Early Ratzinger on Revelation, Faith, and Tradition

Ormond Rush’s Interpretation of Early Ratzinger’s Commentary

At the Synod on synodality, October 23, 2023, Australian theologian Fr. Ormond Rush gave a lecture on the early Joseph Ratzinger’s theology of revelation, faith, and tradition, in light of Ratzinger’s commentary on Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation.¹ Rush begins by framing his understanding of Ratzinger’s theology in light of a “static” versus a “dynamic” understanding of tradition. “The former is legalistic, propositional, and ahistorical (i.e., relevant for all times and place); the latter is personalist, sacramental and rooted in history, and therefore to be interpreted with an historical consciousness.” Furthermore, a dynamic understanding of tradition, according to Rush, reflects a personalist understanding of revelation that, at its core, is dialogical. This framing of tradition as dynamic also provides him with the wherewithal to distinguish legitimate tradition that in the course of time is distinguished from distorting tradition. Moreover, adds Rush,

Revelation is not only a communication of truths about God and human living, which is articulated in Scripture and in the statements of doctrine at particular times in the church’s history, in response to time-conditioned questions put to the tradition. Revelation is primarily a communication of God’s love, an encounter with God the Father in Christ through the Holy Spirit. . . . In Dei Verbum . . . this divine revelation is presented as an ongoing encounter in the present, and not just something that happened in the past. The event of God’s self-revealing (always in Christ, through the Holy Spirit) and God’s offer of relationship, continues to be a living reality here and now.

Rush is quick to dismiss the idea that a dynamic and hence dialogical view of revelation means the idea of a continuing revelation, e.g., “there can be some revelation of who God is.” But he implicitly refers to the “law of evangelization” expressed in Gaudium et Spes, no. 44, and Ad Gentes, no. 22, namely, “accommodated [adapted] preaching of the revealed Word ought to remain the law of all evangelization.” In his view, this means “the same God, in the same Jesus Christ, through the enlightenment and empowerment of the same Holy Spirit, is forever engaging with, and dialoguing with, human beings in the ever-new here and now of history that relentlessly moves humanity into new perceptions, new questions and new insights, in diverse cultures and places, as the world-church courses through time into an unknown future until the eschaton.” In this connection, he also refers to the idea of the “signs of the times” in which we “distinguish and interpret the many voices of our age, and to judge them in the light of the divine word, so that revealed truth can always be more deeply penetrated, better understood and set forth to greater advantage.” He concludes, “That ‘revealed truth’ is a person, Jesus Christ.”

Ratzinger’s Commentary on Dei Verbum

Ratzinger frames his commentary on Dei Verbum in light of the question regarding the relationship between “scripture” and “tradition,” (155–57) in particular, the theory that dominated the theological understanding of that relation between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, namely, the two-source theory of revelation in which there are two materially distinct sources of revelation. The draft of the schema of Dei Verbum of the Preparatory Theological Commission titled, De Fontibus Revelationis, “A Schema of a Dogmatic Constitution of the Sources of Revelation,”² sought to bolster the notion of the two sources of revelation, namely, the equalization of Scripture and the Church’s tradition. There was much opposition and criticisms of this schema, resulting in John XXIII intervening and removing the schema from the Council’s agenda, remanding it to an entirely new working committee. Fr. Joseph Ratzinger gave a lecture on the schema to the German-speaking bishops, October 10, 1962, summarizing the objection regarding the position the schema takes on the relation of Scripture and tradition.³ Ratzinger rejects the two-source theory of revelation. How, then, do Scripture and tradition relate to each other, particularly when we can no longer consider tradition to contain a plus in content over Scripture? For example, how should we think of the dogma of 1850, the bodily Assumption of the Mother of the Incarnate God?⁴ Regarding the two-source theory, Ratzinger writes:

An objection arises right away, namely, that some dogmas are proved by Tradition and not by Scripture alone. After 1950, one often heard that the dogma [of Mary’s Assumption] was a typical example of a tenet provable solely through tradition. But such an account in this case does not help, for it is basically an escape, not an explanation. For tradition clearly knows nothing about the bodily assumption of the Mother of God before the 5th century and when the first accounts do begin to appear they are not at all later records of something handed on orally down to that time. Instead, the insight came to light only after centuries of struggling to understand it, until finally in 1950 the Church declared that the insight was from the Holy Spirit and belongs to the basic content of revelation. Such an approach leads to no proof from tradition as a distinct material principle, but again it appears to be a process of spiritual appropriation and of elaboration of the mystery of Christ amid the Church’s historical struggles.⁵

Thus, in distinction to the two-source theory of revelation, Ratzinger makes clear in the above passage that a new attitude to tradition arose in the nineteenth century that focused on the notions of the categories of “growth, progress and the knowledge of the faith,” (156) and hence on the development of dogma, for example, John Henry Newman, An Essay on The Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), and Johann Adam Möhler, Unity in the Church, or the Principle of Catholicism (1825). Is tradition an organically and homogeneously developing process or is the living tradition practically identical with the voice of the Church, the living consciousness of the present-day Church? Briefly, Ratzinger holds that Dei Verbum rejects the two-source theory of revelation for it “does not positively teach that Scripture is materially supplemented by tradition.” Yes, “[I]t is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed” (Dei Verbum, no. 9). Rather, Dei Verbum accords to tradition a special criteriological value. Says Ratzinger, “The function of tradition is seen here as making certain of the truth, i.e., it belongs in the formal and gnoseological sphere — and, in fact, this is the sphere in which the significance of tradition is to be sought” (195). The chief question, then, raised by Ratzinger is his commentary on Dei Verbum is about the development of dogma in light of the authoritative sources of the faith, Scripture and tradition.

Pace Rush, then, he is mistaken to frame Ratzinger’s commentary in light of a “static” versus a “dynamic” understanding of tradition. In the first place, Ratzinger is referring to Vincent of Lérins’ “canon” or “first rule,” which states that “in the Catholic Church all care must be taken so that we hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by everyone” (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est). Ratzinger is right that this “canon” as such is no longer the right way of expressing the relationship between Scripture and tradition regarding the nature of doctrinal development. Secondly, Ratzinger is nevertheless mistaken here about Vincent since the latter was persuaded that there exists authentic growth and development in the Church over time.⁶ Still, Ratzinger correctly notes, regarding the dynamic concept of tradition, that Vatican II “has another conception of the nature of historical identity and continuity.” (187) This conception refers to Vincent’s “second rule” that all development must be in “eodem sensu eademque sententia.”

John XXIII stated in his opening address at Vatican II, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia: “For the deposit of faith [2 Tim 1:14], the truths contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing; the mode in which they are expressed, but always with the same meaning and the same judgment [eodem sensu eademque sententia], is another thing.” The subordinate clause in this passage — eodem sensu eademque sententia — is part of a larger passage from Vatican I’s Dei Filius, and this passage is itself from the Commonitórium 23.3, of Vincent of Lérins: “Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and all, in individuals and in the whole Church, at all times and in the progress of ages, but only with the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same meaning, the same judgment.” In short, it is about “evolution within the same truth,” or as Karl Rahner also put it, “it is change in, not of identity.” That is, regarding the issue of meaning and truth pertaining to dogmatic development, Rahner summarizes the main question:

How namely authentic identity on the one hand and really genuine development on the other can be reconciled. The problem is undoubtedly very difficult, because it ultimately reaches down to the obscure depths of a general ontology of being and becoming, of the persistence of identity in change — and also comprises the general metaphysics of knowledge and mind, which frames the same questions in searching for truth, with regard to its identity and real historical involvement.⁷

The Lérinian legacy is, arguably, based on the distinction between truth and its historically conditioned formulations, between form and content, truth-content and context, in sum, propositions and sentences, meaning thereby the differing expressions of the propositional truths of faith must keep the same meaning and the same judgment. The crucial point here is that although this teaching can be expressed in different ways, it must always be in eodem sensu eademque sententia, meaning thereby with material continuity and identity of the Christian faith preserved over time. Since Fr. Rush seems to reject propositional revelation as characteristic of a “static” view of tradition, he cannot account for the material continuity and identity of the Christian faith.

Referring to Dei Verbum, no. 8, Ratzinger states that “tradition takes place essentially as the growing insight, mediated by the Holy Spirit, into revelation that has been given once and for all; it is the perfectio of faith which the Spirit brings about in the Church.” (179) In sum, as Thomas Guarino sums up Vatican II’s conception of the nature of historical identity and continuity and Vincent’s second rule that all development must be in eodem sensu eademque sententia.

One may seek a determinate meaning of Scripture while concomitantly defending the necessity of doctrinal development and the amplification of biblical meaning that must always be an organic and architectonic maturation of it. This is precisely what Vincent of Lérins meant in the fifth century when he argued that there is indeed development within the tradition but that it must always be profectus, never a permutatio; it must always be in eodem sensu, not in sensu alieno with the deposit of faith.⁸

Clearly, Rush’s interpretation of Ratzinger and Vatican II on Scripture and tradition is mistaken. Even German Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014) understands better than Fr. Rush that Vatican II’s reliance on Vincent’s second rule makes clear “that the issue [of doctrinal development] was the identity of matter, not the formulation.” He adds, “Vincent saw clearly that the formulation can evolve, and when this happens conflict inevitably rises over whether the new formulation preserves the identity of the faith content.” Hence, pace Rush, Vatican II’s conception of the nature of historical identity and continuity, according to Vincent’s second rule, understood “that development [of doctrine] must be in eodem sensus, always a proper profectus — which shed light on the issue of continuity within change.”⁹

One more thing that can only be mentioned here in passing, namely, says Ratzinger, “the question of the criticism of tradition or the impossibility of a rectilinear idea of perfectio.” The former pertains to distinguishing between “a distorting, as well as a legitimate, tradition.” That is, “tradition must not be considered only affirmatively, but also critically; we have Scripture as a criterion for this indispensable criticism of tradition, and tradition must therefore always be related back to it and measured by it.” (185)

Ratzinger’s Comprehensive View of Special Revelation

I turn now briefly to consider Ratzinger’s comprehensive view of special revelation in light of Dei Verbum. Special revelation is historical, verbal because God’s word revelation is not extrinsic to special revelation, and salvific.

The schema (S) I propose to use here to give an account of special revelation claims is as follows: (S) m reveals α to n by means of (through, etc.) k.¹⁰ This schema is about the origin, content, manner, and purpose of God’s special revelation.¹¹ In other words, the agent of the revelation is represented by m; α represents the content of the revelation, and n the recipient; k represents the manner or means of the revelation. I turn now to look at each of the elements in the schema.

The agent (m) of the revelation is God himself because revelation originates with God. “It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (cf. Eph. 1:9).”¹² Furthermore, he is the essential foundation (principium essendi), the source, the primary efficient cause, of our knowledge of him. Without his divine self-communicative acts, his personal self-disclosures, we would not know anything of God at all. Ratzinger puts the point this way:

[I]t is God himself, the person of God, from whom revelation proceeds and to whom it returns, and this revelation necessarily reaches — also with the person who receives it — into the personal centre of man, it touches him in the depth of his being, not only in his individual faculties, in his will and understanding. (171)

Moving on to the next item (α) in this schema, what is the content of revelation? Put differently, what is it that is revealed? In a fundamental sense, God reveals himself, and so we may say that the content of revelation is God’s own proper reality, his own self, the gift of himself “as a communion of persons inviting human persons to enter into communion.”¹³ In the words of Dei Verbum, “His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature (cf. Eph. 2: 18; 2 Pet. 1:4). By this revelation, then, the invisible God (cf. Col. 1: 15; 1 Tim. 1: 17), from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends (cf. Ex. 33: 11; Jn. 15: 14–15), and moves among them (cf. Bar. 3: 38), in order to invite and receive them into his own company.”¹⁴ Indeed, Dei Verbum discloses that the purpose of God’s self-revelation is coming to know him. “Now this is life eternal: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). We are invited, therefore, to Trinitarian communion with the Father, through the Son, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Revelation is, then, not the mere communication of truths but rather “the life-bestowing self-communication of the Trinitarian God, in which he addresses humans as friends,” as Dei Verbum states.¹⁵ This is the variable n in the schema above. It refers to the recipient of special revelation. Says Ratzinger:

From this there follows an understanding of revelation that is seen basically as dialogue, as is indicated in the words alloquitur and conversatur. . . . [T]he dialogue of God is always carried on in the present; his address “no longer do I call you servants . . . but . . . friends (Jn 15:15) is given here and now with the intention of forcing us to reply. Thus we can see how the idea of revelation also outlines a conception of man: man as the creature of dialogue who, in listening to the word of God, becomes contemporaneous with the presentness of God and in the fellowship of the word receives the reality which is indivisibly one with this word: fellowship with God himself. (171)

What, then, is the purpose of God’s special revelation? Ratzinger correctly states that the purpose of revelation “is not concerned with talking about something that is quite external to the person, but with the realization of the existence of man, with the relation of the human ‘I’ to the divine ‘thou,’ so that the purpose of this dialogue is ultimately not information, but unity [between God and man] and transformation.” (175; emphasis added) Ratzinger is quick to add that this is no way removes the understanding of faith as “believing as true what has been revealed by God.”¹⁶ In other words, this dialogical and hence personalist understanding of faith “in no way removes the intellectual [propositional] component of faith, but understands it as a component in a wider whole.” (178) Dei Verbum states: “‘The obedience of faith’ (Rom. 16:26; see 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5–6) ‘is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals’,” [Denzinger, no. 3008] and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him.”

Yet there is more to the content of revelation: God reveals himself in the economy of special revelation in his words and actions. Dei Verbum holds that the economy of revelation in Sacred Scripture consists of a pattern of deeds of God in history and words, of divine actions and divinely-given interpretations of those actions, that are inextricably bound together in that revelation.¹⁷ That is, God’s redemptive revelation of himself is accomplished through historical events as well as through written words. Thus: “the works performed by God in the history of salvation show forth and bear out the doctrine and realities signified by the words; the words, for their part, proclaim the works, and bring to light the mystery they contain.”¹⁸ In sum, “the most intimate truth which this revelation gives us about God and the salvation of man shines forth in Christ, who is himself both the mediator and the sum total of Revelation [see Matt 11:27; John 1:14, 17; 14:6; 17:1–3; 2 Cor 3:16, 4:6; Eph 1:3–14].”¹⁹ This important emphasis on the history of salvation reaching its absolute zenith in the person and work of Christ, since God’s revelation in him is perfect and definitive, means that there is a history of revelation, with revelation progressing through the history of salvation in phases.

Moreover, God not only reveals himself, giving us himself in Trinitarian communion. Rather, at one and the same time, Holy Scripture is not only God’s gift of himself, inviting humanity to share in his life, but also a disclosure of revealed truths, that is, propositional revelation. In other words, revelation, while involving a profound personal engagement with the revealing God, “also and necessarily has an irreducibly cognitive dimension.”²⁰ Ratzinger correctly notes that there is an eschatological element to faith’s knowledge of God.²¹ He says,

All knowledge in the time of the Church remains knowledge seen in a mirror — and hence fragmentary. The direct relation to reality, to the face of God [himself], is kept for the eschaton (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). This is the only place in this chapter [Dei Verbum, no. 7] in which one can hear a gentle note of criticism of tradition, for when everything is seen and read only in a mirror, one must expect distortions and shifts in emphasis. In any case, this is theologia negativa, which necessarily involves the setting of a certain limit to both kerygmatic and ecclesial positivity, without this line being further developed. (183)

Yet inadequacy of expressions does not mean either inexpressibility of divine truth or that the cognitive content of divine truth grasped and formulated is not determinately true. In short, given Dei Verbum’s claim that “therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit,” it follows that the books of Scripture “must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” (no. 11; emphasis added) This teaching presupposes a view of propositional revelation, that is, “divinely revealed realities” that are presented as true, as permanent truth. Helm rightly says, “We might say of such assertions: once true, always true, permanently true, everywhere true at every time.” And it’s precisely because these truths are permanent truths of God’s self-communication, in other words, the what’s said, that Dei Verbum states that the “full integrity” of these sacred realities should abide in perpetuity and “be handed on to all generations.” Corresponding to this truth claim is the idea stated by Dei Verbum, no. 2, that there is no more public revelation; the canon is closed even if our understanding of the canon is such that “revelation may be more and more profoundly understood.” In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 66: “Yet even if revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church correctly captures both the personal and the propositional in its understanding of faith and revelation. “Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed.”²² In this connection, we should heed Paul Helm’s point: “There is no antithesis between believing a proposition and believing a person if the proposition is taken to be the assertion of some person.”²³ Thus, we must reject the dichotomy between God revealing propositions and revealing himself, such as we find in Rush’s view of revelation as personalist and dialogical,²⁴ between the propositional and the personal, if the propositions are understood to be assertions of God’s self-communicative acts.²⁵ Indeed, Anglican philosophical theologian Richard Swinburne is correct: “It is in any case very hard to see how God could reveal himself in history (e.g. in the Exodus or the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus) without at the same time revealing some propositional truth about himself. For events are not self-interpreting. Either God provides with the historical events its interpretation, in which there is a propositional revelation; or he does not, in which case how can anyone know that a revelatory event has occurred?”²⁶ As I have already shown above, this too is the view of Dei Verbum in affirming the inextricable connection between words and deeds in the economy of divine Revelation.

Briefly, one final point in conclusion pertains to the relationship between Scripture and the Church’s teaching office, the Magisterium. Ratzinger writes:

[When] the task of theology is described as that of showing how what the teaching office has established is contained in the sources [is reductionist]. . . . One can hardly deny that the point of view which sees only Scripture as what is unclear, but the teaching office as what is clear, is a very limited one and that to reduce the task of theology to the proof of the presence of the statements of the teaching office in the sources is to threaten the primacy of the sources which, (were one to continue logically in this direction) would ultimately destroy the serving character of the teaching office. (emphasis added)

Finally, tradition and the Church are intrinsically and necessarily related to Scripture, that is, co-inhere as a network of interdependent authorities, and that means that the Magisterium of the Church can justify, or adequately certify, no truth from Scripture alone, but for that matter neither from tradition alone nor from the magisterium alone. (see 197) Yes, these authorities function together (each in its own way) differing in degree of authority, with Scripture being the supreme rule of faith, the norma normans non normata (the norm with no norm over it), such that Scripture is not subservient to tradition or to the teaching office of the Church. Furthermore, the Church does not hold that the teaching office of the Church operates on its own, that is, without reference to any superior norm.

But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.²⁷

Perhaps there are no other two words used by Vatican Council II that define the question regarding the nature and extent of the Church’s aim of renewal than ressourcement and aggiornamento. What do each of these words mean and how do they stand in relation to each other? Ressourcement involves a “return to the authoritative sources” of the Christian faith, for the purpose of rediscovering their truth and meaning in order to meet the critical challenges of our time. If ressourcement is about revitalization, then the oft-mentioned aggiornamento is about the “law of evangelization,” that is, of finding new ways to rethink and reformulate the fundamental affirmations of the Christian faith.

Unfortunately, some interpreters of Vatican II, and Ormond Rush sounds like one of them, took renewal to be merely a matter of the Church’s adaptation or accommodation to the standards of the modern world. In other words, they took aggiornamento, in the words of Oscar Cullman, as an “isolated motive for renewal.”²⁸ In order to do justice to the enduring and unsurpassable truth of the fundamental affirmations of revelation, the faith’s continuity and unchangeable truth, “aggiornamento should be a consequence, not a starting point,” of renewal. That is, the first step in renewal is to couple aggiornamento to ressourcement, to the sources of Christian faith, in order to deepen, by revitalizing, our understanding of the faith for the purpose of providing, not only a coherent critique of the culture of modernity, but also a theology that will truly address the critical questions of our time.²⁹

In conclusion, this, too, is Ratzinger’s view expressed in properly understanding the contrast between the “listening” and the “teaching” Church. “In the last analysis the whole Church listens, and, vice versa, the whole Church shares in the upholding of true teaching by an . . . attitude of openness towards the [authoritative] sources, which it has continually to consult and consider, in order to be able to interpret them truly and preserve them.” (197)