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Benedict XVI’s new book comprises a series of scholarly meditations on the message of Jesus. It shows signs, indeed, of having originated in a number of separate articles, or perhaps lecture notes, on particular episodes — the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, or the insights of ‘the great Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner’ who, the Pope writes, ‘has opened my eyes to the greatness of Jesus’ words’. What most stands out in the book, however, is Benedict XVI’s acceptance, and use of, the findings of modern critical scholarship, the methods having been authorised in the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu of 1943. (How splendidly characteristic of the Holy See that it should have concerned itself with truly eternal spiritual values while the rest of human society was locked in transient preoccupations like the second world war.) He is traditional to the extent that he accepts the reported words of Jesus in the Gospels as always self-evidently authentic, and appears to be little impressed by the notion that some may be, for example, later interpolations in the text; he is wholly modern in relating the Gospel accounts of the teachings of Christ, and the symbolism of their various contexts, to the encompassing social and moral culture of the times. In places, additionally, he relates them directly to events of our times as well. This fusion of approaches is beautifully achieved. What lingers in the mind, because of its persistence in his writings, is Benedict XVI’s declaration that ‘the historical-critical method — specifically because of the intrinsic nature of theology and faith — is and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical work’.
The Pope is most plainly separated from the critical theology of the last two centuries, both Protestant and Modernist Catholic, in his rejection of its atomism and spiritual insensitivity. His understanding of Biblical texts is expressed within the organic wholeness of ‘the People of God’ who, after all, compiled the sacred writings and eventually authorised the canon of Scripture. ‘Any human utterance of a certain weight contains more than the author may have been immediately aware of at the time,’ he insists, and in due time, and with shifts in culture, essential truths can be discerned in an enriched manner. The entire corpus of modern re-interpretation of Christianity seems to regard the situation in which the sayings of Jesus were set as decisive for their current meaning; an organic understanding reveals the limits of this approach and discloses the reality of a living collection of teaching. In that sense the Pope is a traditionalist, and his book is especially welcome because of it.
John Paul II sought to steer the Catholic faithful away from what, in the heady days of the 1970’s, was called Liberation Theology. Benedict XVI, also, observes, in passing, the dangers of politicising Christianity. There is a particularly illuminating reference to the release of ‘the concrete political and social realm from theocratic legislation’, and its transferrence ‘to the freedom of man’. He actually sees this (in the chapter on the Sermon on the Mount) in the preceding Jewish context. He could have placed it in the Hellenistic culture to which the development was more centrally related — it was the Greeks whose genius rejected the theocratic monarchies of the East, and who humanised politics. The Pope’s conclusion is correct, however; when he writes that ‘discipleship of Jesus offers no politically concrete programme for structuring society’, and that Jesus’ liberation of humanity involved a recognition that ‘political arrangements are no longer treated as sacred law’ — he leads us, instead, to ‘the underlying communion of will with God’ as the essential core of Christian truth. ‘In our day, of course,’ Benedict XVI adds with regret, because of the wasted opportunities for true spiritual formation, ‘this freedom has been totally wrenched away from any godly perspective.’ This study is lucidly and simply written, and with no sacrifice of intellectual gravitas or accessibility. The author hastens to point out that it is not an exercise of the magisterium: it is not infallible teaching. In that, at any rate, it differs from the certainties which the liberals often claim for their beliefs. The present volume is actually ten chapters, and the rest will be published later — since, as the Pope states bluntly, he does not know if he will last long enough to finish the work. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings with the falling of the dusk.
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