Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Heuritisches Prinzip: Wort Gottes; Thematisierung: positiv - negativ

Kurzinhalt: The clue is in the act of naming the relevant materials the word of God; to name a certain reality "the word of God" was an act of thematizing

Textausschnitt: 15a With the problem defined in this way, we begin. For this first step, if we are not just to cast about in trial and error, we need some sort of clue, and I suggest that the clue is provided in the very phrase we have been using to describe our topic, the Christian word of God. I do not mean that the clue is found in the content of the term; that simply adds one more to the tangled nest already formed by gospel, preaching, teaching, tradition, catechesis, and the rest. The clue is in the act of naming the relevant materials the word of God. There is a thematizing here, that thematizing is an event, and the event carries us forward and sets us on a path through history. At some point in time, and in some discrete occurrence, the materials about which we have been talking came to be recognized as the word of God. If we can locate that occurrence, and study the materials before and after the event, we will be launched on the path we are searching for. I believe that it is relatively simple to conclude to such a transition, and to describe both the "before" and "after" stages of history; though we cannot locate the point of transition with the accuracy we would desire, there is still sufficient clarity to structure our first two chapters. (Fs) (notabene)

15b This act of "naming" a topic for theological reflection, of thematizing a set of materials under a certain aspect, brings into focus the point often made about the selective process of history. Realities exist before they are named, and the naming generally points only to a certain aspect that does not by any means exhaust the reality. Isaac, ...

16a In the same way, to name a certain reality "the word of God" was also an act of thematizing. The reality already existed; it existed in the rich life of the Christian community and the diverse activities by which that community tried to assimilate, put into practice, and hand on what it had received from Jesus and his first disciples. When the rich and diversified materials that constituted this reality came to be known as the word of God, both loss and gain resulted. There was gain in the new insight achieved, in the recognition of God's part in all this activity, in the deepening penetration of the mystery of his dealings with his children. But there was loss in the resulting tendency to leave the human element in the background. As the definition of the divinity of Christ led almost inevitably to neglect of his humanity, so the idea that God had spoken to his people in the Christian message led the church to neglect the human agents of the message and the particular cultural situations in which communication of the message to human receivers took place. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Thematisierungen (Botschaft, kerygma) vor der Bezeichnung "Wort Gottes"

Kurzinhalt: How were the materials that pertain to the Christian word commonly designated in the period prior to their becoming known as the word of God?; gospel, kerygma, message

Textausschnitt: 16b Of course, when I speak of naming the materials "the word of God" and thus introducing a theme for thought, I am not denying that there were names prior to that event, which themselves constituted a thematization; it is, in fact, my purpose at the moment to discover what those early designations were. We anticipate our second chapter, then, to say that the message had been thematized as the word of God by the time of the Acts of the Apostles; we use this thematizing to structure our first two stages; and we ask: How were the materials that pertain to the Christian word commonly designated in the period prior to their becoming known as the word of God? Our answer will be that the earlier designations were "gospel," or "kerygma," or "message." It may even be that, at one stage, there was no thematic designation: One simply referred to "what has been handed on," or to "what happened in the life and times of Jesus." (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Hypothese: Frohe Botschaft wird Wort Gottes (Osterbotschaft - Lukas); Agens: Frauen -> Gott selbst

Kurzinhalt: ... hypothesis that the Christian message, which we now know as the word of God and take for granted under that heading, was not originally so conceived, but was simply the joyful message,

Textausschnitt: 22a The sequence here is based on the hypothesis that the Christian message, which we now know as the word of God and take for granted under that heading, was not originally so conceived, but was simply the joyful message, the good news of salvation in Christ; only later did it come to be known as the word of God. There is a prima facie case for that hypothesis in the evident difference between the way the communication of the holy women was received on the first Easter and the attitude that Luke takes toward the same message sixty years later. The story the women told on returning from the tomb is regarded as a babbling and incoherent account of some experience they may have had. Sixty years later Luke takes it for granted that this story, now greatly expanded but built round the same nucleus, is quite simply the word of God; as he has Paul and Barnabas declare to the Jews of Pisidian Antioch: "It was necessary [...] that the word of God should be declared to you first" (Acts 13:46). (Fs) (notabene)

22b However, that prima facie case must be substantiated by more thorough examination of the situation before and after the transition to the new conception; and, if we cannot pinpoint the event itself of the transition, we have at least to raise the question of its time, place, and circumstances. Further, there is a special need in this chapter to notice the fact that we are not dealing merely with the content of the message when it is specified as the word of God. Beyond that, the very act of utterance is specified as God's activity; and this second aspect will have its own fateful role to play in the history of the word. Accordingly, this chapter will be divided into two parts, to deal first with the transition from message to word of God, and then with the notion of God as active in the communication of his word. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Von den ersten Glaubensformeln -> Nizäa (Nicea); Häresie und Orthodosie (Bauer)

Kurzinhalt: The sequence is from a word of confession in which there is truth-content, to a creed that selects the truth-content for special attention and makes it a password, to a conciliar definition that sets two contradictory statements in opposition ...

Textausschnitt: 49b The trend here is too slow to occupy us, for our business is change, not continuity, and we are looking for significant transitions in the emergence of the truth-function. However, there is one preliminary problem that was raised by Walter Bauer in his work on orthodoxy and heresy in the early church. We have proceeded as if truth were the given element, with heresy arising as a sort of perverse refusal to hear and obey a word that is plainly spoken with a definite message. Is that assumption justilled? ...

50a Bauer's work forces us to a refinement of our account of the way truth emerges in the rational exercise of our minds. That exercise, we recall, depended on the occurrence of questions. Sometimes there is a stated proposition whose meaning is sufficiently clear, and then the question is one for reflection: Is it true? But sometimes no statement is proposed, there is not yet a question for reflection, and then the emergence of truth depends on the occurrence of the prior question for understanding and the ideas that provide a possible answer. Now the ideas may be right, but much more likely they will be wrong, simply because many explanations of the data are generally possible, but generally only one is correct. To apply this now to the Christian message: Along with the actual truth in the original kerygma, "the facts about Jesus," there is an enormous range of possibilities; there is an amorphous mass that is neither true nor false, but just data for inquiry and reflection. In Lonergan's terms, it has not yet been "promoted" to the level of truth. Truth is achieved; you reach it by climbing to a new level. Even the word of God may not be true, not in the sense that it is false, but in the sense that it is neither true nor false; it may contain historical experience, ideas, hypotheses, and arguments, it may go on to exhort or rebuke, it may deal in various ways with words and deeds, all without bringing the matter to the critical issue of truth. Bauer's work, I believe, is to be read in the clarifying light of this analysis. At any rate this perspective will guide our own discussion of what happened in the conciliar phase of the theology of the word. (Fs) (notabene)
51a The immediate precursor of the conciliar mentality on truth is the credal form, which mediates between the scriptural confession of Christ and the definition of truth under pain of anathema. The original elements in the creed were scriptural, found in such statements as were "confessed" ("Jesus is Lord") or in such narratives of fact as were handed on ("I handed on to you the facts which had been imparted to me"). These early Christological confessions were complemented a generation later by the formula in Matthew which we have come to call trinitarian: "Baptize men everywhere in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (28:19). (Fs)

51b However, there is a century of obscurity between these scriptural elements and the creeds that clearly presage the conciliar definition. At one time it was an accepted tradition in the West that the twelve apostles, just before their dispersal to the four winds of the great mission-field, gathered for a last meeting and composed their creed, each apostle in turn contributing an article. The legend, propagated by Rufinus in the 5th century, was never an Eastern tradition; in fact, the bishops of the Orthodox Eastern church refused at the time of the council of Florence to have this Western "Apostles' " creed foisted upon them. The attack became general in Renaissance times, and in 1443 the humanist scholar Valla was brought before the Inquisition for denying the ancient tradition. But it was only in 1647 that a definitive positive step forward was taken, with the discovery by James Ussher, bishop of Armagh, of a text that obviously antedated the one explained by Rufinus. And it was only from the 19th century on, with the work of Caspari, Harnack, Kattenbusch, Burn, and other more recent writers, that we have been able to trace the main steps in the development of the creed. (Fs)

51c They are roughly as follows. A century after Matthew we find in Ireneus a rule of faith, in the sense of a rule prescribed by faith; this is close to a creed but not yet the later category. In Tertullian there is more definite use of a credal form, identified with the rule of faith adopted in Rome and Africa, and used as a tessera, a token. This metaphor is taken from a custom of hospitality: There was "an earthenware token, which two friends divided and passed on to their descendants, making the duty of friendship hereditary." At this time, therefore, the creed may have become a badge of Christian profession, admitting the Christian to social meals in churches where he was a stranger. That seems to be the idea also in the use of the term symbolum among Christians. Symbolum became technical, if not in Tertullian, then certainly in Cyprian, for whom it meant the short creed put in interrogative form to candidates at baptism, a form that endures even in our own day. From such beginnings, the "Apostles' " creed developed, and also, presumably, the creed that was employed as the basis of the first conciliar definition at Nicea in 325. (Fs) (notabene)

52a The sequence is from a word of confession in which there is truth-content, to a creed that selects the truth-content for special attention and makes it a password, to a conciliar definition that sets two contradictory statements in opposition, choosing one as an article of faith and condemning the other as heretical. I would certainly not say that the sequence occurs without overlapping, but the emphasis in scripture does seem to be on confessing Christ, the creeds do seem to become an admission requirement, and in the councils we do find what amounts to a formal process of fixing and imposing the truth and anathematizing the contrary. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: 4. Stufe in d. Entfaltung des Wortes: Frage nach der Legitimität; von Nizäa (Nicea) -> Trient

Kurzinhalt: After truth comes the question of our grounds for asserting something as true; so that one may say that the chronological leap from our third to our fourth chapter is measured by the distance between Nicea and Trent

Textausschnitt: 58b It seems to me that we may indeed hope by such a question to discover a clue, and I suggest that it will point to the "sources" of truth as the next thematization of the Christian word. That is, after truth comes the question of our grounds for asserting something as true. This is a normal sequence in daily life: If you tell a plain man something new, he is apt to ask: How do you know? It is the sequence in science: When a scientist forms an opinion on a question in his field, he is driven on to devise a crucial experiment that may settle the question on the basis of sufficient evidence. We can find a hint of this sequence in the instruction of 1 Peter: "Be always ready with your defence whenever you are called to account for the hope that is in you" (3:15). As a final preliminary, we might ask whether such a step is not latent in the procedures of the Nicene council that brought the previous chapter into focus; that is, was there not a feature of the Nicene debate that was not then the central theme but was very much a background factor in the movement of history at that time, namely, the authority by which the council pronounced on Arius and defined the faith of the church? (Fs) (notabene)

60a This at any rate is the view I will propose in this chapter, that, latent in the history of Nicea, there was the question once put to Jesus: "By what authority are you acting like this? Who gave you this authority?" (Mt. 21:23), and that this question will later, very much later, become the theme that dominates the theology of the Christian word. It will indeed require centuries for the thematizing to occur; though it arises immediately in the swift atemporal unfolding of logic, it is not till the 16th century and the controversies between Lutherans and Roman Catholics that historically the theme seems to come directly into focus, so that one may say that the chronological leap from our third to our fourth chapter is measured by the distance between Nicea and Trent. Maybe we could choose a more definite symbol of the new stage in Melchior Cano's De locis theologicis, a work published posthumously in the year 1563. From Nicea to the Reformation is a long interval, and the reader may wonder, as I did, whether the next significant transition is not to be located in some other emerging question; or, if it does lie in the question of loci, whether that question did not come into focus before the 16th century. There are surely important anticipatory steps in the long history between 325 and 1563, but it seems to me, after pondering the evidence, that this thematization occurs in exact form only at that later date. Let me set forth that evidence now for the reader to examine. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Kanon d. Schrift; loci; Tertullian, Irenäus: "subjectives" Prinzip in d. Abwehr der Herätiker;

Kurzinhalt: ...not quite in the modern sense of "subjective" but in the sense that he turns from the truth itself to the bearer of that truth...

Textausschnitt: 70c The Adversus haereses of Ireneus, for all its rambling diffuseness, reveals the new situation formed by ongoing history. The first chapter of the first book gives us the clue: Our adversaries, Ireneus says, "falsify the oracles of God, and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good word of revelation." Remarks scattered through the first two books show this complaint to be continuously operative for Ireneus, but it is the third book, where he comes to his own positive statement, that concerns us most. His first chapter here states the source of all we know on "the plan of our salvation": the apostles, who first proclaimed the gospel and then committed it to writing. The next chapter lays the precise complaint against the adversaries: When we quote scripture, they appeal to tradition but, when we refer them to that tradition which originates with the apostles, they object to tradition. The third chapter reveals the strategy of Ireneus's reply: to list the order of succession from the apostles, through the bishops who followed them, down to the bishops of our own times, taking Rome as a sample. "In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us." (Fs) (notabene)

71a What Ireneus is doing, I should say, is moving from the objective to the subjective, not quite in the modern sense of "subjective" but in the sense that he turns from the truth itself to the bearer of that truth. He appeals directly neither to scripture nor to tradition though both of them contain the truth, but to the agents of the truth wherever it is found. Perhaps he has not got those categories quite clear or become fully aware of what is happening through his strategic decision, but it marks a significant trend in history, to be followed presently by Tertullian. Anyway, in his own mind he has found a principle to serve both for refutation and for proper procedure: "Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the church; since the apostles [...] lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth." (Fs) (notabene)

72b Tertullian in his work On Prescription against Heretics brings the precision of legal argument to the point made more vaguely by Ireneus. The prior question is not what the scriptures say, but to whom the scriptures belong. To take the case to the court of the scriptures, with the adversaries quoting and interpreting them one way and the orthodox church another, is a useless procedure: (Fs) (notabene)
To the Scriptures therefore we must not appeal [...] the order of things would require that this question should be first proposed, which is now the only one to be discussed, "To whom belongeth the very Faith; whose are the Scriptures; by whom, and through whom, and when, and to whom was that rule delivered whereby men become Christians." For wherever both the true Christian rule and Faith shall be shewn to be, there will be the true Scriptures, and the true expositions, and all the true Christian traditions. (Fs)

72a Tertullian then, as the title of his work declares, is appealing to prescription, a legal device in Roman law that had the effect of not even allowing the case to come to court. As for positive argument, he does not differ so very much from Ireneus. He goes on, from the passage quoted, to speak of Christ commissioning the apostles, the apostles founding churches, and other churches deriving from the apostolic. And he continues: (Fs)
On this principle therefore we shape our rule: that, if the Lord Jesus Christ sent the Apostles to preach, no others ought to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed [...] Now what they did preach . . . must be proved in no other way than by those same Churches which the Apostles themselves founded. (Fs)

72b Concluding his work, Tertullian restates his general principle: "And now indeed I have argued against all heresies in general, that they ought to be forbidden by fixed, and just, and necessary rules, to bring Scripture into their disputes." (Fs)

72c An enormous amount of learned ink has flowed in the effort to analyze Ireneus and Tertullian. What matters here, however, is the place of Ireneus and Tertullian in the ongoing evolution, and that cannot be fully clarified by any interpretation of their work, however erudite; it becomes plain only when the result of the evolution has disclosed its direction. The direction of their first fateful step turns out to be toward the doctrine of the magisterium; this doctrine will emerge in due course and reign with a vengeance, only to be challenged in its own turn. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Tertullian, Irenäus -> Athanasius, Augustinus: apostolische -> katholische Tradtion

Kurzinhalt: The great council has become in some sense a "source" of the faith; Augustinus: "securus iudicat orbis terrarum."

Textausschnitt: 72d It is Athanasius, so much of whose work is concerned with the explanation and defense of Nicea, who begins to bring the next phase into focus. His Letter on the Decrees of the Council of Nicea, the very title of which is itself significant, was written about the year 350, and various phrases used by Athanasius reveal the new state of the question: He talks about "the transactions of the Council," and "the assembled Bishops," who "published against [the Arians] the sound and ecclesiastical faith." Athanasius asks about them: "Are they not then committing a crime, in their very thought to gainsay so great and ecumenical a Council?" The Arianizers are in the position of one condemned and arguing against the legitimate judge after the case is closed. (Athanasius too seems to have had his legal side.) (Fs)

73a When we read Athanasius from the perspective of our question on the loci, and see his position as it appears in the trajectory we are plotting, his language is extremely significant. It is clear what the new state of the question is: The great council has become in some sense a "source" of the faith. Of course, we must insist again that it is not the ultimate source; Athanasius maintains as much as anyone could desire that the council did not invent the doctrine it promulgated. The same point is made by contrast with the opponents of Nicea in his letter on the spurious synods of Ariminum in Italy and Seleucia in Isauria. This letter, On the Synods, written about 359, poked fun at their dated creed that gives the year of the consulate in which it was issued, and compared it with the great council of Nicea that simply wrote: "Thus believes the Catholic Church." And repeatedly he accuses his adversaries of deserting "the Fathers." But all his appeals to tradition cannot disguise the new state of affairs. Ireneus and Tertullian had appealed to the succession of bishops from the apostles onwards, but such a procedure is now impractical. The succession is too extended and the churches are too numerous. In any case, it would be useless when church is pitted against church. The one remedy now is an assembly of all the churches, where a consensus will prevail and the recalcitrant members be brought back into line. It is the present church beginning to assert itself as not only the legitimate heir of the past but also as a spokesman in its own right. (Fs)

73b Let us designate what is emerging here by the term "Catholic tradition." I use it in contradistinction to apostolic tradition, hoping thereby to remove it from the controversy of the scripture/tradition dichotomy. It denotes simply the patrimony of dogmas defined by the church and made binding on her adherents, along with a train of lesser doctrines thought to be entailed by the dogmas. And the immediate source of these dogmas, always with an implicit or explicit appeal to the past for their ultimate justification, is the consensus of the present church, the "great church" as it came to be called in Athanasius's time. Nicea shows the mentality of this era as vécu; Augustine will make it thematique with his famous phrase "securus iudicat orbis terrarum." (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Mittelalter: Fehlen d. Frage n. den loci; William von Ockham: entscheidene Frage; J. Wycliffe

Kurzinhalt: William of Occam: Are all the truths necessary for salvation in the bible, or are they not?

Textausschnitt: 74a A long interval separates Nicea from the Reformation. During most of it little thought was given to the question of loci which, in its own form, had so exercised Ireneus and Tertullian. Basil of Cesarea, Augustine himself in another aspect of his thought, Vincent of Lerins, even Thomas Aquinas - all of them could be included in a full and detailed history. But none of them, it seems to me, made the significant contribution to the forward movement of theology that we are looking for. This long repetitive period seems strange at first sight, but reflection may show it to be normal enough. On the one side there was the unparalleled development of the objective side of theology that the Middle Ages witnessed; with the wealth of patristic writings to draw on, and the seemingly inexhaustible fertility of the human mind to stimulate more and still more questions for the systematizing of that wealth, the theologians had enough to put all idle minds to work. On the other side, that of the agent of the word, there was no acutely felt need during all these centuries. Nicea had brought in the idea of the magisterium as the present agent for determining the faith; the church appeared as the authorized interpreter of God's word, legitimately linked with the past and recognized as the immediate source of dogma; why bother about more? In some societies, when needs are satisfied, inventions decline. There was little felt need for careful definition of the original sources, still less for determining their relation to the present, the theme that will occupy us in chapter five. The immediate source was enough; it told us all we know on earth about God's word, and all we need to know. (Fs) (notabene)

74a Nevertheless, there was a built-in source of tension on the subjective side of the situation, and perhaps history was waiting only for men's minds to tire of the mental gymnastics of systematic theology to bring it on the stage. The situation was this: The immediate voice and spokesman for God's word was in the present, but it had its authority only from the past and was legitimate only insofar as it maintained continuity with the past. Further, the all-important part of the past was the age of Christ and the apostles. It was rendered accessible through the scriptures but, as they receded further and further in time, the jump from scriptures into the present age became more and more a problem. The resulting tension appears in the late Middle Ages, and can be studied in the work of Oberman and others. For my purpose it is sufficient to consult Paul De Vooght and his book on the sources of doctrine as they are revealed in the theologians of the 14th century. (Fs)

75a The period studied by De Vooght lies between 1317 and 1414, and marks the beginning of the trend toward treatises de locis theologicis. The background to the new stirring has a deceptive simplicity. In the Middle Ages the scriptures were the manual of theology (at least in principle-in practice the theologians wrote commentaries on Peter Lombard's Sentences). Further, casual statements made at the time would conclude logically to a doctrine of sola scriptura. Yet logic cannot really be applied at this point, before the terms are worked out and the premises accurately stated. Theologians may talk as if all their doctrine were in scripture but, when they come to difficult matters like the doctrine on the sacraments or that on the Filioque, they are capable of statements in the diametrically opposite direction: multa non scripta, or non omne scriptum. The situation has the confusion common in a time prior to thematization, when the question is not clearly stated. (Fs)

75b It was William of Occam , according to De Vooght, who first put the clear question: Are all the truths necessary for salvation in the bible, or are they not? Occam gives reasons for both sides, but does not himself settle the question. Wycliffe goes farther and assumes his own fairly definite position. Finding himself in a situation where church and scripture seem to conflict, he is forced to think their relations through. His conclusion: Scripture and tradition come first, and then the church. He does not make a complete break with the past, but respects the normative function of traditional interpretation of scripture. His polemic, in fact, is more against pope and curia than against the church. Still the direction of his movement is clear and, since at the same time Henry of Totting is moving toward the other pole and extending the list of truths not found in scripture, the ways are dividing. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Lutzer: Begründung d Wahrheit; sola scriptura; Melchior Cano: De locis theologicis

Kurzinhalt: Luther stood for the principle that truth must be grounded; ...everywhere in the world begin to ask not what but why this and that was said...;

Textausschnitt: 76a Full polarization will come with the Reformation and the rebellion against the magisterium. Perhaps the Greek-Roman split a few centuries earlier should have precipitated the debate, and in a measure it did contribute: There was the Greek challenge to the "Apostles' " creed of the West, there were the arguments over scriptural and patristic sources on the Filioque, and there was the role of the pope; all these were factors dividing the two sides. But the Greeks were farther away and spoke a different language; their withers were not wrung by the absurdities of late scholasticism. And so it was the Reformation that effectively polarized the positions, not so much in Luther's lifetime as later on in the opposition between Tridentine theologians and the Formula of Concord. (Fs)
76b To find one's way through the literature on Luther nowadays is so arduous a task that a layman in the matter may be forgiven if he boldly states his case without deferring overmuch to the experts. I would say then that Luther stood for the principle that truth must be grounded, and that his lasting importance in this question lies there rather than in his particular attitude toward scripture. A more familiar way of putting it is to say that he reacted against mere arbitrary assertion and decree. Thus I find the following quotation significant; it is from a letter to Frederick, elector of Saxony, on Pope Leo's decretal, and was written about mid-January of 1519: (Fs) (notabene)

Since in our day Holy Scriptures and the old teachers are reappearing and people everywhere in the world begin to ask not what but why this and that was said, were I to accept these mere words [of the decretal] and recant, my recantation would find no belief but would be looked upon as a mockery. [...] For what it [the decretal] says without any basis would not be established by my recantation. (Fs) (notabene)

76c What impresses me in this passage is not the particular sources Luther refers to, scripture and the old teachers, but the idea itself of requiring an authority for one's statements, and the remark that this is the spirit of the times. On the further question, Where is that authority to be found? Luther seems to have been originally more flexible than his followers of half a century later. The very letter I quoted expresses astonishment that Leo's pronouncement was not based on a single sentence from scripture or the fathers or canon law. Sola scriptura seems, in fact, to have become strict Lutheran doctrine only with the Formula of Concord in 1577. One may consult Tappert's collection of early Lutheran confessions and find several references in the index for the heading "Scriptures [...] the only judge, rule, and norm of doctrine," but not one of these references is to the Augsburg Confession, or the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, or to The Smalcald Articles, or to The Small Catechism, or to The Large Catechism. The first reference is to the Formula of Concord. (Fs) (notabene)

77a Meanwhile the Catholic position was hardening in the opposite direction, though Trent itself, like Luther, retained a certain flexibility. Its famous decree on the sources traces the gospel through the prophetic promises, the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the apostles, through whom finally it was to be preached to everyone as the source of every salutary truth and of every directive of conduct. Only in this context of the supremacy of the gospel as it was first preached do we meet the phrase that has been found so provocative, that this truth and these directives are contained in the written books and the unwritten traditions that the apostles received from the Lord himself or through the word of the Holy Spirit, and transmitted to us as if from hand to hand. Even then, the phrase originally proposed for the decree, partly in scriptures and partly in tradition, was rejected in favor of the more open formula we now have. However, communications were not then what they are today. Roman Catholic theologians needed a slogan to counter the emerging sola scriptura, they thought to find it in the Tridentine "scripture and tradition," and the two sides were soon at loggerheads on the question. History now began to be written with great diligence, but the diligence was exercised less on investigating the facts than on finding texts to prove the adversary wrong. The painful centuries that followed are familiar to all. (Fs) (notabene)
77b It is here in these early decades of Lutheran-Catholic polarization that I place the full focusing of the loci question, and it happens that just then a work appears, called De locis theologicis and destined for long lasting influence. It is the composition of Melchior Cano, Dominican theologian and bishop, who died in 1560, leaving behind him for posthumous publication a work in twelve parts with the title quoted. The idea of loci went back to Cicero, but Cano's immediate source was a Cologne work of 1527, De inventione dialectica, by Rudolph Agricola. The scope in Agricola was to find sources for arguments, but Cano rose above this debater's viewpoint: He was looking for grounds on which to base a judgment. Further, his range was liberating. He found seven sources for the judgments proper to theology, a discipline that is based on authority; they are scripture, the tradition of Christ and the apostles, the church (for Cano it is the "collectio omnium fidelium"), the councils, the popes, the fathers of the church, and finally the scholastic theologians and canonists. There are also three sources that constitute a "borrowed" set in theology: human reason, the philosophers and jurists, and finally history and human tradition. (Fs) (notabene)
78a The proliferation of "sources" in Cano suggest some concluding remarks for this chapter. We could say his range of sources harks back to what we saw of the real breadth of the New Testament. Now the New Testament was already hinting at a factor we shall have to study in chapter seven, the inner resources of judgment in the believer himself, collectively manifested in the sensus fidelium we are talking of more and more today. But Cano's range suggests another approach through analogy with Kant's categories. Kant found twelve a priori forms in the human mind with which he categorized all the materials delivered through the two channels of space and time. Then Lonergan came along to clear away the twelve categories and replace them with the single a priori of the heuristic nature of human spirit, the notion of being. Is there an analogy with the sensus fidelium that will replace all the categories of loci? (Fs) (notabene)

78b One thing at least I would hope, that the scripture/tradition controversy, which I have moved well out on the margins, will stay there permanently. Not that, with many today, I regard the question as meaningless; I think it has a meaning, but I do not regard it as the crucial area for inquiry and thought. That area I find much more broadly based. The whole effort to fix the locus or set of loci is a continually recurring manifestation of the pious longing to wrap the faith up in careful parcels. In the beginning there was just the good news along with the treasured words of the Lord. Soon the credentials of the apostles who bore the good news had to be established, and this was further specified by establishing their right to be witnesses, chosen in advance and appointed for the task. But as the living memory of the apostles became only a tradition the effort was to get a document from them or from their times that would possess their authority and be a kind of permanent presence in the church of those favored agents of the word. When the documents are found to present their own problem, there is a shift to the church as the owner of the documents, and the church in turn is successively epitomized in the fathers, in the great council, in the series of councils, and finally in the present church that here and now has authority to teach the word of God and interpret his meaning. There was over and over again the effort to wrap up the faith in neat packages so that it could be delivered by registered mail. The basic oversight in it all was that the faith is a living thing and keeps growing. Just when you think you have it all wrapped up, something sticks out and you have to begin the process all over again. This was true in all the respecifications leading up to the church herself as the one immediate and sufficient source of doctrine. But it is true also of the reaction; when excessive attention to the subject preaching the word led to a rejection of the magisterium, the tearing off of all the later wrappings and going back to what seemed an original wrapping, the problem was not solved at all. You are still wrapping it up, and the wrapping is even more constrictive than before. This is roughly the situation with which we are left at the end of the loci era, and it leads directly to the next theme in the ongoing history of the word. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Interpretation: Wort Gottes, Bibel (NT, Mittelalter; Form-Kritik; Allegorie; Mittelalter (4-fache Bedeutung)

Kurzinhalt: ... the use Matthew and Luke make of Mark would be one important instance; the community adapted the message to their situation and needs; "Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia."

Textausschnitt: 87c Within New Testament times the practice continues in at least three ways. One is parallel to the Old Testament rewriting of the text; we do not expect to find much of this in a set of documents produced within the short span of two or three generations, but the use Matthew and Luke make of Mark would be one important instance. A second goes back to Mark and spans oral and written forms of the message; it is the editing of the tradition that is studied in redaction-criticism. The third goes back beyond Mark himself to the practices that are studied in form-criticism, and here the purpose of adaptation is particularly in evidence. The name "form-criticism" is derived from the objective, "to trace the provenance and assess the historicity of particular passages by a close analysis of their structural forms." But it is the assumption behind this work that interests me: "The vital factors which gave rise to and preserved these forms are to be found in the practical interests of the Christian community." That is, the community adapted the message to their situation and needs. For example, when Jesus said, "Behold my mother and my brothers," he had the immediate circle of listeners in mind; they were his mother and brothers. "But as the narrative stood it was of no practical use as an appeal in preaching. It was necessary to add a universal application which would bring in would-be converts. Hence a preacher added the words 'Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.' " (Fs) (notabene)

88a One could delay here, and discuss to what extent the ideas implicit in these practices became explicit in the minds of the early believers and bearers of the message. It could be a very profitable discussion, provided we remained aware of the slight distortion thereby introduced into the picture. To speak, as I did a moment ago, of the effort to make the scriptures relevant is to veer from the target. The scriptures for our ancestors are automatically relevant, simply because they are from God and contain an inexhaustible wealth of meaning. (Fs)

88b That was certainly the view that prevailed in the exegesis of post-scriptural times, which I propose to cover now in a rapid survey. A factor already of prime significance in the Hebrew dispersal was the invasion of allegory due to intermingling with the surrounding Greek populations: "Those who lived outside Palestine had a tendency to make the Bible say what their more enlightened neighbors said." To this end they borrowed the allegorical method the Greek philosophers had introduced to give an acceptable meaning to the myths of their tradition. The method was all the more acceptable because of the militant anti-Jewish attitude of men like Marcion. These attacked the Old Testament with vigor, and Christians responded with an allegorical interpretation of the offensive passages. (Fs)

89a But a counter-movement developed, maybe as a reaction to excessive allegorizing after the Marcionite danger had passed, and a sharp division developed between the schools of Alexandria and Antioch. Alexandria had been the city of Philo, and his influence is probably to be seen in Clement and Origen; at any rate this school set out to overcome the anthropomorphic passages of the Old Testament: They would spiritualize the scriptures. The school of Antioch, already literal in tendency and made more so by study of the biblical languages, reacted against this excess. Thus, the representative Theodore of Mopsuestia, insisting on literalism, declared that most of the Old Testament prophecies referred to future events within Jewish history rather than to Christ. Actually, Theodore's results were not so different from those of Alexandria: "One reason for this similarity is to be found in the fact that typology, which he frequently employs, is not entirely unlike allegorization. Again, he constantly stresses the metaphorical meaning of passages of scripture, while continuing to regard this meaning as literal." Both schools found a channel to the Western theology of the Middle Ages, one through Jerome who derived much of his method from Antioch, the other through Augustine, who needed allegory to be at home in traditional Christianity. (Fs)

89b The Middle Ages, however, had their own preoccupations, and applied their bent for system to the meaning of scripture too. From Origen, through John Cassian, they derived the view of a fourfold meaning. Two meanings are basic, the historical or literal, and the spiritual; but the spiritual has three subspecies: tropological or moral, allegorical, and anagogical. An old Latin couplet explains the four: "The letter tells what happened, allegory what you are to believe, the moral sense tells you what you are to do, and the anagogical where you are heading." Sober theologians used the three spiritual senses with circumspection. Thomas Aquinas, for example, expressly made the literal meaning basic and insisted that it alone can furnish an argument. Nicholas of Lyra, author of the first bible commentary ever printed, became a force for literal interpretation through his influence on Luther, as the latter confesses: "When I was a monk, I was an expert in allegories. I allegorized everything. [...] So I hated Lyra [...] because he so diligently pursued the literal meaning. But now [...] I place him ahead of almost all interpreters." (Fs) (notabene)

90a And yet, the divine dissatisfaction with a merely literal meaning remained. Blackman gives expression to it in his work on biblical interpretation. Barth and others talked of a "pneumatic" exegesis of the scriptures, and Roman Catholic exegetes and theologians went through a period of favor for the sensus plenior. This plenary meaning was one that the human author did not conceive but the divine author did; it was therefore a real meaning of scripture, for it was the one intended by the principal author. But, while it was never used as immoderately as allegory, it was just as little subject to control, for it was not specified by any empirical basis in the text. Finally, we may mention the sensus consequens, the meaning the church developed by way of conclusions from the scripture. This is easier to control, but it is not a real meaning of scripture in the way scientific exegesis has to understand the term. However, it can serve here as transitional to Newman's notion of development, with which it has a certain kinship. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Newman: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine; Entwicklung des Dogmas; Problem d. logischen Erklärung

Kurzinhalt: evangelistic success; logical explanation

Textausschnitt: 92c In modern times, according to Chadwick, there have been two efforts to deal with the data that Newman will later analyze more successfully. Bossuet held that variation in the teaching of the faith must be a sign of error. Progress of doctrine in this case means, not deeper understanding, but evangelistic success. As for the definitions of faith promulgated by the church, they are simply a matter of clarification and explication; that is, they translate into clear language what the church already knows in other terms. The second theory is that of logical explanation: Definition of a doctrine is explicating what was implicit, and in this way also medieval scholastics could defend the unity of faith in Old Testament and New; the former implicitly contained the latter. But when theologians after Trent began to analyze this "logical explanation," they ran into such difficulties that the theory broke down. For one thing, they had to explain how a "natural" premise could join forces with a premise from revelation to yield a conclusion that must be believed with divine faith. For another, such "logic" made historical inquiry superfluous. Various eccentric theories now began to emerge, but it was only with Newman that a third force came into play besides Bossuet and the scholastics. (Fs) (notabene)
93a The specific influence on Newman derived from the culture and thinking of the 19th rather than the 17th century. Darwin's The Origin of Species came out only in 1859, but his voyages on the Beagle took place between 1831 and 1836, he was publishing long before his book appeared, and the cast of mind to which it gave expression in the field of biology was already forming more widely. In the historical field too, maybe even more than in the biological, the idea of development was in the air. In the Catholic faculty of theology at Tübingen it found expression in the idea of tradition as a living force instead of a set of doctrines handed on secretly. Möhler's Die Einheit der Kirche [...] was published in 1825, and Möhler himself had been preceded by Drey. There does not seem to have been direct dependence of Newman on Tübingen, but one may say that their very independence of one another is a witness to the way the idea had permeated the culture and thinking of the time. (Fs) (notabene)

93b Newman broached his idea in a sermon on the feast of the Purification in 1843, and the work that everyone knows, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, came out two years later. The book is a kind of apologetic for the Catholic church, at least in the sense of a self-understanding by which one takes account of one's faith. Newman is dealing with the problem of continuity and change not in a programmatic way, but to meet a difficulty. He did not doubt the fact of continuity in change, but he had to explain it to himself in order to be at peace with his conscience. There were, he saw, "apparent variations," "apparent inconsistencies and alterations" in the doctrine and worship of the church. He accepted these variations as simple historical fact, not therefore to be challenged as fact. But he labored to explain the fact, and his concentration was on the virtualities of any great idea that was contained in revelation and was susceptible of development: (Fs)
When an idea [...] is of a nature to arrest and possess the mind, it may be said to [...] live in the mind which is its recipient. (Fs)
[The] process [...] by which the aspects of an idea are brought into consistency and form, I call its development, being the germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field. (Fs)

94a The condition of possibility of such development is the virtuality contained in the idea: "Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth." (Fs)

94b But the proof of such a mental pudding is in its elaboration and application to the concrete, and Newman must tackle that. Weigel outlines his tactics for us: (Fs)
In the light of an unsystematic social psychology he sets up certain patterns for change within an identical flow. First, identity in change preserves its substantial form throughout all the changes. Second, the same principles of life and thought are continuously dynamic. Third, the identical thing in change organically assimilates into itself new elements. Fourth, it draws forth from its own principles new conclusions rendered imperative by its own growth. Fifth, the earlier stage already shows anticipations of later developments. Sixth, newer patterns of being are the result of clinging faithfully to original principles thrust into new contexts. Seventh, at any moment the identical continuum is present with the vigor of life. (Fs)
Then, through seven chapters, Newman applies the elements of this pattern to the life and doctrine of the early church. (Fs)

95a By and large the work of Newman, viewed with suspicion at home and with indifference abroad, fell to the ground with a dull thud. Those who did take up his idea at the turn of the century did not help his cause very much, for they themselves were branded modernist. But two extremist movements on the continent may be said to have clarified the development question by overstepping the boundaries. In 1919 Tuyaerts published a book that carried the logical idea to its logical extreme. Theological conclusions seemed to be for him the sort of thing one could derive from feeding premises into a logic-machine; on the material side, almost every article of the Summa theologiae of Saint Thomas could become a dogma. There was an inevitable reaction to the opposite extreme. In 1938 L. Charlier published a book in which he showed himself to be a deadly enemy of theological conclusions. Given that Christ is a man, we cannot conclude at all that he has a human will, etc. There is development, and a law of development, but we do not know this law, nor can we discover the present faith implicit in the past. All we can do is trust the magisterium of the church. The magisterium responded to this theory by putting Charlier's volume on its index of prohibited books. (Fs)

95b In the end, however, Newman came into his own as a theologian. France, the Lowlands, and Germany began to take an interest in his ideas and, when three International Newman Conferences had been held, his followers in England felt it was time "to bring Newman home"; the result in 1966 was the first Oxford Newman Symposium.38 He is assured, then, of his own place in the history of doctrine that he loved and knew so well. That does not mean that his ideas are accepted uncritically. After a period of suspicion and a wave of enthusiasm, it is possible to take a more moderate view: The fact of development that he brought to our attention is acknowledged, and it explains a good deal of doctrinal history. But it by no means explains it all. Chapters six and seven will show other forces that must be brought to bear on the complex history of the Christian word. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Christus_ gestern - heute; Bultmann, Chadwick; das Neue in d. Theologie: Geschichte als Wort Gottes

Kurzinhalt: ... instead of moving forward from the word of Paul about Jesus, could we go back to the reality of Jesus himself of whom Paul spoke,

Textausschnitt: 104a With the events described in chapter five we are coming to a major turning point in the theology of the word, comparable in its fundamental significance to the step taken when Saint Paul, or some unknown bearer of the early Christian message, came to realize and boldly declare that message to be the very word of God at work in the believer. This last step, however, is being taken in our own time, so we are working under the disadvantage of trying to write history while we are contemporary with it. Still, fairly clear lines are emerging from this giant stirring; it is possible to see them as continuing the trajectory of previous movements and having their own anticipations far back in history, so we can hope to delineate the new phase at least in some rough manner. The viewpoint remains that of an observer of history, doing theology in oratione obliqua, even though, in trying to clarify the obscure beginnings of a new moment, I may seem to take a more personal stand toward particular doctrines. (Fs)
104b The situation, then, is as follows: After a long, tranquil, but uncritical period of simple possession of the truth, and a rather long period of reaching back to the word that was the source of the truth, there followed a short period of diverse programs and activities aimed at bringing those ancient sources forward into our own day, as truth relevant for me and a word to me putting a claim on my response. This can be seen as a twofold aim, with one aspect that is cognitional and one that is affective. Correspondingly, the deficiencies in the programs and activities so far studied are twofold: They leave the word an ancient word that does not speak to my situation, and the word becomes objectified in such a way as not to challenge my response. Is the forward movement of history that will remedy these deficiencies also going to be twofold? It is facile to demand a unity on the ground that the history of theology is also part of the divine salvific plan and God's plan must be one and single. But even God judged it wise and good to proceed in two steps: "When the term was completed, God sent his own Son [...] that we might attain the status of sons. To prove that you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son" (Gal. 4:4-6). And so I see the present stirring in the theology of the word to have two distinct though closely interrelated aspects, to be studied separately in chapters six and seven. (Fs) (notabene)

105a Cognitionally, then, the efforts examined in chapter five are inadequate. Early efforts to stretch the meaning of a word given in the past, to make it mean what we need it to mean today, have either been discredited or allowed to die a natural death; they did not provide for that control of meaning which scientific exegesis requires. Newman's idea of development may be valid up to a point, but it does not account for all the data. There are surely linear developments; but there is also a dialectical factor, there seem to be quite disconcerting reversals, and there are apparently independent new beginnings, and all these call for a deeper explanation. Even where Newman's idea is valid, we still have to meet the objection with which Chadwick ends his volume on development. (Fs)
The question then for those who think Newman's theology is Catholic, is this: these new doctrines, of which the Church had a feeling or inkling but of which she was not conscious-in what meaningful sense may it be asserted that these new doctrines are not "new revelation"? (Fs) (notabene)

105b Modernists might be more open to the dialectic of history, but they did not have an acceptable answer for Chadwick and, worse, did not seem concerned about such a question to the extent demanded by a church that insisted on continuity with the sources. (Fs) (notabene)

105c Efforts on the Protestant side presented their own difficulties. We may be sympathetic to the two conditions Bultmann posits for hearing the ancient word: a common preunderstanding and the work of the Holy Spirit. But the first is made to bear too great a weight: There is the factor of history, which is set aside, and there is the factor of what some call the "strangeness" of the ancient word; both need attention. As for the second condition, theologians cannot admit the action of the Holy Spirit but then simply set him aside as a factor that is incomprehensible; they have to try to see his role in some intelligible relationship to the whole of God's salvific plan. When we turn to the theology of the language-event, we find it too much involved in the obscurities of the remythologizing of the word, too much so for it to satisfy the rigorous demand of the human mind for such understanding as is possible of the divine mysteries - especially when it would neglect the mind of the author of a work in order to invoke some message that is independent of his intention. (Fs) (notabene)

106a Is any clear line of progress in sight? The previous chapter found an opening by reversing the direction of thought: Instead of moving back from the present, as in chapter four, we studied the forward movement from the origins of the word into the present. Can this be invoked in a new way? That is, instead of moving forward from the word of Paul about Jesus, could we go back to the reality of Jesus himself of whom Paul spoke, and then come forward from that new starting point with a new wealth of meaning to be exploited through the centuries? Such approximately is the approach of the new thematization of the Christian word. We go back beyond the Easter word of the apostles to the human reality of Jesus himself, his appearance on earth, his life, death, and glorification in the Easter event, and take that reality as God's most fundamental word, a primary word, an inexhaustible word, one that the church and her spokesmen from Peter and Paul to John tried, more or less adequately, to interpret. Indeed the process of interpretation could go back behind Peter to Jesus himself; and surely it goes forward beyond John to the present day. (Fs) (notabene)

106b A few clarifications may help. The first: I repeat that I am not settling the question of the "historical" Jesus, but simply recording the thought of the early church and of certain theologians on his role. The second: Although I refer to the human reality of Jesus, this reality is not circumscribed by some thirty-three years in Palestine. He is God's first creative idea: "In him everything in heaven and on earth was created" (Col. 1:16). We might refer to him as the cosmic word, but not just in the Greek sense of cosmos; that sense must be expanded in two ways: to take in the whole space-time universe in its four-dimensional reality, and, much more significantly, to take in the realities studied by the human sciences. Then maybe Teilhard de Char-din's view of the place of Christ in the genesis of the universe could serve as a symbol round which to collect our ideas, but it seems better to use the terminology of recent thought and take history as the word of God, history understood with an absolutely comprehensive sweep that embraces the visible universe. A third clarification: This history is not the history that is written, of which we spoke in our Introduction; it is the history that happens. It is therefore much wider than the history of the theology of the word, the history to which this book would contribute; for, as utterly comprehensive, it includes the history of ideas and doctrines as a small part of the whole. Finally, the reader might keep in mind that, as the missions of Son and Spirit are closely linked in trinitarian theology, so we expect to find a link in their respective roles in regard to the word of God; this chapter should therefore be read with some corrective influence from anticipation of the chapter that follows it. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Antizipation (Schrift, Kirchenväter): Geschichte als Wort Gottes

Kurzinhalt: There is another anticipation in early Christian times of the idea that history is a word of God ...

Textausschnitt: 107a Our regular procedure of searching the ancient documents for anticipations of an idea thematized much later yields good returns here. There are some remarkable hints of our theme in the scriptures. There is, first of all, an orientation to history as the place where God acts and reveals what he is. Thus, in the Old Testament we have assertions to the effect that God covered himself with glory in the exodus (Ex. 15:1-21), or that he made his judgment known from heaven in the defeat of the enemy (Ps. 76[75]), or that he will reveal his holiness by his justice (Is. 5:16). This orientation shows history as a source for our knowledge of God, though it does not articulate the notion of God's using history as a medium to speak a word to us. Nor does a series of passages in the New Testament that continue this way of thinking and show the same orientation. For example: "Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that is God's own proof of his love towards us" (Rom. 5:8). Again, God's "love was disclosed to us in this, that he sent his only Son into the world to bring us life" (1 Jn. 4:9). And the evangelists attribute this mentality to Jesus too: When the Baptist sent to ask whether he is the one who is to come, "Jesus answered, 'Go and tell John what you hear and see [...] '" (Mt. 11:4). As John says, he revealed himself: "This deed at Cana-in-Galilee is the first of the signs by which Jesus revealed his glory" (Jn. 2:11). (Fs)
108a However, other New Testament passages seem to take a distinct step forward. The letter to the Hebrews begins: (Fs)

When in former times God spoke to our forefathers, he spoke in fragmentary and varied fashion through the prophets. But in this the final age he has spoken to us in the Son whom he has made heir to the whole universe. (Fs)

108b There is question here of a word God spoke, and it is related to the prophetic word of the Old Testament, which it completes in final form: The suggestion is that the Son himself, in his very being, is God's new and final word. In any case, that is the conclusion to be drawn from a passage in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. The context here is trifling, almost puerile. The Corinthians have evidently accused Paul of being fickle in that he changed his purpose of visiting them. Paul rejects the charge, appeals to God's truth as witness, and suddenly breaks forth in this magnificent statement: (Fs) (notabene)
109a There is another anticipation in early Christian times of the idea that history is a word of God, and it is found in the emergence of typology. The New Testament writings make fairly extensive use of this device, beginning with St. Paul. He speaks of certain Old Testament events as types, or, in the translation of the New English Bible, as symbols, meant to provide a lesson for us: "These events happened as symbols to warn us not to set our desires on evil things" (1 Cor. 10:6). Again, "All these things that happened to them were symbolic, and were recorded for our benefit as a warning. For upon us the fulfillment of the ages has come" (1 Cor. 10:11). The basic meaning seems much the same as in our modern usage, when we speak of "making an example" of some offender, but Paul's use of the basic idea is overlaid by his sense of the whole Old Testament as pointing to "the fulfillment of the ages" that has come in Christ. This usage, which naturally goes beyond Philo through its application to the Christian message, runs through the New Testament; with varying nuances it is found in 1 Peter and the Pastorals, in 2 Peter, and very markedly in Hebrews. This letter, using a number of Greek words to convey the same general idea, speaks of the law, cult and sanctuary, gifts and sacrifices, and other institutions of the Old Law, as copies, shadows, symbols, of what is found in the New (8:5; 9:23, 24; 10:1; etc.).3 (Fs)

109b Jean Danielou has investigated several examples of the patristic use of typology: Adam, Noah and the flood, the sacrifice of Isaac, Moses and the exodus, and other Old Testament figures or events are seen by the fathers as types of Christian realities.4 Danielou maintains further that typology is a true sense of scripture, where allegory is not.5 This brings us very close indeed to an explicit formulation of the idea to which this chapter is devoted. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Geschichte: Wort Gottes -> Thomas v. Aquin; das Universum unter d. Herrschaft Gottes

Kurzinhalt: As God governs all history, so obviously he can use all history to convey his meaning. How do you control the meaning you give to history and to the word of God that you declare it to be?

Textausschnitt: 110a The Thomist position and argument are as follows: Scripture comes to us as words chosen by the author to communicate to us the truths necessary for salvation. However, the expression of truth may be achieved in two ways, either by words or by realities (rebus); that is, words can refer to realities, but also one reality can refer to another reality. Now it is the special prerogative of scripture, which has God for its author, that both the words of scripture and the realities to which they refer are subject to divine control and therefore to divine use of them as instruments of his meaning. Saint Thomas is shorter on examples than he is on the principle at stake, but he speaks of the Old Law as referring to and signifying the New, the synagogue as signifying the church, the twelve stones taken from the Jordan as signifying the twelve apostles. Thus, the literal meaning of scripture, when it speaks of the Old Law, is just that: the Old Law; but the spiritual meaning, the meaning of the reality referred to, is the New Law. (Fs)

110b Clearly, the specific contribution of Saint Thomas to the present question derives from his views on God's use of created realities to manifest his divine meaning, and that in turn is inserted in his larger view of the divine control of all events in the created universe. This latter is a complex question in which "we must have precise ideas [...] on the nature of operation, premotion, application, the certitude of providence, universal instrumentality, and the analogy of operation." On the complexities of this larger question I can only refer the reader to the classic study just quoted, but once that idea of the universal instrumentality of all creation under the operation of God is understood, it can be imported easily enough into the present area. That is, the whole of creation is as much under the dominion of God as pen or voice is under the dominion of human author. Add only the simple notion that the visible universe is as well qualified to be the expression of meaning as are vibrations in the air or ink marks on paper, and you have all the elements you need for the Thomist theory: God writes history by control of events just as men write human language by control of pen, and the resulting "language" of history expresses God's meaning, is God's word to us. (Fs) (notabene)

111a Saint Thomas was cautious almost to the point of being reactionary in the use of this idea. He invoked it only to explain certain instances of typology, and then only because scripture, in declaring specific Old Testament events to be types of the New, forced him to deal with the question. His primary sense of scripture was always the literal: We cannot base any argument on the "spiritual" sense, except, of course, where it is revealed to us later in the literal meaning of a passage. Nor do we need this "spiritual" sense, since anything found in it is also found elsewhere in the literal, if it is necessary for our salvation. (Fs)

111b My own concern now is to exploit the Thomist idea for a modern theology of the word of God, and that involves consideration of three points: generalizing Saint Thomas's idea, reversing his priorities in regard to the literal and spiritual senses of scripture, and taking account of the reasons for his reluctance to give the spiritual sense any prominence in his own thought or exegesis. The first point is quite simple: To generalize Saint Thomas is to conceive the whole of history, and not just certain specified events, as a word from God, as "uttered" by him with a meaning for us. And the possibility of such generalization is provided by Saint Thomas himself in his view of God's universal providence and activity: As God governs all history, so obviously he can use all history to convey his meaning. The second point is a little more complex: To reverse the priorities of Saint Thomas is to make the meaning of history primary and the (literal) meaning of scripture derivative, not the other way around. This is not provided for in the Thomist context of thought, but it is not difficult once we accept the modern view of prophecy and sacred writing as interpretations of the world around us and of the events of history. We have only to note that then we consider the universe not merely as possessing intelligibility, as the physicist may do, but also as possessing the meaning proper to language; this the believer who regards it as God's creation may easily do. Briefly, as the human sciences differ from the natural in that for them meaning is a constitutive part of the data, so the universe of the theologian differs from that of the physicist or philosopher in that it is constituted by meaning as well as by physical or metaphysical elements. Furthermore, we may say that this view is not so much contra Saint Thomas as it is praeter his views. That is, the viewpoint is different; Saint Thomas saw the matter quoad nos, and therefore for him scripture was primary, for he saw no way of getting at the meaning of events except through the scriptures that revealed that meaning. But our present viewpoint is that of the quoad se, and then there is a case for making history the primary word of God; whether there is any way for us to penetrate to that meaning, except where scripture reveals it, is another question that brings us to our third consideration. (Fs) (notabene)
112a The real question then is why Saint Thomas himself was so cautious in his use of what he called the spiritual sense, the meaning of history. Put more cogently still, the question is why the virtualities in the Thomist idea were not exploited long before this. My general answer would be that on one side there was no pressure to exploit them, and on the other there was the evident danger deriving from the lack of control over meaning in the field of history. Saint Thomas himself would certainly see no necessity for developing the views he had set forth on divine activity in history and divine use of history as a medium for the word. The pressure the allegorizers had once felt, to give an acceptable meaning to the Old Testament, had been reduced with the recognition of the New Testament as the word of God in its own right. The pressure arising from the varieties of culture, the genetic view of history, and the recognition that the biblical mentality differed notably from that of the modern Western world was still in the distant future. For Saint Thomas the word of Paul or John could be transported without difficulty across the centuries; after all, God was the principal author of scripture and he did not change with journeys across time and space. In any case causality interested Thomas more than meaning in the universe. (Fs) (notabene)

113a But all this is rather remote from what would prove to be the fundamental question; it explains only why the idea would hardly occur in the first place. More directly, the question for anyone who proposed a view of history as God's fundamental word would be, How do you control the meaning you give to history and to the word of God that you declare it to be? We seem to be back with the airy speculations of the allegorizers, who had no other justification to offer for their interpretation than that it made God more acceptable to the Western mentality. To bring interpretation of God's word in history under control, there was needed both the Thomist view of universal instrumentality, and, besides that, a theory, possible only in our times, of history. Even the Thomist understanding of universal instrumentality was not always understood by his immediate successors, and a theory of history was far in the future. We are coming presently to a discussion of that modern theory, but one very important factor in the theology of the word is intermediate between Saint Thomas and the 20th century. It is the profound conviction expressed in the theology of the spiritual masters that God speaks to the individual believer in the events of his personal life. This is the notion we have next to study. (Fs) (notabene)

Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Geschichte: Wort Gottes -> Jean Pierre de Caussade; Gottes Wirken in jedem Ereignis

Kurzinhalt: the events of the world are the obscure language of this same hidden and unknown God; parallel between scripture and history; You speak also to each individual soul by the circumstances occurring at every moment of life

Textausschnitt: 113b It is remarkable that the inhibitions felt by professional theologians in regard to history as the word of God have been largely ignored by the spiritual writers, who have gone their own quite radical way without, however, falling into the absurd exaggerations of the old allegorizers. Among these spiritual writers Jean Pierre de Caussade, who died at Toulouse in 1751, merits special mention for the clarity of his expression, the really radical nature of his views, and their pertinence to our question. His ideas were not put into book form during his life, but after his death his "treatise" on abandonment to divine providence was put together from his letters of spiritual direction. The context, then, is ascetical practice, and the relevance to the present question lies in his doctrine that the divine will is made known to us in the events of daily life, which speak to us, which are God's word to us, just as really as the words of scripture. (Fs)

113c One can recognize the Thomist background of his thought in his two declarations, "The divine action [...] is everywhere, and always present," and, "Things, in fact, proceed from the mouth of God like words." But Pere de Caussade, the spiritual writer, is far less inhibited in applying the second of these two principles than Saint Thomas, the theologian. For de Caussade, "All has meaning. [...] Not a comma is missing." Thus, (Fs)

The written word of God is full of mystery; and no less so His word fulfilled in the events of the world. These are two sealed books, and of both it can be said "the letter killeth". [...] The sacred Scripture is the mysterious utterance of a God yet more mysterious; and the events of the world are the obscure language of this same hidden and unknown God. [...] They are what He has revealed! He has dictated them! And the effect of these terrible mysteries which will continue till the end of time is still the living word, teaching us His wisdom, power, and goodness. (Fs)

114a Further, the parallel between scripture and history is carried out thoroughly: (Fs)
The Holy Spirit [...] writes His own Gospel in the hearts of the just. [...] The souls of the saints are the paper, the sufferings and actions the ink. The Holy Spirit with the pen of His power writes a living Gospel, but a Gospel that cannot be read until it has left the press of this life, and has been published on the day of eternity. (Fs)

114b So emphatic is de Caussade that he almost seems to make the scriptures inferior as a word to the word of history: (Fs)
[...] it seems as if Your wonders were finished and nothing remained but to copy Your ancient works, and to quote Your past discourses! And no one sees that Your inexhaustible activity is a source of new thoughts. [...] Is not all time a succession of the effects of the divine operation, working at every instant [...]? [...] May the divine operation of my God be my book, my doctrine, my science. (Fs)

114c And, again: (Fs)
You speak also to each individual soul by the circumstances occurring at every moment of life. Instead, however, of hearing Your voice in these events . . . men see in them only the outward aspect. . . and censure everything. They would like to add, or diminish, or reform . . . they respect the holy Scriptures, however, and will not permit the addition of even a single comma. "It is the word of God" say they. [...] All this is perfectly true, but when you read God's word from moment to moment, not written with ink on paper, but on your soul with suffering, and the daily actions that you have to perform, does it not merit some attention on your part? (Fs)

115a In the context in which Pere de Caussade was working it was right that the doctrine be applied to each individual person: The events of one's personal life are God's word to that person. But it is not so limited in principle: "You speak, Lord, to the generality of men by great public events. [...] You speak also to each individual soul by the circumstances occurring at every moment of life." (Fs) (notabene)
115b The positive side of this remarkable doctrine is surely clear enough by now. It remains that it does not satisfy the theologian's demands for a theology of the word. For one thing it concentrates almost exclusively on the will of God, whereas a theology must say a great deal on the being of God and his work of creation. Again, though it supplies the personal element that Luther and modern Protestant exegetes so earnestly seek, a word of God for me, still it lacks the present surety of public revelation: "The divine action continues to write in the hearts of men the work begun by the Holy Scriptures, but the characters made use of in this writing will not be visible till the day of judgment." Only faith enables us to recognize in history what the apostles recognized on the shore of Galilee after the resurrection: "It is the Lord." From the viewpoint of the ascetic, this deficiency is of little moment; it is enough to know that this moment is from the Lord. Particularly is this true from the viewpoint of de Caussade's favorite doctrine of abandonment to the divine will. It is otherwise for those who have to interpret that divine will as directing us to a specific action. Nevertheless, this doctrine remains an extremely interesting and significant stage in the ongoing history of the theology of the word. I do not know whether its history has been fully investigated in its origins19 and its subsequent development, but I do think there is need to bring it into relation with that work of professional theologians which forms the bulk of material for our study. (Fs)

Autor: Crowe, Frederick E.

Buch: Appropriating the Lonergan Idea

Titel: The Responsibility of the Theologian, and the Learning Church

Stichwort: Unterschied: Verantwortung - Gewissen; Prinzip der Konkretheit;

Kurzinhalt: "conscience" seems to refer more directly to the object, while "responsibility" seems to refer more directly to me ... Jesus died for all men, but he could not preach to and teach all men

Textausschnitt: 173a In other words, "conscience" seems to refer more directly to the object, while "responsibility" seems to refer more directly to me and to what I should do. The difference between the two is slight; it is a matter of where the emphasis more directly falls; but I think it makes the change worthwhile. There is a principle of maximum concreteness involved, of what I can and ought to do within the limits of my situation. Jesus died for all men, but he could not preach to and teach all men; his responsibility for preaching and teaching was limited to the house of Israel. (Fs) (notabene)