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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Gmail - [GSC] Re: Eckhart Tolle - jacobthanni@gmail.com

Gmail - [GSC] Re: Eckhart Tolle - jacobthanni@gmail.com

Listen to Eckhart Tolle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uk_AO8Vgr0&feature=related
...........................................................

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle

Tolle was born Ulrich Tolle in 1948 in Germany. He lived with his
father in Spain from about the age of 13 (around 1961) until he
moved to England at the age of 19 (around 1967).[1]

He had no formal education between age 13 and 22; he refused to go
to school because of "hostile environment", but he pursued his "own
particular interests".[1] Tolle graduated from the University of
London and did research at Cambridge University.[2] He studied
literature, languages and philosophy.[1]

At the age of 29, Tolle experienced what he considered a spiritual
transformation.[2]

Since 1996 Tolle has lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.[3]
[4]

Teachings
Tolle claims to have had a radical spiritual awakening at the age of
29 after suffering long periods of suicidal depression. This shift
in consciousness for most people is not a single event but a
process, a gradual disidentification from thoughts and emotions
through the arising of awareness.

His non-fiction bestseller The Power of Now emphasizes the
importance of being aware of the present moment as a way of not
being lost in thought. Instead of you using your mind as a tool, the
mind uses you.

In his view, the present is the gateway to a heightened sense of
peace. He states that "being in the now" brings about an awareness
that is beyond the mind, an awareness which helps in transcending
the ego (false identification with form: body, mind, thoughts,
memories, social roles, life-story, opinions, emotions, material
possessions, name, nationality, religion, likes and dislikes,
desires, fears, etc.) and "the pain-body", which is created by the
cumulation of suppressed emotions, the suffering of non-acceptance
of what is. Our true "identity" is the underlying sense of I Am,
which is consciousness itself. Awareness of Being is self-
realization and true happiness. We people are very important,
because we are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to
unfold.

His later book A New Earth further explores the structure of the
human ego and how this acts to distract people from their present
experience of the world. You don't need future or future lifes to
find yourself, and you need to add nothing to you to find yourself.

In the world of form for everything gained, there is something lost
and for everything lost, there is something gained.

He recommends listening to the body when we eat, because the body
knows more about food than your mind ever will.

He believes that the New Testament contains deep spiritual truth as
well as distortions. Those distortions are due to a misunderstanding
of Jesus' teaching, or because people had an agenda (wanting to fit
Jesus into their preconceived notions, wanting to make converts
etc.). But when you are present, you access your inner knowing and
you will sense what is true and what was added on or distorted.[5]

The ultimate truth of all religions is the surrendered state of
consciousness to the present moment. In christianity it's the symbol
of the cross; Jesus surrenders to the extreme limitations of the
cross.

Love comes into existence when you know who you are in your essence
and then recognize the "other" as yourself. It is the end of the
delusion of separation, which is created by excessive reliance on
thinking.

Influences
Tolle is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition.
However, in the book Dialogues with Emerging Spiritual Teachers by
John W. Parker, he has acknowledged a strong connection to J
Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi and stated that his teaching is a
coming together of the teachings of both those teachers, and it is a
continuation of that. In addition, he states that by listening to
and speaking with the spiritual teacher Barry Long, he understood
things more deeply.[6]

At about age 15 he received five books that were written by a German
mystic, Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, also known as Bô Yin Râ.
Tolle responded "very deeply" to those books.[1]

The first texts he came in contact after the awakening and found
deep understanding were the New Testament, the Bhagavad Gita, the
Tao Te Ching and teachings of The Buddha.[1]

Influences which are alluded to in The Power of Now are the writings
of Meister Eckhart, Advaita Vedanta, A Course in Miracles, the
Bible, mystical Islam, Sufism, and Rumi's poetry, as well as Zen
Buddhism's Lin-chi (Rinzai) school.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

AIM Mail (495)

AIM Mail (495)
Devotion By Dr. T. Jacob Thomas
Gurukul-UTC Joint Staff Meeting 15.03.2003

Mt 19.1-9; Mk 10.1-12


1. The context is a discussion on marriage and divorce. The disciple’s terrible option is not to marry as it involves lot of difficult issues. Jesus accepts a variety of options. First he has said marriage is the purpose of God in creation. Man and woman together fulfill God’s purpose in this world. Our contextual ethics must be evaluated in the light of creation ethics- the purpose of God in creation. Contextual faith, theology religion, ethics, acceptable in particular historical cultural context should not confine us to narrow, parochial views
2. Divorce was not the question addressed to Jesus, but the ground for divorce. There was a tension between the school of Shammai which allowed divorce only on the grounds of sexual immorality and the school of Hillel, which sanctioned divorce on the most trivial grounds? Jesus interpretation of the will of God in creation has in its background the Malachian interpretation of Gen 2.24. Malachi 2.16 deals with the issue of mixed marriage between Jews and gentiles, especially with the Samaritans (See, J.M.Myers The World of the Restoration 98). Malachi’s ministry probably occurred just prior to that of Ezra and Nehemiah in the first part of the fifth century when mixed marriages and divorce were serious problems. Malachi did not base his argument on Deuteronomy 24 as later Ezra and Nehemiah did but on Genesis 1-2. Malachi 2;16 calls for faithfulness between husbands and wives irrespective of their ethnic background and economic interests. J. M. Myers suggests that the husbands were marrying Samaritan women in order to reclaim the land which they had before the exile. Later they may divorce them on various pretexts.

3 The Mosaic legislation in Deut 24:1-4 was authoritative to the Pharisees. Jesus here points out to the older Genesis tradition as did Malachi in deciding their ethics. Jesus says that Genesis tradition takes precedence over Ezra-Nehemiah tradition of interpreting Moses. Both traditions are Mosaic and should be interpreted in a universal creation context though particular, situational interpretations are allowed, some sort interim or realistic ethics. These Mosaic allowances are given on account of the sinfulness of the people as a secondary and temporary measure. The phrase “from the beginning” (ajpÆ ajrch‘»), used by Jesus is a deliberate recalling of the context in which Mosaic allowance of divorce was permitted. Jesus responds by admitting that Moses “permitted” rather than “commanded.” Marriage is grounded in a covenant between the husband and wife and Yahweh; and God intended for a man and his wife to be one flesh irrespective of caste, color, or religion.
4. Jesus also rejects the popular notion that Adam as the originator of human species by restating that “ a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife” and not the other way practiced in patriarchal societies. In the postmodern glocalized (global-local dialectical) context scriptural interpretation must be based on the hermeneutical circle of Contemporary-Creation-Eschatological axiom. Particular denominational text must be reread with reference to creation. Scientific understanding of the nature of the world must have a place in interpretation of particular text. The present religion wise interpretation of reality and ethics must be taken as allowance given because of the hardness of the heart of particular people in particular situation. It has no permanent relevance.


5. God’ s will for the future supercedes even the creation ethics. Future demands more obedience than to the created order. The place given by Jesus to eunuchs , non-gender persons, literal as well as metaphorical, also reflects the priority of the kingdom over the present time frame. God created man and woman, but in Christ’s new creation there is no male or female (Gal. 3:28). In the created order, human freedom is limited, in Christ we are freed for freedom in truth and spirit. In the created order the tree of life is guarded, in the new heaven and new earth, tree of life is accessible to every one, water of life is flowing to every one. In the future order marriage between men and women is replaced by the marriage between God and humans. The kingdom thus can take priority over the scripture.



6. God is not bound by scriptures. Cf. Matthew 22 .24 Jesus replied, “Your problem is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God. 25 For when the dead rise, they won’t be married. They will be like the angels in heaven.
The specific problem they raised, moreover, was based on the failure to realize the newness that the resurrection age will bring.
Theological vocation includes liberating God from the past to the power of God to create future, God of Abraham as well as Isaac and Jacob. God is our God and much more.

Monday, April 28, 2008

BBC NEWS | Americas | Obama's pastor replies to critics

BBC NEWS | Americas | Obama's pastor replies to critics

Obama's pastor replies to critics
Reverend Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club, Washington DC, 28 April 2008
Clips of Rev Wright's sermons caused a storm in March

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of the US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, has hit back at critics of his fiery sermons.

In two speeches, to journalists and African-American activists, Mr Wright said that attacks on him were attacks on the black church.

And he said that his six years of service in the military was proof of his patriotism.

Senator Obama rejected Mr Wright's language in a speech last month.

Publicity campaign

Mr Wright remained silent when old sermons containing politically charged remarks were circulated on television and online in March.

But he is now conducting a publicity campaign to defend himself against the criticisms that were made after the clips were aired.

In a speech to the National Press Club, he said that the criticism of him was "not an attack on Jeremiah Wright - it's an attack on the black church".

He defended himself against charges of anti-Americanism, saying "I served six years in the military - does that make me patriotic? How many years did [Vice President Dick] Cheney serve?"

But he refused to back down on his assertion that the 9/11 attacks were an example of "America's chickens coming home to roost".

"You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you," he said.

"Those are Biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."

Speaking to a crowd of several thousand at a fund-raising dinner organised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Mr Wright acknowledged that he had generated criticism of the Obama campaign in recent weeks.

"I am not a politician. I know that fact will surprise many of you because many of the corporate-owned media have made it seem that I have announced that I am running for the Oval Office," he said.


I come from a religious tradition where we shout in the sanctuary and we march on the picket lines
Rev Jeremiah Wright

The airing of Mr Wright's sermons led to a barrage of bad publicity for Mr Obama's presidential campaign.

In one clip, from a sermon delivered after the attacks of 11 September 2001, Mr Wright suggested that the US had brought the attacks on itself through its own foreign policy.

And in a passage from a 2003 sermon, he said black Americans should condemn the US because of continuing racial injustice, saying: "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."

After the remarks resurfaced, Mr Obama denounced them as "incendiary" and "completely inexcusable" and said he had not been present when they were made.

'Spiritual guidance'

Speaking at the fund-raising dinner, Mr Wright suggested critics had taken his remarks out of context to embarrass him and Mr Obama.

"We just do it differently, and some of our haters can't get their heads around that. I come from a religious tradition where we shout in the sanctuary and we march on the picket lines," Mr Wright said.

"The African-American tradition is different. We do it in a different way."

He added: "I am not one of the most divisive black spiritual leaders... the word is descriptive."

Mr Obama is locked in a close race with New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, and faces forthcoming primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Before his retirement from the Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago, the pastor helped Mr Obama affirm his Christian faith, officiated at his wedding and baptised his daughters.

Mr Obama said he had looked to Mr Wright for spiritual, not political, guidance.

The stained-glass ceiling has been shattered - Opinion - theage.com.au

The stained-glass ceiling has been shattered - Opinion - theage.com.au


appointment of two women bishops.

Muriel Porter
April 28, 2008


Anglicans rejoice at the historic appointment of two women bishops.

CONGRATULATIONS to Barbara Darling on becoming Melbourne's first woman bishop. Congratulations? It doesn't seem the right word somehow. It is too ordinary for such an extraordinary event.

It does nothing to convey the excitement, the delight, the teary joy so many of us, both women and men, are feeling at the news of this historic appointment.

It comes as the culmination of a special period in history for women in this country. Quentin Bryce's appointment as the nation's first woman governor-general came just two weeks ago, a day after the news that Kay Goldsworthy had been appointed a bishop in Perth. The sound of shattering glass ceilings — stained-glass ceilings included — is welcome background music.

In this time of great joy, it is tempting to forget the long, tortuous road Darling, Goldsworthy and other church women have had to journey to reach this happy day.

More than 30 years ago Melbourne Anglicans first called for women to be accepted as bishops. When the diocesan synod issued its confident call in 1976, Darling was a young woman recently arrived in Melbourne to study theology. She was soon teaching male candidates for the ordained ministry and giving them many of the skills they needed as they prepared to become priests — and some even to become bishops — decades before she was able to follow in their footsteps.

No one in 1976 imagined how long and painful the road would be for women like Darling as they began to seek ordination themselves. Thank goodness she came to Melbourne. It is not by accident that both Darling and her sister bishop, Kay Goldsworthy — a native Melburnian — were first ordained here.

While Darling's home diocese of Sydney has progressively hardened its heart against women in church leadership — and much else besides — Melbourne has been the engine room of the women's movement in the Anglican Church. Its archbishops have been unfailingly supportive, its clergy and lay people mostly so.

In the face of Sydney's unyielding opposition, Melbourne has constantly called on the national Anglican General Synod to open the door to women as deacons, priests and bishops.

Even here it was not easy for either woman in the beginning. Some male students walked out when Darling first preached in 1976. Others, men and women, resisted their early appointments in parishes. Every single step of the way has been contested for these pioneers.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

ctc bulletin

ctc bulletin

ctc33.gif (2017 bytes)

A Religio-Cultural Proposal for Building Communities in Asia
K. P. Aleaz[1]

There is a need for us Christians to seek forgiveness for the damage done to other religious faiths and that is our first proposal. The second proposal is that we should have our mission conceived as to proclaim the liberative elements in other religious traditions, when such elements are destroyed by vested interests. The third and final proposal calls for a reconception of our theologies of religions into a perspective called Pluralistic Inclusivism, for the very transformation of our faith-experience with the help of other faith-experiences.

Seeking Forgiveness

In order to become qualified to proclaim the liberative elements in other religious traditions as well as to receive enrichment from them, the first step needed is repentance for sins, committed in the past by Christians, of destroying other religions and cultures as well as of deliberately misrepresenting other religious tenets. Early missionary undertakings were accompanied by the exploitation of indigenous people, genocide, land theft, slavery and oppression, and the WCC at the Canberra Assembly exhorted its member churches to conversion, active and ongoing repentance and reparation for past sins as a prelude to reconciliation.[2] The Assembly rightly called upon member churches

To negotiate with indigenous people to ascertain how lands taken unjustly by Churches from indigenous people can be returned to them;

To support self-determination and sovereignty of indigenous people, as defined by them, in church and society;

To protect burial grounds and sacred sites of indigenous people from desecration and destruction and to work towards the return of ancestral remains, artifacts, sacred objects and other items belonging to indigenous people;

To protect the freedom of indigenous people to practise their traditional religions.[3]

The damage done by Christian missions was not only to indigenous people of various lands but to peoples of all the different religions by distorting their religious teachings. In a lecture delivered to the Western audience, Swami Vivekananda lamented: "You train and educate and clothe and pay men to do what? To come over to my country to abuse all my forefathers, my religion, and everything. They walk near a temple, and say, 'You idolaters, you will go to hell'"[4]

Misinterpretations of theological concepts of other faiths by Christian missionaries and theologians have been a common feature in India and today there is a need for us to seek forgiveness for this. A. G. Hogg[5] misinterpreted the doctrine of karma. P. D. Devanandan had the arrogance to say that the classical Hindu theology is incapable of giving an ideological basis for the new anthropology emerging in Independent India and where it is failing to find a solution the revelation of God in Jesus Christ has got an answer to give. He was for a Christian apologetic which would explain the difference between the Christian and the Hindu understanding of religious fundamentals.[6] According to Surjit Singh, Advaita philosophy, the foundation on which,the structure of the Indian world still rests,[7] is largely ahistorical, apersonal and atemporal[8] and his effort is to indicate a way to safeguard the reality of personality, human and divine, of history, of time, and of the world by recapturing the New Testament significance of the person and work of Jesus Christ.[9] Asian Christians henceforth will endeavour to put an end to such misinterpretations as these.

There are some theologians in India who have tried to correct such Christian misinterpretations of Hinduism and there is a need for us to strengthen their hand. For example, Samuel Rayan, through his exposition of Bhagavadgita has rejected the criticism raised against Hinduism by some people that it does not give sufficient importance to the historical dimensions of human life. For Gita "history is time open to God and on the move, maturing towards its own wholeness which is already present in the presence of its Lord within its heart."[10] The road of death is samsara which is cyclic time and the path of life is history which is time open to Krishna's love and ripening into life with him. We have also tried to show elsewhere that in Advaita the ecological, historical and social dimensions are theologically asserted and thus the ontological understanding of the structure of Being is properly related to the problems of life on earth, of life in relation to earth.[11] Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya, P. Johanns and R. V. De Smet have explained to us that Nirguna Brahman does not mean Impersonal Absolute; rather it corresponds to the Christian notion of God. Nirgunam only means that the attributes which relate the Infinite to the finite are not necessary to His/Her being.[12] It means Absolute Personality or Supreme Personality.[13] It denotes the Fullness of all perfections in absolute simplicity.[14] By affirming interpretations such as these Asian Christians have the responsibility to assure our extra-Christian brothers and sisters that we will no more be un-Christian destroyers and manipulators.

Mission to Proclaim Liberative Elements in Other Religions

Asian Christian is not any more for pointing out defects in other faiths to be corrected by Christian faith, as if Christianity is free from all defects. Rather, he/she stands for the correction of the defects of other faiths by those faiths themselves. He/She is no more to condemn other religions, rather to affirm the liberative elements in them, overcoming the existing misrepresentations of these by their own adherents of vested interest. Today we condemn only the misuse of religion. For example, caste and communalism are two evils manifested in the Indian society in the context of Hinduism. It is easy for us to condemn Hinduism for the evils of caste and present the gospel of God in Jesus as an alternative to Hinduism. This has been done, for example, by J. N. Farquhar who said that caste cannot provide equality, social freedom and social justice and it is remarkable that these social principles spring directly from the teachings of Jesus on the Fatherhood/Motherhood of God and the universal brotherhood/sisterhood of humans.[15]

Rather than doing this, the Christian theologian is to proclaim the gospel that the caste factor can be corrected through resources from within Hinduism itself. He/She proclaims that the serious problem of Dalit oppression can be countered with Advaitic resources.[16] Advaita Vedanta stands for a rejection of caste system and this we know from the Practical Vedanta of Swami Vivekananda: One who is established in the bliss of the Infinite will feel the whole sentient and insentient world as one's own Self. Then that person cannot help treating all people with the same kindness as he/she shows towards himself/herself. This is what the Swamiji meant by Practical Vedanta.[17] The atman is absolute, all pervading and infinite and each individual soul is part of that Universal soul. Therefore in injuring one's neighbour, a person actually injures oneself.[18] In the Atman there is no distinction of sex or Varna or Ashrama, or anything of the kind.[19] Hence, if the Dalit theologians hold that the sufferings of the Dalits should be the basis or starting point of Dalit theology, Swami Vivekananda is inspiring them to add to it the basis of the one Innermost Atman shared by all alike as well.[20] Thus the 21st century Asian Christian upholds the liberative elements in other faiths to fight against the evils manifested today through a misrepresentation of those faiths. Right interpretation of the tenets of other religions to remove social evils is an important aspect of our duty or mission today.

Religious communalism[21] is the other evil manifested in India today in the context of Hinduism through the activities of the Sangh Parivar. Hinduism has an inherent power to tackle this evil from within and the duty of the theologian in this context is to proclaim that power for the benefit of all.[22] While understanding the use of religion in communal politics we should note that religion is neither the cause nor the end of communalism, but only its vehicle. Religion is made to serve politics as a garb or rationalization. In communalism religion plays an entirely extraneous role or a role of a mask because we find communalists to be both non-practising religionists and shirkers of theology. We have to distinguish between religion as an ideology or a belief system, and the ideology of religious identity which is communalism. In fact, to understand communalism or the ideology of religious identity we have to go outside the sphere of religion and explore the spheres of economics and politics. Religious difference is a basic element of communal ideology and politics and it is used by the communalist as an organizing principle and to mobilize the masses. However, religious difference is not the cause of communal ideology and politics.[23]

The glorious fact that contemporary Christians can proclaim is, Hindu religion as an ideology nullifies the ideology of religious identity which is communalism because in Hinduism religious pluralism is theologically accepted.[24] Already in the Rig Veda (1.164. 46), by pointing out that Sat (Truth, Being) is one but sages call it by different names, Brahmanism tried to solve the clash between one religion and another. The Bhagavadgita faced with the possibility of many margas (paths to God) suggested that those who worship other gods in reality worship Krishna (9.23, 24; 7.21; 4.11). Orthodox Hindus argue for religious pluralism saying that plurality is rooted in the diversity of human nature itself, in the principle of adhikarabheda (difference in aptitude or competence) and therefore the question of superiority or uniqueness of any one dharma over others does not arise. Further, Advaita Vedanta and Syadvada of Jainism promote harmony of religions. The Christian theologian can make such meaningful proclamation as these if he/she is also willing to listen to the interpretations of Christ and Christianity provided by people of other faiths. Liberative religious utterances are authentic only in the context of mutuality.

The Way Forward: Pluralist Inclusivism

Pluralist Inclusivism inspires each religious faith to be pluralistically inclusive. On the one hand, each living faith is to become truly pluralistic by other faiths contributing to its conceptual content and, on the other hand, Inclusivism is to transform its meaning to witness the fulfillment of theological and spiritual contents of one's own faith in and through the contributions of other living faiths. It is a perspective in which religious resources of the world are conceived as the common property of humanity. It envisages a relational convergence of religions. A growth in the richness of religious experiences through mutual sharing is understood again as the outcome of this perspective. This perspective consequently can enrich not only Christian theology but also the theology of other faiths and it is different from the perspectives of Exclusivism, Inclusivism and Pluralism in theology of religions.[25]

The age of considering different religions as isolated, self-contained compartments is over. The age of considering other faiths as inferior to one's own is also over. Mutual interaction and enrichment on an equal footing is the inevitable reality for today and all the days to come. Different religions will contribute to each other in arriving at the content of the faith-experience of each. The different 'paths' are no more entirely different, isolated paths. Each becomes a path by receiving insights from other paths. The question of the uniqueness of one path as compared to other paths does not arise any more. What we are now interested in is the unique blending of two or more paths together for the emergence of the creatively new in each of the earlier paths. This is dynamic interaction. In addition, conflict between different paths cannot have the last word. There is a possibility for a natural growth from relational divergence to relational distinctiveness to relational convergence of religions.[26]

Pluralistic Inclusivism gives significance to the process of hermeneutics or understanding and interpretation. It is the hermeneutical context or the contextual socio-politico-religio-cultural realities which decide the content of our knowledge and experience of the Gospel. Knowledge is formulated in the very knowing process and understanding the Gospel of God in Jesus is a continuous integrated non-dual divine-human process. Nothing is pre- given or pre-formulated. We cannot accept some timeless interpretation from somewhere and make it applicable to our context. Understanding and interpretation belongs exclusively to us and to our context, and there is the possibility for the emergence of new meanings of the gospel in the process.[27] One important aspect of Asian context is religious plurality and Christian pilgrimage is progressive integration of the truth that is revealed to others in one's own experience of the story of Jesus. We have a duty to identify the glorious ways in which God's revelations are available to us in other religious experiences which can help in our experience of new dimensions of meanings of the gospel of God in Jesus.[28] Rather than evaluating other religious experiences in terms of pre-formulated criteria, we have to allow ourselves to be evaluated by them in our understanding of the gospel. They in Holy Spirit will provide us with new meanings of the person and function of Jesus, rather than we dictate to them always. From particular Jesus we have to come to the universal Jesus.[29] Universal Jesus belongs to the whole of humanity in Holy Spirit.

How we can arrive at an authentic understanding of Christ or the Christian gospel is an important question. Who decides the content of the meaning of Christ and the gospel is a fundamental question. The meaning of Christ and the Christian gospel has to emerge in the process of an inter-religious communication. Nobody is giving the Christian theologian alone the authority to decide the content of an 'authentic gospel'. People from diverse religio-cultural backgrounds will, in terms of their contexts, decide the content of the gospel. There are diverse ways in which the gospel has been experienced by people of other religious faiths, especially of Asia. For example, in spite of the missionary aggression on their religion, Hindus could experience the gospel of God in Jesus in terms of Neo-Vedantic thought.[30] Neo-Vedanta proclaims the gospel that Jesus had a non-dual relation with God and he is inspiring all humans to have the same relation with God through the renunciation of the lower self. Neo-Vedantic Christology is of course just one among the many developments in Indian Christian Theology. Similar line of development of understanding of Jesus and the gospel are there in other Asian countries undertaken by those who are members of a church as well as those who are not in the context of diverse religious experiences. Here there is a need to question the very conception that Christians are the sole custodians of the Gospel of God in Jesus. Jesus transcends Christianity. We very badly need the help of diverse religious faiths in arriving at the meaning and message of Jesus. There is a need to attempt a comprehensive analysis of the gospel as interpreted by all the diverse religious experiences of the world and this has to be carried out in terms of expositions by both those who are outside and inside the church.[31]

Pluralistic Inclusivism wholeheartedly supports the view expressed by both Aloysius Pieris and Raimundo Panikkar that in Asia cultural incursions have religious consequences. Asia stands for enreligionization. Pluralistic Inclusivism would hold that Inculturation or Indigenization or Contextualization implies Inclusivism in theology of religions which is defective and which is the official standpoint of both the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches.[32] Inculturation or Indigenization or Contextualization denotes certain misconceptions.[33] These include the following: that the gospel is external and alien to Asians; revising the language of the unchanging gospel is what is needed; there is a dichotomy between message and context; we can judge our religious traditions from inside and those of others from outside; we can artificially make indigenous that which is not indigenous; Christian gospel which is foreign has to be translated in each country; and God the Creator is a foreigner in one's own country and culture. It is high time for Christian theologians to take note of the fact that in Asian context religion and culture are integrally related. There is no way of removing religion from culture and then inculturate the Western cultural Gospel in the illusion that it is sui generis.[34]

The dialogical theologies of Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya, P. Chenchiah and K. Subba Rao are a practical demonstration of theological construction in terms of Pluralistic Inclusivism. Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya[35] was of the view that the Vedantic conception of God and that of Christian belief are exactly the same and that Maya of Advaita Vedanta is the best available concept to explain the doctrine of creation. Though he was honestly actualizing his primary assumption that the function of Vedanta is to supply a new garb to an already formulated Christian theology, Upadhyaya did not reinterpret either of the Vedantic concepts of Saccidananda and Maya to serve as explanations of a readymade Christian theology. Rather he showed that Saccidananda is Trinity and that Maya expresses the meaning of the doctrine of creation in a far better way than the Latin root Creare. Chenchiah[36] discovered the supreme value of Christ not in spite of Hinduism but because Hinduism had taught him to discern spiritual greatness. For him theology was based on direct experience of Jesus and this experience varies as per the background and context of the believer. Hence, there is a possibility for new interpretations of Jesus. His own experience was that Christianity is not primarily a doctrine of salvation but the announcement of the advent of a new creative order in Jesus, namely, the Kingdom of God where the cosmic energy or Shakti is the Holy Spirit. We are incorporated in the new creation of Jesus today through the Yoga of the Holy Spirit which is in line with the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Kalagara Subba Rao[37] was of the view that in following Jesus the Gurudev, our foundation has to be Jesus Christ alone, beyond doctrines and rituals; and he gave expression to his experience in confronting Jesus through Advaita Vedantic categories. Jesus died to the body and ego through self-sacrifice and he calls us to follow his way through his grace. We are in reality Spirit; ignorance (ajnana) of this fact makes us servant of the body and that is Fall; and the fallen state is sin. Jesus leads us from ajnana to jnana (knowledge); from the material realm to the spiritual realm.

Our theological endeavours also have been in terms of a method derived from Pluralistic Inclusivism. We have tried to make the very content of the revelation of God in Jesus truly pluralistic by elaborating the contributions of Sankara's Advaita Vedanta to it.[38] We discovered the possibility of understanding the person of Jesus as the extrinsic denominator (upadhi), the name and form (namrupa), and the effect (karya) of the Brahman's delimitation (ghatakasa) as well as the reflection (abhasa) of Brahman. We could show that Advaita provides an ideological basis form the self-sacrifice of Jesus: it is Being (Sat) alone who is perceived in a form other than His/Her own namely Jesus and hence we should not make any assumption of anything other than Being at any time or place. The total negation of Jesus is the total affirmation of Being. We have to sacrifice ourselves as Jesus did to discover our reality in Being. We could also suggest a possibility to interpret the function of Jesus as re-presenting the all-pervasive (sarva - gatatvam), illuminative (jyotih) and unifying (ekikritya) power of the Supreme Atman; as to manifest that the Supreme Brahman as Pure Consciousnes (pragnanaghanam) is the Witness (saksi) and the Self of all (sarvatma); and as to proclaim the eternally present (nityasiddhasvabhavm) human liberation. If Christian thought in the past had distorted the religion of renunciation and realization of potential divinity of Jesus, into a secular dogmatic religion of the innate vileness of human nature and atoning sacrifice of Christ it is such an Indian interpretation of the function of Jesus which can rectify that distortion. The work of Christ is conceived here going beyond the atonement theories.

We have again indicated an Indian Christian epistemology[39] in terms of the Indian philosophical schools, especially Advaita Vedanta. We identified the important meanings of all the six Pramanas (sources of valid knowledge) of Indian Philosophy, namely, Perception, Inference, Scripture, Comparison, Postulation, and Non-cognition in order to discover these Pramanas as sources of valid knowledge in Indian Christian theology so that an authentic Indian Christian theological method as well as understanding of Indian Christian sources of authority may be clarified for the benefit of all Indian Theological constructions. If Scripture (sabda) can be classified under revelation, the other five Pramanas come under reason and there is an integral relationship between reason and revelation in Indian epistemology and consequently in Indian Christian thought. Perception (pratyaksa) proclaims the integral relation between humans, nature and the Innermost Reality, Atman, and makes theology rooted in day to day experience. Inference (anumana) challenges us to identify the invariable concomitances (vyaptis) in Christian theological issues in terms of present day Indian context. A word (sabda) signifies the universal class-character (jati or akriti) over against the particular (vyakti) and so we have to cross over from the particular Bible to the universal Bible. On perceiving Jesus to be like the person pointed out by the Old Testament and the Upanishads, we come to know that the Old Testament and the Upanishads definitely point to Jesus through comparison (upamana). By means of postulation (arthapatti) we can arrive at theological statements that explain seemingly inexplicable phenomena in Christian theology and non-cognition (anupalabdhi) recommends an apophatic Indian Christian theology.

We could also indicate[40] how Advaita Vedanta can dynamically enrich Eastern Christian thought in its further developments. For instance, the insight that Brahman/Atman pervades, illumines and unifies all levels and layers of human personality as well as the whole of creation enables Eastern Christian theology to arrive at new insights regarding the energies of God through which God is knowable and through which deification is actualised. The neti neti theology of Advaita, the experience of Brahman/Atman as the subject and knower of all and everything and which cannot be known, enables Eastern Christian theology to develop its apophatic theology. The Orthodox conception of deification is enriched through Advaitic insights. Deification is in terms of the implantation (mayah) of the Atman in the five human sheaths. The luminous Atman (atmajyotih) imparts His/Her lustre to the intellect and all other organs and thus deification is effected. Brahman/Atman unifies everything and everyone in His/Her homogeneity (ekarasata) and the result is again deification. Brahman/Atman as Pure Consciousness and Witness pervades, illumines and unifies the whole human person by means of His/Her reflection in it. The awareness that Brahman/Atman is reflected at all levels of our personality gives new vigour to the interpretation of human person as created in the image of God, taught by Eastern Christian theology. The divine willing, the idea of created things, the logoi, the words, are in the energies of God and not in God's essence. The Advaita Vedantic view that before creation this universe pre-existed in Brahman as potential seed (bijasaktih) and undifferentiated name and form (avyakrtanamarupa) clarifies this understanding of creation in the energies of God.

Conclusion

If in the name of mission Christian imperialists have attempted to destroy local religions and cultures, and Christian thinkers have misinterpreted the doctrines of other religions, the first step in building communities in Asia is to seek forgiveness for the damage done and to eliminate all the prevalent misinterpretations. Christians are now to be for the correction of the defects of other religious faiths by the resources of those faiths themselves. They are to affirm the liberative elements in them, eliminating the existing misrepresentations of these by vested interests. For example, caste and communalism in India can be demonstrated as destroyable by the resources of Hinduism itself. Building communities are again through a reconceived perspective in theology of religions called Pluralistic Inclusivism which is different from the perspectives of Exclusivism, Inclusivism and Pluralism. In Pluralistic Inclusivism all the diverse religious resources of the world are conceived as the common property of humanity for mutual enrichment, relational convergence and growth. According to it, it is the hermeneutical context or the contextual socio-politico-religio-cultural realities which decide the content of our knowledge and experience of the gospel. The meaning of Christ and the Christian gospel has to emerge in the process of an inter-religious communication. People from diverse religio-cultural backgrounds will, in terms of their contexts, decide the content of the gospel. God's revelations are available to us in other religious experiences, which can help in our experiences of new dimensions of meanings of the gospel of God in Jesus. Trinity therefore may be conceived as Saccidananda and the function of Jesus, going beyond the Atonement theories, can be experienced as pointing to the pervasion, illumination and unification of all levels and layers of human personality as well as the whole creation by the Supreme Atman.

_______________________
Notes:

[1] Revd Dr. K. P. Aleaz < kleaz@satyam.net.in > is Professor of Religions at Bishop's College and Dean of the Doctoral Programme of North India Institute of Post-Graduate Theological Studies in Kolkata, India.

[2] Michael Kinnamon, (ed.), World Council of Churches. Signs of the Spirit. Official Report. Seventh Assembly Canberra, Australia, 7-20 February 1991 (Geneva: WCC, 1991), pp. 216-19.

[3] Ibid., pp. 276-78.

[4] Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. VIII, 5th Edn. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1971), pp. 211-12.

[5] A. G. Hogg, Karma and Redemption. An Essay toward the Interpretation of Hinduism and the Restatement of Christianity (London: CLS, 1909); The Christian Message to the Hindu[Duff Missionary Lectures for 1945 on the Challenge of the Gospel in India] (London: SCM Press, 1947).

[6] P. D. Devanandan, The Gospel and the Renascent Hinduism, London: SCM Press, 1959, p. 55; The Gospel and the Hindu Intellectual. A Christian Approach, Bangalore: CISRS, 1958, pp. 25-27; Preparation for Dialogue. A collection of Essays on Hinduism and Christianity, ed. by Nalini Devanandan and M. M. Thomas, Bangalore: CISRS, 1964, pp. 38-40, 164-68.

[7] Surjit Singh, "Ontology and Personality" in Indian Voices in Today's Theological Debate, ed. by Horst Burkle and Wolfgang M.W.Roth (Lucknow: LPH/ISPCK/CLS, 1972), p. 74.

[8] Ibid., pp. 75-87; Surjit Singh, Christology and Personality (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, n. d.), pp. 19, 139, 143-51, 140-41, 151-58, etc.

[9] Ibid., pp. 19, 143-90, etc.; Surjit Singh, A Philosophy of Integral Relation (Samyagdarsanam) (Madras/Bangalore: CLS/CISRS, 1981), pp. 29-35, 44, 56. For misconceptions of Hinduism by Schweitzer, Bouquet and Zaehner Cf. D. S. Sarma, Renascent Hinduism (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1966), pp. 70-81.

[10] Samuel Rayan, "Indian Theology and the problem of History" in Society and Religion. Essays in Honour of M. M. Thomas, ed. by Richard W. Taylor (Madras/Bangalore: CLS/CISRS, 1976), p. 175.

[11] K. P. Aleaz, "Vedic-Vedantic Vision in Indian Christian Theology of Nature", Bangalore Theological Forum, Vol. XXV, No. 1 (March 1993), p. 36.

[12] B. Upadhyaya, "Notes", Sophia, Vol. I, No. 4, July 7, 1900, p. 6; "Notes", Sophia, Vol. I, No. 2, June 23, 1900, p. 7; Summary of the lecture by B. Upadhyaya, "Hinduism, Theosophy, and Christianity”, Sophia, Vol. IV, No. 12 (December 1897), pp. 1-2.

[13] P. Johanns, "To Christ through the Vedanta", Light of the East, Vol. IV, No. 5 (February 1926), p. 5; Ibid., Vol. III, No. 8 (May 1925), pp. 3-4.

[14] R. V. De Smet, "Ancient Religious Speculations" in Religious Hinduism. A Presentation and Appraisal ed. by R. V. De Smet & J. Neuner (Allahabad: St Paul Publications, 1968), p. 46.

[15] Cf. J. N. Farquhar, The Crown of Hinduism (London: Oxford University Press, 1913).

[16] Cf. K. P. Aleaz, "The Convergence of Dalit-Advaitic Theologies: An Exploration", Indian Journal of Theology, Vol. 36, No. I (1994), pp. 97-108.

[17] Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,Vol. VII, 7th Edn. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1969), p. 163. Cf. Pp. 91, 197; Vol. I, 13th Edn. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1970), pp. 364, 389-90.

[18] The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. I, pp. 384-85; Vol. III, 10th Edn. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1970), p. 425; Vol. II, 12th Edn. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1971), pp. 414-15.

[19] The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. VI, 8th Edn. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1968), p. 327.

[20] K. P. Aleaz, Harmony of Religions. The Relevance of Swami Vivekananda, op. cit., pp. 222-23.

[21] Cf. Bipan Chandra, Communalism in Modern India (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1989); Asghar Ali Engineer, Communalism and Communal Violence in India[special issue of Islamic Perspective Vol. IV] (Bombay: Indian Institute of Islamic Studies, 1988); S. K. Ghosh, Communal Riots in India (New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1987); P. R. Rajagopal, Communal Violence in India (Delhi: Uppal Publishing House, 1987); R. Thapar et. al., Communalism and the Writing of Indian History (Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1969); M.S.Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts (Bangalore: Vikram Prakashana, 1966); S. Arulsamy (ed.), Communalism in India. A Challenge to Theologising (Bangalore: Claretian Publications, 1988); S. Lourdusamy, Religion as Political Weapon (Calcutta: Multi Book Agency, 1990).

[22] In the context of Hindutva the new paradigm for mission then is not dialogue as G. R. Singh conceives. Christian faith need not come into the picture at all for reconciliation. The power for reconciliation has to emerge from within Hinduism itself. Cf. G. R. Singh, "Hindutva and a New Paradigm for Mission", The South India Church Man (October 1993), pp. 2-4.

[23] Bipan Chandra, op. cit., pp. 158-90.

[24] S. J. Samartha, "The Cross and the rainbow: Christ in a multi-religious culture" in Christian Faith and Multiform Culture in India, ed. by Somen Das (Bangalore: United Theological College, 1987), pp. 22-29; Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, Indian Religion (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1969), pp. 54-62.

[25] Cf. K. P. Aleaz, "Religious Pluralism and Christian Witness - A Biblical-Theological Analysis", Bangalore Theological Forum, Vol. XXI, No. 4 and Vol. XXII, No. 1 (December-March 1990), pp. 48-67; Harmony of Religions. The Relevance of Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta: Punthi-Pustak, 1993, pp. 162-165; Theology of Religions. Birmingham Papers and Other Essays (Calcutta: Moumita, 1998), pp. 168-199.

[26] K. P. Aleaz, Dimensions of Indian Religion. Study, Experience and Interaction (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1995), pp.262-63; Felix Wilfred, "Some Tentative Reflections on the Language of Christian Uniqueness. An Indian Perspective", Vidyajyoti, Vol. 57, No. 11 (November 1993), pp. 652-672; K. P. Aleaz, "Dialogical Theologies. A Search for an Indian Perspective", Asia Journal of Theology, Vol. 6, No. 2 (October 1992), pp. 274-291.

[27] K. P. Aleaz, The Gospel of Indian Culture (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1994), pp. 177-282.

[28] Cf. K. P. Aleaz, Jesus in Neo-Vedanta-A Meeting of Hinduism and Christianity (Delhi: Kant Publishers, 1995); An Indian Jesus from Sankara's Thought (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1997).

[29] K. P. Aleaz, The Role of Pramanas in Hindu-Christian Epistemology (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1991), pp. 99-100.

[30] Cf. K. P. Aleaz, Jesus in Neo-Vedanta.A Meeting of Hinduism and Christianity, op. cit.

[31] Cf. M. M. Thomas, The Acknowledged Christ of Indian Renaissance (Madras/Bangalore: CLS/CISRS, 1970).

[32] K. P. Aleaz, The Gospel of Indian Culture, op. cit., pp. 99-176.

[33] Ibid., pp. 129-133.

[34] K. P. Aleaz, "Hope for the Gospel in Divers Religious Cultures: A Response to the Salvador Conference on World Mission and Evangelism", Asia Journal of Theology, Vol. 11, No. 2, (October 1997), pp. 263-81.

[35] K. P. Aleaz, Christian Thought Through Advaita Vedanta (Delhi: ISPCK, 1996), pp. 9-38.

[36] Cf. G. V. Job, P. Chenchiah, V. Chakkarai et al., Rethinking Christianity in India (Madras: A. N. Sundarisanam, 1938).

[37] K. P. Aleaz, Christian Thought Through Advaita Vedanta, op. cit., pp. 45-62.

[38] Cf. K. P. Aleaz, An Indian Jesus from Sankara's Thought, op. cit.

[39] Cf. K. P. Aleaz, The Role of Pramanas, in Hindu-Christian Epistemology, op. cit.

[40] Cf. K. P. Aleaz, A Convergence of Advaita Vedanta and Eastern Christian Thought (Delhi: ISPCK, 2000).

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Christian Responses to Indian Philosophy by K.P. Aleaz/Nehemiah Nilkantha Sastri Goreh at Vedic Books

Christian Responses to Indian Philosophy by K.P. Aleaz/Nehemiah Nilkantha Sastri Goreh at Vedic Books

Christian Responses to Indian Philosophy
by K.P. Aleaz/Nehemiah Nilkantha Sastri Goreh

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A study of various Christian interactions with the six classical schools of Indian philosophy.

K. M. Banerjea's and Nehemiah Goreh's studies of Indian philosophy are first discussed. A. J. Appasamy's interaction with Ramanuja's thought, Ignatius Puthiadam's work on Madhvacharya, John Vattanky's study of Navyanyaya and Francis X. D'Sa's work on Mimamsa are also discussed in various chapters as are Dhvani, Yoga and pramanas.

First writtena an published as early as 1862, this work, originally titled Hindu Philosophical Systems : A Rational Refutation (1862), then A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems (1897) and later, A Mirror of the Hindu Philosophical Systems (1911), is rated as scholarly as Krishna Mohun Banerjea's Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy of 1861.

The approach of both these works to the Hindu philosophical systems is negative and thus not acceptable to Indian Christians. There have been many later works from Indian Christian scholars emphasising the possible contributions of one or other school of Indian philosophy to Christian thought. The merit of these two pioneering works is that they provide a Christian response to all the six systems of Hindu philosophy. For the later Indian Christian scholars to follow inclusivism or pluralism or pluralistic inclusivism in Theology of Religions, somebody had to start at the school of exclusivism- the two pioneers Goreh and Banerjea undertook this task. Nehemiah Goreh considered Nyaya and Vaisesika as the most reasonable of all schools because they acknowledge God. For him, great is the error of Sankhya and Mimamsa in denying the existence of God. Throughout Goreh's work, it is taken as a postulate that with the Vedantins, Brahman excepted, all is nihility. Advaita is interpreted here in terms of Post-Sankarite writings.

About the Author:

Dr. Kalarikkal Poulose Aleaz is Professor of Religions at Bishop's College, Kolkata. He is also a Professor at the North India Institute of Post Graduate Theological Studies (NIIPGTS) (Jointly sponsored by Serampore College and Bishop's College). He guides doctoral candidates of South Asia Theological Research Institute, Bangalore as well. His previous works include (ed.), Dialogue in India: Multi-Religious Perspective and Practice, Calcutta: Bishop's College, 1991: The role of Pramanas in Hindu Christian Epistemology, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1991; Harmony of Religions. The Relevance of Swami Vivakananda, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1993; The Gospel of Indian Culture, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak 1994; Sermons for a New Vision, Delhi: ISPCK, 1994; Jesus in Neo-Vedanta. A meeting of Hinduism and Christianity, Delhi: Kant Publications, 1995; Dimensions of Indian Religion, Study, Experience and Interaction, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1995; The Relevance of Relation in Sankara's Advaita Vedanta, Delhi: Kant Publications, 1996; Christian thought Through Advaita Vedanta, Delhi: ISPCK, 1996; An Indian Jesus from Sankara's Thought, Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1997; theology of Religions Birmingham Papers and Other Essays, Calcutta: Moumita, 1998; (Comp. And Intro.), From Exclusivism to Inclusivism. The Theological Writing of Krishna Mohan Banerjee (1813-1885), Delhi: ISPCK, 1999; A Convergence of Advaita Vedanta and Eastern Christian thought, Delhi: ISPCK 2000; Religions in Christian Theology, Kolkata: Punthi Pustak, 2001; (Comp. And Intro.), a Christian Response to the Hindu Philosophical System by Nehemiah Nilakantha Sastri Goreh, Kolkata: Punthi Pustak, 2003 as well as The Quest for a Contextual Spirituality, Tiruvalla: CSS, 2004.

Nehemiah Nilkantha Sastri Goreh (1825-1895), a Maharashtrian Brahmin, a scholar in Sanskrit and Hindu thought, was born in Jhansi, brought up in Banaras, and came to accept Christian faith through his contact with a C.M.S. Missionary William Smith. He worked as lay missionary to educated Hindus first in Poona and then in Banaras and Cawnpore. It was in this period he wrote a Christian critique of the Hindu philosophical systems in Hindu in 1860, it was later translated to English and published in 1862. In 1870 he was ordained a priest of the Church of England, prior to which he spent some time in the Bishop's College, Calcutta both studying and teaching. He also brought out a number of booklet's controverting the Brahmo claims, while continuing his work among educated Hindus in many parts of India with the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Poona, as his base.

Diligite iustitiam: Joseph Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The 1988 Erasmus Lecture

Diligite iustitiam: Joseph Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The 1988 Erasmus Lecture




Initium sapientiae timor Domini.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Joseph Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The 1988 Erasmus Lecture
From First Things:

Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The 1988 Erasmus Lecture

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Thursday, April 17, 2008, 6:24 AM

Every year the Institute on Religion and Public Life, publisher of First Things, sponsors the Erasmus Lecture in New York City. In 1988, that lecture was delivered by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

In Wladimir Solowjew’s History of the Antichrist, the eschatological enemy of the Redeemer recommended himself to believers, among other things, by the fact that he had earned his doctorate in theology at Tübingen and had written an exegetical work which was recognized as pioneering in the field. The Antichrist, a famous exegete! With this paradox Solowjew sought to shed light on the ambivalence inherent in biblical exegetical methodology for almost a hundred years now. To speak of the crisis of the historical-critical method today is practically a truism. This, despite the fact that it had gotten off to so optimistic a start.

Within that newfound freedom of thought into which the Enlightenment had launched headlong, dogma or church doctrine appeared as one of the real impediments to a correct understanding of the Bible itself. But freed from this impertinent presupposition, and equipped with a methodology which promised strict objectivity, it seemed that we were finally going to be able to hear again the clear and unmistakable voice of the original message of Jesus. Indeed, what had been long forgotten was to be brought into the open once more: the polyphony of history could be heard again, rising from behind the monotone of traditional interpretations. As the human element in sacred history became more and more visible, the hand of God, too, seemed larger and closer.

Gradually, however, the picture became confused. The various theories increased and multiplied and separated one from the other and became a veritable fence which blocked access to the Bible for all the uninitiated. Those who were initiated were no longer reading the Bible anyway, but were dissecting it into the various parts from which it had to have been composed. The methodology itself seems to require such a radical approach: it cannot stand still when it scents the operation of man in sacred history. It must try to remove all the irrational residue and clarify everything. Faith itself is not a component of this method, nor is God a factor to be dealt with in historical events. But since God and divine action permeate the entire biblical account of history, one is obliged to begin with a complicated anatomy of the scriptural word. On one hand there is the attempt to unravel the various threads (of the narrative) so that in the end one holds in one’s hands what is the “really historical,” which means the purely human element in events. On the other hand, one has to try to show how it happened that the idea of God became interwoven through it all. So it is that another “real” history is to be fashioned in place of the one given. Underneath the existing sources–that is to say, the biblical books themselves–we are supposed to find more original sources, which in turn become the criteria for interpretation. No one should really be surprised that this procedure leads to the sprouting of ever more numerous hypotheses which finally turn into a jungle of contradictions. In the end, one no longer learns what the text says, but what it should have said, and by which component parts this can be traced back through the text.

Such a state of affairs could not but generate a counterreaction. Among cautious systematic theologians, there began the search for a theology which was as independent as possible from exegesis. But what possible value can a theology have which is cut off from its own foundations? So it was that a radical approach called “fundamentalism” began to win supporters who brand as false in itself and contradictory any application of the historical-critical method to the Word of God. They want to take the Bible again in its literal purity, just as it stands and just as the average reader understands it to be. But when do I really take the Bible “literally”? And which is the “normative” understanding which holds for the Bible in all its particularity? Certainly fundamentalism can take as a precedent the position of the Bible itself, which has selected as its own hermeneutical perspective the viewpoint of the “little ones,” the “pure of heart.” The problem still remains, however, that the demand for “literalness” and “realism” is not at all so univocal as it might first appear. In grappling with the problem of hermeneutics another alternative process presents itself: the explanation of the historical process of the development of forms is only one part of the duty of the interpreter; his understanding within the world of today is the other. According to this idea, one should investigate the conditions for understanding itself in order to come to a visualization of the text which would get beyond this historical “autopsy.” In fact, as it stands, this is quite correct, for one has not really understood something in its entirety simply because one knows how to explain the circumstances surrounding its beginning.

But how is it possible to come to an understanding which on one hand is not based on some arbitrary choice of particular aspects, but on the other hand allows me to hear the message of the text and not something coming from my own self? Once the methodology has picked history to death by its dissection, who can reawaken it so that it can live and speak to me? Let me put it another way: if “hermeneutics” is ever to become convincing, the inner harmony between historical analysis and hermeneutical synthesis must first be found.

To be sure, great strides have already been made in this direction, but I must honestly say that a truly convincing answer has yet to be formulated. If Rudolph Bultmann used the philosophy of Martin Heidegger as a vehicle to represent the biblical word, then that vehicle stands in accord with his reconstruction of the essence of Jesus’ message. But was this reconstruction itself not likewise a product of his philosophy? How great is its credibility from a historical point of view? In the end, are we listening to Jesus or to Heidegger with this approach to understanding? Still, one can hardly deny that Bultmann seriously grappled with the issue of increasing our access to the Bible’s message. But today, certain forms of exegesis are appearing which can only be explained as symptoms of the disintegration of interpretation and hermeneutics. Materialist and feminist exegesis, whatever else may be said about them, do not even claim to be an understanding of the text itself in the manner in which it was originally intended. At best they may be seen as an expression of the view that the Bible’s message is in and of itself inexplicable, or else that it is meaningless for life in today’s world. In this sense, they are no longer interested in ascertaining the truth, but only in whatever will serve their own particular agendas. They go on to justify this combination of agenda with biblical material by saying that the many religious elements help strengthen the vitality of the treatment. Thus historical method can even serve as a cloak for such maneuvers insofar as it dissects the Bible into discontinuous pieces, which are then able to be put to new use and inserted into a new montage (altogether different from the original biblical context).

The Central Problem

Naturally, this situation does not occur everywhere with the same starkness. The methods are often applied with a good deal of prudence, and the radical hermeneutics of the kind I have just described have already been disavowed by a large number of exegetes. In addition, the search for remedies for basic errors of modern methods has been going on for some time now. The scholarly search to find a better synthesis between the historical and theological methods, between higher criticism and church doctrine, is hardly a recent phenomenon. This can be seen from the fact that hardly anyone today would assert that a truly pervasive understanding of this whole problem has yet been found which takes into account both the undeniable insights uncovered by the historical method, while at the same time overcoming its limitations and disclosing them in a thoroughly relevant hermeneutic. At least the work of a whole generation is necessary to achieve such a thing. What follows, therefore, will be an attempt to sketch out a few distinctions and to point out a few first steps that might be taken toward an eventual solution.

There should be no particular need to demonstrate that on the one hand it is useless to take refuge in an allegedly pure, literal understanding of the Bible. On the other hand, a merely positivistic and rigid ecclesiasticism will not do either. Just to challenge individual theories, especially the more daring and dubious ones, is likewise insufficient. Likewise dissatisfying is the middle-ground position of trying to pick out in each case as soon as possible the answers from modern exegesis which are more in keeping with tradition. Such foresight may sometimes prove profitable, but it does not grasp the problem at its root and in fact remains somewhat arbitrary if it cannot make its own arguments intelligible. In order to arrive at a real solution, we must get beyond disputes over details and press on to the foundations. What we need might be called a criticism of criticism. By this I mean not some exterior analysis, but a criticism based on the inherent potential of all critical thought to analyze itself.

We need a self-criticism of the historical method which can expand to an analysis of historical reason itself, in continuity with and in development of the famous critique of reason by Immanuel Kant. Let me assure you at once that I do not presume to accomplish so vast an undertaking in the short time we have together. But we must make some start, even if it is by way of preliminary explorations in what is still a largely uncharted land. The self-critique of historical method would have to begin, it seems, by reading its conclusions in a diachronic manner so that the appearance of a quasi-clinical-scientific certainty is avoided. It has been this appearance of certainty which has caused its conclusions to be accepted so far and wide.

In fact, at the heart of the historical-critical method lies the effort to establish in the field of history a level of methodological precision which would yield conclusions of the same certainty as in the field of the natural sciences. But what one exegete takes as definite can only be called into question by other exegetes. This is a practical rule which is presupposed as plainly and self-evidently valid. Now, if the natural science model is to be followed without hesitation, then the importance of the Heisenberg principle should be applied to the historical-critical method as well. Heisenberg has shown that the outcome of a given experiment is heavily influenced by the point of view of the observer. So much is this the case that both the observer’s questions and observations continue to change themselves in the natural course of events. When applied to the witness of history, this means that interpretation can never be just a simple reproduction of history’s being, “as it was.” The word “interpretation” gives us a clue to the question itself: every exegesis requires an “inter,” an entering in and a being “inter” or between things; this is the involvement of the interpreter himself. Pure objectivity is an absurd abstraction. It is not the uninvolved who comes to knowledge; rather, interest itself is a requirement for the possibility of coming to know.

Here, then, is the question: how does one come to be interested, not so that the self drowns out the voice of the other, but in such a way that one develops a kind of inner understanding for things of the past, and ears to listen to the word they speak to us today?

This principle which Heisenberg enunciated for experiments in the natural sciences has a very important application to the subject-object relationship. The subject is not to be neatly isolated in a world of its own apart from any interaction. One can only try to put it in the best possible state. This is all the more the case with regard to history since physical processes are in the present and repeatable. Moreover, historical processes deal with the impenetrability and the depths of the human being and are thus even more susceptible to the influence of the perceiving subject than are natural events. But how are we to reconstruct the original historical context of a subject from the clues which survive?

We need to introduce at this point what I have already called the diachronic approach to exegetical findings. After about two hundred years of exegetical work on the texts, one can no longer give all their results equal weight. Now one has to look at them within the context of their particular history. It then becomes clear that such a history is not simply one of progress from imprecise to precise and objective conclusions. It appears much more as a history of subjectively reconstructed interrelationships whose approaches correspond exactly to the developments of spiritual history. In turn, these developments are reflected in particular interpretations of texts. In the diachronic reading of an exegesis, its philosophic presuppositions become quite apparent. Now, at a certain distance, the observer determines to his surprise that these interpretations, which were supposed to be so strictly scientific and purely “historical,” reflect their own overriding spirit, rather than the spirit of times long ago. This insight should not lead us to skepticism about the method, but rather to an honest recognition of what its limits are, and perhaps how it might be purified.


A Self-Criticism of the Historical-Critical Method on the Model of How the Method Was Taught by Martin Dibelius and Rudolph Bultmann

In order not to let the general rules of the method and their presuppositions remain altogether abstract, I would like to try to illustrate what I have been saying thus far with an example. I am going to follow here the doctoral dissertation written by Reiner Blank at the University of Basel, entitled “Analysis and Criticism of the Form-Critical Works of Martin Dibelius and Rudolph Bultmann.” This book seems to me to be a fine example of a self-critique of the historical-critical method. This kind of self-critical exegesis stops building conclusions on top of conclusions, and from constructing and opposing hypotheses. It looks for a way to identify its own foundations and to purify itself by reflections on those foundations. This does not mean that it is pulling itself up by its own bootstraps. On the contrary, by a process of self-limitation, it marks out for itself its own proper space. It goes without saying that the form-critical works of Dibelius and Bultmann have in the meantime been surpassed and in many respects corrected in their details. But it is likewise true that their basic methodological approaches continue even today to determine the methods and procedures of modern exegesis. Their essential elements underlie more than their own historical and theological judgments and, to be sure, these have widely achieved an authority like unto dogma.

For Dibelius, as with Bultmann, it was a matter of overcoming the arbitrary manner in which the preceding phase of Christian exegesis, the so-called “Liberal Theology,” had been conducted. This was imbued with judgments about what was “historical” or “unhistorical.” Both these scholars then sought to establish strict literary criteria which would reliably clarify the process by which the texts themselves were developed and would thus provide a true picture of the tradition. With this outlook, both were in search of the pure form and of the rules which governed the development from the initial forms to the text as we have it before us today. As is well known, Dibelius proceeded from the view that the secret of history discloses itself as one sheds light on its development. But how does one arrive at this first premise and to the ground rules for further development? Even with all their particular differences, one can discover here a series of fundamental presuppositions common to both Dibelius and Bultmann and which both considered trustworthy beyond question. Both proceed from the priority of what is preached over the event in itself: in the beginning was the Word. Everything in the Bible develops from the proclamation. This thesis is so promoted by Bultmann that for him only the word can be original: the word generates the scene. All events, therefore, are already secondary, mythological developments.

A further axiom is formulated which has remained fundamental for modern exegesis since the time of Dibelius and Bultmann: the notion of discontinuity. Not only is there no continuity between the pre-Easter Jesus and the formative period of the church; discontinuity applies to all phases of the tradition. This is so much the case that Reiner Blank could state, “Bultmann wanted incoherence at any price.”

To these two theories, the pure originality of the simple word and the discontinuity between the particular phases of development, there is joined the further notion that what is simple is original, that what is more complex must be a later development. This idea affords an easily applied parameter to determine the stages of development: the more theologically considered and sophisticated a given text is, the more recent it is, and the simpler something is, the easier it is to reckon it original. The criterion according to which something is considered more or less developed, however, is not at all so evident as it first seems. In fact, the judgment essentially depends upon the theological values of the individual exegete. There remains considerable room for arbitrary choice.

First and foremost, one must challenge that basic notion dependent upon a simplistic transferral of science’s evolutionary model to spiritual history. Spiritual processes do not follow the rule of zoological genealogies. In fact, it is frequently the opposite: after a great breakthrough, generations of descendants may come who reduce what was once a courageous new beginning to an academic commonplace. They bury it and disguise it by all kinds of variations of the original theory until it finally comes to have a completely different application.

One can easily see how questionable the criteria have been by using a few examples. Who would hold that Clement of Rome is more developed or complex than Paul? Is James any more advanced than the Epistle to the Romans? Is the Didache more encompassing than the Pastoral Epistles? Take a look at later times: whole generations of Thomistic scholars have not been able to take in the greatness of his thought. Lutheran orthodoxy is far more medieval than was Luther himself. Even between great figures there is nothing to support this kind of developmental theory.

Gregory the Great, for example, wrote long after Augustine and knew of him, but for Gregory the bold Augustinian vision is translated into the simplicity of religious understanding. Another example: what standard could one use to determine whether Pascal should be classified as before or after Descartes? Which of their philosophies should be judged the more developed? Further examples could be mentioned to illustrate the whole of human history. All judgments based on the theory of discontinuity in the tradition and on the assertion of an evolutionary priority of the “simple” over the “complex” can thus be immediately called into question as lacking foundation.

But now we must explain in an even more concrete way what criteria have been used to determine what is “simple.” In this regard there are standards as to form and content. In terms of form, the search was for the original forms. Dibelius found them in the so-called “paradigm,” or example narrative in oral tradition, which can be reconstructed behind the proclamation. Later forms, on the other hand, would be the “anecdote,” the “legend,” the collections of narrative materials, and the “myth.”

Bultmann saw the pure form in the “apothegm,” “the original specific fragment which would sum things up concisely; interest would be concentrated on the word [spoken by] Jesus at the end of a scene; the details of the situation would lie far from this kind of form; Jesus would never come across as the initiator . . . everything not corresponding to this form Bultmann attributed to development.” The arbitrary nature of these assessments which would characterize theories of development and judgments of authenticity from now on is only obvious. To be honest, though, one must also say that these theories are not so arbitrary as they may first appear. The designation of the “pure form” is based on a loaded idea of what is original, which we must now put to the test.

One element of originality is what we have just encountered: the thesis of the priority of the word over the event. But this thesis conceals two further pairs of opposites: the pitting of word against cult and eschatology against apocalyptic. In close harmony with these is the antithesis between Judaic and Hellenistic. Hellenistic was, for example, in Bultmann, the notion of the cosmos, the mystical worship of the gods and cultic piety. The consequence is simple: what is Hellenistic cannot be Palestinian, and therefore it cannot be original. Whatever has to do with cult, cosmos, or mystery must be rejected as a later development. The rejection of “apocalyptic,” the alleged opposite of eschatology, leads to yet another element: the supposed antagonism between the prophetic and the “legal” and thus between the prophetic and the cosmic and cultic. It follows, then, that ethics is seen as incompatible with the eschatological and the prophetic. In the beginning there was no ethics, but simply an ethos. What is surely at work is the by-product of Luther’s fundamental distinction: the dialectic between the law and the gospel. According to this dialectic, ethics and cult are to be relegated to the realm of the law and put in dialectical contrast with Jesus, who, as bearer of the good news, brings the long line of promise to completion and thus overcomes the law. If we are ever to understand modern exegesis and critique it correctly, we simply must return and reflect anew on Luther’s view of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. In place of the analogy model which was then current, he substituted a dialectical structure.

However, for Luther all of this remained in a very delicate balance, whereas for Dibelius and Bultmann, the whole degenerates into a development scheme of well-nigh intolerable simplicity, even if this has contributed to its attractiveness.

With these presuppositions, the picture of Jesus is determined in advance. Thus Jesus has to be conceived in strongly “Judaic” terms. Anything “Hellenistic” has to be removed from him. All apocalyptic, sacramental, mystical elements have to be pruned away. What remains is a strictly “eschatological” prophet, who really proclaims nothing of substance. He only cries out “eschatologically” in expectation of the “wholly other,” of that transcendence which he powerfully presents before humanity in the form of the imminent end of the world.

From this view emerged two challenges for exegesis. First, exegetes had to explain how one got from the unmessianic, unapocalyptic, prophetic Jesus to the apocalyptic community which worshiped him as Messiah; to a community in which were united Jewish eschatology, stoic philosophy, and mystery religion in a wondrous syncretism. This is exactly how Bultmann described early Christianity.

Second, exegetes had to find a way to connect the original message of Jesus to Christian life today, thus making it possible to understand his call to us.

According to the developmental model, the first problem is relatively easy to solve in principle, even though an immense amount of scholarship had to be dedicated to working out the details. The agent responsible for the contents of the New Testament was not to be found in persons, but in the collective, in the “community.” Romantic notions of the “people” and of its importance in the shaping of traditions play a key role here.18 Add to this the thesis of Hellenization and the appeal to the history-of-religions school. The works of Gunkel and Bousset exerted decisive influence in this area.

The second problem was more difficult. Bultmann’s approach was his theory of demythologization, but this did not achieve quite the same success as his theories on form and development. If one were allowed to characterize somewhat roughly Bultmann’s solution for a contemporary appropriation of Jesus’ message, one might say that the scholar from Marburg had set up a correspondence between the nonapocalyptic-prophetic and the fundamental thought of the early Heidegger. Being a Christian, in the sense Jesus meant it, is essentially collapsed into that mode of existing in openness and alertness which Heidegger described. The question has to occur whether one cannot come by some simpler way to such general and sweeping formal assertions.

Still, what is of interest to us here is not Bultmann the systematician, whose activities came to an abrupt halt in any case with the rise of Marxism. Instead, we should examine Bultmann the exegete who is responsible for an ever more solid consensus regarding the methodology of scientific exegesis.


The Philosophic Source of the Method

At this point the question arises, how could Dibelius’ and Bultmann’s essential categories for judgment–that is, the pure form, the opposition between apocalyptic and eschatology and so on–present such evidence to them that they believed they had at their disposal the perfect instrument for gaining a knowledge of history? Why is this system of thought taken without question and applied in large part even today? Most of it has simply become an academic commonplace, which precedes individual analysis and appears to be legitimized almost automatically by application. But what about the founders of the method? Certainly, Dibelius and Bultmann already stood in a tradition. Mention has already been made of their dependence on Gunkel and Bousset. But what was their dominant idea? With this question, the self-critique of the historical method passes over to a self-criticism of historical reason, without which our analysis would get stuck in superficialities.

In the first place, one can note that in the history-of religions school, the model of evolution was applied to the analysis of biblical texts. This was an effort to bring the methods and models of the natural sciences to bear on the study of history. Bultmann laid hold of this notion in a more general way and thus attributed to the so-called scientific worldview a kind of dogmatic character. Thus, for example, for him the nonhistoricity of the miracle stories was no question whatever anymore. The only thing one needed to do yet was to explain how these miracle stories came about. On one hand the introduction of the scientific worldview was indeterminate and not well thought out. On the other hand, it offered an absolute rule for distinguishing between what could have been and what had to be explained only by development. To this latter category belonged everything which is not met with in common daily experience. There could only have been what now is. For everything else, therefore, historical processes are invented, whose reconstruction became the particular challenge of exegesis.

But I think we must go yet a step further in order to appreciate the fundamental decision of the system which generated these particular categories for judgment. The real philosophic presupposition of the whole system seems to me to lie in the philosophic turning point proposed by Immanuel Kant. According to him, the voice of being-in-itself cannot be heard by human beings. Man can hear it only indirectly in the postulates of practical reason, which have remained, as it were, the small opening through which he can make contact with the real, that is, his eternal destiny. For the rest, as far as the content of his intellectual life is concerned, he must limit himself to the realm of the categories. Thence comes the restriction to the positive, to the empirical, to the “exact” science, which by definition excludes the appearance of what is “wholly other,” or the one who is wholly other, or a new initiative from another plane.

In theological terms, this means that revelation must recede into the pure formality of the eschatological stance, which corresponds to the Kantian Split. As far as everything else is concerned, it all needs to be “explained.” What might otherwise seem like a direct proclamation of the divine can only be myth, whose laws of development can be discovered. It is with this basic conviction that Bultmann, with the majority of modern exegetes, read the Bible. He is certain that it cannot be the way it is depicted in the Bible, and he looks for methods to prove the way it really had to be. To that extent there lies in modern exegesis a reduction of history into philosophy, a revision of history by means of philosophy.

The real question before us then is, can one read the Bible any other way? Or perhaps better, must one agree with the philosophy which requires this kind of reading? At its core, the debate about modern exegesis is not a dispute among historians: it is rather a philosophical debate. Only in this way can it be carried on correctly. Otherwise it is like a battle in a mist. The exegetical problem is identical in the main with the struggle for the foundations of our time. Such a struggle cannot be conducted casually, nor can it be won with a few suggestions. It will demand, as I have already intimated, the attentive and critical commitment of an entire generation. It cannot simply retreat back to the Middle Ages or to the Fathers and place them in blind opposition to the spirit of the present age. But neither can it renounce the insights of the great believers of the past and pretend that the history of thought seriously began only with Kant.

In my opinion the more recent debate about biblical hermeneutics suffers from just such a narrowing of our horizon. One can hardly dismiss the exegesis of the Fathers by calling it mere “allegory” or set aside the philosophy of the Middle Ages by branding it as “precritical.”


The Basic Elements of a New Synthesis

After these remarks on the challenge of a self-critique of the historical method, we now find ourselves confronted with the positive side of the problem, how to join its tools with a better philosophy which would entail fewer drawbacks foreign to the text, which would be less arbitrary, and which would offer greater possibilities for a true listening to the text itself. The positive task is without a doubt even more difficult than the critical one. I can only try to conclude these remarks by trying to carve out a few narrow footpaths in the thicket, which may perhaps point out where the main road lies and how it is to be found.

In the midst of the theological, methodological debate of his day, Gregory of Nyssa called upon the rationalist Eunomius not to confuse theology with the science of nature. (Theologein is not physiologein.) “The mystery of theology is one thing,” he said, “the scientific investigation of nature is quite another.” One cannot then “encompass the unembraceable nature of God in the palm of a child’s hand.” Gregory was here alluding to one of the famous sayings of Zeno: “The open hand is perception, the clapping hand is the agreement of the intellect, the hand fully closed upon something is the recording of judgment, the one hand clasped by the other is systematic science.”

Modern exegesis, as we have seen, completely relegated God to the incomprehensible, the otherworldly, and the inexpressible in order to be able to treat the biblical text itself as an entirely worldly reality according to natural-scientific methods.

Contrary to the text itself, physiologein is practiced. As a “critical science,” it claims an exactness and certitude similar to natural science. This is a false claim because it is based upon a misunderstanding of the depth and dynamism of the word. Only when one takes from the word its own proper character as word and then stretches it onto the screen of some basic hypothesis can one subject it to such exact rules. Romano Guardini commented in this regard on the false certainty of modern exegesis, which he said “has produced very significant individual results, but has lost sight of its own particular object and generally has ceased being theology.” The sublime thought of Gregory of Nyssa remains a true guidepost today: “these gliding and glittering lights of God’s word which sparkle over the eyes of the soul . . . but now let what we hear from Elijah rise up to our soul and would that our thoughts, too, might be snatched up into the fiery chariot . . . so we would not have to abandon hope of drawing close to these stars, by which I mean the thoughts of God . . .”

Thus the word should not be submitted to just any kind of enthusiasm. Rather, preparation is required to open us up to the inner dynamism of the word. This is possible only when there is a certain “sympathia” for understanding, a readiness to learn something new, to allow oneself to be taken along a new road. It is not the closed hand which is required, but the opened eye. . . .

Thus the exegete should not approach the text with a ready-made philosophy, nor in accordance with the dictates of a so-called modern or “scientific” worldview, which determines in advance what may or may not be. He may not exclude a priori that (almighty) God could speak in human words in the world. He may not exclude that God himself could enter into and work in human history, however improbable such a thing might at first appear.

He must be ready to learn from the extraordinary. He must be ready to accept that the truly original may occur in history, something which cannot be derived from precedents but which opens up out of itself. He may not deny to humanity the ability to be responsive beyond the categories of pure reason and to reach beyond ourselves toward the open and endless truth of being.

We must likewise reexamine the relationship between event and word. For Dibelius, Bultmann, and the mainstream of modern exegesis, the event is the irrational element. It lies in the realm of mere facticity, which is a mixture of accident and necessity. The fact as such, therefore, cannot be a bearer of meaning. Meaning lies only in the word, and where events might seem to bear meaning, they are to be considered as illustrations of the word to which they have to be referred. Judgments which derive from such a point of view are certainly persuasive for people of today, since they fit nicely into their own patterns of expectations. There is, however, no evidence in reality to support them. Such evidence is admissible only under the presupposition that the principle of scientific method, namely that every effect which occurs can be explained in terms of purely immanent relationships within the operation itself, is not only valid methodologically but is true in and of itself. Thus, in reality there would be only “accident and necessity,” nothing else, and one may only look upon these elements as brute facts.

But what is useful as a methodological principle for the natural sciences is a foregone banality as a philosophical principle; and as a theological principle it is a contradiction. (How can any or all of God’s activity be considered either as accidental or necessary?) It is here, for the sake of scientific curiosity, too, that we must experiment with the precise contrary of this principle, namely, that things can indeed be otherwise.

To put it another way: the event itself can be a “word,” in accord with the biblical terminology itself. From this flow two important rules for interpretation.

(a) First, both word and event have to be considered equally original, if one wishes to remain true to the biblical perspective. The dualism which banishes the event into wordlessness, that is meaninglessness, would rob the word of its power to convey meaning as well, for it would then stand in a world without meaning.

It also leads to a docetic Christology in which the reality, that is the concrete fleshly existence of Christ and especially of man, is removed from the realm of meaning. Thus the essence of the biblical witness fails of its purpose.

(b) Secondly, such a dualism splits the biblical word off from creation and would substitute the principle of discontinuity for the organic continuity of meaning which exists between the Old and New Testaments. When the continuity between word and event is allowed to disappear, there can no longer be any unity within the Scripture itself. A New Testament cut off from the Old is automatically abolished since it exists, as its very title suggests, because of the unity of both. Therefore the principle of discontinuity must be counterbalanced by the interior claim of the biblical text itself, according to the principle of the analogia scripturae: the mechanical principle must be balanced by the teleological principle.

Certainly texts must first of all be traced back to their historical origins and interpreted in their proper historical context. But then, in a second exegetical operation, one must look at them also in light of the total movement of history and in light of history’s central event, Jesus Christ. Only the combination of both these methods will yield understanding of the Bible. If the first exegetical operation by the Fathers and in the Middle Ages is found to be lacking, so too is the second, since it easily falls into arbitrariness. Thus, the first was fruitless, but the rejection of any coherence of meaning leads to an opinionated methodology.

To recognize the inner self-transcendence of the historical word, and thus the inner correctness of subsequent rereadings in which event and meaning are gradually interwoven, is the task of interpretation properly so-called, for which appropriate methods can and must be found. In this connection, the exegetical maxim of Thomas Aquinas is quite to the point: “The duty of every good interpreter is to contemplate not the words, but the sense of the words.”

In the last hundred years, exegesis has had many great achievements, but it has brought forth great errors as well. These latter, moreover, have in some measure grown to the stature of academic dogmas. To criticize them at all would be taken by many as tantamount to sacrilege, especially if it were to be done by a nonexegete. Nevertheless, so prominent an exegete as Heinrich Schlier previously warned his colleagues: “Do not squander your time on trivialities.” Johann Gnilka gave concrete expression to this warning when he reacted against an exaggerated emphasis by the history-of-traditions school.

Along the same lines, I would like to express the following hopes:

(a) The time seems to have arrived for a new and thorough reflection on exegetical method. Scientific exegesis must recognize the philosophic element present in a great number of its ground rules, and it must then reconsider the results which are based on these rules.

(b) Exegesis can no longer be studied in a unilinear, synchronic fashion, as is the case with scientific findings which do not depend upon their history but only upon the precision of their data. Exegesis must recognize itself as a historical discipline. Its history belongs to itself. In a critical arrangement of its respective positions within the totality of its own history, it will be able, on one hand, to recognize the relativity of its own judgments (where, for example, errors may have crept in). On the other hand, it will be in a better position to achieve an insight into our real, if always imperfect, comprehension of the biblical word.

(c) Philological and scientific literary methods are and will remain critically important for a proper exegesis. But for their actual application to the work of criticism–just as for an examination of their claims–an understanding of the philosophic implications of the interpretative process is required. The self-critical study of its own history must also imply an examination of the essential philosophic alternatives for human thought. Thus, it is not sufficient to scan simply the last one hundred and fifty years. The great outlines of patristic and medieval thought must also be brought into the discussion. It is equally indispensable to reflect on the fundamental judgments made by the Reformers and the critical importance they have had in the history of exegesis.

(d) What we need now are not new hypotheses on the Sitz im Leben, on possible sources or on the subsequent process of handing down the material. What we do need is a critical look at the exegetical landscape we now have, so that we may return to the text and distinguish between those hypotheses which are helpful and those which are not. Only under these conditions can a new and fruitful collaboration between exegesis and systematic theology begin. And only in this way will exegesis be of real help in understanding the Bible.

(e) Finally, the exegete must realize that he does not stand in some neutral area, above or outside history and the church. Such a presumed immediacy regarding the purely historical can only lead to dead ends. The first presupposition of all exegesis is that it accepts the Bible as a book. In so doing, it has already chosen a place for itself which does not simply follow from the study of literature. It has identified this particular literature as the product of a coherent history, and this history as the proper space for coming to understanding. If it wishes to be theology, it must take a further step. It must recognize that the faith of the church is that form of “sympathia” without which the Bible remains a closed book. It must come to acknowledge this faith as a hermeneutic, the space for understanding, which does not do dogmatic violence to the Bible, but precisely allows the solitary possibility for the Bible to be itself.

Labels: Joseph Ratzinger, scripture studies

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