On September 13, 2018, almost a month ago, I gave a lecture to a conference for "Young Theologians" in Washington DC. Conferences of this kind are held every couple of years or so, sponsored by the Doctrine Committee of the USCCB, as part of an ongoing effort to encourage conversation and dialogue between bishops and theologians for the good of the Church. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to participate in the conversations engendered during the conference. There is such a great richness of thought and experience in many of our younger theologians, so many of them articulate lay voices in the Church today. The topic in general this time around was loosely entitled "Connecting the Disconnects" in theological education. My contribution aimed at focusing our attention for a while on the importance of recovering the vison of Dei Verbum and the centrality of Scripture in the life of the Church. And I am particularly grateful to Doctor John Cavadini, Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, for his work in organizing the conference, and for his early suggestions to me about the importance of this topic.
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The Trinity
Masaccio
c. 1428
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Dei Verbum: Christ, Scripture and the Life
of the Church
+Daniel E. Flores, STD
Bishop of Brownsville in
Texas
It
would be absurd for me to begin a lecture on Sacred Scripture and the current
reality of theological disconnects that young people in our classrooms face as
if this were a mildly urgent matter for us to chew on for a while. Absurd, I
say, because that makes it seem like we, theologians and bishops, are gathered
in fairly ordinary times. We are not. Our moment is particularly ugly, marred
by scandal, betrayal, and deep wounds publicly exposed. This moment is like a
precipice overlooking an abyss affecting the whole body of the Church, excruciatingly
focused on the failures of those of us called to teach and shepherd.
Part
of our moment, I think, is a searing reminder to us all that in some mysterious
sense, we never live in ordinary times. We kid ourselves into what Pope Francis
once called the “grey pragmatism of the daily life of the Church”, that the
Holy Father, quoting Bernanos, then described as “the most precious of the
devil’s potions”.[1] The
Church in the world is more like Bernanos’ descriptions in The Impostor than even Greene’s simple Whiskey Priest. The battle
between grace and sin goes on every day more on the scale of Benson’s Lord of the World than in the form of
Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday.
There
are elements of Apocalypse Chapter 12 that are operative in history, have been
and will be until the final consummation of all things. We have been for too
long content with programs and policies, as if by themselves they can keep the
ship afloat. Oh, the ship will remain afloat and will be righted, and God’s
inscrutable providence will not be frustrated, but it will not be because we
figured out the right formula. The Lord would have us be conformed to the
charity of his poor Crucified Son, even if it kills us:
I
admire thee, master of the tides, […] Ground of all being, and granite of it:
past all / Grasp God, throned behind / Death with a sovereignty that / heeds
but hides, bodes but abides; […].[2]
+++
This
lecture is based on the conviction that if we do not sustain an effort to get
the connections right between Christ himself, the Scriptural Tradition and the
life of the Church, all of our efforts aimed towards the renewal of Church life
and theology ultimately fail.
1. “The
work of at least another whole generation”
From
Dei Verbum 12:
For the correct understanding of what the sacred
author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and
characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the
time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that
period in their everyday dealings with one another. But, since Holy Scripture
must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no
less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of
Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out.[3]
Theologians
hold an office. St Thomas used the language of his day in what I still consider
the noblest description of your office: Magistri Sacrae Paginae, Masters
of the Sacred Page, Teachers of Sacred Scripture. If the University teaching of
theology in Thomas’ time recognized the magistri
as canonically missioned by the Church, it was because they were understood to
be at the service of the same ends evidenced in Scripture itself, pursued by
the preaching and teaching office of the bishops, and at the service of the
whole Church. St Thomas says this in his commentary on the Sentences:
To
teach Sacred Scripture happens in two ways. One from the office of prelates,
like those who preach and teach,... the other way is from the office of
Magister, like the masters of theology teach,.. the aim of those who teach
Sacred Scripture is the same aim as those who brought forth Sacred Scripture; hence,
since the publication of sacred Scripture was ordered to this, that man might
attain to eternal life, as is clear from John 10, whoever impedes the end of
this doctrine, sins by teaching.[4]
I
like this exemplary passage because Thomas articulates a deep part of the
common tradition. The exposition of Scripture either by the ordained or by the
teachers of theology shares in the aims and ends of the Scriptural authors
themselves. This element of the Tradition was repeated forcefully in Dei
Verbum when it speaks of Scripture being interpreted in the sacred
spirit in which it was written. In some ways this phrase from Dei Verbum
seemed remarkable at the time. Ignace de la Potterie puts it this way:
Certainly,
even the Constitution Dei Verbum says that "due attention must be
paid both to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and
narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer" (DV 12:2). But
this affirmation is immediately followed by a truly novel paragraph on the ecclesial
interpretation of Sacred Scripture "in the sacred Spirit in which it was
written" (DV 12:3); strangely enough, after the Council, this remained a
dead letter.[5]
The
formulation in Dei Verbum 12 may be described as novel in that it unites
the contemporary problematic of the critical appraisal of the sacred writers’
historical setting together with the notion that teaching Scripture necessarily
involves participation in the Spirit that inspired its composition. But the
latter point is as traditional a theological given as you will find. Thomas is
a spokesman for the tradition; De Lubac can give us countless other
pre-critical citations from the tradition. De la Potterie’s contention that the
pre-critical datum of the tradition emerged from the Council without much
attention in a certain way helps frame the circumstance I wish to address.
Cardinal
Ratzinger’s critical appraisal of the state of Scriptural exegesis in his 1988
lecture on Biblical interpretation in Conflict remains a pivotal and
fruitful post-Conciliar theological text.[6] You’ve
probably read it, or if you haven’t I hope you soon will. Still, it might be
useful to recall a few things Ratzinger said in the 1988 lecture.
First,
he notes the bleakness of the disconnect
between Scripture and dogma:
The
negative side of what has happened consists in the fact that the gap between
exegesis and dogma has become complete now among Catholics, too. Scripture has
become for them so many words from the past; everyone tries to transport to the
present in his own way, without being able to put too much faith in the raft he
is relying on to do the job. Faith sinks to the level of a sort of philosophy
of life that the individual tries to distill from the Bible as best he can.
Dogma, now deprived of grounding in Scripture, no longer holds. The Bible,
detached from dogma, has become a record of past events that therefore itself
belongs to the past.[7]
Ratzinger’s
point about the separation of dogma and Scripture speaks for itself. It is
useful to note that he uses the word dogma here, which testifies to the
cascading bifurcations of theological disciplines since the
Counter-Reformation. The diversification of theological disciplines and courses
is a dominant feature of post-Tridentine, baroque, modern and contemporary theology.
This is a great part of our reality today. How to link specialized areas of
study like theological bioethics or theological appraisals of a neo-liberal
social and economic order with the Scriptural revelation would require a whole
series of lectures by a series of specialists. I am not such a specialist.
Thomas, though reminds us of an older way; he would rather us speak of Sacred
Doctrine as a wider term naming the whole tradition of teaching that flows from
Scripture read in the Church. Thomas, in fact, practically equates Sacred
Doctrine with Sacred Scripture itself, (Sacra
Scriptura seu doctrina) testifying to the close identification with which
the patristic and medieval tradition understood the living voice of the Church
and the Sacred Scripture itself.[8]
A
little later, the future pope goes on to restate the dilemma, cautioning us
against withdrawing our efforts to the mere repetition of pre-critical
perspectives:
[Exegesis]
also cannot withdraw to the Middle Ages or the Fathers and use them as a shield
against the spirit of modernity. That said, it also cannot take the opposite
tack of dispensing with the insights of the great believers of all ages and of
acting as if the history of thought begins in earnest only with Kant. In my
judgment, the recent discussion surrounding the problem of biblical
hermeneutics suffers to a large extent from this restricted horizon. One does
not dispose of patristic exegesis simply by labeling it
"allegorical," nor can one set aside the philosophy of the Middle
Ages by classifying it as "pre-critical."[9]
Dei
Verbum quite clearly wanted to shepherd bishops and
theologians and theology as a whole toward a recovery of the primacy of the
revealed Word in the Church in a way that both transmits the pre-Enlightenment
depth of theological exposition, and integrates the varied tools of critical
textual analysis. But as many of us know by experience and as many great
post-Conciliar minds have observed, we are yet far from that. Again, from the
1988 Ratzinger lecture:
[…]
hardly anyone is likely to affirm that we are already ready in possession of a
convincing master idea that would do justice to the irrevocable insights of the
historical method, while at the same time overcoming its limitations and
opening it up to an appropriate hermeneutics. The achievement of this goal
still requires the work of at least another whole generation.[10]
2. A
Direct yet Mediated Word
De
facto, we teach by saying something like “in
Matthew’s account of Christ tempted in the desert, etc.” Or we say “the
Johannine theology of Logos and flesh suggests, etc.” Both examples may be
followed with expressive statements that are quite true critically speaking and
quite Catholic, theologically speaking. Yet, the teacher, and certainly the
preacher desires ultimately to say something more than “Matthew tells us”. And
the Church’s preaching tradition certainly insists on saying more. This is a
given of Tradition. Matthew, John, the Church, and the contemporary preacher
need to be able to say with the conviction of faith: It is the Lord Himself
who asks, who teaches, who reprimands, cajoles and heals. Without this
capacity to hear the Lord speak his word directly, without this voice that is
in the Church but not of her making, we are denied the grace of prophetic
announcement and of authoritative self-critique.[11]
Theologically
we must speak of the Word of the Lord as both directly from him yet mediated
through Scripture, the Tradition of faith, and the contemporary teaching voice
of the Church. This is a problem for us today, because the dominant metaphysics
of knowing sees direct speaking and mediated speaking as mutually exclusive.
Theologically, I think a Catholic must affirm that mediated direct address is
possible; how to account for its manifestation is another matter.[12]
If
as Thomas taught and Dei Verbum insists, the expositor shares in
the Spirit of the sacred authors of Scripture than surely this must include the
graced ability to say: It is the Lord who speaks. If we cannot say this,
we may speak with learned authority, but we do not speak with the authority of
Christ.[13]
It is Christ who changes people by the impact of his Word and presence.
Teachers in the Church either aim to be transparent to this direct address or
we labor in vain.
We
have, it seems to me, reduced most all of our disputations about Christian
faith and life to ecclesiology. Sooner or later a teaching about the
Eucharistic sacrifice as constitutive of the Church Jesus established, or about
immigration, or the death penalty is distilled into a dispute about what level
of ecclesiastical authority proposes the teaching. A self-referential Church is
not only a Church focused on itself, it is also a Church that cannot, for the
most part, remember how to talk more about Christ than about herself, even when
discussing outward looking issues. We do not even realize the dimensions of our
own reductionism, which, paradoxically, are enormous in their narrowness.
The
profound disconnect in practice between our customary ways of citing Scripture
as authoritative and our conviction that it is the Lord whose voice is heard
through the text is in large part responsible for what Ratzinger described as
everyone trying to transport Scripture to the present in his own way, “without
being able to put too much faith in the raft he is relying on to do the job.”
This,
then, is part of our theological muddle today. We have forgotten how to express
with confidence the Church’s Scriptural access to the person of Christ Himself.
This is a wide, varied and deep problem that has been with us for a while.
Scripture is no longer expected to be transparent to a presence in a way
analogous to the Sacrament. Yet, the Tradition does hear a Voice speak directly
from the Scriptural text, it is a kind of sacramentally mediated presence.
Surely not in the same way as the preeminent Eucharistic presence, but an
efficacious sign nonetheless, through which we attain to knowing WORD himself,
and not another.
Scripture
is truly expressive for the same reasons the Eucharistic sacrifice is truly
expressive. The WORD, after all, is known personally and most perfectly in the
Incarnation; expresse se manifestavit, St Thomas says in his commentary
on Hebrews 1.[14] This
is to affirm that the direct address of the Eternal WORD is necessarily
mediated through the humanity of Christ. Human nature, as it were, united to
the Person of the WORD becomes an expressive word itself, transparent to the Wisdom
interior to the Godhead. The human words of the WORD are themselves physical
signs expressive of his person, which is itself mediated to us through his
enfleshed existence.[15]
I
want to pull this notion of Christ’s mediated immediacy together in some way by
referring to a novel entitled La Confesión by Javier Sicilia, a Mexican
poet/novelist/human rights activist. In it he describes the mystery of the
poverty of the WORD made flesh. The novel itself is a devastating critique of
the ecclesiastical culture within which the Maciel disaster was embedded. Early
in the novel a fairly impractical, not to say useless priest, exiled to a poor
mountain village in central Mexico, is having an interview with his fairly
powerful Cardinal Archbishop. No one reading in Mexico would doubt the realism
of the dialogue between poverty and power in the Church. Javier Sicilia's
vision of the poverty and powerlessness of Christ permeates the novel and is
here encapsulated in this fragment. It picks up with the priest speaking
quietly while the Cardinal sips a tequila. My translation cannot do justice to
the beauty of this passage.
Do
you know what amazes me [Eminence] about the Incarnation? I continued, that it
is altogether contrary to the modern world: the presence of the infinite in the
limits of the flesh, and the fight, the fight with no quarter, against the
temptations of the devil’s excesses. You do not know how much I have meditated
on the temptations in the desert. “Take up the power”, the devil told him; that
power that gives the illusion of being able to disrupt and dominate everything.
But he maintained himself in the limits of his own flesh, in his own poverty,
in his own death, so poor, so miserable, so hard. Our age, nevertheless,
showing a face of enormous kindness, has succumbed to those temptations. “They
will be like gods, they will change the stones into bread, and they will
dominate the world”… to such an age we have handed over the Christ, and we do
not even realize it.[16]
Much
later in the novel, the miserable priest is visiting with an elderly religious
sister with whom he shares an abiding friendship. Here it is not so much the
dialogue between poverty and power as it is the dialogue between poverty and
the anguished preacher. This passage focuses on the denigration of the poor, and
thus the denigration of the Christ. Father hears Sister utter the following:
If
misery exists, Father, and the statistics do not lie, it is because the dream
of the rich has contaminated the dreams of the poor. At the bottom of things,
poverty no longer exists, dear Father. The only thing that exists is wealth and
misery, ... Do you know why? I know well that you know ... Because they have
been made to believe that their poverty is a shameful disease, a wound unworthy
of the world. Never before has humanity, and here, excuse me, Father, I also
included our Holy Mother Church, spit so much on the face of Christ, as if his
poverty were a filth, that unclean filth that they hung from the cross and
which we, as did his detractors, make fun of.[17]
These
passages are deeply Scriptural, with a lively sense of the nearness of Christ
in his poverty and powerlessness to us today. The Scriptural episode of Christ
in the desert, tempted by the devil, acts as a mirror to the mystery of the
Incarnation as a whole, and the brutality of the Cross in particular.
Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery are the principal lights through which
Christ’s particular words and deeds are interpreted. Now this is a very
Catholic way of reading Christ, that is to say, of providing access to the
identity and mission of WORD made flesh himself.[18]
The contemplative apprehension of the meaning of the particular accounts of the
Lord’s life contained in the Gospels is enveloped, so to speak, in the intense
intelligibility of the Incarnation and Passion of the Lord.
The
immediacy of the references to the Lord, in both the conversation with the
Cardinal and to the elderly Religious Sister, presumes a transparent movement
from the Christ of Scripture, the Christ of the Church, the Christ present today
in our midst. A radically realist Johannine Christology, (God really did become
flesh), and a fierce defense of his identification with the poor undergirds
this passage scripturally. It is the Lord who speaks to us directly: what
you did not do for the least, you did not do for me. Yet, these passages
are a mediation of that direct address.
There
is a difference between a naïve understanding of Scriptural composition and the
profound attitude of faith that takes the Gospels as coherently expressive, giving
us intelligible access to the voice of the Lord Himself.[19]
To confess that it is part of the faith of the Church that Christ speaks
directly through the Scriptures yet in a manner mediated by human authors is an
important thing to reflect upon theologically. Yet, to begin to account for how
this happens is a subtly difficult question.
3. CHRIST
in History
St
Leo the Great, On the Beatitudes:
And
so it was that he who had spoken to Moses spoke also to the apostles. Writing
in the hearts of his disciples, the swift hand of the Word composed the
ordinances of the new covenant.[20]
The
tale of Scriptural exposition since the development of the critical methods is
rather complex. It is fair to say, though, that we have been on the defensive
about Catholic approaches to Scripture for quite some time now.[21]
Theologians and magisterium alike have been searching for ways to defend the
reliability of Scripture and the Gospels in particular. Sometimes we have
labored from within the historicist frame, unaware of the limitations imposed
by “today's regnant plausibility structure”.[22]
Klemens Stock, the Jesuit biblicist, puts the matter more succinctly and with
greater authority than I could in the following remarkable passage:
Our
fundamental desideratum is to know Jesus as he really is in the
integrity of his person. Now, it is widely believed that, in order to do so, we
have to read the gospels against the grain. The gospels are used as quarries.
Jesus and his deeds are extracted from them in their pure form, or at least
that is the intention. The very thing that the gospels do not give us we must
laboriously, if only fragmentarily, retrieve from them: "the audio and
video recordings," the "stenographic transcripts" of Jesus in
action, now "freed" from the perspective of the gospel writers.
These, so it seems, are what is indispensable for getting at the real Jesus.
The question arises whether these "audio and video recordings" - even
supposing that it is possible to reconstruct with a certain probability
sufficiently long segments free from background noise and distortion – are
indeed the best way to get at the real Jesus.[23]
Jean
Luc Marion, certainly Ratzinger himself, Klemens Stock, and to a certain extent
even Rene Girard point us toward a less defensive position with respect to
post-Enlightenment historicist hermeneutics.[24]
Each in their own way argue for a more robust stance that takes its instruction
from the phenomenon itself. As Cardinal Ratizinger stated it in 1988:
[The
exegete] must not rule out a priori the possibility that God can speak in his
own voice in the world using human words; he must not rule out the possibility
that God can work in history and enter into it without ceasing to be himself,
however improbable this might appear. He must be ready to take instruction from
the phenomenon.[25]
For
our purposes I would like to focus on Stock’s contribution to this approach
that seeks instruction from the phenomena itself:
Do
not the gospels, […] correspond much better to the whole character of how Jesus
actually acted and what he actually intended? It is clear that the gospels are
not stenographic reports. […] But Jesus did gather a circle of disciples, who
accompanied him on all his journeys and were under the constant influence of
his person. The real Jesus is never isolated and alone. Rather, he always lives
in communion with his disciples. He does not want literal exactness. What he
wants is for these living men to understand him and to be shaped by him. […]
Generally speaking, words and deeds are not the only things that come from a
person and give us a glimpse into who he is. […] The impression and
understanding grounded in this real, and not merely verbal, communication
sometimes are not, and cannot be, formulated either at the moment of
encountering this person or during the period of immediate communion with him,
but become clarified only with time -and, despite this time lapse, still find a
valid, truthful verbal expression. Jesus, then, is inseparable from the
disciples.[26]
Historical
reliability is a human phenomenon wider than YouTube recorded accuracy.
It is more true to human history and culture in its near infinite varieties to
locate the ground of history in the human relation that is the basis of
communication. This is to say, in the transmission of understanding not simply
understood as the transmission of transcripted words, but in the transmission
of human impact and interiorization. Put simply, human history is impossible without
prior human communication, and communication is the experience of human
apprehension of persons who say and do things. Perhaps our way forward is
focused not on Scripture’s stenographic exactness, but rather on understanding
the form of its transparency to Christ.
Within
the New Testament the form of this transparency is inseparable from the
phenomenon of the Spirit poured-out to facilitate the apprehension of the
person of Christ. This gift described in Scripture itself opens us to a
properly theological phenomenon. Luke in particular goes to great lengths to
associate the ecclesial reading of Scripture as a gift from the Risen Christ: He
said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still
with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the
prophets and psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to
understand the scriptures.[27]
For
us, though, it is important to appreciate that the gift of the Spirit is
embedded in the human phenomenon of personal communion as the basis for
communication, and in the expressed desire of Jesus himself to throw all of his
pedagogical intent into the forming of persons in his company and not in the
composition of a text.[28]
The text, he no doubt knew, was going to be produced in time, but that would be
the work of those whom he impacted. The impact, ultimately rooted in
Trinitarian missions, is the prior reality: the Son manifested in the flesh,
the Spirit enlightening the apprehension of the Son and conforming the human will
to him by charity.
Put
another way, what if God knows that the only way we can know him as he is, is
through his relation with those who have known him, for the simple reason that
God in himself is Unity in relation? If
that is anywhere near the case, than the phenomenon of the formation of the New
Testament itself witnessed to the Trinitarian economy, and is aimed at
gathering a people into relation with the God who is Trinitarian relationality.
In
this light, the formation of the New Testament is ordered to a mediated
immediacy. The text of the New Testament witnesses to what the impacted
apprehended, and the aim of reading the New Testament is perception of the One
impacting. The perception is based on understanding the text as offering a
mirror into the human authors precisely as impacted by Christ. They reflect
Christ before their written words do; and their written words serve to open us
to the phenomenon of Christ operative in them. But in the end, it is the Christ
they knew that we wish to know. It is not enough to know Matthew or John or
Paul.
There
is a post-modern theological freedom to this way of appreciating the purposes
of Scripture, because it situates the text as fruit of personal impact; the
text has no authority apart from that relation to the Son’s engagement with his
disciples, and the Spirit’s gift of guiding their apprehension over time, and
our apprehension of the One they knew. This is a pedagogy of grace suitable to
the way people teach and learn. This perspective on history and textual
rootedness in prior human relationality actually frees many a non-theologian
from an inhuman hermeneutic. Personal engagement of the teacher is the prior
condition that makes it possible for the learner to teach another. This is the
stuff of which history is made. It is always mediated. If we are to teach
Scripture, though, we must ask for a share of the Spirit that informed those
who composed it.
It
should be noted that the modern impulse to know Jesus in isolation from those
who knew him is a reflection of a wider anthropological move in modernity to
understand the person first as an individual and discrete entity whose
relations to other persons may initially be biologically necessary, but are not
necessary to account for the person as person. The Gospels, therefore, in the
way Stock and others describe them, propose an alternative anthropology, one
that does not begin with a hostile view towards the claims and implications of
human relation.
What
then, becomes of the historical-critical apparatus? Well, certainly it is at
the service of discerning what these persons impacted by the Person of Christ
intended to tell us about him. That is not always an easy task, given the fact
that our habits of reading are not usually attuned to what an ancient person
wants to say through the text they wrote.[29]
For us, the importance of this kind of approach lies in its freeing us from a
defensive posture before the exegetical menace of approaching the Scriptural
texts as somehow reliable only to the extent we can recover what Jesus was
about prior to or apart from his relational impact on those around him. Quite
the opposite is true.
This
approach is not out of sync with the pre-critical testimony of Irenaeus who
located the discipleship of the barbarians in the fact that they, though
illiterate and unable to read the Scriptures, did in fact know Christ through
the impact of the preaching and catechetical work of the Church, and the gift
of the Spirit. Nor does this theological path upend the elegant line from Saint
Leo the Great with which I began this section. And, Thomas’s insistence that
the New Testament is first of all the Gift of the Spirit, and only secondarily
a written text, is part of this tradition. [30]
4. CHRIST
in Figure and the Figure in CHRIST
In
an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, entitled “Darmok”
Picard encounters the Temarians, a people who communicate only by making
reference to landmark events engrained in their historical memory.[31]
“Shaka, when the walls fell”, evokes a tragic loss, which then serves to
situate in the mind of the hearer to how the speaker understands the present
moment. “Temba, his arms wide”, signifies the giving of a gift. It takes Picard
and the crew an hour episode to figure out how this language works, but the
moment of understanding (“Sokath, his eyes uncovered”) comes too late to save
Picard’s interlocutor, Dathon, from a heroic death (“Kailash,
when it rises”). Still, a sort of breakthrough occurs (“Darmok and Jalad on the
ocean"), so the sacrifice is not in vain. Obviously, if you don’t know the
history, the references to foundational events, you don’t know the language,
and you won’t understand the present moment. Not surprisingly, there is a fair
amount of internet commentary, some of it good, some of it just weird, on the
significance of this episode. I have found little or no reference to its
similarity to the Scriptural tradition of figurative understanding. That,
though, is where my mind immediately went the first time I saw the episode.
Figuration
is an essential element within the Scriptural tradition, and in the Catholic
tradition of Scriptural interpretation. Part of our problem is we have confused
the theological category of figuration with the more ambiguous notion of
allegory. Further, we read the Fathers without always perceiving the
theological intuitions that guided them. History is about things that happen,
and human history is about how peoples understand things that happen. In human
matters, event and Word are inseparable. Even if we encounter events that are
initially unintelligible, that in itself is a way of understanding them.
Figuration
is built into the Scriptural self-understanding. It concerns events that are
intelligible in light of other events. “Moses, with his arms upheld”; “Israel,
with unmoistened foot”; “As at Meribah, when they hardened their hearts”. The
Old Testament itself depends on these kinds of historical invocations in order
to understand its later historical moments. In the last books of the Old
Testament, the invocation of the Exodus event in remarkably nuanced ways both
interpret the later moments of Israel’s history, and expand Israel’s perception
of the meaning of Israel’s foundational historical event. Later events are
figured in the foundational event.
Insofar
as the Scriptural books are concerned, the dynamic invocation of the history
through subsequent figurative readings all happens under the guidance and
inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Or, in what amounts to the same thing, the
WORD, who authored the first Word-Event, guides the later prophetic tradition
to its figurative amplifications. One notes the variety of ways Scripture
interprets itself by invoking its foundational history. These internal
differences need not be read as competitive; they do witness to a
super-intelligibiliy present in the founding. A unified super-intelligible
requires a multiplicity if explications.
St
Thomas’ commentary on the Psalms provides some help here. For Thomas, most of
the Psalms are primarily about what the psalmist was going through, that is to
say, they are historically situated in Israel’s history. Thomas respects that
and shows remarkable dexterity in locating, or in wanting to locate, the
historical references to anything from the Exodus, to troubles with Absalom,
thanksgiving for victory in battle, to psalms composed to accompany cultic
worship, etc. After locating the history, he then goes on to read those events
as prefiguring something having to do with Christ. This is not an exercise in
seeking out fanciful allegories; rather it is rooted in the theological
conviction that Israel’s history was governed by a special providence, a grace
that orders its signification in a way that is anticipatory of the final
revelation of God’s historical intent in Christ. Old Testament
self-understanding vía the Exodus figurations is thus also anticipatory
figuration of Christ’s coming. This is perfectly legitimate, and serves as the
basis for a Christian reading of the psalms that respects the history of the
psalmists. Figuration, in this tradition, (and here I must insist Thomas is
very traditional) is rooted in history, not in words; in events understood a
certain way, not in poetic allusions.
Comes
now Thomas’ notes on Psalm 21. Somewhere in his thirsty pursuit of Greek texts
translated into Latin, St Thomas encountered the decrees of the Second Council
of Constantinople (553), and it’s condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia.[32]
Both in the prologue to his commentary on the Psalms and in his exposition of
Psalm 21, Thomas explicitly cites the Council as having condemned Theodore for
denying that the Old Testament prophets ever spoke literally of Christ. Thomas
never uses the word heresy lightly, but he applies it to Theodore’s reported
teaching. It is another question whether Theodore of Mopsuestia actually taught
this. Thomas thinks that Constantinople II judges he did, and that such a
teaching is a grave error.
This
helps to account for the fact that in his commentary on Psalm 21, Thomas makes
a fierce turn and makes a crucial distinction. [33] He insists that the literal sense of the psalm
refers to Christ’s passion. The history narrated in the Psalm is not about
David, it is about Christ. This is its literal sense. On this reading, David
(the psalmist) has a vision of the Passion, and wrote of it. The psalmists own
sufferings are secondarily referenced in the psalm, but only to the extent they
are figured in Christ’s sufferings. David saw himself in Christ; he did not see
Christ in himself. Now, you may think this is a distinction without a
difference. But in fact, it sustains a whole theological understanding of
spiritual progress. It is more perfect to see oneself figured in Christ than it
is to see Christ figured in oneself. This is because Christ is the supreme
locus of intelligibility, and I understand myself better if I see myself
figured in him. This is the distinction Thomas wishes at all costs to preserve:
Israel’s history pre-figures New Testament events, yet the prophets had moments
of vision that saw the Christian history, and read their contemporary events as
figured within the history of Christ.
Now
then, after the full revelation of Christ’s historical appearance, the Church
has access to the aim of history. Hence, all the faithful now have the capacity
by spiritual instinct and knowledge of the Gospel to see themselves in Christ.
This, together with the gift of the Spirit guiding our reception of the history
of Christ, is what is new about the New Testament revelation. And this is why
the Fathers of the Church, following Saint Paul call the definitive revelation
in Christ an “unveiling”. What is unveiled? The aim of human living and all of
history. This is a datum in the tradition which witnesses to what Ratzinger
called the laying bare of the intelligibility of history by the revelation of
its end in Christ.[34]
For us who live after the foundational events of the Christian revelation, the
figurations are clearer, though not perfectly so. Many enigmas of Scripture
remain. [35]
Thus
the transparency of the ecclesial tradition of reading Scripture to the
Eucharistic sacrifice emerges from the salvific economy. The re-presentation of
the founding Word-event after the reading of the Scriptures is an unveiling of
the fundamental ratio through which the Scriptures of both Testaments are
understood. In the intensity of the sacrifice, all things are figured. The
Eucharist itself is the paramount mediated immediacy available to us, following
as it does the logic of the Incarnation. Christian theology breathes of
figuration or it dies. And the root of all figurative meaning is the Gospel
history of Christ. The Christological truth revealed in Scripture and enacted
in the Eucharistic intervention is the basis for all subsequent figurative readings.
+++
At
length, to close:
During
these last weeks my Scriptural meditations have spontaneously turned to the
Lamentations of Jeremiah: “Bitterly she weeps at night, tears upon her
cheeks, With not one to console her of all her dear ones; Her friends have all
betrayed her and become her enemies.” (Lam 1, 2). But as a Catholic I
cannot weep the wound of the Virgin Daughter Zion without seeing her suffering
figured in the concrete historical suffering of the Virgin Mother of God
following the destiny of her poor, Crucified Son. And further, I cannot
contemplate the wounds of the Church apart from seeing them figured in the
bloody birth of the Church figured in Mary at the foot. Immaculate honor of our
race, she is also the recipient of the flowing blood and water, and in her is figured
the whole People of God who in anguish attain to the Kingdom. The Church’s
moments, our moments, are figured in him, and in her insofar as she is the
Church born from his side. But not just us, so also the wounded, the abused,
the poor, the immigrant with no place to lay his head, the death row inmate,
the least of the discarded unborn. If we cannot see ourselves and others, and
all our moments together in Christ, we should probably not be writing or
teaching or preaching at all. We would have nothing to say because we will have
seen but not understood: The Virgin Daughter of Israel, alone with none to console
her.
Thank
you for your kind attention.
+df
[1] Evangelii
Gaudium, no 83.
[2]
Hopkins, Wreck of the Deutschland.
[3] Dei
Verbum 12, around which this lecture revolves is here given in full:
However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the
interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to
communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers
really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words. To
search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given,
among other things, to "literary forms." For truth is set forth and
expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic,
poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what
meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in
particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance
with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding
of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the
customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which
prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally
employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another. But, since
Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it
was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity
of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly
worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account
along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the
task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding
and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory
study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said
about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of
the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding
and interpreting the word of God.
[4] In IV Sententiarum, d. 19, q. 2, a. 2b, ad 4: [...] docere Sacram
Scripturam dupliciter contingit. Uno modo ex officio praelationis, sicut qui
praedicat, docet; non enim licet alicui praedicare, nisi officium praelationis
habeat, vel ex auctoritate alicujus praelationem habentis; rom. 10, 15: quomodo
praedicabunt, nisi mittantur? alio modo ex officio magisterii, sicut magistri
theologiae docent,…eorum qui docent Sacram Scripturam est idem finis et eorum
qui Sacram Scripturam ediderunt; unde, cum ad hoc ordinetur Scripturae editio,
ut ad vitam aeternam homo perveniat, ut patet Joan. 10; quicumque impedit finem
doctrinae, docendo peccat.
[5]
Ignace de la Potterie, “Biblical Exegesis: A Science of Faith” in Opening up
the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation
edited by Josë Granados, Carlos Granados, Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Eerdmans,
2008). Electronic format, pos 597.
[6]
Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and
Itinerary of Exegesis Today”, in Opening up the Scriptures.
[7]
Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 269.
[8] Sacra
Scriptura seu doctrina, in effect identifying Scripture with the doctrine
taught with authority in the Church. See Prima pars, q. 1, art. 2, ad 2.
[9]
Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 413.
[10]
Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 275.
[11]
This theme is related to the distinction between the Church in the holiness of
her members and the Church as constituted also with an objective teaching
office. See Von Balthasar, III, Dramatis Personae, (Ignatius, 1992),
358-359: “Only the Catholic Church has this bipolar character of Marian
subjective holiness and Petrine, objective holiness. It constitutes her
irreducible, inner dramatic tension and is what makes her the extension
(“fullness”, “body”) of Christ as well as his partner (“bride”), enabling her
to participate in Christ’s redemptive mission and, undergirding this, in his
trinitarian being. There is drama in the encounter between the believer’s
experiential knowledge, which comes from the fullness of Christ, and
authorities official knowledge, which is imparted by Christ directly. ...
Rather, it invited the individual to examine in faith, his own conscience,
which is only a Christian conscience if it lets itself be guided by the great
stream of revelation — interpreted by tradition and official Church teaching
and preserved in Scripture — and enters into it. Given all this, it is possible
for the official Church to make demands, according to the mind of Christ, that
seem unintelligible and extreme to an individual or group; there is nothing
strange in Christ leading us along the path of the Cross not only in person but
also, most definitely, through the institution he himself has appointed.”
[12]
Even when we say something like “The Lord encountered three principal
temptations from the devil in the desert,...”, we might actually think to
ourselves that there is a whole critical mental reservation that would be too
hard to unravel in a sermon or lecture, so we simply speak as the Gospel
speaks. Many a preacher feels unease at holding two ways of speaking in his
mind, one way for preaching, another for critical analysis of Matthew’s or
John’s text.
[13]
Learned authority has a place in theological teaching, but it is secondary and
supportive of sacred doctrine, analogous to the relation Thomas describes
between philosophy and Sacred Doctrine. The doctrine is authoritative because
it is visibly and audibly linked to Christ who reveals, either in his Incarnate
state, or in his mission as WORD generating the words of the prophetic ages.
[14]
Ad Hebraeos, Caput 1, Lectio 1, (Marietti 15): Prima autem expressio, scilicet
in creatione, non ordinatur ad manifestationem, sed ad esse, Sap. I creavit Deus ut essent omnia.
Cum ergo expressio non habeat rationem locutionis nisi prout ordinatur ad
manifestationem, manifestum est, quod illa expressio non potest dici locutio,
et ideo numquam dicitur, quod Deus loquatur creando creaturas, sed quod
cognoscatur. Rom. I, 20: invisibilia Dei per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta
conspiciuntur. Secunda vero expressio, quae est editio specierum in mente angelica, vel
humana, ordinatur tantum ad cognitionem sapientiae divinae, et ideo potest dici
locutio. Tertia vero, quae est per assumptionem carnis, ordinatur ad esse, et
ad cognitionem, et ad expressam manifestationem, quia per assumptionem carnis,
et verbum factum est homo, et nos in cognitionem Dei perfecit. (Io. XVIII, 37: ad
hoc natus sum, ut testimonium perhibeam veritati).
Et se nobis expresse manifestavit. Bar. c. III, 38: post haec in terris
visus est, et cum hominibus conversatus est. Sic ergo, licet Deus loquatur in novo et veteri
testamento, perfectius tamen in novo nobis loquitur, quia ibi per revelationes
in mentibus hominum, hic per incarnationem filii.
[15] Dei
Verbum 13: “For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been
made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took
to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men.” On
Scripture as having analogous relation to the Incarnation itself, a line of
thought I would have liked to pursue further in this lecture, see Denis
Farkasfalvy, O, Cist., “Inspiration and Incarnation”, in Verbum Domini and
the Complementarity of Exegesis and Theology (Eerdmans, 2015).
[16] Javier Sicilia: La confesión:
El diario de Esteban Martorus (Debolsillo, 2016, electronic format): pos.
176: Sabe qué me maravilla
de la encarnación? —continué—, que es todo lo contrario del mundo moderno: la presencia del
infinito en los límites de la
carne, y la lucha, la lucha sin cuartel, contra las tentaciones de las
desmesuras del diablo. No sabe cuánto he
meditado en las tentaciones del desierto. ”‘ Asume el
poder’, le decía el diablo; ese poder que da la ilusión de trastocar y dominar todo. Pero él se mantuvo
en los límites de su propia carne, en su propia pobreza, en
su propia muerte, tan pobre, tan miserable, tan dura. Nuestra época, sin embargo, bajo el rostro de una enorme bondad, ha sucumbido a
esas tentaciones. ‘Serán como
dioses, cambiarán las
piedras en panes, dominarán el mundo’… A ella le hemos entregado a Cristo y no nos damos cuenta.
[17] Javier Sicilia, La confesión, pos. 1669: Si
la miseria existe y las estadísticas no mienten es porque el sueño de los ricos
ha contaminado los sueños de los pobres. En el fondo ya no existe la pobreza,
querido padre. Lo único que existe es la riqueza y la miseria,.. ¿Sabe por qué? Sé bien que lo
sabe,... Porque se les ha hecho creer que su pobreza es una enfermedad
vergonzosa, una llaga indigna del mundo. ”Nunca la humanidad, y aquí, discúlpeme, padre, incluyo también a nuestra Santa
Madre, había escupido tanto sobre el rostro de Cristo, como si su pobreza se
tratara de una porquería, de esa inmunda porquería que colgaron de la cruz y de
la cual, como lo hicieron sus detractores, nos burlamos.
[18]
Liturgically, this reception of the twin event-lights of Incarnation and Cross
through which the rest of Scripture is understood is reflected in the
Christmas- Easter cycles through which the readings of all the other seasons
are ecclesially apprehended.
[19]
Neither in the preaching tradition of the Church, nor in the theological novel
is there any footnoting about what the source traditions say about the accounts
of the Lord in the desert, and the historical accuracy of the different Gospel
accounts. There is no re-positioning of the historical reasons that may have
actually, apart from the Gospel’s telling, accounted for why Christ was
arrested and crucified.
[20]Leo
the Great, Sermon 95, 1-2: Qui ergo locútus fúerat Móysi, locútus est et
Apóstolis et in córdibus discipulórum velox scribéntis Verbi manus novi
testaménti decréta condébat.”
[21]
See, Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church” (originally
published in Communio, 2003), in Opening up the Scriptures.
[22]
Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 460.
[23]
Klemens Stock, “Christ in Contemporary Exegeis: Where We Are and Where We Are
Going”, in Opening Up the Scriptures, pos 1272.
[24]
Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, (Oxford University Press,
2016, electronic format) Introduction: “In fact, biblical revelation puts into
operation the privilege of a givenness that surpasses every expectation, every
prediction, and, finally, every reception: “If you knew the gift of God … ”
(Jn. 4: 10). Indeed, gift and givenness offer a perfectly univocal concept:
givenness in phenomenology (the excess of intuition and the advent of
significations unthinkable by men) is found again and prolonged in “every
perfect gift that comes from above” (James 1: 17). Paradoxically, but
logically, revelation, by virtue of the givenness that it alone performs
perfectly, would accomplish the essence of phenomenality.” René Girard, El Sacrificio (Ediciones
Encuentro: 2012, electronic format), cap. 3: He Aquí la verdadera diferencia entre lo mítico y lo bíblico. Lo mítico
permanece como el engaño de los fenómenos de chivo expiatorio. Lo bíblico
desvela su mentira al revelar la inocencia de las víctimas. Si no se identifica
el abismo que separa lo bíblico de lo mítico es porque, bajo el influjo de un
viejo positivismo, se imagina que, para ser realmente diferentes, los textos
deben referirse a asuntos diferentes. En realidad, lo mítico y lo bíblico
difieren radicalmente porque lo bíblico rompe por primera vez con la mentira
cultural por excelencia, hasta entonces oculta, de los fenómenos de chivo
expiatorio sobre los cuales se ha fundado la cultura humana."
[25]
Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 436.
[26]
Stock, Christ in Contemporary Exegesis, pos 1277 ff.
[27]
Luke 24, 44-45.
[28]
Stock, Christ in Contemporary Exegesis, pos 1288: “Primarily, it is the living
human beings who had the grace of knowing his person and his message in a
community of life with him. Jesus did not act with an eye to documentation, but
to living testimony.”
[29]
Stock, Christ in Contemporary Exegesis, pos 2098: “One might ask, in fact, what
need remains for the whole exegetical enterprise, if attentive listening to the
texts in their present form is sufficient for easy access to the real Jesus. In
response, we must not forget that these texts are almost two thousand years
old. On the subject of attentive listening, it is just that this demands
respecting the texts as historical realities, as realities of their time and
environment, which in turn requires us to refrain from imposing our concepts,
questions, and expectations upon them. […].”
[30]
See Against Heresies, Book 3, Ch 4, no. 2; see also Summa Theologiae,
I-II, q 106.
[31] Star
Trek: The Next Generation, episode 102, (season 5, episode 2).
[32] I had occasion to
write on this topic in “Thomas on the Problem of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Exegete”
in The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly
Review, 69 (2), 251-277, 2005.
[33] Super
Psalmo 21: Et inter alia specialiter iste Psalmus agit de passione Christi.
Et ideo hic est ejus sensus litteralis. Unde specialiter hunc Psalmum in
passione dixit cum clamavit, Heli Heli lammasabactani: quod idem
est quod Deus Deus meus etc. sicut hic Psalmus incipit. Et
ideo licet figuraliter hic Psalmus dicatur de David, tamen specialiter ad
litteram refertur ad Christum. Et in synodo Toletana quidam Theodorus
Mopsuestenus, qui hunc ad litteram de David exponebat, fuit damnatus, et
propter hoc et propter alia multa; et ideo de Christo exponendus est. Sciendum
est autem quod quinque Psalmi agunt de passione Christi prolixe: quorum iste
Psalmus primus est. Alii enim brevius tangunt passionem Christi. Secundus
est, judica domine nocentes me, Ps. 34. Tertius est, ibi, exaudi
Deus orationem meam, et ne despexeris deprecationem meam. Quartus, Ps.
68: salvum me fac Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquae. Quintus, Ps.
108: Deus laudem meam ne tacueris. Et hoc propter quinque plagas
Christi: vel propter quinque effusiones sanguinis. Et unus est modus procedendi
in omnibus, quia incipiunt a gemitu, et terminantur in salutem populorum: quia
ex passione facta est salus omnibus hominibus.
[34]
Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 466: “When things have reached their
goal, one can discover cover the true sense that so to say lay hidden in them.
This sense appearing at the end of the movement transcends whatever sense might
be inferred from any given section of the now completed path. "This new
sense thus presupposes the existence of a divine Providence, the existence of a
(salvation) history arriving at its destination."" God's action thus
appears as the principle of the intelligibility of history. The unifying
principle of the whole of past and present "history, which alone confers
sense on it, is, however, ever, the historical event of Christ.”
[35]
Thomas does occasionally use the term ‘allegory”, but he prefers the term
“mystice”; the mystical sense is what is figured in the history of Christ.
Thus, to state the matter briefly, the ecclesiological sense of a text is the
figure of the Church present in the person of Christ; the moral sense of a text
is the norm of Christian living present in Christ’s actions; the eschatological
sense is the destiny of the Christ as anticipatory of the final destiny of the
human race. All of this flows from the super-intelligibility of Christ in his
Person, who, after all is said and done, reveals that the intelligibility of
Word-event is a person. Thomas allows for a fluidity of readings in a text, so
long as they do not oppose the rule of faith and the obvious intention of the
human author. This way of speaking is shorthand for what Dei Verbum
will call “the intention of the sacred writers” understood in relation to the
“content and unity of the whole of Scripture.“
