Posted on 01/13/2020 7:01:33 PM PST by marshmallow
The Theology of Benedict XVI: A Protestant Appreciation
Edited by Tim Perry
Lexham Press, 272pp, £20.99/$25.89
The theology of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is not the easiest thing to get a handle on. There is, first, the sheer volume of it. During his tenures as a theology professor, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and pope, Benedict wrote more than 70 books, three papal encyclicals, three apostolic exhortations, and countless articles, addresses and homilies. Second, there is such a wide variety of themes treated that it is difficult (if not impossible) to peg Benedict’s theology to any of the traditional categories. Is he a biblical theologian? A political theologian? An ethicist? A liturgist? He is all of these, of course, and more.
The Theology of Benedict XVI does a fine job of giving us several handles with which to grasp the whole of the retired pope’s work. The book is edited by Anglican pastor and professor Tim Perry, whose previous publications, The Legacy of John Paul II and Mary for Evangelicals, reveal a strong interest in things Catholic. This new book consists of 16 essays by Protestant thinkers, sandwiched between a foreword and afterword written by Catholic theologians. In two main divisions – dogmatic theology and liturgical theology – the essays address such themes as faith versus reason, biblical hermeneutics, theological anthropology, Christology, the Trinity, Mary, the Eucharist, prayer, and liturgy. The writing varies from the truly brilliant (the chapters on theological method by Katherine Sonderegger and liturgy and the Bible by Peter Leithart are worth the price of the book) to the superficial. But even the weaker essays inspire the reader to turn to the former pope’s writings.
The overall tone is surprisingly sympathetic. Uniquely Catholic doctrines, such as the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist and......
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicherald.co.uk ...
I belong to a Reformed Church (PCA Presbyterian) and loved Pope Benedict (and Cardinal Ratzinger before him).
A great mind as well as a pen. Romberg when some leftist journalist asked his opinion of the other faith, Islam.?
He answered with one word, Deficient.
To bad they kicked him out. All pope’s have left feet first until Pope Benedict. A great intellectual replaced by a reflexive neo commie.
If Peter Leithart is a Protestant,
then bears don’t poop in the woods.
If the Catholic Church endures for 500 years, and that’s a big if, Pope Benedict XVI will be revered as one the greatest thinkers and leaders in history.
What happened to his papacy was the Globalists starved the Catholic Church’s lines of credit. The Pope resisted for a month but the trap was well set.
Remember, his successor was his rival in the Papal Conclave after John Paul II’s death.
Thus, disloyal Cardinals and lesser traitors cooperated with the Godless money-chargers bent on destroying the Catholic Church.
What's with the "a big if"?
The Catholic Church has survived for 2000 years and it will never die.
You and I hope so.
Let’s pray that a new leader emerges.
Before Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted for their opinion. Our teachers' answer was emphatically negative . What here became evident was the one-sidedness, not only of the historical, but of the historicist method in theology. “Tradition” was identified with what could be proved on the basis of texts. Altaner, the patrologist from Wurzburg…had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the 5C; this doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the “apostolic tradition. And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared.
This argument is compelling if you understand “tradition” strictly as the handing down of fixed formulas and texts [or actual ancient reliable records] …But if you conceive of “tradition” as the living process whereby the Holy Spirit introduces us to the fullness of truth and teaches us how to understand what previously we could still not grasp (cf. Jn 16:12-13), then subsequent “remembering” (cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it has not caught sight of previously [meaning needed evidence was lacking, not sight] and was already handed down in the original Word.” - J. Ratzinger, Milestones (Ignatius, n.d.), 58-59.
we are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholics as the thirteenth or nineteenth century world would have understood the term, they were, nonetheless, ‘Catholic,’ and their Catholicism extended to the very canon of the New Testament itself.” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Ignatius Press, 1987], p. 141.)
When asked in a 2000 interview whether the Church would go along with the desire to solemnly define Mary as Co-redemptrix, Ratzinger’s responded that “the response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is, broadly, that what is signified by this is already better expressed in other titles of Mary, while the formula “Co-redemptrix” departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings” (53).
He goes on to say that, “Everything comes from Him [Christ], as their Latter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians, in particular, tell us; Mary, too, is everything she is through Him. The word “Co-redemptrix” would obscure this origin. A correct intention being expressed in the wrong way. “For matters of faith, continuity of terminology with the language of Scripture and that of the Fathers is itself an essential element; it is improper simply to manipulate language” (God and the world: believing and living in our time, by Pope Benedict XVI, Peter Seewald, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2000, p. 306
Referring to the schism of the 14th and 15th centuries, Cardinal Ratzinger observed, "For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective form--the true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution. It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation. — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for the Church of Rome, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” trans. by Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989) p.196). http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/06/13/whos-in-charge-here-the-illusions-of-church-infallibility/
At the moment of his [Paul's] encounter with the Risen One he understood that with Christ's Resurrection the situation had changed radically...The wall is no longer necessary; our common identity within the diversity of cultures is Christ, and it is he who makes us just. Being just simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary. For this reason Luther's phrase: "faith alone" is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love. So it is that in the Letter to the Galatians in which he primarily developed his teaching on justification St Paul speaks of faith that works through love (cf. Gal 5: 14)." (Pope Benedict XVI,11/19/08 General Audience; — http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20081119_en.html)
If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text [of the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes] as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter syllabus… As a result, the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution, was, to a large extent, corrected…” (Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 381,82)
Then you have RC opposition: The Heresies of Benedict XVI http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/BenedictXVI_mainpage.php
The way it's written:
And there you have it: Rome in a nutshell.
Thus sayeth ebb tide: “The Catholic Church has survived for 2000 years and it will never die.”
While it is true that the Catholic Church has survived scandals and turmoil over many centuries and you might be correct that it survives this one, this I believe is the defining moment. Past speed bumps didn’t have the world wide reach, the financial/political exposure and the instant news capability that we have today. Catholics may find this offensive but the modern Catholic Church is ripe to be plundered.
Not helping one bit is the current availability of historical works and docs and both Bibles and Biblical scholarship that casts the early Church is a much different light from what is seen today.
The previous Pope was a theologian. His theology I disagree with but still from his prospective he was very knowledgeable and articulate. His is everything the current one is not.
In conservative evangelical circles these days it is said that we are fighting the reformation all over again. I believe there is truth in this statement. The biggest in-house argument today has to do with grace with respect to salvation and how does the believer obtain it. One might have thought that question was settled in the 16th century. Today everyone wants to read their personal theology into the Scriptures to make their personal case. It’s called making the simple...complex.
There’s no heresy asserted anywhere in your quotations that I can find.
Sola Scriptura means that no question is ever really "settled".
Today everyone wants to read their personal theology into the Scriptures to make their personal case.
Luther complained about the very same thing.
I did not say or post them as being heretical in terms of Catholic teaching, but they have been contrary to what some Catholics have expressed.
Thus sayeth Campion: “Sola Scriptura means that no question is ever really “settled”.”
This is, of course, your opinion.
But to the bigger question, in some circles, when there is a dispute, the final authority is....tradition and not the Scriptures. Why? Because the answer to any dispute is settled by canon law or decree or council. This of course is in conflict with the words of the Savior “the Scriptures cannot be broken”.
It wasn’t all that long ago when questions such as the celibacy of the priest was determined by centuries of rock solid tradition. Those days appear to be numbered. If so, tradition appears to be subject to change. One of the many crimes committed by Luther was that he married. It is a good question to ask, can the church that claims apostolic succession and perfection in all matters of the true faith put the heads back on the protestant martyrs and breath new life into their nostrils? Because they might have to.
What many Conservative Protestants like(d) about Benedict is not related to Catholic specific arguments or thoughts of his. It is more about his upholding a Conservative Christian moral line of thinking. That is more important, to many Protestants, than whether or not the cause of that in Benedict comes from his Catholicism.
contrary to what some Catholics have expressed
This doesn’t mean much when there are entire protestant denominations that don’t believe in Jesus divinity, or that he was a man who became God, and so can you!
In other words individual people of an faith are liable to believe anything, even though it’s wrong.
If I was defending anything that is called "Protestant" or such as you describe above then your response would bne applicable. However, i was referring to Catholics in particular.
I find good Protestant writers such as RC Sproul or John MacArthur to be far more instructive in their theology teaching than Pope Benedict or Ratzinger.
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