Introduction to Christianity Book

This book has been a difficult read for me so far, and I find that I have to keep reminding myself to put it in its proper context; viz., late 60's theology programs in Germany. Given this fact about its intended audience, the book is poorly titled, for it is anything but an introduction. Unless you are reasonably well versed in philosophy I think there is very little that can be made of it one way or another.

Being more than reasonably well-versed myself, I have to say that so far I am deeply ambivalent about its content. So far I've only read through the sections on "Belief" and its necessarily ecclesiastical form. In this section I find much to take issue with.

Ratzinger begins, as usual, with the right question, in this case, "What does it mean for the Christian in the modern world to say credo--'I believe'?" Ratzinger's answer is too existentialist for my comfort. We can see how he comes to it by looking at some of his more dubious premises. For starters, he says that "God is not just he who at present lies in fact outside the field of vision but could be seen if it were possible to go farther; no he is the being who stands essentially outside it, however far our field of vision may be extended" (essentially in italics here). Why he so thoroughly rejects the traditional belief that we can see that God exists by looking at his creation is left unanswered, though I suspect it has more to do with what was fashionable in German academia at the time (Heidegger, Heidegger, and some more Heidegger) than any principled argument.

More disturbing, he argues that "Faith comes to man from outside, and this very fact is fundamental to it" (91) This would be news to St. Paul and Augustine, who personally testified that the law of God and faith in Him was written in their hearts.

Even more problematic is his rejection and mistrust of man's natural inclinations. Thus we find him argue that "man's natural inclination draws him to the visible, to what he can take in his hand and hold as his own...He must turn around to recognize how blind he is if he trusts only what he sees with his eyes. Without this change of direction, without this resistance to the natural inclination, there can be no belief...belief is not demonstrable: it is an about-turn; only he who turns about is receptive to it; and because our inclination does not cease to point us in another direction, it remains a turn that is new everyday; only in a lifelong conversion can we become aware of what it means to say "I believe". (51)

This sort of talk can only make a Thomist very, very unhappy. And it gets worse:

"From this we can see that it is not just today, in the specific conditions of our modern situation, that belief or faith is problematical, indeed almost something that seems impossible, but that it has always meant a leap, a somewhat less obvious and less easily recognizable one perhaps, across an infinite gulf, a leap, namely, out of the tangible world that presses on man from every side. Belief has always had something of an adventurous break or leap about it, because in every age it represents the risky enterprise of accepting what plainly cannot be seen as the truly real and fundamental. Belief was never simply the attitude automatically corresponding to the whole slant of human life; it has always been a decision calling on the depths of existence, a decision that in every age demanded a turnabout by man that can only be achieved by an effort of will." (52)

Ugh!! Did they read any Aquinas in Tubingen in the sixties, or was it all just Kierkegaard, Nietsche, and Heidegger?? ST IaIIae Q92-94 would have saved him from talking about this sort of "voluntarism" about belief, which is really, in the end, (dare I say it??) a Protestant view.

Also disturbing: on page 58 he starts using Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena. What need does any Catholic theologian have for this, I wonder? I would think nothing, and Ratzinger does nothing to convince me otherwise.

Of course, against the Marxists he is ever brilliant. Here he has some reflections on the priority of speculative over practical knowledge that I found very helpful.