The understanding of revelation and the theology of history of Bonaventura

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The understanding of revelation and the historical theology of Bonaventura is that of Joseph Ratzinger, the later Pope Benedict XVI. , Habilitation thesis in its original version, submitted to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich in 1955 . It was initially rejected because of the negative attitude of the dogmatist Michael Schmaus, who was appointed as co-referee . Ratzinger completed and revised the third part of the study, which was not objected to, within a short time and submitted it under the title The Theology of History of St. Bonaventure again a. This second version was accepted by the university as a habilitation thesis in early 1957. Ratzinger omitted the first two sections of the original work, Bonaventura's understanding of revelation and his conception of salvation history - and thus the predominant part of the original work - in the second, finally accepted version; they were first published in 2009 - over fifty years later.

Subject and historical background

Bonaventure

The work was initiated by Gottlieb Söhngen , who had already supervised the doctoral thesis Ratzinger, People and House of God in Augustine's Doctrine of the Church . Söhngen, an expert on the work of Bonaventura , commissioned Ratzinger to find out "how Bonaventura understood revelation and whether there was something like an idea of ​​salvation history with him"

That has always been controversial between Protestant and Catholic theology concept of disclosure was against the background of the controversial survey of the Assumption of Mary into heaven to dogma by Pope Pius XII. got into the field of special interest in 1950. The theme of salvation history was updated in Oscar Cullmann's book Christ and the Time of 1946.

Objective and methodological approach

Ratzinger's work is less to be understood as special research on the history of literature, but rather as a contribution to the history of a fundamental theological question that is still topical . By illuminating the past, the understanding of the present should also be served. To a certain extent, it is a question of working on a fundamental theological question with a medieval discussion partner, Bonaventure.

When working on it, one should on the one hand avoid repeating statements by old authors and thus not get their lively content and its relation to the present in view, on the other hand avoiding current questions and their possible solutions under preconceived ideas in the Incorrectly reading the past written into it. Those things that the medieval author took for granted should become visible which are no longer taken for granted today. According to Ratzinger, the passages that have become incomprehensible and unfamiliar to today's readers have proven to be particularly fruitful.

When formulating his own pre-understanding of revelation, which Ratzinger assumed as a researcher when examining the contributions of Bonaventura, it was important for him to take this pre-understanding as broadly as possible. In particular, suggestions from Protestant theology should also be included. Ratzinger wanted to do justice to Bonaventure as

"Witness to a Catholic theology that was even more conscious of its evangelical heritage than many later theologies that seem to be more Counter-Reformation than Catholic."

Results

Ratzinger's analyzes showed that Bonaventura did not have a term that corresponds to the modern understanding of the term “revelation”. The direct translation of “revelation” - “revelatio” - represents only part of what Ratzinger found as his understanding of revelation in Bonaventure, alongside other parts such as “manifestatio”, “doctrina” or “fides”. With Bonaventure, revelation is never something that is objectively given or available - as it appears, for example, in speaking about Holy Scripture as revelation. Rather, Bonaventure understands revelation in the sense of an act concept, which always includes the subject to whom it is revealed. In the case of the apostles, for the historical event, “apparitio”, enlightenment, “inspiratio”, for reading and understanding the Scriptures, there is an inner revelation, “revelatio”, so that revelation occurs. According to this understanding, revelation always precedes and transcends its material precipitations - for example, the Holy Scriptures; a Sola scriptura as formulated by Martin Luther is incompatible with it.

Joachim of Fiore

According to Ratzinger, Bonaventura's conception of salvation history is not that of a permanent set of existing doctrines from which new things are derived in the course of the development of dogmas in the sense of syllogisms, but that of an ongoing salvation history in which the church takes the place of the subject to whom is revealed.

Ratzinger's analysis of Bonaventura's theology of history showed that Bonaventure had tried to take up the thoughts of Joachim von Fiore - in contrast to the prevailing opinion at the time, which assumed that Bonaventure had ignored Joachim. Ratzinger's starting point was the fact that Bonaventure, as general of the Franciscan order, was involved in the dispute over Joachim's prophecy, which gave St. Francis a prominent position in a doctrine of the Three Kingdoms. Joachim's theses had led to currents in the order that had led to unrest and conflicts with the Pope. Ratzinger found that Bonaventure, with the intention of mediating in order to bring peace to the order, took up parts of the theses of the controversial Joachim when writing his collation in Hexaemeron and integrated them into the church order.

Rejection and final acceptance as qualification work

Domherrenhof in Freising, Ratzinger's residence from 1955 to 1959

In the late autumn of 1955, Ratzinger submitted the work. As the main speaker, Söhngen soon expressed his enthusiasm for the font. On the occasion of a dogmatists' conference at Easter 1956, however, Michael Schmaus, as co-referee for the work, informed Ratzinger that he rejected the script as inadequate by scientific standards. After a discussion, the faculty committee responsible for the habilitation decided not to finally reject the submitted version, but to return it for revision. Due to his countless complaints, the co-referee said that the required revision would take years.

In his memoirs, Ratzinger vividly describes the shock that the rejection of the habilitation thesis gave him; He not only saw his own life plans thwarted, but also the future of his parents endangered: In 1955 he had moved into a professor's apartment that was sufficiently spacious for the family in the canon house at Freisinger Domberg 26. Confident that his habilitation was secured and that he could take up a promised professorship at the Philosophical-Theological University, he had the frail parents give up their home in Hufschlag near Traunstein in the autumn of the same year in order to join him in the To move the professor's apartment - the loss of which was now threatened. Even when the habilitation was finally brought to a successful conclusion in the spring of the following year, he was initially not happy under the impression of the events.

The corrections and complaints made by Michael Schmaus are still kept under lock and key by the University of Munich. Many years later, in his memoirs, Ratzinger cited a number of reasons that Schmaus believed he had for rejecting the script. On the one hand, Schmaus would have encountered the criticism of his positions in Medieval Studies expressed in the paper , and also the fact that Ratzinger wrote the paper under the supervision of Söhngen and had not turned to him, Schmaus, as the Faculty's Medievalist. According to Ratzinger, another main reason for the rejection was the main result of the first sections - the act-related understanding of revelation in Bonaventure, which he found and claimed in the work, which presupposes an understanding subject as a necessary component of the revelation. Schmaus considered this result to be a misinterpretation of Bonaventura's writings and, moreover, to be “a dangerous modernism that must result in the subjectification of the concept of revelation”. The inadequate form of the manuscript, which, according to Ratzinger, can be traced back to the scribe he commissioned, did the rest.

After the preliminary rejection of the text, Ratzinger revised its unobjectionable third part, which dealt with the historical theology of Bonaventura, and developed it into an independent work, which he submitted again in October of the same year 1956. He left out the first two parts, Bonaventura's concept of revelation and his conception of salvation history. This time the work was accepted. Following Ratzinger's habilitation lecture in February 1957, Söhngen debated fiercely as the speaker for the work and Schmaus as its co-speaker. In the following faculty meeting, it was decided to do his habilitation for Ratzinger.

Reception and aftermath

Soon after the publication of the part of the work accepted as a habilitation thesis under the title The Theology of History of St. Bonaventure , reviews of his work appeared. Two of them were reissued in 2011 after Ratzinger's entire habilitation thesis had been published.

On the occasion of the publication of Ratzinger's unabridged habilitation thesis, the Institute Pope Benedict XVI. organized a symposium on the work. A volume summarizing the contributions was published in 2011. Rudolf Voderholzer , participant of the symposium, expressed the importance of Ratzinger's analyzes of the concept of revelation for the church teaching authority in a particularly pointed manner:

“With the demonstration of the constitutive link between revelation and church (encompassing the sizes“ tradition ”,“ church teaching office ”,“ regula fidei ”), Joseph Ratzinger finally succeeds in establishing the church's teaching authority in the original Christian event that goes much deeper than a mere theological one -positivist asserted meaning that was brought to the scriptures from outside in an authoritative manner. It is paradoxical that a study with such a result, which founded the church's teaching authority in the event of revelation, would obviously have been almost prevented in concern for the right faith. "

As a council theologian, Ratzinger played a key role in the creation of the Constitution on the Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council Dei Verbum . The results of his analyzes on Bonaventura's concept of revelation benefited him. Immediately before the beginning of the council, he gave a lecture on revelation to the German-speaking bishops, in which he criticized the proposed scheme “De fontibus revelationis” (“On the sources of revelation”) as already missing in the heading: Scripture and tradition are not sources of revelation but only media of their transmission. Cardinal Joseph Frings took up Ratzinger's thoughts at the council, the scheme “De fontibus revelationis” was rejected, and parts of Ratzinger's thoughts found their way into the council's constitution Dei Verbum .

Text output

Partial edition and partial translations:

  • Josef Ratzinger: The theology of history of St. Bonaventure , Schnell and Steiner, Munich 1959; New edition: EOS, St. Ottilien 1992
  • Josef Ratzinger: La teologia della storia di San Bonaventura , Milan 1978, 1991 (Italian)
  • Josef Ratzinger: La théologie de l'histoire de saint Bonaventure , Paris 1988 (French)
  • Josef Ratzinger: The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure , Chicago 1971, 1989 (American)
  • Joseph Ratzinger: Teologia istoriei la sfântul Bonaventura , Iași 2019 (Romanian)

Entire text:

Ratzinger was unable to realize his original intention of publishing the parts of his work in question in the form of a monograph, as he was too busy elsewhere. Only after his election as Pope did the work appear in its entirety under the editorship of Marianne Schlosser in the second volume of Ratzinger's Collected Writings:

  • Joseph Ratzinger: The understanding of revelation and the historical theology of Bonaventura . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8

In the edition of the entire text from 2009, the 1st section, divided into two sections, corresponds to the first two parts (concerning Bonaventura's concept of revelation and his conception of salvation history), which were not submitted again in 1956, in their 1955 version; the 2nd section on Bonaventura's theology of history, the revised and then re-submitted third part in the version of the printed edition from 1959. The merging of the previously unpublished, unrevised, and the revised and expanded part for the first publication results in repetitions in the text.

Together with the entire text of the habilitation thesis, some of the author's earlier essays on the subject of Bonaventure are reprinted in the second volume of the writings collected by Ratzinger. Some of them grew out of the material of the parts that were not submitted again to the university; Thus, in 1958, Ratzinger published some of the results of the 1955 work in the article Revelation - Scripture - Tradition. A text by St. Bonaventure and its meaning for contemporary theology together with an interpretation of current questions in theology.

literature

  • Michael Karger: A drama in four acts. Joseph Ratzinger's habilitation on the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure was the prelude to his participation in decisive phases in the history of theology . In: Die Tagespost from July 30, 2009 Article in the network , PDF document
  • Michael Karger: Revelation, Scripture and Tradition. Volume 2 of the edition of the collected writings of Pope Benedict XVI. documents Joseph Ratzinger's habilitation thesis . In: Die Tagespost from September 8, 2009 Article in the network , PDF document
  • Claudia Kock: Bonaventure and the theology of Benedict. On the occasion of the publication of the second volume of Joseph Ratzinger's “Collected Writings”, a scientific colloquium was held in Bagnoregio . In: Die Tagespost from September 19, 2009 Article in the network , PDF document
  • Joseph Ratzinger: Revelation - Scripture - Tradition. A text by St. Bonaventure and its meaning for contemporary theology . In: Trier theologische Zeitschrift , vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 13-27
  • Joseph Ratzinger: From my life. Memories (1927–1977) , DVA, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-421-05123-2
  • Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI: Foreword . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8 , pp. 5–28
  • Marianne Schlosser: On Joseph Ratzinger's Bonaventure Studies . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8 , pp. 29–38
  • Hansjürgen Verweyen : An unknown Ratzinger. The habilitation thesis from 1955 as the key to his theology , Pustet, Regensburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-7917-2286-3
  • Rudolf Voderholzer: Revelation and Church. A basic idea of ​​Ratzinger's habilitation project (1955/2009) and its theological scope . In: Marianne Schlosser and Franz-Xaver Heibl: The Presence of Revelation for the Bonaventure Studies by Joseph Ratzinger , Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2292-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Benedict XVI: Foreword . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8 , p. 7
  2. ↑ Joseph Ratzinger: The understanding of revelation and the historical theology of Bonaventura . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8 , p. 55, p. 75
  3. ↑ Joseph Ratzinger: The understanding of revelation and the historical theology of Bonaventura . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8 , p. 71
  4. ↑ Joseph Ratzinger: The understanding of revelation and the historical theology of Bonaventura . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8 , pp. 73 f.
  5. ↑ Joseph Ratzinger: The understanding of revelation and the historical theology of Bonaventura . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8 , p. 57
  6. ↑ Joseph Ratzinger: The understanding of revelation and the historical theology of Bonaventura . In: Joseph (Benedict XVI.) Ratzinger: Understanding of Revelation and theology of history of Bonaventura. Habilitation thesis and Bonaventure studies ( Joseph Ratzinger Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 2), Herder, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30130-8 , p. 58; Highlighting in the original
  7. ↑ Joseph Ratzinger: From my life. Memories (1927–1977) , DVA, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-421-05123-2 , p. 84.
  8. ↑ Oktavian Schmucki : Joseph Ratzinger's “Die Geschichtstheologie des St. Bonaventure ”. After-effects in research and the subsequent period . In: Marianne Schlosser and Franz-Xaver Heibl: Presence of Revelation. On the Bonaventure studies by Joseph Ratzinger , Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2292-4 ; This article reproduces Schmucki's 1960 review.
  9. ^ Sophronius Clasen : On the theology of history of Bonaventura . In: Marianne Schlosser and Franz-Xaver Heibl: Presence of Revelation. On the Bonaventure studies by Joseph Ratzinger , Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2292-4 ; Original published in 1960
  10. ^ Claudia Kock: Bonaventure and the theology of Benedict. On the occasion of the publication of the second volume of Joseph Ratzinger's “Collected Writings”, a scientific colloquium was held in Bagnoregio . In: Die Tagespost from September 19, 2009 Article in the network , PDF document
  11. ↑ Marianne Schlosser and Franz-Xaver Heibl: The Presence of Revelation on Joseph Ratzinger's Bonaventure Studies , Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2292-4 List of the articles printed in the volume ( Memento from February 7, 2016 on the Internet Archives ). Choros Publishing House
  12. ^ Rudolf Voderholzer: Revelation and Church. A basic idea of ​​Ratzinger's habilitation project (1955/2009) and its theological scope . In: Marianne Schlosser and Franz-Xaver Heibl: Presence of Revelation on Joseph Ratzinger's studies of Bonaventure. Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2292-4 , p. 61.
  13. ↑ Joseph Ratzinger: From my life. Memories (1927–1977). DVA, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-421-05123-2 , p. 84.
  14. ↑ Jared Wicks: Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during Vatican Council II . In: Gregorianum , 89, 2, 2008, pp. 233-311. For the report cf. P. 241 ff., The presentation is reproduced verbatim on p. 295–309. scotthahn.com ( Memento from September 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), PDF document