Tuesday, February 21, 2006
(9:04 AM) | Anonymous:
Letter From a Radical Theologian
Friends,Having begun Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity, and before becoming wholly immersed in his exegesis of the Apostle’s Creed, I am impelled at this stage to record my ironic apprehension of the good cardinal or pope as being a "death of God theologian." No one can open this book without immediately becoming aware of the ultimate importance of the year of its publication, 1968, as one is initially given a reprisal of the book by its author written in 2000, calling attention to the year 1968 as a time of ultimate nihilism, when an abyss of nothingness was at hand, and everything changes as Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God is realized in our midst. This is the context in which this book was written, and one accounting in large measure for its deep impact, and even if Ratzinger can say that he is writing in the spirit of Karl Adam’s Spirit of Catholicism, a radically new world is here at hand. Not even Rahner was open to our nihilism, and at that time in the world of Catholic theology only Teilhard was open to nihilism, and Teilhard has had a real impact upon Ratzinger, but virtually none upon other major Catholic theologians. It is well known that Ratzinger reacted very strongly against 1968, but this is commonly associated with the student radicals of that period, whereas his own book makes it overwhelmingly clear that he was most deeply responding to a new and ultimate nihilism. And to judge by the prefaces of the book, his understanding of nihilism is far deeper in 2000 than in 1968, leading one to surmise that Ratzinger has reflected more deeply on nihilism than any other Catholic theologian, which I suspect is the deepest ground of his conservative and even reactionary theological turn.
It is remarkable how few are aware of the possibility that it is a new and comprehensive nihilism that has been the deeper ground of our new conservative theological world, just as it is also fully possible that it is a reaction against such nihilism, even if only an unconscious one, that is deeply responsible for our new conservative political world or worlds. The truth is that very few among us have a serious understanding of nihilism, and there is no critical agreement today upon the meaning of nihilism, indeed, there is not even a good book on the subject, with the inevitable exception of Book One of Nietzsche’s The Will to Power. Yet Ratzinger does have a truly astute understanding of nihilism, and in Introduction to Christianity he can allow this to set the stage for a new investigation of the Christian faith, almost reminding one of the young Luther, and particularly so as Harnack presents him in the final sections of his History of Dogma. We are want to forget that Ratzinger is a deeply German theologian, and one who has inevitably been affected by a uniquely German philosophical theology, which is our only truly modern philosophical theology, and perhaps most modern in its ultimate enactment of the death of God. All too significantly many of Rahner’s opponents have found such a philosophical atheism in his work, just as conservative Thomists find it everywhere in modern philosophy, as marvelously enacted in Cornelius Fabro’s God in Exile. Of course, Barth, too, had a deep understanding of modern atheism, and it is not only at this point that Ratzinger can be associated with Barth, but also insofar as each have battled so fiercely with uniquely modern expressions of religion. This is most manifest in Ratzinger’s assault upon Liberation Theology, for this is not only an attack upon a Catholic expression of Marxism, but also an attack upon a radically independent form of faith and community, one setting itself against the Hierarchy of the Church, and even against all hierarchy whatsoever. Now it is just in a nihilistic or radically atheistic context that an overwhelming need of hierarchy looms forth, one not only creating the radical hierarchies of modern totalitarianism, but profoundly affecting all institutions, and most clearly so the Catholic church.
Ratzinger is the first pope who is a professional theologian, or a major theologian, and one who theologically eclipses virtually all of his theological critics, so we can expect to witness gnats battling an elephant, which hopefully will lead the Catholic world to take theology far more seriously than it now does. To judge by his first encyclical we can expect Benedict XVI to be fully responsible theologically as Pope, and there is a particular power here insofar as this is a theological response to an abyss of nihilism, one that John Paul II attempted to articulate, but was unable to do so. But given our comprehensive ignorance of nihilism, we cannot expect astute responses to this Papacy, or even an appreciation of an ultimate battle that may well now be waged. One is reminded of a story that Ratzinger tells in the opening of Introduction to Christianity: a traveling circus in Denmark catches fire, the manager sends its clown into a neighboring village, where he screams for help, but the villagers think that this is only a circus performance to lure them to the show, and despite the clown’s weeping they can only laugh at him, until finally the fire engulfs the village, and everyone perishes. Obviously, Ratzinger associates himself with this clown, and this could even be an image of his Papacy, for there is an apocalyptic sensibility in this pope which is rare, and also an astute sense of an absolute abyss looming within and beneath us, and one that inevitably must explode, so that the deepest duty of the Church is now to prepare for that explosion, and to provide sustenance against it. Ratzinger is known for preferring a far smaller but far stronger Church, here one can sense the impact of Kierkegaard, but his commitment to orthodoxy is not that common one which appears about us, it is far rather a commitment to a new orthodoxy, and one occasioned only by an absolute crisis.
Perhaps the clearest analogy to this crisis is the Augustinian crisis in the ancient world, then a world was clearly coming to an end, and one demanding a truly new theology, Augustine created such a theology, and thus made possible not only Western Christian theology but a Western Christian world. Now we can expect no such miracle from Ratzinger, but is it possible that he is now in position to initiate such a transformation, and even to give it an institutional foundation? For there surely has been no previous pope with such a sense of an ultimate crisis that is a theological crisis, one profoundly uprooting us in our deepest foundations, and therefore ultimate challenging our deepest faith. At the beginning of his first Preface to Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger remarks that the Christian faith is enveloped today in a greater fog than at almost any earlier period of history, and this not simply because of a comprehensive watering down of faith, but because of a contemporary faith hiding a complete spiritual vacuum. Apparently no other Catholic theologian has such a deep sense of this vacuum, so that in his opening discussion in this book of belief in the world of today, he can speak not only of the power now of unbelief, but of the bottomless abyss of nothingness that now can be seen, and even seen as he observes by our saints themselves. This can induce him to initiate an apparently new theology, one in which God is essentially invisible, and while he speaks as though this is simply Biblical theology, the Biblical world or worlds surely did not know a bottomless abyss which is an incarnate abyss, and thus inevitably drawing forth a truly new or absolute invisibility of God. This is very close to Kierkegaardian language, and truly distant from traditional Catholic language, to say nothing of the whole world of natural theology. True that world has long since perished, but Ratzinger knows this all too well, and knows it as no previous pope has known it, to say nothing of the common forms of Catholic theology. So Ratzinger may yet prove to be a revolutionary pope, even if he is revolutionary by establishing a truly new Catholic orthodoxy, an orthodoxy inseparable from an ultimate and comprehensive nihilism, and only made possible by that nihilism itself. Both Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky have given us such an orthodoxy, but none such has yet arisen in the Catholic world, can we realistically expect such a gift from this Papacy?
