Round up: recent readings of interest - updated 9/19

Deacons are for proclaiming the Word of God, in word and in deed.  But we don't do that on our own, like liturgical Lone Rangers; we proclaim only in communion with our shepherd, apart from communion with whom we have no ministry, no mission.

Here's Pope Benedict proclaiming the Gospel during his recent apostolic visit to Lebanon. Text of all twelve of his addresses from this journey are at the link.

(Pope Benedict and Patriarch Gregorios III of Antioch in the Basilica of St. Paul, Harissa; Reuters photo, from the link above)

Here's Archbishop Chaput proclaiming the Gospel in a more quotidian but still compelling fashion:
     Selfishness dressed up as individual freedom has always been part of American life.  But now it infects the whole fabric of consumer society.  American life is becoming a cycle of manufactured appetites, illusions and licenses that turns people in on themselves and away from each other. As communities of common belief and action dissolve, the state fills in the void they leave.  And that suits a lot of us just fine, because if the government takes responsibility for the poor, we don’t have to. 
     I’m using a broad brush here, obviously.  In Catholic social thought, government has a legitimate role – sometimes a really crucial role -- in addressing social problems that are too big and too serious to be handled by anyone else.  But Jesus didn’t bless higher taxes, deficit spending and more food stamps, any more than he endorsed the free market.
     The way we lead our public lives needs to embody what the Catholic faith teaches -- not what our personalized edition of Christianity feels comfortable with, but the real thing; the full package; what the Church actually holds to be true.  In other words, we need to be Catholics first and political creatures second. (emphasis in original)


Here's an interesting reflection from Anthony Esolen on subsidiarity and the way it's being consistently misrepresented in politics:
     The welfare state is a soft prison, a system of induced incapacity, to the benefit of the wardens.  It works in concert with public schools, another vast network of compulsions, whose existence is predicated on the assumption that learning, in children, is unnatural, so that only “experts” can fathom the mystery, and so that “good” parents will act as trusties, submitting to the authority and enforcing its often ridiculous and pernicious commands.  The next network of control is an infantilizing media, persuading people that they are stupid or fat or ugly, that they live in a shack, that they wear rags, that they need what the hawkers provide.  The last element is a diseased and counterfeit individualism: the promotion of selfishness and of vices that make true self-reliance, and therefore true community, impossible.

And, tangentially, here's part I of a very interesting apologetic piece on the Deuterocanon (the books of the Bible Catholics keep and Protestants reject).

Update, 9/19 - Here's Part II of the same apologetic piece.

And, even more tangentially, for a bonus, here's the free on-line quarterly journal, "Church Life," from the Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame - where, for the moment, a significant portion of the University's Catholicity is being consistently expressed (link to Vol 3, vols 1 and 2 available there also).

"Deacon Reader" Summer Reading 3

In addition to Acts 6, there's good information on deacons in Phil 1 and 1 Tim 3, which Fr. Enright refers to in the first essay in the Deacon Reader.

Phil 1 specifically addresses the "bishops and deacons" in this city. They are described as having a "partnership in the Gospel" (1:5; and 1:7, "defending the Gospel") and as being completed by Christ's "good work in you" (1:6 - a prayer still used in ordinations: "May he who began the good work in you bring it to completion"), and as "sharing in God's grace with me [Paul]" (1:7). All these ideas resemble the actual ministry of the Seven, and will certainly become characteristic of the ordained by the end of the 1st century. But there's a little element of doubt that "bishops and deacons" are, this early, recognizable offices in the Church, distinct from others, because (a) the Apostles are still alive, and (b) Rom 16 refers to Phoebe as a "deacon". So the words "bishop" and "deacon" seem to be used to refer both to those on whom hands had been laid for the apostolic ministry (ordained, like the Seven), and on those on whom hands had not been laid for the apostolic ministry. In any case, even if, before the 60's, the identity of the clergy was still rudimentary and developing, the special share of the apostolic ministry given to some was notable.

1 Tim 3 also describes "bishops and deacons," given a list of moral and spiritual qualifications. This seems pretty clearly something different from baptism; even this early, it looks like, leaders of the fledgling Christian community were expected to be held to a demandingly higher standard. There is also a distinction, as with the Seven, between the bishops and the deacons, since there are two lists of these qualifications, not just one. The list for deacons (vv. 8-12) is still recognizable to us, and, in its essence, is what we're still expected to represent.

These three critical passages, then, seem to indicate that, even in the first generation of the Church, from the 30's to the 60's, the most basic truths of the sacrament of Holy Orders existed in the Church. Even though everyone in the Church was active in charity and ministry, some people were set aside by the Apostles, by the act of laying on of hands, to exercise a special share in the work Christ gave them specifically. There was the distinction between sacerdotal need (Apostles and bishops, which becomes what we call bishops and priests after the Apostles die) for "breaking bread" (the Mass), and diaconal need for preaching, evangelizing, baptizing, and so forth (deacons, like Stephen and Philip in Acts 7-8, from which all the minor orders, now reduced to lector and acolyte, eventually derived). There were moral and spiritual qualities looked for, which not all the baptized were expected to have. All this is part of the apostolic deposit of faith, but the precision of theological understanding and terminology developed in the next 2 or 3 generations.

Verbum Domini 5

We continue with our reading of Verbum Domini. We've been concentrating on what the Holy Father is saying about our encounter with the Word (Jesus Christ) in different ways, and our response to this encounter (namely, ongoing conversion). Paragraph 15 introduces the Holy Spirit's role in this dynamic of encounter and conversion:

In fact there can be no authentic understanding of Christian revelation apart from the activity of the Paraclete. (15)

Note the compelling summary of the Holy Spirit's activity throughout the New Testament which follows. For Christ Himself, for the disciples and Mary, for Paul and the earliest Christians, the Holy Spirit is always present and active. So too for us.

The word of God is thus expressed in human words thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit. The missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are inseparable and constitute a single economy of salvation. (15)

This means that:

...without the efficacious working of the “Spirit of Truth” (Jn 14:16), the words of the Lord cannot be understood.... Just as the word of God comes to us in the body of Christ, in his Eucharistic body and in the body of the Scriptures, through the working of the Holy Spirit, so too it can only be truly received and understood through that same Spirit. (16)

Pope Benedict notes that this same unity also works liturgically. Firstly, we need the present action of the Holy Spirit in order to hear, receive, and respond to the proclamation of the Word in the readings and homily. From there, this unity of Spirit and Son is the very essence of "Tradition:"

Indeed, since God “so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16), the divine word, spoken in time, is bestowed and “consigned” to the Church in a definitive way, so that the proclamation of salvation can be communicated effectively in every time and place. (17)

The root of all ministry in the Church, whether priestly, diaconal, or lay, is our fidelity to the real and compelling communion of Spirit and Son in the one economy of salvation. What the Son does and commands us to do, the Spirit likewise does and supports. We cannot follow Christ coherently without the following of the Holy Spirit. (As a tangent, this is why the argument about "spiritual but not religious" is always wrong-headed; it divides the grace of the Son from the grace of the Spirit, into two separate economies of salvation.) But what has the Son commanded us to do?

Jesus Christ himself “commanded the Apostles to preach the Gospel – promised beforehand by the prophets, fulfilled in his own person and promulgated by his own lips – to all as the source of all saving truth and moral law, communicating God’s gifts to them. This was faithfully carried out; it was carried out by the Apostles who handed on, by oral preaching, by their example, by their ordinances, what they themselves had received – whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or by coming to know it through the prompting of the Holy Spirit...” (17, quoting Dei Verbum 7)

This "all" is all-encompassing of the life of the Church. It is the whole of Tradition. It includes the full panoply of Word, Sacrament, and Charity, and all of our charisms and states of life. Notice especially here the implication of unity of communion with the bishops as successors of the Apostles, and of course with the Successor of Peter as head of that College. Apart from that communion, there is no full and comprehensive fulfillment of Christ's command to preach, baptize, and "do this," but only bits and pieces of that single diakonia.

This communion is not the thrust of his development here, but worth our noticing more closely, certainly. This is where he wants to go from here:

Ultimately, it is the living Tradition of the Church which makes us adequately understand sacred Scripture as the word of God. (17)

And, lest we be overwhelmed by such a demanding expectation, the heart of that statement is here:

...sacred Scripture presents itself to us, in the variety of its many forms and content, as a single reality. Indeed, “through all the words of sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single word... (18)

Scripture, despite its complexity of form and content and composition, and no matter what kind of theory one uses to approach it, must always conform to this overarching truth: its meaning is always one, never plural (though that one meaning can of course have many parts, and many different applications). And that one meaning is always the person of Jesus Christ.

In short, by the work of the Holy Spirit and under the guidance of the magisterium, the Church hands on to every generation all that has been revealed in Christ. The Church lives in the certainty that her Lord, who spoke in the past, continues today to communicate his word in her living Tradition and in sacred Scripture. Indeed, the word of God is given to us in sacred Scripture as an inspired testimony to revelation; together with the Church’s living Tradition, it constitutes the supreme rule of faith... (18, citing Dei Verbum 21).

Verbum Domini, Introduction

You may have noticed that the Post-Synodal Exhortation, “Verbum Domini,” on the Word of God, was published yesterday. You should all find time to read it in the coming weeks. I keep harping on the deacon as “herald of the Gospel,” (believe what you read, preach what you believe, and practice what you preach; or, in the Extraordinary Form, Receive the power of reading the Gospels in the Church, as much for the living as for the dead) and therefore on our service as being shaped in a special way by the proclamation of the Good News. Pope Benedict is giving the same message to the whole Church in this document. It needs to shape our study of Scripture, of theology, of pastoral care, of liturgy, and of preaching.

This is a quick look at the document, with my first impressions. I'll go section by section, to make it manageable. Pope Benedict starts with the basics. The Church has received the Good News from Christ, the Word of God Incarnate, and an unchanging mission to proclaim it:

…we find ourselves before the mystery of God, who has made himself known through the gift of his word. This word, which abides forever, entered into time. God spoke his eternal Word humanly; his Word “ became flesh ” (Jn 1:14). This is the good news. This is the proclamation which has come down the centuries to us today. (Verbum Domini, 1)

So the Word is at the heart of everything the Church does (“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”), like a “wellspring”:

In this way I wish to point out certain fundamental approaches to a rediscovery of God’s word in the life of the Church as a wellspring of constant renewal. At the same time I express my hope that the word will be ever more fully at the heart of every ecclesial activity. (1)

I don’t think this point can be stressed enough.

Pope Benedict goes on to remind us that this Word is not just an object of faith, but a gift, a person, and a communion of us with Him:

Called to communion with God and among ourselves, we must proclaim this gift. From this kerygmatic standpoint, the synodal assembly was a testimony, before the Church and before the world, to the immense beauty of encountering the word of God in the communion of the Church. For this reason I encourage all the faithful to renew their personal and communal encounter with Christ, the word of life made visible, and to become his heralds, so that the gift of divine life – communion – can spread ever more fully throughout the world. Indeed, sharing in the life of God, a Trinity of love, is complete joy (cf. 1 Jn 1:4). And it is the Church’s gift and unescapable duty to communicate that joy, born of an encounter with the person of Christ, the Word of God in our midst. (2)

If we meet and know Jesus by receiving the kerygma in the Gospel, our reception of Him as gift brings “complete joy,” and a burning desire to share that complete union with others. Our love for Him needs to be infectious, the more so since it is precisely the absence of Christ which makes modern life seem so difficult to bear:

There is no greater priority than this: to enable the people of our time once more to encounter God, the God who speaks to us and shares his love so that we might have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). (2)

(These are still the basics.) Growing in union with Christ is our purpose as human creatures. This is why God made each of us. We can’t fulfill that end without a personal encounter with the Word.

This next move is totally characteristic of Benedict’s ministry as Holy Father. As the Church has grappled more and more concretely with the modern world over the last 125 years or so, the necessary mode of the centrality of this personal encounter with Christ the Word has become more and more clear. (In the past, the encounter was often through poverty and asceticism, for example; but only in certain contexts through the Word in Scripture directly.) The foundation of his idea of a “hermeneutic of continuity” is the unchanging nature of this encounter, now being deployed by the Church in ways both old and new, to make it more available to people in this age:

Beginning with the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII, we can say that there has been a crescendo of interventions aimed at an increased awareness of the importance of the word of God and the study of the Bible in the life of the Church, culminating in the Second Vatican Council and specifically in the promulgation of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum. The latter represented a milestone in the Church’s history… Everyone is aware of the great impulse which the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum gave to the revival of interest in the word of God in the life of the Church… By celebrating this Synod, the Church, conscious of her continuing journey under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, felt called to further reflection on the theme of God’s word, in order to review the implementation of the Council’s directives, and to confront the new challenges which the present time sets before Christian believers. (3)

This 2008 Synod, then, and this document which is its fruit (guided by the Holy Spirit), is part of that trajectory of continuity of living faith, and of the same goal of bringing the personal encounter with Christ the Word to the front of the Church’s activities in the world, for evangelization and the salvation of souls.

This last point in the Introduction I’d like to note connects with my talk on St. Hilarius from a couple of weeks ago, at our Fall Day of Reflection. St. Hilarius used the Prologue of the Gospel of John as the foundation for his development of a Trinitarian theology, and for his spirituality as I described. Pope Benedict does the same thing here, and draws the same conclusion St. Hilary did: our whole spiritual life needs to “lean on the bosom of Christ, like St. John:”

I would like to present and develop the labours of the Synod by making constant reference to the Prologue of John’s Gospel (Jn 1:1-18), which makes known to us the basis of our life: the Word… May John, who “ saw and believed ” (cf. Jn 20:8) also help us to lean on the breast of Christ (cf. Jn 13:25), the source of the blood and water (cf. Jn 19:34) which are symbols of the Church’s sacraments.(5)

Models of Revelation 14

We’re still in Ch 9, on Dulles’s idea of “symbolic mediation.” Dulles argues that revelation occurs primarily in symbols – special kinds of signs that become deeply embedded in Tradition, that carry multiple, powerful layers of meaning, and that ultimately become definitive for that Tradition. I have agreed with much of what Dulles is arguing here about how symbols work in Tradition and in carrying the content of revelation symbolically. But I have argued in rebuttal that the primary (as in original and bedrock) form of revelation needs to be something more than a symbol. The Tradition cannot take a single, coherent direction only from a multi-valent symbol. I have suggested that historical fact, direct propositional revelation, direct ritual or liturgical revelation, and symbolic revelation all coincide to establish the baseline of meaning, from which further symbols take their meanings. The two most critical of these nexus are Exodus, and the Incarnation and Passion of Christ.

Having seen how his symbols work in reference to the propositional model, he works through the other four in the same way. I believe my rejoinder holds up in each case: symbols cannot define themselves, ultimately; something more must be given to be definitive, to establish the Tradition.

In reference to the historical model, Dulles takes the historical events themselves as symbols. “Just as a literary text discloses to the literate reader a meaning which is really there, so a revelatory sign-event, to the religiously disposed observer, can convey a divine meaning that truly belongs to the event” (p. 146). Dulles briefly addresses the two problems of subjectivity – that is, maintaining a fixed meaning in the sign-event if it can’t be accurately expressed propositionally, but only narratively – and of distinguishing in history special divine causation (an “act of God”), and therefore dealing with miracles.

In reference to the experiential model, the symbols must mediate the experience of divine presence, and shape the revealed meaning of that presence. “[T]he experience of grace cannot be rightly interpreted, or recognized for what it is, without the help of symbols derived from the known world through sensory experience” (149). The mystical experience also emphasizes the “gap” between symbol and divine reality.

In reference to the dialectical model, the Word itself is taken as the predominant symbol. There is a risk here of taking Christ only as “a” symbol, rather than as unique Savior. Here, Dulles must in fact take my position on his argument, to avoid this: “The word, as the sign [broad sense, not narrow “symbol”] which articulates meaning, is a necessary complement to revelation through any other kind of symbol. The grosser symbolism of nature, deed, or artifact [including ritual], potent though it may be, is too ambiguous to be the sole mediator of revealed religion. The symbol becomes revelation only when interpreted…. For public revelation, moreover, there must be external words, capable of being heard or seen. Such attesting words are necessarily symbolic, for otherwise they could not be conducive to a salvific union with the divine.” (p. 152).

Dulles and I would seem to disagree on the priority of this last sentence. For him, as I understand his argument, the symbols are primary, and the words are human words being used as further, derived symbols to reveal divine truth. I would argue in contrast that the Word, the Logos, is primary to the use of words as symbols.

Finally, in reference to the new consciousness model, symbols do shape and affect our experience, but Dulles insists on the objectiveness of the symbols’ meaning. He also distinguishes (for the first time, here) between primary symbols that carry objective revealed meaning, and “mutable secondary symbols” (153-4; he those symbols such as those in art or liturgy – though he doesn’t here, as I wish he had, note that some of those liturgical symbols are in fact primary) which are more flexible over time.

At this point in my analysis of his argument, I add a second objection. In his desire to retrieve what he sees as the benefits of the different models, he does not distinguish adequately between the giving of the symbol, and our reception and response to it.

The giving of the symbol (if revelation is indeed in the form of symbols) must be accompanied with defining, irreducible propositional, historical, and probably liturgical elements, just like I have argued in reference to Exodus and the Incarnation and Passion. But, the giving of the symbols does not first and foremost involve our inner experience, dialectical submission, or conversion (“new awareness”). These are not the form of revelation, but our response to revelation. What is true in these models is true about our reception of revelation, not about revelation per se. Dulles does yeoman work to show the continuity between 1 and 2 as giving revelation, and 3, 4, and 5 as receiving it. My insistence on the primacy of a Logical nexus of word, sign, and act helps us to separate out these two modes from each other.

Models of Revelation - Excursus on Faith and Reason

One of the greatest strengths of the "traditional" view of theology (Patristic and Scholastic) is how the category of knowing which is "faith" is intrinsically related to the category of knowing which is "reason." This is the gist of the famous line that theology means "faith seeking understanding." All truth leads to Truth, therefore, and Truth must necessarily be one and universal.

These ideas about truth, knowledge, and so forth are not merely unprovable assumptions, for which other (equally valid because equally unprovable) assumptions might be substituted. Rather, they rest on a long tradition of observation, analysis, testing of hypothesis, and synthesis. They are proven, at least at the level of plausibility and self-coherence. They have stood the test of time (despite the contempt that modernity's irrationality holds them in). They are, in effect, conclusions of "natural theology."

Take, for example, the problem of defining "life" in "living" objects, as opposed to non-living objects. Reason tells us that the stuff is the same - the same elements of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, merely arranged differently here than there. Reason tells us, however, that there is clearly something different between living and non-living things. If you've ever seen a person or an animal die, you know that the difference is clearly visible, but not clearly quantifiable. Metaphors like "the light in the eyes" must be employed. In fact, reason tells us that the difference between living and non-living is not really a question of the arrangement of stuff (atoms, molecules) at all. It's something different.

In other words, experience, observation, and reason clearly "prove" the existence of something non-material. Its effects are observable; it itself is not directly observable. In terms of living objects, this non-material element can be called "soul." It expresses the vitality, motion, and ultimately rationality of different kinds of living things. But it can never be reduced only to material properties.

Coming at the problem from the angle of faith works essentially the same, but in reverse. The same observations about the material world, and the visible effects of the spiritual world therein, describe different kinds of relationships with God. Here "soul" is not a property or set of properties related to the observable differences in categories of objects, but defining spiritual realities that separate those same categories of objects in how that relate to God.

But these two aspects of the idea of "soul," from reason and from faith, are not to be seen as unrelated to each other. Together, they tell us more about "soul" than simply the juxtaposition of the two ways of knowing.

But for this to be true, that spiritual knowledge must be expressible in the form of a proposition (or more likely, a set of propositions). Even if the set of propositions is not complete in an absolute sense, it still must be relatively complete (relative to the extent of our ability to know at all), and accurate to the same extent. If this is not true, then "faith" knowledge is not related to "reason" knowledge, since the rules of logic (that is, propositional relationships) don't work there.

This is the heart of the propositional model in Dulles's schema. Of the five, only this model holds the intrinsic relationship of faith-knowledge and reason-knowledge; that is, that revelation is ultimately reasonable in itself. The historical model, and Dulles's theory of symbolic mediation, hold an extrinsic relationship between faith and reason. This can, in practice, be fairly close to the intrinsic relationship, but it's not really the same idea. At root, the existential, dialectic, and transcendent models all separate faith and reason from each other in modernist ways; this is why they are less successful at grasping revelation.

This is why I insisted in the previous post that there must be some non-ambiguous "rule" - an act, a word, or a symbol; or a combination of these, as in Exodus and the Passion - at the bedrock of revelation, prior to the mediation of the symbol(s). This "rule" must be expressible (to the extent of human knowing) as complete and accurate propositions. Even if the propositions are derived, and not taken as the primary content of the revelation itself, still the propositions are equal to the revelation in its relationship to the faith community: the propositions carry the revelation. I mean this concretely, not abstractly, because the propositions are not simply abstract, but concretely embedded in the liturgical life of the community (Passover and Mass, etc.). They are still explicit, however: they are acts, words, and symbols expressible as propositions. Therefore the meaning is not ambiguous and subject to change, and not derived from human sources, but given by God.

It is precisely in the knowing by both faith and reason that the certitude of revelation exceeds that of science (reason alone) or of individual inspiration (faith alone). It is precisely in the being carried by Tradition that the meaning remains stable and non-arbitrary. And it is precisely in the "faith seeking understanding" that we accept the invitation into God's own life, which is what revelation really is.

Models of Revelation 9

Dulles continues in Ch 6 with the fourth model, “dialectical presence.” This means that revelation is always a paradox, simultaneously revealing the mystery of God, and thus concealing Him in the mystery, in the very act of revealing. The origins of this model lie in the inadequacies of liberal theology, displayed with such clarity in the unprecedented social and moral devastation of WWI. It was the juxtaposition of divine transcendence with undisguised human sinfulness that led thinkers like Barth, Bultmann, etc., to deny that “God’s presence and activity could ever be discovered within the realms of historical fact, doctrinal statement, or religious experience.” (85). Yet there is nowhere else to discover God’s presence and activity; hence the paradox.

This model never constituted a school as such, and there are significant differences among those who play with it. What Dulles offers here is a quite artificial schema, which he admits cannot really do justice to any of the thinkers he cites.

The core of this model is the idea that revelation is always of a mystery. God’s self cannot be reified in human terms. Instead, revelation for us is always of God’s saving self, hence of Christ. There is no revelation apart from Christ. (86). This requires a rejection of “natural theology,” of the revelation of some aspect of God’s nature in created natures, which was such a mainstay of medieval theology. But as revelation only in Christ, revelation is also coterminous with grace. (87). Therefore revelation, as the same saving act of God, continues today with the same mysterious divine freedom. The Bible, the Church, and the sacraments are not in themselves revelatory; but they can be the means of the one revelation of Christ, because of grace. By the same token, nothing outside the mystery of revelation is necessary to God’s salvation, and so the Bible, the Church, and the sacraments must be seen as fallible and changeable. (88).

Continuing this logical reduction, the act of faith is also the same as the act of revelation, and is the free gift of God. (89). Apologetics, then, falls into the same category as Bible, Church, and sacrament.

Hence, the form of revelation in this model is the Word itself, Jesus Christ. The problem is that the “residue” of the Word, whether in Scripture, in the Church, in the sacraments, in Tradition, etc., is not the Word itself, and so ultimately is not really a trustworthy witness to Christ.

Dulles is very careful to note the positive aspects of this model (93-4). He finds four positives. It is quite well-grounded in Scripture, at least in the sense that it doesn’t contradict Scripture. It salvages an epistemology of faith (albeit individual and subjective) from the Kantian cul-de-sac. Its rejection of apologetics cleared away accumulated tangles of intellectualizing undergrowth. And its quite spare religiosity renewed a sense of commitment to the absoluteness of God.

The principle weakness of this model is its inner incoherence (94-5). If faith (as the content of faith) cannot be meaningfully communicated, how can it be itself meaningful? If the Bible is not a reliable witness to Christ, how can the experience of revelation, even as a paradox, be judged as true or false to Christ? If salvation history is not actually historical, how can it be salvific? At the root of this incoherence is the divorce of the “Christ of faith” from the “Jesus of history,” which is really at the center of this model.

Dulles’s conclusion is surprisingly positive, however. “In view of these difficulties it is not surprising that dialectical theology, in its acute form, was only a phase in the career of its authors. When they sought to reflect further on the meaning of the gospel, they moved beyond dialectical thinking…. [T]hese theologians took up something like the analogous discourse of the classical tradition…. Whenever theology is tempted to forget its own limitations and to claim mastery of the revealed message, the vehement negations of dialectical theology remain a valuable corrective.” (97).

You might notice that all the thinkers cited by Dulles, and all the assumptions that underlie this model, are Protestant, mostly Lutheran. I've also come across some "post-modern" Catholics who fall for the illusion of clarity in this model, especially in sacramental theology. For example, M.-L. Chauvet wrote "Symbol and Sacrament" (originally in French) very much along these lines. He either coined or popularized the phrase "the absence of the presence of God" in reference to sacramental presence, especially True Presence in the Eucharist. The same criticisms noted above apply here, without any of the offsetting positives.

Models of Revelation 8

Dulles’s third model is “revelation as inner experience.” This doesn’t mean the bells and whistles of private revelation in the form of visions and whatnot, but an experiential, even existential, model of immediate, interior communion with God. This rejects the objectivity of both the dogmatic and the historical models. It is based on a thoroughly modern set of assumptions: i.e., what is “natural” (immediate and interior, intuitive or instinctive) is “more real” than what is artificial (mediate and exterior, learned objectively); the distrust of authority, here in objective revelation; the denial that noumenal (i.e., the thing as it really is, vs. “phenomenal,” the thing as it seems to my senses to be) reality can be known; individualism.

Again, there are several forms of this model. In this chapter, Dulles is not as clear on the permutations as in the previous. Without clearly defining the differences among them, he notes (p. 69-70) a liberal Protestant version, a modernist Protestant version, a modernist Catholic version, and a “transcendental” Catholic version. This last, he points out, best articulated by Karl Rahner, is “not typical” of this model, and he mostly sets it aside here. (He will return to Rahner under his 5th model.)

The model, in general, works this way: (p 70:) As transcendent and non-contingent Creator, God is in some immediate sense “present to” every point of creation. So then, every part of creation implies at least the theoretical possibility of some kind of “religious” or “mystical” experience of that divine presence. Such experiences, being immediate, are also universal (at least potentially). (p 72:) This experience always communicates the whole of God’s being, therefore not “revealed truth” in dogmatic or even historical form. Dogmas and history, even sacred history, even the Bible, are not “revealed” at all in this sense, but mere human attempts to communicate the reality of this experience in a particular tradition.

Faith and belief, then, are two quite distinct things. Faith is having the experience; belief is only an approximation of the experience in human terms. All belief, then, is necessarily more or less wrong, and therefore any belief is more or less tolerable in itself. (There follows, 73ff, a description of much jumping through hoops in order to try to ascribe some significance to tradition in Christianity; but, if the assumptions be granted, the most that can be said is that certain beliefs, including Scripture, the Church, the sacraments, etc. etc., tend to be more helpful for us, in being receptive to the faith-experience.)

This same problem of tradition and authority must also be faced, in reference to Jesus Christ. Here it can be said that Christ was the highest and fullest example of religious experience, and that following Him in the Church maximizes our potential to have the same experiences. But of course this is a very far cry from claiming that Jesus is the unique and universal Savior.

The substantial weaknesses of this model should be fairly obvious. It is non-Biblical, and even contradicts the Bible in significant ways. “All the passages from Scripture used to support either of the first two models constitute objections to the third.” (p. 78). It denies the prophets' own experience of inadequacy to know and love God. It substitutes elitism for divine election. It cannot be harmonized with a great many traditional Church teachings. It makes the Church herself a secondary, rather than a primary, reality. It disappoints many expectations of what religion is “supposed to do,” such as define the meaning of stuff, especially in the moral and metaphysical senses.

Is there any redeeming feature of this model? Dulles notes two only: “[T]his model made it possible to accept that critique [i.e., the Kantian denial that noumenal knowledge is possible] without falling into skepticism.” (p. 77). There are other, better responses to Kant; nor is it necessary to accept that critique at all, or at least wholly. But the much harder trick, if one is intending to accept Kant, is not to fall into relativism, which this model, by itself, inevitably does. Second, “this model gave striking support to the life of devotion.” (p. 77) By this he means, “New links began to appear between systematic and ascetical theology. The life of prayer and mystical experience… appeared once again as central themes.” (78). To the extent that “systematic and ascetical” theology have been divided since the 17th c. (much more so in Protestant denominations than in Catholicism), this renewed connection certainly is valuable.

One of the most obvious places I think this model has taken root in the Church is in moral theology, specifically in the formation of conscience. Very few Catholics think about the Bible, the Church, or Jesus Christ in these experiential terms, but all too many think exactly this way about their conscience: that it is immediate, rather than needing formation; that it is interior, rather than shaped by our learning and practice of the Faith; and that it is authoritative of itself, rather than needing the authority of the magisterium for full conviction.

Models of Revelation 6

Dulles continues in Chapter 4 with his second model: “Revelation as History.”

A word of preface here. One of the features of the model mind-set is the increasing tendency, since the late 18th c., to “historicize” everything. This means that people see everything only, or at least mostly, in terms of a process over time. This view connects closely with the model of evolution, and goes a long way to explain why we now tend to see everything, not merely biology, in terms of that theory.

In a positive sense, this historicizing can keep us from making the mistake of thinking that people at time A had the same assumptions or attitudes about stuff as people at time B. It has made us more aware of the diversity of human experience.

But in a negative sense, historicizing has also undermined any confidence in a fundamental stability to stuff. It denies more or less strongly that anything is permanently real: thus, no unifying human nature, no unchanging moral law, etc.

Since everything else was subjected to historicizing in the 19th c., it’s not surprising that revelation also was.

Dulles notes from the first that there is an historical element in the first model of Revelation as dogma. That model implies that revelation occurs in history, for where else would it occur? It notes that revelation must also be handed down through history (“Traditio”). And it includes some events, such as Exodus and the life of Christ, in the category of Revelation. “Still, the propositional model is not in the fullest sense historical, for it denies that the events of sacred history are by themselves revelation…” (53).

The defining notion of this model is that “revelation occurs primarily through deeds, rather than words, and that its primary content is the series of events by which God has manifested himself in the past” (53).

Dulles identifies three forms of this model, and gives examples of theologians who follow each.

The first form he calls “Revelation as Event.” “God, inasmuch as he is personal, cannot be adequately revealed through nature, but only through persons – that is to say, through actors on the stage of human history. The historical persons and events are the source of any truths which the mind may derive from them. Creeds and doctrines depend upon the prior events of revelation from which they are derived.” (54). The events, in other words, offer a self-evident interpretation. For this version of this model, there are some immediate problems:
• If words do not reveal, there are no revealed truths in dogmatic form. At the extreme, all dogma is changeable, if our interpretation of the events of sacred history changes.
• The Bible, strictly speaking, is not revealed, and therefore cannot be held to be inerrant.
• What becomes the ground for interpreting the events of sacred history? At the extreme, is there even such a thing as Tradition?
• “If we cannot trust the biblical interpretation, what resources do we have for asserting [even] the fact that God was active in this history?” (56).

The second form he calls “Revelation as Salvation History.” The Protestant Oscar Cullmann and the Catholic Jean Danielou represent this version of the model quite well. Cullmann responds to some of the problems of the first version of this model by distinguishing among event, prophetic interpretation, and recapitulation. [So for example, the meaning of the event, “the crossing of the Red Sea,” is made clear through the centuries by accumulating layers of interpretation of liturgy and law and prophecy, culminating in the baptism of Christ in the Jordan and the institution of the Sacrament of Baptism in the Church.] The key difference from the first version of the model is that here, the events cannot interpret themselves. So there must be some kind of meaning-carrying Tradition to serve as the interpretive key. The Catholic scholar Danielou follows much the same path, but manages to include in the accumulating layers of meaning in Tradition a defense of Patristic typology. Something very significant for the reality of the Church comes from this, but of course this is a Catholic point, which Cullmann does not fully agree with.

The principle objection to this second version is that it still posits two kinds of history taking place together: one objective and human, one sacred and meaningful only to those who have faith. The third version, which Dulles calls “Revelation as History,” takes on this objection. One of its principle supporters was Pannenberg. “Revelation, he holds, is not to be found in a special segment of history, but rather in universal history…” (59). In other words, every event, no matter what its context, or how mundane or celebrated, how public or private it is, can serve to reveal something of God in an objective way. [NB, this is tied in to the mid-20th c. defense of historicizing which tries to make history into a social science, rather than a liberal art.] “Hence no special illumination is needed for their meaning to be understood. It suffices that people be able to use their reason… Faith, therefore, does not precede the recognition of revelation…” (59). In order to hold this position, one must claim that events reveal God only indirectly, never directly, which denies the possibility of theophanies, word-revelations [“I am who am.”], and miracles.

This throws one immediately back to the question of interpretation. This version can only hang its claim to objective, universal interpretation on the Resurrection. This becomes the interpretative key to the whole of Revelation, the most fundamental meaning of any and every other event in human history.

Question: Can you think of examples of this model which you have encountered?

Models of Revelation 5

We're still in Chapter 3, on the first model (revelation as doctrine). Remember Dulles's criteria of evaluation (see post #3):
1. Faithfulness to the Bible and Christian tradition
2. Internal coherence
3. Plausibility
4. Adequacy to experience
5. Practical fruitfulness – namely, “sustains moral effort, reinforces Christian commitment, and enhances the corporate life and mission of the Church” (p. 17)
6. Theoretical fruitfulness – humanly satisfying in the quest for religious understanding, and thus be of assistance for theology more broadly
7. Value for dialogue

Starting on p. 46, Dulles offers his evaluation of this model. First, its strengths: "The propositional model stands up well in terms of its faithfulness to tradition, its internal coherence, and its practical advantages..."

Faithfulness to Tradition: If revelation is in the form of doctrinal propositions, then these doctrinal propositions can be received immediately into Tradition, and preserved and passed on without having constantly to reinterpret and rephrase things. A good example of this would be Trinitarian and Christological formulae. Having been hashed out in finest detail once, and all the pieces and foundations of these formulae having been located in revealed Scripture, we don't need to redo any of that fight.

Internal Coherence: "Once the premises are granted, the whole theory follows with a certain inevitability. This, in turn, makes for a measure of theoretical fruitfulness. The propositional model provides firm doctrinal standards, so that the orthodoxy and heterodoxy of theological opinions can be measured..." (p. 46).

Practical advantages: A simple and useable theological method derives directly from this model. "Theology, then, has the task of systematizing the data of revelation, defending them against adversaries, and spelling out their logical implications." (p. 47). Even if one claims that theology may also do other things, these tasks are necessary as part of our response to revelation.

Moreover, "Among the more striking advantages of this model are its practical fruitfulness for the unity and growth of the Church." (p. 47). This would include loyalty to Scripture and Tradition, and clarity of and solidarity in identity and mission.

He then lists these weaknesses of this model:

"The Bible, in this approach, is viewed principally as a collection of propositions, each of which can be taken by itself as a divine assertion." (p. 48). And, "...every declarative sentence in the Bible, unless the contrary can be shown from the context, is to be taken as expressing a revealed truth." (p. 48-9). Both of these are true in a sense, but not absolutely. Some doctrines are revealed propositionally and immediately in Scripture (e.g., the sanctity of human life, in the Ten Commandments); some are revealed symbolically and must therefore be derived exegetically, which this model, as a pure type, does less well. Again, the quality of revealed truth in each sentence in Scripture must exist, unless we think that God can lie to us; but the nature of that truth is not identical from sentence to sentence. (This is sometimes referred to as the "four levels" of truth in Scripture.) These nuances are not contradicted by this model, but something must be added to the model to understand this in the way the Church asks us to.

Another weakness is adduced in the historicism of the day. If conciliar and magisterial statements of dogma are merely historical and not universal truths, then their foundation in Scripture may not be universal either. (You won't be surprised to know that I reject this sort of hyper-historicism root and branch, for very good epistemological reasons that are probably too complicated to deal with here.)

Another weakness is its "inadequacy to experience" (p. 50-1). It demands assent to explicit propositions and to past definitions, "irrespective of whether they actually illuminate the believer's own situation." (p. 51). To this it must be noted that this model, and its fruits, have certainly illuminated believers' situations, both in the past and in the present; and that the possibility of universal truth, as claimed, is not precluded by examples of weak or failed faith. To be fair, the other possibility needs to be considered objectively, also.

"Finally, it must be mentioned that the doctrinal understanding of revelation has not shown itself favorable to dialogue with other churches and religions." (p. 51). Again, this is true in one sense: if such doctrines are true, then their opposites cannot be, and those who adhere to the opposites are objectively in error. But, if one accepts that something in revelation is true, one can then pursue it in dialogue; while if one accepts that nothing is universally true in revelation, no dialogue is even possible.

Summary: On criteria # 1, 2, 5, and 6, this model is strong or very strong. On criteria # 4, this model is weak. On criteria # 3 and 7, this model gets mixed review, depending on other presuppositions. Dulles concludes with this final caveat: "In this chapter we have taken as a target a rather rigid form [what I called above a "pure type"] of the propositional model. In showing the shortcomings of this style of theology we should not be taken as implying that God's revelation is devoid of cognitive value or that the clear teachings of Scripture and the creeds are without grounds in revelation." (p. 52). To be revelation to us, at least some part of it must be graspable and expressible by our human intellects, in human language.