The responsibility of theologians

...To profess puzzlement at such basic belief statements about Jesus can mean (and certainly for the vast majority of Catholic theologians does mean) that one recognizes the limitations of any such statements...

...the question is: "What kind of authority does the pope have when he participates in or regulates the ministry of theology or the ministry of teaching...

...and if in his risen life he remains genuinely human...

...and where are we to find it...

...Catholics have been raised to expect such guidance from the church...

...After one has repeated the words of John's prologue,' 'and the Word was made flesh," how does one spell out accurately the meaning of such an incredible statement...

...but it could not be authentic obedience, which can be directed only to legitimate exercise of authority...

...However, theology's ministry is that of using careful and disciplined research and reflection in order to help the church to more accurate understanding of its Lord and of itself...

...If theologians feel deeply responsible for the accuracy of Christian understanding of faith, so do those in official positions...

...At least to some extent, we had overstated our case...

...it does not mean that one is denying either the divine element or the human element in Jesus...

...Nor should Christianity wish to do so...

...All this is bothersome: earlier we had attributed to dogmatic statements of councils or popes an absoluteness that no human statement can have...

...As for the understanding of "authority" when it touches teaching in the church: We may here be at the bottom of the presently painful confrontation between the Vatican and the theologians they are condemning...

...One indispensable task they have, as in any field of careful research, is to evaluate the adequacy of understandings arrived at in earlier periods of human history...

...What is going on now—the Vatican judgment of Schillebeeckx and Kung and a number of U.S...

...much too much is at stake for theologians (or for that matter, any other group in the church) to do other than speak the truth with love for the Christian people who are the church...

...Or is this a fearful pulling, back of the papacy from the openness promised by Vatican n, an attempt to use power to suppress thought...

...but it itself is always relative to such things as the use of language at that moment and the cultural influences that touched those who made the statement...

...moral theologians—is but the latest instance of this recurrent pattern...

...they should guide the church to new insights into the traditional beliefs of Christianity, so that the church's understanding (especially of Christ) can provide direction for humanity's evolving consciousness—so that the church can truly be a light to the world...

...we had claimed a degree of unchangeableness that is incompatible with our human historical way of existing...

...about the actual circumstances surrounding the beginnings of Christianity (What was the earliest Christian experience of Jesus's resurrection...

...In some circles theologians have been blamed for raising such disturbing questions...

...While in some cases such questioning can be cynically sceptical and almost totally negative, the main stream of modern critical thought is honest search for truth that recognizes the many limitations of human thinking...

...As a matter of fact, much of the recent rethinking of christology has been grounded in the fact that theologians like Schillebeeckx and Rahner and Schoonenberg have taken very seriously the reality of Jesus's humanness—as we all must if our faith is to agree with the Gospels or with the Council of Chalcedon...

...At least part of the upset caused by Catholic theologians comes because they no longer repeat these misleading ideas...

...Catholics believe that the bishops as a group, centered in the bishop of Rome, possess and communicate the truth upon which Christianity is grounded: the event of Jesus's death and resurrection...

...A number of the most perceptive thinkers in the church—for example, Karl Rahner in the most recent issue of Theological Studies—have indicated that a new era of theological reflection (and resultantly of Christian understanding) is well under way, theological reflection that will replace but not negate the viewpoint of the past eighteen hundred years or so...

...Previous ages of humans had, of course, known that there was a sequence of human happenings that one called "history...

...There is at stake the very sacramentality of the church: the church of Christ is meant to be a light, a sign that truth need never be feared, a community whose life manifests a loving openness to a variety of gifts and insights...

...Now, after finding direction in the post-conciliar years from theologians such as Schillebeeckx, they read the charges made against "the new theology" (for example, against Schillebeeckx's christology) and are uncertain what is considered dangerous or misleading...

...Many are justifiably concerned about such talk of relativity in human knowledge and in formulations of Christian faith, particularly when it touches ethical reflection, because the notion of relativity in moral thinking seems to leave each person to his or her devices and to threaten the very moral fabric of society...

...and the religious outlook of both Old and New Testament literature had been distinguished by its linear historical view...

...it is an attempt systematically to recognize and overcome error...

...But there are other unsettling aspects to modern historical consciousness...

...Our faith must involve more personal decision, therefore more risk and more commitment of our individual and corporate freedom...

...Have progressive theologians really gone too far and drifted into heresy...

...then we cannot deny to him in his days in Galilee and Judea the limitations and uncertainties and development of consciousness that are intrinsic to being human...

...SCHILLEBEECKX, & TRUE OBEDIENCE The responsibility of theologians BERNARD J. COOKE VATICAN II has left us a number of guidelines, none clearer than that all members of the church bear responsibility for the well-being of the Christian community—for we are the church...

...its view of human history is characteristically eschatological, i.e., it sees history as progressing under divine guidance toward a goal that will surpass our present situation of human existing...

...Theologians are meant to explore in depth God's revelation in Jesus...

...Given the immense difficulties human thought faces when it attempts to think about the divine, what meaning is contained in a term such as "the Son of God...

...The problem with this' 'solution'' is that it would be false...

...Well, for one thing, modern thought is characteristically critical...

...but it has been historians (Christian and non-Christian), not theologians, who have raised them—and inevitably, because of humanity's increasing historical awareness...

...And we tended to think the same about some of the institutions of the church, such as the episcopacy...

...No one agency alone is able to provide the kind of direction the present moment requires, not the papacy as focus of episcopal witness, not the worldwide episcopacy, not theologians, not charismatic individuals—for the Spirit is given to the entire community...

...The only hope of a genuine response to the situation lies in a widespread development of mature conscience among Christians (and others) and the nurturing of an ethical wisdom within society through continuing public discourse on relevant moral issues...

...It is a humble admission of human inability to know even created 1 February 1980: 39 reality comprehensively...

...What exactly is going on...

...But when we move out beyond this core reality to which the papacy and episcopacy witness, when we move to questions about the meaning and applicability of Christ's death and resurrection, other kinds of knowledge and experience enter the picture, and one has authority to speak in proportion to the knowledge and experience he or she has...

...What is happening in the intellectual life of the church is frightening, if one does not understand it: a basic shift is occurring in human consciousness in general and therefore in Christians' understanding of their faith...

...Their plea to the pope and the bishops is quite simple: Can we not love and trust one another enough, so that we can speak fearlessly and candidly to one another, listen carefully to one another, and so together provide that kind of guidance that the church and the world so sorely need at this moment...

...Today Catholic theologians, because of more careful examination of the New Testament— that means a more careful look at the way Jesus thought of himself and the way in which Jesus's earliest disciples thought of him—no longer repeat statements that seemed to glorify Jesus but actually obscured the revelation that he was and is...

...There is no turning the clock backward, no way to stop the future from happening...

...about the concrete situation in which doctrinal formulations of church councils and popes and bishops and theologians were made (How free, for example, were the bishops at Vatican I Commonweal: 40 when they agreed to papal infallibility...

...We had considered them unalterable, adequate as formulations of faith for all future generations...

...Commonweal: 42...

...Their reason for this plea is not simply to protect fellow-theologians who, at least to all appearances, are being treated unjustly...

...a recognition that any given moment of human experience is conditioned by all the factors that make up that moment, and must be understood in relation to all those factors...

...It might be safer for Catholic theologians to say nothing at the present moment, to let the "heresy trials" being carried on by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith proceed unchallenged...

...Aware of the delicacy and importance of this whole affair, many groups of theologians are asking for a public, high-level airing of the entire matter, instead of the secret and disturbing methods now being employed...

...But why does this present-day development in human consciousness seem to some in the church to be such a grave threat...

...Truth cannot be legislated, even by one who has the highest legitimate official authority in the church...

...Neither faith nor grace nor freedom is cheap in today's world...

...The fact that this procedure continues after Vatican II does not necessarily mean that there is ill will or stubborn clinging to power on the part of Vatican officials...

...how exact is our understanding of the world, even of ourselves—to say nothing of our understanding of God...

...theologians can tolerate error and inadequate understandings no more than scholars in other fields...

...Increasingly such critical study has moved toward the very center of Christian faith: to Jesus as the Christ...

...Really, there seems to be serious confusion about the role of theologians in the church and an even more basic confusion regarding the kind of authority that is appropriate to the church in its ministry of teaching...

...one can communicate truth only if one possesses truth...

...Many of us are deeply concerned that the present mood of the Vatican seems opposed to this: instead of open conversation, frank and careful debate on matters that are of deepest concern to all of us, matters about which all of us have much to learn, the Congregation is operating in the inquisitorial mode, holding secret investigations in which the interested parties are not even allowed to have input...

...BUT WOULDN'T it be better for the church at this present disturbed time, if theologians were simply to submit, be silent, loyal and obedient, painful as that might be...

...What is needed—and has been needed for many years—is open and careful discussion that includes all the responsible voices in the church...

...And here we must say quite clearly that the possession of jurisdictional authority (i.e., the authority attached to office) does not of itself give one authority in either theology or teaching...

...Yet, one of the paradoxes of the Roman Catholic church in the twentieth century is the fact that when theologians have tried to fulfill this God-given ministry within the church, they have repeatedly been criticized and even condemned by the highest levels of church authority...

...But to do this would be irresponsible...

...Responsibilities are, of course diverse, depending on the situation of each Christian...

...The basic question is not: "Does the pope (or a bishop) have authority that obedient Catholics must recognize...

...No happening, and therefore no statement, can be considered absolute...

...Official criticism of Ku'ng and Schillebeeckx and Schoonenberg has often been directed more at what they did not say than at precise statements they did make...

...truth must be discovered...

...Yet, somehow over the past centuries there crept into Christian belief about Jesus some denial of Jesus's full humanity—we did not think we should admit that he had doubts, that he could make mistakes, that he was uncertain about the course the future would take, that he was integrally sexual and emotionally passionate as we are, that he grew in his own selfidentification, that he was limited in his human knowledge and conditioned as we all are by the language and culture and historical situation that were his...

...Thus, Catholic theologians are attempting to answer yet more clearly and deeply the question first posed by Jesus himself, the question with which Christian faith must always be concerned: "Who do you say that I am...

...We need to devise structures by which the bishops' collegial witness to apostolic tradition can openly interact with the reflection and research of scholars and both can be challenged by the life experience of devoted Christians...

...FOR ALMOST a century this critical approach to knowledge has had its impact on Catholic theology...

...It involves the recognition that all human existing is existing in history, i.e., in a process of unavoidable and irreversible change...

...The day when responsibility for the peace and life of the church could be shunted off onto church officials is long over—it should never have been...

...Theologians may not in conscience abandon this charismatic role...

...What this has meant for Christian thought and life is that we have quite recently raised questions about the actual historical realities of Jesus's life (What was Jesus really like...

...and this is precisely the confusion of the present moment—there are conflicting views within the church, with theological and official leadership seemingly at odds...

...The only ground for legitimate authority in teaching is accurate understanding...

...and no theological opinion that denies this central truth can be considered genuinely Catholic...

...Understandably, many Catholics (and others also) are confused: a decade or two ago they saw scholars like Murray, de Lubac, Congar, Rahner, Teilhard—to say nothing of a wide range of Catholic biblical scholars—officially silenced or removed from teaching, shortly thereafter to become the guiding intellectual influence at Vatican II...

...Or in "Incarnation...

...Modern theology accepts such statements as intrinsic to Christian tradition...

...Certainly, many bishops and many in the Vatican do not accept the role for theologians that we mentioned earlier: namely, one of exploring for new insights and leading the church to clearer and deeper understandings...

...Every Christian is bound to witness to the true God, the true Jesus Christ, the true Gospel—one cannot be asked to do otherwise, and to do so would be the betrayal of one's faith...

...Very understandably, some people who had linked belief in Jesus's divine identity to certain characteristics like inerrancy that they attributed to the historical Jesus now feel that theologians' denial of such characteristics threatens Christian belief in Jesus as the Son of God...

...For centuries, we had been saying many things about Jesus—that he was the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, true God and true man, the savior of the human race...

...In this situation it would be a mistake to look for one all-sufficient guide...

...Theologians, for instance, have the particular task of studying the nature and meaning of Christianity, in order to make ever more accurate the church's understanding of its faith...

...it may point to the absolute, it may be grounded in certain absolutes...

...Instead, these church officials feel that theologians' principal function is to defend and justify what they (i.e., church officials) have decided is to be said...

...Theologians who love the church, who cherish their Catholic traditions, do not wish their church to give even the impression of fearing the discovery of truth...

...it would / February 1980: 41 be neither obedience nor loyalty...

...Such submission might be any one of several things—charity, or cowardice, or pragmatic capitulation in order to keep on serving the church...

...TO MAKE a long story short, we Catholics today are faced with the need to believe in the midst of less certainty than we thought we had...

...Actually, the ultimate importance of the knowledge with which they are dealing demands of them even greater care...

...How did church structures, such as the episcopacy, actually come into existence...

...In all fields of knowledge scholars ask: how certain are we of what we know...

...Yet, it remained for the past couple of hundred years to lay stress on the historical aspect of human life, to be concerned about "what actually happened" at earlier points in the human odyssey on this earth, to accept development and even evolution of the human race...

...And today that means that Catholic theologians may not avoid the real questions that are being asked about Jesus's identity and role, questions that have taken on new shape and new urgency, not only because of the advance of critical knowledge in Western consciousness, but also because of our Western world's exposure to the true depth and insight of other great world religions such as Buddhism and Islam...

...We need guidance, now more than ever before...

...What did he actually say...

...If Jesus was truly human in his historical life, genuinely human as we are...

...but what do such statements mean...

...More precisely, if a theologian knows that the claims of an ecclesiastical judge go beyond his legitimate authority, to submit to this judge is not obedience...

...IF MODERN THOUGHT has been distinguished by its critical attitude toward knowledge, it has been equally marked by its consciousness of history...