In September, 2018, I gave a lecture to a conference for «Young Theologians» in Washington DC. Conferences of this kind are held every few years, sponsored by the Doctrine Committee of the USCCB, as part of an ongoing effort to encourage conversation and dialogue between bishops and theologians for the good of the Church. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to participate in the conversations engendered during the conference. There is such a great richness of thought and experience in many of our younger theologians, so many of them articulate lay voices in the Church today. The topic in general on that occasion was loosely entitled «Connecting the Disconnects» in theological education. My contribution aimed at focusing our attention for a while on the importance of recovering the vison of Dei Verbum and the centrality of Scripture in the life of the Church. And I am particularly grateful to Doctor John Cavadini, Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, for his work in organizing the conference, and for his early suggestions to me about the importance of this topic.
Dei Verbum: Christ, Scripture and the Life of the Church
+Daniel E. Flores, STD
Bishop of Brownsville in Texas
Part of our moment, I think, is a searing reminder to us all that in some mysterious sense, we never live in ordinary times. We kid ourselves into what Pope Francis once called the “grey pragmatism of the daily life of the Church”, that the Holy Father, quoting Bernanos, then described as “the most precious of the devil’s potions”.[1] The Church in the world is more like Bernanos’ descriptions in The Impostor than even Greene’s simple Whiskey Priest. The battle between grace and sin goes on every day more on the scale of Benson’s Lord of the World than in the form of Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday. There are elements of Apocalypse Chapter 12 that are operative in history, have been and will be until the final consummation of all things. We have been for too long content with programs and policies, as if by themselves they can keep the ship afloat. Oh, the ship will remain afloat and will be righted, and God’s inscrutable providence will not be frustrated, but it will not be because we figured out the right formula. The Lord would have us be conformed to the charity of his poor Crucified Son, even if it kills us: I admire thee, master of the tides, […] Ground of all being, and granite of it: past all / Grasp God, throned behind / Death with a sovereignty that / heeds but hides, bodes but abides; […].[2]
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This lecture is based on the conviction that if we do not sustain an effort to get the connections right between Christ himself, the Scriptural Tradition and the life of the Church, all of our efforts aimed towards the renewal of Church life and theology ultimately fail.
1. “The work of at least another whole generation”
From Dei Verbum 12:
«For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another. But, since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out.[3]»
Theologians hold an office. St Thomas used the language of his day in what I still consider the noblest description of your office: Magistri Sacrae Paginae, Masters of the Sacred Page, Teachers of Sacred Scripture. If the University teaching of theology in Thomas’ time recognized the magistri as canonically missioned by the Church, it was because they were understood to be at the service of the same ends evidenced in Scripture itself, pursued by the preaching and teaching office of the bishops, and at the service of the whole Church. St Thomas says this in his commentary on the Sentences:
«To teach Sacred Scripture happens in two ways. One from the office of prelates, like those who preach and teach,… the other way is from the office of Magister, like the masters of theology teach,.. the aim of those who teach Sacred Scripture is the same aim as those who brought forth Sacred Scripture; hence, since the publication of sacred Scripture was ordered to this, that man might attain to eternal life, as is clear from John 10, whoever impedes the end of this doctrine, sins by teaching.[4]»
I like this exemplary passage because Thomas articulates a deep part of the common tradition. The exposition of Scripture either by the ordained or by the teachers of theology shares in the aims and ends of the Scriptural authors themselves. This element of the Tradition was repeated forcefully in Dei Verbum when it speaks of Scripture being interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written. In some ways this phrase from Dei Verbum seemed remarkable at the time. Ignace de la Potterie puts it this way:
«Certainly, even the Constitution Dei Verbum says that «due attention must be paid both to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer» (DV 12:2). But this affirmation is immediately followed by a truly novel paragraph on the ecclesial interpretation of Sacred Scripture «in the sacred Spirit in which it was written» (DV 12:3); strangely enough, after the Council, this remained a dead letter.[5]»
The formulation in Dei Verbum 12 may be described as novel in that it unites the contemporary problematic of the critical appraisal of the sacred writers’ historical setting together with the notion that teaching Scripture necessarily involves participation in the Spirit that inspired its composition. But the latter point is as traditional a theological given as you will find. Thomas is a spokesman for the tradition; De Lubac can give us countless other pre-critical citations from the tradition. De la Potterie’s contention that the pre-critical datum of the tradition emerged from the Council without much attention in a certain way helps frame the circumstance I wish to address.
Cardinal Ratzinger’s critical appraisal of the state of Scriptural exegesis in his 1988 lecture on Biblical interpretation in Conflict remains a pivotal and fruitful post-Conciliar theological text.[6] You’ve probably read it, or if you haven’t I hope you soon will. Still, it might be useful to recall a few things Ratzinger said in the 1988 lecture.
First, he notes the bleakness of the disconnect between Scripture and dogma:
«The negative side of what has happened consists in the fact that the gap between exegesis and dogma has become complete now among Catholics, too. Scripture has become for them so many words from the past; everyone tries to transport to the present in his own way, without being able to put too much faith in the raft he is relying on to do the job. Faith sinks to the level of a sort of philosophy of life that the individual tries to distill from the Bible as best he can. Dogma, now deprived of grounding in Scripture, no longer holds. The Bible, detached from dogma, has become a record of past events that therefore itself belongs to the past.[7]»
Ratzinger’s point about the separation of dogma and Scripture speaks for itself. It is useful to note that he uses the word dogma here, which testifies to the cascading bifurcations of theological disciplines since the Counter-Reformation. The diversification of theological disciplines and courses is a dominant feature of post-Tridentine, baroque, modern and contemporary theology. This is a great part of our reality today. How to link specialized areas of study like theological bioethics or theological appraisals of a neo-liberal social and economic order with the Scriptural revelation would require a whole series of lectures by a series of specialists. I am not such a specialist. Thomas, though reminds us of an older way; he would rather us speak of Sacred Doctrine as a wider term naming the whole tradition of teaching that flows from Scripture read in the Church. Thomas, in fact, practically equates Sacred Doctrine with Sacred Scripture itself, (Sacra Scriptura seu doctrina) testifying to the close identification with which the patristic and medieval tradition understood the living voice of the Church and the Sacred Scripture itself.[8]
A little later, the future pope goes on to restate the dilemma, cautioning us against withdrawing our efforts to the mere repetition of pre-critical perspectives:
«[Exegesis] also cannot withdraw to the Middle Ages or the Fathers and use them as a shield against the spirit of modernity. That said, it also cannot take the opposite tack of dispensing with the insights of the great believers of all ages and of acting as if the history of thought begins in earnest only with Kant. In my judgment, the recent discussion surrounding the problem of biblical hermeneutics suffers to a large extent from this restricted horizon. One does not dispose of patristic exegesis simply by labeling it «allegorical,» nor can one set aside the philosophy of the Middle Ages by classifying it as «pre-critical.»[9]»
Dei Verbum quite clearly wanted to shepherd bishops and theologians and theology as a whole toward a recovery of the primacy of the revealed Word in the Church in a way that both transmits the pre-Enlightenment depth of theological exposition, and integrates the varied tools of critical textual analysis. But as many of us know by experience and as many great post-Conciliar minds have observed, we are yet far from that. Again, from the 1988 Ratzinger lecture:
«[…] hardly anyone is likely to affirm that we are already ready in possession of a convincing master idea that would do justice to the irrevocable insights of the historical method, while at the same time overcoming its limitations and opening it up to an appropriate hermeneutics. The achievement of this goal still requires the work of at least another whole generation.[10]»
2. A Direct yet Mediated Word
De facto, we teach by saying something like “in Matthew’s account of Christ tempted in the desert, etc.” Or we say “the Johannine theology of Logos and flesh suggests, etc.” Both examples may be followed with expressive statements that are quite true critically speaking and quite Catholic, theologically speaking. Yet, the teacher, and certainly the preacher desires ultimately to say something more than “Matthew tells us”. And the Church’s preaching tradition certainly insists on saying more. This is a given of Tradition. Matthew, John, the Church, and the contemporary preacher need to be able to say with the conviction of faith: It is the Lord Himself who asks, who teaches, who reprimands, cajoles and heals. Without this capacity to hear the Lord speak his word directly, without this voice that is in the Church but not of her making, we are denied the grace of prophetic announcement and of authoritative self-critique.[11]
Theologically we must speak of the Word of the Lord as both directly from him yet mediated through Scripture, the Tradition of faith, and the contemporary teaching voice of the Church. This is a problem for us today, because the dominant metaphysics of knowing sees direct speaking and mediated speaking as mutually exclusive. Theologically, I think a Catholic must affirm that mediated direct address is possible; how to account for its manifestation is another matter.[12]
If as Thomas taught and Dei Verbum insists, the expositor shares in the Spirit of the sacred authors of Scripture than surely this must include the graced ability to say: It is the Lord who speaks. If we cannot say this, we may speak with learned authority, but we do not speak with the authority of Christ.[13] It is Christ who changes people by the impact of his Word and presence. Teachers in the Church either aim to be transparent to this direct address or we labor in vain.
We have, it seems to me, reduced most all of our disputations about Christian faith and life to ecclesiology. Sooner or later a teaching about the Eucharistic sacrifice as constitutive of the Church Jesus established, or about immigration, or the death penalty is distilled into a dispute about what level of ecclesiastical authority proposes the teaching. A self-referential Church is not only a Church focused on itself, it is also a Church that cannot, for the most part, remember how to talk more about Christ than about herself, even when discussing outward looking issues. We do not even realize the dimensions of our own reductionism, which, paradoxically, are enormous in their narrowness.
The profound disconnect in practice between our customary ways of citing Scripture as authoritative and our conviction that it is the Lord whose voice is heard through the text is in large part responsible for what Ratzinger described as everyone trying to transport Scripture to the present in his own way, “without being able to put too much faith in the raft he is relying on to do the job.”
This, then, is part of our theological muddle today. We have forgotten how to express with confidence the Church’s Scriptural access to the person of Christ Himself. This is a wide, varied and deep problem that has been with us for a while. Scripture is no longer expected to be transparent to a presence in a way analogous to the Sacrament. Yet, the Tradition does hear a Voice speak directly from the Scriptural text, it is a kind of sacramentally mediated presence. Surely not in the same way as the preeminent Eucharistic presence, but an efficacious sign nonetheless, through which we attain to knowing WORD himself, and not another.
Scripture is truly expressive for the same reasons the Eucharistic sacrifice is truly expressive. The WORD, after all, is known personally and most perfectly in the Incarnation; expresse se manifestavit, St Thomas says in his commentary on Hebrews 1.[14] This is to affirm that the direct address of the Eternal WORD is necessarily mediated through the humanity of Christ. Human nature, as it were, united to the Person of the WORD becomes an expressive word itself, transparent to the Wisdom interior to the Godhead. The human words of the WORD are themselves physical signs expressive of his person, which is itself mediated to us through his enfleshed existence.[15]
I want to pull this notion of Christ’s mediated immediacy together in some way by referring to a novel entitled La Confesión by Javier Sicilia, a Mexican poet/novelist/human rights activist. In it he describes the mystery of the poverty of the WORD made flesh. The novel itself is a devastating critique of the ecclesiastical culture within which the Maciel disaster was embedded. Early in the novel a fairly impractical, not to say useless priest, exiled to a poor mountain village in central Mexico, is having an interview with his fairly powerful Cardinal Archbishop. No one reading in Mexico would doubt the realism of the dialogue between poverty and power in the Church. Javier Sicilia’s vision of the poverty and powerlessness of Christ permeates the novel and is here encapsulated in this fragment. It picks up with the priest speaking quietly while the Cardinal sips a tequila. My translation cannot do justice to the beauty of this passage.
«Do you know what amazes me [Eminence] about the Incarnation? I continued, that it is altogether contrary to the modern world: the presence of the infinite in the limits of the flesh, and the fight, the fight with no quarter, against the temptations of the devil’s excesses. You do not know how much I have meditated on the temptations in the desert. “Take up the power”, the devil told him; that power that gives the illusion of being able to disrupt and dominate everything. But he maintained himself in the limits of his own flesh, in his own poverty, in his own death, so poor, so miserable, so hard. Our age, nevertheless, showing a face of enormous kindness, has succumbed to those temptations. “They will be like gods, they will change the stones into bread, and they will dominate the world”… to such an age we have handed over the Christ, and we do not even realize it.[16]»
Much later in the novel, the miserable priest is visiting with an elderly religious sister with whom he shares an abiding friendship. Here it is not so much the dialogue between poverty and power as it is the dialogue between poverty and the anguished preacher. This passage focuses on the denigration of the poor, and thus the denigration of the Christ. Father hears Sister utter the following:
«If misery exists, Father, and the statistics do not lie, it is because the dream of the rich has contaminated the dreams of the poor. At the bottom of things, poverty no longer exists, dear Father. The only thing that exists is wealth and misery, … Do you know why? I know well that you know … Because they have been made to believe that their poverty is a shameful disease, a wound unworthy of the world. Never before has humanity, and here, excuse me, Father, I also included our Holy Mother Church, spit so much on the face of Christ, as if his poverty were a filth, that unclean filth that they hung from the cross and which we, as did his detractors, make fun of.[17]»
These passages are deeply Scriptural, with a lively sense of the nearness of Christ in his poverty and powerlessness to us today. The Scriptural episode of Christ in the desert, tempted by the devil, acts as a mirror to the mystery of the Incarnation as a whole, and the brutality of the Cross in particular. Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery are the principal lights through which Christ’s particular words and deeds are interpreted. Now this is a very Catholic way of reading Christ, that is to say, of providing access to the identity and mission of WORD made flesh himself.[18] The contemplative apprehension of the meaning of the particular accounts of the Lord’s life contained in the Gospels is enveloped, so to speak, in the intense intelligibility of the Incarnation and Passion of the Lord.
The immediacy of the references to the Lord, in both the conversation with the Cardinal and to the elderly Religious Sister, presumes a transparent movement from the Christ of Scripture, the Christ of the Church, the Christ present today in our midst. A radically realist Johannine Christology, (God really did become flesh), and a fierce defense of his identification with the poor undergirds this passage scripturally. It is the Lord who speaks to us directly: what you did not do for the least, you did not do for me. Yet, these passages are a mediation of that direct address.
There is a difference between a naïve understanding of Scriptural composition and the profound attitude of faith that takes the Gospels as coherently expressive, giving us intelligible access to the voice of the Lord Himself.[19] To confess that it is part of the faith of the Church that Christ speaks directly through the Scriptures yet in a manner mediated by human authors is an important thing to reflect upon theologically. Yet, to begin to account for how this happens is a subtly difficult question.
3. CHRIST in History
St Leo the Great, On the Beatitudes:
«And so it was that he who had spoken to Moses spoke also to the apostles. Writing in the hearts of his disciples, the swift hand of the Word composed the ordinances of the new covenant.[20]»
The tale of Scriptural exposition since the development of the critical methods is rather complex. It is fair to say, though, that we have been on the defensive about Catholic approaches to Scripture for quite some time now.[21] Theologians and magisterium alike have been searching for ways to defend the reliability of Scripture and the Gospels in particular. Sometimes we have labored from within the historicist frame, unaware of the limitations imposed by “today’s regnant plausibility structure”.[22] Klemens Stock, the Jesuit biblicist, puts the matter more succinctly and with greater authority than I could in the following remarkable passage:
«Our fundamental desideratum is to know Jesus as he really is in the integrity of his person. Now, it is widely believed that, in order to do so, we have to read the gospels against the grain. The gospels are used as quarries. Jesus and his deeds are extracted from them in their pure form, or at least that is the intention. The very thing that the gospels do not give us we must laboriously, if only fragmentarily, retrieve from them: «the audio and video recordings,» the «stenographic transcripts» of Jesus in action, now «freed» from the perspective of the gospel writers. These, so it seems, are what is indispensable for getting at the real Jesus. The question arises whether these «audio and video recordings» – even supposing that it is possible to reconstruct with a certain probability sufficiently long segments free from background noise and distortion – are indeed the best way to get at the real Jesus.[23]»
Jean Luc Marion, certainly Ratzinger himself, Klemens Stock, and to a certain extent even Rene Girard point us toward a less defensive position with respect to post-Enlightenment historicist hermeneutics.[24] Each in their own way argue for a more robust stance that takes its instruction from the phenomenon itself. As Cardinal Ratizinger stated it in 1988:
«[The exegete] must not rule out a priori the possibility that God can speak in his own voice in the world using human words; he must not rule out the possibility that God can work in history and enter into it without ceasing to be himself, however improbable this might appear. He must be ready to take instruction from the phenomenon.[25]»
For our purposes I would like to focus on Stock’s contribution to this approach that seeks instruction from the phenomena itself:
«Do not the gospels, […] correspond much better to the whole character of how Jesus actually acted and what he actually intended? It is clear that the gospels are not stenographic reports. […] But Jesus did gather a circle of disciples, who accompanied him on all his journeys and were under the constant influence of his person. The real Jesus is never isolated and alone. Rather, he always lives in communion with his disciples. He does not want literal exactness. What he wants is for these living men to understand him and to be shaped by him. […] Generally speaking, words and deeds are not the only things that come from a person and give us a glimpse into who he is. […] The impression and understanding grounded in this real, and not merely verbal, communication sometimes are not, and cannot be, formulated either at the moment of encountering this person or during the period of immediate communion with him, but become clarified only with time -and, despite this time lapse, still find a valid, truthful verbal expression. Jesus, then, is inseparable from the disciples.[26]»
Historical reliability is a human phenomenon wider than YouTube recorded accuracy. It is more true to human history and culture in its near infinite varieties to locate the ground of history in the human relation that is the basis of communication. This is to say, in the transmission of understanding not simply understood as the transmission of transcripted words, but in the transmission of human impact and interiorization. Put simply, human history is impossible without prior human communication, and communication is the experience of human apprehension of persons who say and do things. Perhaps our way forward is focused not on Scripture’s stenographic exactness, but rather on understanding the form of its transparency to Christ.
Within the New Testament the form of this transparency is inseparable from the phenomenon of the Spirit poured-out to facilitate the apprehension of the person of Christ. This gift described in Scripture itself opens us to a properly theological phenomenon. Luke in particular goes to great lengths to associate the ecclesial reading of Scripture as a gift from the Risen Christ: He said to them, «These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.» Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.[27]
For us, though, it is important to appreciate that the gift of the Spirit is embedded in the human phenomenon of personal communion as the basis for communication, and in the expressed desire of Jesus himself to throw all of his pedagogical intent into the forming of persons in his company and not in the composition of a text.[28] The text, he no doubt knew, was going to be produced in time, but that would be the work of those whom he impacted. The impact, ultimately rooted in Trinitarian missions, is the prior reality: the Son manifested in the flesh, the Spirit enlightening the apprehension of the Son and conforming the human will to him by charity.
Put another way, what if God knows that the only way we can know him as he is, is through his relation with those who have known him, for the simple reason that God in himself is Unity in relation? If that is anywhere near the case, than the phenomenon of the formation of the New Testament itself witnessed to the Trinitarian economy, and is aimed at gathering a people into relation with the God who is Trinitarian relationality.
In this light, the formation of the New Testament is ordered to a mediated immediacy. The text of the New Testament witnesses to what the impacted apprehended, and the aim of reading the New Testament is perception of the One impacting. The perception is based on understanding the text as offering a mirror into the human authors precisely as impacted by Christ. They reflect Christ before their written words do; and their written words serve to open us to the phenomenon of Christ operative in them. But in the end, it is the Christ they knew that we wish to know. It is not enough to know Matthew or John or Paul.
There is a post-modern theological freedom to this way of appreciating the purposes of Scripture, because it situates the text as fruit of personal impact; the text has no authority apart from that relation to the Son’s engagement with his disciples, and the Spirit’s gift of guiding their apprehension over time, and our apprehension of the One they knew. This is a pedagogy of grace suitable to the way people teach and learn. This perspective on history and textual rootedness in prior human relationality actually frees many a non-theologian from an inhuman hermeneutic. Personal engagement of the teacher is the prior condition that makes it possible for the learner to teach another. This is the stuff of which history is made. It is always mediated. If we are to teach Scripture, though, we must ask for a share of the Spirit that informed those who composed it.
It should be noted that the modern impulse to know Jesus in isolation from those who knew him is a reflection of a wider anthropological move in modernity to understand the person first as an individual and discrete entity whose relations to other persons may initially be biologically necessary, but are not necessary to account for the person as person. The Gospels, therefore, in the way Stock and others describe them, propose an alternative anthropology, one that does not begin with a hostile view towards the claims and implications of human relation.
What then, becomes of the historical-critical apparatus? Well, certainly it is at the service of discerning what these persons impacted by the Person of Christ intended to tell us about him. That is not always an easy task, given the fact that our habits of reading are not usually attuned to what an ancient person wants to say through the text they wrote.[29] For us, the importance of this kind of approach lies in its freeing us from a defensive posture before the exegetical menace of approaching the Scriptural texts as somehow reliable only to the extent we can recover what Jesus was about prior to or apart from his relational impact on those around him. Quite the opposite is true.
This approach is not out of sync with the pre-critical testimony of Irenaeus who located the discipleship of the barbarians in the fact that they, though illiterate and unable to read the Scriptures, did in fact know Christ through the impact of the preaching and catechetical work of the Church, and the gift of the Spirit. Nor does this theological path upend the elegant line from Saint Leo the Great with which I began this section. And, Thomas’s insistence that the New Testament is first of all the Gift of the Spirit, and only secondarily a written text, is part of this tradition. [30]
4. CHRIST in Figure and the Figure in CHRIST
In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, entitled “Darmok” Picard encounters the Temarians, a people who communicate only by making reference to landmark events engrained in their historical memory.[31] “Shaka, when the walls fell”, evokes a tragic loss, which then serves to situate in the mind of the hearer to how the speaker understands the present moment. “Temba, his arms wide”, signifies the giving of a gift. It takes Picard and the crew an hour episode to figure out how this language works, but the moment of understanding (“Sokath, his eyes uncovered”) comes too late to save Picard’s interlocutor, Dathon, from a heroic death (“Kailash, when it rises”). Still, a sort of breakthrough occurs (“Darmok and Jalad on the ocean»), so the sacrifice is not in vain. Obviously, if you don’t know the history, the references to foundational events, you don’t know the language, and you won’t understand the present moment. Not surprisingly, there is a fair amount of internet commentary, some of it good, some of it just weird, on the significance of this episode. I have found little or no reference to its similarity to the Scriptural tradition of figurative understanding. That, though, is where my mind immediately went the first time I saw the episode.
Figuration is an essential element within the Scriptural tradition, and in the Catholic tradition of Scriptural interpretation. Part of our problem is we have confused the theological category of figuration with the more ambiguous notion of allegory. Further, we read the Fathers without always perceiving the theological intuitions that guided them. History is about things that happen, and human history is about how peoples understand things that happen. In human matters, event and Word are inseparable. Even if we encounter events that are initially unintelligible, that in itself is a way of understanding them.
Figuration is built into the Scriptural self-understanding. It concerns events that are intelligible in light of other events. “Moses, with his arms upheld”; “Israel, with unmoistened foot”; “As at Meribah, when they hardened their hearts”. The Old Testament itself depends on these kinds of historical invocations in order to understand its later historical moments. In the last books of the Old Testament, the invocation of the Exodus event in remarkably nuanced ways both interpret the later moments of Israel’s history, and expand Israel’s perception of the meaning of Israel’s foundational historical event. Later events are figured in the foundational event.
Insofar as the Scriptural books are concerned, the dynamic invocation of the history through subsequent figurative readings all happens under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Or, in what amounts to the same thing, the WORD, who authored the first Word-Event, guides the later prophetic tradition to its figurative amplifications. One notes the variety of ways Scripture interprets itself by invoking its foundational history. These internal differences need not be read as competitive; they do witness to a super-intelligibiliy present in the founding. A unified super-intelligible requires a multiplicity if explications.
St Thomas’ commentary on the Psalms provides some help here. For Thomas, most of the Psalms are primarily about what the psalmist was going through, that is to say, they are historically situated in Israel’s history. Thomas respects that and shows remarkable dexterity in locating, or in wanting to locate, the historical references to anything from the Exodus, to troubles with Absalom, thanksgiving for victory in battle, to psalms composed to accompany cultic worship, etc. After locating the history, he then goes on to read those events as prefiguring something having to do with Christ. This is not an exercise in seeking out fanciful allegories; rather it is rooted in the theological conviction that Israel’s history was governed by a special providence, a grace that orders its signification in a way that is anticipatory of the final revelation of God’s historical intent in Christ. Old Testament self-understanding vía the Exodus figurations is thus also anticipatory figuration of Christ’s coming. This is perfectly legitimate, and serves as the basis for a Christian reading of the psalms that respects the history of the psalmists. Figuration, in this tradition, (and here I must insist Thomas is very traditional) is rooted in history, not in words; in events understood a certain way, not in poetic allusions.
Comes now Thomas’ notes on Psalm 21. Somewhere in his thirsty pursuit of Greek texts translated into Latin, St Thomas encountered the decrees of the Second Council of Constantinople (553), and it’s condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia.[32] Both in the prologue to his commentary on the Psalms and in his exposition of Psalm 21, Thomas explicitly cites the Council as having condemned Theodore for denying that the Old Testament prophets ever spoke literally of Christ. Thomas never uses the word heresy lightly, but he applies it to Theodore’s reported teaching. It is another question whether Theodore of Mopsuestia actually taught this. Thomas thinks that Constantinople II judges he did, and that such a teaching is a grave error.
This helps to account for the fact that in his commentary on Psalm 21, Thomas makes a fierce turn and makes a crucial distinction. [33] He insists that the literal sense of the psalm refers to Christ’s passion. The history narrated in the Psalm is not about David, it is about Christ. This is its literal sense. On this reading, David (the psalmist) has a visionary perception of the Passion, and wrote of it. The psalmists own sufferings are secondarily referenced in the psalm, but only to the extent they are figured in Christ’s sufferings. David saw himself in Christ; he did not see Christ in himself. Now, you may think this is a distinction without a difference. But in fact, it sustains a whole theological understanding of spiritual progress. It is more perfect to see oneself figured in Christ than it is to see Christ figured in oneself. This is because Christ is the supreme locus of intelligibility, and I understand myself better if I see myself figured in him. This is the distinction Thomas wishes at all costs to preserve: Israel’s history pre-figures New Testament events, yet the prophets had moments of vision that saw the manifestation of the Christ, and read their contemporary events as figured within the history of Christ.
Now then, after the full revelation of Christ’s historical appearance, the Church has access to the aim of history. Hence, all the faithful now have the capacity by spiritual instinct and knowledge of the Gospel to see themselves in Christ. This, together with the gift of the Spirit guiding our reception of the history of Christ, is what is new about the New Testament revelation. And this is why the Fathers of the Church, following Saint Paul call the definitive revelation in Christ an “unveiling”. What is unveiled? The aim of human living and all of history. This is a datum in the tradition which witnesses to what Ratzinger called the laying bare of the intelligibility of history by the revelation of its end in Christ.[34] For us who live after the foundational events of the Christian revelation, the figurations are clearer, though not perfectly so. Many enigmas of Scripture remain. [35]
Thus the transparency of the ecclesial tradition of reading Scripture to the Eucharistic sacrifice emerges from the salvific economy. The re-presentation of the founding Word-event after the reading of the Scriptures is an unveiling of the fundamental ratio through which the Scriptures of both Testaments are understood. In the intensity of the sacrifice, all things are figured. The Eucharist itself is the paramount mediated immediacy available to us, following as it does the logic of the Incarnation of the WORD. Christian theology breathes of figuration or it dies. And the root of all figurative meaning is the Gospel history of Christ. The Christological truth revealed in Scripture and enacted in the Eucharistic intervention is the basis for all subsequent figurative readings.
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During these last weeks my Scriptural meditations have spontaneously turned to the Lamentations of Jeremiah: “Bitterly she weeps at night, tears upon her cheeks, With not one to console her of all her dear ones; Her friends have all betrayed her and become her enemies.” (Lam 1, 2). But as a Catholic I cannot weep the wound of the Virgin Daughter Zion without seeing her suffering figured in the concrete historical suffering of the Virgin Mother of God following the destiny of her poor, Crucified Son. And further, I cannot contemplate the wounds of the Church apart from seeing them figured in the bloody birth of the Church figured in Mary at the foot of the Cross. Immaculate honor of our race, she is also the recipient of the flowing blood and water, and in her is figured the whole People of God who in anguish attain to the Kingdom. The Church’s moments, our moments, are figured in him, and in her insofar as she is the Church born from his side. But not just us, so also the wounded, the abused, the poor, the immigrant with no place to lay his head, the death row inmate, the least of the discarded unborn. If we cannot see ourselves and others, and all our moments together in Christ, we should probably not be writing or teaching or preaching at all. We would have nothing to say because we will have seen but not understood: The Virgin Daughter of Israel, alone with none to console her.
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NOTES:
[1] Evangelii Gaudium, no 83.
[2] Hopkins, Wreck of the Deutschland.
[3] Dei Verbum 12, around which this lecture revolves is here given in full: «However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words. To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to «literary forms.» For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another. But, since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God.»
[4] In IV Sententiarum, d. 19, q. 2, a. 2b, ad 4: […] docere Sacram Scripturam dupliciter contingit. Uno modo ex officio praelationis, sicut qui praedicat, docet; non enim licet alicui praedicare, nisi officium praelationis habeat, vel ex auctoritate alicujus praelationem habentis; rom. 10, 15: quomodo praedicabunt, nisi mittantur? alio modo ex officio magisterii, sicut magistri theologiae docent,…eorum qui docent Sacram Scripturam est idem finis et eorum qui Sacram Scripturam ediderunt; unde, cum ad hoc ordinetur Scripturae editio, ut ad vitam aeternam homo perveniat, ut patet Joan. 10; quicumque impedit finem doctrinae, docendo peccat.
[5] Ignace de la Potterie, “Biblical Exegesis: A Science of Faith” in Opening up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation edited by Josë Granados, Carlos Granados, Luis Sánchez-Navarro (Eerdmans, 2008). Electronic format, pos 597.
[6] Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and Itinerary of Exegesis Today”, in Opening up the Scriptures.
[7] Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 269.
[8] Sacra Scriptura seu doctrina, in effect identifying Scripture with the doctrine taught with authority in the Church. See Prima pars, q. 1, art. 2, ad 2.
[9] Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 413.
[10] Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 275.
[11] This theme is related to the distinction between the Church in the holiness of her members and the Church as constituted also with an objective teaching office. See Von Balthasar, III, Dramatis Personae, (Ignatius, 1992), 358-359: “Only the Catholic Church has this bipolar character of Marian subjective holiness and Petrine, objective holiness. It constitutes her irreducible, inner dramatic tension and is what makes her the extension (“fullness”, “body”) of Christ as well as his partner (“bride”), enabling her to participate in Christ’s redemptive mission and, undergirding this, in his trinitarian being. There is drama in the encounter between the believer’s experiential knowledge, which comes from the fullness of Christ, and authorities official knowledge, which is imparted by Christ directly. … Rather, it invited the individual to examine in faith, his own conscience, which is only a Christian conscience if it lets itself be guided by the great stream of revelation — interpreted by tradition and official Church teaching and preserved in Scripture — and enters into it. Given all this, it is possible for the official Church to make demands, according to the mind of Christ, that seem unintelligible and extreme to an individual or group; there is nothing strange in Christ leading us along the path of the Cross not only in person but also, most definitely, through the institution he himself has appointed.”
[12] Even when we say something like “The Lord encountered three principal temptations from the devil in the desert,…”, we might actually think to ourselves that there is a whole critical mental reservation that would be too hard to unravel in a sermon or lecture, so we simply speak as the Gospel speaks. Many a preacher feels unease at holding two ways of speaking in his mind, one way for preaching, another for critical analysis of Matthew’s or John’s text.
[13] Learned authority has a place in theological teaching, but it is secondary and supportive of sacred doctrine, analogous to the relation Thomas describes between philosophy and Sacred Doctrine. The doctrine is authoritative because it is visibly and audibly linked to Christ who reveals, either in his Incarnate state, or in his mission as WORD generating the words of the prophetic ages.
[14] Ad Hebraeos, Caput 1, Lectio 1, (Marietti 15): Prima autem expressio, scilicet in creatione, non ordinatur ad manifestationem, sed ad esse, Sap. I creavit Deus ut essent omnia. Cum ergo expressio non habeat rationem locutionis nisi prout ordinatur ad manifestationem, manifestum est, quod illa expressio non potest dici locutio, et ideo numquam dicitur, quod Deus loquatur creando creaturas, sed quod cognoscatur. Rom. I, 20: invisibilia Dei per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta conspiciuntur. Secunda vero expressio, quae est editio specierum in mente angelica, vel humana, ordinatur tantum ad cognitionem sapientiae divinae, et ideo potest dici locutio. Tertia vero, quae est per assumptionem carnis, ordinatur ad esse, et ad cognitionem, et ad expressam manifestationem, quia per assumptionem carnis, et verbum factum est homo, et nos in cognitionem Dei perfecit. (Io. XVIII, 37: ad hoc natus sum, ut testimonium perhibeam veritati). Et se nobis expresse manifestavit. Bar. c. III, 38: post haec in terris visus est, et cum hominibus conversatus est. Sic ergo, licet Deus loquatur in novo et veteri testamento, perfectius tamen in novo nobis loquitur, quia ibi per revelationes in mentibus hominum, hic per incarnationem filii.
[15] Dei Verbum 13: “For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men.” On Scripture as having analogous relation to the Incarnation itself, a line of thought I would have liked to pursue further in this lecture, see Denis Farkasfalvy, O, Cist., “Inspiration and Incarnation”, in Verbum Domini and the Complementarity of Exegesis and Theology (Eerdmans, 2015).
[16] Javier Sicilia: La confesión: El diario de Esteban Martorus (Debolsillo, 2016, electronic format): pos. 176: Sabe qué me maravilla de la encarnación? —continué—, que es todo lo contrario del mundo moderno: la presencia del infinito en los límites de la carne, y la lucha, la lucha sin cuartel, contra las tentaciones de las desmesuras del diablo. No sabe cuánto he meditado en las tentaciones del desierto. ”‘ Asume el poder’, le decía el diablo; ese poder que da la ilusión de trastocar y dominar todo. Pero él se mantuvo en los límites de su propia carne, en su propia pobreza, en su propia muerte, tan pobre, tan miserable, tan dura. Nuestra época, sin embargo, bajo el rostro de una enorme bondad, ha sucumbido a esas tentaciones. ‘Serán como dioses, cambiarán las piedras en panes, dominarán el mundo’… A ella le hemos entregado a Cristo y no nos damos cuenta.
[17] Javier Sicilia, La confesión, pos. 1669: Si la miseria existe y las estadísticas no mienten es porque el sueño de los ricos ha contaminado los sueños de los pobres. En el fondo ya no existe la pobreza, querido padre. Lo único que existe es la riqueza y la miseria,.. ¿Sabe por qué? Sé bien que lo sabe,… Porque se les ha hecho creer que su pobreza es una enfermedad vergonzosa, una llaga indigna del mundo. ”Nunca la humanidad, y aquí, discúlpeme, padre, incluyo también a nuestra Santa Madre, había escupido tanto sobre el rostro de Cristo, como si su pobreza se tratara de una porquería, de esa inmunda porquería que colgaron de la cruz y de la cual, como lo hicieron sus detractores, nos burlamos.
[18] Liturgically, this reception of the twin event-lights of Incarnation and Cross through which the rest of Scripture is understood is reflected in the Christmas- Easter cycles through which the readings of all the other seasons are ecclesially apprehended.
[19] Neither in the preaching tradition of the Church, nor in the theological novel is there any footnoting about what the source traditions say about the accounts of the Lord in the desert, and the historical accuracy of the different Gospel accounts. There is no re-positioning of the historical reasons that may have actually, apart from the Gospel’s telling, accounted for why Christ was arrested and crucified.
[20]Leo the Great, Sermon 95, 1-2: Qui ergo locútus fúerat Móysi, locútus est et Apóstolis et in córdibus discipulórum velox scribéntis Verbi manus novi testaménti decréta condébat.”
[21] See, Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church” (originally published in Communio, 2003), in Opening up the Scriptures.
[22] Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 460.
[23] Klemens Stock, “Christ in Contemporary Exegeis: Where We Are and Where We Are Going”, in Opening Up the Scriptures, pos 1272.
[24] Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, (Oxford University Press, 2016, electronic format) Introduction: “In fact, biblical revelation puts into operation the privilege of a givenness that surpasses every expectation, every prediction, and, finally, every reception: “If you knew the gift of God … ” (Jn. 4: 10). Indeed, gift and givenness offer a perfectly univocal concept: givenness in phenomenology (the excess of intuition and the advent of significations unthinkable by men) is found again and prolonged in “every perfect gift that comes from above” (James 1: 17). Paradoxically, but logically, revelation, by virtue of the givenness that it alone performs perfectly, would accomplish the essence of phenomenality.” René Girard, El Sacrificio (Ediciones Encuentro: 2012, electronic format), cap. 3: He Aquí la verdadera diferencia entre lo mítico y lo bíblico. Lo mítico permanece como el engaño de los fenómenos de chivo expiatorio. Lo bíblico desvela su mentira al revelar la inocencia de las víctimas. Si no se identifica el abismo que separa lo bíblico de lo mítico es porque, bajo el influjo de un viejo positivismo, se imagina que, para ser realmente diferentes, los textos deben referirse a asuntos diferentes. En realidad, lo mítico y lo bíblico difieren radicalmente porque lo bíblico rompe por primera vez con la mentira cultural por excelencia, hasta entonces oculta, de los fenómenos de chivo expiatorio sobre los cuales se ha fundado la cultura humana.»
[25] Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 436.
[26] Stock, Christ in Contemporary Exegesis, pos 1277 ff.
[27] Luke 24, 44-45.
[28] Stock, Christ in Contemporary Exegesis, pos 1288: “Primarily, it is the living human beings who had the grace of knowing his person and his message in a community of life with him. Jesus did not act with an eye to documentation, but to living testimony.”
[29] Stock, Christ in Contemporary Exegesis, pos 2098: “One might ask, in fact, what need remains for the whole exegetical enterprise, if attentive listening to the texts in their present form is sufficient for easy access to the real Jesus. In response, we must not forget that these texts are almost two thousand years old. On the subject of attentive listening, it is just that this demands respecting the texts as historical realities, as realities of their time and environment, which in turn requires us to refrain from imposing our concepts, questions, and expectations upon them. […].”
[30] See Against Heresies, Book 3, Ch 4, no. 2; see also Summa Theologiae, I-II, q 106.
[31] Star Trek: The Next Generation, episode 102, (season 5, episode 2).
[32] I had occasion to write on this topic in “Thomas on the Problem of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Exegete” in The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review, 69 (2), 251-277, 2005.
[33] Super Psalmo 21: Et inter alia specialiter iste Psalmus agit de passione Christi. Et ideo hic est ejus sensus litteralis. Unde specialiter hunc Psalmum in passione dixit cum clamavit, Heli Heli lammasabactani: quod idem est quod Deus Deus meus etc. sicut hic Psalmus incipit. Et ideo licet figuraliter hic Psalmus dicatur de David, tamen specialiter ad litteram refertur ad Christum. Et in synodo Toletana quidam Theodorus Mopsuestenus, qui hunc ad litteram de David exponebat, fuit damnatus, et propter hoc et propter alia multa; et ideo de Christo exponendus est. Sciendum est autem quod quinque Psalmi agunt de passione Christi prolixe: quorum iste Psalmus primus est. Alii enim brevius tangunt passionem Christi. Secundus est, judica domine nocentes me, Ps. 34. Tertius est, ibi, exaudi Deus orationem meam, et ne despexeris deprecationem meam. Quartus, Ps. 68: salvum me fac Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquae. Quintus, Ps. 108: Deus laudem meam ne tacueris. Et hoc propter quinque plagas Christi: vel propter quinque effusiones sanguinis. Et unus est modus procedendi in omnibus, quia incipiunt a gemitu, et terminantur in salutem populorum: quia ex passione facta est salus omnibus hominibus.
[34] Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation, pos 466: “When things have reached their goal, one can discover cover the true sense that so to say lay hidden in them. This sense appearing at the end of the movement transcends whatever sense might be inferred from any given section of the now completed path. «This new sense thus presupposes the existence of a divine Providence, the existence of a (salvation) history arriving at its destination.»» God’s action thus appears as the principle of the intelligibility of history. The unifying principle of the whole of past and present «history, which alone confers sense on it, is, however, ever, the historical event of Christ.”
[35] Thomas does occasionally use the term ‘allegory”, but he prefers the term “mystice”; the mystical sense is what is figured in the history of Christ. Thus, to state the matter briefly, the ecclesiological sense of a text is the figure of the Church present in the person of Christ; the moral sense of a text is the norm of Christian living present in Christ’s actions; the eschatological sense is the destiny of the Christ as anticipatory of the final destiny of the human race. All of this flows from the super-intelligibility of Christ in his Person, who, after all is said and done, reveals that the intelligibility of Word-event is a person. Thomas allows for a fluidity of readings in a text, so long as they do not oppose the rule of faith and the obvious intention of the human author. This way of speaking is shorthand for what Dei Verbum will call “the intention of the sacred writers” understood in relation to the “content and unity of the whole of Scripture.“
Words and Things 