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71 (2010)
GRACE RELOADED:
CARITAS IN VERITATE’S THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
PHILIPP GABRIEL RENCZES, S.J.
PHILIPP GABRIEL RENCZES, S.J., received his Ph.D. from the University of Paris
IV (Sorbonne) and his Th.D. from the Institut Catholique of Paris. He is associate
professor of systematic theology at the Gregorian University and invited professor
of historical theology at the Pontifical Institute Augustinianum. With special inter-
ests in the theology grace, Maximus the Confessor, and church and synagogue in the
first centuries A.D., he has recently published: “L’emergenza educativa secondo i
Padri della Chiesa,” Civiltà Cattolica 3795/3796 (2008); and “La patristica e la
metafisica nel secolo XX,” Gregorianum 90.1 (2009). In progress is a monograph
entitled “For Augustine—Against Augustine: Controversial Arguments of
Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace and Their Exploration in 20th-Century Theology.”
1
This formulation was first used by John XXIII in his encyclical Pacem in terris
(1963).
273
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274 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
keeps the world together would once again become an effective force
in mankind.”2 In the light of both the dramatic events connected to the
2008–2009 world-wide economic crisis and the long-term challenges posed
by globalization and climate change, much can be said in favor of this
desire to go “back to the basics” concerning the conditions of human
coexistence, a concern that clearly reflects Ratzinger’s priority agenda for
Christian theology and life in the modern world.3
From a more specifically theological point of view, the pope’s address
“to all people of good will” documents his readiness to make known to
the world his conception concerning the identity of a “Catholic social
doctrine” as distinct from a “social doctrine” as such. In 1964, at the
beginning of his professorial activities and toward the final year of the
Second Vatican Council, Ratzinger had bluntly remarked: “A proper theo-
logical social doctrine does not exist, though the attempt at the ever new
‘evangelization’ . . . in man’s concrete social history does exist.”4 Thus, one
might read in the period of the encyclical’s redaction a manifestation of not
only the careful attention that the abruptly changing global market situa-
tion required but also, on a deeper level, the complexity that Ratzinger
discerned in the subject itself.
My claim here is that the foundational reflections, particularly in
its introductory chapter, that the encyclical dedicates to the provision of
“building stones” for a theological social doctrine constitute in themselves
a revisit of Ratzinger’s own efforts to encourage the development of a
theological anthropology. The emerging perspective itself then discloses
the theo-anthropological principles that, in Ratzinger’s well-known
style, find close-knit application in the encyclical’s reflections in regard
to those cultural values traditionally addressed by social encyclicals. In
what follows I will highlight some of the encyclical’s structural components
that reveal a widespread influence of patristic (and not only Augustinian!)
theology.
2
Joseph Ratzinger, Europe: Today and Tomorrow, trans. Michael J. Miller (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 2007) 82; originally published as I suoi fondamenti oggi e
domani (Milan: San Paolo, 2004). Throughout this article I use “Benedict” when
referring to his writings as pope, and “Ratzinger” when referring to his earlier
writings.
3
See Pope Benedict XVI, “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church con-
cerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated
by Archbishop Lefebvre” (March 10, 2009). This and all other papal and Vatican
documents cited in this article are available on the Vatican Web site and are easily
found by an Internet search. All such sites were accessed on February 20, 2010.
4
Joseph Ratzinger, “Naturrecht, Evangelium, und Ideologie in der katholischen
Soziallehre: Katholische Erwägungen zum Thema,” in Christlicher Glaube und
Ideologie, ed. Klaus von Bismarck and Walter Dirks (Mainz: Grünewald, 1964) 28
(my translation).
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276 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
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11
Ibid. 46, emphasis original.
12
See Hansjürgen Verweyen, Joseph Ratzinger-Benedikt XVI: Die Entwicklung
seines Denkens (Darmstadt: Primus, 2007) 108–9. Ratzinger himself remarks in his
memoir: “The encounter with the personalistic thought, which we find elaborated
with new convincing force in the great Jewish thinker Martin Buber, became for me
an essential formative experience. It needs to be said that this personalism ‘sponta-
neously’ (¼ wie von selbst) linked itself with the thought of Augustine which I
encountered with all its human passion and depth in the Confessions” (Aus meinem
Leben: Erinnerungen [1927–1977] [Munich: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1998] 49 [my
translation]).
13
See for instance, Emmerich Coreth, Metaphysics (New York: Seabury, 1973)
46–68; Béla Weissmahr, Ontologie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1985) 30–49.
14
Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance 181.
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278 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
15
Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity 110.
16
Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology 163.
17
Ratzinger, God Is Near Us (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003) 70–71.
18
Verweyen, Joseph Ratzinger-Benedikt XVI 113. See also Klaus Müller, “Die
Vernunft, die Moderne, und der Papst,” Stimmen der Zeit 226 (2009) 291–306, at
303–4 (my translation).
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CARITAS IN VERITATE’S THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 279
19
Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity 110.
20
Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology 171.
21
See Heinrich Denzinger, ed., Enchiridion symbolorum: Definitionum et
declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 37th ed., ed. Peter Hünermann (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1991) no. 1529.
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280 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
chapters (nos. 1–9), which are foundational for the encyclical’s approach;22
implicitly, by entrusting the term’s content with the task of supporting the
encyclical’s construction as a whole.23 What may at first strike one as a
fairly trivial move proves on closer inspection to have far-reaching and
thought-provoking consequences for the development of a theological
anthropology. In fact, it foregrounds grace with its theological and, more
remarkably still, philosophical significance, thus allowing Benedict to
address the principles of Catholic social doctrine to “all people of good
will.” Moreover, contrary to most current presentations of the notion of
grace, from its appearance in the writings of Paul and Augustine, it is not
seen as limited to a residual space for a higher being’s intervention into
human existence that requires a spiritual willingness to embrace it; rather,
the meaning of grace encompasses the very principles of the conditions of
human life stretched between the poles of past and future, matter and form.
The integration of the philosophical and theological richness of the con-
cept of grace appears, then, to enable Benedict to appeal in his encyclical
to the principles of his theological anthropology, on the basis of which he
can both ground the Church’s social doctrine and implement certain timely
aspects of it.
In attempting to identify those various principles with concepts
borrowed from the classical tract De gratia, I try to specify their content,
but I do not intend thereby to give the impression that Ratzinger’s
approach to grace needs per se a more detailed parsing. In fact, it can be
noticed that the proposed classifications without exception belong to the
pre-Scholastic period when a unified concept of grace was axiomatic.
22
“Grace” appears three times in the encyclical’s introduction, where it is closely
tied to “love.” However, in Deus caritas est, which focuses entirely on “love,”
“grace” occurs only toward the end, in nos. 35 and 42, both times in rather specific
contexts: first to illustrate the right attitude of the faithful as God’s servant, then to
highlight the eminent role of the Mother of God.
23
While Benedict prefers to appeal to the more accessible notion of “gift” when
referring to ideas essential to the concept of grace, in fact his focus on “grace” at the
beginning (nos. 1–9), middle (no. 34), and end (no. 78) positions “grace” as the
encyclical’s very framework.
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282 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
26
Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate
Destiny of Mankind (London: Burn, Oates, & Washbourne, 1950) 167.
27
Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946). This
work, never translated into English, was later revised into “twin volumes” that
found their way into two English translations as The Mystery of the Supernatural
(London: Chapman, 1967) and Augustinianism and Modern Theology (London:
Chapman 1969).
28
On this point see Raymond Moloney, S.J., “De Lubac and Lonergan on the
Supernatural,” Theological Studies 69 (2008) 509–27, at 514–15.
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CARITAS IN VERITATE’S THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 283
At any rate, in the past Ratzinger seemed to focus rather on the need to
safeguard human existence against the possibility that the dynamics of a
too close relationship with transcendence might compromise humanity’s
proper autonomy.
The exitus, or better, the free creative act of God, does in fact aim at reditus, but this
does not mean that created being is revoked. Rather, it means the coming-into-its-
own of the creature as an autonomous creature answers back in freedom to the love
of God, accepts its creation as a command to love, so that a dialogue of love
begins—that entirely new unity that only love can create.29
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284 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
THEO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES
OF A LOVE-IN-TRUTH THEOLOGY
One would certainly expect Caritas in veritate’s choice for a revalorized
theology of grace to imprint its features onto concrete teachings in relation
to the encyclical’s theological anthropology. The second part of this article,
therefore, tracks some specific configurations regarding the encyclical’s
social teaching shaped according to this option. Corresponding to the fun-
damental character of “grace” that emerges in this encyclical, it seems both
suggestive and appropriate to arrange my presentation according to the
fundamental ways that human beings engage reality, that is, according to
the categories of “space” and “time.”
Of course, the encyclical does not broach the issues of “space” and
“time” as such; they arise as “theo-anthropologically-mediated” realities:
“nature” and “development.” Furthermore, we encounter “nature” in the
encyclical as “cosmological nature” (¼ environment) and “anthropological
nature” (¼ the human person).
The encyclical privileges—at least in terms of weight given—the dimen-
sion of time over the dimension of space. On the one hand, this privileging
was certainly dictated by the fact that Caritas in veritate sees itself as a
homage to Paul VI’s Populorum progressio, for which “development” was
pivotal. On the other hand, “time” in general seems a much more congenial
dimension for the category of grace, which concretizes its spiritual reality
according to the parameters set by salvation history. Once again, this
30
Deus caritas est nos. 19–39.
31
Philipp Gabriel Renczes, Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme (Paris: Cerf, 2003)
332–34.
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CARITAS IN VERITATE’S THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 285
primary relationship between “grace” and “time,” which moves the anthro-
pological question from the essential to the existential order, has become
manifest through Augustine’s Confessions. My own presentation here will
reflect this distribution of weight.
32
With this metaphor, Ratzinger alludes to the so-called Münchhausen-
trilemma, introduced into contemporary philosophical discourse by Hans Albert,
Traktat über kritische Vernunft (Tübingen: Mohr, 1968) 13. Albert uses it to indicate
that, according to him, every attempt to found “objective truth” is faced with three
alternatives, all of which fail. See Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity 73.
33
Joseph Ratzinger, Werte in Zeiten des Umbruchs: Die Herausforderungen der
Zukunft bestehen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2005) 35 (my translation).
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286 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
sense, which stems from de Lubac’s contentions, can Benedict adopt John
Paul II’s speaking of nature both as “vocation” and “as a gift of the Creator
who has given it an inbuilt order” (no. 48) that is “lived” in nature’s
dynamic realization.
In this light, it seems that the true opposite of natural law for Benedict
would not be an anthropology characterized by a general or particular form
of licentiousness or anarchy, but the explication of human existence by the
mere arbitrariness of chance or the automatism of determinism, leaving
human life without true finality (see no. 29).
Nature as Environment
Within the “grace-structure” proper to humanity’s being, the environ-
ment is seen in Caritas in veritate as the Creator’s gift, containing a “gram-
mar” (no. 48), the rules of which rather induce an imitation of the Creator’s
creativity than deliver detailed rubrics. One can detect here Benedict’s
twofold ambition, particularly apparent in Deus caritas est: on the one
hand, to liberate Christianity from the moralistic traps that in recent centu-
ries the mentalité bourgoise of the Northern Hemisphere set up for religion
by sacrificing creativity to the sterile obedience of fixed codes; and on the
other hand, to propose a Christian vision of anti-Pelagianist humanism that
fosters a freedom and commitment that do not oppose creation’s eros to
personal agape.34 The inspiration may well have come from Greek patristic
theology and its emphasis on the cosmological dimension of grace. Recall
Maximus the Confessor’s vision of a “cosmic liturgy,” in which the human
person, being a microcosm—thanks to the incarnation of the Logos—has
been elevated to participate in Christ’s mediation to unite all levels of the
created world to God, as Logos-Christ is logos not only for the human
species but for all other species as well.35
According to Pope Benedict, two extremes are to be avoided: “idealizing
technical progress” and “contemplating the utopia of a return to
humanity’s original natural state” (no. 14). Particularly evocative in this
context is Benedict’s designation of technology as a “covenant between
human beings and the environment” (no. 69), just after he identified
“nature” with “vocation” (no. 48). “Vocation” and “covenant” are closely
related yet, placed side by side, manage to convey the idea of a “cre-
scendo.” In fact, Abraham first received a call (vocation) to the New Land
(Gen 12) where, at a more advanced stage of his relationship with God,
he then received the covenant (Gen 15). The confrontation of “vocation”
34
See Deus caritas est nos. 5–7.
35
For Maximus’s most poignant presentation of this cosmological vision, see
Ambigua 41 (Migne, PG 91.1309A–1312 B), Engl. trans. in Andrew Louth,
Maximus the Confessor (New York: Routledge, 1996) 59–60.
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288 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
patristic Greek thought, which developed the Stoic idea of the conforma-
tion of all virtues and capacities in a single “state of being” constituted and
sustained by God’s grace.37
37
See Philipp Gabriel Renczes, “L’educazione secondo i Padri della Chiesa,”
Civiltà Cattolica 159 (2009) 252–65, at 263–64.
38
Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity 50–52.
39
Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology 55–60.
40
Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity 25 and passim.
41
In Principles of Catholic Theology 166, Ratzinger asks: “Is it not the main
point of the faith of both Testaments that man is what he ought to be only by
conversion, that is, when he ceases to be what he is?”
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CARITAS IN VERITATE’S THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 289
in this primarily eschatological sense, which points to the not yet realized
“about-turn,” sheds a different light on Ratzinger’s infamous sprints
through philosophical and theological history, such as we saw in his
“Regensburg Address”42 that dealt with the relationship of faith and rea-
son in Christianity from its beginnings to the present; or in his introduction
to Jesus of Nazareth43 where he sketches in a few paragraphs the extremely
complex course of the quest for the historical Jesus of the last two centu-
ries. Though at first sight those thought-genealogies seem to be constructed
according to an anticlimactical pattern, on closer inspection they lose their
character of “antipositions” or “downswings,” such that they cannot call us
out of our entrenched positions.
In the Introduction to Christianity, we find a most surprising description
of the development of Christian doctrine:
When one looks at the history of the dogma of the Trinity as it is reflected in a
present-day manual of theology, it looks like a graveyard of heresies, whose
emblems theology still carries around with it like the trophies from battles
fought and won. But such a view does not represent a proper understanding of the
matter. . . . Every heresy is at the same time the cipher for an abiding truth, a cipher
we must now preserve with other simultaneously valid statements, separated from
which it produces a false impression. In other words, all these statements are not so
much gravestones as the bricks of a cathedral, which are, of course, only useful
when they do not remain alone but are inserted into something bigger, just as even
the positively accepted formulas are valid only if they are at the same time aware of
their own inadequacy.”44
Ultimately, it appears that Ratzinger’s thought is permeated by a “negative
theology of grace,”45 in other words, by the acknowledgement that no
human expression can definitively grasp or determine the forms and ways
of God’s action in human beings. As a consequence, we should get accus-
tomed to read in human developments, insofar as they represent more or
less cooperative answers to God’s invisible grace, occasions for further
development.
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290 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
of tradition is, in fact, the ability to recognise my now as significant also for
the tomorrow of those who come after me, and therefore, to transmit to
them for tomorrow what has been discovered today.”46 Obviously, against
the backdrop of his insight that the incessant dynamism of grace creates
interconnectivity through time, Benedict sees discontinuity as an interpre-
tative frame as wrong (see Caritas in veritate no. 12). But more importantly,
applying to one’s own propositions the content of one’s claims—the encyc-
lical calls for “dynamic faithfulness to a light received” (no. 12)—results in
an example, as it were, of effective “performative language”: a renewed
appreciation of Populorum progressio that shifts one’s perspective from an
anthropological to a theo-anthropological plane.
CONCLUSION
Time will tell how many of the numerous suggestions of Caritas in
veritate will actually be appropriated by “people of good will.” Considering
the reactions to the encyclical, one can be skeptical, at least regarding the
Western world. This uncertainty, of course, extends also to the encyclical’s
theological anthropology itself that in more sense than one can be seen as
“counter-current” to widely held conceptions and behaviors based on
them. But as the encyclical itself says—and this is unusual for a social
encyclical which primarily aims to orientate consciences in the task of
designing politics and economics—“truth, and the love which it reveals,
cannot be produced: they can only be received as a gift” (no. 52). It seems
that it is time to take grace seriously.
46
Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology 87.
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