Link via Bill of Random Notes
One of the standard questions hovering about the intellectual world since the crisis of Marxism has been, "where does the intellectual left go next, especially if it refuses to consider orthodoxy?" The obvious, most likely answer, I think, is that it goes in the direction of ecology and environmentalism insofar as these all-embracing systems provide an apparently plausible, natural justification to reduce the relative importance of man's individual dignity in the name of a planetary or worldly, if not cosmic, "good". This postulated inner-worldly transcendent good is proposed in the name of the on-going cycles of nature and of the good of the living "species" within it. This higher "good" becomes the criterion by which we judge how many people we can have in each country or on the earth, how long they can live and under what conditions, what they can or cannot consume, what is their relation to the state. Indeed, it is not the state but the world state, which, since it is said to have the exclusive responsibility to look out for the distant future, can control the present in its name. "Progress" is replaced as an ideal by "stability". This simultaneous relativizing of the dignity of the human person and of the consequent justification for the vast expansion of the state has provided a handy way to replace or rather incorporate the Marxist ideology that formerly justified these inner-worldly goals...
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In the light of the appeal to Christians and non-Christians alike of Marxism, relativism, and New Age movements, Ratzinger asks, now addressing himself to the intellectuals in the Church, "Why has classical theology appeared to be so defenseless in the face of these happenings? Where is its weak point, and why has it lost credibility?"..... Their [historical critical] method reduces the reality they study to its (the method's) proportions. Ratzinger puts this position into words: "If I know a priori (to speak like Kant) that Jesus cannot be God,. and that miracles, mysteries and sacraments are three forms of superstition, then I (the exegete with this philosophy) cannot discover what cannot in fact be in the sacred books." My philosophical theory has prevented me from seeing what might be there. What I see is my theory, not the reality. Ratzinger does not deny that there is value in the "historical-critical" method. Generally, if it is used to study the history of the Roman emperors, say, it works fine. When the method is used of the Bible, two problems arise. The method wants to find out about the "past as something past." History further is said to be "uniform." This means that all instances of a given type will be judged to be the same on the basis not of fact but of theory. The method brings us to the past, not to the present.
Secondly, the world in theory must be held to be always the same. The method requires this. The crisis of exegesis is a crisis of the philosophical presuppositions that guide its method by which it reaches conclusions such as that Jesus did not affirm His own divinity. "The problem of exegesis is connected ... with the problem of philosophy. The indigence of philosophy ... has turned into the indigence of our faith. The faith cannot be liberated if reason itself does not open up again." Reason, in other words, knowing itself, must see that it is grounded in what is, over which it has no control. What is controls what we know and not vice versa. The exclusion any reality, however, is contrary to the object of reason itself . "Human reason is not an autonomous absolute." Ratzinger thinks that scholastic philosophy in the Twentieth Century in a sense failed because it tried to do the impossible, that is, provide a totally rational ground of the faith that a priori excluded the possibility of faith's openness to reason.
Yet, it was reality, not reason, that decided that to which reason was open. And reality included the reality of God and His activity in time. Faith cares for and about reason. "It is not the lesser function of the faith to care for reason as such. It does not do violence to it; it is not external to it; rather, it makes it return to itself." Thus, faith can liberate reason from itself by asking it questions that it could not itself have anticipated, yet about which it can consider. "Reason will not be saved without the faith, but the faith without reason will not be human."
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