I'd like to begin by expressing my own thanks for the invitation to come here. To all of you, especially to Brother Nathan, who was the only one that I knew before last night, this is my first trip to Mount Savior. I've heard about it quite frequently from John Burckhardt, also from another former colleague of mine, Walter Edervang, in Boston, who has been coming regularly here on retreat for a number of years. So I'm very happy to be here. I could say one word also about the choice of topic. I did teach Brother Nathan in a course in History and Method of Theology at Catholic University, which I've been teaching there regularly for the past few years. But prior to going to Washington, I taught at St. John's Seminary in Boston for 17 years, and I consistently taught Christology there. So in fact, I've taught Christology probably ten times as often as I've taught the course on history and methods.

[01:00]

So it's not only that it's more suitable for eight presentations, but also that it's something that I'm, if anything, a bit more familiar with. Since we have eight talks to speak about something that's quite vast, obviously some choices have to be made. And the initial choice that I've made is to focus on contemporary Christology in these talks. That will be a bit less true this morning because much of what will be said this morning is by way of background. But as far as the talks in general are concerned, I'll be focusing on the Christology of the last 25 or 30 years with particular attention to the questions and problems that have been dealt with in this period. Now, that shouldn't give the impression that the older questions, the older issues have disappeared. They haven't. But I take it that there's probably greater familiarity in this group with the traditional questions, with the teaching of the early councils, and so on.

[02:03]

And so, given the limitations of time, I won't try to go over that material again. I'd like to divide the presentations really into five parts, but the parts will not be of equal length. This morning will basically be an introduction. Then the four parts that follow will deal first with the Christologies of the New Testament, very briefly and just accenting a few important themes. Then a section on Jesus' public life. section on the crucifixion, and we'll conclude with a section on the resurrection. I suppose it would be appropriate to conclude with the ascension this Thursday, but I don't know if it will be possible to do quite that exactly. First, a few words by way of introduction. For the last 15 or 20 years, Christology has been a central area of discussion among Catholic theologians.

[03:11]

Now, there's a sense, of course, in which theologians always speak about Christology. Catholic Christian faith always has to do with Christ, and theology is a reflection on that. You can't imagine any thorough presentation of theology that completely skipped over Christology, any more than you could skip over the Trinity or the Church or the Sacraments. Nonetheless, it's true that at different times in its history, theology has tended to focus on one subject or another with particular attention. There have been periods among Catholic theologians in this century where great attention was given to the theology of the Church. You can think here especially of the Second Vatican Council, the years of the Council itself and the time immediately preceding and immediately following it. There have been other periods a bit further back, but many of you may remember very intensive discussions of the theology of grace in the years after the Second World War and in the 1950s, especially in French theology and Belgian theology at that time.

[04:19]

Since 1974, roughly, that seems like an odd choice of dates, but that's the date in which a number of books began to be published. Christology has moved center stage, to some extent by itself, to some extent also joined together with reflections on the doctrine of God, especially the theology of the Trinity. But sometime before that, pretty much for the whole of the 20th century up to that time, Christology had not been the main focus of attention among Catholic theologians. There was the standard teaching, there was the standard treatment of the basic material in courses, but not further attention. And that situation has changed. Very often, I think, when we reflect on the history of theology, or look more generally at the history of the Church, We tend to focus on the Second Vatican Council as the watershed, to think of things before the council and things after the council, and often to attribute causal influence to the council and the shift from before to after.

[05:29]

But that's not particularly true as far as Christology is concerned. The great themes of the council were not Christological themes directly. They were themes concerning the church. the Church in itself, various facets of the Church's existence, the liturgy, the sacraments. But the Second Vatican Council does not have a document on Christ as such, though of course there are countless references to Christ scattered through the texts. At the time of the Council and in the years immediately after the Council, five to ten years after the Council, the efforts of theologians tended to be concentrated in the same direction as the Council's own efforts. And then in the mid-1970s and running up to the present, there has been a shift in theological attention to Christology for a couple of different reasons, which we'll come to some of them in a few minutes. But I would note one difference in content between the Christology of this later period, these last 15 years, and the Christology which preceded it in the regular teaching in the first half of the century and before that.

[06:42]

Twenty-five, thirty years ago, there was a widespread consensus among Catholic theologians on how to approach Christological questions. There were some differences in detail, especially when one came to a finer point or some particular issue, but the basic themes were pretty common. If you read one author's presentation of Christology and then read a second author's presentation of Christology, you didn't notice enormous differences as far as the content was concerned. Differences in style, of course, differences in literary form, but the main themes were pretty much the same. That's less true at the present time. There are still, of course, many common elements, many common beliefs, but there's greater difference from one theologian to another, a more pluralistic situation. I'll give some examples of that in what follows in more detail when we look at individual figures, individual issues. First, however, I'd like to give a little illustration of the situation at the present time.

[07:47]

I hope I have enough copies. If not, perhaps a couple could look okay together. Before commenting on any of these, may I just insert one parenthetical remark. As we go on after this morning, there'll be at least certain sections of the talks which will concentrate quite a bit on biblical themes, and I'd like to ask that for the subsequent sessions. If each of you could bring a copy of the Bible, or at least a copy of the New Testament, I think it would be helpful for following the presentations.

[08:50]

It won't be necessary this morning, but as we go on it will be. I've put in parentheses at the end of the listing of these various works, to the extent that they weren't originally written in English, the date of the original publication in either German or Dutch, as the case may be. The reason for that is to indicate the period in which the initial burst of Christological interest came forward. The works in the first section are listed in alphabetical order by author. They're very different in character. Walter Casper, these are all authors by Catholic theologians. Walter Kasper, at the time of writing this, was a professor of theology at the University of Tübingen. He has since become the Bishop of Rotenburg-Stuttgart. And his work, Jesus the Christ, has been quite widely read.

[09:53]

It's basically a textbook, a contemporary textbook of Christology, taken pretty much from Kasper's lectures. in Christology at the University of Tübingen. It covers the standard themes that a textbook would cover. It does so very thoroughly, but no more and no less than that. That's what it's intended to do. Hans Kung's book, On Being a Christian, Kung's name certainly is known to you. He is also a professor in Tübingen. His book is intended for a wider audience. It's not completely on Christology. It's more a general presentation of Christian faith. But there is a very extensive Christological section. It's a book of about 600 pages, and you'll notice from what's listed there that about 350 pages of it are devoted to Christology. That's an indication, on the one hand, of a very Christocentric presentation of

[10:54]

the faith, but it's also an indication that you could really take that portion of the book and have a very decent-sized Christological work of its own. Karl Rahner, now deceased, a Jesuit, a German Jesuit, who did most of his writing in the form of essays and briefer presentations, but toward the end of his life presented in this one book, Foundations of Christian Faith, not a summary of the whole of his thought, but the closest thing to that that he ever did. And once again, you'll notice that a very substantial portion of the book is devoted to Christology. This is a book of about 400 pages, but you still have 150 pages or so on Christology. That's about as much as he devotes to the doctrine of God and more than is given to other subjects. And then finally two books that go together, the beginning of a three-part project of Edward Skillebakes, the Flemish Dominican theologian,

[12:02]

First volume, Jesus, published in 1974. The second volume, Christ, published in 1977. These are not textbooks. Unlike the others, these don't at all come out of a classroom setting, but they are a more original rethinking of Christological questions on Schillerbeek's part. That's one of the reasons for their great length. Taken together, they're about 1600 pages, and they're supposed to be a third part of the trilogy to follow, if that ever comes about. I just note at this point that the Thai people have wondered if the first volume is entitled Jesus and the second volume Christ, what could one possibly say for a title to the third volume? I just note in passing at this point that the English titles don't correspond to the Dutch titles, that the Dutch title of the original is Jesus, but there's no reference in the Dutch to the experiment. can suggest, I think, the wrong kind of emphasis. And the original title of the second is not Christ at all.

[13:05]

The more literal translation, the first volume is Jesus, the story of one who lives, with accent both on story and the living one, with an allusion to the resurrection story. Why do you seek the living one among the dead? And then the second volume, which has been translated as Christ the Experience of Jesus as Lord, the original title there is Justice and Love, Grace and Liberation. Now you can see they didn't use that as a title, that long title like that's not going to sell any books. But you can also see that there's a little difference in emphasis in what Scalabix is doing, and he is moving from his discussion of Jesus in the first volume, really to a discussion of the theology of grace in the second volume. And the third volume, supposedly, will link that more directly with the issue of the church. Those are just some examples of major recent works.

[14:10]

The three volumes, the three titles that are listed, one essay and two smaller books. After that are more popular presentations, deliberately so. First is a brief survey by Avery Dulles, the Jesuit theologian, Dulles here, as in many other cases, gives a little presentation of different models of Christology. He does the same thing with a lot of other areas, and coincidentally here, too, there turn out to be five different models. He indicates something of the history of each, and then gives the pros and cons of each of the models. So it's a little survey, not focusing completely on the present, with great attention to contemporary authors up to the time of his writing. Unfortunately, that was written too soon to take too much account of the books that are mentioned in the top part of this presentation. The other two are of a different type.

[15:11]

Gerald O. Collins is an Australian Jesuit who teaches at the Gregorian University in Rome. This is an introductory Christological work of his own. something of the order of Casper's, not as detailed in its presentation, but a little easier to follow as an initial overview of the issues. And it has the further value, of course, that it was originally written in English. Anything, no matter how well it's translated, reads like a translation. This is written immediately in our own language. And finally, the work of William Thompson, an American theologian, a survey of recent writing more popular nature. To those issues, I would add a reference to one more work that is not listed there. Many of you, all of you perhaps, are familiar with the Jerome Biblical Commentary, which was published some years ago.

[16:11]

There is now There is now a new Jerome biblical commentary that was published in 1990. You may have seen it. It was actually published in 1989, but they wanted a 1990 date on it rather than make it look out of date before it really got started. And some of the material in that is carried over from the early volume, but most of it is new. And there is a new entry by John Meyer with the title Jesus. If I'm not mistaken, there is no entry on Jesus in the first volume. You have to piece together material on Jesus by looking at different sections. My section is toward the back of the volume, which is a succinct account of Jesus' life and teaching.

[17:18]

It's not intended to be an account of Christian teaching about Jesus. If you're looking for that type of material, you'd look under other entries in this volume, treating the different authors of the New Testament. But I would add this, it's a very good presentation to the initial bibliography. Now, one of the reasons for this intensified interest in Christology at the present time There are lots of factors. There are always lots of factors when shifts like that take place. Some of them are quite mundane. I think, to a certain extent, that one could simply say that the major theologians had spent so much time and effort in writing on questions concerning the Church. in the 60s and early 70s, that almost inevitably they turned their attention to something else, that they had said what they had to say about the church, and rather than repeat the same thing, decided it was necessary to move to a slightly different area to focus their attention there.

[18:26]

You could see that reflected, I think, in the fact that the four major authors that are mentioned on the handout that was just distributed, all had written extensively on the Church in the period immediately before this. And each then turned more directly, though not for the first time, to Christ. At the same time, I would say that there are two more significant factors that lie behind this shift. First, I can put in very general terms. There's an effort on the part of these theologians to address the question of the relationship of Christianity and the modern world. That's an issue that the Council grappled with, of course, in its own way. This isn't the first time that that question was raised. The question itself has been around since at least the French Revolution and the Enlightenment in various forms. But if one is going to address one's efforts specifically to that type of question, then I think it's quite clear that Christology is going to play a major role.

[19:33]

It's not going to be possible for Christians to talk about Christianity in the modern world and talk only about the Church. There's a certain point where even the reflection on the Church itself is going to require being pushed back further to reflection on Christ. And I think in conjunction with that first issue, it's worth noting that the same factor has contributed to the intensified interest in the doctrine of the Trinity, in speaking about God. Because when Christians think of themselves in the modern world, speaking to other people within the modern world, inevitably God and Christ are going to be in the forefront of what Christians have to say. That's one reason. I leave it just in very general terms. I just note that in doing this, in seeking to address specifically modern problems, different theologians have different ways of reading the situation, and different specific issues come to their minds.

[20:40]

That's one of the reasons for the diversity among the theologians. It's not always that they disagree with each other. Well, that too can sometimes take place. It can sometimes simply be that they pick out different facets of a complex problem to address, and so they're addressing slightly different issues. The second factor, which will have a great bearing on what we'll be getting to later, exegetical developments. As I'm sure you realize, in 1943, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Divino Affluente Spiritu, promoting modern Catholic biblical study, which has flourished in various places and to a great extent in this country since that time. But the effects of that encyclical and the effects of modern biblical study were not felt overnight. As you might expect, they're felt first among the exegetes themselves, those biblical scholars who deal with the material on a day-to-day basis. It takes time before the implications of those methods, those new forms of questioning, the new positions that are taken, it takes time before those factors get felt in other areas of theology.

[21:53]

And so it's really a generation almost of theologians before dogmatic theologians begin to assimilate these questions and begin to address the issues in a new form. And it's probably another generation after that before moral theologians do it and eventually pastoral theologians at another point. That intensified interest in exegesis, which was of course encouraged, promoted very strongly by the Second Vatican Council as well, has effects in all branches of doctrinal study in one way or another, but it particularly has effects in Christology precisely because there is so much of Christology that is related especially to the New Testament material. There are other areas of theology. You can think of something like sacramental theology, where only certain portions of the New Testament would come to mind immediately as dealing with sacraments. But if you think of Christology, you've really got the whole of the four Gospels, enormous portions of the Epistles, and other parts of the New Testament as well.

[23:00]

Think of something like the the passage from the Book of Revelation that was read liturgically last evening with strong Christological content in very symbolic form. So any alterations in exegetical developments, any rethinking of exegetical issues are bound to have particular focus here. What types of questions get raised here? in Christology at the present time. Here I'd suggest that there are two different types of question that are in the foreground. First let me just mention the two, and then I'll try to connect them back to some antecedents in earlier thought. The easiest way to illustrate this is to begin with a very simple looking, at least, expression of Christian faith.

[24:19]

simply reflected in the words Jesus Christ. Now, people, at least perhaps initially, know better if they stop and think about it, but it almost looks like a proper name, a first name and a last name, like John Smith or something like that. Of course we know it's not that. If it were simply that, then nothing further would be contained in that. It would simply be an identification, just as you and I have names that normally don't tell us very much about ourselves. We might say a bit, but not much more. But that's not the case here. Even though this has more or less been used as a name, for a very long time. Think of how frequently we simply refer to Christ without the need to say anything else at all. In fact, this is a confession of faith, then compressed. This is a way of saying Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.

[25:39]

So it's a brief Christological confession which can serve our purposes here for the moment as a way of indicating what some of the Christological issues are. In suggesting the two questions that are going to follow, I don't mean to give the impression that we're totally lacking answers to the questions. That's not my purpose, that each of us could give something of an answer to the two. I'm only suggesting that these are questions that have to be explored more thoroughly and more fully in Christology. First of all, we can ask the question, is Jesus the Christ? Of course, the answer of Christian faith to that is, yes, he is. That's what's compressed in the confession here. But still, the question can arise and does arise, particularly if you think of the situation of the Church in a world in which all are not Christian.

[26:48]

The question can then arise, is Jesus the Christ? What are the reasons for saying that Jesus is the Christ? What is there about Jesus, what is there about his life, his death, his resurrection that leads Christians or causes Christians to identify him as the Messiah despite the fact that there were historically and still are others who do not make that identification? That's one type of question. You notice that the answer to that type of, to that question is going to be yes or no. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, or no, he is not. I suppose it's possible also to respond by saying, I'm not sure, I haven't made up my mind, or something like that. If you're going to answer the question directly, the answer is going to be in yes or no terms.

[27:52]

If we turn to the second question, we have a very different situation. The second question is, What does it mean to say Jesus is the Christ? What does it mean to say that Jesus is the Messiah, that Jesus is salvific? Now, you'll notice with that second question, it doesn't make any sense to say yes or no. If someone says to you, what does it mean to say Jesus is salvific, and you say yes, That misses the point of the question, which can't be answered with a single word, but which has to be answered in more complex form, with greater detail. Notice also that in the first question, is Jesus the Christ, the yes-no answers fall along the same line

[29:02]

as the line between Christians and non-Christians. Christians are those who confess that Jesus is the Christ. Non-Christians don't do that. There are other ways of explaining the differences or pointing to the differences also, but in terms of this issue, there's the difference there. You don't find non-Christians saying that Jesus is the Messiah, not unless they plan to be baptized. However, on the second question, There isn't that same kind of dividing line. At least in principle, it would be possible for a non-Christian to look into this issue, even to give the same type of answer that a Christian might give and yet reject it, might find it unacceptable. So this second issue is in some ways a harder issue harder issue to answer, a harder issue to explore, a more complex question. In some respects also, the second issue logically comes first.

[30:10]

If you don't have some idea of what it means to say that Jesus is the Christ, then you wouldn't have any possible way of addressing the question. Now, you'll notice, again, with regard to the second question, that you probably don't ever get to a complete and exhaustive answer to that. There's a depth there that no one is going to be able to articulate completely, an element of mystery in the sense of not being exhaustible. But it's with these two questions that contemporary theology, contemporary Christology, is largely concerned. Some authors are more concerned with one aspect or another. That, too, accounts for some of the differences among them. We'll find that the greatest variations among the authors that have been mentioned and other authors that could be mentioned come with regard to the second question. All of the people that have been mentioned so far certainly affirm that Jesus is the Christ.

[31:14]

That's not disputed among them. But they have slightly different ways, even significantly different ways, of getting at what that means and entailed in that somewhat different ways of explaining why they hold, what the reasons are for their convictions. A long line of passage which is often cited in this connection is from the first letter of Peter, chapter 3. The first letter of Peter is not cited that frequently by theologians, but this is one particular line that is often mentioned. Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence. That's one of the tasks of theology. The reasons for the hope or the faith that is within us, that's one of the tasks that is being addressed here. Just one last point on this issue.

[32:16]

I've taken the example, Jesus as the Christ, as one of the broader Christological confessions, but it would be equally possible to raise the same question. the is it so and what does it mean questions with regard to more specific issues of Christology. Let me take just one example. This is one that I usually use in class and I think it will fit here as well. When we recite the Creed, we come finally to a section where we say that Christ sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. Supposing someone, at an appropriate time, asked you to explain what was meant by that. That's not easy to do. You are going to have to say that God does not have a right hand, that God is spirit. You don't mean, presumably, that Christ is sitting down rather than standing up.

[33:23]

But there's an imagery there that has to be unpacked, which would be misleading if it's not interpreted. Now, just as it is difficult to explain what's meant by the confession that Christ sits at the right hand of God, so too we are faced with the question of explaining what does it mean to say Christ died for us? or that Christ died for our sins? What does it mean to say that Christ was raised on the third day? In all of those specific instances, we're dealing with matters that are very significant for Christians, make their way, word for word almost, into one or another forms of the creeds, and yet at the same time require a great deal of explanation and study.

[34:25]

Again, in each case, the Christian answer is going to be an affirmation of the truth of that confession. But the other part of the issue, explaining its meaning, is not that simple. And I suspect you could say that in some ways each of the four Gospels was written as a way of expressing the meaning of these statements. are answering these questions, not only to say that Jesus is salvific, but to say a bit about the how. You can see, of course, simply from the procedures of the evangelists that they don't do it quickly or with ease. They do it over a long extended work that has provided material for reflection and meditation for countless centuries. So that's the first type of issue that we're dealing with. Well, lastly, as far as these introductory remarks are concerned, I'd like to draw attention to a shift in structure between Catholic theology at the present time and Catholic theology of the recent past.

[35:44]

The shift is not limited to Christology, but it has particular impact in Christology. The shift's not that long ago. Father mentioned earlier that John Burkhardt and I had been classmates studying theology. We were studying theology during the Council, but the structure that was in effect at that time was very much the same structure as that which had prevailed for about a hundred years before the Council. The Council's teachings and so on had begun to affect the treatment of issues within that structure. but had not yet brought about a certain rethinking of the structure itself. If you take a look at the bottom of the sheet that was distributed, there you go, There's a brief outline of the system of the revival of scholastic theology that prevailed roughly from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century.

[36:54]

This may be familiar to many of you from your own theological studies. It's not foreign territory. If you start at the bottom, But typically, there was one year of studying fundamental theology, concerned with the question of revelation, the theology of the church. The procedure in that section of the treatment was to argue on the basis of historical information and reason, not by appeal to authority. Dealt with scriptural material, but not with the argument, this is the inspired word of God. Rather, dealing with this as something of a historical record. And the purpose of that initial study was to argue, first, that God had revealed himself, especially in Christ, and secondly, that the church was the divinely authorized representative and teacher of the content of the Christian faith.

[37:59]

I'm compressing it down to these particular issues. Study of other areas of theology proceeded against that background, but now with a great switch in argumentation. And no longer arguing on the basis of reason and history alone, but now arguing by appeal to authority. The authority of the scriptures, above all the authority of the Church's teaching of the Magisterium. And you'll notice that Christology And what was called soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, the doctrine of Christ's salvific work, they're located within the dogmatic theology, toward the middle of it, at least in conjunction with these various other issues. Now, that brought about a very strange situation. As far as I know, it was not at all intended.

[39:02]

And I suspect that it wasn't even adverted to very much, just as we don't pay attention to most things that we get accustomed to. But it still had effects on the content. Let me mention here four issues that at some point or another will have to be discussed in a presentation of Christology. One is the incarnation. The word became flesh. The theology of the incarnation, the relationship of the divinity of Christ to his humanity, issues of that sort. is Jesus' public life, his teaching, his significant actions of one sort or another, miracle stories, the calling of disciples, issues of that sort.

[40:16]

Let's group those together for the moment. Thirdly, the crucifixion. And lastly, the resurrection. I grouped together with the Resurrection for these purposes, the theology of the Ascension, Pentecost, and so on. That can all be grouped together here. Sometime or another, any Christology is going to have, at some point, these issues are going to have to come up to be discussed. And in fact, if you look at any of the authors who were mentioned earlier, you'll find a chapter or more directed to these issues. Not necessarily in the sequence, that would be a matter of individual author's judgment, but substantially. And I look back at the little chart that was given out. Where did these issues get discussed in that framework?

[41:20]

The theology of the incarnation is discussed under the heading of Christology, Person of Christ. In fact, the theology of the Incarnation pretty much exhausts the content of that course. The course was often taught under the title, On the Incarnate Word, so that the Incarnation was right directly indicated as its content. The public life of Jesus, however, was discussed in fundamental theology as part of the doctrine of revelation. Jesus teaching his actions as revelatory of the Father and as somehow constituting testimony to Christ's own standing. Crucifixion was discussed under the heading of soteriology.

[42:26]

Christ died for us, died for our sins. Think here of the language of sacrifice, of satisfaction, atonement, and so on. And finally, the resurrection was treated almost exclusively in fundamental theology as a kind of culminating proof of Christ's status. There's a book that's often mentioned in this regard by a theologian named Ott, entitled Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. It's a standard textbook of the past. The same point could be made by referring to other books, but Ott has a book of about 600 pages. It doesn't include the fundamental theology. It just includes the dogmatic Christology. And in the 600 pages, there's about a page and a quarter on the resurrection, and about another half a page on the ascension.

[43:35]

So if you brought that in together, you'd have about two pages on the resurrection material. Think of the New Testament. Think of the liturgy. Think of the significance of the resurrection in various aspects of the Christian life. There's something out of focus there. What I'm getting at is that in the structure that prevails here, there is no unified treatment of Christology. The different themes that have to be addressed all get picked up in one place or another, but not brought together. Now that means, concretely, in any theological faculty of any size, that different professors taught these different areas, and so there was no unified synthesis of Christological teaching in the broader sense.

[44:38]

What effect does that have? The easiest example that I can give is with regard to the crucifixion. And that may not be coincidental because the crucifixion tends to be the area where questions and problems emerge most strongly. This system, almost by definition, means that the crucifixion is divorced from Jesus' public life. There's very extensive treatment of the importance of the crucifixion, argument for the importance of the crucifixion, but not by saying what brought him to the cross. which is almost the immediate question that would come to mind, and which is certainly a good portion of the presentation in the Gospels. So you can see one effect there, the separation of the crucifixion from Jesus' public life. On the other hand, the crucifixion is also separated from the resurrection, and vice versa in both cases of course.

[45:44]

So you have the crucifixion in isolation, an effort to explain its meaning, but without very direct connection of the crucifixion precisely to the very things which help explain that. That's a problem with this structure, and that's a problem which has pretty much universally led in the direction of a more integrated presentation of Christological teaching, both in classroom exposition and also in writing. If you look at any of the books that are listed in the top part here, there's a strong effort to integrate these various elements. The question, of course, that remains is precisely how to do that, how to go about doing it, how best to articulate the interconnections that are present. That's something that we'll have to come back to and look at later.

[46:47]

I think that will do by way of introduction here. We have just a couple more minutes anyway, but if there are any questions, maybe this would be the best time to raise them if there are questions that have to do with these introductory points. And then there was a bit of a big surprise. He also understood NFC, New Testament theology. Yes, yes, it is that. It's a very interesting project. Basically what Skillebakes has in mind is this. He has the idea that Christianity began with an encounter. An encounter between Jesus as God's offer of salvation on the one hand, and those who received that offer and responded to it in faith, and the other.

[47:55]

And he thinks that in order to present his theology, he should keep the same offer-response structure. The first volume is largely a presentation of the offer. Jesus' public life, death. In order to talk about the resurrection, he has to start talking about the early Christians at that point. So there's a little shift there. Then he goes to the second volume, and the idea there is to run through almost the whole of the New Testament. to present the different theologies of the different books of the New Testament, and then to do some synthesis of that, which will pull out from the various books the major common themes. So that's what he's trying to do. There is one major point where he departs from the logic of that. I don't say this to criticize, actually, because it's a book of 800 pages, and if he didn't depart from the logic, I think it would be about 1,200, and I can see reasons for not doing that.

[49:10]

Well, in the first volume, in his presentation of the history, you might say, of Jesus, he draws very heavily on the Gospels, as you'd expect, the synoptic Gospels. When he comes to the second volume to give the theologies of the New Testament, he doesn't go into the synoptics again. And the logic of his thought would be, having already drawn on the synoptics for historical information about Jesus. Now, in the second stage, you should look at the theologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, because they are significant biblical theologians in their own right. That he does not do. But as I say, it would probably have been another 400 pages, and there are perhaps good reasons for not having done it. Are you going to, sometime in the talk, just give a little schema as to what a modern presentation of theology is? Yes. Yeah, I will. But it's complicated in the fact that there's not just one.

[50:24]

There is in common an effort to integrate. That's certainly there. But I'll try to show at least some of the ways that people have drawn different links. Casper, in your book The God of Jesus Christ, is that simply enough dating? It's substantially the same in the general theological thrust, but the background is different. Jesus the Christ is basically his Christology course. The God of Jesus Christ is basically his course on the Trinity. Well, the existence of God and the Trinity. There is a certain overlap because there are Christological elements to both, but it's not really an updating, it's a parallel work. The usual German system in teaching is that courses are not taught every year. They're taught every two or three years on something of a cycle. And Casper has taught these different courses at different times.

[51:28]

And simply for one reason or another, the Christology book was published first and this other one was published later. But the class material that lies behind both goes back through the same periods. I don't think you find significant differences on individual points from one book to another. You might find, you would find a more complete explanation of one thing or another in the different book. With the schema that's given here, the older schema, it represents, would you say, the situation of the time, of the contemporary need to challenge the theology of the time. And would you say that that's still... would be the same in this larger period, of course, the Reformation approach responds to the challenges of that period. I think it does represent the way the challenges were perceived at the time when they originated. And I think it would be a great mistake to drop

[52:30]

say, the themes of fundamental theology or the concerns of fundamental theology. That's the part that was particularly addressed to the 19th century questions. It would be a great mistake to drop that and say we can dispense with that and just deal with the dogmatic questions. What most authors try to do now, and I think correctly try to do now, is to integrate the concerns to say, in effect, that the theologians who developed this structure were right in trying to respond to the needs of the day, but that it might have been better not to make a kind of two-part theology out of it, but rather to make the whole of theology a response to the needs of that time without forgetting questions and important issues that had come up in the past as well. Okay, so the separation there is perhaps the main point to criticize, to raise questions about.

[53:38]

What became of it? It's still there. It's still there. The difference is this, that roughly from... I suppose you could say roughly from... the mid-19th century, but particularly from 1879. In 1879, Leo XIII issued an encyclical, Eteni Patris, promoting the revival of Thomistic studies. Roughly from that period to the Council, neo-scholasticism, with the revival of scholastic thought, was the dominant approach in Catholic theology. There were some exceptions to it here and there, but basically that's what was done. Since the Council, I would say that the neo-scholastic approach is now one among many. It doesn't die out.

[54:43]

In fact, in ecclesiastical circles, it would still be highly influential after all. That's the system in which 95% of the bishops have been educated. But it's not the only system prevailing. And just as a completely parenthetical remark, the individual who is probably most immediately represented with official Catholic statements at the present time is Cardinal Ratzinger. That's the name that tends to come to mind. He can certainly not be called a neo-scholastic theologian. It's a kind of revival of patristic or Franciscan theology. It's not neo-scholastic. So that's another indication of the complexities of the situation that wouldn't have happened before. you have to get that in the Oxford Review, I see Dulles has an article kind of defending, or at least saying that there is still a role for neo-scholasticism, with some of its ramifications.

[55:49]

Is there still an attempt, this is just a mistress, but is there still an attempt to disclose that there's some neo-scholastic methodology and an approach to theology in the average seminary? Or is it pretty eclectic? I would not say that there is an attempt to impose this methodology. Pretty eclectic, that might make it sound too loose. But I would say, my impression is that in the average seminary, that any of the positions would be considered standard Catholic approaches, in the plural. would generally be found acceptable. See, one of the issues is this. The Council promoted very strongly not only biblical studies, but also use of the Bible and the liturgy in dealing with other theological questions. Well, the neoscholastic system had strengths in some ways, but that's not where its strengths lay.

[56:55]

They were a more speculative, philosophical system. And if you're going to accent more the biblical forms of treatment, and one of the decrees of the Council says to begin with the treatment of the biblical issues, well, if you're going to begin with the treatment of the biblical issues, you're not following the neo-scholastic pattern of the presentation of theses. So you've already moved a little bit away from it in structure and patterns of thought. Romano Guadini, some sort of transition. He did, yes he did, very much so. And someone, it's interesting, he's an interesting figure, not so much in the biblical side of it, but on the liturgical side of it, and on the alertness to contemporary questions. It's interesting that Guadini, for almost the whole of his life, did not teach, strictly speaking, theology. He was a professor of Christian worldview, in Berlin and Tübingen in Munich, precisely because with that odd-sounding title, which was created explicitly for him, he didn't have to present things in the form that was then standard in a theological faculty.

[58:13]

If he wanted to do the same thing today, he probably wouldn't have to create a completely new chair for him. But what he was doing right then was something that people tended not to classify, strictly speaking, as a theologian, but rather as a Christian thinker on religious questions or something of that sort. But he did. He would be a significant factor. I guess we should break off here. Good, thank you. And if you could remember to bring the New Testament with you at that time.

[58:52]

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