Introduction to Christianity by Fr Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI

Stratiotes · #1 May 1, '08, 3:46 pm

Any takers? I just started and already have some notes scribbled all over the margins of the first few pages so go ahead and start if you are interested....

mizznicole · #2 May 23, '08, 6:16 am

I have to finish my thesis revisions, but after that would enjoy reading this from the start. I read the 2nd half for a class. Great book.

Stratiotes · #3 Jun 5, '08, 5:24 am

OK, you've had time for that thesis

.

What do you think of the discussion on belief - what it is, etc.?

I liked the discussion very much about how Christians and non-Christians have the same problem of faith - we think, "What if it really isn't true?" and non-believers are plagued by the same doubt from the other direction, "What if it really is true?" And so all mankind has the same starting point concerning faith. It is, like so much in the book, something obvious yet profound when you think about it.

mizznicole · #4 Jun 5, '08, 5:44 am

Ha! I just recalled that I hadn't checked back since I posted. I'll pick it up this morning to read during nursing.

yep, thesis done. thanks be to God!

Stratiotes · #5 Jun 5, '08, 3:41 pm

So, you're a mom finding time for writing a thesis and time to read and discuss this kind of book.... I feel lazy now.

mizznicole · #6 Jun 7, '08, 7:35 am

Well I have only 1 baby and stay at home. Don't feel bad! I don't do housework.

There were some bells that went off in those first couple of pages with Balthasar...I'm going to research that and get back.

mizznicole · #7 Jun 7, '08, 6:25 pm

I'm going to skip over the Balthasar stuff because it gets into his absolute abandonment stuff, which I don't think I agree with in the end. But it is similar in the sense of the believer being bound dialogically with an unbeliever.

I think Ratzinger is giving a masterful summary of the modern period in this first section. The believer feels stretched over the abyss because nature has been cut out from under us. He's answering questions that I have about the historical consciousness of modernity and how it is different from the ancients--Christianity concerns both factum and faciendum (what is made and what is makeable), but in the classical sense does not absolutize either the historical or the transformative. I'm just at the point where he's talking about the stand-understand dialectic, which is the middle way between those points.

It's interesting how he points out that Marxism and nihilism come out of the Christian context as antithetical; but ride on the Christian emphasis of history and transformation. In general I think he's building a polemic against nihilism as the last stage of modern philosophy.

I don't know if that offers any food for thought. I'm working from memory of a few hours ago.

Stratiotes · #8 Jun 8, '08, 11:32 am

Those are great insights.

That first chapter brought to mind two similar thoughts to me. The "leap of faith" that Kierkegaard spoke of and the presuppositionalism of Cornelius Van Til. Van Til was a presbyterian but he and Ratzinger would be on the same page with the idea of philosophies presupposing a Christian base. Van Til's analogy was of a child who must climb up into the lap of his father in order to slap him in the face - such is the modern agnostic/atheist. Very insightful I think.

I especially liked this one line: "Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received." - pg 73

mizznicole · #9 Jun 10, '08, 6:52 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stratiotes

I especially liked this one line: "Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received." - pg 73

Wow, wish I had had that for my thesis (Which was on 'receptivity').

Stratiotes · #10 Jun 16, '08, 8:18 pm

Another quotable:

"Thus 'Amen' simply says once again in its own way what belief means: the trustful placing of myself on a ground that upholds me, not because I made it and checked it by my own calculations but, rather, precisely because I have not made it and cannot check it." Pg. 75

I know there are some Rich Mullins fans (as I am) and this made me wonder if Rich had read this book when he penned the lyrics of his song, "Credo." The chorus to that song is:

"And I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am
I did not make it, no it is making me
I did not make it, no it is making me
I said I did not make it, no it is making me
It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man"

mizznicole · #11 Jun 28, '08, 6:59 am

Sorry I've been away for a while. The same quote caught my attention.

Here are some thoughts on I.5:

p. 70: reference to Heidegger. This seems typical of Ratzinger. He's not afraid to engage the positive aspects of various philosophers/theologians. It's as if he is actively looking for what can be affirmed, but then go a step further and show the slight differences with Catholic theology and how it would need to change in order to be reconciled. Note his earlier use of Luther.

p. 71: "every man must adopt some kind of attitude toward the realm of basic decisions..." I find it curious that he frames this in terms of decision, which in the Thomistic analysis deals with the external act. I would expect him to speak instead of judgment, the interior intellectual assent. When judgment is collapsed into decision you often get the kind of misuse of techne that he's critiquing. I wonder what the German says. Or is he perhaps contrasting decision detached from judgment/contemplation (which gives you a kind of mechanistic view of man pace Marx) with the decision that comes from judgment? He's not explicit about this. It seems like he's holding his cards in this section, trying to bring the non-Christian reader further in.

Stratiotes · #12 Jun 28, '08, 3:09 pm

Yes, the references to other philosophers - atheist, agnostic, and protestant alike - is one thing I have always loved about Ratzinger's work. Like the apostle Paul, he is not afraid to bring in all the thinkers whether pagan, heretic, etc. to bear on an issue and pull the bits of truth they may have found. It shows just how deeply he has dug into these topics to see it from all sides. Before I became Catholic I had stumbled upon something of his that made reference to Deitrich Boenhoffer (a Lutheran martyr of the Nazis) and it made me realize that there was something very different in Ratzinger that I wanted to find out more about him.

Toward the end of that first section, page 111:
"If one can say that hunger, love, and power are the forces that motivate man, then one can point out, as an extension of this observation, that the three main forms of polytheism are the worship of bread, the worship of love, and the idolization of power. All three paths are aberrations: they make absolutes out of what is not in itself the absolute, and they thereby make slaves of men."

page 113:
"[F]aith is not a matter of playing with ideas but a very serious business: it says no, and must say no, to the absoluteness of political power and to the worship of the might of the mighty in general....it has shattered the political principle's claim to totality once and for all. ...it forms the only definitive protection against the power of the collective and at the same time implies the complete abolition of any idea of exclusiveness in humanity as a whole."

page 114: "We are also coming to understand more and more clearly that the apparent liberation of love and its conversion into a matter of impulse mean the delivery of man to the autonomous powers of sex and Eros, to whose merciless slavery he falls victim just when he is under the illusion that he has freed himself. When he eludes God, the gods put out their hands to grasp him; he can only be liberated by allowing himself to be liberated and by ceasing to try to rely on himself."

Seems very reminiscent of Humane Vitae where Paul VI challenged what seemed to be a liberation to be nothing more than an opportunity for enslavement. His words were not so direct as that but implied especially in the section on the civil authority and contraception - as is being played out in China as a most obvious example.

Don't worry if you can't get back to it right away. I may be away for a good part of July. I'll be traveling in India for business and may not have a lot of access to the internet. So long as we keep it going...the pace is not so important. Good to find somebody who appreciates Ratzinger.

Stratiotes · #13 Jul 29, '08, 12:40 pm

Finished reading _Introduction... while in India - back now and ready to get into this discussion again. I love the last line:

"A salvation of the world does exist - that is the confidence that supports the Christian and that still makes it rewarding even today to be a Christian."

Rings with the Pope's message of hope today...40 years after having written that line.