Foreword of Jesus of Nazareth Vol II
Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI
At last I am able to present to the public Part Two of my book on Jesus of Nazareth.
In view of the predictable variety of reactions to Part One, it has been a source of great encouragement to me that such leading exegetes as Martin Hengel (who sadly has since passed away), Peter Stuhlmacher, and Franz Mussner have strongly confirmed me in my desire to continue my work and to complete the task I had begun.
While not agreeing with every detail of my book, they regarded it, in terms of both content and method, as an important contribution that should be brought to fruition.
A further joy for me is the fact that in the meantime this book has, so to speak, acquired an ecumenical companion in the comprehensive volume of the Protestant theologian Joachim Ringleben, Jesus (2008).
Anyone who reads both books will see, on the one hand, the great difference in approach and in underlying theological presuppositions through which the contrasting confessional backgrounds of the two authors are concretely expressed.
Yet, at the same time, a profound unity emerges in the essential understanding of the person of Jesus and his message. Despite the differing theological viewpoints, it is the same faith that is at work, and it is the same Lord Jesus who is encountered.
It is my hope that these two books, both in their differences and in their essential common ground, can offer an ecumenical witness that, at the present time and in its own way, can serve the fundamental common task of Christians.
I also note with gratitude that discussion of the methodology and hermeneutics of exegesis, and of exegesis as a historical and theological discipline, is becoming more lively despite a certain resistance to some recent developments.
I consider especially important the book by Marius Reiser, Bibelkritik und Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift [Biblical criticism and Interpretation of Sacred Scripture](2007), which brings together a series of previously published essays, forms them into a whole, and offers important guidelines for new exegetical approaches, without abandoning those aspects of the historical-critical method that are of continuing value.
One thing is clear to me: in two hundred years of exegetical work, historical-critical exegesis has already yielded its essential fruit. If scholarly exegesis is not to exhaust itself in constantly new hypotheses, becoming theologically irrelevant, it must take a methodological step forward and see itself once again as a theological discipline, without abandoning its historical character.
It must learn that the positivistic hermeneutic on which it has been based does not constitute the only valid and definitively evolved rational approach; rather, it constitutes a specific and historically conditioned form of rationality that is both open to correction and completion and in need of it.
It must recognize that a properly developed faith-hermeneutic is appropriate to the text and can be combined with a historical hermeneutic, aware of its limits, so as to form a methodological whole.
Naturally, this combination of two quite different types of hermeneutic is an art that needs to be constantly remastered. But it can be achieved, and as a result, the great insights of patristic exegesis will be able to yield their fruit once more in a new context, as Reiser’s book demonstrates.
I would not presume to claim that this combination of the two hermeneutics is already fully accomplished in my book. But I hope to have taken a significant step in that direction.
Fundamentally this is a matter of finally putting into practice the methodological principles formulated for exegesis by the Second Vatican Council (in Dei Verbum 12), a task that unfortunately has scarcely been attempted thus far.
Perhaps it would be helpful at this point to clarify once more the guiding intention of my book.
I need hardly say that I did not set out to write a “Life of Jesus”. Excellent studies are already available concerning chronological and topographical questions to do with the life of Jesus.
I refer especially to Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History by Joachim Gnilka (translated by Siegfried S. Schatzmann; Peabody, Mass., 1997) and to the exhaustive study by John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew (4 vols., New York, 1991, 1994, 2001, 2009).
A Catholic theologian has labeled my book, together with Romano Guardini’s masterpiece, The Lord, as an example of “Christology from above”, not without issuing a warning about the dangers inherent in such an approach.
The truth is that I have not attempted to write a Christology. In the German-speaking world there is already a whole series of important Christologies by authors ranging from Wolfhart Pannenberg through Walter Kasper to Christoph Schönborn, to which the magnum opus of Karl-Heinz Menke, Jesus ist Gott der Sohn (2008), may now be added.
Closer to my intention is the comparison with the theological treatise on the mysteries of the life of Jesus, presented in its classic form by Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae (S. Th. III, qq. 27–59).
While my book has many points of contact with this treatise, it is nevertheless situated in a different historical and spiritual context, and in that sense it also has a different inner objective that determines the structure of the text in essential ways.
In the foreword to Part One, I stated that my concern was to present “the figure and the message of Jesus”. Perhaps it would have been good to assign these two words — figure and message — as a subtitle to the book, in order to clarify its underlying intention.
Exaggerating a little, one could say that I set out to discover the real Jesus, on the basis of whom something like a “Christology from below” would then become possible.
The quest for the “historical Jesus”, as conducted in mainstream critical exegesis in accordance with its hermeneutical presuppositions, lacks sufficient content to exert any significant historical impact. It is focused too much on the past for it to make possible a personal relationship with Jesus.
In the combination of the two hermeneutics of which I spoke earlier, I have attempted to develop a way of observing and listening to the Jesus of the Gospels that can indeed lead to personal encounter and that, through collective listening with Jesus’s disciples across the ages, can indeed attain sure knowledge of the real historical figure of Jesus.
This task was even more difficult in Part Two than in Part One, because only in this second volume do we encounter the decisive sayings and events of Jesus’ life.
I have tried to maintain a distance from any controversies over particular points and to consider only the essential words and deeds of Jesus — guided by the hermeneutic of faith, but at the same time adopting a responsible attitude toward historical reason, which is a necessary component of that faith.
Even if there will always be details that remain open for discussion, I still hope that I have been granted an insight into the figure of our Lord that can be helpful to all readers who seek to encounter Jesus and to believe in him.
On the basis of the underlying intention of the book as here expounded — to understand the figure of Jesus, his words and his actions — it is clear that the infancy narratives would not fall directly within the scope of the present book.
I will try, however, to keep the promise that I made in Part One (p. xxiv) and to prepare a small monograph on this subject, if I am given the strength.
Rome, on the Feast of Saint Mark
25 April 2010
Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI
© Ignatius Press
