Franciscan Penance Library

OBSTACLES TO BELIEF

Introduction to Christianity, by Professor Joseph Ratzinger, speaks of some barriers or obstacles to Christian belief:  “……..there comes, to make things harder for us, the gulf between ‘then’ and ‘now’.  The basic paradox already present in belief as such is rendered even more profound by the fact that belief appears on the scene in the garb of days gone by and , indeed, seems itself to be something old-fashioned, the mode of life and existence current a long time ago………Belief appears no longer as the bold but challenging leap out of the apparent all of our visible world and into the apparent void of the invisible and intangible:  it looks much more like a demand to bind oneself to yesterday and to affirm it as eternally valid.   And who wants to do that in an age when the idea of ‘tradition’ has been replaced by the idea of ‘progress’? 

"We touch here on a specific element in our present situation that is of some importance to our question.   For intellectual circles in the past, the concept of ‘tradition’ embraced a firm program; it appeared to be something protective on which man could rely; he could think himself safe and on the right lines if he could appeal to tradition.  Today precisely the opposite  feeling prevails: tradition appears to be what has been laid aside, the merely out-of-date, whereas progress is regarded as the real promise of life, so that man feels at home , not in the realm of tradition, of the past, but in the realm of progress and the future.” 

On top of the problem that Christianity comes from the past, lies another problem which Professor Ratzinger goes on to discuss: “Christian belief is not merely concerned, as one might at first suspect from all the talk of belief or faith, with the eternal, which as the ‘entirely Other’ would remain completely outside the human world and time; on the contrary, it is much more concerned with God in history, with God as man.  By thus seeming to bridge  the gulf between eternal and temporal, between, visible and invisible, by making us meet God as man, the eternal as the temporal, as one of us, it understands itself as revelation.  Its claim to be revelation is indeed based on the fact that it has, so to speak, introduced the eternal into our world: ‘No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known’ (John 1:18).” Professor Ratzinger then makes the point even clearer by referring to 1 John 1:1-3 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life----the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us----that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

Professor Ratzinger goes on to explain why this aspect of Christianity is such a stumbling block: “The very thing what at first seems to bring God quite close to us, so that we can touch him as a fellow man, follow his footsteps and measure them precisely, also becomes in a very profound sense the precondition for the ‘death of God’, which henceforth puts an ineradicable stamp on the course of history and the human relationship with God.  God has come so near to us that we can kill him and that he thereby, so it seems, ceases to be God for us.” After wondering whether it would be better to leave God as the “Mysterious Eternal” rather than the Person whom we can “see” and “touch” as St. John says in his first letter, Professor Ratzinger then states “Surely a God thus narrowed down to one point is bound to die definitively in a view of the world that remorselessly reduces man and his history to a tiny grain of dust in the cosmos, that can see itself as the center of the universe only in the naïve years of its childhood and now, grown out of childhood, ought finally to have the courage to awake from sleep, rub its eyes, shake off that beautiful but foolish dream, and take its place unquestioningly in the huge context in which our tiny lives have their proper function, lives that should find new meaning precisely by accepting their diminutiveness?”  Here Professor Ratzinger brings together the double scandal of Christian tradition and claims concerning the Divine Revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Professor Ratzinger was writing these words in the 1960’s, when the “death of God” was very much in the news and the consciousness of many people.  Now, we hear very little about the “death of God”.  Why not?  It seems that Western society has very quietly “killed” God, not on a cross or by persecution of Christians but by relegating Him to Churches and keeping Him totally out of public society.  What is God’s position on abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, divorce, fornication, adultery, or gay marriage? It does not matter since the question of God is a private subjective question and best left out of polite society.  Those Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, who have questioned the wisdom of this “style” of our secular society don’t get very far and may even be persecuted.

Next, Professor Ratzinger challenges each Christian to firmly decide whether he or she can stomach the “scandal of Christianity” or simply accept the “death of God” in our society: “The Christian of today must ask himself this question; he is not at liberty to remain satisfied with finding out that, by all kinds of twists and turns, an interpretation of Christianity can still be found that no longer offends anybody.  When some theologian explains that ‘the resurrection of the dead’ simply means that one must cheerfully set about the work of the future afresh every day, offense is certainly avoided.  But are we then really still being honest?   Is there not serious dishonesty in seeking to maintain Christianity as a viable proposition by such artifices of interpretation?  Have we not much rather the duty, when we feel forced to take refuge in solutions of this sort, to admit that we have reached the end of the road?  Are we not then bound to emerge from the fog and to face straightforwardly the abiding reality?  Let us be quite plain about it: An ‘interpreted’ Christianity of this kind that has lost all contact with reality implies a lack of sincerity in dealing with the question of the non-Christian, whose ‘perhaps not’ should worry us as seriously as we want the Christian ‘perhaps’ to worry him.”

In 1968 Professor Joseph Ratzinger challenged Christians to face up to the real scandal of the claims that both Jesus Christ and Christianity have made for Him.  He continues to do this right up to this day.  Can we Catholics accept the challenge?

--Jim Nugent (Jim is a life pledged member of the Confraternity of Penitents)