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§ 3
HISTORY OF DOGMA
Up to this point I have mentioned what the Church is as something founded by Christ. I indicated that the Church is constitutively a dynamic sameness in Christ, and transmitted from some men to others, a personal communion with Christ, and also a communion, which exists in the form of incorporation to him. The problem then appears concerning what are in a more precise way the characteristics of this presence of Christ in the heart of the Church considering that the people of God, and therefore the Church, is a constitutively historical reality. At first sight this would appear to present no problem at all because, obviously, that things may be in history is something common to the Church and to the stars. But it is not the same to be in history than to be historically in it. The sun, for example, is in history, but is not in it historically, just physically. On the other hand, Christ is not only present in history because the Church is historical, but is in it in a most precise manner, historically. This presents a problem, I repeat, concerning what the presence of Christ may be in the very history of the Church.
It is the case of a Church composed of men in which Christ can be and is present to all those men in a manifestative experience of what is present to them. Manifestation (shall follow with more details) is precisely revelation. Therefore, the problem of how Christ is present historically to the Church is just to determine what is that intrinsic and {455} formal historical characteristic revelation has. This demands that we ask the following questions.
In the first place, what is revelation?
In the second place, how does revelation occur?
In the third place, to whom is this revelation made?
And in fourth place, in what does the intrinsic historicity of revelation consist?
I. What is revelation?
Revelation, above all, is a donation from the part of God. It is God giving of himself his own real truth. In the second place, this donation is certainly a knowing, but a knowing through intimacy, as the Hebrew verb yada’ mentioned above expresses. This is the knowing of a friendship, the intimacy of a person. It is not a speculative and theoretical knowing, but a knowing through intimacy. And this donation through intimacy of God as real truth is principle of life. It is essential not to forget this, that it is intrinsically necessary for revelation, as its own constitutive ingredient, to be principle of life. The rest is speculation. And in third place, precisely by revelation being a principle of life, it is in the life of man with all its dimensions where this donation is clearly manifested.
Manifestation is in what revelation precisely consists. This is the reason we shall never be able to understand the donation of God to man based on revelation, but (the reverse) we have to understand the revelation of God from the donation he makes of himself to man. And he can make it precisely because man is constitutively and formally a religation. Therefore, in his religation man has {456} the manifestative experience of that to which he is religated. In the first place, man is religated to the power of the real. This is a fact common to all men. In the second place, in that power of the real is discovered, through intelligence, the reality of God. In that case, it is manifestative experience, in one form or another, of the reality of God. And in third place, through an option of faith, if one thinks that God is the Christian God, then it is not only the manifestative experience of the power of the real, and the reality of God. It is but a special and concrete manifestative experience of that, which thematically we shall call revelation.
This revelation is a manifestation, a phanérosis, and it is such regardless of the form it may take. There is no necessity for it to take one form only. It can have many. Patently, the way many of the books of the Old Testament are compiled demonstrates this quite well. They begin with creation, the interest of the first chapter of Genesis is not to provide a theory of the origin of things, but precisely to make of creation the first manifestative act of God in creatures. The second great stage is the constitution of the very history of Israel, which is based on two concepts. In the first place, to the constitution of the people of Israel corresponds the concept of election; it is the chosen people. And, in second place, the type of the historical progress of that people, which is summarized in fidelity or infidelity. And at one and the same time, the election and the fidelity constitute the very essence of what the Old Testament calls berit, Covenant, Alliance. This is why the reality and the historical progress of the people of Israel are the reality and the historical progress of the Covenant. This is known in the stages that the Deuteronomic writer puts in his theology, such as, the Covenant of Yahweh, the fidelity or infidelity to Yahweh, the anger of Yahweh, and the repentance. The third great moment is the life of Christ, who is the subsisting revelation. {457} And there is also a subsisting revelation, which is given to us precisely in the Spirit of Truth, constitutive of Pentecost. Therefore, revelation is a manifestation under many forms. With this base established, we now ask how this revelation occurs.
II. How does revelation occur?
We tend to think that revelation is a dictation. This is simply absurd; there is no such dictation. Obviously, God could dictate a revelation in Hebrew or Greek. He has not done so, no doubt about that. Revelation is not a dictation; it is simply an illumination of intelligence regardless of the form it may take. This illumination can be direct, obviously. Isaiah has a vision resembling the one anyone might have had seeing an Assyrian king seated on his throne with the seraphim, etc. (cf. Is 6). But regardless of how, revelation is not that. Revelation consists in the light this person receives to apprehend something through the human means he has and sees, but under a light different than the one these human means can provide. Because of this, revelation not only is not a dictation, but even reflection and positive work is not excluded from it (including deficient positive work). Revelation in this sense not only is not a dictation, but it does not even have to be a miracle in all its details, not at all. The man who receives the revelation is making his reflections, is judging the events occurring in life under a light and a criterion that, certainly, does not come from the events themselves. In this sense this special illumination should be called revelation.
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III. To whom is this revelation made?
Certainly, revelation has to be made involving within it the intelligence of those receiving it. The contrary would not be a manifestation or a revelation. This is true as long as it is not said, in the first place, that the revelation is exclusively and formally a revelation to the intelligence. That would be completely false. Revelation is a donation as principle of life regardless how manifestative it may be. But as principle of life it is something not limited to the intelligence. Revelation is not a kind of illumination to have an interesting knowledge, and perhaps even useful, but in and of itself it would only be nothing more than knowledge. Revelation involves intelligence, but is not directed exclusively to it. The contrary would be an absolutely insufficient notion of revelation. And in the second place, there is a dimension very usual in theology books, but formally false. It consists in saying that the intelligence receiving that revelation is the intelligence that judges and emits propositions and enunciations, the revealed enunciations. This is completely false. It is not the case here of a judicatory intelligence or the enunciative intelligence. It is the case, from my point of view, of intelligence in a much more real sense, and much more modest. What I have called numerous times the intelligence as apprehension of the real as real. Be that as it may, to understand something as real is precisely what constitutes intelligence.
Precisely because it is revealed to some men, to realities endowed with intelligence, revelation from the part of God is something that in one form or another, involves the receiver of the revelation. Certainly, if not there would be no revelation. Revelation, one way or another involves the receiver of revelation in a very concrete form; it is given {459} so that man may give his heart to what he receives. Cor dare is the origin of the term credere, to fully believe. Actually, revelation is made to be fully believed by those who receive it. Those who receive it can be individual men, but it should be well understood that their individual revelation is to be communicated to others. And above all, those who receive it may be taken as a certain unity, but this unity is not an extrinsic unity. Precisely because man belongs intrinsically to the notion of revelation itself, and man is essentially historical, revelation is also historical or at least, in an essential way, a certain historicity belongs to it.
IV. In what does the historicity of revelation consist?
This is an important problem we must now consider. To say that revelation is historical is equivalent to say that the subsisting revelation, Christ, is a historically constituted truth. But this does not mean that it is a progressive truth. I believe it is one of the great exact audacities Suárez ever proposed was to think that it is not excluded from the history of revelation that during the course of the Church there may have been real partial obscurities of the revealed truth. This is evident. With a somewhat exaggerated expression, but a basic undeniable truth, St. Jerome wrote, “the whole world groaned and was astonished to discover it had become Arian”1. At any rate, the whole world is somewhat difficult, but Arianism certainly had an unbelievable extent within the Church and human society. There can be, of course, an obscurity, {460} which means that revelation, even while being the subsisting truth of Christ, is a revelation that at least is offered to man to be believed and accepted. But it is an offer.
Thus we find that this offer is, above all, an offer to accept revelation. And what is offered to us in revelation is precisely the power of God. It is a power that is destined to be accepted by man and therefore, to seize him. The offer is a going through the seizure. And this seizure enters the concept of power. Cause is not the same as power. While cause is the functionality of the real qua real, power is the dominance of the real qua real. Revelation dominating the man that accepts it seizes him. Therefore, the historicity of revelation is nothing but the dialectic of this seizure. Still, this dialectic of seizure has very different strata.
A) There is a stratum that is, in a certain way, the most obvious, revelation seizes man, an intelligent being. And this intelligent being, naturally, tries to understand in an adequate or inadequate way that, which is given to him and has seized him. It is the case of a seizure in which he has made a personal surrender of his human reality. Then the historicity of revelation as dialectic of the seizure consists in that the seizure, with which revelation seizes the intellect, this intellect understands better that which has been offered. In this sense revelation has a progress. Historicity means a progress, but a progress on the line of a better intellection. It is, what in a more or less generic way, I would denominate a theologic progress.
{461} B) Nevertheless, there is a deeper stratum, anterior to the theologic progress. And it consists in the fact that the seizure, with which revelation seizes man, not only carries with it that intelligence conceptualize that which is offered to it, perhaps in a richer or more exact way theologically, but also that it may assimilate it better vitally. Here resides the dimension of donation in revelation. That which is offered to man can be assimilated vitally in a richer way in some moments more than in others, in some persons more than in others, perhaps in some eras more richly than others. Here the progress of revelation is not a progress at the conceptive level; it is formally a progress at the religious level. Revelation as fountain of riches seizing man and transforming his whole religious life does not coincide with theologic progress. But it is subjacent to the theologic progress, and without revelation there would be no such progress. Nevertheless, this progress is not the same as the theologic, but is a deeper progress, which we could call theological progress. It is not theologic; it is theological, it is the whole life of man in its theological dimension.
C) But there is still a deeper stratum. Because, in this seizure man not only can better conceptualize that which is given to him (progressive revelation theologically), but can have more assimilation of revelation, and in this sense can have a greater discovery of the internal riches, which compose the revelation that seizes him. But there is also something apparently more modest, but quite crucial. The fact is that revelation itself, which is given and seizes man, becomes more manifest than it was before. This progress is not simply a theologic progress. Also, it is not a theological progress; {462} it is a much deeper progress. It is a real progress, which affects revelation itself. That is the question. Suffice it to remember, for example, one of the dogmas defined in the last era, the Immaculate Conception. Up to the IV century there are no testimonies that anyone believed it. By the time just before the definition of the Immaculate Conception there was an enormous school of theologians pressuring Pius IX to make the declaration. St. Thomas was wrong, together with other saints, with respect to the deposit of revelation; he believed the Blessed Virgin was not immaculate. Neither St. Thomas believed it, or St. John Chrysostom, or someone of the standing of St. Bernard despite being the one who wrote the Salve Regina2. Nevertheless, revelation has had a real progress. And in this real progress is where we precisely find the important difficulty concerning the historical existence of revelation. Because this third stratum of the real progress indicates to us that revelation, insofar as a manifestation and donation of God, is a manifestation that intrinsically has a progress. Therefore, from the point of view of God, revelation has an intrinsic historicity. What does this mean?
So far it means that if revelation is intrinsically historical as revelation, i.e., in its very reality, then, revelation is not given to men in an ordinary way, for example like a treatise or something instituted that can be read, the way the catechism is given to men. Revelation is given to men in a different way; it is given to some so that they may transmit it to others. Which means that, in the end, the unity of those many to whom revelation is given is not a specific unity, but historical. It is not the case of men insofar as rational animals, but of some men that are continually receiving the revelation from others, and so on successively; it is a historical unity. And {463} because of this revelation, in this sense, is called, for example, euaggélion, the good news that is being announced from some to others; or rather, kérygma, preaching, etc.
As I mentioned earlier, the foundation of Christianity from the part of Christ is to make Christians, and transmit what Christ has made with some to others. Hence, history is nothing but revelation in act. In an act through which, in the doing, what is truly done is being manifested. Since it is a manifestation that is being transmitted from some men to others in a historical manner, it means that the doing itself consists in a fixed way of giving, from some men to others, something that remains fixed in those receiving the revelation. This donation is what has been called parádosis, tradition. Tradition not in the sense that it may be something old and traditional, but in the sense of tradere, of something that is delivered.
Therefore, the historical unity of revelation consists, first and above all, in being a living tradition where some men (Christ first and afterwards the rest) are communicating to others, in a manifestative experience of their life with Christ that, which constitutes the content of revelation. To ask, therefore, for the content of the intrinsic historicity of revelation consists, in the end, to ask for the content of the structure of this living tradition. Consequently, as I said with respect to religions in general3, there are three decisive moments in every tradition that we must specify in regard to Christianity, leaving other religions aside.
1) There is, in first place, an originating seizure. When revelation occurs, it remains fixed in those {464} that receive it as a donation. This is what forms the constituting moment of tradition, or the constituting tradition. This constituting tradition impresses a special characteristic upon those constituted in it. Above all, the constituting tradition is a giving from one to another, for example, Christ to the Apostles. And it is a positive giving, therefore, what is given is a positum, something placed there. But it is not only given to satisfy human needs; it is given for something different, precisely so that man may live from it. Hence, what is placed and given is placed and given to be kept. What is given in revelation not simply has the characteristic of a positum, but the characteristic of a de-positum. That is what the revealed deposit is. The revealed deposit is not simply something fixed by transmission, but something fixed by and to be kept in the vital intimacy of those who receive it. That is why the deposit is, in its radical and constituting moment in Christ, a delivery by Christ made in the effusion of hs own intimacy in the Spirit of Truth, in the Holy Spirit.
The type of fixation can be varied. It can be written. In that case, fixation is associated with a theological characteristic such as inspiration. Inspiration does not consist in having a clever idea, not even of this type. Inspiration in theology has a very precise meaning; it is an action that is received. And second, it is received in order to write, not for any other purpose. It is received only for writing. And third, it is received for writing, but in order to teach without error in what is written.
That is the crucial question. To teach without error, in the first place, what the author wishes to teach. It is not stipulated anywhere that what is taught should be things to be offered as models for man. There can be inspired texts, such as hundreds of pages in the Old Testament, where there is {465} no intention of teaching anything from this point of view. They only consign some traditions and legends from the history of Israel. That is something different, the aim is to present those things that were believed or had happened in Israel. There is no intention of teaching that what Israel believed in those days should be repeated. In the second place, it is the case of a motion to teach without error what the author wishes to teach, and the way the author wishes to teach it. This is another question. We are inundated with the idea of literary genre. I believe the literary genre is a subterfuge to avoid the fundamental problem. It is not the case only of literary genre; it is a question of intellectual and conceptual styles. The mental way of conceptualizing things for an Israelite from the time of the prophet Isaiah or the time of St. Paul is not the same compared to our time. Not only is there a literary genre, but also a genre we might call intellectual. It is the case of a motion to write and teach without error what the author wishes to teach, the way he wishes to teach it, and in third place, to those he wishes to teach. That is the third part of the question. It is not enough to distinguish the literary genre. The revealed books have been characterized as circumstantial numerous times. Yes, but this seems to me quite an external characterization even through I may have used it many times. More than circumstantial they are circumstantiated, i.e., in some particular circumstances, from a certain particular author, for some particular goals. What the revealed books contain of this circumstantiated mode is something that will have to be discovered through an interpretive way.
However, revelation can be fixed through writing or any other way. Nevertheless, despite the way revelation may be fixed, it is above all an absolutely concrete revelation. In the second place, in that concretion, the purpose is to help those who receive the revelation from others. In this sense, from the point of view of its constitutive moment, {466} every revelation is a paidagogía, a pedagogy, as St. Paul said (cf. Gal 3:24-25; 1 Co 4:15). And in third place, it is a pedagogy to transcend the limits of what has been taught in a certain way towards truths that perhaps may be taught in other ways, and of course, reach further beyond the circumstances that required the previous revelation.
2) The second moment of tradition is a seizure of others, but not by the depositum. Let us take, for example, the case of Christ. Christ, as man, disappeared from the surface of the Earth a long time ago. His deposit has remained. And then that deposit is transmitted to other persons. What seizes each one is the deposit he has received from those that initially received the deposit of revelation. In this case we do not have the merely constituting tradition, but we have the tradition in a second dimension; it is the continuing tradition. Certainly, in it we have the depositum. But it is not a depositum received simply to be kept, but a deposit that has permanence from delivery to delivery. Therefore, it is the case of something that is offered to man as a depositum, but a depositum with a characteristic in a certain way reduplicative, and the second power of the depositum; that is what I would call the propositum. It is proposed to man, to believe that, which constituted the deposit of the first revelation. It is a propositum, not simply a depositum.
This propositum is not (I repeat) a new communication of teachings, but establishes the possibility for a personal life. As such, the propositum is not different from the depositum, but is purely and simply (and this was essential never to have forgotten it) the reactualization of the primary deposit. The propositum consists precisely in reactualizing it at later moments and circumstances, and obviously with a particular {467} perfectly determined direction. If in the constituting moment that direction was called paidagogía, here the direction has a more complex characteristic, it is didaskalía, teaching. Christ not only was at the beginning of tradition, but is also contained in its depth, continuing it precisely as great didáskalos, as the great master in the bosom of the people of God.
3) But tradition has a third moment. In the seizing with which the revealed deposit seizes the intelligences of those receiving it, and the successive ones of those that have it as proposed, what is given to revelation can be made more manifest. Then tradition is not simply constitutive or continuing, but also has a third dimension. It is a progradient tradition. That is the real progress of revelation. Of course, this real progress of revelation impresses a special characteristic upon that, which progresses. Certainly, revelation is not going to be altered with this, but there will be a real progress. Then, this means that the depositum does not function here purely and simply as propositum, but as a suppositum (as a supposition, in the etymological meaning of the term) of what is going to come next. It is a suppositum of progress. We then face the crucial point of the question, and we must ask the following.
In the first place, what is this characteristic of supposition revelation has in the progradient tradition?
In the second place, in what does progress consist?
And in third place, what is the structure of this progress?
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1 “Ingemuit totus orbis, et arianum se esse miratus est”, in St. Jerome, Dialogus contra luciferianus, no. 19, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, vol. 23, Paris, 1845, col. 172.
2 [Tr. note: Based on legend. Contemporaries and companions of St. Bernard (1090-1153) never mentioned it. Modern scholarship attributes the Salve Regina to either Herman Contractus [1013-1054] or St. Peter of Mezonzo, Bishop of Iria Flavia and Compostela (985-1003) in Galicia, Spain. William Durandus [1237-1296], famous French canonist and expert liturgical writer assigned it to St. Peter of Mezonzo in his Rationale divinorum officiorum written in 1286. Presumably, pilgrims to the tomb of Santiago in Compostela (discovered in 829), spread it widely throughout Spain and Europe]
3 Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions, op. cit., pp. 108-111.