
The Ecumenical Significance of the Fathers
Thus far, Cardinal Ratzinger has argued that significance of the Fathers in theology has been diminished by modern developments in the Catholic understanding of Scripture (the introduction of the historical-critical method) as well as Tradition (the two views of tradition covered in Part II).
In continuing his quest for a place for the Fathers in modern Catholic theology, Ratzinger considers their importance from an ecumenical standpoint:
Even if the Fathers seem to be losing stature as interpreters of Holy Scripture and witnesses to tradition, do they not, at least, have a distinguished ecumenical significance. Thomas Aquinas and the other great Scholastics of the thirteenth century are “Fathers” of a specifically Roman Catholic theology from which the Christian churches of the Reformation consider themselves completely separated and which, for the churches of the East, also expresses an alien mentality. But the teachers of the ancient Church represent a common past that, precisely as such, may well be a promise for the future (Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 140).
Since they were theologians in a time when the Church was yet undivided, the Fathers constitute a heritage shared by the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches.
“Whereas the theology of the Eastern Churches has never aspired to be anything but a patristic theology” (p. 140), Ratzinger says, the churches of the West, both Catholic and Protestant, have developed their respective theologies in particular ways that are not accepted by the other side. Indeed, the great influence of medieval Scholasticism on Catholic theology was one of the sore points for Protestant theologians during the Reformation.
With candor, Ratzinger acknowledges that Catholic theology since the Middle Ages has been definitively shaped by someone other than the Fathers, although this person’s influence was in some way grounded in patristic thought:
For we must admit, on the one hand, that even for Catholic theology, the so-called Fathers of the Church have, for a long time, been “Fathers” only in an indirect sense, whereas the real “Father” of the form that ultimately dominated nineteenth-century theology was Thomas Aquinas, with his classic systematization of the thirteenth-century doctrina media, which…was in its turn based on the “authority” of the Fathers (p. 142). [Emphasis added.]
A similar situation arose within Protestantism:
On the other hand, it is evident that Protestant theology is also not without its “Fathers”, insofar as the leaders of the Reformation have, for it, a position comparable to the role of the Fathers of the Church. The perspective from which Scripture is studied and the point of departure for ecclesial life bear their mark and are inconceivable without them (p. 142).
These observations lead him to this, in my opinion, extremely insightful conclusion:
Indeed, we must go a step farther and say that the division of the Church is revealed above all in the fact that the Fathers of the one side are not the Fathers of the other. And the ever more observable inability of one side to understand the other even in language and mode of thought stems from the fact that each has learned to think and speak at the knees of totally different Fathers. The differences among the sects do not have their source in the New Testament. They arise from the fact that the New Testament is read under the tutelage of different Fathers (p. 143). [Emphasis added.]
Here, then, is how I would sum up Ratzinger’s evaluation of the situation:
- The separated churches have each been shaped under the teaching of different “Fathers”.
- The Eastern Churches, whose theology “has never aspired to be anything but a patristic theology” (p. 140), have been and continue to be committed to the Fathers of the Church properly speaking.
- In the West, however, things are quite different. Catholic theology, since the Middle Ages, has been dominated by one “Father”, Thomas Aquinas, whose influence can still be felt today. The Protestant churches, for their part, have been shaped by their own “Fathers”—the leaders of the Reformation through whose lens Protestant Christians continue to read Scripture and practice their faith (Luther, Melanchton, Calvin, etc.).
Ratzinger is, first of all, concerned with the situation in the West. In order to truly hear and see each other once again, Western Christians (Catholics and Protestants) will have to learn and understand each other’s Fathers, but the ecumenical impasse remains: this quest for mutual understanding will not make the Fathers of one group the Fathers of the other.
Who would deny that Thomas Aquinas and Luther are each Father of only one part of Christianity? …. And so the question remains: If these Fathers can be Fathers for only a part of Christianity, must we not turn our attention to those who were once Fathers of all?
The solution is for Catholics and Protestants to both return to their common Fathers—the Fathers of the ancient and undivided Church. Happily, this orientation toward the Fathers, as Ratzinger stated earlier, has always been the posture of the Eastern Churches. In the return to patristic theology, then, lies the hope for the reconciliation, first of all, of the Catholic and Protestant Churches in the West, and then of this whole Western Church with the Eastern Churches.
Even if the Fathers’ importance as exegetes and bearers of tradition have been called into question in modern Catholic theology, their ecumenical priority still stands unchallenged. They remain the teachers of a once-unified Church, and therefore constitute the shared heritage of all Christians. As such, these Fathers are the ones to whom the separated Churches must return in order to find their way to each other.
[This series will be continued on Monday.]