Berkouwer and Catholicism : Disputed Questions [1 ed.] 9789004245990, 9789004245587

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Berkouwer and Catholicism

Studies in Reformed Theology Editor-in-chief

Eddy Van der Borght, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Editorial Board

Abraham van de Beek, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Martien Brinkman, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Alasdair Heron, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg Dirk van Keulen, Theological University, Kampen Daniel Migliore, Princeton Theological Seminary Richard Mouw, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena Gerrit Singgih, Duta Wacana Christian University, Yogjakarta Pieter Vos, Protestant Theological University, Amsterdam Conrad Wethmar, University of Pretoria

VOLUME 24

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/srt

Berkouwer and Catholicism Disputed Questions By

Eduardo Echeverria

Leiden • boston 2013

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1571-4799 ISBN 978-90-04-24558-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-24599-0 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

In Memoriam Michael E. Echeverria (1979–2011)

Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... Foreword ............................................................................................................

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Introduction ......................................................................................................

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1 The Renewed Church and the Nouvelle Théologie .........................

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2 Revelation, Faith, and the Knowledge of God ................................. 110 3 On the Dynamics of Faith and Reason: The Differentiated Unity of Nature and Grace .................................................................... 187 4 Scripture and Tradition in Relation to Revelation and to the Church ......................................................................................................... 273 5 Scripture, Tradition and Theological Authority .............................. 319 6 The Development of Dogma ................................................................. 394 Epilogue: The Significance of Berkouwer for the Adventure of Ecumenicity .................................................................................................. 472 Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 489 Index .................................................................................................................... 503

Acknowledgements A sabbatical in the first part of 2011 at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, was the beginning of this book. I wish to thank the individuals who have assisted me along the way by reading portions or all of the manuscript: Gijsbert van den Brink, Thomas G. Guarino, Dirk van Keulen, John M. McDermott, S.J., and Jared Wicks, S.J. I also wish to thank Fr. Guarino especially for his intellectual support, constant encouragement, and friendship throughout the writing of this book, and for writing the Foreword. Thanks are also due to many others without whose practical help this book could not have been finished. To Eddy Van der Borght, the Editor-in-Chief of the Series Studies in Reformed Theology, for inviting me to submit a draft of the manuscript and commending it to Brill for inclusion in this series. To Mirjam Elbers, the Acquisition Editor in Theology at Brill, who was always helpful with answering questions about the process of publishing a book with Brill. To Okke Postma who helped as copy editor to get the manuscript in final shape. To James A. De Jong who translated into English the untranslated Dutch citations of Berkouwer’s writings. To the administration, staff, and colleagues of Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, Michigan, who provide me with a sanctuary, indeed, a home for teaching and writing. To the Seminary for granting me a sabbatical and for its unfailing support of my work. To the Theology Faculty of the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, that generously supported my tenure as Researcher-in-Residence during February–April, 2011. To the C.J. de Vogel Stichting that financially supported my research at the Vrije Universiteit in the area of Catholic and Reformed ecumenism. To my wife, Donna Rose, sine qua non. This book is dedicated to my late son, Michael E. Echeverria (1979–2011). I tried to locate copyright holders of the photo in this book to the best of my abilities, but was unsuccessful. I would be pleased to receive any information. I hope this is more than a book about Berkouwer and Catholicism, Catholic and Reformed ecumenism. I pray it is a service to Christ and His Church, by contributing to the restoration of unity among Christians. “To believe in Christ means to desire unity; to desire unity means to desire the Church; to desire the Church means to desire the communion of grace which corresponds to the Father’s plan from all eternity. Such is the meaning of Christ’s prayer: ‘Ut unum sint’ [ John 17:21]” (John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, Encyclical Letter, May 25, 1995).

Foreword The Theological and Ecumenical Importance of Berkouwer and Catholicism The beginning of the ecumenical movement is normally traced to the 1910 World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, Scotland, an assembly at which delegates of various mission societies made joint plans for promoting the Gospel. Some fifty-two years later, at the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Roman Catholic Church officially committed itself to ecumenism. One way it did so was by inviting observers from the various Christian churches to the council, so that they could see first-hand the inner workings of the Catholic Church and, by their presence, remind the council’s participants of an ecumenical perspective. Among the delegates at Vatican II was G.C. Berkouwer, who was a guest of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity at all four conciliar sessions. A prominent Reformed theologian who spent most of his career at the Free University of Amsterdam, Berkouwer had long been interested in theological dialogue with Catholicism. But the debates and documents that emerged from the nouvelle théologie and from Vatican II itself, offered him new insights, allowing for a rethinking of the Reformed-Roman Catholic divide. In this volume, Eduardo Echeverria offers a masterful account of Berkouwer’s life-long encounter with Catholicism. Echeverria is uniquely qualified to write this book. He obtained his philosophical doctorate from Berkouwer’s own Free University, is well-acquainted with the significant Reformed thinkers who influenced Berkouwer (such as Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and Herman Dooyeweerd), and, while a committed Roman Catholic, he has a profound understanding of, and sympathy for, the Reformed tradition. In other words, this book displays ecumenical theology at its finest. While this volume is rich in theological insights, I highlight only a few here. Central to Berkouwer’s thought was the “newer” Catholic theology of the 1950s and 1960s emerging from theologians such as Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac and Joseph Ratzinger. Under their influence, Berkouwer became more sympathetic to Roman Catholic positions, seeing a new opportunity for dialogue. One significant element emerging from the “new theology” and from Vatican II itself was the theological point made by John XXIII in his famous speech opening the council in 1962. The pope spoke of a distinction between the truth of Christian doctrine (depositum fidei) and the formulations through which the truth of doctrine is expressed (modus quo veritates enuntiantur). Yves Congar, one of the

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principal architects of Vatican II, stated that these few words encapsulated the entire council, allowing the ancient Christian faith to be expressed in a variety of forms, thereby sanctioning legitimate diversity. Berkouwer saw the distinction between the unchanging truth of revelation and its theoretically changeable formulations as modifying the climate of Catholicism since no formulation could be regarded as exhaustively adequate. Berkouwer was right to underscore the importance of this theological insight which, in subsequent years, has borne much theological and ecumenical fruit. For the distinction between the truth of doctrine and its conceptual expression opened the door to authentic pluralism and to a significant amount of theological agreement among the Christian churches. Varying formulations could now be regarded, at least in certain cases, as mediating the same divine truth. Christian doctrine could be expressed differently but complementarily over the course of time. Here, indeed, was a contemporary revival of the ancient axiom, “diversi sed non adversi.” A fruitful example of this approach may be found in the Joint Declaration on Justification, a 1999 agreement between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation. If one compares the Joint Declaration to the council of Trent, one may see that the language has changed considerably from that used in the sixteenth century, even if the same fundamental teaching is maintained. Berkouwer presciently saw the ecumenical promise in this distinction, with the possibility of conceiving more comprehensive and balanced formulations over time. A second issue arising from Vatican II was the relationship between Scripture and tradition, a theme at the very heart of the Reformation. Berkouwer took note of the fact that several Catholic theologians, just prior to the council, had defended the “material sufficiency” of Scripture for the truths of salvation. And Vatican II taught, in its dogmatic constitution on revelation, Dei Verbum, that the church’s teaching office is always first ecclesia audiens, listening to, and devoutly serving the Word of God (no. 10). Reflecting on these points, Berkouwer acknowledged that “Trent said nothing that would put tradition on a par with Scripture in the sense that it complements Scripture.”1 And he argued that the phrase sola Scriptura was never intended to establish an anti-tradition principle. Rather, the Reformation wanted “to bind the church with its confessions and its preaching to the apostolic witness,” ensuring that Christ was acknowledged as Lord of tradition.2 Echeverria analyzes the Scripture/ tradition relationship at length, allowing for much common ground between Reformed teaching and Catholicism. 1 G.C. Berkouwer, The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 96–97. 2 Berkouwer, 107.



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Throughout the book, Echeverria offers brisk analyses of Berkouwer’s thought while responding to his continuing theological concerns. It cannot be overemphasized, then, that this book is not simply an historical study of G.C. Berkouwer’s theology. It is about living theological concerns, concerns which stand at the heart of contemporary ecumenical dialogue. I have long been involved with the North American ecumenical initiative, Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT). As Catholic and Evangelical theologians, we continue to wrestle with the issues raised by Berkouwer and compellingly examined by Echeverria: What is the precise relationship between historicity and truth? How can there be doctrinal development over time that is faithful to Scripture? If Scripture is materially sufficient for the truths of salvation, then what precise role does tradition play in its understanding and development? Is Mariology an example of legitimate development, and can it have an authentic role in Protestant theology? Is natural theology meant to be self-sufficient and religiously neutral, abstracted from the concrete conditions of sin and holiness? All of these questions come to the fore again and again, demanding to be examined with theological and ecumenical incisiveness. Berkouwer was a theologian committed to Christian unity. He was convinced that conflicts within the church of Christ were scandalous, that visible unity was a legitimate goal, and that theology should be deeply involved with overcoming divisions. While he cautioned that the “adventure of ecumenicity” should not underestimate differences, Berkouwer also warned against confessional identities that degenerate into hardened defensiveness. The issue was and remains: How can we be open to the truth present in serious theological dialogue? In a recent volume, Walter Kasper observes that the ecumenical movement has made impressive gains over the decades. Some disputes have been resolved through consensus; other issues have witnessed significant if imperfect convergences. In all cases, there has been a new accent among Christians on all they share in their proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ.3 May Echeverria’s penetrating study of, and theological dialogue with, G.C. Berkouwer help to advance the noble cause of Christian unity. Thomas G. Guarino Professor of Systematic Theology Seton Hall University Co-chairman, Evangelicals and Catholics Together

3 Walter Kasper, Harvesting the Fruits (London: Continuum, 2009), 196–197.

The photo here is (from left to right) of Prof. Dr. Heiko A. Oberman (1930–2001), Monsignor Johannes G.M. Willebrands (1909–2006), and Prof. Dr. G.C. Berkouwer (1903–1996) upon their arrival in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome, to participate in the opening of the second session of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), Sunday morning, September 29, 1963.

Introduction The true chance for ecumenism does not lie in revolt against the Church as it is, in a Christianity as free of the Church as possible, but in a deepening of the reality which is the Church. . . . In practice, this means that one cannot live ecumenism against one’s own Church, but only by trying to deepen it in relation to what is essential and central. This means that one must seek the center in one’s own Church, and this, after all, for all Christians and Churches is truly only one. Conversely it means . . . that at any event one may not seek the center in traditions that are purely one’s own, which are not found in the whole of the rest of the oecumene. All this, however, can never be done by merely rational calculation. It presupposes spiritual experience, penance, and conversion. And again, it begins quite concretely by overcoming mutual mistrust, the sociologically rooted defensive attitude against what is strange, belonging to another, and that we constantly take the Lord, whom after all we are seeking, more seriously than we take ourselves. He is our unity, what we have in common—no, who is the one who is common to and in all denominations.1

The main purpose of this book is to give an in-depth analysis and critique of the theology of Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer (1903–1996), particularly his evolving relationship with Catholicism in light of Vatican II. It is my contention that Berkouwer’s careful and nuanced examination of Catholic theology—as well as possible responses to his critiques—offers important clues for the contemporary ecumenical project. Berkouwer was a great master of dogmatic and ecumenical theology, a Reformed Protestant thinker, with roots in Dutch neo-Calvinism, a holder of the Chair in Dogmatics (1945–1974) at the Free University, Amsterdam, a position previously held by his two illustrious neo-Calvinist predecessors, Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854–1921). By ‘Reformed’ I mean that version of Protestant Christianity, the Reformed tradition, arising from the Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe. The term ‘neoCalvinism’ refers to a revivalist movement within the Reformed tradition that stems from the nineteenth-century Dutch educator, theologian, church leader, and politician, Kuyper.2 Besides Kuyper, Bavinck, and

1 Joseph Ratzinger, “What Unites and Divides Denominations? Ecumenical Reflections,” in Joseph Ratzinger in Communio, Vol. I, The Unity of the Church, Introduction by David L. Schindler (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 1–9, and for this quote, 8–9. 2 For a brief account of the “neo-confessional alternative” of Dutch neo-Calvinism to the nineteenth-century Liberalism of J.H. Scholten (1843–1881) and C.W. Opzoomer

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Berkouwer, this intellectual, cultural and religious milieu includes the great systematic philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977).3 Unlike Kuyper and Bavinck4—or the American Reformed theologians, such as, Charles Hodge (1797–1878) or Louis Berkhof (1873–1957),5 all of whom produced a systematic way of organizing the doctrinal truth regarding the knowledge of God—Berkouwer did not produce a traditional systematic theology, but rather is the author of an eighteen volume work, Dogmatische Studiën (1949–1972),6 discussing classical loci of theology in each volume. Berkouwer’s studies discuss dogmatic loci, such as the relation between general and special revelation, divine providence, faith and justification, sanctification, and perseverance, the providence of God, divine election, the sacraments, anthropology, the person and work of Christ, the return of Christ, sin, the Church, Holy Scripture (two volumes are devoted to each of the last four dogmatic themes).7 (1821–1892), see Hendrikus Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, Translated by John Vriend (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1989), 97–114. See also the section on “Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer” in Modern Christian Thought, The Twentieth Century, Second edition, James C. Livingston, et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 393–401. One of Berkouwer’s American translators, a theologian and ethicist in his own right, Lewis B. Smedes (1921– 2002), wrote one of the earliest English accounts of Berkouwer’s thought, “G.C. Berkouwer,” in Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, edited by P.E. Hughes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1966), 63–97. For an account of Berkouwer’s role in the twentieth-century history of the Reformed Churches in Holland, see Dirk van Keulen, “The Theological Course of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands,” in Vicissitudes of Reformed Theology in the Twentieth Century, editors George Harinck, Dirk van Keulen (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2004), 87–117. See also, a more recent entry on Berkouwer by Cornelis van der Kooi, a systematic theologian at the Vrije Universiteit, in Biografisch Lexicon Voor de Geschiedenis van het Nederlandse Protestantisme, Deel 5 (Kampen: Kok, 2001), 51–55. 3 For an account of the historical roots of the neo-Calvinist philosophical tradition, see Albert Wolters, “Dutch Neo-Calvinism: Worldview, Philosophy and Rationality,” in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, edited by Hendrik Hart, Johan van der Hoeven and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Toronto: University Press of America, 1983), 113–131. 4 Kuyper is the author of a three-volume work entitled Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid (1893–1894), which has been translated in part in English early on (1899), with an Introduction by Benjamin B. Warfield. This translation contains all of volume 2 and the first 53 pages of volume 1. Volume 3 remains untranslated. Bavinck is the author of a magisterial four-volume work entitled Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (1895–1901), which has been translated into English only recently as Reformed Dogmatics (2003–2008). 5 Charles Hodge is the author of a three-volume work entitled Systematic Theology (1871–1873). Louis Berkhof (1873–1957) is the author of a two-volume work entitled Systematic Theology (1932, 1938). 6 The original Dutch publisher of these studies in dogmatics is J.H. Kok, Kampen, The Netherlands; the American publisher with Dutch roots is William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, USA, between 1952 and 1976. 7 In this connection, Dutch theologians Gijsbert van den Brink and Stephan van Erp have recently written about Berkouwer’s Studies in Dogmatics, “it is striking that some other loci are conspicuous by their absence—among which figure the doctrine of the



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Regarding Berkouwer’s methodology, Calvin Seerveld has written that notwithstanding Berkouwer’s deft explication of these dogmatic loci amid many other classical and contemporary positions, the studies seem to Seerveld “to be episodic, missing a linking systematic character.”8 Seerveld does not say exactly what he has in mind with this critical comment, but I think we can surmise. I think what Seerveld means is that absent from Berkouwer’s studies is a theological prolegomena, such as one finds in volume I of Bavinck’s Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, that considers not only the theological epistemology at the foundations of systematic theology, but also the overall interrelatedness of these dogmas to each other as well as to divine revelation itself. In addition, the Dutch expert on Berkouwer’s theology, Dirk van Keulen, comments in regard to Berkouwer’s dialogical style of doing theology: “Characteristic of Berkouwer’s style is being in dialogue with many others’ views. In his account of their views, he is foremost always concerned to do justice to these others. He would rather write more than less in order to make certain that he has understood the other’s view rather than prematurely cut off the conversation. The drawback of this style of theologizing is that Berkouwer’s own view must usually be inferred from those conversations with others. He is therefore difficult to read.”9 It will be evident from my analysis of Berkouwer’s thought in this

Trinity as well as adjacent themes such as the doctrine of God (more broadly speaking) and pneumatology” (“Ignoring God Triune? The Doctrine of the Trinity in Dutch Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 11, No. 1, January 2009, 72–90, and for this quote, 74). 8 Calvin Seerveld, “Reformational Christian Philosophy and Christian College Education,” in Pro Rege, March 2002: 1–16, and at 14. 9 In a personal email to me from Dirk van Keulen, June 29, 2012. Dutch Calvinist philosopher at the Vrije Universiteit, S.U. Zuidema (1906–1975) echoes this point about the difficulty of getting at Berkouwer’s own view in a critical review of Berkouwer’s De Mens het Beeld Gods (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1957). He writes: “In the form whereby Berkouwer gives an account of his own vision, which mostly occurs through ‘dialogue’ with others whose views are first examined, there is the danger that Berkouwer’s own view threatens to disappear between the voices and contours of the many individuals presented. . . . It then becomes an art in itself, as well as a time consuming business, to form a conclusive picture of the dogmatic teaching that is developed by Berkouwer” (Correspondentiebladen, 22, No. 12, April 1958, 6–14, and for this quote, 6). This review appeared in the now defunct in-house discussion Newsletter of the Association for Calvinistic Philosophy. American Orthodox Presbyterian theologian, John M. Frame, makes a similar remark about Berkouwer’s methodology: “When reading G.C. Berkouwer, I have often found myself lost among the citations and historical comparisons, wondering exactly what he is recommending as normative content and why” (A Theology of Lordship, Vol. 4, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Foreword by J.I. Packer [Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2010], 383).

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book that I agree with Van Keulen’s judgment about Berkouwer’s style of theologizing as well as the difficulty of getting at his own position. Berkouwer is also the author of a highly regarded study and trenchant critique of Karl Barth, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (1954). Barth himself describes Berkouwer’s study as “a great book on myself and the Church Dogmatics.” Barth adds, “For all its reservations and criticisms this work is written with such care and goodwill and Christian aequitas.”10 The theology of Barth sustained Berkouwer’s theological attention throughout the years of his teaching and writings. In addition to Barth, however, Roman Catholicism equally sustained his concentrated attention from the beginning of his teaching and writing at the Free University to his very last book, Zoeken en Vinden (1989), which devotes chapter XIII entirely to highlighting key moments in the history of the papacy from Pius XII to John Paul II.11 Indeed, Berkouwer’s 1940 inaugural address, Barthianisme en Katholicisme, as extraordinary Professor in the theology faculty of the Free University, dealt with the thought of both Barth and Catholicism. In particular, in the same year as his inaugural address, Berkouwer also published his first book on Catholicism, De Strijd Om Het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma. In addition to this first book on Catholicism, he published another book on Catholicism in 1948, Conflict met Rome. In 1957, he published yet another study, this time a monograph, reviewing the state of the question regarding the controversy between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, Nieuwe Perspectieven in de Controvers: Rome-Reformatie. All these works were written prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), but his 1957 work suggests a decisive shift already in Berkouwer’s assessment of Catholicism. Regarding the council, Berkouwer was an invited guest at Vatican II by the then Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, presided over by Cardinal Augustin Bea (1881–1968), now the Pontifical Council, which resulted in an important 1964 study, Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie.12 This study was published mid-way through the Council in 10 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV/2, Preface, xii. See also, Church Dogmatics, Vol. IV/3/1, §69, 3, 173–180. 11  Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 367–428. 12 Nouvelle théologie began in the 1940s as a movement of return to the biblical and patristic sources; hence, its call for “ressourcement.” Berkouwer writes, “[Nouvelle théologie’s] starting-point lies in the school of Lyon-Fourvière, France, with its brilliant representation, of whom the most prominent are: Henri Bouillard, Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. In these men and others [such as Yves M.-J. Congar] we encounter the strong influence of earlier theologians and philosophers, such as Newman, Blondel, and Max Scheler. . . . I believe, that there is an undeniable, powerful



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1964 and was, arguably, a milestone in his assessment of the development of contemporary Roman Catholicism. Berkouwer continued his Reformed assessment of Vatican II and the nouvelle théologie in a 1968 study, but this time with respect to the actual documents of the council, in another book that remains untranslated, Nabetrachting op het Concilie. The work before you is the only book-length study of Berkouwer’s thought on Catholicism in the English language.13 Two questions might well be raised that deserve an answer at the start of this study. First, why is Berkouwer important in his own right as a twentieth century Protestant/ Reformed theologian? Second, why is a study of his thought in relation to Catholicism/ecumenism essential today? In his book, Van Kant tot Kuitert en verder, De Belangrijkste Theologen Sinds 1800, A. van de Beek regards Berkouwer as one of the most important theologians since 1800. He does so because he claims that Berkouwer “played an important role in leading the Reformed Church out of its self-imposed isolation to a greater openness, in its ecumenical relation to influence coming from Biblical theology in this new theology [nouvelle théologie]” (Berkouwer, Recent Developments in Roman Catholic Thought, 33). The term “nouvelle théologie” was actually coined by the French Dominican philosopher Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877–1964), who was a fierce critic of French Jesuit Henri de Lubac (1896–1991). Apparently, “Pius XII had used the expression ‘new theology’ in his discourse of September 1946 to the general Congregation of the Jesuits” (Yves M.-J. Congar, O.P., A History of Theology, Translated and edited by Hunter Guthrie, S.J. [New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968], 10. The term was, however, quickly adopted by the movement. For a brief account by De Lubac himself of the origin of this term, see At the Service of the Church, Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances that Occasioned His Writings, chapter 4, 60–79. For a historical account of the emergence of the nouvelle théologie, see Jürgen Mettepenningen, Nouvelle théologie, New Theology, Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II (London/ New York: Continuum Imprint, 2010). See also, Gabriel Flynn, “A Renaissance in TwentiethCentury Catholic Theology,” in the Irish Theological Quarterly 76 (2011): 323–338; and John M. McDermott, S.J., “Vatican II and Ressourcement Theology,” Lateranum, LXXVIII, no. 1, 2012: 69–94. 13 Listed here is a sample of book length works on certain aspects of Berkouwer’s thought in the English language. A study on Berkouwer’s doctrine of election by Alvin Baker is entitled, Berkouwer’s Doctrine of Election (1981). Cornelius van Til also published a study on Berkouwer’s doctrine of election, especially his critique of the Canons of Dordt entitled, The Sovereignty of Grace: An Appraisal of G.C. Berkouwer’s view of Dordt (1969). Berkouwer replies to this critique in his essay, “The Authority of Scripture (A Responsible Confession),” in Van Til’s Festschrift, Jerusalem and Athens, Critical Discussions on the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius van Til, Edited by E.R. Geehan (n.p.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1971), 197–203. Another study of Berkouwer’s theological methodology is by Charles M. Cameron, The Problem of Polarization: An Approach Based on the Writings of G.C. Berkouwer (1992). Johannes de Moor also produced a study of Berkouwer’s method entitled, Towards a Biblically Theo-logical Method: A Structural Analysis and a further elaboration of G.C. Berkouwer’s hermeneutic-dogmatic method (1980). See also the brochure by C.W. Bogue, Berkouwer: A Hole in the Dike?, online: http://www.all-of-grace .org/pub/others/hole_in_dike.html.

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other churches as well as to the culture and the questions of modernity.” 14 This is true, but it doesn’t answer the question why Berkouwer is a great Reformed master of dogmatic and ecumenical theology. Van de Beek bemoans the fact that, although Berkouwer participated with great openness at the Second Vatican Council, his extensive account of the Council [in Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie and Nabetrachting op het Concilie] nevertheless “remained the account of a reformed protestant” (161). In short, Van de Beek seems to think that taking seriously one’s own confessional tradition is a defeat for ecumenism. But in my judgment—Ratzinger and John Paul II would agree—that is precisely what is important about Berkouwer, namely, that he theologized from out of the Reformed confessional tradition as a starting point for the practice of ecumenism in the search for full visible communion. Ratzinger, for one, argues that ecumenism does not mean an “indifferentism with regard to faith that sees the question of truth as an obstacle, measures unity by expediency and thus turns it into an external pact that bears always within itself the seeds of new divisions.”15 Indeed, an “indifferentism to faith” is itself an obstacle to genuine Church unity. In the epigraph to this Introduction, Ratzinger rightly notes that ecumenical practice is dialectical. The ecumenical starting point is one’s own confessional tradition that we (e.g., Reformed, Anglican, Catholic) try to deepen our understanding of in relation to what is essential and central to that tradition; by the same token, that tradition is not a reality closed in on itself, meaning thereby, as Ratzinger puts it elsewhere, “a confessional chauvinism that orients itself primarily, not according to truth, but according to custom and, in obsession with what is its own, putting emphasis primarily on what is directed against others.”16 As I will show in this book, Berkouwer’s writings on Vatican II do not reflect the spirit of a narrow “confessionalism of separation,” which he rightly opposed, as does Ratzinger, with a “hermeneutics of union that sees the confession of faith as that which unites.”17 In other words, say Ratzinger, “The guarantee of unity is a Christianity of faith and fidelity that lives the faith as a decision with a definite content but precisely for that reason is always 14 A. van de Beek, Van Kant tot Kuitert en verder, De Belangrijkste Theologen Sinds 1800 (Kampen: Kok, 2009), 159, 161, my translation. 15 Joseph Ratzinger, “On the Question of Catholic-Protestant Ecumenism,” in The Ratzinger Reader, Edited by Lieven Boeve and Gerard Mannion (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 164–167, and for this quote, 166. 16 Ratzinger, “On the Question of Catholic-Protestant Ecumenism,” 166. 17 Ratzinger, “On the Question of Catholic-Protestant Ecumenism,” 166.



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searching for unity, lets itself be constantly purified and deepened as a preparation for it and, in so doing, helps the other to recognize the common center and to find himself there by the same process of purification and deepening.”18 That process involves prayer, penance and conversion, overcoming mutual mistrust, a defensive attitude, and “that we constantly take the Lord, whom after all we are seeking, more seriously than we take ourselves” as the common center in all our confessional traditions. John Paul II wrote in his great encyclical on ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint: In this courageous journey toward unity, the transparency and the prudence of faith requires us to avoid both false irenicism and indifference to the Church’s ordinances. Conversely, that same transparency and prudence urge us to reject a halfhearted commitment to unity and, even more, a prejudicial opposition or a defeatism which tends to see everything in negative terms. To uphold a vision of unity which takes account of all the demands of revealed truth does not mean to put a brake on the ecumenical movement. On the contrary, it means preventing it from settling for apparent solutions which would lead to no firm and solid results. The obligation to respect the truth is absolute. Is this not the law of the Gospel?19

In my judgment, most important for justifying a book-length study on the disputed question between Berkouwer and Catholicism is that Berkouwer is the only Reformed theologian participant at Vatican II who published two book-length studies of that Council: one on the influence of the nouvels théologiens on that Council, and the other on an intensive examination of its major documents. Of course this is in addition to his earlier two book-length studies on Roman Catholicism that are also worthy of examination. Furthermore, given Berkouwer’s opposition to a “confessionalism of separation” (as I will argue in Chapter 1), he was neither anti-Catholic nor anti-papist, and given his openness to a “hermeneutics of union,” Berkouwer would have been a member of Evangelical and Catholics Together as well as an active contributor to the journal of catholic and evangelical theology, Pro Ecclesia, which is sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. Against this background, I can turn to answer the question why Berkouwer is important in his own right, not only as a twentieth century Protestant/Reformed theologian, but also as an essential partner in relation to Catholicism/ecumenism today. Most important are the intellectual strengths of Berkouwer’s thought, namely, its evangelical and catholic 18 Ratzinger, “On the Question of Catholic-Protestant Ecumenism,” 166. 19 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, Encyclical Letter, May 25, 1995, no. 79.

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dimensions, its ecumenicity, and its comprehensiveness. Berkouwer’s thought as a whole is utterly evangelical: the Gospel of Jesus Christ reveals to us that before God we are sinners in need of his free and justifying grace, that is, God’s saving act in the person and work of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, Berkouwer works out of the venerable theological tradition of the confessional Calvinism of his illustrious predecessors, Kuyper and Bavinck.20 Consistent throughout his multi-volume work is his clear commitment to the Reformed confessional tradition, to its three “forms of unity,” to the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), to the Belgic Confession of Faith (1618), and to the Canons of Dordt (1618–1619).21 Still, since Berkouwer does not hallow this confessional tradition, rejecting the immobilism of a hide-bound confessionalism (“confessionalism of separation”), he theologizes beyond the circle of his confessional tradition by drawing on the catholic tradition. Berkouwer understood full well that being reformed is “one way of being catholic.”22 This is what makes Berkouwer’s way of doing Reformed theology today uniquely well-suited to engage the culture as well as to participate fully in ecumenical, interconfessional dialogue. Pared down for my purpose here, catholicity means several things in Berkouwer’s thought. Berkouwer is catholic because he claims the central Trinitarian and Christological dogmas formulated at the early Councils of Nicea, Ephesus, Constantinople, and Chalcedon as the permanently normative context for articulating the Christian faith. In this fundamental respect, Berkouwer’s theology is an orthodox theology. There is another aspect of the Catholicity of Berkouwer’s thought, namely, his commitment to the constitutive significance of the church for the reality of God’s saving 20 Stephen Williams writes about Berkouwer, “Throughout his writings, he understands himself as standing in, expounding and defending the tradition of Calvin and confessional Calvinism, though his fidelity to these has been queried at some specific and significant points” (“Observations on the Future of System,” in Always Reforming, Explorations in Systematic Theology, Edited by A.T.B. McGowan [Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006], 63). 21 Smedes rightly notes that “Berkouwer is a confessionally committed theologian. The confessions of the Church are, to him, not historical documents that one must rise above in personal creativity. They are expressions of the Gospel in which the theologian must find his starting point and within which he must serve the Church whose confessions they are. For Berkouwer, then, it was impossible to be a creative theologian in any basically original sense. . . . All he has permitted himself is the task of serving the Church by helping to make the Gospel clear” (“G.C. Berkouwer,” 92). 22 I am adapting this phrase that Gilbert Meilaender used with reference to his own Lutheran tradition to Berkouwer’s Reformed tradition. On this see his article, “The Catholic I Am,” First Things, February 2011, 27–30.



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work as well as for the interpretation of the faith. Yet another aspect of his catholicity to be highlighted—which has a bearing upon his ecumenical stance—is that Berkouwer is committed to the unity of the church and to reconciling the divisions among Christians.23 Berkouwer is a catholic and evangelical theologian. This stance is evident in Berkouwer’s involvement with the ecumenical concerns of theology. He increasingly practiced what can be called ecumenical theology, engaging in critical discussion, but carrying out a true dialogue, with some of the leading Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians of the twentieth-century, such as Edward Schillebeeckx, Piet Schoonenberg, Karl Rahner, and the theologians of the nouvelle théologie, on the one hand, and Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Wolfhart Pannenberg on the other. As Lewis Smedes describes Berkouwer’s brand of polemical theology, “He never uses them as a foil for his own contrary assertions. He never yields to the temptation to strike out at the weakest link in his opponents’ armor. He meets his opponents, Roman [Catholic] and Barthian, on their own platform.”24 In sum, Berkouwer demonstrates an impressive breadth and balance throughout his writings, which remains unreached by American Evangelical and Reformed theologians, as well as an ecumenical sensibility that is best described by John Paul II: “Ecumenical dialogue is not simply an exchange of ideas,” but also “an ‘exchange of gifts’,” indeed, “a dialogue of love.”25 There remains to say something, even if only briefly, about the comprehensive scope of Berkouwer’s theology, and the best expression of that comprehensiveness is his theology of nature and grace that has its proximate source in Kuyper and Bavinck, indeed in Dooyeweerd’s writings.26 Although I cannot argue the point fully here, the suggestion that Berkouwer became opposed to Dooyeweerd’s philosophy during the 1950s is inaccurate. In fact, in his 1951 dogmatic study, De Algemene Openbaring, Berkouwer refers approvingly to Dooyeweerd’s Kuyperian account of false religion. Moreover, two important works of Berkouwer in 1956 and 23 Helpful to me in identifying the dimensions of evangelical and catholic theology is Michael Root, “Catholic and Evangelical Theology,” Pro Ecclesia XV, No. 1 (2006): 9–16. 24 Smedes, “G.C. Berkouwer,” 70. 25 Ut Unum Sint, no. 28, 47. “Berkouwer’s A Half Century of Theology (1974; Eng. Trans., 1977) is further evidence of his deep and broad engagement with the work of other important twentieth-century theologians” (J.C. Livingston, F.S. Fiorenza, et al., Modern Christian Thought, Vol. 2, The Twentieth Century, Second Edition [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006], 394). 26 Jan Veenhof, “Nature and Grace in Bavinck,” Translated A.M. Wolters from J. Veenhof, Revelatie en Inspiratie. Amsterdam, 1968, 345–365, in Pro Rege, (June 2006): 10–31.

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1957 also suggest otherwise: one dealing with Dooyeweerd’s interpretation and critique of Scholasticism and the other with his philosophical anthropology.27 Furthermore, except among Catholics and Dutch neoCalvinists, Berkouwer’s theology of nature and grace is too little known and discussed among American Evangelical and Reformed thinkers. And yet, it is a rich aspect of Berkouwer’s thought that I explore in this book in respect of, for example, the legitimacy of natural theology in particular, and the relation between faith and reason in general, Christian anthropology, and the question of a point of contact—Anknüpfungspunkt— between the gospel and human life. How, then, does Berkouwer conceive the fundamental relationship between nature and grace, of creation and re-creation, of sin and redemption? Berkouwer puts full emphasis on the radical and comprehensive scope of sin’s effects, as well as the equally radical and comprehensive scope of Christ’s redemptive work, and thus his saving work is re-creation, with grace neither leaving nature untouched nor abolishing it, but rather restoring nature. Moreover, in connection with Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, it is also important to take note of a certain weakness in Berkouwer’s thought, namely, the “feebleness of its metaphysical authority.”28 Understanding this weakness in Berkouwer’s theology will help us to understand the conscious return to the thought of Kuyper and Bavinck in the contemporary Evangelical and Reformed theological context.29 Dooyeweerd’s interpretation 27 G.C. Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict? Een Poging tot analyse,” Philosophia Reformata 21 (1956): 1–41. This work is an extensive article review of Michael J. Marlet, S.J., Grundlinien der Kalvinistischen “Philosophie der Gesetzesidee” als Christlicher Transzendentalphilosophie (München: Karl Zink Verlag, 1954). In this article, Berkouwer defends the essential correctness of Dooyeweerd’s critique of traditional scholasticism. In Berkouwer’s dogmatic study on theological anthropology, De Mens Het Beeld Gods (Kampen: Kok, 1957), he expounds and defends Dooyeweerd’s philosophical anthropology against its critics (211–310). In Berkouwer’s last book before his death, Zoeken en Vinden, Herinneringen en ervaringen (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1989), he writes about the problems he always had with the philosophy of . . . Dooyeweerd, that he was never a member of the Association for Calvinistic Philosophy, “but that never scarred their contact and friendship or the sense of connection” (84). Since Berkouwer makes no mention of S.U. Zuidema’s biting critique of Berkouwer’s De Mens het Beeld Gods in this last book, one presumes that their friendship continued even after the appearance of that review in Correspondentiebladen, the Newsletter of the Association for Calvinistic Philosophy. 28 Aidan Nichols, O.P., Catholic Thought Since the Enlightenment (Leominster, England: Gracewing: 1998), 197. Nichols uses this term in reference to “some Catholic theology today,” but I am using it now to describe a fundamental aspect of Berkouwer’s thought that aligns him with a contemporary current of post-modern and post-foundationalist theology. 29 Evidence of this return is the recent translation of Bavinck’s four-volume work, Reformed Dogmatics, and the forthcoming translation of Kuyper’s three-volume work, Common Grace (http://m.acton.org/research/kuyper-translation-project).



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of Berkouwer’s illustrious predecessors is that there are not only traditional scholastic elements in their theological dogmatics but also, significantly, anti-scholastic lines, so-called ‘reformational’ elements.30 Dooyeweerd, for one—being a staunch critic of scholastic thought—aligns the reformational dynamic with the call for a de-hellenization of Christianity. The scholastic line is represented by Thomas Aquinas’ integral synthesis of classical Christian orthodoxy with Augustinian Platonism and Aristotelianism. The Protestant Reformers, particularly Calvin, according to Dooyeweerd, loosened but did not break the hold of this philosophical synthesis on the Reformed tradition. Albert Wolters summarizes the main features of this philosophical synthesis in the thought of the early neoCalvinists, such as Kuyper and Bavinck. The basic features of the paradigm: God as summum ens, the Son or Logos understood as archetypical ideas in the mind of God, creation as the imposition of ectypical formae on matter, evil understood as privatio boni, the connection of rationality with the image of God, and so on. Herman Bavinck is perhaps most explicit about the connection of rationality with this underlying ontology. . . . For him, scholarship was a matter of “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” Bavinck, more than the other neo-Calvinists, was influenced by the revival of Thomism that was taking place in Catholic circles in response to the encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879).31

To this summary, one should add Dooyeweerd’s thought regarding the influence of scholasticism on the Calvinist confessional tradition. He holds that scholasticism appears especially in the traditional philosophical understanding of soul and body, in the doctrine of the logos and the metaphysical realism of divine ideas, the analogia entis, and in the attempt to break free of the subjectivism of Kantian transcendentalcritical idealism by giving the latter an “objective, realist turn.”32 According to Dooyeweerd—and Berkouwer aligns himself with his judgment— the tradition of scholastic theology, which had kept its hold on the Dutch confessional Calvinism of Kuyper, Bavinck, et al., was a faith system conditioned by Greek philosophy, that is, an articulation of the Christian faith based on an alien philosophical system of thought. Of course both Dooyeweerd and Berkouwer recognize another line in the thought of Kuyper and Bavinck, a line that Dooyeweerd called ‘Reformational 30 Herman Dooyeweerd, “Kuyper’s Wetenschapsleer,” Philosophia Reformata 4, 1939: 193–232. 31 Wolters, “Dutch Neo-Calvinism: Worldview, Philosophy and Rationality,” 12. 32 Dooyeweerd, “Kuyper’s Wetenschapsleer,” 197, 223–224.

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Calvinism,’ and they both consciously go back to this original, antischolastic line of their thought, Dooyeweerd before, and Berkouwer after, World War II.33 In my judgment, Berkouwer’s dogmatics, especially evident in his criticism of natural theology, his understanding of faith and reason in the Catholic tradition, suffers from the weakness of abandoning the scholastic tradition. For example, rejecting the claim of the scholastic tradition that Christian belief is wedded to ontology, the analogia entis is dismissed as the necessary connection between God and knowledge. Furthermore, having severed the link between the God who is Logos and the creation, with the divine Logos establishing the truth of beings and all universal norms of creations, as well as the intelligibility of the world, of our existence, in particular, the aptitude of reason to know God and the world’s intelligibility, natural theology and natural law ethics is philosophically brought into question. Not only is natural theology abandoned, however, but so too is any philosophical foundation for systematic theology, for example, Berkouwer’s hermeneutics. In short, the intellectual weakness of Berkouwer’s thought is his anti-metaphysical and anti-scholastic tendency, having accepted in some sense the project of the dehellenization of classical Christian orthodoxy. I am now in a position to state briefly the general thesis of this book, toward which the various chapters are supposed to lend support, namely, Berkouwer’s ecumenical engagement with Catholicism raises the fundamental question of what is an evangelical, catholic, and orthodox theology of the faith of the Church. This book is a work in both historical and dogmatic theology. I am interested in writing a historical theological study of Berkouwer’s changing theological assessment of Roman Catholicism, especially with regard to Scripture and tradition, doctrinal development, Marian doctrine, and the relationship between the ecclesiastical magisterium and theologians. But my book is also a dogmatic theological study

33 Berkhof, Two Hundred Years of Theology, 109, 114, “In theology . . . Kuyper closely followed the Calvinistic tradition, even in its scholastic form. . . . Bavinck remained more strongly burdened than he wished by the legacy of the Reformed scholasticism of the seventeenth century and gave up intellectual tools he could not well do without in the continuing confrontation with the modern spirit. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the first three or four decades of the twentieth century Reformed theology fell back on the traditional scholastic elements of Bavinck. This tendency was furthered by the predominance of Kuyper, who in his dogmatics was much closer to the old scholasticism than Bavinck. Not until after World War II did Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer, Bavinck’s second successor, consciously go back to the original, antischolastic lines of Bavinck’s thought.”



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concerned to explore and ground the faith of the Church, to apprehend more deeply what it means to be an evangelical, catholic and orthodox Christian. The thesis of this book is that the influence of the renewal movement of nouvelle théologie upon Berkouwer’s thought accounts for his positive theological assessment of the development of Roman Catholicism in the decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council and afterwards in the documents of that council. Studying Berkouwer’s thought in light of nouvelle théologie provides a solid point of entry into his ecumenical attempt to reframe in a new and promising light the dogmatic historical dispute between Reformed Protestants and Roman Catholics. A subordinate purpose of my study is to deepen self-understanding and, hopefully, communion between Reformed and Catholic Christians.34 An examination of Berkouwer’s writings on Catholicism can help to bring that about today. I have chosen to focus my attention in this book on a set of fundamental theological issues that consistently occupied Berkouwer’s attention for a half-century. Throughout his writings, pre- and postVatican II works, he returns to a set of theological issues that has historically divided Rome and the Reformation. It is this set of issues that I consider in chapters One-Six of this book. I propose to show not only the development in Berkouwer’s own thought on these matters vis-à-vis his assessment of Catholicism, but also the development—continuity and discontinuity—in Catholicism as such, that is, the Church’s efforts to apprehend more deeply her teachings on these doctrinal themes. Writing as an historical theologian, I intend to let Berkouwer speak for himself, in such a way that he retains his integrity as a major contributor to the centuries-long dispute between Rome and the Reformation. But I cannot stop there. Rather, writing also as a fundamental or dogmatic theologian, I attempt a reasoned discernment aiming at establishing more securely the faith of the Church as well as to apprehend more deeply its teaching. My goal is well stated by English Dominican theologians, Aidan Nichols, “The goal of fundamental dogmatics is, by using the work of historical theology, to affirm something valid on behalf of the whole Church.”35

34 This is not my first study with that purpose. See also, Eduardo J. Echeverria, Dialogue of Love: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic Ecumenist (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2010); idem., “In the Beginning . . .” A Theology of the Body (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2011). 35 Aidan Nichols, O.P., From Hermes to Benedict XVI: Faith and Reason in Modern Catholic Thought (Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2009), 2.

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This study is, then, divided into six chapters, plus an Epilogue. They are organized around the following five issues. The Renewed Church and the Nouvelle Théologie In Chapter One of this book, I address several issues. First, I give an indepth account Berkouwer’s changing assessment of Catholicism between the periods of 1940–1968. Second, I also consider the influence of the theological movement known as the nouvelle théologie upon Berkouwer’s reassessment and the perspective it offered for genuine ecumenical conversation with the Roman Catholic Church. Berkouwer argues that the influence of nouvels théologiens on the Second Vatican Council, evident in its documents, signals the possibility of an eventual re-writing of the dogmatic-historical conflict between Rome and the Reformation. Third, this possibility will be actualized only if the hermeneutical framework of the ressourcement, which the nouvels théologiens spearheaded, finds general recognition. There are three features of this framework that will set the context for the later chapters in this book that I shall especially explore in chapter one. Significantly, these three features have ecumenical significance in so far as they must find general recognition among all Christians who heed Christ’s call to unity. In this connection, I examine in considerable detail the following: Ressourcement and Aggiornamento: What is the nature and extent of renewal? Revelation and Truth: Different expressions of the same truth? How is the notion of the Hierarchy of Truths a significant breakthrough in the approach to ecumenism by the Roman Catholic Church at Vatican II? Revelation, Faith and the Knowledge of God The main issue I address in chapters Two and Three concerns the disputed issue between Rome and the Reformation regarding the legitimacy of natural theology, or more generally the natural knowledge of God, the distinction between natural theology and general revelation, and the unity of general revelation and special revelation in Christ, who is the fullness and mediator of all revelation. In chapter two, I will show why Catholic tradition agrees with much of Berkouwer’s theology of general revelation. Most significantly, I show that Berkouwer correctly understands that, epistemologically, the question of the relation between nature and grace, or between



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the order of creation and the order of redemption, has implications for the problems of faith and reason. This problem is particularly important because within its scope we take up the disputed question about the validity of a natural knowledge of God and the relationship between general revelation and special revelation. In my Catholic response to Berkouwer’s reformed theological objections to natural theology in chapter three I will only consider those aspects of his theology that bear upon those objections. Pared down for my purpose here, I am interested, chiefly, in four important questions: (1) what does general revelation mean and is natural theology implied in accepting it; (2) what can human reason, if anything, truly know of God?; (3) does human reasoning have any power to know God after the fall into sin?; and finally (4) What is the relation between nature, sin and grace or, alternatively put, between structure and direction? In this connection, the question regarding how that revelation is received, and what the conditions are for its reception by the receiver, will also be considered.36 In keeping with the theme of this book, I will also consider Berkouwer’s reassessment of the question regarding the rationality of faith after Vatican II. My general thesis is that his post-Vatican II writings on this question shows a subtle but definite shift on this question. He writes, “The way of faith is not the route of argument and deductive reason, to be sure. But the question, then, is whether faith is something other than a blind submission to an ‘exterior’ revelation, or an ‘exterior’ authority. Moreover, is there in the process of persuasion no human motivation at all, is there no connection between faith and one’s own experience and insight in being persuaded?” In sum, “Must we, finally, say that faith is an irrational leap without any point of contact in ordinary human experience, and is it, therefore, in the last analysis in conflict with all human reasoning and rational demonstration?”37 This concern with the rationality of faith is missing from Berkouwer’s pre-Vatican II writings, but gains attention in his post-Vatican II writings.

36 In distinguishing these three questions, I am following Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, especially 302–325. See also, Eduardo J. Echeverria, “The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology: A Catholic Response to Herman Bavinck.” 37 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, [149–150].

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introduction Scripture and Tradition in Relation to Revelation and the Church

The primary sources of theology are found in the revelation to which the Church is the witness. These primary sources are Scripture and Tradition. The theological issue I address in Chapters Four and Five is how Scripture and Tradition are related as the source of revealed understanding in the Catholic and Reformed traditions. I begin with the question: Did the sixteenth-century Council of Trent (1545–1563) teach the so-called ‘two source theory’ of divine revelation in which Scripture and Tradition are seen to be complimentary and where divine revelation is disclosed partly in Scripture and partly in Tradition? Admittedly, this theory is the view that was dominantly held by many Catholic theologians between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. But did Trent actually teach this theory? Berkouwer seems to think so at least in his two major pre-Vatican studies on Catholicism, but he definitely changed his mind in his later studies,38 arguing that the issue between Rome and the Reformation was no longer a question of two sources of revelation. Rather, persuaded by the arguments of the nouvels théologiens, Berkouwer now claims that Trent never taught a two-source view, that it is more a question of seeing how tradition functions as the normative context for interpreting Scripture, and that Rome and the Reformation were much closer now because Catholicism was attempting to defend a Catholic version of sola scriptura. I examine Berkouwer’s interpretation of the Scripture/tradition relation in the context of examining the views of twentieth-century Catholic theologians such as Josef Rupert Geiselmann, Joseph Ratzinger, Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, and others who have vigorously argued against this interpretation of Trent.39 They also offer as well various account of the Scripture/ Tradition relation that we’ll need to discuss in this chapter. I examine their arguments, singling out from among the various accounts of that relation an approach that seems well-suited both to the teaching of Dei Verbum, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, and to

38 Berkouwer, Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie, 105–133 [89–111]; idem., Nabetrachting op het Concilie, 112–140. 39 J.R. Geiselmann, The Meaning of Tradition; idem., “Scripture, Tradition, and the Church: An Ecumenical Problem,” 39–72. Joseph Ratzinger, Revelation and Tradition. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 361–378. Yves M.-J. Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 139–176, 233–458; idem., The Meaning of Tradition.



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the demands of theology. The strength of Berkouwer’s theological assessment of Catholicism’s teaching on the Scripture/Tradition relation, and the reason that he is still very worth reading with regard to this matter, is that he is in conversation with Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, as well as the most current Catholic thinking on that relation by Geiselmann, Ratzinger, Congar, Rahner, and others. We shall need to consider whether the current Evangelical Reformed assessment of that relation—by scholars as diverse as Heiko A. Oberman, Kevin Vanhoozer, Timothy Ward, Timothy George, and others—is correct, namely, development of Catholic thinking on that relation has not really addressed the issues of the Reformation.40 Additionally, we shall need to consider whether some Reformed theologians “have been largely untouched by the ecumenical exchanges of recent times and have therefore not been challenged or encouraged to reconsider their traditional stance.”41 Development of Dogma Doctrinal development is the theme of Chapter Six in this study of Berkouwer’s theological assessment of Roman Catholicism in both his preand post-Vatican II writings. This theme sustained Berkouwer’s attention throughout several his writings on Catholicism (1940, 1949, and 1964).42 How does doctrine develop?43 In addition to Berkouwer, I pay particular attention to the views of Rahner on dogmatic development in this chapter. Of course there are issues of meaning and truth at stake here in addressing the particular issue of doctrinal development, namely, the issue of truth

40 Heiko A. Oberman, “Quo Vadis, Petre? Tradition from Irenaeus to Humani Generis.” Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, 151–165; idem., “Scripture and Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, 149–169. R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confessions, 7–28. Timothy Ward, Words of Life, 144–169. Timothy George, “An Evangelical Reflection on Scripture and Tradition,” in Your Word is Truth, 9–34. 41 Reformed-Roman Catholic, “Towards a Common Understanding of the Church,” in Deepening Communion 187. 42 Berkouwer, De Strijd Om Het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma, 168–205; idem., Nieuwe Perspectieven in de Controvers: Rome-Reformatie, 14–30; idem., Recent Developments in Roman Catholic Thought, 33–54; idem., Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie, 61–104 [57–88]; idem., Nabetrachting op het Concilie, 42–82. 43 On the history of the idea of doctrinal development, see Aidan Nichols, O.P., From Newman to Congar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990). See also, Henri de Lubac, “The Problem of the Development of Dogma,” in Theology in History, 248–280.

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and history, continuity and change, of authentic and inauthentic development. In what respects is doctrinal development significant, or even crucial, for theology, and, in fact, for faith seeking understanding? Catholic theology regards the issue of doctrinal development to be vital to the justification of specifically doctrinal insights of the Catholic faith. It also insists that whatever else doctrines are, they are propositions, and hence no account of the relationship between revelation and doctrinal development that excludes a propositional view of truth from its purview could do justice to the role of doctrines and doctrinal development in Catholicism. Indeed, in the context of ecumenism, the theological justification of specifically Catholic doctrinal insights is especially important vis-á-vis the serious objections to those insights lodged by Reformed Christians, such as Berkouwer has consistently done throughout his writings. The Church teaches that she can bring fresh truths from the riches of revelation, from the truth inherent in God’s self-revelation to mankind. Furthermore, she holds that every such new truth is an aspect of the one truth revealed by God in the Lord Jesus. Thus, no authentic development of doctrine ever can contradict what the Church believed and taught in earlier times and other places. What, then, is authentic doctrinal development? Scattered throughout his writings Berkouwer gives us a glimpse of his answer to this question regarding development. After summarizing Berkouwer’s view, I’ll turn to set out a view of dogmatic development that is consistent with a Catholic view of divine revelation. Perhaps the most contentious area in dogmatic development between Catholics and Reformed Christians is Marian dogma. Therefore, in the concluding section of Chapter Six I discuss Berkouwer’s criticism of Marian dogma, in particular, the fundamental mariological principle regarding Mary’s place in God’s plan of salvation. Although I want to be sensitive to the important biblical and theological objections raised by Berkouwer, I will also craft a careful Catholic theological rebuttal of them. Epilogue In this book, I have considered at length some of the disputed questions between Catholicism and the Reformed tradition in the writings on Catholicism of Dutch Reformed dogmatician and ecumenical theologian, Berkouwer. In this Epilogue, I shall draw some conclusions about what I have learned from this Catholic ecumenical engagement with his writings for the future of Roman Catholic and Protestant ecumenical



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dialogue.44 I think it is helpful to begin my reflections in this epilogue by considering Berkouwer’s own perspective for the future of ecumenism and interconfessional dialogue in the conclusion to his 1964 book on Vatican II, Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie. I will also develop some of Berkouwer’s points, and then turn to describing some of the major Reformed and Evangelical attitudes toward the Roman Catholic Church in the last half a century. I will conclude by commending Berkouwer’s writings on Catholicism as a road to take for ecumenical partnership with the Catholic tradition.

44 My focus in this epilogue is limited to Berkouwer’s significance for ecumenism, particularly with respect to the ecumenical dialogue between Reformed Protestants and Catholicism.

chapter ONE

The Renewed Church and the Nouvelle Théologie Our thoughts about the future of the Church must come out of tensions in the present, tensions that must creatively produce watchfulness, prayer, faith, and commitment, love for truth and unity, love for unity and truth.1 The unity willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety. In matters of faith, compromise is in contradiction with God who is Truth. In the Body of Christ, “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), who could consider legitimate a reconciliation brought about at the expense of the truth? . . . A “being together” which betrayed the truth would thus be opposed both to the nature of God who offers his communion and to the need for truth found in the depths of every human heart.2 Certainly [ecumenical] dialogue should bring us closer together, but the things that still separate us should be recognized with all clarity and not rendered harmless by what are often artificial interpretations, so that the resultant discussions dispense with clarity. Dialogue should be conducted in full clarity and truth, not in confusion. If there is then an approximation of viewpoints, this is immensely more valuable. But also if it must be

1 Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie, (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1964), 316; ET: The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism, translated by Lewis Smedes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965), 250. The phrase “nieuwe theologie” (literally “new theology”) in the Dutch title of the book is a clear reference to the nouvelle théologie of Henri de Lubac, et al. That reference is lost in the English translation, which speaks of “New Catholicism.” The Dutch historian of the Reformation and Reformed theologian Heiko Oberman (1930–2001) describes Berkouwer’s book on Vatican II as “breathtakingly important” (Evangelische Theologie, v. 28 (1968): 388. Other writings of Berkouwer on Catholicism that I shall examine in this book are De Strijd Om Het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1940); idem., Conflict met Rome Tweede Druk (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1949); ET: The Conflict with Rome, Translated by David Freeman (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1958). See also, idem., Nieuwe Perspectieven in De Controvers: Rome-Reformatie, Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel 20, No. 1 (Amsterdam: N.V. Noord-Hollandsche UitgeversMaatschappij, 1957); idem., Recent Developments in Roman Catholic Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1958); Berkouwer continued his Reformed assessment of Vatican II and the nouvelle théologie, but this time with respect to the actual documents of the council, in another book that remains untranslated, Nabetrachting op het Concilie (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1968). When English translations of Berkouwer’s writings on Catholicism are available, both sources will be cited throughout the book, first the original, followed by the pagination of the English in square brackets [ ]. 2 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, 1995 Encyclical Letter, no. 18.



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provisionally determined at the end of the conversation that the positions are incompatible at the point under discussion, it is ecumenically much better than if one separated in an illusionary unity.3

Ecumenicity In Berkouwer’s 1964 ecumenical study, Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie, he is especially concerned to show the influence of nouvelle théologie on Vatican II. “For the relationship between the nouvelle théologie that has risen within the Roman Church and the Second Vatican Council is one that has put its stamp on the whole council in all of its discussions.”4 At the risk of simplifying, I think we can say that Berkouwer found the relevance of nouvelle théologie, not just for the Catholic Church, but also for himself to be in its conviction that a distinction could be made between truth and its formulations in dogma, between form and content, a distinction that made possible internal renewal within the Catholic Church by virtue of rediscovering the riches of the sources of the Christian faith. In the last year of the Second Vatican Council (1965), Berkouwer was asked in an interview whether he regarded himself to belong to the Catholic renewal movement of the nouvelle théologie. He replied, “There are very many valuable new elements in the nouvelle théologie: the growing conviction that theology can never be finished; that the Word of God is inexhaustible; that we see through a glass, darkly (1 Cor 13:12); and that we must live with the awareness that theology cannot exist by repeating the formulations that were at one time expressed.”5 In sum, these elements helped contribute to a renewal that “can be an authentic enrichment of our understanding of unchangeable truth” (VCNT, 74 [66]), in order to meet truly the contemporary challenges faced by the Church. In a 1946 seminal essay, Jean Daniélou identifies “the temptation [that] would be laziness” leading “us to mistake truth’s garments for truth itself, convincing us that because the words (paroles) of Christ do not pass away,

3 Oscar Cullman, “Have Expectations Been Fulfilled?” in Vatican Council II, The New Direction, Essays Selected and Arranged by James D. Hester (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968), 54–63, and for this quotation, 61. 4 Berkouwer, Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie, Woord Vooraf [7]. Unless otherwise noted, subsequent references to this work will be cited parenthetically in the text as VCNT. 5 George Puchinger, Gesprekken over Rome-Reformatie (Delft: Meinema, 1965), 308 (as cited in Dirk van Keulen, “Berkouwer en het Concilie”).

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we need not modify the forms we use to express them.”6 Daniélou makes clear that it isn’t a question of adding to Revelation, “which ended with Christ,” he affirms, but rather of deepening our understanding “of dogma, with the forms of each mentality permitting new aspects of the inexhaustible riches of Christ to be valued.”7 Actually, even before Berkouwer’s 1964 book on the influence of nouvelle théologie on Vatican II, he had already made the point about its challenge several years earlier in 1957, namely, in his monograph Nieuwe Perspectieven in de Controvers: Rome-Reformatie. He pointedly asked the question even then: “what really, now, is new in the théologie nouvelle [?]”8 Chiefly, the nouvelle théologie’s “challenge was that of finding a hermeneutic for reinterpreting the affirmations of the Church.”9 He writes about that challenge in 1957: What characterizes the new theology does not lie primarily in ecumenical tendencies or in the kerygmatic mandate of the church, but in a powerful urge for applying and renewing theological thought with a new openness to contemporary culture. This is an openness that refuses to relativize or replace the riches of Catholicism, but that wants to understand them in their specific relevance for a new era. . . . While the church stands on an eternal foundation, she nevertheless always stands surrounded by scaffolding. And we have the task now of building our house in our style that reckons with our unique problems. . . . All of this is certainly not new, and Leo XIII already had a powerful sense of this kind of accommodation. But with [Henri] de Lubac and others it received an especially powerful emphasis, particularly with respect to the development of dogma in a way that strongly emphasized both our limitedness and the inexhaustibleness of truth. We need to keep our eyes open for “the continuously moving state of social, intellectual and cultural conditions,” a movement that does not leave dogma untouched. The issue of thought forms impinges with new force. . . . The problem of the relationship between truth and its human expression is constant. This is the problem of variable, historically defined thought forms in different eras when all kinds of philosophical notions have played a definite role. What is the relationship between unchanging truth and theological formulations and doctrinal choices?10

 6 Jean Daniélou, S.J., “Present Orientations of Religious Thought,” in Josephinum Journal of Theology, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2011: 51–62.  7 Daniélou, “Present Orientations of Religious Thought,” 62.  8 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 18.  9 G.C. Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, Motieven en Stromingen van 1920 to Heden (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1974), 319. ET: A Half Century of Theology: Movements and Motives, translated and edited by Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), 221. Both sources will be cited throughout the book, first the original, followed by the pagination of the English in square brackets [ ]. 10 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 19–20.



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Later in Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie he expanded on this point: The newer Roman Catholic theology has not been marked by a spirit of accommodation; its clear dissociation from modernism is what makes its efforts at reinterpretation of dogmatic formulae significant. . . . The reinterpretations that it makes are matters of debate. But what is clear is that the new theology is not a neo-modernistic movement. It is not revisionist. Nor is it twisting the old dogmas to fit the new thoughts. It is trying honestly to read and interpret the dogmas of the Church within the framework of their historical context and the conditionedness of their formulation [in order to get at the truth]. Its aim in this is to rediscover what the Church, led by the Spirit, really wanted to express in its historical formulations of infallible truth (VCNT, 59 [56]).

It is, then, the nouvelle théologie’s interpretation of this distinction between unchanging truth and the formulations of truth that “helped create the changed climate in the Roman Church.” In particular, as Berkouwer describes their view of truth and theological epistemology, “the truth is never expressed in an absolute, wholly adequate, and irreplaceable form” (VCNT, 69 [62]). Therefore, he adds, “A given formulation is never the only form the content of that truth may take” (VCNT, 69 [62]). Berkouwer is quick to add that the limited and conditioned nature of doctrinal formula does not deny that divine truth can be known to be determinately true. “It only means that it [formula of faith] cannot exhaust the truth and that it knows that it cannot” (VCNT, 76 [68]). Hence, the formula of faith can be changed without that meaning that “a break from faith has occurred somewhere” (VCNT, 71 [64]). This distinction, correctly understood, entailed the rejection of conceptual monism, namely, that there is only one way to express the truth-content of faith. Consequently, conceptual and theological pluralism was embraced by the nouvels théologiens. It would be erroneous to interpret this shift to pluralism as relativism or subjectivism, says Berkouwer: the form of expression can vary while leaving its truth-content intact. Furthermore, adds Berkouwer, regarding the ecumenical significance of distinguishing between truth and its formulations, “It [nouvelle théologie] is the kind of movement in which the whole Roman Church and every church must be involved sooner or later. The unavoidable radical questions which face the Church of our time, not the charm of ecumenicity, create the change of climate” (VCNT, 60 [56]). What sorts of questions must the Church face regarding the necessity of a hermeneutic for reinterpreting the affirmations of faith? Thomas Guarino identifies what needs attending to in giving a rich “account of the material identity of Christian truth over time.” That is, he asks,

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chapter one How does one explain the universal validity and stability of doctrine, the claim that the same perduring meanings are held by all peoples despite deep socio-cultural-linguistic differences and the profound effects of historicity? How does one offer theoretical reinforcement, in other words, for the universal, transcultural and transgenerational claims of the Christian faith? Is such continuity only a matter of grace or of long-standing rituals and practices? Does not the issue of stability within change, unity within multiplicity, perdurance within temporality, inevitably raises questions concerning the metaphysical and ontological dimensions of reality? This invocation of metaphysics has traditionally helped the Church find support, in the philosophical order, for what she holds by grace and faith.11

We shall return below to address these questions that converge on a hermeneutic for reinterpreting the affirmations of faith to consider whether there is a solution to this very real problem, and whether Berkouwer himself has a solution. In 1968, three years after the conclusion of the Council, he published a second book on the Council, Nabetrachting op het Concilie, but this time it was a retrospect of the Council as a whole and its definitive decisions as expressed in the various documents (Constitutions, Decrees and Declarations) of Vatican II. He is more directly concerned here to understand and assess the actual documents of Vatican II on issues, such as ecclesiology, ecumenism, Scripture and tradition, the authority of the Church, and doctrinal development. In sum, throughout his many dogmatic studies and elsewhere he engages the official teachings of the Catholic Church as well as the works of both classical and contemporary Catholic theologians. Berkouwer’s last two Vatican II works give us a more positive Reformed approach and assessment of Roman Catholicism than his earlier preVatican II books. He had passed, as John Paul II puts it, identifying a necessary condition for genuine ecumenical dialogue, from “antagonism and conflict to a situation where each party recognizes the other as a partner. When undertaking dialogue, each side must presuppose in the other a desire for reconciliation, for unity in truth. For this to happen, any display of mutual opposition must disappear. Only thus will dialogue help to overcome division and lead us closer to unity.”12 I think we can say that Berkouwer’s positive approach stems partly from recognizing that ecclesial diversity has degenerated into ecclesial divisions that we should 11 Thomas G. Guarino’s review of Anthony C. Thiselton, The Hermeneutics of Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), in The Thomist, 73 (2009), 344–348, and for this quote, 347. 12 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 29.



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be striving to overcome. These divisions, not to say schisms and discords among Christian, are such that “the different ‘forms’ of the Church are anything but harmonious; they are not directed toward the well-being of all, to the equipment of the saints, to the work of ministry, or to the building up of the body of Christ (Eph 4:12).”13 Berkouwer is critical here of what Herman Bavinck had called the “church-dissolving dynamism”14 of Protestantism, its prevailing sectarianism, or as Leslie Newbigin once put it, “the tendency to endless fissiparation which has characterized Protestantism in its actual history.”15 Indeed, Berkouwer adds, “the disunity of the Church stands under God’s criticism!”16 This dynamism of Protestantism has contributed not only to the disintegration of the God-given unity of the church, ultimately undermining her teaching office, and hence her visible unity, which has effectively diminished the importance of the Church’s catholicity, but also has eroded biblical authority and, in turn, the Gospel. In view of these actual realities of the divided church, says Berkouwer, Christians should heed the call to work for the visible unity of the church.17 In this light, we can easily understand why Berkouwer concludes that the problems the Roman Catholic Church faced in the second half of the twentieth-century “are not private Catholic problems.” At the root of these problems is the common issue faced by both Catholics and Protestants of finding a hermeneutic for reinterpreting the affirmations of faith, a hermeneutic that involves explaining the continuity, or material identity, of Christian truth, despite the profound effects of historicity. Berkouwer explains:

13 G.C. Berkouwer, De Kerk , Vol. I, Eenheid en Katholiciteit (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1970), 63. ET: The Church, Translated by James E. Davison (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 53. Both sources will be cited throughout the book, first the original, followed by the pagination of the English in square brackets [ ]. 14 Herman Bavinck, “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” Translated by John Bolt, Calvin Theological Journal 27 (1992): 220–251. Original Dutch version on line: http://www.neocalvinisme.nl/hb/broch/hbkath.html. 15 Leslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church (London: Paternoster Press, 1998 [1953]), 63. 16 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 64 [54]. 17 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 31–60 [29–50]. Helpful discussion of Berkouwer’s ecclesiology and ecumenism is found in Richard J. Mouw, “True Church and True Christians: Some Reflections on Calvinist Discernment,” in That The World May Believe, Essays on Mission and Unity in Honour of George Vandervelde, edited by Michael W. Goheen, et al. (Lanham: University Press of America, 2006), 103–111, especially 109–111.

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chapter one Not the least of the problems we share is that of continuity [material identity of Christian truth] amid the powerful forces of change surging in the variableness of human life. This problem takes on unique relevance for the Church, for here the decisions of faith made in the past are binding decisions, making the past in some sense determinative of the future. Are these decisions irrevocable in every sense, or are they historically defined that we can shake ourselves loose from them in the face of each new insight and challenge? Is the Church, like every other institution, caught up in the relativity of historical thought and must it accept all the radical consequences of this relativity for its faith and life? We know something these days of situational ethics. Are faith and dogmatics also situational? Or are whatever changes that do occur in dogmatics merely innocent variations of form as compared to the light of unchangeable truth that sheds an undeviating illumination over the Church (VCNT, 318–319 [251])?

Thus, the Church’s answer to the root problem of continuity—the truth is “ever the same” (semper eadem), but it has to be made relevant—“will not be private Catholic answers.” Rather, this is a common problem touching “the depths of the one Christian faith and affect the churches that ought to be and are not visibly the one flock of the one Shepherd, that ought to be and are not giving witness to that one faith with one voice and with a single power” (VCNT, 325 [257]). Significantly, Berkouwer sees the challenges the Catholic Church faces for setting her way into the times ahead as challenges that all churches must face together as the one visible Body of Christ. Of course Berkouwer insists that his concern for the visible unity of the Body of Christ does not mean the leveling out of all genuine differences between Catholics and Reformed Christians, or for that matter between non-Catholics themselves. That is because an ecumenism based on anything else than truth is empty. Interconfessional dialogue is a matter of dealing with truth-claims. Berkouwer correctly understands that “ ‘dialogue’ . . . does not signify a priori a relativizing approach to ecumenism.”18 As John Paul also says, “Authentic ecumenism is a gift at the service of truth.”19 Essential to such dialogue, according to Berkouwer, is the distinction between a “common-denominator ecumenicity and a serious inquiry into the true nature of unity in Christ and how it came about that this unity was broken” (VCNT, 321 [253]). The former, common-denominator ecumenicity is a fruitless way to seek unity, encouraging minimalism and 18 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 91n130 [74n71]. 19 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 38.



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random pluralism. “But it is no compromise of the faith to point to a common call to discipleship of Jesus Christ and to the gospel Paul preached, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. . . . In fact the Church at present is being tested down to the last phase of its life precisely on this point. Does the Church, in its faith and its credibility, its acts and its words, its listening and its learning, its controversies and its problems, does the Church have its sights on the one message that has for the world? In the opening of the council on October 11, 1962, John XXIII pointed to the one thing that has stayed the same throughout almost two thousand years of change and crisis in the Church: Jesus Christ, the center of history and life, the center of the gospel that the Church must guard for the purpose of giving it to the world” (VCNT, 325 [257–258]). Significantly, he adds, “If the adventure of ecumenicity is going to have real relevance to our world, the question of the gospel and unity in Christ must be both honestly and stubbornly faced as the important issue” (VCNT, 321 [254]). The important issue here is not simply the one for which the Catholic Church has responsibility, addressing the question of her relation to other churches. Rather, argues Berkouwer, The other churches must accept [responsibility] too. The presence of nonCatholic observers at the council from widely differing groups was a remarkable reminder that the problem of division is not simply one between the Roman and the non-Roman sides. The observers had a non-Romanism in common, but their own great diversity and divisions were never out of sight. And it served only to press home the inescapable duty of us all to subject ourselves constantly to the touchstone of the gospel that is meant to lead us all on the one pilgrimage in one faith toward the future that will reveal the one truth to us all (VCNT, 321 [254]).20

Returning now to my claim that Berkouwer’s Vatican II writings show a more positive approach to Catholicism, I don’t mean to suggest that there were no signs of this approach in his early books. Signs of this approach are especially evident five years before the start of Vatican II (1962), in his 1957 monograph, Nieuwe Perspectieven in De Controvers: Rome-Reformatie. Indeed, I shall now argue that Berkouwer never illustrated, even early on, the marks of being anti-Catholic and of regarding the pope as antiChrist.

20 See also, John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, nos. 9–11.

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chapter one Essential and Accidental Protestantism

“Anti-Catholicism and the pope as Anti-Christ are,” according to Reinhard Hütter, “identity-markers of essential Protestantism.”21 He explains, “Essential Protestantism requires for its identity Catholicism as the ‘other’.” Hütter elaborates: Much of essential Protestantism assumes that at the time of the Reformation the true Gospel—lost or at least significantly distorted shortly after the apostle Paul—was rediscovered and the Church in the true sense reconstituted. Virtually everything in-between, the few exceptions only affirming the rule, pertains to the aberration of Roman Catholicism. Essential Protestantism, therefore, in a large measure needs Roman Catholicism and especially the papacy to know itself, to have a hold of its identity as Protestantism.22

In contrast to essential Protestantism, there is accidental Protestantism. This sort of Protestantism “sees itself as the result of a particular, specific protestation,” in short, it “has seen itself to a large degree as a reform movement in the Church catholic.”23 “For accidental Protestants there tends to be one fundamental difference—and it can be the Petrine office itself—that prevents them from being Catholic. This difference cannot be just any, but must be one without which the truth of the Gospel is decisively distorted or even abandoned. Being Protestant in this vein amounts to an emergency position necessary for the sake of the Gospel’s truth and the Church’s faithfulness; in short, accidental Protestantism does not understand itself as ecclesial normalcy.”24 I shall now illustrate from Berkouwer’s writings why he is an accidental Protestant. Consider here his 1957 monograph, Nieuwe Perspectieven in De Controvers: Rome-Reformatie. That study marked a significant shift, to say the least, in approach to Catholicism: from (in the titles of those early books) “battle” or “struggle” (strijd) and “conflict” (conflict), reflecting an antithetical stance toward Catholicism, with an emphasis on mere apologetical confrontation, to authentic ecumenical (interconfessional) dialogue with Catholicism. Berkouwer argues there, “When our mindset is neither dominated by an anxiety regarding the weakening of one’s own positions nor closed to possibly necessary corrections, then all sorts of questions, which 21 Reinhard Hütter, “Why does the Pope Matter to Protestants?,” Nova et Vetera, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2008): 675–680, and for this quote, 676. 22 Hütter, “Why does the Pope Matter to Protestants?,” 676. 23 Hütter, “Why does the Pope Matter to Protestants?,” 678. 24 Hütter, “Why does the Pope Matter to Protestants?,” 676–677.



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early on were raised solely from an apologetical perspective, can now be raised on their own merits, with an honesty and open-mindedness, which is decisively necessary for all theoretical reflection.”25 Around the same time, Berkouwer writes in a short study on recent developments in Roman Catholic thought, “Whenever we thus occupy ourselves with the Roman Catholic Church we must keep in mind that we may not adopt a negative attitude, a barren anti-papism. The note of anti is sounded in the Reformation, but this anti is positive, not negative. Every kind of Protestantism that stands merely in a protest-relationship is stricken with unfruitfulness.”26 Its unfruitfulness stems partly from its working with caricatures, bypassing the real differences, and hence the real controversy, between Catholicism and Protestantism.27 Furthermore, what Berkouwer says about anti-Catholicism applies with equal force to Contra-Reformation anti-Protestantism. “Anti-Catholicism is a slippery phenomenon, hardly susceptible of definition, but it does have this characteristic, that it is unreceptive to any corrections in the caricature that it fights because it fears that correcting the caricature will mean a weakening of its own negative position. Anti-Catholicism [as well as anti-Protestantism], with all its apparent emotional force, is powerless to make a contribution to the controversy between Rome and the Reformation” (VCNT, 27–28 [29]). In short, “Anti-Catholics therefore are a priori skeptical of any talk of attempts at renewal of the Catholic Church” (VCNT, 28 [30]). Moreover, inter-confessional dialogue as such between Reformed Protestants and Catholics is often taken to be “a sign of weakness” by some Protestants and Catholics alike. Berkouwer disagrees. “The emotional anti-Catholic [and anti-Protestant] feels uncomfortable in a new situation in which by means of new confrontations and new investigations into exegesis and dogmatics the controversy is stripped of its simplistic forms. 25 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 11–12 (my translation). 26 Berkouwer, Recent Developments, 10. 27 The American Orthodox Presbyterian theologian and philosopher Cornelius van Til (1895–1987) is a prime example of this unfruitfulness. As Stephen Williams writes, “Van Til sets the tone by declaring not only that ‘the Church of Rome loved Aristotle almost as much as Christ’, but that like ‘the Church of Rome the Remonstrants too loved the freedom and autonomy of man almost as well as they loved Christ’” (The Sovereignty of Grace: An Appraisal of G.C. Berkouwer’s view of Dordt [Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969], 12–13). Williams continues: “Such an identification of perceived theological error with spiritual unfaithfulness contrasts strikingly with Berkouwer’s own attitude in theological debate, clear as he could be in riposte when it was needed” (“Observations on the Future of System,” 63n50).

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Many Protestants [and Catholics] suspect that by taking these confrontations seriously, we may water down the differences and lose some of the old convictions of the struggle.” On the contrary, argues Berkouwer, “Responsible encounter is not a sign of weakness; it is rather recognition of the seriousness of the division of the Church” (VCNT, 28–29 [30]). Failure to engage Roman Catholics would be irresponsible especially given all the efforts at renewal going on within the Catholic Church in light of Vatican II.28 What is more, already in his 1940 work, De Strijd om het RoomschKatholieke Dogma, Berkouwer argues against what he later calls a “barren anti-papism,” urging the Protestant student of Roman Catholic thought to acquire serious knowledge of the latter “not motivated by antiCatholicism, but because the truth and gospel require it.”29 He adds, those who struggle with Rome “always has the responsibility first of all to understand Catholic doctrine in its most prominent and fundamental thoughts.” Even if Roman Catholics are unfair in their treatment of us, explains Berkouwer, “That does not remove the obligation, however, that we have in every instance of not doing an injustice to Rome in our representation of the disputed position” (SRKD, 6). Indeed, as Dutch theologian Dirk van Keulen notes, Berkouwer’s preference for the title of his second book (1949) on Catholicism was not “conflict” with Rome but rather “dialogue” (Dutch: “gesprek”) with Rome. “That Berkouwer himself preferred ‘dialogue’ suggests that he expressly sought a dialogue with Rome. And ‘dialogue’ in the years that followed came to stand strongly for Berkouwer as a sign of searching for points of convergence rather than to emphasize what separates us.”30 So, these earlier works were explicitly not antipapist. But what exactly does it mean to be antipapist? 28 For a brief history of Reformed-Roman Catholic ecumenical dialogue as well as a common confession on two areas of fundamental agreement, namely, “that our Lord Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and [man] and that we receive justification by grace through faith,” see “Towards a Common Understanding of the Church,” in Deepening Communion, International Ecumenical Documents with Roman Catholic Participation, Edited by William G. Rusch and Jeffrey Gros (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1998), 179–229. 29 Berkouwer, De Strijd om het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma, 6. Unless otherwise indicated, subsequent references to this book will be cited parenthetically in the text as SRKD. 30 In a private email correspondence of Tuesday, January 24, 2012, Dirk van Keulen reminded me that he had stated this point about Berkouwer’s 1948 work on Catholicism in his study, Bijbel en Dogmatiek, Schriftbeschouwing en Schriftgebruik in het Dogmatisch Werk van A. Kuyper, H. Bavinck en G.C. Berkouwer (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 2003). Van Keulen recounts a point that Berkouwer had made forty-five years after the publication of Conflict met



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Perhaps its particular meaning, historically speaking, is the identification of the papacy and the Anti-Christ (2 Thess 2:4). We find this identification in, among others, the Reformers Luther and Calvin.31 Berkouwer explicitly rejects this identification even in his pre-Vatican II books.32 In particular, he writes in a 1957 essay: In a lecture I gave this year [1957] in Belgium, the question came up in the discussion of whether I had not simply portrayed Catholicism too favorably, since I had been silent about this identification [of the pope as the Antichrist] and apparently no longer factor it into my thinking. Didn’t the reformers reflect more of the force of this clear designation of the pope or the papacy as the Antichrist? This is a position that the questioner presented to me in a pamphlet he handed me at the end of the gathering, a pamphlet that contained no fewer than eighteen arguments supporting it. It seems that this perspective is a marginal manifestation of the Protestant condemnation of Rome, since the quite self-evident and simplistic location

Rome in a speech on June 4, 1993 commemorating his 90th birthday: “In 1948 I had written a book, Conflict with Rome. I told that to someone whose name I shall not give. Then he said: ‘What is the title?’ . . . ‘Dialogue with Rome’. To which he replied: No, you must call it: ‘Conflict with Rome’.” He was insistent, get down to brass tacks . . . Conflict with Rome. And you will say, why did you not in turn stick to ‘dialogue’? Thinking in hindsight, I should have then taken refuge in my good friendship with Gerard Brom [1882–1959], a fantastic man, a devout Catholic, who had written, Dialogue on the unity of the Church [1946]. But I no longer trust my memory. I do too want . . . conflict! No conversation! Of course, that was entirely wrong’ ” (367n82, my translation). 31 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, Ch. III, no. 12. Richard J. Mouw (“True Church and True Christians,” 104–105) writes about Calvin’s judgment regarding the ecclesial status of the Roman Catholic Church, “Even though Calvin saw the Roman Catholic authorities as having done much to destroy the proper patterns of the church’s life and mission, Calvin nonetheless insisted that he could not bring himself to ‘deprive the papists of those traces of the church which the Lord willed should among them survive the destruction’. Thus ‘the Lord wonderfully preserves’ within the Roman Catholic Church, he argues, ‘a remnant of his people, however woefully dispersed and scattered’. This remnant preserves ‘those marks whose effectiveness neither the devil’s wiles nor human depravity can destroy’. But for Calvin these marks are not enough to grant legitimate churchly status to the Roman church as such. Since some of the most important marks of proper churchness ‘have been erased’ in that body, Calvin is forced to conclude ‘that every one of their congregations and their whole body lack the lawful form of the Church” (Book IV, Ch. II, nos. 11–12). On the other hand, when discussing the matter of apostolic succession, Berkouwer argues that “Calvin is not concerned with an anti-conciliar and anti-papal disposition.” Berkouwer adds, “He [Calvin] even appears willing to go very far, because he exclaims [in his reply to Cardinal Sadolet’s Letter]: ‘Let the Pope be the successor of Peter, if only he also performs the service of an apostle’. This statement connects directly to present-day ecclesiological thought about the service of Peter. In that light, Calvin can understandably speak in a provocative way and at the same time can mention the ‘majesty’ of a council as long as Scripture ‘stands out in the higher place’ (Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 9, 8)” (Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 84 [271]). 32 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 9–10.

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chapter one of the kingdom of the Antichrist in the pope and the papacy has been pretty much discarded under the influence of all sorts of factors.33

There is another, more commonly held, meaning ascribed to being an anti-papist, which clearly brings out the meaning of being anti-Catholic. An anti-papist is not merely someone who rejects the Catholic Church as a true visible expression of Christ’s body, as an acceptable Christian communion, let alone as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, but also someone who denies that Roman Catholics are fellow believers by virtue of sharing a love of Jesus Christ, of accepting him as Lord and Savior, affirming the faith of the ecumenical creeds, and a familial bond in baptism and God’s Word.34 Berkouwer is, arguably, not anti-papist in either of these senses. In his two pre-Vatican II books, the ecclesial claim of the Roman Catholic Church that Berkouwer fundamentally contends with is her exclusivity, that is, “Rome’s claim that it is the only church.” In other words, “In Rome’s view the happiness and the true future of any nation is insolubly bound up with the Roman claim that the [Ecclesia] Catholica is the only church of Jesus Christ on earth.”35 Despite Berkouwer’s rejection of

33 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 9. For a brief historical analysis of the Reformation’s opposition to the pope as the “Anti-Christ,” see The Condemnations of the Reformation Era, Do They still Divide?, Edited by Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Translated by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 157–159. 34 One prime example showing that anti-papism is still alive and well is evident from the opposition on the part of some Evangelical Reformed Protestants, such as R.C. Sproul, the late D. James Kennedy, Albert Mohler, Michael Horton, et al., who refused to support the 1994 ecumenical alliance of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which affirms the substance of historic Christian orthodoxy as expressed in the Ecumenical Creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon. A similar opposition surfaced recently to the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, which is a declaration speaking in defense of the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty. There are a few contemporary Reformed attitudes toward the Roman Catholic Church: “There are within the Reformed family those whose attitude to the Roman Catholic Church remains essentially negative: some because they remain to be convinced that the modern developments of the Roman Catholic Church has really addressed the issues of the Reformation, and others because they have been largely untouched by the ecumenical exchanges of recent times and have therefore not been challenged or encouraged to reconsider their traditional stance. But this is only one part of the picture. Others in the Reformed tradition have sought to engage in a fresh constructive and critical evaluation both of the contemporary teaching and practice of the Roman Catholic Church and of the classical controverted issues” (“Towards a Common Understanding of the Church,” 187). 35 Berkouwer, Conflict met Rome, 6 [4]. Unless otherwise indicated, subsequent references to this work will be cited parenthetically in the text as CR. Berkouwer makes the same point in 1940: “Rome speaks to us with a very strong self-awareness, not at all to be understood as an expression of haughtiness, but rather as a deep sense that arises from



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this claim he does not let himself be deflected from listening seriously and trying to understand what the Church is really saying and why. This includes taking seriously the background and approach of the other side so that we can see whether “separate traditions have hardened into positions that have their origin, not in the gospel, but in historical situations and the limited human insights that have gradually distorted the truth on both sides” (VCNT, 321 [253]). Therefore, the consequence of a barren anti-papism is, says Berkouwer, a negative attitude that “deprives one of the broad-mindedness and patience necessary for a proper analysis of the motives of Roman Catholic doctrine” (CR, 13 [9]).36 Thus, even in his preVatican II studies of the Catholic Church with their antithetical emphasis on ‘battle’ and ‘conflict’ with Catholicism, Berkouwer never seemed in a rush to sound the depth of the religious antithesis between Rome and the Reformation. He always listened seriously to the other before he responded, and once he responded it was not as if everything that could be said about theological differences between Rome and the Reformation had now been said, and thus the discussion with Catholicism was over. Of course avoiding the pitfall of a simple anti-papism, he adds, “would not in any way minimize the gravity of the conflict [between Rome and the Reformation]. Quite the contrary. Analysis alone can provide insight into the immediate cause of the separation; only critical analysis can lead us to a discussion of ultimate issues. Though we are still subject to error in our attempts to understand each other, there is a chance for us to sound the depth of the religious antithesis” (CR, 14 [9]). Indeed, says Berkouwer, “The divisions of the Church are forcing the churches to get at the root question of their existence and task. . . . For this reason it would be irresponsible to shove the questions that divide the Church aside or to give them a simple answer that only camouflages the fact that they have not been answered at all. We cannot make believe the differences do not exist. This would be too high a price to pay for a common front against the problems that confront us commonly. To do so would be to deny the very importance of the Church in the modern situation” (VCNT, 321 [253], italics added). How, then, does Berkouwer engage hardened positions, getting at their origin, either in the gospel or in historical situations, the latter

the conviction that the Roman Catholic Church is the Church of Christ” (SRKD, 7–8, my translation). 36 Berkouwer, Recent Developments, 9.

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limiting human insights into the truth, and even gradually distorting our grasp of the truth? Berkouwer states a hermeneutical principle that came to inform his own engagement of the Catholic tradition, marking his efforts to minimize distortion and hence misunderstanding, encouraging a one-sidedness that inevitably follows from a position that is reactionary as well as predominantly apologetical and merely out to refute Catholicism or Reformed Protestantism. Hermeneutical Principle for Interpreting Ecclesial Texts What is, then, this hermeneutical principle? Essentially it posits that we should not make judgments about, say, the Councils of Trent and Vatican I without understanding the integral totality of Catholicism because the statements of these councils were polemical and antithetical. In other words, all truth formulated for polemical reasons is partial—albeit true.37 Berkouwer refers us to Hans Urs von Balthasar’s understanding of this methodological principle.38 Balthasar explains, “Even though, of course, the truth of the Councils of Trent and Vatican I will never be overtaken or even relativized, nonetheless there are still other views and aspects of revelation than those expressed there. This has always happened throughout church history, when new statements are brought forth to complete

37 Berkouwer recognizes this point: “One-sidedness does not make the decision of 1870 [Vatican I on the primacy and infallibility of the pope] a false one, but it does have the marks of incompletion, of needing the complement of other facets of the episcopacy” (VCNT, 179 [148]). On this point Yves M.J. Congar writes: “When faced with a one-sided distortion of the truth, the Church must do more than simply emphasize the other, equally partial, side of the same truth. Her obligation is to point to the total truth that towers over all error and partial truths. And yet it is inevitable that in her pronouncements of the time she will end up stressing those substantial points that are being denied by heresy. Her apologetes have no choice but to try to restore to their rightful place the truths that have been distorted by error” (Crétiens désunis [1937], 34; cited by Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, translated by Edward T. Oakes, S.J. [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992 (1951)], 13). See also, Pius XII, Humani Generis, “Catholic theologians and philosophers, whose solemn duty it is to defend natural and supernatural truth and instill it in the hearts of men, cannot afford to ignore or neglect these opinions, which are more or less devious. Rather they must understand them well, first because diseases are not properly treated unless they are rightly diagnosed, then, too, because false theories sometimes contain a certain amount of truth, and finally because the mind is thereby spurred on to examine and weigh certain philosophical or theological doctrines more attentively” (no. 9). 38 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 4–5.



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earlier insights in order to do justice to the inexhaustible riches of divine revelation even in the earthen vessel of human language.”39 Furthermore, the distinction between the truth and its formulations, between form and content, is of ecumenical significance because it “implied that the Church’s formulation of the truth could have, for various reasons, actually occasioned misunderstandings of the truth itself ” (VCNT, 20 [23–24]). In other words, the formulation or expression itself of the truth could be characterized by one-sidedness. Following Congar, we may distinguish two types of one-sidedness. “First, there is the possibility that this formulation, made in reaction to an error characterized by unilateralism, should itself become unilateral in its expression. Next, there is the possibility that the condemnation might include in its condemnation of the erroneous reactive element the seeds of truth as well, whose original ambivalence unfortunately became deviant.”40 As an example of the second type of one-sidedness, consider here Pius XI’s negative attitude41 toward the ecumenical movement because of its denial of

39 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 11–12. Berkouwer makes a similar point, particularly in regard to the Reformed confessions, in his study, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1949), 19–20; ET: Faith and Justification, Translated by Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954), 19: “The Heidelberg Catechism mirrors the controversy with the Lutherans, the Canons of Dordt are defined by the struggle with the Remonstrants, the Belgic Confession reflects opposition to the anabaptists, the Helvitic Confession of 1562 is clearly directed against Rome, the Westminster Confession of 1647 opposed the Catholic mass; and so it is with every confession. The Church that most keenly wishes to subject itself to the gospel never frees itself from historical definition. This is no concession to historical relativism. The Bible itself is historically conditioned.” 40 Yves Congar, O.P., True and False Reform in the Church, Translated and with an Introduction by Paul Philibert, O.P. (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2011 [1968]), 205–208. 41 Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, no. 9. Online: http://www.vatican.va/ holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19280106_mortalium-animos_ en.html. Another example is given by Congar himself regarding a book edited by Fr. Karlo Balić (De Scriptura et Traditione, 1963) on the Two Sources theory of revelation. “The book for which Fr. Balić had asked me for a contribution has now appeared. I have read the conclusion-summary written by Fr. Balić himself. I fear that this book will make a huge impression on many of the bishops. It makes it quite clear that the Two Sources have been taught in the Catholic Church, and that this is a majority view, if not quire universal. In my opinion, THIS is not the issue. The question today is precisely to GET AWAY FROM THIS PROBLEMATIC, which has been conditioned either, in the Middle Ages, by ignorance of the problem of THE tradition, or, since the Reformation, by a treatment of the question that is domindated by the bad position it has because of the Protestant denials. If only I had the time to show this, to put forward a useful status quaestionis” (My Journal of the Council, Translated by M.J. Ronayne, O.P. and M.C. Boulding, O.P., English Translator Editor, D. Minns, O.P. [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012], 307; italics added, but capitols in original).

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the visible unity of the Church of Christ, appearing as “one body of faithful, agreeing in one and the same doctrine under one teaching authority and government.” On the contrary, some in the ecumenical movement “understand a visible Church as nothing else than a Federation, composed of various communities of Christians, even though they adhere to different doctrines, which may even be incompatible one with another.”42 The pope condemned these views because they were based on an ecclesiological relativism, fostering a false irenicism and religious indifferentism. In light of Vatican II’s Unitatis Redintegratio and John Paul II’s Ut unum Sint, however, we can say that Pius XI was right in rejecting these views as false, but incorrect in his analysis that the rejected errors where inherent to ecumenism, with the latter jeopardizing the dogma that the Catholic Church is in some fundamental sense the one visible Church of God. The distinction, then, rightly understood, between truth and its formulations or expressions need not bring the truth of the Church’s dogmas into uncertainty. Berkouwer understands the type of one-sidedness we have been briefly examining. He writes, “The Church has been constant in truth at its deepest intent, even though it [the Church] has not been elevated above historical relativity in its analysis of the rejected errors” (VCNT, 52 [49]). He elaborates in a passage worth quoting in full: An unmistakable limitation and even, in a sense, an overshadowing of the fullness of truth is created by the defensive and polemical character of dogmatic pronouncements. Thus, Trent judged the Reformation sola fide as a vain confidence, but failed to “delineate what could rightfully have been intended by the phrase sola fide.” The historical and polemical conditionedness of Church pronouncements must be respected. It seems both necessary and almost self-evident that previous pronouncements of dogma must be interpreted in this light. The interpretation need not bear the character of a revision which gives a new and different meaning to the dogma in order to make it acceptable to a new era. But dogma must be understood in the light of revelation and of the intention of the Church as that intention came to expression in a given period of history (VCNT, 77 [69]).43 42 Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, no. 6. 43 Berkouwer writes elsewhere: “The question is one of limits: where does reinterpretation of the past slide over into critique of and break with the past? At the present stage of discussion [1974], the question is being asked whether [Hans] Küng is reacting against a straw man, whether he has interpreted the real intentions of Vatican I correctly. It is asked for instance whether Vatican I ever meant to assert that it was impossible for the church to err and to posit a priori infallible propositions. Might it not be that the council never intended an absolute unchangeability of dogmatic formulation, but only to affirm the conviction that the Pope’s magisterial judgment, which was, in any case, irrevocable, is indispensable as arbiter regarding matters of faith in the church” (Een Halve Eeuw



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Put differently, appreciating the ecumenical significance of the distinction between truth and its formulations, form and truth-content, does not sacrifice the immutability or permanence of dogmatic truth. It simply brings with it the “immense advantage of dissipating prejudices and correcting false interpretations.”44 Although he expresses Berkouwer’s point somewhat differently, this, too, is Joseph Ratzinger’s view: “The really hard cases of division are only those in which one or more of the parties is convinced that they are not defending their own ideas but are standing by what they have received from revelation and cannot therefore manipulate. The aim of [ecumenical] dialogues is then to perceive how positions that are apparently opposed may be compatible at a deeper level and, in doing so, of course, to exclude everything that derives only from certain cultural developments.”45 Most recently, Aidan Nichols has made a similar point in response to traditionalist critics of the documents of Vatican Council II. He writes: [T]he doctrinal statements of a Council (which, obviously, are far more important for the Church of all ages) may be less than balanced or comprehensive and thus, by implication, need supplementation, whether from another Council or from other sources. The development of Christological doctrine in the early centuries, from Ephesus to the Third Council of Constantinople, substantiates, I believe, this view. Were the Church to have drawn a line under that development at any point before the last of the four Councils concerned, we should not have had the beautiful equilibrium of our doctrine of the Word incarnate, a pre-existing divine Person now energizing in his two natures, with his twofold divine and human will. . . . We must not ask for perfection from Councils, even in their doctrinal aspect. It is enough to know that, read according to a hermeneutic of continuity they will not lead us astray. An Ecumenical Council will never formally commit the Church to doctrinal error. It is, moreover, unfair to ask of Councils what they have not claimed to provide.46 Theologie, 325 [224]. I modified the English translation of this passage because the translator missed some of the nuances in the original Dutch text. 44 Yves M.J. Congar, Dialogue between Christians, Catholic Contributions to Ecumenism, translated by Philip Loretz, S.J. (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1965), 129. 45 Joseph Ratzinger, “On the Ecumenical Situation,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, The Church as Communion, edited by Stephen Otto Horn, et al., translated by Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 253–269, and at, 256. 46 Aidan Nichols, O.P. and Moyra Doorly, The Council in Question, A Dialogue with Catholic Traditionalism (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2011), 81–83. Nichols clearly distinguishes “criticizing incomplete or unbalanced formulations in the language of the Conciliar texts . . . from the claim that the Council fathers formally committed the Church to doctrinal error” (29–30). The former is within the limits of acceptable criticism, not making one a dissenter, the latter is not.

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Thus, the distinction between truth and its formulations, form and content, does not ask us to renounce anything that God has revealed and the Church has infallibly declared to be true. Rather, this distinction makes it possible “For the Church’s deepest intentions [to declare a universal truth] . . . simply [to] be brought to clearer expression in a new formulation” (VCNT, 50 [48]). Furthermore, a new formulation must not contradict the revealed truth; rather, it must “keep the same meaning and the same judgment” (eodem sensu eademque sententia).47 Of course Berkouwer no more than Balthasar and Ratzinger is defending a dialectical notion of truth, in which a reconciliation of contradictions among themselves is attempted, with this hermeneutical principle. Rather, they are all distinguishing between truth and its formulations—in different contexts and conceptualities in which to understand and communicate truth—and, accordingly, making a point that the Second Vatican Council was also to make: “It is hardly surprising if sometimes one tradition has come nearer than the other to an apt appreciation of certain aspects of the revealed mystery or has expressed them in a clearer manner. As a result, these various theological formulations are often to be considered as complementary rather than conflicting.”48 I shall return later to consider the difference between a complementary and a conflicting interpretation. For now, we can appreciate that without attending to Berkouwer’s hermeneutical principle we may get stuck in intolerant polemics and controversies. This principle has ecumenical significance because it helps us to open ourselves to self-correction and also to a correction of the caricatures of others (see VCNT, 36 [36]). In other words, the distinction between truth and its doctrinal formulations play an especially important role in ecumenical dialogue, according to Berkouwer, because it helps us to distinguish “in these formulations between the sense and the essence in confessing, in order that we may then pose the question of whether at the heart of confessing there is an actual divergence, and if there is, wherein 47 Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei Filius, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, nos. 13–14. “May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same meaning, and the same judgment (in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia). The last sentence of this quotation refers the reader to Vincent of Lérins (died c. 445), Commonitorium, Chapter XXIII, §28, “Of what kind of Improvment Christian Doctrine is susceptible.” 48 Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio, Decree on Ecumenism, no. 17.



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it consists.”49 In addition, it may help us avoid turning two different ways of looking at the same reality into incompatible assertions. As John Paul II has said, “Nowadays we need to find the formula which, by capturing the reality in its entirety, will enable us to move beyond partial readings and eliminate false interpretations.”50 Philosophical issues of meaning and truth are at stake in distinguishing between truth and its formulations as well as discerning the difference between complementary and contradictory theological formulations.51 I explore some of these issues, too, later in this chapter. We can easily appreciate that taking seriously this principle, and putting it into practice, requires leaving behind the commitments and attitudes described above, which are characteristic of both a Protestant anti-Catholic and a Contra-Reformation anti-Protestant Catholic. In particular, they must leave behind their lack of “receptivity to any corrections in the caricature that it fights because it fears that correcting the caricature will mean a weakening of its own negative position” (VCNT, 28 [29]). Both Catholics and Protestants can make a turnaround here only if they experience the “need for interior conversion.” In the words of Vatican II’s call for renewing the ecumenical task of uniting divided Christians, “There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without a change of heart.”52 And this change of heart will come from a response to Jesus’ high-priestly prayer “to the Father for his disciples and for all those who believe in him, that they might be one, a living communion.” John Paul explains, This is the basis not only of the duty, but also of the responsibility before God and his plan, which falls to those who through Baptism become members of the Body of Christ, a Body in which the fullness of reconciliation and communion must be made present. How is it possible to remain divided, if we have been ‘buried’ through Baptism in the Lord’s death, in the very act by which God, through the death of his Son, has broken down the walls of division? Division ‘openly contradicts the will of Christ, provides a stumbling block to the world, and inflicts damage on the most holy cause of proclaiming the Good News to every creature’.53

49 Berkouwer, Nabetrachting op het Concilie, 59. Unless otherwise indicated, subsequent references to this work will be cited parenthetically in the text as NC. 50 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 38. 51 I have already addressed some of these issues in chapter 2 of my book, Dialogue of Love, Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic Ecumenist. 52 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 15. 53 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 6.

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Indeed, the pope asks all Christians pointedly, “How indeed can we proclaim the Gospel of reconciliation without at the same time being committed to working for reconciliation between Christians?”54 What is more, both John Paul and Berkouwer single out ecumenism’s inspiration and guiding motif: “that they may all be one . . . so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21). Berkouwer also sees that Christ’s prayer for unity is connected to that specific motif: It is striking to what a high degree, in the whole of the New Testament, the Church is related to the discovery of the gospel by the world. On one side stands the god this age, who blinds the minds of men and hinders them from seeing the light of glory (II Cor 4:3f). On the other side stands the Church, which has been taken up in the process of convincing the world. She is the salt of the earth (Matt 5:13) and the light of the world (5:14). Her light shines before men (5:16) that the Father may be glorified. Her preaching must go out into the world (28:19), and she proclaims the wonderful deeds of God (I Pet 2:9). But the function of the Church manifests itself also in her being, her unity, which becomes visible and thus summons up reactions of faith and acknowledgement. This “being” always has a goal, just as Christ placed love for one another in a broad connection: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). In that love a window is thrown open on the Lord, and He is perceived as its source. Likewise, Christ prays for unity to be such a window, which gives an outlook on His mission in this world. . . . Therefore, the severance of unity is a catastrophe for the world. John 17 says as much, but we are so accustomed to disunity that we are in danger of becoming immune to its warning.55

Furthermore, our heart-felt response to Jesus’ high-priestly prayer, calling all his disciples to unity, will be deepened by repentance. In the words of John Paul II, “[The] radical exhortation [in the First Letter of John] to acknowledge our condition as sinners [1: 8–10] ought also to mark the 54 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 98. 55 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 52–53 [45–46]. John Paul II puts Berkouwer’s point in Ut Unum Sint (no. 98): “At the same time it is obvious that the lack of unity among Christians contradicts the Truth which Christians have the mission to spread and, consequently, it gravely damages their witness. This was clearly understood and expressed by my Predecessor Pope Paul VI, in his [1975] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi: ‘As evangelizers, we must offer Christ’s faithful not the image of people divided and separated by unedifying quarrels, but the image of people who are mature in faith and capable of finding a meetingpoint beyond the real tensions, thanks to a shared, sincere and disinterested search for truth. Yes, the destiny of evangelization is certainly bound up with the witness of unity given by the Church . . . At this point we wish to emphasize the sign of unity among all Christians as the way and instrument of evangelization. The division among Christians is a serious reality which impedes the very work of Christ’.”



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spirit which we bring to ecumenical dialogue. . . . Even after the many sins which have contributed to our historical divisions, Christian unity is possible, provided that we are humbly conscious of having sinned against unity and are convinced of our need for conversion.” In other words, “ecumenical dialogue [should] take on a specific characteristic; it becomes a ‘dialogue of conversion’, and thus, in the words of Pope Paul VI, an authentic ‘dialogue of salvation’.” In this respect, then, “Dialogue is not simply an exchange of ideas. In some way it is always an exchange of gifts,” indeed, a “dialogue of love.”56 At the root of this exchange, its dynamic is, as John Paul II correctly notes, “love for the truth.” “[This] is the deepest dimension of any authentic quest for full communion between Christians. . . . There must be charity toward one’s partner in dialogue, and humility with regard to the truth which comes to light and which might require a review of assertions and attitude.”57 Anyone who reads Berkouwer’s Vatican II works on Catholicism cannot fail to see this kind of dialogue and dynamic at work in his writings. In particular, Berkouwer’s fundamental concern for the visible unity of the Church is about a unity that is grounded in truth, certainly not in an indifference concerning the truth, as all three epigraphs to this chapter emphasize. Credo Unam Ecclesiam Perhaps Berkouwer’s ecclesiology gives us the single most important reason why he is an accidental Protestant and not an essential one. In Vol. 1 of his 1970 dogmatic study, De Kerk, Berkouwer reflects on the Church’s confession: credo unam ecclesiam, and the division among Christians, disunity in the Church. Berkouwer is persuaded that the New Testament teaches that there is only one Church, here and now, rather than many churches, and this Church is the concrete, visible Church, and thus “the being of the Church, as willed by God, implies unity.”58 “Our conviction that the plural for ‘Church’ is an inner contradiction is confirmed by the numerous characterizations of the Church of Christ in the whole of the New Testament: the one people of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the building of God, the flock of the good Shepherd. These images indicate

56 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, nos. 34–35, 28, 47. 57 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 36. 58 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 32–33 [30].

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in various ways the one reality of the Church.”59 Therefore: “Unity belongs essentially to the Church’s being: the expression ‘one Church’ is really a pleonasm.”60 Of course there is diversity, but it is “the pluriformity of the Church” and not a “plurality of churches.”61 Yes, there is division among Christians, disunity in the one Church, but this division is the fruit of human sin, and such disunity is sharply placed “under the criticism of the gospel.”62 Therefore, there must be another way to do justice to the pluriformity of the one Church. Berkouwer develops an ecclesiology in which the unity of the Church, given the Church’s pluriformity, is not shifted into the future or into an ecclesia invisibilis, with the latter seeking “to make everything dependent on the already present, but hidden, unity of the invisible Church.”63 Nor does Berkouwer turn to a conception of unity in terms of federation. As Leslie Newbigin once wrote, and Berkouwer agrees, “The disastrous error of the idea of federation is that it offers us reunion without repentance.”64 Rather, Berkouwer’s ecclesiology “seeks to examine the concrete, visible Church, and does so by placing her in the light of pluriformity.”65 Significantly, pluriformity is not just another name for division, but it is positive. “If this recognition of positive traces of the Church in other churches is not to result in [ecclesiological] relativism, how is one to think concretely of the [Church’s] relation to other churches?”66 Berkouwer’s answer stresses the responsibility of the Church’s confession, credo unam ecclesiam: The extreme concentration and responsibility of the Church’s whole life does not require a forced, unattractive uniformity (in place of “pluriformity”). The Lord of the Church Who is the Shepherd of the flock, knows all the sheep—in all variation, in need and threat, and in the dangers of doubt and temptation. In only one thing are they “uniform”: He cares for them all, in their individuality, their history, their problems, their time, their cares, their new tasks, their gifts, and their lacks. This care makes room for an

59 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 94 [77]. Leslie Newbigin concurs, “Any serious reading of the New Testament must surely make [the fact] inescapable, that to speak of a plurality of Churches, is strictly absurd; that we can only do so in so far as we have ceased to understand by the word ‘Church’ what the New Testament means by it” (The Household of God, 17). 60 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 33 [30]. 61 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 61 [51]. 62 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 37 [33]. 63 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 61 [51]. 64 Newbigin, Household of God, 17. 65 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 61 [51]. 66 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 89 [72].



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unexpected, enriching pluriformity, which is manifold and inexhaustible. . . . Yet this pluriformity is possible only within the one fellowship, within which the possibilities of all times, lands, and circumstances are unlimited. Because the many questions today are so different and complicated, there cannot be uniformity in all solutions. But “pluralism” in various provisional solutions is subject to “necessity” as the decisive aspect of the good Shepherd’s messianic life-work. The necessity was related to a new reality, to deep fellowship in Him: “I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). Whoever abstracts in this pluralism even for an instant from the necessity of Christ’s bringing the others [into the fold] must despair of unity and fellowship in the Church, since there is so much variation in the many problems that face the Church.67

Still, Berkouwer’s commitment to the Church’s confession, credo unam ecclesiam, is not that of a starry-eyed optimist. He seeks to avoid both false irenicism and indifference to doctrinal difference, which is usually coupled with ecclesiological relativism. He asks, “Is it possible to see each other in true proportions and then to engage in discussion. Can we penetrate the depth of the experience of the mass or understand the devotion paid to Mary? And can a Roman Catholic penetrate the deep meaning of the sola fide and the sola gratia, and to the action of the Holy Ghost in the Reformed doctrine of the sacrament? Are such difficulties responsible for the fact that debate often takes the form of a description of the pathology of Roman Catholicism or of the Reformation? Is a ‘talk’ destined to change into two monologues that hardly touch each other” (CR, 15 [10])? The ever-present threat of a monologue may cause “a feeling of weariness due to the seeming hopelessness of the conflict” between Rome and the Reformation. This threat pushes some to succumb to the temptation of relativism. By relativism Berkouwer means a form of “experiential expressivism,” meaning thereby that doctrines are non-propositional expressions of inward experiences or existential orientations. Berkouwer elaborates: “In the history of the church, with its appalling discords and dissensions, the bogey of relativism sometimes frighten us. Had we not better be satisfied with a phenomenological description and reassure ourselves with the knowledge that religion arises out of the depth of the soul as something very irrational? Is there any meaning in struggle, or is the struggle nothing but some confessional objectification of psychical structures? Is it after all a hopeless debate, or is the certainty of faith at issue?”68 I think Berkouwer 67 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 93 [75–76]. 68 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 16 [10–11].

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holds that the question of the certainty of faith looms large here because division among Christians raises the basic question of the point of being a Christian. “We must add that for those who together confess Christ as Lord of their lives and Lord of the world, who have a common stake in the cause of Christ in face of the urgent modern problems forced on all who join His cause, for all who want to go into the world with its radical doubts to give witness of their faith—for these the issues of the day will affect their approach to the issues that divides them.” In short, “The mind that takes the problems seriously also takes the question of faith and its content seriously” (VCNT, 321 [253]). Once again, this question presents a common ecumenical “challenge of finding a hermeneutic for reinterpreting the affirmations of the church.”69 What characterizes Berkouwer’s last two books on Catholicism, Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie (1964) and Nabetrachting op het Concilie (1968), was an honesty and open-mindedness, a readiness to learn from others—critically, to be sure—and the drive of searching for the truth. Furthermore, Berkouwer argues in these studies that the influence of nouvelle théologie on the Second Vatican Council, evident in its documents, signals the possibility of an eventual re-writing of the dogmatic-historical conflict between Rome and the Reformation. This possibility will be actualized only if the hermeneutical framework of the ressourcement, which the nouvels théologiens spearheaded, finds general recognition.70 There are three features of this framework that will set the context for the later chapters in this book that I shall especially explore now. Significantly, these three features have ecumenical significance in so far as they must find general recognition among all Christians who heed Christ’s call to unity. I shall be arguing that point in what follows. • Resourcement and Aggiornamento: What is the nature and extent of renewal?71 • Revelation and Truth: Different expressions of the same truth? • The Hierarchy of Truths 69 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 319 [220]. 70 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 28. Regarding the term ressourcement Gabriel Flynn writes, “The word ressourcement was coined by the poet and social critic Charles Péguy (1873–1914). . . . The liturgical changes inaugurated by Pope Pius X (1835–1914) were also an inspiration for ressourcement” (“A Renaissance in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology”), 327. 71 For a brief account of the Church-reforming dynamic of Catholicism, see Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, 19–52.



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Ressourcement and Aggiornamento Perhaps there are no other two words used by Vatican Council II that define the question regarding the nature and extent of the Church’s aim of renewal than ressourcement and aggiornamento. What does each of these words mean and how do they stand in relation to each other? Ressourcement involves a ‘return to the sources’ of Christian faith, for the purpose of rediscovering their truth and meaning in order to meet the critical challenges of our time. If ressourcement is about revitalization, then the oftmentioned aggiornamento is a question of “adaptation,” alternatively put, of accommodation, that is, of finding new ways to rethink and reformulate the fundamental affirmations of the Christian faith.72 As Berkouwer rightly senses, “The questions involving ‘aggiornamento,’ renewal, are the ones that confront us big as life. As expected, after the call for accommodation was sounded, the question arose with increasing urgency of what the ideals of this ‘renewal’ could possibly mean concretely” (NC, 8). What, then, are the goals of aggiornamento? Unfortunately, some interpreters of Vatican II took renewal to be merely a matter of the Church’s adaptation or accommodation to the standards of the modern world. In other words, they took aggiornamento as an “isolated motive for renewal.”73 When taken as such, aggiornamento means, on the accommodationist interpretation, simply adapting to the culture of modernity. The impulse for this interpretation derives from John XXIII’s understanding that the Council’s “deepest intent did not lie in a sharp anti but in a clear pro” (NC, 10–11)—“God loves the world and calls the Church to serve the world” (VCNT, 33 [34]). Of course John did not share the accommodationist interpretation of his words that the primary stance 72 The Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition also engaged in aggiornamento. Berkouwer writes, “Herman Dooyeweerd criticizes Abraham Kuyper’s ‘metaphysical doctrine of the Logos’ and his failure to extricate himself from the scholastic, Aristotelian tradition, but agrees fully with Kuyper’s “basic religious conception,” a conception which, according to Dooyeweerd, must now be developed more consistently than Kuyper himself succeeded in doing. Herman Bavinck talks of the need for theology to relate itself to the ‘mind and spirit of the era in which it speaks’ (Bavinck, Modernisme en Orthodoxie, 1911, p. 35). A. Kuyper wanted to bring Reformed theology into contact with ‘human consciousness as it had developed at the end of the nineteenth century’, and he spoke of bringing one’s confession awareness to the ‘level of the modern consciousness’, Encyclopaedie, I, 1908, Foreword, and II, 532. Kuyper frequently talked of the need for bringing the forms of orthodoxy into harmony with the thought forms of modern times” (Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie, 63n 9, 64n 10[59n 2]). See also, Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 15. 73 Cullman, “Have Expectations Been Fulfilled?,” 57. Cullmann rejects this understanding of aggiornamento.

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of the Church to the world was not “apriori-antithetical” (NC, 10). John XXIII states the primary aim of the council: “The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously.” The world, he adds, expected from this council “a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine.”74 Paul VI addressed this interpretation as well in his speech of November 18, 1965: This word [Italian: aggiornamento; Latin: accomodatio], which described [Pope John’s] goal, certainly did not have the meaning for him which some try to give it, as if it allowed for the ‘relativization,’ according to the spirit of the world, of everything in the Church—dogmas, laws, structures, traditions. His sense of the doctrinal and structural stability of the Church was so vital and strong that it was the basis and foundation of his thought and work.75

Indeed, the pope warns against two opposing dangers in understanding aggiornamento: Those who neglect or want to thwart them [the “new”], by invoking fidelity to the past, are unfaithful to the mission of the Church today and to her responsibility for tomorrow. Those who go beyond them in order to follow their personal inspiration build on sand a Church without roots. One and the other diminish the Church’s unity and credibility.76

Aggiornamento, then, argues Berkouwer, for John XXIII did not mean “an undifferentiated appropriation of ‘the modern spirit’ ” (NC, 10). Still, he adds, “John XXIII’s understanding of ‘aggiornamento’ is hardly selfevident. It concerns primarily issues that touch the Church’s continuity and unchangeableness as she makes her way through the world. These are not issues in which the spirituality of renewal engage us, but ones that touch the entire life of the Church” (NC, 41). But what, then, is the starting-point for renewal?

74 John XXIII, “Gaudet Mater Ecclesia,” http://www.saint-mike.org/library/papal_ library/johnxxiii/opening_speech_vaticanii.html. 75 As cited in Douglas G. Bushman, “Pope Paul VI on the Renewal of Vatican II as an Act of the Church Drawing from Her Treasure Things both Old and New,” Nova et Vetera, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011): 361–393, and for this quotation, 364n 9. The pope had already made the same point earlier in his August 6, 1964 Encyclical Letter, Ecclesiam Suam, no. 48. 76 Pope Paul VI, Ad limina address to the bishops of Switzerland, December 1, 1977, as cited in Bushman, “Pope Paul VI on the Renewal of Vatican II,” 366.



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Berkouwer inquires regarding the concrete meaning of ‘aggiornamento’: “What are the nature and the scope of renewal?” He replies, in particular, regarding the extent of renewal that it is limited by the continuity—unity, integrity, and identity—of revelation: “The difficulty lies especially in the fact that no one wants to concede or deny continuity, so that renewal must necessarily occur within continuity; it can involve no break with the past. Seen this way, they are in essence the same questions about transition that arose in the Reformation; was the movement really a reformation or was it a rupture, a revolution, an abrupt new beginning” (NC, 9)? In order to do justice to the enduring and unsurpassable truth of the fundamental affirmations of revelation, the faith’s continuity and unchangeable truth, “aggiornamento should be a consequence, not a starting point,” of renewal.77 That is, the first step in renewal is to couple aggiornamento to ressourcement, to the sources of Christian faith, in order to deepen, by revitalizing, our understanding of the faith for the purpose of providing, not only a coherent critique of the culture of modernity, but also a theology that will truly address the critical questions of our time.78 Berkouwer’s interpretation of Vatican II reflects a view that Benedict XVI has called the hermeneutics of continuity and renewal.79 Summarizing his position regarding the notion that Vatican II represents a “rupture” in the continuity of Church tradition, Ratzinger argues in The Ratzinger Report : “This schematism of a before and after in the history of the Church, wholly unjustified by the documents of Vatican II, which do nothing but reaffirm the continuity of Catholicism, must be decidedly opposed. There is no ‘pre-’ or ‘post-’ conciliar Church: there is but one, unique Church that walks the path toward the Lord, ever deepening and ever better understanding the treasure of faith that he himself has entrusted to her. There are no leaps in this history, there are no fractures, and there is no break in continuity. In no wise did the Council intend to introduce a temporal dichotomy in the Church.”80 Ratzinger has continued to emphasize “Not rupture but continuity” in his interpretation of the Council—a diachronic 77 Cullman, “Have Expectations Been Fulfilled?,” 58. 78 Helpful here in understanding the relationship between aggiornamento and ressourcement is Tracey Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition, After Vatican II (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 19. 79 Christmas Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia (http://www .vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_ spe_20051222_roman-curia_en.html). 80 Joseph Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report, translated by Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, Press, 1985), 35.

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continuity of the Council’s teaching with the whole Catholic tradition. That is, Vatican II, says Ratzinger, “is one part of the unbroken, the unique Tradition of the Church and of her faith.”81 Significantly, for Ratzinger, a hermeneutics of continuity does not deny change; indeed, change is necessary in order to ensure continuity of identity. Exactly how that happens we’ll consider in the next section when we examine the distinction between truth and its formulations, form and content, and context and content. For now suffice it to say, as Ian Ker correctly notes, “There are changes that preserve identity and there are changes that change identity, that is to say, there are changes that are developments and there are changes that are corruptions.”82 Therefore, on the one hand, identity and sameness of meaning are essential dimensions of the ontology of meaning undergirding the two-fold project of aggiornamento and ressourcement. As John XXIII put it in a much discussed statement, “the deposit or the truths of faith, contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing, while the mode in which they are enunciated, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment [“eodem sensu eademque sententia”], is another.”83 On the other hand, as Berkouwer legitimately emphasizes, John XXIII’s concern with “keeping the same meaning and the same judgment” should “not lead to a rigid and immobile ‘semper eadem’ ” (NC, 80). For an immobile theory would not only disallow true development in our understanding of the truth of faith but also it would weaken rather than strengthen the credibility of those truths. It is this interpretation of renewal, one that couples the concept of aggiornamento to ressourcement, that is, to retrieval, which shapes Berkouwer’s understanding of the concept of “open Catholicism,”84 in short, of “the opening of the Church’s doors to the world.” Drawing on Hans Urs von Balthasar understanding of this concept, Berkouwer writes, it means that “the newly opened Catholicism, opened not to compromise the richness of the Church, not to watering down in vagueness and relativism the

81 Joseph Ratzinger, “Early Ratzinger on the Lefebvrian Schism,” which is an address he gave to the Chilean bishops, July 13, 1988, in Santiago (http://catholica.pontifications.net). 82 Fr. Ian Ker, “Is Dignitatis Humanae a Case of Authentic Doctrinal Development?” Logos 11: 2, Spring 2008, 149–157, and for this quotation, 150. 83 Ioannes XXIII, “Allocutio habita d. 11 oct. 1962, in initio Concilii,” 54 Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1962), 796, and for this quote, 792. We will return to consider the most consistent interpretation of this statement by John XXIII in the next section. 84 This concept occurs in Karl Rahner, “Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions,” Theological Investigations, Volume V, translated by Karl-H. Kruger (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), 115.



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mystery of the Church, but to the possibility that the full treasure of the Church may become fruitful for all others in a world-wide vision. Simply put, it is the perspective of Pentecost come alive again—‘to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8)” (VCNT, 34 [35]). What this means concretely is that there is an evangelical motive driving the goals of renewal. Still, Berkouwer understands that there remains to ask the question “of the meaning of continuity, of the true significance of Catholicism’s ‘semper eadem,’ the big bone of contention both during and after the Council” (NC, 41). Now, Berkouwer has raised the issue behind the project of aggiornamento and ressourcement in his early reflections on the relation between the revealed Word of God and the legitimate theological insights and questions of the time.85 Berkouwer uses a principle of correlation,86 namely, the correlation between faith and revelation, and correspondingly between theology and revelation, which some consider the “guiding principle” and “perhaps the greatest single most influential principle in Berkouwer’s theology.”87 Unfortunately, except for some ad hoc remarks on the correlation of faith and revelation, Berkouwer never explicitly reflects as such upon the method of correlation. Still, I think he gives us some definite cues to help us make sense of his method of correlation. The first cue is that theology is correlated to the Word of God. Berkouwer explains: Theology is relative to the Word of God. This relativity is decisive for the method and significance of theology. It means that theology is occupied in continuous attentive and obedient listening to the Word of God. And since such listening is an ongoing activity, dogmatic theological questions remain

85 Berkouwer does so briefly in Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 5–6, 17–20. ET: Faith and Justification, 9–10, 17–20; idem., De Heilige Schrift, I, 166–167 [120–121]. 86 For a brief history of the method of correlation in the nineteenth-century, Paul Tillich’s method of correlation, and its adaptation by many twentieth-century Catholic theologians, such as Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Küng, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and David Tracy, see Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Systematic Theology: Task and Methods,” in Systematic Theology, Roman Catholic Perspectives, Vol. I, edited by F.S. Fiorenza and J.P. Galvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 3–87, and for the section on the method of correlation, 55–61. For an important critique of the method of correlation, see Francis Martin, The Feminist Question, Feminist Theology in the Light of the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 71–74, 173–175. 87 Smedes, G.C. Berkouwer, 65. See also, Dirk van Keulen, “G.C. Berkouwer’s Principle of Correlation: An Attempt to Comprehend,” Journal of Reformed Theology 4 (2010): 97–111, and Paul Helm, “Revelation and Correlation,” in The Divine Revelation (London: Marshall Morgan & Scott, 1982), 38–40. See also, Hendrikus Berkhof, “De Methode van Berkouwers Theologie,” in Ex Auditu Verbi, Theologische Opstellen Aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. G.C. Berkouwer (Kampen: Kok, 1965), 37–55.

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Scriptural authority is, then, the highest norm of faith—norma normans non normata. The starting point of the intellectus fidei, namely, the understanding of revelation and the content of faith, is the auditus fidei. “We hope always to have our ear to the Word. The purity and clarity, as well as the relevance, of our study will depend on our attentiveness to the Word of revelation. The absolute pre-eminence of the Word of God above all human considerations provides our only perspective.”89 Of course Berkouwer has no intention of advancing a version of biblicism, by which he means thereby a way of doing theology in relation to the Word of God that has no appreciation for the history of dogma, confessions, creeds, councils, and past theologians, striving to begin afresh, as it were, unburdened by tradition.90 Says Berkouwer, “No one can slough off the questions and results that have arisen in the earlier and later history of dogma and confessional development. There is a living interaction between dogmatic theological reflection on the one hand and the defined dogma of the Church and the entire line of the history of dogma on the other.”91 The second cue helpful to understanding Berkouwer’s method of correlation is that this correlation is between, not only theology and the Word of God, but also the Word of God and faith, in short, faith and revelation. The truth of revelation, and hence the realities of faith, will not be understood unless it is correlated to the divine gift of faith.92 Berkouwer stresses the “living relationship of divine truth to faith,”93 and his understanding of this relation purports to avoid the dilemma of subjectivism and objectivism, as he calls it in what is perhaps the clearest, albeit brief, reflection on this dilemma in a 1959 article, “Subjectivisme noch objectivisme.”94 He describes this dilemma as follows:

88 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 5 [9]. 89 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 21 [21]. 90 The dogmatic theological question regarding the relation between Scripture and Tradition in relation to Revelation and the Church will be addressed in Chapters Four and Five. 91 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 19 [19]. 92 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 6 [10]. 93 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, [17]. 94 G.C. Berkouwer, “Subjectivisme noch objectivisme,” Gereformeerd Weekblad 14 (January 9, 1959): 217, 224.



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On the one hand, we have the danger of an objectivism that operates on the terrain of objective truths where personal and communal engagement scarcely plays any role at all, while on the other hand we find that of a subjective experience that shrinks the full content of the gospel to that which can be immediately experienced. The latter, accordingly, demonstrates no interest for a great deal in which the apostles had substantial interest. In our time, it happens that the effort to transcend the tension between subjectivism and objectivism concentrates especially on discussion of the factual realities related to salvation.95

In Berkouwer’s terms, objectivism refers to the danger of minimizing or altogether disregarding the personal relatedness or involvement of the knower in the knowledge of faith. This overemphasis results in the understanding of faith in its correlation to revelation as a primarily “noetic transaction,”96 or, alternatively put, “an isolated insight or idea,”97 namely, as holding certain propositions to be true, which reduces the content of divine revelation to a series of propositions, with theology’s task being that of grasping the logical and conceptual structure of these propositions in a harmonious synthesis.98 Berkouwer calls this view, “intellectualistic orthodoxism.”99 He emphasizes, by contrast, the existential character of faith knowledge. He means thereby “that in faith-knowledge it is all about real connectedness, about knowledge that is connected to faith that affects people not only in their intellectual functions but affects them as whole persons in their relationship with God.” Berkouwer illustrates his point, “One can confess the fact of reconciliation in Christ, for example, but a true confession of personal reconciliation is not just the statement that such a reconciliation exists, but rather that one has had a living experience of it.”100 Of course, Berkouwer also rejects subjectivism that in reaction to objectivism “lays all the emphasis on experience, so much so that ‘objective’ truth’ remains in the shadows.”101 In Berkouwer’s own words, he describes the mistake of subjectivism being “that it subjectivized the norm of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. It gave the human subject a determinative, creative function and made revelation dependent upon the subjective creation.”102 How, then, does Berkouwer transcend this dilemma?   95 Berkouwer, “Subjectivisme noch objectivisme,” 217.   96 Martin, The Feminist Question, 73.   97 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 195.   98 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 22 [22].   99 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 17 [17]. 100 Berkouwer, “Subjectivisme noch objectivisme,” 217. 101  Berkouwer, “Subjectivisme noch objectivisme,” 217. 102 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 17 [17].

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One way of understanding Berkouwer’s transcendence of this dilemma is to see it against the background of the distinction between ontological and epistemic objectivity.103 Berkouwer affirms the ontological objectivity of the redeeming acts of God in Christ; they have an objective existence independently of a human knower, or of the act of faith. Paul Helm helpfully distinguishes between the “conditions under which something is true” and the “conditions under which something is known to be true.”104 Corresponding to ontological objectivity, and hence to the conditions under which something is true, is a realist notion of truth: a proposition is true if and only if what that proposition asserts is in fact the case about objective reality; otherwise, the proposition is false. Corresponding to epistemic objectivity, and hence to the conditions under which something is known to be true, is the “question of how our beliefs about and knowledge of the world are to be properly arrived at, the question of the proper manner of human enquiry. Is it possible to gain knowledge and belief that is objective, that is not ‘made up’? And if so, in what sense is this objective?”105 Now, Berkouwer affirms the ontological objectivity of the historical reality of special revelation, of the “factual realities of salvation,” as he refers to them in the above quotation; indeed, he affirms the words and deeds of God’s self-revelation, which culminate in Christ who is the fullness and mediator of all revelation, as a condition of knowing revelation, and as a condition of its saving significance. In short, he affirms the objectivity of revelation: Is the gospel all about a ‘message’ that can be communicated, if need be even when all the ‘facts’ would fall away? Or, does that message depend inseparably on what has happened? Is the gospel about the living Christ, 103 Helm, Divine Revelation, 40. See also, Helm, “Why be Objective?,” in Objective Knowledge: A Christian Perspective, editor, Paul Helm (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1987), 29–40. 104 Ibid., 39. It is precisely the distinction between ontological and epistemic objectivity, and hence the “conditions under which something is true” and the “conditions under which something is known to be true,” that is overlooked by the authors of the 1979 synodical report of the former Gereformeerde Kerk in the Netherlands, God Met Ons, Over de Aard van het Schriftgezag, especially Chapter I, Veranderingen in het Waarheidsbegrip, 9–13. In short, the report confuses ontological and epistemological questions: what there is and how we can know it are two different questions. The report calls for a “relational” as opposed to the traditional “objective” notion of truth, meaning thereby a “correspondence” understanding of truth, wrongly claiming that a “realist” notion of truth—a proposition is true if and only if what that proposition asserts is in fact the case about objective reality; otherwise, it is false—has no place for the conditions under which the truth-seeker knows something to be true. 105 Helm, “Why be Objective?,” 33.



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apart from one saying anything about the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Or does the proclamation of the living Christ happen in an inseparable connection with the message of his bodily resurrection? . . . . Here we also think of the celebration of Christmas that lies just behind us. What is so striking in the gospel of Christmas is that here there is no mention of a choice between inner experience and actual history. That dilemma is simply non-existent in the Christmas message. The hymns of praise are sung precisely in connection with what has happened. Experience and event are not posited over against one another, much less as living faith against God’s actual involvement with the world. If dogmatic reflection is occurring in the same way in our time, it is hoped that it will not fall victim to that wretched and blind dilemma designated by the terms subjectivism and objectivism.106

So, for example, the condition under which the bodily resurrection of Jesus is true depends on the state of affairs that Jesus actually rose bodily from the dead. It is true independently of whether anyone knows it to be true, and hence its being known is not a necessary condition for it being a revelation of God, or for making it true.107 As Helm explains, “If the special revelation is true then this is presumably in virtue of certain facts about God and his ways. The [verbal] revelation expresses or announces these facts. The announcement may be a necessary condition of anyone coming to know what is revealed is true, but it would be true even if it were not announced or believed since its truth does not depend on the fact that it is announced [or believed] but rather on certain facts about God.”108 Now, the objection may be raised that it is precisely this realist conception of truth to which Berkouwer objects because it leaves out of account that in faith knowledge it is a matter of the personal relatedness or involvement of the knower rather than just simply a question of the objectivity of truth, of ‘truth itself.’ In other words, the objectivity of truth may be emphasized to the point where no attention is given to the question regarding the conditions under which something is known to be true. “Precisely during the arid days of orthodoxism this question of connectedness no longer played a defining role. Then people were certainly engaged with the truth, but it was with the truth ‘in and of itself ’, it was with truths that must be believed without being worked out as the

106 Berkouwer, “Subjectivisme noch objectivisme,” 217, 224. 107 Van Keulen is making a similar point regarding the ontological objectivity of revelation in Berkouwer’s thought: Bijbel en Dogmatiek, 454, “Faith is indispensable to the extent that only within faith God’s revelation is acknowledged as revelation, although that does not mean that revelation becomes revelation in or through faith.” 108 Helm, Divine Revelation, 39–40.

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surrender of faith or the gladness of faith.”109 Since Berkouwer affirms the ontological objectivity of revelation and, by implication, its corresponding realist notion of truth, the best way to understand his objection is to see that it turns on his rejection of the one-sidedness that insists on the objectivity of truth, on true propositions, neglecting the epistemic conditions under which something is known to be true, or, alternatively put, “the dynamics of the advance toward truth.”110 If this is actually the point of Berkouwer’s objection to the one-sidedness of “intellectualistic orthodoxism,” then we can also understand why Berkouwer is not an epistemic subjectivist, and that turns on his position regarding the status of propositional revelation. One is an ‘epistemic subjectivist’ regarding the revealed knowledge of God when that revelation “is not something that is static, given once and for all and therefore capable of being remembered and communicated to others.”111 Berkouwer is never really crystal clear—as I will show later in this chapter and also chapter five—on whether revealed propositions “may be considered irrevocable, continuous, universal, materially identical, and objectively true.”112 What is clear is that his account of the correlation of faith revelation does not exclude propositions from its purview. Says Berkouwer: In no way do the words ‘assent,’ ‘embrace,’ or ‘accept as true’ need to be discarded. All these terms make sense and are legitimate whenever they are maintained in an appropriate framework and are not detached or considered apart from the content of revelation. . . . [Otherwise] the impression can be left that all importance on what is ‘informative’ is denied and that a choice should be made for revelation that is a personally meaningful message as opposed to revelation that discloses information about all sorts of ‘truths.’ In the light of Scripture, we are clearly warned about creating simplistic dilemmas. No reason exists whatsoever for thinking that we should have to resist the idea of information as such. . . . All types of resistance to teaching truthful messages are usually made against an objectivistic view of revelation which allows no room for faith as a gift or as fiducia. . . . One can certainly speak of the ‘informative’ dimension or revelation and even regard it as essential that the entire witness of Scripture be regarded as divine speech.113 109 Berkouwer, “Subjectivisme noch objectivisme,” 217. 110 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., “The Subject,” in A Second Collection, edited by William F.J. Ryan, S.J. and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S.J. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), 69–86, and for this quote, 72. 111  Helm, Divine Revelation, 40. 112 Thomas G. Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2005), 6. 113 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 188, 193–194.



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The danger of the one-sidedness that insists on the objectivity of truth is that theological reflection becomes sterilized by virtue of being abstracted from the living relationship of divine truth to faith, a relationship in which we “confront . . . realities—realities seen and understood only in faith, but when thus perceived, definitive for our own lives and the life of the Church.”114 But how then does the light of faith penetrate into the reality mediated by the revelatory words and deeds of God as these culminate in Christ, not only to appropriate that revelation personally by the assent of faith but also to deepen our understanding of it in the various confessions of the Church that were “intended simply to confess anew the divine truth”? The truth mediated by these confessions is perpetually relevant, “giving the confessions of the Church their living continuity,” but at the same time also showing that these confessions are in some sense “a product of a historical situation.”115 How then should the unchanging truth of the Gospel once again be known and expressed in different historical moments? One of the most important questions that has repeatedly engaged the attention of the Church throughout the centuries pertains to the truth, validity and the meaning of her confessions. Is it a question in the confessions of a clear unchangeability of truth or is it rather a question of development, and in that sense does the expressions of these confessions also have a changing element that betrays the influence of specific times? This question is closely related especially to the much discussed development of dogma in Roman Catholic theology.116

This fundamental question will demand our attention later in this chapter. For now, it will suffice to say that Berkouwer’s reflections on the method of correlation brings us back here to the question regarding the hermeneutics of continuity, namely, the truth of revelation and the idem sensus: there is innovation and continuity, a new task as well as building on the work of two previous councils, but no ‘fractures’ or ‘breaks in continuity’ with respect to the continuity, meaning, and unity of revealed truth, grounded in the authoritative sources of faith, interpreted as the Church understands them. Let me make my point as clear as I can. When we talk about the hermeneutics of continuity we do not mean to deny that the necessary affirmations of the Catholic faith can be presented in different 114 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 6 [10]. 115 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 19 [19]. 116 G.C. Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” in Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 63 (1963): 1–41, and for this quote, 1.

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contexts and conceptualities in order to deepen our understanding of them and more efficaciously communicate them. Rather, the main thesis of a hermeneutics of continuity, as I understand it, is that a “single and unitary revelation,” in the words of Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols, can be “homogeneously expressed,” that is, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment (eodem sensu eademque sententia) while expressed in a plurality of ways.117 This conclusion brings us to the issues of truth and theological epistemology in the hermeneutic of reinterpreting the affirmations of faith. How, then, can the same thing be said in a different way? “Must there not be some permanent intellectual content in human words in order that human intellectual communication occurs over the ages?”118 Revelation and Truth: Different Expressions of the Same Truth? Berkouwer’s thinking about Roman Catholicism in the late 1950s was decisively influenced by the Catholic theological thought of the nouvelle théologie, of Henri Bouillard, Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, as well as the writings of Eduard Schillebeeckx and Karl Rahner. This is the case especially regarding the hermeneutic of reinterpreting the unchanging affirmations of faith and the issues of truth and theological epistemology raised by this hermeneutic. “The new theology had its origin in a new confrontation with the problem of change. This confrontation, unlike the modernist movement, occurred within the context of a conscious acceptance of the entire dogma of the Church” (VCNT, 69 [62]). One of the representatives of the nouvelle théologie, Henri Bouillard, expresses the problem this way: “If the mind evolves, then the representation of the truth must evolve.”119 He follows this statement up with a now well-known adage: “If theology is not related to contemporary life, it is false theology.”120 In sum, adds Bouillard, “The history of theology reveals the permanence of divine truth on the one hand and the contingency of concepts and systems in which we endeavor to represent that

117 Aidan Nichols, O.P. The Shape of Catholic Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 350. 118 John M. McDermott, S.J., “Elizabeth Johnson on Revelation, Faith, Theology, Analogy, and God’s Fatherhood,” Nova et Vetera 10, No. 4 (2012): 923–83, and at 930. 119 Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez saint Thomas d’Aquin (Théologie), (Paris: Aubier, 1944), 219. 120 Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 219.



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truth on the other.”121 Alternatively put, Bouillard’s problem expresses the question of identity and change, and Berkouwer explains it this way: “Change in the unchangeability is not a paradox or a contradiction, but a meaningful thing that has always been understood and accepted in the Church in principle—even if it was often only intuitively—although one can say that reflection on the problem came clearly to light first of all in the 19th century.”122 Some background is needed to grasp the full import of Berkouwer’s remarks.123 In the nineteenth-century, most of the significant systematic theological attention given to the problem of change appeared in the treatment of the issue of doctrinal development by Catholic theologians such as John Henry Newman (1801–1890), An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), and Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838), Symbolism, Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences between Catholics and Protestants as Evidenced by their Symbolical Writings (1832). But the nineteenth-century Scottish Presbyterian theologian, James Orr (1844–1913) also discussed the important question of doctrinal development in his 1901 work, Progress of Dogma.124 Berkouwer remarks in particular on Newman’s study of the evolution of dogma that he was “stimulated by the question of how the process of development had taken place and of the factors that had influenced it, a question which for Newman was most existential” (VCNT, 64 [59]). The conclusion that Newman came to, says Berkouwer, was “that a genuine evolution had taken place in the development of dogma, while the truths of revelation were not really affected by the historical process. Evolution of dogma was not a development of truth, but a development of the Church’s consciousness of the truth” (VCNT, 65 [60]). Since Newman, Catholic theologians have increasingly devoted their attention to the question of the unchangeability and evolution of dogma. Some have defended a hermeneutic of continuity in which a “single and unitary revelation,” in the words of Aidan Nichols, can be “homogeneously expressed,” that is, keeping the same meaning and the same valid judgment of truth

121  Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 219. 122 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 110 [293]. 123 Helpful here is Thomas G. Guarino, Revelation and Truth, Unity and Plurality in Contemporary Theology (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1993), 19–56. Also helpful is Aidan Nichols, O.P., Catholic Thought Since the Enlightenment (Leominster, England: Gracewing, 1998), 64–69, 83–89, 134–138, 151–158; idem., Criticising the Critics (Oxford: Family Publications, 2010), 7–28. 124 We shall discuss the question of doctrinal development in Chapter Six.

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(eodem sensu eademque sententia) while expressed in a plurality of ways.125 As McDermott rightly states, “However limited and capable of improvement dogmatic and other propositions may be, it is impossible without them to distinguish truth from falsehood and, without that distinction, continuity with Jesus’ truth is lost.”126 Others, especially those associated with the “modernistic wing of the Church had another view,” according to Berkouwer, namely, a hermeneutic of discontinuity. “It was convinced that the Church’s dogma had developed in a way that was open to criticism and correction. Catholic modernism was not a defensive, but an offensive movement, critical of traditional elements in the process of dogma evolution, critical of what it felt to be the Church’s failure to keep pace with the development of knowledge in other spheres” (VCNT , 66 [60–61]). Berkouwer’s description of modernism is supported by the more recent assessment of Aidan Nichols who writes: “On dogma, the Modernists gave the impression that doctrine was simply a vehicle for the response of a given age to the divine. A doctrine well suited to the time-spirit of one generation might be gawkily out of place in another. Instead of saying that there is a historical dimension to the explicitation of doctrine, evolution becomes everything.”127 In short, modernism blurs the distinction between our consciousness of the truth and truth itself, sacrificing its unchangeable character to relativism. In critical response to the modernistic movement, the evolution of dogma began to take second place to the primary emphasis the Church began to put on “the unchangeability of its truth” (VCNT , 66 [61]). Here are some examples of this critical response from the ecclesiastical magisterium. Ecclesiastical Magisterium For instance, the nineteenth century Catholic thinker, Anton Günther attempted to reinterpret the dogmas of the Trinity and Incarnation, invoking the distinction between those dogmas and official conciliar formulations. But his attempt was found deficient for various reasons and it was condemned by Pius IX in 1857.128 This was followed up in 1864 when Pius IX issued a condemnation, in his Syllabus of Errors, of the thesis:

125 Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 350. 126 McDermott, “Revelation, Faith, Theology, Analogy,” 930. 127 Nichols, Catholic Thought Since the Enlightenment, 84. 128 Apostolic letter of Pius IX to Cardinal von Geissel, 15 June 1857, Eximiam tuam. ASS, 8 (1874), 445–8.



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“Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason.” This condemnation was reiterated later in the First Vatican Council in 1869–1870. “For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence, but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated. Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.”129 Still, though explicit attention was not given to the historical dimension in our knowledge of divine truth, the Council Fathers did not deny that our knowledge of divine truth is capable of growth so long as care is taken that this increase in understanding is homogeneous with the same doctrine, keeping the same sense, and the same understanding. Nonetheless, the emphasis is on the unchangeability of its truth. “May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same sense, and the same understanding.”130 This emphasis continues with Pius X’s 1907 Pascendi dominici gregis and it is succinctly expressed in the accompanying syllabus of errors of the modernists, Lamentabili Sane. For example, “Dogmas, Sacraments and hierarchy, both their notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected by an external series of additions the little germ latent in the Gospel.” Again: “Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.” And again: “Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places.”131 As Berkouwer summarizes the judgment of Pius X against those he thought would destroy the unchangeability of dogma:

129 Dei Filius, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, no. 13. 130 Dei Filius, no. 14. 131 Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, nos. 54, 58, and 59, respectively.

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chapter one It was evident in Pius X’s attack against modernism in the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis of 1907 [that he] associated the notion of the evolution of dogma with the immanence and vitalist theories of modernism. Modernists were characterized as those who “most boldly attack the Church as moving on a path of error because she does not distinguish the religious and moral force from the superficial significance of the formulae, and by clinging . . . to the formula devoid of meaning, permits religion itself to collapse” (VCNT , 79 [70]).

One may summarize the objection of Pius X in this way: modernism denies that the affirmations of faith have a determinable content of truth. Rather, as Congar puts it, “the conception of the relation between dogmatic pronouncements and religious realities [is taken to be] a relation of symbol to reality, not as an expression proper (however inadequate) to reality.”132 In other words, adds Congar, “The dogmatic formulas which come to light in the course of centuries are only a useful expression of that which we are led to think conforms to the spirit of Christ. Between them and the primitive, revealed fact, the relation is not that of a formula to an objective and intellectually definite datum, but that of a formula born of the needs of a given time and adapted to them and to a spirit, that is the Christian spirit which dwells in each believer and animates the entire Church.”133 Hence, there is a disjunction between faith and a determinable content of truth, the latter being always derived only as a product of theological reflection upon this faith. New Modernism? Now, the question that Berkouwer raises is whether the theologians of the nouvelle théologie were really just a new modernism having “similarities with the older modernism in its subjectivistic approach to the truth of dogma” (VCNT , 81 [71]).134 Berkouwer argues against this characterization of the nouvelle théologie. Still, he adds, “They do touch each other in a number of questions and problems that both throw on the table for discussion, problems that according to the new theology cannot be avoided simply because of their association with modernism” (VCNT, 82 [72]).

132 Congar, History of Theology, 10. 133 Congar, History of Theology, 191–192. 134 The answer to this question is significantly missing from the recent study of Jürgen Mettepenningen, Nouvelle théologie, New Theology, Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II.



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As Aidan Nichols says succinctly, “though modernism had been a false answer it had set a real question.”135 What is the real question it raised? Congar replies: modernism raised the problem of “the variations in the representations and the intellectual construction of the affirmations of faith.”136 The nouvels théologiens “solved the problem by distinguishing between an invariant of affirmations, and the variable usage of technical notions to translate essential truth in historic contexts differing culturally and philosophically.”137 Adds Congar: For them, first of all, the invariant was a set of affirmations have a real content of truth. And secondly, in the differing notional translations which the theologians had given, there existed an analogy of relations or a functional equivalence between the notions used to express that truth. In this way they escaped the accusation of ruinous anti-intellectualism and dogmatic relativism justly brought against the Modernists.138

It was, then, the question regarding the relationship between unchangeable truth and the human expression of that truth in the variety of historically conditioned forms of thoughts, inclusive of different philosophical concepts that have played a role in explicating the content of revelation. Succinctly put, the real question is, according to Guarino, how to explain “the material identity of Christian truth over the course of time.” In fact, Berkouwer himself is persuaded that “Modernism has definitely seen a very real problem—despite its untenable solutions—that has not been seen by anti-modernistic reaction in upholding the ‘semper eadem,’ namely the absolutizing of continuity in a way that had no appreciation for the historical nature of human expression. In more recent times, this compelling problem naturally resurfaced and the distinction between form and content returned” (NC, 72). Thus, the distinction between abiding truth and its historically conditioned formulation resurfaced with the nouvels théologiens and with that came the problem regarding the relation between history and truth. Of course Berkouwer is right that the distinction itself cannot “be used as a magician’s wand to clear up every burning question” (VCNT, 99 [84]). The problem was that the presupposition of the hermeneutic of continuity no longer seemed self-evident, given that truth’s expressions are historically conditioned, and that these expressions 135 Aidan Nichols, O.P., “Thomism and the Nouvelle Théologie,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 1–19, and for this quote, 5. 136 Congar, History of Theology, 10. 137 Congar, History of Theology, 10. 138 Congar, History of Theology, 10.

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are never absolute, wholly adequate, and irreplaceable. Thus, the “problem of truth was placed on a slippery slope,” as Schillebeeckx was to refer to historicity, because no attempt was made “to show how truth, in this historicity, is more than a historical expression that changes in each period.”139 Berkouwer elaborates: That harmony had always been presumed, virtually self-evidently, to be an implication of the mystery of the truth “eodem sensu eademque sententia.” Now, however, attention is captivated primarily by the historical-factual process that does not transcend the times but is entangled with them in all sorts of ways. It cannot be denied that one encounters the undeniable fact of the situated setting of the various pronouncements made by the Church in any given era (NC, 52).

How, then, exactly is a single and unitary revelation homogeneously expressed, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment, given the undeniable fact “of time-conditioning, one can even say: of historicity” (NC, 52–53). Says Berkouwer, “All the problems of more recent interpretation of dogma are connected very closely to this search for continuity. . . . Thus, the question of the nature of continuity has to be faced.”140 Furthermore, how did the ecclesiastical magisterium respond to the nouvels théologiens and the issue of truth and theological epistemology raised by them? In reply to these questions, we need to begin with Berkouwer’s outline of the position of Henri Bouillard, “who, in 1941, pointed to a distinction between the unchangeable ‘affirmations’ and the changeable ‘representations’ of truth” (VCNT, 68 [62]). The main idea is that of “finding the most suitable form available at the time to give . . . unchangeable truth a meaningful expression. The form is not opposed to content; but it is only form, a time-bound utterance of the truth. . . . The truth never changes; new representations of the truth merely reveal the truth in other dress” (VCNT , 69 [63]). Bouillard general thesis is that “theology always expressed the truth by making use of the concepts, terms, and images typical of the intellectual climate of a given era. This is true indeed of all that the Church says and not only of theology.” Almost immediately the question was raised whether “the distinction between form and content, and representation and affirmation, had been rejected in principle by the Church when it condemned modernism on the basis of the unchangeability of the truth”

139 E. Schillebeeckx, “Towards a Catholic Use of Hermeneutics,” 10. 140 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 236, 237 [190–191].



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(VCNT, 78 [69–70]). Chiefly, the concern was that since theologians of the nouvelle théologie, too, distinguished between unchanging truth and its dogmatic formulations, which were historically conditioned, their theological epistemology could lead to relativism in regard to truth itself. In his 1950 encyclical letter, Humani Generis, Pius XII seemed to reject the validity of this distinction. In the judgment of some theologians, Pius seemed to see “all dissociation and nuancing of dogma in terms of form and content as a dangerous regression into modernism” (NC, 70). Or did the pope merely reject certain exaggerations of this distinction, particularly those interpretations that led to what he called “dogmatic relativism.” In particular, Pius has in mind those theologians who, he says: more audaciously affirm that this [reconceptualization] can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries.141

In all fairness to Pius, he affirms that the “terminology employed in the schools [scholastics] and even that used by the Teaching Authority of the Church itself is capable of being perfected and polished.” Furthermore, he states that “we know also that the Church itself has not always used the same term in the same way. It is also manifest that the Church cannot be bound to every system of philosophy that has existed for a short space of time.”142 These remarks of Pius lead me to think with good reason that he rejected only certain exaggerations, in particular, the claim that the same divine truths could be expressed, not only in different ways, but also “in various ways that are even somewhat opposed,” that is, fundamentally contradictory.

141 Pius XII, Humani Generis, 12 August 1950, no. 15. Online: http://www.vatican.va/holy_ father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html. 142 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 16.

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Notwithstanding these qualifications, Pius is persuaded that not all philosophical systems are equally valid. He affirms that the formulations of divine truth “are based on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge of created things.”143 What this claim means is that Pius rejects the “nominalist supposition,” as Avery Dulles correctly notes, “that abstract concepts and terms are mere conventions established for the sake of convenient communication.”144 Rather, Dulles adds, “ecclesiastically approved philosophical categories have been shaped by, and in some way correspond to the structure of reality itself.” It is precisely because these categories correspond to the truth of reality itself, which implies the mind’s ability to know unchangeable truth, that the Church insists that it would be wrong to depart from them. Thus, “Acceptance of this conceptual tradition is a singular asset for the better understanding of revelation.”145 As we shall see below, and as Pius has already acknowledged above, this acceptance does not mean that there is only one philosophical perspective that is compatible with orthodox faith. Still, concludes Dulles,

143 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 16. 144 Avery Dulles, S.J., “Vatican II & Scholasticism,” New Oxford Review, May 1990, 5–11, and for this quote, 10. It would take us too far afield to discuss the nominalist account of concepts. Suffice it to give the brief account by John R.T. Lamont: “The nominalist account of concepts described them as particular contents of individual minds, which relate to the things in the external world that they are concepts of through signifying these things. . . . On this understanding, concepts are signs of things, of a kind that serve as intermediaries between the person understanding and the things that are understood. The assumption of this understanding of concepts is what permitted [M.-D.] Chenu to hold that concepts are capable of failing adequately to represent the things they signify, and are susceptible of being replaced by other concepts that do the job better—and, in consequence, that the same can be said of propositions, which are made up of concepts.” Later in this article, Lamont contrasts nominalism with St. Thomas’ understanding of concepts. “Saint Thomas does not consider concepts to be signs that can represent reality more or less accurately, because he holds that the content of concepts is identical with the natures of the realities that they are concepts of: ‘intelligibile in actu est intellectus in actu’ [the intelligible in act is intellect in act] (STh I, q. 14, a.2). Concepts may be of more or less general types—the concept of ‘man’ is more specific that the concept of ‘animal’—but a concept cannot represent reality inaccurately, because all there is to the content of a concept is the feature of reality that it is about” (John R.T. Lamont, “Determining the Content and Degree of Authority of Church Teachings,” The Thomist 72 [2008]: 371–407, and for these quotes, 387–389). 145 Dulles, “Vatican II & Scholasticism,” 10. Elsewhere Dulles asks, “Without endorsing every detail in that controverted encyclical [Humani Generis], we may put the questions: Could Pius XII have been correct in holding that philosophical systems such as immanentism, idealism, dialectical materialism, and existentialism in unamended form are incompatible with Catholic dogma? Was he far from the mark when he felt it necessary to defend the genuine validity of human knowledge and the mind’s ability to attain certain and unchangeable truth?” (The Craft of Theology [New York: Crossroad, 1992], 128).



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though “Sound theologies may begin from different philosophical perspectives . . . they must in the end converge toward a harmonious articulation of the meaning of revelation.”146 So, conceptual and theological pluralism is permitted, if (and only if) it is commensurable with the truth of revelation, with the fundamental creedal and doctrinal affirmations of faith. I’ll return to this type of pluralism—commensurable pluralism, as Guarino calls it—below.147 Truth and Its Formulations Now, the distinction between truth and its historically conditioned formulations, between form and content, was also invoked by John XXIII in his opening address at Vatican II, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, and this has been viewed by many as a clear indication that he wished the considerations begun by the nouvels théologiens to be given continued study. The pope made this distinction between truth and its formulations in a famous statement at the beginning of Vatican II: “The deposit or the truths of faith, contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing, while the mode in which they are enunciated, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment [“eodem sensu eademque sententia”], is another.”148 What did John mean with this statement?149 First of all, he clearly meant to call for a suitable reformulation of Catholic teaching in light of the authoritative sources of faith. Second, reformulation was possible because the propositional truths of faith are distinct from their linguistic expression in different conceptual and theological frameworks. In short, there could be different expressions of the same truth, which is to say of the same proposition. Third, and most important, the differing linguistic expressions of the propositional truths of faith must keep the same meaning and the same judgment—“eodem sensu eademque sententia.” This italicized phrase 146 Dulles, “Vatican II & Scholasticism,” 10. 147 Guarino, Revelation and Truth, 37. 148 Ioannes XXIII, “Allocutio habita d. 11 oct. 1962, in initio Concilii,” 54 Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1962), 796, and for this quote, 792. Possible translations of the Latin “eodem sensu eademque sententia”: with the same meaning and purpose; in the same sense and judgment; in the same sense and meaning; with the same meaning and idea; with the same meaning and sentiment; with the same sense and thought. In my view, the most appropriate translation is “keeping the same meaning and the same judgment”—I follow Germain Grisez’s translation—because of the connection between meaning and truth: if one grasps what a proposition means one grasps what it is asserting to be true about reality. 149 Immensely helpful to me in answering this question and others in regard to the unalterability of the truths of the Catholic faith is Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. I, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 495–503.

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means to say that the truth of a proposition is closely connected with its meaning—if one grasps what a proposition means one grasps what it is asserting to be true about reality. As Bernard Lonergan correctly states, “reality is known through true judgment.”150 Put differently, a dogma’s meaning is unchangeable because that meaning is true.151 The truths of faith are, if true, always and everywhere true; the different way of expressing these truths may vary in our attempts to more clearly and accurately communicate revealed truths, but these various linguistic expressions do not affect the truth of the propositions.152 The distinction between the propositional truths of faith and their expressions is of utmost importance because it provides us with “the criterion for distinguishing between form and content, representation and affirmation” (VCNT, 73 [65]).153 I’ll come back to the question of the criterion below in considering Berkouwer’s response to this question. For now, this third point needs some explanation. There are necessary affirmations of the Catholic faith that are taught by the Church to be true. Still, there are, Aidan Nichols argues in a clear allusion to John XXIII’s statement, “different ways of presenting those affirmations,” meaning thereby “different contexts and conceptualities in which to understand and communicate them.” “But,” asks Nichols, “in that case how can a single and unitary revelation be homogenously expressed in a plurality of ways?”154 As Berkouwer also asks in this connection, “Where is the line beyond which the unchangeability of dogma is lost in relativism” (VCNT, 73 [65–66])? Nichols’ question is the pressing question raised 150 Bernard Lonergan, The Way to Nicea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), 9. 151 Bernard Lonergan, Doctrinal Pluralism, 1971 Pere Marquette Theology Lecture (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1971), 53–56. 152 Grisez, Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. I, 496. Piet Schoonenberg claims that “propositions too can change” (“Historicity and the Interpretation of Dogma,” Theology Digest, Vol. XVIII, No. 2, Summer 1970: 132–143, and for this quote, 135. But Fr. Schoonenberg confuses the difference between propositions and sentences (linguistic expressions). Propositions are the sorts of things that may be asserted or denied, and as such they are either true or false. Furthermore, we should distinguish between propositions and the sentences by which of which they are asserted. As Del Kiernan-Lewis puts it, “The proposition is the message. Different languages are merely the medium by which the message is embodied and expressed. Thus, the same proposition can be expressed by assertions spoken or written in different languages” (Learning to Philosophize [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000], 30). On the distinction between propositions and sentences, see Irving Copi and Carl Cohen, Introduction to Logic, Eleventh Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 4–6. 153 We shall see below that Berkouwer’s answer to the question that he himself poses is deeply ambiguous. 154 Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 350.



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by the theologians of the nouvelle théologie. The question Berkouwer asks is really the same as Nichols’ question: we need to discern a bright line distinguishing the nouvelle théologie from the modernist movement, who had sacrificed unchangeable truth to relativism. As Nichols explains, “for Catholicism theology must be in the last resort homogeneous, not heterogeneous, with revelation. It must be a refraction of revelation, which presents a part at least of revelation’s own content in a new medium of thought.”155 In particular, he adds, “Dogmas are . . . solemn proclamations of the content of revelation in some particular respect. . . . Were Catholic theology not homogeneous with revelation, then Catholic dogma would be impossible.”156 Thus, the brief answer here to Nichols’ question regarding how a single and unitary revelation can be homogeneously expressed in various ways must be that the bright line between unchangeable truth and its formulations is the distinction between the propositional truths of faith and their linguistic expressions. That is, only if we distinguish between propositions and sentences, between a determinable content of truth and context, and focus on the truth-content or propositional character, of divine revelation, will we avoid sacrificing unchangeable truth to relativism.157 How should this distinction be understood? Essential to a Catholic theology of revelation is the claim that faith does deal with propositional truths because “Propositions are part of the way God reveals himself.”158 What, then, are propositions? “Propositions are contents of thought which are true or false and can be expressed in language, usually in complete sentences.”159 We find in our uses of 155 Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 351. 156 Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 351. 157 On the distinction between content/context, see Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., The Craft of Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 108. See also Thomas G. Guarino’s extensive analysis of the importance of this distinction in Foundations of Systematic Theology, (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2005), 141–208. I have profited immensely from Fr. Guarino’s magisterial study. 158 Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, 4–6. In addition to the point that propositions are part of the way God reveals himself, Grisez makes three other points in regarding to a Catholic theology of revelation: “[2] Faith in God includes assenting to the truth of propositions. . . . [3] The propositional truths of faith really communicate God. . . . [4] One has responsibilities with regard to these truths of faith.” Grisez rightly adds that “propositions are not the whole of revelation, for God also enters into human history and acts in it. Vatican II, therefore, teaches that God’s ‘plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having an inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them” (Dei Verbum 2) (Ibid., 4–5). 159 Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, 4.

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language a variety of ways of communicating in addition to expressing propositions in making assertions: asking questions, making requests, giving commands, expressing emotions, exclamations, and much else. Biblical revelation reflects the speech forms of language users, in particular, God reveals himself, in part, by asserting propositions. Paul Helm is, then, right that “since Scripture is taken to be a revelation, with a unique cognitive value, assertions have primacy because its other speech forms— exclamations, questions, etc.—logically depend for their own force and intelligibility on a bedrock of assertions. The exclamation ‘How good is the Lord!’ implies the truth of the assertion ‘The Lord is good’. Those who uphold the propositional character of divine revelation . . . have nothing more or less in mind than the central importance of assertions, especially God’s assertions about himself, in Scripture.”160 Thus, only assertions express propositions, express beliefs, about what is (or is not) the case, what ought (or not) to be done, which means that only they are the logical entities, the contents of thought, that are either true or false.161 Of course human beings speak in sentences to communicate propositions, but sentences are not the same thing as propositions. “Propositions are not linguistic entities,” or merely words, as Grisez correctly states.162 That is, the same proposition, or same meaning, is the message having many and varied expressions in different sentences of the same language or in different languages. “For example, someone can express the truth that snow is white in many languages and even in various ways in the same language. The proposition is a particular truth one can know about snow; it picks out and corresponds to the state of affairs of snow being white. No matter how many ways the proposition is expressed, it remains in itself what is meant by all the linguistic expression. Thus a proposition is not part of a language; it is a nonlinguistic entity. And one proposition can have many and varying expressions in language.”163 Furthermore, a 160 Paul Helm, “Propositions and Speech Acts,” online: http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot .com/2007/05/analysis-2–propositions-and-speech-acts.html. 161 It is a red herring at this point to suggest that this view holds that the Bible consists only of assertions and the propositions they express. Stephen T. Davis is right, “Everybody knows that the Bible contains all sorts of genres and linguistic elements—law codes, poetry, parables, songs, commands, questions, expressions of praise, exhortations, and many others—that seem incapable of being, in the paradigmatic sense, true (or false)” (“What do we mean when we say, ‘The Bible is True’?” in But is it all true? The Bible and the Question of Truth, editors, A.G. Padgett & P.R. Keifert [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006], 86–103, and at 88). 162 Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. I, 496. 163 Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. I, 496.



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proposition is true if what it says corresponds to the way objective reality is; otherwise, it is false. In other words, regarding the status of meaning, the way things are is what makes “meanings” true or false. Lonergan clearly explains the relationship between meaning and truth: Meaning of its nature is related to a meant, and what is meant may or may not correspond to what in fact is so. If it corresponds, the meaning is true. If it does not correspond, the meaning is false. . . . To deny correspondence is to deny a relation between meaning and meant. To deny the correspondence view of truth is to deny that, when the meaning is true, the meant is what is so. Either denial is destructive of the dogmas. . . . If one denies that, when the meaning is true, then the meant is what is so, one rejects propositional truth. If the rejection is universal, then it is the self-destructive proposition that there are no true propositions. If the rejection is limited to the dogmas, then it is just a roundabout way of saying that all the dogmas are false.164

This concluding reflection by Lonergan on the relationship between meaning and truth bring us back to the subordinate clause in the pope’s statement: suitable restatements of the truths of faith must keep the same meaning and the same judgment [“eodem sensu eademque sententia”]. The meanings of those propositions are true if (and only if ) what they assert is in fact the case, being the way things are; otherwise, they are false. In short, regarding the status of meaning, the way things are, objective reality, is what makes “meanings” true or false. This understanding of the pope’s statement on the distinction between truth and its formulations is, then, fundamental for the type of pluralism called commensurable pluralism, a type that is consistent with the hermeneutic of continuity because “no authentic development of doctrine ever can contradict what the Church believed and taught in earlier times and other places.”165 164 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., “The Dehellenization of Dogma,” in A Second Collection, Edited by William F.J. Ryan, S.J. and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S.J. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), 11–32, and for this quote, 14–15, 16, respectively. Although Neil Ormerod (“Transposing Theology into the Categories of Meaning,” in Gregorianum 92, 3 [2011] 517–532) doesn’t deny the connection between meaning and propositional truth in Lonergan’s thought, he overlooks its importance in Lonergan’s theory of meaning. Furthermore, though he refers to John XXIII statement that a genuine distinction is to be made between the truths of faith and their linguistic expressions, he neglects the importance of the subordinate clause that suitable restatements of the truths of faith must “keep the same meaning and the same judgment” [“eodem sensu eademque sententia”]. 165 Grisez, Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. I, 497. Similarly, Karl Adam writes, “The truth is that since Christ Himself is incarnate Truth and Reality, His Revelation too concerns objective realities, which remain eternally unchangeable quite independently of subjective experience. And because truth can only be one, it will not do to have Churches making mutually contradictory statements about the faith, although they call upon one and the

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What is Berkouwer’s answer to the question he raises regarding “the criterion for distinguishing between form and content, representation and affirmation” (VCNT, 73 [65])[?] His answer is deeply ambiguous. Berkouwer says that we must admit “that there can be no simplistic technique here that operates with the concepts of matter [Sache] and formulation, content and form. For, undeniably, there is no clear ‘distinction’ between form (formulation) and content.”166 Given the profound effects of historicity, of the limitedness, the time-boundness, and inadequacy of all formulations, says Berkouwer, the dogmas of the Church are affected even as to content, making it hard to discern bright lines between what is unchangeable and changeable without loss of content.167 Thus, on the one hand, Berkouwer affirms the historicity of all dogma, as we have seen (see NC, 52).168 Is Berkouwer suggesting, then, that not only the form of expression of a dogma is historically determined but also the content? On the other hand, Berkouwer refers to truth as being unchangeable throughout his reflections on the distinction between truth and its formulation, content and form. Let me be clear, then, that Berkouwer affirms the unchangeability of truth. “The way in which truth is clothed can undergo change without changing truth itself ” (NC, 63). Put differently, Berkouwer makes clear that the distinction between truth and its formulations “has nothing to with an irrational doubt regarding the value of thought, but rather it is a question of the inexhaustibility of the truth of the Gospel.”169 Still, he never actually tells us what he means by truth and the sense in which it is unchangeable. One thing seems sure: the nature of continuity does not consist merely of the propositional truths of faith that are unchangeable. He writes: “This unchangeableness does not mean that an isolated formulation of the truth is simply passed along, in the same way that all sorts of things are protected against the ravages of time” (NC, 50). Again, he says elsewhere: “Unchangeableness cannot be compared with a formal, immediately transparent entity in an educational or scientific setting and about which a number of propositions or truths are discovered and pronounced, then passed along ‘unchanged’ for all time.”170

same Christ. This means that the search for reunion is the search for the truth” (One And Holy, translated by Cecily Hastings [London/New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954], 76). 166 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 110 [294]. 167 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 318 [219]. 168 See also, Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, [291]. 169 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 5. 170 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 236 [190].



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Yes, Berkouwer is right that it is surely simplistic to ignore the extralingustic context in understanding “the various terms, concepts, images, and propositions that the Church has used to confess its faith.” He is also surely right that the meaning of dogmas is not always immediately transparent. For example, there exists unclear terms “in the christological and triniatarian controversies, such words as consubtantial, hypostasis, person, nature, and many others. The terms often evoked misunderstandings, and different interpretations of them created conflict of opinion.”171 Berkouwer’s insistence here is, then, that to grasp the meaning of a dogma we must understand its extralinguistic context. Still, Germain Grisez is also right that “if the propositions signified by certain expressions were true,” say, the Chalcedonian formula of faith regarding the relationship between the two natures in the unity of the divine person, “subsequent variations in the meaning of the expressions does not affect the truth of the propositions, but only the ability of the expressions to communicate truth without interpretation.” In short, adds Grisez, “If this proposition is true, it will be true always and everywhere.”172 But Berkouwer seems to deny this very point. He writes, “it is realized more and more that one may not explain all the differences in the process of development as simply a different formulation of the same thing.”173 The italicized word ‘all’ in this last sentence is a red-herring; no one need deny that doctrinal statements are historically conditioned and limited, affecting their ability to communicate truth. Still, the truth that is communicated is perfectly true in the realist sense of adequatio intellectus et rei. Most important, distinguishing the propositional truths of faith from their linguistic expression need not presuppose a “petrified concept of unchangeability,” as Berkouwer calls it, as if we can’t deepen our understanding of the truths grasped.174 Propositions of faith, as Guarino rightly notes, “may be reexpressed, reconceptualized, and reformulated in ways that preserve its meaning and content, even though [they] now take on a new form or context.”175 171 Berkouwer, VCNT, 85 [74]. Franz Dünzl states that the terminology of the Church’s doctrine of the Trinity at the ecumenical councils of Nicaea and Constantinople “is not immediately comprehensible today [but that] is no obstacle to its making important statements which can still be explained” (A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church, Translated by John Bowden [London/New York: T&T Clark, 2007], 136). 172 Grisez, Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. I, 496. 173 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 237 [191], italics added. 174 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 236 [190]. 175 Guarino, Revelation and Truth, 39.

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In sum, then, Berkouwer seems to be confusing propositions and their expressions, which leads him, then, to reject the view that he refers to as “a purely intellectual understanding of truth,”176 which sees truth as propositional and hence the propositional truths of faith as unchangeable. But since Berkouwer also thinks that truth is unchangeable, aren’t the truths of faith more than there linguistic expressions? Confusion between propositions and their expression would reduce the truths of faith “to a mere reflection of the self-consciousness of the Church of a given time with the effect that theology becomes no more than a projection of anthropology” (VCNT , 99 [85]). Berkouwer resists reducing the truths of faith to their linguistic expressions, but he never gives us an account of the material identity of truth over the course of time and the failure to do so will make his defense of the material continuity of dogma truly daunting because he has not shown why the meaning of Christian dogma is not open to diverse and incompatible interpretations. For now, I continue by concurring with an unambiguous judgment of Berkouwer: “It would be reckless to pull far-reaching conclusions out of Pope John’s statement and to brand it with the mark of strong progressive theological outlook. His words suggest that they had been well considered, and they are marked by obvious caution.” The pope’s words do not, adds Berkouwer, “give us justification for supposing a confessional watering-down or relativizing of dogma is taking place in Rome” (VCNT, 19–20 [23, 25]).177 Furthermore, in addition to Pius’ response in Humani Generis to the general thesis expressed by Bouillard, which did not settle the questions raised by the nouvelle théologie, as Berkouwer correctly remarks (VCNT, 82 [72]), the first encyclical letter of Pope Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei (1965), returns to an assessment of this general thesis and the concommitant distinction between truth and its historically conditioned formulations.178 Let us recall Bouillard’s general thesis: “theology always expressed the truth by making use of the concepts, terms, and images typical of the intellectual climate of a given era. This is true indeed of all that the Church says and not only of theology.”179 Paul VI also had the same reservations as Pius XII about the distinction between truth and its formulations. Again, 176 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 237 [191]. 177 See also, Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 376. 178 Pope Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, September 3, 1965. Online: http://www.vatican.va/ holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_03091965_mysterium_en.html. 179 Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 219—as cited by Berkouwer in VCNT, 69 [62].



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here, too, it isn’t clear whether the pope rejects the distinction itself or exaggerated uses of it. And so the rule of language which the Church has established through the long labor of centuries, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and which she has confirmed with the authority of the Councils, and which has more than once been the watchword and banner of orthodox faith, is to be religiously preserved, and no one may presume to change it at his own pleasure or under the pretext of new knowledge. Who would ever tolerate that the dogmatic formulas used by the ecumenical councils for the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation be judged as no longer appropriate for men of our times, and let others be rashly substituted for them? In the same way, it cannot be tolerated that any individual should on his own authority take something away from the formulas which were used by the Council of Trent to propose the Eucharistic Mystery for our belief.180

Here, too, the basis for his reservations about tossing aside one conceptual system and replacing it with another is that the former system was used successfully to explicate the contents of revelation. The success of this conceptual system used in the dogmatic formulas is grounded in the construal by Paul that they, in some way, correspond to reality itself. For instance, the Nicene and Chalcedonian formularies, as well as the formulas of Trent regarding Eucharistic Presence, are not embedded in obsolete philosophical systems. He says, “These formulas—like the others that the Church used to propose the dogmas of faith—express concepts that are not tied to a certain specific form of human culture, or to a certain level of scientific progress, or to one or another theological school. Instead they set forth what the human mind grasps of reality through necessary and universal experience and what it expresses in apt and exact words, whether it be in ordinary or more refined language. For this reason, these formulas are adapted to all men of all times and all places.”181 Berkouwer is critical of the pope’s point regarding the determinate cognitive content of Christian doctrine, not because of the epistemological realism that stands behind his claim that conceptual categories correspond to the structure of reality itself. Indeed, it is baffling to me that he mentions that crucial point just in passing without comment (see NC, 58). The crux of the issue for Pius IX, X, XII, and, now, Paul VI is that faith’s knowledge of God has determinable truth-content that corresponds to reality itself; thus their insistence on epistemological realism 180 Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, no. 24. 181  Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, no. 24; italics added.

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as an account of the determinate content of Christian dogma and on the continuing validity of the conceptual framework to explicate the material identity of truth over the course of time. Rather than directly address the issue of theological realism, however, Berkouwer argues, in particular, that Paul VI in Mysterium Fidei misinterprets John XXIII’s, as well as Vatican I’s, position that reinterpretations of the fundamental affirmations of faith must always adhere to the ‘eodem sensu eademque sententia.’ He does so, according to Berkouwer, by binding the meaning of the latter to doctrinal formulations. He explains: “What for John was an important subordinate clause became a main clause for Paul VI. As is well understood, the nuancing of the ‘eodem sensu’ (as a subordinate clause) engendered a great deal of approval with very many at the beginning of the Council. The ‘eodem sensu’ awakened no protest whatsoever in this setting, since people were not willing to concede this sense of the truth of the faith. The problem with Mysterium Fidei lies in not honoring this context” (NC, 74).182 In view of Paul’s alleged misunderstanding, says Berkouwer, the pope “by doing so moved in another direction with respect to his reflection on continuity than that of his predecessor [John XXIII]” (NC, 74). But are the two popes so far apart on the matter of continuity as Berkouwer suggests?183 Does Paul VI identify the propositional truths of faith with their linguistic expressions, resulting in a hidebound traditionalism? Is he in principle against presenting the fundamental affirmations of faith in different linguistic expressions? Does he think that it is always wrong to depart from the ecclesiastically approved categories and notions? Berkouwer thinks that is exactly what Paul VI claims: “Continuity is only seen as guaranteed by identification [of unchangeable truths and its conceptual formulations] without allowance for disassociation” (NC, 73). Admittedly, Paul VI seems cautious in suggesting that traditional dogmatic formula regarding the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Eucharistic Mystery cannot be surpassed and must be preserved. “And so the rule of language which

182 Berkouwer claims that the subordinate clause in John’s statement (“keeping the same meaning and the same judgment [‘eodem sensu eademque sententia’]” becomes the principal clause, and is then linked, by Paul VI, to the doctrinal formulations of the truth. 183 Karl Rahner disagrees with Berkouwer’s judgment regarding the two popes of the council. He writes: “The old formulations are still quite suited to define revealed truth if they are understood correctly—and . . . John XXIII taught nothing else at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, even if he and Paul VI stressed that the ancient dogmas must be so expressed that they truly reach the minds and hearts of the people of our time” (“Mysterium Ecclesiae,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. XVII, translated by Margaret Kohl [New York: Crossroad, 1981], 150).



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the Church has established through the long labor of centuries, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and which she has confirmed with the authority of the Councils, and which has more than once been the watchword and banner of orthodox faith, is to be religiously preserved, and no one may presume to change it at his own pleasure or under the pretext of new knowledge.”184 But it is not the spirit of antiquarianism that motivates the pope. Rather, he thinks it would be wrong to depart from a theological terminology and conceptual formulations proposed by the Church for articulating the dogmas of faith because the judgments made by the traditional dogmatic formulas are true, corresponding to reality itself, and thus these formulas are a singularly unique asset for understanding the unchanging truth of revelation. Indeed, Paul VI’s spirit of cautiousness comes from his surmising that the abuse of the distinction between truth and its conceptual formulations and linguistic expressions serves to cast doubt on the latter, rendering such formulations just that, “mere formulations, of limited and merely relative value?”185 Furthermore, that rendering implies that “propositional truths of faith are mere human thoughts or even mere sets of human words, altogether separate from God.”186 But— and this is the position of Paul VI—propositional truths of faith “are not mere thoughts or mere sets of words; they are what the words convey and the thoughts grasp”187 about reality itself. In the pope’s own words: These formulas—like the others that the Church used to propose the dogmas of faith—express concepts that are not tied to a certain specific form of human culture, or to a certain level of scientific progress, or to one or another theological school. Instead they set forth what the human mind grasps of reality through necessary and universal experience and what it expresses in apt and exact words, whether it is in ordinary or more refined language. For this reason, these formulas are adapted to all men of all times and all places.188

I also think we do Paul VI an injustice if we fail to appreciate that he understands, as Dulles puts it, that a “living tradition always renews itself.” “As Newman pointed out in his epoch-making Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, authentic developments of Christian doctrine are 184 Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, no. 24. 185 Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, 4–6, and at 5n11. I am indebted to Grisez for helping me to formulate the role of propositions in “the way by which human persons identify with the realities they know.” 186 Grisez, Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, 5. 187 Grisez, Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, 5. 188 Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, no. 24.

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recognizable by the continuity of their principles and by their conservative actions on their own past.”189 In the pope’s own words, “[Dogmas of faith] can, it is true, be made clearer and more obvious; and doing this is of great benefit. But it must always be done in such a way that they retain the meaning in which they have been used, so that with the advance of an understanding of the faith, the truth of faith will remain unchanged. For it is the teaching of the First Vatican Council that ‘the meaning that Holy Mother the Church has once declared, is to be retained forever, and no pretext of deeper understanding ever justifies any deviation from that meaning’.”190 Thus, deepening our understanding of the Eucharistic Mystery must be such that the dogmatic formula of Trent regarding the use of transubstantiation retains the meaning in which it has been used “so that with the advance of an understanding of the faith, the truth of faith will remain unchanged.”191 Though Berkouwer misunderstands Paul VI, he is right that the distinction between truth and its formulations played a significant role in Vatican II. We can find that distinction in passages such as Gaudium et Spes, no. 62, and Unitatis Redintegratio, nos. 4, 6, and 17. Consider, for example, the passage from Gaudium et Spes, no. 62: “While adhering to the methods and requirements proper to theology, theologians are invited to seek continually for more suitable ways of communicating doctrine to the men and women of their times. For the deposit of faith or revealed truths are one thing; the manner in which they are formulated without violence to their meaning and significance is another.” Consider also the passage on conceptual and theological pluralism in Unitatis Redintegratio, the Decree on Ecumenism, no. 4: “While preserving unity in essentials, let all member of the Church, according to the office entrusted to each, preserve freedom in the various forms of spiritual life and discipline, in the variety of liturgical rites, and even in the theological elaborations of revealed truth” (emphasis added). So why the concern of Paul VI in his encyclical Mysterium Fidei? Berkouwer is sympathetic to the pope’s concern that in some reinterpretations of the truth of dogmas, that truth’s unchangeability would be sacrificed. Paul VI is, in substance, reiterating Pius’ insistence on the permanent validity of dogmatic formula. Surely their point needs to be made

189 Dulles, “Vatican II & Scholasticism,” 9. 190 Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, no. 25. 191  Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, no. 25.



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especially against the contemporary cultural dominance of philosophical relativism and historicism. This is especially the case, Paul VI argued, with respect to the Eucharistic Presence in the sacrifice of the Mass. The voice of the Church, says the pope, The voice [of the Church] assures us that the way in which Christ becomes present in this Sacrament is through the change of the whole substance of the bread into His body and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, which change, truly marvelous and unique, the Catholic Church suitably and properly calls transsubstantiation. As a result of transubstantiation, the appearances [Latin species] of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification [transignification] and a new finality [transfinalization], for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of a sacred reality and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they a contain a new “reality,” which we can rightly call ontological. For what now lies beneath the aforementioned appearances [species] is not what was there before, but something completely different; and not just in the estimation of Church belief but rather in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine expect the appearances [species]—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical “reality,” bodily [Latin corporaliter] present, although not in the manner in which bodies are present in place.192

Did the replacement of ‘transubstantiation’ with ‘transignification’ and ‘transfinalization’ change the content of the teachings of the faith regarding Eucharistic Presence? We can’t decide here whether or not the theological proposals by Dutch theologians, such as Edward Schillebeeckx and Piet Schoonenberg, to reinterpret the former with the latter two notions meant the hollowing out of the realism of Eucharistic Presence.193 Clearly,

192 Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, no. 46. 193 Berkouwer, NC, 63–68, argues against that interpretation. He writes: “The pope’s intention is to maintain the ‘ontology’ of actual presence against every form of symbolism that allows this reality to recede. Now, one can pose the question of whether this definition of the problem, whether the pope’s dilemma (ontological versus ‘only symbolical’) truly coincides with the new understanding in Roman Catholic theology concerning the Eucharist today, one in which the words ‘trans-signification’ and ‘transfinalization’ play such an important role. That question has already been answered in the negative more than once, since the intention was never to juxtapose ‘symbol’ and ‘reality’ over against one another. Rather, it was the desire to transcend this dilemma by means of a deeper insight into symbol characterized especially by emphasizing that ‘symbol’ has nothing whatsoever to do with lack of reality, vagueness or flight.” (65). For a philosophical and theological critique of “transfinalization” and “transignification” that dovetails with Paul VI’s critique in Mysterium Fidei, see James T. O’Connor, The Hidden Manna, A Theology of the Eucharist, Second Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005 [1988]), 158–163. See also,

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Paul VI, in the passage cited above from his encyclical Mysterium Fidei reaffirms the teaching of Trent on transsubstantiation in the face of that possibility. Still, that passage above situates transignification and transfinalization within the context of transubstantiation. For these two conceptual categories—a change in meaning or purpose—can successfully explicate the content of revelation only to the extent that they can deepen our understanding of transubstantiation and thus of the meaning of Real Presence as an ontological reality. In other words, a change in meaning or purpose is necessarily dependant on a change in the Eucharistic substance,194 and so “it is not simply a matter of something remaining ontologically the same but acquiring a new significance [or purpose].”195 Indeed, this is precisely what the pope says about doctrinal development: doctrinal formulas “can, it is true, be made clearer and more obvious; and doing this is of great benefit. But it must always be done in such a way that they retain the meaning in which they have been used, so that with the advance of an understanding of the faith, the truth of faith will remain unchanged. For it is the teaching of the First Vatican Council that ‘the meaning that Holy Mother the Church has once declared, is to be retained forever, and no pretext of deeper understanding ever justified any deviation from that meaning’.”196 Is it, then, correct to say, as Berkouwer does, of Paul’s view that he subscribes to a general thesis regarding truth and its formulations, namely, the continuity of the truth of dogmas is maintained if (and only if) one rejects any disassociation of truth and its formulations, as the pope’s judgment shows in the case of transsubstantiation and

Robert Sokolowski, “The Eucharist and Transubstantiation,” Christian Faith & Human Understanding (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 106. 194 Paul VI makes the same point in his 1968 Credo of the People of God, no. 25: “Christ cannot be thus present in this sacrament except by the change into His body of the reality itself of the bread and the change into His blood of the reality itself of the wine, leaving unchanged only the properties of the bread and wine which our senses perceive. This mysterious change is very appropriately called by the Church transubstantiation. Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery must, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, maintain that in the reality itself, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the Consecration, so that it is the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus that from then on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine, as the Lord willed it, in order to give Himself to us as food and to associate us with the unity of His Mystical Body” (Online: http://www .ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/p6credo.htm). 195 Herbert McCabe, O.P. God Matters (Springfield, Illinois: Templegate Publishers, 1991), 117. 196 Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei no. 25.



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Real Presence (see NC, 73, 75)? I have been arguing that Berkouwer is mistaken. Precisely five years after Berkouwer’s Nabetrachting was published (1968), the ecclesiastical magisterium responded to the issue of conceptual and theological pluralism, in particular, to the question whether truth could be signified in a determinate way by dogmatic formulae, in the 1973 declaration, Mysterium Ecclesiae, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.197 In that document, the claims of Pius XII and Paul VI were further nuanced but their main points were reaffirmed. The Congregation clearly states that “The transmission of divine Revelation by the Church encounters difficulties of various kinds.” These are: “[1] Difficulties arise from the historical condition that affects the expression of Revelation.” Some language is more expressive in its capacity to express the meaning of the affirmations of faith. In addition, the Congregation admits that dogmatic truth may be expressed incompletely, inadequately, but not falsely. The doctrinal formulations of, say, the Trinity and the Incarnation, are open to receiving a fuller and more perfect expression of their dogmatic truth. Furthermore, truth and its dogmatic formulations may be distinguished since the latter may be influenced by the limitations of the changeable conceptions of a given time. “It can sometimes happen that these truths may be enunciated by the Sacred Magisterium in terms that bear traces of such conceptions.”198 Evidently, then, “the truths which the Church intends to teach through her dogmatic formulas are distinct from” those changeable conceptions. “[2] The dogmatic formulas of the Church’s Magisterium were from the very beginning suitable for communicating revealed truth, and that as they are they remain forever suitable for communicating this truth to those who interpret them correctly.” This is so despite the influence of changing cultural contexts upon the interpretation of philosophical terms and concepts that are used to explicate the truth of revelation. As Dulles says regarding Mysterium Ecclesiae, “such terms can express unchangeable truths in a way intelligible to later ages.”199

197 Mysterium Ecclesiae, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 24, 1973. Online: http://www.saint-mike.org/library/curia/congregations/faith/mysterium_ecclesiae.html. 198 Berkouwer concurs: “We could say that the Church’s dogma was materially affected by its limited knowledge about man and his world, so that the Church’s statements are bound even as to content within the limitations of the day they were made” (Berkouwer, VCNT, 92 [79]). 199 Dulles, Craft of Theology, 129.

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Significantly, the Congregation’s statement is more nuanced than the previous statements of the papal magisterium regarding the use of philosophical terms and concepts. It seems to open the door to conceptual and theological pluralism in stating that not every one of the dogmatic formulas will remain successful in explicating the contents of revelation. “For this reason theologians seek to define exactly the intention of teaching proper to the various formulas, and in carrying out this work they are of considerable assistance to the living Magisterium, to which they remain subordinated.” Moreover, it often happens that “suitable expository and explanatory additions that maintain and clarify their original meaning of dogmatic formulas are necessary.” “As for the meaning of dogmatic formulas,” then, “this remains ever true and constant in the Church, even when it is expressed with greater clarity or more developed.” Most significant, the Congregation states: [3] “The faithful therefore must shun the opinion, first, that dogmatic formulas (or some category of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but can only offer changeable approximations to it, which to a certain extent distort or alter it; secondly, that these formulas signify the truth only in an indeterminate way, this truth being like a goal that is constantly being sought by means of such approximations. Those who hold such an opinion do not avoid dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church’s infallibility relative to the truth to be taught or held in a determinate way.”200 So, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith states that truth can be known in a determinate way, which is to say, wholly true. Berkouwer seems to think that this claim is incompatible with conceptual and theological pluralism. Is that so? If what a dogmatic formula asserts about reality is entirely truthful, then that means that its description of reality is adequatio intellectus et rei, in so far as dogmatic formula states absolutely nothing which is false. Berkouwer alludes to something like this in passing without comment: “There is a traditional Catholic notion that the formulations of the Church if not totally adequate, nonetheless satisfactorily and faithfully translated the truth” (VCNT, 88 [77]). Mysterium Ecclesiae is right to state that doctrinal statements are historically conditioned, which therefore limit what we can know and express through them. But it does not follow from this limitation that what we know is therefore not

200 All the quotations in this paragraph are from Mysterium Ecclesiae, no. 5.



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perfectly true.201 It only follows that “there are things that people in a given set of circumstances will be unable to know or comprehend.” This is why there is a history of dogma. “Such limitations are part of the explanation for the development of doctrines; as conceptual horizons expand, new questions about the subject matter of the faith can be put that require an answer.”202 Epistemological Relativism? Berkouwer’s criticism of Paul VI would carry more weight if he made clear the sense in which some, even if not all, dogmatic formulas can signify truth in a determinate way. As it stands, however, Berkouwer’s judgment against Paul VI seems to imply that none of our dogmatic formulas—for example, even in the Christological and Trinitarian dogmas—and the meaning that they purport to declare can be cognitively determinate and unalterable. Berkouwer seems to imply that the claim that dogmatic formulas can signify truth in a determinate way is inconsistent with the epistemological assumption “that the understanding of God’s revelation is not suspended above history and human experience, but that it is and remains like seeing with a mirror, seeing enigmas and seeing with incomplete knowledge that is always historically determined and that ultimately comes to inadequate expression” (NC, 62). Berkouwer is describing Karl Rahner’s view, but I think it is accurate to say that he shares this view. He consistently states “that the Church in its historical and human existence always speaks out of a limited horizon of knowledge” (VCNT, 90 [78]). Again: “The Church’s teaching can be recognized only in the temporal conditionedness of human speech, since the Church cannot lift its speech above its own limited scope of knowledge” (VCNT, 96 [82]).203 But Berkouwer’s point here in these statements conflates the difference between context and content, between propositions and their linguistic expressions, and hence he seems to open himself up to the charge of epistemological relativism. Now, I think we can argue that a distinction can be drawn here between context and content, propositions and their 201 Pace Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., “Towards a Catholic Use of Hermeneutics,” in God the Future of Man, translated by N.D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), “A partial affirmation is, after all, never completely true” (12). 202 Lamont, “Determining the Content and Degree of Authority of Church Teachings,” 378. 203 See also, Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 111 [291].

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linguistic expressions, even if it is the case, as it surely is, that creeds, confessions, doctrinal formulas, in short, the linguistic expressions of truths of faith are “not without a context and background.”204 Consider the claim that integral to the truth of the Christian faith are certain historical events, as well as statements about these events, such as we find in the Nicene Creed: “For us men and for our salvation, Jesus Christ came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures.” Yes, Berkouwer is correct to say that to understand confessions of faith, such as the Nicene Creed, “a hermeneutical problem arises that creates an honest need for consideration of the background and the orientation of a given confession. To insist that there is a direct, verbal clarity in the statements of the past, apart from historical context and the need for hermeneutical principles of interpretation is to betray an ignorance of Church history” (VCNT , 90 [78]). Consider the first part of the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father” (italics added). Berkouwer is right, “The real intentions of the Church’s language have had to be clarified within the total message of the Church. The use of the word co-substantial [one in Being] in the Church’s condemnation of Arianism in 325 is very illustrative” (VCNT, 85 [75]). Thus, we need to understand the extralinguistic context and background of these creedal statements in order to get at “the intention of the Church as it witnesses to the truth of God in each historical era” (VCNT, 90 [79]). Again: We should ask “what the real intention of the Church was in its use of these philosophical concepts” (VCNT, 88 [77]). The question of intention is particularly important to Berkouwer because it is bound up with the question regarding the “criterion for distinguishing between form and content, representation and affirmation” (VCNT, 73 [65]). If the word ‘intention’ is sometimes used here, it is not meant to designate a psychological problem, as though one’s concern were not actually with the text but with the intention of its framers. Rather, one’s concern is with an intentionality in the confessions themselves, which often comes clearly to light. But this directedness is concretized in a definite time, which is con-

204 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 108 [294].



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nected to the understanding of Scripture then. Often, too, it is connected to limited ideas and thoughts, which were characteristic of that time but can now be reflected on critically—unless one believes that all formulations of dogma has taken place under the special, providential leading and sanction of the Holy Spirit. . . . When we look back at that confession in later times and trace its intentionality, tensions can arise concerning continuity. However, they cannot be abolished by starting from an abstract idea of ‘unchangeability’ and minimizing the differences [between then and now] and seeking the confessional continuity in those differences.205

If I correctly understand Berkouwer’s notion of intention/intentionality, then I think he means to say that the confession, say, the Belgic Confession of Faith, is the result of a communicative action, which means that the meaning of this text is an intentional action of its framers. Berkouwer doesn’t elaborate on his notion of the confession as an intentional action, but I suggest that his view is compatible with Jeannine Brown’s hermeneutic, which holds that this intentional action is the “communicative act of the author that has been inscribed in the text and addressed to the intended audience for purposes of engagement.”206 Brown develops her point around six theses about the stability of textual meaning: 1. Meaning is author-derived but textually communicated. Meaning can be helpfully understood as communicative intention. 2. Meaning is complex and determinate. 3. Meaning is imperfectly accessed by readers, both individual readers and readers in community. 4. Ambiguity can and often does attend meaning. 5. Contextualization involves readers attending to the original biblical context and to their contemporary contexts, so that meaning can be appropriated in ways that acknowledge Scripture as both culturally located and powerfully relevant. 6. The entire communicative event cannot be completed without a reader or hearer.207 205 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 111 [294–295]. 206 Jeannine K. Brown, Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 14. 207 Brown, Scripture as Communication, 99. On the stability of textual meaning, see John Paul II, Fides et Ratio: “The chief purpose of theology is to provide an understanding of Revelation and the content of faith. . . . In this light, a careful analysis of texts emerges as a basic and urgent need: first the texts of Scripture, and then those which express the Church’s living Tradition. On this score, some problems have emerged in recent times, problems which are only partially new; and a coherent solution to them will not be found without philosophy’s contribution. An initial problem is that of the relationship between meaning and truth. Like every other text, the sources which the theologian interprets

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Berkouwer’s hermeneutics of doctrinal pronouncements whether regarding creeds, confessions, or dogmatic formulas emphasizes continuity of communicative intention in reinterpretation “for what the Church intended and the way it was brought to expression.”208 Here, too, the distinction between form and content is relevant for understanding Berkouwer’s hermeneutics. For instance, consider the meaning of the Chalcedon confession regarding the one person and two natures, which is stated in the second paragraph of the confession, but which meaning is first communicated in the first paragraph without the technical language of the second: “it is one and the same Son our Lord Jesus Christ that is perfect in divinity and the same perfect in humanity, truly God and the same truly man, consubstantial with the Father in his divinity and the same consubstantial with us in his humanity, born of the Father before all ages in his divinity and these last days the same . . . born of the Virgin Mary in his humanity.”209 Now, the truth-content of the confession is given a different linguistic expression in the second paragraph: “one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ.” Berkouwer pits what he calls the “abstract ontology” of Chalcedon against the Christ [that] is preached from the Gospels.”210 One presumes that his point here is that the Church must offer “the world not just a doctrine but the living Christ.”211 “Therefore,” Berkouwer adds, “whatever the church set in difficult formulas cannot be the final word or

­ rimarily transmit a meaning which needs to be grasped and explained. This meaning p presents itself as the truth about God which God himself communicates through the sacred text. Human language thus embodies the language of God, who communicates his own truth with that wonderful “condescension” which mirrors the logic of the Incarnation. In interpreting the sources of Revelation, then, the theologian needs to ask what is the deep and authentic truth which the texts wish to communicate, even within the limits of language (nos. 93–94). 208 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, [293]. 209 The Fourth Ecumenical Council, The Council of Chalcedon, 451 ad, Decree of Chalcedon, First Paragraph. Online: http://www.creeds.net/ancient/chalcedon.htm. 210 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 350 [240]. 211  Bernard Lonergan, “Pope John’s Intention,” in A Third Collection, Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., Edited by Frederick E. Crowe, S.J. (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1985), 228.



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highest word, because it is not the language of preaching.”212 If Berkouwer is merely claiming that there is a discontinuity here between the linguistic forms of expression—the preached Gospels and the dogmas—then he is right. Unfortunately, however, he leaves unclear where the bond is that unites these two forms: the gospels and the dogmas. Lonergan is right: “That bond is the word as true.” He explains: For whenever anyone, whether educated or uneducated, affirms that X is so, he is appropriating the word as true; and similarly, every negation is a rejection of the word as false. Furthermore, no change from one pattern of consciousness to another can make what is true false, or what is false, true. Admittedly, different patterns of consciousness are bounded by different horizons; each has its own particular mode of feeling, thinking and speaking; with different patterns, therefore, there will be different expressions of the same truth. But just as the transition from one pattern of experience, or consciousness, to another, does not destroy the identity of the human subject, neither does it destroy the identity of the truth that he expresses, now within one pattern and now within another. There is, then, one simple rule for dealing with the arguments adduced by those who say that there is a radical discontinuity between the gospels and the dogmas: pay attention to the word as true.213

Yes, Berkouwer is right: an orthodox Christology is maintained “only in conformity with the truth that the church had in mind when it tried to state the truth in its inadequate formulas.”214 Still, his focus is on the 212 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 350 [240]. 213 Lonergan, The Way to Nicea, 10. Similarly, Kevin Vanhoozer writes, “That to which theologians must attend in Scripture is not the words and concepts so much as the patterns of judgment. Christian doctrine describes a pattern of judgment present in the biblical texts. To make a judgment is to form an opinion about some thing or to make an assessment about some situation. I agree with David Yeago that the same judgment can be rendered in a variety of conceptual terms. The judgment about Christ that Nicea rendered in terms of homoousion, for example, went beyond what Phil. 2 says about Christ’s ‘equality with God’ [Phil 2:6]. The concepts of Nicea are those of Philippians. Yet the judgment— what is predicated about the subject Christ—is the same. Doctrine concerns judgments, not concepts. We move from Bible to doctrine not by systematizing Scripture’s concepts, nor by extracting (e.g., decontextualizing) principles, but rather by discerning and continuing a pattern of judgment rendered in a variety of linguistic, literary, and conceptual forms” (Vanhoozer is replying to I. Howard Marshall’s lecture, Beyond the Bible, Moving from Scripture to Theology [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: 2004], “Into the Great ‘Beyond’,” 81–95, and for this quote, 93. Vanhoozer’s position is reminiscent of the nouvelle théologie, particularly the French Jesuit Henri Bouillard who held that “since truth resides not in the concept but in the judgment . . . the councils do not sanction notions, but propositions” (“Notions conciliarires et analogie de la verité,” Recherches de science religieuse, 35 (1948): 251–71, especially, 258–263, as cited by Avery Dulles, The Survival of Dogma [Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1971], 194, 227n7). 214 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 351 [241].

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inadequate formula of Chalcedon, its historically conditioned ontological formula that has “Christ being known ‘in two natures, unmixed and unchanged, undivided and unseparated’ and yet ‘brought together in one person and one reality’.”215 Though Berkouwer doesn’t seek to break with Chalcedon,216 this focus on inadequacy, historical conditionedness, leaves us in the dark about “the function of church doctrines and theological doctrines: the function of explaining and defending the authenticity of the church’s witness to the revelation in Jesus Christ.”217 Here, too, Lonergan is right that the meaning of the first paragraph of the Chalcedon confession gives rise to reflection and to the questions. “Only after someone asks whether the divinity is the same as the humanity and, if not, then how can the same be both God and man, is it relevant to explain that a distinction can be drawn between person and nature, that divinity and humanity refer to two natures, that it is one and the same person that is both God and man. Such logical clarification is within the meaning of the decree.”218 This logical clarification between person and nature is not necessary in order to grasp the truth in the meaning of phrase “true God and true man” in the language of the preached Gospel. In other words, the tenet must be distinguished from the Chalcedon formulation, otherwise we would imply that the meaning of the phrase that Jesus Christ is true God and true man could not properly be said to be believed before Chalcedon.219 Of course

215 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 349 [240]. 216 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 350 [241]. 217 Lonergan, “Unity and Plurality: The Coherence of Christian Truth,” in A Third Collection, 245. See also, idem, Doctrinal Pluralism, 24–26. 218 Lonergan, “Unity and Plurality, 244. Lonergan continues: “But if one goes on to raise the metaphysical question whether person and nature can be really distinct or the anthropological question whether there can be any real distinction between subject and subjectivity, then the issue is being transported from the fifth century to the thirteenth on the metaphysical issue, and to the twentieth on the anthropological issue.” Lonergan adds a clarification in a note: “As ontologically Christ is one person in two natures, so psychologically he is one subject with two subjectivities, one divine, one human” (250n7). 219 Brian Davies, O.P., has similarly written: “To suppose that Jesus, speaking from knowledge, said enough to warrant us proclaiming that God is Trinity does not, of course, commit one to holding that Jesus uttered the language of Nicea and Chalcedon or an Aramaic translation of that. . . . All it commits one to . . . is the belief that the language of Nicea and Chalcedon is a legitimate way of expressing what Jesus taught. It might be replied that knowledge of the Triune God depends on knowing the formulae of Nicea and Chalcedon. But that is false. God from eternity knows himself to be Trinity. But he does not need to know the formulae of Nicea and Chalcedon. If he had not created, there would be no such formulae for him to know” (“Why Should We Believe It?” in New Blackfriars, Vol. 69, No. 819, September 1988, 368n9.



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that is false. Still, for all their differences, there is a bond that unites them and, as Lonergan says above, “that bond is the word as true.”220 There remains to ask of Berkouwer’s view: Is the inadequacy of a dogmatic formula the same as not being perfectly true? Doesn’t Chalcedon’s formula consist of statements that describe reality entirely truthfully even if inadequately? There is the danger of logical slippage in Berkouwer’s hermeneutics: it doesn’t follow from the true claim that doctrinal statements are historically conditioned and limited, indeed, inadequate, that this must result in their not being wholly true.221 As Rahner correctly states, “They are an ‘adequatio intellectus et rei’, in so far as they state absolutely nothing which is false.”222 In fairness to Berkouwer, he does say that inadequacy of expression doesn’t mean that the Chalcedonian creedal statement—“one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood [is] truly God and truly man”—is inaccurate. “But there is no thought that by accepting this formulation the perfect perspective on the person of Christ would be guaranteed, or that it would in any sense capture the complete revelation concerning Christ.”223 Thus, Berkouwer doesn’t regard Chalcedon’s formula “as putting the mystery [of the Incarnation] in sharper focus, limiting it, finalizing it, and thus setting limits to further progress in understanding. Over against this notion, we should see further progress in Christology, not as transgression of the limits set by Chalcedon, but as growth into the full possibilities of preaching Christ.” But what, then, is the ecclesially determinable content of this mystery? This brings us back to the question regarding the continuity of doctrine, the bond that ties the Gospels and the dogmas. Berkouwer’s hermeneutics of doctrinal pronouncements is not intended as a rupture between them. “The intention is to interpret the [intentionality of the] previous confession.”224 Given the danger of logical slippage in Berkouwer’s thought, it is hard to see how he can maintain the material identity of Christian truth over the course of time.225 220 Lonergan, The Way to Nicea, 10. See also, idem, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 320–330. 221 Lamont, “Determining the Content and Degree of Authority of Church Teachings,” 378. 222 Karl Rahner’s 1954 essay, “The Development of Dogma,” in Theological Investigations, Volume 1, translated by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1961), 39–77, and for this quotation, 44. I return to Rahner’s point below. 223 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 27. 224 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 108 [292]. 225 The same question may be put to Francis Schüssler Fiorenza who in his 1987 Presidential Address to the Catholic Theological Society of America (“Foundations of Theology:

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We need, therefore, to say more about ontology of meaning in order to provide the material identity of truth with a metaphysical buttress. Guarino is right that “the issue of stability within change, unity within multiplicity, perdurance within temporality, inevitably raise questions concerning the metaphysical and ontological dimensions of reality.”226 Briefly, pared down for my purpose here, I shall draw on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ontology of the meaning of the text that he inherited from Frege via Husserl. Nicholas Wolterstorff has recently given the clearest account of this ontology and its bearing on the hermeneutic tradition, especially Gadamer. He explains: Suppose we assume that the right way to analyze belief and judgment is into a content, on the one hand, and the stance of belief or the action of judgment, on the other hand. The context of the belief that 2+3=5, is that 2+3=5, and the content of the judgment that today is warm and sunny, is that today is warm and sunny. Let us further suppose that the content of beliefs and judgments are entities of some sort, so that believing something consists of taking up the stance of belief toward that entity which one believes, and judging something consists of performing the action of judging on that entity which one judges to be true. Frege called such entities Gedanken, that is, thoughts . . . Gedanken are not states of mind. He argues that whereas you and I can believe and assert the same Gedanke, we cannot share the same state of mind. Obviously Gedanken are also not physical entities. And neither, so Frege argued, are they to be identified with sentences, for the reason that two distinct sentences may express one and the same Gedanke. Gendanken have to be abstract entities—or as the hermeneutic tradition preferred to call them, ideal entities. What distinguishes them from such other abstract entities as properties is that they can be believed and asserted, and that they are all either true or false.227

A Community’s Tradition of Discourse and Practice,” 107–134) holds that it is a false dilemma that urges one to choose between unchanging propositional truth and its formulation, content and context, content and form, on the one hand, and historical relativism on the other (see 120). Since he opts for the “inseparability of categorical scheme and content” (133), resulting in his conclusion that “if the conceptual scheme changes, then the meaning changes” (119), it is difficult to see how he avoids historical relativism regarding truth and hence dogma. 226 Guarino’s review of Anthony C. Thiselton, The Hermeneutics of Doctrine, 347. 227 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Promise of Speech-act Theory for Biblical Interpretation,” in After Pentecost: Language and Biblical Interpretation, edited by Craig Bartholomew, Colin Greene, Karl Moeller (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 73–90, and for this quote, 77–78. See also, Wolterstorff, “Resuscitating the Author,” in Hermeneutics at the Crossroads, edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, et al. (Bloomington and Indianopolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 35–49, especially, 39.



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Indeed, Gadamer calls the ontological status of the meaning of the text an ‘ideal’ entity. On this point, we find him saying, “What is stated in the text must be detached from all contingent factors and grasped in its full ideality, in which alone it has validity.”228 Gadamer explains himself more fully in the following often overlooked passage that Wolterstorff brings to our attention. [The] capacity for being written down is based on the fact that speech itself shares in the pure ideality of the meaning that communicates itself in it. In writing, the meaning of what is spoken exists purely for itself, completely detached from all emotional elements of expression and communication. A text is not to be understood as an expression of life but with respect to what it says. Writing is the abstract ideality of language. Hence the meaning of something written is fundamentally identifiable and repeatable. What is identical in the repetition is only what was actually deposited in the written record. This indicates that ‘repetition’ cannot be meant here in its strict sense. It does not mean referring back to the original source where something is said or written. The understanding of something written is not a repetition of something past but the sharing of a present meaning.229

The Fregean-Husserlian ontology of textual meaning then affirms the objectivity of meaning in general and is thus anti-historicist. I join Wolterstorff in siding “with Frege and Husserl that the right analysis of judgment is that, in judgment, there is something that one judges to be true that’s to be distinguished from both that particular act and the sentence one uses to make the judgment.”230 What is more, thoughts, meanings, and propositions—what Wolterstorff elsewhere calls noematic content231— are true if and only if what they assert is in fact the case, being the way things are; otherwise, they are false. In short, regarding the status of meaning, the way things are, objective reality, is what makes “meanings” true or false. Furthermore, adds Wolterstorff, “readers of texts can often find out the noematic content of the discourse of which the text is the medium— so that, in that sense, noematic content is ‘transferable’ from one mind to another.”232 One could add here: propositions are transferable as well 228 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 3., erweiterte Auflage (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1972), 372. English translation: Truth and Method, Second Revised Edition, Translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1994), 394. 229 Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 370; Truth and Method, 392. 230 Wolterstorff, “The Promise of Speech-act Theory for Biblical Interpretation,” 80. 231 Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 138, 155, 157–158. 232 Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, 155.

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to different contexts and conceptualities in which we seek to understand and communicate truth, including divine truth. This conclusion brings us back John XXIII’s famous statement that we have already analyzed in some depth: “the deposit or the truths of faith, contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing, while the mode in which they are enunciated, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment, is another.”233 As I argued earlier, it seems obvious that John is distinguishing here between the propositional truths of faith and their linguistic expressions. This seems even more obvious in light of the point that the linguistic expressions of the truths of faith must keep the same meaning and the same judgment—if one grasps what a proposition means one knows what it is asserting to be true about reality itself. The former are, if true, always and everywhere true; the latter, that is, the different way of expressing these truths, may vary in our attempts to more clearly and accurately communicate revealed truths, but do not affect the truth of the propositions. Thus, the distinction between propositions and linguistic expressions is necessary in order to show that the propositional truths of faith establish “the material continuity of the Christian faith from biblical times to our own day.”234 So, we can distinguish the determinate truth-content of these statements from the context and background in which they were made. The truth of this set of creedal statements refers to events that occurred, but surely the truth of these statements does not depend upon when they were stated, who stated them, the historical context that helps us to understand why these statements were made in the first place, and most certainly their truth is not true only at the times to which they refer. As Paul Helm correctly notes, “Christians down the centuries, reciting [the Nicene Creed], have expressed the same truths. We may say this, then: that as regards the central affirmations of our faith, their truth is not affected in any way by when they are asserted. We might say of such assertions: once true, always true, permanently true.”235 Berkouwer would probably refer

233 Ioannes XXIII, “Allocutio habita d. 11 oct. 1962, in initio Concilii.” 234 Guarino’s review of Anthony C. Thiselton, The Hermeneutics of Doctrine, 348. 235 Paul Helm, “Propositions and Speech Acts.” Helm says elsewhere, “Such assertions as ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself’ [2 Cor 5: 18], which Christians confess to be a truth, were false when uttered before a certain date. This is simply to say that, being a historical religion, many of the crucial statements of Christianity are tensed [propositions]” (“Revealed Propositions and Timeless Truths,” Religious Studies 8 [1972], 127–36, and for this quotation, 135).



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to truth in this sense as “abstract truth,” suggesting “an abstract idea of ‘unchangeability’.”236 But it is hard to see why this is an objection. Perhaps Berkouwer’s objection is this: “Statements of dogmatic faith cannot be preserved as a group of propositions sealed off from all the pressures of interpretation that come from the dynamics of real life problems in a modern world” (VCNT , 87 [78]). I think that part of what Berkouwer means in stressing the historical conditionedness of creedal statements— for example, the Christological and Trinitarian creeds—is that we are present with a hermeneutical problem: the propositions expressed in these statements employ concepts, such as consubstantial, hypostasis, person, nature, and many others, that are in some way historically related, and hence we have to take seriously the meaning which they assume in different times and cultures. But it is hard to see why this claim would be inconsistent with the claim that once something is true it is always true. In short, even given the hermeneutical problem, why can’t we distinguish context and content? To quote Helm again, “What has happened to our faith if it is not now forever true that our Savior was born of a virgin? Jesus stopped being born, he stopped suffering and so on, but the statements Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus suffered, etc. never stops being true.”237 Consider, for example, the assertion expressing the proposition, Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim 1: 15). Yes, we are focusing here on an abstract truth, on the truth of what St. Paul asserted, the theological truth-content, rather than on the fact that he asserted it, or facts about the fact of his asserting it, in short, on the hermeneutical context. We’ve moved from context to content, and legitimately so. The question isn’t whether propositions can be understood without an extralinguistic context and background. Instead, the question is what does one mean when he says that those propositions are true? The brief answer to this question here is that “if this proposition is true,”—“Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—“it will be true always and everywhere.”238 Perhaps we may get some clarity here regarding Berkouwer’s view of truth if we return briefly to Rahner’s claim that the truth of revelation is expressed incompletely, inadequately, given the profound effects on our knowledge of being historically conditioned. The one crucial factor missing from Berkouwer’s outline of Rahner’s view is that the truth of revelation

236 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 111 [295]. 237 Paul Helm, “Propositions and Speech Acts.” 238 Grisez, Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. I, 496.

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may be expressed incompletely and inadequately—and here’s what’s missing— but not falsely. In short, Rahner’s holds a realist view of truth— adaequatio rei et intellectus. For a realist, the meaning of truth is such that a proposition is true if (and only if), what that proposition asserts is in fact the case about objective reality. In short, whether a proposition is true or not depends on whether reality is as the proposition says it is. Rahner’s point is this: If what a dogmatic formula asserts about reality is entirely truthful, then that means that its description of reality is adequatio intellectus et rei, in so far as dogmatic formula states absolutely nothing which is false. As Rahner puts it: All human statements, even those in which faith expresses God’s saving truths, are finite. By this we mean that they never declare the whole of reality. . . . This is even truer of spiritual and divine realities. The statements which we make about them, relying on the Word of God which itself became ‘flesh’ in human words, can never express them once and for all in an entirely adequate form. But they are not for this reason false. They are an “adequatio intellectus et rei,” in so far as they state absolutely nothing which is false. Anyone who wants to call them ‘half false’ because they do not state everything about the whole of the truth of the matter in question would eventually abolish the distinction between truth and falsehood. On the other hand, anyone who proposes to regard these propositions of faith, because they are wholly true, as in themselves adequate to the matter in question, i.e., as exhaustive statements, would be falsely elevating human truth to God’s simple and exhaustive knowledge of himself and of all that takes its origin from him.239

Does Berkouwer agree with Rahner that dogmatic statements, if true, are wholly true, and hence adequatio intellectus et rei? Unfortunately, he never makes clear his answer to the question regarding the meaning of truth that was originally put by R. Garrigou-Lagrange in a 1946 article240 to the nouvels théologiens. Did they accept the modernist conception of truth? “That of substituting, as it were a chimera, the traditional definition of truth: adaequatio rei et intellectus [the adequation of intellect and reality], for the subjective definition: adaequatio realis mentis et vitae [the

239 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 43–44. Rahner’s realist view of truth is missing in a later essay dealing with the question of whether dogma is unchangeable and, if so, in what sense: “Basic Observations on the Subject of Changeable and Unchangeable Factors in the Church,” Theological Investigations, Vol. XIV, Translated by David Bourke (New York: The Seabury Press, 1976), 3–23, especially, 8–14. 240 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “Where is the New Theology Leading Us?,” in Josephinum Journal of Theology Vol. 18, No. 1, 2011: 63–78.



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adequation of intellect and life].”241 If Garrigou-Lagrange’s critique of the concept of truth of the nouvels théologiens was meant to align them with the modernist and hence submit their position to the papal critique of modernist by Pius X—“Aeternam veritatis notionem pervertunt” [They pervert the eternal concept of truth]—Berkouwer dismisses this criticism. “Whoever engages the new literature [or the nouvels théologiens] sees immediately that an immense distance exists between [modernists such as] Loisy and [George] Tyrell. Nowhere do we encounter an attack on a given dogma of the Church and everywhere one perceives a solid ‘sensus catholicus’.” Berkouwer elsewhere explicitly raises the same alternative GarrigouLagrange put before the nouvels théologiens in the choice between different accounts of truth—“does truth depend on its conformity with the measure of human knowledge in a given day” or “on its conformity to the reality of things as they are.” The former is a relativist view of truth; the latter is a realist view of truth, also known as a correspondence view. Berkouwer’s answer is that a correspondence theory of truth “is no answer to the questions raised by the new theology” (VCNT, 88 [77]). Intriguingly, Berkouwer doesn’t think that an answer to the question regarding what is truth is relevant to the project of the nouvelle théologie. But surely Berkouwer is mistaken here since what distinguished the nouvelle théologie from modernism’s dogmatic relativism is that revealed truth is, in essentials, unchangeably true and valid in the realist’s sense. As Guarino correctly puts it, “Christian doctrine makes cognitive claims that are intended to be universally and, in a certain sense, conclusively true. Insofar as doctrine is the linguistic articulation of revelation, of God’s determinate self-manifestation to us, it is a reflection of the locutio Dei that is in some substantive manner continuous, identical, and universal.” Thus, revealed truth is true because what it asserts is the case about reality, and precisely for that reason it is always binding. Of course, adds Guarino, “this perpetuity . . . must be clearly and unambiguously nuanced by a variety of theological qualifications.”242 One such qualification is that theological language is analogical243 and doxological, that human 241 Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “Where is the New Theology Leading Us?,” 76, but see also, 66 (cited in Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 13–14). 242 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 129. 243 The International Theological Commission correctly states, “Dogmas, like every human statement about God, are to be understood analogically; namely, however great the similarity, there is a greater dissimilarity. Analogy protects against an objectivist, reified and ultimately mysteryless understanding of faith and dogma. But it protects as

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formulation of divine truth is imperfect and inadequate, meaning thereby that such formulations never express the whole of divine truth. As Bavinck states, “Dogma is not merely a symbolic interpretation of the spiritual life but an expression, be it a human one, of the truth God has given in his Word. All our religious knowledge is certainly non-exhaustive, anthropomorphic, [and] analogical.”244 Such limitations, however, do not make these doctrinal formulations false. Just because we don’t know everything that there is to know about divine truth it doesn’t follow that what we do know is not perfectly true. Rahner is correct: “They are an “adequatio intellectus et rei,” in so far as they state absolutely nothing which is false. Anyone who wants to call them ‘half false’ because they do not state everything about the whole of the truth of the matter in question would eventually abolish the distinction between truth and falsehood.”245 Rather, such limitations make our knowledge capable of growth and in need of development. In this sense, a Christian may be a mitigated fallibilist. That means that dogmas may “require further thought and elucidation.” As such, then, dogmatic formulas are “open to reconceptualization and reformulation, and that [is because] no statement comprehensively exhausts truth, much less divine truth.”246 Nevertheless, doctrinal truth “unmistakably contains an element of stability and unchangeability— and is classically denominated as the depositum fidei. Christian doctrine, therefore, needs a notion of truth that can support some measure of realism and referentialism [adequatio intellectus et rei], as well as one that can support normative and even perpetual claims. This is what is ultimately behind the theological use of [characterizations of truth as] ‘adequation’ and ‘correspondence’.”247 It is also what ultimately distinguishes the well against an overly negative theology, which regards dogmas as mere ciphers of an ultimately inconceivable Transcendence and consequently fails to recognize the historical concreteness of the Christian mystery of salvation. The analogous character of dogmas is to be distinguished from a falsely understood symbolic conception of dogma in the sense that dogma would be a subsequent objectification, whether this be of an existential religious experience or of a determined social or ecclesial praxis. Dogmas are to be understood rather as a binding doctrinal form of God’s own salvific truth reaching us. They are the doctrinal form whose content is God’s own word and truth” (“On the Interpretation of Dogmas,” Origins 20 [May 17, 1990]: 9–10). 244 Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, Zesde Onveranderde Druk (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1976 [1895]), 531. Reformed Dogmatics, Prolegomena, Volume I, Editor, John Bolt, Translator, John Vriend (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2003), 559. 245 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 44. 246 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 139n. 59. 247 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 129. See also, Thomas G. Guarino, “Fides et Ratio: Theology and Contemporary Pluralism,” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 675–700,



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nouvels théologiens from modernism, preventing their position from sacrificing unchangeable truth to relativism. After Mysterium Ecclesiae Mysterium Ecclesiae was followed by the Synod of 1985 in whose Final Report (II.C. 2) the question is raised of the “true theological principle of variety and pluriformity in unity.” Reference is made to the “necessity to distinguish pluriformity from pure pluralism.” The Report adds, “When pluriformity is true richness and carries with it fullness, this is true catholicity. The pluralism of fundamentally opposed positions instead leads to dissolution, destruction, and the loss of identity.”248 In addition, there is also the International Theological Commission writing of 1990, On the Interpretation of Dogma.249 The document raises many of the fundamental issues of revelation and theological epistemology that we have discussing in this section. As Guarino rightly states, “As the document makes clear, the fundamental contemporary theological question is the relation between truth and history. To say this is simply to rephrase the question with which we have been dealing all along, viz., how does one maintain the unity, identity, continuity, and integrity of the truth of revelation, given the historical, societal, political, and cultural horizons of finitude that seem to militate against universal truth in general and the universal cognitive ambitions of revelation in particular?”250 Furthermore, John Paul II is aware of the importance of distinguishing between truth and its formulations, form and content, and context and content. For example, in the following statement from his 1995 encyclical letter on ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint, he expresses this importance. He writes: “because by its nature the content of faith is meant for all humanity, it must be translated into all cultures. Indeed, the element which determines communion in truth is the meaning of truth. The expression

particularly, “Just as theological language has analogical, apophatic, and doxological dimensions, it has ostensive and ‘representation’ ones as well. The breakdown of realism leads, seemingly, to unfettered constructivism, to conceptual pragmatism, or to a narrative unsure of its precise ontological status. This is why the encyclical [Fides et Ratio] insists that theological language and interpretation cannot simply ‘defer’ . . . but must ultimately offer us ‘a statement which is simply true; otherwise there would be no Revelation of God, but only the expression of human notions about God’ (Fides et Ratio, no. 84).” 248 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops, Rome 1985, A Message to the People of God and The Final Report (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1986), 18. 249 “On the Interpretation of Dogma,” Origins. Vol. 20 (May 17, 1990): 1–14. 250 Thomas G. Guarino, Revelation and Truth, 35.

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of truth can take different forms. The renewal of these forms of expression becomes necessary for the sake of transmitting to the people of today the Gospel message in its unchanging meaning.”251 Although he does not refer here252 to the critical passage of John XXIII’s opening address regarding the fundamental distinction between the propositional truths of faith and their linguistic expressions, he seems to endorse it and the fundamental intention of the context/content, form/content distinction, which, by implication, leads to a legitimate pluralism in order to express the Christian faith. Later in the same encyclical the pope returns to the fundamental distinction, but this time in an ecumenical context, suggesting that differing “doctrinal formulation” regarding, for example, “Real Presence” raises the point that “it is certainly right to determine whether the words involved say the same thing.”253 If they are saying the same thing, we can conclude that we just have “two different ways of looking at the same reality.”254 But this isn’t always the case. “Even though the truths which the Church intends to teach through her dogmatic formulas are distinct from the changeable conceptions of a given epoch and can be expressed without them, nevertheless it can sometimes happen that these truths may be enunciated by the Sacred Magisterium in terms that bear traces of such conceptions.” The pope explains that the dogmatic formulas remain constant, enduringly valid, because “from the very beginning [they were] suitable for communicating revealed truth, and that as they are they remain forever suitable for communicating this truth to those who interpret them correctly.”255 The presumption here is that the only way to keep the continuity of faith intact is with the dogmatic formulas of the Church. This last point brings me the pope’s 1998 encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio, where he makes clear that the challenge for philosophy that bears upon the theological interpretation of revelation is “that of the relationship between meaning and truth.”256 He explains:

251 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 19. 252 He does refer to John XXIII’s opening address later in the encyclical: “In all this, it will be of great help methodologically to keep carefully in mind the distinction between the deposit of faith and the formulation in which it is expressed, as Pope John XXIII recommended in his opening address at the Second Vatican Council” (no. 81). 253 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 38. 254 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 38. 255 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 38. 256 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 94.



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The Word of God refers constantly to things which transcend human experience and even human thought; but this “mystery” could not be revealed, nor could theology render it in some way intelligible, were human knowledge limited strictly to the world of . . . experience. Metaphysics thus plays an essential role of mediation in theological research. A theology without a metaphysical horizon could not move beyond an analysis of religious experience, nor would it allow the intellectus fidei to give a coherent account of the universal and transcendent value of revealed truth. . . . Faith clearly presupposes that human language is capable of expressing divine and transcendent reality in a universal way—analogically, it is true, but no less meaningfully for that. . . . The Word of God is [thus] not addressed to any one people or to any one period of history. Similarly, dogmatic statements, while reflecting at times the culture of the period in which they were defined, formulate an unchanging and ultimate truth. This prompts the question of how one can reconcile the absoluteness and the universality of truth with the unavoidable historical and cultural conditioning of the formulas which express that truth. The claims of historicism, I noted earlier, are untenable; but the use of a hermeneutic open to the appeal of metaphysics can show how it is possible to move from the historical and contingent circumstances in which the texts developed to the truth which they express, a truth transcending those circumstances. Human language may be conditioned by history and constricted in other ways, but the human being can still express truths which surpass the phenomenon of language. Truth can never be confined to time and culture; in history it is known, but it also reaches beyond history. To see this is to glimpse the solution of another problem: the problem of the enduring validity of the conceptual language used in Conciliar definitions. This is a question which my revered predecessor Pius XII addressed in his Encyclical Letter Humani Generis. This is a complex theme to ponder, since one must reckon seriously with the meaning which words assume in different times and cultures. Nonetheless, the history of thought shows that across the range of cultures and their development certain basic concepts retain their universal epistemological value and thus retain the truth of the propositions in which they are expressed. Were this not the case, philosophy and the sciences could not communicate with each other, nor could they find a place in cultures different from those in which they were conceived and developed. The hermeneutical problem exists, to be sure; but it is not insoluble. Moreover, the objective value of many concepts does not exclude that their meaning is often imperfect. This is where philosophical speculation can be very helpful. We may hope, then, that philosophy will be especially concerned to deepen the understanding of the relationship between conceptual language and truth, and to propose ways which will lead to a right understanding of that relationship.257

257 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, nos. 83, 95–96.

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I shall conclude this section by identifying four theses that John Paul states in this paragraph regarding the contemporary theological attempt to explain the relationship between truth and its historically conditioned doctrinal formulations.258 1. Revealed truth is, in essentials, unchangeably true and valid, and being true, corresponds to reality. This universal truth, even with all the limitations of language, expresses the divine and transcendent reality of God. 2. Revealed truth is grasped through dogmatic statements, and such statements, being true, formulate an unchanging and ultimate truth. At the same time, these dogmatic statements reflect our language and culture, the mind-set of the time, and being conditioned by history. 3. Still, while our knowledge of the truth is limited by history and constricted in other ways, it is not limited to these factors. To hold the latter would be cultural relativism, or historicism—as John Paul calls it, which he rejects because it “denies the enduring validity of truth.”259 The pope thinks that the idea of truth is indissolubly linked to claims of universality, meaning thereby that truth is universal in that “if something is true, then it must be true for all people and at all times.”260 In short, John Paul distinguishes between metaphysics and epistemology, truth itself from the conditions under which I know, or have reason to believe, that something to be true. Given this distinction, it makes no sense to claim that truth varies with epistemic context. In his own words, “Truth can never be confined to time and culture; in history it is known, but it also reaches beyond history.” In short, truth is unchangeable.261 4. There are limits to conceptual pluralism given the enduring validity of the conceptual language used in conciliar definitions, such as the concept of “transubstantiation” used by the Council of Trent to express

258 I am indebted to Fr. Thomas Guarino’s summary for helping me to formulate these theses on “the question of maintaining the universal cognitive content of revelation while incorporating elements of otherness, difference, and diversity” (Revelation and Truth, 37–39). 259 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 87. 260 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 27. 261 For a critique of the claim that “truth changes,” see René van Woudenberg, “Over het antwoordkarakter van kennis en waarheid,” in Homo Respondens, Verkenningen rond het mens-zijn, edited by Govert Buijs, et al. (Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 2005), 68–83, especially, 76–80.



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the meaning of the Eucharistic Mystery. Thus, validity attaches not merely to the meaning of the truth of faith revealed by God but also to the dogmatic formula. Admittedly, John Paul recognizes the hermeneutical problem that the historical conditionedness of dogmatic formulas requires taking seriously the meaning which concepts assume in different times and cultures. But this hermeneutical problem is not insoluble since “certain basic concepts retain their universal epistemological value and thus retain the truth of the propositions in which they are expressed.” Still, there remains to deepen our understanding of the relationship between conceptual language and truth, proposing ways that lead to a right understanding of that relationship. What are the ecumenical implications of John Paul II’s view on the relation between conceptual language and truth for ecumenical dialogue? His position seems to suggest that the conceptual language of transubstantiation, which explains the conversion of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, is a matter of faith. The content of the word transubstantiation is, then, enduringly valid and hence not merely a historically conditioned way of explaining the Eucharistic Mystery but instead it is itself a central aspect of that mystery.262 Thus, suppose we hold the following position: Indeed, it is the very material and bodily quality of the Incarnation that calls for Transubstantiation in the Eucharist. If Christ is to be present in the sacrament, he must be present in his divine and human natures; if his human nature is to be present, it must be present in both soul and body. And if his body is to present, the bread cannot be. The one thing cannot be two material substances, both bread and a human body, not even the glorified human body of Christ. If it is the one it cannot be the other. The two bodily natures exclude one another, and it is the bodily presence of Christ that is specifically emphasized in the words of consecration. The body of Christ is not with the bread but takes the place of the bread in the change we call Transubstantiation. If we deny this change, we deny the bodily presence of the glorified Christ, and hence we deny the presence of Christ. Without Transubstantiation the sacramental presence of Christ would not occur.263

Clearly, Sokolowski is arguing that to change the concepts used to express the faith regarding Eucharistic presence is thus to change the content

262 That is still John Paul II’s position in his last encyclical, Ecclesia De Eucharistia, April 17, 2003, no. 15. 263 Sokolowski, “The Eucharist and Transubstantiation,” 106–107.

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of the teaching of the faith. Does the concluding thesis of this quotation, then, leave us at an ecumenical logjam? Reformed theologian George Vandervelde suggests that the rigidity of this position does have that result. “Given such rigidity, the only hope of clearing the stream is to raise the question whether a teaching regarding the change of the elements [in the Eucharist] is related to the “foundations of the Christian faith” in such a way that it must remain a church-dividing issue.”264 To change metaphors here, Berkouwer rightly notes that the distinction between truth and its linguistic expressions, between form and content, cannot “be used as a magician’s wand to clear up every burning question” (VCNT, 99 [84]). Perhaps the differing theological formulations regarding Eucharistic Presence are conflicting rather than complementary. If so, it follows that the propositions expressed by dogmatic formulas such as Transubstantiation are true—adaequatio rei et intellectus—and hence not open to correction. But this is not the end of the ecumenical journey. Ecumenism isn’t merely about positing “a bare adaequatio.”265 Consider in this connection Congar’s distinction between contrast (Gegensatz) and contradiction (Widerspruch). 266 “The Gegensätze are contrasted positions which express different aspects of reality. When they are held in the living unity of the Church which embraces them, each one is corrected by at least a potential openness to the complementary aspect. They interpenetrate in such a way that they have a mutual relationship. These are diversities in unity.”267 But “there is the danger that what are contrasts”—in short, as John Paul puts it, “two different ways of looking at the same reality”268—might become contradictions.”269 Contradictions fall out of unity with the whole tradition of faith and hence break the unity of the Church. For a proposition and its negation cannot both be true (or both false) at the same time. What for one is true, for another is false. Congar rightly rejects a dialectical notion of truth in which unity is restored by reconciling contradictions among 264 George Vandervelde, “BEM [Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry] and the ‘Hierarchy of Truths’: A Vatican Contribution to the Reception Process,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 25: 1, Winter 1988: 74–84, and for this quote, 82. 265 Guarino, “Fides et Ratio: Theology and Contemporary Pluralism,” 691. 266 Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, 205–208. The distinction originates with Johann Adam Möhler, and “Cardinal [Charles] Journet has felicitously rendered [these ideas] by the words contrast and contradiction” (as cited in Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, 205). 267 Congar, Diversity and Communion, 151. 268 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 39. 269 Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, 206.



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themselves. Yes, unity may be restored when “false oppositions turn into authentic contrasts in the church.”270 This is what Guarino rightly calls “ ‘commensurable’ pluralism, i.e., different systems cannot hold positions that are fundamentally contradictory.” He adds, they “must be commensurable with the fundamental creedal and doctrinal affirmations of faith. These affirmations are patient of reconceptualization, but always adhering to the ‘eodem sensu eademque sententia’.”271 But there are limits to pluralism: false oppositions may in fact be genuine contradictions. Still, “the condemnation of an error should not cast a shadow over what is valuable in its insights.” Congar concludes, “A condemnation should not damage the development of these insights or of these demands with respect to what is true about them.”272 It is precisely Congar’s approach—distinguishing between contrast and contradiction, and if the latter, learning from its insights, questions, and so forth—that I shall employ in the rest of this book. In Chapters Two to Six, therefore, I shall try to maintain the ecumenical dynamic when engaging Berkouwer on basic theological differences between the Reformed tradition and Catholicism. Even when nongainsayable differences surface I hope to show that there still exists an impressive degree of unity between these two traditions. I turn now in conclusion of this chapter to a brief exposition of the “hierarchy of truths” that makes it possible to face the differences between these two traditions without overlooking their degree of unity with regard to the foundations of the Christian faith. Hierarchy of Truths Berkouwer joins the chorus of voices, which include luminaries like Oscar Cullmann and Karl Rahner,273 regarding the Roman Catholic Church’s

270 Congar, Diversity and Communion, 151. 271  Guarino, Revelation and Truth, 37. 272 Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, 210. 273 Cullmann maintained that “this text sets forth for all time a completely new concept of ecumenism—new at any rate from the Catholic point of view” (“Comments on the Decree on Ecumenism,” The Ecumenical Review 17 [April, 1965]: 93). Berkouwer cites Cullmann as having said, “vieleicht eine der meistversprechenden unter allen Texten des Konzils, obwohl merkwürdigerweise so wenig von ihr gesprochen wird” (Berkouwer, NC, 102n78). Rahner similarly wrote regarding the “hierarchy of truths”: “von fundamentaler Wichtigkeit auch für die gesamte Glaubenssituation der Gegenwart” and “eine der wirklichen Grosztaten des Konzils” (also cited in Berkouwer).

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bold, new approach to ecumenism in Vatican II’s Unitas Redintegratio (“Decree on Ecumenism”), which represents a significant breakthrough, especially in view of one of its key principles, namely, the ‘hierarchy of truths.’ This stated principle regarding the hierarchy of truths was not only unexpected but also, says Berkouwer, “a highly remarkable viewpoint brought in direct connection with the ecumenical problematic” (NC, 102).274 Here is the well-known paragraph from the “Decree on Ecumenism”: The way and method in which the Catholic faith is expressed should never become an obstacle to dialogue with our brethren. It is, of course, essential that the doctrine should be clearly presented in its entirety. Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism, in which the purity of Catholic doctrine suffers loss and its genuine and certain meaning is clouded. At the same time, the Catholic faith must be explained more profoundly and precisely, in such a way and in such terms as our separated brethren can also really understand. Moreover, in ecumenical dialogue, Catholic theologians standing fast by the teaching of the Church and investigating the divine mysteries with the separated brethren must proceed with love for the truth, with charity, and with humility. When comparing doctrines with one another, they should remember that in Catholic doctrine there exists a “hierarchy” of truths, since they vary in their relation to the fundamental Christian faith. Thus the way will be opened by which through fraternal rivalry all will be stirred to a deeper understanding and a clearer presentation of the unfathomable riches of Christ.275

In this paragraph, two things must be highlighted. One, there is an order of priority or hierarchy among truths resulting from their different relation to the foundation of the Christian faith (“faith in the triune God, one

274 If anything Cullmann went further than Berkouwer, calling this statement “the most revolutionary to be found, not only in the Schema de oecumenismo but in any of the schemas of the present Council” (“Comments,” 94). 275 Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 11. For a helpful account of the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, see Charles Morerod, O.P., “The Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio,” in Vatican II, Renewal within Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 311–341. For an account of the historical origin of the term “hierarchy of truths” before Vatican II and twenty years afterwards, see William Henn, O.F.M. Cap., “The Hierarchy of Truths Twenty Years Later,” Theological Studies 48 (1987), 439–471; idem, “The Hierarchy of Truths,” in Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, Edited by René Latourelle and Rino Fisichella, English-language edition edited by René Latourelle (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 425–427. See also, Guarino, Revelation and Truth, 138–161. For Berkouwer’s reflections on the ecumenical significance of the hierarchy of truths, see Nabetrachting op het Concilie, 106–111. In addition, see Congar, Diversity and Communion, 107–133. Karl Rahner, “A Hierarchy of Truths,” Theological Investigations, Vol. XXI, Translated by Hugh M. Riley (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 162–167. “The Notion of Hierarchy of Truths—An Ecumenical Interpretation,” in Deepening Communion, 561–571.



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and three in the incarnate Son of God, our Redeemer and Lord).276 Two, attending to this hierarchy of revealed truths helps us to understand better what unites and divides Christians in matters of doctrine. Regarding point one, Christian truths are seen in relationship not only to each other but chiefly in respect of the central truths of the Christian faith. The nature of this relation is such, Rahner rightly states, that “one can first of all quite properly say that it consists of the fundamental truths of faith, those truths, therefore, on which everything else is based and which themselves are not actually derived from other truths.”277 Following Rahner, let’s call this an “‘objective’ hierarchy of truth.”278 Thus, the Immaculate Conception of Mary and papal infallibility derive their justification from foundational truths such as the Trinity and the Incarnation. For example, “the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, which may not be isolated from what the Council of Ephesus declares about Mary, the Mother of God, presupposes before it can be properly grasped in a true life of faith, the dogma of grace to which it is linked and which in its turn necessarily rests upon the redemptive incarnation of the Word.”279 The upshot of the objective hierarchy of truths is that any truth of divine revelation—the entire hierarchy—must be connected to the foundations of the Christian faith. Regarding point two, exactly how attention to the hierarchy of truths helps us to have a better estimate of what divides Christians is unclear. Berkouwer notes, “It is not enough to merely gauge the meaning and scope of this expression. It is undoubtedly flabergasting that this ‘concentration’ (on the fundamentals) that pretty much occupies all churches today is unexpectedly set forth in a conciliar decree and that this did not elicit more opposition despite its ‘strangeness’” (NC, 103). Indeed, that lack of clarity led to misunderstanding the hierarchy of truths in a “quantitative” fashion as if a reduction of Christianity to its essential content was the point of the hierarchy. In this regard, the “hierarchy of truths” is taken to ranking truths in the order of their importance such that there was a reduction of some truths to ultimate importance and others to relative

276 Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 12. 277 Rahner, “A Hierarchy of Truths,” 164. See also, Mysterium Ecclesiae, no. 4. 278 Rahner, “A Hierarchy of Truths,” 165. 279 Secretariat for Christian Unity, August 15, 1970, “Reflections and Suggestions concerning Ecumenical Dialogue,” paragraph IV, 4b; as cited in Congar, Diversity and Communion, 128.

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importance.280 Consequently, so it was said, we may adopt an attitude of indifference regarding those truths lower in importance in that hierarchy with respect to the foundation of our faith, say, the Assumption of Mary. In other words, the latter could no longer remain a church-dividing issue because of its low rank—nonfundamental truths—in regard to the foundation of faith and hence the fundamental revealed truths at its base. This interpretation of the hierarchy is evident in the following passage. “A hierarchy of truths implies that an ecumenical consensus need not take place in every detail but, rather, on the more basic and fundamental truths of Christianity.”281 But this interpretation of the hierarchy of truths is mistaken, as Berkouwer himself notes, because it breeds theological indifference. “Hierarchy is the very opposite of indifferentism” (NC, 108). Thus, the hierarchy of truths is not about separating nonnegotiable teaching from optional teachings of the Church. Rather, it brings an integral perspective to bear upon the whole body of truths by considering the question of their interconnectedness with the central mystery of Christ and the Trinity. Berkouwer explains: “In the first place, embedded in this expression in the decree is the question of the connection that binds together the ‘elements’ of doctrine, and above all the ‘nexus’ with Christ as the foundation, and of the variation in the connection with this foundation.” Furthermore, adds Berkouwer, “The background of the hierarchy of truths lies in the perception that in the doctrine of the Church one can speak about the center, about the fundamental mystery of salvation, and also about the fact that not everything that the Church teaches can be called central in the same sense and without nuance” (NC, 103). In other words, though the fundamental issue of the hierarchy is the question regarding the relation of all revealed truths to the foundation of the Christian faith, the Christological concentration, as Berkouwer and others have called it (NC, 102, 106).282 This shouldn’t lead us to overlook the legitimate sense in which some truths are weightier than others. Most important, the last consideration is a material principle—Christological concentration—that is, a principle of interpretation, not a selective principle.283 As Kasper explains: “It 280 Helpful in formulating this point is Vandervelde, “BEM and the ‘Hierarchy of Truths’,” 79. 281 James C. Livingston, Francis S. Fiorenza, et al., Modern Christian Thought, The Twentieth Century (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 246–247. 282 See also, Walter Kasper, An Introduction to Christian Faith (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), section entitled “Concentration rather than reduction,” 99–104. 283 Kasper, Introduction to Christian Faith, 103.



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may even be—and has indeed often been in the history of the Church— that fundamental principles have been resolved on the basis of relatively peripheral questions. At the Council of Ephesus in 431, for example, the true incarnation of God was discussed on the basis of the title ‘Godbearer’ (Theotokos). The so-called peripheral truths should therefore not be treated with indifference.”284 Furthermore, this mistaken interpretation implies an opposition between the hierarchy of truths of Vatican II’s “Decree on Ecumenism” and Pius XI’s 1928 Encyclical Mortalium Animos. “In the encyclical ‘Mortalium animos’ the distinction between ‘capita fundamentalia’ and ‘capita non-fundamentalia’ is rejected. The value of this kind of distinction was opposed with the question of whether God had not revealed all truths, thus without nuancing them” (NC, 101). In his own words, Pius XI wrote: In connection with things which must be believed, it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful: for supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause, namely, the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such distinction. For this reason it is that all who are truly Christ’s believe, for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity, and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the senses in which it was defined by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Are these truths not equally certain, or equally to be believed, because the Church has solemnly sanctioned and defined them, some in one age and some in another, even in those times immediately before our own? Has not God revealed them all?285

Pius’ point is, essentially, that all revealed truths must be held with the same divine faith because they are revealed and the Church infallibly declares them to be true. This very point was made by Archbishop Andrea Pangrazio of Gorizia (Italy) to the council in its discussion of the schema of ecumenism, November 1963, when he introduced the principle of the “hierarchy of truths.”286 Still, Cardinal Pangrazio did not fail to add that some of these truths are more important than others. More important in what sense?

284 Kasper, Introduction to Christian Faith, 103–104. 285 Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, no. 9. 286 As cited in Morerod, “The Decree on Ecumenism,” 322–323.

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We can answer this question by distinguishing between a “doctrine’s content from the authority with which it is proposed.” Alternatively put, “the distinction is between centrality to the foundation of the faith as opposed to the certainty with which the Church teaches it.” In this regard, dogmas, such as the Immaculate Conception (1854) and Mary’s Assumption (1950), may be very high in certainty but “relatively low with regard to the central truths of the Christian faith.”287 So, some revealed truths may be important because they provide the foundation to nonfoundational teaching; in that regard they are central to the Christian faith. Yes, as Mysterium Ecclesiae reiterates, “all dogmas, since they are revealed, must be believed with the same divine faith.” But what kind of ecumenical importance does this emphasis leave us with? Are we back to Pius XI, unable to make a distinction “between the act of faith by which a Christian believes in the Incarnation and that of the infallible papal magisterium [?]”288 I don’t think so. Congar’s respectful criticism of Mortalium Animos is apt here: While valid on its own level, Pius XI’s criticism does not quite accord with reality. It is somewhat one-sided. Faith can be considered from two perspectives, either from that of its content, the objects to which it relates—I would say the quod—or from that of the formal motive, that is to say, what motivates us to believe—one might say the quo. . . . From this point of view it is clear that the mystery of the holy Trinity is more fundamental and more important for the nature of Christianity than that of the Immaculate Conception, and the mystery of the incarnation more fundamental and more important than the infallibility of the papal magisterium!289

Thus, we can hold on to Pius’ point without forfeiting the distinction between foundational and nonfoundational teachings. We may do so by focusing on the distinction between the certainty with which the Church teaches, the quo or formal authority infallibly declaring this or that dogma, and the centrality of content, the quod or material content of a doctrine. In terms of the former, we can now say that all revealed truths are equal; but in terms of the latter we can say that some truths are more funda-

287 Guarino, Revelation and Truth, 142–143. 288 Guarino, Revelation and Truth, 147. 289 Congar, Diversity and Communion, 119. For Congar’s discussion of types of onesidedness, see True and False Reform in the Church, 208–213. For a brief account of Congar’s view of the hierarchy of truths, see Henn, “The Hierarchy of Truth Twenty Years Later,” 454–455.



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mental and more important than others. In this sense, then, there is no inconsistency between Unitatis Redintegratio and Mortalium Animos. What are the practical implications of the idea of a ‘hierarchy of truths’ in an approach to ecumenical dialogue, as it is practiced in this book, where significant theological differences remain between Reformed and Catholic Christians in their advancement of unity in truth (NC, 108)? The most important implication is that the hierarchy of truths is essential for discerning the extent of agreement between us regarding the foundations of faith as well as the basic differences that remain on particular questions. Properly understood, using the ‘hierarchy’ also illustrates the revealed truths that vary in importance, depending on their closeness to that foundation. These so-called peripheral truths, such as the four Marian dogmas, are not negotiable, and hence we are not indifferent to them. Still, the question arises as to how exactly we deal with these differences in ecumenical conversation when for the Church they remain churchdividing issues. This, too, is Berkouwer’s question: The question can come up, then, of whether believers, Catholic and nonCatholic, cannot find one another in confessing the central doctrines and of whether a marked difference in ‘weight’ and importance does not exist within the circle of the Church’s doctrines, for example, between the doctrines of the seven sacraments and the hierarchical structure of the church, and the doctrine of the incarnation as the central, major mystery of the faith. In this way, exclusive attention to the ranking order is placed ahead of the breadth of doctrine; and ranking order of doctrine is not fixed arbitrarily, but from the perspective of proximity to the center. One could ask the question of whether the idea of a hierarchy of truths in the Roman Catholic system of doctrine is not a huge risk . . . now that this ‘ranking order’ will need to be subjected to the judgment of other churches in connection with their ‘proximity’ and believing connection to Christ as the foundation (NC, 104).

Berkouwer doesn’t say what risk he has in mind. But one can surmise from everything else he says that the risk is that the ‘hierarchy of truths’ is misused in such a way that those truths, so-called peripheral ones, having less weight in the hierarchy will somehow be treated with indifference. We may counter this misuse in ecumenical dialogue by keeping our focus on the relation of a stated teaching to the foundation, showing the sense in which it derives its justification from that foundation. In this regard, Berkouwer’s student, the Reformed ecumenist, George Vandervelde rightly notes, “the discussion of differences must remain open and move toward greater agreement concerning the core of faith.” He adds: “Precisely such a notion as the ‘hierarchy of truths’ can help maintain the ecumenical

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dynamic in the face of differences. This notion can break through a static fixation of “basic differences” by constantly forcing dialogue partners to the unity that is to be found in the “foundation of faith,” while at the same time opening up the possibility of articulating the confessional expression of that unity.”290 I turn now in the next chapter to discuss the topic of revelation, faith and knowledge that, although historically has been a difference between the Reformed and Catholic traditions, need not “reflect a basic difference and thus must not be allowed to stagnate ecumenical discussion or action.”291 Conclusion This chapter has given the reasons for understanding Berkouwer’s transition from a primarily antithetical and apologetical stance toward the Catholic tradition to an ecumenical catholic Reformed engagement with that tradition. I have argued that, chiefly, four things account for this transition. First, there is the influence of the nouvelle théologie’s challenge, affirmed by John XXIII with his distinction between truth and its formulation, of finding a hermeneutic for faithfully reinterpreting the affirmations of the Church in light of the in exhaustibility of revealed truth, the wealth of revelation. Berkouwer deeply appreciated the Second Vatican Council’s commitment to the ecumenical significance of this distinction. A good deal of this chapter devotes its attention not only to laying out a proper understanding of this challenge and the concomitant distinction between truth and its formulations, but also probing the limits of, and flaws with, Berkouwer’s own understanding of this distinction. There are three others points discussed in this chapter that makes possible an authentic ecumenical engagement with Berkouwer’s thought. Second, Berkouwer is an accidental Protestant because he sees the Reformation as a renewal movement within the church catholic rather than an essential Protestant who requires Catholicism in order to define itself. Third, Berkouwer is persuaded that the New Testament teaches that there is only one Church, here and now, rather than many churches, and this Church is the concrete, visible Church, and thus “the being of the Church, as willed by God, implies unity.”292 Fourth, the notion of the ‘hierarchy 290 Vandervelde, “BEM and the ‘Hierarchy of Truths’,” 83–84. 291  Vandervelde, “BEM and the ‘Hierarchy of Truths’,” 84. 292 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 32–33 [30].



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of truths’ makes it possible to face the significant differences between the Catholic and Reformed traditions without overlooking their degree of unity with regard to the foundations of the Christian faith. The upshot of the analysis of Berkouwer’s developing thought in this chapter is that his now authentic ecumenism, which is at the service of truth, makes it possible not only to understand the beliefs, traditions and convictions of Catholics, but also to engage in self-criticism, in order for substantive agreement to be found, at times hidden under disagreement over controverted doctrinal formulations.293 In the chapters that follow, I examine three problems that have divided these two traditions: one, the relation between faith and reason, and the corresponding doctrine of revelation; two, Scripture and tradition in relation to Revelation and to the Church; and three, the idea of dogmatic development, especially with respect to Marian dogma.

293 Avery Dulles, S.J., “Paths to Doctrinal Agreement: Ten Theses,” Theological Studies 47 (1986): 32–47, and at 44.

chapter TWO

Revelation, Faith and the Knowledge of God1 We would do well to think . . . about how dearly Catholic theology must pay for schisms and heresies. When Protestantism proclaimed that “Scripture alone” was valid and used it exclusively, the Catholic Church was forced to stress the rights of tradition and reason, which forced her into taking a certain stand in opposition, stressing once more the already hypertrophied philosophical side. And when, the third time around, modern philosophical and theological agnosticism and fideism denigrated and distorted God’s natural creation, the Church once more was forced into opposition. The Catholic Church and her theology have taken a great deal of abuse for this, when, apparently so loudly and one-sidedly, she took on the role of defending nature and reason. But she really was faced with heresies that—presuming to stand on Scripture, claiming historical revelation for itself—did indeed foreshorten the work of creation and thus undercut the work of redemption too. Of course, the opposition between the two sides: with Protestantism as defender of revelation in Scripture and Catholicism as the sole defender of revelation in nature, was never total. If that had been the case, then Protestantism would have chosen the infinitely better part by far, for the other part (natural revelation) would still have to be implied and presupposed, whereas Catholicism would have had to dispense with the exalted heights of revelation, not even being able to content itself with the full meaning of nature. For that too would have been lost, since its true and final meaning can only be found in revelation. But of course, we never came to such a pass, and the alternatives were never narrowly drawn. On the contrary, Vatican I defended the duplex ordo and therefore the totality of reality in God.2

Introduction In the first chapter of this book, I argued that all truth formulated for polemical reasons may be partial—albeit true. What this means is that, for example, Councils may make less than balanced or comprehensive statements. Because of this, such statements may need to be supplemented

1 A much shorter and different version of this chapter and parts of the next was published in Thriving in Babylon, Essays in Honor of A.J. Conyers, eds. David B. Capes and J. Daryl Charles (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 69–100. 2 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 265.



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with statements from another Council or from other sources.3 Balthasar makes this point clear: “Even though, of course, the truth of the Councils of Trent and Vatican I will never be overtaken or even relativized, nonetheless there are still other views and aspects of revelation than those expressed there. This has always happened throughout church history, when new statements are brought forth to complete earlier insights in order to do justice to the inexhaustible riches of divine revelation even in the earthen vessel of human language.”4 In the epigraph to this chapter, Balthasar illustrates this very point with respect to the Catholic Church’s defense of nature and reason against “modern philosophical and theological agnosticism and fideism [that] denigrated and distorted God’s natural creation.” Typical of the abuse that the Catholic Church has taken for this defense is found in the following statement against the scholastic tradition by Dutch Calvinist philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd,5 “The Bible does not permit any view of nature, in distinction to grace, in which human reason in its apostasy from God, becomes the main stay of a ‘philosophia et theologia naturalis’. It does not sanction any view in which the . . . intellect which is apostate from Christ in the sense of thinking according to the ‘flesh’ is declared to be sovereign.”6 Reduced to its essential point, Dooyeweerd writes elsewhere that natural reason is nothing other than what the Holy Scripture refers to as the “‘unspiritual mind’ [Col 2;18], ‘the apostate, fallen understanding’ [Eph 4:17–18].”7 That is the key reason why Dooyeweerd rejects, as he puts it, “every philosophical standpoint that leans upon the ‘naturalis ratio’ as a supposed self-sufficient Archimedean point.”8 So, created human nature is totally corrupt ever since the fall, 3 Aidan Nichols, O.P. and Moyra Doorly, The Council in Question, 81. 4 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 11–12. 5 Berkouwer correctly notes that Dooyeweerd initially regarded his philosophizing as “Calvinistic philosophy,” but eventually stepped back from using “‘Calvinistic’ as typically characteristic of his philosophy” (Zoeken en Vinden, 21). For Dooyeweerd’s explanation regarding the reference to his philosophizing as Calvinistic philosophy, see Herman Dooyeweerd, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, I, (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935), 483–484. But in the English translation of this work by D.H. Freeman & W.S. Young as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, I, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1953), 516. Dooyeweerd explicitly distances himself from referring to his philosophizing as Calvinistic, 524. 6 Dooyeweerd, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, I, 484. ET: New Critique, 516. 7 Herman Dooyeweerd, “Het Dilemma voor het Christelijk Wijsgeerig Denken en het Critisch Karakter van De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee,” in Philosophia Reformata, 1, 1936: 3–16, and for this quote, 16. 8 Dooyeweerd, De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, I, 484. ET: New Critique, 522.

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and hence natural reason, being completely blind as a consequence of its total condemnation, is unable to give us any true knowledge, even in some degree, about God. The implication of Dooyeweerd’s claim is that the true knowledge of God is available only through revelation in Scripture with its focus in Jesus Christ. Hence, regarding the knowledge of God via general revelation, as Gijsbert van den Brink describes this view, “we begin to know God through Holy Scripture (and more eminently through Jesus Christ) and then, helped by the spectacles of Scripture, find traces of God in creation and history.”9 This, too, is Berkouwer’s view, according to Van den Brink. As I shall show, this view does not reject the notion of general revelation, but only adopts a critical stance towards natural theology. In Van den Brink’s view, which I share, there is another stance toward natural theology in the Reformed tradition, namely, the position of post-Reformation seventeenth-century theology and its successors that embraced some version of natural theology, and that it is only “until the twentieth century” that Reformed theologians “substantially deviate from this position regarding our knowledge of God.” What, then, motivates Berkouwer to deviate sharply from this position, being critical not only

9 Gijsbert van den Brink distinguishes three competing interpretations of Article 2 of the Belgic Confession (1562) that regards the relation between general revelation and special revelation as two sources regarding the knowledge of God (“A Most Elegant Book: The Natural World in Article 2 of the Belgic Confession,” Westminster Theological Journal 73 (2011): 273–91). First, “Article 2 intends to say that we begin to know God through Holy Scripture (and more eminently through Jesus Christ) and then, helped by the spectacles of Scripture, find traces of God in creation and history” (285). Van den Brink cites Berkouwer as one who supports this view: “And on the basis of what has been confessed concerning the two means and their comparative relationship, it [i.e., the Belgic Confession] tries to give an account of God’s manifest activity in the works of his hands, which was truly seen and known only because of the Word-revelation” (De Algemene Openbaring; ET: General Revelation, 280, as cited in “A Most Elegant Book,” 285). Further, “A second post-Barthian interpretation reads Article 2 entirely on the basis of the very first word: ‘we’. ‘We know [God] by two means’. The ‘we’ is said to refer here to those confess their faith. . . . In that case the knowledge of God through creation that is confessed here would be a form of faith knowledge” (286). Moreover, “A third strategy . . . is to interpret Article 2 as indeed confessing some kind of objective divine revelation in the world, but as denying that this revelation leads to a natural [and true] knowledge of God. Here, the exegesis is that the Transmitter does communicate himself in creation, but the signal is not picked up by the receivers or is distorted and misused by them, as a result of which creation does not actually function as a source of knowledge of God” (287–288). Van den Brink argues that the only convincing interpretation of Article 2 is that it does “say that we humans still have some [true] knowledge about God outside of Holy Scripture on the basis of the book of the world” (288). He argues in general that this is the classical position of Reformed theology and that it is only “until the twentieth century” that Reformed theologians “substantially deviate from [this] position regarding our knowledge of God” (289).



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of medieval scholasticism, but also of Protestant scholastics, and hence reject natural theology? Throughout the nineteenth century, the ecclesiastical magisterium of the Catholic Church defended nature and reason against such views, whether held by Catholics or Protestants, as fideism, which denies “the human possibility of knowing by the natural light of reason some metaphysical truths such as the existence of God.”10 Over against fideism, the Church’s position is summed up succinctly in Vatican I’s Dei Filius: “The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the things that were created, through the natural light of human reason [Rom 1:20].”11 Thus, the Catholic position gives natural reason some positive role in acquiring knowledge of God. Of course Balthasar is correct that the opposition between Catholicism and neo-Calvinism on this score was never total. On the one hand, Berkouwer affirms the continuing validity of general revelation—which is God’s revelation of himself in and through the works of creation—after the fall into sin, while at the same time rejecting natural theology. On the other hand, the Catholic Church affirms the noetic effects of sin—man’s natural reason is imperfect, fallen, wounded, impaired as a consequence of his aversion to God who is the source and origin of truth—as well as the epistemological significance of the Holy Spirit, while at the same time affirming that man cannot fail to see something truly of God’s existence and attributes in and through the works of his creation revelation—even if man’s will refuses to acknowledge him. I think both the Reformed and Catholic traditions hold that general and special revelation should be understood in light of each other. But as Balthasar suggests both traditions hold that biblical revelation has epistemological priority over God’s creation revelation—“since its true and final meaning can only be found in revelation.” Nonetheless, the opposition described above in a nutshell 10 Aidan Nichols, From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 111. For a brief history of the ecclesiastical magisterium’s intervention in philosophical matters pertaining to the relation of faith and reason, see John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, nos. 49–63. 11  Vatican Council I, 1869–1870, Dei Filius, Chapter 2, On revelation. See also, John Paul, Fides et Ratio, no. 52: The ecclesiastical magisterium in Vatican I censured “even-handedly: on the one hand, fideism and radical traditionalism, for their distrust of reason’s natural capacities, and, on the other, rationalism and ontologism because they attributed to natural reason a knowledge which only the light of faith could confer. The positive elements of this debate were assembled in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, in which for the first time an ecumenical council . . . pronounced solemnly on the relationship between reason and faith.”

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is the dispute between Catholicism and Calvinism that shall hold our attention in this chapter and the next. General Revelation, Natural Theology, and Special Revelation In this second chapter and the next, Chapter Three, as well as the following two, chapters Four and Five, I consider two theological topics regarding the doctrine of revelation—both general and special revelation—that have traditionally divided Catholics and Reformed Protestants, such as Berkouwer. Of the many doctrinal themes that Berkouwer discusses in his Dogmatische Studiën, surely one of the most insightful overall, and of continuing importance, is the treatment in his 1951 work, De Algemene Openbaring, of the nature and reality of divine revelation, of the distinction between, and unity of, God’s general and special revelation, especially as that unity bears upon the process of arriving at the natural knowledge of God.12 In this chapter, then, I first deal with what is commonly known as general revelation, or sometimes called by Catholics, natural revelation, and the manner in which that revelation may be known so as to come to know the truth of God’s reality. General revelation is the term used to refer to God’s revelation of himself made known to man in and through the works of creation (Rom 1:19–20; Wis 13:1).13 Indeed, Berkouwer adds, this revelation is “found in nature, history, and in man himself, in short, in the whole of created reality” (AO, 7 [11]). This, too, is the view of the

12 De Algemene Openbaring (Kampen: Kok, 1951); ET: General Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955). Further references to this work will be cited parenthetically in the text. Both sources will be cited, first the original as AO, followed by the pagination of the English translation in square brackets [ ]. See also, G.C. Berkouwer, “General and Special Divine Revelation,” Carl F.H. Henry, ed., Revelation and the Bible. Contemporary Evangelical Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958 / London: The Tyndale Press, 1959), 13–24. 13 The Belgic Confession of Faith (1561), Article 2, states that “God is made known unto us” by two means: “first, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe [Ps 19:2; Eph 4:6]; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, His eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul saith (Rom 1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse. Secondly, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word [Ps 19:8; 1 Cor 12:6]; that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation” (http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www .reformed.org/documents/BelgicConfession.html).



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Catholic Church.14 It is, however, worth noting that Berkouwer raises the question “whether Rome really acknowledges a revelation of God in this created reality” (AO, 60 [75]). Although Berkouwer answers this question in the affirmative, he admits to being “always amazed how little place this revelation idea gets in the exposition of natural theology” (ibid.).15 Its minimal role derives from the general tendency of the Catholic tradition to focus on the ability of man’s natural reason to grasp general revelation, particularly on natural theology, which is the discipline that purports to make knowledge of God, in some degree, available through human reasoning. Still, as Balthasar rightly notes, “Even in God’s ‘revelation in creation’, as the phrase already says and as the scriptural texts [Rom 1:19–20; Wis 13:1] referring to it attest, should be interpreted as a revelation—that is, as a free act of God. In order to discuss the issue of man’s ability to grasp this revelation, this revelation is not at all named or described as such. The focus rather is on the subjective, creaturely presuppositions for perceiving it.”16 Berkouwer concurs with this assessment. He writes: “The idea of revelation does not play a decisive role here. In natural theology the attempt is not made to show how God is ‘revealed’ in reality, but reason concludes to the first cause, viz. God. This explains why the Roman Catholic argument for a natural knowledge of God often appears to deal with knowledge reached apart from revelation” (AO, 61 [75]). Here a problem arises for Berkouwer that we may not neglect to mention at the start of 14 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 279–324, 355–368. See also, Francis Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” in Wisdom and Holiness, Science and Scholarship, Essays in Honor of Matthew L. Lamb, Edited by M. Dauphinais & M. Levering (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2007), 205–247. 15 Intriguingly, Germain Grisez reserves the term “revelation” for God’s self-revelation in his Word. He writes, “As Vatican I and II teach, God manifests himself in creation. . . . But neither council calls this ‘revelation’. This manifestation, which can be grasped by the natural light of reason, scarcely provides a basis for knowing whether God is personal. It is inadequate to establish a relationship of intimacy between him and us” (The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 1, 478). It is also worth noting that the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not speak of “revelation” in reference to God’s manifesting himself in creation, which he surely does according to the teaching of the Catechism. The focus is on “Ways of Coming to Know God” (nos. 31–35). The Catechism only speaks of “divine revelation” and a corresponding order of knowledge (nos. 50–100) in respect of a special, supernatural, historical, salvific, and personal communication by God. Bernard Lonergan operates with a similar distinction. He writes, “The knowledge [of God] in question is not immediate but mediated, and it is mediated not by revelation but by creation. It is not immediate, face to face, but through a glass darkly. It is not mediated by revelation but shortly contrasted with revelation. Explicitly it is mediated by creatures, e rebus creates, per ea quae facta sunt” (“Natural Knowledge of God,” in Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., A Second Collection, Edited by W.F. Ryan, S.J., et al. [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974], 118). 16 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 309.

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this chapter. He challenges the legitimacy of natural theology because he rejects the claim that the unbeliever can achieve certain knowledge of the true God in any sense whatsoever by the light of natural reason through the things that have been made. In general, there are various reasons for this challenge. Pared down for my purpose here, I think seven reasons are prominent, but not all of them have a role in Berkouwer’s rejection of natural theology. 1. Reason’s truth-attaining capacity has been corrupted by sin and hence, being crippled, is incapable of attaining true knowledge, though very imperfect, of God. Let’s call this the anthropological objection. 2. The boundaries of reason’s ability are limited to human experience and hence none of our concepts, including the concept of causality, can apply to God. This is the Kantian objection. 3. The concept of God acquired through the medium of created reality is empty, abstract, and formal, leaving us with an idea of God that is an intellectual idol of the philosophers rather than the God of the Bible. This is the ‘hellenization’ objection. 4. Natural theology is not an autonomous science providing not only the foundations for the rationality of theistic belief, but also for revealed theology. Expressed here is the autonomy objection.17 5. There are no universal criteria of rationality because of the historically conditioned nature of human reason and hence that precludes the possibility of acquiring knowledge of God through natural theological argument.18 This may be called the historicist objection.

17 So called by Michael Sudduth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” in European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2 (2009), 37–62, and at 50–57. 18 Roger Haight makes such a claim: “That God is, that God is personal and universally gracious, are not assertions that are based on knowing in an ordinary sense and cannot be demonstrated or verified in any objective way. . . . In the end there can be no universal power of reason to uncover the shape of transcendent reality because reason itself is historically conditioned” (Dynamics of Theology [Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001], 57, 62–63). Hans Küng makes a similar point in his work, Does God Exist? (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1980), 533. Rudolph Bultmann also makes that claim in 1933. “For Protestant theology, such a natural theology is impossible. Not only, nor even primarily, because philosophical criticism has shown the impossibility of giving a proof of God, but especially because this view of natural theology ignores the truth that the only possible access to God is faith” (“The Problem of ‘Natural Theology’,” in Faith and Understanding, Volume I, translated by Louise Pettibone Smith [NewYork/Evanston: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1969], 313–331, and for this quote, 313).



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These first four reasons are the most commonly given for denying the legitimacy of natural theology.19 The first four objections play a clear role in Berkouwer’s rejection of natural theology. There are still two other objections, however. 6. “Some are struck by the contradictions among the philosophers and think that it is dangerous on this account to put their faith in God on rational grounds.” In other words, faith in God would be unstable and wavering given the contradictory claims of philosophical reasoning about God. Let us called this the certainty objection. 7. “Positivist minds, trained in scientific disciplines, are disconcerted by the trend of metaphysics, in which they fail to find their criteria of certainty and take refuge in religious experience.”20 The presupposition here—scientism—is that science gives us the ultimate and complete truth about reality, which view here not only determines how we can know but also what we can know and hence what is real. Certainty is determined by scientific reason, pushing religion outside the boundaries of reason to subjective experience. I shall call this the scientism objection. The anthropological objection is the motive behind why Berkouwer contests the use of Romans 1:19–20 to support the legitimacy of natural theology. “How is it possible to discern in Romans 1 a natural power of the human reason which already has been able to achieve a partial knowledge of God? Paul indeed speaks of the understanding, but of that same understanding (nous) he says elsewhere: the heathen walk in ‘the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding’ (Eph 4:17). This is for Paul the upshot of the ‘natural light of reason’” (AO, 121 [149]). Thus, according to Berkouwer, because of man’s fallen nature, his natural reason is not considered capable of such knowledge. Those who think so do not properly understand the relation between God’s revelation in creation and his revelation in Jesus Christ. They fail to grasp the radical antithesis between God and man as a consequence of sin. The root of this misunderstanding is a flawed conception of the relation between nature and grace.

19 Jean Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing, Translated by Walter Roberts (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 53. 20 Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing, 53.

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How, then, does one come to know God’s general revelation? What ways of knowing God in and through the medium of creation are available to humanity? For example, does natural human reason possess the possibility of coming on its own power to knowledge of the existence and attributes of God? An affirmative answer to this question is a principle of Catholic thought. Berkouwer agrees. “In 1870, the First Vatican Council declared that it was possible to know God by way of the things that were created. This was after [Louis] Bautain (in 1840) was condemned when he refused to confess that God’s existence could be proved with certainty. Vatican I then said that it was possible to know God via the created world through the natural light of reason. In the anti-modernist oath, this possibility of knowing became ‘proof’ for God’s existence. Roman Catholicism has kept this conviction intact since then; it came out in the [Pius XII] encyclical Humani Generis and was reaffirmed by Vatican II [Dei Verbum].”21 As I shall show below, the question at issue is whether human reason has a role in the process of coming to faith’s knowledge of God that does not entail rationalism, which is a “blind confidence in reason,”22 a denial of the noetic influences of sin, and a withdrawal of the role of grace and, consequently, the epistemological significance of the Holy Spirit. Painting with a broad stroke, we can say that, traditionally, the answer to this question about the legitimacy of natural theology has divided Catholics and Reformed Protestants, such as Berkouwer, with the latter rejecting and the former accepting its legitimacy.23 One of the reasons for the 21 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 206 [146]. Actually, Vatican I did condemn the fideistic views of L.E. Bautain (1796–1867), who denied not only the possibility of rationally knowing God’s existence with certainty but also of establishing the credibility of divine revelation by purely natural powers. But it also rejected the rationalistic views of Georg Hermes (1775–1831) and Anton Günther (1783–1863). Regarding Bautain, his views had already been condemned in 1835 by the Bishop of Strasbourg, Jean-François Le Pappe de Trévern, who deprived him of all his ministerial faculties, and this judgment was later reaffirmed by Pope Gregory XVI. In 1835, again in 1840, and finally in 1844, Bautain disavowed these claims and promised never to teach them. For the promise signed by Bautain, see The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, edited by Jacques Dupuis, Sixth Revised and Enlarged Edition (New York: Alba House, 1996), 38. The issue, as Aidan Nichols rightly describes it, is as follows: “Rightly, in the light of Scripture and tradition, Bautain refused to make faith the inevitable conclusion to a process of rational argument. But in the course of making this refusal, he also, wrongly (by the same lights) sought to deprive faith of its character as reasonable adherence to the Word of God (From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 92–93). 22 Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing, 53. 23 I discuss this division between the Catholic tradition and the neo-Calvinist Herman Bavinck in a recent article: “The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology: A Catholic Response to Herman Bavinck,” Calvin Theological Journal, April 2010, Vol. 45, No. 1: 87–116.



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emphasis on natural theology is to show that theistic belief is rational and hence provides a foundation of reasonableness, a ground of credibility, for distinctively Christian belief. Aside from his critical discussion of natural theology in the study of general revelation, Berkouwer never devotes attention as such to the question of natural theology and the corresponding issue of faith and rationality throughout his books on Catholicism, before, during and after Vatican II. We do find references to these matters scattered throughout some others volumes in his Dogmatische Studiën, which I shall consider. Surprisingly, Berkouwer does raise the question of the revival of natural theology as well as of faith and rationality almost twenty five years after the publication of his study on general revelation.24 In a special 1974 issue of the Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift devoted to the revival of natural theology, Berkouwer wrote that the word revival presupposes “that with respect to natural theology, about which so much criticism has been registered from various sides, something is going on and that questions are again being raised that seem to relativize the criticism. In all sorts of ways the idea is being expressed that in such a radical critique and rejection not everything has been said yet and that good reason exists to once again rethink the criticism of natural theology.”25 So, Berkouwer now asks whether there are still unresolved and neglected issues raised by natural theology of which a too reactive criticism lost sight. He asks, “But as is often the case with strong reactions and counter movements, at some later occasion people think better of it and ask whether the baby has been thrown out with the bath water. . . . Are there no aspects of the subject that can be shown to have been too quickly discounted?”26 It seems that Berkouwer now thinks that not everything has been said about natural theology and that there are reasons to reopen the question of its perhaps too hasty critical dismissal. After Vatican II, he now seems definitely interested in recovering natural theology’s legitimate concern of addressing the reasonableness of the Christian faith given the signs of the time, namely, of crisis, challenge and See also, my book-length engagement with Dutch neo-Calvinsim, Dialogue of Love: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic Ecumenist. 24 Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” in De Herleving van de Natuurlijke Theologie, 3–17; idem., Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 29–48, 203–253 [25–38, 144–178]; idem., “Inleding: waarheid en verificatie,” and “Terugblik,” in Wat is Waarheid? Waarheid en verificiatie in kerk en theologie, Een bundel opstellen onder redactie van G.C. Berkouwer en A.S. van der Woude (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1973), 7–12, 186–192, respectively. 25 Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 3. 26 Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 3–4.

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doubt about the rationality and truth of the Christian faith. Indeed, in this connection, he asks “whether there is any sense of verification possible and, if so, what is its meaning and range?”27 Berkouwer insists that the question of verification is not “an abstract, purely theoretical approach to the question of truth.”28 Rather, he raises this question in order to get at “the meaning, power, and the concreteness of truth in the human life of our time.”29 Furthermore, already in 1968, he is particularly concerned to address the question of whether, and if so, how the authority of Scripture has a reasonable claim on our assent.30 In the words of Vatican I’s Dei Filius, Berkouwer seems particularly concerned now to explain why “the assent of faith is by no means a blind movement of the mind.”31 How do we account for this change in Berkouwer’s epistemological concerns? Besides revealing himself through the medium of created nature and so making some knowledge of himself, in principle, available to all men by natural reason, according to the Catholic tradition, “there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by his own powers: the order of divine [supernatural] revelation. Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. This he does by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity in Christ, for the benefit of all men. God has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.”32 Following this chapter and the next, then, I devote chapters four and five to the theological topic of Holy Scripture and Tradition in relation to Special revelation and to the Church. Special revelation is the term used to refer to God’s self-revelation as it is manifested in salvation history, through word (verbal revelation) and deed, culminating in Jesus Christ who is the mediator and fullness of all revelation, and understood through Holy Scripture and the living tradition of the Church.33

27 Berkouwer and Van der Woude, Woord vooraf, Wat is Waarheid? 28 Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 4. 29 Berkouwer and Van der Woude, Woord vooraf, Wat is Waarheid? 30 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” in Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift, 68 (1968): 177–200. 31 Vatican I, Dei Filius, 3, 6. 32 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 50. 33 In the words of Dei Verbum, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, we read: “In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4). Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col. 1; 15, 1 Tim. 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends



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I have defined here the nature of both general and special revelation in a way that suggests that they exist in separate compartments, but that is far from the case. In particular, in this chapter I will address not only the distinction between them, but also their unity in Christ, who is the fullness and mediator of all revelation, as Vatican II’s Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation) puts it. The issue of their unity especially arises in connection with the question regarding the epistemological significance for humanity of special revelation “not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also ‘about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error’.”34 To paraphrase Aquinas, why would God choose to reveal even those truths that in principle can be known by the natural light of human reason?35 “In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone.”36 In this connection, the epistemological significance of the Holy Spirit also arises in regard to restoring the ability of man’s fallen human reason to come to know the truth of God’s reality. Unity and Distinctness of God’s Revelation Now, by the middle of the twentieth-century, according to Berkouwer, three problems had arisen making it urgently necessary to devote a dogmatic study to the topic of the nature and reality of divine revelation, especially of the distinction between, and unity of, God’s general and special revelation. Indeed, says Berkouwer, “There is no more significant question in the whole of theology and in the whole of human life than that of the nature and reality of revelation” (AO, 13 [17]).

(see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14–15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself. This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having in inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them. By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation” (no. 2). 34 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 38. The quote within the quote is from Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 3. 35 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. I, 4. 36 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 37.

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The first two problems presuppose an antithesis between general and special revelation, such that a theological position is developed that abandons either general revelation or special revelation. Either general revelation is abandoned on the basis of “the Christo-monistic conception of revelation [that] cannot recognize any other revelation than the one in the incarnated Word” (AO, 82 [102]). Or, alternatively, special revelation is “gradually relativized by a general divine manifestation in the world” (AO, 8 [12]), and then eventually abandoned on the basis of a religious relativism that refuses to accept the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the revelation in Christ as a revealed truth. Men take offense at the claim “that God has revealed himself in Christ and that no one comes to the Father except through Him [John 14:6]” (AO, 9 [13]). The third problem—found chiefly in traditional Roman Catholic theology, indeed, in Vatican Council I of 1870—is that the acceptance of the doctrine of a general revelation entails natural theology, indeed, the identification of the two, and hence that there is a natural knowledge of God or independently of the special revelation in Jesus Christ. In short, the question is whether nature, in any sense whatsoever, plays a role in acquiring knowledge of God and his purposes and designs for the created world apart from any effective redemptive activity and grace on God’s part?37 Let me briefly explain each of these problems in order to set the context for the topic of this chapter. First, the historic Christian teaching regarding the “unique and ‘oncefor-all’ character of the redemptive revelation in Jesus Christ” (AO, 6 [9]) is “increasingly criticized from the viewpoint of ‘general’ revelation.” “Christianity, it was argued,” adds Berkouwer, “set too many boundaries to God’s revelation by calling it ‘special’ and by localizing it. Did not all religions contain elements with hidden indications of a revelation of God? Was it still possible to accept the specific of God’s revelation in Israel and in Jesus Christ? In this manner—as an attack on the Church—the plea was made for a general, universal revelation of God in the world.”38 Since Berkouwer wrote this statement a half a century ago, religious relativism has been championed by many theologians, making the opposition to the distinction between general and special revelation even more stiff. “They thought they could see one broad, universal revelation of God in

37 Trevor Hart, “A Capacity for Ambiguity?: The Barth-Brunner Debate Revisited,” Tyndale Bulletin 44.2 (1993): 289–305, and for this quote, 291. 38 Berkouwer, “General and Special Divine Revelation,” 14.



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the background of the various religions, and they hesitated to accept the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the revelation in Christ on the basis of an a priori of faith. They [e.g., Ernst Troeltsch] rejected this position as ‘the old method of the supernaturalistic theology’” (AO, 8 [12]). Of course Berkouwer rejects any view of general revelation that undermines the sufficiency and absoluteness of special revelation in Jesus Christ. Yes, general revelation is necessary: it is not only sufficient to leave men and women without excuse, establishing the impossibility of their guiltlessness, but also indicates that fallen man is not freed from the general revelation of God in and through the works of creation. In particular, general revelation, particularly through the reality of God’s common grace—a non-saving grace that restrains the full consequences of sin from disclosing itself in reality—manifests “the power of God in revelation and in grace preserving life from total self-destruction.”39 Thus, general revelation is necessary. Second, in reaction to those who argue that “general revelation” is sufficient and hence special revelation in Christ is unnecessary, a Christomonistic idea of revelation is developed. “The principal attack against the profession of general revelation came namely from the adherents of Christo-monism” (AO, 90 [112]).40 Some argue that it is religiously necessary

39 Berkouwer, “General and Special Divine Revelation,” 21. 40 For Berkouwer’s earliest analysis of Barth’s “Christomonism,” see his 1940 inaugural address entitled, Barthianisme en Katholicisme, as extraordinary Professor in the Theology Faculty, Free University, Amsterdam. He is not alone in making this charge. According to French Evangelical Henri Blocher, “Critics, not lightweights in the scholarly world, have complained [of Barth’s] ‘Christomonism’: [for example] A. Moda lists Paul Althaus (first in print), Reinhold Niebuhr, Helmut Thielicke, K. Okayama, to whom we may add Richard Muller and even, though with a limiting ‘perhaps’, the faithful translator Geoffrey Bromiley. . . . Berkouwer [in The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth] introduced ‘panchristism’ and ‘Jesucentric’ to characterize Barth’s thinking. . . . Webster notes that Barth, in his later writings, was alert to the danger of ‘Christological totalitarianism’. The phrase, finally, that many Barthians prefer was coined by Barth to define his 1930 turn: ‘christological concentration’. This comparatively neutral expression is unobjectionable” (“Karl Barth’s Christocentric Method,” Engaging with Barth, Contemporary Evangelical Critiques, Edited by David Gibson and Daniel Strange [New York/London: T&T Clark, 2008], 20–54, and at, 26–27). G.W. Bromiley explains his position thus: “when it is seen that Barth’s reference is to the natural theology of fallen man, and that he does not deny that there may be partial lights and words and truths even outside special revelation, it is hard to maintain that he is not basically right in his understanding, that he does not give a more correct account of, for example, Romans 1–2 (as well as 1 Corinthians 1) than many who try to see here a foundation of knowledge rather than of guilt, and that his examination of natural theology is not among the most acute and helpful in this whole area” (“Karl Barth,” in Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology, 56). Trevor Hart also argues that in the Barth of Church Dogmatics IV.3, §69.2, “The Light of Life,” that “Barth develops the view that those

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“to simply conclude from the exclusive salvation in Christ to the exclusive revelation in Christ” (AO, 74 [93]). In other words, adds Berkouwer, “this monism denies all revelation in actual sense outside of the historic Christ and recognizes only ‘witness’ and ‘indications’ which as such indeed are connected with the revelation but still are not revelation” (AO, 90 [112]). There is also a version of Christo-monism that attempts to prove, says Berkouwer, “on the basis of fallen mankind’s blinded eyes, that God has revealed himself only by his Word, and not already in the works of his hands” (AO, 233 [280] italics added). Now, as to its sufficiency and absoluteness, Berkouwer rejects any view of special revelation in Christ that opposes the biblical idea, as he rightly judges, that God reveals himself universally in and through the works of creation. “It is not out of a desire to broaden the aspects of revelation in our lives and in the world that we reject the Christo-monistic conception of revelation, but we do so because, on the basis of the uniqueness of Christ’s birth, suffering, death and resurrection, the vision must remain open towards the whole of God’s deeds of revelation and God himself ” (AO, 87 [108]; italics added in the last sentence). Yes, Jesus Christ is the fullness and mediator of all of God’s revelation in word and deed, in Old Testament prophecy and promises, in his historical acts of revelation in times past, and in his creation as a source of revelation itself. These all truly point to Christ for their ultimate significance and meaning as the one historical revelation in whom the light of God’s revelation arose in a full, unparalleled, and unsurpassable manner (see Col 1:15–20). But this “is something entirely different,” says Berkouwer, “from revelation commencing with him. Asserting the latter is forcing the Scriptural data into an aprioristic scheme” (AO, 85 [106]). But affirming the reality of general revelation, of the revelatory nature of creation, does not mean that it is concurrent with the supernatural special revelation in Christ. In other words, says Berkouwer, general revelation is not an independent source of natural knowledge of God in addition to special revelation, with the latter being the source of our supernatural knowledge of God, supplementing and completing the former. “In general aspects of the cosmos which he refers to as the ‘little lights’ of creation, while they certainly do not reveal God to the unregenerate mind are, nonetheless, given to do so as and when they are viewed by the eyes of faith. The creation, he affirms in this context, is thus invested with ‘a power of speech’ which persists regardless of whether humans hear what it has to say or not. What is heard by those with ears to hear is altogether more full than that which is grasped by common sense alone; but there is a positive relation between the two” (“A Capacity for Ambiguity?: The Barth-Brunner Debate Revisited,” 296n3)!



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revelation we are not dealing with an independent source of knowledge; on the contrary, by faith we understand the act of divine revelation in created reality” (AO, 238 [289]). Berkouwer adds, “No true knowledge of the revelation of God in the works of his hands is obtainable without faith in Christ” (AO, 235 [285]). In other words, Berkouwer rejects the claim, “The natural light of reason receives this knowledge [of God] apart from the supernatural revelation, viz., directly from the factuality of created reality” (AO, 57 [71]). Therefore, Berkouwer rejects natural theology, indeed, the very idea that general revelation can be grasped by natural reason, but especially the claim that some true knowledge of God is available through natural human reason, independently of faith and special revelation. In sum, Berkouwer’s view gives expression here to the autonomy objection. This point brings us to the third problem, namely, the problem of natural theology and its identification with general revelation. Berkouwer strenuously insists that general revelation is not the same as natural theology, and he argues, on the one hand, that identifying the two has led some, such as the Barth of 1934 in the famous Barth/Brunner debate, to reject the former because they reject the latter.41 On the other hand, some have argued, such as Etienne Gilson,42 that accepting general revelation opens, in Berkouwer’s words, “the door to natural theology” and guarantees “it a legitimate place in the theological system.” Berkouwer adds, “General revelation and natural theology are thought to be on the same plane structurally.” That is, a natural knowledge of God is mediated through created things by way of natural reason, theistic proofs, logical inferences, rendering our knowledge of God the conclusion of an argument. Those who accept general revelation but reject natural theology are considered to 41 See the Barth/Brunner debate in Natural Theology, Translated from the German by Peter Fraenkel (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946). Oscar Cullmann is also unclear about the question of an original revelation in and through creation, natural revelation, as he calls it. He says, on the one hand, “The concept of ‘natural revelation’, which emerges only later, is still foreign to the New Testament.” On the other hand, he says, “Paul merely confirms the fact that the revelation through the works of Creation . . . does not effectually lead the Gentiles to Christ.” In sum, “In the context of Rom 1:18, therefore, the mention of the divine revelation to the Gentiles among the works of Creation cannot have the aim of providing a basis for a natural revelation in addition to the Christian revelation given in redemptive history. It rather has only the meaning of showing that the Gentiles, like the Jews, are ‘inexcusable’ ” (Christ and Time, translated by Floyd V. Filson [London: SCM Press Ltd, 1951], 180–181). But as Berkouwer says regarding Cullman’s point that the effect of general revelation is to leave men without excuse: “Maar dit kan toch nooit de werkelijkheid dezer Openbaring te niet doen” [But this can nonetheless never eliminate the reality of [creation] Revelation] (AO, 23–24, note 52). 42 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 39–44.

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be inconsistent. “Consistently—it is said—the idea of general revelation must lead to natural theology. Therefore, we must discuss the background of natural theology and ask whether general revelation and natural theology are indissolubly united” (AO, 11 [15]). Berkouwer argues that the connection is purely contingent, not necessary. Indeed, Berkouwer argues that not only are general revelation and natural theology not the same but also that “there is general revelation but no natural theology” (AO, 33 [43]). It is “only by separating between general revelation and natural theology can we do justice to the message of Scripture” (AO, 126 [153]). The message that Berkouwer has in mind is that the unbeliever “does not know God at all” (AO, 109 [139]). In other words, in reply to the question, “Is there a ‘natural’ knowledge of God and his will possible outside of the revelation in Jesus Christ?’ (AO, 12 [15]), Berkouwer answers this question in the negative, categorically denying, not that there is such a thing as objective creation revelation, but rather that that sin’s noetic effects has rendered human reason’s epistemic capacity by itself incapable, in any sense whatsoever, of knowing God. This means that, according to Berkouwer, the central problem at issue here is that of “objective knowability and subjective knowledge” (AO, 33 [44]). Yes, there exists an objective revelation of God in creation, and that revelation is, in principle, objectively knowable in the sense that man has an objective “capacity for revelation” (to use Brunner’s phrase). But as far as possessing the subjective knowledge of God that is necessary to actualize, as it were, that objective capacity, and hence our ability to see the objective creation revelation correctly, a knowledge acquired by oneself and through one’s own natural powers, no such subjective possibility exists given man’s fallen condition and the noetic effects of sin. There is an epistemic gulf, resulting from man’s fallen nature, between general revelation and true knowledge of God acquired in, by and through the created realities themselves. In other words, “God’s revelation still exists in the created reality, but man cannot perceive this revelation because his whole nature has been darkened” (AO, 30 [40]). Berkouwer argues that the antithesis between knowing and not-knowing is deeply biblical and cuts all the way down. “There is no half-way stop between the idolatry, foolishness, and darkness of heathendom and the knowledge of God.” “A man can leave the one for the other,” adds Berkouwer, “only by way of conversion as by the passage from life to death. This, too, is the only way of escape from the wrath of God” (AO, 119–120 [147]). Yet, Berkouwer also insists, this antithesis doesn’t eliminate an objective general revelation. He urges us to resist the identification of the



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noetic aspect of knowledge—how we can know or our ability to see— with its ontic aspect—the ontological foundation of what is there to be known—and hence always to distinguish sharply between knowing and being, between the objectivity of God’s revelation in creation and the subjective conditions that are necessary for knowing that revelation. In other words, man’s lack of true knowledge of God’s reality apart from Christ in no way denies the objective reality of general revelation and its objective knowability; the reality of the latter is not determined by man’s lack of true knowledge. To draw that conclusion would be to confuse the noetic with the ontic, as Berkouwer repeatedly states. General revelation is still normative, clear and irrefutable. “The heathen do not escape the divine revelation. That which is knowable in respect to God is revealed amongst them” (AO, 120 [148]). Indeed, St. Paul states that “they know God” (Rom 1:21), but he focuses on the resistance of the unbeliever to that knowledge, to his exchanging the truth about God for a lie, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Thus, according to Berkouwer, the only function this “knowing God” has—the effect of general revelation—is to leave men without excuse, and thus “the not-knowing is unmasked in its guilty character precisely because there is and remains [general] revelation” (AO, 23 [31]). Berkouwer opposes every effort to “kidnap” (his word) this phrase—“knowing God”— using it to support a natural theology. In sum, as Berkouwer writes, “Precisely this distinction, yes, the separation [Dutch: scheiding] of general revelation and natural theology, is the most important question in the whole debate [between Barth and Brunner and hence on the relation of general revelation and natural theology]. It is impossible and unjustified to conclude that because man lacks the true knowledge of God, therefore God’s [general] revelation is also absent” (AO, 35 [46]). Thus, we must not confuse the objectivity of creation revelation—ontic—with the ability to acquire knowledge of that revelation—noetic. Now, the Catholic tradition agrees with the first principle of Berkouwer’s theology of general revelation. Balthasar offers a representative statement shared by Catholic dogmatics. He writes: Catholic dogmatics knows that the will of God to reveal himself, his divine essence, “his eternal power and divine nature” (Rom 1:20) in creation is materially identical with the act of creation but is to be distinguished from its mere end result: created nature. . . . Because this first gift—which is completely free and “personal” in its origin as an act—is accessible in its final outcome only in created nature, God’s personal self-disclosure as Creator is neither “reified” nor even obscured. Indeed creation reveals the Creator

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Given this agreement between the Catholic tradition and Berkouwer, my Catholic response to his reformed theological objections to the positive status of natural theology in the next chapter will only consider those aspects of his theology that bear upon those objections. Pared down for my purpose here, I am interested, chiefly, in three important questions: (1) what does general revelation mean for natural human reason and is natural theology implied in accepting it; (2) what can man’s natural reason, if anything, truly know of God after the fall into sin?; (3) what is the relation between nature, sin and grace or, alternatively put, between structure and direction.44 I follow that up in a concluding section by addressing the question whether Berkouwer, after Vatican II, changed his mind about natural theology and the related issue of faith and rationality. Before turning to respond these questions in chapter III, I shall first expound, in this chapter, Berkouwer’s reformed objections to natural theology. In the course of my critical exposition, I consider the influence of the nouvels théologiens, such as Balthasar, on a Catholic interpretation of Vatican I’s defense of the duplex ordo cognitionis, which is an interpretation that distances itself from a neo-scholastic interpretation.45 The occasion shall present itself in the next chapter to determine whether that interpretation is consistent with Vatican I’s idea of a duplex ordo cognitionis. Berkouwer’s Reformed Objections to Natural Theology I should like to summarize Berkouwer’s reformed theological objections to natural theology by addressing the following four questions. 43 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 309–310. 44 In distinguishing the first three questions, I am following Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, especially 302–325. 45 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 302–325. Five years after the publication of Algemene Openbaring, Berkouwer returns to a critical discussion of Vatican I in “Identiteit of Conflict? Een Poging tot analyse,” Philosophia Reformata 21 (1956): 1–41. This work is an extensive article review of Michael J. Marlet, S.J., Grundlinien der Kalvinistischen “Philosophie der Gesetzesidee” als Christicher Transzendentalphilosophie (München: Karl Zink Verlag, 1954).



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(1) Is natural theology an autonomous theology? (2) Is the knowledge of God’s existence by natural reason a fact or merely a possibility? (3) Is the God of the philosophers not the God of the Bible? (4) Two Sources of Knowledge: General Revelation and Special Revelation? Is Natural Theology an Autonomous Theology? The first question I shall address is whether natural theology is an autonomous theology? Berkouwer believes that natural theology in the Catholic tradition purports to be based upon God’s general revelation in creation and hence it “does not pretend to be an autonomous theology” (AO, 47 [61]). As Balthasar also notes, “The passage from Paul (Rom 1:20) cited by the Council [Vatican I] frequently speaks in this context—from which it cannot be disengaged—of an act of revelation. . . . Certainly it was not part of the intention of the Council to thematize this side of the problem [of knowing God’s revelation]. But the Acta [et decreta sacrorum Conciliorum recentiorum] speak nonetheless of an act of revelation by God. Catholic dogmatics recognizes this.”46 This is an important and accurate observation to make about the basis of natural theology. A natural theology would be taken to be autonomous if it ascribes to reason’s power self-sufficiency in acquiring knowledge of God. Autonomy here means that human reason purports to function in a “mere world-immanent sense”47 and hence without reference to God, grace, revelation. Rather, a Catholic natural theology is based on the principle that any knowledge of God at all, including the knowledge acquired through the medium of creation, is solely due to God’s self-revelation. In the case of natural theology, this is God’s manifestation of himself in and through the works of creation. In other words, St. Paul’s statement (Rom 1:19) that what can be known about God is manifest because God made it manifest “implies a certain action on the part of God. There is first of all the act of creating itself, which, of course, is durative: Creation is held in existence by the same power by which it was 46 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 309. The Acta et decreta sacrorum Conciliorum recentiorum (1789–1870) are found in the Collectio Lacensis (1870), edited by Theodor Granderath, S.J. (1839–1902), expositor of Vatican I proceedings. Fergus Kerr, O.P., explains the content of these proceedings: “This contains the draft, minutes of the speechs, the responses by the steering committee (deputation de fide) to additions and amendments proposed by the bishops—all the material from which it is quite easy to reconstruct the debate [at Vatican I]” (“Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” New Blackfriars, Vol. 91, No. 1033, May 2010: 215–228, and for this quote, 219–220). 47 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311.

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first given existence and is an expression of that power.” In addition, however, to the manifestation of the created realities themselves, God’s action includes “the light to read them correctly,” making possible what can be known about him in and through creation itself. Consequently, there is also a corresponding capacity given with man’s nature to grasp this revelation. Francis Martin summarizes, “Disclosure, therefore, involves both the created reality manifesting itself in and through the act of its existence and the creative receptivity of the mind that receives the act of the reality and gives it intelligibility, transposing it to the level of the knower. . . . [T]he capacity to receive and transpose, is what the ancient thinkers meant by the light of the mind. Aquinas says of this interior light that it is itself a ‘certain participation in divine light’ (ST I, 12, 11, ad 3); it is, in fact, ‘nothing else but the imprint of the divine light in us’ (ST I, 1, 3, aad2).”48 I shall return to the two dimensions of disclosure or manifestation later in this chapter. Berkouwer agrees that, in Roman Catholic theology, “It is true that . . . we often do find the conception of revelation expressed in relation to nature” (AO, 66 [80]). The twentieth-century German Catholic theologian Eric Przywara (1889–1972) makes this point clearly referring again to the two dimensions of God’s self-revealing act in the creation itself and the epistemic capacity to know it correctly: .

A kind of self-revelation therefore stands at the beginning of every possible knowledge of God. Not only that, but even the possibility of accepting this self-revelation is given only through God’s action. The self-revelation of God that proceeds from him is the objective creation, which in its own essence is a gift of existence from the Creator. And this action of God that effects the acceptance of his self-revelation consists in him giving to man the ability to find him. And he brings about this finding, although it is not exclusively the result of his work.49

Nevertheless, Berkouwer adds, “It is certainly true that in Roman Catholic theology (here natural theology) God’s revelation in nature does not function as such” (AO, 66 [80]).50 “What does function is simply the fact of this reality which via causality leads to the first cause” (AO, 66 [80]). This is how 48 Francis Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 220–221. 49 As cited by Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 309n80. 50 Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg make a similar charge, particularly against Vatican I. For the former, see Church Dogmatics, Vol. II/1, The Knowledge of God; the Reality of God (New York: T & T Clark, 2004), 79; for the latter, see Systematische Theologie. Band 1, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988). ET: Systematic Theology, Vol. I, Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991, 75–76.



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Berkouwer understands Vatican I’s decree, Dei Filius, namely, that it is a dogma of faith that man can have certain knowledge of God by the natural light of reason through the things that have been made. It is important to note that Berkouwer equates the natural light of human reason with the rational demonstrability of God’s existence, with the latter acquired by demonstrative proof from effects to cause. So, according to Berkouwer, although natural theology doesn’t purport to be an autonomous theology in the Catholic tradition, functioning independently of God’s self-revelation in creation and serving as the foundation for special revelation and hence revealed theology, it seems to operate in precisely that way. Hence, the practice of natural theology in the Catholic tradition is subject to the autonomy objection, according to Berkouwer. Does he explain why? Berkouwer claims that Rome’s natural theology is based on the presupposition that regards the reality of God’s existence to be the conclusion of an argument, in short, of autonomous human reason. “Roman Catholic theology involves the relation between man’s rational nature and ‘reality’. The road to a knowledge of God is by way of logical conclusion” (AO, 60, 64, 67 [74–75; see also 78, 82]). Furthermore, he adds, “Rome’s natural theology . . . is based upon the relationship of ‘reason-reality’, and therefore has no need of God’s revelation” (AO, 67 [82]). Berkouwer does not say exactly why the claim that reason can in some sense know the truth about reality, in particular, God’s reality, is a problem. Perhaps he thinks that Vatican I decreed that belief in God rests on rational arguments. But the decree only claims that the natural light of human reason may acquire knowledge of God’s existence through the things that have been made. As Fergus Kerr rightly remarks, this is “something significantly different from the suggestion that faith in God is founded on or somehow procured by reason.”51 Furthermore, argues Kerr, “The dogma does not say that knowledge of God’s existence is a ‘conclusion reached by a chain of inferences’, let alone that the certainty depends on a ‘syllogism.”52 In short, that God “could be known with certainty” (certo cognosci posse) is different from having demonstrative certainty (certo demonstrari posse) acquired by theistic arguments. Berkouwer overlooks these differences. Yes, he acknowledges the difference between the Anti-modernist Oath,53 51  Kerr, “Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” 216. 52 Kerr, “Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” 224. 53 Sources of Catholic Dogma, “The Oath Against the Errors of Modernism,” 549: “First of all, I profess that God, the beginning and the end of all things, can be known with certainty, and therefore also proved, as the cause from its effects, by the natural light of

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issued by Pope St. Pius X, which takes the natural light of human reason to mean demonstrative proof from effects to cause, and Dei Filius, but nonetheless he insists on equating the two because he thinks that the equation follows from Vatican I dogma.54 Says Berkouwer, “It is true that the Vaticanum does not speak of the provability[55] but of the certainty of knowing God. However, when the modernistic-oath of 1910 referred back to the Vatican Council’s declaration of the natural light of reason, to this was added that God, who is knowable by the natural light of reason, ‘can certainly be known as the cause of all things, and therefore can also be proved’” (AO, 53 [66–67]). Who can blame him, since the Oath insists on that equation, too. But the question is whether this equation follows from the Vatican I dogma? Is that what was envisaged at the council? Perhaps Berkouwer’s objection to natural theology being based upon the relationship of reason and reality stems from thinking that the search for the rational intelligibility of the totality of reality drives human reason to the point that the human mind is made the measure of God. “Erecting into an absolute the intelligibility which is proper to [the human mind], she pulls everything down to that level. Yet the very essence of God is precisely to be that which is measured by nothing and which measures all things. . . . The error of all rationalism is [thus] that of putting God on the same basis as other objects of reason, higher, no doubt, but not really reason ‘from the things that have been made’ [Rom 1:20], viz., from the visible works of creation.” Latin: “Ac primum quidem: Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali rationis lumine ‘per ea quae facta sunt’ hoc est, per visibilia creationis opera, tamquam causam per effectus, certo cognosci, adeoque demonstrari etiam posse, profiteor.” 54 In addition to the Anti-modernist Oath, there is the twenty-second of the XXIV Thomistic Theses, issued by the Roman Congregation for Studies on July 27, 1914, which states as guidance to Catholic philosophers and theologians: “We do not perceive by an immediate intuition that God exists, nor do we prove it a priori [ontological arguments]. But we do prove it a posteriori [cosmological arguments], i.e., from the things that have been created, following an argument from the effects to the cause: namely, from things which are moved and cannot be the adequate source of their motion, to a first unmoved mover; from the production of the things in this world by causes subordinated to one another, to a first uncaused cause; from corruptible things which equally might be or not be, to an absolutely necessary being; from things which more or less are, live, and understand, according to degrees of being, living and understanding, to that which is maximally understanding, maximally living and maximally a being; finally, from the order of all things, to a separated intellect which has ordered and organized things, and directs them to their end” (http://www.sspx.org/miscellaneous/24_thomistic_theses.htm). As Fergus Kerr notes, “These are more or less the Five Ways of Aquinas (as in Summa Theologiae 1.2.3.” (“Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” 219). 55 The English translation erroneously—one can only assume by mistake—has translated the Dutch word “bewijsbaarheid,” which means “provability” with the English word “probability.” I translate correctly in the text.



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other.”56 As French Catholic theologian Jean Danielou, a thinker in the nouvelle théologie renewal movement, correctly argues, The error of false philosophies is precisely that of making God an object, of claiming to possess Him through the intellect. On the contrary, it must be said that encounter with God drives the intellect to a fundamental conversion, to a decentralization from the self; and this conversion is the knowledge of God Himself. For God can only be broached as an existent and as a personal existent. On His level, my act of intellect seems itself to be an existential act, the act of an existent; and this far it depends on God. To know God is not, then, to hold Him in my intellect, but on the contrary to rediscover myself as measured by Him. So we see at the same time how the knowledge of God is a work of reason and a challenge to reason.57

Perhaps, then, we can surmise that Berkouwer objects to the role of natural theology because, on the interpretation of it that he contests, “it appears as if belief in the existence of God is based on these proofs and has no foundation apart from them. And surely it would be ‘a wretched faith that first had to prove God’s existence before it prayed to him.”58 On this view, natural theology is autonomous because the human mind is made the measure of God. This criticism is reminiscent of Karl Barth’s critique of natural theology, who wrote that natural theology is “Selbsttauslegung” [self-interpretation] and God is, “sein eigenes Spiegelbild die Hypostasierung seines Selbstbewusztseins.”59 For Barth, natural theology, in this sense, was one step removed from Feuerbach’s idea that theology is anthropology. Of course if this, too, is Berkouwer’s objection, then I agree with him. Furthermore, adds Berkouwer, this alleged knowledge is “mediate, analogous, inadequate, and true” (AO, 50 [65]). It is mediate because it is acquired by way of created reality. It is analogous because there exists a real analogy between the Creator and the creature—as the Fourth Lateran Council stated in 1215—in which “there is a great difference, an ‘infinite distance’, between God, ‘the source of being’, and all created things. But this infinite distance does not eliminate all analogy. . . . There is analogy, in spite of the infinite diversity—an analogy of being. ‘Being and existence are in God, just as well as in the creature’” (AO, 56–57 [70–71]).60 Berkouwer 56 Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing, 61–62. 57 Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing, 64–65. 58 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 62–63[90]. 59 Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatiek, II, 1, 151 (as cited by Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 6). 60 The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 gave classic and authoritative formulation to the doctrine of analogy implicit in this metaphysics of the God-world relation. It speaks

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is careful not to call the analogia entis a scale-of-being ontology, with God revealed as the ‘supreme being.’ Unlike other critics, such as Michael Horton, he does not claim that the analogia entis either “confuses the creature with the creator (any distinction being merely quantitative)” or that it “simultaneously downgrades creation as a falling away from being in its very essence.”61 Berkouwer recognizes (AO, 56 [70]) that analogy truly expresses the actual relationship between God and creation, not because they can both be subsumed under some common denominator called ‘being’ (as the critique of onto-theology alleges) but rather having created the creature, he both establishes the being and the truth of what he created—and precisely by creating it.62 “The being of the cause really is in the effect.”63 This knowledge is inadequate, because “it results in knowledge of the formal aspects of God’s being, rather than in “the knowledge of God in the reality of his grace and mercy” (AO, 58 [72]), but it is no less true for that—at least according to Rome, if not Berkouwer. Still, Berkouwer questions whether this alleged knowledge leaves us with anything but a concept of God as a metaphysically ultimate being that is “empty, abstract, and formal”—God as “Pure Act,” First Cause, Self-existent, Necessary Being, Cosmic Designer, and so forth—“which has nothing to with the knowledge of God in the reality of his grace and mercy” (AO, 58 [72]). We may well ask why the God of the philosophers and the God of Faith in some sense can’t be one and the same. Berkouwer seems to be influenced by the ‘hellenization thesis.’ As Guarino correctly notes, this view involves “the rejection of metaphysics [that] creates a division between faith and reason, a yawning abyss between the God of philosophy and of the Bible.” Those who hold this thesis, adds Guarino, claim that “metaphysics necessarily constitutes an alien philosophical intrusion on

of similitude and greater dissimilitude between God and creatures: “For between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them” (Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos major sit dissimilitudo notanda). Fourth Lateran Ecumenical Council (1215), Section 2, On the Error of Abbot Joachim, in Norman P. Tanner, S.J., English Editor, Decrees of the Ecumenical Council, Volume I, Nicea I to Lateran V (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 231–3, and for this quote, 232. 61 Michael S. Horton, “Meeting a Stranger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” Westminster Theological Journal 66 (2004): 337–55, and for this quote, 345. 62 On this, see Edward T. Oakes, S.J., Patterns of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, 63–64. 63 Étienne Gilson, The Spirit of Thomism, 70.



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the purity of Scripture.”64 I shall return in the next chapter to rebut the ‘hellenization objection’ in order to defend the claim that any theology that shuns metaphysics is “radically unsuited to the task of mediation in the understanding of Revelation.”65 For now, I shall briefly consider Berkouwer’s main objection to the interpretation of natural theology by Max Scheler (1874–1928) and Karl Adam (1876–1966). Berkouwer claims that their position creates a tension with Rome’s conception of natural theology. He finds these thinkers significant because they argue for the epistemological significance of general revelation in coming to knowledge of God—as Scheler does—or even special revelation—as does Adam. “But this is certainly not in agreement with Rome’s natural theology. For it is based upon the relationship of ‘reasonreality’, and therefore in principle has no need of God’s revelation” (AO, 67 [83]). I will argue in the next section that Scheler and Adam make some valuable points, but, pace Berkouwer, their views are not irreconcilable with Vatican I’s teaching on the natural knowledge of God. Scheler and Adam on Natural Theology Scheler displaces the central place that natural theology has assumed as a foundational discipline purporting to give us a natural knowledge of God by proving his reality or existence. Like Berkouwer, Scheler takes this assumption to mean that God’s existence or reality has no foundation apart from the arguments and proofs of natural theology. But Scheler believes that “there is a direct factor in knowledge of God (i.e., one independent of inference and proof).”66 Most important, he argues that “it is absurd ‘to prove reality or existence’” (AO, 64 [78]). This is no less true with respect to proving “an external world independent of consciousness” or that “other minds exist” than it is with respect to the knowledge of God’s existence or reality.67 Scheler states, “To find God is something completely 64 Thomas G. Guarino’s description of the “hellenization thesis,” that is, “the claim that there exists an essential chasm between philosophy and revelation” (in his review of D. Stephen Long, Speaking of God. Theology, Language, and Truth, which appears in The Thomist). 65 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 83. 66 Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010 [1921]), 270. 67 For example, Hans Meyerhoff writes, “How do we know them, or, how do we know that, behind the overt behavior, language and gestures of others, there are minds or souls like our own? By inference, by analogy, by empathy or by some other means that will get us out of the private prison of our own selves? Scheler rejects all these ‘inferential’

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different from proving God” (Ibid.). On this point Scheler is correct—the affirmation of God’s reality is not the conclusion of an argument. If I may briefly interject at this point that this, too, is the view of Bavinck.68 Scheler argues that there exists, independently of natural theology, a completely different source of a natural knowledge of God, of religious insights and experience, other than an inferential knowledge of God (‘proofs’) that is reached by logical conclusion. How, then, do we find God? In a refreshingly Augustinian fashion, if I understand Scheler correctly, he holds that we cannot find God without God. Scheler, Berkouwer insists, attempts to show us the epistemological significance of God’s selfrevelation in creation. This is an approach to acquiring the natural knowledge of God that is missing in traditional Catholic accounts, according to Berkouwer. Thus, rather than begin with our search for God via arguments, Scheler begins with God’s self-revelation in creation, which revelation stands at the beginning of every possible natural knowledge of him. The givenness of God’s self-revelation is combined, then, with the givenness of objective creation, which is a gift from God. This creation revelation presents itself to us, “with God revealing himself in it” (AO, 68 [82]). “This self-givenness points to a natural revelation of God ‘by means of which man’s rational spirit is actively instructed in the essence and meaning of the Creator’s work’” (AO, 65 [79]). Man receives this natural revelation in a religious act that is a corresponding response to the creation’s self-presentation, which “speaks of the heavens declaring the glory of God and of the traces and footsteps of God implanted in it” (AO, 64 [79]). In short, then, the natural knowledge of God involves a religious act dealing with the creation’s self-presentation “upon which the religious act is directed and with the evidence by which this given is made known to our consciousness” (AO, 64 [79]). Still, Scheler argues that this unique epistemic source of experience and insight about God that precede the project of natural theology must submit its “sources and the insights they supply to purification and criticism, as well as to re-interpret data by due arguments—or turn them around. The problem as stated in these arguments is a pseudoproblem. It is generated by a false, prejudicial reading of reality. For it proceeds on the assumption that we first know only our own selves and must grope our way to the knowledge of others with the help of some artificial theory. Instead, the knowledge of other minds is given prior to the knowledge of our own. We have direct access to other minds because, to begin with—say, as children—they form as integral a part of our immediate experience as anything else in the world” (Translator’s Introduction, Max Scheler, Man’s Place in Nature [New York: The Noonday Press, 1961 (1928)], xviii–xix). 68 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 562 [592], and II, 47 [76].



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process of thought.”69 Thus, recognizing the limits of natural theology did not lead him to depreciate reason; indeed, he seems to require reason’s discernment of religious insights and experience because theology is not immune to criticism. Against this background, we can deal more briefly with Karl Adam.70 He, too, takes an Augustinian starting point in order to show the epistemological significance of God’s self-revelation in creation. “God has freely revealed himself in this world, which is a ‘form of his gracious self-revelation. . . . Even in nature it is the personal God’s ‘desire to be revealed’ in the visible world” (AO, 66 [80]). Says Berkouwer, “Adam here agrees with Scheler and writes, ‘the fact that we can discover God in the essential form of the world is not due first of all to the world but to God’s displaying himself in the world’” (AO, 66 [81]). Most important, Adam is clearer about the nature of the religious act, making evident the sense in which creation revelation yields its truth only to that person who is already to some extent in a state of receptivity and trust. “Blessed are the pure of heart, declares Adam at this point. Consistently he therefore adds that natural revelation does not primarily captivate and fill the impersonal, practical, cold mind, but rather its source of activity, viz. the warm, living heart” (AO, 67 [81]). So, the truth about God’s reality in creation is not accessible to the detached scrutiny of the one who reviews arguments for or against God’s existence but only to that aspirant to truth whose knowledge of God is “preceded by first seeking and finding Him in love” (AO, 67 [81]). Otherwise, then, “this natural knowledge will not stand in the test since ‘it is not based upon and motivated by the sum total of personal experiences, nor has it any connection with original, effectual experience of value, or with elemental psychical activity, but it is based solely upon impersonal, 69 Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, 272. Danielou makes the same point: “If it is true that the encounter with God is a personal event, it is no less true that this event needs afterwards to be controlled and placed within the scheme of things. It is never a development of pure reason, but it must always be subsequently submitted to criticism and sifted by reason. It is only then that I can make certain that I am not the plaything of an illusion, that I am not being carried away by an affective impulse. Only a belief in God which has been thus been tested by reason and found solid, which has been brought into relation with the other data and acknowledged to be consistent with them, carries real weights and assures us that our conviction has a sound basis” (Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing, 55). 70 According to Robert A. Krieg, C.S.C., “In his [1920] essay, ‘Glaube und Glaubenswissenschaft im Katholizismus’, [Karl Adam] used Max Scheler’s phenomenological method to describe the experience of Christian belief and its objective referent” (“Karl Adam, National Socialism, and Christian Tradition,” Theological Studies 60 [1999]: 432–456, and for this quote, 437).

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logical evidence apart from and outside of the soul’s experience’ ” (AO, 67 [81]). Is Adam’s dismissing here theistic proofs because the effort to work them out is not merely a matter of right reason but rather should be preceded by the proper dispositions of the aspirant to truth?71 If not, does his interpretation square with Vatican I’s teaching that God can be known with certainty through the medium of creation by natural reason? It is important to note that Adam does not dismiss arguments for God’s existence via the works of creation as well as arguments to establish the credibility of special revelation.72 We shall return to this point below. For now, let us note that Berkouwer dismisses Adam’s attempt to reconcile his view of natural theology with that of Rome. He says, “Here also recourse is taken from the abstract ‘reason’ to man’s ‘heart’ upon the basis of which the search is made for the actual revelation of God in his works” (AO, 67 [82]). We shall need to consider whether interpretations of natural theology, such as Adam’s, are unacceptable because irreconcilable with Vatican I’s ‘duplex ordo cognitionis’ (twofold order of knowledge). Berkouwer thinks they are, and he defends this claim against the interpretation of Vatican I by the nouvels théologiens, in particular, Balthasar. Berkouwer also objects to the idea that natural theology is an independent source of knowledge and traces it back to a problematic understanding of the relationship between nature and grace, the order of creation and salvation, and epistemologically, the problem of faith and reason. Vatican I mapped the fields of natural and revealed knowledge of God onto the realms of nature and grace and their corresponding epistemic principles

71 As we shall see later, Pius XII argues the same point in Humani Generis (1950). 72 On the role of natural theology as well as arguments to establish the credibility of special revelation, see Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, Translated by Dom Justin McCann, O.S.B. (Steubenville, Ohio: Franciscan University Press, 1996 [1929]), 159–160: “As the Church affirms man’s sensible nature, so does she also affirm and lay hold of his spiritual nature, and especially human reason. She aims deliberately at conquering the world of the mind. Her whole theology, from the apologists and the schools of Alexandria and Antioch through early and late Scholasticism down to our own day [1924], is dominated by confidence in the illuminating power of reason. Her conception of faith presupposes that human reason can of itself recognize the so-called praeambula fidei, i.e., the spirituality of the human soul and the existence of God—realities which transcend sensible experience—and that reason can establish the credibility of revelation on historical and philosophical grounds. . . . Whenever men have doubted or denied the capacity of the human mind to transcend the limits of experience, wherever they have attempted to paralyze or kill man’s profound yearning for absolute truth, then the Church has come forward in defense of reason, whether against Averroes and Luther or against Kant.” Pace Berkouwer, there are no signs of “profound tensions” (AO, 67 [82]) in Adam’s thought between his view of natural theology and the natural theology of Rome.



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of reason and faith, which expresses a “duplex ordo cognitionis.”73 There is a “twofold order of knowledge distinct both in principle and also in object,” according to the dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council (1870) on the Catholic faith, Dei Filius.74 The Council Fathers add, “in principle, because our knowledge in the one is by natural reason, and in the other by divine faith; in object, because, besides those things to which natural reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries hidden in God, which, unless divinely revealed cannot be known.” Implied in the relation between faith and reason is the Church’s understanding of the relation between grace and nature. Nature and Grace There is a widely-held view—Karl Rahner called it the “text-book conception”75—that much of post-Tridentine neo-scholastic theology was dominated by an exaggerated distinction, indeed, a dichotomy, between nature and grace, the natural and the supernatural, leading to a ‘twostorey’ or ‘two-tier’ view of reality, a duplex ordo. On this view, the two realms, a complete, self-enclosed, self-sufficient, autonomous ‘natural’ world at the bottom and an added ‘supernatural’ world at the top, a donum superadditum, a ‘plus factor,’ are extrinsically related to one another. These levels were first distinguished, partly, in response to the tendency of the Protestant Reformers to see human nature as totally corrupt after the fall into sin. This tendency was opposed by Catholics: they affirm the goodness of creation. That is, notwithstanding the serious damage by sin upon human nature’s powers, and thus its activities, its deepest foundation—its nature—is still what God made it. This distinction eventually hardened, however, into a separation between those levels. On this conception, the order of nature is seen as self-sufficient, autonomous, and a presupposition of grace. For our purpose here, the upshot of this separation is that

73 Sources of Catholic Dogma, 446–447. Heinrich Niebecker calls this twofold order of knowledge “das erste grosze Wesensgesetz des katholischen Offenbarungsbegriffs” [the first great essential law of the Catholic notion of revelation] (cited by Berkouwer, AO, 49n4). 74 Vatican I, Constitutio dogmatica “Dei Filius” de fide Catholica, Chapter IV, “On Faith and Reason.” 75 Karl Rahner, S.J., Theological Investigations, Vol. I, Translated with an Introduction by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961 [1954]), 298. See also, Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, & Contemporary Protestant Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985).

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the ‘autonomy of reason’ within the order of nature is taken to be a basic assumption of Roman Catholic thought. Therefore, the dualism between nature and grace had an impact upon how natural theology came to be understood, contributing to its rise as an autonomous discipline, and hence to the image of it being rooted in a rationalistic conception of human reason. Here, too, there is a widelyheld view that regards the realm of nature to be self-contained and the practice of natural theology to be world-immanent, with the powers, and thus activities, of human reason in that practice taken to be essentially self-sufficient, religiously neutral, unaffected by sin, the ultimate authority in the realm of nature, and reaching for knowledge of God apart from grace and revelation. Here we have the essence of Catholic rationalism. Neo-Calvinist critics, like Bavinck, of the dualistic construal of the nature/ grace relation in Catholic thought, then, charge understandably: “If for a moment you abstract from the supernatural order which Catholicism has built up around the natural order, then you will have nothing left but pure rationalism, genuine Pelagianism, and unadulterated deism.”76 Allegedly, Catholics are rationalists because reason is taken by them to be autonomous; pelagians because they assume that the sinner can free himself by his own rational powers from the rejection of God; and deists because the Catholic concept of God is of a God too abstract and too impersonal to be the God of biblical revelation. Of particular importance here for understanding the rationalistic interpretation of natural theology is the assumption that “truth or reality ought to be accessible irrespective of the character and state of mind of the aspirant to truth.”77 In other words, “that is an assumption of modern scientific inquiry—that the truth is simply available for discovery, given sufficient ingenuity and the careful application of the appropriate techniques, and that the dispositions and moral character of the inquirer are entirely irrelevant.”78 Consequently, the practice of natural theology seems

76 Bavinck, “Common Grace,” 47. “Common Grace” is a translation by Raymond C. Van Leeuwen of Bavinck’s rectorial address at Kampen Theological Seminary, Netherlands, in December 1894. For an extensive analysis and critique of Bavinck’s views on Catholicism, see my book, Dialogue of Love: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic Ecumenist, 181–241. 77 John Cottingham, The Spiritual Dimension, Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 139. Cottingham’s description of this assumption is pertinent to the rebuttal of Catholic rationalism and a corresponding view of reason’s autonomy within the order of nature. 78 Cottingham, The Spiritual Dimension, Religion, Philosophy and Human Value, 139 (italics added).



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to function under presuppositions that are inconsistent with the idea of not only general revelation—as Scheler and Adam argued—but but also special revelation, in particular faith’s illuminating role. It not only takes on the shape of an autonomous theology but also general revelation and natural theology are identified as one and the same, with the latter being taken to be necessary in order to justify the rationality of theistic belief.79 I agree with Gilson that there is some warrant for this interpretation given the way that some Catholics—indeed, some Protestants as well80— have expressed themselves. “If reformed dogmatic theology believes itself authorized in criticizing what it calls Catholic rationalism, it is perhaps because certain Catholics express themselves as though the science of the preambles of faith, namely, natural theology, under the pretext that it is essentially rational, were a religiously neutral domain, wherein Revelation exercises no positive and direct influence.”81 These Catholic rationalists— neo-scholastics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—who held that the unaided reason of natural theology could reason about God of course did not subscribe to a notion of “absolute reason” that “refuses all revelation, as of set purpose.”82 In other words, they were not “pure rationalists.” “While the pure rationalist puts philosophy [and hence reason] in the highest place, and identifies it with wisdom, the neo-scholastic subordinates it to theology which alone, as he holds, fully deserves that name.”83 Still, the neo-scholastics subscribed to a notion of “ ‘pure reason’, beloved of rationalism, [which] belongs only with a state of pure nature.”84 The notion of ‘pure nature’ prescinds from all concrete conditions and circumstances under which human reason actually functions. Gilson correctly notes that even though these neo-scholastics subordinate philosophical reason to theology, divine wisdom, as it were, in their view “philosophy [and hence reason] remains precisely of the same nature as any other that recognizes no Wisdom higher than itself?”85 But this means that neo-scholastics do not recognize in the order of nature, as Vatican I stated, that “created reason is wholly subordinate to uncreated Truth,” 79 For an instructive account of how this historically came about, see Dupré, Passage to Modernity, 178–181. 80 Sudduth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 55–56. 81 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 59. 82 Aidan Nichols, O.P., Epiphany: A Theological Introduction to Catholicism (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996), 10. 83 Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, 4. 84 Nichols, Epiphany, 10. 85 Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, 4.

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even in the natural activity of human reason. On this view, human reason is autonomous, self-sufficient, and the ultimate authority in the order of nature, which is precisely what Reformed critics, such as Berkouwer, repudiate. Catholic critics of the neo-scholastic conception of human reason, such as Gilson, Maritain, Balthasar, Ratzinger, Nichols, et al., argue that—in Nichols’ words—the “state of pure nature . . . has never, in the concrete, existed.”86 As I understand these critics, “pure reason” does not, concretely, exist because the natural reasoning of actual human beings is a religious act, as it were, being already directed in the actual conditions of fact under which it operates by the central disposition of the heart, whether fallen or renewed, either for or against God. Indeed, these critics subscribe to a notion of “natural reason,” according to Nichols, which “remains open and disponsible where revelation is concerned: it is able to enter into a relation with some historically realized situation of [humanity], whether fallen or redeemed.”87 Nichols view, then, is, that men seek a natural knowledge of God in the actual conditions in which they have already made a choice either for or against God, and hence they are in either a state of grace or of sin. This, too, is Balthasar’s view: “The outlook of his reason will not be the outlook of a ratio pura but of a reason that already stands within the teleology of faith or unbelief.”88 This view is consistent with Vatican I as long as one affirms at the same time that we can have certain knowledge of God by the natural light of reason. “[A]ccording to Vatican I,” argues Balthasar, “all natural knowledge of God occurs de facto within the positive and negative conditions of the supernatural order. Thomas Aquinas was of the opinion that in corresponding to the fact that man possesses only one single supernatural goal, every 86 Nichols, Epiphany, 10. Ratzinger writes, “For human reason is not autonomous at all. It is always living in one historical context or other. Any historical context, as we shall see, distorts the vision of reason; that is why reason needs the help of history in order to overcome these historical limitations. It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any faith, has failed; and it cannot be otherwise for any such attempts to do that kind of thing. . . . Faith, as a historical instrument, can set reason itself free again, so that—now that faith has set it on the right path again—reason can once more see properly for itself ” (Joseph Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI, Truth and Tolerance, Christian Belief and World Religions, Translated by Henry Taylor [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004], 136). It remains to consider how Ratzinger’s view is consistent with Vatican I—this, too, is Berkouwer’s question, which we shall consider in the next chapter. 87 Nichols, Epiphany, 10. 88 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 280.



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human being who had reached the age of reason must make a choice either for or against the God of grace.”89 In other words, man himself within the actual history of salvation is always de facto the man who has either turned away from God in sin or turned toward God in the light of grace and faith.90 This turn toward God always occurs with his prevenient grace, or, in the words of Vatican I: “For the most merciful Lord stirs up those who go astray and helps them by his grace so that they may come to the knowledge of the truth [see 1 Tim 2:4]; and also confirms by his grace those whom he has translated into his admirable light [cf. 1 Pet 2:9; Col 1:13], so that they may persevere in this light.”91 Still, on this view, the natural capacity of human reason to grasp, in some degree, the truth about God continues to function because “the intellectual character of [natural reason] or the clear evidence it perceives” has not been called into question by being called to total submission to the Creator and Lord.92 Rather than destroy or turn human nature and hence human reasoning into its opposite, grace transforms it by calling “on reason to fulfill the most natural aspects of its identity.”93 Grace restores nature rather than replace it. Berkouwer regards this interpretation of natural reason, which is influenced by the nouvelle théologie, to be an advance over the neo-scholastic view, but he argues that it is inconsistent with Vatican I’s decree, which speaks of a ‘duplex ordo cognitionis,’ distinguishing the source and object of knowledge pertaining to faith and reason. We’ll return to this point in the next chapter. Of course Berkouwer also rightly acknowledges—as does Gilson—that affirming the legitimacy of natural theology does not imply a rationalistic limitation of the knowledge of divine revelation, as if all knowledge of 89 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 307. 90 Aquinas claims that the age of discretion, when man has the use of reason, “is the time when man is bound by God’s affirmative precept, which the Lord expressed by saying (Zech 1:3): ‘Turn ye to Me . . . and I will turn to you’ ” (Summa Theologiae, I–II q. 89 a. 6). See also, Jean Mouroux, From Baptism to the Act of Faith, Translation by Sr. M. Elizabeth, I.H.M. and Sr. M. Johnice, I.H.M. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1964 [1953]): “‘Age of reason’ does not necessarily mean speculative clarity, nor correct construction of concepts, nor clear synthesis of judgment; but rather, possibility of an act of love and adoration. . . . The age of reason, then, is that wherein the child becomes personally capable: (1) of moral and religious discernment; (2) of free choice between good and evil, hence of perfect charity or of mortal sin; (3) of love and adoration of Christ in the Eucharist. The age of reason is, then, the age of personal entry into the mystery of love” (36–37). 91 Vatican Council 1, 1869–1870, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Chapter 3, On Faith. 92 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311. 93 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311, and 307.

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God can be traced back to its source in reason’s natural capacities; alternatively put, as if all knowledge to count as knowledge, including faith’s knowledge of God, must derive its justification from beliefs that are evident to the senses, incorrigible, or self-evident. Vatican I affirmed that the true God, the principle and end of all things, can be known, though incompletely, with certainty by natural reason. What the council did not claim “is that natural reason suffices to know with full certainty: (1) the unity of God; (2) the true nature of God; (3) the mystery of creation in its true sense, that is: ex nihilo.”94 Instead, the council taught that there exists knowledge of God that is proper to faith, having its own internal theological rationality. This is Aquinas’ view as well as Vatican I and II, and the view of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.95 But Berkouwer is unpersuaded that even this acknowledgment of the internal rationality of faith’s knowledge of God excludes the autonomy of human reason in the realm of nature, or in its own right; instead, it just means that reason isn’t as such closed to divine revelation or autonomous in the realm of grace and revelation, because there are revealed truths wholly surpassing the capacity of human reason to grasp on its own. Autonomous Reason? Yet, we shall need to consider whether Berkouwer does justice to the Church’s critique of autonomous reason even in the realm of nature. Isn’t human reason “addressed and challenged to its very roots,” as Balthasar asks?96 Berkouwer must know that Pius IX Syllabus of Errors of 1846 clearly condemned rationalism: “All truths of religion flow from the natural power of human reason; hence, reason is the chief norm by which man can and should come to knowledge of all truths of whatever kind.”97 Moreover, Vatican I rejected the idea, as Balthasar puts it, that “knowledge in its ultimate identity is [a] mere world-immanent and exclusively theoretical happening that could be disengaged from the commitment of the will and the whole person.”98 A “world-immanent happening” means man’s cognitive capacities are self-sufficient such that he purports to know the truth without reference to the knowledge of God. An “exclusively theoretical

94 J.M.A. Vacant, Études théologiques sur les constitutions du Concile du Vatican, Two volumes (1895), I, 308–309, as cited in Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 312. 95 St. Thomas Aquinas, Vatican I, John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 8, and Benedict XVI. 96 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311. 97 Sources of Catholic Dogma, 435, Syllabus, no. 4. 98 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311.



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happening” suggests intellectualism—“a purely cognitive recognition of certain theological facts that fails to affect existentially one’s innermost spiritual life.”99 But both these views are rejected by Vatican I: “Since man depends totally on God as his Creator and Lord, and created reason is completely subject to uncreated Truth, we are obliged to yield to God the revealer full submission of intellect and will by faith.”100 What, then, is the relation between the intellect and the will in the act of faith is a question that we’ll return to in the next chapter. For now, it is important to note that the role of the will is not to fill in for the incapacity of the intellect to acquire knowledge about God. That the act of faith involves both intellect and will, as Balthasar rightly remarks about Vatican I, “does not in any way, of course, call into question the intellectual character of this act or the clear evidence it perceives.”101 Yes, as I said above, Berkouwer recognizes that Catholicism rejects a notion of ‘absolute reason.’ Nevertheless, he holds that the charge of rationalism is warranted because Rome defends the claim, according to him, that reason left completely to itself, unaided reason, in its own domain has the power to attain knowledge of God mediated by creation.102 I’ve already argued above against the neo-scholastic notion of pure reason and the corresponding notion of pure nature. I opted, along with critics of neo-scholastics, for a notion of natural reason. Still, the point of fundamental difference between Rome and the Reformation remains because these critics still hold that “the natural capacity of a human being to know   99 Douglas Groothuis, “Do Theistic Proofs Prove the Wrong God,” in Christian Scholar’s Review, No. 2, (Winter 1999), 247–259, and for this quote, 258. Online: http://winsomemedia .org/groothuis%20theistic%20proofs.htm. 100 Vatican I, Dei Filius, Chapter 3, On Faith; italics added. William Brownsberger correctly notes: “Both will and intellect suffer the consequences of the fall: they cooperate in sin and both are distanced from God. Intellect and will together, then, must not only be the subject of salvation, but also the media through which healing passes even to the level of human affectivity” (“The Authority of God and the Act of Faith,” in Irish Theological Quarterly, 73 (2008): 148–163, and for this quote, 153). On the rejection of intellectualism, see John Pau II, Fides et Ratio, “By faith, men and women give their assent to this divine testimony. This means that they acknowledge fully and integrally the truth of what is revealed, because it is God himself who is the guarantor of that truth. They can make no claim upon this truth which comes to them as gift and which, set within the context of interpersonal communication, urges reason to be open to it and to embrace its profound meaning. This is why the Church has always considered the act of entrusting oneself to God to be a moment of fundament decision which engages the whole person. In that act, the intellect and the will display their spiritual nature, enabling the subject to act in a way which realizes personal freedom to the full” (no. 13). 101  Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311. 102 Berkouwer, “General and Special Divine Revelation,” 17.

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God continues to function.” Berkouwer identifies this claim as a point of conflict between Rome and the Reformation: Reformation thought . . . took a critical stance toward the proofs of the existence of God in Roman Catholic theology. These proofs prompted the impression that isolated human reason must lead to the conclusion of the existence of God. But such isolation is impractical and impossible because man’s thinking exists and functions only in relationship to the whole man. In this totality the matter of human decision falls within the realm of the heart and of faith.103

To make Berkouwer’s objection more precise: it is a point of difference over anthropology. As he puts it, “It is clear that a specific anthropology is involved here, an anthropology or view of man, which lifts the socalled rational soul out of the sin-depraved life of man, and then by way of this non-corrupt reason considers man capable of true knowledge of God” (AO, 53 [67]). In other words, Berkouwer takes Rome’s natural theology to presuppose a notion of ‘pure reason,’ which is essential to an anthropology—man as ‘rational animal’—in which the primacy of the autonomous intellect is affirmed, unaffected by sin, and hence in a state of ‘pure nature,’ which even if open to revelation, does not need grace in order to come to a true knowledge of God. Behind this anthropology is an understanding of the relation between nature and grace in which the fall into sin “wounded human nature by the loss of special supernatural gifts, but the . . . ability of human reason was neither destroyed nor disturbed, so that reason can still reach God. The nature of the intellect remained intact and so in a certain sense human nature is still open for the knowledge of God. Reason operates in the world of created reality and arrives thus at true, though incomplete, knowledge of God. That reason can accomplish that much is due to its structure” (AO, 53 [67]). The heart, then, of Berkouwer’s critique of this anthropology is that “We never encounter such a man—man-as-reason, or however he is distinguished from the animals—in Scripture.” Berkouwer explains: Indeed, if we follow Scripture, we must say that neither man-as-essentiallyreason (or some similar definition) nor man’s nature-as-essentially-rational really exists at all. If man is defined in such a way—and it is sometimes done for apologetic reasons—man’s relation to God can only be described as something which presupposes man and man’s nature as already defined

103 Berkouwer, “General and Special Divine Revelation,” 17.



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entities, basically isolated actualities. If is true that the relation to God is essential in the definition of man, then all such “neutral” or “non-religious” definitions of man-in-himself can throw no light at all on the true nature of man.104

It isn’t at all clear why Berkouwer holds that theistic proofs are unavailable if knowing is an act of the whole man (which it surely is) and not only of the mind. Why can’t the whole man exercise his powers of reasoning to construct a valid argument to the existence of God? Furthermore, Berkouwer dismisses theistic proofs because “in general [they] have wielded little influence. For they stand—especially in our times—in the shadow of a great many ‘proofs’ against the existence of God.” But this objection says nothing about their intrinsic validity. In addition, what anti-theistic ‘proofs’? Unfortunately, Berkouwer doesn’t say. Moreover, Berkouwer adds, “that God can be proved as the first cause or prime move of all things finds less agreement these days among men. Even in Roman Catholic circles some voices say that the Roman Catholic proofs mean little or nothing for those who do not already believe. And in our times, in opposition to the proofs for the existence of God, a deep agnosticism elaborates the conviction of the absence of God; no longer recognizing the world as purposeful, this agnosticism abandons it to senselessness and absurdity and sees the existence of man in the world as a meaningless and purposeless jest.”105 Here Berkouwer’s objection to theistic arguments does not challenge their validity but remarks upon the fact that they have been unconvincing. He doesn’t say why.106 Berkouwer’s insouciance regarding either the availability of arguments for God’s existence or their lack of cogency, and thus his apparent indifference to support the rationality of theistic belief, is troubling because it may lead some to conclude that the source of unbelief is not only our sinfulness but also our intellectual incapacity.107

104 Berkouwer, De Mens Het Beeld Gods (Kampen: Kok, 1957), 31–32. ET: Man: The Image of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1962), 34–35. 105 Berkouwer, “General and Special Divine Revelation,” 17. 106 Hans Urs von Balthasar attempts an answer to the question that Berkouwer leaves unanswered: “In a world that no longer has enough confidence in itself to affirm the beautiful, the proofs of the truth have lost their cogency. In other words, syllogisms may still dutifully clatter away like rotary presses or computers which infallibly spew out an exact number of answers by the minute. But the logic of these answers is itself a mechanism which no longer captivates anyone” (The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics [T & T Clark, 1985 (1961)], volume I, 19). 107 On this point, see Terence Penelhum, “Revelation and Philosophy,” 67–86. Berkouwer’s lack of epistemological self-confidence in theistic arguments a half-a-century ago has

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This conclusion might suggest that “man could by nature be an atheist and the act of faith could in itself be neither reasonable nor shown to be reasonable.”108 It is also worth noting at this point that his indifference to the availability of such arguments undergoes a radical change after Vatican II, some 25 years later. Unacceptable to Berkouwer is the view that has the Christian retreating to his commitment when confronted with the responsibility of giving a reason for the hope that is within him (1 Peter 3:15). In other words, it is unacceptable to claim that “faith is a personal matter, a conviction not given to rational argument and can only be witnessed to.”109 He adds, “With this, the problem of communication is put on the agenda: Is faith an irrational and esoteric mystery that has no point of contact with the other person? Can we only witness to our faith? Or is there within human thought a possibility for real and mutually understood dialogue?”110 That is, given sharp and widespread criticism of Christian faith, Berkouwer explains, “We may feel compelled to ask whether there are not indications in the world of thought available to all that while not having the cogency of proof, do form ‘indicators’ of the possibility at least, and perhaps the reasonableness as well, of faith.”111 Even earlier, Berkouwer surprises us, “It has been pointed out that the decision for or against the truth reaches deeper than human thought. However, it would be incorrect to look at the questions about verification exclusively from this angle. There is a kind of apology [1 Peter 3:15] that is aware of the problematic of the heart and is nevertheless connected to a penetrating persuasion.”112 These claims reflect nothing less than a complete turnabout in understanding. I’ll return to this matter later in the next chapter.

been replaced with a modest confidence in the availability of arguments for defending the rationality of theism. On this point, see William Lane Craig who has recently written: “The renaissance of Christian philosophy has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in natural theology, that branch of theology that seeks to prove God’s existence apart from divine revelation. The goal of natural theology is to justify a broadly theistic worldview, one that is common among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and deists. While few would call them compelling proofs, all of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, not to mention some creative new arguments, find articulate defenders today” (“God is Not Dead Yet, How Current Philosophers Argue for His Existence”). 108 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 320. 109 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 205 [145]. 110 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 43 [35]. 111  Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 44 [35]. 112 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 43 [235].



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Is the Knowledge of God’s Existence by Natural Reason a Fact or Merely a Possibility? The second question I shall now address is whether it is a fact or merely a possibility that one acquires the knowledge of God’s existence by natural reason independently of special revelation? Making this distinction between fact and possibility allows us to see that Vatican I only made a de jure statement about acquiring knowledge of God by natural reason rather than a de facto statement. Why is this distinction important? The import of this distinction between possibility and fact offers a way of rejecting the autonomy objection, namely, the idea that natural theology is an autonomous system providing a rational foundation for revealed theology, indeed, for the Christian faith. But doesn’t rejecting the autonomy objection leave Catholics with the following conclusion. If is true that Vatican I was only making a de jure statement about acquiring the knowledge of God through the medium of created things, does that mean that this possibility never becomes de facto realized? If it never becomes actualized, then how can Vatican I be so certain that natural reason can deliver true knowledge of God, and even form the basis of natural theology, with the latter being a foundation for revealed knowledge? Berkouwer readily grants that Vatican I (1869–1870) and, later, Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Letter, Humani Generis, distinguish the possibility of acquiring knowledge of God by means of the light of natural reason from the fact of actually doing so.113 The question is whether Vatican I made merely a de jure statement about acquiring knowledge of God by natural reason—a statement about reason’s capacity—rather than a de facto

113 Aidan Nichols makes the same point: “Over against traditionalist fideism, as well as atheism, chapter II [of Vatican I’s Dei Filius] affirmed the human possibility of knowing by the natural light of reason some metaphysical truths such as the existence of God, but left open the question, Is the natural knowledge of God independently of all revelation a fact, or merely such a possibility” (From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 111). Francis Martin agrees with the distinction but comes down on the side of it being a de jure statement: “The texts of Vatican II [Dei Verbum, no. 6] as well as those of Vatican I [Dei Filius], had as their goal to defend the intrinsic ability of the mind to arrive at a knowledge of God. Their intent was to deny that the mind was so crippled that it had to rely on faith for certitude in religious and moral matters (fideism) and/or that all knowledge of God derives from a primitive revelation made to humanity and then subsequently obfuscated [traditionalism]. As we have seen, this was a de jure statement: The mind is capable of knowing God since creation is a revelation of God as the biblical tradition asserts. On the other hand, the de facto situation is that human beings need divine help in order to exploit the full potential of their mind” (“Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 233).

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statement about the concrete conditions in which man acquires such knowledge, leaving the latter open as to whether this capacity has always or ever been exercised. Catholic theologians, such as Balthasar, who was influenced by the nouvelle théologie, and Lonergan, argue that the Council asserts the former but not the latter. Balthasar, for one, argues: Now the views that Vatican I opposed were those of the theological rationalism of Hermes and Günther, the fideism of Bautain and the traditionalism of de Bonald. Now none of these positions was concerned with the question of the concept of nature as such, so that this question never came up in the Council’s deliberations. . . . Rationalists went overboard, [fideists and] traditionalists were minimalists, while Vatican I struck a moderate balance. . . . Fideist and traditionalists had predominantly argued from the concrete condition of human nature: fallen and crippled in its power and intellectual range. Against this concrete argumentation, the Council expressly refused to counter with a statement about concrete nature. Rather, its focus was on the natura absolute sumpta, that is, on nature as such, prescinding from all its concrete states.114

Now, three quarters of a century past, Jacques Maritain significantly remarked regarding the question of the relation of nature and grace that it is erroneous to ignore both the distinction between nature and grace as well as their union.115 In consequence, Balthasar adds to his remarks about the Council’s de jure statement that the orders of nature and grace were distinguished. Yet, regarding the question of their union, “nothing was said about the type, depth and duration of the connection between the two.”116 Rather, the Council held that the domain of nature “could still be found, in its essential structure, in all the concrete circumstances of nature. And finally, it was assumed that this domain possessed this crucial potentiality: it was able to touch the Absolute: God as the origin and end of created things. That and nothing else was the purpose of the decree.”117 Over against fideism and radical traditionalism, on the one side, and atheistic rationalism on the other, the Council affirmed the possibility of human reason to know something true of God independently of revelation. Radical traditionalism is a version of fideism because it denies

114 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 303. 115 Jacques Maritain states, “There is one error that consists in ignoring [the] distinction between nature and grace. There is another that consists in ignoring their union,” Clairvoyance de Rome (Paris, 1929), 222. Cited in Henri de Lubac, “Apologetics and Theology,” 103, n. 28. 116 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 304. 117 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 304.



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natural reason the power of acquiring by itself any metaphysical and moral truths whatsoever. Rather, it holds that “all metaphysical, moral and religious knowledge whatsoever derives from a primitive or natural revelation at the creation, which has been handed down from one generation to the next in an unbroken (if often threatened and corrupted) tradition.” “As Christians,” the traditionalists “emphasized the weakness and insufficiency of human reason, which they believed to be fallen and prone to sin. . . . They preferred to exalt the role of community and tradition in the discovery and transmission of truth.”118 In response, what the Council didn’t do was to make statements about concrete human nature and the relation of nature, sin and grace in the conditions of actual occurrence. On this matter, Balthasar makes four points: The Council did not touch upon the question of [1] whether nature in concreto was ever raised to another state, the supernatural one, or [2] whether there is within fallen nature an essential expression of nature that occurs without any relationship to supernatural grace, or [3] whether de facto, if not necessarily de jure, a moment of supernatural grace is not at work either internally or externally in all knowledge of God by the human race. . . . Nor finally [4] did the Council ever declare what number of human beings actually attained a true knowledge of God outside the revelation of God’s Word in the Old and New Covenants.119

Pared down for my purpose here, all the questions above ([1]–[4]) imply that the Council left open the core question regarding the relationship between nature and grace in the concrete order of fallen human nature, and, epistemologically, the corresponding problem of the relationship between faith and reason. “The Council refused to treat the utterly transformed conditions that obtain in nature because of its actual location in the supernatural realm—either positively or negatively.”120 In other words, the Council didn’t consider the effects of either grace and faith or sin and unbelief upon concrete human nature and man’s exercise of his reasoning powers. Balthasar’s closes this question by arguing for the priority of the one, supernatural telos for concrete human nature, namely, that there 118 Kerr, “Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” 220–221. 119 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 304, 306. Kerr agrees with Balthasar’s claim: “Thus it remained unsettled at Vatican I whether the natural light by which reason can attain knowledge of God should be equated with . . . the light in which someone in a state of grace might exercise his reasoning powers, or the light which someone might supposedly have independently of the effects of sin and grace” (“Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” 222). 120 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 306.

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has never been, in the concrete, a graceless nature; the historically realized situation of humanity is an order of grace and sin, within the history of redemption. Furthermore, there is no contradiction between inserting the capacity of natural human reason to know God within the concrete order of faith and revelation, or alternatively, the concrete order of sin and unbelief. In either case, Vatican I holds that natural reason possess a relative independence, a limited but legitimate integrity, in acquiring a natural knowledge of some truths about God. Says Balthasar, Nothing prevents the theologian from maintaining—not only for his own reason but also according to Vatican I—that all natural knowledge of God occurs de facto within the positive and negative conditions of the supernatural order. Thomas Aquinas was of the opinion that in corresponding to the fact that man possesses only one single supernatural goal, every human being who has reached the age of reason must make a choice either for or against the God of grace. And so man’s spiritual and intellectual life, as well as his every act of knowing God (which always includes within itself a moment of decision), will be embedded within a supernatural reality.121

Lonergan, for another, argues that the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius of Vatican I “asserted the possibility of certain knowledge [of God], certa cognosci posse.” He explains: Explicitly in the Acta [et decreta sacrorum Conciliorum recentiorum] there is envisaged not any quaestio facti but only a quaestio iuris. What is claimed is not fact but possibility. . . . It is not asserted that [the natural light of human reason] is sufficient for fallen man to come to certain knowledge of God; on the contrary, the words ad homine lapso once were in the decree and later were removed from it. Again, it is not asserted that man without some tradition can reach the full development of his rational powers and so come to certain knowledge of God; on the contrary, that was the doctrine of the so-called moderate traditionalism. What was condemned was an outright traditionalism that flatly denied the possibility of the light of reason reaching certain knowledge of God.122

In addition to making the point that Vatican I only made a de jure statement rather than a de facto statement about acquiring knowledge of God by natural reason, Lonergan makes the extremely clarifying point that the council did not assert that man could reach the full potential of his natural reason without some tradition, indeed, as he says elsewhere, without the

121 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 307. 122 Lonergan, “Natural Knowledge of God,” 117–118, 133; idem, Method in Theology, 338–339.



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assistance of grace. Yes, the council did assert that natural reason possessed the intrinsic ability to arrive at knowledge of God, meaning thereby some truths about him. But what the council did not claim is that man’s de facto situation is such that he did not need divine assistance in order to reach the full potential on his natural reason regarding the natural knowledge of God. In short, the council did not claim “that natural reason suffices to know with full certainty: (1) the unity of God; (2) the true nature of God; (3) the mystery of creation in its true sense, that is: ex nihilo.”123 Elsewhere Lonergan writes about what is entailed by the quaestio iuris: One misinterprets Vatican I if one fancies it is speaking, not about a quaestio iuris, but about a quaestio facti. The quaestio iuris is (1) whether there exists a valid argument for God’s existence and (2) whether the apprehension of that argument is an actus supernaturalis quoad substantiam. Natural knowledge of God is denied if one holds that there is no valid argument or if one holds that apprehending the argument is an intrinsically supernatural act. Natural knowledge of God is affirmed if one holds that there is a valid argument and one holds that apprehending the argument is intrinsically natural.124

Lonergan then follows up this explication of the quaestio iuris by considering some of the conditions of actual occurrence making the concrete individual capable of grasping moral and religious truth. In other words, in the shift from the quaestio iuris to the quaestio facti, from conditions of possibility to conditions of actual occurrence, we cannot disregard the very conditions of objective truth’s emergence. Lonergan explains: “Such conditions are always very numerous. In the present instance men must exist.” Without human beings, in other words, there would not be knowers of the truth. But the conditions of actual occurrence are more concrete. “They must be healthy and enjoy considerable leisure. They must have attained a sufficient differentiation of consciousness to think philosophically. They must have succeeded in avoiding all of the pitfalls in which so many great philosophers have become entrapped. They must resist their personal evil tendencies and not be seduced by the bad examples of others. Such are just a few very general conditions of someone actually grasping a valid argument for God’s existence.”125 Of course these are all natural conditions of actual occurrence. But reaching the full potential of 123 J.M.A. Vacant, Études théologiques sur les constitutions du Concile du Vatican, Two volumes (1895), I, 308–309, as cited in Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 312. 124 Lonergan, “Natural Knowledge of God,” 133. 125 Lonergan, “Natural Knowledge of God,” 133.

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natural reason acquiring the truth about God, Lonergan adds, does not occur without God’s grace. “I do not think that in this life people arrive at natural knowledge of God without God’s grace, but what I do not doubt is that the knowledge they so attain is natural.”126 In other words, the act of knowing God is intrinsically natural, though grace properly orders natural reason from within “to fulfill the most natural aspects of its identity.”127 Again, grace restores nature, rather than replace it with a donum superadditum, so that natural human reason can realize its fullest potential, its divinely appointed end, one might say, to know God, even in the realm of creation. In short, special revelation comes not to repudiate natural reason but to perfect it. More extensively than Lonergan, Balthasar establishes a basis in the records128 of Vatican I in the Acta for his interpretation that “the Council decided the de jure question” but “clearly left the de facto question open.”129 Some Council Fathers even suggested that the de jure statement be completed with a complementary de facto statement: “Whoever denies that human reason as it now is can know God from the things he had made by its own rational light, let him be anathema.”130 But this suggestion was 126 Lonergan, “Natural Knowledge of God,” 133. 127 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311. 128 The Acta et decreta sacrorum Conciliorum recentiorum (1789–1870) are found in the Collectio Lacensis (1870), edited by Theodor Granderath, S.J. (1839–1902), expositor of Vatican I proceedings. On the issue that the Council decided the de jure question but left open the de facto question, here are some samples of recorded statements at the Council. 1) “The Council teaches the possibility but not the fact of a supernatural knowledge of God.” 2) “The issue at stake and what the statement is saying directly concerns the faculty of reason: it says that the objective revelation of God to creatures is suited to the constitution of human reason. Human creatures possess the means to recognize God based on this revelation” (Annotation 6 to the Schema). 3) “In order to keep itself outside of every concrete, historical way of looking at things, the Council distanced itself with great care from every statement that could be applied, not to man in general, but to some actual human being in a specific state, whether that state be real or hypothetical.” In response to the objections of some of the Council Father who “would have preferred to see it verified in the concrete order and held out for a statement corresponding to revelation about man as he actually exists,” [Bishop Vincent] Gasser stated, 4) “It seems to me that the honored Father who has raised this objection has confused two things that should not be confused: the principia rationis and the exercitium rationis. We are speaking here only of the principle of reason and assert that God can be known with certainty through these principles, however the case may be in the de facto exercise of that faculty” (as cited by Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 304–305). 129 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 302–309. See also, Lonergan, “Natural Knowledge of God,” 117–133; idem., Philosophy of God, and Theology, 51, and Method in Theology, 339. Last, see Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik, 164–169, whom Balthasar cites extensively, Theology of Karl Barth, 307–308. 130 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 304.



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resisted, not because a de facto possibility of natural reason reaching certain knowledge of God was denied by the Council. How could it be denied? The “absolute statement” entailed by de jure possibility “cannot be so abstract that it is not applicable in some way to concrete human nature. Otherwise it would no longer be absolute.”131 In the words of the Council Father: “A faculty that is never realized concretely in any act ought rather to be called an incapacity; indeed this incapacity is not just moral but physical [ontic].”132 The upshot is that “this conclusion should be denied,” according to Balthasar. He adds, “If the natural absolute sumpta really is the object of the statement, and not concrete nature, then the sentence is not only possible but necessary, ‘otherwise, honored Fathers, one would have to annihilate all the works of the Scholastics and the other theologians, each and every one of them’. Or, as another bishop pointed out, ‘One would have to remove every foundation from under the act of faith if one were to vote for the contrary statement (supported by the fideists and traditionalists)’.”133 Furthermore, leaving the de facto question open does not mean that the Council Fathers did not speak at all on the question of concrete human nature. Rather, they spoke with reserve and caution because it was understood “how difficult it is in practice to attain [certain knowledge of God] when reason is left completely to itself.”134 Hence, the import of the moral necessity of divine revelation, namely, “that those matters concerning God which are not of themselves beyond the scope of human reason, can, even in the present state of the human race, be known by everyone without difficulty, with firm certitude and with no intermingling of error.”135 Berkouwer acknowledges that Dei Filius presupposes this distinction between a quaestio iuris and a quaestio facti. But he disagrees with interpretations of this distinction like those of Balthasar and Lonergan because he argues that it is a revisionist interpretation of the Council that 131 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 305. 132 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 320. 133 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 320. 134 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 60. In this connection, Gilson cites Aquinas, who has written regarding these matters, “our researches easily lead us into error because of the weakness of our intellect. This is clearly shown by the example of the philosophers who, looking for the end of human life by following the path of reason, and failing to discover the way of attaining it, fell into so many and such abominable errors, contradicting one another so much that we can scarcely find two or three holding one opinion identical on every point in these matters, where we see even several peoples agree in the same opinion of faith” (In Boeth. De Trinitate, q. III, art. 1, ad 3m). 135 Vatican I, Dei Filius, Chapter 2, On revelation.

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is inconsistent with the Council’s own teaching on faith and reason. In other words, it is inconsistent with what Heinrich Niebecker calls “das erste grosze Wesensgesetz des katholischen Offenbarungsbegriffs” [the first great essential law of the Catholic notion of revelation], namely, the twofold order of knowledge, in the Council’s own words, a “duplex ordo cognitionis.”136 “There is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards its source, but also as regard its object. With regard to the source, we know at the one level by natural reason, at the other by divine faith. With regard to the object, besides those things which natural reason can attain, there are proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God which, unless they are divinely revealed are incapable of being known.”137 Berkouwer interprets this ‘duplex ordo cognitionis’ dualistically, dividing it into two self-contained parts, one natural, the other supernatural, externally juxtaposed, as Bavinck says.138 In Berkouwer’s view of the Council’s first principle regarding this twofold order of knowledge of faith and reason, then, human reason in the order of nature is taken to be a ‘pure reason’ even within the concrete conditions and circumstances of the human condition that inhibit the actual functioning of reason. This was Berkouwer’s judgment in 1951 study on general revelation and then again later in 1956 when contesting the interpretation of the nouvels théologiens, such as Balthasar, on a Catholic interpretation of Vatican I’s defense of the ‘duplex ordo cognitionis,’ which is an interpretation that distances itself from a neo-scholastic interpretation. I shall argue that Berkouwer is mistaken in his interpretation of Vatican I. His interpretation mistakenly takes the council to be subject both to the anthropological and autonomy objection. Berkouwer’s core argument is that the Council holds that despite these inhibiting factors and circumstances that get in reason’s way of properly functioning, the difficulty of natural reason’s proper functioning in order to attain knowledge of God is not inherent to reason itself and “is not found in the fact that the whole man is closed to God and his revelation.”139 Thus, reason is autonomous, self-sufficient in the order of nature, because the rational capacities of man are not subject to the noetic effects of sin, making for sinful knowers, requiring the healing of grace within the order of nature. Therefore, Berkouwer adds, “one can never see in the Vatican 136 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 1–4. 137 Vatican I, Dei Filius, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason. 138 Bavinck, “Common Grace,” 60. 139 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 14.



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Council an opening, a way that lends itself to approaching nature from grace. Furthermore: the principle structure of this twofold order of knowledge (‘duplex ordo cognitionis’) secures the different directions of faith and reason and therefore the structure of natural reason in its principled capacity and openness to the revelation of God is not affected by the morally necessary nature of God’s Word revelation, but despite this necessity remains the same.”140 In short, despite the moral necessity of divine revelation, human reason is still autonomous, self-sufficient, unaffected by sin, possessing ultimate authority in the order of nature, according to Berkouwer. What this means is that Berkouwer thinks that the council asserts that man can reach the full potential of natural reason within the order of nature without special revelation. I have been arguing against this interpretation with a little help from Balthasar and Lonergan. It is important to consider here, even if only briefly, Berkouwer’s rejection of the idea that human nature, even after the fall, and hence human reason possess a “principled capacity and openness to the revelation of God.” In his 1949 work on Catholicism, Conflict met Rome, Berkouwer critically discusses the view of Dutch Catholic theologian Jan C. Groot (1908–1994)141 who held that human nature remained intact even after the fall. Says Berkouwer, “It consists in the rational moral nature of man owing to which, even after the fall, man has retained a certain openness to God. There is no other possibility, according to Rome, for this is the basis of man’s susceptibility to the Word of God.” In sum, according to Groot, “Human nature should not be conceived as totally closed to God. . . . For this reason there must be a ‘positive point of contact’, a positive possibility on the ‘part of nature’.”142 The denial of this Catholic view, argued Groot, results in the separation of “nature from grace, not recognizing any point of contact, and making grace a new creation hovering in a vacuum.”143 On this view, grace replaces nature in us de novo; man is a new creation in that sense for there is nothing already existing in human nature, no previous analogies, to which the gospel might appeal. Groot aligns the Calvinist view, as he understands it, with Barth’s claim that “[Revelation] comes to us as a datum with no point of connection with any previous datum.”144 140 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 14. 141  Berkouwer engages Groot’s 1945 work on theological epistemology, Karl Barth en het theologische kenprobleem, in Conflict met Rome, 134–138 [99–102]. 142 Berkouwer, Conflict met Rome, 135 [99]. 143 Berkouwer, Conflict met Rome, 135 [100]. 144 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, 172–173, as cited in Horton, “Meeting a Stranger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” 339n17.

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In response to Groot, and to his charge that revelation must result in an overcoming of the order of creation such that it is replace altogether by something entirely new, Berkouwer defends the view that human nature is preserved even after the fall because of common grace—the latter is a kind of grace that restrains sin and evil from having its full way with the whole creation. He explicitly rejects the charge, which he associates with the early dialectical theology of Barth, “that faith is a donum superadditum, a donum novum in God’s hands, which remains external to concrete existence.”145 Barth’s view would make it difficult to account for faith as a human act.146 Thus, the substance of human nature, its deepest structure, in short, the order of creation, remains the same as God intended it even under the regime of sin. Rather than the structure of human nature having changed, needing to be replaced altogether by something entirely new, “a new world apart from human nature,” as Berkouwer describes this view, what has changed, according to Berkouwer is man’s direction. “Direction” here may also be referred to as “the order of sin and redemption.” Berkouwer explains: “The moment of ‘direction’, of the being directed of man in obedience or in apostasy, plays a decisive role . . . for the entire way of Reformed thought about man after the fall.” Significantly, Berkouwer adds, “That is why, without any supra-naturalistic exaggeration, and recognizing the universal revelation [in creation], Reformed theology could deny any positiveness and susceptibility in man in relation to the true God, and was able more than Rome to profess the absolute miracle of God’s grace and the opening of man’s heart by the Holy Spirit.”147 Elsewhere Berkouwer writes in the same vein, “Grace does not mean an ontological cutting-off of a part of human life.”148 Berkouwer is arguing here that grace doesn’t replace human nature altogether with something new

145 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 182 [175]. Similarly, Berkouwer already in his Vrije Universiteit dissertation, Geloof en Openbaring in de Nieuwere Duitsche Theologie (Utrecht: Kemink en Zoon, 1932), 104–133, 193–226, extensively criticizes early Barth’s conception of faith. Dooyeweerd aligns himself with Berkouwer’s criticism of early Barth’s dialectical theology and its corresponding conception of faith in De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, II, De Functioneele Zin-Structuur Der Tijdelijke Werkelijkheid and het Probleem der Kennis (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1935), 228–229. In the English Translation and Revised edition of this volume, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, II, The General Theory of the Modal Spheres, Translated by D.H. Freeman & H. De Jongste (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1953), Dooyeweerd gives a more extensive critique of the early Barthian conception of faith, 300–302. 146 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 187 [178]. 147 Berkouwer, Conflict met Rome, 137 [101]. 148 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 187–88 [179].



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but rather restores nature to fulfill its ordained ends. But this emphasis on structure—the order of creation—and direction—the order of sin and redemption—does not really get at the issue that divides Catholics and Reformed thinkers, like Berkouwer. We more properly get at the division between them with Berkouwer’s rejection of “all such notions as capacity, point of contact, susceptibility, fitness [that] in the Roman view have an ontological accent.” 149 By “ontological accent” Berkouwer means that, on the Roman Catholic view, man remains a human being such that he is responsible and addressable, in short, capax Dei, providing a point of contact—Anknüpfungspunkt—between the gospel and human nature, a natural access point of entry, which is the condition of the possibility of for the reception of revelation. For Berkouwer the ontological accent of these notions presupposes a relative optimism in a Catholic view of human nature, predisposing man favorably to God’s redemptive revelation. Now, Berkouwer counters Rome by arguing that the Reformation does not deny the goodness of creation. Does that mean to suggest, as Michael Horton claims, that “Reformed orthodoxy asserted that the natural capacity for God remains intact even after the fall [?]”150 Yes, in the sense that the order of creation, including that which makes man truly man, has not been lost or eradicated. Yet, Berkouwer adds, “reality created by God, man created by God, broke loose from God in his humanity. In consequence, he became a ‘closed’ reality, blind, obfuscated in his understanding, without God in the world, even hostile to him.”151 What this means is that what man last lost after the fall is his “moral capacity for God,” as Horton says.152 In short, “according to the Reformers the reality of human nature (preserved by God also after the fall) came into a total conflict with divine revelation and grace.” Man’s whole being has suffered misdirection is consequence of his being captive to sin. Thus, Berkouwer rejects Rome’s view, or at least the view he thinks Rome holds. “In the Reformed conception everything is concentrated on the ‘direction’ of the whole of life, namely, in man’s wandering away from God or going up to him. . . . It is not a question of a mere ‘capability of being addressed’ but the real issue

149 Berkouwer, Conflict met Rome, 137 [101]. 150 Michael S. Horton, “A Stony Jar: The Legacy of Karl Barth for Evangelical Theology,” in Engaging with Barth, 346–379, and for this quote, 354. 151 Berkouwer, Conflict met Rome, 139 [102]. 152 Horton, “A Stony Jar: The Legacy of Karl Barth for Evangelical Theology,” 354.

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is concerned with that which will be said to man (as man!).”153 Given the total scope of man’s fall, redemption is equally total in its scope, renewing and transforming man’s whole nature to fulfill his God-ordained ends. The question still remains whether Berkouwer has satisfactorily addressed the issue of the point of contact (Anknüpfungspunkt) for divine revelation, that is, the question regarding the condition of possibility for the reception of revelation.154 Distinguishing between structure and direction, or between natural and moral inability, avoids Groot’s charge that Reformed theologians, like Berkouwer, must regard grace as a reality that overwhelms nature, overcoming man’s natural capacities, being a donum novum. Yes, God’s grace renews the direction of the whole man’s existence, with his gracious initiative and activity having a priority given man’s incapacity to redeem himself; in this point Berkouwer is right. But he still leaves us wondering how that revelation is received, and what the conditions are for its reception by the receiver. I shall return to this question in the next chapter. Berkouwer argues that human reason remains autonomous in not only Dei Filius but also Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis. I shall now briefly consider this encyclical. On the one hand, as Pius states, “absolutely speaking, human reason by its own natural force and light can arrive at a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, Who by His providence watches over and governs the world, and also of the natural law, which the Creator has written in our hearts.” On the other hand, in human reason’s actual functioning “there are not a few obstacles to prevent reason from making efficient and fruitful use of its natural ability.”155 The pope adds, The truths that have to do with God and the relations between God and men, completely surpass the sensible order and demand self-surrender and self-abnegation in order to be put into practice and to influence practical life. Now the human intellect, in gaining the knowledge of such truths is hampered both by the activity of the senses and the imagination, and by evil passions arising from original sin.156

Pius here seems to be suggesting that human reason has the possibility of arriving at the knowledge of God that is only a quaestio iuris rather than

153 Berkouwer, Conflict met Rome, 137–138 [101–102]. 154 Berkouwer, Geloof en Openbaring, 218. 155 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 2. 156 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 2.



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a quaestio facti. If that is so, we can then readily understand why “Divine Revelation must be considered morally necessary so that those religious and moral truths which are not of their nature beyond the reach of reason in the present condition of the human race, may be known by all men readily with a firm certainty and with freedom from all error.”157 Pius’ point raises the question not only whether without the support of grace man in fact attains the knowledge of God with difficulty, but also what number of human beings actually attain a true knowledge of God outside the revelation of God’s Word in the Scriptures? In regard to the latter, then, both Vatican I and the encyclical emphasize, says Berkouwer, “the relative or moral necessity of divine supernatural revelation ‘even for the natural knowledge of God’ ” (AO, 51 [65]). In the concrete circumstances of man’s epistemic condition, he adds, “most men do not actually come to knowledge of God by means of a rational worldand-life view but by another way” (AO, 50 [64]). In the concrete conditions of life there are obstacles hampering human reason’s actual functioning, impeding its proper functioning so as to carry out its natural ability of grasping the truths about God mediated through creation. So another way was made available so that human reason could properly function so as to grasp the truth about God’s existence. That other way is the divine Word-revelation: our knowledge of God’s general revelation is the fruit of knowing the gospel. Therefore, the Fathers of Vatican I write, “It is indeed thanks to this divine revelation, that those matters concerning God which are not of themselves beyond the scope of human reason, can, even in the present state of the human race, be known by everyone without difficulty, with firm certitude and with no intermingling of error.”158 But this only makes divine revelation relatively necessary respecting divine truths that, in principle, do not exceed reason’s grasp. Such revelation makes it easier for human reason, in a concrete situation, as a de facto actuality, to acquire natural knowledge of God derived from the things that have been made. Yet, adds Berkouwer, “The natural light of reason in the present situation has nevertheless not been affected. . . . The restraining factors which make

157 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 3; italics added. 158 Sources of Catholic Dogma, 446. Nichols writes in the same vein: “Divine revelation is of great utility for helping people to know in a sufficiently exact fashion what it is in theory possible to know of the true God by dint of reason alone. The question whether human reason requires in this respect an education of a certain type for its own full development was left deliberately to one side” (From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 111–112).

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supernatural revelation relatively necessary are due to the circumstances, but not to the knowing agent, not to the power or ability of human reason itself. . . . The sharp lines [between faith and reason] appear blurred for a moment, but nevertheless they are maintained. Natural reason has the ability to know God” (AO, 52 [66]). This objection is consistently raised by Berkouwer. “The restraint does not appear because reason fails (in her posse) but due to extrinsic circumstances that exercise restraint and are capable of limiting normal functioning. People will in no way be able to be misled by Vatican [I] in concluding that reason itself is involved in this problematic.”159 In sum, these restraining factors are all, according to Berkouwer, extrinsic difficulties and hence do “not destroy the basic assertion of reason’s ability” (AO, 52 [66]). From remarks such as these, it is clear that Berkouwer will not be satisfied with anything less than a total condemnation of human reason, which entails natural reason’s intrinsically complete blindness to acquire a true knowledge of God, in whatever degree, ever since the fall. But Berkouwer’s view does less than justice to Pius’ view of natural reason. For Pius refers to the concrete situation in which we exist as fallen human beings and the noetic effects of original sin, which leaves the proper ordering of our intellectual powers to the truth in a precarious, confused, and disordered state. In this, Pius XII is echoing Aquinas who argues that the knowing powers of human reason suffer the wound of ignorance and is deprived of its direction toward truth; additionally, that the disordered state of our intellectual powers also affects “man’s desire to know the truth about creatures,” for he may wrongly desire to know the truth by not “referring his knowledge to its due end, namely, the knowledge of God.”160 Furthermore, according to Aquinas, a man may fail to know that something is true because human reason may be perverted. Indeed, he identifies five ways in which that may be the case: passion, evil habit, and evil disposition of nature, vicious custom, and evil persuasion.161 Corruption of reason by passion: Momentarily blinded by grief and rage, I unjustly strike the bearer of the news that my wife is deep in adultery with another man. Corruption of reason by evil habit: Little by little I get into the habit of using pornography or cutting corners on my taxes. At first my conscience bothers me, but eventually I can see nothing wrong with my 159 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 13. 160 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 85, a. 3, Resp., q. 109, a. 2, II-II, q. 167, a. 1, respectively. 161 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II q. 94, a. 4 and a. 6.



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behavior. Corruption of reason by evil disposition of nature: A defect in one of my chromosomes predisposes me to violence, abuse of alcohol or homosexual acts. Although I am still capable of restraint, it is more difficult for me than it might be for someone else. Corruption of reason by vicious custom: I have grown up among people who do not regard bribery as wrong, and so I take it for granted. Corruption of reason by evil persuasion: I use electronic tricks to make free long-distance telephone calls, justifying my behavior by the theory that I am merely exploiting the exploiters.162

Moreover, it is not as if Pius leaves the knowing subject out of account in arriving at the knowledge of God. He states that the aspirant to truth must exercise self-surrender and self-abnegation because the human intellect is hampered by, for example, evil passions arising from original sin, prejudice or passion or bad faith that fuels the resistance against the evidence. In particular, Pius also rejects the charge of intellectualism against Catholic philosophy “for regarding only the intellect in the process of cognition, while neglecting the function of the will and the emotions.”163 He dismisses this charge, “Never has Christian philosophy denied the usefulness and efficacy of good dispositions of soul for perceiving and embracing moral and religious truths. In fact, it has always taught that the lack of these dispositions of good will can be the reason why the intellect, influenced by the passions and evil inclinations, can be so obscured that it cannot see clearly.”164 Furthermore, Pius adds, looking back to Aquinas, “that the intellect can in some way perceive higher goods of the moral order, whether natural or supernatural, inasmuch as it experiences a certain ‘connaturality’ with those goods, whether this ‘connaturality’ be purely natural, or the result of grace; and it is clear how much even this somewhat obscure perception can help the reason in its investigations.”165 What is Berkouwer’s take on Pius’ argument regarding the role of the virtues and, indeed, of grace, transforming the concrete individual making him capable of grasping moral and religious truths? He recognizes that some interpreters of Humani Generis seize upon these paragraphs in the encyclical, attributing to them a shift in thinking about the autonomy of natural reason. “In this ‘connaturality’ as well as in the moral necessity of revelation of the Word-revelation in the Vatican Council [and Humani Generis] this interpretation sees an approach to 162 J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 72–73. 163 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 33. 164 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 33. 165 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 33; italics added.

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a new vision—not without continuity with the past—of the relation between nature and grace.”166 That is, nature is approached from grace with the latter interiorly transforming the aspirant to truth about God. Given the fundamental significance of the duplex ordo, with the distinctness of faith and reason as to their source and object, Berkouwer seriously contests whether this interpretation is consistent with Vatican I and Humani Generis.167 He acknowledges the importance that Pius grants to dispositions in properly ordering reason’s capacity to attain metaphysical and moral truths. “But at the same time we see,” he adds “that they assist reason, while precisely in this connection is maintained man’s capacity by the reasoning of his mind to distinguish with certainty what he needs to accept as true.”168 In other words, Berkouwer sees in Pius’ claim affirming the “validity of reason in the field of metaphysics” a rationalistic anthropology, namely, “the independence of the rational soul that in the abstract concludes from what is created that God exists.”169 He concludes, “Thus, there also doesn’t seem to be in the least in Humani Generis an acknowledgement of a fundamental structural change in anthropological thought on the basis of which one would be able to break through to a unified understanding of this new anthropology in which the priority of reason attempts to assert itself. By means of the duplex ordo of 1870, Humani Generis emphasizes even more the significance of natural knowledge.”170 Now, it is important to note that, according to Berkouwer’s interpretation, both in 1951 and 1956, neither the knowing agent nor the truthattaining capacity of human reason itself has been affected by the fall. This means that Vatican I and Humani Generis still hold the natural light of man’s reason to be sufficient for the post lapsum man to come to certain, though incomplete, knowledge of God. The view I have been defending here against Berkouwer’s interpretation is that natural reason may come to a certain, though incomplete, knowledge of God in the order of creation, without implying that post lapsum man can autonomously realize the full potential of his natural reason acquiring the knowledge of God within that order. Given that Berkouwer overlooks the distinction between, on the one hand, partial, incomplete, fragmented knowledge of God, given man’s fallen condition, and, on the other hand, the ability to 166 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 15. 167 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 34. 168 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 15. 169 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 17. 170 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 16.



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exercise the full potential of his mind to reach a knowledge of God, and the latter only with grace and special revelation, Berkouwer is unable to free his interpretation from not only the autonomy objection, but also the anthropological objection. In other words, he still claims that the council’s view is informed by an understanding of the relation between nature and grace in which the latter two are divided into two self-contained, externally juxtaposed, levels, one natural, the other supernatural. Berkouwer explains: “It is true that Rome admits that sin has wounded human nature by the loss of special supernatural gifts, but the . . . ability of human reason was neither destroyed nor disturbed, so that reason can still reach God. The nature of the intellect remained intact and so in a certain sense human nature is still open for the knowledge of God. Reason operates in the world of created reality and arrives thus, at true, though incomplete knowledge of God” (AO, 53 [67]; italics added). On the crucial matter, then, of man’s capacity for God, human beings are “capax Dei”—in a certain sense. Berkouwer is suggesting here that on the Catholic view human nature is not integrally wounded by sin: original sin did not have an impact on the whole of human nature. Rather, man was only deprived of certain “supernatural gifts proper to the state of adamic innocence.”171 But what if human nature is still “capax Dei” because “the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and [because] God never ceases to draw man to himself [?]”172 This way of putting it suggests that human nature is still “capax Dei” because of the priority of God’s gracious initiative and activity in never ceasing to draw man to himself. This way of putting it is not inconsistent with holding that man’s capacity to know the truth has been wounded by original sin. John Paul II explains, “As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is ‘a liar and the father of lies’ ( Jn 8:44), man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols (cf. 1 Thes 1:9), exchanging ‘the truth about God for a lie’ (Rom 1:25). Man’s capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened.” And yet, the pope adds, “no darkness of error or of sin can 171 On the contrary, Jacques Maritain writes, “The original sin, however, did not only deprive human nature of the supernatural gifts proper to the state of adamic innocence; it also wounded human nature. That is a theological datum on which St. Thomas lays particular stress. And these wounds of our nature are a reality always present in the human race” (On the Philosophy of History, Edited by Joseph W. Evans [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957], 80). 172 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 27; italics added.

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totally take away from man the light of God the Creator. In the depths of his heart there always remains a yearning for absolute truth and a thirst to attain full knowledge of it.”173 Berkouwer’s standard neo-Calvinist interpretation of Catholic thought raises the rejoinder, then, that wounded human nature does not merely suffer the loss of a supernatural addition to our natural human reason. Aquinas, for one, makes clear that original sin, which wounded human nature, involves the dissolution of a natural harmony pertaining to human nature that he also calls a “sickness of nature.” As he puts it, “original justice was taken away by the sin of the first parents. As a result all the powers of the soul are in a sense lacking the order proper to them, their natural order to virtue, and the deprivation is called the ‘wounding of nature’. . . . In so far as reason is deprived of its direction toward truth, we have the ‘wound of ignorance’.”174 Thus reason is, as Gilson puts it, “stripped of its disposition for truth.”175 It isn’t that wounded natural reason is as such unable to grasp certain truths about God after the fall; rather the necessity of divine revelation is justified by the “weakness of human reason which, left to itself, would inevitably become entangled in the grossest errors.”176 In conclusion, since the fall had an effect on the whole of human nature, including natural reason, the disagreement between the Catholic tradition and Berkouwer is not over whether human reason has been “wounded and weakened by sin,”177 but rather over the extent to which the wounds impair the whole of human nature and hence natural reason itself.

173 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, no. 1. The pope’s view seems consistent with Calvin’s: “Since reason, therefore, by which man distinguishes between good and evil, and by which he understands and judges, is a natural gift, it could not be completely wiped out; but it was partly weakened and partly corrupted, so that its misshapen ruins appear. John speaks in this sense: ‘The light still shines in the darkness, but the darkness comprehends it not’ [ John 1:5]. In these words both facts are clearly expressed. First, in man’s perverted and degenerate nature some sparks still gleam. These show him to be a rational being, differing from brute beats, because he is endowed with understanding. Yet, secondly, they show this light choked with dense ignorance, so that it cannot come forth effectively” (Institute of the Christian Religion, Bk. II, II, no. 12. 174 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 85, a. 3, Resp. St. Thomas describes the wound of human nature as a sickness in Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 82, a. 1, Resp. 175 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 80. 176 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 80. 177 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 51.



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Having Known God? We come now to the fundamental implication that results, according to Berkouwer, from Rome’s misconceived anthropology of how nature, sin and grace are related—man is a rational animal—, namely, the claim that fallen man can have in some sense true though incomplete knowledge of God is, according to Berkouwer, contrary to biblical teaching: the “real Pauline doctrine is that the [unregenerate] do not know God at all” (AO, 109 [139]). But this claim surely raises the question: if unregenerate man is so fallen and estranged from God that he cannot have any true knowledge at all of God, then how can God’s wrath be justified without this knowledge? Isn’t this the knowledge that renders man without excuse? Doesn’t he need to recognize sufficiently the truth about God in order to suppress it?178 Isn’t that what St. Paul implies, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom 1:21). Don’t we need to distinguish between knowing God and acknowledging him? Isn’t St. Paul drawing on this distinction when speaking of those who “having known God, do not glorify him as God,” that is, do not acknowledge him as God? Doesn’t the failure to acknowledge him “arise because of man’s freedom to make something from the created world into a god [?] But man does that precisely in the knowledge of what is meant by God.”179 Without that knowledge surely St. Paul’s teaching regarding divine wrath is nullified?180

178 Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 205–247, and for this point, 219. 179 Eric Przywara, Analogia entis, I, 80, as cited by Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 319. 180 On this connection, see Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 41: “The first part of verse 21 is causally related to the last clause in verse 20 and gives the reason why those concerned are without excuse—they are without excuse ‘on this account that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks’. The knowledge of God must in this context be the knowledge derived from the manifestation given in the visible creation. It is of this manifestation the apostle is speaking and it is this manifestation that is stated in verse 20 to leave men without excuse. Therefore the cognitive perception elicited from the manifestation of God’s glory in the visible creation is spoken of an ‘knowing God’. The inexcusableness resides in the fact that being is possession of this knowledge they possessed ought to have constrained.” Murray’s exegesis is shared by more recent commentaries, Catholic and Protestant alike. For the former, see Byrne, Romans, 66–67. For the latter, see Schreiner, Romans, 85–86. See also, Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, “Every person is ‘without excuse’ because every person—whether a first-century pagan or a twentieth-century materialist—has been given a knowledge of God and has spurned that knowledge in favor of idolatry, in all its varied manifestations” (98).

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Berkouwer agrees that the clarity and irrefutability of general revelation leads St. Paul to speak of the “heathen as knowing God” and this is evidence of a fundamental relation between general revelation and knowledge that cannot be denied. “Man can never remove himself so far from divine revelation that the light of revelation no longer shines upon his life. But what does man do with this revelation, how does he react to his encounter with this revelation, to his ‘knowing’ of God in his revelation” (AO, 122 [150])? What kind of “knowing” is this if it necessary to account for man’s inexcusability, but fails, as St. Paul says, to lead man to give thanks or glorify God with his whole life? Why is Berkouwer downright skeptical that this act of ‘knowing’ is an authentic act of knowing God? Why can’t the unbeliever know God in one sense without knowing him in another sense? In answering the question regarding the sense in which the unbeliever fails to know God, Berkouwer cites Dutch Reformed theologian, Seakle Greijdanus (1871–1948), who writes that this “knowing” is “ ‘not a right knowing which leads to recognition . . . but only a superficial notation. [God’s Revelation] touches his consciousness and is active there, but issues in no true knowledge which reveals itself in true service of God’ ” (AO, 122–123 [150]).181 Berkouwer adds emphatically, “There is a contact with revelation, but a contact which fails to lead to a true knowledge and acknowledgment” (AO, 123 [150]). What is, then, that ‘knowing’ that is the basis of man’s guilt, and how is it distinguished from a true knowledge and acknowledgement of God that issues forth in true service of God? Berkouwer doesn’t say, but I think we can surmise what he means by a true knowledge and acknowledgment of God. Francis Martin obliges us with a biblical understanding that I dare say Berkouwer would share. “The English word that captures most of the semantic field [of the notion of the knowledge of God] is ‘recognize’, which can mean both ‘perceive’ and ‘acknowledge’. ‘Perceive’ extends to include not only ‘discern’ but also ‘experience’ and, in this sense, ‘know intimately’. ‘Acknowledge’, on the other hand, implies a movement of the will, a choice of someone or an acceptance of their authority. ‘To know God’, therefore, means to discern his presence and action, to experience him and be in communion

181 Greijdanus, De Brief van den Apostel Paulus aan de Gemeente te Rome, I, 112. Online: http://www.reformationalpublishingproject.com/pdf_books/Scanned_Books_PDF/KommentaarophetNieuweTestamentI_VIII.pdf.



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with him, but it also means to choose him and obey him.”182 Catholic thinkers, such as Gilson, do not suppose that the unregenerate person ‘knows’ God’s revelation in, by, and through his creation in this authentic sense of acknowledging God. But he does suppose that the unregenerate minds of the ancients and others affirmed “numberless errors mingled with . . . truth” about God. But unlike Berkouwer, Gilson adds, “they were still truths”183 known by pagan philosophers. There is here a unique blend of knowing and not knowing, where the latter means not acknowledging God, a mixture of both at the same time. Berkouwer’s deep unease with this entire train of thought is, chiefly, that a natural theology cannot be built upon this ‘knowing,’ upon socalled “elements of truth,” because we will then diminish the extent of man’s ignorance and estrangement from God, and hence misconceive the radical antithesis between knowing and not knowing God, and the attendant call to radical conversion that is clearly taught throughout the New Testament will be muffled. Therefore, concludes Berkouwer, “Romans 1 is good material for the confession of general revelation. But one must take care of how he uses it. This ‘knowledge’ can never be isolated from the prevailing theme of Romans 1—the wrath of God. The history of theology parades before us numerous attempts to isolate it from the context. It is only with such kidnapping of the phrase [“having known God”] from its context that it can be used to support a natural theology” (AO, 120–121[148]). In this connection, I cannot fail to mention critics, such as Dooyeweerd, of the scholastic appeal to Romans 1:20 for justifying natural theology with a failure to read this verse contextually with verse 21 and the “they are without excuse” of verse 20. By natural theology Dooyeweerd means “providing a purely philosophical knowledge of God that is independent of the Word-revelation and that would be accepted simply by the light of ‘natural reason’.”184 He aims his critical remarks here against Aquinas in particular.

182 Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 229. See also, Dictionary of Biblical Theology, 298: “[W]hen it [knowledge of God] is understood in its full breadth, [this] knowledge . . . can rightly be called ‘communion’ (1 John 1:3), since it is a share in the same life (John 14:19f ), a union perfect in the truth of love (John 17:26; see also 1 John 2:3; 3:26).” 183 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 35. 184 Herman Dooyeweerd, “De Transcendentale Critiek van het Theoretische Denken en de Thomistische Theologia Naturalis,” Philosophia Reformata, 17, 4 (1952): 151–184, and for this quote, 153.

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chapter two The locus classicus to which he [Aquinas] appeals—in the line of Roman Catholic ecclesiology and of its ground motive of nature and grace—is the expression of the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:20. . . . In book one, chapter twelve of his Summa Contra Gentiles, this text is placed alongside the distinctive proofs for the existence of God developed by the Greek philosophers in rejecting the position of those that hold that the existence of God can only be maintained by faith and cannot be proven scientifically. But does Paul really want to say here that God can be known from his creatures, purely by means of drawing theoretical conclusions? In other words, does Paul teach here the autonomy of theoretical thought proceeding from its original premise in contrast with divine revelation [?] There is no hint of this. . . . In the relevant text it is obvious, therefore, that it is general revelation in the created order that is involved . . . and that this is distorted in unbelief and that suppresses the Truth in unrighteousness. Because of this the natural knowledge of God does not produce the honoring and worshipping of the true God (verse 21).185

In this passage from Dooyeweerd, we run up here against the same pattern of interpretation that we’ve found in Berkouwer, in addition to some specific charges against Aquinas’ theological exegesis. First, Dooyeweerd overlooks that earlier in Bk I, 4, no. 7 of the Summa contra gentiles Aquinas acquits himself of the charge—as I argued earlier—that he does not attend to the noetic effects of sin. Indeed, precisely respecting those truths naturally knowable to man, Aquinas applies St. Paul’s charge in Ephesians 4:17–18 that the mind of man is futile and darkened in its understanding. Aquinas is suggesting here that the Word of God dispels the intellect’s darkness and shields it from futility. Second, for whatever reason Dooyeweerd doesn’t refer to Aquinas’ commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In connection with Romans 1, Aquinas distinguishes between ‘knowing God’ and ‘acknowledging him.’ The former knowledge is necessary in order to hold men without excuse (vs 20), accountable and guilty. As Aquinas states, “Things about God are so well known to them, that they are without excuse, i.e., they cannot be excused on the plea of ignorance.” He adds, “That their basic guilt was not due to ignorance is shown by the fact that, although they possessed knowledge of God, they failed to use it unto good.” Indeed, Aquinas continues by remarking upon their failure to acknowledge God, “In their thinking they were futile, because they put their trust in themselves and not in God, ascribing their blessings not to God but to themselves.” In sum, their minds “were darkened, 185 Dooyeweerd, “De Transcendentale Critiek van het Theoretische Denken en de Thomistische Theologia Naturalis,” 166–167.



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i.e., by the fact that it was darkened their mind became senseless, i.e., deprived of the light of wisdom, through which man truly knows God. For just as a person who turns his bodily eyes from the sun is put in darkness, so one who turns from God, presuming on himself and not on God, is put in spiritual darkness.”186 Third, though Aquinas affirms the validity of natural theology, theistic arguments and proofs, it isn’t at all clear that he means to interpret the natural light of reason not only in this philosophical sense but also to disengage it, stronger, oppose it to God’s revelation in creation as the condition for possibility of coming to a natural knowledge of God. Aquinas states: Rightly do I say that they have suppressed the truth about God. For they did possess some true knowledge of God, because what is known about God, i.e., what can be known about God by men through reason, is manifest in them, i.e., is manifest to them from something in them, i.e. from an inner light. . . . Men had such knowledge through the light of reason bestowed on them: “Many say, ‘O, that we might see some good!’ Lift up the light of your countenance upon us, O Lord” (Ps 4:6). Then when he says God has manifested it to them, he shows by what author such knowledge was manifested to them and says that it was God: “He teaches us more than the beasts of the earth” (Job 35:11). Here it should be noted that one man manifests something to another by unfolding his own thought by means of such external signs as vocal sounds or writing. But God manifests something to man in two ways: first, by endowing him with an inner light through which he knows: “Send out your light and you truth” (Ps 43:3); secondly, by proposing external signs of his wisdom, namely, sensible creatures: “He poured her out,” namely, wisdom, “over all his works” (Sir 1:9). Thus God manifested it to them either from within by endowing them with a light or from without by presenting visible creatures, in which, as in a book, the knowledge of God may be read.187

Clearly, Aquinas thinks that it is a certain action on the part of God that makes it possible for “[1] the created reality manifesting itself in and through the act of its existence and the [2] creative receptivity of the mind that receives the act of the reality and gives it intelligibility, transposing it to the level of the knower.”188 This divine action grounds the basic correspondence between the knower and the known.

186 St. Thomas Aquinas, Lectures on the Letter to the Romans, Translated by Fabian Larcher, 69–71. Online: http://nvjournal.net/files/Aquinas_on_Romans.pdf. See also, Balthasar on Aquinas, Theology of Karl Barth, 327–328. 187 Aquinas, Lectures on the Letter to the Romans, 63–65. 188 Marin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 220.

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Returning now to the crucial point that man’s basic guilt is not due to ignorance of God since the truth about God is somehow recognized sufficiently in order to suppress it, why is the function of this knowledge completely exhausted by its religious relation to the wrath of God? For Berkouwer this is its only function because man’s natural reason is completely closed to general revelation. But if it is completely closed doesn’t that nullify St. Paul’s teaching regarding man’s guilt and by implication God’s wrath? As Gilson rightly notes, “In whatever way these texts of the Epistle to the Romans may be understood, they suffice to show that Saint Paul is thinking of those who ‘having known God, do not glorify Him as God’, a fact of such importance that it cannot be suppressed without ruining his whole doctrine. It is because, having known God, they did not glorify Him as God, that the pagans are inexcusable.”189 Therefore, if we distinguish between knowing God and failing to acknowledge him (“glorify him”) in the context of “the revelation of God’s wrath” (Rom 1:18), the guilt of the pagans is precisely this: That they do not place their natural faculties in the service of a believing submission to God but refuse the act of obedience that is an essential aspect of reason. Instead of this, they “absolutize” their natural understanding, its power and its results. And that is precisely why they put something created in the place reserved for God. And so they become fools because they want to be wise. And this is not only the necessary consequence of, but also the punishment for, their introducing worldly concepts and imaginings into their insight into God.190

Thus, if knowing God is necessary in the biblical context for establishing a connection between general revelation and guilt—“that they may be without excuse”—why, then, can’t we distinguish this knowledge, in whatever imperfect form it appears—mindful that it cannot be wholly correct, error-free, and unaffected by its rejection of God’s grace—from acknowledging God? In short, why not use this knowledge—however incomplete and inaccurate—to legitimate the natural capacity of man’s reason to grasp the truths, however incorrectly, of God’s general revelation? After all, surely some men who know God through the natural capacity of reason put the latter in believing submission to God’s creation revelation. I should stress precisely here that the sinner does not “free himself by logical means themselves from his rejection of God and . . . move to an inner

189 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 34. 190 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 315.



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harmony with God’s deed and to everything that follows from that. To assume the opposite would smack of Pelagianism.”191 Otherwise, if man’s reason is completely closed to that creation revelation, he, says Balthasar astutely, “could by nature be an atheist and the act of faith could in itself be neither reasonable nor shown to be reasonable.”192 Furthermore, he adds, “Paul is referring to, summoning and claiming man’s natural faculty [of reason] and in no way the purely supernatural faith. . . . Therefore, in this act of faith that is demanded here, it is also a question of the natural activity of human reason. It is precisely human reason that is summoned not only to come to know God but to acknowledge him in its logical thinking.”193 This is the reason why Vatican I cites the famous passage from Romans (1:19–20) as a warrant for natural theology. Berkouwer would resist legitimizing natural theology for another reason. It is, he claims, biblically unacceptable because the true knowledge of God is far from being a mere addition of some knowledge acquired by faith to the knowledge that one already possesses by reason. This kind of quantitative view neglects the nature of the unregenerate mind’s suppression of the truth and the call to radical conversion to the revelation of God in Christ through the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit (AO, 116, 123 [144, 147]. Furthermore, natural theology regards the knowledge of God as the conclusion of an argument: “via causalitatis to the prima causa” (AO, 123 [150]. And Berkouwer rejects the identification of general revelation and natural theology. This claim brings me to a third point in Berkouwer’s reformed objection to natural theology. Is the God of the Philosophers not the God of the Bible? The third question I shall now address is whether the God of the philosophers is the same, and I so, in what sense, as the God the Bible. In an

191 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 322. 192 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 320. See also, Emil Brunner, “The denial of such a ‘general revelation’ preceding the historical revelation of grace in Jesus Christ can appeal neither to Paul nor to the Bible at large. It contradicts the fact of responsibility. If man did not know God, how could be he responsible? But he is responsible, for he knows about God on the strength of the divine self-revelation. The apostle does not speak of a past, now buried, possibility but of something actually present; for it is true of everyone that he is inexcusable in his godlessness. It is true of every godless man that he does not give the honor to the God who made himself known to him, but obscures the divine revelation by the productions of his own undisciplined imagination and arbitrariness” (The Letter to the Romans, A Commentary, 17). 193 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 314–315; italics added in last sentence.

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effort to show the limits of the knowledge of God that natural theology yields—“how and how far God is known in this way” (AO, 55 [69])— Berkouwer gives a brief account of the alleged incompatibility between the God of philosophy and of the Bible. I have already discussed how natural theology purports to arrive at knowledge—albeit mediate, analogous, inadequate, and true—of God—through the medium of created reality. Given that medium, this knowledge is not only inadequate but also partial in as much as it cannot know that God is triune. Says Berkouwer, By means of natural knowledge one knows only that part or ‘aspect’ of God which is mediated through creation and relates especially to his being. The results of the theistic proofs demonstrate this. By means of these proofs reason comes to recognize the existence of a self-existent being, ‘which not only expresses the deepest core of God’s being, in so far as it is accessible to human understanding, but also the root of his infinite perfections’. This ‘self-existent being’ is the central point of the natural knowledge of God. (AO, 56 [69–70])

Intriguingly, Berkouwer does not attempt to rebut the claims of natural theology regarding the alleged knowledge it yields. Rather, his criticism goes straight to the heart of the problem to which he claims “Roman Catholic theology has never been able to give a satisfactory answer” (AO, 59 [73]). Berkouwer’s criticism is a familiar one: the God of the philosophers is not the God of the Bible. In short, natural theology, even if its theistic arguments are valid, proves the wrong God, a God too abstract and too impersonal to be the God of biblical revelation.194 He elaborates: When Christ says, “And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ,” then according to Rome this does not destroy the fact that there is also real and true knowledge of God wholly apart from Christ. It is almost inconceivable that the Roman Catholic Church has not been repeatedly shocked by this empty, abstract, and formal God-concept of her natural theology. What is the significance of this true knowledge of God who is here known as the Being “which exists in and of itself,” as “the Prime Mover, first cause, necessary being, the uncaused being, the true and the good, the rational designer, who is own goal”? How is it possible that such considerations derived from the natural light of reason can be connected with the name, which God himself revealed to Moses when he said: “I am that I am.” Can one really be satisfied with this identification of the “natural” conception of “God as being” and this covenant name expressing his faithfulness to his people? When Moses meets God does that even for a moment concern only the isolated, 194 Groothuis, “Do Theistic Proofs Prove the Wrong God,” 247–259.



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abstract “being” of God in itself, which a natural theology could also reach? (AO, 58–59 [72–73])

Of course the knowledge of the God of the philosophers acquired by natural reason is, according to Aidan Nichols, undoubtedly “finally poor stuff when compared with the full vision of the glory disclosed in the mercy and faithfulness of Jesus Christ, ‘the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:39).”195 Thus, Berkouwer’s objection highlights a fundamental point already acknowledged by the natural theology of Rome, namely, that the knowledge of God “derived from special revelation through Christ and the illumination of the Holy Spirit . . . is much richer than the other” (AO, 47 [61]). So the God of the philosophers isn’t simply identical with the God of the Bible. In the light of Christ, who is the fullness and mediator of all revelation, there is a transcendence of the philosophical concept of God. “The attributes of divine being uncovered on the trajectory of philosophical reason are amplified, enhanced, transformed, not truncated or denied once that trajectory meets, and merges with, the trajectory of biblical faith. Being revealed as love: this is henceforth the only adequate formula for the divine.”196 If Rome acknowledges, then, the theological limits of natural theology, why is natural theology defective in principle, according to Berkouwer? It can only be because Berkouwer thinks that the God that is proved is the wrong God. Berkouwer’s view is opposed to the view that Nichols expresses, namely, “The God of the philosophers is indeed the same God as the Father of Jesus Christ, but he is known in two different fashions.”197 In what sense is the God of the philosophers and the God of Biblical revelation the same God? Put differently, why can’t the abstract references of the former and the concrete references of the latter have a common reference?198 For now, the brief answer to this question here must be that the one who experiences the difference between the two modes of knowing God does not thereby conclude that God ceases to be what had been validly concluded by philosophical reasoning. In other words, the God the Bible is not incompatible with the God of abstract natural theology. Rather, having attained a richer knowledge of God through special revelation, one concludes “that one only comes to know him properly when

195 Nichols, Epiphany, 17–18. 196 Nichols, From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 227. 197 Nichols, A Grammar of Consent: The Existence of God in the Christian Tradition, 16. 198 Groothuis, “Do Theistic Proofs Prove the Wrong God,” 250.

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one realizes that he, the real truth and ground of all Being, is at one and the same time the God of faith, the God of men.”199 Berkouwer begs the question by assuming that the God of the philosophers is totally different from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Father of our Lord Jesus. I shall return to address this question more fully later in my replies to Berkouwer’s objections. Berkouwer continues his criticism of the God-concept of natural theology. This concept is not only empty, abstract and formal, but it is chiefly an idol. This conclusion should not surprise us. Earlier I showed that, according to Berkouwer, the unbeliever does not know God at all. Recall that Berkouwer’s theological exegesis of Romans 1:18–23 leads him to argue against the legitimacy of natural theology—pace Rome. St. Paul’s assessment of the Gentile whose knowledge of God (Rom 1:21) does not result in gratitude to God reveals knowledge that is “murky with vanity and foolishness” rather than the “clear color of true knowledge” (AO, 121 [148]). Rom 1:20 does not provide a biblical foundation for natural theological arguments. Rather, St. Paul concern with the ‘knowing’ man is with his “holding under of the truth in unrighteousness” and hence “with the exchange of gods” (AO, 121 [149]). Berkouwer concludes, “How is it possible to discern in Romans 1 a natural power of the human reason which already has been able to achieve a partial knowledge of God? Paul indeed speaks of the understanding, but of that same understanding (nous) he says elsewhere: the heathen walk in ‘the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding’ (Eph 4:17). This is the upshot of the ‘natural light of reason’” (AO, 121 [149]). Furthermore, continuing to cast doubt on the whole project of natural theology, Berkouwer raises a crucial question about this project from a Kantian perspective. The Kantian question expresses the idea that none of our concepts, including the concept of causality, can apply to God but are limited in their applicability to the limits of our experience. Berkouwer informs us that “Rome adopts a completely different point of view. Kant’s criticism is termed agnostic, and Rome maintains that the argument from causality is not limited to the extent of our experience, but is also valid beyond that. . . . The transcendent value of causality makes natural knowledge of God possible” (AO, 54–55 [68–69]. 199 Joseph Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI, Introduction to Christianity, Translated by J.R. Foster, With a New Preface, Translated by Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004 [1968]), 144. Helpful here on Ratzinger is Thomas G. Guarino, “The God of Philosophy and of the Bible: Theological Reflections on Regensburg,” Logos 10:4 (Fall 2007): 120–130.



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In particular, the idea that none of our concepts can apply to God rules out all analogy between Creator and creature, and hence without analogy the whole of our speaking about God would “simply [be] a groping in the darkness of an unapproachable light” (AO, 57 [70]). Thus, without analogy, there is no possibility of natural theology. We can therefore easily understand the importance for Roman Catholic theologians, says Berkouwer, to readily affirm the analogia entis, the real analogies between the Creator and the creature, which is founded upon the doctrine of creation. Significantly, it has nothing to do with an essentialist analogy between Creator and creature. Berkouwer correctly states that Catholic theologians strongly oppose the idea of the analogy of being in which “there is one universal Being under which both God and man are subsumed.” “Rather,” Berkouwer adds, “it presupposes a difference between Creator and creature. There is a great difference, an ‘infinite difference’, between God, ‘the source of being’, and all created beings. But this infinite distance does not eliminate all analogy. There is also a ‘line of similarity’ which God has himself established. God is not a hidden God. The words with which we speak about God are not simply a groping in the darkness of an unapproachable light. There is analogy, in spite of the infinite diversity—and analogy of being. ‘Being and existence are in God, just as well as in the creatures’” (AO, 56–57 [70–71]). Thus, the analogy of being makes possible a natural knowledge of God—does Berkouwer agree with this thesis? It isn’t at all obvious why Berkouwer raises this Kantian objection against the Catholic tradition of natural theology. One might ask Berkouwer, why limit Kant’s point to causality? Indeed, as Nicholas Wolterstorff asks rhetorically: “What is it that the theologian is doing, if not applying concepts to God? And more basic, what is it that Christians around the world are doing when they confess their belief that God is the maker of heaven and earth? And more basic yet, what is it that St. Paul was doing when he said [2 Cor 5:19] that God was in Jesus Christ reconciling the world to himself [and not counting men’s sins against them], if not applying the concept of reconciling to God?”200 Does Berkouwer endorse Kant’s rejection of the transcendent value of causality, or of the application in general of concepts to God? He doesn’t say. Is he simply arguing that natural reason doesn’t yield true knowledge of God? If so, there remains to ask Berkouwer how he avoids both agnosticism—God is unknowable—and

200 Wolterstorff, “Herman Dooyeweerd: An Appreciation.”

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“symbolism, which contends that our words [and concepts] do not touch God’s reality” (AO, 57 [71]). Two Sources of Knowledge: General Revelation and Special Revelation? The fourth question I now turn to address is whether there exits two sources of revelation: general and special revelation. Berkouwer rejects the claim implied in the conception of natural theology—a true knowledge of God can be acquired through the natural light of reason—that general revelation is an independent source of knowledge of God in addition to special revelation of Holy Scripture. How, then, does Berkouwer understand the relation between general and special revelation, between the universality and particularity of all God’s doings? Briefly, general revelation is God’s self-revelation in and through the works of creation; it refers to the universality of God’s actions in created reality (nature, history and human existence) extending to the entire world and to all men. “He did not leave himself without witness” (Acts 14:17). “Therein lies the ‘general’ character of this revelation of God” (AO, 242 [294]). Special revelation refers to the particular, concrete and historically focused activity of God’s revelation in the history of Israel, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and in the witness of the Holy Scriptures to Jesus Christ. The particularity of God’s redemptive deeds should not be severed from the universality of God’s action in the totality of created reality. Regarding man’s capacity to appropriate God’s general revelation through the things that have been made, Berkouwer calls for the absolute necessity of special revelation because the noetic influences of sin blocks our ability to be able to know general revelation for what it is, namely, “this revelation deals with the knowledge of God himself ” (AO, 238 [289]). Berkouwer adds, “Calvin’s reference to the glasses (of faith) as the only means whereby we can know God in this book of ‘nature’ is of decisive significance for all reflection on general revelation” (AO, 235 [285] see also, 252–253 [306]).201 Thus, in Jesus Christ there is the unity of God’s general and special revelation, of his universal and particular activity. 201 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, chapter VI, no. 1, “Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly; so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God” (70). Centuries earlier St. Bonaventure makes the same point: “The world was like a damaged [deletes] book which God brought to perspicacity



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Now, since without faith in Christ no true knowledge is available of God’s self-revelation in general revelation, according to Berkouwer, is the unregenerate man so out of connection with the revelation of God, so incapable of receiving revelation because of sin, that there are no ‘elements of truth’ at all in non-Christian religions? Berkouwer himself asks, “Do the false religions present us with a complete darkness that has fallen upon human existence, with an ignorance of which nothing more can be said than that it is non-knowing? Or is there in Scripture the suggestion of a connection between false religions and the reality of general revelation? If so, is it proper to speak of the complete ignorance of heathendom and of the so-called absoluteness of Christianity? Is false religion wholly false, all lies, or has it, at least in its highest moments, a participation in elements of the truth of God” (AO, 128 [154–155])? Berkouwer answers the question whether all non-Christian religions are totally bereft of truth by first arguing that man cannot escape the normative revelation of God in nature, in history, and in human existence and hence, by God’s common grace, the natural knowledge of God survives in the unregenerate and is manifested in man’s sensus divinitatis (‘awareness of divinity’). Indeed, according to Berkouwer, “Every religion is a reaction to divine revelation. This what Paul indicates in Romans 1 [:19–21]. For this reason it is impossible to understand this reaction rightly when revelation is left out of view. The observed regularity among the religions of the world is understandable only from the fact that man cannot escape the revelation of God” (AO, 136 [162]). True enough, Berkouwer adds, “he can misconstrue, avoid, exchange and pervert” this revelation and evidence of man’s truth-twisting is, in sum, found in all religions. But “in all this, religion is not independent of revelation; it is rather, a reaction, an answer, a resistance to, and defense against revelation. All human life is estranged from the life and glory of God,” adds Berkouwer, “but that does not mean that man has escaped the revelation of God” (AO, 136 [162]). This conclusion raises the question whether false religions contain fragments of the truth given that man is unable to escape the normativity of general revelation? One would think so given that normativity. But Berkouwer resists drawing that conclusion for fear that the antithesis between knowing and not knowing God at all would be abolished. In reply to this question, then, Berkouwer seems to suggest that false religion is wholly false.

[illuminavit] and rectified by the book of Scripture” (as cited in Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” note 3, 206).

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Berkouwer interprets his illustrious predecessor Abraham Kuyper as holding that position as well. Says Berkouwer, Kuyper views “all religions together as the necessary products of the apostasy to which the natural knowledge of God in the sinner must come when left to itself. The common point of departure for all false religions lies, according to Kuyper, in man’s corrupted natural knowledge of God. This forms the motif of false religion” (AO, 139 [166]). Yet, Berkouwer acknowledge that in addition to this corrupted natural knowledge, there is also “the positive element of common grace present among the pagan peoples” (AO, 140 [167]). Isn’t, then, Kuyper ineluctably driven to recognize fragments of truth and goodness in these other religions if he is to be faithful to the Reformed creeds? Kuyper answers this question affirmatively in an 1898 passage that is worth quoting in full: The purest confession of truth finds ultimately its starting-point in the seed of religion (semen religionis), which, thanks to common grace [a grace that restrains sin from having its full way with man; common grace is a not a saving grace], is still present in the fallen sinner; and, on the other hand, there is no form of idolatry so low, or so corrupted, but has sprung from this same semen religionis. . . . Sin, indeed, is an absolute darkening power, and were not its effect temporarily checked, nothing but absolute darkness would have remained in and about man; but common grace has restrained its workings to a very considerable degree; also in order that the sinner might be without excuse. In consequence of this common grace there remain the rudera [remnants] or sparks of light in the sinner, and the curse upon nature has not yet come in such measure but that “invisible things” are clearly seen, because understood by the things that are made (Rom 1:20). Hence the condition of man and his world are not such as they would have been if sin had at once accomplished its end; but, thanks to common grace, both are of such a character that knowledge of God is still possible, either by way of tradition, or as the result of personal insight, such as has been found in generous measures in the midst of paganism, in its mysteries as well as with its poets and philosophers.202

202 Kuyper, Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid, II, 254–255; see also 227, 231. ET: Principles of Sacred Theology, 301–302; see also 275, 279. Both the Belgic Confession (1561) and the Canons of Dordt (1619) recognizes “traces” of God’s general revelation, respectively: “He lost all his excellent gifts which he had received from God, and he retained none of them except for small traces which are enough to make him inexcusable” (Article 14). “There is, to be sure, a certain light of nature remaining in man after the fall, by virtue of which he retains some notions about God, natural things, and the difference between what is moral and immoral, and demonstrates a certain eagerness for virtue and for good outward behavior. But this light of nature is far from enabling man to come to a saving knowledge of God and conversion to him—so far, in fact, that man does not use it rightly even in matters of nature and society. Instead, in various ways he completely distorts this



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The sum and substance of Kuyper’s point in the above passage is that the natural knowledge of God survives, by God’s common grace, in post lapsum man. Kuyper isn’t talking about philosophical knowledge of God that is acquired through natural theological reasoning, theistic arguments, but rather an increated knowledge—Kuyper calls it natural theology— given with man’s semen religionis or sensus divinitatis, which is an “ineradicable property of human nature, a spiritual eye in us, the lens of which may be dimmed, but always so that the lens, and consequently the eye, remains.”203 Thus, adds Kuyper, “natural theology is with us no system,” he says, but rather it is “the knowledge of God itself, which still remains in the sinner and is still within his reach, entirely in harmony with the sense of Rom 1:19 sq and Rom 2:14 sq.”204 This raises the question whether Kuyper is softening the antithesis between Christians and non-Christians, that is, between “the pagan world of idols as contrasted with the one but tri-personal God of the Catholic [?]”205 This is an important question regarding the extent to which “natural knowledge of God remains and what value it has after sin.”206 The answer is no: despite the workings of common grace among unbelievers, Berkouwer argues that Kuyper’s view “does not abolish the anti­ thesis [between knowing and not-knowing the true God] at all” (AO, 139 [166]). Of course Berkouwer is correct that “in the last analysis, there is only the either/or between God and idol—and thus between pagan and light, whatever its precise character, and suppresses it in unrighteousness. In doing so he renders himself without excuse before God” (III–IV, Article 2). For Kuyper’s more complete account of the natural knowledge of God, see Uit Het Woord, Stichtelijke Bijbelstudiën, Vol. III, Tweede Druk (Amsterdam: Höveker & Wormser, n.d.), Chapter III, Naturrrlijke Godskennis, 167–225. Online: http://www.reformationalpublishingproject.com/pdf_books/ Scanned_Books_PDF/UitHetWoordIII.pdf. 203 Kuyper, Encyclopaedie, 217; Principles, 265. By “increated knowledge” of God Kuyper does not mean that man is fully equipped with a ready-made knowledge of God, which is in that sense innate and acquired apart from the things that God has made. I dare say that Kuyper, like his contemporary Herman Bavinck, means that such knowledge is “increated” or “implanted” only in the sense that (in Bavinck’s words) “we possess both the capacity (aptitude, faculty) and the inclination (habitus, disposition) to arrive at some firm, certain, and unfailing knowledge of God. Human beings gain this knowledge in the normal course of development and in the environment in which God gave them the gift of life. It arises spontaneously and without coercion, without scientific argumentation and proof. The words ‘implanted’, ‘natural’, and ‘innate’, accordingly, are not meant to convey the ‘wherewithal’ with which a person is born but merely to indicate that knowledge of God arises naturally, aside from any scientific input, from the human mind” (Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 43 [71]). 204 Kuyper, Encyclopaedie, 255; Principles, 302. 205 Eric Przywara, Analogia entis, I, 80, as cited by Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 319. 206 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 319.

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Catholic.”207 This, too, is the Catholic view. As Balthasar puts it, “The human beings and the cosmos that come into view here [Rom 1:19–21] are the humans beings and cosmos that were once raised into the light of grace but that now become guilty and will always remain so because they do not want to perceive the revelation of God speaking to them through creation and its transcendence; nor do they want to submit their own reason to this revelation.”208 Still, Kuyper thinks—and there is a point of contact here with the Catholic tradition—that the natural knowledge of God, or the seed of religion, survives by virtue of God’s general revelation and common grace in fallen individuals as ‘sparks’ (scintillae) or ‘remnants’ and ‘vestiges’ (rudera), as he indeed says. Furthermore, this general revelation and common grace is “refracted through a humanity spoiled by original sin,” which explains why “error is always mingled with truth.”209 In this connection, Balthasar makes this important point regarding the inescapability of the pagans ‘knowing’ God and the consequences of the failure to ‘acknowledge’ him: If the sinful pagan cannot not know God by nature, then at least his conscious image of God can in no case be a correct, error-free image, untouched by its rejection of God’s supernatural grace. Nonetheless, even this adulteration rests on an original openness to what man should have known and what he cannot help still knowing in completing every act of knowledge. . . . [E]ven the knowledge possessed by the denier of God, there stands, according to Vatican I, these natural-supernatural contacts of the created spirit with the true God, equally Creator and Bestower of all grace. In both cases, the sinner refuses what he de facto inclusively knows (in a real and physical posse) and what he could have known even expressly, discursively and logically—based on this inclusive knowledge if he had not resisted the knowledge.210

As a consequence of common grace, then, something of the natural knowledge of God remains after original sin, but what is its value other than that it renders the pagans guilty; indeed, that they knew God but did not acknowledge him. In the space between ‘knowing’ and ‘acknowledging’ God, why, then, can’t the ‘sparks’ or ‘remnants’ and ‘vestiges’ of the natural knowledge of God in man be seen as representing “levels, phases, foreshadowings and starting points” to the “onset of a higher capacity given

207 Przywara, Analogia entis, I, 80, as cited by Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 319; italics added. 208 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 315; italics added. 209 Danielou, God and the Ways of Knowing, 21–22. 210  Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 322.



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to him in grace also to grasp God through faith in his personal Word [?]”211 It is not that the latter builds on top of the former as if to say that the natural knowledge of God is being merely supplemented with a revealed knowledge. Rather, why can’t we recognize that, say, philosophical pagans such as Aristotle and Plato “already said something important about God, even if this needed to be amplified, corrected, and transformed by revelation” [?]212 Berkouwer rejects this Catholic interpretation of Kuyper’s view. These remnants, he says, are not a point of contact that could form “a stairway to grace or a preparation for conversion” (AO 141; see also, 142 [167, 169]). Speaking of religions as such, in contrast, Kuyper holds “the Christian religion is the only absolutely true religion in the face of all other religions as untrue and unrighteous.”213 In these other religions qua religions, he sees, says Berkouwer, “anomaly, degeneration of the truth, disturbance, apostasy” (AO, 141 [168]). In sum, adds Kuyper, “the common point of departure for all false religions lies . . . in man’s corrupted natural knowledge of God.”214 Kuyper measures the reactions of these religions in light of the normativity of God’s general revelation, says Berkouwer, and of man’s fundamental relation to that revelation, namely, his failure to acknowledge God, a true knowledge of God that issues forth in his service. Thus he describes these religious reactions as a reflection of the primary act of man suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18). This biblical description of the unregenerate man, leaves us, concludes Berkouwer, with the “picture of the real man . . . searching and groping, with his apostasy and lostness, with his homesickness and idolatry, with his altars and his sacrifices. And in all this we come to the reality of man, the man who is without excuse, because he lives in the midst of a permanent confrontation with the living God” (AO, 145 [171–172]). Yes, the idea that the ‘sparks’ or ‘remnants’ and ‘vestiges’ of the natural knowledge of God in man is a stairway to grace is unacceptable because it suggests Pelagianism, that is, the possibility that the sinner frees himself on his own power from his rejection of God. The Church rejects Pelagianism and hence interpreting these ‘vestiges’ as a half-way house to a saving 211 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311, 310. 212 Guarino, “The God Philosophy and of the Bible,” 120. 213 Berkouwer is citing Kuyper here from Volume III of the Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgeleerdheid, 451. This Dutch volume remains untranslated into English. Kuyper also says, “Christianity and paganism are related to each other as the plus and minus forms of the same series,” in Encyclopaedie, II, 255; Principles, 302. 214 Kuyper, Encyclopaedie, III, 451.

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knowledge of God is not her teaching.215 But given the normativity of general revelation and the influence of common grace, why can’t these ‘remnants’ of the natural knowledge of God be seen as a point of contact between Christians and non-Christians? In particular, why can’t Kuyper’s thesis about the influence of common grace be understood in light of the following statement of Vatican II: “Whatever good or truth is found amongst them [non-Christian religions] is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel.”216 This, too, is the outcome of God’s grace, says Vatican II. Of course the Council also taught, following St. Paul, that the intellect and conscience of man is marred by the consequences of original sin, meaning thereby that he is “impaired by an aversion to the One who is the source and origin of truth,”217 and hence we can understand why some men resist the grace of God. “But very often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator (see Rom 1:21, 25).”218 Therefore, the pagans indeed knew God but did not acknowledge him (Rom 1:21). “The guilt of the pagans therefore consists in this: that they do not place their natural faculties in the service of a believing submission to God but refuse the act of obedience that is an essential aspect of reason. Instead of this, they ‘absolutize’ their natural understanding, its power and its results. And that is precisely why they put something created in the place reserved for God. And so they become fools because they want to be wise. And this is not only the necessary

215 For example, Vatican II’s Ad Gentes states, “No one is freed from sin by himself and by his own power, no one is raised above himself, no one is completely rid of his sickness or his solitude or his servitude. On the contrary, all stand in need of Christ, their model, their mentor, their liberator, their Savior, their source of life” (no. 8). 216 Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, no. 16. Francis Martin makes a similar point: “Paul is . . . aware of those who have, in whatever imperfect form, yielded to God’s manifestation of himself in and through creation. Evidence of such piety abounds in Greek literature and is found in other literatures as well. Paul himself in the next chapter [Rom 2:14–16] speaks of those who, without the benefit of the revealed Law, nevertheless obey the precepts of the law” (“Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 224). Bavinck’s view is more in line with Catholicism. He writes that by virtue of common grace the Reformed theologian is in a position to “recognize all the truth, beauty, and goodness that is present also in the pagan world” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 290–291 [319]). Berkouwer finds many points of contact throughout Vatican II documents (Lumen Gentium, no. 16, Ad Gentes Divinitus, no. 3, Gaudium et Spes, no. 22, Nostra Aetate, no. 2) with Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace (De Kerk, I, 190, 195n179). 217 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 22. 218 Lumen Gentium, no. 16.



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consequence of, but also the punishment for, their introducing worldly concepts and imagining into their insight into God.”219 In sum, despite ‘having known God’ some men resist ‘acknowledging’ him. The latter implies knowing God in its most intimate sense, participatory knowledge, which is rightly called communion, fellowship with the Blessed Trinity; the former knowledge is necessary to account for man’s inexcusability, but insufficient to lead man to give thanks or glorify God with his whole life. There is here a unique blend of knowing and not-knowing allowing us to understand how the unbeliever can know God in one sense without knowing him in another sense. Conclusion Let me move on to state what my conclusion is regarding the disputed question about the validity of natural theology that is at stake in the whole discussion of this chapter. Epistemologically, Berkouwer’s interpretation of Vatican I’s teaching regarding the duplex ordo cognitionis of faith and reason is informed by a dualistic, or ‘two-tier,’ construal of the relation between nature and grace, or between the orders of creation and of redemption. The order of nature is thought of as being independent and self-sufficient in its own domain—as if this order is integral, unaffected by sin, and a closed system with its own ends to which grace is added as a donum superadditum, as a pure superstructure, as it were, leaving the substructure of nature unchanged. Hence Berkouwer’s claim that Vatican I’s view regarding the duplex ordo cognitionis is based on the autonomy objection. Anthropologically, Berkouwer sees the same dualism between nature and grace at work in an understanding of human nature where the latter, which includes natural reason, has not been integrally affected by sin, and therefore it requires little or no internal healing by the redemptive work of Christ. In other words, the fall into sin only wounded rather than integrally impaired the whole of human nature, meaning thereby that it merely loss the supernatural gift of God’s grace, of a supernatural addition, leaving the realm of human nature intact, including natural reason, meaning thereby unaffected by sin. In short, according to Berkouwer, this anthropology is the basis for an autonomous natural theology and a

219 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 315.

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corresponding concept of natural reason that is unrefracted by the reality of sin. I critically responded to Berkouwer’s interpretation of the Catholic idea and practice of natural theology in light of the anthropological and autonomy objections by offering not only an alternative reading, indeed, I argued, a more faithful and hence correct interpretation, of Vatican I that is consistent with its teaching on the duplex ordo cognitionis of faith and reason, but also an interpretation that completely undermines these objections. The major conclusion of my interpretation was that in the de facto situation of post-lapsarian man his natural reason could at the same time both know some truths about God—however incomplete and inaccurate—and also need God’s grace to bring natural reason to realize its fullest potential regarding the knowledge of God through the means of creation. In short, the autonomy objection was not at all necessary for the legitimate practice of natural theology and recognizing the noetic influences of sin did not undermine natural reason’s ability to arrive at some knowledge of God. In the next chapter, I will press on to develop a fuller response to Berkouwer by considering the following questions. What does general revelation mean for natural human reason and is natural theology implied in accepting it? In this connection, the question will also be considered regarding the contribution of natural theology to showing the credibility of faith as an intellectually responsible act. Furthermore, what can man’s natural reason, if anything, truly know of God? That is, does man’s reason have any power to know God after the fall into sin?220 Lastly, the hermeneutic key for unlocking the interpretation of the whole discussion between Berkouwer is found in the answer to the question regarding the relation between nature, sin and grace or, alternatively put, between structure and direction. In this connection, the question regarding how divine revelation is received, and what the conditions are for its reception by the receiver, will also be considered.

220 In distinguishing the first three questions, I am following Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, especially 302–325.

chapter THREE

On The Dynamics of Faith and Reason: The Differentiated Unity of Nature and Grace We can, in fear of rationalism and the autonomy of reason, refuse to take account of how the gospel takes hold of a human life. But this is a treacherous route.1 Let me say that among my acquaintances is one for whom the decisive step in his conversion to Christianity some years back was his consideration of the evidence for the truth of Christianity. So let the Reformed person not leap into the fray here insisting that arguments presented to unbelievers for the truth of Christianity are always useless, or even pernicious. They are not. One can appropriately ask what exactly they do, under what circumstances they do it, etc., but what is not in question is that sometimes they work beneficially.2 For is not this the error, the common and fatal error, of the world, to think itself a judge of Religious Truth without preparation of heart?3 In order that the submission of our faith should be in accordance with reason, it was God’s will that there should be linked to the internal assistance of the Holy Spirit outward indications of his revelation, that is to say divine acts, and first and foremost miracles and prophecies, which clearly demonstrating as they do the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are the most certain signs of revelation and suited to the understanding of all. . . . Now, although the assent of faith is by no means a blind movement of the mind, yet no one can accept the gospel preaching in the way that is necessary for achieving salvation without the inspiration and illumination of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all facility in accepting and believing the truth.4

1 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 224 [159]. 2 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Is Reason Enough?, in Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology, Edited by R. Douglas Geivett and Brendan Sweetman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 142–149. Reprinted from The Reformed Journal 31 (April 1981). Similarly, Lonergan writes: “I should say that normally religious conversion precedes the effort to work out rigorous proofs for the existence of God. But I do not think it impossible that such proofs might be a factor facilitating religious conversion so that, by way of exception, certain knowledge of God’s existence should precede the acceptance of God’s gift of his love” (Method in Theology, 339). 3 John Henry Newman, “Faith and Reason, Contrasted as Habits of Mind,” Sermon X (1839), no. 43. Online: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/oxford/sermon10.html. 4 Dei Filius, Chapter 3, On faith.

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The epigraphs to this chapter make several points that I shall consider in this chapter that focuses on the question regarding the sense in which the act of faith is an authentically human act. It is not exaggeration to state that this question has engaged Berkouwer’s theological attention since his 1932 dissertation, Geloof en Openbaring in de Nieuwere Duitsche Theologie. Surprisingly, in 1974, Berkouwer’s thought now seems ready to countenance the notion of a point of contact—Anknüpfungspunkt—between the gospel and human life, in order to resist the treacherous route of an authoritarian view of justifying faith, “wherein faith—and the truth—is taken to be an irrational ‘foreign body’ [Fremdkörper] in the world without testifying, appellative, and verifying force.”5 In this light, I think we can say that Berkouwer is more than ever concerned to show the sense in which believing is a human act. This concern helps us to understand why he reconsiders the value of the major concern of natural theology, even if not of the standard theistic arguments. Also, Wolterstorff, like Newman in the nineteenth-century, does not dispense with giving evidences for the truth of Christianity on the ground, in Newman’s words, “that on men of irreligious minds Evidences are thrown away.” In fact, adds Newman, “the Evidences may . . . be of great service to persons in particular frames of mind.”6 What, then, is the role of rational argumentation in coming to faith? In 1972, Berkouwer explicitly attends to this question that he refers to as the problem of verification. He writes: The Church has dealt with this problematic in many situations. True, we often see a certain mistrust of the idea of verification because of the fear that it is an attempt to transfer the truth of God to the domain of purely human thinking and reasoning, which then has the last word. It has been pointed out that the decision for or against the truth reaches deeper than human thought. However, it would be incorrect to look at the questions about verification exclusively from this angle. There is a kind of apology that is aware of the problematic of the heart and is nevertheless connected to a penetrating persuasion.7

Berkouwer point here regarding the one-sidedness of the traditional criticism of verification, namely, its rationalism, raises the question whether he is engaging in a bit of self-criticism. Is he now distancing himself from the approach that is decidedly negative about giving a place to reason 5 Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 16. 6 Newman, “Faith and Reason,” nos. 42, 44. 7 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, [235]. The italics are original to the Dutch text.



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in the process of coming to faith as rationalistic? Berkouwer writes elsewhere: “There was a time when people distanced themselves from all questions of verification because they suspected them of being rationalistic attempts to prove the faith and its connection with truth on rational grounds.”8 His views of natural theology in his 1951 dogmatic study on general revelation seem to fit this description of those who always distanced themselves from the question of verification, from looking at the question of its place in that process exclusively from that angle. After Vatican II, Berkouwer returns to the concern of natural theology, and hence faith’s verification and accountability to oneself and others, because he sees something important in “the growing aversion to the understanding of faith as an irrational leap, without any connection to the surrounding world of experience.”9 He explains: In all sorts of ways and all around us, we hear the protest against faith as a sacrificium intellectus, as the silencing of ordinary thought. We hear a protest against believing with our eyes shut (blind faith). With people everywhere, we regard this as inconsistent with being human. We see this as making faith enigmatic and a divisive force among people. We consider it to be a secretive and baffling reality in the world of human interchange that makes accountability impossible. One could appeal to Paul’s defense before Festus, who accused him of being out of his mind, but then heard him and concluded that he was not raving mad but spoke reasonable truths not merely reported about some out-of-the-way place (Acts 26:25–26).10

The concluding sentence of the above quotation refers us to Paul’s account of his conversion and commission to preach the Gospel, and Festus’ charge that too much studying is driving Paul mad (Acts 26:24). Paul’s rejoinder to Festus is, “I am not out of mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words” (ESV Acts 26:25), over what was not done in a corner (26:26), namely, Jesus’ arrest, conviction, crucifixion, and resurrection. Berkouwer takes this to mean that “faith does not allow itself to be locked up in the ghetto (presently one encounters this term often) of subjective conviction.”11 This point can be well understood, adds Berkouwer, given “the problem of faith’s responsibility or accountability.”12 That is, “To reject verification as rational verification and in doing so to   8 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: Waarheid en Verificatie,” 7.   9 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: Waarheid en Verificatie,” 8. 10 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: Waarheid en Verificatie,” 8. 11  Berkouwer, “Inleiding: Waarheid en Verificatie,” 8. 12 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: Waarheid en Verificatie,” 11.

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retreat into one’s own defenseless, inner conviction, without any apology, is both too simplistic and to cheap.”13 I shall return to the question of verification and truth below. Furthermore, Berkouwer also alludes to an apology for the Christian faith that brings us to a point of theological epistemology that Newman makes and that Berkouwer adumbrates above in stating that “There is a kind of apology that is aware of the problematic of the heart and is nevertheless connected to a penetrating persuasion.” Yes, Berkouwer correctly refers here to the problematic of the heart, meaning thereby the moral and theological disposition of the truth-seeker, namely, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8). This problematic is referred to by Ratzinger when he describes the state of mind of this aspirant as one who is in a state of receptivity and trust: Truth “reveals itself only to the watchful and humble heart. If it is already true that the great discoveries of science reveal themselves only to long, watchful, and patient labor that is ready always to correct itself and let itself be taught, then it is selfevident that the highest truths demand a humble and continuous readiness to listen . . . . to the great witnesses to the truth, to the witnesses of God, and to allow ourselves to be led by them in order to follow the path of knowledge.”14 I shall return to this apologetic below. Lastly, Vatican I condemned two extremes: on the one hand, rationalism—“all the dogmas of the faith can be understood and demonstrated by properly trained reason from natural principles”15—on the other hand, fideism—“In modern times some theologians, swayed by philosophical agnosticism, took the ‘fideist’ position that faith is its own ground, and that it cannot and should not appeal to reason.”16 The Council’s basic teaching on faith and reason required not only showing the reasonableness of the act of faith by virtue of the grounds of credibility (‘outward indications’), but also that this act be reconciled with the epistemological significance of the Holy Spirit. So, the epigraphs to this chapter set the stage for the main issues to be discussed in this chapter concerned with responding to Berkouwer’s objections to natural theology.

13 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: Waarheid en Verificatie,” 11. 14 Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ, Translated by Robert Nowell (New York: Cross Publishing Company, 1991), 19–20. 15 Dei Filius, Canons, 4, On Faith and Reason. 16 Avery Dulles, S.J., The Assurances of Things Hoped For (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 208.



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In the last chapter, I critically discussed the disputed question about the validity of a natural knowledge of God, in particular, Berkouwer’s Reformed objections to natural theology. I also set forth his understanding of the relationship between revelation, faith and the natural knowledge of God. In addition, I discussed the question of the relation between nature and grace and the corresponding epistemological problem of faith and reason. I provided a critical and interpretative context for evaluating his objections. I turn now in this chapter to respond in a systematic fashion to the questions I summarized at the conclusion of the last chapter. What Does General Revelation Mean for Acquiring a Natural Knowledge of God? Berkouwer rightly affirms that any knowledge of God at all, including the natural knowledge of God acquired through the medium of creation, is solely due to God’s self-revelation; it is his first gift, his personal selfdisclosure in, by and through the things he has made. This claim that God’s revelation in creation is a free act of God, is based on the basic principle expressed by, for one, St. Irenaeus at the end of the second century: “The Lord taught us that no one is able to know God unless taught by God. God cannot be known without the help of God”17 Indeed, Irenaeus’ principle—“the knowledge of God begins with God”—goes back to St. Paul’s statement in Romans 1:19–20 of why he justifiably accuses men of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” The second half of this verse implies a certain action on the part of the self-revealing God: God himself has revealed what can be known about him in and through the created realities themselves.18 In addition, however, to the manifestation of the created realities themselves, God’s self-revealing action includes “the light to read them correctly,” making possible what can be known about him

17 Cited by De Lubac, Discovery of God, 7. On Irenaeus, see Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, 1–24. 18 Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 219–221.

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in and through creation itself. Consequently, there is also a corresponding objective capacity given with man’s nature to grasp this revelation.19 This self-revelation of God opens up man’s mind itself, indeed the whole man, to the knowledge of God via the medium of created realities themselves. Briefly, according to Francis Martin, whose account of Aquinas I am following here, the manifestations of God occur in three dimensions of our human knowing. First, the knowledge of God is “implicit in every act of knowing.” This is a fascinating thesis, but I cannot pause here to examine it.20 Second, there is the dimension that Aquinas called “intuition or intellectus. Its foundation is the presence of the thing known to the knower.” The foundation here undergirding the ability of man’s intellectus is the correspondence between the knower and what is known; the knowledge that follows from this correspondence is the explicit articulation in the act of knowing of that correspondence. The former Martin calls ‘ontological truth’ and the latter ‘epistemological truth.’ Regarding this distinction, he writes, “Beings gives themselves to us and modify us, thus establishing us in truth whose effect is knowledge. That knowledge that is the effect of [ontological] truth must first be considered as intellectus, as Aquinas says in the Summa contra Gentiles (1, 57): ‘That which is

19 Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 219–221. 20 Aquinas’ thesis, “All knowers know God implicitly in all they know” (De Veritate, q. 22, a. 2, ad 1), has been developed as a transcendental argument in the philosophical writings of profoundly different theologians, the French Catholic Henri de Lubac (1896– 1991) and the American Calvinist Cornelius van Til (1895–1987). A transcendental argument purports to make explicit the implicit knowledge of God present in every act of knowledge, showing the truth of God’s existence to be the presupposition for the very possibility of knowledge, predication, argument, causality, and everything else. On this argument, see De Lubac, The Discovery of God, Translated by Alexander Dru (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), which is the first unabridged English translation of Sur les chemins de Dieu, which is itself a revised and greatly expanded edition of his 1945 book, De la connaissance de Dieu. For Van Til’s version of this argument, see his A Survey of Christian Epistemology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969); idem, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969); idem, The Defense of the Faith (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1955). Robert D. Knudsen, “The Transcendental Perspective of Westminster’s Apologetic,” Westminster Theological Journal 48 (1986), 223–239 (https://www.reformed.org/apologetics/knudsen_westapol.html); idem, “Apologetics and History,” in Life is Religion: Essays in Honor of H. Evan Runner, Edited by Henry Vander Goot (St. Catherines, Ontario: Paideia Press, 1981), 119–133. John M. Frame, “Transcendental Arguments” (http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/2005Transcendental .htm). See also, Revelation and Reason, New Essays in Reformed Apologetics, Edited by K. Scott Oliphint & Lane G. Tipton (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2007). Don Collett, “Van Til and Transcendental Argument,” Westminster Theological Journal 65, no. 2 (Fall 2003), 289–306. John M. Frame, “Reply to Don Collett on Transcendental Argument,” Westminster Theological Journal 65 (2003): 307–309.



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supreme in our knowledge is not reason, but intellectus which is the source of reason’.” There is also the third dimension that Aquinas calls “reasoning (ratiocination), which is a movement of the mind made in the power of the original intuition [intellectus] by which a new truth is acquired and consciously assimilated in judgment.”21 Though I cannot argue the point here, I think that these two dimensions of our knowing that can be manifestations of God correspond to a pre-philosophical natural knowledge of God that should be distinguished from the philosophical knowledge of God acquired through reasoning or natural theological arguments.22 More important now is to consider what is the implication for intuition or intellectus, on the one hand, and human reasoning or theistic arguments, of God’s self-revelation in creation, particularly when we consider God’s judgment of wrath (Rom 1:18) upon the guilt of those who having known God fail to acknowledge him in his effects, that is, in created realities themselves. Regarding intellectus, Martin rightly notes, “since it is essentially an act of receptivity, suppression [of the truth] would consist in a refusal to be open to the witness of what is received, an inhibiting of its self-communicating.”23 The same can be said of natural theological reasoning. Here, too, human reasoning is “addressed and challenged to its very roots,” states Balthasar, indeed “summoned not only to come to know God but to acknowledge him in its logical thinking.”24 Yes, this summons is explicitly stated by Vatican I: “Since man depends totally on God as his Creator and Lord, and created reason is completely subject to uncreated

21 All the quotes in this paragraph are from Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 222–223. 22 Fergus Kerr alludes to this distinction in refuting the standard equation of the Vatican I dogma of faith that we can have certain knowledge of God by the natural light of reason with rational demonstrability of the existence of God. “Most theologians disagree with this, [Marcel] Chossat says (remember that he died in 1926); and anyway, so he concludes, the proceedings of the Council show that it is not so. The dogma does not say that knowledge of God’s existence is a ‘conclusion reached by a chain of inferences’, let alone that the certainty depends on a ‘syllogism’, Human reason is capable by nature of attaining sure and certain knowledge of God’s existence, but it is equally clear that Catholics were never committed by the Council to the possibility of proving this a posteriori by anything like the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Rather, as Chossat explains at great length, we have to distinguish between knowledge of God’s existence, which is spontaneous and universal, and knowledge of God’s existence, which is reflective or ‘scientific’ in the French sense” (“Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” 224). 23 “Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” 226. 24 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 315.

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Truth, we are obliged to yield to God the revealer full submission of intellect and will by faith.”25 Let’s return now to Berkouwer’s claim that the Catholic Church does affirm God’s creation revelation in the exposition of natural theology. Yes, all the great teachers of the Catholic tradition—for example, Irenaeus, Maximus the Confessor, William of St.-Thierry, Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas—are a witness to Berkouwer’s claim about the Church.26 Speaking of general revelation, or alternatively as Catholic theologians sometimes do,27 of natural revelation, to some suggests an epistemic supernaturalism, or fideism, and hence a suppression of our natural activity of human reason in grasping this revelation. But this conclusion confuses the ontic aspect of the problem of knowledge with the noetic aspect, between what is there to be seen in objective creation revelation, and our epistemic capacity to see it. In other words, speaking of general revelation refers only to the ontic source of the knowledge that is naturally acquired through reason (noetic aspect). Henri de Lubac rightly says, then, that speaking of general revelation “does not mean the suppression of our natural activity of mind; it indicates the prime condition and guarantee of its validity. It does not mean substituting another principle in the place of reason; rather it means digging down to its foundation. Going back, and up, to the source. It means saying, with St. Thomas, and according to the teaching of St. Paul [Rom 1:19–20], that God, the creative God, manifests himself to us through his works as in a book, and that he is, moreover, the principle of the knowledge which we have to acquire by the exercise of natural reason.”28 If I understand De Lubac correctly, he is alluding here to the classical distinction between the causa essendi (ontic) and the causa cognoscendi (noetic), that is, between the metaphysical and the epistemological order of things, between what there is and how we can know it.29 To say that the knowledge of God is grounded in, rather than known by, human reason would subvert the metaphysical order of things. Rather, as De Lubac puts it, “God is the reality which envelops, dominates, and measures

25 Vatican I, Dei Filius, Chapter 3, On Faith. 26 On this claim, see De Lubac, Discovery of God, 9–10, note 15. 27 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 12, 89–90. See also, Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 309–311. 28 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 7–8. 29 On the import of this distinction, see Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 62 [89–90].



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our thought, and not the reverse.”30 While many things about God are known from the bottom up, as it were—says St. Paul, from the things that God has made we come to a knowledge of his eternal power and divinity (Romans 1:19–20)—they are not ‘grounded’ in my knowledge, but in objective reality. A ‘ground of knowledge’ and a ‘ground of existence’ are distinct; alternatively put, we must avoid confusing the ontic (what is there to be seen) and noetic (and our ability to see it). As Bavinck rightly explains: “Although in a syllogism the existence of God may be the conclusion—just as, generally speaking, one may infer the existence of a worker from the existence of a piece of work—that existence in reality is still in fact the origin and ground of the existence of all things; indeed, it is even posited as such in the conclusion.”31 Bavinck understands the philosophical difference between the causa essendi (ontic) and the causa cognoscendi (noetic) in the practice of natural theology, but Berkouwer does not (see AO, 60–68 [74–83]). Berkouwer rolls out the standard claim that the acceptance of natural theology implies that belief in God’s existence is based on arguments and proofs and hence that God has no foundation apart from them. “The contrary,” says Bavinck, “rather, is the case.” “The so-called proofs may introduce greater distinctness and lucidity.” But, he adds, “they are no means the final ground on which our certainty regarding God’s existence is ultimately based.”32 Again, that is the import of the philosophical distinction between the causa essendi (ontic) and the causa cognoscendi (noetic) in the practice of natural theology. Bavinck recognizes that difference and, unlike Berkouwer, he is, therefore, still able to value (but not overvalue!) theistic arguments. And as long as we are clear on the difference, pace Berkouwer, we will avoid not only identifying general revelation and natural theology but also overvaluing the role of natural theological arguments in coming to certain knowledge of God through the medium of creation. Is Natural Theology Implied in an Acceptance of General Revelation? Yet, there is more to say about why the idea of creation revelation remains in the background of the practice of natural theology. General revelation 30 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 38. 31  Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 62 [89–90]. 32 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 62 [90].

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and natural theology are often confused, and also the scope of natural theology is narrowed to philosophical knowledge of God that is acquired through arguments and proofs, because of our being preoccupied with giving arguments and theistic proofs that rationally justify the Christian faith. In this light, we can understand why Vatican I’s main concern at the start of Chapter 2 of the Constitutio dogmatica de fide catholica is, in opposition to fideism and rationalism, to affirm man’s natural ability to grasp this revelation, that is, “the subjective, creaturely presupposition for perceiving it.” Given this concern, it is understandable why, as Balthasar also remarks, “this [creation] revelation is not at all named or described as such.” Still, he adds, The passage from Paul (Rom 1:20) cited by the Council frequently speaks in this context—from which it cannot be disengaged—of an act of revelation. . . . Certainly it was not part of the intention of the Council to thematize this side of the problem. But the Acta [et decreta sacrorum Conciliorum recentiorum] speak nonetheless of an act of revelation by God. Catholic dogmatics recognizes this. . . . Thus we may say that the ‘inferential’ ascent of thought to the Creator is always borne by the Creator’s prior decision to reveal himself in this nature itself.33

Balthasar is not alone in his view that Vatican I presupposes God’s selfrevelation in creation as the basis for the natural knowledge of God. More recently, Pannenberg has written in agreement with this point and in disagreement with Karl Barth who criticized “the council statement for suggesting that the knowledge of God is a possibility at our disposal, for [Barth] found here a violation of his basic principle that God can be known only by God.”34 He writes: Unlike Paul, the council did not in fact expressly present the knowledge of God from the works of creation as a result of divine self-declaration. On the other hand it was obviously not the intention of the council to rule out this

33 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 309–310. 34 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, Band I (GööVandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 86. (ET: Systematic Theology, Vol. I, 75). Pannenberg regards “as at least misleading the statement of Vatican I (1870) that God can be known as the origin and goal of all things from creaturely things (certo cognosci posse . . .). This statement at least suggests that what is at issue is an ability or capability of human reason (naturali humanae rationis lumine) and not the mere facticity of knowledge of God.” In other words, Pannenberg is suggesting that the Council opens itself up to the misunderstanding that this is “just a human possibility that we must first actualized by our own efforts.” Yes, adds Pannenberg, “In a more general sense the facticity includes the possibility, but it is there even when we have no awareness of the possibility. We cannot escape the presence of God” (Ibid.).



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basis of the knowledge or to introduce division into the concept of God [as Creator and Redeemer] as Barth believed. . . . Insofar as it is a matter of stating the fact of a knowledge of God from the works of creation by the light of human reason, we cannot contradict the council statement from the NT so long as it is presupposed that this fact has its basis in God himself, who made himself known to us in his deity from creation.35

Now, we can also avoid identifying general revelation and natural theology by distinguishing the pre-philosophical natural knowledge of God from the philosophical knowledge of God acquired through natural theological arguments. Pace Berkouwer, the inference of natural reason Balthasar is referring to in the concluding sentence of the passage above—and he is referring to St. Paul famous passage cited by Vatican I in support of the teaching that knowledge of God is attainable by natural reason through the things that God has made—does not necessarily mean the philosophical knowledge of God acquired through theistic proofs, reasoning and argument. The affirmation of God’s reality is not the conclusion of an argument or reasoning—so says De Lubac.36 He adds, “No proof gave me God.”37 In other words, affirming the truth of God’s existence is not necessarily achieved by way of the deductive consequence of the premises of an argument.38 Rather, Balthasar is referring to the spontaneous inference of reason, without argumentation and proof, through which humans arrives at (in Bavinck’s words) “some firm, certain, and unfailing knowledge of God” . . . “in the normal course of development and in the environment in which God gave them the gift of life.”39 This knowledge,

35 Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, Band I 75–76. Pannenberg also notes a contrast between Vatican I and Vatican II. “When Vatican II adopted the statement of Vatican I [“God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason”] in its Constitution on Revelation (Dei Verbum 6), it set the natural knowledge of God in the framework of salvation history according to the divine decree of revelation.” 36 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 38, “The thought, which is our affirmation of God, is not the conclusion of an argument.” 37 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 188. This claim doesn’t render philosophical proofs for God’s existence superfluous. 38 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 60. 39 Herman Bavinck distinguishes between an “implanted knowledge of God” (cognitia insita) and an “acquired knowledge of God” (cognitia acquisita). The former “is acquired naturally and spontaneously, without reasoning and argument,” whereas the latter is “acquired by reasoning and argument, reflection and demonstration along the lines of causality, eminence, and negation” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 42 [71]). Bavinck’s distinction is at the root of the development of the epistemology known as “Reformed Epistemology” in the twentieth-century by American neo-Calvinist philosophers Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, et al. On the relationship of Bavinck to Reformed Epistemology, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Herman Bavinck—Proto Reformed Epistemologist,” in Calvin

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too, is always mediated by the things that God has made. In sum, this distinction implies that Berkouwer is mistaken in stating that, as a matter of principle, the Catholic tradition identifies the knowledge of general revelation with natural theological arguments. In my judgment, Catholic thinkers, such as Balthasar, De Lubac, John Henry Newman,40 Jacques Maritain,41 and Aidan Nichols, are right in distinguishing these two kinds of natural knowledge of God. Nichols correctly observes regarding this passage: “It has sometimes been supposed that the council committed Catholics to seek a proof of God’s existence in strict logical form, a demonstration in a quasi-mathematical sense. Yet the key words of the text are ample, broad, capable of multiple interpretation: a knowledge ‘through the creation’ (through some, or perhaps each and every, aspect of finite being), ‘by the natural light of human reason’ (human reason tout court, with no attempt to lay down in advance what mode or style of human rationality that might be).”42 So the Church’s teaching regarding natural theology is not rationalistic because it neither requires such arguments to arrive at a natural knowledge of God nor does it limit the natural knowledge of God to demonstrative knowledge. What is more, it is not rationalistic, pace Berkouwer, Bavinck and Dooyeweerd, because it does not claim that the Catholic faith “is founded on or somehow procured by reason.”43 Yes, such theistic arguments are available but they are not necessary for the rationality of faith in God. So, then, Vatican I affirms the natural knowability of God: “The same holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the origin and end of all Theological Journal, April 2010, Vol. 45, No. 1: 133–146. For Plantinga’s mature statement of this epistemology, see his Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 40 For Newman’s mature statement of his religious epistemology, see An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1870]). 41 Jacques Maritain writes regarding Romans 1:19–20 that St. Paul “was thinking not only of scientifically elaborated or specifically philosophical ways of establishing the existence of God. He had in mind also and above all the natural knowledge of the existence of God to which the vision of created things leads the reason of every man, philosopher or not. It is this doubly natural knowledge of God I wish to take up here. It is natural not only in the sense that it belongs to the rational order rather than to the supernatural order of faith, but also in the sense that it is prephilosophic and proceeds by the natural or, so to speak, instinctive manner proper to the first apperceptions of the intellect prior to every philosophical or scientifically rationalized elaboration” (Approaches to God, 17–18). 42 Nichols, Epiphany, 16. The Catechism of the Catholic Church distinguishes “proofs for the existence of God . . . in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences” from “‘converging and convincing arguments’, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth [of God’s existence]” (no. 31). 43 Kerr, “Knowing God by reason alone: what Vatican I never said,” 216.



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things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason from the things that he created,” and Romans 1:20 is cited in support. But whether this knowledge necessarily entails natural theology in the sense of theistic proofs and arguments is another question. Berkouwer argues for this entailment. He assumes that Vatican I states that such arguments are necessary in order to come to certain knowledge of God’s existence. But in this passage, says Balthasar, “Vatican I has cleverly and reticently rejected . . . the definition of how one forms proofs for God’s existence: it [God’s existence] can be known, but it cannot be demonstrated—cognosci posse, but not demonstrari posse.” He adds, “Nothing is said by this against the logical validity of conclusiveness of proofs for God’s existence (of which, for example, the [1910] oath against Modernism will speak later).”44 Yes, most definitely such arguments are available, and so on this point there is a consistent position between Vatican I (1870) and the anti-modernist Oath (1910), indeed, the Catholic tradition. What sort of arguments? The Catechism of the Catholic Church categorizes theistic arguments in terms of their “twofold point of departure: the physical world and the human person.” It explains: The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe. . . . The human person: With his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the ‘seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material,’ can have its origin only in God. The world, and man, attest [then] that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality ‘that everyone calls “God”.’45

Thus, Berkouwer is correct to cite R. Garrigou-Lagrange who wrote regarding the anti-modernist oath that it more precisely rules out interpretations that deny the legitimacy of natural theological arguments.46 But no, Berkouwer is mistaken to suggest—stronger, to repeatedly insist throughout the years (1951–1974)—that such arguments, on the Catholic view, are

44 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 322. 45 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 32–34. 46 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 11.

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necessary not only to arrive at knowledge of God’s existence but also that we derive our certainty about God’s existence from such arguments. As Gilson correctly remarks, It is easy to write that Scholasticism “wishes to have us find God at the end of its syllogisms and to constitute a speculative science of the divine essence,” but how would it be proven? Neither for Saint Anselm, nor for Saint Bonaventure, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Albert the Great, Duns Scotus, Occam, nor, in a word for any of the great masters of scholastic theology, would the pretension of finding God by this means have any sense. Their critic is mistaken here. . . . [H]e forgets that all scholastic theology claims to be theology, precisely because it is founded on the Word of God, and on nothing else. A scientia? Certainly, but, as Saint Thomas says in the very first article of the Summa Theologica, a science inspired of God (scientia divinitus inspirata), about which he adds that, for this very reason, it does not belong to the philosophical disciplines which have been constructed by human reason (non pertinet ad philosophicas disciplinas, quae sunt secundum rationem humanam inventae). The end from which scholastic theology takes its start is not natural reason armed with its principles, but indeed the articuli fidei, and that towards which it tends is not an evacuation of the mystery, but the submission of the intellect to the mystery of Christ: “bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ” [2 Cor 10:5]. For Saint Thomas can also cite Saint Paul [Summa Theologica, I, 1, 8, resp. et ad 2m] and it is on this very point that he quotes this text.47

In sum, Gilson’s point is that for the great masters of scholastic theology theistic arguments are not necessary as a starting point for arriving at knowledge of God. That knowledge is founded on the revealed Word of God. Returning to Dei Filius and Pius XII in Humani Generis, the word “necessary” with respect to the knowledge of God in fact only appears in two places. First, in Pius’ own words, “Divine revelation is morally necessary so that those religious and moral truths which are not of their nature beyond the reach of reason in the present condition of the human race, may be known by all men readily with a firm certainty and with freedom from all error.”48 Second, Dei Filius follows up this point immediately 47 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 32. Elsewhere Gilson rejects as false and unjustified the “reproach directed against Catholicism by the dogmatic theology of the Reformer, namely, ‘of making the affirmations of faith rest on fallible reasonings’.” His rejoinder is: “The affirmations of Catholic faith ultimately depend on no reasoning, fallible or otherwise, but on the Word of God” (Ibid., 55–56). 48 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 3. Dei Filius, though not using the words “morally necessary” says the very same thing that Pius does: “It is indeed thanks to this divine revelation, that those matters concerning God which are not of themselves beyond the scope of human reason, can, even in the present state of the human race, be known by everyone



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by speaking of divine revelation being “absolutely necessary” . . . because “God directed human beings to a supernatural end, that is a sharing in the good things of God that utterly surpass the understanding of the human mind.”49 In the first case, divine revelation would only be absolutely, and not morally, necessary if natural reason did not at all have the in principle possibility of arriving at knowledge of God. Berkouwer understands this point well. “Now, this possibility, this capacity, definitely needs to be accepted and can only be discussed in terms of moral necessity since through supernatural revelation the route of the natural knowledge of God is only expedited. This necessity is based on the fact that there are restraining influences on the natural knowledge of God, factors that are embedded in the circumstances pertaining to fallen humanity.”50 In the second case, the unconditional necessity of revelation discloses divine truths that are inaccessible to natural reason outside of revelation. Divine revelation is morally but not absolutely necessary. This claim implies, according to Berkouwer, that human reason is not integrally influenced by sin, and hence does not need the healing grace of redemption. In the last chapter, I rebutted the autonomy objection against Catholic idea and practice as well as the anthropological objection that it doesn’t take seriously the noetic influence of sin and the corresponding power of grace to heal the actual functioning of fallen reason. Still, the Catholic tradition insists on the relative but real autonomy of natural reason, and so the possibility of the natural knowability of God—in either of the two ways.51 In particularly, regarding natural theology, it recognizes its “relative without difficulty, with firm certitude and with no intermingling of error” (chapter 2, On revelation). 49 Dei Filius, Chapter 2, On revelation. 50 Berkouwer, “Identiteit of Conflict?,” 13. 51  On interpreting Rom. 1:19–20, William Lane Craig writes: “The passage itself permits either interpretation [pre-philosophical as well as natural theological arguments]. But the interesting phrase ‘ảórata . . . nooúmena kathorâtai’ (1:20) could very well indicate that inferential reasoning is involved in the perception of God’s invisible nature in the creation, meaning something like ‘God’s invisible nature is perceived through reflecting on the things that have been made’. . . . This pattern of reasoning was characteristic of Greek and Hellenistic Jewish thought, and it is interesting that Paul’s language bears the imprint of that influence: aidios is found in pagan Greek from early times and frequently in Philo, but only here and in Jude 6 in the New testament; on God’s dynamis kai theiotēs, cf. vis et natura deorum (Cicero, De natura deorum 1.18,44). A very close parallel to the Romans passage—so close, in fact, that some commentators have suggested that Paul had it in mind—is the Hellenistic Jewish work Wisdom of Solomon 13:1–9, where inferential reasoning is clearly in view, especially, verses 4–5, where we noēsatōsan ap´autōn . . . analogōs. Moreover, Acts 14:17 states that although God let the Gentiles go their own way, still he did not leave them amartyron, that is, without evidence or witness, which is constituted by

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autonomy,” as Guarino notes, “and so the possibility of an integral argument for God’s existence.” This acknowledgment that theistic arguments “possess a certain independence, a legitimate integrity, in the philosophical domain” means that there exists a valid argument for God’s existence and its apprehension is intrinsically natural.52 This does not for a moment leave the knowing subject’s proper natural and theological dispositions, as one aspiring to truth, out of account in arriving at the knowledge of God via creation, and this is even more the case when we consider man’s realizing the full potential of natural reason.53 Let us briefly recall my earlier discussion of Pius XII who stated that the aspirant to truth must exercise self-surrender and self-abnegation because the human intellect is hampered by, for example, evil passions arising from original sin, prejudice or passion or bad faith that fuels the mind’s resistance against the evidence. He affirms the “usefulness and efficacy of good dispositions of soul for perceiving and embracing moral and religious truths.” “In fact,” Pius adds, “the lack of these dispositions of good will can be the reason why the intellect, influenced by the passions and evil inclinations, can be so obscured that it cannot see clearly.”54 Furthermore, he aligns himself with Aquinas who held “that the intellect can in some way perceive higher goods of the moral order, whether natural or supernatural, inasmuch as it experiences a certain ‘connaturality’ with those goods, whether this ‘connaturality’ be purely natural, or the result of grace; and it is clear how much even this somewhat obscure perception can help the reason in its investigations.”55 But Pius’ position suggests that some moral and metaphysical truths are accessed only by the one who seeks after truth in a moral or spiritual

the created order. These passages, which doubtless reflect a common approach to Gentile audiences, may be plausibly interpreted as a legitimation of natural theology” (William Lane Craig, “Classical Apologetics,” 26–55, and for these quotes, 39–40). 52 Lonergan rightly holds that “Natural knowledge of God is denied if one holds that there is no valid argument [for God’s existence] or if one holds that apprehending the argument is an intrinsically supernatural act. Natural knowledge of God is affirmed if one holds that there is a valid argument and if one holds that apprehending the argument is intrinsically natural” (“Natural Knowledge of God,” 133). 53 I showed in the last chapter that this, too, was not only Karl Adam’s view, but also the view of Pius XII, that is, the effort to work out theistic proofs is not merely a matter of right reason but rather should be preceded by the proper dispositions of the aspirant to truth. 54 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 33. 55 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 33; italics added.



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condition that makes him fit for attaining truth. Thus, these central truths are not accessed by way of impartial inquiry, or detached scrutiny. In this connection, consider also the brief reflections of Ratzinger, indebted to Newman, on the moral and theological disposition of the truth-seeker.56 Regarding the fundamental relationship of human beings, indeed, of the truth-seeker, to truth, what sort of person must I be in order to know the truth? Ratzinger replies: All too often people are inclined, the great theologian states, to wait quietly as if proofs of the reality of revelation would walk in through their front door, as if they were in the position of judges rather than suppliants. “Like this is the conduct of those who resolve to treat the Almighty with dispassionateness, a judicial temper, clear-headedness and candor.” But we deceive ourselves by making ourselves the lord of truth in this way. It [truth] withdraws itself from those who claim self-sufficiency and reveals itself only to those who approach it in attitude of reverence, of adoring humility. . . . To a “critical” way of thinking that criticizes everything except human beings themselves we thus oppose openness to the infinite, vigilance, and sensitivity for the whole of being: a humility of thought that is ready to bow before the majesty of truth, before which we are not judges but suppliants—it reveals itself only to the watchful and humble heart.57

56 Neil Ormerod correctly describes Lonergan’s emphasis “that to get someone to the starting point [of proofs for the existence of God] may require a [intellectual] conversion on the part of the subject. ‘One cannot prove the existence of God to a Kantian without first breaking his allegiance to Kant. One cannot prove the existence of God to a positivist without first converting him from positivism’. So in that sense the argument begins within a horizon with certain presuppositions which may not be present in every subject. If one does not accept these presuppositions, the argument has no traction” (“Charles Taylor and Bernard Lonergan on Natural Theology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 74 [2009]: 419–433, and for this quote, 431). Lonergan puts the point this way: “If one considers logical proof to be basic, one wants an objectivity that is independent of the concrete existing subject. On the contrary, objectivity is reached through the self-transcendence of the concrete existing subject, and the fundamental forms of self-transcendence are intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. To attempt to ensure objectivity apart from self-transcendence only generates illusions” (Method in Theology, 338). Lonergan argues that his position is not inconsistent with Vatican I’s decree that God can be known through the things that have been made by natural reason’s own force and light because the Council was stating a quaestio iuris, not a quaestio facti (“Natural Knowledge of God,” 133). As Ormerod notes, for Lonergan “the use of the term ‘natural light of reason’ at Vatican I was in contradistinction to the ‘fallen reason’ which is our present state” (Ibid., 431). 57 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 17–19. John Henry Newman, “Faith and Reason, Contrasted as Habits of Mind,” Sermon X (1839), in Oxford University Sermons, no. 43: “For is not this the error, the common and fatal error, of the world, to think itself a judge of Religious Truth without preparation of heart? ‘I am the good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine’ [ John 10:14]. ‘He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His voice’ [ John 10:4]. ‘The pure in heart shall see God’ [Matt 5:8]; ‘to the meek mysteries are revealed’ [Sirach 3:19]; ‘He that is spiritual judgeth all things’

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Thus, Ratzinger is suggesting that the truths about God do not reveal themselves in an impartial assessment, detached scrutiny, but to the aspirant to truth whose state of mind is already to some extent in a state of self-criticism, of humility, being a suppliant, openness, receptivity, trust, and the willingness to listen. This demand—that one be a certain sort of person in order to know the truth—cannot be dismissed as “merely subjective.”58 What it is concerned with is fundamental human attitudes. It is only to a humble willingness to listen and learn that does not let itself be discouraged by any refusal, nor be led astray either by applause or rejection, nor even by the devices and desires of our own hearts—it is only to this humility of thought that the majesty of truth reveals itself and thereby grants access to our true dimension. This kind of openness to the infinite and to the One who is infinite has nothing to do with credulity: on the contrary, it demands the keenest self-criticism. It is more open and more critical than that limitation to the sphere of the empirical in which human beings make their desire for mastery the final criterion of knowledge.59

These reflections of Pius and Ratzinger raise the following question. Are they inconsistent, not only with their own reaffirmation of Vatican I’s teaching that humans can have certain knowledge of God by reason’s own natural force and light, but also with the Council’s first principle, the ‘duplex ordo cognitionis,’ which distinguishes the source and object of knowledge pertaining to faith and reason? In a word, the answer to this important question is ‘no.’ And the correctness of this answer, I argued at length in the last chapter, is clear once we see that natural theology is not necessarily based on the autonomy and anthropological objections.

[1 Cor 2:15]. ‘The darkness comprehendeth it not’ [ John 1:5]. Gross eyes see not; heavy ears hear not. But in the schools of the world the ways towards Truth are considered high roads open to all men, however disposed, at all times. Truth is to be approached without homage. Everyone is considered on a level with his neighbor; or rather the powers of the intellect, acuteness, sagacity, subtlety, and depth, are thought the guides into Truth. Men consider that they have as full a right to discuss religious subjects, as if they were themselves religious. They will enter upon the most sacred points of Faith at the moment, at their pleasure,—if it so happen, in a careless frame of mind, in their hours of recreation, over the wine cup. Is it wonderful that they so frequently end in becoming indifferentists, and conclude that Religious Truth is but a name, that all men are right and all wrong, from witnessing externally the multitude of sects and parties, and from the clear consciousness they possess within, that their own inquiries end in darkness?” Online: http://www .newmanreader.org/works/oxford/sermon10.html. 58 Cottingham, The Spiritual Dimension, Religion, Philosophy and Human Value, 138. 59 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 19.



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Vatican I rightly defended the duplex ordo against both fideism and rationalism, but we should also consider that its statement regarding the first principle of ‘duplex ordo cognitionis,’ “may be less than balanced or comprehensive and thus, by implication, need supplementation, whether from another Council or from other sources.”60 In Chapter One, I referred to Balthasar’s explanation of this implication: “Even though, of course, the truth of the Councils of Trent and Vatican I will never be overtaken or even relativized, nonetheless there are still other views and aspects of revelation than those expressed there. This has always happened throughout church history, when new statements are brought forth to complete earlier insights in order to do justice to the inexhaustible riches of divine revelation even in the earthen vessel of human language.”61 I showed in the last chapter that Berkouwer himself makes this same point in Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie. He writes, “An unmistakable limitation and even, in a sense, an overshadowing of the fullness of truth is created by the defensive and polemical character of dogmatic pronouncements. It seems both necessary and almost self-evident that previous pronouncements of dogma must be interpreted in this light” (77 [69]). In the case of Vatican I, we can state that it taught nothing that is false, but that is consistent with claiming that its statements were less than well-balanced or comprehensive, say, with respect to a theology of nature and grace, and epistemologically, the problem of faith and reason. In this connection, it is helpful to recall Maritain’s remark regarding the relation of nature and grace: it is erroneous to ignore both the distinction between nature and grace as well as their union. Vatican I emphasized their distinction in the positions it took against fideism and rationalism. But the Council’s teaching must be supplemented with a reflection on their union. As Balthasar correctly notes, The Council did not touch upon the question of whether nature in concreto was ever raised to another state, the supernatural one, or whether there is within fallen nature an essential expression of nature that occurs without any relationship to supernatural grace, or whether de facto, if not necessarily de jure, a moment of supernatural grace is at work either internally or externally in all knowledge of God by the human race.62

60 Aidan Nichols, O.P. and Moyra Doorly, The Council in Question, A Dialogue with Catholic Traditionalism, 83. 61  Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 11–12. 62 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 304.

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In presenting a theology of nature and grace in what follows, I defend more fully the consistency of the approach that brings the aspiring subject’s proper natural and theological dispositions in regard to arriving at the natural knowledge of God with the ‘duplex ordo cognitionis.’ What Can Human Reason, If Anything, Truly Know of God After the Fall? Berkouwer holds that, according to the principle of the “duplex ordo cognitionis,” human reason in the order of nature is taken to be a “pure reason” even within the concrete conditions and circumstances of the human condition that inhibit the actual functioning of reason. Berkouwer takes the neo-scholastic interpretation to be the correct reading of this principle. In the previous chapter, I have already distanced myself from a neo-scholastic view of natural reason as ‘pure reason’ and the corresponding state of ‘pure nature.’ The notion of ‘pure nature’ prescinds from all concrete conditions and circumstances under which human reason actually functions. I joined my voice with other Catholic critics of neoscholasticism by urging that the “state of pure nature . . . has never, in the concrete, existed.”63 As I understand these critics, ‘pure reason’ does not, concretely, exist because the natural reasoning of actual human beings is a religious act, as it were, being already directed in the actual conditions of fact under which it operates by the central disposition of the heart, whether fallen or renewed, either for or against God. Indeed, these critics subscribe to a notion of “natural reason,” according to Nichols, which “remains open and disponsible where revelation is concerned: it is able to enter into a relation with some historically realized situation of [humanity], whether fallen or redeemed.”64 Nichols view, then, is that men and women seek a natural knowledge of God in the actual conditions in which they have already made a choice either for or against God, and hence they are in either a state of grace or of sin. This, too, is Balthasar’s view: “The outlook of his reason will not be the outlook of a ratio pura but of a reason that already stands within the teleology of faith or unbelief.”65 Furthermore, like Pius in Human Generis, Ratzinger also urges that faith can help reason in its investigations, freeing it from the noetic influences that 63 Nichols, Epiphany, 10. 64 Nichols, Epiphany, 10. 65 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 280.



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disorient reason, obscuring its perception of the truth. Ratzinger writes, “For human reason is not autonomous at all. It is always living in one historical context or other. Any historical context, as we shall see, distorts the vision of reason; that is why reason needs the help of history in order to overcome these historical limitations. It is my view that the neoscholastic rationalism that was trying to reconstruct the praeambula fidei, the approach to faith, with pure rational certainty, by means of rational argument that was strictly independent of any faith, has failed; and it cannot be otherwise for any such attempts to do that kind of thing. . . . Faith, as a historical instrument, can set reason itself free again, so that—now that faith has set it on the right path again—reason can once more see properly for itself.”66 With Ratzinger’s claims we have come by another route to the same question raised above: although Berkouwer is sympathetic to this view, indeed, regards it as an advance in Catholic interpretations of reason, what are we to make of his insistence that this view is inconsistent with Vatican I’s first principle, the ‘duplex ordo cognitionis’? The question before us is whether God can be known with certainty through creation by natural reason’s own force and light, and, if so, under what conditions? I argued in the last chapter that there is a basis in the records of Vatican I, namely, in the Acta [et decreta sacrorum Conciliorum recentiorum], for the interpretation that “the Council decided the de jure question” but “clearly left the de facto question open.”67 Furthermore, there seems to be a consensus that Vatican I meant to speak only of a quaestio iuris rather than of a quaestio facti, of the conditions of possibility rather than of the conditions of actual occurrence, and hence it prescinds from the concrete and fallen order in which we live and from the question to what extent and under what conditions of actuality that possibility is de facto realizable.68 Why is it important to understand whether the Vatican council left the de facto question open? The core answer to this question here must be that it undercuts both Berkouwer’s self-evident assurance that the ‘autonomy of reason’ is a first principle of Roman Catholic thought, and hence his justification in criticizing what he regards as ‘Catholic rationalism.’ The latter is the view that the essentially rational 66 Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Truth and Tolerance, Christian Belief and World Religions, Translated by Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 136. 67 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 302–309. 68 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 302–309. See also, Lonergan, “Natural Knowledge of God,” 117–133; idem, Philosophy of God, and Theology, 51, and Method in Theology, 339. Last, see M. Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik, 164–169, whom Balthasar cites extensively, Theology of Karl Barth, 307–308.

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character of natural theology means that is “religiously neutral” with “revelation exercising no positive and direct influence.”69 What, then, did Vatican I decide? To answer this question, we need to know what remains of nature in the post-lapsarian condition. “Is our natural light irremediably blind to God and to everything which is of God or not?”70 The Council answers negatively. It decided that human nature and hence natural reason’s capacity to know God, is not destroyed or turned into its opposite, needing to be replaced altogether by a supernatural capacity to know God. In other words, the Council rejected fideism and hence the view that natural reason’s capacity was, in light of the fall into sin, completely incapacitated such that, in Berkouwer’s words, “a complete darkness . . . has fallen upon human existence, with an ignorance of which nothing more can be said than that it is non-knowing” (AO, 128 [154]). Instead, natural reason’s ability to know God continues to function even under the regime of sin, in the concrete and fallen order of man’s postlapsarian condition. Fallen natural reason remains capax Dei in the order of knowledge, as Gilson rightly holds, but “it is certainly no longer capax in the same way as before the fall, and its light can only with difficulty rediscover God without error unless that of faith is added to it.”71 Evidence that fallen natural reason remains capax Dei in the order of knowledge is that there are still valid arguments for God’s existence and apprehending them is an intrinsically natural act, not a supernatural act.72 That it is a natural 69 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 59. 70 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 19. In his understanding of the text of Vatican I, Heinrich Ott (1929–) argues “that there is natural knowledge of God in principle but in the present state of the race the possibility is never actualized because of sin (Die Lehre des I. Vatikanischen Konzils. Ein evangelischer Kommentar [Basil, 1963], p. 48).” This quote from Ott is cited in Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie, I, 86n33. Pannenberg adds, “This formulation is even further from Paul than that of the council, since it rules out the facticity of knowledge of God which the apostle emphasizes in Rom 1:21 ( gnontes ton theon).” In other words, Pannenberg rejects Ott’s view because it denies St. Paul’s teaching that the pagans are those who are rendered inexcusable by the fact that they “have known God.” Pannenberg has misgivings about Vatican I’s formulation of this fact because it does not “expressly present the knowledge of God from the works of creation as a result of divine self-declaration.” Still, the council does not rule out that the natural knowledge of God “has its basis in God himself, who made himself known to us in his deity from creation” (75n33). Pannenberg’s correct objection against Ott, namely, that it rules out the facticity of knowledge of God stated in Rom 1:21, also holds against Jürgen Moltmann, “The Revelation of God and the Question of Truth,” in his Hope and Planning, Translated by Margaret Clarkson (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1971), 3–30, especially, 21–22. 71 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 23. This, too, is the view of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God” (no. 35). 72 Lonergan, “Natural Knowledge of God,” 133.



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act does not mean that natural reason is religiously neutral with respect to the self-revealing God of creation revelation. I have already argued against the neo-scholastic interpretation of natural human reason, having defended the view that the natural reasoning of actual human beings is a religious act, as it were, being already directed in the actual conditions of fact under which it operates by the central disposition of the heart, whether fallen or renewed, either for or against God. This follows from the view that I have been defending, namely, “There is the moment of decision of the will and of the whole person that already accompanies and determines every knowledge of depths in the natural and even more in the supernatural sphere. And, in the sinner, this decision, as a negative one, influences and muddies true knowledge even down to its very roots.”73 The decision that sinners make when rejecting the one, indivisible God of creation and redemption that they have known—presupposing knowledge of God that they cannot not know—distorts the knowledge of God that they do have at its very core, with the result that they are under the wrath of God. Significantly, this kind of ‘knowing’ is necessary to account for human’s inexcusability, but fails, as St. Paul also says, to lead human’s to give thanks or glorify God with their whole life; in other words, such knowledge that they cannot help knowing is rejected by them and hence they do not arrive at a ‘believing acknowledgment of God.’ I argued in the last chapter that Berkouwer’s downright skeptical attitude regard the claim that this of ‘knowing’ is an authentic act of knowing God is untenable. For if unregenerate humans are so fallen and estranged from God that they cannot have any true knowledge at all of God, then God’s wrath cannot be justified without this knowledge. But it is this knowledge that renders humans without excuse. They need to recognize sufficiently the truth about God in order to suppress it.74 Thus, the unbeliever may know God in one sense without knowing him in another sense—which latter sense is the fuller sense of believing acknowledgment, resulting from turning toward God in the light of grace and faith. Thus, natural reason already stands with the context of faith or unbelief, of grace or wrath. Balthasar explains: “The God with whom man relates in this world is de facto the God of wrath and the God of grace, just as man himself is always de facto

73 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 319. 74 Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 205–247, and for this point, 219.

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the human being who has either turned away from God in sin or turned toward God in the light of grace and faith.”75 Of course the fact that it remains a natural act even in the postlapsarian condition does not mean that people arrive at a natural knowledge of God—meaning thereby the full ‘believing acknowledgement’ of God rather than merely ‘knowing’ him—without the light of God’s grace and faith. Turning toward God “always occurs praeveniente gratia [with God’s prevenient grace].”76 Indeed, as Vatican I states: “For the most merciful Lord stirs up and helps with his grace those who are wandering astray, so that they may be able to come to a knowledge of the Truth” [1 Tim 2:4].77 So, some humans reject this grace by not accepting it. “And thus, just as man’s turning toward God is borne along by grace, so too his turning away from God, in original or personal sin, is modified by a supernatural modus. As long as he remains in sin, man cannot know God the way he should know him.”78 Most significant, then, “His knowledge remains in its decisive meaning a ‘miscarried knowledge’ (peccatum) in spite of all its correct moments. For it occurs in the basic attitude of refusing to obey (apistia: infidelity). And for this refusal to ac-knowledge God in spite of their knowing him, Paul promised to the pagans the same (thoroughly supernatural) punishment as he did to the Jews.”79 In St. Paul’s words, “For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened” (Rom 1:21). Thus, natural reason is, in one basic sense, irremediably blind since it is only by faith’s knowledge of God, which is a gift of God’s grace, that one can come to a believing acknowledgement of God. Yes, fallen human reason can still know God, but it remains fallen with repercussions. As Nichols explains: “The telltale signs [of it remaining fallen reason] are scattered throughout the history of thinking. Our apparently inextinguishable urge to locate ourselves in relation to reality as a whole, to go beyond what experience alone can tell us, ends up frequently enough either in hubris or in impotence. Thought either leaps into speculative delusions about how much it can know or else falls back into a state of supine resignation to not knowing. And so the history of philosophy is 75 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 323. 76 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 323. 77 Vatican Council I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Chapter 3, On Faith. 78 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 323–324. 79 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 324.



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a history of reaction against metaphysics, and of reactions against the denial of metaphysics.”80 In short, the fallen human intellect needs to be purified, transformed, and properly ordered to attain its ends. In the words of Leo XIII, “Those, therefore, who to the study of philosophy unite obedience to the Christian faith, are philosophizing in the best possible way; for the splendor of the divine truths, received into the mind, helps the understanding, and not only detracts in nowise from its dignity, but adds greatly to its nobility, keenness, and stability.”81 Faith needs reason, but vice-versa, reason needs faith. “Faith frees and saves reason from error, and endows it with manifold knowledge.”82 To counter the standard neo-Calvinist objection to the Catholic view, as Berkouwer understood it, namely, the knowledge of faith is a mere supernatural addition to our natural reason, it is important to see that faith stands to our cognitive powers as corrective and guide. Yes, faith provides knowledge not acquired through natural reason’s own force and light; the only epistemic access to the truths of special divine revelation—the economy of redemptive history—is through faith. But the light of grace and faith involves the redemption of the proper natural functioning of human reason. Put differently, resulting from the achievement of grace, which takes hold of human nature, transforming and perfecting that nature, nature is redeemed in its own domain. This last point is worth repeating: infused with grace this transformation and perfection occurs in the very order of nature. On the one hand, then, in order to do justice to the claim that we are dealing here with a natural knowledge of God, we need to “take into account a full activity of the rational faculties of man in his coming to know God.” Nature—i.e., natural reason—is not suppressed by grace but rather it is confirmed by grace. Balthasar explains, “Paul’s text [in Romans 1] itself shows this most unambiguously. The invisible qualities of God are seen as ‘befitting reason’. The activity of nature is incorporated into this knowledge intact. Nature is what must perform the act of believing acknowledgment. The same holds for Wisdom 13:5ff, and Acts 17:22.”83 80 Nichols, Epiphany, 56. Nichols adds, “Outside the sphere of salvation, reason is adapted to the fallen state of [man]. It is, often, happily and successfully so adapted, but adapted nonetheless it is. Fallen reason can generate truth—speculative truth in pure reason, truth about conduct through practical reason, and that other truth for which we have no name in productive reason (i.e., in making things, from pots and pans to states and governments). Yet it remains fallen reason” (Ibid.). 81  Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, August 1879, no. 9. 82 Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, no. 9. 83 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 318.

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On the other hand, this believing acknowledgement of God by reason is undertaken with grace. As I noted earlier, Balthasar correctly remarks, “The Council did not touch upon the question of . . . whether there is within fallen nature an essential expression of nature that occurs without any relationship to supernatural grace.” One can safely say that the neoscholastic interpretation assumed that the Council took a position that grace was in principle unnecessary because of the ‘duplex ordo cognitionis.’84 But on the view I am defending grace doesn’t replace natural reason with some supernatural capacity but rather it restores reason so that it can “fulfill the most natural aspects of its identity.”85 Gilson correctly states this theology of nature and grace as: “Grace presupposes nature, whether to restore or to enrich it. When grace restores nature, it does not substitute itself for it, but re-establishes it; when nature, thus reestablished by grace, accomplishes its proper operations, they are indeed natural operations which it performs.”86 Furthermore, since Vatican I only decided the de jure question but left open the de facto question, it did not address the actual difficulties of attaining certainty regarding the knowledge of God when reason is left completely to itself in man’s fallen condition.87 Berkouwer is simply mistaken when he charges Vatican I with diminishing the significance of this fallen condition for man’s natural reason to arrive at knowledge of God without grace and being guided by Revelation.88 Recall that he claimed that, according to the Catholic tradition, neither the knowing agent nor the power or ability of human reason itself has been weakened and darkened by original and actual sins, and hence needs restoration by redeeming grace. Says Berkouwer, “[W]e . . . absolutely reject the Roman Catholic idea of natural theology. For the latter supposes it can point to human reason as the sphere which has in principle not been affected, nor even imperiled by sin.”89 Here, too, Berkouwer is mistaken. Indeed, I have already shown in the last chapter that St. Thomas Aquinas contradicts him on this very point. Aquinas holds that’s the power or ability of human reason suffers the wound of ignorance and is deprived of its direction 84 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 304. 85 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311. 86 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 24. 87 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 60. 88 On this, see Kuyper, Encyclopaedie, 53; Principles, 106–114, especially 106–107: “[I]n every theory of knowledge which is not to deceive itself, the fact of sin must henceforth claim a more serious consideration.” 89 Berkouwer, Conflict Met Rome, 316 [235].



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toward truth.90 Therefore: “The researches of natural reason do not suffice mankind for the knowledge of Divine matters, even of those that can be proved by reason.”91 This leaves the proper ordering of our intellectual powers to the truth in a precarious, confused, and disordered state. This deprivation may also affect “man’s desire to know the truth about creatures,” adds Aquinas in his critique of immanentism, for he may wrongly desire to know the truth by not “referring his knowledge to its due end, namely, the knowledge of God.”92 Yes, indeed, Berkouwer is right: according to Vatican I (and yes again, Vatican II) “Natural reason has the ability to know God” even within the concrete context of humanity’s fallen condition.” Of themselves, truths about God are naturally knowable without the supernatural light of faith because even the unbeliever, in his fallen condition, can come to know truths about God. Let us recall St. Paul’s point, that it is precisely this knowledge that renders humanity without excuse. But let us also avoid equivocation and hence confusion between knowing God and acknowledging him. We must recall that Berkouwer at one and the same time says that the unregenerate man does not know God at all and yet there are some who have, however imperfectly, yielded to God’s self-manifestation in and through creation and hence in some sense ‘know’ God. They know God but do not acknowledge him as God. Regarding this point, there is a unique blend of knowing and not knowing, a mixture of the one and the other at the same time. On the one hand, humans know God: if they suppresses the truth about God, they need to recognize sufficiently that truth, and hence in some sense know it, in order not only for them to suppress it but also for God’s wrath to be justified against them (‘man is without excuse’). Balthasars affirms this point in replying to the question regarding the extent to which the natural knowledge of God remains in humanity’s post-lapsarian condition as well as what value that knowledge has. Even in that condition there is, he rightly says, “an authentic and lasting knowledge of God.”93 This knowledge is, however, not wholly correct and errorfree especially because of its rejection of God’s grace.

90 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 85, a. 3, Resp. See also, Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 81. 91  St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 2, a. 4 ad 1. 92 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 167, a. 1. 93 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 319.

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Ratzinger concurs. He remarks: “Truth was available to them but they did not want it nor the claim it would make on them. The apostle [Paul] talks of the ‘wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth’ (Rom 1:18). Human beings oppose the truth that would demand submission of them.”94 He adds: “When we place our own will, our pride, and our comfort above the claim of truth, everything is in the end necessarily turned upside down: it is not God to whom worship is due that is worshipped any longer; what we worshipped are the images, the appearance, the prevailing opinion that wins domination over people.”95 Significantly, it isn’t that the evidence for God’s existence is insufficient, but rather that there is “resistance to the evidence laid down in human beings for the Creator who is concerned for them and summons them.” Ratzinger elaborates: For Paul atheism, or agnosticism lived in an atheist manner, is no innocent affair. For him it always rests on resistance to a perception that is in itself open to human beings but whose requirements they refuse to accept. We are not condemned to ignorance with regard to God. We can “see” God if we hearken to the voice of our essential nature, to the voice of creation, and let ourselves be led by this.96

Again, humans are not condemned to ignorance regarding the knowledge of God. Rather, they are without excuse because they know God, and suppress the truth about him. Thus, I do think that Berkouwer is inconsistent when denying that humans know God truly in any sense whatsoever, while at the same time affirming the epistemic connection between general revelation and humanity’s guilt. On the other hand, they do not know God when what it means to know God truly is to acknowledge him in its deepest sense, which involves submission in the form of honoring God and giving him thanks (Rom 1:21) In other words, “ ‘To know God’ . . . means to discern his presence and action, to experience him and be in communion with him, but it also means to choose him and obey him.”97 This is

94 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 22. 95 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 23. Ratzinger continues: “This general perversion extends to all fields of life. What is unnatural becomes normal: the person who lives against truth also lives against nature. People’s powers of invention no longer serve what is good but the ingenuity and refinement of evil. The relationship between man and wife, between parents and children is dissolved, and in this way the sources of life are blocked up. It is no longer life that reigns but death, and a civilization of death has become established.” 96 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ, 23–24. 97 Martin, “Revelation as Disclosure: Creation,” 229.



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obviously not the kind of knowledge that is naturally acquired by unregenerate humans; for that knowledge fails to result in true service of God. In that sense Berkouwer is right that unregenerate humans do not know God at all. Yet, because of God’s common grace, the natural knowledge of God, however imperfect, but in some sense still true, does survive in fallen humanity.98 That is why Ratzinger rightly says about Romans 1 that “Paul’s words are essentially painting the picture, not of some particular historical situation, but of the permanent situation of humanity, of man, vis-à-vis God.”99 Berkouwer acknowledges this point but it remains in the background of his thinking. That’s because in his view the only value this knowledge has is that it renders humanity guilty for failing to acknowledge God. Furthermore, Berkouwer is chiefly concerned about avoiding interpreting the natural knowledge of God sustained by common grace as somehow predisposing man toward saving grace, being as such “a preparation for conversion” and hence as a preparation for the reception of the Gospel (see AO, 141–142 [167, 169]). Human nature, and hence its powers such as natural reason, is not, in its concrete historical state, predisposed toward grace. What is, then, the implication of denying that man has ‘the capacity as man for contacting God’ even in his fallen state? The implication would be that “man could by nature be an atheist and the act of faith could in itself be neither reasonable nor shown to be reasonable. That is why what is at stake in every posse is not merely something unreal but a genuine possibility, no matter how hindered it might be in the way it unfolds and takes shape.”100

  98 In support of this claim, I cited earlier in the text Berkouwer’s predecessor Kuyper who writes, “thanks to common grace . . . knowledge of God is still possible, either by way of tradition, or as the result of personal insight, such as has been found in generous measures in the midst of paganism, in its mysteries as well as with its poets and philosophers.” Similarly, we find Berkouwer’s other predecessor, Bavinck, writing: “However severely Scripture judges the character of paganism, it is precisely the general revelation it [Scripture] teaches that enables and authorizes us to recognize all the elements of truth that are present also in pagan religions. . . . The Reformed theologians . . . by their doctrine of common grace . . . recognize all the truth, beauty, and goodness that is present also in the pagan world. . . . An operation of God’s Spirit and of his common grace is discernible not only in the science and art, morality and law, but also in the religions” (Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 290–291 [318–319]).   99 Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, Translated by Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 97. 100 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 320. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states one important reason for the Church’s defense of “the ability of human reason to know God,” namely, “the Church is expressing her confidence in the possibility of speaking about

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Again, as I have been arguing, human reason has the genuine possibility of coming to know God through the things that have been made but that doesn’t mean that natural reason is religiously neutral; rather, humans seek a natural knowledge of God in those actual conditions in which they have already made a choice either for or against God, and hence they are in either a state of grace or of sin. That genuine possibility results in natural reason’s ability to construct an integral argument for God’s existence. The value of this argument is that it “can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.”101 This does not mean, in any sense, that humans frees themselves by logical means from their rejection of God. Neither Vatican I nor Vatican II subscribe to Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism. The former heresy in the theology of grace “rejects the doctrine of original sin, overlooks the pressure of concupiscence and the nature of suffering and death as consequence of sin.” Furthermore, it conceives of human freedom as (created but) complete autonomy which by itself can and must observe the law of God, thus denying the necessity of grace for natural and salutary observance of the moral law.” Semi-Pelagianism “divides salvation between God and man in a primitive synergism: man begins his salvation by his own unaided powers; then God responds to this independent ‘good will’ by granting the grace to complete the work of salvation.”102 Rather, the Church affirms the teaching of the Second Council of Orange (529) that divine grace is the beginning of faith—the initium fidei—“targeting the fundamental spiritual powers of the human being—intellect and will—[and] this is not to be seen as replacing the normal functioning of those powers but as assisting that functioning in such a way that the will is drawn to the supreme Good manifested in revelation, the will thereby moving the intellect to give assent to the Word of God, and the Word of God in turn testifying to that manifestation.”103 Nichols’ theology of nature and grace as expressed him to all men and with all men, and therefore of dialogue with other religions, with philosophy and science, as well as with unbelievers and atheists” (no. 39). 101 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 34. 102 Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, Editor, Cornelius Ernst, O.P., Translated by Richard Strachan (New York: Herder & Herder, 1965), 343, 431, respectively. See also, Justo L. González, Essential Theological Terms (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 128: “sinners still retain the freedom of the will necessary to accept God’s grace, and therefore the initium fidei—the beginning of faith—is in the human will, and not in God’s grace.” For an extensive account of Pelagianism, with extensive bibliography, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, I, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 307–319. 103 Nichols, From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 173.



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here in this passage is exactly the theology that I’ve been defending in this chapter and the previous, namely, that grace neither leaves nature untouched nor replaces it altogether, but rather it transforms nature from within so that it can properly operate now according to its ends. Thus, given this theology of nature and grace, “what is involved is assistance, not suppression, the assent of intellect and will, mind and heart, has to be properly human, which means in this context reasonable and prudent. This revelation offered man must be, at the ordinary human level, then, credible.”104 We may now conclusively states that Berkouwer is wrong in claiming that “the natural light of reason in the present situation has nevertheless not been affected” (AO, 52 [66]). It is precisely because of the noetic effects of sin that Vatican I insists on the “moral necessity”105 of divine revelation so that man can attain knowledge of God in his present fallen condition “directly, with firm certainty and without any admixture of error.”106 Elsewhere it makes this very point even clearer, “For the most merciful Lord stirs up and helps with his grace those who are wandering astray, so that they may be able to come to knowledge of the Truth.”107 Clearly, natural reason itself is wounded; it is fallen reason. Therefore, writes Newman, “ ‘Ye must be born again,’ is the simple, direct form of words which she [the Church] uses after her Divine Master; ‘your whole nature must be re-born, your passions, and your affections, and your aims, and your conscience, and your will, must all be bathed in a new element, and reconsecrated to your Maker, and, the last not the least, your intellect’.”108 I want now to return briefly to the objection raised by Berkouwer that knowing alleged truths of natural reason cannot be a divine preparation and education, helping the human heart to be open to the fullness of truth in Jesus Christ. But why not? Why couldn’t natural theological arguments increase a person’s openness to divine revelation? I dare say that philosophical arguments for God’s existence may be of significant service to

104 Nichols, From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 173–174. 105 This phrase “morally necessary” is used by Pius XII in making the same point: “Divine Revelation must be considered morally necessary so that those religious and moral truths which are not of their nature beyond the reach of reason in the present condition of the human race, may be known by all men readily with a firm certainty and with freedom from all error” (Humani Generis, no. 3). 106 Sources of Catholic Dogma, no. 3, 444. 107 Sources of Catholic Dogma, Dei Filius, Chapter 3, Faith, no. 14, 446. 108 John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 246.

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persons in all sorts of particular frames of mind. For example, as John Henry Newman explains: [1] They often serve as a test of honesty of mind; their rejection being the condemnation of unbelievers. [2] Again, religious persons sometimes get perplexed and lose their way; are harassed by objections; see difficulties that they cannot surmount; are a prey to subtlety of mind or over-anxiety. Under these circumstances the varied proofs of Christianity will be a stay, a refuge, an encouragement, a rallying point for Faith, a gracious economy; [3] and even in the case of the most established Christian they are a source of gratitude and reverent admiration, and a means of confirming faith and hope. Nothing need be detracted from the use of the Evidences [such as natural theology] on this score; much less can any sober mind run into the wild notion that actually no proof at all is implied in the maintenance, or may be exacted for the profession of Christianity. 109

In this connection, a related objection is raised regarding the truths about God known by unbelievers, say, Aristotle or Plato or Plotinus, or by nonbiblical religions. Yes, Christianity is positioned antithetically to all that is false in non-Christian religions because the Church believes the truth of revelation to be exclusively, definitively, and comprehensively true and hence incompatible with the claims of other religions. Still, whatever is true in these other religions is fulfilled and perfected in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the truths about God known by unbelievers belong to their respective frameworks of thought and the latter contain many errors and confusions to a greater of lesser extent, hence requiring the purification, the opposition to and the elimination of the errors contained therein. Accordingly, the task facing the Christian thinker involves assimilating, integrating, and finally transfiguring these truths into a Catholic framework. For Catholic thought recognizes fully that although non-Christian thought can get at some truth, the truth it holds may be part of a false perspective. The assumption here is that whatever good is found sown in Greek thought, in the minds and hearts of men like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and others, must be taken captive for the truth of Christ and for the glory of God (see 2 Cor 10:5). In short, in Etienne Gilson’s wonderfully apt phrase, Christian thinkers must “put these fragments of truth in the service of revelation.”110 Gilson explains:

109 Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before The University of Oxford Between 1826 & 1843, Sermon X: no. 44. 110 Gilson, The Philosopher and Theology, 188.



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Once we understand by “God,” the one and only true God, such as is known and adored by the Christian, it follows without saying that no one can know Him without adhering to and complying with the divine word. Never has a Thomist, and still less a Bonaventurian or a Scotist, admitted that the God accessible to reason was God—one in three Persons, and Jesus Christ, Who became Man, suffered under Pontius Pilate and died on the cross to save us. What Catholic theology does maintain is that reason by itself can discover a God, and that this God which it discovers is already the truth God, precisely because there is no other, and that whatever truth we know about God can consequently apply to Him alone.111

This service is, as Balthasar rightly urges, “no mechanical adoption of alien chains of thought with which one can adorn and garland the Christian dimension externally.”112 No quantification view of knowledge here! Rather, the task implied in Gilson’s phrase could be distinguished, says Balthasar, into the “art of breaking open all finite, philosophical truth in the direction of Christ, and the art of clarifying transposition.”113 Regarding the former, Christians are deeply committed to the ‘all-embracing authority of Christ’ (see Matt 28:18) over all forms of creaturely truth, because in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (see Col 2:2–3), and hence Christians “cannot rest until they have brought all these forms of into the service of the one truth. ‘Everything is yours; but you belong to Christ, and Christ to God’ (1 Cor 3:23).”114 Now, since the whole of human nature is wounded by original sin and needs to be redeemed, made holy, sanctified, this therefore includes as well the knowing powers of human reason. The redeeming grace of Christ transforms the very roots of human reason. “Grace must first purify reason, dress its wounds and guide it towards an object of which it is no longer worthy; but as soon as grace does this, it is indeed the withered reason itself, which revives under grace, the same reason, but [now] healed, saved, therefore in another state, which sees and proves.”115 In short, grace transforms reason from within, calling on it, 111 Gildon, Christianity and Philosophy, 38. 112 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “On the tasks of Catholic philosophy in our time,” 147–187, and for this quote, 155–156. This essay was originally published in 1946. That the point Von Balthasar is making is in agreement with Aquinas may be seen from the following statement of Aquinas: “So those who use the works of the philosophers in sacred doctrine, by bringing them into the service of faith, do not mix water with wine, but rather change water into wine” (Q.2, art. 3, Reply 5). The former would involve a dilution of sacred doctrine, while the latter involves a change, a transformation of philosophical ideas in light of the truth of the Christian revelation. 113 Von Balthasar, “On the tasks of Catholic philosophy in our time,” 156. 114 Von Balthasar, “On the tasks of Catholic philosophy in our time,” 158. 115 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 22.

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as Balthasar astutely remarks, as I quoted him earlier, “to fulfill the most natural aspects of its identity.”116 In conclusion of this section and in preparation for the next, I want to say that in developing a Catholic natural theology, the Catholic thinker should reject all those presuppositions that sometimes have badly affected the practice of natural theology. That is, it should reject the view that regards the realm of nature to be self-contained and the practice of natural theology to be world-immanent, and autonomous in that sense, with the powers, and thus activities, of human reason in that practice taken to be essentially self-sufficient, abstracted from the commitment of the will and hence of the whole man, religiously neutral, unaffected by sin, and reaching for knowledge of God, necessarily, on a rational foundation prior to and apart from the light of grace and faith. Rather, in the words of Vatican I: “Since man depends totally on God as his Creator and Lord, and created reason is wholly subject to uncreated Truth, we are obliged to yield to God the revealer full submission of intellect and will by faith.” In light of these words, we can understand why a Catholic natural theology, though never despairing of natural reason’s philosophical tasks, “cannot set itself up as the ‘preamble of faith’ without taking account of the faith of which it desires to be the preamble.”117 Those who practice natural theology must avail themselves, Gilson rightly states, “of the supernatural aids that God offers the reason, in order to permit the same to succeed in its enterprises.”118 Does Gilson mean to deny the possibility of knowing God by reason alone, in the absence of all revelation? Not at all, but he is aware “that what natural reason may know with certitude, many a natural reason does not so know, or even doubts, when it doesn’t go so far as to deny it.”119 And this is evidence that, though natural knowledge of God is possible, humans experience many difficulties in attaining that knowledge “when reason is left completely to itself.”120 Such is precisely the reason why a Catholic natural theology holds that natural reason has need of faith “‘that by it it may receive the divine truths from the very beginning’.”121

116  Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 311. 117  Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 81. 118  Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 81. 119  Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 81. 120 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 60. 121  Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 62. The quote within the quote is from Aquinas, III Sent., dist. 24, art. 3, sol. 1, Resp.



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So, Catholic thinkers, such as Aquinas, Gilson, Henri de Lubac, and many others, recognize that there is, in principle, a path to God by way of natural reason, but it is not a safe path. The natural knowledge of God, both pre-philosophical and philosophical, is, in principle, a way to God; but it is insufficient because of the intellect’s weakness, original sin’s grip on human nature, and its resulting effect of wounding reason and rendering the eyes of the mind unable to see clearly God’s universal revelatory action in created reality, his general revelation. Thus, this natural knowledge is only grasped properly in all its truth in relation to special revelation. Yet there is more: grace is also ordered to the internal transformation of fallen nature and hence of natural reason. So says Bavinck, and the Catholic tradition agrees: “Nature precedes grace; grace perfects nature. Hence general and special revelation interact with each other.”122 So rather than weakening the connection with faith in the Word of God, natural theology ought to maintain more firmly than ever its real connection with that Word. Gilson does not think it is mere coincidence that “the great masters of our natural theology are found to be at the same time the great masters of revealed theology.”123 Indeed, it was they and their successors who resisted the separation between the God of the philosophers and the God of the Bible, and hence between reason and faith. Although I cannot argue the point here, I dare say that the separation of the God of the philosophers from the God of the Bible resulted in the God of Deism. To resist that separation and its result we must follow the example of Gilson and others, such as De Lubac, who do not philosophize about God independently of the Christian revelation, and this is evident from their rejection of the God of the Deists. De Lubac says, “It is only too true, often enough ‘a deist is a man who has not had time to become an atheist.”124 He explains: The deist’s God, the God of several modern “theodicies” which weigh and measure him rather than defend him, the God who can hardly say “I am” [Exodus 3:13–14] any longer, the God who tends to be no more than the “universal harmony of things,” who rules over a beyond where “everything is the same as here,” the God imprisoned “within the limits of reason,” who no longer intervenes in the world, who is really nothing but the projection of natural man, who is distant yet without mystery, a God made to our measure and defined according to our rules, a God merged in the “moral order of

122 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, 1, 294 [322]. 123 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 77. 124 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 177.

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chapter three the universe” as man understands it, a God who is not adored and whom on can only serve by the cult of morality, a God who is “only accessible in pure knowledge” and who is “nothing but that knowledge itself,” a God in fact whose thoughts are our thoughts and whose ways are our ways: such a God has proved very useless in practice and has become the object of a justified ressentiment. And when at last man decided to get rid of him altogether in order to enter into his own inheritance, he was only a shade, “reduced to the narrow limits of human thought”.125

There is no safe path to the true God, to a believing acknowledgement of him, by natural reason alone.126 Thus, De Lubac, like Gilson, is arguing that it is from within the normative context of faith established by revelation that natural theology is best carried out as a philosophical 125 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 178. For a similar judgment about the God of the Deists, see Étienne Gilson, God and Philosophy, Second Edition, with a foreword by Jaroslav Pelikan (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2002 [1941]), “I know of no greater tribute ever paid to the God of Christianity than His survival in this idea [of Deism], maintained against Christianity itself and on the strength of pure natural reason. For almost two centuries—for I myself could quote French Deists whom I have personally known—this ghost of the Christian God has been attended by the ghost of Christian religion: a vague feeling of religiosity, a sort of trusting familiarity with some supremely good fellow to whom other good fellows can hopefully apply when they are in trouble: le Dieu des bonnes gens. As an object of religious worship, however, the God of the Deists was but the wraith of the living God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. As an object of pure philosophical speculation, he was little more than a myth whose death sentence had been irrevocably passed by Spinoza. . . . In short, God became again what he had already been in the Timaeus of Plato: A Demiurge, the only difference being that this time, before beginning to arrange his world, the Demiurge had consulted Newton. Just like the Demiurge of Plato, the God of the Deists was but a philosophical myth” (p. 107). De Lubac agrees, and has no problem dispensing with that myth: “We have witnessed, during the last few centuries, ‘the rationalistic evaporation of God’. But it was the rationalist God. A single puff will disperse the vapor. We shall not be disturbed. We shall even breathe more comfortably. The true God, the God we continue to adore, is elsewhere. He is everywhere you think to find him. He is everywhere, even when you do not find him” (179; italics added). 126 Let me stress the point that de Lubac isn’t denying the value of philosophical arguments for God. De Lubac approvingly quotes Romano Guardini on this point: “The ordinary representations or universal conceptions of God which claimed to be ‘pure’, and which, to be sure, were in a certain sense such, are immersed in this apparent humanization of God. The two worlds of thought and experience which were capable of being characterized by the formulas: ‘God is absolute’ and ‘God is the one who speaks through Jesus Christ’, contend with one another . . . even though they have for their object the same reality, namely the living God. . . .” However, “all that a faithful effort at ‘the philosophical knowledge of God’ was capable of bringing to light keeps its value. And this value is great, in spite of all the despisers of philosophy, either in our own day or times gone by. For the great ensemble of the real, just like the postulates of thought and the power of the spirit from which these concepts are taken, did not take their rise just anywhere; nor is it any more strongly the case that they spring from evil. Rather do they spring from that God who has spoken through Christ. But creation is ordered to grace and is only grasped properly in all its truth in relation to it” (De Lubac, Discovery of God, 169 n. 57).



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project, never done apart from it, and ultimately subjected to theological criteria. Indeed, “The One, True God, Creator and Lord, of whom the Vatican Council [I] affirms that natural reason can know with certitude, is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, become, thanks to the light of Revelation, the God of philosophers and savants. For all those who wish to find Him in their turn by reason, the wisest thing is to seek Him in the same way.”127 The starting point of a Catholic natural theology is, then, the revealed Word of God. For that Word teaches positive truths about God, namely, that “He is One, True, Creator and Lord of all things, Intelligent, Wise, Free, and Just,” and these truths are “rich with rational content, apt, consequently, to become scientific certitudes for an intellect capable of understanding them.”128 I conclude this section with the words of Ėtienne Gilson: In short, let this science [of the preamble of faith] be ours, but let us not say that we owe it only to ourselves. He who wishes to think truly as a Catholic will do well never to forget the great saying of Saint Paul to the Ephesians: “that henceforward you walk not as also the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind: having their understanding darkened” [4:17–18]. Saint Thomas applies this text, which he himself quotes in his Summa Contra Gentiles [Bk. I, 4, 7], precisely to the truths naturally knowable to man. A Catholic natural theology is therefore possible for the intellect assisted by the divine Word which dispels the darkness and shields it from vanity.129

Let me turn now to the last question regarding nature and grace, or structure and direction, before turning to consider the changes in Berkouwer’s thought after Vatican II. Nature and Grace, Structure and Direction I return now to the question regarding the relation between nature and grace, or structure and direction, as Berkouwer, at least in Conflict met Rome, and other neo-Calvinist prefer to phrase it, and the corresponding question of the capax Dei, namely, the question of the condition for the reception of revelation. In the last chapter, we saw Berkouwer distinguish between ‘structure’ and ‘direction,’ or, alternatively put, between ‘the order of creation’ and the ‘order of sin and redemption.’ Albert Wolters

127 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 77. 128 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 79. 129 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 79.

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succinctly states the meaning of this categorical distinction in neoCalvinism: ‘Structure’ refers to the created cosmos as it was meant to be; ‘direction’ refers to that cosmos as it is misdirected by sin and redemptively redirected by Christ. Because sin and redemption, in the Calvinist understanding, are cosmic in scope, this distinction holds in principle for all the earthly creation, including natural, cultural and societal life as well as morality and piety. Here the Calvinist stress on the radical and comprehensive scope of man’s Fall, as well as the equally radical and comprehensive scope of Christ’s redemption, finds expression in a succinct categorical formulation. At the same time, this fundamental distinction reflects the basic Calvinist intuition that salvation is re-creation, that is, that grace does not destroy or supplement, but rather restores nature.130

We find this understanding of the relation of nature and grace, creation and re-creation, in Berkouwer’s 1932 doctoral dissertation, Geloof en Openbaring in Nieuwere Duitsche Theologie, as well as in his 1948 work, Conflict met Rome, as I explained in the last chapter. In the former work, this relation is especially evident in regard to the question regarding the basis of the believing subject in both the order of creation and redemption. Berkouwer writes, “The connection between the believing subject and creation, and in this connection between the believing subject and general revelation, opens the possibility for subjectivity to come fully into its own.”131 Indeed, he adds, “The perspective on subjectivity comes into its own in light of Scripture’s teaching regarding creation and re-creation.”132 Berkouwer elaborates: Man is God’s creature and through general revelation is thus never a revelation-less being. Furthermore, the created being of man remains intact, not having been abolished by the fall, and hence the subjective possibility exists for special revelation to find a point of contact in man’s nature. . . . The denial of this subjective possibility of revelation in man seems to be a plea for the glory of God, but it actually negates the principle that the creation is a work of God’s hands. . . . Recreation then is the restoration of what was wrongly directed through sin. . . . The recognition of this actual human subjectivity in creation is in no sense a denial of the freedom of God’s self-revelation, but results from the recognition of the believing subject in creation and hence the continued existence of its being despite the impact of sin.133 130 Wolters, “Dutch Neo-Calvinism: Worldview, Philosophy and Rationality,” in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, 8–9. 131  Berkouwer, Geloof en Openbaring in Nieuwere Duitsche Theologie, 238. 132 Berkouwer, Geloof en Openbaring, 238. 133 Berkouwer, Geloof en Openbaring, 239.



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Therefore, the relation between special revelation and general revelation, re-creation and creation, is such that the former is inseparably connected to the latter. Summarily stated, “Revelation follows this law: re-creation is adapted to creation.”134 I have argued in several works that the theology of nature and grace expressed in neo-Calvinism is similar to Gilson’s Catholic theology of nature and grace.135 Gilson explains: “Grace presupposes nature, whether to restore or to enrich it. When grace restores nature, it does not substitute itself for it, but re-establishes it; when nature, thus re-established by grace, accomplishes its proper operations, they are indeed natural operations which it performs.”136 So grace does not overcome the natural operations of creation; indeed, it restores them from within. Elsewhere Gilson writes, “Catholicism teaches before everything the restoration of wounded nature by the grace of Jesus Christ. The restoration of nature: so that there must be a nature, and of what value, since it is the work of God, Who created it and re-created it by repurchasing it at the price of His own Blood! Thus grace presupposes nature, and the excellence of nature which it comes to heal and transfigure.”137 In sum, my argument here is that the neo-Calvinist theology of nature and grace is consistent with the Thomistic axiom that grace neither abolishes nor leaves nature untouched: our nature was created by God, it exists in the state of fallen nature as a consequence of Adam’s sin, but in Christ it is marvelously restored, and so now exists in a state of redeemed nature.138 So the difference between Berkouwer and Catholicism is not as such in respect of that theology. The real difference is seen clearly when we ask whether the natural capacity for God remains intact even after the fall and, if so, in what sense and to what degree? I argued earlier that humans lack the spiritual capacity to free themselves by their own powers from their rejection of God; the alienation between God and humanity is too deep to suggest that man possesses a 134 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 351 [380], as cited by Berkouwer, Geloof en Openbaring, 241. 135 Most recently in Echeverria, Dialogue of Love, Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic Ecumenist, 193–199; idem, “In the Beginning . . . A Theology of the Body”, 205–238. 136 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 24. 137 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 111. See also, “The true Catholic position consists in maintaining that nature was created good, that it has been wounded, but that it can be at least partially healed by grace if God so wishes. This instauration, that is to say, this renewal, this re-establishment, this restoration of nature to its primitive goodness, is on this point the program of authentic Catholicism” (Ibid., 21–22). 138 Nichols, Epiphany, 181–182.

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tendency or predisposition in favor of God’s revelation.139 Yes, God’s grace renews the direction of the whole man’s existence, with his gracious initiative and activity having priority given humanity’s incapacity to redeem itself; in this point Berkouwer is right that man has lost his spiritual capacity for God. There is no difference here with the Catholic tradition. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “For man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him [a personal God], God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.”140 But this point does not entail that sinful humanity does not have a capax Dei, a natural capacity for God’s self- revelation even in his postlapsarian condition. Indeed, the Catechism locates the “point of contact” for man to receive God’s self-revelation in grace and faith in “man’s capacity for God,” that is, the faculties that “make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God.”141 “Without this capacity,” adds the Catechism, “man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created ‘in the image of God’.”142 Isn’t this natural capacity the condition for its reception even after the fall? If man was created by God and for God, if the desire for him is written in the human heart and God never ceases to draw man to himself, if all of this is given with the structure of humanity’s creation, sustained even in the regime of sin by God’s grace and mercy, then the structure of creation, in particular, humanity’s natural capacity for God remains intact even after the fall. What humanity lost after the fall is his spiritual capacity for God, his direction, as Berkouwer puts it.143 Gilson explains this point admirably well: The first thing to find out, therefore, is whether our nature, wounded by original sin, can wisely neglect the remedy supplied by God Himself for its wound. Saint Thomas constantly justifies the necessity of Revelation by the weakness of human reason which, left to itself, would inevitably become entangled in the grossest errors. Since when is the human reason so weak? 139 Helpful on this point regarding the difference between “capacity” and “tendency or predisposition” is Trevor Hart, “A Capacity for Ambiguity?: The Barth-Brunner debate Revisited,” 302–305. Helpful also is E.L. Mascall, The Openness of Being (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971), 141–157, as well as Michael S. Horton, “Meeting a Stranger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” Westminster Theological Journal 66 (2004): 337–55, and for this point, 347–350. 140 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 35. 141  Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 35. 142 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 36. 143 Helpful on this point is Horton, “Meeting a Stranger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” 337–55.



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When St. Thomas enumerates the wounds inflicted on human nature by the sin of Adam, he never forgets to mention ignorance, by which reason is stripped of its disposition for truth. We could not of ourselves remedy this loss suffered by our natural reason. To be sure, the very essence [read: structure] of human reason was left intact and even the natural aptitude of man to know the truth has suffered less from original sin that his aptitude to will the good; but nevertheless, because our reason is the knowing power of a human nature wounded by sin, it did suffer from it, and it still suffers from each supplementary wound that new sins inflict on it. We have therefor come back to that fundamental Catholic postulate, namely, that fallen nature, although it can do something, can, however, no longer do all the good connatural to it so that it never fail in any way (totum bonum sibi connaturale ita quod in nullo deficiat). . . . [So] the detriment suffered by his nature remains and only a divine intervention can remove it. Faith in the divine Word brings this grace to us. . . . To forget what good remains in nature is fatal to Catholicism, but to forget what nature has suffered and the remedies which its weakness calls for would be none the less fatal to it.144

What, then, are the conditions of possibility for the reception of revelation? In this connection, we need to consider whether Berkouwer has satisfactorily addressed the issue of the point of contact (Anknüpfungspunkt) for divine revelation in some sense within human nature. He still leaves us wondering how that revelation is received, and what the conditions are for its reception by the receiver. Undoubtedly, Berkouwer’s 1932 reflections on this question in Geloof en Openbaring in Nieuwere Duitsche Theologie posited the relation between human subjectivity and revelation in the context of creation and re-creation. But in his 1949 reflections in Geloof en Rechtvaardiging the question regarding that relation is no longer situated in that context. This is especially the case since Berkouwer now seems to emphasize that the subject of faith is constituted by his relation

144 Gilson, Christianity and Philosophy, 80–81. Ratzinger shows that he has a similar understanding of the axiom, “Gratia praesupponit naturam”: “This axiom is correct and fully biblical in saying that grace, the encounter of man with the God who calls him, does not destroy what is truly human but, rather, salvages and fulfills it. This genuine humanity of man, the created order ‘man’, is completely extinguished in no man; it lies at the basis of every single human person and in many different ways continuously has its effects on man’s concrete existence, summoning and guiding him. But of course in no man is it present without warping or falsification; instead, in every individual it is called with the layer of filth that Pascal once aptly called the ‘second nature’ of man” (“Gratia Praesupponit Naturam, Grace Presupposes Nature,” in Dogma and Preaching, Unabridged Edition, Translated by Michael J. Miller and Matthew J. O’Connell, Edited by Michael J. Miller [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011 [1973], 143–161). For an instructive analysis of Benedict XVI’s view of the relation of nature and grace, see Thomas C. Guarino, “Nature and Grace: Seeking the Delicate Balance,” Josephinum Journal of Theology, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2011): 1–13.

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to the self-revelation of God in Christ, a faith-revelation correlation. Berkouwer looks at the newly constituted man of faith exclusively from the perspective of that self-revelation rather than from the perspective of creation and re-creation, as he did in 1932. Therefore, he explains, “The subject-object relationship is transposed—man is the object, God the subject.”145 With this description, Berkouwer is describing early Barth’s view, which leaves unclear how faith is a human act in correlation with divine subjectivity in revelation, but I shall now argue that Berkouwer’s view suffers from the same lack of clarity. Already in his 1932 dissertation Berkouwer raises this question of early Barth’s view of the faith-revelation correlation: “By fully maintaining God’s subjectivity [in revelation] to what extent can we still speak of the act of faith as a human act?”146 Berkouwer’s answer in that work presupposes the context of creation and re-creation: the relation between human subjectivity, grounded in creation, and saving faith is such that the latter’s positive character is found in its renewal of human subjectivity in respect of God’s special revelation in Christ. Almost twenty years later, Berkouwer reiterates his criticism regarding the Barthian notion of faith, “Faith is not cast away; but it is, as it were, completely absorbed in the revelation and the faithfulness of God. Barth expresses this most radically when he contends that faith is ‘not an act of man, but original divine believing’.”147 Pace Barth, however, Berkouwer insists that the faith-revelation “correlation is apparent, however, only when it really embraces the reality of human existence.”148 In particular, the act of faith is a human act. “Faith is not a gift in the sense of a donum superadditum added to human nature as a new organ.” This understanding of faith “is the result of cutting off faith from the fullness and concreteness of human life.”149 And this result is itself an implication of that ‘two-tier’ relationship between nature and grace in which one has two self-contained compartments, one natural, the other supernatural, externally juxtaposed, as Bavinck famously put it. On this view, faith is seen as a new, supernatural supplement, as an addendum, to the realm of man’s nature, an addendum that he had loss as a consequence of the fall 145 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 181 [174]. 146 Berkouwer, Geloof en Openbaring, 218, and also 221. 147 The quote from Barth within the quote cited by Berkouwer Geloof en Rechtvaardiging is from his 1928, Erklärung des Philipperbriefes, 98. Berkouwer makes the same point in Geloof en Openbaring in the Nieuwere Duitsche Theologie, 240. 148 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 187 [179]. 149 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 201 [191].



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into sin, but has now regained it by redemption. This view leaves nature untouched by grace, and thus nature and grace have only an extrinsic relationship to each other. Berkouwer helpfully counters Barth’s view by arguing that faith is not a new function added to human nature that God created outside of the natural order of creation. Rather, the divine grace that dynamically sustains the faith-revelation correlation embraces the whole man at the religious center of his human existence, “at his heart,” adds Berkouwer, “from which are the issues of life.”150 He continues: Instead of calling faith a new organ or a donum superadditum, the work of the Holy Spirit has been described as the great change of course from the way of apostasy to the way of the true God. Such a description surely has its value. It seeks to maintain the donum purum over against the donum superadditum. But its value is kept only when it is not forgotten that the direction, structure, and content of faith may never be set loose from one another.151

The structure of faith to which Berkouwer is referring in this quotation is the faith-revelation correlation. Berkouwer warns us about misconstruing this relation as one “in which both sides are mutually dependent and reciprocally effective.” Rather, he adds, “the correlation of which we speak involves a relationship which is unique, sui generis, and which therefore must remain ultimately mysterious. . . . Faith in the correlation bespeaks the working of the Holy Spirit directing man to God’s grace.”152 Berkouwer continues: “Faith itself is defined by its object, defined and determined as to its totality and root. The act of faith is as much being held by God as holding Him. . . . This faith is truly a gift, a gift which is totally unique because of its object and which in that uniqueness can lead us on the way of salvation.”153 So the subject of faith is originally constituted in this correlation, directing man to God by the pure gift of his grace, with faith’s belief-content ( fides quae) being integral to that correlation. And in an allusion to the theological epistemology of Dooyweerd where faith is one of the fundamental modes of being human; a sui generis function of human experience, belonging to the creation order, Berkouwer contrasts his own position:

150 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 201 [191]. 151  Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 202 [191]. 152 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 186–187 [178]. 153 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 201 [190].

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chapter three Faith is not a change of direction within a general subjective area already existent, an area in which faith is one function along with the acts of socalled faith that are present in most human relationships. For the change of direction involved in true faith includes faith’s content. . . . The faith is which God’s saving gift . . . is defined by its content and, this [is] God’s sovereign work in Christ.154

Notwithstanding the significance of Berkouwer’s point that the faithrevelation correlation embraces the reality of human existence, that is, that “the correlation is firmly rooted in concrete human existence,”155 it seems to me that Berkouwer is, like the early Barth, unable to account satisfactorily for the sense that the act of faith is a human act. In his earlier 1932 reflections on this question, he held the view: “The perspective on subjectivity comes into its own in light of Scripture’s teaching regarding creation and re-creation.”156 That no longer is the case in 1949. This limitation in his 1949 position brings us back to the question regarding the point of contact in man for God’s grace. Returning now to the question regarding the conditions of possibility for the reception of revelation, I have been arguing that Berkouwer does not satisfactorily address the issue of the point of contact (Anknüpfungspunkt) for divine revelation that in some sense is within human nature. 154 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 202 [191]. It would take us too far afield to discuss a possible response of Dooyeweerd to Berkouwer’s view. Suffice it to quote Dooyeweerd on this matter: “It is quite understandable why the conception of belief as function implanted in human nature at creation has raised serious objections not only on the part of Barthian theologians. At first sight it might seem that in this way Christian faith is reduced to a common human faculty, whereas the New Testament lays full stress on the radical impotence of carnal man to believe in Jesus Christ. But this is a radical misunderstanding of the true meaning of the conception concerned. The question is not whether in the state of sin man can come to Christ by means of a natural faculty of faith alone. The only question is whether Christian belief can function outside of the temporal order of creation in which the modal aspect of faith has an essential and undeniable . . . position.” And like Berkouwer, Dooyeweerd would not “set loose from one another” (to use Berkouwer’s words) the direction, structure, and content of faith. He writes: The “structure of the function of faith itself guarantees that it cannot be conceived apart from the ‘heart’ as the religious root of human existence and the spiritual [dunamis] operative in the latter. So it must be evident that Christian belief cannot be understood apart from the [dunamis] of Jesus Christ operative in the hearts of those who by regeneration are implanted in Him.” But this is where Berkouwer and Dooyeweerd differ. Dooyeweerd continues: “But this does not detract from the necessity of distinguishing between faith as a modal function in the temporal order of creation, and its religious [dunamis], which transcends its functional character and determines its content and direction” (New Critique, II, 302). For a summary of Dooyeweerd’s critics on faith as a function, see J. Douma, Kritische Aantekeningen Bij de Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee (Groningen: De Vurrbaak, 1976), 26–32. 155 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 187 [179]. 156 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 187 [179].



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He still leaves us wondering how that revelation is received, and what the conditions are for its reception by the receiver. Does this natural capacity for God mean that human nature should not be conceived as totally closed to him? I would answer this question affirmatively, but I would quickly add that it is a matter of God’s grace that it is not completely closed. That is, it is a matter of God’s grace that he never ceases to draw man to himself even after the fall. If so, isn’t this natural capacity, this capax Dei—as the Dutch Catholic theologian Jan Groot, Berkouwer’s contemporary, once put it—“the reason why there is a ‘positive point of contact’, a positive possibility on the part of nature’” (CR, 135 [99])?157 This natural capacity for God, which remains intact even after the fall, and which is the condition for the possibility of humanity’s intimate and vital bond to God, of course does not mean that humanity by nature, or naturally, by its own powers, responds to God. Not at all, humanity has lost the spiritual capacity for God, which is evident in that “God can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man.”158 Still, “Although man can forget God or reject him, He [God] never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness.”159 This is the case “even after losing through his sin his likeness to God, [for] man remains an image of the Creator, and retains the desire for the one who calls him into existence.”160 Significantly, “this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, an ‘upright heart’, as well as the witness of others who teach him to seek God.”161 In keeping with the truth that man lost after the fall his spiritual capacity for God, his direction, one must add here, in order to 157 Jan Groot was aligning Calvinism with Karl Barth’s theological claim that “[Revelation] comes to us as a datum with no point of connection with any previous datum” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, 172–173, as cited in Horton, “Meeting a Stranger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” 339n17). In his 1940 inaugural address at the Vrije Universiteit, Barthianisme en Katholicisme, Berkouwer agrees with Groot’s assessment of Barth, but rejects the alignment of Calvinism with Barthianism. Furthermore, in that address he argues that Barth’s theology led to a strengthening of Roman Catholicism’s position on natural theology rather than a turnaround. “That is nevertheless very understandable: Rome clearly sees that in the Barthian configuration of nature and grace very real dimensions of Holy Scripture receive short shrift. Rome correctly sees that Barth has cut through a point of contact as though it were a Gordian knot. And, what is the consequence of having done so? It is that Rome points even more emphatically to those dimensions that have been neglected by Barth, and that Rome’s natural theology and Rome’s configuration of nature and grace, with its emphasis on a definite point of contact and the Vorstufe [preliminary stage] of grace, come even more sharply into focus” (30–31). 158 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 29. 159 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 30. 160 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2566. 161  Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 30.

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avoid any misinterpretation, that this all is a work of grace: “The preparation of man for the reception of [justifying] grace [in Christ and by the Holy Spirit] is already a work of [prevenient] grace.”162 The question I now want to put to Berkouwer is whether he has pushed the non capax too far, given his emphasis on divine transcendence and the fact that humanity is justified in believing in God only because of revelation, of the Deus dixit? Revelation is a complete and utter novum by the power of the Holy Spirit with no prior conditions for the possibility of its reception, except the conditions that God himself has created in his act of self-revelation. Berkouwer rejects any attempt to provide some rational scaffolding to support the acceptance of “the possibility of revelation, because of a prior conception of God.” 163 The standard rationale for such support is, as Roger Trigg puts it, that “Without some conception of a Creator, there must be considerable doubt about what, if anything, or who, if anybody, is being revealed.”164 In short, he adds, “If reason cannot create a space in which the possibility of divine revelation can be allowed, the ability of humans to recognize any revelation as divine even through ‘faith’ is put into question. Faith itself must involve a conception of what it is we have faith in.”165 Of course Trigg’s approach is in line with the Thomistic notion of the preamble of faith, namely, that the Christian faith does presuppose certain divine truths of reason, such as that there is a God. Berkouwer rejects the notion of the preamble of faith, and so it is worth quoting him at length on this point from his dogmatic study, Algemene Openbaring: Again and again the attempt has been made . . . to produce a certain foundation with respect to the discussion of God’s revelation. They wished to avoid that this discussion created a subjective impression and they tried to make it rationally transparent why exactly here and thus revelation could be spoken of. Such an attempt, however, is always doomed to failure, because the very nature of God’s revelation excludes the possibility to listen to still another revelation of God outside of and beyond the former which would afford it foundation and reliability. The point at issue in the Deus dixit is always a final pronouncement which is at the same time a primary, foundation-acknowledging pronouncement. It is not possible to give a foundation to this revelation because it is itself foundation. There is, therefore, only one way left for all reflection on revelation, viz. to listen to God’s revelation

162 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2001. 163 Roger Trigg, Rationality and Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 181. 164 Trigg, Rationality and Religion, 182. 165 Trigg, Rationality and Religion, 212.



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itself. This has frequently been referred to as a vicious circle: in order to answer the question ‘What is revelation?’ . . . an appeal is made to revelation itself. However, that which is called ‘circular-reasoning’ here, belongs to the essence of God’s revelation, which comes to us sovereignly and omnipotently and which does not wait until it has received an unconditional guarantee from elsewhere on the basis of an instance outside of revelation. The searching for a still deeper foundation is in itself already a misjudgment of God’s speaking, because this speaking of God is thus considered insufficient and no guarantee in itself. It is, to the contrary, the marvel of faith that it unquestionably knows for certain to hear the revelation of God, and every believer knows that this certainty and the hearing of the voice of the Lord do not emerge from one’s own reasonable insight or from the intuitions of one’s own heart, but are the results of the irresistible power of the Spirit (AO, 69–70 [87–88]).

Berkouwer thinks that the preamble of faith is always doomed to failure. Why? The preamble of faith undermines divine revelation as the real ground of faith by establishing the credibility of revelation in light of a standard external to that revelation, and hence by implication the rationality of believing is grounded in one’s own reasonable insight. This is theological rationalism and it is unacceptable because the ultimate ground of certainty on which faith is based is the revelation of God; it is not possible to provide a foundation outside this revelation because it is itself foundational. “The Deus dixit is always a final pronouncement which is at the same time a primary, foundation-acknowledging pronouncement.” Berkouwer’s charge of theological rationalism may be deflected by distinguishing between the real ground and motive of faith, which is the authoritative Word of God, with then the certainty of faith being based on the truth and truthfulness of God himself, and the external grounds of credibility that provides for faith’s rational acceptance of revelation.166 The former is the answer to the question “why something is believed”; whereas the latter—the motive of credibility—deals with “the reason for holding that the witness is sufficiently credible and that he in fact testifies to something.”167 Failing to make some such distinction, Berkouwer cannot avoid the charge of a vicious circle, meaning thereby that he tests a claim to revelation by its conformity to revelation. He acknowledges that this is a standard charge made against the view that he supports, but

166 For an explanation of this classical Catholic distinction, see Walter Kasper, An Introduction to Christian Faith, Translated by V. Green (New York: Paulist Press, 1980 [1972]), 60–63. 167 Rahner and Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, 168.

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urges that “‘circular- reasoning’ belongs to the essence of God’s revelation.” God’s Word is an absolute authority and hence “our final appeal must be to that authority and no other.”168 I’ll return to the charge of circularity and Berkouwer’s response below when considering his postVatican II turnabout in his understanding of this matter. For now, I ask whether the closed circle of the Deus dixit can be opened. Put differently, what, then, are the conditions of possibility for the reception of revelation?169 These conditions are also called the praeambula fidei, the preambles of faith, meaning thereby “the preliminaries or presuppositions of faith.”170 These presuppositions include metaphysical and historical truths: •  The natural knowledge, derived from the created world . . ., of God as the personal mystery to whose unfettered sway man (as a metaphysical and historical being) must be open; •  Rational, historical knowledge of the existence of Christ and of the essential content of his Gospel and personal testimony; •  Miracles, above all his resurrection, attesting the historical credibility of the Gospel and his intimacy with God.171 In what sense does the knowledge of these presuppositions—for example, the natural knowledge of God—precede, logically, if not temporally, the assent of faith? Another important question of the preliminaries or presuppositions of faith is whether humanity is inwardly attuned to God’s self-revelation, say, in creation, and under what conditions? One such condition is human nature’s natural capacity for God, a capax Dei, which should not be conceived as totally closed to him. Natural theology, then, plays a role in creating a space in which the possibility of divine revelation is allowed. John Paul gives a good account of its role in Fides et Ratio. He writes, “The First Vatican Council, following the teaching of St. Paul (cf. Romans 1:19–20) has already turned our minds to the existence

168 John M. Frame, “God and Biblical Language: Transcendence and Immanence,” in God’s Inerrant Word: An International Symposium on the Trustworthiness of Scripture (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany Fellowship, INC., 1974), 159–177, and for this quote, 170. 169 It isn’t at all clear why Horton, following J.K.A. Smith, thinks that “our finitude, materiality, and embodiment . . . are in fact the very conditions of its [revelation’s] possibility” (Horton, “Meeting a Stronger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” 348). 170 Rahner and Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, 368. 171  Rahner and Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, 369.



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of truths which can be known naturally, and thus philosophically. Knowledge of these is a necessary prerequisite for receiving divine revelation.”172 What does John Paul mean in stating that these naturally knowable truths are a presupposition or preamble of faith’s acceptance of God’s revelation? Only that the existence of God is a presupposition for believing in the Trinity of the Godhead, the divinity of Christ, and still others. This passage does not say that knowledge of God’s existence, although a naturally knowable truth about God, must first be acquired through philosophical argument before accepting God’s revelation. That truth must be known whether or not it is acquired by a validly demonstrated natural theology. The pope cannot mean that such a demonstration is a necessary condition especially since he has already told us that faith is not based on reasoning but rather on the Word of God as the real ground of faith, and has argued as well for testimony as a source of rational, justified, knowledge.173 Of course John Paul does hold that truths like the existence of God or that God is one are within the capacity of natural reason in itself to grasp through theistic arguments. And such arguments contribute to the “motives of credibility” that should make the reception of revelation in faith epistemically responsible. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The proofs of God’s existence . . . can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.”174 Furthermore, he also holds that man is a religious being having been created by God and for God, and hence even after the fall into sin “in the deepest recesses of the human heart there has been sown a burning desire for God.”175 Thus, at the root of theistic arguments is the fundamental desire for God, and various the kinds of experience of the world may be regarded as starting points for such arguments—wonder at its very existence, its transience and contingency, apparent order, and purposiveness, and of ourselves, our finitude, moral obligation, the grandeur and poverty of humanity, and others. But, again, such arguments—while available—are not necessary for belief in God, because God reveals all the truths that are necessary for salvation, including those that fall within the grasp of reason as well as 172 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 67. The next two paragraphs are from my article, “Once Again, John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio,” in Philosophia Reformata 69 (2004): 38–52, and for these paragraphs, 44–45. 173 I develop John Paul’s epistemology of testimony in my book, Dialogue of Love, 160–164. 174 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 35. 175 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 24.

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those truths that wholly surpass the capacity of natural reason to grasp, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and others. Even those truths that are in themselves naturally knowable and, additionally, philosophically justifiable and defensible are divinely revealed and hence known in faith by most. Why would God reveal even those truths that man’s mind can in principle know on its own? Because most men and women are hampered in actually grasping these truths through theistic arguments due to their ability, time, training, background, or opportunity to understand or evaluate them; and those few that do arrive at the truth that God exists, do so only after a long time, and with a mixture of truth and error.176 Thus: “Beneficially, therefore, did the divine Mercy provide that it should instruct us to hold by faith even those truths that the human reason is able to investigate. In this way, all men would easily be able to have a share in the knowledge of God, and this without uncertainty and error.”177 To conclude this section, I want to return briefly to my criticism of Berkouwer that he has pushed the non capax too far. Let me develop my point differently by asking whether and, if so, in what sense, is it the case that in meeting God we meet a stranger if it is true—and it is—that “we come to ourselves when we come to God.”178 I don’t see how that way of speaking of the God-human relation can be wholly true? We need a more dialectical approach. On the one hand, of course sin estranges us from God and so in that sense in our sinful condition God’s relation to us is that of a stranger. On the other hand, humanity remains created in the image of God even after the fall into sin. Thus, despite our gravely wounded nature, indeed, despite our estrangement from God because of

176 These are the three reasons Aquinas gives why “It is necessary for man to accept by faith not only those things which are above reason, but also those which can be known by reason.” That is, “in order that men might have knowledge of God, free of doubt and uncertainty, it was necessary for Divine matters to be delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them, as it were, by God Himself Who cannot lie” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 2, Art. 4). 177 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk, I, translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Anton C. Pegis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), Chapter 4, no. 6. 178 Horton, “Meeting a Stranger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” 338. Horton rejects this way of speaking of the God-man relation because he thinks that it reflects the idea that “there is a path to God” built-in to our humanity, a view he calls “hyper-immanence” since it surrenders God’s transcendence and the truth that there is only “a path from God to us” (343). “Meeting a Stranger” is how Horton describes man’s relation to God as a consequence of the fall, with “the covenant [being] the site where strangers meet” (346).



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the fall, isn’t John Paul II right that “in the deepest recesses of the human heart there has been sown a burning desire for God.”179 The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Even after losing through his sin his likeness to God, man remains an image of his Creator, and retains the desire for the one who calls him into existence.”180 This is so because man is created by God and for God. In this fundamental respect, man is a religious being. He is created with a desire for God written in the human heart. “This desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it.”181 Biblically speaking, then, the heart is “the depth of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God.” In the words of the Catechism, “The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place ‘to which I withdraw’. The heart is the hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant . . . relationship between God and man in Christ.”182 St. Augustine wrote famously, “For you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Truly, God never ceases to draw man to himself. Thus, “God calls man first. Man may forget his Creator or hide far from his face; he may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him; yet the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter [with him].”183 Indeed, Os Guinness correctly argues that, on the one hand, the desire for God is at the very core of human existence, and so “True satisfaction and real rest can be found only in the highest and more lasting good, so all seeking short of the pursuit of God brings only restlessness.”184 On the other hand, Guinness rightly adds a reminder to us of our estrangement from God, “Considering the gulf between the creature and the Creator, no 179  John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 24. 180 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2566. 181  Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1718. “The Beatitudes reveal the goal of human existence, the ultimate end of human acts: God call us to his own beatitude. This vocation is addressed to each individual personally, but also to the Church as a whole, the new people made up of those who have accepted the promise and live from it in faith” (no. 1719). 182 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2563–2564. 183 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2567, 2563. 184 Os Guinness, Long Journey Home (Colorado Springs: Waterbooks Press, 2001), 191.

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seeker—however dedicated, brilliant, virtuous, and tireless—can hope to bridge it. We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God—which is another way of saying that all of our seeking will always fall short unless God starts and finishes the search. The unaided search will be forlorn.”185 In this sense, Horton is right to hold that there is “no safe path to God” but there is “a path from God to us,” and so “instead of us finding God he has caught up with us.”186 Again, to quote Guinness, “the secret of the search is not our ‘great ascent’ but the ‘great descent’—of God toward us.”187 John Paul II articulates this deeply Catholic incarnational approach: History therefore becomes the arena where we see what God does for humanity. . . . In the Incarnation of the Son of God we see . . . the Eternal enters time, the Whole lies hidden in the part, God takes on a human face. The truth communicated in Christ’s revelation is therefore no longer communicated to a particular place or culture, but is offered to every man and woman who would welcome it as the word which is the absolutely valid source of meaning for human life. Now, in Christ, all have access to the Father, since by his death and resurrection Christ has bestowed the divine life that the first Adam had refused (cf. Rom. 5:12–15). Through this revelation, men and women are offered the ultimate truth about their own life and about the goal of history. As the Constitution Gaudium et Spes [no. 22] puts it, ‘The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.’ For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.188

Thus, it is true to say that we are made by God and for God—God created us with a desire for him in our hearts, and the revelation of God in Jesus Christ fulfills that desire. Yet, ultimately the question isn’t whether our desire for God will find an answer, but rather whether we will learn to trust the answer that has been given to us by the living and true God. “Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life” (John Paul II). Christ is the answer in which God himself makes for us the way to God—to acknowledge this truth is a work of grace through the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

185 Guinness, Long Journey Home, 191. 186 Horton, “Meeting a Stranger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” 343. 187 Guinness, Long Journey Home, 190. 188 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 12.



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I agree with Henri de Lubac that discovering God is, then, not like discovering some distant city, “to which I was not bound by any real tie and which I should only note as an external fact.” He adds: “to speak of God to a human being is not to speak of colors to the blind.”189 Still, I wonder here what to make of the New Testament’s stress on the blindness of carnal man to believe in Jesus Christ. For example, John 12:39–40 says that the unbelieving “could not believe” because of the blindness of the eyes of their hearts. Rom 11:7–10 says that “The elect obtained [God’s grace] but the rest were blinded, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear.” 2 Cor 4:4 clearly makes the point: “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Two verses down St. Paul adds that those who do believe are those for whom “God . . . has shone in [their] hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” But if sin has rendered the unregenerate “blind” with respect to God, then in what sense, if any, can we speak of recognition when we encounter God? Consider the disciples encounter with Jesus on the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35). The meeting with Christ starts off with Jesus drawing close to them, walking with them, but the disciples’ “eyes were kept from recognizing him” (24:16). “And they stood still, looking sad,” as the stranger asked them what they were talking about. Stunned at his apparent ignorance of what had been happening, namely, that Jesus of Nazareth had been sentenced to death and crucified, they related to him their dashed hopes that he was the one to redeem Israel. All the while they had not yet recognized the stranger and Jesus to be one and the same man. “Then Jesus said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” And finally, when he celebrated the Eucharist with them, “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (vv. 28–35). So the Emmaus Road encounter involves the disciples recognizing Jesus as their risen Lord in Word and Eucharist. Afterwards, “They said each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scripture’?”

189 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 76.

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There is certainly recognition in the Emmaus Road encounter. “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him” (Luke 24:31). But in what sense? Yes, the disciples were spiritually powerless to attain this recognition of Jesus Christ as their risen Lord without the Lord’s gracious self-revelation, without the gift of the Word and Sacrament. The question of the recognition of God, however, brings us back to a theology of nature and grace and to the question regarding the condition for the reception of revelation. I have been arguing that God has inscribed in human nature a desire for him, and that this desire persists, though seriously disturbed, in the regime of sin. This persistence is a gift of God’s grace especially in view of the fall, but it becomes particularly clear in Christ that the first gift—the desire for God inscribed in the human heart—is made for the second gift of God’s grace, namely, Jesus Christ. At the same time, given man’s desire for God, the grace bestowed in and through Jesus Christ represents a genuine fulfillment of human nature. Created in the image of God, humanity is by nature capax Dei; this capacity has been savagely wounded, radically misdirected by original sin, but is not wholly closed to God, and hence it defines our “nature itself as a non-anticipating readiness for God’s gracious and unmerited self-communication in Christ.”190 In this connection, we should note that De Lubac has an insightful analysis of a passage of Aquinas from the Summa Theologiae where Aquinas states, “To know in a general and confused way that God exists is implanted in us by nature.”191 “All men know God ‘naturally’,” says de Lubac, “but they do not always recognize him. A thousand obstacles, some inward, some external, hinder that recognition. Not everyone knows that he knows God, and consequently not everyone does know him ‘simply’. Thus, when I see Peter coming towards me—the comparison is St. Thomas’s— it is certainly Peter whom I see in that being coming towards me, but I do not yet know that it is he.”192 There is a sense that when I know God, that is, when I reach an explicit knowledge of him, “I certainly do not recognize him as someone whom I had already known with the same sort of 190 Nicholas J. Healy, “Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace: A Note on Some Recent Contributions to the Debate,” 535–564. Online: http://www.communio-icr.com/articles/ PDF/healy35-4.pdf. 191 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1. St. Thomas adds: “But this is not, simply speaking, awareness that there is a God, any more than to be aware of someone approaching is to be aware of Peter, even should it be Peter approaching.” St. Thomas makes a similar point about the implanted knowledge of God in Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. IIIa, ch. 38, 1. 192 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 75.



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knowledge, and had since forgotten or lost to view.” “Nevertheless,” adds de Lubac, “the extraordinary thing is that knowing God for first time I do, in fact, recognize him.”193 On the one hand, then, the revelatory action through Jesus Christ is such that the believer acknowledges that God has acted in such a way that his awareness of reality is different, that is, knowing something they did not know before. On the other hand, from the “moment he knows God it would be true to say that he has recognized him.” “For,” says de Lubac—and this is the extraordinary and really admirable thing—‘the habit of God’ [the capacity or inclination to desire God], belonging as it does ‘to the very nature of the spirit’ [capax Dei], is possessed by it ‘before any act whatsoever’.” Concludes de Lubac: “That is what St. Thomas implies by his comparison, and when he explains, at the same time, that we do not know God ‘simpliciter’ with our first knowledge, which is purely ‘natural’ and implicit [implanted], his qualification means that in a certain sense God is, nevertheless, known; that is why, when the moment comes, it is permissible to speak of ‘recognizing’ him.”194 De Lubac’s conclusion brings us back to his central thesis and to the point I have been making against Berkouwer. Regarding the paradoxical relation between the natural and the supernatural, the desire to see God is natural and the fulfillment is supernatural; the fulfillment by grace alone is the fulfillment of this desire we have by nature, but we are powerless to fulfill it, especially in our sinful condition. Hence we need grace to fulfill the desire which we have by nature. So grace is the condition that enables us to know God and yet since it is the fulfillment of the natural capacity to know him, we can speak at once of recognizing him. For by revealing himself to us,” says de Lubac, “God ‘has revealed us to ourselves.”195 Pace Horton, this is not a version of what he calls ‘hyper-immanence,’ because though God does accommodate his revelation to our capacity, he does so “without surrendering his transcendence in the process.”196 As Benedict XVI preached during a general audience of May 11, 2011 held in St. Peter’s Square: 193 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 76. 194 De Lubac, Discovery of God, 76. 195 De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 211, 214. 196 Horton, “Meeting a Stranger: A Covenantal Epistemology,” 349. As Hans Urs von Balthasar explains the meaning of accommodation: “Human beings share a common language, even if each person can leave his own creative stamp on it. But between God and man—when it is a matter of genuine personal self-disclosure and not only a vague, closed knowledge about the other—the only language possible is the Word of God, and this language is possible only if God freely chooses to make himself intelligible to man in his Word

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chapter three The full realization of man’s search is found only in the God who reveals himself. Prayer, which is the opening and raising of the heart to God, becomes a personal relationship with Him. And even if man forgets his Creator, the living and true God does not fail to call man to the mysterious encounter of prayer. As the Catechism affirms: “In prayer, the faithful God’s initiative of love always comes first; our own first step is always a response. As God gradually reveals himself and reveals man to himself, prayer appears as a reciprocal call, a covenant drama. Through words and actions, this drama engages the heart. It unfolds throughout the whole history of salvation” (no. 2567). Dear brothers and sisters, let us learn to spend more time before God, let us learn to recognize in silence the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, to recognize in the depth of ourselves his voice that calls us and leads us back to the profundity of our existence, to the fount of life, to the source of salvation, to make us go beyond the limits of our life and to open ourselves to the measure of God, to the relationship with Him who is infinite love.197

After Vatican II: Did Berkouwer Change His Mind about the Relation between Faith and Reason as well as Natural Theology? In two important articles that Berkouwer wrote in the Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift after Vatican II, namely, “Sacrificium Intellectus?” (1968) and “Achtergrond” (1974), as well as two short essays published in 1973 in an anthology on the theme of truth and verification, Wat is Waarheid? Waarheid en verificiatie in kerk en theologie, Berkouwer shows a remarkable change in his approach to the question of faith and reason and the problem of natural theology.198 Let’s now consider each of these essays so as to examine how, not whether, Berkouwer changes his mind about how best to approach the questions regarding the relation between

by interpreting to him the Word that he speaks” (Love Alone is Credible, Trans. by D.C. Schindler [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004 (1963)], 47–48). 197 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2011/documents/hf_ ben-xvi_aud_20110511_en.html. 198 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” and “Terugblik,” in Wat is Waarheid? Waarheid en verificiatie in kerk en theologie, Een bundel opstellen onder redactie van G.C. Berkouwer en A.S. van der Woude (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1973), 7–12, 186–192, respectively; idem, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 177–200, and “De Achtergrond,” 3–17. See also, idem, De Heilige Schrift, II (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 19676), 415–447. ET: Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), 346–366; and idem, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 29–48, 203–253 [25–38, 144–178].



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faith and reason, the authority of revelation, as well as the legitimacy of natural theology. Unlike St. Augustine, Berkouwer never wrote a work of retractions, engaging in self-criticism of earlier claims and positions. Of course I’m not suggesting that he ever retracts his reformed objections to natural theology that I have considered at length in this chapter and the previous: the traditional practice of natural theology operates with the presupposition that human reason is essentially self-sufficient in its own realm, necessary for justifiably believing, religiously neutral, unaffected by sin, and able to reach knowledge of God apart from grace and revelation. This is the notion of natural theology of the theological rationalist, of the neo-scholastic, and Berkouwer consistently opposed it, as have I in this chapter and the last. But I dare say, if ever there was a need for giving an account of his retracting an earlier position, or at least an approach and perspective, it is here in Berkouwer’s position on faith and rationality. He now seems sympathetic to efforts in the second half of the twentieth-century seeking to recover natural theology’s legitimate concern by rejecting the dichotomy between faith and human experience.199 Indeed, in the period of theology Berkouwer has in sight, there is an “increasing turn against the understanding of faith as an irrational leap, without any connection with the surrounding world of experience.”200 Most explicitly, he writes that “upon further interpretation natural theology once again comes into view in the sense that of crucial importance is the living connection between faith and our natural human experience.”201 Thus, Berkouwer insists that one of theology’s most urgent concerns is to locate in human life and experience the act of faith in God as an authentically human act and as something meaningful as well as intellectually responsible.202 Berkouwer cites the German Catholic theologian Walter Kasper with whom he finds an affinity: Faith is a fully and wholly human act in spite of the [supernatural] giftcharacter of grace and faith. It is a man who believes and not the Holy Spirit in man. As a human act, however, belief may not be an arbitrary decision [Willkür-entscheidung]. It has to be acknowledged as something humanly meaningful and as something intellectually honorable and responsible [als 199  Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 15–16. 200 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 8. 201  Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 14. 202 Kasper, Introduction to Christian Faith, 21.

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chapter three menschlich sinnvol und als intellektuell redlich und verantwortlich]. If it were anything else it would be unworthy of God and of man. For that reason, faith must not be a pious transcendence of the world. Any such, even apparent, ‘pure’ faith would be mere flight from reality; sooner or later it would be exposed as empty and unreal.203

We can well understand Berkouwer’s concern to show that faith is an authentically human act given the increasing experience of people in the modern world who find fewer traces of God in their everyday life and, in particular, Christian believers who verify their beliefs less and less often in daily experience. In this light, we can easily see why Berkouwer finds troubling an irrationalism (fideism) that results in a dichotomy between faith and human experience. Of course Berkouwer holds that only divine grace and the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit can account for the response of faith to the Gospel. But that does not mean that divine faith intrudes into the life of the believer as if to say that it is a ‘foreign body’ (“Fremdkörper”). It cannot mean this because faith is an authentically human act. This, too, is the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. But it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act. Trusting in God and cleaving to the truths he has revealed is contrary neither to human freedom nor to human reason.”204 How, then, does divine grace take hold of a man’s life without violating the integrity of his human experience? Pared down for my purpose here, Berkouwer consistently shows three concerns throughout these articles: overcoming the dilemma of rationalism versus irrationalism,205 transcending the opposition between authority and reason, and giving an account of the relationship between faith and rationality. Retreat to Commitment Before Vatican II, as I have argued in the previous chapter, Berkouwer’s theological critique of the pretended autonomy of human reason resulted in the rejection of rational apologetics as such because he held that unbelievers are unable to know the true God, sin having rendered their natural 203 Kasper, Introduction to Christian Faith, 21. See also, Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 16. 204 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 154. 205 Already in his 1952 Calvin Foundation Lectures that he delivered at Calvin College and Seminary, Berkouwer urged that Protestantism has to oppose both rationalism and irrationalism as “a serious foe of the Christian faith” (Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1953], 49–61, and for this quote, 53).



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reason ‘blind’ with respect to his existence. After Vatican II, totally unexpectedly and, indeed, without justification given his previous approach to the question regarding the knowledge of God, he now raises the question of the relation between truth and verification. He acknowledges that the question of verification arises especially in times of crisis, challenge and doubt within the circle of Christian faith raising the question of accountability to oneself and others. He explains, “It is a question deserving further reflection in the light of what confronts us in the confessing and presenting of the truth.”206 In other words, adds Berkouwer, “in verification we meet head on the issue of accountability to ourselves and to others. Those two dimensions are not to be isolated from one another. That of accountability toward others who are inquiring, doubting, or critically resisting the pretention of truth is only possible from a deep conviction that does not elevate itself above all critical questions, but that is—being itself in touch with the world around us—engaged with them and is searching for a way through them.”207 Berkouwer argues that there is a biblical basis for the connection between conviction and accountability in the New Testament. “Where Paul admonishes the congregation: ‘you need to know how to give a good answer to everyone” (Col. 4:6), we see the connection between being convinced and being responsible. We see this as well in 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be ready to give an answer to all those who ask you to give an account of the hope that is in you.” Indeed, reflections on the question of verification “can and must protect truthfulness and at the same time are intended to lift the discussion above all unrestrained subjectivism and all willfulness.”208 Completely unacceptable to Berkouwer is the view that has the Christian retreating to his commitment when confronted with the responsibility of giving a reason for the hope that is within him [1 Peter 3:15]. In other words, it is unacceptable to claim that “faith is a personal matter, a conviction not given to rational argument and can only be witnessed to.”209 Berkouwer rejects the position of fideism encapsulated in the adage, “Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it.” He adds, “With this, the problem of communication is put on the agenda: Is faith an irrational and esoteric mystery that has no point of contact with the other person? Can we only witness to our faith? Or is there within 206 Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 186. 207 Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 186. 208 Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 186. 209 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 205 [145].

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human thought a possibility for real and mutually understood dialogue?”210 That is, given sharp and widespread criticism of Christian faith, Berkouwer explains, “We may feel compelled to ask whether there are not indications in the world of thought available to all that while not having the cogency of proof, do form ‘indicators’ of the possibility at least, and perhaps the reasonableness as well, of faith.”211 This renewed interest in natural theology provides a solid entry-point into ecumenical dialogue with Catholic thinkers, such as Aidan Nichols, who hold that “human experience, when its inner order and coherence are drawn out by reason, proves to have a theistic order and coherence that are only fully explicable in terms of the reality of God.”212 Against this background, we can understand why Berkouwer resists a retreat to commitment that is immune from accountability to oneself and others regarding the truth of Christian faith, to a helpless ‘haven of ignorance’ (asylum ignorantiae), a citadel where you think you cannot be reached by objections, resulting in withdrawal from discussion regarding the deepest questions of verification, and hence telling others to believe on blind authority. In sum, he states, “To reject verification as rational verification and in doing so to retreat into one’s own defenseless, inner conviction, without any apology, is both too simplistic and too cheap.”213 In this connection, Berkouwer stresses that the question of verification cannot be kept at a distance by appealing to the claim that faith involves a personal encounter of the truth, a subjective decision, and hence that faith grounds itself in man’s own free choice. For the fact that faith involves knowledge of the truth of what is believed, of the historical revelation of God in Christ in this world, as found in Bible and the Church, a revelation that took place within the horizon of human knowledge and experience, leads us to understand why there is a need “to attend to the question of verification in connection with revelation.”214 Says Berkouwer, “This is not to base believing on science, but to see it as a requirement of truthfulness, because faith does not actually create reality but does really presuppose that its claims are true to reality, in this world. It therefore takes on the responsibility of verification in principle—as a sine qua non condition—

210 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 43 [35]. 211  Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 44 [35]. 212 Nichols, Grammar of Consent, 1. 213 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 11. 214 Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 189.



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in speaking the truth concerning faith and its content.”215 Given, then, that foundational for the structure of faith is the presupposition that Christian beliefs are true, faith cannot be understood as something that occurs “outside of life, outside accountability for providing an answer .”216 Thus, Berkouwer concludes, “Paul’s ‘encounter’ does not constitute an introduction of an esoteric, secretive silence but to a testimony that avoids not a single question and not a single objection.”217 In this light, Berkouwer sets up the problem of faith and rationality in terms of overcoming the dilemma between rationalism and irrationalism, meaning by the latter a version of fideism that presents faith as an irrational commitment. “Over against all forms of rationalism that make human reason the measure of truth, some thinkers have often approached the question of faith from out of a certain irrationality. Faith is a gift and an enlightening through the Spirit over against reason and therefore faith cannot submit to any demands for verification.”218 He now stresses the importance of avoiding an overreaction to rationalism and intellectual arrogance by fleeing to the understanding that faith involves an “irrational leap,” which is “disconnected from all rationality” and “in which all rational accountability is removed.”219 After a period in which rational apologetics went through a crisis, says Berkouwer, we stand now before the remarkable fact that there is a resurgence of interest in apologetics. Yes, there is a resurgence, he adds, “but not in the sense that men as such are returning to theistic proofs and natural theology, but rather in a growing aversion to the notion of faith as an irrational leap, without any relation to the surrounding world of experience.”220 Since the revelation of Jesus Christ was given in history—as St. Paul says, “it did not happen in a corner” (Acts 26:26)—we realize that the truth of revelation is within our human horizon, which results in attending to the question of verification, asking how is that revelation identified, and what are the signs by which one becomes convinced of its truth.221 Berkouwer explains:

215  Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 189. 216  Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 188. 217  Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 188. 218  Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 180. 219  Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 177. See also, Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 224 [159]. 220 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 8. 221  Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 9.

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chapter three In this regard, one can consider the fact that at present people point out that faith refuses to be isolated in the ghetto—one encounters this term frequently today—of subjective conviction. What makes sense to people is revelation that does not float around above and outside our world like some transcendent mystery that requires some independent instrument in order to be contacted, but revelation that occurs by penetrating our history and our lives.222

Given that Berkouwer now raises the question of truth and verification in respect of the historic divine revelation, as found in the Bible and in the Church, he now seems to suggest that what appeared to be the closed circle of the “Deus dixit” can be opened.223 Important dimensions of the question of truth have been neglected from the stance of the a priori “Deus dixit” and its closed circle, which brings to bear its own sovereign truth upon us as a complete and utter novum with no point of connection with our experience.224 In short, Berkouwer is now suggesting that it is legitimate to ask what, then, is the condition of possibility for the reception of revelation. Motives of Credibility225 In this light, Berkouwer now considers the question regarding the reasonableness of assenting to biblical authority. He explicitly resists the charge that “faith’s response to God’s revelation is nothing more than a blind submission, a blind trust without any insight into what is believed and accepted.”226 On the one hand, Berkouwer holds that there is no place in our understanding of faith for sacrificing the intellect when that means eliminating human thought and insight. How, then, was the idea of sacrificing the intellect ever taken seriously, on the other? Limiting myself to Catholic theology, in answering “the question why something is believed” a distinction is made in this tradition “between the motive of credibility (the reason for holding that the witness is sufficiently credible and that he in fact testifies to something) and the real motive of 222 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 8. 223 On the apparent nature of the closed circle of the “Deus dixit,” see my reflections on AO, 69–70 [87–88] earlier in this chapter. 224 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 9. 225 For an extensive and instructive discussion in French Catholic theology during the 1940s about the motives of credibility and the rationality attending the act of faith, see Roger Aubert, Le problem de l’acte de foi: Données traditionnelles et resultants des controversies récentes, 4th ed. (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1969). 226 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 177.



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faith, that is, the sole authority of God, who is truth itself, incapable of deceiving anyone when he reveals himself.”227 In this light, we can answer Berkouwer’s question why was the sacrifice of the intellect ever taken seriously. The answer to this question is, briefly, that one believes on the authority of God the revealer and not on the basis of reason. So, then, on the other hand, “The answer to this question depends on the fact that in the arena of faith people did not intend to exclude all thought and reflection, but that they definitely did not want faith as accepting, embracing, and affirming the truth to depend on rational insight, but on the authority of revelation itself.”228 The point here is a familiar one, and Vatican I clearly makes it. Regarding the mysteries of faith, divine truths, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atoning Work of Christ, the Church, and so forth, the supernatural virtue of faith, which is the beginning of man’s salvation, is required. “Whereby,” the Dogmatic Decree of Vatican I adds, “inspired and assisted by the grace of God, we believe that the things which he has revealed are true; not because of the intrinsic truth of the things, viewed by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God himself, who reveals them, and who can neither be deceived nor deceive.”229 In other words, these truths are not evident to the intellect; they are true, we can know them to be true by faith, and the real ground of faith is the authority of the God who reveals himself. The council approaches the question of faith accepting certain things to be true from the perspective of an authoritative revelation, upon which the acceptance of those truths is grounded. Says Berkouwer, “Submission can only be correlated with divine revelation. There can be no thought whatsoever of any critical verification in light of this a priori authority. The first Vatican council expressed the matter in a way that made clear that people are entirely dependent on God and that their ‘ratio creata’ is completely subordinate to eternal, uncreated truth.”230 The real ground and motive of the act of faith is the authority of the God who reveals himself and not the external motives of credibility that provides reasons for faith. The authority of God grounds the act of faith rather than being just one additional external motive of credibility. Brownsberger correctly notes, “The authority of God is that by which one believes, not that in 227 Rahner and Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, 168. 228 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 179–180. 229 Vatican I, 1870, Decreta Dogmatica Concilii Vaticani de Fide Catholica et de Ecclesia Christi, Chapter III, Of Faith. 230 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 181.

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consideration of which one believes.”231 Therefore, adds Berkouwer, “Faith is bound to revelation and submission and therein is faith’s acceptance based on that alone, ‘propter auctoritatem’.”232 Still, Berkouwer remarks critically that the problem of authority and reason is not resolved here because the Council decree states that the submission of faith to the authority of the revealing God is in accordance with reason. Yes, a Catholic theology of the act of faith holds that this act is essentially supernatural, but it is also reasonable. Clearly, then, the Council Fathers were concerned to legitimize—in avoidance of fideism— the credibility of the historical revelation of the Christian faith from the viewpoint of human reason. Dei Filius states the need for the external motives of credibility because “the assent of faith is by no means a blind impulse of the mind.” Thus, “it was God’s will that there should be linked to the internal assistance of the Holy Spirit external indications of his revelation, that is to say divine acts, and first and foremost miracles and prophecies, which clearly demonstrating as they do the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are the most certain signs of revelation and are suited to the understanding of all.”233 The role of these exterior proofs or signs is that an historical apologetic establishes these signs of credibility as signs of God’s revelation. What signs of credibility does the Council have in mind? Well, clearly a miraculous event like the Resurrection of Jesus would count as a sign accrediting God’s testimony. But how does one establish the judgment of credibility that this is event is indeed a ‘sign’ as such provided by God’s historical revelation? Although the Council decree leaves that question open, I venture to say that an historical apologetic would suffice that establishes the historicity of the events, such as the empty tomb, Jesus post-mortem appearances, and the genesis of the disciples’ belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead, as that which undergirds a historical inference to the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection.234 Of course

231 William Brownsberger, “The Authority of God and the Act of Faith,” 156. 232 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 182. 233 Vatican I, Dei Filius, Chapter 3, On Faith, no. 5. See also the First Vatican Council canon 3, de fide: “If anyone says that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs and that therefore men should be drawn only by their personal internal experience or by private inspiration, let him be anathema.” 234 William Lane Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” in Jesus Under Fire, Editors, M.J. Wilkins, J.P. Moreland (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995), 142–176; idem, “Dale Allison on Jesus’ Empty Tomb, his Postmortem Appearances, and the Origin of the Disciples Belief in his resurrection,” Philosophia Christi 10 (2008): 293–301.



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these signs are facts bearing meaning, otherwise we would just have sheer facticity, and so the content of revelation to which they testify is itself the original theological meaning of the signs themselves. John Paul II explains, “These signs also urge reason to look beyond their status as signs in order to grasp the deeper meaning which they bear. They contain a hidden truth to which the mind is drawn and which it cannot ignore without destroying the very signs which it is given.”235 In sum, revelation presents the resurrection as a historical event with meta-historical meaning, to paraphrase Aidan Nichols.236 Consider the description of eventplus-theological-intepretation, which is the wider significance inhering in the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection, given by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:12–19. Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

The question remains to be asked regarding the relation between the judgment of credibility and the act of faith. For to judge rationally that the historical events are credibly to be seen as signs of God’s revelatory acts in history is “not yet to make the act of supernatural faith.”237 “Faith is supernatural because it is only made possible by a supernatural interior grace.”238 Thus, there is also the necessity of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit since “no man can assent to the Gospel teaching, as is necessary to obtain salvation, without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all men sweetness in assenting to and believing in the truth.”239 These two elements are, then, essential to the act of faith: the exterior sign and the interior grace by the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The epistemological significance of the Holy Spirit is not

235 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 13. 236 Nichols, Epiphany, 176. 237 Nichols, From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 183. 238 Rahner and Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, 168. 239 Decreta Dogmatica Concilii Vaticani de Fide Catholica et de Ecclesia Christi, 244.

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that this illumination and inspiration is an additional cognitive source of revealed truth. Rather, since the external motives of credibility on their own cannot move a person toward faith, the inward certainty regarding the truth of divine revelation is only accomplished by the Spirit of God “who moves us inwardly by his grace.” As Aquinas explains: “Because it is not only exterior or objective revelation which has a power of attraction, but also the interior instinct impelling and moving me to belief, therefore the Father draws many to the Son by the interior instinct of the divine operation moving the heart of man to believe.”240 The judgment of credibility regarding the external signs of revelation history belongs to the praeambula fidei. We may speak here of a ‘historical faith’ but not yet of ‘saving faith.’ There should be no opposition between these two. For of course the latter logically presupposes the former so that we can say that saving faith includes not only historical knowledge but also the saving knowledge that “if Christ has not been raised from the dead, my faith is futile and I am still in my sins” (1 Cor 15:18). Now, Berkouwer rejects the claim that saving faith is preceded by “the preliminaries or presuppositions of faith” that here pertain, in the first place, to the historical faith that rests upon the judgment of credibility regarding the signs provided by the history of revelation and that accredit the testimony of revelation. “It is out of the question that there first has to be an act of assensus in which there is total assent—following historical verification, if necessary—to a kind of historical faith ( fides historica) which would then expand into a saving faith ( fides salvifica), and that the two together would then form the one Christian faith.”241 In this passage, Berkouwer rejects the idea that the saving knowledge of God’s acts in history is preceded by historical knowledge of the external signs of salvation history as preambles of faith. The point here is not that Berkouwer denies the fundamental significance of history for faith, say, that the resurrection actually happened in space and time. Rather, Berkouwer denies that faith rests upon historical evidence that establishes the historicity of the events, such as the empty tomb, Jesus post-mortem appearances, and the genesis of the disciples’ belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead, as that which undergirds a historical inference to the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection, which then results in an acceptance 240 St. Thomas Aquinas, In Ioannem c.vi, lect. 5, no. 3, as cited in Jean Mouroux, I Believe: The Personal Structure of Faith, Translated by Michael Turner (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1959), 21. 241 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 195.



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of this fact, indeed, this “sign” of revelation history, that is called historical faith. But how can the distinction between the resurrection “actually happened” and yet “cannot be grasped historically” be upheld?242 It cannot be upheld. This is not because my acceptance of the resurrection would follow from my fashioning an historical apologetic that establishes the credibility of the signs of God’s revelation. Rather, it is because the truth of the resurrection could not stand if it were definitely disproved that Jesus rose from the dead. It is the possibility of being open to falsification that we find the source of the believer’s interest, as believer, in the external motives of credibility.243 Why does Berkouwer oppose the claim that the external signs of revelation history belong to the praeambula fidei? The answer to this question can be found in Berkouwer’s theology of faith. He refers us to Lord’s Day 7, Question 21, of the Heidelberg Catechism, which asks, “What is true faith?” The answer the Catechism gives is as follows: “True faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his word, (a) but also an assured confidence, (b) which the Holy Ghost (c) works by the gospel in my heart; (d) that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation, (e) are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.”244 Berkouwer then remarks: The ‘faith’ in the prophets that Paul presupposes Agrippa has (Acts 26:27) is not half of that knowledge and trust concerning which the Catechism talks in explaining true faith. This acceptance is not an isolated pre-supposition of faith to which the ‘pro nobis’ is then added as application. This is true because the ‘informative’ dimension itself of this knowledge is not given as an isolated ‘announcement’ of a brute fact, but as the disclosure of the meaning and inherent aspect of the saving event itself. So, the interpretation is not something added that factually ought not to be tied to the events themselves. Paul talks about the death of Christ for our sins—according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3), so that one can say that people do not know the fact—in an act of assenting, accepting—if they separate or isolate it from this aspect.245

242 Roger Trigg, “Can a Religion Rest on Historical Claims,” 91–112, and for these phrases, 94. 243 Ralph McInerny, “Philosophizing in Faith,” in Being and Predication (Washington, D.C.” Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 244. 244 Heidelberg Catechism, 1563, Lord’s Day 7, Question 21. Online: http://www.reformed .org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/heidelberg .html. 245 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 196–197.

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Berkouwer’s theology of faith consists of knowledge (notitia), assent (assensus), and trust ( fiducia). The issue here is not that Berkouwer denies that the Christian faith rests on the truth of a historical revelation, of events that actually happened, with the act of faith involving, logically if not temporally, assenting (assensus), knowledge (notitia) and acceptance of certain historical truths. Rather, the issue is that this approach that distinguishes historical faith from saving faith results in the treatment of the signs of credibility as essentially extrinsically related to the content of revelation to which they testify. In other words, a judgment of credibility, according to Berkouwer, leaves us with historical information of ‘brute facts,’ meaning thereby facts without significance. Berkouwer rejects the extraneous nature of this connection between historical judgment and the act of faith that makes possible the knowledge that the revelation is itself the inherent meaning of the signs, what the signs signify. Since the revelation is itself the significance of the signs, we cannot know the fact of Jesus’ resurrection without seeing its intrinsic relation to that revelation. Whenever faith is considered as assent, knowledge, and holding something to be true, it is impossible to isolate or highlight these aspects in abstraction from the central reality of the heart’s assent. Without this central reality, acceptance, assent, holding something to be true, loses its specifically Christian character. Christian faith is only rightly understood in terms of the connection between the informative and inherent meaning of saving events because this is the way the gospel’s call is extended to people—one could say as assent, adherence, cognition, trust, and obedience.246

But it seems to me that Berkouwer misunderstands the external motives of credibility. The historical judgment purports to establish, not only that events such as the resurrection actually happened, brute facts, as it were, but also that they are indeed ‘signs’ of credibility regarding revelation history to which they testify. In other words, these signs of credibility establish not only “the historical actuality of the fact of revelation” but also “the meaning of its content.”247 So they are not in danger of losing their specifically Christian meaning, as Berkouwer suggests in the above quotation. Yes, pace Berkouwer, it is historical reason which initially 246 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 195–196. 247 Nichols, From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 187. As Grisez explains, “revelation also requires a distinctive signal; it must include elements—words and deeds—which cannot reasonably be interpreted as anything except divine communication. This is to say that it necessarily includes signs and wonder: states of affairs brought about by God without the usual conditions which, if present, would dispose people to regard these happenings as part of the normal course of events” (The Way of the Lord Jesus, I, 479–480).



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established the status of these events as signs, and not just as things that merely happened—though one must not underestimate the value of this historical evidence for faith—but “these signs also urge reason to look beyond their status as signs in order to grasp the deeper meaning which they bear.” “They contain a hidden truth to which the mind is drawn,” John Paul II adds, “and which it cannot ignore without destroying the very signs which it is given.”248 This, too, is Berkouwer’s point in the above quotation. But unlike Berkouwer, John Paul thinks—in line with Vatican I and II—that we can show that the act of faith is reasonable because of the external motives of credibility: there is historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. For Berkouwer faith’s knowledge of the resurrection is “excluded altogether from the domain of proof, of evidence and hence of rationality.”249 But Berkouwer cannot consistently posit such a break between faith’s knowledge that something actually happened and historical evidence regarding the resurrection, since if that knowledge is making assertions about objective reality, as he surely holds it is, then, it must be open to falsification by historical evidence. Hence, the import of using historical evidence to build a reasonable case supporting a judgment of credibility that we have here a sign provided by revelation history. Postivism of Revelation There is another reason to consider why Berkouwer opposes the external motives of credibility. He understands that the grounds of credibility do not prove faith itself but rather establish its credibility by showing that the consent to faith is reasonable. Berkouwer gives a clear explanation as to why the external motives of credibility do not bring into question the authority of God himself. He writes: Vatican I also concludes from this “propter [auctoritatem ipsius Dei revelantis]” against holding to blind faith, but involves itself with the issue of the why of faith. Certainly, God’s authority as ‘summe verax’ [perfectly truthful] is of decisive significance. But granted this genesis of faith, people then go on to reflect on the credibility of revelation [motives of credibility]. In other words, they go on to reflect on the nature and content of, illumination it within the horizon of human existence. In this way, one can distinguish between the actual foundation for faith (divine authority) and the issue of faith’s credibility that does play a role in believing. People cannot rest completely on the concept of formal authority [“propter auctoritatem ipsius 248 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 13. 249 Trigg, “Can a Religion Rest on Historical Claims,” 98.

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chapter three Dei revelantis”], arriving automatically at a closer reflection on the necessity for ‘the light of faith’ that in turn produces acceptance of divine revelation. Rather, in their concrete situation, people realize that they are confronted with a unique authority that calls them to make a definite choice.250

Now, since supernatural faith does not rest on human testimony of the judgments of credibility but rather on divine testimony, namely, the authority of the God who reveals himself, the question raised by this view of divine authority as expressed by Vatican I, says Berkouwer, is that the assent of faith seems “severed from the content of the message of salvation: it has no inner affinity with this message.”251 Yes, the decree makes clear that there are motives of credibility showing that the “assent of faith is by no means a blind action of the mind.” These motives of credibility establish the rationality of believing and hence the credibility of these signs as God’s revelation. But those motives only justify the reasonableness of believing that something has been revealed and why it should be believed, in short, its formal authority; they do not provide, however, an ‘inner conviction’ regarding what has been revealed, its material authority, namely, “the object and content of faith to which man is called.”252 In short, Berkouwer is raising here an objection that held the attention of some of the best minds in Catholic theology of the early twentiethcentury (Maurice Blondel, Ambroise Gardeil, and Pierre Rousselot), namely, the “signs of credibility seem essentially extraneous to the revelation to which they testify.”253 As a consequence, Berkouwer argues, faith is, then, reduced to the act of assenting to the truths that must be blindly believed and accepted on authority. This is a treacherous route, he claims, not because the authority of God and of his revelation has an inappropriate significance in the correlation between faith and revelation, but rather “the formal and material authority of revelation are separated, and faith is placed in the framework of an abstract acceptance of authority.”254 Deus dixit, and that settles it. Berkouwer critique of Vatican I focuses on what 250 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 182. “Because of the authority of the revealing God” is the meaning of “propter auctoritatem ipsius Dei revelantis.” 251  Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 422 [352]. Berkouwer is not directing his critical remarks against Vatican I’s view of divine authority. Rather, he is questioning a notion of formal authority (why something is believed) that is separated from material authority (what is believed). 252 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 419 [349]. 253 Nichols, From Hermes to Benedict XVI, 187. Nichols give an instructive account of how Catholic thinkers from Blondel to Balthasar dealt with that objection in chapter 9, “The Dispute over Apologetics: From Blondel to Balthasar,” 173–196. 254 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 188.



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he regards, following Bonhoeffer, as a positivism of revelation and the corresponding act of faith, understood as the mere assent and acceptance of incomprehensible and equally significant truths, “a necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all.”255 Throughout his post-1968 writings he often cites Bonhoeffer critique of Karl Barth’s ‘revelation positivism.’256 What is the point of this criticism? Now, whenever Bonhoeffer talks about the “positivism of revelation,” a conception of faith is indicated—resulting in the dogmatic methodology—in which various “truths” are accepted on the basis of revelation and not on the basis of ecclesial authority. . . . In this sort of faith-appropriation, according to Bonheoffer, ‘ein Gesetz der Glaubens’ is created: one is simply compelled to accept various truths. In this critique, Bonhoeffer is concerned about not only a dogmatic view of ‘the faith,’ but also sees in the positivism of revelation—embracing a number of revealed truths in a leveling manner—the positing of a world that is left to itself; “das ist ihr Fehler” because that kind of embracing of truths does not involve the world with which it is immediately and actually connected. . . . A dualism arises that can no longer find a way to the world. . . . In the background of Bonheoffer’s critique there is a leveling ‘acceptance’ of the truths of revelation without the “Stufen der Erkenntnis un Stufen der Bedeutsamkeit” [“substance of discernment and the substance of meaning”], and therefore, on the basis of the quality of such authority, may not be doubted or questioned. Bonhoeffer sees such truths obviously functioning as impediments, as stumbling blocks. Here there is no thought of understanding meaning and therefore of a direction giving relatedness to such truths. The “propter auctoritatem [ipsius Dei revelantis]” is in danger of becoming purely formal because an understanding of the truth is erased, and faith assumes the function of ‘accepting truths,’ that is, faith as assent. 257

In the above passage, Berkouwer is arguing that the view of authority represented by Vatican I is a heteronomous view of authority with a corresponding authoritarian view of faith. “At issue is the notion of faith as an assent to certain truths. We are dealing with a concept of faith that makes the object of faith heteronomous, foreign to man’s nature, and remaining foreign while one keeps believing.”258 In short, faith on the basis of authority seems to leave us, Berkouwer adds, with a “formal authority that can

255 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 219 [155]. 256 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 192–193, 196; idem, “De Achtergrond,” 13; idem, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, [155]. 257 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 192–193. 258 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 220 [156].

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and must be believed no matter what words are spoken.”259 We are left, then—and this is the upshot of Berkouwer’s critique of this authoritarian view of faith—with truth being understood as an “irrational ‘foreign body’ in the world, without “testifying, appellative, and verifying force.”260 Berkouwer’s problem is not that some people “speak of the authority of God and of the definitive meaning of his revelation, but rather that they separate the formal and material [“content”] authority of revelation and then place faith in a framework where it is taken to mean acceptance of authority isolated from the content of revelation.”261 Berkouwer, therefore, concludes that this view of biblical authority leaves us with a mere formal authority, a heteronomous power, or as Dietrich Bonhoeffer once put it, a “positivist doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, ‘Like it or lump it’,”262 whereby man is reduced by God’s Word (“Deus dixit”) to passivity, blind submission, and in which a concept of faith is rendered as a sacrifice of the intellect, blind faith, not allowing any insight, understanding, or response on man’s part. Berkouwer is right that this view entails a “dangerous view of faith.”263 The only question is whether his critique of Vatican I is accurate, namely, that basing faith’s knowledge of God on authority is heteronomous. Let me be clear that Berkouwer is not questioning Vatican I’s emphasis on God’s authority. In other words, he, too, holds that theological faith is based on that authority as its ultimate motive and formal object. 259 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 424 [353]. 260 Berkouwer, De Achtergrond,” 16. 261  Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 424 [353]. 262 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 157. Bonhoeffer actually said in German, “frisz, Vogel ober stirb!,” which literally translated mean, “Eat, bird or die.” This is taken to express the authoritarian call that “alle ‘openbaarde waarheden’ op gezag aan te nemen” (Berkouwer, “Achtergrond,” 13). Hendrikus Berkhof writes that Bonhoeffer’s “words about Barth’s ‘positivism of revelation’ (‘Take it or leave it’) struck like a bomb. These words were exceedingly painful to Barth. One can say that the post-Barthian period really starts with the publication of this position of Bonhoeffer. It arose directly from his analysis of the new cultural epoch. In the anthropocentric age in which Barth had sought his way as a theologian, his starting with God as the subject of faith and theology was a liberating new beginning. In Bonhoeffer’s time this point had already become self-evident in theology. But in the period which he foresaw, such a starting point would be completely unintelligible. For the people for whom the working hypothesis ‘God’ would be a total redundancy, ‘the authority of the Word of God’ would only constitute a double enigma: first, because they would accept nothing on authority anymore and, second, because they could not handle the idea of ‘speaking God’. Since Bonhoeffer’s time countless preachers, pastoralcare workers, and theologians experienced that they had to work under these conditions and—whatever they may have believed and thought for themselves—found themselves unable to start in their work where Barth did” (Two Hundred Years of Theology, 209–210). 263 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 422 [352].



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Berkouwer’s position on authority and experience does not imply a “subjectification of authority, which might only become reality through acknowledgment.”264 Rather, he says, “faith is not founded on human reliability but on the explicit authority of God himself, the deep foundation of all apostolic authority.”265 Let me also make it clear that Berkouwer does not reject a propositional view of faith—as long as we do not understand faith first and last to mean only holding certain propositions to be true, then Berkouwer has no difficulty taking the act of “faith’s assent-function to mean that it must believe and accept certain truths.”266 Says Berkouwer, “There is no reason to reject the words ‘assent’, ‘acceptance’, or ‘hold to be true’. All these terms are meaningful and legitimate as long as they are maintained in the right framework, which is to say as long as they are not separated from the content of revelation.”267 Put differently, Berkouwer agrees (in my own terms) that theological faith involves holding certain propositions to be true, holding them to be divinely revealed, and holding them because we believe God who reveals them. In short, faith therefore believes what is revealed because of who reveals it. Still, Berkouwer objects to Vatican I’s view of authority because it bases faith’s knowledge of God on authority, and on this view the object and content of faith is heteronomous. “For faith,” says Berkouwer, “would then be called to a decision without inner conviction regarding the object and content of the faith to which man is called.” Berkouwer seeks to counteract this view of God’s authority by arguing that “this authority does not exclude experience and man is freely part of it; but in the experience the authority is acknowledged and confessed. Scriptural faith is part of this acknowledgment and is manifested in submission and the obedience of faith.”268 Elsewhere he expresses the correlation between faith and understanding to be such that this correlation is grounded in the unique 264 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 418 [348]. It is hard to see how Francis Schüssler Fiorenza avoids the “subjectification of authority” in the following statement of his position in his 1987 Presidential Address to the Catholic Theological Society of America (“Foundations of Theology”) regarding the authority of divine revelation. He rejects the approach to revelation and faith that emphasizes “the authority of revelation and the relation of this authority to the truthfulness of God.” He holds, instead, that “the authority of revelation is an authority that needs to be gained through the interpretation of what is revelation” (114). 265 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 419 [349]. 266 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?” 188. 267 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?” 188. 268 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 419 [349].

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authority of Scripture rather than in that view in which this authority is made to rest on man’s insight and understanding, which results in the subjectification of biblical authority.269 He adds, “It is the deep dynamic of faith in the authority of Scripture that is daily confirmed in understanding and in listening.” This deep dynamic of faith involves “a faithful listening—ex auditu Verbi—that more deeply understands what it hears and therein finds rest.”270 In this biblical vision, faith is never and nowhere portrayed as an irrational acceptance of the objective content of faith on the basis of authority, whereby the emphasis is more on the “that” than the “what” of revelation. Rather, says Berkouwer, “Revelation may never even for a moment be abstracted from the self-revealing God.” Indeed, God’s gift of himself in revelation involves man “being called to his communion, called to walking in his way, to a faithful listening to his Word. Without this context, faith loses its deepest meaning.”271 In God’s calling humanity to faith, he is called to be “transformed by the renewing of [his] mind” (Rom 12:2). In other words, faith’s acceptance of biblical authority means that he “is persuaded [to respond to the Gospel] through the reality of the proclaimed content of the gospel so that he is not led to a sacrifice of the intellect but to renewal of his thought (Rom 12:2), born in the freedom of faith and issuing in gratitude and adoration. We are dealing here with a faith that is not subject to rational yardsticks and needs no approval of rational verification and yet cannot be separated from insight. . . . This faith is no less full of certainty.”272 But what then is the ground of faith’s certainty? Well, given the distinction between the real ground and motive of faith on the one hand, and the grounds of credibility on the other, we already know that faith’s certainty is not derived from the latter. Berkouwer recognizes this distinction’s importance in Vatican I’s theology of faith. But he charges the Council with a heteronomous view of faith, namely, “faith on the basis of authority.”273 Berkouwer charges that this is a positivist doctrine of revelation’s authority, which says, in effect, “Like it or lump it.” Walter Kasper has rightly questioned this interpretation of Dei Filius of Vatican I. He writes:

269 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?” 198. 270 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?” 198. 271  Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?” 187. 272 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 422 [352–353]. 273 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 220 [156].



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The Constitution [Dei Filius] speaks not of auctoritas Dei imperantis [God’s commanding authority], but of auctoritas Dei revelantis [authority of God revealing]. It is not, in other words, a question of pure authority as such. We are not told that God has revealed something and that is that. This kind of [revelation] positivism with regard to faith and this kind of obedience are not in accordance with the teaching of the Church. The certainty of faith is rather based in the evidence and authority of the truth of God. This means that problems of faith cannot be reduced—as they often are nowadays—to problems of obedience. We do not, then, believe the Church. We believe because we are convinced of the truth of the God who reveals himself.274

Kasper is correctly arguing in this passage that the problem with Berk­ ouwer’s interpretation is his understanding of how a person believes on the authority of God. I agree with William Brownsberger that the Council did not “close off discussion about how this authority is to be understood.”275 As Berkouwer himself rightly remarks, “We must not get caught up in an emotional reaction against such phrases as ‘believing on authority’. Everything depends on the character of the authority and the character of believing.”276 I will now argue that we can best understand the nature of this authority and the corresponding act of faith in terms of an epistemology of testimony in order to rebut Berkouwer’s charge that Vatican I’s view of authority is heteronomous. Pared down for my purpose here, I will sketch an account of testimony’s role in the acquisition of knowledge, showing that authority is not a “darksome power that compels us to subject ourselves without reason.”277 In the concluding sentence of the above quotation of Kasper, he claims that we believe a statement to be true, and hence possess the certainty of faith, “because we are convinced of the truth of the God who reveals himself.” What does this conviction mean? In other words, what convinces us of the truth of the God who reveals himself? Well, it cannot be that I see for myself the truth of the statements to be believed. Rather, we believe because of the authority of the God who reveals himself. This means that God himself is the source of the credibility of what he reveals and that he is thereby the guarantor of that truth.278 What accounts then for our conviction of credibility? Mouroux answers this question: “we meet with

274 Kasper, Introduction to Christian Faith, 63. 275 Brownsberger, “The Authority of God and the Act of Faith,” 160n45. 276 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 224 [159]. 277 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 223 [158]. 278 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 13.

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a person—that explains the certainty of faith.”279 In other words, with faith I accept the truth of what God says about Himself, and in doing so I not only share in His self-knowledge but also accept the Person who reveals Himself through His divine testimony. This statement needs some unpacking. What is the nature, place and value of testimony in acquiring knowledge? This fundamental question is about whether each man should confine himself to what he knows in virtue of what he could in principle find out directly for himself by means of personal experience, insights, and grasp of the truth without relying on anyone else for acquiring knowledge.280 As Paul Helm asks, “Besides the things which we get to know for ourselves, are there not many things for which we must rely on others? What about the testimony of others?”281 Aquinas already answered Helm’s question regarding human testimony by arguing that human faith, meaning thereby trust in another, is necessary. And because in human society one person must make use of another just as he does himself in matters in which he is not self-sufficient, he must take his stand on what another knows and is unknown to himself, just as he does on what he himself knows. As a consequence, faith is necessary in human society, one person believing what another says.282

Elsewhere Aquinas writes in the same vein: “If one were willing to believe only those things which one knows with certitude, one could not live in this world. How could one live unless one believed others? How could one know that this man is one’s own father? Therefore, it is necessary that one believes others in matters which one cannot know perfectly of oneself.”283 One person believing what another says, trusting the word of another, involves an element of participating and sharing the knowledge of another. What is the meaning here of believing what another says? Says John Paul, “‘To believe’ means to accept and to acknowledge as true and corresponding to reality the content of what is said, that is, the content of the 279 Mouroux, I Believe, 59. 280 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., develops this question in his, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1958), 703–706. 281  Paul Helm, Faith and Understanding (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 19. 282 Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Reason and Theology, Questions 1–4 of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, Translated by Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1987), Q. 3, art. 1, 65–66. 283 Thomas Aquinas, The Catechetical Instruction of St. Thomas Aquinas, Translated by Joseph B. Collins (Manila: Sinag Tala, 1939), 4.



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words of another person . . . by reason of his . . . credibility. This credibility determines in a given case the particular authority of the person—the authority of truth. So then by saying ‘I believe’, we express at the same time a double reference: to the person and to the truth; to the truth in consideration of the person who enjoys special claims to credibility.”284 Credibility, then, is “the property of a testimony.”285 For it is the person to whose testimony the assent is given in view of his special claim to credibility, resulting from his possession of the relevant credentials or competence to state truly the truth of statement.286 So, faith does not merely believe a proposition, believing that p is true, but rather believing a person that what he says about that p is true. Faith necessarily involves both a propositional attitude and an attitude toward a person. This, too, is Aquinas’s view. “Whoever believes, assents to someone’s words; hence in every form of belief, the person to whose words assent is given seems to hold the principal place and to be the end, as it were, while the things by holding which one assents to that person hold a secondary place.”287 Hence, for Aquinas, “it belongs to faith to believe something and in someone.”288 Trusting in the word of another by which I participate and share in his knowledge is true of virtually all knowledge, scientific, historical, moral, theological, and many others.289 In John Paul’s own words, “there are in the life of a human being many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way of personal verification.”290 In the case of acquiring knowledge through the testimony of God in his written Word revelation, here, too, credibility is not separated from testimony. Here, too, I share in God’s knowledge that comes to me from others, but this sharing in the knowledge of another “is more personal than the knowledge I share with the technician or specialist.”291 As John

284 John Paul II, A Catechesis on the Creed, Vol. I, God: Father and Creator (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1996), 31. 285 Mouroux, I Believe, 57. 286 Aquinas states, “Other things being equal, sight is more certain than hearing; but if (the authority) of the persons from whom we hear greatly surpasses that of the seer’s sight, hearing is more certain than sight . . . and much more is a man certain about what he hears from God who cannot be deceived, than about what he sees with his own reason which can be mistaken” (Summa Theologiae, IIa, IIae, q. iv, a.8. ad.2). 287 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 11, a.1. 288 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 129, a. 6. 289 Richard Swinburne, Faith and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 40–43. 290 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 31. 291 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 103.

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Paul rightly notes, “In knowing by faith, man accepts the whole supernatural and salvific content of revelation as true. But at the same time, this fact introduces him into a profound personal relationship with God who reveals Himself.”292 Therefore, our knowledge of God is essentially based on faith, on a trust that is participatory of “what another has seen.”293 Ratzinger explains, “Christ is there, at the very center of history, as the great man who sees, and all his words flow from his immediate contact with the Father. As for us, the word that refers to our situation is: ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9). In its innermost essence, the Christian faith is a participation in this act whereby Jesus sees. His act of seeing make possible his word, which is the authentic expression of what he sees. Accordingly, what Jesus sees is the point of reference for our faith, the specific place where it is anchored.”294 Ratzinger’s point that our faith is anchored in what Jesus sees brings us back to the question regarding the certainty of faith. What explains the certainty of faith? “Faith is certain, and thus I am sure of possessing what is true; yet I do not see it.”295 In other words, I do not see for myself the truth of statements, such as “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). “Why then am I sure?” Mouroux insightfully replies by appealing to what another has seen. “Through Christ, our connection with God is assured”: Because I am united to Someone who sees. Faith is certain, not because it comprises the evidence of a thing seen, but because it is the assent to a Person who sees. This is just what we would expect. If the essential in faith is not primarily the fragmentary truths, but the person to whom we tend through these truths—“Him to whose word we assent”—it is quite clear that our certitude will be based on this Person. For it is this Person, and he alone, who sees the truths, and who can therefore gives our knowledge a solid foundation. As St. Thomas puts it in an extremely precise formula: the full affirmation does not proceed from the vision of the believer, but from the vision of Him in Whom one believes, non procedit ex visione credentis, sed a visione ejus cui creditur [Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. xii, a. 13, ad. 3; cf. Summa Contra Gentiles, 111, 154, init.], Faith is an assent to the First Truth, that is to an Infallible Person.296

292 John Paul II, A Catechesis on the Creed, Vol. I, 44. 293 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 104. 294 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 104–105. 295 Mouroux, I Believe, 54. 296 Mouroux, I Believe, 54–55.



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Lastly, pace Berkouwer, this act of faith is not heteronomous because it essentially involves the “act of entrusting oneself to God,” of the gift of giving oneself, meaning thereby a “fundamental decision which engages the whole person.”297 Hence, in the act of faith I become a sharer in the knowledge of God that comes to me from the divine testimony of his Word. This is not a blind faith, a blind trust, a leap in the dark; no, it is a form of knowledge, not merely involving an assent to the truth of a proposition, but also “the person to whose words the assent is given”,298 resulting in a personal knowledge containing an element of participation, where by means of trusting God, I share in his knowledge, in the knowledge of the Person who sees, and by God’s grace I am permitted to see. Thus: When we put our confidence in what Jesus sees and believes in his word, we are not in fact moving around in total darkness. The good news of Jesus corresponds to an interior expectation in our heart; it corresponds to an internal light in our being that reaches out to the truth of God. Certainly, we are before all else believers “at second hand.” But Saint Thomas is right to describe faith as a process, as an interior path, when he writes: “The light of faith leads us to see.” [For] in the living encounter with [Jesus Christ], faith is transformed into “knowledge.” It would of course be wrong to imagine the subsequent path of faith as a linear process, as an untrammeled development. Since this path is linked to our life with all its ups and downs, we keep experiencing setbacks that oblige us to start anew. Every phase of life has to discover its own specific maturity, for otherwise we fall back into corresponding immaturity. And yet, we can say that the life of faith also permits the growth of an evidential character of the faith: its reality touches us, and the experience of a successful life of faith assures us that Jesus is truly the Savior of the world.299

Revival of Natural Theology? I turn finally to make sense of Berkouwer’s interest in the revival of natural theology almost twenty five years after the publication of his study on general revelation?300 Given the signs of the time—namely, the crisis and

297 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, “This is why the Church has always considered the act of entrusting oneself to God to be a moment of fundamental decision which engages the whole person. In that act, the intellect and the will display their spiritual nature, enabling the subject to act in a way which realizes personal freedom to the full” (no. 13). See also, Pius XII, Humani Generis, nos. 32–33. 298 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa, IIae, q. xi, a.1. 299 Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 110–111. 300 Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 15–16; idem, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 29–48, 203– 253; idem, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 7–12, and “Terugblik,” 186–192.

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uncertainty that stamps our times regarding the credibility of the Christian faith—he now seems definitely interested in recovering natural theology’s legitimate concern. Given these signs, says Berkouwer, “we may no longer be content only to witness—as in ‘Here I stand, I can do no other’. We may feel compelled to ask whether there are not indications in the world of thought available to all that, while not having the cogency of proof, do form ‘indicators’ of the possibility at least, and perhaps reasonableness as well, of faith.”301 In other words, if by natural theology we understand “what human experience in general can do to point us to its own transcendent ground and meaning”302—such as, experiential cues that signal signs of transcendence—then Berkouwer does show an interest in recovering the legitimate concern of natural theology. This interest is motivated by the concern for showing the reasonableness of belief in God by finding what Walter Kasper has called the “natural ‘access-point’ of faith” in human experience.303 Berkouwer writes, A certain obstinacy and positivity is contained in these proofs concerning the conviction that ground and motives removing this belief in God from all irrationality can be pointed out. One was not content with the statement that the fool says in his heart “there is no God” (Ps. 14:1; 53:1), but pointed to general human insight, which showed that belief in God was different from a leap into an irrational, defenseless belief. Kant’s criticism of the proofs for God has never been able to detract from this interest entirely [in showing that belief in God was different from a leap into an irrational, defenseless belief]. After a crisis in traditional apologetics, which was never completely satisfied with the unfruitfulness of conclusions “from the things that are created,” interest in these proofs has again returned. One searches continually, not necessarily for strict proofs, but at least for arguments, indications, and pointers which have force, if not with respect to the full content of the Christian confession, then nevertheless with respect to the belief in God that is essential in the Church’s confession.304

Admittedly, says Berkouwer, there seems to be a shift in the meaning of natural theology, in comparison with traditional natural theology, which partly accounts for its contemporary relevance. “In this there is certainly a shift in meaning comparable to what people earlier generally understood by the distinction between the possibility of a definite knowledge of God via the natural light of reason and the attendant proofs for the existence 301 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 43–44 [35]. 302 Aidan Nichols, Grammar of Consent, 20. 303 Kasper, Introduction to Christian Faith, 19. 304 Berkouwer, De Kerk, II, 43–44 [235–236].



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of God.”305 Where exactly is the shift in meaning? Briefly, rather than a focus on arguments and demonstrations for God’s existence, the attention of natural theology has moved in a hermeneutical and personalist direction. “From this arose the legitimacy of giving attention to the human person as an addressee of the gospel, with which one is not permitted to trifle. One cannot separate revelatory events from people’s questions about the meaning of reality.306 Indeed, adds Berkouwer, “The current focus on understanding and intelligibility—hermeneutics, interpretation, and horizon at a certain time—is far from being merely a fashionable issue, but rather is an attention to the power of the evidence of truth, and so it will be of service to the question of verification.”307 To be sure, it isn’t that this hermeneutical and personalist turn to natural theology has nothing in common with the traditional practice of natural theology. What they both have in common is the large and defining role of the question regarding the relation, and hence “point of contact,” between revelation and human experience, which is now approached from a hermeneutical standpoint.308 In light of such a reflecting on the value of natural theology, we can understand why Berkouwer revisits the question of the legitimacy of using notions such as capacity, point of contact and susceptibility when accounting for the manner in which the gospel takes hold of human life. Berkouwer is so persuaded by the decisive importance of the “living connection between faith and our human, natural experience en route to faith,”309 that when sight is lost of this dimension there remains only one way open to us to deal with revealed truths, namely, as truths accepted on authority, which leaves us with a heteronomous view of faith. Given our critical discussion of this view earlier in this chapter, we can now directly turn to treat Berkouwer’s position on the point of contact between revelation and human experience. On the question then of finding the natural ‘access-point’ of faith in human experience—that is, on showing the coherence of faith with life in the world—there is an unmistakable albeit subtle shift in Berkouwer’s mentality regarding the issue of the reasonableness of faith and hence of recovering the legitimate concern of natural theology. That shift is clearly expressed when he says, “We can, in fear of rationalism and the autonomy 305 Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 12. 306 Berkouwer, “De Achtergrond,” 13. 307 Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 188. 308 Berkouwer, “Achtergrond,” 12. 309 Berkouwer, “Achtergrond,” 14.

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of reason, refuse to take account of how the gospel takes hold of a human life. But this is a treacherous route.”310 This route is treacherous because it results in thinking, says Berkouwer, that “faith is an irrational leap without any point of contact in ordinary human experience.” In other words, it leaves us with the idea that faith, he adds, “in the last analysis [is] in conflict with all human reasoning and rational demonstration.”311 So, Berkouwer rejects irrationalism as well as rationalism, undervaluing or overvaluing reason. In fact, he aims to transcend the dilemma of “rationalism or irrationalism,” as he puts it.312 How does a personalist and hermeneutical turn to natural theology help Berkouwer to transcend this dilemma? At most he gives us a glimpse of his effort to overcome this dilemma. Indeed, says Berkouwer, “In the Church and theology man once again faces the unmistakable fact that faith involves knowledge, that faith is enacted within the horizon of knowledge and experience.”313 In fact, regarding the matter of the truth of the Christian faith he argues that the connection between faith and human experience must be such that there are experiential indicators of God’s existence that can verify the truth of our beliefs. “The attention for verification arises when we realize that the truth of Revelation comes within our earthly horizon. . . . How is then Revelation recognized, what are her signs or experiential indicators through which men are convicted,”314 and hence lead them to respond to God’s presence in the depth of their experience? Verification here does not mean what philosophers of an empiricist bent have meant: that knowledge is obtained only by sense experience, observations that are measurable and quantifiable, and repeatable in principle. Human experience is much richer than sense experience. There is an irreducible plurality and richness in the experiential indicators of God, just as there is in the texture of experience itself. These experiential indicators or cues are signals of transcendence; indicators or cues such as the experience of moral obligation, the wonder of existence, of why there is something rather than nothing, of the experience that the world makes sense, is intelligible, of the experience of self-estrangement and the quest for self-integrity, of the experience of the world’s contingency, 310 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 224 [159]. 311  Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 211 [150]. 312 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 12. See also, “Terugblik,” 191. 313 Berkouwer, “Terugblik,” 188. 314 Berkouwer, “Inleiding: waarheid en verificatie,” 9.



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its non-necessary character, and the concomitant experience of its essential limitedness and transience, in short, the fragility of beings—all these experiences provide experiential cues that when drawn by human reflection into arguments indicate the reasonableness of assent to the existence of God. Aidan Nichols summarizes the kinds of experiences that may be regarded as cues for formulating arguments for God’s existence. He writes: What kinds of experience may be regarded as raw materials in the argument for the existence of God? They would include (1) the “erotic” (desiring) nature of human existence, combined with the realization that nothing finite will ever satisfy the human animal; (2) the discovery that truth is an absolute standard for a conditioned mind; (3) awareness of the finitude of beings—their transience and contingency—bringing with it the insight that the entire universe of being exists by grace and favor; (4) the apparent authenticity of much mystical experience; (5) our sense of the irremediable ambiguity of humankind, “glory and refuse of the universe” as Pascal judged, a walking tragedy which only the healing goodness of an infinite God can resolve; (6) moral obligation as an implicit awareness of the presence of the all-­holy foundation of morals; (7) the need of human society (and individuals) for a hope that refuses to be bound by the limits set by calculation, and so implies some transcendent ground of hoping; (8) in G.K. Chesterton’s words, “joy without a cause,” a reaction of joy to the fact that there should be such a thing as life at all, for “existence . . . has the wild beauty of a woman, and those love her with most intensity who love her with least cause.” In this romantic epiphany, religion finds its justification by being the vindication of joy, play, thanksgiving, our sense of basic security in the world, and of all that embodies these things in human living.315

This experiential confirmation of God’s presence in the depths of our varied experiences is not just a theoretical affair. Rather, the relation between verification and truth concerns “how man himself [is] involved as he [is] 315 Nichols, Epiphany, 17. In addition, Nichols says, “If these areas of experience were to be assessed singly, we could not be sure that a reductionist account of them would not suffice to meet the demands of reason. For each of them a naturalistic explanation might serve, though some would mount a stronger resistance thereto than others. But the mind, engaging with the materials of life, does not assess areas of experience singly. It has a marked tendency to integrate them and let them fall, if they will, into a pattern. And the pattern formed by the kinds of materials considered here is manifestly theistic: their uncreated pole is a reality supremely desirable, all-knowing, the fount of existence, offering itself in communion to humankind, the resolution of our restlessness, ethically all-holy, provident in giving us grounds for hope, the secret joy at the heart of being. And this (to echo Aquinas) all human beings call God. The simplicity or elegance of the God of reason lies in the way this God is simultaneously the key to so many arresting features of self and world” (17).

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confronted by [the truth of] revelation, and how he [comes] to entrust himself to this revelation.”316 Therefore, the demand for verification is a demand for the credibility of our beliefs. This demand follows from the truth-claims of Christian faith. Our beliefs do not create reality, Berkouwer rightly holds. Put differently, believing that something is true does not make it true, but rather our beliefs are true if what they assert is in fact the case about objective reality; otherwise, they are false. Berkouwer’s fundamental interest in the relation between verification and truth arises from his acceptance of the importance of giving an account of how the gospel takes hold of a human life. His acceptance of such an account reopens the ecumenical discussion between Catholicism and the Reformed tradition regarding the legitimacy of natural theology. Conclusion How is the act of faith an authentically human act? In particular, how is believing a rational act? Scattered throughout his many writings over the years, from 1932 onwards, Berkouwer addressed the first question but resisted considering the second question regarding the rationality of believing in fear of rationalism. As to the first question, notwithstanding the significance of Berkouwer’s point that the faith-revelation correlation embraces the reality of human existence, that is, that “the correlation is firmly rooted in concrete human existence,”317 it seems to me that Berkouwer is, like early Barth, unable to account satisfactorily for the sense in which the act of faith is a human act. Just to be clear: the point is not whether Berkouwer regards the act of faith to be a human act—he definitely does—but rather how the act itself is authentically human. This limitation in his position raised the question regarding the point of contact in man for God’s grace. Prior to 1968, Berkouwer seemed unwilling to consider what the conditions are of the possibility for the reception of revelation. In this connection, I concluded that Berkouwer unsatisfactorily addressed the issue of the point of contact (Anknüpfungspunkt) for divine revelation in some sense within human nature. As to the second question—how it is that believing is a rational act—I concluded that the charge of rationalism against the Catholic tradition does not stick. My argument made, chiefly, five points. First, distinguishing 316 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 211 [150]. 317 Berkouwer, Geloof en Rechtvaardiging, 187 [179].



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between the causa essendi and the causa cognoscendi, between the metaphysical and epistemological order of things, enables one to rebut the standard objection—made by Berkouwer, but not by Bavinck—that the acceptance of natural theology implies that belief in God’s existence is based on arguments and proofs and hence that his existence has no foundation apart from them. Pace Berkouwer, while many things about God are known from the bottom up, as it were—says St. Paul, from the things that God has made we come to a knowledge of his eternal power and divinity (Romans 1:19–20)—they are not grounded in my knowledge, but in objective reality. In short, a ‘ground of knowledge’ and a ‘ground of existence’ are distinct. As long as we are clear on this difference, we will avoid overvaluing the role of natural theological arguments in coming to certain knowledge of God through the medium of creation. Second, general revelation and natural theology are not identical; and furthermore the scope of the natural knowledge of God should not be narrowed to knowledge of God that is acquired through arguments and proofs. So, then, I concluded that when Vatican I affirms the natural knowability of God through the medium of creation it is not limiting that knowledge to what is acquired by arguments and proofs. Third, although theistic arguments and proofs are available in justifying the rationality of faith, they are not necessary either for acquiring knowledge of God or for establishing faith’s rationality. Hence, faith’s knowledge of God does not rest upon such arguments and proofs. That knowledge is founded on the revealed Word of God. Fourth, I concluded that truths about God do not reveal themselves in an impartial assessment, or detached scrutiny, but only to the aspirant of truth whose state of mind is already to some extent in a state of selfcriticism, of humility, being a suppliant, such that one is characterized by openness, receptivity, trust and the willingness to listen. The upshot is that to realize the full potential of natural reason in coming to knowledge of God—in particular accessing certain more and metaphysical truths— it is necessary for the truth-seeker to be in a moral or spiritual condition that makes him fit for attaining truth. Fifth, I concluded that these four points are consistent with Vatican I’s teaching on the duplex ordo cognitionis of faith and reason once we interpret that teaching independently of the autonomy and anthropological objections. Finally, some of Berkouwer’s publications during the period of 1968– 1974 return to the question regarding the conditions of possibility for the reception of revelation. How is that revelation received, and what are the conditions for its reception by the receiver? I argue that Berkouwer

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is motivated to return to this question because he now sees that one of theology’s most urgent concerns is to locate within human life and experience the act of faith in God as an authentically human act and as something meaningful as well as intellectually responsible. In this connection, Berkouwer returns to consider the value of natural theology and hence to the issue of the point of contact (Anknüpfungspunkt), for divine revelation does not intrude into the life of the believer as if to say that it is a ‘foreign body’ (Fremdkörper). In short, how, then, does divine grace take hold of a man’s life without violating the integrity of his human experience? In this connection, certain pressing concerns, according to Berkouwer, are at the center of his answer to this fundamental question: one, overcoming the dilemma of rationalism versus irrationalism; two, transcending the opposition between authority and reason; and three, giving an account of the relationship between faith and rationality. Although I conclude that Berkouwer’s perspective is helpful in setting up the problems raised by each of these concerns, he does not provide us with a solution to them. This is especially the case on the matter of the relation between authority and reason, and, consequently, the critique that the council of Vatican I has a heteronomous view of authority (‘positivism of revelation’). But it pertains as well as to the matter of faith and rationality, and, in this connection, the charge that the role of ‘motives of credibility’ is rationalistic. In rebuttal of these two charges, but also to provide a solution to the problems sketched by Berkouwer, I conclude not only that an epistemology of testimony overcomes the alleged opposition between authority and reason, but also that the role of the motives of credibility is not to provide the real ground and motive of faith—only the Word of God can provide that—but rather to establish faith’s credibility by showing that the consent of faith is reasonable.

chapter FOUR

Scripture and Tradition in Relation to Revelation and to the Church1 Can the Word be given over to the Church without fear that it will forfeit its own power and vitality under the shears of the magisterium or in the rank growth of the sensus fidelium? That is the Protestant’s question to the Catholic. Can the Word be posited as independent without thereby delivering it up to the caprice of exegetes, evacuating it of meaning in the controversies of historians and so robbing it entirely of binding force? That is the counterquestion which the Catholic will put immediately, and as such he will also be of the opinion that we do not have to consider in any case whether we are going to commit the Word to the Church or not. The Catholic will say that the Lord himself has delivered it to the Church. It is true that this will not prevent him, if he honestly looks the facts in the face, from regarding concern for the purity of the Word as a duty of the greatest gravity, which is not fulfilled simply by appealing to the infallibility of the Church. To that extent Luther’s struggle concerning the Word will seriously appear to him as at least a salutary warning.2 If sola scriptura means ‘the Bible alone apart from the church and tradition,’ it has no future. But this is not what sola scriptura means. Sola scriptura is a protest not against tradition as such but against the presumption that church tradition (interpretation) and Scripture (text) necessarily coincide.3 One might find it much too optimistic when [Oscar] Cullmann writes the following in his study on tradition, on the views of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches regarding ‘Scripture and tradition’: “In actuality, however, the two positions approach one another to an astonishing degree.” What is certain is that every reason exists not to allow the controversy to continue without challenging the historic dilemma: whether there are one or two sources, a Catholic position maintaining tradition as a source and

1 G.C. Berkouwer, SRKD, 100–140; idem, CR, 20–51 [15–37]; idem, Nieuwe Perspectieven; idem, Recent Developments; idem, VCNT, 105–133 [89–111]; idem, NC, 112–140. 2 Joseph Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” in Offenbarung und Überlieferung (Freiburg: Herder, 1965), 25–69, and for this quote in original German, 29–30. ET: “Revelation and Tradition,” in Revelation and Tradition, Translated by W.J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 26–66, and for this quote, 31. 3 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Scripture and Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 149–169, and for this quote, 167. See also Vanhoozer’s later work, The Drama of Doctrine (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), Chapter 5, “Scripture and Tradition,” 151–165.

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chapter four a Protestant one without it. The reformation confessions have not only pointed with emphasis and solidarity to the symbols of the early church, but also from the Roman Catholic side there has been an increasing emphasis recently that the issue does not revolve around a mechanistic and dualistic coordination of two sources. The result is that the discussion can now concentrate on the function of traditions in the life of the church. It can focus on the functioning of tradition whereby neither Catholic nor Protestant is willing permanently to risk everything for the sake of the principle of relevance [actualiteitsbeginsel]—a kind of relevance that can hardly be squared with the positive [affirming] nature of the faith of the ‘church of all ages.’4 I regard as alien to Catholicism both any exclusive assertion of the sola scriptura, the sola traditio, or the solum magisterium, and similarly any affirmation of two or three parallel and independent sources. Both the scriptures and tradition are necessary to the life of the church. But, on the other hand, scripture and tradition also need the church and each other if they are to be recognized as canonical scriptures and as authentically apostolic tradition. . . . The church’s [normative] supervision of scriptural exegesis does not place it above scripture, but merely points to the church’s recognition of the exclusively apostolic principle as the norm of Christian faith and of life in the church.5

An Introductory Orientation The four epigraphs to this chapter form the background to this chapter and the next where I propose to continue my ecumenical theological dialogue with Berkouwer, but now on the dogmatic topic of ‘Scripture and Tradition in relation to Revelation and to the Church.’ These epigraphs contain all the essential issues that I will consider in regard to this topic. Some readers of this present chapter—in which I seek above all to explain and to understand carefully Berkouwer’s position—may be distracted by my insertion of, not only Catholic reflections by Ratzinger and others, but also more recent reflections by evangelical and reformed Protestants. My aim in doing so is to enrich my analysis by showing that the essential issues discussed in this chapter were being discussed by Catholic ­theologians in 4 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 13–14. What Berkouwer rejects here is a one-sided use of the “actualiteitsbeginsel”, whereby the Church’s faith is accommodated to the contemporary situation. 5 Prof. Mag. Dr. E. Schillebeeckx, O.P., “De Openbaring en haar ‘Overlevering’,” in Schrift en Traditie (Hilversum/Antwerpen: Uitgeverij Paul Brand N.V., 1965), 13–20, and this quote, 20. ET: “Revelation, Scripture, Tradition, and Teaching Authority,” Revelation and Theology, Vol. I, translated by N.D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 3–24, and this quote, 23–24 (the italics are in the Dutch version).



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the years before as well as during and after Vatican Council II, but they also continue to have relevance in a wider ecumenical context. Presumption of Coincidence The disagreement over the meaning of sola Scriptura is no longer focused on whether it rules out every kind of tradition, as if that phrase meant to require an opposition between Scripture and tradition, but rather it means to challenge, as Vanhoozer states in the epigraph, the “presumption that church tradition (interpretation) and Scripture (text) necessarily coincide.” Catholicism is typically charged with what Vanhoozer calls the presumption of coincidence.6 As we shall see below, this too is the major criticism of Berkouwer, in his two pre-Vatican II works on Catholicism, concerning the relation in Catholic teaching between Scripture, tradition and the Church. Indeed, it remains his focus of criticism as well in his post-Vatican II writings—albeit now tempered by his deep appreciation for Rome’s renewed self-understanding that the Church is a servant of the Word of God and hence is called to be the ecclesia audiens in order to be truly the ecclesia docens. Notwithstanding his appreciation for the renewed Church, Berkouwer suggests that the presumption of coincidence implies an automatic guarantee of truth. Of course we’ll need to probe critically whether this charge is valid and, if so, in what sense (VCNT, 259 n. 164, 260–261 [209 n. 77, 210–211]). Aren’t there different levels of authoritative church teachings, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, with some being fundamental, irreformable, and definitive, and others being non-definitive and hence subject to reform?7 Certainly, in the second half of the twentieth-century the problem of the permanence of dogma and the historical relativity of the concepts and language has been addressed by the Magisterium as well as by Catholic theologians. Still, the chief problem with the presumption of coincidence as such, and hence the real crux of the question regarding sola Scriptura, and hence of the dynamic of the ecclesia semper reformanda, is, says Vanhoozer elsewhere, that “it is not clear how tradition can be criticized.” He adds, “It would appear that not all

6 Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 156. 7 Thomas G. Guarino, “Catholic Reflections on Discerning the Truth of Sacred Scripture,” in Your Word is Truth, A Project of Evangelicals and Catholics Together (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 79–101, especially 94–96.

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developments are equally correct. We need criteria as we attempt to sort out genuine development from the spurious.”8 Years earlier in 1967, as Vanhoozer now has done almost 40 years later, Ratzinger himself makes the same point in his commentary on Dei Verbum, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. He acknowledges “the truth of the criticism that there is, in fact, no explicit mention [in Dei Verbum] of the possibility of a distorting tradition and of the place of Scripture as an element within the Church that is also critical of tradition, which means that a most important side of the problem of tradition, as shown by the history of the Church . . . has been overlooked.”9 “Consequently,” adds Ratzinger, “tradition must not be considered only affirmatively, but also critically; we have Scripture as a criterion for this indispensable criticism of tradition, and tradition must therefore always be related back to it and measured by it.”10 This question is all the more relevant, indeed urgent, for the Catholic since Vatican II explicitly teaches that the teaching office of the Church is the servant of the Word of God.11 What, then, is needed is an account of the place of Scripture as a critical principle of distinguishing authentic from inauthentic traditions, a “Gegenüber,” so that rather than making the Church the norm itself, we can instead understand how the Church is subject to the norm of the Word of God.12 Sola Scriptura, Si; Solo Scriptura, No Vanhoozer claims in the above epigraph that sola Scriptura does not mean “the Bible alone apart from the church and tradition.” He boldly states that this view of sola Scriptura “has no future.” Thus, Vanhoozer, like Berkouwer, rejects ‘solo’ Scriptura, which confuses the “Reformation  8 Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine,” 162, 161, respectively.  9 Joseph Ratzinger, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Volume III (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 167–198, 262–272, and at 192–193. 10 Ratzinger, Dogmatic Constitution, 185. 11  Dei Verbum, no. 10: “But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed” (italics added). 12 Yves Congar, O.P., Jesus Christ, Translated by Luke O’Neill (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 162.



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call to sola Scriptura,” says Berkouwer, with “a call to Biblicism.”13 Furthermore, adds Vanhoozer, “The main problem with ‘solo’ scriptura is that each individual biblical interpreter sees what is right in his . . . own eyes.”14 This view results in the rejection of the principle of the Church’s catholicity, as both Vanhoozer and Berkouwer recognize.15 Their rejection of ‘solo’ Scriptura and, consequently, preserving an important role for tradition, raises the fundamental question regarding the relationship between the Gospel (Scripture), tradition, and the Church. Several issues must be addressed here in answering this question in our analysis of Berkouwer’s views on Scripture and Tradition in Catholicism pre- and post-Vatican II. First, in what sense are tradition and the Church intrinsically and necessarily related to the Scriptures for properly interpreting them? This question may now be put to Reformed theologians, such as Berkouwer, because sola Scriptura is no longer understood only in an oppositional 13 Berkouwer, Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism, 101. The original Dutch version (VCNT) does not contain this sentence. In that version, Berkouwer cites German Lutheran dogmatician Edmund Schlink who also “insists that the doctrine of sola Scriptura is something quite different from biblicistic purism” (Ibid., n. 68, 122 [n. 42, 102]). Another aspect of “Biblicism” is highlighted by John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio. The pope argues that “Biblicism” shows itself to have a “fideistic tendency,” meaning thereby those approaches to the Bible that are anti-metaphysical, indeed, “which fail to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse [“the language of being”] for the understanding of faith” (no. 55). Biblicism, consequently, “tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scripture the sole criterion of truth.” Therefore, he adds, “the Word of God is identified with Sacred Scripture alone, thus eliminating the doctrine of the Church which the Second Vatican Council stressed quite specifically” (ibid). There is another form of “Biblicism,” namely, one in which “the only kind of normativity that [some Protestants] want to acknowledge is that which comes from the Bible.” Al Wolters argues here: “In my judgment, this is a misconception of the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura. Special and general revelation need to be read in the light of each other. To be sure, biblical revelation has epistemological priority over God’s revelation in creation, but both come with divine authority. God speaks to us through the very structure of creation—creation conceived in a broad biblical sense to include the God-ordained fabric of human culture and society” (“A Reflection,” in Moving Beyond the Bible to Theology [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009], 299–319, and for this quote, 317). 14 Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 154. 15 Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 154, “ ‘One Christian thus measures the scriptural interpretation of other Christians against the standard of his own scriptural interpretation’. ‘Solo’ Scriptura thus denies the principle of catholicity.” G.C. Berkouwer, E. Schillebeeckx, and H.A. Oberman, Ketters of Voor-trekkers, De Geestelijke Horizon van onze Tijd, Vier gesprekken, Ingeleid en onder redactie van H.A. Oberman (Kampen: J.H. Kok N.V., 1970). The difference between Vanhoozer and Berkouwer is that the latter claims that Protestantism is at risk in denying the principle of catholicity because there is a “sectarian element in Protestantism.” He explains: “also within the dividedness of the Reformation the danger of heresy is present in the sense of being one-sided, of riding hobbyhorses, of accentuating in such a way that the perspective of the fulness of truth—one might even say, of catholicity—is lost” (9).

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sense to tradition. Rather, Berkouwer, Vanhoozer, et al., speak of the relation between Scripture and Tradition in what may be called “the coinherence of Scripture and Tradition.”16 If tradition and the Church are intrinsically and necessarily related to Scripture, presumably that means that the Church can justify no truth from Scripture alone, but for that matter neither from tradition nor from the magisterium alone, as Schillebeeckx rightly states in the above epigraph. But if there is a necessary place for tradition and the Church in the justification of dogmas, which cannot be denied, then tradition and the Church must also be criteria of theological justification. Did the Reformation decision for sola scriptura mean to deny this claim? May one hold the position that Scripture is not only the final authority of faith and life, but also that it is intrinsically and necessarily related with tradition and Magisterium as interdependent authorities? Does Berkouwer think that the acceptance of this position contradicts the historic Reformed teaching concerning the debates about sola Scriptura and tradition? Are those debates not about the primacy of biblical authority (prima Scriptura) but rather about the Bible’s exclusive authority in the sense of only authority? Second, if the debates concerning Scripture and tradition are ultimately about authority, we need to ask about the relationship between Scripture’s authority and the teaching authority of the Church. How valid is the standard charge made by, for example, Reformed theologians Van Genderen and Velema, Michael Horton,17 as well as most recently by Oliver Crisp,18 and Evangelicals Vanhoozer, Ward, Köstenberger, and Kruger, that the Catholic position regarding Biblical authority is such that

16 Timothy George, “An Evangelical Reflection on Scripture and Tradition,” in Your Word is Truth, 9–34, and this phrase, 16. 17 Michael S. Horton, The Christian Faith, A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 167: “This inner witness of the Spirit was developed especially by Calvin [Institutes of the Christian Religion I.7] as a way of answering the Roman Catholic claim that biblical authority rested on the authority of the church.” 18 Oliver D. Crisp, “On Being a Reformed Theologian,” in Theology 115 (2012): 14–25, especially, 19. Crisp seems to hold that the Catholic Church teaches that the Church confers upon Scripture its authority rather than merely recognizing or receiving its authority. He seems entirely unaware that both Vatican I and II teach that the Scriptures are canonical because they are inspired, not vice-versa, inspired because canonical. “For Holy Mother Church relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 2:31); 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:19–21; 3:15–16), they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself ” (Dei Verbum, no. 11; see also, Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 2, On revelation, no. 7).



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the Church confers upon Scripture its authority, creating the Bible’s normativity, rather than merely recognizing or receiving its authority?19 Is Schillebeeckx’s denial of this charge in the above epigraph correct: “The church’s [normative] supervision of scriptural exegesis does not place it above scripture, but merely points to the church’s recognition of the exclusively apostolic principle as the norm of Christian faith and of life in the church.” Even Bavinck, and Berkouwer after him, acknowledge that the Catholic Church does not teach that Scripture derive its authority from the Church, or create the normative value of Scripture, but it can only recognize it. Still, their critique of the Church’s position on biblical authority is more complex. They both refer to the distinction drawn 19 J. van Genderen and W.H. Velema, Concise Reformed Dogmatics, translated by Gerrit Bilkes, edited by M. van der Mass (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2008 [1992]), 84: “The Roman Catholic Church declared: All authority that Scripture has among us depends on the authority of the church.” Kevin Vanhoozer, “Scripture and Tradition,” 165, “The Bible is not Scripture simply because an interpretative community decides to use it as such. . . . The church acknowledges what the Bible is—divine discourse—but this acknowledgment does not make it so.” Vanhoozer is surely correct that some theologically liberal Catholic theologians, such as Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and Michael G. Lawler, hold the view that he wrongly attributes to the Church. For instance, Fiorenza rejects Vatican I’s teaching regarding the relation between the “formal authority of revelation and the relation of this authority to the truthfulness of God.” Instead, he insists, “The authority of revelation is an authority that needs to be gained through the interpretation of what is revelation. . . . Scriptures have authority not insofar as they themselves are devoid of a community’s interpretations of its reflective identity and history but precisely insofar as it expresses” (“Foundations of Theology,” 114, 128). Lawler himself puts the matter this way: “Scriptural authority . . . is social and socially approved authority, derived not from scripture itself but from the community of believers, for that community has, first, canonized and, then, accepted scripture as its classical representation of the God encountered in the immediate experience of Jesus, and established it as a secondary revelation” (What is and What ought to be, 84). Consider, also, Timothy Ward, Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 110. Ward claims that Roman Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit speaks “through the official teaching institution of the church in Rome . . . in order to give Scripture its authority” (italics added). Similarly, Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2010), “Any suggestion that the church creates the canon, or that the canon is simply and solely the outcome of a long period of ‘choosing’ by the established church, would not only unduly reverse the biblical and historical order but would have been an idea foreign to the earliest Christians. This is why the early church fathers speak consistently of ‘recognizing’ or ‘receiving’ the books of the New Testament, not creating or picking them. In their minds, scriptural authority was not something they could give these documents but was something that was (they believed) already present in these documents—they were simply receiving what had been ‘handed down’ to them” (121). Last but not least, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) is obviously taking aim at the Catholic Church—more exactly, what it thinks the Church teaches—in its denial (Article I) that “the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human source” (Online: http://www.reformed.org/documents/index .html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/icbi.html).

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by Roman Catholic theologians between the authority of Scripture with respect to itself (quoad se) and with respect to us (quoad nos) (SRKD, 101–102).20 In itself, the authority of Scripture does not depend on the Church or for that matter on a purely human appraisal, but rather on the fact that the Scripture has God as its author, it is divinely inspired, and has been delivered to the Church by the Holy Spirit. Regarding ourselves, however, that is with respect to us, of the act of canonization in which a list of books is determined as belonging to the canon, Nichols write, “the Church declares that certain books are divinely enabled testimony to a divinely given revelation. In other words, in canonizing, the Church discovers which books, among those known to her that touch her faith, are really and truly divinely inspired. . . . To accept a biblical book on any other ground than [it being divinely inspired] would be to submit the Word of God to a purely human appraisal.”21 It further follows that our own acceptance of Scripture’s authority—of the dogmatic teachings of the Catholic Church, of doctrinal development, and of discerning the difference between authentic and inauthentic traditions—depends on the Church as the divine instrument through which we assent to the truths of our faith. In other words, the teaching office (magisterium) is the authoritative and infallible interpreter of Holy Scripture, and in that sense she is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). Notwithstanding their recognition of this distinction, Bavinck and Berkouwer (at least the Berkouwer before Vatican II) still claim that the authority of Scripture is endangered because, on the Catholic view, the Scripture is not self-sufficient, it does not determine which books belong to its canon, vouch for its own inspiration, or is its own interpreter. As a result, says Berkouwer, “the value of an exclusive appeal to Scripture itself is brought into question.” He adds, “The conflict over the authority of Scripture increasingly focused on the question of tradition. That was inevitable given that the Catholic Church in the time of the Reformation stood over against the Reformer’s passionate appeal to the Scripture as

20 See Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, I (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1967), 97; ET: Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), 78; Both sources will be cited through this book, first the original, followed by the pagination of the English in square brackets [ ]. See also Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1967; Vijfde Onveranderde Druk), 426; Reformed Dogmatics, Prolegomena, I, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 457–458. 21 Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 105–106.



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a self-sufficient authority to which the Church in her whole life remains subject. In light of this conflict, the elementary question regarding the value of appealing to Scripture was obvious” (SRKD, 105–106). The upshot of the Catholic Church’s position is that, in Bavinck’s words, “Rome can neither understand nor recognize the necessity of Holy Scripture.”22 Ratzinger, for one, is aware of the risk in the interpretation of the Catholic Church’s position where the Church’s authority is given primacy (‘solum magisterium’) vis-à-vis Scripture and tradition: it threatens the primacy of Scripture’s authority and—if one continues logically in the direction of ecclesial primacy, particularly respecting the Church’s teaching office—the servant-character of the teaching office would ultimately be destroyed.23 Indeed, for those doing theology the Church’s teaching office is, says Pius XII, the “proximate and universal norm of truth, because Christ entrusted the scriptures and apostolic tradition to this authoritative office for their defense and interpretation.”24 Furthermore, he also recommends, following Pius IX, the ‘regressive method’ in dogmatic theology, namely, that “the noblest office of theology” is thought to be “to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of revelation.”25 Additionally, “and with very good reason,” says Pius XII, that doctrine not only defined by the Church, but also “in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church.”26 Finally, this view of the Church’s teaching office and its concomitant “regressive” methodology raises the question whether Scripture, tradition and the Church can be intrinsically and necessarily related, without either making Scripture subservient to tradition or the Church’s teaching office, or swallowing Scripture up into the tradition.27

22 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, no. 122, 435 [466]. 23 Ratzinger in his commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 197. 24 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 18. 25 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 21. For more on the “regressive method,” see Yves Congar, A History of Theology, 236–237. See also, Jarred Wicks, S.J., Doing Theology (New York: Mahwah, NJ: 2009), 20–21. See also, Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 256. 26 Humani Generis, no. 21. 27 I am indebted to Gavin D’Costa, “Revelation, Scripture and Tradition: Some Comments on John Webster’s Conception of ‘Holy Scripture’,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 6, No. 4, October 2004: 337–350.

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At stake in affirming or denying sola Scriptura no longer seems to be whether or not there are two materially distinct sources of revelation—the so-called “two-source theory” of revelation in which it is understood, says Ratzinger, that “Scripture and tradition contain revelation and they do this in such a way that parts of revelation are only in tradition.”29 In fact, Berkouwer (already in 1957) and Schillebeeckx make this point in the epigraph above. Berkouwer, in particular, claims that we mustn’t let the controversy between Catholics and Protestants collapse into the dilemma: “one or two sources, a Catholicism with a tradition-source and a Protestantism without tradition [i.e., ‘solo’ Scriptura].” Rather, Protestants, especially the Reformed churches, and Catholics on the relation between Scripture and tradition have drawn closer to each other. In the words of a contemporary Reformed theologian, the doctrine of sola Scriptura never meant that “all of theology ought to be constructed anew, without reference to the church’s tradition of interpretation, by the lonely exegete confronting the naked text.”30 Distinguishing, then, ‘solo’ Scriptura from ‘sola’ Scriptura means that some Protestants have come to acknowledge the tradition of Church teaching that flows from the Apostles through the apostolic Church and on to the councils of the early Church (e.g., Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon), later confessions and creeds, indeed, the Three Forms of Unity (i.e., the Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession of faith, and the Canons of Dordt). Some Catholics have gradually moved to a rejection of the double-source theory of revelation as the Catholic doctrine, even though it admittedly “came to be dominant in the period between the [sixteenth century] council [of Trent] and the nineteenth century.”31 Says Berkouwer, “The issue does not revolve around a mechanical, dualistic juxtaposition, so that the discussion can now focus on the function of 28 Karl Rahner claims to have coined this phrase in his study, Inspiration in the Bible, Translated by Charles H. Henkey (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961), 36. 29 Joseph Ratzinger, “Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during Vatican Council II,” translation and annotations by Jared Wicks, S.J., Gregorianum 89, 2 (2008): 269–285, and for this quote, 273. 30 Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), 51. So, too, Karl Barth, who writes, “We do not live, think, and teach on the basis of a Scripture that is suspended all alone in the air, and thus not ‘sola’ (=solitaria) Scriptura. We live, think, and teach . . . in the communion of the saints, as we listen with filial reverence and brotherly love to the voice of the pastors and teachers of God’s people, those of the past as well as those of the present” (Ad Limina Apostolorum: An Appraisal of Vatican II, Translated by Keith R. Crim (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1968), 49–50. 31 Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 176.



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traditions in the life of the church.” The question still remains unanswered: if not a source of revelation on the same level with Scripture, what then is the function of tradition in the life of the Church? Furthermore, if Scripture and tradition are not on a par as sources of revelation, in the sense of tradition complementing Scripture by offering a plus-in-content over Scripture, but rather tradition is understood to be an interpretative source, as Berkouwer puts it elsewhere, where then is the disagreement between Rome and the Reformation? Asks Berkouwer, “Is there a Roman Catholic version of sola Scriptura” (VCNT, 116 [98])? If so, does that mean the Council of Trent can coexist with the ‘classical view’ of the ancient tradition of the Church “according to which all the truth of salvation is contained in Scripture” (VCNT, 114 [97])? On this view, canonical Scripture has a material sufficiency as to its content, even if a formal insufficiency32 because “Holy Scripture is dependent upon the sensus which the church maintains and has always maintained, for the explanation of its contents which concern faith and morals?”33 Authority and Interpretation Finally, in the first epigraph to this chapter, Ratzinger sets up a dilemma in the controversy between Protestants and Catholics over authority: either Scripture is entrusted exclusively to the teaching authority of the Church, or the authority of Scripture is completely independent of the Church. If the former, there is the risk that “[Scripture] will forfeit its own power and vitality under the shears of the magisterium.” Hence, we need to affirm Scriptures’ critical function over against the Church. If the latter, there is the risk that positing the independence of Scripture from the Church’s tradition runs the risk of “thereby delivering it up to the caprice of exegetes, evacuating it of meaning in the controversies of historians and so robbing it entirely of binding force.” Let us add to this second horn of the dilemma the ‘dangerous idea’ of Protestant Christians, as Alistair McGrath has called it, an idea “firmly embodied at the heart of the 32 That canonical Scripture is formally insufficient means that tradition and the Church’s teaching authority are required for interpreting all the saving truth that is virtually contained in the Scripture. 33 Josef Rupert Geiselmann, Die Heilige Schrift und die tradition: Zu den neuren Kontroversen über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift zu den nichtgeschriebenen Traditionen, Quaestiones Disputatae 18 (Freiburg: Herder, 1962), 282; as cited by Benedict Thomas Viviano, O.P., “The Normativity of Scripture and Tradition in Recent Catholic Theology,” in Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible, edited by Markus Bockmuehl and Alan J. Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 125–140, and for this quotation, 130.

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Protestant revolution,” namely, “that all Christians have the right to interpret the Bible for themselves.”34 This ‘dangerous idea’ is, McGrath argues, constitutive of the logic of Protestantism and hence responsible for the fracturing of Protestantism as a unified tradition, with ecclesial communities being formed, reformed, re-reformed, ultimately splintering over differing interpretations of Scripture with no appeal to any central authority apart from Scripture itself. This is what Herman Bavinck called the ‘church dissolving element’ of Protestantism, its sectarian element, as Berkouwer also called it, which has contributed not only to the disintegration of the church, the diminishing of the importance of the Church’s catholicity, but also to the erosion of biblical authority, indeed, to subjectivism.35 In other words, what is the implication of rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church and claiming “that the content of true Christian faith and life was now to be based on Scripture alone over against the Church’s tradition?” In short, writes Brad S. Gregory, it resulted “in an open-ended range of exegetically discrepant and therefore doctrinally divergent and ecclesially and socially divisive ways that began in the early 1520s and has never gone away.”36 I think the thesis is defensible that these two developments are inherently connected. As David Lyle Jeffrey once wrote, “The loss of the Church’s teaching authority has led to the loss of the authority of Scripture.”37 Protestantism suffers from a “magisterial vacuum,” possessing no official and concrete public locus of authority. Therefore, appealing to the ‘doctrine of sola Scriptura,’ Berkouwer himself concedes, “does not provide a kind of hermeneutical guarantee of a right understanding of the apostolic witness. The multitude of clashing interpretations of Scripture within Protestant churches is an obvious proof of the contrary” (VCNT, 128 [107]).38 Thus, 34 Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 2. Of course McGrath’s title should be read as “Protestant” Christianity’s Dangerous Idea. 35 Berkouwer critically discusses Rome’s critique of the “church dissolving element” of Protestantism in his 1940 book on Catholicism, SRKD, 79–99. 36 Brad S. Gregory, “A Response to Evangelicalism,” in Journeys of Faith, Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism, edited by Robert L. Plummer (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 165–178, and at 169. 37 David Lyle Jeffrey, “Houses of the Interpreters, Spiritual Exegesis, and the Retrieval of Authority,” in Books & Culture 8.3 (2002), 30. Similarly, Carl Braaten writes, “The authority of the Bible is not autonomous. When people cease to believe in the church, they will soon cease to believe in the Bible” (Mother Church, Ecclesiology and Ecumenism [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998], 148). 38 Yves Congar frequently cites the Dutch Protestant theologian, J.N. Bakhuizen van den Brink, in this regard, “Was the motto of the Reformation not Scripture alone? On the contrary, the plurality of Churches belies this motto” (as cited in The Meaning of Tradition,



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we are left with the problem of normative authority in the Church today, the need for authoritative, external boundaries, given hermeneutical pluralism regarding the interpretations of the Bible. “Who will defend Scripture when the Church is confronted by two or more contradictory interpretations of Scripture?”39 Alternatively put, as Hans Boersma correctly notes, we need to affirm that “the canon is the church’s canon, and that therefore the church and her magisterium set authoritative parameters and make authoritative pronouncements about the interpretation of the Scriptures and so about Christian doctrine.”40 In short, how, does Berkouwer propose to safeguard the objectivity41 and authority of Scripture, blocking his own position from drifting into hermeneutical individualism, subjectivism, and sectarianism?42 Focus of This Chapter and the Next The focus of this chapter and the next is on Berkouwer’s writings concerning Catholicism’s teaching on the relation between Scripture and tradition. In all his books on Catholicism (1940–1968), Berkouwer engages the dogmatic topic of ‘Scripture and Tradition in relation to Revelation and the Church’ before, during, and after the Council. In my presentation of his views, I praise his interpretation and analysis for its various strengths, for the important questions he puts to the Catholic position, but I also Translated from the French by A.N. Woodrow [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004 (1964)], 92–93). 39 The Rev. Alvin Kimel, “Sola Scriptura,” April 2, 2004. Online: https://pontifications .wordpress.com/sola-scriptura. 40 Hans Boersma, “On Baking Pumpkin Pie: Kevin Vanhoozer and Yves Congar on Tradition,” Calvin Theological Journal 42 (2007): 237–255, and for this quote, 254. 41 Berkouwer consistently uses the German term “Gegenüber” to refer to the objectivity of Scripture. 42 When I use the term “sect” I use it in the Troeltschian sense where the church is understood as a voluntary association of like-minded individuals who have accepted the Gospel and voluntarily share to choose their life of faith, a congregatio fidelium. But this view is criticized, not only for reversing the proper theological order of things, but also for misunderstanding the nature of the Church. The Church is not an “association” of converted individuals. Rather, it is convocatio before being a congregatio, that is, the Church is not the work of men, a product of believers, but it is instituted by God himself for it is He who calls the community together, who unites those people who are His own. In my book, Dialogue of Love: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic Ecumenist, 53–117, I set up a trialogue between the Dutch neo-Calvinist philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977), the Catholic philosopher/theologian Roman Guardini (1885–1968), and Ernest Troeltsch (1865–1923) concerning the adequacy of Troeltsch’s categorization of ecclesiologies into “Church-type” and “sect-type.”

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subject Berkouwer’s own position to critical theological analysis (Chapter Five). In reply to Berkouwer’s four objections to the Catholic position, I argue finally that his arguments fall short of what he wants to preserve: the objectivity and authority of Holy Scripture, God’s Word, interpreted through the Spirit. It falls short exactly not only because the authoritative role of tradition, and hence of the Church’s teaching office, is underplayed, but also because Berkouwer’s later view of revelation underplays propositional revelation. Is propositional truth alien to revelation? Berkouwer leaves us with a lack of clarity regarding the nature of the distinctive truth-content of Scripture. In particular, his view of divine revelation leaves unclear what the basis is of Scripture’s “universal authority,” which Berkouwer clearly affirms.43 Put differently, how does he account (as Berkouwer puts it) for the “validity of God’s Word for all times” [?]44 Chapter Five concludes with my reply to Berkouwer’s fourth objection by showing the connection between Berkouwer’s view of revelation and his defense of hermeneutical pluralism. I argue that—in the final analysis—he is unable to give a theological account of the normative foundation of the certainty of the Christian faith in divine revelation. I approach all these criticisms of Berkouwer from a close analysis of his treatment of the Roman Catholic position on the matter of Scripture and tradition in relation to Revelation and the Church before and after Vatican II. Before, During and After the Second Vatican Council Before the Council The nub of Berkouwer’s critique of the Church’s understanding of the relation concerning Scripture and tradition is ultimately about authority. In his two books prior to Vatican II, De Strijd om het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma (1940) and Conflict Met Rome (1948), Berkouwer argues that the logical conclusion of the Catholic position, as he understood it at the time—a position that ascribes a place to tradition and the Church wherein the latter both assume a certain primacy or priority—makes Scripture sub43 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1967), 113. ET: Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), 194. Both sources will be cited through this book, first the original, followed by the pagination of the English in square brackets [ ]. 44 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 107 [189]. The original Dutch version uses the word “virtualiteit” instead of “geldigheid,” whose meaning may be translated with the English word “validity.” The italics are original to the Dutch version, but are left out in the English translation.



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servient to tradition or to the teaching office of the Church. Furthermore, it leads to Scripture being swallowed up into tradition, relegating Scripture to the background, or to holding that Scripture must be completed or supplemented by tradition, taking the latter to be a source of revelation, the result being that tradition stands independent of Scripture, and is seen as being unqualifiedly equal to it—all of which leads to undermining the objectivity and authority of the Scripture as the Word of God. Berkouwer claims that this conclusion follows from the Catholic position as he understood it from the writings of German but especially of Dutch Catholic theologians between the 1920s and 1940s.45 Of course Berkouwer knew that the Church clearly affirmed the infallibility of the Word of God, that Scripture’s canonical authority with respect to itself (quoad se) is grounded in its being divinely inspired, and hence that the Church does not confer authority on Scripture, but can only recognize it, that the Scripture has divine authorship, and hence is entrusted to the Church by the Holy Spirit46 “as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated” (in the words of Vatican I).47 Indeed, Berkouwer clearly states, “In order to do justice to Rome’s standpoint regarding the relation between Scripture and the Church, it is necessary to add here that the authority of the Church is not above that of the Holy Scripture but also that the Holy Scripture does not derive its authority from the Church” (SRKD, 101). Notwithstanding Berkouwer’s acknowledgement of this historic orthodox Catholic teaching concerning the dogma of the objectivity and authority of Scripture, Berkouwer argues in his 1940 De Strijd om het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma that “in practice an appeal is made to the Word in the shadow of an appeal to the Church, such that one can say: with an appeal to tradi45 The theologians whose writings Berkouwer cites to illustrate his judgments about Catholicism are principally German and Dutch theological writings in the first four decades of the twentieth century. The footnotes in Chapter 6 (100–140) of De Strijd om het RoomschKatholieke Dogma, and Chapter 1 (20–51; ET: 15–37) of Conflict Met Rome, refer to the writings of German theologians, such as Karl Adam, Bernhard Bartmann, Ferdinand Kastner, J. Mausbach, E. Przywara, Joseph Ranft, and F. Chr. Viering, and Dutch theologians, such as G. Brom, G. Philips, C.J. de Vogel, J. van der Ploeg, W.H. van der Pol, A. van Straaten. 46 Vatican I, 1870, Decreta Dogmatica Concilii Vaticani de Fide Catholica et de Ecclesia Christi, Chapter II, Of Revelation, no. 7, “These books the Church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the Church.” (101; see also, 104, 111). 47 Decreta Dogmatica Concilii Vaticani de Fide Catholica et de Ecclesia Christi, Chapter IV, Of Faith and Reason, no. 13.

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tion” (SRKD, 110). Berkouwer adds, “To that extent one can say that Rome gives priority to tradition and the Church” (SRKD, 110). The upshot is the Church’s tradition and her teaching office are elevated to a place alongside of Scripture and finally to a place above Scripture. Holy Scripture may be described as the infallible Word of God, but in practice the appeal to this Word stands in the shadow of an appeal to the church, one can even say: the appeal to tradition. To that extent, one can say that with Rome one can speak of a priority of tradition and of the church. . . . With Rome it is all about the “eyes” with which truth can be seen, and then not only about that truth that is locked up in Holy Scripture, but also that truth that is not written but is handed down by word of mouth. Increasing emphasis came to be placed on the latter over time. And by contrast with those who profess the exclusive authority of Holy Scripture, the way of speaking about this becomes sharper and more accentuated, so that one can even talk about the priority of tradition with respect to Holy Scripture. . . . The point of departure in the development, wherein reference is made to the necessity of interpreting Scripture accurately, inherently leads to further refinement in appropriating tradition as a second source of divine revelation (SRKD, 110–111).

Significantly, Berkouwer does acknowledge that it is undeniable that not all Roman Catholic theology holds to the unqualified equality of Scripture and tradition as two sources of revelation, or to the priority of tradition in relation to Scripture. He says, “that with various theologians time and again elements come to expression that point in the direction of Holy Scripture as the primary source of revelation. However much coordination of the two sources is accepted, indications nevertheless exist that certainly indicate that the priority of Holy Scripture is still not entirely obscured” (SRKD, 112).48 Still, in the above quotation, Berkouwer emphasizes how tradition, instead of being subject to Scripture, being a servant of the Word of God, begins to make Scripture subservient to tradition, with tradition increasingly being seen as a source of revelation.

48 For instance, in footnote 6, 102, of SRKD, Berkouwer cites the Dutch Catholic theologian, J. van der Ploeg, “The Church does not grant Scripture its authority, because Scripture has received that authority from God. The Church explains that there exists a Scripture with divine authority” (my translation). This, too, is Rahner’s point: “We thus assume the traditional teaching of the Church as binding. The Scriptures have God as their author: he is the ‘author’ in the literary sense of the word, because he inspired the Scriptures. This inspiration does not consist in the fact that the Scriptures have been accepted as canonical by the Church” (Inspiration in the Bible, 9).



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In his 1949 study on Catholicism, Conflict Met Rome, Berkouwer develops his critique of the Catholic Church’s position on the relation concerning Scripture and the Church, especially the Church’s teaching office, by arguing that, in this aspect of the Church’s teaching, Scripture is made subservient to the teaching office, which results in the self-sufficiency of the Church and hence its “unshakable authority” (CR, 20 [15]). Of course Berkouwer acknowledges that the Church professes to derive its authority from Christ, indeed, the reality of the living Christ within the church, for it is only by sharing in the authority of Christ does the Church secure her own authority, according to Catholicism. The problem is, according to Berkouwer, that the Church identifies the authority of its teaching office with Christ’s authority in some sense such that she takes herself to possess “absolute ecclesiastical authority” (CR, 22 [16]). I say ‘in some sense’ because Berkouwer acknowledges that “of course for Roman Catholics there can be no question of total identity and equality” (CR, 33 [24]). Still, absolute ecclesiastical authority is taken to follow from this variously interpreted identity in an a priori way, giving to the church qua church the guarantee that when she teaches, in a word, the matter is settled (causa finita est) (CR, 23–26 [17–18, 20]). Berkouwer traces this teaching back to the papal encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XII.49 This ‘identity-view,’ as Berkouwer calls the Catholic position expressed in these encyclicals, not only abstracts this guarantee given to the Church from her correlative faithfulness and obedience to the Word of God, but also reduces the living correlation between Christ and the Church, in communion with him through the Word and the Spirit, between the Word of God and the Church, between faith and revelation, to a rigidity, to a static a priori datum that leads to confessionalism. Says Berkouwer, “Confessionalism in effect takes the position that the Scriptures have been given their final form in the confession. The Bible lies behind; ahead of us is the ‘extract’. The Scriptures have no longer any actuality” (CR, 43 [31]).50

49 Leo XIII: Inscrutabili (1878), Satis Cognitum (1896); Pius XII: Mystici Corporis Christi (1943). 50 Berkouwer remarks upon “a surprising agreement between such confessionalism and the Roman Catholic view, insofar as the Scriptures are relegated to the background of all that happens in the church.” Still, he adds, “Our charge against Rome that it has relegated the Scriptures to the background in no way entitles us to a haughty attitude. I do not refer merely to some tendency within Protestantism, but I am mindful of all our sins with regard to God’s powerful sovereign Word. Every believer is ever in danger of misconceiving the relation between the Scriptures and his confession, and of devaluing

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Half a century later, Berkouwer points out that one of the risks of confessionalism is “dead orthodoxy.”51 For instance, he writes, “it is possible for the confession of Scripture’s authority and its inspiration to be maintained for a long time as an apparent part of the church’s heritage of faith without there being any evidence of a real living faith anymore. It is possible never to question the authority of Scripture without walking in the truth.”52 But also, the ‘identity-view’ detaches the structure of the church from these correlations, resulting in a denial of the insight of the Reformation “that the communion with Christ is never a communion apart from faith and outside of the correlation between faith the Word of God” (CR, 39 [28]). The root of the problem with this ‘identity-view’ is the a priori character of the authoritative foundation of the Church’s doctrine, argues Berkouwer, “with its semblance of absolute stability, unshakability, and objectivity” (CR, 40 [29]). Most significant, argues Berkouwer, this a priori identity view of Christ and the Church prevents the Church from becoming an “ecclesia audiens” (listening Church) or an “ecclesia discens” (learning Church) in the full sense of these words—which Berkouwer says summarizes the aim of the Reformation. The major problem here with this a priori identity view, argues Berkouwer, is that the “Scriptures have no longer any actuality.” The Bible is no longer “open in the church, where it can be read, listened to, and preached.” Berkouwer elaborates: And, neither Trent, nor the Vatican, with their “favorable appreciation” of the Scriptures can dispel the shadows which Rome casts over the Word of God. These shadows not only affect individual lives but influence the entire life of the church. In former times Roman Catholic pronouncements more than once showed a certain concern to base the words of the church, if not exclusively, at any rate in real earnest, on the Scriptures, and to derive the ecclesiastical words from the Bible. But I think I am not wrong when I say that especially later—and not the least so in our own day—the tendency

the Scriptures to an inactive background. . . . We are alive to the fact that in itself the purest theory of inspiration we may possibly be able to elaborate is by no means a guarantee that in everyday life we actually submit to the word of Christ, and that we have really seen him in ‘the garb of the Scriptures’. But precisely in connection with the official acceptance of the infallibility of the Scriptures at the Councils of Trent and of the Vatican [I], our objection is that Rome is no longer fully aware of this serious danger and no longer proclaims it from the housetops.” 51 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, I, (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1966), 38. ET: Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), 35. Both sources will be cited through this book, first the original, followed by the pagination of the English in square brackets [ ]. 52 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift I, 38 [35].



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has increased to lay less and less stress on this necessity. The a priori character of the infallibility of the pronouncements of the church has more and more come to the fore, although of course it still remains possible for theology to ‘prove’ their conformity to Holy Scripture a posteriori. (CR, 45 [32])

The concluding sentence of this quotation alludes to the ‘regressive method’ in dogmatic theology: the movement from the developed dogma to the biblical source, tradition, and rational argument by way of proofs showing the basis for the dogma being treated.53 I must comment here upon Berkouwer’s observation that the tendency to give prominence to the Church’s teaching office seemed to go hand in hand with the tendency to relegate Scriptures to the background. Berkouwer traces the former tendency to Trent, Vatican I’s Dei Filius (1869), Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus (1893), Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), Benedict XV’s Spiritus Paraclitus (1920), and then after 1950 to Pius XII’s Humani Generis.54 This tendency would seem to have some grounds in these documents because the norm of the biblical and systematic theolgians’ activity, their “proximate and universal norm of truth” (Pius XII), must be the magisterium, the Church’s teaching office. Thus, Berkouwer judges, the conflict “between Rome and the Reformation . . . is not merely [about] a quantitative difference (the Scriptures and tradition or the Scriptures alone), but . . . this quantitative difference also determines the structure of our Scriptural insight and places the Scriptures in the ‘reflected light’ of [the Church’s] tradition” (CR, 42 n. 76 [270 n. 76]). Berkouwer seems to be suggesting that this “reflected light” is more of a shadow that Rome casts over the Word of God rather than a light that helps us to recognize the living and divine words of the Scriptures. Of course Berkouwer quickly adds, “this listening [and learning] is not opposed to the teaching [authority] of the church (ecclesia docens), but is indissolubly bound up with it. In such listening [and learning] everything is set in motion” (CR, 46 [33]). In other words, Berkouwer argues that the Reformation did not deny that the Church has the authority to teach the Word of God, interpreted in and through the Holy Spirit, trusting in the promise of Christ that the Spirit of truth will guide the Church into all truth (John 16:13). Pace the Catholic Church, however, there is no a priori guarantee that the Church speaks the truth. No, not even the promise of 53 Wicks, Doing Theology, 20. 54 Dei Filius, Chapter 2, On Revelation, nos. 8–9, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, nos. 13–14; Providentissimus Deus, no. 14; Pascendi Dominici Gregis, no. 40; Spiritus Paraclitus, no. 39; and Humani Generis, nos. 17–18, 21.

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Christ concerning the leading of the Spirit of truth is an a priori guarantee. Indeed, only as the “ecclesia audiens”—that is, only when the Church is subject to the Word of God—can it exercise authority, be truly an “ecclesia docens.” At stake here in the decisive difference between the Reformation and Catholicism is an understanding of the “coherence between Spirit, Word, and church [that] is essential to the church” (CR, 48 [35]). Says Berkouwer, “In Roman Catholicism the promise (of the leading of the Holy Ghost) falls outside of the relation of faith [and revelation], as an a priori gift; but with the Reformation that promise is inside this relation” (CR, 48 [35]). He elaborates, “In the history of the church decisions are made only in the action and life of the church, in its subjection to the gospel of grace and its recognition of the sovereign grace of the Lord of the church. This is the only ‘guarantee’ in the listening and, therefore, in the teaching church” (CR, 48 [35]). Only the Reformation’s decision to subject the faith of the church to the sovereign activity of God, in communion with Christ through the Word and the Spirit, can do justice to the truth that “the Word of God is the sword of the Spirit over [italics added] the church” [Eph 6:17] (CR, 50 [36]). This is the focus of the Reformation’s fundamental protest against Roman Catholicism. Therefore, Berkouwer concludes, only the Reformation’s sola Scriptura can safeguard the objectivity and authority of the Word of God. During and After the Council In chapter One, I argued that Berkouwer states a hermeneutical principle that came to inform his own engagement of the Catholic tradition. This principle marked his efforts to minimize distortion and hence misunderstanding, discouraging a one-sidedness that inevitably follows from a position that is reactionary as well as predominantly apologetical and merely out to refute Catholicism or Reformed Protestantism. Essentially this principle posits that we should not make judgments about, say, the Councils of Trent and Vatican I without understanding the integral totality of Catholicism because the statements of these councils were polemical and antithetical. In other words, all truth formulated for polemical reasons is partial—albeit true. Putting this principle into practice contributed to a fundamental shift in Berkouwer’s view of Catholicism concerning ‘Scripture and Tradition in Relation to Revelation and the Church.’ In this chapter, then, my concern is with his interpretation and critical assessment of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,



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Dei Verbum (November 18, 1965), particularly its teaching on ‘Scripture and Tradition.’55 Where does his assessment change from his earlier preCouncil works? Where does it remain the same? Perhaps the most important change that is nothing short of amazing between Berkouwer’s first two books on Catholicism and his later Catholic studies is that he is now persuaded by the arguments of Catholic theologians of the nouvelle théologie school, such as J.R. Geiselmann, Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, Yves M.-J. Congar, et al., that the theory of “two [materially distinct and] equally valuable sources of revelation is not the Catholic doctrine” (VCNT, 116 [98]; NC, 112). In other words, he adds, it does “not reflect the teaching of the Church, but only that of a single theological school” (VCNT, 105–106 [90]). This, too, is Berkouwer’s view of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, namely, that it does not explicitly teach the theory of two sources of revelation. Significantly, the draft of this document (technically called a “schema”)56 of the Preparatory Theological Commission titled, De Fontibus Revelationis, “A Schema of a Dogmatic Constitution of the Sources of Revelation,” sought to bolster the notion of the two sources of revelation, namely, the equalization of Scripture and the Church’s tradition. Berkouwer was a guest of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity and he had this schema in hand when he arrived in Rome for the first session in October 1962.57 As it happens, says Berkouwer, “the surprising element was that the subject [of Scripture and tradition] should have aroused such a tension-packed debate.” He adds, “Given the official Catholic doctrine, how is it possible 55 VCNT, 105–133 [89–111] and NC, 112–132. 56 Lewis Smedes, the English translator of Vatikaans Concilie en Nieuwe Theologie, gives us a helpful definition of “schema”: “A schema is a draft report prepared in advance by appointed commissions and submitted to the council as the basis of its discussion on specific issues. The term ‘schema’ is part of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical jargon. . . . If one thinks of a report drafted by a study commission, and submitted to a church assembly for adoption, he will have a sufficiently clear notion of what schema is in the Vatican Council” (21n29). 57 For Berkouwer’s own brief account of the issues at stake in this schema, see VCNT, 105–112 [89–93]. Other brief accounts of the rejection of this schema at Vatican II, see René Latourelle, S.J., Theology of Revelation (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1966), 453– 455. See also, Gerald O’Colllins, S.J., Retrieving Fundamental Theology (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993), 57–62, and Ronald D. Witherup, Scripture & Dei Verbum (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2006), 15–31. Joseph Ratzinger, “Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during Vatican Council II”; idem, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2009 [1966]), 40–48; Milestones, Memoirs 1927–1977, translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 108–109, 124–127.

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that the ‘two sources’ notion should have been as intensely debated as it was” (VCNT, 105 [89])? There was much opposition and criticisms of this schema, resulting in John XXIII intervening and removing the schema from the Council’s agenda, remanding it to an entirely new working committee. Joseph Ratzinger’s lecture on the schema to the German speaking bishops, October 10, 1962, summarizes the objection regarding the position the schema takes on the relation of Scripture and tradition. Chapter 1, nos. 4–6, of the schema intends to defend the Catholic principle of tradition against the principle of sola Scriptura. Thus: [1] The sections in effect say this: Scripture and tradition contain revelation and they do this in such a way that parts of revelation are only in tradition. Tradition offers a plus in content over Scripture, because the former is made up of unwritten words passes on solely “from hand to hand” in the Church. . . . Clearly this doctrine [of Scripture and tradition as two sources of revelation] has without doubt the backing of most all textbooks of theology. [2] But here the concern is less to oppose the Reformation confessions than to directly oppose another adversary, namely those [Catholics] who are trying to examine in a fresh way the nature of tradition, especially the effort in Germany initiated by the writings of the Tübingen dogmatic theologian, Geiselmann. The later discovered that the Tridentine formulation, “these truths [of the Gospel of Christ] [. . .] are contained in written books and unwritten traditions, involved a modification introduced at the behest of different Council Fathers who objected to the previous wording that the truths were contained ‘partim [partly] in written books, partim in unwritten traditions.” [3] Accordingly, the Council declined to take over this unambiguous determination of the relation of Scripture and tradition and left open the question about how they relate to each other. Thus, by not taking the position that Scripture and tradition each contains a proper part of the truth of revelation, Trent wanted to avoid censuring the position of others who held that all the necessary content of faith is given in Scripture alone and so the relation has to be conceived more as a totum-totum than a partim-partim. . . . But the adoption of this schema as presently worded would mean the end of this openness and in effect a late victory for the partim-partim position.58

That Trent left open the question of the relationship between Scripture and tradition and thus that it “allows at least the possibility of putting an accent on the sufficiency of Scripture,” says Berkouwer, “is nothing less than amazing” (VCNT, 114 [96]).

58 Ratzinger, “Six texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during Vatican Council II,” 273–274 (italics added to the last sentence of this quotation). See also, Ratzinger in his commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 191.



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Berkouwer didn’t always hold this view. He, like most, simply took it for granted that the “theory of two sources of revelation is simply the traditional Catholic teaching about revelation, solidified at Trent” (VCNT, 105 [90]). Of course this was because the majority of Dutch and German Catholic theologians familiar to Berkouwer in the 1930s–1950s embodied that traditional view of Catholic teachings in their theology and hermeneutic practice.59 So, in his 1938 study, Het Probleem der Schriftkritiek, Berkouwer held the very view that almost twenty years later he would come to reconsider, namely, Trent taught that Scripture and tradition are “two equally valuable sources of knowledge.”60 He explains: “Over against the Reformation with her appeal to the exclusive authority of the Holy Scripture as the written Word of God, the Roman church posited tradition as the authoritative source of faith and revelation alongside of the Holy Scripture.”61 In his 1949 study, Conflict met Rome, he held the view that, according to Rome, Scripture and tradition are equivalent material sources of revelation (CR, 42 [30–31]). In a series of lectures he delivered at Calvin College and Seminary in the spring of 1952, he stated, “In Trent, tradition and Scriptures were put on the same level.”62 Furthermore, adds Berkouwer, “In that council of Trent it was stated that tradition was on the same level of authority as the Scriptures.”63 There is, however, evidence in Berkouwer’s 1957 monograph, Nieuwe Perspectieven in De Controvers: Rome-Reformatie, that he had already begun to reconsider his position. “One might find it much too optimistic when [Oscar] Cullmann writes the following in his study on tradition, on the views of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches regarding ‘Scripture and tradition’: ‘In actuality, however, the two positions approach one another to an astonishing degree’. What is certain is that every reason

59 See footnote 42 of this chapter for a partial list of Dutch and German Catholic theologians with whom Berkouwer was familiar. 60 G.C. Berkouwer, Het Probleem der Schriftkritiek (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1938), 215–251, and for this quote, 224 (my translation). 61  Berkouwer, Het Probleem der Schriftkritiek, 222–223 (my translation). 62 G.C. Berkouwer, Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1952), 42. 63 Berkouwer, Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith, 41. Herman Bavinck is Berkouwer’s illustrious predecessor in the chair of dogmatics at the Free University of Amsterdam. He, too, held the view that Berkouwer later came to reject, namely, the “difference between Rome and the Reformation in their respective views of tradition consists in this: Rome wanted a tradition that ran on an independent parallel track alongside of Scripture, or rather, Scripture alongside of tradition. The Reformation recognizes only a tradition that is founded on and flows from Scripture” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 464 [493]).

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exists not to allow the controversy to continue without challenging the historic dilemma: whether there are one or two sources, a Catholic position maintaining tradition as a source and a Protestant one without it.”64 But this change definitely occurs at Vatican II. He is now persuaded that the two-source theory of revelation does not get at the deepest intentions to which the Church was seeking to give expression in the decree of the sixteenth-century Council of Trent (1545–1563).65 He concludes that Trent did not teach this theory of revelation in which Scripture and Tradition are seen to be complimentary and where divine revelation is disclosed “partly” as Scripture and “partly” as Tradition. Significantly, though the exact significance is not easily seen, the language speaking of revelation as being “partly” Scripture and “partly” traditions was in an earlier draft of the decrees of Trent, but not in the final version. That phrase is there dropped and replaced by “and.”66 The sacred and holy, ecumenical, and general Synod of Trent,—lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the same three legates of the Apostolic See presiding therein,—keeping this always in view, that, errors being removed, the purity itself of the Gospel be preserved in the Church; which (Gospel), before promised through the prophets in the holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated with His own mouth, and then commanded to be preached by His Apostles to every creature, as the source [ fons] of all, both saving truth, and moral discipline; and seeing clearly that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating, have come down even unto us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand (italics added).67

64 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 13–14. 65 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 339. The English edition, Holy Scripture, did not translate pages 337–355 of the original Dutch version. These pages add to Berkouwer’s analysis of the Catholic position on Scripture and tradition as found in VCNT and NC. 66 For a brief account of this change at the Council of Trent, see George H. Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 195–209. Inexplicably, David C. Steinmetz makes no reference to this replacement in his article, “The Council of Trent,” in The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology, Edited by David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 233–247, and at 238: “To describe the dual nature of God’s self-revelation the council used the words partimpartim, ‘partly-partly’. Explicit Catholic teaching is found partly in scripture and partly in the church’s tradition.” 67 Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Fourth Session, Decree Concerning the Canonical Scriptures, http://www.bible-researcher.com/trent1.html.



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Now, the key phrase that is ambiguous is the one in which Trent states that both “saving truth and moral discipline are contained in the written books and the unwritten tradition.” Three interpretation of this phrase regarding the relationship between Scripture and tradition have been given.68 The first, which dominated Catholic theology between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, is the one we’ve already referred to as two source theory of revelation. There are two sources for our knowledge of revelation because “one part of the deposit of faith would come to us in Holy Scripture and the other in the living tradition—which would thus, in a sense, supplement scripture.”69 A second interpretation emphasizes “both . . . and.” “This would mean that the two sources, Holy Scripture and tradition, each contained God’s entire revelation.” However, this interpretation leaves unexplained the particular relation that these two sources have with one another. The third interpretation strengthens this second interpretation. Otto Semmelroth explains: According to this view scripture and tradition are seen as joined more or less in the sense expressed by the word “with.” Holy Scripture together with the living tradition offers God’s revelation to the faithful. In this view the deposit of faith revealed by God is presented through Holy Scripture insofar as it is communicated and interpreted by the church’s tradition under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But the same can just as well be said conversely: God’s revelation is transmitted to us through the living tradition, insofar as it bears Holy Scripture in its hands and brings to light from the depths of scripture what God’s inspiring Spirit has hidden there. What tradition has to transmit to later generations, to interpret and to bring to light, is precisely Holy Scripture and scripture alone. . . . Scripture and tradition are not the same, nor are they two independent sources. Rather they are bound together in organic unity.70

It is this third interpretation that Berkouwer is discussing. He summarizes the arguments of Catholic theologians, such as J.R. Geiselmann, who was chiefly responsible for reintroducing this interpretation into theological discussion, as we read above in the words of Ratzinger, who took this switch of phrases to mean that room was now made for the option concerning the material sufficiency of Scripture. But since the switch in 68 Helpful here is Otto Semmelroth, S.J., The Preaching Word, On the Theology of Proclamation, Translated by John Jay Hughes (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 102–108. 69 Semmelroth, The Preaching Word, 102. 70 Semmelroth, The Preaching Word, 103–104.

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phrases was probably a change for stylistic reasons only, or perhaps to show respect to the view of those “who felt that by teaching two equal sources of revelation the Church was undermining the unique authority of Holy Scripture” (VCNT, 110 [93]),71 we cannot say that Trent meant to teach the material sufficiency of Scripture. Still, Trent left this open as a theological possibility, Berkouwer and other Catholic theologians hold, such as Ratzinger, Geiselmann, Congar, Daniélou, Rahner, Semmelroth, and Nichols.72 Quoting Berkouwer, “That so many now accepted the Geiselmann thesis [at the Second Vatican Council] and see in it the real Catholic teaching about Scripture’s unique significance is nothing less than amazing. A comparable view of Catholic teaching would have been out of the question had the ‘partly’ phraseology been maintained by Trent. It is possible only because Trent allows at least the possibility of putting an accent on the sufficiency of Scripture” (VCNT, 114 [96]). Indeed, Berkouwer adds, “[T]he relationship between Scripture and tradition is a completely open matter” for Trent (VCNT, 114 [97]). However, Counter-Reformation Catholics interpreted Trent to have rejected the sufficiency of Scripture, and, in fact, as teaching, clearly and without qualification the first interpretation of the relationship between Scripture and tradition, the doctrine of two parallel material sources of revelation. Hence, the “two-source theory . . . came to be dominant in the period between the [sixteenth-century] council [of Trent] and the nineteenth century” (VCNT, 114 [97]). “On this view,” adds Nichols, “there are (alongside Scripture) confessional, liturgical, and ethical traditions in the Church deriving from ancient times and testifying to revelation.”73 Now, Berkouwer sides with those who reject this first view of Trent, taking it to be a misreading by Counter-Reformation Catholics.74 He says, 71 See also, Yves M.-J. Congar, “De Omstreden Kwestie van de Verhouding Tussen de Schrift en de Traditie wat Betreft hun Materiële Inhoud,” in Schrift en Traditie, 90–105, especially, 92: “Our experience of the council’s discussions and of its editorial work in the commissions has taught us how the framers attempted to give a degree of recognition to a protest, even though they did not agree with its motive.” 72 Dutch Reformed theologians Velema and Van Genderen agree regarding the Council of Trent with these Catholic theologians: “B. Wentsel concluded correctly that the substantive [material] sufficiency of Scripture was not proclaimed [at Trent]. Neither did the council support the view that tradition is of a complementary nature as taught by the theory of two sources. Neither was it said that tradition plays an exclusively interpretive role” (Concise Reformed Dogmatics, 103n31). 73 Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 176. 74 Congar, “De Omstreden Kwestie,” 92, “That kind of affirmation does not lie within the text of the decree. It does not say that such truths do no lay embedded in the writings.” So, too, Geiselmann, “One cannot emphasize enough that nothing, absolutely nothing, was



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“Trent said nothing that would put tradition on a par with Scripture in the sense that complements Scripture.” Rather, Berkouwer adds, Trent “was content to contradict the Reformation with an expression of great respect for tradition.” It left the matter of their mutual relationship an open question. So open, argues Berkouwer, “that it is now argued that the text of Trent’s decree is not in conflict with the notion that tradition is not a source of revelation on the same level with Scripture, but it is only an interpretative source. Trent, it is argued, leaves Catholics free to identify themselves with the very ancient tradition of the Church according to which all the truth of salvation is contained in Scripture” (VCNT, 114 [96]).75 Berkouwer owes the way of thinking of tradition as an interpretative source to Geiselmann who explicitly states, “[W]ith respect to the decided at the Council of Trent concerning the relation of Scripture and Tradition” (“Scripture, Tradition, and the Church: An Ecumenical Problem,” in Christianity Divided, Protestant and Roman Catholic Theological Issues, edited by Daniel J. Callahan, et al. [New York: Sheed & Ward, 1961], 39–72, and for this quote, 47–48. Counter-Reformation Catholics who held that Trent taught a “two-source” theory of revelation include theologians such as Melchior Cano, St. Peter Canisius, and St. Robert Bellarmine. On this point, James Gaffney writes: “There can be little doubt that after the Council and, barring isolated demurs and uncertain innuendos, almost until the present, it was the conception of two unequal, discontinuous sources, both of the apostolic provenance, that prevailed, and prevailed by the putative sanction of Trent. Geiselmann assigns a decisive initiative in the fixing of this, in his view erroneous, conception to Peter Canisius, closely followed by Robert Bellarmine: ‘The first great post-Tridentine controversial theologian to champion the partimpartim was Peter Canisius. . . . With Canisius the partim-partim view of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition rested secure. According to him, it is divinely ordained, irreformably by human authority, that by fixed laws, partly (partim) written and partly (partim) not, but enjoined on us by apostolic tradition, the Church is governed, dogma assured, religion protected and discipline preserved. . . . Bellarmine followed him in basing the Scripture-tradition relationship on the partim-partim. In his De Verbo Dei, Bellarmine goes so far as to see in it the distinctive characteristic of Catholics. Thus, he divides opinions regarding the nature of God’s word into three classes [namely,] “Some accept only God’s inner word (Schwenkfeld, Coppin, Quintin), others only the external but written word of God (Lutherans, Calvinists), still others the word of God partly written (partim scriptum) and partly traditional (partim-traditum). And these last are the Catholics’.” (“Das Konzil von Trient über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift und der nicht-geschrieben Traditionen,” in Die mündliche Űberlieferung, edited by M. Schmaus [Munich, 1959], 170; as cited in James Gaffney, O.P., “Scripture and Tradition in Recent Catholic Thought,” in Vatican II: The Theological Dimension, edited by Anthony D. Lee, O.P. [The Thomist Press, 1963]. 141–169, and for this quotation, 159). 75 See also, Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 341–342. Semmelroth states the conclusion arrived at in light of the theological discussion initiated by Geiselmann, “Therefore we may certainly say that the scales have now turned very considerably in favor of the view that Holy Scripture contains the entire content of revelation. This content is, to be sure, in many respects undeveloped and hidden . . . [and thus] the entire content of this revelation is unfolded for the faith of the church” (The Preaching Word, 108).

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understanding of Holy Scriptures, [the Church] needs the clarifying tradition of the Fathers in faith and morals. Tradition in these cases exercises the function of tradition interpretativa.”76 On the one hand, then Scripture possesses a material sufficiency; tradition doesn’t play a supplementary or additive role to Scripture, but rather its role is interpretative and explicative. Given that understanding of the role of tradition, the controversy between Rome and the Reformation could no longer be about the issue that tradition was adding to the Scripture. Says Berkouwer, In evaluating this issue, one must first point out that this new interpretation in any case takes a different form in the concreteness of the controversy. Specifically, people can no longer look for another, compensatory source, namely tradition, when certain “givens” are lacking in Scripture, as frequently occurred earlier. Acceptance of the material sufficiency per force leads to a greater urgency for Scriptural proof.77

On the other hand, Berkouwer opined that “even if Geiselmann’s interpretation of Trent’s decree was correct, that did not mean that the controversy between Rome and the Reformation was resolved.”78 Yes, adds Berkouwer, one can see that “there is a remarkable shift in the interpretation of the relation of Scripture and tradition that is connected with a new attention for the normative witness of Scripture.” Still, “this shift went from the two-source theory (partim-partim!) to ecclesiology: the ecclesiastical magisterium.”79 In other words, though this shift in interpretation affirms Scripture’s material sufficiency—and hence a Catholic idea of sola Scriptura as prima Scriptura—it also affirms the formal insufficiency of Scripture. Formal insufficiency means not only that the reading and interpretation of Scripture is not an individualistic matter, a solitary affair. Rather, Scripture and tradition are intrinsically and necessarily related such that Scripture must be interpreted in the concrete life of the Church,80 its living tradition, through the teaching authority of the 76 Geiselmann, Die Heilige Schrift und die tradition, 282. 77 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 344. 78 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 39. 79 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 39–40. 80 On the matter of the relation between Scripture and the Church, Bavinck stresses their reciprocal interrelationship even while affirming the subordination of the latter to the former. In other words, Bavinck seems to affirm that Scripture and the Church are interrelated and joined together such that one cannot maintain itself without the other. He writes eloquently, “In applying [objective] revelation, illumination and regeneration, Scripture and church are linked to each other. . . . Revelation in this dispensation is continued jointly in Scripture and in the church. In this context the two are most intimately connected. Scripture is the light of the church, the church the life of Scripture. Apart from the



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ecclesiastical magisterium, which is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This means that the biblical source cannot be the whole source of revelation. As Ratzinger put it to the German bishops on the eve of the solemn inauguration of Vatican II, “revelation is always more than its material principle, the Scripture, namely that it is life living on in the Church in a way that makes Scripture a living reality and illumines its hidden depths.”81 Most important concerning Scripture’s formal insufficiency—and hence the intrinsic and necessary relation between Scripture and tradition—is that such insufficiency chiefly concerns the matter of certainty: the Church does not attain certainty about everything that has been revealed from Scripture alone (“non per solam Scripturam”). Berkouwer defends Vatican II’s Constitution, Dei Verbum, against the charge that we find here a reassertion of the two-source theory of revelation. He writes, “One may not read into this ‘non per solam Scripturam’ a pointed choice for the two-source theory (in the sense of partim-partim). The perspective is quite pointedly that of a certainty in the church in which tradition plays an important role. One comes to such certainty not by disparaging the voice of the church and its tradition, and by isolating Scripture in the life of the church as a ‘sufficient’ resource. Much rather, the church— and her tradition—actively functions in understanding the Word rightly, and hence certainty comes not ‘per solam Scripturam’.”82 In this context of formal insufficiency, and hence in connection with the Church’s attaining certainty, sola Scriptura has a fundamental and meaningful place as prima Scriptura, but only when it is indivisibly connected with tradition and the Church, with tradition being understood as the Church’s authoritative interpretation of Scripture.83 Scripture’s formal insufficiency is, then, a church, Scripture is an enigma and an offense. Without rebirth no one can know it. Those who do not participate in its life cannot understand its meaning and point of view. Conversely, the life of the church is a complex mystery unless Scripture sheds its light upon it. Scripture explains the church; the church understands Scripture. In the church Scripture confirms and seals its revelation, and in Scripture the Christian—and the church—learn to understand themselves in their relation to God and the world, in their past, present, and future” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 356 [384]). 81 Joseph Ratzinger, “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during Vatican Council II,” 276. 82 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 342–343. 83 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 344. Berkouwer supports this interpretation by citing Rahner’s understanding of the meaningful place of sola Scriptura in the Church’s life. He writes, “Tradition cannot be understood to mean ‘something standing above Scripture’, but only as tradition in its interpretative function (with respect to Scripture) in the life of the church. That this in no way constitutes a devaluation of tradition is apparent from

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question not only about the hermeneutical distance, as it were, between divine revelation and our understanding of revelation, but also, says Berkouwer, “bridging the gap through the church’s authoritative interpretation that puts an end to the danger of coming up short.”84 Thus: “The actual motive for formal insufficiency lies in pointing to the genuine interpreting authority of the church as the definitive guarantee of Scripture.”85 In light of the above, we can understand why Berkouwer rejects the distinction between material sufficiency and formal insufficiency. His objection returns to the issue of the presumption of coincidence, namely, the a priori guarantee that continuity necessarily exists between the authoritative interpretation of the Church, that is, tradition, and the Scripture. Berkouwer explains that the real problem here is not that the Church is guilty of an “ecclesiastical positivism,” as Berkouwer calls it, “that simply canonizes what in the church passes for tradition.”86 That is, it cannot be said that the Reformers closed “the doors to the past by glorifying the present in which the church lived. Rather, they devoted a good deal of attention to continuity with the ancient church and its councils.” So, too, it cannot be said that “Rome canonized, without critical examination, every concept [Dutch: “gedachteninhoud”] that came up through the course of the centuries.”87 The real problem, argues Berkouwer, concerns the objectivity of Scripture and, once again, the danger that Scripture is subordinate to, not to say swallowed up in, tradition. This problem arises from the point made by Dei Verbum that Scripture and tradition “in a certain way merge into a unity” (no. 9; Latin: “in unum quodammodo coalescunt”), and which Berkouwer understands to be a “confluence . . . in the actuality of the church’s life.”88 And here the risk arises, even after the abandonment of a two-source theory of revelation, that tradition becomes “an independent and in fact a normative authority, valid in itself, through a gradual historical process.”89 It is no clearer now after Vatican II and in what Rahner sees as a ‘presupposition’ of this catholic view of ‘sola Scriptura’, namely, ‘that we understand it in a catholic sense when we see that there is an authoritative witness and exposition of Holy Scripture through the living word of the church and her teaching authority.’ If one separates this from the understanding of ‘sola Scriptura’, it becomes a onesided and illegitimate principle. But seen in connection with the church, ‘sola Scriptura’ makes sense” (343–344). 84 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 346. 85 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 346. 86 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 349. 87 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 333 [301]. 88 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 349. 89 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 336 [303].



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light of its Constitution, Dei Verbum, how tradition could be tested so as to break through the “nearly self-evident harmony between the gospel and the empirical factuality of the church.”90 Still, notwithstanding this criticism, Berkouwer’s new understanding of the dogmatic-historical conflict between Rome and the Reformation concerning the matter of Scripture and tradition has ecumenical significance. The Reformation principle of sola Scriptura is not an anti-tradition principle (‘solo Scriptura’).91 This has been increasingly recognized, especially but not only among Reformed theologians.92 One may even speak, as Berkouwer indeed does, of the “‘rehabilitation of tradition among Reformed writers.” They seem “able to think about tradition without the negative emotional accompaniments” that often motivated the rejection of tradition as such. Indeed, the Reformers themselves affirmed ecclesial continuity with the preceding centuries, embraced the Trinitarian and Christological teaching of certain early councils, notably Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, but also the next three, ending with Nicaea (787), and engaged the Scripture in light of the Church’s exegetical tradition, reverently albeit critically in their biblical interpretations.93 Yes, Trent did close off the possibility of the Protestant position when sola Scriptura was used an “anti-tradition principle”94 Nonetheless, “All one need do is recall the fact that the Reformed churches committed themselves to the apostolic confession in order to see that the single source idea did not prohibit respect for other ‘sources’.” Rather, adds Berkouwer, the Reformation “saw in the sola Scriptura principle a way of keeping the Church open for the power and the normativity of the total content of

90 Ibid., 358 [307]. 91  Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 38: “The Reformation did not mean— in an unhistorical manner—to take ‘sola scriptura’ as its starting in order to isolate the Church from her history and confessions.” 92 See the volume edited by Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus, Your Word is Truth. See also, Dutch Reformed theologian, Heiko A. Oberman, “The Protestant Tradition,” in The Convergence of Traditions, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Edited by Elmer O’Brien, S.J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), “The Reformation slogan, sola Scriptura . . . has often been misunderstood as implying the rejection of Tradition as such. An analysis of sixteenth-century debates shows that it actually means the rejection of a particular concept of Tradition” (95). 93 Timothy George, “An Evangelical Reflection on Scripture and Tradition,” 16–21. 94 The anti-tradition reading of the principle of sola Scriptura excludes “the complex position whereby scripture and tradition [and the Church] are intrinsically and necessarily related, without either making scripture subservient to tradition or the Magisterium, or swallowing it up into the tradition [or Magisterium]” (Gavin D’Costa, “Revelation, Scripture and Tradition,” 343).

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the apostolic witness in the sense of a critical and dynamic proclamation of the gospel of the Christ who is, indeed, the Lord of tradition” (VCNT, 122 [103]).95 Furthermore, Trent also closed off the Protestant position of sola Scriptura as a cul-de-sac, not only when taken to be ‘anti-tradition principle,’ but also as stating that dogmas may be justified by the Church only on the authority of Scripture. Of course this meant that the Church held to the formal insufficiency of Scripture, as explained above. Moreover, Scripture and tradition are not in opposition. Tradition plays an essential role in the transmission of the faith of the Church, of the normative, objective apostolic witness to the singularly unique acts of God in salvation history concerning Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. Moreover, the Gospel was itself handed down by Jesus Christ himself to the apostles who in turn handed it down to us. Thus: “The faith of the Church is not about an existential vertical relation between man and God without extension in history,” argues Berkouwer. Rather, the faith is taken up in the Church, wherein tradition places the role of a conduit (Dutch: “bedding”) in and through which the truth is handed down, and hence tradition plays an important and even essential role in the Church (VCNT, 117–118 [99]). So, the Christian commits himself to the tradition of the Gospel witnessed to in Scripture, transmitted in and by the Church through the centuries by power of the Holy Spirit. With this point Berkouwer brings us back to the main point, as he sees it, of the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura. It is about keeping alive “the question of one’s commitment to the Lord [of the Church and of this tradition] and to the gospel” (VCNT 119 [100]). In this sense, sola Scriptura is a critical principle. “The Scriptures call the Word of God the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17), ‘living and powerful and sharper than any twoedged sword’ (Hebrews 4:12). . . . We are asked here to think of the Word of God as the sword in the hand of the Spirit, to think of God coming in His Word as it is preached in all its critical and exposing power, judging even the deepest secrets of the heart” (VCNT, 120–121 [101]). This is the concrete, living reality of the Word of God to which the Apostles bore witness. Furthermore, argues Berkouwer, we should avoid the undue narrowing of revelation, objectifying the ‘source’ of revelation as though it consisted 95 See also, Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 40. Later Berkouwer reiterates his point, “the phrase sola Scriptura was not meant to suggest an opposition between Scripture and tradition; it was meant to be a sign pointing to danger zones where the sound of the gospel might not be heard” (VCNT, 128 [107]).



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simply of divinely given propositions for communicating information, and a corresponding intellectualism where faith is understood as a mere assent to those propositions, holding them to be true.96 “Scripture is not composed of isolated words, claims, and truths expressed, but a centered witness.”97 Rather, “Its central and inner coherence must always be given close attention.”98 That is, this means attending to the “correlation, unity, and coherence of the biblical witness as well as with the riches and fullness of meaning implied in it.”99 In short, God doesn’t simply communicate information about something, but in communicating verbally He also reveals Himself, communicating and giving Himself personally to humanity. The implication of unduly narrowing or reducing revelation to statements or propositions is threefold: 1) It turned the principle of sola Scriptura into an anti-tradition principle by understanding it as “a solution of an academic problem about sources” (VCNT, 121 [102]). Hence, the slogan sola Scriptura isolated Scripture from both its dynamic function of proclaiming the event of salvation and the Holy Spirit, objectifying it into a single and exclusive source of revelation, making it into a “kind of depository of truths comparable to a sourcebook of Roman law” (VCNT, 120–121 [101]). Furthermore, the Reformation confession of the sufficiency of Scripture is

96 Indeed, Berkouwer rejected “intellectualism” in his 1932 doctoral dissertation at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. G.C. Berkouwer, Geloof and Openbaring in de Nieuwere Duitsche Theologie. 97 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 78 [178]. The English version translates the Dutch word “stellingen” as “theses.” Though that literal translation is correct, I think that the English word “claim” is a more faithful translation of Berkouwer’s meaning: he is arguing that the content of revelation is not adequately or sufficiently thought of as a series of assertions, propositions, truth-claims, and so forth. 98 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 276 [280]. 99 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 280 [284]. Berkouwer is here indirectly echoing a point Rahner makes regarding the treatment of “the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, as an absolutely homogeneous and undifferentiated quantity, a sort of Summa of revealed statements all laid down at once, like a code of law or a catechism composed in one piece under the same enterprise.” Rahner affirms the legitimacy, indeed, he states, “an indisputable right,” of going “on to prove individual dogmatic assertions of Church doctrine by means of dicta probantia.” Still, this approach is “a one-sided view of Scripture and gives a one-sided method in our dogmatic work.” Rahner continues: “Modern exegesis has taught us that we can no longer reasonably overlook the fact that within what we call Sacred Scripture, and within the New as well as the Old Testament, the assertions undergo a history and a development. No doubt the contents of Scripture are all dogma, quoad nos, and not just debatable theology. But it is equally certain that we must affirm that much of this scriptural dogma, which has for us the quality of inerrant assertions of revelation, is itself derivative theology with regard to a more primordial utterance of revelation” (“Considerations on the Development of Dogma,” 3–33, and for these quotes, 6.

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thought to be by some to be a solution to “a formal problem dealing with intellectual knowledge.” That is, “sufficiency [is] isolated, as if it had to do only with a formal problem of [theological] epistemology and is thus of a ‘technical nature’.”100 Berkouwer adds, “When this happens, Scripture is shrunk to the level of a thesaurus of proof-texts to be used as ammunition in theological controversies” (VCNT, 99 [101]). 2) “With this, the full content of the gospel and its critical and saving power took second place to the need for an exclusive source of statements of truth” (VCNT 122 [102]).101 The objectifying of this source as a set of true propositions is responsible for setting Scripture against tradition. Elsewhere Berkouwer writes in the same vein, “The function of [sola Scriptura] never was to find an answer to the question of where Christian ‘truth’ could be found, for it deals with the one testimony to the truth unto salvation, with its exclusive, concrete, and normative significance.”102 3) This is not the view of the Reformation concerning the principle of sola Scriptura and the Reformation’s confession of its sufficiency.103 This principle gained “its significance in the Reformation, not as a formal principle, but as a pointer to a new understanding of the Scriptures and the salvation to which they were a witness” (VCNT, 122 [102]). Certainly, this principle means “to bind the Church with its confessions and its preaching to the [objective normativity of] the apostolic witness [to the faith]” (VCNT, 128 [107]). Therefore, the Reformation’s struggle against Rome regarding the sufficiency of Scripture is concerned with what Berkouwer calls its “central religious dimension,” namely, the absolute sufficiency of Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3). Accordingly, adds Berkouwer, “since all the treasures of knowledge are found in him, we need no new doctrine, and all ‘additions’ have therefore become meaningless.”104 In sum, the sufficiency of Scripture can only mean that the content of revelation finds its center in a “decisive centralization, a concentration,”105 that is, a Christological concentration in that 100 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 356 [304–305]. 101  The last part of this sentence (“took second place to the need for an exclusive source of statements of truth”) as such does not occur in the original Dutch version. The translator, Reformed theologian Lewis Smedes, presumably with Berkouwer’s permission, is interpreting Berkouwer’s rejection of sola Scriptura as a formal principle, as a solution to the Rome-Reformation controversy over sources, one or two sources, as a rejection of the practice of objectifying revelation as consisting simply of divinely given propositions. 102 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 356–357 [305–306]. 103 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 330–386 [299–326]. 104 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 337, 358 [304, 311]. 105 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 79 [179].



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divine redemptive action that St. Paul sums up in saying, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). This is the Gospel in its unified entirety; it is not, adds Berk­ ouwer, a “reduction of many truths to the one ‘truth’, leaving others truths in the wings; yet in striking manner we find here expressed a decisive centralization, a concentration (Rom 15:18).”106 Implications for Principle of Sola Scriptura Now, what exactly are we to take away from Berkouwer’s reflections on the principle of sola Scriptura? In particular, what do his reflections mean for the Rome-Reformation controversy? Well, we can conclude that the issue between Rome and the Reformation, according to Berkouwer, concerning sola Scriptura and the relationship between Scripture and tradition is, at its core, a question concerning the absolute sufficiency of Christ. Thus, it is no longer merely a question of two sources of revelation, independent of each other, mechanically juxtaposed. It seems that the Scripture, tradition and the Church do not exist in isolation from each other. In particular, since sola Scriptura is no longer about the problem of sources, according to Berkouwer, “tradition has lost its isolated and independent significance” (VCNT, 125 [104]). Rather, there exists a mutual relation between them such that “Scripture is sufficient for all truth,” that is, it is materially sufficient as the source of revelation, remaining in and for the Church a norma normans et non normata (the normative standard that has no norm about itself), and “that tradition only interprets the truth of Scripture” rather than creating truth or being itself an independent source of truth;107 thus, the relation is more a question of seeing how tradition 106 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 79 [179]. The italicized words are original to the Dutch version but not the English translation. Elsewhere Berkouwer makes the same point: “When Paul wants to grab hold of one point in his opposition to the gnosis present in Corinth, he says: ‘I have decided to know nothing among you except one thing, namely, Jesus Christ and him crucified’ [1 Cor 2:2]. That is neither minimalizing nor reductionist but rather a [Christological] concentration of the gospel message, since that message is not concerned with a plurality of truths, comparable to a number of books lying on the table” (Ketters of voortrekkers, 17). 107 Berkouwer rightly interprets the Catholic Church’s position regarding the normativity of the Scriptural canon that “though the Church was active in recognizing the canon, it did not create it; it only acknowledged the normativity of a divinely given authority.” Given that Scripture is the norm for tradition, a norma normans et non normata, this entails the denial that the Church “creates ‘new dogma’ either out of the material of the Church’s own consciousness or by way of a ‘new revelation’ ” (Berkouwer, VCNT, 127 [106]). This, too, is

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functions as the normative context for interpreting Scripture, tradition as an interpretative source, with tradition being identified with the life and faith consciousness of the Church. In sum, “Given the sufficiency of Scripture, the problem of tradition now centers on the right understanding of Scripture” (VCNT, 128 [107]). Here we find with Catholicism, Berkouwer concludes, “a new meeting ground for discussion” (VCNT, 130 [108]). Nevertheless, given Scripture’s formal insufficiency, as explained above, and the attention given to the ecclesiological aspect of tradition, namely, the Church’s teaching office, in connection with the attaining of certainty regarding all that is divinely revealed in Scripture, we have, Berkouwer concludes, “the new form of the old controversy over Scripture and tradition.”108 Summarizing his conclusions, he writes: “We think, for example, about what has recently been written from the Roman Catholic perspective about Scripture itself, specifically with respect to a growing resistance to the notion of ‘supplementary’ tradition. Here we encounter a clear example of a convergence [with reformational theology] that at the same time once again reflects a divergence based on the ecclesial understanding of the concept of tradition.”109 In light of these conclusions, Berkouwer raises two critical questions concerning the new Catholic understanding of the relation between Scripture and tradition. First, suppose we understand the relation between Scripture and tradition to be such that tradition is the dynamic realization of faith under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This dynamic understanding of tradition testifies to a living expression of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit working in and through a living tradition that is identified with the being and faith of the Church. Berkouwer raises an important question concerning this view. “What is the relationship between the indwelling of the Spirit and the Church’s subjection to the

the position of many contemporary Catholic theologians, such as Yves Congar. He writes, “It is not that the Church and her Magisterium actually create the canon; even less do they endow Scripture with its authority, as mistakenly rather than intentionally certain Catholic apologists have sometimes maintained. With this dogma, as with the others, Church and Magisterium simply recognize the truth established by God’s action, submit to it and, since they are responsible for it, proclaim it with authority” (Meaning of Tradition, 110). Most important, the Council of Trent declared as a theological cul-de-sac the “late medieval concept of post-apostolic revelation made to the Church” (Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 176). This is also taught at Vatican I, and was reiterated in the anti-Modernist decree of Pius X, Lamentabili Sane (1907), no. 21. The upshot is that the Church clearly rejects a doctrine of continuing revelation. 108 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 347. 109 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 287.



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normative, objective [German: ‘Gegenüber’] apostolic witness? Once tradition has lost its isolated and independent significance, how is the identity of tradition with the living Spirit in the Church to be harmonized with the abiding normativity of tradition? If authoritative tradition is identified with the life of the Church, is there a real place for the critical and normative function of the gospel? Does not normativity imply that the standard is distinct and independent of the thing being measured?” In short, “how can the Word function normatively over the Church as the sword of the Spirit” (VCNT, 125 [104–195])?110 Looking back to Vanhoozer’s phrase, the presumption of coincidence, I think we can easily understand why Berkouwer asks whether some Catholic theologians have “sacrificed the objective normativity of the apostolic witness to the faith consciousness of the historical Church. That is, does not the mere fact that the Church believed such and such establish a given doctrine as trustworthy tradition?” Certainly not, says Berkouwer. Even if we bring into this picture, as we must, the promise of Christ that the Spirit of truth will guide the Church into all truth (John 16:13), adds Berkouwer, “We know enough to realize that we will not really explain anything by saying that the Spirit and the life of salvation within the Church are ‘identified’.” That is, “the indwelling of the Spirit must be matched by the power of the Spirit over the Church. . . . Roman Catholic emphasis on the Spirit within the Church and upon tradition as a living tradition is not intended to identify Spirit and Church with tradition; if this were so, the canonical normativity of the apostolic witness would be forfeited” (VCNT, 124–125 [104–105]). So, this issue raises an ecclesiastical-pneumatological question: what, then, is the relationship between the indwelling of the Spirit in the living tradition of the Church and the Church’s subjection to the normative, objective apostolic witness, the Word of God?

110 In this book’s chapter on Mary, Berkouwer raises a similar critical point regarding the views of German Catholic theologian and priest, Carl Feckes (1884–1958) in regard to Mary’s assumption. Apparently, Feckes wrote, “The primary norm of my faith is by no means Holy Scripture but the living consciousness of the present day Church. . . . The Church therefore does not need in principle Holy Scripture” (as cited by Berkouwer, VCNT, 227n27). Berkouwer correctly responds: “There would be no norm by which the ‘consciousness of faith’ can be held up to criticism, if such statements as these were the consensus of Catholicism” (Ibid.) Berkouwer also says, “The ‘consciousness of faith’ may be significant, and the teaching authority of the Church may be important, but neither of these can take the place of establishing the dogma of the Church in revelation” (227). Berkouwer made similar critical remarks in his 1940 book, SRKD, 187–191, but then with respect to the “evolution of dogma.” I discuss dogmatic development and Marian dogma in Chapter Six.

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The second critical question Berkouwer raises concerns the teaching of the unity of Scripture, tradition and the Church, a unity described by Vatican II’s Dei Verbum as an intrinsic (or indissoluble) and necessary relation (“one cannot stand without the other”) between them. It should be clear that Berkouwer’s Protestant understanding of sola Scriptura is, as Ratzinger also puts it, “less concerned with the material origin of the individual statements of faith as with the problem of the judging function of Scripture [as “norma normans non normata] in relation to the Church.”111 For instance, Berkouwer dismisses the charge that Dei Verbum reiterates the two-source theory of revelation when it urges to venerate with the same sense of loyalty and reverence both Scripture and tradition. “It is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence” (no. 9).112 As I explained earlier, Berkouwer argues that the meaning of “not from Sacred Scripture alone” (“non per solam Scripturam”) need not be taken to question the material completeness of Scripture and opting for the two-source theory in which Scripture must be completed by tradition.113 He makes the point that the formulation in this passage concerns the certainty of the Church regarding the teachings of the Scripture rather than the question of its material sufficiency or insufficiency. In other words, the role of tradition in this passage pertains to the epistemological matter of how the Church arrives at the epistemological certainty of the truth. Quoting E. Stakemeier, a German Catholic commentator of Dei Verbum, Berkouwer defends this reading on “non per solam Scripturam.” Roman Catholic commentators appropriately lay heavy emphasis on this: “One takes note of the word certitudinem. This formulation sheds light on the irreplacable importance of tradition without either exaggerating or minimizing its function.” This explains the way in which knowing, the process

111  Ratzinger in his commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 191. 112 This much disputed passage is based on the equally disputed passage of Trent that Dei Verbum repeats verbatim, namely, “the same sense of loyalty and reverence” should be shown the whole Bible “together with all the traditions concerning faith and morals as coming from the mouth of Christ or being inspired by the Holy Spirit and preserved in continuous succession in the Catholic Church.” 113 Not everyone would agree with Berkouwer’s interpretation that the two-sources theory is not being reasserted here. For a contrary view, see George, “An Evangelical Reflection on Scripture and Tradition,” 34.



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of knowing within the church, is considered and for which the traditions are indispensible, but not the way in which the material insufficientia of Scripture is expressed. These commentators do not want to fix the traditions as being either complementary or as being merely interpretative. . . . The council . . . limited the significance of tradition to indicating certitude, the church’s knowledge of the faith. This is the point at which the non per solam Scripturam functions in the life of the church, for here the believer is confronted with Scripture in its connection with tradition and church. But this does not yet imply that traditions are an independent source of revelation alongside Holy Scripture (NC, 115–116).114

Berkouwer now brings into focus the major theological question concerning the “judging function of Scripture in relation to the Church,” to quote Ratzinger, given the intrinsic and necessary interdependence of Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office. Indeed, Berkouwer consistently refers to the principle of sola Scriptura as having a “critical function,” being a “critical authority,” “as a reference to the critical, prophetic-apostolic witness of Scripture,” as well as the “critical, authoritative norm.”115 Indeed, Berkouwer presses the point whether justice can be done to the unique and fundamental nature of Scriptural authority when the Word of God is inserted into an interdependent network of authorities that include tradition and Magisterium. “It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls” (Dei Verbum, no. 10). Significantly, Berkouwer does not question whether Vatican II teaches that the Bible alone has final authority, prima Scriptura, in that network of interdependent authorities, which include tradition and the Magisterium. But he senses a tension between the claim 114 This, too, is the view of Ratzinger in his commentary on the meaning of “non per solam Scripturam”: “The function of tradition is seen here as a making certain of the truth, i.e., it belongs in the formal and gnoseological sphere—and, in fact, this is the sphere in which the significance of tradition is to be sought” (Ratzinger in his commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 195). It is also the view of Congar, but now with respect to the disputed passage of Trent upon which Dei Verbum, no. 9, is based. He rejects the interpretation that Trent had a two-source theory of revelation. “That kind of affirmation does not lie within the text of the decree. It does not say that such truths do not lay embedded in the writings, but only that they cannot be discerned through Scripture alone: for this we need the traditions. But this means no more than what people assert when they maintain the thesis of the formal insufficiency of Scripture” (“De Omstreden Kwestie,” 92). 115 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 361–365 [307, 311].

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that the Magisterium is a servant of God’s Word, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the teaching office of the Church has been entrusted exclusively with “the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on.” Pressing the point, Berkouwer asks, “In what way, then, is the relation fixed between the life of the church with its preservation of the ‘depositum fidei’ and Holy Scripture” (NC, 113)? This teaching authority “is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” It does not derive from the Church itself, but from the Word of God and, ultimately, from Jesus Christ, just as does Scripture’s authority. Most important, “This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it” (“Non supra verbum Dei, sed eidem ministrant”). Furthermore, Dei Verbum says that all the Church’s preaching, indeed, the whole Christian religion, must be nourished and ruled by Scripture (no. 21). Therefore, the teaching office is charged with “teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, drawing from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed” (no. 10). Moreover, Berkouwer stresses that the Church’s teaching authority does not ignore the “responsibility of the Church to keep listening (to be the ecclesia audiens).” Rather, he adds, the Church “believes that it has a sure help in its listening and its believing” (VCNT, 132 [110]). Here, then, is the focus of the current controversy, as Berkouwer sees it, between Rome and the Reformation: does the Church’s assuredness in its listening and believing imply the a priori guarantee that her teaching and Scripture necessarily coincide (the presumption of coincidence)? Consequently, it is not clear to Berkouwer whether the Church’s proper emphasis on the ministerial character of her teaching authority to the Word of God is threatened by the position of the Church’s teaching office in that interdependent network of authorities. Is there a tendency here for the Church to stand over rather than under the Word. Consider the following claims. There exists an indissoluble interconnection between Scripture, tradition and teaching office, Scripture and tradition “in a certain way merge into a unity” (Dei Verbum, no. 9), and, last, Scripture and tradition taken together are the “supreme rule of faith” (no. 21). In light of these claims, then, Berkouwer asks, “When the proclamation of the teaching authority is ‘norma normata’ and simultaneously the highest rule of faith, then the formulation ‘non supra Verbu’ can no longer clearly receive its full significance” (NC, 119; italics added). Significantly, however, Berkouwer fully recognizes that the intention of the Council is not to make



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Scripture subservient to tradition or to the Magisterium. Certainly not, because the Council carefully states that in this network of interdependent authorities of Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office, these authorities function together, each in its own way (“singula suo modo”), with the understanding that the Church’s teaching office is a servant of the Word of God. Indeed, Berkouwer approvingly refers to Rahner on this very point: “Rahner insists, for instance, that the Roman Catholic view of the Church’s teaching authority does not vitiate the authority of Scripture through the exercise of the Church’s own authority. Should the Church intend to put Scripture in second place to her own teaching authority that would mean that the Church could determine what the Scripture actually says and may say. . . . But when the Scripture is truly admitted as the authoritative Word of God,” adds Berkouwer, then the relation “between responsible exegesis of the Word and the Church’s authority to teach must be a deep relation of discovery” (VCNT, 174 [143]).116 Given the proper understanding of the limits of the Church’s teaching authority in respect of interpreting Scripture—discovery of textual meaning, not its creator—then we can understand why Berkouwer rejects the claim that we should interpret the Bible alone apart from the Church. Rather, “precisely because the understanding of the meaning of Scripture is a matter of discovering that meaning rather than creating it, responsible exegesis of the Word and the Church’s teaching authority may neither be isolated from each other or put in opposition to each other” (VCNT, 174).117 Still, Berkouwer remains unconvinced of the Catholic Church’s understanding of the relation between Scripture and her teaching authority: “What can it mean that theology has as its enduring foundation the written Word of God along with sacred tradition? Whenever at a given moment the Word of God is caught up in this triad [Scripture, tradition, magisterium], then the question arises of whether it can still have its own voice there, can maintain its own allure” (NC, 120–121). Indeed, he concludes that inserting Scripture into a network of interdependent authorities can never do justice to the unique and foundational nature of Scriptural authority. Why? In particular, there is the emphasis in 116 Berkouwer here is referring to Rahner, Inspiration in the Bible, 31. I have altered Smedes’ English translation because he says something entirely different from what Berkouwer says in the original Dutch. For example, the translation states “that the Roman view of the Church’s teaching authority does not vitiate the Scriptures as the only revelation of God” (143). My translation is more faithful to what Berkouwer actually takes Rahner to be saying. 117 This sentence is, inexplicably, entirely missing from Smedes’ English translation.

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Dei Verbum that scriptural interpretation “is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God” (no. 12; italics added). Elsewhere in Dei Verbum we read, “Catholic exegetes . . . and other students of sacred theology, working diligently together and using appropriate means, should devote their energies, under the watchful care of the sacred teaching office of the Church, to an exploration and exposition of the divine writings” (no. 23; italics added). The risk here, argues Berkouwer, is that the authority of the teaching office in this triad of interdependent authorities reduces the task of biblical interpretation to an apologetical role, of establishing dogma in the Scripture, because it takes as the hermeneutical starting point the presumption of coincidence (‘apriorische identificatie’) between Scripture and dogma, and hence this threatens the primacy of Scriptural authority, which would also have the boomerang effect of ultimately destroying the servant character of the teaching office.118 If one were to continue logically in this direction, the Church would be prevented from becoming an ecclesia audiens (listening Church) or an ecclesia discens (learning Church) in the full sense of these words.119 The teaching authority of the Church would then retreat to a “traditionalism or into an ultimate appeal to the Spirit and the church’s understanding of the faith in which the Word of God, however ‘norma non normanda’ it may be, no longer fully functions” (NC, 131). With this conclusion we return to the controversy between Rome and the Reformation even if now differently formulated and understood. “When living, interpretative traditions direct attention back to the sufficiency of Sacred Scripture, once again then the problem of the norm arises with respect to the infallibility of the teaching authority (and also of dogma). This is the problem of being open to the critical, testing activity of the gospel in Scripture.”120 In other words, the controversy between Rome and the Reformation is no longer over the relation of Scripture and tradition but rather over the relation of Scripture and the Church’s teaching office, a magisterium. 118 This is Berkouwer’s argument in NC, 124–132. Helpful, too, is Ratzinger’s analysis of the problem Berkouwer is discussing. On this, see Ratzinger in his commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 197. 119 That is why Berkouwer claims, “One can expect with certainty that the problem of the connection between the ‘pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia’ [with the same sense of reverence and devotion] and the ‘noma normans non normata’ [a norm that norms but is not itself normed] will remain one of the most gripping questions in the future” (NC, 130 n. 72). 120 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 40.



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Still, argues Berkouwer, this direction is clearly in conflict with the central teaching of Dei Verbum that the Holy Scripture remains in and for the Church a norma normans et non normata (i.e., the normative standard that has no norm above itself). “It is the dimension of the ‘Gegenüber’ of the scriptural Word” that needs safeguarding. The need for safeguarding the objectivity and authority of the Word is reflected in claims, such as, the teaching office of the Church is a servant of the Word of God, the study of Sacred Scripture is the soul of theology, the ministers of the Church are called to provide nourishment of the Scriptures, of her divine words, for the people of God, the Christian faith and life should be nourished and regulated by the Scriptures, and last but not least, Dei Verbum urges us to “hold fast to the Sacred Scriptures through diligent sacred reading and careful study” (no. 25). On the matter of safeguarding the uniquely authoritative and primary character of the Word of God, the contribution of the nouvelle théologie may not be overlooked. According to Berkouwer, “The question of the nouvelle théologie is about quiet reflection without premature decisions, and therefore making room for reflection is a result of a willingness to honor the unique and primary character of the Word of God.” Berkouwer adds, in this listening “Scripture discloses its own meaning, indeed, continues to disclose its meaning in the church, not by virtue of the church’s creativity, but only by the church being receptive [to the Scripture] in the process of not only listening but also being active in her understanding of the Scripture” (VCNT, 172 [141]). Furthermore, it is also not by virtue of the church’s authority that Scripture discloses its own meaning. Berkouwer explains, “That [Scripture disclosing its own meaning] can only be taken to mean authentic exposition that in its deepest sense cannot point to the authority of the church, but to that of Scripture. The right of the church to interpret Scripture implies a concentration on the ‘sensus Scripturae’ and therein the central problem of ‘vigilantia’ is posed” (NC, 127–128). In other words, the central problem of the Church’s vigilance of Scripture’s meaning is posed here because it the Church, according to Dei Verbum, is ultimately responsible for stating authoritatively what Scripture means. What, then, is Berkouwer’s own solution to the problem of safeguarding the ‘norma non normanda’ of Scripture? In particular, since Berkouwer does not take sola Scriptura to mean the Bible alone apart from the Church’s teaching authority, what is the place of the latter in defending the text of Scripture? In response to the more general question of safeguarding the objectivity and authority of Scripture, Berkouwer urges a turn from an apologetical use of Scripture to a more “open, honest and unencumbered

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study of Scripture” (NC, 119, 130), being consistent with a “concentration on the ‘sensus Scripturae’.” Such a study is a necessary condition for the Church to be the ecclesia audiens, according to Berkouwer, but it is not a ‘storm-free’ zone in which neutral theological exegesis can occur. “Only someone who goes about the business of understanding Scripture in an individualistic manner—independently of the church—and then in light of a formalistic understanding of ‘sola Scriptura’ could labor under this illusion” (VCNT, 172 [142]).121 Indeed, earlier in this chapter we showed that Berkouwer rejects the rendering of sola Scriptura as an anti-tradition principle and hence he is fully aware of the competing and conflicting interpretations of Scripture within the Church by the members of that Church. Still, the question that needs to be addressed is “who will defend Scripture when the Church is confronted by two or more contradictory interpretations of Scripture?”122 In short, who then decides which interpretation of Scripture is correct? As Berkouwer rightly notes, “The danger definitely exists that we no longer hear the Word of God in the human voices that are sounded in Scripture.” Agreed! Who then defends the text of Scripture in order to safeguard its objectivity and authority so that we might listen to it? Berkouwer responds, “No safe, a priori control exists that avoids this danger, and hence neither an ecclesial teaching authority nor a spiritualized reassurance eliminates the problems involved.” Berkouwer continues: “Only one way exists that can be taken, and it must be followed in faith and prayer, with responsibility and hopeful expectation. It is the way of the ecclesia audiens that in turn leads to the ecclesia docens.”123 But the way from the “listening church” to the “teaching church” is a hermeneutical battlefield in which rival readings, contradictory interpretations, over the meaning of Scripture are vying for our allegiance.124 In that context, who speaks authoritatively and dogmatically to the whole Church in the name of the Church? That is the critical question I shall need to ask of Berkouwer in the next chapter in light of considering whether his perspective on the pervasiveness of hermeneutics offers a real solution to the problem of hermeneutical pluralism. The latter has contributed not only to the disintegration of the church’s unity, the

121 By a formalistic notion of sola Scriptura Berkouwer means a view where “Scripture is shrunk to the level of a thesaurus of proof-texts to be used as ammunition in theological controversies” (VCNT, 99 [101]). I discussed this notion earlier in this chapter. 122 Kimel, “Sola Scriptura.” 123 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 41. 124 Berkouwer, Zoeken en vinden, 418.



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diminishing of the importance of the Church’s doctrinal catholicity, but also to the erosion of biblical authority, indeed, to subjectivism. That is why, Berkouwer rightly notes, “the big question concerns how we confront this interpretation-pluralism.”125 Conclusion This chapter has discussed Berkouwer’s fresh, constructive and critical evaluation of the issue of Scripture and tradition in relation to Revelation and the Church. Berkouwer has taken us beyond the historical impasse of this classical controverted issue between Rome and the Reformation to a new meeting ground for discussion regarding a fundamental criterion of biblical hermeneutics. The influence of nouvelle théologie played a significant role as a catalyst towards his re-evaluation of the Catholic tradition on this issue. The issue is no longer whether tradition and the Church are primary settings for theological interpretation. In other words, the disagreement over the meaning of sola Scriptura is no longer focused on whether theological interpretation and justification must occur apart from the Church and tradition. It is rather a question of understanding how Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office are intrinsically and necessarily related in theological interpretation. While truly affirming that Scripture is the authoritative Word of God, Berkouwer’s biblical hermeneutics raises the central question of how best to safeguard the objectivity and authority of that Word. Guarino writes: “How may Scripture function as a critical principle over and against ecclesial tradition? How can there be an actual Gegenüber, a true confrontation of the church with her norm?”126 This question arises with great urgency in our time given that the hermeneutical movement from the listening church (ecclesia audiens) to the teaching church (ecclesia docens) is a battlefield in which contradictory interpretations of Scripture are vying for our allegiance. Of course, Berkouwer affirms that there are normative sources of the faith, with Scripture being the primary source, in addition to the subsidiary sources of Creeds and Confessions. But how is the authority of these normative sources implemented? Must not the Church have offices whose primary task is to teach authoritatively and dogmatically for the 125 Berkouwer, Zoeken en vinden, 425. 126 Thomas G. Guarino, Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 95.

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whole church in the name of the Church? The answer to that question will consequently help us to answer another fundamental question: “Where does the buck stop when it comes to matters of interpretation and application? Are all opinions of equal validity?”127 Who, then, decides which interpretation of Scripture is correct?

127 Braaten, “The Teaching Authority of the Church,” Mother Church, 82–97, and at 96. This entire chapter is very helpful for framing the question of the relation between the normative sources of the faith and the Church’s teaching authority.

chapter FIVE

Scripture, Tradition, and Theological Authority The question asked by the Reformers (in order that the revelation of God may be supreme, it is imperative that Scripture should truly be given the status of a norm) ought to be taken very seriously and as a call from the Lord. But the question which we [Catholics] ask of the Reformers ought to be taken just as seriously and equally as a call from the Lord: in the name of a norm posited once and for all, do they not misunderstand and ignore, as unworthy of attention, the permanent reality of the Spirit united to the Church by a covenant relationship, and the reality of the instituted and assisted apostolic ministry? How difficult this dialogue between us is—and yet, how fundamental to our lives! What is at stake, in fact, is the full truth of the Christian position. This is not to be found in a tradition or a magisterium divorced from scriptural reference, nor in a reference to Scripture which would exclude Tradition and the magisterium. It is to be found in the fullness of that synthesis whose achievement is the precise object of the whole ecumenical dialogue.1

In the last chapter, I discussed Berkouwer’s fresh, constructive and critical assessment of Catholicism—before, during and after Vatican II—in regard to the question of Scripture and tradition in relation to Revelation and the Church. I concluded the chapter with the central theological question that Yves Congar poses in the above epigraph to this fifth chapter: If—as Dei Verbum teaches—Scripture, tradition and the Church are intrinsically and necessarily related as a network of interdependent authorities, with these authorities functioning together, each in its own way (‘singula suo modo’), how can we avoid making Scripture subservient to tradition or to the teaching office of the Church, leaving us with either ‘sola traditio’ or ‘solum magisterium,’ both are which are uncatholic? By undertaking replies to Berkouwer’s objections in this fifth chapter, I hope to outline the ‘full truth of the Christian position,’ which, I argue, safeguards the objectivity and authority of Scripture. Such a position, Congar rightly states, and Vatican II’s Dei Verbum teaches, cannot be found in either “a tradition or a magisterium divorced from scriptural reference” or “a reference to Scripture which would exclude Tradition 1 Yves M.-J. Congar, O.P., Tradition and Traditions, Translated by Michael Naseby and Thomas Rainborough (New York: Macmillan Company, 1966), 469.

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and the magisterium.” Thus, Congar’s full Christian position also excludes ‘sola Scriptura,’ not only as an anti-tradition principle, which Berkouwer and other Protestants, such as Heiko Oberman and, more recently, Kevin Vanhoozer, have argued is a misunderstanding of it, but also as one that expresses the claim that dogmas may be justified by the Church only on the authority of Scripture. Rather, and now expressing Congar’s point in the already cited words of Dei Verbum, “sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls” (no. 10). Let’s now turn to the four objections I raised in the introductory section to chapter four. These are objections reflected in Berkouwer’s criticisms of the Catholic position, as he understands it. Objection I The first objection concerns the presumption of coincidence: Scripture, tradition and the Church are intrinsically and necessarily interrelated. Put differently, as Thomas Guarino states, a “kind of coinherence exists among the three.”2 He explains, “Sacred Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, the church is guided by the Holy Spirit, allowing the church to interpret Scripture properly, and tradition (with varying levels of authority, of course) is the history of the church reading Scripture with the divine assistance of the Spirit.”3 This presumption of coinherence is at the root of Catholic teaching that no chasm in principle can exist between Christ and the church, or between Spirit, Word and church. “Christ, the guarantor of truth, has promised that he abides with the church to the end of days. The Catholic Church takes this to mean that Christ will not allow the church to deviate from his truth or to lead his flock into serious error.”4 This promise has to do with the guarantee of the Church’s essential indefectibility, namely, its perseverance and maintenance in the truth (cf. Mt 16:18; John 16:13). Berkouwer affirms the Church’s indefectible nature by virtue of Christ’s promise, but rejects the claim that it is automatically sustained. In other words, Berkouwer rejects the interpretation 2 Guarino, “Catholic Reflections on Discerning the Truth of Sacred Scripture,” 94. 3 Guarino, “Catholic Reflections, 94. 4 Guarino, “Catholic Reflections, 95.



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of indefectibility as an a priori guarantee that she will never deviate from the truth, but not that the Church has an indefectible nature. Rather, the promise of indefectibility is a conditional one. “These conditions point the Church to the kind of protection that is guaranteed to it. . . . The Church must remain true. God remains true. These two facts are bound together in a living correlativity, and it is only in such a correlative situation that the Church is assured of its continuity. . . . The continuity promised to the Church is not one that is self-evident from the nature of the Church as seen in its structure. It is one that occurs in the life of the Church as it is put to the test of its life with Christ” (VCNT, 258–259 [209]). We see here that twenty-five years after his 1940 book, Strijd om het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma, Berkouwer’s criticism of the Catholic position remains essentially the same. Jesus’s promise to the Church that the Spirit would keep her permanently in truth is thought about outside of the Church’s correlative faithfulness and obedience to the Word of God, according to Berkouwer, and hence in the Catholic position this promise is objectified into an automatic guarantee by virtue of the Church’s institutional structure. This abstract view of the Church’s indefectibility also reduces the living correlation between Christ and the Church, in communion with him through the Word and the Spirit, between the Word of God and the Church, between faith and revelation, to a rigidity, to a static a priori datum. Furthermore, adds Guarino, the critical principle of tradition in the Catholic position is the Holy Spirit himself, the Spirit of truth, who “guides the Church into the fullness of truth and directs her in avoiding error.”5 The Catholic position holds on to the divine guarantee being realized in the real life of the Church in light of the promise of Jesus Christ that the Spirit of truth will guide the actual Church into all truth (John 16: 13). Berkouwer writes, “There is a knowing related to the reality of the church and her march through history, namely her mystery based on the promised Spirit” (VCNT, 254–255 [206]). Of course Berkouwer also acknowledges that the Church fully recognizes that she actually lives with tension and strife, selfcriticism and self-correction, in short, that fidelity to the Word of God involves a struggle for right doctrine. The Church’s own history warns her of genuine danger zones and threats, human sinfulness, pride, and corruption that inhibits the Church from maintaining the pure truth of Scripture. Still, she stands under the guarantee of her own indefectibility, of the 5 Guarino, “Catholic Reflections”, 94.

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inevitable continuity of the Church and of salvation in it, in light of the divine promise. Still, Berkouwer probes the Catholic view, “But the question that haunts the evangelical is how fully and profoundly this warning can possibly be heard once one [the Catholic] has identified his institution, his historical and empirical organization, with the indestructible body of Jesus Christ. Can the urgent warning and the absolute guarantee function together in the real life of the Church?”6 Put differently, how can the Church reconcile her claim that the Magisterium is a servant of the Word of God (‘Magisterium verbum Dei ministrant’) and not above that Word (‘non supra verbum Dei’) with the idea that Scripture and tradition in some way merge into a unity in the living Church, which leaves us with the suggestion that there exists a “nearly self-evident harmony between the gospel and the empirical factuality of the church” (VCNT, 254–255 [206])? Reply Now, this presumption of coincidence, or coinherence, has been variously expressed by some as the a priori identification, and hence necessary coincidence, between dogma and Scripture, the Church’s teaching office with Christ’s authority, and Church tradition and Scripture. We may summarize one account of the presumption of coincidence with the following syllogism: “What the Catholic Church teaches with the assistance of the Holy Spirit must be true; but the Catholic Church teaches X. Therefore X must be true.”7 This is an a priori argument that purports to be the basis for trusting in the promise of Christ that the Spirit of truth will guide the Church into the fullness of truth (John 16:13). Let us agree with the critics of this understanding of the presumption, such as Berkouwer, et al., that it runs the risk of collapsing all distinction between the magisterium and its normative sources, such as Scripture, which as Ratzinger argues, “threatens the primacy of the sources which, (were one to continue logically in this direction) would ultimately destroy the serving character of the teaching office.”8 In short, the problem with this a priori argument is that it confuses the difference between two statements: one, we should accept

6 Guarino, “Catholic Reflections,” 94. 7 Aidan Nichols, O.P., From Newman to Congar, The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 38. 8 On this, see Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 197.



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the Church’s teaching because it is true, in accordance with the supremacy of Scripture and other authoritative sources of faith, and, two, we should accept the Church’s teaching simply because the Church’s teaches it. The former statement is true, but not the latter. Ratzinger elaborates on the implication that would follow from the latter statement being true: “The result of this [a priori argument] was that Scripture was considered basically only from the aspect of proof it offered for already existing statements, and even when this was done with great care and with modern exegetical methods, this mode of procedure hardly allowed for a theme to be developed from the perspective of Scripture itself or questions from the Bible to be raised that were not covered in the body of the Church’s teaching.”9 The logical direction of this a priori argument is solum magisterium.10 The position of solum magisterium is mistaken because it makes the Church’s teaching office the supreme norm of faith. In other words, the Catholic Church does not hold that her authority is the basis—“I believe because of the Church’s authority”—for intentionally assenting to the divine truth that is believed, taught, and proclaimed by the Church. Rather, the Church is a divine instrument through which we assent to that truth. Consider here, for instance, Ratzinger’s remarks on the limits of the Church’s authority regarding the ordination of women. His remarks here pertain to John Paul II’s 1994 Apostolic Letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.11 Ratzinger writes in respect of this Letter’s key statement: [Wishing to remain faithful to the Lord’s example], “the Church does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination.” In this

  9 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, 269. 10 This position is sometimes called ‘ecclesiastical positivism.’ Avery Cardinal Dulles describes this position’s logical direction as follows: “On some presentations it appeared as though the believer had to give a blank check to the magisterium. Catholic faith was understood as an implicit confidence in the teaching office, and the test of orthodoxy was a man’s readiness to believe whatever the Church might teach for the very reason that the Church was teaching it. One danger in this approach was that it engendered a certain indifference to the content of revelation. Believers were heard to say that if the Church were to teach that there were five or ten persons in God, they would believe it with as much faith as they now believed in the three divine persons” (Models of the Church, Expanded Edition (New York: Image Books, 2002 [1974]), 169–170). Bavinck draws the following conclusion from his view that the Catholic Church holds to the position of solum magisterium: “Now Rome, with its infallible pope, can assert that Scripture is not necessary; the infallibility of the church indeed renders Scripture superfluous” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 439 [469]). 11 Online: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_ jp-ii_apl_22051994_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html.

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chapter five statement the Church’s Magisterium professes the primacy of obedience and the limits of ecclesiastical authority: The Church and her Magisterium have authority not in and of themselves, but rather from the Lord alone. The believing Church reads the Scriptures and lives them out . . . in the living fellowship of the people of God in every age; she knows that she is bound by a will that preceded her, by an act of “institution.” This prevenient will, the will of Christ, is expressed in her case by the appointing of the Twelve.12

And more than thirty years earlier Ratzinger writes in the same vein: ‘Tradition’ is indeed never a simple and anonymous handing on of teaching, but is linked to a person, is a living word that has its concrete reality in faith. And, vice versa, [apostolic] succession is never the taking over of some official powers that are then at the disposal of the office-bearer; rather, it is being taken into the service of the Word, the office of testifying to something with which one has been entrusted and which stands above its bearer, so that he fades into the background behind the thing he has taken over and is (to use the marvelous image from Isaiah and John the Baptist) just a voice that enable the Word to be heard aloud in the world.13

The main point that Ratzinger is making here is that the authority of the Church’s teaching office is not based on itself and hence the Church is itself not the norm of faith.14 The Church affirms the primacy of the authority of God, of his Word, in short, of divine revelation, over the teaching authority of the Church, which is an authority derived from Christ. Pace 12 Joseph Ratzinger, “Grenzen kirchlicher Vollmacht: Das neue Dokument von Papst Johannes Paul II: zur Frage der Frauenordination,” Internationale katholische Zeitschrift 23 (1994): 337–45, and at 338; as cited in Gerhard Müller, Priesthood and Diaconate, translated by Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 65n3. 13 Joseph Ratzinger, “Primacy, Episcopacy, and Successio Apostolica,” in God’s Word: Scripture—Tradition—Office, Edited by Peter Hünnermann and Thomas Söding, Translated by Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 13–39, and at 23. 14 Pace Bavinck, he wrongly assumes that Vatican I taught that there are no limits to papal authority, that the pope has a monopoly on ecclesiastical authority, and hence expressed the view of an extreme papalism (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 458 [487]). It is impossible to enter here into a discussion of the three different ways that the dogma of papal infallibility has been interpreted. Vatican I affirmed a moderate infallibilism, and hence it was against papalism, which is how Bavinck understands the nature of the papacy. Berkouwer states that judging from the many discussions at the council of Vatican I, the autonomy of the papacy was “a real problem.” This is especially apparent from the “repeated efforts of the moderate infallibilist to fix our attention on the binding and normative character of revelation” (NC, 152). On the arguments for moderate infallibilism and the rejection of maximalism (papalism) and conciliarism, see Vatican Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser, The Gift of Infallibility, Translated with Commentary by the Rev. James T. O’Connor, Second, Updated Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), The Official Relatio on Infallibility at Vatican Council I, July 11, 1870, 49, 60–89. See also, Le Groupe Des Dombes, “One Teacher” Doctrinal Authority in the Church, Translated by Catherine E. Clifford (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010 [2005]), 66–67.



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Berkouwer, indeed, the Reformed consensus that is a legacy of Calvin, the authority of the Church is not place “outside of the word of God.”15 Certainly, the Church has teaching authority, indeed shares in the authority of Scripture, but it “is only a secondary rule, measured by the primary rule, which is divine Revelation.”16 Perhaps we can make this point clearer by distinguishing between the “formal reason” of faith and the Church’s teaching authority. The former is the reason why we believe something, say, that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. We believe it by virtue of divine revelation. “Divine revelation is thus the reason without which there would be no reason to have faith.”17 The latter—Church authority—is the means the Church has “to avoid losing that most precious revelation.”18 The Dominican Cardinal Cajetan explains what these means are: And so that no error might appear in the proposal or explanation of things to be believed, the Holy Spirit provided a created rule, which is the sense and the doctrine of the Church, so that the authority of the Church is the infallible rule of the proposition and explanation of things which must be believe by faith. Therefore, two infallible rules concur in faith, namely divine revelation and the authority of the Church; there is between them this difference: divine revelation is the formal reason of the object of faith, and the authority of the Church is the minister of the object of faith.19

But if we do not base the presumption of coinherence in an a priori argument, such that the actual institutional form of the Church is automatically guaranteed to be indefectible, must we renounce any coinherence at all between Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office? In particular, must we renounce the authority of the Magisterium? Is the Church’s teaching office “capable of certifying revealed truth with divine authority [?]20 Yes, the Church teaching office does serve as “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), meaning thereby that she speaks authoritatively and dogmatically to the whole Church in the name of the Church. Of course Berkouwer correctly emphasizes that exercising genuine 15 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.8.13, as cited in Hans Küng, Structures of the Church, Translated from the German by Salvator Attanasto (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1964), 345. 16 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 69. 17 Charles Morerod, O.P., The Church and the Human Quest for Truth (Ave Maria, FL.: Sapientia Press, 2008), 48. 18 Morerod, The Church and the Human Quest for Truth, 47. 19 Cajetan, In Summ. Theol., IIa, IIae, q.1, a.1, no. X; as cited in Morerod, The Church and the Human Quest for Truth, 47. 20 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith (Naples, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2007), 6.

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Christian authority is a matter of being of service to the gospel. “And if the Church were truly to be the teaching Church (ecclesia docens), it had first and always to be the listening Church (ecclesia audiens)” (VCNT, 215 [176]). But given the hermeneutical battlefield, as I referred at the conclusion of the previous chapter to the competing and conflicting interpretations of the meaning of Scripture, in the movement from the listening Church to the teaching Church, it is all the more pressing to answer the question regarding the “nature of the guarantee [of indefectibility] given to the Church that it will prevail to the end of time” (VCNT, 216 [177]). Berkouwer calls this question “the most important issue,” but he leaves it unanswered.21 This question is all the more urgent since there is a crisis of authority in the Church regarding the very authority of the Bible: “the appeal to the Bible itself has been discredited.”22 This crisis is not totally unexpected since “when people cease to believe in the church, they will soon cease to believe in the Bible.”23 Yes, says Berkouwer rightly, it is “the promise of the Spirit to lead the Church into all truth” (VCNT, 216 [177]). In response to the question, “Who defends the text of Scripture?”, Berkouwer then apparently would answer that the Spirit must do so. Let me be clear that Berkouwer sees “no contradiction between the free work of the Spirit and the established offices of the Church” (VCNT, 216 [177]). Still, where is the “concrete official and public locus of authority”24 in the Church through which the Spirit exercises this work of defense? Prescinding from the question regarding the seat of ecclesial authority, Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson rightly argues that “The Church as Church defends the text. It is the Church that must stand over against the believing interpreter and state authoritatively what Scripture means.” He explains: “But if the church as community is to defend the text against the interpreting of the church’s associated members, the church must have a voice with which to speak for herself to her own members. Biblical authority—and mutatis mutandis ritual and dogmatic authority—are not possible apart from a voice for the church as community speaking to the church as association, that is, in the church’s own language, apart from a teaching office, a magisterium.”25 21 It is also unanswered in his later 1968 book on Vatican II, Nabetrachting op het Concilie. 22 C. van der Kooi, Tegenwoordigheid van Geest (Kampen: Kok, 2006), 190. 23 Braaten, Mother Church, 148. 24 Braaten, Mother Church, 96. 25 Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, I (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 40; as cited in Kimel, “Sola Scriptura.”



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So, notwithstanding our agreement with Berkouwer regarding the logical implication of this a priori argument, namely, it leads to the practice of solum magisterium, we are not left defenseless in answering the question regarding who speaks authoritatively and dogmatically to the whole Church in the name of the Church and hence defends the text of the Scripture. The Church’s position on the coinherence of Scripture, tradition and the teaching office of the Church is a more complex position than Berkouwer outlines and then criticizes. Here are five theses I will briefly defend in reply to Berkouwer’s objection: 1. The Scripture is God’s gift to the Church, which has been entrusted with the responsibility to teach faithfully and be its authoritative interpreter. 2. The living understanding of the Catholic faith has an ecclesial structure. 3. Church teaching has different levels of authority. 4. There is in principle no conflict between the “listening” and the “teaching” Church. 5. Infallibility is necessary for realizing Indefectibility. The Scripture is God’s Gift to the Church First, the Catholic tradition—indeed, Vatican I and II—affirms that the Lord himself has delivered the Scripture to the Church.26 Though the Scriptures are canonical and hence authoritative because they have God as their author, are inspired, and have been delivered by the Spirit to the Church, “the writings gathered in the Bible are [canonical], and can be, a ‘Bible’, ‘Scripture’, only within the Church.”27 Second, the Church’s authority to teach is one of three functions that Christ conferred on the Church, functions which he fulfilled and united in himself in the offices of prophet, priest, and king, namely, to teach, sanctify and govern. Briefly, the authority given by Jesus Christ to the apostles and hence to his successors, included the powers to bind and loose (Mt 16:9; Mt 18:8), to forgive sins (John 20:21–23), to baptize (Mt 28:18–20), and to make disciples (Mt 28:18–20).

26 This, too, is Bavinck’s view: “Scripture, though certainly also a book for the individual believer, has in the context of the church of all ages been given to the whole church, to believers of all times and place” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 569; ET: 598). 27 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 193.

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Regarding the Church’s responsibility to teach, explains Avery Dulles, “The Church . . . is commissioned by Christ to bear authoritative witness to God’s revelation in Christ. . . . The term ‘Magisterium’ . . . designates the Church’s function of teaching. More precisely, it means the authoritative teaching of those who are commissioned to speak to the community in the name of Christ, clarifying the faith that the community professes.”28 Furthermore, adds Dulles, “The Catholic Church believes and teaches that Christ delivered his revelation to the Church as a corporate body. Having received the Word of God, the Church has an inalienable responsibility to hand it on, explain it, and defend it against errors.”29 Disagreements about the truth of the Gospel involve the discriminating responsibility of the Church’s teaching office. This responsibility means “determining whether or not a particular teaching is identifiable or consistent with what is taught in the scriptures and the tradition of the church. This special teaching function is essentially the power to recognize sameness and difference between what was taught and what is being proposed.”30 Moreover, the Church’s special teaching function involves her being preserved from errors; otherwise, the saving teaching of Christ would no longer be available to men. As Dulles writes, “it is logical to suppose that if God deems it important to give a revelation, he will make provision to assure its conservation. If he did not set up reliable organs of transmission, the revelation would in a few generations be partly forgotten and inextricably commingled with human speculations.”31 Indeed, it is more than logical to argue for the necessity of a teaching office that speaks for the Church in the name of the Church. “God was moved by love to impart to men the fullness of his revelation through Christ and the apostles; was he also moved by love to guarantee the infallible teaching of this revelation until the end of time? Or did he leave men after the death of the apostles with a mute text which each could interpret as he saw fit?”32 It is helpful to

28 Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 3. 29 Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 4–5. 30 Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith & Reason, Foundations of Christian Theology (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995 [1982]), 26. 31  Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 4–5. In a nutshell, this is John Henry Newman’s argument for a teaching office of the Church in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter II, Section II. See also Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter V. 32 Charles Journet, The Primacy of Peter, Translated from the French by John Chapin (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1954), 41.



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recall here that the loss of catholicity is one of the major causalities of the denial of a teaching office. Consider in this connection Bavinck’s reflection on the catholicity of the Church. What does he mean by catholicity?33 Pared down for my purpose here, chiefly, one thing. Bavinck explains that the Church is one and universal, reflecting her unity and catholicity. The Church that Christ established, upon the foundation of the apostles (Eph 2:20), and as his Body, is one church. Thus, what the one church is in its entirety is present in each of the plurality of churches. Similarly, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith writes, “While present everywhere, she [the Body of Christ] is yet only one, just as Christ is one.”34 This unity or oneness of the Church, says Bavinck, refers to the church as a unified whole, because Christ, who is the Head of the Church, has only one Body, and as the Bridegroom, only one Bride, with the Christian life being life in that Body, being in union with Christ. This unified whole that is the Church, exists not only prior to the parts, that is, its unity ontologically and temporally preceding the plurality of churches, but it is also universal or catholic because the one Church, which is his Body, is inclusive of that plurality, and hence is the fullness of Christ (Eph 1:23). Bavinck’s understanding of the unity and catholicity, or universality, of the Church, and its corresponding diversity, is evidence of “the vitality of the Christian faith.” Indeed, he adds, “The richness, the many-sidedness, the pluriformity of the Christian faith, has in this way become evident.” Still, he adds, one condition needs to be met here for discerning whether the diversity is legitimate, namely, preserving the catholicity of the Christian faith and of the one, holy, apostolic Christian Church. Furthermore, Bavinck seems to think that the universality or catholicity of the Church is present in all the individual particular churches in their own way, which is to say, in his own words, “[in] more or less pure expressions.” The latter expression indicates, says Bavinck, that “no one church, no matter how pure is identical with the universal church.” It would seem, then, that only fragments of the Church exist, according to Bavinck, with the understanding that “the one, holy, universal church that is presently an object

33 Herman Bavinck, “The Catholicity of Christianity and the Church,” Translated by John Bolt, Calvin Theological Journal 27 (1992): 220–251. Original Dutch version on line: http://www.neocalvinisme.nl/hb/broch/hbkath.html. 34 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion,” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, May 28, 1992, no. 5.

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of faith, will not come into being until the body of Christ reaches full maturity.” Catholic ecclesiology rejects Bavinck’s view. “The true Church is a concrete reality, an existing reality, even now,” says Joseph Ratzinger, in the reality of the Catholic Church, which is visible, historical, temporal, institutional, in a word, bodily.35 Bavinck’s view of ecclesial unity and diversity leads him to highlight critically what he calls the “church-dissolving” element of Protestantism, its prevailing sectarianism, or as Leslie Newbigin once put it, “the tendency to endless fissiparation which has characterized Protestantism in its actual history.”36 Bavinck writes, “The one Christian church has been fragmented into innumerable sects and small churches, assemblies, and conventicles.” At the root of this tragic fragmentation of the Church is the faulty ecclesiology of what some have called ‘ecclesial atomism,’ which is the idea that “the church [is] a [voluntary] association of individuals who first become believers apart from the church and subsequently united themselves.” Bavinck rightly rejects this ecclesiology. “This oneness of all the churches does not just come into being a posteriori by the establishment of a creed, a church order, and a synodical system.”37 No, he adds, “The church is not just an . . . association of people who wish to worship together, but something instituted by the Lord, the pillar and ground of the truth.” The Church is a people convoked by God that precedes the Church as a gathering of believers who worship together—convocatio precedes congregatio, as Henri de Lubac says.38 Thus: “If we then understand the catholicity of the church in this fashion, it is impossible for us as churches to shut ourselves off from the one, universal Christian church.” For this isolationism, or division from one another, is in contradiction to the heart of the Gospel because it divides Christ. Indeed, all such divisions, according to Bavinck, are caused by sin, and are in conflict with Christ’s high-priestly prayer for unity (Matt 17:21). The Catholic ecclesiologist’s response to Bavinck asks whether he can extricate himself from the ‘church-splitting dynamism’ of Protestantism 35 Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, Translated by Henry Traub, S.J., et al. (New York: Paulist Press, 1966), 71, italics added. 36 Leslie Newbigin, The Household of God, 63. 37 Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, IV (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1901), 264. ET: Reformed Dogmatics, IV, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, Edited by John Bolt, Translated by John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 280. 38 Henri de Lubac, Catholicism, Translated by Lancelot C. Sheppard, et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988 [1947]), 62–64.



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and its ecclesial atomism that he rightly rejects. Although he affirms that the institutional Church has, inter alia, the authority to teach, he nonetheless argues that ultimately every believer has the complete freedom to interpret the Word of God for himself, by his own light, leaving him “free to confess otherwise” than what the Church teaches in accordance with its creeds and confessions and hence “to conceive the truth of God in some other sense.”39 But, then, how can Bavinck’s position avoid “hinder[ing] the complete fulfillment of its [the Church’s] universality in history,” as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith puts it. Yes, Bavinck stipulates a condition of legitimate diversity, namely, preserving the catholicity of the Church. But how does one decide whether this condition has been met, and who decides? Who speaks for the Church in the name of the whole Church? The complete freedom that Bavinck posits has left particular churches shut off from one another, indeed, contradicting one another. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith puts it, “If they are all Churches ‘in their own way’, then this Church is a collection of contradictions and cannot offer people clear direction.” In addition, “If this were so, subjectivism would be warranted: then everyone would invent his own Christianity and in the end his personal taste would be decisive.” In other words, the “church-splitting dynamism” of Protestantism has contributed not only to the disintegration of the church, ultimately undermining her teaching office, and hence her visible unity, which has effectively diminished the importance of the Church’s catholicity, but also has eroded biblical authority and, in turn, the Gospel. Of course Bavinck would reject this conclusion, but it is difficult to see how he can block this move. The Catholic blocks this move with the ecclesiological claim that the visible unity of the Church, and the corresponding catholicity of the Christian faith, is given an indispensable support in the Church’s official and public teaching authority with which Jesus Christ endowed her for all ages as “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). In sum, the responsibility of the Church’s teaching office, the Magisterium, is to keep faithfully, to judge authentically, distinguishing between true and false teaching, and to define infallibly the content of the deposit of the faith. The Church is called by the Lord Jesus to be a herald of the 39 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, IV, 302, 402 [318, 421].

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apostolic faith, to defend the faith against opposed errors in its judgments, and, as Dulles puts it, “to clarify the faith by bringing forth from the treasury ‘things new and old’.” He adds, “In answering new questions, as in refuting new errors, the Magisterium sometimes brings out hitherto unnoticed implications of the faith.”40 Therefore, the Church’s teaching office is the answer to the following question: “Who will defend Scripture when the Church is confronted by two or more contradictory interpretations of Scripture?”41 Otherwise, who speaks for the Scripture? Are we thrown back on our private judgment? If so, how do we block the move to hermeneutical individualism, subjectivism, and sectarianism? The Living Understanding of the Catholic Faith Has an Ecclesial Structure This question brings me to my second point. Will invoking the work of the Spirit help to block the move to hermeneutical individualism, subjectivism, and sectarianism and thus safeguard the objectivity and authority of Scripture, binding religious subjectivity to the Word of God itself, safeguarding interpretations from these cul-de-sacs and hence from the loss of the authority of Scripture? Karl Rahner gives a Catholic response to this question. Briefly, the difference between Rome and the Reformation is not over whether the Spirit is at work in interpretations made in the light of faith. Rather, the focus of the difference concerns the question as to how the Spirit of God works concretely. According to the Catholic position of faith’s living understanding of Scripture, says Rahner, that understanding has itself an ecclesial structure because faith lives on in the Church in a way that makes Scripture a living reality in the power of the Spirit. He explains: This does not dethrone Scripture. It does not cease to be the norma non normata for the church and also for its teaching office. We did not discover the Bible somewhere by our own curiosity, but rather, as something which awakens faith and brings faith and communicates the Spirit, it comes to us only in the preaching of the concrete church. And this says to us: here is the Word of God, a word which it gives witness to in such a way that according

40 Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 62–63. 41  Fr. Alvin Kimel, “Sola Scriptura.” Fr. Kimel correctly answers, in my judgment, his own question, “Only the Church, guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit, can properly read and interpret those writings that were written under the inspiration of the action of the Spirit. The Bible, as Bible, only teaching anything because the Church teaches on the basis of the Bible and tells us what it means—or perhaps better, because God guides the Church to discern and express what he means in and by his Word.”



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to the Catholic understanding of the faith too it can manifest itself by its own power. . . . However, faith’s living understanding of Scripture, and Scripture’s transposition into faith’s really pneumatic experience of the reality which Scripture means are processes whose place Scripture itself cannot take, and the process of faith’s living understanding of Scripture has itself an ecclesial structure. It is not simply and merely an affair of the individual’s religious subjectivity. Rather it is more originally an affair of the Church as such, an affair of the single community of believers within which the individual Christian acquires his concrete understanding of the faith. This community of faith is not only the sum of individual religious subjectivities, but rather it really has a structure, a hierarchical constitution, and an authoritative leadership through which the Church’s single understanding of the faith receives its unambiguous meaning and its binding character.42

As Rahner states admirably well in the above passage, the formative process of faith’s understanding of divine revelation, of salvation, of sin, the cross and grace, and so much more, is essentially an ecclesial one, namely, by being members of Christ’s historic Church, the Catholic Church. And this ecclesial structure is hierarchically constituted with the official and public teaching of the Church, the Magisterium, consisting of an authoritative leadership, of the pope and the bishops who are in communion with him.43 This last point is particularly important to counteract what seems like the overwhelming ascendancy of sectarianism and a corresponding congregationalist ecclesiology in contemporary Protestantism.44 The ‘magisterial vacuum’ in contemporary Protestantism is the unfolding of the logic of Protestantism—separating the Bible from the Church—that has led to a crisis of authority, indeed, a crisis of faith in the authority off Scripture. Let us recall David Lyle Jeffrey’s insight, “The loss of the Church’s teaching authority has led to the loss of the authority of Scripture.”45 This crisis cannot be resolved by reasserting orthodoxy alone or the Church’s hierarchical teaching office alone. Rather what is needed is the teaching

42 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, Translated by William V. Dych (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 1978), 364–365. 43 For a brief catechesis and theological interpretation of the Magisterium, see Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 47–58. 44 Vatican I, 1870, Decreta Dogmatica Concilii Vaticani de Fide Catholica et de Ecclesia Christi, no. 5, already taught that rejecting “the divine magisterium of the Church” and “allowing religious questions to be a matter for the judgment of each individual, have gradually collapsed into a multiplicity of sects, either at variance or in agreement with one another; and by this means a good many people have had all faith in Christ destroyed.” 45 Jeffrey, “Houses of the Interpreters, Spiritual Exegesis, and the Retrieval of Authority,” “Houses of the Interpreters, Spiritual Exegesis, and the Retrieval of Authority,” in Books & Culture 8.3 (2002), 30.

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and practice of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution, Dei Verbum, namely, a trilateral conception of authority wherein Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office, being intrinsically and necessarily related operating together, but exercising authority in a way that is unique to each one of them. In other words, to quote Dulles, “nothing is believed on the authority of tradition alone, Scripture alone, or the magisterium alone.”46 Church Teaching Has Different Levels of Authority Third, Church teaching has different levels of authority and certainty; while some are fundamental, definitive, indeed, infallible, and hence irreformable, others are not and so may be subject to reform, the possibility of reversals (e.g., the Church’s previous teachings on religious freedom, Church/state relations, ecumenism have been reformed). So not all Church teaching carries the same weight or authority because the Church has never held that every magisterial teaching is, ipso facto, infallible.47 Furthermore, doesn’t Berkouwer agree, indeed, mustn’t he agree with the distinction between irreformable and definitive, on the one hand, and reformable and non-definitive, on the other? The former sorts of statements are such that they are permanently valid, objectively, or absolutely true and hence are not subject to rejection or correction or reversibility. Certainly the following biblical affirmations are of that sort: “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12:3), “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself ” (2 Cor 5:19), and “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), and many other biblical and creedal theological propositions as found, for instance, in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed, but also in the Belgic Confession of faith, the Heidelberg Catechism, and other Reformed and Lutheran Confessions. In defending this claim, we need to see that doxological affirmations, such as these affirmations, contain propositions, that is, claims that things are such and such and so not their contradictories.

46 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Vatican II on the Interpretation of Scripture,” Letter & Spirit 2 (2006): 17–26, and for this quote, 17. 47 On the possibility of reversals, see Thomas G. Guarino, Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013). On the various levels of magisterial authority, see Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution, Lumen Gentium (1965), no. 25; “Profession of Faith,” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1989); Donum Veritatis, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1990); “Commentary on the Profession of Faith’s Concluding Paragraphs, Professio Fidei (1998). All of these documents may be found in Appendices E–H, respectively, in Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 131–181.



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All affirmations of the Christian faith, all dogmas, are such that being true propositions they can never become infected with error, with falsehood.48 Otherwise, the same proposition would be true and false. Notwithstanding this fundamental point about irreformable statements, which are statements protected by infallibility, even teaching that is fundamental, definitive, and hence irreformable is such that it may “require further thought and elucidation.” Seeing the distinction here clearly requires us to distinguish between an unqualified fallibilism and qualified fallibilism. “Fallibilism does not challenge the claim that we can know the truth, but rather the belief that we can know that we have attained the final truth with absolute certainty.”49 There is an inconsistency generated by an unqualified fallibilism by virtue of implying the reversibility, in principle, at some later point, of all Christian doctrinal and dogmatic truths that are putatively irreversible or final, such as the examples given above. In contrast, a qualified fallibilism presupposes the distinction between the propositional truths of faith and their linguistic expressions, between truth-content and context, such that those truths are “open to reconceptualization and reformulation, and that [is because] no statement comprehensively exhausts truth, much less divine truth.”50 As Dulles also puts it, “Irreformable statements may, however, require completion, refinement, reinterpretation, and restatement in accordance with new conditions, which raise new questions and provide new information, new conceptual categories, new methods, and new vocabulary.”51 Berkouwer’s fear regarding “uncritical traditionalism” or “confessionalism” has no place here.52 For, adds Dulles, “The ‘irreformability’ of a definition 48 George Lindbeck, “The Infallibility Debate,” in The Infallibility Debate, Edited by John J. Kirvan (New York: Paulist Press, 1971), 107–152, and for this point, 111. 49 This definition of fallibilism is by Richard Bernstein, “Philosophers respond to [John Paul II’s] Fides et Ratio,” Books and Culture 5 (July/August 1999): 30–32. The two other philosophers reviewing the philosopher-pope’s 1998 encyclical are Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga. 50 Thomas G. Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2005), 139, n. 59. I have profited immensely from this magisterial study. 51  Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 60. 52 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 272 [278]. Elsewhere Berkouwer writes: “The tensions in Catholicism may remind us that no ‘position’ or ‘mind’ ever is free from danger of perversion. One side runs the greatest danger of static irrelevance to the times, of traditionalism and confessionalism, and of seeking to put the Church under the control of a school of theology, notwithstanding the assumption that the ‘school’ identifies itself with the gospel. For the Church to be guardian of the truth could be twisted so badly that the Church would lose perspective for the future, lose power to test the gospel in new situations of life, and lose the willingness to attempt new answers to new questions. The other

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[definitive teaching about matters of faith and morals], though it rules out subsequent reversals, leaves room for considerable ‘reformulations’.”53 Moreover, there is even an eschatological qualification to knowledge of Church teaching that is fundamental, definitive, and irreformable. As Ratzinger explains, “All knowledge in the time of the Church remains knowledge seen in a mirror—and hence fragmentary. The direct relation to reality, to the face of God himself, is still kept for the eschaton (cf. 1 Cor 13:12).”54 Berkouwer reminds us that no dogmatic definition is adequate given the fullness of divine truth.55 Still, inadequacy of expression does not mean total inexpressibility. We can say something determinate and true about divine truth, even if the fullness of divine truth remains inexhaustibly beyond us. This latter point was clearly taught by Vatican Councils I and II.56 So teaches Vatican II’s Unitatis Redintegratio, “Christ summons the Church . . . to that continual reformation of which she always has need, insofar as she is an institution of men here on earth. Therefore, if the influence of events or of the times, has led to deficiencies in conduct, in Church discipline, or even in the formulations of doctrine (which must be carefully distinguished from the deposit of faith itself ), these should be rectified at the proper moment” (no. 6).

side runs the danger of being so open and fearless in the face of the problems of the time that it does not sufficiently honor the critical, testing power of the gospel. It faces the temptation to engage the issues of the day so openly that it neglects to bring the power and hence the blessings of the unchangeable gospel to bear on the situation” (VCNT, 323 [255–256]). 53 Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 60, italics added. I discussed Berkouwer’s position on the question of truth and its formulation at length in Chapter One. 54 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 183. 55 Berkouwer, Een Halve Eeuw Theologie, 350–351 [241]. 56 Vatican I, 1870, “May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase [of the meaning of sacred dogmas] as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same meaning, and in the same judgment [in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu eademque sententia]” (Dogmatic Constitution, Dei Filius, Chapter IV, Faith and Reason, no. 14). Vatican II: “For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her” (Dei Verbum, no. 8).



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The distinction between propositions and their varied expressions, between propositions and sentences, is relevant to understanding a famous statement made at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII regarding a faithful restatement of Catholic teaching. As I understand the pope, the understanding of the content of faith can only be deepened without threatening its unchangeable meaning and truth if we hold to the following distinction: “the deposit or the truths of faith, contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing, while the mode in which they are enunciated, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment, is another.”57 Now, the claim that there are different ways of expressing these basic doctrinal truths of the Christian faith in different epistemic contexts, using different conceptualities to understand these truths more fully and to communicate them more effectively, has raised questions regarding their universality and normativity, indeed, regarding the unchangeability as such of the truths of the Christian faith. Of course there is something undeniably positive in this claim about expressing the truth of Christian faith differently, given that the motive is, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger then put it, “to help understand faith afresh as something that makes possible true humanity in the world of today.” Still, it is just as undeniable that some efforts to expound Christian faith have changed “it into the small coin of empty talk painfully laboring to hide a complete spiritual vacuum.”58 Both these concerns are expressed admirably well by John Paul II: As an understanding of Revelation, theology has always had to respond in different historical periods to the demands of the diversity of cultures, in order to communicate the content of faith to those cultures with the appropriate formulation of doctrine. On the other hand she must explore the task committed to her by the Second Vatican Council: the task of renewing her

57 Ioannes XXIII, “Allocutio habita d. 11 oct. 1962, in initio Concilii,” 54 Acta Apostolicae Sedis [1962], 796, and for this quote, 792. This translation from the Latin of the opening address is from Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Christian Moral Principles, Vol. 1, 502. It seems obvious that John is distinguishing here between the propositional truths of faith and their linguistic expressions. This seems even more obvious in light of the point that the linguistic expressions of the truths of faith must keep the same meaning and the same judgment—if one grasps what a proposition means one knows what it is asserting to be true. The former are, if true, always and everywhere true; the latter, that is, the different way of expressing these truths, may vary in our attempts to more clearly and accurately communicate revealed truths, but do not affect the truth of the propositions. 58 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, Translated by J.R. Foster, Communio Books (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990, Second German edition, published with a new preface, 2000; originally published in German, 1968), 32.

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chapter five own structures of teaching for the better service of evangelization. On this subject who does not recall the words with which Blessed Pope John XXIII opened the Council? He said then: “It is imperative, as many sincere members of the Christian Catholic and Apostolic faith earnestly desire, that this teaching should be more widely and deeply known and that minds should be more imbued with and formed by it. It is vital that the same certain and changeless teaching to which we owe faithful obedience should also be explored and presented in a way which meets the needs of our time.”59

No Conflict between the “Listening” and the “Teaching” Church Fourth, in principle there should be no conflict between the ‘listening’ and the ‘teaching’ Church, between the ministerial function of the teaching office and its primary service of listening to the authoritative sources, especially the Scriptures, the supreme norm of faith, the norma non normata, of an openness to them, consulting and considering them. Ratzinger rightly puts it, this listening is necessary “in order to be able to interpret them truly and preserve them . . . as a faithful servant who wards off attempts at foreign domination and defends the dominion of the Word of God both against modernism and against traditionalism. At the same time the contrast between the ‘listening’ and the ‘teaching’ Church is thus reduced to its true measure: in the last analysis the whole Church listens, and, vice versa, the whole Church shares in the upholding of true teaching.”60 The whole Church, laity and hierarchy alike, share in the threefold ministry of Christ as prophet, priest and king, but they do so in fundamentally different but interrelated ways as the universal priesthood of all believers and the sacramental priesthood, respectively.61 But Berkouwer may reply by arguing that this fourth thesis misses the point. He, too, thinks that there should be no conflict between the “listening” and the “teaching” Church. The question is whether the Church’s hermeneutical practice genuinely leaves “the Bible open in the Church,” as Berkouwer says, “where it can be read, listened to, and preached” (CR, 46 [33]). Berkouwer’s doubts about an “open Bible” in the Church stem in part from the Catholic position that there exists an intrinsic and necessary interdependence of Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office such that theologian takes his starting point from the actual 59 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 92. The quote of John XXIII is from his Address at the Opening of Vatican II. 60 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 197. 61 Lumen Gentium, Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, nos. 9–12.



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teaching in the Church, with the Church being “proximate and universal norm of truth.” For example, as I explained in the last chapter, there is the emphasis in Dei Verbum that scriptural interpretation “is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God” (no. 12; italics added). Elsewhere in Dei Verbum we read, “Catholic exegetes . . . and other students of sacred theology, working diligently together and using appropriate means, should devote their energies, under the watchful care of the sacred teaching office of the Church, to an exploration and exposition of the divine writings” (no. 23; italics added). I’ll treat Berkouwer’s doubt extensively in my reply to his second objection. For now we should stress, as Jared Wicks correctly remarks, “the preemptive authority of the teaching office did not mean that in doing theology a person only repeats the contents of church documents. Pius XII [in his encyclical Humani Generis] also insisted on immersion in the life-giving waters of the original sources, for pure speculation is sterile, while scripture and tradition give fresh vigor to theological work.”62 In Pius’ own words: Theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation. . . . Each source of divinely revealed doctrine contains so many rich treasures of truth, that they can really never be exhausted. Hence it is that theology through the study of its sacred sources remains ever fresh; on the other hand, speculation which neglects a deeper search into the deposit of faith, proves sterile, as we know from experience.63

So, in principle, there need be no conflict between the ‘learning Church’ and the ‘teaching Church.’ Indefectibility and Infallibility Fifth, the crux of Berkouwer’s objection to the presumption of coincidence is the claim that the promise of the Spirit concerning the Church’s

62 Wicks, Doing Theology, 20. 63 Pius XII, Humani Generis, no. 21. Yves Congar makes a similar point. “The method of positive theology, because it is theology, will then be ‘regressive’ according to the term proposed by Fr. A. Gardeil. Positive theology takes its departure from the present, from the actual teaching in the Church, but it tries to enrich that teaching with a knowledge obtained by putting to work all the resources of historical reason as well as the total teaching of the Church, its integral social testimony on Revelation, which comprises together with Scripture—its principalior pars—all the development and all the expressions which Revelation has received in the Church through time and space” (A History of Theology, 236–237).

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indefectibility in truth is rendered an a priori guarantee that is objectified into an automatic guarantee of truth by virtue of the nature of the Church. For more than twenty five years Berkouwer opposed this view because “the promise that the Church will never defect into total apostasy is correlative to the Church’s walking the way of faith and obedience” (VCNT, 259 [210]). Summarizing the position of the Reformation, Berkouwer writes: The most perceptive and determinative question that was posed by the Reformation was the one concerning the manner in which the church submitted itself to the prophetic-apostolic witness of Holy Scripture and in which she sought to safeguard the continuity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For the Reformers, no certainty was attainable via a definitive and settled appeal to the authority of the church. The rejection of this all-embracing and guaranteed solution did not emerge from devaluing the church, or her office and authority, but from another vision of the nature of her authority. For the Reformation, no “definition” of the church was possible or thinkable for even a moment where she could operate on the basis of an a priori sanction rather than in submitting to the authority of the Word. Only as the “ecclesia audiens”—in all the conditional dimensions attached to this, promise and exhortation—could the church truly be the “ecclesia docens.” For this reason, for the Reformation every a priori that fell outside the correlation that defined the essence of the church was excluded on the basis of essential “submission” to the Word of the living and ever-present Lord of the church.64

As I understand Berkouwer’s position, I share it. But I would like to sum it up using the words of Carl Braaten that I cited earlier: “Orthodoxy without episcopacy is blind; episcopacy without orthodoxy is empty.”65 In short, adds Braaten, “Without the Bible the church is blind, and without the church the Bible is dumb.”66 The indefectibility of the Church’s teaching authority in truth, indeed, the very authentic exercise of her authority, is derived from her submission in faith and hope to the Word of the living and ever-present Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ. Only her ongoing submission to the prophetic-apostolic witness of the Scripture can preserve her in the continuity of the Gospel, orthodoxy, as it were. It is not the fact that the Church as such has authority to teach through a hierarchical 64 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 347–348. 65 Braaten, Mother Church, 97. Similarly, Charles Journet writes, “Where in the West do we still find belief in the infallibility of the Church or in the infallibility of Scripture itself? More and more a close connection is becoming apparent between belief in the infallibility of Scripture, its inspiration and its inerrability [inerrancy], and belief in the infallibility of the primacy of Peter” (Primacy of Peter, 72). 66 Braaten, Mother Church, 129.



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constitution and authoritative leadership, papacy and episcopacy, that preserves her in the promise of perpetuity or indefectibility. For papacy and episcopacy without orthodoxy is empty. The realization of this promise in her teaching authority is neither automatically guaranteed nor selfevident. Rather, it is based in the Lord’s divine assistance, who preserves her in the truth by his Spirit (John 14:26, 16:13) to the extent that the Church remains faithful to the promise of the Spirit to be with her until “the closing of the ages” (Mt 28:20), such that not even the “gates of hell will overcome here” (Mt 16:18). The source of this guarantee is found in the Church’s ongoing obedience manifested in her living “in coherence with love, faith and walking in the truth,” indefectibility thus being “the fruit of her confidence in God’s gracious promise, in timore et tremore.”67 Still, there is something fundamentally missing from Berkouwer’s understanding of Church authority. No, it isn’t that he denies that the actual Church, the visible Church, here and now, rightly possesses the confidence, as Dulles puts it, “that she will never cease to bear authentic witness to Christ.”68 Berkouwer rejects ecclesiological docetism.69 Thus, he affirms that the continuity and indefectibility of the Church “applies to the very visible Church as, grasping the promises in faith, it walks the way of faith and obedience through the fires of severe testing” (VCNT, 259 [210]). In other words, adds Berkouwer, “The controversy between Rome and the Reformation is not one between a church that is sure of its indefectibility and a church that is not sure of it.”70 Yes, of course he rejects the claim that the Catholic Church, this visible Church, is the fully and rightly ordered expression of the Body of Christ, standing in full institutional continuity with the apostolic Church, and hence is the Church of Christ.71 But not even that major difference is the point here. Rather, I am trying to get at the point that the difference between Berkouwer and Catholicism is about how the Church is preserved from errors that would contradict the truth of the Gospel. According to the Catholic 67 E. Schillebeeckx, O.P., “Ecclesia Semper Purificanda,” in Ex Auditu Verbi, Theologische Opstellen Aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. G.C. Berkouwer (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1965), 216– 232, and for this quote, 228. Berkouwer’s brief response to Fr. Schillebeeckx is found in De Heilige Schrift, II, 353–355. 68 Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 65. 69 Berkouwer, VCNT, 260 [210]. See also, De Kerk, I, 31–60 [29–50]. 70 Berkouwer, VCNT, 260 [210]. Berkouwer has no problem citing evidence from Lutheran and Reformed creeds confessing the indefectibility of the Church (VCNT, 258 [210]). More extensively, see Ketters of voortrekkers, 19. 71 I give a Catholic theological justification for this claim in my book, Dialogue of Love, Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic Ecumenist, 19–52.

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faith, “The Magisterium is one of the means whereby God preserves the Church in the truth of the gospel.”72 Furthermore, in reply to the question of how it does so, the brief answer is simply, though significantly, that by exercising its teaching authority the Magisterium of the Church teaches infallibly, and the latter is “at the service of the Church’s indefectibility.”73 On this view, infallibility cannot be reduced to indefectibility, meaning by the latter that the Church “will remain in truth in spite of all the errors that are always possible.”74 “Properly understood,” as Küng explains, infallibility, now reduced to indefectibility, “means the confidence of faith that, in spite of many errors in detail, intrinsically the Church is maintained in the truth of the gospel by the Spirit of God.”75 This reductionist view of infallibility is rejected by the Church. On Dulles’ non-reductionist view of infallibility, by contrast, “Thanks to the promised assistance of the Holy Spirit and the created means of grace, the Church as a whole has what Vatican II speaks of as a ‘charism of infallibility’ [Lumen Gentium, no. 25]. Putting this idea in a positive form, one may say that the Church is gifted with what Vatican I calls a ‘charism of unfailing truth and faith’.”76 In particular, this means that “infallibility in the traditional sense,” as Rahner correctly puts it, “includes the truth of individual defined statements and not merely in the sense that Hans Kung . . . seems to advance, namely that the indefectibility of the Church’s faith ultimately refers to the continuing union of the Church with its Lord—a union which allows, even in ‘definitions’, many remediable errors.”77 Of course the Church’s teaching function derives its justification from the truth of Christian doctrine and the proclamation of the true Word of God. As Ratzinger correctly sees, “The function of the Magisterium is not, then, something extrinsic to Christian truth nor is it above the faith. It arises directly from the economy of faith itself, inasmuch as the Magisterium is, in its service to the Word of God, an institution positively willed by Christ as a constitutive element of his Church. The service to Christian truth which the Magisterium renders is

72 Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 65. 73 Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, September 3, 1998, “The Gift of Authority,” no. 41.1. Online: https://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/Arcicgf3.htm. 74 As Hans Küng, the prominent defender of “ecclesial indefectibility” rather than “magisterial infallibility,” put it in his controversial book, Infallible? An Inquiry (New York: Doubleday, 1971), 144 (italics added). 75 Küng, Infallible?, 163. 76 Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 65. 77 Karl Rahner, “A Century of Infallibility,” Theology Digest XVIII, No. 3, Autumn 1970, 216–221, and for this quote, 216.



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thus for the benefit of the whole People of God called to enter the liberty of the truth revealed by God in Christ.”78 I think we can now understand why the Catholic Church, in its understanding of indefectibility, requires as one of the conditions of indefectibility “that those preaching and teaching the faith on highest authoritative level be not mistaken about what pertains essentially to revelation.” Moreover, Dulles adds, “as defined at Vatican I and reaffirmed at Vatican II, the supreme Magisterium, in its definitive teaching about matters of faith and morals, is divinely protected against error.”79 In other words, infallibility is a necessary condition even if not a sufficient one of the Church’s indefectibility. It is therefore necessary for the Magisterium’s activity of teaching what the truth of the faith is in “an infallible homogeneity and continuity between the divinely revealed deposit of faith revealed once and for all by the apostles, on the one hand, and its actual preservation through the ages by means of a divinely assisted teaching office, on the other.”80 In

78 Donum Veritatis, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologians, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, no. 14. The Prefect for the Congregation at that time was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. 79 Dulles, Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 66. 80 Journet, Primacy of Peter, 57. It would take us too far afield to theologically justify the Catholic teaching that this teaching office is a an apostolic office by virtue of apostolic succession. Berkouwer writes, “Reformed thought contends rather unanimously that the doctrine of apostolic succession rests on a misunderstanding of the special function of the apostles, a function which was defined by the situation within the history of salvation in which they were ordained, a situation which renders their peculiar office untransferable and unrepeatable. Oscar Cullman has performed a noteworthy service in showing that the once-for-allness of the ‘salvation time’ that broke into the world with Christ gives to the apostles, as eye-witnesses of that time, a unique position. The Reformed consensus insists that though these office were properly established to govern the Church as time went on, these offices were not apostolic offices. They were means by which the apostolic proclamation would be continuously recalled, so that Christ’s high priestly prayer would be fulfilled in the Church” (VCNT, 202–203 [166]). Journet responds to Cullman and hence to the Reformed consensus that Berkouwer shares. Catholic doctrine “distinguishes between a mission of the apostles which is an extraordinary non-communicable charisma relating to the foundation of the Church, and ordinary communicable charisma relating to the preservation of the Church. . . . Let there be no misunderstanding on this point. It is perfectly clear that the mission of the apostles comprised a charisma which was by its very nature non-transferable. What is denied here is that in spite of a difference in level, which no one doubts, there was an infallible homogeneity and continuity between the divinely revealed deposit of faith revealed once and for all by the apostles, on the one hand, and its actual preservation through the ages by means of a divinely assisted teaching office, on the other; between the essential structure of the Church in the never-to-be-repeated days of its foundation by the apostles and the essential structure of the Church in the course of its pilgrimage through time; or, more profoundly, between the mystery of Christ as the Head and the mystery of the Church as his Body” (The Primacy of Peter, 53, 57).

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sum, Dulles is right that the notion of infallibility makes good theological sense when seen in light of other Christian beliefs: 1. God provides for the Church effective means by which it may and will in fact remain in the truth of the gospel till the end of time. 2. Among these means are not only the canonical Scriptures but also, as an essential counterpart to the Scriptures, the pastoral office. Without such a pastoral office the Christian community would not be adequately protected against corruptions of the gospel. 3. The pastoral office is exercised for the universal Church by the bearer of the Petrine office (which means, for Catholics, by the pope). It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the pope is equipped by God with a special charism (or grace of office) for correctly interpreting the gospel to the universal Church, as circumstances may require. 4. In order that the papacy may adequately discharge its function of preserving unity in the faith and exposing dangerous errors, the papal charism must include the power to assert the truth of the gospel and to condemn contrary errors in a decisive and obligatory manner. Authoritative pronouncements from the Petrine office that are seriously binding on all the faithful must have adequately certified truth, for there could be no obligation to believe what could probably be error.81

The matter, then, of teaching infallibly is what is missing, not surprisingly, from Berkouwer’s account of the function of the Church’s teaching authority. At best we can say that he reduces the Church’s infallibility to indefectibility.82 The Church is indefectible, rather than infallible, when

81 Avery Dulles, S.J., “Moderate Infallibilism,” in Teaching Authority & Infallibility in the Church, Edited by Paul C. Empie, et al. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1978), 81–100, and for this quote, 83. Again, the teaching function of the Magisterium is not extrinsic to Christian truth nor is it above the faith. Indeed, to quote Dulles again, “Together with the promise of perpetuity [indefectibility], Christ has given to the Church means whereby she can assuredly remain ‘the pillar and the bulwark of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15; cf. 2 Tim 2:19). These means include the canonical Scriptures, as an inspired record of the developing faith of the People of God in its constitutive phase; sacred Tradition, whereby the Church preserves her deposit of faith as a living memory; the sacraments, whereby she encounters the living Lord in faith; prayer, whereby she invokes the Spirit of Truth; and the ecclesiastical office, which continues to shepherd God’s People as the needs of the time require” (Magisterium, Teacher and Guardian of the Faith, 65). Msgr. Robert Sokolowksi correctly states, “the authority of the teaching church is the authority and responsibility of an office; the church identifies and differentiates not primarily on the basis of scholarship and reflective argument—however much it might use these in preparing for its decision—but on its commission to determine what is the truth of the faith” (The God of Faith & Reason, 28). 82 Fr. Schillebeeckx also gives an interpretation of infallibility that suggests its reduction to indefectibility. This interpretation is much to the surprise of Berkouwer and Heiko Oberman (Ketters of voortrekkers, 19–20). Oberman says, “But is infallibility thus devel-



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we are confident that, in light of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, she will not depart significantly from the truth of the Church’s historical faith, even though the Church’s magisterium may be in error concerning doctrinal statements that she teaches must be held definitively. This point is evident from his discussion with Edward Schillebeeckx who explicitly gives that reductionist interpretation that the Church is indefectible rather than infallible.83 In reply, Berkouwer says: Thus, you could also say the following about continuity: we can never make a claim about preservation (that holds, naturally, for all churches). We cannot pin it down specifically, and in that way transcend the problem. Now, I think that the Reformation points the way on the matter—naturally, fraught with dangers: that we may never lay a hand on any matter of faith as if— without permanently testing it—as it we have mastered it. I think that this element of critically testing, nevertheless, will no longer be able to be maintained as an essential difference.84

Of course Berkouwer is right in emphasizing that we can never be ‘masters’ of the truth as such, let alone divine truth. Still, it is another thing to suggest that from our inability to be masters of the truth that it follows “that [therefore] dogmatic formulas (or some category of them) cannot signify truth in a determinate way.”85 This passage gives us a glimpse into Berkouwer’s understanding of the epistemic status of, say, dogmas that have been handed down in creeds and councils, confessions, and which the Church claims preserves the truth of revelation, a universally valid truth, normative, and unchangeable in substance. Take for example, the revealed truth of John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and made his ­dwelling

oped in order to give certain, solid support to believers so that they know that this is now really the doctrine of the church? Whenever you [Schillebeeckx] posit the various levels of tradition dialectically over against each other this way, then this doctrine no longer achieves the purpose for which it has been used up to this point” (19). Berkouwer adds, “I also find that [Schillebeeckx’s interpretation of infallibility] to be a difficult problem.” Later Oberman asks Schillebeeckx, “Do I understand accurately that in your explanation of infallibility it is reduced to indefectibilitas, to the permanence and triumph of the church” (20)? Schillebeeckx agrees, but doesn’t justify his interpretation: “In my theological works,” he says, “I use the word ‘indefectibilitas’, unequivocably or some similar term rather than infallibilitas.” 83 The Church rejects the reduction of infallibility to indefectibility. “The faithful are in no way permitted to see in the Church merely a fundamental permanence in truth,” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared in Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), “which, as some assert, could be reconciled with errors contained here and there in the propositions that the Church’s Magisterium teaches to be held irrevocably” (no. 4). 84 Berkouwer in Ketters of voortrekkers, 20. 85 Mysterium Ecclesiae, no. 5.

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among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Nicene and Chalcedon creeds define this revealed truth as dogma. What is dogma? “Dogma in a stricter sense . . . is a teaching in which the church proclaims a truth of revelation definitively and in a way that is binding for the universal church, with the result that denial of that teaching is rejected as heresy and anathematized.”86 Now, as I understand what Berkouwer is saying in the above passage, he suggests that we cannot make the claim that this is a dogma in the sense just defined. Berkouwer is a fallibilist, epistemologically speaking, namely, he thinks that all assertions, that is, truth-claims, are open to reversibility such that they must, as I cited him above, “be constantly put to the test, a test met within the context of the promise [of the Spirit]” in light of the whole of Scripture. The Church can never claim that she possesses the truth in a dogma. No, perhaps that isn’t quite right. Perhaps Berkouwer is saying that no linguistically articulated dogma, given the historical relativity of the concepts and language used to articulate the dogma, is ever definitive, irreformable, in short, permanent. In other words, perhaps Berkouwer is saying that “dogmatic formulas . . . can only offer changeable approximations to it, which to a certain extent distort or alter it;” and second, “that these formulas signify the truth only in an indeterminate way, this truth being like a goal that is constantly being sought by means of such approximations.”87 Everything, then, would be open to permanent testing in light of the total witness of Scripture. Berkouwer, then, remarks on the paralyzing effect this may have upon on our ability to make assertions. He writes, “In this way that relates to the entire witness of Scripture, the depressing feeling can sometimes overwhelm us that everything seems to become increasingly complicated, thus less apparent, and that there remains scarcely any room any longer for ‘assertiones’.”88 In other words, if the interpretation of Scripture has become more and more complicated, as Berkouwer states, and hence what it is that Scripture teaches appears less transparent, there seems hardly any room left for “assertions” of dogmatic truth. 86 International Theological Commission, “On the Interpretation of Dogmas,” Origins 20 (May 17, 1990): 9; as cited in Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 3. See also, Müller, Priesthood and Diaconate, “Dogma is the linguistic form assumed by the Word as a result of God’s will to communicate himself—that same Word which, in the Church’s verbal profession of faith, is God and has become flesh” (190). 87 Mysterium Ecclesiae, no. 5. 88 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 273 (italics added).



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A dogma, says the International Theological Commission, is “a teaching in which the Church proposes a revealed truth definitively, and in a way that is binding for the universal Church.”89 John Paul II makes this point about dogmatic statements in his 1998 encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio, “Dogmatic statements, while reflecting at times the culture of the period in which they were defined, formulate an unchanging and ultimate truth.”90 Elsewhere in that same encyclical, he states: “The Bible, and the New Testament in particular, contain texts and statements which have genuinely ontological content. The inspired authors intended to formulate true statements capable, that is, of expressing objective reality.”91 Later in this chapter we shall show that Berkouwer’s kerygmatic theory of revelation leaves unclear the status of propositions in his theory. For now, what isn’t clear here is whether Berkouwer means to say that it is hard to make dogmatic assertions. If so, how does he avoid dogmatic relativism?92 Furthermore, his position puts in doubt, not only the concept of the Church’s infallibility, but also the very claim that the truth is taught or held in a determinate way by the Church such that the teaching of that truth is decisive and irrevocable. What is, then, an assertion? Berkouwer doesn’t say. Typically, we use propositions to make assertions. For example, the Scripture asserts the proposition, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). If I assert that proposition, I am expressing my belief. In other words, when I believe ‘that p’ I have intellectually assented to the truth of some proposition, say, the Nicene claim that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, homoousion with the Father; and in believing that proposition, I am claiming that it is true. Furthermore, true propositions express true beliefs. Of course my believing it to be true, does not make it true. A proposition is true if and only if what that proposition asserts is in fact the case

89 “On the Interpretation of Dogmas,” III.3. 90 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 95. 91  John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 82. 92 The International Theological Commission asks, “How can man take the hermeneutic circle between subject and object seriously without becoming victims of a relativism which recognizes nothing but interpretations of interpretations, which, in turn, give birth to further interpretations. Is there, not as something external, but at the very heart of the historical process of the historical process of interpretation, a truth existing of itself? May man claim and absolute truth? Are there certain [universally valid] propositions which must be admitted or denied, no matter what the culture is, or the particular point in mankind’s history” (“The Interpretation of Dogma” (1990), in Texts and Documents 1986–2007, Edited by Reverend Michael Sharkey and Father Thomas Weinandy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 26.

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about objective reality; otherwise, it is false. Is Berkouwer now suggesting that the Scripture doesn’t use propositions to make assertions, that Scripture doesn’t contain propositional revelation, or that it is hard to see which proposition are being used to make biblical assertions? And hence, in light of that difficulty, that we can’t make assertions? Not exactly. Yes, he thinks that we are constantly called to test critically our claims in light of the whole of Scripture, that we are always on the way to the truth, that is, “that each insight and observation is not the end of the matter but its beginning, since it finds its true legitimacy only in continuing attention to the biblical witness.” But, Berkouwer adds, “That does not signify a ‘being underway’ that would stand in opposition to the assertiones, even less that that was the case with Paul, but an awareness of the mystery present in the assertiones!”93 That awareness implies the recognition of the “inadequacy of every formulation of the truth.”94 But inadequacy of expression doesn’t mean inexpressibility of truth. That inadequacy, says Berkouwer, “has nothing to with an irrational doubt regarding the value of thought, but rather it is a question of the inexhaustibility of the truth of the Gospel.”95 Still, although truth is not inexpressible in human formulations, its inexhaustibility implies that our attempts to formulate the truth determinately is always taken up in the context of striving to be faithful to the gospel, to the deposit of faith. This is the point I take Berkouwer to be making in the following passage. Clearly, it is not at all a question of denying the certainty of speaking about God, of misunderstanding or relativizing the affirmative nature of that speech. Rather at play here is the canonical [Scripture] and unchangeable [truth] that have the decisive role of being expressed in the confession of faith. . . . It is then not a question of uncertainty, or a “maybe” or a “probably,” but rather a matter of taking seriously the witness of God and man and in these affirmations to remember the good confession Paul speaks of in connection with fighting the good fight of faith [1 Tim 6:12].96

So, the issue isn’t that Berkouwer is asking us to refrain from the practice of making assertions. Rather, we can make assertions as long as we are mindful that no statement comprehensively exhausts divine truth. Still, we are no further at this point in knowing whether Berkouwer thinks that

93 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 272, 274, respectively. 94 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 5. 95 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 5. 96 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom de Belijdenis,” 7.



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doctrinal assertions are such that they “may be considered irrevocable, continuous, universal, materially identical, and objectively true.”97 If doctrinal assertions do not possess these properties, then, doesn’t this imply that all Christian teaching, particularly, doctrine, is reversible? If so, what is it that gives continuity, material identity, and therefore intelligibility to dogma? But is that so? How could the Nicene claim that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, homoousion with the Father, be reversible? In other words, is it admissible to deny that Jesus Christ is the incarnate Word of God? I dare say not. “For the historic and orthodox Christian faith,” as Guarino rightly says, “this assertion is universally and enduringly true, mediating an actual state of affairs.” “On the other hand, adds Guarino, “a qualified fallibilism is always endorsable if one means by this that every statement requires further thought and elucidation, that every assertion is open to reconceptualization and reformulation, and that no statement comprehensively exhausts truth, much less divine truth.”98 But this qualified fallibilism is not inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church that God has graciously bestowed upon his Church, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, a participation in his own infallibility and hence that the property of infallibility belongs to the Magisterium’s activity of teaching. I conclude these replies to the first objection with this very point that is made by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility.”99 Objection II The second objection concerns the claim that positing the coinherence of Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office undermines the objectivity (‘Gegenüber’) and authority of Scripture. The Catholic positions claims that the opposite is the case: maintaining the objectivity and authority of Scripture cannot be done apart from an interpretative tradition and Church teaching office “that must share in the authority of Scripture to secure scripture’s authority.”100 The coinherence of these three gives expression to their reciprocal and inseparable functional

  97 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 6.   98 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 129, 139n59.  99 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 889. 100 D’Costa, “Revelation, Scripture and Tradition,” 342.

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r­ elationship, with each of them exercising authority in their own unique way, such that this relationship does not jeopardize Scripture’s normative place as prima Scriptura, namely, as “the unique and final touchstone for all church teaching, including every conciliar or papal decision.”101 But it is precisely the claim of “coinherence” of Scripture and tradition that, according to Berkouwer, challenges Vatican II’s teaching that the Church is a servant of the Word of God and not above that Word. Reply The Council of Trent closed the door on the Protestant position of sola Scriptura which some Protestants along with some Contra-Reformation Catholics understood as an anti-tradition principle. Berkouwer, for one, and Heiko A. Oberman, for another, reject this interpretation of sola Scriptura.102 Like Vanhoozer, Berkouwer and Oberman suggest that the Reformers had an important place for tradition in the life of the Church: the Reformers understood themselves as the legitimate bearers of the ongoing Catholic tradition. Accordingly, they acknowledge and affirm aspects of that tradition, not only of a sense of continuity with the Church of the preceding centuries, but also its ecumenical orthodoxy as well as its exegetical tradition.103 Still, it remains to ask, not only whether tradition has an autonomous value, albeit no total autonomy in regard to Scripture, as an interpretative source, but also what kind of authority does it carry?104 Tradition is subordinated to Scripture, being a witness to the latter and hence deriving its authority from Scripture’s authority. Tradition is not “understood as a parallel stream of knowledge, independent of Scripture.”105 Rather, tradition enables the Church “to apprehend the deeper meaning of Scripture itself.”106 Still, does tradition’s entire value as an authoritative 101  Guarino, “Catholic Reflections on Discerning the Truth of Sacred Scripture,” 96. 102 Heiko A. Oberman, “The Protestant Tradition,” in The Convergences of Traditions, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 94–113. 103 George, “An Evangelical Reflection on Scripture and Tradition,” 16. 104 Congar rightly holds that this is the basic question that divides Rome and the Reformation: “Has tradition an autonomous value, albeit subordinated to that of Scripture, or does its entire value come from Scripture, which it interprets” (Meaning of Tradition, 167)? 105 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Tradition: Authentic and Unauthentic,” Communio 28 (Summer 2001): 377–385, and for this quote, 380. 106 Dulles, “Tradition: Authentic and Unauthentic,” 380.



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source come from Scripture? The Catholic tradition replies in the negative to that question. Tradition’s authoritative role as an interpretative source is such that, though its authority is neither greater than nor equal to the authority of Scripture, it nonetheless shares in biblical authority, assuming a relatively independent function in securing Scripture’s authority by virtue of giving vital expression to the substance of the faith. This would be my position. Therefore, the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas of the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon, are interpretative sources of tradition, forming the permanently normative context for interpreting the New Testament. Yes, this interpretative tradition derives its authority from Scripture, but these councils and their decrees must also share in some lesser sense in its authority. Otherwise, what would become of our faith in the Trinity and in the Incarnate Word of God without reading the New Testament in light of Nicaea and Chalcedon? The answer is quite clear, as Jean Daniélou correctly observes, we would “condemn ourselves to going over once again the long distance from adoptionism or subordinationism to consubstantialism.”107 Bavinck shares Daniélou’s perspective: “Now in the confession of the Trinity we hear the heartbeat of the Christian religion: every error results from, or upon deeper reflection is traceable to, a departure in the doctrine of the Trinity. . . . All the greater, however, has been the opposition to the ecclesiastical formulation [Nicene Creed] of the doctrine of the Trinity and the more frequent its restatement. At the same time the history of this dogma clearly demonstrates that only the ecclesiastical formulation of it is capable of preserving inviolate the matter with which we are here concerned.”108 I take the point being made by Daniélou and Bavinck to mean that a right reading of the Bible, of the unitary Bible, as Jenson puts it, must be “motivated and guided by the Church’s teaching.” Otherwise, as Jenson correctly adds, “we will find only dissecta membra in our hands.”109 Still, this ecclesial hermeneutics does not jeopardize the authority and objectivity of the Bible. Given that the Magisterium is a servant of the Word of God, with its own authority to keep faithfully, judge authentically, and define infallibly the deposit of faith, it “enjoys

107 Jean Daniélou, S.J., “The Catholic Tradition,” in The Convergences of Traditions, 39–66, and for this quote, 53. 108 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 255 [288]; italics added. 109 Robert W. Jenson, “Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church,” Reclaiming the Bible for the Church, editors, Carl E. Braaten, R.W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 89–105, and at 98.

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no autonomy with regard to the deposit [of revelation],” and hence its authority is derivative, but yet genuine authority. Congar explains: There is no moment of its activity as Magisterium—that is, as active tradition—when it is exempt from referring to the deposit and to its statements, since the former is merely a witness to the latter. . . . While it evaluates and judges, the Magisterium itself depends on tradition, since it is a function within the Church, and not above or outside here, and receives assistance only in keeping and defining the faith of the Church. It judges tradition in the sense that it decides whether it is indeed the tradition of the Church, but as soon as it has recognized it as such, the Magisterium submits to tradition as to a rule inherent to itself: exactly as the conscience submits to a good as soon as it has discovered it.110

Berkouwer’s position, then, on the relation between Scripture and the Church’s teaching office is not clear to me. On the one hand, his theological hermeneutic encompasses the way from the listening church (ecclesia audiens) to the teaching church (ecclesia docens). On the other hand, it isn’t clear whether he agrees with the biblical hermeneutics that holds a fundamental criterion of biblical hermeneutics to be the context of the church’s teaching. By emphasizing that biblical exegesis should be “open, honest and unbiased study of the Scriptures,” he gives the impression of contrasting Scripture strictly with the Church’s teaching office. The Church’s teaching office is dependent on exegesis, so as to ground dogma in Scripture explicitly. By implication, one gets the sense that, for Berkouwer, “if a dogma cannot be found in scripture explicitly it should be questioned and rejected.”111 This seems to be the only way to safeguard the objectivity and authority of the Scripture, according to Berkouwer. Having insisted that “sola Scriptura” is not an anti-tradition principle, but also having rejected the distinction between material sufficiency and formal insufficiency, Berkouwer leaves unclear in his own reflections what the hermeneutical significance of tradition, and hence the teaching office, is for properly interpreting Scripture. “When we maintain that this distinction [between material sufficiency and formal insufficiency] is untenable, that does not mean that the church is confronted with Scripture- minustradition, vertically and a-historically and that all continuity within the church should make room for the contingency and actuality of individual

110 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 100. 111  This is how Gavin D’Costa describes the classical Protestant position in “Revelation, Scripture and Tradition,” 344.



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listening.”112 Yes, Berkouwer does underscore that the faith of the Church expresses itself in history. Indeed, he underscores that tradition plays an important, indeed essential role in the transmission of the faith of the Church. Notwithstanding Berkouwer’s protests to the contrary in this passage, it does remain unclear, however, what role the living tradition of the Church, and hence the authority of the Church to teach, which he clearly affirms, plays in understanding properly the Scripture. Furthermore, it isn’t at all clear that Berkouwer offers a real alternative to the inner difficulties of the Protestant position, namely, hermeneutical individualism, subjectivism, and sectarianism. Of course Berkouwer isn’t suggesting that the exegete stands in some neutral position (‘storm free zone’) above or outside history and the Church, as if to suggest that exegesis without presuppositions is possible. But then what is he saying about the hermeneutical position of the exegete in respect of the ecclesial context of the teaching office? Is he drawing a sharp contrast here between the independence of biblical exegesis, on the one hand, and theological interpretation, that is, dogmatic and ecclesiastical exegesis, on the other? How, then, does he understand the relation between teaching authority and biblical interpretation? Who speaks for the Church in the name of the Church, and hence who defends the text of Scripture? I’ll return to these questions later in this chapter. For now, I note that without any real discussion, Berkouwer bluntly dismisses the hermeneutical rule that Scripture should be interpreted in the context of the Church’s living tradition as a matter of “scouring the woods” (Dutch: doorkruist), as it were, with exegesis, as if the Magisterium operates self-sufficiently, without reference to any higher norms. Significantly, he suggests that hermeneutical rules can only arbitrarily constrain or hold back exegesis if Scripture’s own authority is truly honored, that is, if “they are related to the discovery of the meaning of Scripture, to the exposition of the Word.” He adds, “there always has to be, therefore, an accountability with respect to the Word by which arbitrariness is prevented” (NC, 125 n. 58). Who would disagree with this last point? Certainly not Dei Verbum. Indeed, Vatican II specifically stated, “The magisterium is not above the Word of God, but serves it, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully by divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit. It draws from this one deposit of faith whatever it presents for belief as divinely revealed” (no. 10). 112 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 352.

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Evidently, according to Vatican II, the Church has a duty of being evervigilant as the listening Church, as Dei Verbum’s opening line eloquently states: “Hearing the Word of God with reverence and proclaiming it with faith” (no. 1). Certainly she does by virtue of Scripture possessing a certain independence, a relatively independent criterion, in face of the Church’s teaching office.113 Furthermore, the Church’s duty is not fulfilled simply by appealing to the infallibility of the Church’s teaching office. Still, we cannot put our faith, as Berkouwer seems to be emphasizing, in the exegetes being led by the Holy Spirit in order to achieve (in Berkouwer’s words) “open, honest and unprejudiced or impartial studies of Scripture.” Berkouwer seems unaware, at least in this context, of the hermeneutical pluralism that is characteristic of our fundamental hermeneutical situation.114 Ratzinger is explicitly aware of this hermeneutical situation, and he elicits E. Käsemann’s comment on the position, such as Berkouwer’s, that ascribes a certain primacy to independent exegesis: “On the contrary, it seems to me safer to walk through a minefield blindfold. Is it possible to forget for a second that we are daily concerned with a flood of doubtful, even abstruse ideas in the fields of exegesis, history and theology, and that our scholarship has gradually degenerated into a world-wide guerilla warfare?”115 Why, then, can’t we offer the real alternative of sola Scriptura et ecclesia in which Scripture has a certain primacy, prima Scriptura, norma normans et non normata, but not a normative place that is divisible from tradition and the teaching office of the Church, in order to safeguard the authority of Scripture as the Word of God? Berkouwer gives much attention to and expresses serious concern in Nabetrachting op het Concilie over the claim of Dei Verbum that Catholic exegetes and theologians are under the “watchful care of the sacred teaching office of the Church” [“sub vigilantia sacri magisterii”] (no. 23). “It is part of the very central problem of the Constitution [Dei Verbum] to determine concretely what is mean by this and what boundaries are posited by such ‘vigilantia.’ How does teaching authority function in the context of the concrete problematics of biblical studies that endeavor to understand the sense of Holy Scripture” (124–125)? I acknowledge the importance of

113 Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 46–47. ET: “Revelation and Tradition,” 48–49. 114 He is fully aware of hermeneutical pluralism in De Heilige Schrift, I, 138–225 [105–138]. 115 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 194.



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these questions. They are raised from a deep concern to honor the authority of the Bible. But “watchful care,” D’Costa critically remarks, “hardly means that scripture is in the clutches of the Magisterium.”116 Nor does it mean to devalue or remove the place of vigilance in guarding the objectivity and authority of Scripture. Still, Dei Verbum teaches that Scripture must be read within the Church. Certainly, this hermeneutical imperative does not give the Church’s teaching office complete autonomy regarding Scripture. This important point is plainly stated by Congar: “If the magisterium elucidates Scripture, it first and always submits itself to Scripture and must be ready to receive from it.”117 He elaborates: To imagine that the Church, at a given moment in its history, could hold as of a faith a point which had no stateable support in Scripture, would amount to thinking that an article of faith could exist without bearing any relation to the center of revelation, and thus attributing to the Church and its magisterium a gift equivalent to the charism of revelation, unless we postulate, gratuitously, the existence of an esoteric oral apostolic tradition, for which there exists no evidence whatsoever. It is an express principle of Catholic teaching that the Church can only define what had been revealed; faith can only have to do with what is formally guaranteed by God.118

Berkouwer is concerned with the serious risk involved in placing the written Word of God within the trilateral conception of authority—Scripture, tradition, and the teaching office of the Church. Will the Scripture be able to maintain its own voice, its own attraction, if it is placed in that coordinated system of authority?119 One wonders how Berkouwer could dispel what he regards, in Ratzinger’s words, as the “terrifying possibilities of the teaching office,” its so-called suppression and relativizing of the written Word of God, by merely appealing to Spirit-led exegetes who will apparently practice “independent investigation of Scripture” (NC, 130). Indeed, Berkouwer even suggests that “unbiased and thorough investigation of Holy Scripture is absolutely necessary in order to discover where and how the continuity of the church’s teaching becomes visible” (NC, 130). Though this sentence is not clear, I presume Berkouwer is speaking of the continuity of the Church’s teaching, and here he seems to be suggesting a fundamental criterion of biblical hermeneutics is independent of 116 D’Costa, “Revelation, Scripture and Tradition,” 342. 117 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 403. 118 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 414. 119 Berkouwer, NC, 120–121.

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the Church’s teaching office, indeed, of the living tradition of the Church. Berkouwer’s concern with continuity is fundamentally important in order to safeguard the true meaning of Scripture as ‘norma nòn normata.’ Still, he puts the task of safeguarding the objectivity and authority of Scripture in the hands of those exegetes who purport to practice “independent investigation of Scripture,” and hence he maintains that the ecclesial context is an extrinsic rule of interpretation. Berkouwer’s confidence in independent exegesis flies in the face of what Käsemann has called above “a flood of doubtful, even abstruse ideas in the fields of exegesis, history and theology,” and what Ratzinger in apparent agreement has described as “the caprice of exegetes, who have evacuated Scripture of meaning in the controversies of historians and so robbed it entirely of binding force.”120 Furthermore, couldn’t those so-called “terrifying possibilities” be similarly dispelled “through confidence in the Spirit that guides his Church [?]”121 Moreover, they may also be dispelled by two clear statements in Dei Verbum regarding the servant-character of both tradition and teaching office to the authority of Scripture. “This teaching office is not above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully by divine commission and with the help of the Holy

120 Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 29. ET: “Revelation and Tradition,” 31. Consider the recent example of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). The Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson, who is a member of that ecclesial community, writes: “In many of our churches we have been experiencing denominational, diocesan, or synodical decisions and statements on moral, disciplinary, and even doctrinal matters. Let me provide an example. My own denomination [ELCA] recently issued a draft statement about sexuality that flatly contradicted what reasonable folk used to think Scripture plainly says about a variety of matters. Now the drafting committee had asked seminary-certified exegetes to tell them what guidance Scripture might give them. And the exegetes had said what such exegetes now always say when thus summoned: ‘You will just have to decide on your own’. They were unable to offer anything definite. Those experts were not being dishonest. They were simply reading Scripture as it will inevitably be read if the classroom is the only place it is read closely and seriously. In the homiletical practice of worshipping and teaching assemblies, on the other hand, reading Scripture closely and seriously means struggle, because lives and behavior are at stake and folk are not going to let us off with evasions. If preaching and teaching are seriously and determinedly scriptural in our churches, we have to struggle to say what Scripture says, and by the act itself necessarily cling to the conviction that Scripture does say something. The struggle itself is the hermeneutical principle. It is the parish clergy, not the academics, whose labor to read the text closely, and assumption of the struggle that means in the parish, will maintain the authority of Scripture, and whose failure to read the text closely will undercut the authority of Scripture” (“Hermeneutics and the Life of the Church,” 94–95). 121 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 194.



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Spirit” (no. 10; italics added). Berkouwer does recognize the significance of this statement, but underestimates its far reaching implication for preventing Scripture from being made subservient to tradition or to the Magisterium in a complex Catholic position, that is, a trilateral conception of authority wherein Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office, operating together but exercising authority in a way that is unique to each one of them, are intrinsically and necessarily related. In particular, since each of them exercises authority in its own way, Scripture, tradition, and the Church’s teaching office are not on the same level of authority. As Berkouwer correctly acknowledges, “the teaching office serves the Word of God” (NC, 120). Indeed, as Congar explains, “Scripture has an absolute sovereignty; it is of divine origin, even in its literary form; it governs Tradition and the Church, whereas it is not governed by Tradition or the Church.”122 Still, Congar rightly elaborates, “Scripture’s sovereign character does not prevent it from being just one component of God’s redemptive work, a work which demands in addition the Church and Tradition. Nor does it mean that there do not hold between these three realities certain reciprocal interrelations which make it impossible to isolate them completely from one another, still less actually to oppose them.”123 Scripture is fundamentally the supreme norm of faith, and hence is never subjected to any other objective rule, but “is not the sole principle regulating the belief and life of the Church.” Indeed, adds Congar, “God has established two other principles: tradition and the Church, with her pastoral Magisterium.”124 And yet, Berkouwer worries whether the claim that the Church is ‘non supra Verbum’ can be fully honored in this trilateral system of coordinated authorities. Yes, it can for the fundamental reason that in this trilateral system, Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium are not on the same level of authority. Yes, each exercises authority, but in their own way, and the singularly unique way that Scripture exercises authority is such that it is the supreme guide to which the other authorities are subjected. As Ratzinger explains, “The Bible interprets the church, and the church interprets the Bible. Again, this must be a mutual relationship. We cannot seek refuge in an ecclesiastical positivism [i.e., solum magisterium]. Finally, the last word belongs to the church, but the church must give the last word

122 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 422. 123 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 422. 124 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 100.

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to the Bible.”125 That the Church gives the last word to the Bible does not mean that she confers authority upon the Bible in doing so; rather, she gives the last word to the Bible because the Church accepts and receives that Word as the very Word of God and not merely as the word of men. Are there risks here so that the Church will fail to honor her service to the Word and not elevate herself above that Word? Of course, but there are checks and balances built into this trilateral system of coordinated authorities that act as a safeguard to Scripture’s objectivity and authority. On this view, there exists an interdependent and dynamic interrelation between Scripture, tradition and the Church’s teaching office, without compromising the biblical teaching that the authority of all three is ultimately derived from Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Objection III Berkouwer aligns himself with K. Rahner, Y. Congar and J. Geiselmann who maintain that the Council of Trent, implicitly, left the door open for Scripture’s material sufficiency, indeed, for a “Catholic idea of sola Scriptura.”126 Congar rightly states, “This means that Scripture contains, in one way or another, all truths necessary for salvation.” But he also correctly adds, that this position is not inconsistent with the Council of Trent because the latter “merely affirms that the revealed truths and the principles of Christian living which are wholly contained in the Gospel are conveyed both by the traditions and by Scripture.”127 Still, if the entire truth of salvation is found in Scripture, which Catholics in their own way affirm, the question arises whether this means that Scripture is sufficient of itself to ground the great dogmas of the Church, for example, the fixing of the scriptural canon,128 the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas (the ontological 125 Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” as cited in D’Costa, “Revelation, Scripture and Tradition,” 349. 126 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 192. 127 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 410. 128 Congar correctly distinguishes the principle of canonicity, or normativity, from the ecclesiastical question regarding the actual fixing of the canon. The principle of canonicity is revealed: the Scriptures are canonical because they were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have God as their author, and, consequently, have been entrusted by God to the Church. The Scriptures are not inspired because they are canonical; that would imply “that the Church could create the normative value of Scripture; [but] it can only recognize it. One cannot say, therefore, that Scripture takes its authority from the Church, or even its canonicity, fundamentally” (Tradition and traditions, 417–419). Congar makes the same point in Meaning of Tradition, 110.



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Trinity consists of three eternally distinct persons, the personal divinity of the Holy Spirit, the equality of the divine persons, one divine person in two natures, the hypostatic union), Eucharistic presence, not to mention the Immaculate Conception and the bodily Assumption of Mary, Mother of God? The answer must be ‘no.’ Congar writes, “there is not a single point of belief that the Church holds by tradition alone, without any reference to Scripture; just as there is not a single dogma that is derived from Scripture alone, without being explained by tradition.”129 Thus, we still must come to grips with the real problem, according to the Protestant, of Scripture and tradition in relation to revelation and to the Church.130 The real problem arises from the Catholic view in which tradition is considered “either as a means other than Scripture in communicating Christianity or as having a content other than the Holy Scriptures.”131 In other words, explains Congar, “In both cases tradition is not Scripture; it is something else, in the widest sense. But in the first case, it presents or can present the same content [of Scripture] in a different way—and this ‘other way’ will need defining exactly; in the second case, it presents a content not given by the Scriptures.”132 Of course Berkouwer would have no problem, in principle, communicating Christianity by legitimate means other than the Scriptures. The Reformed tradition affirms the relative authority of, for example, councils, creeds, confessions, and catechisms as vehicles of transmitting the content of Christianity. That, then, isn’t the dividing issue. The question concerns the more fundamental one of how we account for the development of dogmas in relation to the objectivity and authority of Scripture? In some cases, for example, Trinitarian or Christological dogmas, we could say that the dogma is a more explicit formulation of what is already implicitly given in the truth-content of revelation, of the deposit of faith. In this case, one might say that this given dogma is logically part of the deposit, virtually given, even if not formally expressed. In the latter meaning of tradition, Christianity is expressed in belief-content other than that implicitly or explicitly expressed in Scriptures, namely, 129 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 39–40; see also, 43, “No article of the Church’s belief is held on the authority of Scripture independently of tradition, and none on the authority of tradition independently of Scripture.” Idem, Tradition and Traditions, 413, “The Church holds no truth from Scripture alone, and none from tradition alone, without Scripture.” 130 For my account of this problem I am indebted, mostly, to the writings of Congar and Ratzinger. I have also profited from Aidan Nichols, O.P., “The Nature of Tradition,” in his The Shape of Catholic Theology, 165–180. 131  Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 90. 132 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 90.

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in Marian dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, and so forth. Still, the Catholic claim is that any revealed truth must have its roots in some sense in Scripture even if not necessarily being explicitly taught there or derivable by good and necessary inference from what is taught there.133 For instance, Berkouwer himself refers to Geiselmann’s observation that Pius XII, in his 1950 encyclical, Munificentissimus Deus, appeals to Scripture as the ultimate basis (“tamquam ultimo fundamento”) for the dogma of Mary’s Assumption.134 Indeed, adds Congar, “Even the Marian dogmas defined in recent times, namely the Immaculate Conception [1854] and the corporal Assumption of the Mother of God [1950], are stated, in the bull Ineffabilis and the constitution Munificentissimus Deus, which proclaimed them respectively, as not being without foundation in holy Scripture.” The point here isn’t that the popes are justified in making this foundational appeal to Scripture, though I would argue that they are; rather, it is that they take these dogmas to be biblically justified, with the assumption being then that in some sense all truth is located in Scripture, even if it is also the case that “the Church holds no truth from Scripture alone, and none from tradition alone, without Scripture.”135 So, we have before us the claim that, on the one hand, the Magisterium teaches that Marian dogmas belong to the deposit of faith; on the other hand, it doesn’t claim to have discovered these dogmas either explicitly in Scripture or by logical inference, though there is the insistence that they are not “alien to formal scriptural statements,”136 such as dogma regarding the person and atoning work of Jesus Christ. How, then, are we to make sense of both these claims? Without justification of these two claims, is the Catholic then forced to admit that tradition provides the Church with new revelation? Does the Church after all have the power to create truth?137 If not, and recall that the Church insists that her teaching office “enjoys no autonomy with the regard to the deposit [of faith],” how then should the relationship between Scripture and tradition be conceived? Congar continues, “There is no moment of its activity as Magisterium—that is, as active tradition— when it is exempt from referring to the deposit and to its statements,

133 In Chapter Six, I attempt to provide a biblical justification for Marian dogmas. 134 Berkouwer, VCNT, 130n. 102 [108n. 55]. 135 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 43. 136 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 106. 137 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 81.



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since the former is merely a witness to the latter.”138 What is needed is an account that allows for genuine doctrinal development yet respects the substantial homogeneity of later dogma with revealed truth.139 Reply Let’s distinguish Tradition (with a capital T), understood as revelation in its transmission, from its two modalities of expression: Scripture, which is the written Word of God, and unwritten traditions. For the sake of clarity, let me say from the outset that by unwritten traditions I do not mean merely what is orally transmitted of an unwritten teaching. Rather, I am thinking especially of dogmas, such as, Nicaea (the Son, Jesus Christ, is of one substance with the Father), Chalcedon (one divine person with a human and divine nature), Council of Trent’s teaching regarding Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist (‘transubstantiation’), Vatican Council I on papal infallibility. These dogmas are taken simply to be clarifications of the truth-content of an idea already contained implicitly or explicitly in the Scripture. But the same cannot be said for the development of dogmas, such as: the Immaculate Conception, the bodily Assumption of Mary, the Mother of God. For they, Congar writes, “can scarcely pass as the simple explanation of a formal statement of Revelation, certified scripturally.” He adds, “And yet these dogmas have strong ties with Revelation, in the setting and by means of what is called ‘the analogy of faith’.”140 Here, again, is the real problem of tradition to which I will now sketch a solution. First, then, Tradition refers to the transmission of revelation in and through the totality of the Church’s life and consciousness, its way of life and worship, of the reality that is Christianity, which is necessarily a reality that is not only larger than the Scripture but also inclusive of it. This includes living transmission of a doctrine, the very substance of the Christian faith, of the embodiment of revelation, “not only by words, but also by attitudes and modes of action,” says Congar, “includes written documents, documents of the Magisterium, [the sacraments], liturgy, 138 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 70. Congar continues, “There is no moment of its activity as Magisterium—that is, as active tradition—when it is exempt from referring to the deposit and to its statements, since the former is merely a witness to the latter.” 139 Nichols, From Newman to Congar, 169. I will examine Berkouwer’s views of Catholic theories of doctrinal development throughout his writings on Catholicism in Chapter Six of this book. 140 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 120.

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[Creeds and Councils], patristic writings, catechisms, etc., a whole collection of things that form the evidence or monuments of tradition.”141 On this view, Scripture forms the central authority, indeed, a norma normans et non normata and hence we should speak of prima Scriptura, but not the only authority. Tradition, in this sense, is divine in origin because its source is a real, living self-communication of God, a divine transmission, namely, the Father’s handing-over of the gift of the Son to the world, and the Son’s subsequent handing-over of himself to the hands of sinful men, who in turn hands that gift on to the apostles, and whose successors in and through the Church hand it down throughout the whole economy of salvation by means of the Holy Spirit. Ratzinger explains, At the beginning of all tradition stands the fact that the Father gives the Son over to the world and that the Son for his part allows himself to be given over to the ‘nations’, as a sign. This original paradosis [tradition, “what is handed on”], in its character as judgment and gift of salvation, is contained in the abiding presence of Christ in his Body, the Church. To that extent the whole mystery of Christ’s continuing presence is primarily the whole reality which is transmitted in tradition, the decisive fundamental reality which is antecedent to all particular expressions of it, even those of scripture, and which represents what has in fact to be handed down.142

Ratzinger highlights in the above passage the dynamic character of the mystery of Christ’s continuing presence in the Church. Tradition in this sense primarily refers to the total reality “of the institutio vitae christianae under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”143 So, tradition here essentially involves what Ratzinger elsewhere calls the “pneumatological component of the Christ-event.”144 This component refers not only to the promise of the Holy Spirit to the apostles and, in them, to the Church, which makes them witnesses of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. It also refers to that aspect of the promise in which the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who will guide the Church into all truth (John 16: 13), writes Congar, “realizes and gives an inner depth to what was said and done once for all by Christ, which is the Gospel (John 14:26; 16).”145

141  Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 4. 142 Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 45. ET: “Revelation and Tradition,” 46. 143 Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 64–65. ET: 62–63. 144 Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 55. ET: 55. 145 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 52–53.



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Second, we can speak of tradition as Sacred Tradition because it is above all the saving truth of the Gospel, the divine Revelation made in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, Lord and Savior, who is the Father’s gracious gift to us for the sake of leading men to eternal life, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Tradition in this sense refers to the deposit of faith itself, namely, the heart of the gospel, the rule of faith. Berkouwer himself recognizes “the significance of tradition in the handing down of the apostolic witness, a tradition which the apostle himself demands be accepted and preserved.” Tradition, in this sense, refers to “a specific part of the past [that] has been qualified by the unique acts of God in Jesus Christ.” He adds, “The function of tradition is implicit in the fact that the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ Himself as the chief cornerstone” [1 Cor 11:2; Phil 2:6; 1 Tim 3:20; 2 Thess 2:15; Eph 2:20] (VCNT, 118–119 [99–100]). This Gospel tradition originally comes to us in the form of proclamation, of kerygma, which is the preaching of Christ and of the saving Gospel, claiming Christ to be the true fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures and the center—the concentration point—from which they take their meaning. In this sense of tradition, the living Word of God precedes the written because in the early Church “the apostles were essentially witnesses, heralds of the Good News, preachers and teachers.”146 Initially, then, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Sacred Tradition, is transmitted to the Church under the form of the living kerygma, of oral proclamation, of preaching, because the apostles preached before they wrote. Of course, as Berkouwer correctly remarks, this emphasis on the priority of preaching, of the spoken word, should not lead to “a devaluation of the written Word.” He adds, “the written Word may never be placed in opposition to preaching, for it is related to the living message both in origin and in aim.”147 There is a third sense of tradition to consider: the written Word. Eventually, however, this Sacred Tradition receives a living expression in the letters of the apostles and the Gospels, “written accounts of what Christ had said and done.”148 In this sense, Sacred Tradition is no different from the material contents of Holy Scripture. In short, as Geiselmann writes, “Holy Scripture is the paradosis of the apostolic kerygma, become writing.”149 After preaching the Gospel, the apostles expressed it to us in 146 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 17. 147 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 394–395 [333–334]. 148 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 16. 149 J.R. Geiselmann, “Scripture, Tradition, and the Church,” 55.

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the Scriptures, a written (verbal) Word revelation, the deposit of faith. Alternatively put, “New Testament Scripture is the written counterpart of apostolic tradition.”150 In its being so transmitted—a verbal revelation— the apostolic paradosis “becomes the parathêke, the apostolic bequest which is committed to the Church’s safekeeping.”151 “The Scriptures were given to the Church,” adds Geiselmann, and finds its place and life within her, “so that it could preserve the Gospel entrusted to it.”152 Berkouwer correctly says, “The fixation of the written Word means the preservation of what is important.”153 Indeed, in this way the power of Word is retained and the subject of the gospel may be heard in all ages. Significantly, tradition in its transmission of this sacred deposit through its being lived, defended and explained by the Church throughout the generations, is not only conservation but also development. In this sense, as Hans Boersma explains Congar’s view, “Scripture needs tradition for interpretation [because] the explanation of the faith deposit results in a development that may be described as growth.”154 In Congar’s own words, “[T]here is more in the ecclesial explanation (and, on occasion, in a ‘definition’ of the extraordinary magisterium) than in the text of Scripture, understood at the purely philological and historical level.”155 This understanding of the role of tradition as the interpretation of Scripture, as an interpretative source, as Berkouwer calls tradition, and of the magisterium, is necessary for building an account of the interpretative process in the development of doctrine. Fourth, then, is the development of the apostolic writings of the New Testament that we find in a number of unwritten apostolic traditions. For example, Sunday observance, turning to the east for prayer, the Lenten fast, certain baptismal rites, certain Eucharistic rites, infant baptism, validity of baptism by heretics, the sign of the cross, certain rules for the election and consecration of bishops, prayers for the dead, and various liturgical feasts and rites.156 Regarding these apostolic traditions, however, some 150 J.R. Geiselmann, Meaning of Tradition. Translated by W.J. O’Hara. Questiones Disputatae 15 (London/Freiburg: Burns & Oates/Herder, 1966), 23, and see also, 24. 151  Geiselmann, Meaning of Tradition, 23. 152 Geiselmann, Meaning of Tradition, 37. 153 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 395 [334]. 154 Han Boersma, “On Baking Pumpkin Pie: Kevin Vanhoozer and Yves Congar on Tradition,” 242. 155 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 125; idem, Tradition and Traditions, 267. This quote is cited by Boersma, “On Baking Pumpkin Pie: Kevin Vanhoozer and Yves Congar on Tradition,” 242. 156 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 37.



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of them concern practical points of application of articles of faith—e.g., making the sign of the cross represents the Trinitarian foundation of our salvation that is symbolized by the cross—rather than an article of faith. Praying toward the east (ad orientem) is significant from a doctrinal viewpoint regarding the liturgy and worship. Of course the practice of infant baptism, in contrast to believer’s baptism, as well as prayers for the dead, have doctrinal implications. These unwritten traditions are transmitted by the Church and hence sometimes it becomes difficult to distinguish between the actual apostolic origin of these traditions from their ecclesiastical origin, having been established by the Church. “For example, the obligation of hearing Mass on Sunday or of the annual Easter Communion is an ecclesiastical modification of a divine or apostolic reality. The papacy, in the form fixed by centuries of history, is a historical form of a divine institution (that of Peter as supreme pastor and head of the apostolic college), itself already modified by an apostolic initiative (the fact that Peter had his ‘see’ at Rome). [But] [s]ometimes ecclesiastical traditions are purely ecclesiastical.”157 The Council of Trent recognized and affirmed the existence and value of unwritten apostolic traditions against its Protestant critics. Still, Trent did not deal directly and extensively with what Congar calls “the problem of the tradition.”158 The tradition refers to the deposit of faith—Christianity and the essentials of the Christian message—that was delivered unto the Church from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God himself. The tradition begins by a divine transmission and “is the very principle of the whole economy of salvation.”159 Again, the problem of the tradition is that tradition is considered “either as a means other than Scripture in communicating Christianity or as having a content other than the Holy Scriptures.”160 Regarding the former, tradition refers, for example, to the sacraments, the liturgy, creeds and councils, magisterial documents, the Church’s art and architecture, as extra-scriptural means for communicating the Gospel. Regarding the latter, Marian dogmas, such as the Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Assumption of Mary, the Petrine ministry, papal infallibility, are the most obvious dogmas that spring to mind.

157 Geiselmann, Meaning of Tradition, 44. 158 Geiselmann, Meaning of Tradition, 165. 159 Geiselmann, Meaning of Tradition, 166. 160 Geiselmann, Meaning of Tradition, 90.

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How should we deal with this problem? Well, three of the most influential ways of dealing with this problem are 1) appealing to esoteric, non-public apostolic tradition, 2) post-apostolic revelation, and 3) the two-source theory of revelation. Each of these has it flaws. First, then, we cannot deal with the problem of tradition by appealing to “the idea of an esoteric, non-public apostolic tradition coming out of the closet from time to time.”161 Trent, too, disposed of this idea. Reference is being made here to an exclusively oral tradition in which the justification is sought for certain dogmas, such as, the Assumption of Mary. Congar argues that this view “is a figment of the imagination.” That is, “what was transmitted by the apostles must have been transmitted in something objective or exterior: either in writing, or in rituals or in the ordinary activity of Christian life.”162 Additionally, “that idea contradicts the positive assurance of such ancient witnesses as St. Irenaeus and Tertullian that the apostles made public all that they knew, without keeping back a kind of esoteric or secret portion, as the Gnostics claimed to do.”163 In short, Congar correctly rejects the claim that truths of faith were “handed down secretly through the ages, whispered in the ear.”164 Instead, he affirms the material sufficiency of Scripture: the entire dogmatic contents of the faith can either explicitly or implicitly be found there. Second, we also cannot deal with the problem of tradition by appealing to the concept of post-apostolic revelation made to the Church. Trent, too, closed this door. Doctrinal development is not synonymous with continuing revelation because the Church holds that God’s public revelation was

161  Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 176. 162 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 167. Elsewhere Congar writes, “This is an interpretation that connot stand the test of critique. Aside from the fact that the earliest church fathers (Irenaeus, etc.) repeatedly testified that the apostles did not secretly leave something behind, one needs to regard as pure fabrication or myth the idea that something would have been handed down to us by whispering in our ears or via some undisclosed, secret avenue” (“De Omstreden Kwestie,” 95). 163 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 38. Ratzinger makes a similar point in “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as peritus before and during Vatican Council II,” 274–275. Ratzinger’s central thesis is: “History can name practically no affirmation that on the one hand is not in Scripture but on the other hand can be traced back even with some historical likelihood to the Apostles. There are three classic examples given in textbooks, namely, the canon of Scripture, the existence of seven sacraments, and infant baptism. But these do not pass the text. . . . I repeat: there is no affirmation that is not found in Scripture but can be traced back with any historical probability to the time of the Apostles. If this is so, and it is so, one may not define tradition as the communication of unwritten affirmations” (274–275). 164 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 64; see also 286, 414; idem, Meaning of Tradition, 37.



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completed once and for all in Christ.165 He is the fullness and mediator of all revelation in the redemptive economy of God’s saving plan. Furthermore, God’s revelation in Scripture is central to that redemptive economy, but that revelation was closed at the death of the last apostle. Therefore, given the absolute sovereignty166 of the Scriptural canon, Berkouwer correctly observes, “It is in this light that we must understand why Roman Catholics deny that any Pope creates ‘new dogma’ either out of the material of the Church’s own consciousness or by way of a ‘new revelation’. . . . The crucial word in connection with the infallible teaching authority of the Church is not revelation, but ‘assistance’. With this assistance, the Church is able to keep its eyes open to the decisive ‘past’, with the canon remaining in and for the Church, a norma normans et non normata,” that is, the Scriptural canon is a “norming norm” and not a “normed norm” (VCNT, 127 [106]). In sum, then, the Church’s teaching office does not have a “gift of invention, but of discernment”167 resulting in a progressive understanding of revelation, gradually unfolding the implications of the written Word of God. The Church’s living tradition then is “not creative, but it is, in a sense, a source of Revelation—precisely because it contains and makes explicit things that it has always held and practiced concretely, but for which, in the beginning, there existed not written or verbal formulation.”168 On the one hand, then, Congar adds, “the Church invents nothing: she receives no new Revelation to alter or enrich the object of the saving faith.”169 On the other hand, however, the Church’s tradition is “full of inventions, of questions and initiative,” making doctrinal development a matter of “creative invention.”170 These two statements are not contradictory. The creativity and inventiveness Congar refers to is at the level of the formulating truths anew, keeping the same meaning and the same 165 Dei Verbum, no. 4: “The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Tim 6:14 and Tit 2:13).” 166 This is how Congar describes the authority of the Scriptures in Tradition and Traditions, 422. Elsewhere Congar writes, “Exactly the same value, therefore, should not be attributed to tradition and to the holy Scriptures, even if they are paid the same respect. The Holy Scriptures have an absolute value that tradition has not, which is why, without being the absolute rule of every other norm, like the Protestant scriptural principle, they are the supreme guide to which any others there may be are subjected. If tradition or the Magisterium claimed to teach something contradicting the Holy Scriptures, it would certainly be false, and the faithful ought to reject it” (Meaning of Tradition, 100). 167 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 70. 168 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 140. 169 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 134. 170 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 114, 117.

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judgment, and not at the truth itself. Now, though there is no increase in divine revelation, of the biblical canon, our understanding of it does increase under the guidance of the Church and through the power of the Holy Spirit. So, “even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.”171 Congar distinguishes a continuing underlying identity of truths that remain the same from their different expressions. He believes that the Holy Spirit ensures the “continual renewal and fertility within this given structure, which is guaranteed by a living and unchanging principle of identity.”172 In this connection, the question arises regarding the assurance of the Church’s faithful interpretation of that living and unchanging principle of identity given the notion that doctrinal development in the “living tradition” of the Church involves a progressive understanding of revelation. I shall return to this question in the next chapter on doctrinal development. Third, of course the most influential way of dealing with the problem of tradition as I have described it above, is to affirm the two-source theory of revelation (division of revealed truth between Scripture and tradition). Trent also, implicitly, left the door open for this theory. I noted earlier that this theory had dominated Catholic theology between the sixteenthcentury Council and the nineteenth century. Berkouwer enthusiastically agrees that this traditional theory was “not a teaching of the church, but the theory of a certain school of thought” (NC, 112). It is commonly said that the Church teaches that two sources of revelation exist, each with distinct contents. Congar describes this view: “Tradition is a completely autonomous source that objectively and materially completes Scripture, thus amounting to two sources.”173 But Congar rightly remarks, “This position is difficult to harmonize with the church fathers and theologians [such as Aquinas] who predated Trent. Those holding it can appeal neither to the text of the Council of Trent nor to the entire body of Catholic polemicists.”174 I, too, reject the position that Scripture is completed by tradition, adding to it because the former allegedly only contains a part of revealed truth. Rather, tradition is an interpretative source, and the living tradition of the Church is the context involving a development of

171  Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 66. 172 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 265. 173 Congar, “De Omstreden Kwestie,” 101. 174 Congar, “De Omstreden Kwestie,” 101.



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Scripture, “that possesses radical and material sufficiency.”175 But if Scripture possesses material sufficiency, then this means that all the truths necessary for salvation are contained in the Scriptures. So, in one way or another, even the Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the bodily Assumption of Mary are part of the deposit of divine Revelation. But the claim that all revealed truth is virtually contained in Scripture is, prima facie, difficult to show if that means, not only that theological interpretation is a matter of purely exegetical exposition, but also that tradition is unnecessary for interpreting Scripture. But as Congar rightly says, “The truth is that there is no doctrine of the Church based solely on Scripture independently of tradition, and none that she holds solely by oral tradition independently of Scripture: because, on the one hand, Scripture has no implications for faith independently of its meaning, given to us in the Church’s delivery of it, animated by God’s Spirit and, because, on the other hand, tradition possesses many links with Scripture.” He elaborates: (1) Even if it completes the latter [Scripture] objectively, what it adds must, short of being a new Revelation, which is impossible, be closely connected with the written testimony; (2) in its essential dogmatic content, it gives the meaning of the Scriptures; (3) it is a synthesis, in the way already described, namely by uniting the numerous separate or partial statement to the center of Revelation, which is the economy of the Covenant in Jesus Christ of the Christian mystery. It [tradition] plays this role in its interpretation of the Scriptures and also in its developments that go beyond the explicit scriptural statements.176

Congar raises the question of doctrinal development in the concluding sentence of this quotation, and I will consider it at length in Chapter Six, along with Berkouwer’s reflections in his writings on Catholicism regarding doctrinal development. For now, it must suffice to answer the question raised above regarding the role of tradition in its interpretation of Scripture, particularly when tradition goes beyond the text of Scripture. Let us recall that theological interpretation must in some sense be closely connected with Scripture, manifesting a homogeneity with revealed truth, giving an understanding of the “scriptural meaning, a penetration of its content and implications.”177 Congar asks pointedly, “Upon what grounds,

175 Congar, “De Omstreden Kwestie,” 101. 176 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 106. 177 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 406.

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and on what conditions does all this occur?”178 The first principle that guarantees the substantial homogeneity of later dogma with revealed truth is what is called the “analogy of faith, that is, the relationship enjoyed by the various truths, linking them to each other, and all collectively to the center of revelation.”179 This principle should appeal to Berkouwer. Like Congar, he, too, rejects treating Scripture as a mere series of propositions, supplying the dicta probantia in support of doctrines; rather, the fundamental hermeneutical axiom is to attend to Scripture’s organic, canonical unity. This axiom is expressed in the “analogy of faith.”180 Congar elaborates: This phrase, taken from St. Paul (Rom 12:6) is taken to mean the proportion and relationship existing between the parts themselves with one another, or between all the parts and their common center, which we may call the revelation of the covenant relation in Christ, the center of the Christian mystery. This analogy of faith exists at the level of the dogmas or articles of faith. It is, thus, one of the main resources of theology. It exists also at the level of the scriptural texts and is in this way one of the main principles of theologico-biblical hermeneutics. This principle rests on the essential oneness of the Word of God, the covenant plan it communicates to us, and the unity that follows from this for Scripture. Therefore, not only is it impossible to find one passage in real contradiction to another, but also we cannot deal with any text in isolation from the rest of Scripture, as the fundamentalists and sectarians do incessantly. It follows, too, that by bringing texts into relation with one another, even if they are rather remote at the literary level, conducting our argument, however, still within the context of the overall structure of the Christian mystery, we can sometimes go beyond the formal terms of Text.181

178 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 406. 179 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 106–107. 180 Berkouwer correctly notes, “In ‘Dei Verbum’ [no. 12] it is correctly stated that one must pay attention to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture and in addition must reckon with the analogy of faith regarding the church’s tradition. To be sure, many questions are involved with reference to this ‘analogy,’ but they are connected with discovering the sense of Scripture, with the exposition of the Word. Further, there must therefore always be an accountability with respect to the Word that excludes arbitrariness” (NC, 125 n. 58). 181 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 406–407. See also the entry in Rahner and Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary “In the Catholic sense [analogy of faith] means that every affirmation of revelation or faith must be understood in the light of the Church’s objective faith as whole. The analogia fidei also requires that it be quite clear that the terms used in any dogmatic formula bear a merely analogical meaning. This principle is recognized by the magisterium” (17).



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In the next chapter, we shall discuss at length the question of doctrinal development. In that chapter, I shall briefly consider a prime example of dogmatic development: Marian dogmas, particularly, Mary’s Immaculate Conception and her Assumption. Throughout his writings on Catholicism (1940–1968), Berkouwer has critically discussed the Catholic understanding of the role of Mary in God’s plan of salvation and in the communion of saints. I’ll reply to Berkouwer’s criticisms of this understanding by asking how these dogmas are to be justified in light of Scripture, the Church’s living tradition, and the ‘analogy of faith.’ Objection IV Berkouwer’s fourth objection will take a bit longer to formulate. It is perhaps the most important objection, but the one about which he is the least articulate. In the last chapter (“Nabetrachting”) of his last book, Zoeken en Vinden, Berkouwer discusses the problem of safeguarding the objectivity and authority of Scripture, given hermeneutical pluralism with its competing and conflicting interpretation of the meaning of Scripture. “How is that possible, one can ask, now that we are dealing with theology, not with uncontrollable, willful experimenting, but with visions and faith-convictions that are purportedly normed?” He adds, “How is all of this possible in a situation in which one usually appeals to normativity, to authority?”182 In reply to this question, Berkouwer says that the search for truth is always driven by the serious attempt to transcend human subjectivity, to go beyond subjectivism “to what is usually called, objectivity, normativity, direction, revelation.”183 What is hermeneutical subjectivism? Berkouwer does not actually say, but I think we can surmise that such a view would reflect the triumph of hermeneutics, of the realization that “one cannot escape the reality of being interpretative, of translating Holy Scripture.”184 Perhaps Berkouwer’s point is satisfactorily stated by John Paul II. Hermeneutical subjectivism would mean that we are trapped in a hall of mirrors of interpretation, and no one interpretation is ever judged to open us up to what is really true. “The interpretation of this Word . . . merely keeps referring us to one interpretation after another, without ever leading us 182 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 418–419. 183 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 422. 184 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 424.

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to a statement which is simply true.”185 Perhaps an even more philosophically exact way is to say that the triumph of hermeneutics entails that there are no “non-epistemic data or facts.”186 Everything is a matter of interpretation. We can’t know the world as it truly is, but only the world as humans interpret it. Let me be clear that this triumph does not necessarily mean that ‘anything goes,’ epistemically speaking. There are criteria of rationality employed to justify our interpretative claims. Still, such criteria are located “historically within a community of discourse and point to the intrinsic relation between criteria of good theology and communities of discourse.”187 Significantly, then, this view reduces truth to justification, and hence it fails to distinguish ontological and epistemological questions, namely, as Roger Trigg states, “what there is and how we can know it.”188 On this view, the real—reality, the world, what there is— becomes totally irrelevant to questions of truth, with reality then receding behind hermeneutical pluralism. Berkouwer highlights that the “battle against subjectivism constitutes an important part of the history of theology. People search for a way to achieve what is usually called objectivity, to being normed, directed by, or subject to, revelation.”189 Though not a subjectivist, and mindful of the danger of subjectivism, Berkouwer expresses much sympathy for the emphasis on man’s search for truth rather than on the finding of truth. Of course he does not want to oppose “searching and finding,” so it is more a matter of emphasizing that human beings are truth-seekers. That truth-seeking occurs from out of a specific framework of interpretation, experiences, cultural context, and the like, none of which can be set aside in that search, “although they (precisely!) can sometimes be cut-short and corrected in a forceful way by revelation.”190 Later in this chapter, Berkouwer reiterates that the triumph of hermeneutics raises the “fear . . . that subjectivism can again penetrate the activity of interpretation.” He adds approvingly,

185 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 84. 186 Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Foundations of Theology: A Community’s Tradition of Discourse and Practice,” 107–134, 1987 Presidential Address to the Catholic Theological Society of America, 117, 128, 131–132. 187 Fiorenza, “Foundations of Theology,” 130. 188 Roger Trigg, Reality at Risk (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1980), xii. 189 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 421–422. 190 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 423.



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Here we are talking about the interpretation that emerges and of necessity is attached to all human writing. Although people can also twist and betray it (J.T. Bakker), interpretation belongs to the mandate of the church and of theology. But it is certainly understandable that, with the enormous amount of attention being paid to hermeneutics in our time, people can become unsettled that in the church some would not be able to muster enough resistance to the power of their own thought-world, but rather find a legitimizing in the biblical text of what we already knew—not a surprise, also not a correction, a ‘Gegenüber,’ or a contradictory voice.191

So, then, given hermeneutical pluralism, how does Berkouwer suggest that the interpreter extricate himself from being trapped in a hall of mirrors of interpretation? Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, remarks in a gloss on John Paul’s statement I cited above: “Man is not caught in a hall of mirrors of interpretation; he can and must look for the way out to the reality that stands behind the words and manifests itself to him in and through the words.”192 Berkouwer would agree with Ratzinger, I dare say. But he is not especially helpful in answering what he called the “big question,” namely, “how do we confront that plurality of interpretation?” Berkouwer takes us as far as recognizing the danger of subjectivism that lurks within hermeneutical pluralism, and therefore the responsibility to resists that danger in the activity of interpretation, namely, “by searching for truth in all its connections within the horizon of our own time.”193 But this seems to imply a conflation of truth with what we are justified in believing given our hermeneutical situation. On the realist notion of truth, however, true interpretations “are true in virtue of the nature of objective reality. Truth has it source in reality,”194 and as a consequence ontological and epistemological questions are distinct. Unlike the realist who distinguishes truth and justification, conflating truth with justification hearkens back to Berkouwer’s analysis of the nouvelle théologie and the question whether “Truth does . . . depend on its conformity with the measure of human knowledge in a given day [or] on its conformity to the reality of things as they are” (VCNT, 88 [77]). Human beings are truth-seekers from within the horizon of their own time—so says Berkouwer. What, then, is truth? How do we come to know the truth, that is, the truth of statements or beliefs? Can we justifiably 191 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 425. 192 Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, Christian Belief and World Religions (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 189. 193 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 425. 194 Trigg, Reality at Risk, xiv.

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claim to know the truth? Can we even make assertions about objective reality? Berkouwer doesn’t raise these questions in the last chapter of Zoeken en Vinden, but I suggest that the “protest against objectivism”195 that he voices implies his reluctance, indeed, serious reservations, given the diversity of interpretations, about making claims regarding the finality of truth.196 Philosophically speaking, as I have argued several times in this book, Berkouwer seems to align himself with fallibilism in order to take distance from epistemic objectivism. One wonders whether Berkouwer should have issued a caveat against protesting objectivism. He warns us against the danger of subjectivism lurking in hermeneutical pluralism. Even so, surely the danger in rejecting objectivism is that nothing that the Church can claim to know now is beyond revision, irreformable, and hence irreversibly true; all Church doctrine is reversible in principle—including the claim that Christ Himself is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and hence, if we reject objectivism, we are unable to account for the universal, objective, perduring, and materially continuous claims of Christian faith and thought. In De Heilige Schrift, II, I argued earlier, Berkouwer is not asking us to refrain from the practice of making assertions as long as we are mindful that no statement comprehensively exhausts divine truth. Still, I added that then we came no further in knowing whether Berkouwer thinks that doctrinal assertions are such that they “may be considered irrevocable, continuous, universal, materially identical, and objectively true.”197 Some twenty-years later in Zoeken en vinden Berkouwer’s answer to this question seems to have become somewhat clearer, but unfortunately he now— problematically, I would say—moves in a direction against what he calls objectivism. Berkouwer never defines what he means by objectivism. So I think it will be helpful to give some sense of what it means. Of course Berkouwer affirms ontological objectivity, that is, the objectivity of revelation, as I have argued from the very first chapter of this book. The ambiguity of his position was over epistemic objectivity, and that turns on his position regarding the status of propositional revelation. One is an ‘epistemic subjectivist’ regarding the revealed knowledge of God when one takes that revelation to be something that “is not something that is static, given once and for all and therefore capable of being

195 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 426. 196 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 427. 197 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 6.



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remembered and communicated to others.”198 Berkouwer is never really clear on whether revealed propositions are to be considered irrevocable, that is, unchangeable, continuous, universal, materially identical, and objectively true. But his protest against epistemic objectivism suggests, as I said above, that he stands back from making claims about the finality of truth. What he is clear about is that he seeks to transcend both subjectivism and (epistemic) objectivism. According to Berkouwer, both views undermine the power of the living Word of God from realizing its true purpose as God’s revelation. The former because it leaves religious subjectivity in a hall of mirrors of interpretation; the latter because it suggests rationalism: fixation on objective truth, the reduction of certainty to that which is ‘clear and distinct,’ evident to the human mind, and the content of revelation to a series of propositions. What does Berkouwer mean by epistemic objectivism? Again, he doesn’t say. But I think we can surmise that to be an epistemological objectivist means that, say, being committed to the faith of the Church involves holding certain propositions to be true and that in expressing that commitment one is making assertions, or truth claims, about objective reality. In this connection, we must also add that to be an objectivist regarding divine revelation, God’s verbal revelation, is to hold that this objective revelation has a determinate intellectual content of the sort presupposed by the existence of historic Christian dogma. This kind of view of objective revelation is well represented by the philosopher-pope, John Paul II. He writes, “The Bible, and the New Testament in particular, contains texts and statements which have a genuinely ontological content. The inspired authors intended to formulate true statements, capable, that is, of expressing objective reality. It cannot be said that the Catholic tradition erred when it took certain texts of Saint John and Saint Paul to be statements about the very being of Christ. In seeking to understand and explain these statements, theology needs therefore the contribution of a philosophy which does not disavow the possibility of a knowledge which is objectively true, even if not perfect.”199 Related to this notion of epistemological objectivism is a certain epistemic certainty regarding the truth of the Christian faith. Here, too, this view is best represented by another pontiff, Benedict XVI, in a lengthy passage that is worth quoting in full.200 198  Helm, Divine Revelation, 40. 199  John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 82. 200 On this passage from Benedict’s Spe Salvi, see the commentary of Adam G. Cooper, “Hope, A Mode of Faith: Aquinas, Luther and Benedict XVI on Hebrews 11:1,” Heythrop Journal LIII (2012): 182–190.

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chapter five “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen” [Heb 11:1]. For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia. The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads: Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium—faith is the “substance” of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. Saint Thomas Aquinas, using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see. The concept of “substance” is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say “in embryo”—and thus according to the “substance”—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: the whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this “thing” which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not “appear”), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. To Luther, who was not particularly fond of the Letter to the Hebrews, the concept of “substance,” in the context of his view of faith, meant nothing. For this reason he understood the term hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term argumentum as a disposition of the subject. In the twentieth century this interpretation became prevalent—at least in Germany—in Catholic exegesis too, so that the ecumenical translation into German of the New Testament, approved by the Bishops, reads as follows: Glaube aber ist: Feststehen in dem, was man erhofft, Überzeugtsein von dem, was man nicht sieht (faith is: standing firm in what one hopes, being convinced of what one does not see). This in itself is not incorrect, but it is not the meaning of the text, because the Greek term used (elenchos) does not have the subjective sense of “conviction” but the objective sense of “proof.” Rightly, therefore, recent Protestant exegesis has arrived at a different interpretation: “Yet there can be no question but that this classical Protestant understanding is untenable.” Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof ” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.201

201 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, Encyclical Letter, 2007, no. 7.



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Now, that we have a clear sense of objectivism we can easily understand why Berkouwer directs his protest especially against the authority of the Catholic Church, which in light of its commitment to objectivism, seeks to relieve the believer of the burden of the search for truth—at least according to Berkouwer. That is, he protests “against putting the church at ease with her authority, her exposition of the Scriptures, by which she can with ultimate certainty appropriate the faithful’s burden of searching.” He then adds, “Against that kind of peace and certainty, the Reformation stimulated a tremendous level of attention to achieving the same via confidence ‘in the preservation and comfort of Scripture’ (Romans 15:4).”202 In this connection, Berkouwer expresses his confidence that the Church will never fall away from the gospel in its search for truth. Yes, in that search, which along the way removes barriers and misunderstanding for ourselves and others, this search derives its meaning from its orientation to finding the truth. But this finding has its own unique nature; it is more inclusive than we think. Indeed, I think that is his point in concluding this chapter with Psalm 119:96: “I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad.”203 It’s almost as if Berkouwer is suggesting that truth is stranger than we think. So, let’s not shut down the search for truth, seeking to free ourselves from hermeneutical pluralism, running straight into the arms of the Catholic Church’s epistemic objectivism. Berkouwer’s criticism, then, of the Catholic Church is that her epistemic objectivism—her epistemic certainty—prevents her from being open to the Word of God, “to give renewed and close attention to the words of Scripture so that we are kept from going beyond that which is written as well as from an uncritical traditionalism.” In short, the objectivism of the Catholic Church “wholly disregards the dynamic of God’s Word as sword of the Spirit” [Eph 6:17].204

202 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 427. 203 Berkouwer, Zoeken en Vinden, 428. Italicized words from this psalm are original to Berkouwer’s text. 204 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 252–253 [272–273].

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What doctrine of special revelation is presupposed by Berkouwer’s understanding of sola Scriptura?205 A doctrine of revelation will deal with the origin, content, manner, and purpose of God’s special revelation. First, then, the agent of special revelation is God himself because revelation originates with God. In the opening words of Dei Verbum, “It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (cf. Eph 1:9)” (no. 2). Second, what is the content of revelation? Put differently, what is it that is revealed? Well, these opening words make clear that, in a fundamental sense, God reveals himself, and so we may say that the content of revelation is God’s own proper reality, his own self, the gift of himself “as a communion of persons inviting human persons to enter into communion.”206 In sum, says Ratzinger about these opening words, “it is God himself, the person of God, from whom revelation proceeds and to whom it returns, and thus revelation necessarily reaches—also with the person who receives it—into the personal centre of man, it touches him in the depths of his being, not only in his individual faculties, in his will and understanding.”207 Of particular significance here is, not only that the notion of revelation, as God’s action, requires a human recipient in order for revelation to realize its purpose of establishing an interpersonal relation between God himself and man, but also God’s self-revelation “is ultimately not [merely] information, but unity and transformation”,208 that is, not only informs us of salvation but actually brings it about in a human recipient of his revelation. Yet, there is more to the content of revelation and it necessarily includes both an objective dimension and a subjective dimension. Regarding the former, God reveals himself in the economy of redemptive history in words and actions, of divine actions and divinely-given interpretations of those actions, with the words and deeds being inextricably bound

205 In the following paragraphs I am explicitly drawing on the doctrine of special revelation I set forth in my recent book, “In the Beginning . . .” A Theology of the Body, 27–71. 206 Germain Grisez, “On Interpreting Dogmas,” Communio: International Catholic Review 17 (1990): 120–126, and for this quote, 120. 207 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 171. 208 Ratzinger’s commentary on Dei Verbum, 175.



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together, making up one whole,209 culminating in Jesus Christ who is both the mediator and fullness of revelation. Again, Dei Verbum explains the intimate connection between words and deeds: “the works performed by God in the history of salvation show forth and bear out the doctrine and realities signified by the words; the words, for their part, proclaim the works, and bring to light the mystery they contain” (no. 2). In sum, “the most intimate truth which this revelation gives us about God and the salvation of man shines forth in Christ, who is himself both the mediator and the sum total of Revelation” [see Matt 11:27; John 1:14, 17: 14:6; 17:1–3; 2 Cor 3:16, 4:6; Eph 1:3–14] (Ibid.). Regarding the subjective dimension of revelation, we are talking about “the activity, also historical and also mediated by Jesus Christ, by which God moves and assists someone to believe, that is to commit himself . . . to God, yielding to and accepting the divine self-communication.”210 Given this dimension of revelation, we can understand why revelation’s living reality comes to realize its purpose—living contact with the Father’s selfrevelation in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit—only when it is fully present, making itself known, to man in faith. But is revelation also a disclosure of revealed truths? The brief answer to this question here must be ‘yes,’ because the redemptive-historical revelation of God in history is not self-interpreting. “Either God provides with the historical events its interpretation, in which case there is a propositional revelation; or he does not, in which case how can anyone know that a revelatory event has occurred?”211 This, too, is the view of Berkouwer 209 Eduard Schillebeeckx, The Real Achievement of Vatican II, translated by H.J.J. Vaughan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 40: “Factual and verbal revelation form one entity.” 210 Martin, The Feminist Question, 2–3. 211 Richard Swinburne, Revelation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 4. This, too, is early Schillebeeckx’s view: “God’s saving activity—revelation in reality—and his word—revelation in word—are therefore indissolubly united to each other in the one concept of revelation. Both are essential ingredients of the one divine revelation. . . . The word [of God] thus forms an integral part of the manifestation of God’s saving activity. It is, of course, true that God did not simply say something about salvation. He also accomplished salvation within history. But, if this history was to be experienced as saving history, [God] had to interpret its meaning in and through the message of the prophets. The history of salvation, or God’s saving activity as revelation, was for this reason an interpreted history, interpreted under a divine guarantee. . . . Revelation-in-reality, revelation-in-word, and Holy Scripture thus form one single whole. Scripture provides us with an infallible and precise expression of the revelation as this was revealed in God’s saving activity in Christ, in a veiled manner in Christ’s prehistory in the Old Testament, and indeed even in the remote prehistory of the whole of mankind. Scripture is an essential element of the redeeming mystery of Christ as

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in 1968. He rejects the “simplistic dilemma” (his words) that pits God’s personal self-communication over against revelation as “informationbearing,” as “declarative, as disclosive of information of all sorts of ‘truths’.”212 Still, as I explained earlier, for Berkouwer, sola Scriptura and its concomitant principle of Scripture’s sufficiency cannot be reduced to a ‘formal problem of sources.’ He writes, “Whoever isolates and virtually exclusively uses the term ‘source’ as often happened in the controversy—for example, both in the Counter Reformation’s appeal to two sources as well as in post-Reformation orthodoxy’s appeal to one source—runs the immediate risk of thinking in terms of one or two sources out of which all truths are derived. This is analogous to the approaches of Roman and old Low Country jurisprudence, and that threatens diminishing the use of Scripture to searching for and finding proof texts in the fields of polemics and dogmatics.”213 So, then, for Berkouwer, sola Scriptura can’t mean merely material sufficiency if that term is understood to mean that Scripture is a deposit of isolated statements, a propositional source of dogmatic texts. Elsewhere in De Heilige Schrift Berkouwer reiterates this point: “But the proclamation of salvation does not automatically fragment into isolated and unrelated facts and truths.”214 This approach loses sight of Scripture’s unity, the mutual relationship and coherence of all its parts.215 Berkouwer rejects this view as an abstract view of sola Scriptura. Abstract in the sense that it isolates Scripture from the purpose of God’s revelation, namely, to make known the reality of that revelation by proclaiming the saving acts of God in Christ in and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the question of Scripture’s material sufficiency as a source for the justification of dogmatic truths is a purely secondary problem within the framework of a much more fundamental question concerning the mode of presence of the revealed and living Word of God, a reality that makes itself known in faith by means of the power of the Holy Spirit.216 So, for Berkouwer, “the sola Scriptura principle [is] a way of keeping the divine revelation” (“De Openbaring en Haar ‘Overlevering’,” 14–16; ET: “Revelation, Scripture, Tradition, and Teaching Authority,”9, 12). 212 G.C. Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?” 193–195. 213 Berkouwer, VCNT, 120 [101]. I cite the original Dutch version in the text because the English translation misses some of the nuances from the original Dutch. 214 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 279. ET: 283. 215 This, too, is Congar’s view in his book, The Meaning of Tradition, 132. 216 The phrase, “mode of presence” (German: Gegenwartsweise) is taken from Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 33. ET: “Revelation and Tradition,” 34.



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Church open for the power and the normativity of the total content of the apostolic witness in the sense of a critical and dynamic proclamation of the gospel of the Christ who is, indeed, the Lord of tradition” (VCNT, 122 [103]). Is, then, Berkouwer merely, though significantly, making a point that treating Scripture as a mere source in a formal sense, a source of information, is to mistake its purpose? Yes, that would be one way to put it. Indeed, Berkouwer himself puts it that way, “It is not that Scripture offers us no information but that the nature of this information is unique. It is governed by the purpose of God’s revelation.”217 Elsewhere he makes the same point, “Not a single reason whatsoever exists for a person to oppose the notion of the informative as such. . . . Revealed information is structured entirely by the nature and the purpose of revelation, and in this way it receives its deepest meaning.”218 For instance, the redemptivehistorical acts of God in Christ have an existential relevance, a salvific significance or purpose. Berkouwer clearly states, “The reality of salvation occurs in the center of history, in the center of our own life. But its existential meaning for us does not stand over against the redeeming acts of God in history; rather that meaning is inherent in those acts.”219 So the factuality (Dutch: ‘feitelijkheid’) of these redeeming acts must not be opposed to their saving significance; indeed, as I understand Berkouwer, without the redemptive-historical work of Christ, the Gospel would have no saving significance for man.220 In other words, as the American New 217  Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 94 [183]. 218  Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 194. 219  Berkouwer, “Subjectivisme noch objectivisme,” 224 (my translation). 220 Berkouwer, “Sacrificium Intellectus?,” 166–167 [120–121, 123]. Unfortunately, Jack Rogers, the American translator of De Heilige Schrift, entirely misses this point in his (mis) translation of the following passage from Vol. I. Berkouwer writes, “That the existential ‘meaning’ of dogma would stand in opposition to ‘factuality’ and as such would be proclaimed as ‘canonical’ is very simply in conflict with the Reformation’s emphasis on correlation, I think. But it is something completely different when, out of the depth and wisdom of correlation and frequently in the sharp rejection of Scholasticism, the Reformation very lucidly gave expression to the saving significance of that factuality and the ‘tua res agitur’ embedded in it” (166–167; my translation of the original Dutch). Clearly, Berkouwer here is claiming that the benefits for man—the saving significance, as it were, of the redemptivehistorical work of Christ—may never be isolated from the factuality of that work. Indeed, the factuality of that work “includes all of his [Christ’s] benefits.” In Rogers’ translation the foundation of the Gospel’s significance in the factuality of Christ’s redemptive-historical work is entirely lost because the term “feitelijkheid” has been replaced with the English word “actuality,” rendering Berkouwer’s meaning indecipherable. Rogers’ translation: “I hold it to be in conflict with the Reformation correlation to posit the existential meaning of dogma over against ‘actuality’ and thus to proclaim it as ‘canon’. But it is something

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Testament scholar George E. Ladd puts it, “The Kingdom of God is concerned with my existence, my personal response and responsibility, my freedom from bondage to the past, to sin, to pride, to the world. . . . But all of this is true because first of all [italics added] something happened in history . . . Existential import results only from historical event.”221 In other words, as I argued in Chapter One, Berkouwer doesn’t confuse, as Paul Helm puts it, “the conditions under which something is true with the conditions under which I know something to be true.” He explains: If the special revelation is true then this is presumably in virtue of certain facts about God and his ways. The revelation expresses or announces these facts. The announcement may be a necessary condition of anyone coming to know that what is revealed is true, but it would be true even if it were not announced or believed since its truth does not depend on the fact that it is announced but rather on certain facts about God.222

Alternatively, is Berkouwer merely, though significantly, making the point that Scripture, the written Word of God, when proclaimed, is not simply informative discourse, but an active power: “It is the power of God for the salvation to everyone who has faith” (Rom 1:16)? Yes, that is another way to put it. But I think a more accurate way of describing Berkouwer’s point is that, for him, indeed for the Reformers, sola Scriptura is a critical principle that keeps us directed to what Scripture signifies, namely, the concentration point—scopus—of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the whole Christian reality disclosed in Christ, made known by Scripture, and inclusive of the implicit contents of that disclosure in Scripture. Looking back to the objective and subjective dimensions of revelation, we can put Berkouwer’s point by stating that revelation realizes its own proper purpose when it makes itself known to man in faith. Significantly, Berkouwer’s view of Scripture in which the whole Christian reality disclosed in Christ comes to the individual in the word of altogether different when men of the Reformation, out of the depth and breadth of the correlation—and often in sharp reply to scholasticism—clearly expressed the saving significance of that actuality and the tua res agitur which it contains” (120–121). In the original Dutch, Berkouwer warns against opposing the existential meaning of dogma and the factuality of Christ’s redemptive-historical work. Rogers has Berkouwer opposing “existential ‘meaning’ of dogma over against ‘actuality’. This is not only redundant—the Gospel’s existential meaning is its actuality—but it also ignores the foundation of dogma’s existential meaning in the factuality of Christ’s redemptive-historical work, a point Berkouwer is at pains to make against the existentialist theology of Bultmann, et al. 221 George E. Ladd, The Pattern of New Testament Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), 63–64. 222 Helm, The Divine Revelation, 39–40.



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preaching, in the proclamation of the word of salvation, encourages us to think of Scripture, in Congar’s words, as a “means of grace and not only of information and knowledge.”223 I share Berkouwer’s view, but I think we can develop his point in a more Catholic direction by sketching the sacramental structure of the Word of God. In Catholic sacramental theology, the following distinctions are made: sacramentum tantum; res et sacramentum; and res tantum. By sacramentum tantum (‘sign only’) is meant the sign itself, which in the case of, for example, Baptism the sign only would be water, as in the Eucharist it would be the bread and wine. In either case, a sacrament is not a mere pointer to a reality that is absent. Rather, a sacramental sign is a “ ‘full sign’, a sign of something really present.”224 Beyond the sign itself, then, we have res et sacramentum (‘the thing and the sign’), by which is meant what is signified by the sign. Congar gives a clear description of the latter. “Res et sacramentum is the spiritual reality which the sacrament produces of itself, when it is valid, but which demands in addition an effect in us: this is, in baptism, for example, the ‘character’ or spiritual mark of our consecration; in the Eucharist, the presence of the sacrificed Christ.”225 Furthermore, what is signified also signifies, and so what is res et sacramentum signifies what is res tantum, the thing only. In other words, what is signified points to the spiritual effects of any given sacrament, namely, writes Congar, that which “is produced in the soul of the believer but not contained as such in the sacrament, and requires for its existence a new act.” In the case of Baptism, the new act of God is “the grace by which we are made sons of God and members of the Body of Christ.” Regarding Eucharistic presence, adds Congar, it is “the grace of the deepest possible ecclesial unity” [1 Cor 10:16–17].226 In short, as the Council of Trent taught, sacraments both contain the grace they signify and confer the grace they contain. One last point needs to be made before we apply this three-fold distinction to the Word of God. What, then, is obtained when one receives the sacrament? Briefly, all recipients, whether properly or improperly disposed to receive the sacrament, receive sacramentum tantum and res

223 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 102; see also, 84. This, too, is the view of Bavinck, “Scripture is and remains a ‘means of grace’ [medium gratiae],” Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 539; ET: 570. 224 Dulles, Models of the Church, 58. 225 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 404. 226 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 405.

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et sacramentum. The Eucharistic Lord, for example, who is truly, really and substantially present in the consecration of the bread and wine into his body and blood, is received by all who receive the precious body and blood of Christ. However, only those recipients correctly disposed receive the res tantum that is offered in the sacrament, being the full beneficiaries of the sacrament. As Congar explains more fully, “These sacraments envisage these ultimate spiritual effects; there is a continuity of movement and intention all the way from the sacramental sign to the reality of grace. In order that the ultimate spiritual effect may be obtained in the living, personal and free subject whom it is to sanctify, a new spiritual act must supervene. This is why, in a last ‘epiclesis’, the liturgy has us ask that our participation in Christ’s body and blood should bring about in us by a visitation of grace the fruit of the sacrament.”227 We can now apply this three-fold distinction to the Word of God: the Scriptures are, as Congar writes, “a sign of divine saving action, an efficacious sign, a sign of grace.”228 In the case of the Scriptures, the text as such, the words themselves, is the sacramentum tantum (‘sign only’), meaning thereby the sign itself. But here, too, the sacramental sign is not a mere pointer to an absent reality, but rather a full sign. What, then, is the res et sacramentum regarding the written Word of God? What is signified by the sign is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the whole Christian reality disclosed in Christ, a “decisive centralization, a concentration,” in Berkouwer’s words, “die Christus-wirklichkeit” (‘the Christ-reality’), as Ratzinger puts it, made known by Scripture as “the coherence, centrality, and depth of God’s actions.”229 Lastly, the res tantum refers to that aspect of “a grace-bearing sign that effectively realizes communion with God, and salvation, when it is used in the right conditions.”230 Adds Congar, “The decisive things is the act accomplished by God and its actual operation within us.”231 This act is a supernatural gift of God’s grace giving us “humility, purity of heart, a true desire to seek God and a strong love of the Gospel.”232 God’s grace brings us into the plan of God, his covenant, in the fellowship of the Church. This act “attributes to Christ himself, in his living presence, and not to 227 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 405. 228 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 404. 229 Berkouwer, De Heilige Schrift, II, 79, 279 [179, 283], respectively. Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 39. ET: 40. 230 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 90. 231  Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 90. 232 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 91.



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the book, the whole efficacy in procuring salvation,” its res, which is the spiritual reality resulting from the sacrament.233 In this sense, “Scripture contains the whole of the mystery of Christ, and thus the whole of ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God’.”234 Significantly, Congar makes it clear that the “Scriptures do not surrender their meaning by the bare text; they surrender it to a mind that is living, and living in the conditions of the Covenant.” This is the mind “of the Church, God’s people, the Body of Christ and Temple of the Holy Spirit. Thus, in a certain way, Scripture possesses its meaning outside itself.”235 In light of the sacramental category of res tantum we can easily understand Congar’s meaning. These reflections upon the sacramental structure of the Word of God opens us up to the doctrine of special revelation I sketched above: revelation necessarily includes both an objective dimension and a subjective dimension: the former refers to God’s self-revelation in action and word, culminating in the formation of an objective deposit of faith as integral to the history of redemption; the latter refers to the act of God’s self-presence, indeed the act of God’s self-revelation in a living subject, by the power of the Holy Spirit, enabling a human being to respond in faith to the reality of revelation. Ratzinger, for one, rightly claims that divine revelation involves “God’s whole speech and action with man.” God is not only the agent of revelation because revelation itself originates with Him. But he also is the one Scripture makes known to us in faith “a reality . . . that is not itself simply identical with scripture.” Using the sacramental category of res tantum, we can understand why Ratzinger says, “Revelation, therefore, is more than scripture to the extent that reality exceeds information about it.” That is, he adds, “it signifies a reality which scripture makes known but which is not itself simply identical with scripture. . . . For revelation always and only becomes a reality where there is faith.”236 Of course Ratzinger is not denying that the “reality of revelation is a word-reality,” a verbal-propositional reality, ontologically speaking, nor he is saying that Scripture remains external to revelation. He continues: “The fact remains, however, that the mere presence of the word of Scripture is not the reality of revelation itself, which is never simply ‘there’. The above remark is simply meant to draw attention to the difference between scripture and 233 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 405. 234 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 381. 235 Congar, Meaning of Tradition, 91. 236 These passages of Ratzinger are from “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 34–35. ET: 35–36. (“Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” ET: 70 n. 12).

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the reality which makes itself known in scripture, a difference which is not annulled by the verbal character of revelation.” We would misunderstand Ratzinger if we took him here to be saying that the Scripture becomes revelation when it is actually known to man in faith. No, that would be a version, in Ratzinger’s own words, of an “extreme actualistic theology according to which the word of God only takes place in the word of Scripture as a new event each time it is read.”237 Ratzinger of course does not elide the difference between ontological and epistemological matters. Rather, he is merely making an epistemological point: “Revelation is in fact fully present only when, in addition to the material statements which testify to it, its own inner reality is itself operative in the form of faith. Consequently revelation to some degree includes its recipient, without whom it does not [fully] exist.”238 Given all the qualifications Ratzinger makes in this paragraph about revelation being ‘fully’ present only when it is operative in the form of faith, I think it is justified to insert fully in front of the last word of the concluding sentence of this quotation. In sum, given the subjective dimension of revelation, we can understand why revelation’s living reality comes to realize its purpose—living contact with the Father’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit—only when it is fully present, making itself known, to man in faith. Bavinck makes a similar, but clearer point. He writes, “objective revelation in Christ is not sufficient, but there needs to be added a working of the Spirit in order that human beings may acknowledge and accept that revelation of God and thereby become the image of the Son.” Most significant, Bavinck adds, “[S]o external and objective revelation demands an internal revelation in the subject. . . . But it can come into its own only if it is positioned in relation to the objective revelation granted in Christ. Detached from or elevated above this revelation, it loses its criterion and corrective and opens the door to all sorts of arbitrariness and fanaticism. Even the very concept of subjective revelation is determined and controlled by that of objective revelation.”239 Although Berkouwer’s kerygmatic theory of revelation is a valuable corrective to understanding Scripture as a mere objective deposit containing propositional truth, a mere cognitive source of information, it isn’t clear what role propositions play in Berkouwer’s account of revelation. Is he 237 Ratzinger in his commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, 270 n. 12. 238 Ratzinger, “Ein Versuch Zur Frage Des Traditionsbegriffs,” 35. ET: 36. 239 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 320. ET: 347–348.



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dismissing the idea of an apostolic deposit, a determinate revealed datum, in short, as Nichols puts it, a revealed given, “an objective revelation with a determinate intellectual content of the sort presupposed by the existence of historic doctrine [?]”240 Is there no determinate content of faith? Put differently, doesn’t God reveal himself by way of propositions? In short, can there be any propositions about God that correspond definitively, even if not exhaustively, with his reality? What is clear to me is that “no account of revelation which would exclude propositions wholly from its purview could do justice to the rôle of doctrines in Catholic Christianity.”241 And their role is that they embody valid judgments of truth about reality, “without [which] it is impossible to think coherently and distinguish truth from falsehood.”242 We may put this last point by stating that the Gospel, then, is also a teaching, meaning thereby “an instructive communicating of facts and events of salvation, or an instructive interpretation of the Old Testament.”243 In this connection, Geiselmann correctly states that the “New Testament itself calls the gospel a doctrine, didachē (Rom 16:17, Acts 2:42), didaschalia (Rom 12:7; pastoral letters, passim). To preach the word of God is also paraphrased with didaschein (2 Thess 2:15; Col 2:7; Eph 4:21; 1 Tim 4:11; Acts 5:42; 18:11; 28:31). The announcer of the word of God may also be honored by the title of teacher (didaschalos) (1 Tim 2:7; 2 Tim 1:11).”244 In sum, God’s self-revelation is linguistically articulated as teaching, as doctrine. Furthermore, to affirm the propositional character of revelation, as I believe we must, is consistent with the claim that we find in biblical revelation a variety of speech acts, reflecting the speech forms of language users: asking questions, making requests, giving commands, expressing emotions, exclamations, and much else. Still, Paul Helm is right to argue that “since Scripture is taken to be a revelation, with a unique cognitive value, assertions have primacy because its other speech forms— exclamations, questions, etc.—logically depend for their own force and 240 Nichols, From Newman to Congar, 171, and see also 112. 241  Nichols, From Newman to Congar, 175. 242 McDermott, “Revelation, Faith, Theology, Analogy,” 933. 243 Heinrich Schlier, Wort Gottes. Eine neutestamentliche Besinnung, 39, as cited by Geiselmann, “Scripture, Tradition, and the Church,” 53–54. 244 Schlier, Wort Gottes, 53. Elsewhere Geiselmann writes, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ of necessity assumes in the Church’s paradosis the form of didaskalia, of doctrine, just as, of course, [St] Paul himself in his writings was conscious, in view of the false teachings arising in the Church, and in view of the false gnosis invading it (1 Tim 6:20), that he was no longer solely an apostle and herald of the message of Christ, but also a teacher of the gentiles (2 Tim 4:17)” (Meaning of Tradition, 31).

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intelligibility on a bedrock of assertions. The exclamation ‘How good is the Lord!’ implies the truth of the assertion ‘The Lord is good’. Those who uphold the propositional character of divine revelation . . . have nothing more or less in mind than the central importance of assertions, especially God’s assertions about himself, in Scripture.”245 Thus, only propositions make assertions, express beliefs, about what is (or is not) the case, which means that only they are the logical entities that can be true or false. Of course human beings speak in sentences to communicate propositions, but sentences are not the same thing as propositions. Propositions are nonlinguistic entities. That is, the same proposition, or same meaning, is the message having many and varied expressions in different sentences of the same language or in different languages. Moreover, a proposition is true if what it says corresponds to the way objective reality is; otherwise, it is false. In other words, regarding the status of meaning, the way things are is what makes ‘meanings’ true or false. Canadian Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan clearly explains: Meaning of its nature is related to a meant, and what is meant may or may not correspond to what in fact is so. If it corresponds, the meaning is true. If it does not correspond, the meaning is false. . . . To deny correspondence is to deny a relation between meaning and meant. To deny the correspondence view of truth is to deny that, when the meaning is true, the meant is what is so. Either denial is destructive of the dogmas. . . . If one denies that, when the meaning is true, then the meant is what is so, one rejects propositional truth. If the rejection is universal, then it is the self-destructive proposition that there are no true propositions. If the rejection is limited to the dogmas, then it is just a roundabout way of saying that all the dogmas are false.246

Perhaps Berkouwer would object by resisting the idea that the truth contained in Scripture is trans-cultural, meaning thereby timeless truth, eternal truth, or abstract truth, because in that case we have allegedly not taken seriously the historical outlines, cultural location, or time relatedness, of the Bible. There is every indication in his major two-volume study, De Heilige Schrift, that he would raise this objection. Berkouwer writes, for instance, “God’s revelation must not be seen as a timeless and suprahistorical event but as a manifestation in history, and interest in this

245 Paul Helm, “Propositions and Speech Acts,” online: http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot .com/2007/05/analysis-2-propositions-and-speech-acts.html. 246 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., “The Dehellenization of Dogma,” in A Second Collection, 14–15, 16, respectively.



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history and its relation to revelation is therefore perfectly legitimate.”247 He repeats this point: “Central in [the discussions on the relation between kerygma and history] is the so-called historical relatedness (Geschichtsbezogenheit) of the Christian faith, which makes it impossible for us to take refuge in a timeless kerygma that has not a single point of contact with real history.”248 But this objection confuses a number of different things. Of course integral to the truth of the Christian faith, of the Gospel, are certain historical events, as well as statements about these events, such as we find in the Nicene Creed: “For us men and for our salvation, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures.” The truth of this set of sentences refers to events that occurred, but surely the truth of these sentences does not depend upon when they were stated, who stated them, and most certainly their truth is not true only at the times to which they refer. The failure to make these distinctions is at the root of Berkouwer’s objection—and his confusion. As Paul Helm correctly notes, “Christians down the centuries, reciting [the Nicene Creed], have expressed the same truths. We may say this, then: that as regards the central affirmations of our faith, their truth is not affected in any way by when they are asserted. We might say of such assertions: once true, always true, permanently true.”249 Now, then, Berkouwer’s objection is, partly, that speaking of the truths of the Christian faith as being now forever true is to take the Gospel to be an abstract truth, and this fails to take seriously that Scripture says things that are in some way historically related. But it is hard to see why the historical relatedness of the Gospel would be inconsistent with the claim that once something is true it is always true. To quote Helm again, “What has happened to our faith if it is not now forever true that our Savior was 247 Berkouwer, Heilige Schrift, I, 29 [28]. 248 Berkouwer, Heilige Schrift, I, 29 [28]. 249 Paul Helm, “Are Revealed Truths timeless?” Online: http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot .com/2007/08/analysis-5-are-revealed-truths-timeless.html. See also, Helm, “Propositions and Speech Acts.” Online: http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2007/05/analysis-2propositions-and-speech-acts.html. Helm says elsewhere, “Such assertions as ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself ’ [2 Cor 5: 18], which Christians confess to be a truth, were false when uttered before a certain date. This is simply to say that, being a historical religion, many of the crucial statements of Christianity are tensed [propositions]” (“Revealed Propositions and Timeless Truths,” Religious Studies 8 [1972], 127–36, and for this quotation, 135). I have profited from Helm’s analysis in these papers.

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born of a virgin? Jesus stopped being born, he stopped suffering and so on, but the statements Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus suffered, etc. never stop being true.”250 Consider, for example, the assertion expressing the proposition, Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15). Yes, we are focusing here on an abstract truth, on the truth of what St. Paul asserted, the theological truth-content, rather than on the fact that he asserted it, or facts about the fact of his asserting it, and so forth. Why should there be any objection to that focus? What’s wrong with abstract truth anyway? We’ve moved from context to content, and legitimately so. Colin Gunton gives some more examples, biblical and creedal, of theological propositions that may be considered as abstract truths. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” [Gen 1:1]. . . . “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” [John 1:14]. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Cor 15:20). “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from who are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6). “Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb 9:15). “I believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth” (Nicene Creed). I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life” (Nicene Creed). “Christ alone is God’s own eternal Son, whereas we are accepted for his sake as children of God by grace” (The Heidelberg Catechism). “Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death” (The Barmen Declaration). These affirmations have varying grammatical and logical form. Some describe events, or acts; others the status of those who act or bring about events. Yet for all of their diversity, I would claim, simply as they stand, they are, or purport to be revelatory. They are components of a revealed religion. They are not chosen at random, and intentionally so, for it has always been held that some statements encapsulate the heart of the faith more appropriately than others. To state is to exclude, logically. But if they were once true, they are always true, even though we may need to explain, gloss and expand them in all kinds of ways.251

Berkouwer formulates another objection. “Along these lines, it is meaningful and necessary to consider that in Scripture we do not come into contact with a revelation of divine truth or truths about which we would be able to speak apart from the testimonial nature of these words.”252 But

250 Helm, “Are Revealed Truths timeless?” 250. 251  Colin E. Gunton, A Brief Theology of Revelation, The 1993 Warfield Lectures (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 13–14, italics added. 252 Berkouwer, Heilige Schrift, II, 56 [166].



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what exactly is the problem here? Again, consider the truth of assertions such as, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). This statement is only contingently true, but now that it has happened, it is forever true, and hence we may asserting it to be once true, say that it is always true, permanently true, true today and tomorrow. Yes, this is an abstract truth. Again, why would Berkouwer think that treating John 1:14 as an abstract truth is a problem? It is a problem, according to him, because it misconstrues the kerygmatic purpose of Scripture. Recall that Berkouwer has a kerygmatic theory of revelation—Scripture proclaims the Gospel, the Word, calling forth a response from man in faith to the words of the gospel, so that we may live by the truth to which it bears witness. Abstracting John 1:14, treating it as a piece of informative discourse, a system of abstract propositional truths, suggests that this revealed truth may be viewed in a detached manner, meaning thereby that one can view that truth at a distance, of mere theoretical interest, without getting personal about it, without seeing faith as a response to the words of the Gospel that bear witness to the Christ-event. Two points must be made here. First, clearly, all these propositions formulated by Gunton may be treated as abstract truths. In this connection, we must ask, “But is our abstracting of them an act of detachment? Are we, in abstracting them, and then confessing them, detaching ourselves from them? Are they then of merely theoretical interest? Whoever would think such a thing? Cannot one’s conscience be bound to the word of God when one makes such affirmations?”253 To ask these questions is to see immediately the answer to the last one: of course. Second, Gunton rightly concludes in the last sentence of the above quotation, as regards the central affirmations of the Christian faith, that their truth is such that we might say of such assertions, not only once true, always true, permanently true, and hence these affirmations make cognitive claims that are universally and, in a certain sense, conclusively true. But also, if Berkouwer means to reject what he calls “objectivism” because he thinks that linguistically articulated doctrines are always open to what Guarino calls “fallibilistic reversibility,” then he is mistaken. “Fallibilistic ‘reversibility’ is not possible here because the denial of Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word of God is not admissible.” Still, adds Guarino, “a qualified fallibilism is always endorsable if one means by this that every statement requires 253 Paul Helm, “Are Revealed Truths timeless?”

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further thought and elucidation, that every assertion is open to reconceptualization and reformulation, and that no statement comprehensively exhausts truth, much less divine truth.”254 Lastly, Berkouwer’s lack of clarity regarding the propositional character of revelation shows itself once again when he seems to deny the place of fundamental revealed moral truth in Scripture. He writes, remarking upon St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, “Paul is obviously not engaged in lessons in timeless morals.”255 Indeed, he adds, “The Word of God does not come to us in generalities, showing no historical outlines; if that were the case, it would be able to guarantee continuity through the course of the centuries.”256 Does Berkouwer think that all the biblical commands, in particular, the Decalogue, are culturally conditioned such that there are no universally valid and permanently revealed moral precepts? In other words, does he actually deny “that there exist, in Divine Revelation, a specific and determined moral content, universally valid and permanent [?]”257 Aren’t there moral norms formulated in Scripture having not only the status of fundamental revealed moral truth but also are in themselves relevant for salvation (1 Cor 6:9–11)? Aren’t the biblical commandments against incest, bestiality (Exod 22:19), homosexuality (Lev 18:22; Rom 1:26–27; 1 Cor 6:9), adultery (Exod 20:14), child sacrifice, prostitution (Lev 19:29; Deut 23:17–18), and rape (Deut 22:25–29), absolute and universally valid? Is it morally acceptable to oppress the poor? Commit idolatry (Exod 20:4; Deut 13:6–11)? Bribery (Exod 23:8; 2 Chr 19:7)? Bearing false witness against one’s neighbor (Exod 23:1–2)? Surely not. Of course I’m not suggesting that Berkouwer thinks that any of these practices are morally acceptable. But it does seem that his apparent denial of fundamental revealed moral truth, which is universally valid, holding for all times and places throughout the centuries, makes it difficult for him to

254 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 139n59. See also, Dei Verbum, no. 8: “This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts (see Luke, 2:19, 51) through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her.” 255 Berkouwer, Heilige Schrift, II, 106 [188]. 256 Berkouwer, Heilige Schrift, II, 102 [186]. 257 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, no. 37.



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justify his acceptance of these moral precepts. In short, Berkouwer’s view of propositional revelation leaves us confused about how to come to terms with the Bible’s authority for the moral life. But even more significant is that without being clear about the status of propositional revelation, Berkouwer is unable to account for the universal, objective, perduring, and materially continuous teaching of Christian faith and thought. Conclusion “Who speaks for the whole Church in the name of the Church?” Central to answering this question is being able to identify the “concrete official and public locus of authority” in the Church, namely, a teaching office, a magisterium. Berkouwer significantly helps Catholics and Protestants to move beyond the impasse of the dilemma of either Bible or Church. He argues that the principle of sola Scriptura excludes not only an antitradition principle but also an anti-ecclesial principle. Still, in the hermeneutical trajectory from the listening church (ecclesia audiens) to the teaching church (ecclesia docens), Berkouwer leaves us defenseless on the hermeneutical battlefield of competing and conflicting interpretations of the meaning of Scripture—indeed, of the very authority of Scripture in the Church. That is so because he is never clear on the matter of the teaching office and its office bearers, and hence is unable to answer the question of, not only what the role of the teaching office is in the interpretation of Scripture, but also of who defends the text of Scripture, indeed, the deposit of faith. In this connection, I address Berkouwer’s shortcoming by arguing for a teaching office, a magisterium. I concluded that that Scripture, tradition and the Church are intrinsically and necessarily related as a network of interdependent authorities without making Scripture subservient either to tradition (solo tradition) or to the teaching office of the Church (solum magisterium). I also concluded that Berkouwer’s defenseless posture in the hermeneutical battlefield arises from, not only his failure to locate the Church’s teaching office, but also from two problematic aspects of his doctrine of revelation. For one, his lack of clarity regarding the status of propositional revelation in particular and propositional truth in general; and secondly, his protest against epistemological objectivism. Both of these aspects contribute to Berkouwer’s inability to account satisfactorily for the universal, objective, perduring, and materially identical teaching of the historic Christian faith and thought.

chapter SIX

The Development of Dogma For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence, but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated. Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding. May understanding, knowledge and wisdom increase as ages and centuries roll along, and greatly and vigorously flourish, in each and all, in the individual and the whole Church: but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same meaning, and the same judgment (in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia).1 Why is the issue of doctrinal development worth studying? In what respects is it a significant, or even a crucial, issue for theology, and, indeed, for faith? . . . For Catholic theology, the issue of doctrinal development is vital to the justification of specifically Catholic Christian doctrinal insights, vis-à-vis the serious objections to these which other historic Christian communities can lodge. For it may be said that certain elements met with in Catholic teaching today, such as, for example, the doctrine of Purgatory, were not found in the early Church, or, at any rate, can be found there only with difficulty. But if an aspect of the public faith of the Church today was not a constitutive part of the original apostolic preaching, at least, not in any obvious sense, how can this aspect be supported, or even tolerated?2 1 Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei Filius, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, nos. 13–14. The last sentence of this quotation refers the reader to Vincent of Lérins (died c. 445), The Commonitory of Vincent of Lerins: A New Translation, Furnished with an Introduction, Bp. Jeff; and Appendix from Bishop Beveridge, and Notes by the Translator (Baltimore: Joseph Robinson, 1847), Chapter XXIII, §28, “Of what kind of Improvement Christian Doctrine is susceptible,” 66–72. For a magisterial study of this work by Vincent of Lérins, see Thomas G. Guarino, Vincent of Lérins and the Development of Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013). 2 Aidan Nichols, O.P., From Newman to Congar, 1. Most of the systematic theological attention, in the nineteenth century, to the issue of doctrinal development was given by Catholic theologians such as John Henry Newman (1801–1890), An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 9th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1894; originally published, 1845), and Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838), Symbolism, translated James Burton Robertson (New York: Crossroad, 1997; originally published, 1832). See also, Scottish Presbyterian James Orr (1844–1913), Progress of Dogma (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1901).



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Berkouwer on Dogmatic Development In his 1940 book on Catholicism, De Strijd Om Het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma, Berkouwer devotes an entire chapter to the “Evolution of Dogma.”3 He begins by stating exactly the nature of dogma. Berkouwer understands that by Roman Catholic standards a dogma is taken to be a “religious truth that has been revealed by God and is proposed by the Church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed. These are the two essential marks of dogma: that it lies contained in divine revelation, and that it is proclaimed by the church” (SRKD, 169).4 In short, a dogma is nothing other than the Church’s infallible teaching of what God has revealed by virtue of being contained in the Word of God; it is also defined by a solemn judgment as a divinely revealed truth either by the papal magisterium or an ecumenical council, or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.5 Some examples of such dogmas would be “the articles of faith of the [Nicene] creed, the various Christological dogmas, the doctrine of the institution of the sacraments by Christ and their efficacy with regard to grace; the doctrine of the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the sacrificial nature of the Eucharistic celebration,” and so many more.6 Berkouwer is sensitive to the distinction between the exercise of the extraordinary Magisterium of the papacy and of an ecumenical council, on the one hand, and that, on the other, of the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Bishops in communion with Peter. Given that distinction, Berkouwer notes that “the official proclamation by the church is not strictly necessary for the presence of dogma” (SRKD, 169n2).7 In

3 Berkouwer, SRKD, 168–205. 4 Similarly, Henri Rondet, S.J., states, “Doctrine is an official expression of a particular truth contained in Revelation which, once defined by the teaching authority, cannot be called in question” (Do Dogmas Change? Translated by Dom Mark Pontifex [New York: Hawthorn Books, 1961], 10). 5 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Doctrinal Commentary on the Profession of Faith’s Concluding Paragraphs, Professio Fidei,” 1998, no. 5. Appendix H in Dulles, Magisterium, 163–173. Online: http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfadtu.htm. 6 “Doctrinal Commentary, no. 11. 7 In this connection Berkouwer cites Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei Filius, Chapter 3, On Faith: “Wherefore, by divine and Catholic faith all those things are to be believed which are contained in the word of God as found in Scripture and tradition, and which are proposed by the Church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal magisterium” (no. 8). Thus, according to Vatican I, the absence of a defining act, what Berkouwer calls “kerkelijke fixeering” (ecclesiastical determination), is not a necessary condition to hold that a dogma is to be believed as divinely revealed. Still, although Berkouwer recognizes

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other words, a defining act, or solemn judgment, is not strictly necessary for the Church to hold that a dogma is to be believed as divinely and formally revealed, as contained in the Word of God; it is sufficient for a truth to be believed as divinely revealed by virtue of a non-defining act. In the latter case, as the then Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, was to write more than a half a century later: “a doctrine is taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the bishops dispersed throughout the world who are in communion with the successor of Peter.”8 Significantly, Ratzinger adds, “Such a doctrine can be confirmed or reaffirmed by the Roman Pontiff, even without recourse to a solemn definition, by declaring explicitly that it belongs to the teaching of the ordinary and universal magisterium as a truth that is divinely revealed . . . or as a truth of Catholic doctrine.” In this light, we can understand why Berkouwer distinguishes between dogmas and “Catholic truths.” It may be helpful to provide the rationale for this distinction because Berkouwer does not do so. Catholic truths are not proposed by the teaching office of the Church as formally revealed and hence they are not declared as divinely revealed; rather they are logically or historically connected with revelation. This “in so way diminishes their definitive character.”9 In this case, too, Catholic doctrines can be solemnly defined either by the exercise of the papal magisterium or by an ecumenical council, or “can be taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church.”10 Regarding the latter, he writes: “These catholic truths include, in succession, the theological conclusions, one of whose premises is contained in revelation; also, those philosophical truths that the church employs in working out the expression of divine truth; finally, the so called ‘facta dogmatica’,11 which are not this point he confuses us by drawing on the distinction of German Catholic theologian, Bernhard Bartmann (1860–1938), who distinguished between “dogmata formalia quoad nos, revelata et proposita” and “dogmata materialia, in se, revelata sed non proposita,” and then concluded (as cited in Berkouwer, SRKD, 169n4): “Bei letzteren fehlt das zweite Wesensmoment, sie sind daher keine eigentlichen Dogmen” [With the latter the second essential element is missing, and hence they therefore are not true dogmas]. This is confusing because it suggests that a dogma is a proposition to be believed with divine faith only if it has been solemnly defined by the Church. But Vatican I says the exact opposite.   8 “Doctrinal Commentary,” no. 9.   9 “Doctrinal Commentary,” no. 7. 10 “Doctrinal Commentary,” no. 6. 11  What is the meaning of dogmatic facts ( facta dogmatica)? “[They] are not the facts of salvation history; they are the facts involved in the Church’s censorship of heresies. The question is whether the censure of the Reformation doctrine of justification forms part of the infallible censorship of the Church. Put another way, the question is: Does a judgment by



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about the great acts of redemption, but about historical realities such as the episcopacy of Peter in Rome, the legitimacy of certain councils” (SRKD, 170n6).12 Dogmas have a direct and immediate relation to divine revelation, meaning thereby that they are formally revealed. Although the latter truths—strictly speaking referred to as doctrines—do not entirely lack an internal relationship with revelation, the relation as such is historical or logical, in short, so-called ‘virtually implicit,’ and thus are completely other than that of a dogma. Examples of such definitive doctrines—that are not revealed in se, but are nonetheless “necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith”—are papal infallibility prior to the solemn, dogmatic definition of Vatican I, the doctrine that priestly ordination is reserved only to men, the wrongness of abortion, euthanasia, prostitution, fornication, and others. Berkouwer explains the difference between dogma and doctrine (‘catholic truths’): This is what pertains to catholic truths: “They are not contained [formally revealed] in revelation and as such are not proclaimed,” and they are designated as church teaching in distinction from dogma as the divine teaching of revelation. These catholic truths are of enormous significance. Various dogmatic truths are closely, coherently involved here and they are, therefore, also infallible. But they are not dogmas (SRKD, 170).13 the Church of a given position carry with it the assumption that its analysis of the position under judgment is necessarily accurate? The problem is illustrated in the Church’s judgment of Jansenism. In 1653, five theses from Jansen’s Augustine were condemned. But Jansenists contended that these five theses were not accurate representations of the book. The Pope (Alexander VII), however, declared that the theses were taken from Jansen’s book ‘in the sense that the writer intended them’. So the Pope’s analysis of Jansen’s book was part of the truth of his condemnation of certain views. This is an example of the problem of the ‘dogmatic facts’. Must these ‘facts’—the analysis of a condemned idea—be considered part of infallibly proclaimed truth? Or is it possible that the analysis may later be seen as mistaken even though the intention of preserving a truth may have been valid? Can we distinguish between the Church’s positive intention to confess a truth and its analysis of an ‘error’ so that the constructive intention could be admitted without implying that the analysis of the ‘error’ was correct” (VCNT, 50–51[48–49])? 12 In this passage, Berkouwer is confusing two sorts of doctrines: one, doctrines that the Magisterium has not proposed as formally revealed, but are still such that they can be solemnly defined by the papal magisterium or ecumenical councils, or taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church; and two, teachings that “have not been defined with a solemn judgment or proposed as definitive by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” Such teachings still “require religious submission of will and intellect because they are authentically taught by the ordinary papal magisterium or of the college of bishops. “They are set forth in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of revelation, or to recall the conformity of a teaching with the truths of faith, or last to warn against ideas incompatible with these truths or against dangerous opinions that can lead to error” (“Doctrinal Commentary on the Profession of Faith’s Concluding Paragraphs,” no. 10). 13 The quote within the quote is from German Catholic theologian, Bernhard Bartmann.

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Now, regarding the nature of dogma, the Church purports to speak then of ‘nothing other than what God has revealed.’ “It is self-evident,” Berkouwer notes, “that in connection with this definition of dogma the question arises as to what is to be understood by this ‘based on’ and this ‘being contained in’ revelation” (SRKD, 171). If revelation is held to have closed with the death of the last Apostles, as the Church holds doctrinally, then some such ‘being-based on’ or ‘being-contained in’ revelation is necessary. In light of this presupposition, Berkouwer, then, raises the question regarding the nature of development: “What is the relation between the evolution of dogma and revelation, and what are the factors that determine this evolution? Can there be talk here of a new dogma, of a genuine development of dogma, or in the strict sense may we only speak of the unfolding of dogma” (SRKD, 168)? For instance, consider the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, which was promulgated by Pius IX in his 1854 Apostolic Constitution, Ineffabilis Deus,14 or the dogma of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven, promulgated by Pius XII in his 1950 Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus.15 I shall return later in this chapter to consider Berkouwer’s biblical and theological assessment of the fundamental Mariological principle in his writings on Catholicism: De Strijd Om Het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma (1940), Conflict Met Rome (1949), and Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie (1964). Most important for us now is to note that Berkouwer astutely grasps certain first principles that determine any talk of development, raising the difficulty of how “the ‘new’ proposition is not to be a new revelation.”16 These principles are, first, the closed nature of divine revelation—it has been given once for all—with the death of the last apostles; and second, the unchangeable truth of dogma. Given the first principle, which refers us to the constitutive phase of the Apostolic Faith, “the Church can only continue to bear witness to what she heard from Christ in the apostolic generation and recognized then as belonging to her deposit of faith.”17 This 14 Online: http://www.ewtn.com/LIBRARY/PAPALDOC/P9INEFF.htm. 15 Online: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/apost_constitutions/documents/ hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus_en.html. 16 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” entry in Theological Dictionary, 125–126, and for this quote, 126. 17 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” 126. As Yves Congar explains: “No post-Pentecostal experience is exempt from being checked against the datum of Revelation given in the prophets, in Christ and by the Apostles; this is the principal objective criterion of the Faith and its theology, and it applies not only to the faithful, as individuals, but to the Church as such. Neither an instinct for the faith [sensus fidei], nor the data of religious experience possesses autonomous standards by which their validity may be



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first principle effectively removes the concept of post-apostolic revelation made to the Church as a way of justifying dogmatic development.18 Given the second principle, which refers us to the interpretative phase, although our understanding of dogmatic truths has developed, that understanding must always be in eodem sensu eademque sententia with the truths of revelation, thereby maintaining their permanence, material identity, and universality.19 In other words, authentic dogmatic development must reflect an understanding of the biblical revelation that is homogeneous with the originally intended meaning of the universally valid truths of revelation. Elsewhere, in the important 1963 article, “Vragen Rondom De Belij­ denis,” Berkouwer registers his agreement with these first principles. He writes, “Both the Reformational and the Roman Catholic sides see this ‘development’ in large measure as being intimately tied to the canonical and unchangeable gospel. For the Reformation that means Holy Scripture, and for Rome it proceeds on the basis of the concluding of revelation with the death of the apostles.”20 In short, revelation has been given once for all, it is closed, as it were, and the unchangeable truth of revelation is constitutive of the Church’s reflection on the development of dogma. Given these first principles, then, it is understandable why Pius IX carefully speaks of Mary’s Immaculate Conception as being ever held to be “divinely revealed and as contained in the deposit of revelation.” Similarly, Pius XII speaks of Mary’s Assumption as “a truth revealed by God and contained in that divine deposit which Christ has delivered to his Spouse to be guarded faithfully and to be taught infallibly.” Evidently, then, Berkouwer understands that the Catholic tradition emphatically speaks of the unfolding of dogma by virtue of “an increase in our knowledge and insight in the dogma,” rather than of the “making known of new truths,” when that means newly revealed. The latter is not possible since the “arising of

assessed. Both must be judged by reference to the datum which is the objective criterion of what is de fide” (Christ, Our Lady and the Church, 80–81). 18 The concept of post-apostolic revelation, appealing to esoteric, non-public apostolic tradition, and the two-source theory of divine revelation were theologically assessed in Chapter Five, reply to Objection III. 19 I owe the terms “constitutive” and “interpretative” to Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” in Openbaring en Theologie (Bilthoven: H. Nelissen, 1964), 50–67, and for this term, 50. ET: “The Development of the Apostolic Faith into the Dogma of the Church,” Revelation and Theology, Translated by N.D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), 57–83, and for these terms, 57. 20 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift 63 (1963): 1–41, and at 1.

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truly new dogma is precluded since the death of the last apostles” (SRKD, 171–172).21 Thus, the Church’s claim is that she arrived at these revealed truths, these dogmas, such as the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary, without the aid of a new revelation, and hence they are not newly revealed, involving rather, as Rahner put it, “evolution within the same truth.”22 In other words, he adds, “it is change in, not of, identity.”23 In sum, explains Berkouwer: Therefore, this evolution is not in competition with the unchangeability of dogma, but complements it. We are dealing here with the radiation of the full riches of essentially unchangeable dogma. For this reason, many 21 Berkouwer recalls Proposition 21 of Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane (1907), Syllabus of Errors Concerning the Modernists, in which the following modernist thesis is rejected: “Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles” (Revelatio, objectum fidei catholicae constituens, non fuit cum Apostolis completa” (171n10). This Proposition is appealed to by De Lubac, “The Problem of the Development of Dogma,” 267–268, “Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 50n1 [57], Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 48, Rondet, Do Dogmas Change?, 12, Charles Journet, What is Dogma?, 48, Aidan Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, Yves M.J. Congar, The Word and the Spirit, 57, “Such classical contemporary theologians as Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx have explained the idea of the closure of revelation with the death of the last apostle in the sense that the witness borne to Christ, through and in whom the revelation of God’s plan and his mystery was fulfilled, was secured and terminated at that moment. It is also certainly in this sense that the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum 4 should be understood. This paragraph is very full and it concludes with the statement: ‘We now await no further public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ’.” This, too, is the view of Dutch Reformed New Testament Theologian, Herman Ridderbos, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, Translated by H. de Jongste, Revised by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1963), 25. For a similar view, see also The Heresy of Orthodoxy, written by Evangelical Protestant theologians, Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger (Wheaton, IL.: Crossway, 2010), 170–171. 22 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 44. So, too, Vincent of Lerins: “But perhaps some will say, Is there then to be no progress of religion in the Church of Christ? There is certainly, and very great. For who is he that is so envious toward men, so hostile toward God, as to endeavor to hinder it? But it must be such as may be truly a progress of the faith, not a change; for when each several thing is improved in itself, that is progress; but when a thing is turned out of one thing into another, that is change. Fitting it is, therefore, that the intelligence, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of any one man as of the whole Church, should in process of years and of ages increase, and make and rapid progress; but only in its own kind, that is, in the same doctrine, in the same meaning, in the same judgment” [in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia] (Commonitory, 66). 23 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 45. Nichols explains Rahner’s point about “development as change within identity—not change of identity. The decisive feature, in other words, is not progress, nor does the Church become cleverer as time proceeds. In this context change takes place within a self-identical reality and truth” (From Newman to Congar, 220).



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Roman Catholic theologians say that one can speak about not an objective, but about a subjective, evolution. The progression involved is not progression in revealed doctrine (at least not since the death of the apostles), but a progression in the knowledge and insight of the church, while the guarantee to the church of a pure and true evolution is the promised presence of the Holy Spirit. Nor is this evolution in conflict but in harmony with Paul’s admonition to Timothy: ‘Guard the deposit that has been entrusted to you (1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:14) (SRKD, 173–174).

Berkouwer voices his sympathy for the distinction between objective and subjective progression in the Catholic account of dogmatic development. Still, he asks whether Rome is able to maintain consistently this distinction. The “practical meaning of ‘subjective progression’ ” must be examined “because it is necessary to test all progression by the norm of Holy Scripture.” We shall therefore need to consider, according to Berkouwer, whether “in reality, this ‘progression’ is nothing more than a masked attack on revealed truth” (SRKD, 174). Alternatively, does this ‘subjective progression’ disclose to us something of the fullness of divine revelation? Berkouwer raises these critical questions especially in connection with the development of Marian dogmas. I shall return to his critique in the last section of this chapter, especially in connection with Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. For now, I want to describe the main point of criticism he had in 1940 with Catholic accounts of dogmatic development, namely, the loss of biblical normativity. Berkouwer argues there that the “the evolution of this [Marian] dogma is not determined by what is given in revelation, but is added on the basis of entirely other sources.” What is that other source? He replies: “It is the growing veneration of Mary that gained increasing influence and paved the way for the triumph of dogma” (SRKD, 188). In other words, the consciousness of faith and experience expressed in Marian piety, and under the leading of the Spirit, increasingly influences the development of dogma. The subjective growth in understanding and insight, in short, the Church’s consciousness of faith, takes on an ‘unfettered growth’ from the givens of revelation. Berkouwer is, then, persuaded that the untethering of this dogmatic developmental process results in the “Catholic Church sanctioning a [biblically] normless evolution of dogma and, therefore, the Holy Scripture increasingly recedes into the background” (SRKD, 188–191, 203–204). Therefore, Berkouwer finds some affinity between the ascendency of the ‘consciousness of faith’ as the norm for dogmatic development in Catholic theology and the experiential expressivism of Catholic modernism.

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Berkouwer continues: “What is self-evident here is that Rome does not want to acknowledge any subjectivism, and it regards this banning of subjectivism to be a matter of the church’s authority. But it is not adequate to posit this triumph over subjectivism, especially when one has first granted a leading role to popular piety and the consciousness of faith, and then, a posteriori, posits this line of development safely under the protection of the Spirit’s leading” (SRKD, 190; italics added). In other words, the teaching authority of the Church, with its point of concentration in the papacy, doesn’t resolve the problem of the normativity of revelation. If anything, it exacerbates it. “To the degree that God’s authority is more pointedly regarded as visibly embodied in the pope, to that degree the urgency of defending the cessation of the once-and-for-all-given revelation is weakened” (SRKD, 195).24 In sum, says Berkouwer: “The struggle over the evolution of Roman Catholic dogma is a conflict over the precious deposit entrusted to the church about which Paul is talking in his words to Timothy [1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:14]” (SRKD, 205). Now, although Berkouwer devotes an entire chapter to the issue of the development of dogma in his 1940 book on Catholicism, and there are remarks on that issue scattered throughout his 1949 book, Conflict met Rome,25 emphasizing a hermeneutic of continuity between the Reformation and the ancient Church, such remarks begin already in 1957, under the influence of the nouvelle théologie, to focus on the question regarding the relationship between the unchangeability of the truth of dogma and the historical conditionedness of its formulation, in short, on the relationship between truth and history.26 This focus is missing completely in his first two books on Catholicism. But Berkouwer now correctly notes: “One of the central points in the conflict with modernism is located in the problematic of the evolution of dogma in connection with historical process. With respect to dogma, are we dealing with timeless truth or with a historical process of evolution containing relativizing aspects?”27 Again, in “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” Berkouwer takes ownership of “the problem that the théologie nouvelle (within the boundaries of infallible

24 I already discussed at length in Chapter Five the question of biblical authority and the Church (tradition). 25 Berkouwer, CR, 332–343 [247–257]. 26 I examined this issue at length in Chapter One. 27 Berkouwer, Nieuwe Perspectieven, 16.



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dogma) struggled with.” He adds, this problem “is certainly for us not a false problem [schijnprobleem].”28 Berkouwer explains: One of the most important questions that has repeatedly engaged the attention of the Church throughout the centuries pertains to the truth, validity and the meaning of her confessions. Is it a question in the confessions of a clear unchangeability of truth or is it rather a question of development, and in that sense does the expressions of these confessions also have a changing element that betrays the influence of specific times? This question is closely related especially to the much discussed development of dogma in Roman Catholic theology.29

In response to this question concerning the relation between the unchangeability of truth and history, Berkouwer works with several explicitly held presuppositions. In conclusion of this section and in preparation for the next, it would be helpful to have an overall specification of the characteristics of dogma (and doctrine): “It is (a) an expression of the truth of revelation (b) in the form of a judgment (proposition) that is (c) the infallible expression of faith and therefore (d) binding in conscience; each dogma (e) arises on account of a specific historical problem.”30 What is the Nature of Dogmatic Development? First, the development of dogma as such shouldn’t be thought of merely as a gradually unfolding, dynamic organic process—from the implicit to the explicit—of what was already given in the fullness or completeness of revelation since the death of the last apostles. Further, it shouldn’t also be thought of as merely a logical activity, a process of logical explanation and deduction from given premises or revealed data, as if “it is a question of conclusions in effect being logically derived from earlier propositions.”31 As Berkouwer puts it describing a tendency in contemporary reflections on dogmatic development: “The evolution of dogma can no longer be construed simply as straight development of the explicit out of implicit truth. The implicit-explicit scheme has in fact been losing favor as a principle of 28 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 21. 29 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 1. 30 Wolfgang Beinert, “Dogma/Dogmatic Statement,” entry in Handbook of Catholic Theology, edited by Wolfgang Beinert and F.S. Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 185–188, and at 187. 31 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 2.

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explanation. Today, such a rather intellectualistic explanation of the evolutionary process of dogma is considered out of keeping with the character of divine revelation. Revelation, it is said, is not a reservoir of intellectual propositions from which other propositions can be deduced. . . . Hence, the growth of dogma cannot occur by way of deduction from revealed propositions.”32 What, then, according to Berkouwer, is the nature of dogmatic development? Berkouwer doesn’t exactly say. Pared down for our purpose here, I will distinguish four theories of dogmatic development to help chart our way through an answer to this question: (1) Development as restatement or clearer statement of what is already conceptually possessed and known (Bossuet). With the passing of the idea of tradition as a collection of orally transmitted teachings not contained in Scripture [the two-source theory of revelation], and with keener attention given to the history not only of outward verbal expression but of expressed conceptuality in Christian tradition, this idea of development has been abandoned. (2) Development as the logical work of drawing conclusions from revealed premises. On this view, it should be possible strictly logically to demonstrate the continuity of dogma with Scripture. . . . (3) Development as the material transformation of the didactic expression of faith according to the scientific and philosophical conceptuality of the age (Schleiermacher, modernism). This view is ordinarily criticized on the ground that the continuity of Christianity is more than a continuity of experience and piety and includes a continuity of teaching. (4) Development as properly theological contemplation of revealed reality by a necessarily historically conditioned reason illumined by faith (Newman, Möhler, Blondel). Recognition of the historical conditionedness of reason accounts for the leaps in development that cannot be logically bridged as a passage from already possessed premises to previously unarticulated conclusion. Delimitation of the object of contemplation as revealed reality (the Christ), while not denying the role of propositions in the transmission of revelation, explains how there can be more in the developments than was previously already propositionally expressed. Finally, the specification of the contemplation as “theological” and of reason as “illumined by faith” makes of the actual process of development an act of faith, and so one not wholly reducible to naturally human capacities and makes of the subsequent recognition of authentic developments likewise an act of faith.33

32 Berkouwer, VCNT, 76 [67–68]. 33 Guy F. Mansini, “Dogma,” entry in Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, 243.



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In his early book on Catholicism, De Strijd Om Het Roomsch-Katholieke Dogma, he explicitly shares Rome’s critique of the modernistic, evolutionary view of dogma in which doctrinal formulas are merely expressions of religious experience.34 This is the third theory above of dogmatic development. Says Berkouwer, With sharp pronouncements, Rome has wanted to distance itself from every form of evolution that loses the basis for the cessation of revelation and in doing so achieves the production of new dogma via evolution. She points to the danger of those “religious formulations” that that flow from adopting the principle of immanence. She battles against the subjectivism determined by the influence of the notion of a “sensus religiosus” and blames modernists for a “new system.” As far as Rome is concerned, the modernistic understanding of dogma calls into question the unchangeability of dogma. This is threatened by the modernists’ subjectivistic approach on essential points. . . . Rome does not want to regard revelation as a projection of immanent subjectivity and rejects every concession in this direction with indignation. The papal encyclical Pascendi dominici Gregis by Pius X in 1907 speaks out clearly against this approach as attacking and distorting the eternal understanding of truth (SRKD, 201–202).35

34 The term “experiential expressive” that I am using to describe the modernist model for faith and theology was first used by George Lindbeck in his influential 1984 book, The Nature of Doctrine, but it happens to dovetail with Pius X’s critique of modernism’s view of dogma in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, nos. 12–13. This model holds the mistaken belief that “inner experiences (are) prior to expression and communication” (36), and that “whatever the variations, thinkers of this tradition all locate ultimately significant contact with whatever is finally important to religion in the prereflective experiential depths of the self and regard the public or outer features of religion as expressive and evocative objectifications (i.e., nondiscursive symbols) of internal experience” (21). 35 The concluding sentence of this quotation is referring to Proposition 58 of Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane, Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists, “Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.” In his 1941 book, Hearer of the Word, Karl Rahner, too, rejected the “experiential expressivism” of Liberal Protestantism and Catholic modernism, namely, the claim that “revelation is . . . the mere objectivation of humanity’s subjective state” (New York: Continuum, 1994), 18–19. As Benedictine theologian Guy Mansini correctly notes, “For Hearer [40–41, 61, 132, 145–46] aims at the (transcendental) vindication of the possibility of a positive revelation in history, wherein the ‘word’ to be heard is the word of the prophets, of Christ, of Scripture” (“Experiential Expressivism and Two Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians,” Nova et Vetera, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 125–41, and for this quote132). In his 1954 article, “The Development of Dogma,” Rahner still rejects experiential expressivisim: “A dogma explicitly formulated in propositions [does not arise] from some a priori religious consciousness or subconsciousness, itself the only source of an explication in dogmatic propositions” (65n1). According to Mansini, however, Rahner ended up becoming an experiential expressivist (133–141). For a recent summary of Pius X’s critique of Catholic modernism, see Aidan Nichols, O.P., Criticising the Critics (Oxford: Family Publications, 2010), 7–28.

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In 1940, then, Berkouwer underwrites for the greater part Rome’s rejection of experiential expressivism as an account of dogma and hence of dogmatic development because of its subjectivism, which threatens the unchangeable truth of dogma. Put differently, the development of dogma involves a continuity of doctrine in explaining the continuity of Christian faith rather than merely a continuity of religious experience.36 In 1949, he continues to reject experiential expressivism, but this time in connection with explaining the confessional differences between Rome and the Reformation. He writes, Relativism in whatever form it may appear is one of the most dangerous temptations in the history of the church. . . . In the history of the church, with its appalling discords and dissensions, the bogey of relativism sometimes frightens us. Had we not better be satisfied with a phenomenological description [of religious experience] and reassure ourselves with the knowledge that religion arises out of the depth of the soul as something very irrational? Is there any meaning in struggle, or is the struggle nothing but some confessional objectification of psychical structures (CR, 15–16 [10–11].

Berkouwer unequivocally rejects the temptation of relativism regarding truth. Later in his 1952 dogmatic study on De Persoon van Christus, Berkouwer asks the question: What constitutes the development of dogma? Rejecting the antithesis of dogmatic progression and regression as a false dilemma, he writes: The incorrectness of the dilemma is shown up by the fact that there can be a forward movement which runs true precisely by a continual backward reference to Scripture. Uninterrupted research in Scripture must guide the reflection and proclamation of the church: this “going back” must be the source of guidance and correction. It is our conviction that such progression has played an important role in the history of the church. The ideal of the church’s reflection is not formal progression but a progression which expresses close attachment to Scripture, expresses a growing understanding of Scripture as a result of faithful reading of Scripture. Such understanding of Scripture implies the recognition of heresy and its rejection. Theology must not be intent on continually saying new things because they are new; but because from age to age it is confronted by new situations—situations, too, implying an acute threat to the Gospel—the church must be ready each time to formulate the truth anew. It does not then propose a new dogma, but tries to understand the truth of God in the new situation. . . . For the Scriptures are richer than any pronouncement of the church, no matter how excellent it be and how faithfully it has been formulated in subjection to

36 Mansini, “Dogma,” 243.



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the Word of God. To acknowledge this fact is not to have a relativistic view of dogma.37

Here, too, the upshot is that Berkouwer rejects historical relativism.38 When we fast forward to 1963, he still rejects that temptation. Still, his emphasis is now on dogmatic development being rich and complex so that “the development is not taking place on an isolated terrain of conceptual and logical reflection about God’s truth.” Rather, Berkouwer adds, dogmatic development “is embedded in both the total life of the church and the world.”39 But this point raises the question, then, whether dogmatic development “could be merely the reflection of a general history of humanity, a history of civilizations containing nothing but the objectivization of the everchanging sentiments, opinions and attitudes of a continual succession of historical epochs.”40 No, this would be historical relativism, and Berkouwer rejects it as theologically false. In other words, historical relativism would not be consistent with both the historic Christian teaching that revelation has been given once for all—it is closed, as it were—and the unchangeable truth of revelation. This point brings us to the second presupposition. Truth and Noetic Progress Second, since truth is unchangeable, dogmatic development involves ‘noetic progress,’ meaning thereby not a progress of revelation, but rather progress in our understanding of revelation, of the revealed deposit. “Development is designated as ‘noetic,’ as an increasing ‘discovery’ of the gospel’s content.”41 As Berkouwer is to express this point later in his first book on Vatican II, Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie, “Evolution of dogma was not a development of truth, but a development of the Church’s consciousness of the truth” (VCNT, 65 [59–60]).42 That is, Roman Catholics 37 Berkouwer, De Persoon van Christus (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1952), 70–71. ET: The Person of Christ, Translated by John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954), 90–91. 38 For both a history of theological historicism and a defense of it as a normative theological position, see Sheila G. Davaney, Historicism, The Once and Future Challenge for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006). 39 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 1. 40 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 43. 41 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 1. 42 Similarly, Rondet states, “The history of doctrine is the history of the awareness of the Church (as a whole) of the truths contained in the revealed deposit” (Do Dogmas Change?, 10).

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believed—and Berkouwer agrees—that the evolution of dogma is a homogeneous development and a “noetic penetration and illumination of the unchangeable truth, as an increasing radiation of its light” (VCNT, 64).43 Still, he adds elsewhere, “Whoever speaks of noetic progress, of a discovery of that which is given in the biblical canon and in ‘unchangeable’ truth, has merely framed the problem rather than solved it.”44 Berkouwer writes elsewhere: “We come to the real question when we ask whether the dogma of the Church is also subject to the influence of historical variation. Does dogma stand alone as the one unchangeable and untouchable rock within the waves of history, transcending the law of changeability? Or does dogma participate in the law of historical change” (VCNT, 62–63 [58])? Agreed, because there still remains the critically important requirement of explaining how ‘progressive knowledge’ (‘noëtische progressive’) stands in consonance with the originally intended meaning of the unchangeable truth. Indeed, Berkouwer stresses that the real problem that is present in an orthodox Christian account of dogmatic development arises from its starting-point “that does not deny the unchangeability of truth in dogma” (VCNT, 4).45 The upshot of this second presupposition is that development over time must always be—as I argued earlier in Chapter One—in edodem sensu eademque sententia. Truth and the Inadequacy of its Formulations This brings us to the third presupposition, namely, the distinction between truth and its formulations. “Along with maintaining the unchangeability of dogma, one must simultaneously pay attention to the wording, to the expression and representation of that which is unchangeable and confessed as truth by the church” (VCNT, 64). The import of this distinction between the unchangeable truth of the Church’s dogma and its formulations arises from the recognition that the former is expressed in “thought forms belonging to a definite time, thought forms that naturally bear a human, historically determined and therefore relative character” (VCNT, 64). Berkouwer adds explanatorily:

43 This sentence is not present in the English translation. 44 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 2. 45 This sentence is not present in the English translation.



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Attention is urgently sought for the fact that the church, in formulating her dogmas, has often been served by philosophically expressed thought-forms belonging to a certain period. . . . These thought-forms are changeable, varying with the times and relative, so that it is thought to be possible to confess the same truth in other times using others ideas and categories. Concerning dogma, we are dealing with two realities: the unchangeable affirmation and the changeable representation; or said differently: with the intended content and with the form in which that content is expressed (VCNT, 64).

This distinction between truth and its formulations, unchangeable affirmations and changeable representations, rests upon a more particular epistemological presupposition, namely, that all formulations of the truth are inadequate. This is Berkouwer’s fourth presupposition, and it implies his rejection of the first view of dogmatic development descried above. Let’s call that view immobilism, or what Berkouwer refers to as a hidebound traditionalism: the absolutizing of certain concepts as the only way to say something. Of course, he assures us, inadequacy of expression46 doesn’t mean that the unchangeable truth is inexpressible, or that the formulations or representations are untrue,47 and certainly this distinction doesn’t reflect an “irrational doubt in the value of thought.”48 Berkouwer writes elsewhere, “The incompleteness of our knowledge plays a large role but not because of irrationalistic, skeptical or agnostic motives, but rather as a consequence of the sense of the immeasureable terrain of truth on which men are privileged to set foot” (VCNT, 71 [64]). Similarly, Berkouwer writes in defense of the claim that the theologians of the nouvelle théologie reject relativism. He adds “Their rejection of relativism is connected with a related point, namely, that these theologians do not in an irrationalistic manner deny the value of conceptual formulations” (VCNT, 73).49 Rather, such formulations can never be adequate because they can never be exhaustive expressions of the truth. In other words, he adds, “The issue is not about challenging revealed truth, but about recognizing the ‘limitation’ or ‘incompleteness’ of our knowledge . . . that is only

46 In Bavinck’s words, “No one claims that content and expression, essence and form, are in complete correspondence and coincide. The dogma that the church confesses and the dogmatician develops is not identical with the absolute truth of God itself ” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 7 [32–33]). 47 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 27. 48 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 5. 49 This important sentence is, inexplicably, not in the English translation. Italics added.

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sketched even in the most worthwhile formulation.”50 There is always more to say about the reality of faith. In short, “This has everything to do with inexhaustibility of the truth of the gospel.”51 Consider Berkouwer’s statement on the Chalcedonian Creed (451 ad) that it doesn’t express the whole truth about the person and natures of Christ once and for all in an entirely adequate form.52 The issue is about an inadequate confession of what the gospel preaches about Christ. That inadequacy is connected to the limitation of the operative expressions in the process of being clarified and subject to changing interpretation, as we can clearly see in the entire Christological controversy until 680. Least of all does this mean that the expression “vere Deus-vere homo” is wrong. But in no way does this mean that the fully true perspective on the person of Christ would be guaranteed by accepting these words as such, or that they would capture in any sense the complete revelation concerning Christ.53

So, here Berkouwer makes clear that inadequacy of expression does not for this reason mean that the christological statements of Chalcedon are false. He adds the point that Chalcedon’s “important words and formulations only have meaning for the Church to the extent that they remain open to the inexhaustible message of the Lord.”54 This point raises a question that, in my judgment, Berkouwer unsatisfactorily addresses: Does Chalcedon state definitive teaching about the person of Christ even while stimulating further theological reflection? Berkouwer asks: “May we simply remain where Chalcedon stood, or shouldn’t we much rather regard Chalcedon as a beginning, as pointing the way, as protection against a specific heresy in order subsequently to direct us once again to the full gospel?”55 His response to this important question stresses that Chalcedon’s Christological formula is not exhaustive given “human limitation and the inadequacy of human formulations.”56 The recognition of this general epistemological claim “frees such formulas from the constraints that are present in confessionalism, in particular the constraint that the formula—taken as end

50 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 6, and also 10, 22, 25–26, 35–36. 51  Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 5. 52 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 26–36. Earlier in Chapter One, I discussed Berkouwer’s epistemological presuppositions and his interpretation of Chalcedon. 53 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 27. 54 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 27. 55 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 29. 56 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 27.



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rather than beginning—is isolated from the full light of the Scriptures.”57 So Berkouwer’s emphasis is on a theologically stimulative role such formulas as that of Chalcedon may serve in the ongoing exploration of the person and natures of Christ. Still, Berkouwer leaves unanswered the question, not only in what sense Chalcedon’s statements are true— actually corresponding to reality—but also how “every formula in which the faith is expressed can in principle be surpassed while still retaining its truth.”58 Put differently, how can Chalcedon’s teaching never again be brought into question while at the same time being such that it opens the way to further advances?59 Berkouwer leaves this question unanswered and thus with a lack of clarity regarding whether “authoritative conciliar teachings and creeds are binding truths, unimpeachable and irreversible interpretations of Scripture.”60 Don’t ecumenical councils, such as Chalcedon, “in their definitive teaching, represent the universal and ancient faith of the church and so, ensure the faithful interpretation of God’s Word?”61 We are not forced to choose between the inexhaustibility of the truth of the gospel and the corresponding openness to the possibility that Christian teaching about Christ may always receive further elucidation, on the one hand, and the stability, material continuity, and substantial identity

57 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 29. Berkouwer here is siding with Karl Rahner who wrote, “The clearest formulations, the most sanctified formulas, the classic condensations of the centuries-long work of the Church in prayer, reflection and struggle concerning God’s mysteries: all these derive their life from the fact that they [conciliar formulations] are not end but beginning” (“Current Problems in Christology,” in God, Christ, Mary, and Grace, Vol. I of Theological Investigations, Translated by Cornelius Ernst (Baltimore: Helicon, 1969; 1951 essay originally entitled, “Chalkedon—Ende oder Anfang?” [Chalcedon—End or Beginning?]), 149–200, at 149. Berkouwer took the same position, even without reference to Rahner, in his 1952 book, De Persoon van Christus, 65–76 [85–97]. 58 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 44; italics added. 59 As the French Catholic Jesuit theologian, Jean Galot, points out, “No valid Christology can be developed, therefore, outside the path blazed by Chalcedon. The starting point of Christology remains unity of person and duality of natures. A theology of Christ should not reach back beyond Chalcedon to search for another solution than the one this Council so laboriously achieved to the problems posed by the unity and duality of Jesus. . . . [Yet] it does not in any sense put an end to doctrinal research. On the contrary, it remains the point of departure for new research. . . . [T]he Chalcedonian formula of faith does not go into explanations of what nature is or what person or hypostatis is. It does not even concern itself with defining the act of the Incarnation, but limits itself to declaring what exists in Christ. It does not specify the relationship between Christ’s ontological constitution and his redemptive mission, but limits itself to a general affirmation: ‘For us and for our salvation’ ” (Who Is Christ? A Theology of Incarnation, Translated by M. Angeline Bouchard [Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1981], 248–249). 60 Guarino, Vincent of Lérins, Chapter Three, 100. 61  Guarino, Vincent of Lérins, 101.

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of dogma over time, on the other. Yes, as Thomas Guarino rightly notes, “There is, then, always room for expansion and counterbalance, for clarifications, and for reformulation, even while maintaining the stable continuity of fundamental meaning (idem sensus).”62 Faithfulness to the Gospel Fifth, and last, what drives Berkouwer’s struggle with the issue of truth and its formulations, especially since he affirms “the historical conditionedness of the creeds” and, consequently, refuses to “minimize the inadequacy of its formulations,” is faithfulness to the Gospel rather than relativism.63 The dogmatician here has the responsibility of “determining the relation between divine truth and the church’s confession.”64 “Setting forth the problem of affirmation and representation—or, whatever one might call it—is not a sign of relativism. Rather it can be a matter of being true to the gospel—indeed, it depends on it! This is seen whenever one recognizes in the church’s earlier struggles that the church was being true to the gospel by expressing it in all sorts of frameworks and formulations. Thus, this is what it means to embrace the church’s confession integrally.”65 What, then, are the theological criteria for determining whether we are faithful to the Gospel? Berkouwer doesn’t explicitly say so, but I think we surmise that the criteria he would employ would be something like the criteria Reformed theologian Michael Horton posits. “(1) the Scriptures as the infallible canon, qualitatively distinct from all other sources and authorities; (2) under this magisterial norm, the ministerial service of creeds and confessions; (3) contemporary proclamation of God’s Word in the church around the world; (4) long-standing interpretations in the tradition; (5) the particular nuances of individual theologians.”66 This is a crucially important question raised in this statement by

62 Guarino, Vincent of Lérins, 101. 63 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 21. 64 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 7 [32–33]). 65 Berkouwer, “Vragen Rondom De Belijdenis,” 23. 66 Horton, Christian Faith, 218. Hütter gives a similar list of normative sources in “Relinquishing the Principle of Private Judgment in Matters of Divine truth: A Protestant Theologian’s Journey into the Catholic Church,” in Nova et Vetera, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2011): 865–81, and at 876. So, too, by Le Groupe Des Dombes, in “One Teacher” Doctrinal Authority in the Church, no. 127; and, on warrants for doctrinal development, see Guarino’s list in Vincent of Lérins, Chapter Three, 91–111: Prima Scriptura, ecumenical councils, theological doctors, Christian faithful, and papal magisterium.



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Berkouwer. Perhaps an even more important question arises from Berkouwer claim that Christ’s church has a teaching office, that is, in Bavinck’s words, the ministerial power in service to the Word of God “to preserve, explain, understand, and defend the truth of God entrusted to her.”67 “Who speaks for the whole Church in the name of the Church?” What are the Issues at Stake in Dogmatic Development? Let me begin this section by stating that I share Berkouwer’s five presuppositions informing his brief reflections on dogmatic development. Of course, in light of them, it is easy to see that there are issues at stake here not only of meaning and truth, as I showed at length in Chapter One, and again in Chapter Five, but also of theological epistemology, which I will discuss in the next section of this chapter. Regarding the issue of meaning and truth pertaining to dogmatic development, Rahner summarizes the main question: “How namely authentic identity on the one hand and really genuine development on the other can be reconciled. The problem is undoubtedly very difficult, because it ultimately reaches down to the obscure depths of a general ontology of being and becoming, of the persistence of identity in change—and also comprises the general metaphysics of knowledge and mind, which frames the same questions in searching for truth, with regard to its identity and real historical involvement.”68 In this light, we can easily understand why, first, issues arise regarding the meaning and truth of Christian dogma over time, its stability and material continuity, that is, “the substantial identity between the faith once delivered to the saints and the faith preached in every age of the church.”69 Secondly, Berkouwer does not give us an account of the substantial identity over time of dogma. He emphasizes to such an extent the general problem of the inadequacy and limitations of dogmatic expressions in history of unchangeable truth, that it is unclear not only to what extent and, if so, how these dogmatic propositions are true, but also the sense, if any, in which they “may be considered irrevocable, continuous, universal, materially identical, and objectively true.”70 Third, the failure to give an

67 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 6–7 [32–33]). 68 Karl Rahner, “Considerations on the Development of Dogma,” Theological Investigations, Vol. 4, 3–35, and for this quote, 5. 69 Guarino, Vincent of Lérins, 83. 70 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 6.

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account of the substantial identity over time of dogma leaves unanswered an issue that is of critical importance in any account of dogmatic development. Christian dogma, for example, regarding the fixed meaning of Chalcedonian proposition of the two natures in the unity of the person— “Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man”—can always receive further elucidation, but “any doctrinal development must stand in consonance with the originally intended meaning.” That is, as Guarino adds, “This is why any profectus fidei must always be in eodem sensu eademque sententia with the preceding tradition, thereby maintaining the substantial identity of doctrine over time.”71 Therefore, in the next section, I’ll give an account of the substantial identity over time of dogma mindful of the question that Berkouwer leaves unanswered. “How can there be a healthy plurality of formulations (and so of concepts) without betraying a profound unity of faith? How can a delicate balance be maintained between same and other, unity and multiplicity?”72 Further, Berkouwer’s heavy emphasis on the general problem of the inadequacy and limitations of dogmatic expressions of unchangeable truth in history, leaves unattended the question of logical coherence, namely, “to what extent a truth that is later defined (or to be defined) is implicit in the whole deposit of faith as hitherto known.”73 In other words, “In what ways . . . can a truth be implicit in the Gospel, in view of its structure (which after all is ‘logical’ too)?”74 Berkouwer correctly notes that dogmatic development is too complex to be regarded as merely a logical explanation of a theological conclusion and the initial revealed data, such that the former is logically contained in the latter. This means that Berkouwer rejects the second theory of development I distinguished above. Still, logical coherence does play a subsidiary role within that richer complexity of dogmatic development.75 Exactly what kind of role, I’ll discuss in the next section. Moreover, it might be suggested that the issue here is that, as Schillebeeckx puts it, “it is not possible to regard logical connections as the

71 Guarino, Vincent of Lérins, 84. 72 Guarino, Vincent of Lérins, 88. 73 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” 126. 74 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” 126. 75 Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 56 [66].



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principle of a development of a supernatural faith.”76 This is because at issue here is the question of a development of dogma, of propositions revealed by God and thus matters of divine faith, not just of theology. Put differently, Schillebeeckx adds, “Theological reasoning as such can therefore be the principle of a theological development, but not the principle of a dogmatic development.”77 This distinction derives its importance from the recognition that dogmatic development is not merely about theological exploration but rather chiefly concerns doctrinal judgments of the Church’s faith: propositions of faith, as Rahner correctly notes, of “the Word of faith—not indeed as newly revealed but as the Word which utters Revelation itself truly and with binding force.”78 Thus, dogmatic development presents us with “the task of demonstrating both the inherent possibility of the later, ‘developed’ exposition of the faith being identical with the apostolic exposition which was made in Christ, and also that actual identity in each instance.”79 This task is necessary given the doctrine of the Church that “Revelation is held to have ‘closed’ with the [last] Apostles.”80 At the center of this task is showing “how the earlier and the later knowledge are related to each other.”81

76 Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 56 [66]. 77 Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 56 [66–67]. 78 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 46. 79 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” 126. Berkouwer makes the following remarks regarding this passage from Rahner and Vorgrimler: “Despite recognizing a number of varying factors, the explanation of the evolution of dogma in many cases bears an apologetic character since people think that they are able to demonstrate the harmony between the implicit and the explicit in this evolution” (VCNT, 65–66, and see 66n16). I don’t sense a negative tone with Catholics here in the Dutch as I do in the English translation by Lewis Smedes. In my judgment, his translation is very interpretive. “In spite of their willingness to come to grips with the complexities of the evolutionary process and in spite of their willingness to admit the influence of historical factors in the formation of dogma, Catholics have tended to inject their own apologetics for Catholic truth into the problem [of dogmatic development]” (The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism, 60; italics added). A more literal translation of the original Dutch would be: “But in spite of their acknowledgment of all kinds of factors, their reflection on the evolution of dogma nevertheless is often of an apologetic nature as a result of their belief that they can demonstrate that this evolution show that what is implicit and what is explicit is in harmony with each other.” Indeed, Berkouwer’s point here is not necessarily negative. Given the wider appreciative context of Berkouwer’s book, I doubt whether he would agree with this much more sharply rendered version of his meaning. 80 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 55. 81  Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 56.

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In sum, then, dogmatic development involves the Church in the task of defining propositions as divinely revealed, namely, as “a development and unfolding of the original treasures of faith under a positive influence of the light of faith bestowed upon the Church.”82 (1) Such propositions may have “existed before but were not always expressly taught as divinely revealed.”83 ‘Divinely revealed’ means ‘formally revealed,’ that is, contained in the Word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition. Examples of such propositions of faith are, for example, the following: Articles of faith of the Creed, the various christological dogmas and marian dogmas; the doctrine of the institution of the sacraments by Christ and their efficacy with regard to grace; the doctrine of the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the sacrificial nature of the Eucharistic celebration; the foundation of the Church by the will of Christ; the doctrine on the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff; the doctrine on the existence of original sin; the doctrine on the immortality of the spiritual soul and on the immediate recompense after death; the absence of error [inerrancy] in the inspired sacred texts; the doctrine on the grave immorality of direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being.84

Of course some of these propositions of faith have not always been expressly taught as divinely and formally revealed. They may be ‘virtually implicit’ in the revelation. Such propositions are not ‘formally implicit’ since they are not merely stating the same thing in a new proposition. I’ll return to this point in a moment. Regarding the meaning of ‘virtually implicit,’ this kind of theological reasoning involves moving from the “purely virtually implicit to the explicit”85 with the help of one or more propositions. There are different examples of this kind of reasoning, some involving deductive reasoning, others involving less than stringent reasoning, since there is no claim to prove the necessity of the truth, such as in arguments from conventientia, ‘fittingness’ (suitability), or probable arguments from Scripture and tradition.86 Regarding the latter kind of 82 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 52. 83 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” 126. 84 “Doctrinal Commentary,” no. 11. 85 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 58. 86 Nichols, From Newman to Congar, 325. Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Argument of Convenience,” in Theological Dictionary: “A Method of studying a theological truth, used by theologians in both medieval and modern times, which demonstrates that it is ‘fitting’ (in terms of other revealed truths, the divine attributes, and so forth), without claiming to prove the necessity of this truth. Where such a truth is already established, the argument



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reasoning, Mary’s assumption may be a good example since it is not a deductive conclusion from the hope for the general resurrection of the redeemed. Still, as Nichols correctly notes, “the more particular statement illuminates the more general, and vice versa.”87 More fully, Rahner explains this kind of reasoning: “It may occur that a more particular or more exact statement appears to fit in harmoniously with a more general, less determined combination of statements or ideas; in this way each throws light on and supports the other, without its being possible to see that the more particular statement can be inferred with logical stringency from the more general one as its only possible consequence. In this case we have the so-called ‘theological convenientia’, ‘probable’ arguments from Scripture or Tradition, and the like.”88 In such cases, then, their relationship to revelation is such that “they are necessarily connected with revelation by virtue of an historical relationship, while other truths evince a logical connection that expresses a stage in the maturation of understanding of revelation which the Church is called to undertake. The fact that these doctrines may not be proposed as formally revealed, insofar as they add to the data of faith elements that are not [ formally] revealed or which are not yet expressly recognized as such, in no way diminishes their definitive character, which is required at least by their intrinsic connection with revealed truth.”89 In other words, the propositions that result from an explication of what is virtually implicit are held by the teaching office of the Church “to be ‘revealed by God’, and so can properly be believed, in the proper sense of ‘divine faith’, on the

of convenience simply investigates more thoroughly the nature of this truth, of its connection with other truths, and thus is indispensable to theology. The argument of convenience as such cannot prove a truth which is not already established” (102). 87 Nichols, From Newman to Congar, 325. 88 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 52. Elsewhere Rahner gives an example of “virtually implicit” reasoning: “Let us supposes that the following proposition is valid: All men born more than two hundred years ago are no dead. If I do not know that there was a Socrates who was born more than two hundred years ago, I cannot know that the general proposition includes Socrates as a particular case, not only in the real state of affairs under consideration but in the proposition as such. But if I do know the second proposition, the first contains something ‘virtually’ implicit: Socrates is dead, an implication which could never have been explicated by a mere analysis of the first proposition in itself. Operations of this kind (of course more complex usually) do undoubtedly exist in the theological field. Without them it would be impossible to think of theology as a body of intelligibly connected ideas at all” (58). 89 “Doctrinal Commentary,” no. 7. No explanation is given here of the meaning of “historical relationship” and “logical connection.”

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‘authority of God’.”90 One major example of a truth that is connected to revelation by logical connection is: The development in the understanding of the doctrine connected with the definition of papal infallibility, prior to the dogmatic definition of the First Vatican Council. The primacy of the Successor of Peter was always believed as a revealed fact, although until Vatican I the discussion remained open as to whether the conceptual elaboration of what is understood by the terms ‘jurisdiction’ and ‘infallibility’ was to be considered an intrinsic part of revelation or only a logical consequence. On the other hand, although its character as a divinely revealed truth was defined in the First Vatican Council, the doctrine on the infallibility and primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff was already recognized as definitive in the period before the council. History clearly shows, therefore, that what was accepted into the consciousness of the Church was considered a true doctrine from the beginning, and was subsequently held to be definitive; however, only in the final stage—the definition of Vatican I—was it also accepted as a divinely revealed truth.91

Two other examples are the Church’s doctrine regarding priestly ordination and euthanasia. Although these doctrines are not now defined by the Church as divinely and formally revealed, that does not preclude the possibility that, in the future, they may come to be regarded in that manner by the Church’s magisterium. (2) It may also be that such propositions state the “substance of the affirmations of previous tradition in quite a different terminology.”92 This new proposition states what is ‘formally implicit’ in the old proposition such that it states the same thing. Rahner explains: “When the explication is that of a single proposition contained in original Revelation, and when this explication only states more expressly (‘in other words’, in a different conceptual language, etc.) ‘the same thing’ as the original proposition (of course with the guarantee of the magisterium that the new proposition correctly renders the sense of the old), there can be no doubt that the new proposition too states what God has revealed, that is believed with divine faith as materially God himself, that it is ‘dogma’ and not just theology.”93 As he puts it later in the same article, “an explication of what is formally implicit in a revealed proposition is present only when the new proposition really states the same thing as the old one in other words.”94 This 90 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 59, but also, 60. 91 “Doctrinal Commentary,” no. 7, no. 11. 92 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” 126. 93 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 57–58. 94 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 59.



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new way of propositionally expressing the originally revealed proposition of faith is being developed with the aim of “the Church more explicitly protecting that sense of the revealed truth, which has always been known, against heretical misinterpretations.” This new way of expressing the propositions of faith in a variety of conceptual, literary, and linguistic forms must always be—as I argued earlier in Chapter I—in edodem sensu eademque sententia, that is, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment. Examples here abound. One major example is Phil. 2:6 and Nicea as well as Chalcedon. Christ’s ‘equality with God’ is expressed differently, both the conceptual and literary forms of expressions, while at the same time the judgment about the subject Christ is the same, having the same meaning. To quote Rahner again: “For instance, instead of the proposition: One and the same Logos is God and man, we can say: The ‘person’ of the Logos has both a human and a divine ‘nature’. If theological or metaphysical theories . . . are not attached to the concepts ‘person’ and ‘nature’, we may conceive of the second proposition as the bare explication of what is formally implicit in the first.”95 (3) Of course there are other cases in which dogmatic development does not take place according to the idea of explicating what is formally implicit. “For,” in those cases, “even tradition does not at once and directly furnish explicit propositions that are obviously equivalent to the definition and that can be proved to date back to the Apostles.”96 The most obvious examples of these propositions of faith would be the Marian dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Further, “True though it be that the Church’s magisterium and its authority can now guarantee the individual believer that an objective connection exists between ‘old’ and ‘new’ propositions, still they cannot constitute this connection, much less form a substitute for it.”97 This last point raises the question of the Church’s teaching office in dogmatic development. In particular, the Church is not a source of revelation and hence she cannot declare either that a later proposition is new revelation, or that the revealed truth of, say, the Immaculate Conception, is apprehended independently of earlier divine pronouncements about Mary.98 For instance, on this last view it may be said to be apprehended by virtue of an orally transmitted teaching not contained in Scripture in any sense. This view seems to dovetail 95 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 60. 96 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” 126. 97 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Development of Dogma,” 126. 98 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 56.

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with the two-source theory of revelation. I discussed this theory at length in Chapters Four and Five, and so I won’t return to it now, except to note that it is the first theory of dogmatic development I distinguished above. The account of dogmatic development I will defend in the next section will explain how the ‘old’ and ‘new’ propositions are related to each other such that the latter are pre-contained in the former. How, then, do we explain this pre-containment? Theological Epistemology In this section, I shall make five points that are necessary for developing a Catholic position on dogmatic development.99 This position requires (1) a doctrine of special revelation, (2) a theological epistemology in which the act of faith is a way of knowing divine reality through the mediation of propositions, (3) tacit knowing, or a living contact with the reality itself, in which the claim is defended that knowledge in faith involves knowing know much more than we can state in propositions, (4) the relation between knowing and propositional knowledge on the one hand, and the logical connection of the formally and virtually revealed on the other, and (5) theological criteria for development: “Scripture as interpreted, preeminently, by the universal and consential judgments of ecumenical councils, but also by the consensus of holy and learned doctors, by the faithful generally, and by the bishop of Rome.”100 Doctrine of Special Revelation Regarding a doctrine of special revelation, I accept the position on special revelation of St. Thomas Aquinas as foundational to a Catholic position on dogmatic development:

99 Helpful to me in dealing with theological epistemology and dogmatic development are the following writings: Karl Rahner’s 1954 essay, “The Development of Dogma,” 39–77; Henri de Lubac, S.J., “The Problem of the Development of Dogma,” in Theology in History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 248–280. Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma.” Aidan Nichols, From Newman to Congar, especially chapters on De Lubac, Rahner, Schillebeecks, and Congar. International Theological Commission, “The Interpretation of Dogma” (1990), in Texts and Documents 1986–2007, Edited by Reverend Michael Sharkey and Father Thomas Weinandy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009). Henri Rondet, Do Dogmas Change?, and Charles Journet, What is Dogma? 100 Guarino, Vincent of Lérins, 84.



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So also in the faith by which we believe in God there is not only the accepting of the object of assent, but something moving us to the assent. This is the kind of light—the habit of faith—divinely imparted to the human mind. It is more capable of causing assent than any demonstration. . . . Thus this light is an adequate means of making judgments. The habit of faith, however, does not move us by way of the intellect but rather by way of the will. As a consequence it does not make us see what we believe, nor does it force our assent, but it causes us to assent to it voluntarily. It is clear, then, that faith comes from God in two ways: by way of an interior light that leads to assent and by way of the realities that are proposed from without and that had as their source divine revelation.101

The point Aquinas is making here about the economy of divine revelation is expressed in the writings of contemporary theologians, such as Reformed theologian, Herman Bavinck,102 early Edward Schillebeeckx,103 and Francis Martin, both Catholic thinkers. All three accept Thomas’s position, as Nichols describes it, “that revelation necessarily includes both an objective dimension,” which Bavinck calls the principium cognoscendi externum, namely, “the action of God in creation and history as recorded and handed on in the ‘articles of faith’.” In addition, there is “a subjective dimension,” which Bavinck calls the principium cognoscendi internum, namely, “the inner illumination of the mind by which the Holy Spirit enables the believer to assent to what the intellect could never fully grasp as intelligible.” Further, “while assent to the articles provides the necessary mediation of faith, faith’s ultimate term is a spiritual union between the believer and God.”104 Catholic theologian Francis Martin brings these two elements together in his explanation of the doctrine of special revelation that accord well with Dei Verbum (nos. 2–6) He writes: Revelation may be described as an act of God by which he communicates himself and the mystery of his will to human beings. This act reaches us in two ways. There is first God’s activity in history that is accomplished through intimately connected words and deeds, culminating in Jesus Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of revelation. Second, there is the activity, also historical and also mediated by Jesus Christ, by which God moves

101 Boethius de Trinitate, 3, 1, ad4, in St. Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Reason and Theology: Questions I–IV of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, Medieval Sources in Translation, 32, translated A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1987), 69. 102 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 180–207; 295–324 [207–233; 323–351]. 103 Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 61 [76]; idem., “De Openbaring en haar ‘Overlevering’,” 18–19 [10–12]. These essays appeared in 1958 and 1963, respectively. 104 Nichols, From Newman to Congar, 240.

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chapter six and assists someone to believe, that is, to commit himself . . . to God, yielding to and accepting the divine self-communication. While the first activity was brought to completion by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the second is still continuing. This second dimension is always present as the Holy Spirit brings each person into living contact with the Father’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ from the dead. In a mysterious interaction of divine initiative and human freedom, the Holy Spirit leads those who assent to his action from the first act of yielding in faith to its consummation in a transforming vision of God. Only then does God completely manifest and communicate himself, which allows us to obtain a clear knowledge of the eternal mystery of his will.105

I would like to unpack the rich meaning of Martin’s account of special revelation106 in light of the following schema (S): (S) m reveals α to n by means of (through, etc.) k.107 This schema is about the origin, content, manner, and purpose of God’s special revelation.108 Briefly, then, the agent of revelation is represented by m; α represents the content of the revelation, and n the recipient; k represents the manner or means of the revelation. I turn now to look at each of the elements in the schema. The agent (m) of revelation is God himself because revelation originates with God. “It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (cf. Eph. 1:9).”109 Furthermore, he is the essential foundation (principium essendi), the source, that is, the primary efficient cause, of our knowledge of him. Without his divine selfcommunicative acts, his personal self-disclosures, we would not know

105 Martin, Feminist Question, 2–3. See also, Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 49: “It is further to be observed that the ‘closed’ Revelation with which we are concerned here is a Revelation made to the believing Church, in possession of the revealed Reality itself. A sure knowledge of this reality of divine salvation can only be gained through the divine tidings and through the faith which comes from hearing and speaks in human concepts and human propositions. Any attempts to transcend this divine message—in some ‘religious experience’ or emotive states, some experiential contact eliminating the faith which hears—so as to grasp this reality immediately and without reference to the message, is delusive and impossible, and must inevitably lead to a modernistic rationalization of Christianity. Our religion, in so far as it moves within the sphere of our intellectual and moral ‘consciousness’, is inseparably dependent upon the announcing Word.” 106 In the following paragraphs, I draw more fully than I did in Chapter Five, Reply to Objection III, on the doctrine of special revelation that I set forth in my book, “In the Beginning . . .” A Theology of the Body, 27–34, 53–57. 107 I am indebted to George Marvrodes here for this formal schema, Revelation in Religious Belief, 88–94. 108 Van Genderen & Velema, Concise Reformed Dogmatics, 24–26. 109 Dei Verbum, no. 2; see also no. 6.



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anything of God at all. “He is knowable only because and insofar as he himself wants to be known.”110 Moving on to the next item (α) in this schema, what is the content of revelation? Put differently, what is it that is revealed? In a fundamental sense, God reveals himself, and so we may say that the content of revelation is God’s own proper reality, his own self, the gift of himself “as a communion of persons inviting human persons to enter into communion.”111 In the words of Dei Verbum, “His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature (cf. Eph. 2:18; 2 Pet. 1:4). By this revelation, then, the invisible God (cf. Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17), from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends (cf. Ex. 33:11; Jn. 15:14–15), and moves among them (cf. Bar. 3:38), in order to invite and receive them into his own company.”112 Indeed, Dei Verbum discloses that the purpose of God’s self-revelation is coming to know him. “Now this is life eternal: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). We are invited, therefore, to Trinitarian communion with the Father, through the Son, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Revelation is, then, not the mere communication of truths but rather “the life-bestowing self-communication of the Trinitarian God, in which he addresses humans as friends,” as Dei Verbum states.113 Yet, there is also the manner or means of revelation to consider (k): God reveals himself in the economy of special revelation in his words and actions. As Schillebeeckx pointedly states, “Christ himself, both in His actions and in His words, is revelation. ‘Etiam factum Verbi verbum nobis est’ [St. Augustine]—the acts of the word speak to us and, on the other hand, the revelation-in-word is only one aspect of the total appearance of the mystery of Christ.”114 Similarly, Dei Verbum holds that the economy of special revelation consists of a pattern of deeds of God in history and words, of divine actions and divinely-given interpretations of those actions, that are inextricably bound together in that revelation.115 That is, 110 Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, I, 183 [212]. 111 Grisez, “On Interpreting Dogmas,” 120. 112 Dei Verbum, no. 2. 113 Hermann J. Pottmeyer, “Tradition,” 1123. 114 Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma.” 61 [74]. 115 Helm, Divine Revelation, 32–35.

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God’s redemptive revelation of himself is accomplished through historical events as well as through written words. Thus: “the works performed by God in the history of salvation show forth and bear out the doctrine and realities signified by the words; the words, for their part, proclaim the works, and bring to light the mystery they contain.”116 In sum, “the most intimate truth which this revelation gives us about God and the salvation of man shines forth in Christ, who is himself both the mediator and the sum total of Revelation [see Matt 11:27; John 1:14, 17; 14:6; 17:1–3; 2 Cor 3:16, 4:6; Eph 1:3–14].”117 This important emphasis on the history of salvation reaching its absolute zenith in the person and work of Christ—since God’s revelation in him is perfect and definitive—means that there is a history of revelation, with revelation progressing through the history of salvation in phases.118 Furthermore, God not only reveals himself, giving us himself in Trinitarian communion. Rather, at one and the same time, Holy Scripture is not only God’s gift of himself, inviting humanity to share in his life, but also a disclosure of revealed truths. In other words, revelation, while involving a profound personal engagement with the revealing God, “also and necessarily has an irreducibly cognitive dimension.”119 The Catechism of the Catholic Church correctly captures both the personal and the propositional in its understanding of the correlation of faith and revelation. “Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed.”120 Hence, it is crucial to be clear about the epistemological significance of theological propositions in mediating the truth of divine reality. In this connection, we shall underscore the importance of the recipient (n) of the reality and dogma of revelation and, consequently, the function of the light of faith. In What Sense is Faith a Way of Knowing Divine Reality? In what sense is faith a way of knowing divine reality, and how, as Romanus Cessario asks, “can propositions serve as true objects of faith, even though

116 Dei Verbum, no. 2. 117 Dei Verbum, no. 2. 118 Van Genderen & Velema, Concise Reformed Dogmatics, 25–26. 119 Guarino, Vattimo and Theology, 115. 120 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 150.



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the act of faith finds its ultimate term in the divine reality?”121 Cessario adds, “For Catholic theology, the act of faith reaches beyond the formal content of doctrines and attains the very referent—‘res ipsa’—of theological faith.”122 Aquinas understood this matter well. Yes, he does say, “Actus autem credentis non terminator ad enuntiabile sed ad rem” [The believer’s act (of faith) does not terminate in the propositions, but the realities [which they express].123 While it is true to say that the ultimate term of faith is not a set of theological formulas that we confess, but rather God himself, it is also the case that for Aquinas articles of faith are necessary for knowing God. Aquinas explains: “We do not form statements except so that we may have apprehension of things through them. As it is in knowledge, so also in faith.”124 In other words, one knows primarily God himself but as mediated in and through determinate propositions. Propositions are an authentic mediation of God’s self-revelation because faith involves belief, and to have a belief means that one is intellectually committed, or has mentally assented, to the truth of some proposition or other. Faith involves belief, continues Aquinas, and “belief is called assent, and it can only be about a proposition, in which truth or falsity is found.”125 As Charles Cardinal Journet puts Aquinas’ point, “The object of faith is both the statement so far as this touches reality, and reality so far as this is shown in the statement. It is both the statement to which faith assents, and reality which becomes open to it by its assent, towards which it tends, and in which it terminates.”126 In reply to those who pit the statement or proposition over against reality by claiming that the reality remains essentially unknowable because inexpressible, Journet adds, “Some people have supposed that faith is not concerned with the statement but with reality, non est de enumtiabili sed de re. . . . This is false, for faith involves assent, and hence involves a judgment based on the true and the false, non potest esse nisi de compositione, in qua verum et falsum invenitur.”127 In short, propositions of faith are true because they 121 Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith & the Theological Life (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 71. 122 Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith & the Theological Life, 71. 123 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad. 2. 124 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad. 2. 125 St. Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Truth, q. 14, art. 8, ad. 12. 126 Journet What is Dogma?, 11–12. 127 Journet What is Dogma?, 12. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 170: “We do not believe in formulas, but in those realities they express, which faith allows us to touch. ‘The believer’s act [of faith] does not terminate in the propositions, but in the realities [which they express]’ [St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II, 1, 2, ad. 2]. All the same, we do approach

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correspond to reality; they are as true judgments an “adaequatio intellectus et rei,” corresponding to what is, and hence “a claim to the possession in knowledge of what is.”128 Of course the point here is not merely about “a bare adaequatio.”129 It is important to emphasize that affirming the truth of a proposition of faith means that one knows the res itself rather than just merely the proposition. In other words, in “what has been handed down to us,” say, “the Eucharist,” as Schillebeeckx rightly notes, it “is not simply the doctrine of the Eucharist, but also—and above all—the reality itself of the celebration of the Eucharist, the meaning and content of which are expressed in conceptual terms in the doctrine.”130 Moreover, since faith is a way of knowing, the recipient (n) of both the reality and dogma of revelation cannot “come into contact with the genuine moment of revelation and its supernatural saving content in the revelation-in-word and revelation-inreality unless God addresses man inwardly . . . by the light of faith [principium cognoscendi internum].” Schillebeeckx continues: This light of faith enables me to grasp more in the mystery of revelation than is said about it in conceptual terms and that pure history tells us about it. The material objects of faith enter our conscious minds by way of the church’s proclamation of the word ( fides ex auditu, or “faith by learning and listening”) and the historical saving fact of the living church herself. . . . The affective epistemic contact in which we know God is in us the result of the locutio interna (“inner address”) or of the light of faith. Its meaning and content, however, come from objective, public revelation [principium cognoscendi externum].131

Thus, on the one hand, faith’s knowledge of revealed truth involves a contact with the very res in question, and not merely, as Rahner notes, “propositions about a (remote) reality.”132 He admirably explains: these realities with the help of formulations of the faith which permit us to express the faith and to hand it on, to celebrate it in community, to assimilate and live on it more and more” (italics added). See also, Guarino, Vattimo and Theology, 103–118, for a defense of propositional revelation and faith’s knowledge of God as mediated through determinate propositions. 128 Mansini, “Dogma,” 242. 129 Guarino, “Fides et Ratio: Theology and Contemporary Pluralism,” 691. 130 Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 61 [74]. Similarly, Congar writes: “Catholicism is not simply an idea, nor is it ruled exclusively by intellectual propositions. It is a religion of the presence of God and of the reality of the holiness which is God’s work” (Christ, Our Lady and the Church, 80). 131 Schillebeeckx, “De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 62 [75]. 132 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 53.



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It is not only propositions about their experience that the Apostles bequeath, but their Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, the very reality, then, of what they have experienced in Christ. Their own experience is preserved and present together with their Word. Spirit and Word together form the permanent active potentiality of an experience which is in principle the same as that of the Apostles even if, because it is supported on the Apostolic Word handed down in Tradition, it is an experience, resting on that of the Apostles and prolonging theirs, which has historical roots and can never continue to live if it is cut off from the connection with the Apostles through Word, Sacrament and the handing down of authority.133

Significantly, on the other hand, as the concluding claim in the above quotation states, one may never leave behind these original propositions because “the former [experience of reality] cannot be had without a basic minimum of the latter.”134 This point importantly brings us back to the propositional element in revelation, namely, that we would not have experiential access to the truths of special revelation “without verbal information: in Revelation,” in short, without the original propositions given in revelation.135 These propositions are constitutive of special revelation, for they are in some sense normative for an understanding of that reality, and hence give us access to divine reality. Put differently, Rahner rightly argues, the Church “cannot leave the Word behind in order to grasp this reality. But no more does she possess a word about the thing instead of the thing itself. Consequently her hearing of the Word and her reflection upon the Word . . . . is reflection on the propositions heard in living contact with the thing itself.”136 So, as a necessary requirement for our understanding, in the light of faith, of the reality itself to which special revelation refers, we must affirm a partial identity between special revelation and the res itself.137 I wish there were another phrase handy than “partial identity,” because I fear that some may use it against me to show the failure of words and propositions to grasp the reality. So, in order to avoid that misunderstanding, let me explain why only a partial identity exists. There exists, then, a partial identity for two reasons. First, the propositions in revelation, although necessary for gaining access to reality itself (res ipsa), do not simply exhaust the fullness of divine reality; all formulations, scriptural as well as creedal ones, of the truth of divine reality 133 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 68. 134 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 53. 135 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 72. 136 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 50. 137 Helm, Divine Revelation, 94.

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are inadequate, not exhaustive, incomplete, not totally comprehensive— nevertheless, they are wholly true, corresponding to reality and, therefore, always binding. In other words, this view affirms the “dogmatical principle,” as John Henry Newman called it, in which revealed truth about God, human beings, and the world is received, defended, and transmitted by Christians as something “definite, and formal, and independent of ourselves.” This principle states that revealed truths have been “irrevocably committed to human language.” This propositional revelation in verbalized form is at once true though not exhaustive, “imperfect because it is human,” adds Newman, “but definitive and necessary because given from above.”138 Still, the truth of divine reality itself to which special revelation refers is, however, inexhaustible. This is not to overlook or underplay the necessary mediation of the res in propositions and the possibility of their logical expansion in the development of dogma; rather, it is only to deny that vital contact with the res is simply exhausted by propositions.139 Looking back to Berkouwer, we can easily understand that he would agree with this first point. This agreement may be expressed by saying that in the special revelation of Scripture, God’s written Word revelation, “more has been communicated by God than has been stated formally.”140 In other words, on the one hand, God has communicated “what is merely virtually implicit in his speech in his Word.” “What we ‘deduce’ in this way, God has not indeed stated ‘formally’ in the initial propositions from which our deduction proceeds (i.e. he has not expressed it in the immediate meaning of the propositions), but he has really ‘communicated’ [mit-geteilt] it, so that entire faith can be given to it as his knowledge.”141 Further, on the other hand, given that God has communicated more than has been stated formally or virtually implicit in a proposition and its explication, we must distinguish between ein formell Gesagtes, ‘something directly stated,’ and ein formell Mitgeteiltes, ‘something directly communicated.’142 In short, “more is actually communicated formally than can formally be stated.”143 As Nichols explains, “Much in historical revelation may have been directly communicated that was not directly 138 John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 6th ed. (1845; repr., Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), chap. 7, sec. 5, par. 3, and sec. 1, par. 4, 348 and 325, respectively. 139 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 56. 140 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 62. 141 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 61. 142 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 61–63, 69–71, 73. 143 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 74.



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stated. Thus when, for instance, someone says that ‘Christ died for us’, everyone understands what is meant by dying, or by death, in that statement. The whole human experience of death can be really communicated and heard, even though neither speaker nor hearer has ever translated the idea of death into adequate propositions.”144 Here, too, I think Berkouwer would agree with the basic point being made here since he holds that sola Scriptura cannot mean merely material sufficiency, if that term is understood to mean that Scripture is merely a deposit of isolated statements, a propositional source of dogmatic texts.145 In other words, more has been communicated by God in the revelation of Holy Scripture than has been stated formally, that is, propositionally. Second, there is an epistemological point at stake here regarding knowing in general and the knowledge of divine reality in particular, namely, we know much more than we can state in propositions.146 Although not denying the necessary role of propositions in the concept of revelation and its explication, there is more in dogmatic development “than was previously already propositionally expressed.”147 This is an aspect of the fourth theory of dogmatic development I distinguished above. In other words, the process of dogmatic development cannot merely be about explicating what is formally and virtually implicit because such explication presupposes that “a dogmatic explication is always a proposition in the proper sense.”148 The point here is directly related to the Rahnerian claim that more has been communicated by God in the revelation of Holy Scripture than has been stated formally, that is, propositionally. It is the difference between something being directly stated and it being directly

144 Nichols, From Newman to Congar, 229. Nichols example is from Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 72. 145 I first made this point about Berkouwer’s rejection of an undue narrowing of revelation to propositions in Chapter Four and, then, developed it in Chapter Five. 146 Tacit knowledge is a fact, says Rahner (“The Development of Dogma,” 70). But he does not develop a full-fledged epistemology of tacit knowing, such as we find with the Hungarian-British polymath, Michael Polanyi (1891–1976). Polanyi develops tacit knowing, which he first treated in his 1951–1952 Gifford Lectures, Personal Knowledge, Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (The Justification of Personal Knowledge, Part Three, 249–324), in Part III of Knowing and Being, Essays by Michael Polanyi, Edited by Marjorie Grene (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 123–207. Unlike his predecessors, Kuyper (Encyclopaedie van Heilige Godgeleerdheid, II, Part I, Chapter 1, 4–52 [59–105]) and Bavinck (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, 26–64 [53–91]), Berkouwer’s anti-scholasticism inhibited him from engaging in philosophical reflection upon knowledge, and hence he lacked the philosophical resources for developing such an account of knowledge. 147 Mansini, “Dogma,” 243. 148 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 63.

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communicated. Significantly, as I argued above, propositions are the media by which we apprehend the thing itself (res ipsa). “The proposition is always a kind of window through which a view may be gained of the thing itself, and implies in its full sense (as Communication) this view of the thing through the proposition (in its ‘stated’ sense).”149 Rahner’s point raises the question: How does the proposition that we know imply the full sense of the thing itself when that proposition has a determinate sense? Yes, the intelligible content of the proposition has a determinate sense such that it can be “clearly distinguished from the sense of another or contrary proposition.” But this does not mean that the proposition in question states “adequately and exhaustively all that is concomitantly stated and known in it and all that is not; it is easy to establish unambiguously the minimum but not the maximum of what may in fact be its intelligible content.”150 Borrowing an example from Rahner, suppose I state the proposition: “Minerva Echeverria is my (biological) mother.” In one sense, it is clear that the determinate sense of this proposition logically excludes as false a state of affairs in which my mother did not exist and give birth to me. In another sense, says Rahner, “When I make a statement like this, there can and almost must be an abundance of other things in mind at the same time, globally and implicitly no doubt, but very really.” The point here is that the speaker’s statement tacitly presupposes knowledge of the thing itself not yet articulated propositionally. Further, this knowledge, which is in excess of the propositionally stated content, “can concomitantly be heard by the hearer of the proposition.” In other words, although not yet propositionally articulated, the tacit knowledge of “the specifically human character of the motherhood, the relation between mother and son lasting long after the events of generation and birth, and all the other circumstances involved . . . is intelligible to the hearer.” Rahner continues: The hearer too, just like the speaker, looks in and through the proposition with the speaker at the thing itself, and sees what he sees in the things as the communication made to one who is taking part as hearer. He rightly hears in the proposition not just its more or less definable minimum content, but concomitantly all that further content of the speaker’s unreflective [tacit] awareness not yet propositionally objectified; and he hears it as something known to the speaker.151

149 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 69. 150 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 69. 151  Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 70.



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The hearer hears this tacit knowledge of the speaker that is not yet propositionally objectified, hearing it as something known to the speaker, indeed, “hearing this knowledge of the thing too as the speaker’s communicated knowledge, something had in common with the speaker about the thing, although not yet propositionally objectified.”152 In other words, Rahner is arguing that it is possible that the hearer’s propositional knowledge of the speaker’s communicated knowledge “is a real (‘formal’) communication from [the speaker], even when it is not stated as a proposition.” This communicated knowledge is merely virtually implicit, but not in the sense that it is inferred from some other stated propositional knowledge; rather, it is “formally communicated (the total meaning of the utterance, in fact communicated and intended in the speaker’s utterance, but neither by speaker nor by hearer always articulated reflectively and propositionally).”153 Looking back to Nichols’ example regarding the assertion “Christ died for us,” more is communicated in this statement than just the end of life. Here we see the import of the distinction between what is explicitly stated (definitions of death) and what is co-present in mind and communicated (the whole human experience of death), even when it is not stated propositionally. If the hearer should ever arrive at a reflective propositional analysis of what the word “death” has always meant to him, it is then perfectly possible (though not in every case necessary) that what has been analyzed in this way and minted into propositional coin, may still be conceived of precisely as communicated by the speaker. And this can still be so even when “historically” we may grant that the speaker himself has never used a propositionally objective form to clarify his communication “like this,” or indeed if we grant that in his particular he could never have done so. If we believer a speaker when he says something, then it is still this very speaker whom we believe when what he says has been explicated in propositions, because this is just what he has (or could have) known and communicated (though not propositionally).154

We Κnow Μuch Μore than We Can Tell This epistemological point—we know much more than we can tell—has already brought us to the third element necessary for a Catholic account of dogmatic development: there is an experiential knowledge of reality,

152 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 70. 153 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 71. 154 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 73.

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which brings us into living contact with the reality itself, but “lying behind propositions and forming an inexhaustible source for the articulation and explication of the faith in propositions.”155 The nature of this knowledge requires some further explanation in a fourth (4) element of a Catholic theory of dogmatic development. I agree with Rahner that the starting point of dogmatic development is not always a proposition. There exists a kind of knowledge of the res that “is the starting-point of an intellectual process which develops into propositions.” In order to avoid mistakenly identifying Rahner’s view with the experiential-expressive notion of dogma, it is fundamentally important to understand that the experiential knowledge of the res does not lack conceptual content that is originally given with that experience. Still, the object of that experiential knowledge is reality itself rather than another proposition, and the knowledge of it “is richer than in its reflective articulation and logical exposition.” As Rahner explains: “Why should a (individual or collective) consciousness not arrive by a concrete logic of discovery at a theological proposition, which (when it is a question of the Church’s consciousness in faith) is apprehended as true and certain in this direct, global and concrete knowledge belonging to the supernatural life of faith, even before the theologian’s reflective work of deductive intelligence has produced a reflective ‘proof’?”156 Indeed, why not? Rahner continues: In the theological field too, where the knowledge of Revelation becomes progressively more profound, there exists a ‘concrete experience’, a cognition which integrates a thousand and one merely ‘instinctive’ observations, and which only with great difficulty, if at all, permits of being exhibited in a chain of syllogistic formulae.”157 In short, we know much more than we can tell. How, then, are we to understand this more-than-propositional reflection on knowledge, namely, we know much more than we can state, and how do we apply it to the notion of dogmatic development? Rahner explains the answer to the first question by using an analogy:

155 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 65. 156 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 55. 157 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 55. There is an echo here of Newman’s illative sense in which one reaches certainty not from propositions to propositions, as in the logically formal inference of a stringent argument, but rather the spontaneous, multiform, and intricate process of implicit reasoning by which men make judgments. We also find an explicit appeal to Newman’s illative sense in Schillebeeckx’s critique of the logical type of dogmatic development (“De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 56 [66–67]).



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Let us imagine that a young man has the genuine and vital experience of a great love, an experience which transforms his whole being. This love may have presuppositions (of a metaphysical, psychological and physiological kind) which are simply unknown to him. His love itself is his “experience”; he is conscious of it, lives through it with the entire fullness and depth of a real love. He “knows” much more about that he can “state” [italics added]. The clumsy stammerings of his love-letters are paltry and miserable compared to this knowledge. . . . If he is intelligent . . . he could perhaps . . . state what he knows about his love, what he is already aware of in the consciousness of simply possessing the reality (more simply but more fully aware), so as finally to “know” (in reflective propositions). In such a case it is not (merely) a matter of the logical development and inference of new propositions from earlier ones, but of the formulation for the first time of propositions about a knowledge already possessed. . . . The lover knows of his love. This knowledge of himself forms an essential element in the very love itself. The knowledge is infinitely richer, simpler and denser than any body of propositions about the love could be. Yet this knowledge never lacks a certain measure of reflective articulateness: the lover confesses his love at least to himself, ‘states’ at least to himself something about his love.158

Similar to the lover’s knowledge of his love—“infinitely richer, simpler and denser”—is the direct, total, and concrete knowledge of the reality of faith that precedes “the doctrinal propositions . . . and forms a part of the original Revelation, the explication of which, already begun by the Apostles, is not of the same character as the logical explication of propositions.”159 Although this knowledge is not explicitly propositional, it “never lacks a certain measure of reflective articulateness.” Rahner gives as an example those cases “where our Lord’s spoken word is the necessary starting-point of the Apostles’ faith because the actual content of Revelation is available in no other way.” Significantly, in Rahner’s view, the conceptual content of faith comes from objective, public revelation. “Christ, as the living link between God and the world, whom they have seen with their eyes and touched with their hands, is the objective content of an experience [of the historical revelation of God in Christ] which is more elemental and concentrated, simpler and yet richer than the individual propositions coined in an attempt to express this experience.”160 Still, this knowledge— elemental and concentrated, simpler and yet richer—of the res, which is a “prior conscious entering into possession of the reality itself,” says Rahner, necessarily possesses a certain measure of reflective articulateness 158 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 63–64. 159 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 66. 160 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 65; italics added.

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of the full consciousness in faith possessed by the Apostles and the apostolic community that is developed more fully in propositions.161 In other words, “this original consciousness possesses itself later in a new way, such that its life is now the accomplishment of that personal act of reflective apprehension by which it has enriched itself.”162 On the one hand, reflective consciousness without the original conscious possession of the total reality of God’s saving work, “total spiritual possession of the entire res,” as Rahner states, would wither. On the other hand, this original consciousness “would become blind if, because it is richer and fuller, it refused to allow itself to grow out into a reflective consciousness involving ‘pensées’ and ‘propositions’.”163 Rahner continues: “These are not competing opposites”—namely, the original conscious possession of the total reality of God’s saving work and the growth of reflective consciousness into propositional knowledge—“but reciprocally interacting factors of a single experience [namely, “a mind’s possession of a given reality”]164 necessarily unfolding in historical succession.”165 But this developed reflective consciousness must always be appropriated in the living context of a vivid experience of the res itself. “Every theological proposition—in St. Paul’s Epistles, for example—is uttered out of the entirety of this living conscious contact with the living God.” Thus, the development of dogma takes place “through living self-explication within a mind’s possession of a given reality.” Rahner adds: “And so, even in these cases, the concrete experience [of the res] is an essential presupposition for the true and ever-deepening understanding of the words spoken and heard. . . . An explication of this kind, then, is not a just a matter of deduction from propositions: it takes a proposition which is offered as a conceptual expression of experience, measures it by the original experience and finds it correct by this

161 Similarly, Schillebeeckx writes describing Newman’s view: “The appearance of Christ aroused in the apostles’ consciousness of faith a comprehensive intuition of the essence of Christianity. There are, in addition to explicit aspects, also implicit orientations and unexpressed elements in this initial ‘impression’ or ‘idea’, which constitutes a knowledge that is experience rather than consciously thought out. According to Newman, the comprehensive intuition of the apostles was handed down by and in the church. . . . The whole of the development of dogma begins with a comprehensive intuition which is in many respects implicit and continues, through implicit and explicit thought, to the point where dogma is explicitly formulated” (“De Ontwikkeling van het Apostolisch Geloof tot Kerkelijk Dogma,” 58 [69]). Schillebeeckx adopts Newman’s view (63 [75]). 162 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 65. 163 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 65. 164 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 66–67. 165 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 65.



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standard.”166 How is it, then, that the ‘original experience’ of divine reality is the standard? The answer to this important question must be that—in the full consciousness of faith that the Apostles and the apostolic church possessed— they knew much more than they could state. Rahner clearly explains the sense in which this is the case: It is true that men did not ‘know’ much then, if we understand by ‘knowledge’ a form of knowledge which is set up with the help of a reflective, highly articulated conceptual system. There could have been for the most part so little acquaintance with a system of this kind that we may safely assume that it quite certainly would not have been immediately intelligible at the time, because concepts like this [e.g., homoousios, transubstantiation] only emerge at a definite point in time and require a definite period of pedagogic activity to become intelligible. Yet at the same time all was known, because men has laid living hold upon the total reality of God’s saving Act and now lived in it spiritually. Let us remember that in actual fact (if not in essential principle) greater reflective articulateness of a spiritual possession is nearly always purchased at the cost of a partial loss in unhampered communication (‘naïve’ in the good sense) with the reality given in faith (and which is still possessed in its entirety). Then we shall see that our more complex and highly differentiated consciousness in faith and theology which corresponds to it need not fancy themselves ‘superior’ to the simple faith of Apostolic times! God allots to every age its mode of consciousness in faith. Any romantic desire of our own to return to the simplicity and unreflective density and fullness of the Apostolic consciousness in faith would only result in an historical atavism. We must possess this fullness [of faith] in a different way.167

In a different way, yes, but in edodem sensu eademque sententia, that is, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment. Why is this account of faith as a way of knowing divine reality important for dogmatic development? The brief answer to this question here must be that it explains how there can be more in the development of dogma than was previously already propositionally expressed. Of course this account does not give a full account of dogmatic development that does consist as well of “the connection between something formally or virtually implicit in a proposition and the explication of this by logical procedures with the support and in the light of the divine Spirit.”168 This conclusion brings us to the fifth element (5) in a Catholic account of dogmatic development, namely,

166 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 65. 167 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 67. 168 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 63.

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regarding theological criteria for determining whether this development is a dogmatic one, that is, whether this developed truth has been revealed by God—without appealing to a new revelation!—and hence may be claimed by the Church “as the Revelation of God himself and consequently may be believed on the testimony of God himself.”169 This question, too, belongs to the fourth model of dogmatic development I described earlier as one in which the actual process of development involves reasoning illumined by the light of faith. How, then, do we know whether a new articulation and explication, expressed propositionally, has the character of Revelation? All those criteria listed earlier are relevant—Holy Scripture, ecumenical councils, the consensus of holy and learned doctors, the faithful generally, and the Magisterium. “A sure knowledge is acquired in the form of knowledge in faith proper to the Church as such (if she steps in) not just through the merely logical explication of propositions as such but through the luminous power of the Spirit in contact with the res itself.”170 Now, this sure knowledge in faith regarding the reality, its meaning and content, of objective, public revelation may only be accessed explicitly as a member of Christ’s Church and understood by the norms of the Church herself. To quote Rahner once again, whose theory of dogmatic development I have relied upon in large measure in this section. For it was only to the Church as a whole that the promise was made that she should possess the original faith entire and unclouded. She alone, and not every isolated individual, has the organs which, without fear of error, can bring this reflection to completion with universally binding authority. In the last resort this is why it is only in the Church that there is a secure guarantee of a permanent connection between the original faith (in part global and implicit) in contact with the reality itself by grace and the light of faith, and the “new” explication by theological means. The individual recognizes the faith as binding and certain only in so far as he grasps it in the Church and with her.171 169 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 60. 170 Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 52–53. 171  Rahner, “The Development of Dogma,” 76. Similarly, Schillebeeckx writes, “The Church’s teaching authority is the ultimately authentic and infallible instrument of the interpretation of tradition, of which the church’s hierarchy as such and the ordinary believers, as the non-qualified members of the church, are the active subject. The hierarchy is therefore in an exceptional position not only because it is special, qualified, and active instrument of tradition—as is the believing community in a non-hierarchical manner— but also because the teaching authority of the church is the exclusive regula of the tradition of faith. It is important therefore not to confuse the whole subject of active tradition in all its diversity of structure with the subject of the instrument that is the norm and the judge of this tradition” 66 [82]).



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I turn now to discuss Berkouwer’s critique of Marian dogma especially in his books of 1949 and 1964 on Catholicism. There is no possibility here to discuss the whole of Marian dogma, its development during the first eight centuries of the Church,172 let alone the Church’s magisterial teaching over the centuries. I will address a fundamental question of great importance raised by Berkouwer’s critique, namely, “what is the position of Mary in the Roman Catholic Church and why is at this point the Reformation protest so sharp and so indispensable” (CR, 203 [153]). Although I want to be sensitive to the important biblical and theological objections raised by Berkouwer, I will also craft a careful Catholic theological rebuttal of them. Marian Dogma173 Pre-Vatican II Critique of the Fundamental Mariological Principle Perhaps the best place to begin in understanding Berkouwer’s critique of Mariology is with his search for the fundamental Mariological principle, as he understands it: “Is there one central point from which this doctrine

172 Luigi Gambero, S.M., Mary and the Father of the Church, The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought, Translated by Thomas Buffer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999). 173 Helpful to me in understanding the place of Mary in the plan of God and in the Communion of Saints have been the following works: Sara Butler, MSBT, “The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: A Theological Note,” Chicago Studies 43:3 (Fall/ Winter 2004): 297–303. Yves M-J. Congar, O.P., Christ, Our Lady and the Church, Translated with an Introduction by Henry St. John, O.P. (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1957); Avery Dulles, S.J., “Mary at the Dawn of a New Millennium,” Laurence J. McGinley Lecture, November 19, 1997, 3–19; Groupe des Dombes, Mary in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints, Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell (New York/Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 2002); Luigi Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the Church, Translated by Thomas Buffer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999); Scott Hahn, Hail, Holy Queen, The Mother of God in the Word of God (New York: Doubleday, 2001); Bishop Jan Hendriks, Maria, Inleding tot de Katholieke Leer Over de Moeder van de Verlosser (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2008); John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 1987 Encyclical Letter, online: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031987_redemptoris-mater_en.html; idem., Theotókos: Woman, Mother, Disciple, Volume 5, A Catechesis on Mary, Mother of God, Wednesday Audience Talks from September 6, 1995–November 12, 1997 (Boston: Pauline Books & media, 2000); André-Mutien Léonard, Drie (niet) geliefden? Maria, de Kerk, and de Vrouw, Vertaald door Michel T’Joen (Gent: Carmelitana, 2008); Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Vatican II, November 21, 1964, Chapter VIII, The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the Mystery of Christ and the Church, nos. 52–69, online: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_ const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html; Hugo Rahner, S.J., Our Lady and the Church, Translated by Sebastian Bullough, O.P. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961); Karl Rahner, S.J.,

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must be rejected?” For example, adds Berkouwer, “Is the charge of the deification of a creature the cardinal point, or merely a side-issue” (CR, 215 [162]?174 In 1949, Berkouwer suggests that Marian piety is “to the Protestant mind . . . without any doubt the deification of a human being.” He explains: “We feel that in this case the limits that are set to the devotion that can be given to creatures have been far exceeded. In Roman practice the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ is often followed by the ‘Ave Maria’ (Hail Mary)” (CR, 207 [156]. In an exercise of probing examination, Berkouwer asks, “Is not this coordination of the Ave Maria and the Lord’s Prayer decisive, or is the Protestant believer wrong when he looks upon this substitution of the doxology by the Ave Maria as an infringement of the creaturely boundaries?” He continues: How can it be explained that the Reformed objections are doggedly maintained notwithstanding the emphasis which Rome distinguishes between worship proper and invocation? Is this distinction perhaps not always clear in Roman practice, but must the Protestant reproach be called a vain beating the air at least with respect to the official theory of the Roman church? Or are things the other way around? In the light of the officially sanctioned Mary devotion is this distinction between worship and invocation (and devotion) nothing but an arbitrary limitation of a practice for which the Church does not dare to be held fully responsible? Does the conscience of the Roman church speak in this distinction and does it feel uncomfortable about the lofty names given to Mary (CR, 207–208 [156])?175 “The Immaculate Conception,” and “The Interpretation of the Dogma of the Assumption,” in Theological Investigations, Vol. I, Translated with an Introduction by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (London: Darton, Longmand & Todd, 1961), 201–227; idem., Mary Mother of the Lord, Theological Meditations, Translated by W.J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963); Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mary, The Church at the Source, Translated by Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005); Joseph Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, Translated by John M. McDermott, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005); Michael Schmaus, “Mariology,” entry in Sacramentum Mundi, Vol. III, General Editor, Adolf Darlap (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 376–390. Matthias J. Scheeben, Mariology, I–II, Translated by T.L.M.J. Geukers (St. Louis/London: B. Herder Book Co., 1946); Eduard Schillebeeckx, O.P., Mary, Mother of the Redemption, translated by N.D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964); Otto Semmelroth, S.J., Mary, Archetype of the Church, Translated by Maria von Eroes and John Devlin (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963). 174 Bavinck issues this charge in Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, III, 283 [282]. 175 Regarding the distinction between worship and devotion, Berkouwer elaborates later in VCNT, “Every Catholic dogmatics distinguishes between worship latreae (given only to God), honor duliae (given only to saints), and reverence hyperduliae (given only to Mary” (301n125 [238n50]). Rahner clarifies: “The special honor paid to Mary as the Mother of God, which of course has nothing to do with adoration, is called hyperdulia. This is simply the religious veneration due to those who are redeemed and sanctified in the complete sense, in heaven—dulia—but in the special case of the unique dignity of Mary as the Mother of God, and of her unique position and function in the divine plan of our redemption. Such



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The alternatives here are clear: Is the excess in Marian piety and practice that tends to deification and hence idolatry inconsistent with Mariology, or is Mariology itself the source of such excess and is the Catholic Church resistant to taking full responsibility for the consequence of its Mariological principle? Berkouwer opts for the second alternative. In other words, he argues that the excess of Marian piety and practice has as its source the fundamental Mariological principle of the Church as well as the way this principle has been worked out by many Catholic theologians.176 In particular, the principle source of this excess is the place that Mary assumes in God’s plan of salvation, according to Catholicism, that is, her function in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man. Berkouwer argues that there is a “thorny path of subtle distinctions” in the reflection of Catholic theologians on “how to determine this function correctly.” Of course, Mary’s place in God’s plan of salvation is only intelligible in terms of the primacy of Christ, who “alone is the perfect Mediator between God and men.” Berkouwer adds: “On the basis of this confession Mary will never be equal to the Holy Christ.”177 Still, “This ‘reassurance’ by no means implies that Mary stands outside of the mediating work of Christ.” Notwithstanding that Mary’s share in that redemptive work is spoken of as a “serving partnership,” there is still full consideration given to “the coordinate element in this ‘cooperation’ in the mediator of Christ” (CR, 211 [159]. In what sense, does Mary not stand “outside” the mediating work of Christ, according to Berkouwer’s account? The subtle distinction that Berkouwer has in mind that has been employed in determining Mary’s function in Christ’s work and which also answers this question is the distinction between “objective redemption” (redemptio

religious honor, in other words, has its intrinsic basis and measure in the holiness and dignity of the person in question” (Mary, Mother of the Lord, 18). 176 Berkouwer notes that “It is certainly not right to ascribe to the Roman church all that is taught about Mary in Roman Catholic theology” (CR, 210 [158]). Still, Berkouwer also holds, “Anybody who studies the different papal pronouncements [about Mary] will find how difficult it is to distinguish sharply between church and theology in relation to the Mariological problem” (Ibid., 214 [161). 177 Yves Congar writes that in one meeting he attended in preparation for the Second Vatican Council “several English bishops say categorically: no new mariological dogmas.” Indeed, Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland, Cardinal John d’Alton “was . . . protesting against the view that would preserve Christ’s place at the centre de jure, while at the same time placing Mary at the centre de facto” (My Journal of the Council, Translated by M.J. Ronayne, O.P. and M.C. Boulding, O.P., English Translator Editor, D. Minns, O.P. [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012, 24]).

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objectiva) and “subjective redemption” (redemptio subjectiva).178 The former refers to the work of Christ the Redeemer alone; for he alone redeems us through his work and his only, meriting grace for all on his own. The latter sense of redemption “means the giving of the fruits of salvation to men when the ‘proper disposition’ (under the influence of grace) makes possible the reception, as well as the increase, of sanctifying grace.” In short, “Redemptio subjectiva is the giving of the fruits of redemptio objectiva to individuals.”179 In which sense, then, if any, did Mary co-operate with the work of redemption? Doe she cooperate in the redemptive work of gaining salvation for men, participating in the obtaining of the graces of redemption, and hence in Christ’s objective redemption, or does she merely help subjectively, after the Calvary event that is the full and sufficient cause of our salvation, in the applying of Christ’s saving work, distributing his redemptive graces, to men’s lives? Berkouwer suggests that Mary is interpreted by some Catholic theologians to share in Christ’s objective redemption such that she actually co-merits redemption within Christ’s work, and hence we see the importance of Mary not standing ‘outside’ this work, although she assumes a subordinate role. Berkouwer explains: For although Mary’s partnership with Christ, her work of satisfaction, may not have infinite value, it is inexpressibly great. On account of her special value as the Mother of God who—through Christ’s merit—was conceived immaculate—she was able to satisfy the requirement demanded of a real mediator, viz., the being outside of the parties that want mediation. Through her blood relationship with God the Son, Mary has entered into a “kind of affinity” with the Father and the Holy Ghost and has been included in the divine family. She has a central place in the work of redemption, although she owes this place to the center, Christ. She is associated with the satisfying Christ, with his suffering and sacrifice, and his meritorious work and all the gifts of his redemption flow to us through her. The distribution of grace is Mary’s doing. But there can be no legitimate objection to her co-redemptive work (CR, 213 [160]).

Many Catholic theologians completely reject the idea that Mary participates objectively in achieving salvation for men—objective redemption— even if only in a subordinate sense. For how could Mary cooperate in objective redemptive when she herself owed her own redemption to 178 For my description of these two senses of redemption I am indebted to Otto Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 71–89. See also, Jan Hendriks, Maria, 88–112, and Schillebeeckx, Mary, Mother of the Redemption, 35–39. 179 Semmelroth, Mary, 72.



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Christ? These Catholic critics either see no way, or a way strewn with difficult and thorny distinctions, of reconciling Mary’s participation in objective redemption with the basis dogma of Christ as the one and only Mediator between God and men. Still, there are others who claim that “Although she is not coordinated with Christ, but subordinate to him, she shares his mediator’s work in her subordination” (CR, 215 [161]). This is why Berkouwer has to admit that there is no consensus among Catholic theologians, on the one hand, “on Mary’s share in the objective redemption” (CR, 213 [160]). On the other hand, he adds, “as regards the application of grace Mary’s place was beyond any dispute” (CR, 215 [162]).180 Berkouwer continues to press the critical point of Protestants, like himself, against the view of Catholic theologians who stress Mary’s subordinate but cooperating function in objective redemption such that Mary not only “becomes the mediating companion of Christ,” but also is “given the name of ‘co-redemptrix’, and in connection with this the distributrix of all gifts of grace” (CR, 220 [165]). It is here that Berkouwer identifies the chief protest of the Reformers. “The Reformers did not object to the exalted position of Mary [in the New Testament], her unique motherhood as the blessed one among women, but they looked upon the idea of ‘cooperation’ that played such an important part in the Roman view as the obfuscation of salvation and a devaluation of the divine grace in Jesus Christ. And even if they had been able to get acquainted with the stress laid on the subordination of Mary to Christ later on, their fundamental protest would not have been weakened by it” (CR, 218 [164]). What is more, the Reformers rejected the biblical hermeneutic of Catholic Mariology. Yes, once again, Berkouwer urges that they did not reject Mary’s singularly unique place in the divine plan, with her “fiat,” in the birth of Christ, as the Mother of God.181 But

180 In his 1964 Vatican II study, Berkouwer claims that “the history of Marian dogmas reveals that the idea of Mary as co-redemptrix in the work of salvation and the idea of Mary as mediatrix in the application of salvation are very often intimately related” (VCNT, 315 [248]). Whether or not this claim is true, I have chosen in the last section of this chapter to deal alone with the question of Mary’s role in objective redemption. 181 Berkouwer rejects the charge of Nestorianism against Reformers such as Calvin. “When the title of “Mother of God” is intended to give expression to the doctrine that the person born of Mary is really God, we can say that the whole of the Reformation has accepted this doctrine with all their hearts. They have emphatically rejected the union between the Logos and the human person of Jesus of Nazareth (Nestorius). . . . Calvin opposes Nestorius’ separation of the two natures in Christ ‘for we see that in a clear voice the Scriptures protest against this in the passage where He who was born of the virgin is given the name of God and the virgin herself is called the mother of our Lord” (Berkouwer, CR, 226 [170]).

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the Reformers find “nothing—nothing whatever—of all the qualities and honorary titles assigned by Rome to Mary, either in the objective or in the subjective work (or in both) of redemption” (CR, 218 [164]). Further, they argue that “It is simply impossible to infer this honor [co-mediation] from Mary’s ‘fiat’.” That is, “For in the few data given in the Scriptures, either in Mary’s own words or in those of the angel, we can discover nothing of all that under the influence of tradition has been gradually added to complete the picture of Mary” (CR, 222 [166]). So, in 1948 Berkouwer leaves a clear picture of his rejection of Mary’s cooperating and her mediating function in objective redemption. This is the central point from which Mariology must be rejected. He has no doubt this fundamental Mariological principle leads not only to the tendency to deify a creature but also to “obscuring the glory of Christ in an appalling way and demonstrating a doctrine of grace in which man himself is given a function which is not in accordance with the character of grace” (CR, 233 [175]). Yes, the Reformers, too, affirm Mary’s unique motherhood, the favor given to her, but her place in the plan of God and in the communion of saints “is only meaningful through the fact of her being the mother of Christ.” Yes, Roman Mariology, too, holds this relation to be the case. “But in reality this relation has given rise to a devotion which obscures it” (CR, 233 [175]). Thus far Berkouwer’s 1948 assessment of Mariology. Yet, a distinct change takes place in 1964 with Berkouwer’s first book on Vatican II. This change is due, in part, to a confluence of factors—for example, the rejection of the two-source theory of revelation and the uncritical use of Scripture to fit Mariological dogma—that led to an increasing concentration on the Scriptural basis of Marian dogma. Most important to Berkouwer in his reassessment of the Reformation polemic against Marian dogma, giving Vatican II’s discussion of Mary increased significance, is the ‘Catholic minimalists’ concern to protect the uniqueness of the one Mediator” (VCNT, 303 [240]). This point requires some explanation. During Vatican II: Minimalism and Maximalism In Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie, Berkouwer devotes an entire chapter to Mariology, especially to the two different approaches of minimalism and maximalism.182 He examines their respective approaches to 182 Berkouwer notes that minimalism “does not suggest that Catholics should speak as little as possible about Mary” (VCNT, 280 [236]). These terms seem to be common currency among German Catholic theologians of the mid-twentieth century. In this connection,



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the biblical and theological foundations of the fundamental Mariological principle of Mary’s role in the work of redemption. The minimalist rejects any approach to Mary’s role that may undermine the dogma regarding the singularly unique Mediatorship of Jesus Christ in divine redemption. Of course, the maximalist agrees with that dogma. Still, according to the minimalist, the maximalist view that Mary participates in objective redemption obscures and even minimizes that dogma. That is the case because, according to maximalism, Mary stands, even if entirely subordinate and dependent upon Christ, as a kind of co-redemptive principle, which, although subordinate to Christ’s Mediatorship, co-operates and co-merits as such, meaning thereby that Mary participates in objective redemption. This participation puts in doubt that Christ’s action is the full and sufficient cause of redemption. The Catholic minimalist is not satisfied with the maximalist’s assurance that Mary, as co-redemptrix, is entirely subordinate and dependent upon Christ. For the minimalist, unlike the maximalist, as Semmelroth correctly notes, “The question is not of one main Mediator but, simply, one [1 Tim 2:5].”183 Clearly, then, the minimalist rejects the maximalist position that salvation is somehow co-constituted through Mary’s co-operation. Furthermore, the minimalist, unlike the maximalist, rejects a twosource theory of revelation regarding the relation between Scripture and tradition, and hence he or she is more systematically attentive to a biblical hermeneutic, reviving the spiritual sense of the text and its corresponding typological exegesis, and hence to the biblical foundations of Marian dogmas.184 In this connection, says Berkouwer, “it became clear that the proponents of this view were not about to argue the legitimacy of the Marian doctrine by pointing to tradition as its source.” Hence, he adds, there arose “a new demand for showing that the Marian dogma was founded in Scripture” (VCNT, 276 [222]). Yes, according to the minimalist, the sensus fidelium is significant and the Church’s teaching authority is necessary, “but neither of these can take the place of establishing the dogma of the Church in revelation.” Berkouwer adds, “In times when the apostolic norm for the faith of the Church is given special emphasis, as it is today, biblical exegesis is likely to play a large role in further discussion Berkouwer often cites the 1957 work of Alois Müller, Fragen und Aussichten der heutigen Mariologie, in his chapter on Mariology. 183 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 75. 184 I discussed extensively in Chapters Four and Five the two-source theory of revelation regarding the relation of Scripture and tradition.

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about Mary” (VCNT, 283 [227–228]). I now want to look more closely at each of these perspectives. Significantly, Berkouwer dismisses his earlier focus on the question whether the deification of Mary is a cardinal point in Mariology. The conflict with Rome, perhaps Berkouwer sees more clearly now, is not over whether she ‘intends to deify Mary.’ Emphatically, Berkouwer states, “It does not. But the controversy has to do with her disputed function as co-redemptrix, a function ascribed to her to this day” (VCNT, 301 [238]). He continues: “The mediation of Mary—not her deification—is the real area of difference” (VCNT, 302 [240]).185 In short, the conflict with Rome is over the nature of Mary’s mediation and the function she plays in the work of redemption, indeed, in God’s plan of salvation and in the communion of saints. Thus, the focus for Berkouwer now is particularly on the conflict between minimalism and maximalism. Since the representatives of both perspectives fully accept the Marian dogmas, I have already suggested that the theological difference between them lies elsewhere. The maximalist may be seen as best representing the position that Berkouwer rejected in 1948. The maximalists conclude that Mary’s role in the mystery of salvation is cooperative; she is a co-worker in redemption. Mary is not merely passive and receptive; she involves herself in the salvation-historical way of redemption in a unique role—a Marian role, shared by no one else. She was more than the mother of the Redeemer. Her entire life is bound up with that of her Son. She participates, as God wills, in the mystery of salvation, not merely as “mediatrix” in subjective redemption, by way of helping in the applying of salvation to men’s lives, but also in the objective achieving of it for man. Without standing on a par with Christ—she remains dependent on him. Mary’s so-called fiat is said to illustrate her cooperation in the work of gaining salvation for men. The miracle of redemption happens through Mary response; it does not occur above the human level. Therefore, argue the maximalists, the notion of co-redemptrix is not a theologoumenon of the maximalist group of Catholics. It belongs to the essence of Mariology (VCNT, 299 [237]).

What exactly belongs to the essence of maximalist Mariology? The essential claim is that the redemptive work of Christ cannot be effected without Mary’s co-operation, really co-meriting redemptive grace within Christ’s 185 Elsewhere Berkouwer says, “We are quite aware that none of [the various titles assigned to Mary] is intended to deify Mary; we are [only] asking the question [whether these titles serve a useful purpose or whether they actually mislead] in the context of Mary’s human role in the salvation event” (VCNT, 301 [239]).



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actions. Berkouwer expresses his affinity, as a Reformed theologian, with the Catholic minimalist who critically questions the above maximalist position. Of course Berkouwer affirms that God’s plan of salvation “sweeps Mary into the drama via the annunciation and via her response, her readiness to be the servant of God” (VCNT, 299 [237]). Still, how could Mary cooperate in objective redemptive as co-redemptrix in gaining salvation for men when she herself owed her own redemption to Christ? Minimalists, such as Semmelroth, argue that the answer to this question must distinguish between temporal priority and causal priority in order to avoid distinguishing between Mary’s redemption and our own. He explains: “Even though Mary was pre-redeemed in the temporal sense before the Logos entered this world (propter praevisa merita Christi, as the Church says), the fact remains that she first had to receive the fruits of the Redemption before being able to fulfill her co-operative role, and Christ’s Redemption, with all its satisfactory and meritorious forces, must have been foreseen by God as complete. From this causal point of view, God indeed preserved Mary from original sin and pre-redeemed her.”186 Confusing this distinction has sometimes led Catholics to insist on the distinction between Mary being redeemed through Christ’s work alone, but that man was redeemed through the work of Christ and Mary. As an example of such a position, Semmelroth cites the work of German Jesuit theologian, H. Seiler, who in 1941 wrote: “If Mary co-redeemed man objectively, then we must demonstrate that another sort of objective salvation was established for her alone. We must hold that God redeemed Mary upon the basis of Christ’s self-surrender and that He redeemed all others on the basis of His self-surrender through Mary.”187 Semmelroth critically adds: “It is impossible to accept this theory, of course, nor is such a thesis at all necessary.”188 It is unnecessary because “a denial of this point of view is not the same as a complete denial of any co-operation on the

186 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 75. As Edward T. Oakes, S.J., has recently put it regarding Mary’s Immaculate Conception: “One can, after all, hardly ‘merit’ grace until one first exists, but Mary was given a singular grace at the first moment of her conception, which also means that she must in some sense have been predestined for her role as Mother of God from all eternity and quite independent of any later ‘merit’ on her part (what is known as ante merita praevisa, in the traditional terminology)” (“Predestination and Mary’s Immaculate Conception: An Evangelically Catholic Interpretation,” Pro Ecclesia Vol. XXI, No. 3 [Summer 2012]: 281–298, and at 284). 187 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 74. 188 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 74.

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part of Mary with the Redemption.”189 In what precise sense is a complete denial unnecessary, shall be explained below. For now, let it suffice that it is impossible to accept this theory because what is at stake here is the teaching of Holy Scripture that there is only one Mediator between God and man, whose redemptive action alone is the full and sufficient cause of our salvation. Doesn’t the maximalist view undo the singularly unique role of Jesus Christ, in short, solo Christo, misinterpreting Mary’s role as a second, albeit subordinate, principle of saving grace? Berkouwer sides with the minimalist on this question, but since the minimalist does not deny any co-operation at all on the part of Mary with Christ’s redemption, the same objection raised by Berkouwer in this passage below will come back to the minimalist position as well. If the role that Mary played in [objective] redemption is going to be based on her fiat, will that not mean that divine redemption was dependent on her agreement and her cooperativeness? And would this not mean that redemption stems from two components—the act of God in Christ and the act of Mary? . . . And what then of I Timothy 2:5—the ‘one mediator between God and man’? Quoted as frequently as ever, perhaps, could it ever again have the same force if the team Christ-Mary are co-redeemers? And since Mary remains human, would not her status as co-redemptrix mean that salvation has a human constituent, an earthly source? And is this not the Mariological heresy against which so many Mariologists insistently warn us today (VCNT, 295–296 [235])?

I think there are two issues here that need identifying. In addition to sharing the Catholic minimalist objection, Berkouwer adds his own Protestant criticism of this maximalist view that admittedly has not always managed to avoid misunderstanding on the matter of Mary’s co-operation. First, consider the Protestant question implied by Berkouwer in the passage above: “Is it the Yes of Mary that makes the incarnation possible, or is it the decree of divine grace that makes Mary’s Yes possible?”190 The brief

189 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 78. Ratzinger is correct to note that “an exaggerated solus Christus compelled its adherents to reject any cooperation of the creature, any independent significance of its response, as a betrayal of the greatness of grace” (“The Sign of the Woman,” in Mary, The Church at the Source, 43). 190 Groupe des Dombes, Mary in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints, 87. Similarly, Jan Hendriks asks, “Is Christ’s redemptive work without Mary’s cooperation in a certain sense incomplete, because in God’s plan of salvation Mary’s cooperation is a constitutive or essential part, although all her cooperation is completely dependent and subordinate to Christ? May one say that her cooperation, her suffering and compassion with Christ is so much a part of his saving work that it can be integrated into that redemption?” (Maria, 98).



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answer to this question here must be that it is “the election of Mary as Mother of the Son of God” that “is fundamental for the accomplishment of God’s salvific designs for humanity,”191 and hence it is her election, or unique predestination to grace, in the mystery of Christ that makes her fiat in faith possible. In other words, Mary’s unique predestination to grace as the Mother of God is rooted in God’s plan of salvation and finds its origin in his decree. According to Pius IX, then, “From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world.”192 Another question raised in the above passage is whether Mary’s fiat “adds a percentage, however, minimal, to the work of Christ,”193 so that sharing in Christ’s redemptive work is a kind of ‘synergism,’ that is, a human constituent in Christ’s saving work. Again, the latter suggests that human cooperation with grace contributes to the believer’s salvation, resulting in the view that man adds something to the saving work of Christ, detracting from that work being the full and sufficient cause of our salvation (see VCNT, 296 [236]).194 The brief answer to this question here must be that “our salvation is one hundred percent 191 John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 9. Later in this encyclical he repeats the same point: It is “by virtue of divine election [that] Mary is the earthly Mother of the Father’s consubstantial Son and his ‘generous companion’ in the work of redemption” (no. 38). In light of John Paul’s reference to Mary’s divine election, I am baffled by Greg Allison’s claim that Catholicism interprets “Mary’s response to Gabriel’s announcement—‘Let it be done to me’—as an “imperative,” indeed, he adds, “Mary expresses not her fiat (that is, her authoritative decree) but her wish to obey God’s will that has been communicated to her by the final angelic words, ‘Nothing will be impossible with God’. Accordingly, this text is not about Mary; it is about the power of God to effect the incarnation of his Son” (Greg Allison, “A Response to Catholicism,” Journeys of Faith, 115–128, 239n30). Allison cites no textual evidence to support his objection. Butler also makes clear that “According to Pope Pius IX [in Ineffabilis Deus] God predestined Mary along with her Son in one and the same divine decree. . . . [Thus] The reason for Mary’s unique predestination to grace is her vocation to be the God-bearer (Theótokos), the mother of the Son of God according to the flesh” (“The Immaculate Conception,” 299). Michael Schmaus avoids the false dilemma that Allison posits between divine election and Mary’s authentic human choice: “Though her ‘yes’ was grounded in God’s eternal decision, yet God would not have come to men apart from the ‘yes’ which Mary spoke on behalf of mankind” (cited in Berkouwer, De Zonde, II, Wezen en Verbreiding der Zonde [Kampen: Kok, 1960], 286). The English translation of this work is in one volume, although the original Dutch was in two volumes: Sin, translated by Philip C. Holtrop (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1971), 504. 192 Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, http://www.ewtn.com/LIBRARY/PAPALDOC/P9INEFF.htm. See also, Butler, “The Immaculate Conception,” 298–299. 193 Groupe des Dombes, Mary in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints, 89. 194 Berkouwer makes a similar point in CR, 217 [163], “In the conflict of the Marydoctrine the issue is also the meaning of God’s grace.”

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God’s work through Christ in the Spirit.”195 This is the Catholic response, as Semmelroth clearly states: “The principle of Redemption is Christ Himself alone; the work of Salvation is His work and His only.”196 I’ll return to both these points below. Maximalism is also to be rejected because it has the danger of a tendency to monophysitism, according to Berkouwer and some Catholic critics, such as Schillebeeckx, Rahner and Congar. If we make Mary’s “cooperation an ontologically internally necessary component of the Incarnation then that may lead to an exaggerated Mariology.” Berkouwer adds, “One then ascribes to Mary’s humanity what is already accomplished by Christ (vere homo). And that cannot be the meaning of Mary’s place in the mystery of salvation, because then Mary would represent the human component in redemption, a consequence only possible in a Monophysite Christology that certainly fully confesses Christ as ‘vere Deus’, but comes up short on the ‘vere homo,’ leaving a ‘deficiency’ in the area of his humanity” (VCNT, 297 [236]). In other words, Mary is taken to be a complement, or compensation, to Christ’s divinity “filling the vacuum left by lacunae which seemed to exist in Christ’s humanity.”197 For example, Mary is the Mother of Mercy who can sway her Son, the Righteous Judge.198 Indeed, this criticism

195 Groupe des Dombes, Mary in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints, 89. 196 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 76. Semmelroth cites from a Decree on Behalf of the Jacobites issued by the Council of Florence (1438–1445): “He who was conceived without sin, was born and died, through His death alone laid low the enemy of the human race by destroying our sins (solus una morte prostravit)” (Denzinger 711). He also cites a question that Ambrose once hypothetically posed about Mary who asked herself: “Was there perhaps something that could be added to Christ’s public ministry by her own death? The Saint answers: ‘The suffering of Christ demands no help. The Lord prophesied long ago, “I looked around and there was no one to help me”’ (as cited in Mary, Archetype of the Church, 76). 197 “Schillebeeckx makes this comment by way of criticism of the complementary notion of Mary as co-redemptrix,” says Berkouwer (VCNT, 311 [245]). 198 For another minimalist critique of this tendency to monophysitism, see Yves Congar: “An indirect influence inherent in preaching and devotion of [the] sort that . . . is so penetrated with the thought of Christ’s divinity and exaltation, that his true humanity is left in the background, with the result that he seems remote from human life, and a need is then created for a sort of human mediatorship between him and ourselves which can be filled by our Lady. . . . Attention should be called . . . to two features which are not seldom met with in Marian literature. One of them is the connection of the part played by our Lady, and especially in regard to her title of mediatrix, with a view of our Lord which makes him, if it can be so expressed, too exclusively divine. The other is the idea that Christ is a stern judge, while our Lady is wholly merciful. These two features, to be rightly assessed, must be seen in the light not of religious sentiment, but of theology and of Holy Scripture, the primary objective standard of judgment for theology” (Christ, Our Lady and the Church, 71–72).



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of maximalist Christology is a major objection shared by Berkouwer with minimalists.199 A Minimalist Reply to Berkouwer’s Objections Mary as Type of the Church200—the typological201 role of Mary in God’s plan of salvation—is the approach that some minimalist take to getting at the fundamental Mariological principle, and which Berkouwer discusses. There is a consensus among diverse supporters of typology that it “should not be confused with symbolism, allegory, or prophecy. Its hallmark is history, not fanciful imaginations; it deals in relationships of persons, events, and institutions rather than words themselves.”202 I will now begin

199 Berkouwer writes, “This is in my judgment the core of much criticism leveled against the maximalists.” Siding with Rahner, he writes, “Mary the epitome of humanity [?]—‘as though Christ is not truly man!’ Rahner also speaks of monophysite tendencies in the coredemptrix notion” (VCNT, 297n107 [236n49]). 200 Berkouwer uses the phrase—Mary as a type of the Church—to characterize the new interpretative scheme of Mariology (VCNT, 313, 315 [240–41, 246]. “Ambrose [c. 339– d. 397] is the first Christian author to call Mary the type and image of the Church” [Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Holy Gospel According to Saint Luke, trans. Theodosia Tomkinson (Etna, Calif.: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998], Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the Church, 189. 201 Reformed theologian, Hendrikus Berkhof (1914–1995), makes the case for typology, as distinct from allegory, in this way: “Besides [the] reading of the OT as directly prophetic of Christ, much christological interpretation of the OT by the NT can be characterized as typology: earlier events and persons are regarded as a ‘foreshadowing’ of Christ and his life. In this way a christological perspective is obtained on Adam, Melchizedek, Moses, the serpent in the wilderness, the manna, the worship in the tabernacle, David, Jonah, etc. This method as such need not violate the OT because, exegeting e mente auctoris, it only puts it in a new context of which the original author had no knowledge. . . . Allegory is a different matter. It cannot be precisely distinguished from typology, yet generally speaking it attaches little or no value to the historicity of OT persons and events; it regards these as bearers of ‘higher’ ‘spiritual’ ‘truths’. As distinct from typology, the danger is much greater here than the literal meaning of the text is violated and that the OT is made the mouthpiece of a message which is foreign to it” (The Christian Faith, Translated by Sierd Woudstra [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979], 226). Berkhof also makes the point later in his work, “[Gerhardus] Von Rad (Theology of the OT, II, part three, A and B) has shown that these typological reinterpretations are already applied by later traditions in the OT to earlier ones and that they belong integrally to the history of redemption and the history of tradition itself ” (259). 202 Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., and Moisés Silva, Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics, Revised and Expanded Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 103. That there is a “clear difference between biblical typology and allegory” is also argued by J.P. Versteeg in defense of New Testament typology in Adam in the New Testament, Second Edition, Translated and with a Foreword by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2012 [1969]), 11–15.

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replying to Berkouwer’s objections to Mariology by aligning my theological reflections on the fundamental Mariological principle with the minimalist perspective. I include here under minimalists not only Joseph Ratzinger (Daughter Zion) but also Otto Semmelroth (Mary Archetype of the Church), Hugo Rahner (Our Lady and the Church), and John Paul II (Redemptoris Mater). Rather than focusing merely on individual texts (e.g., Genesis 3:5, Rev 12:1) in order to justify Marian dogmas, these dogmas, according to a minimalist, like Ratzinger, “become visible only to a mode of perception that accepts [the] unity [of both Testaments], i.e., within a perspective which comprehends and makes its own the ‘typological’ interpretation, the corresponding echoes of God’s single history in the diversity of various external histories.”203 In other words, the fundamental Mariological principle can be shown to be scriptural against the background of the whole economy of redemptive history, illustrating the analogy of faith. “This [analogy of faith] exists at the level of the scriptural texts and is in this way one of the main principles of theologico-biblical hermeneutics. This principle rests on the essential oneness of the Word of God, the covenant plan it communicates to us, and the unity that follows from this for Scripture.”204 Typological interpretation operates in the light of the analogy of faith, and hence being a version of canonical exegesis it shows a teaching’s scriptural basis by attending to Scripture’s organic unity. So, typological interpretation, which is an exercise in a canonical interpretation, purports to provide scriptural evidence for the fundamental Mariological principle, but not merely by referring to individual texts.205

203 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 32. Ratzinger’s thesis is: “Wherever the unity of Old and New Testaments disintegrates, the place of a healthy Mariology is lost” (Ibid.). Elsewhere Ratzinger writes in defense of typology, “Nowadays it is the fashion to attack typology as doing violence to the text, and there certainly have been inappropriate applications to typology. But the central and quite justified significance, the essential message, of typology is absolutely clear right here: there is a line running right through the history of faith and worship. Inwardly, things correspond to this—there are deviations, but there is also a path in a particular direction; the inner harmony with the figure of Jesus Christ, with his message and his existence, simply cannot be ruled out in spite of the variety of historical contexts and stages. . . . Christ is moving through history in these forms and figures, as (again, with the Fathers) we may express it” (Truth and Tolerance, 96–97). 204 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 406–407. 205 Berkouwer seems to understand that the fundamental Mariological principle is “rooted at its deepest in what the Holy Scripture teaches regarding the place and dignity of Mary in the work of God. . . . It is a question of the total picture of Holy Scripture. There are texts that as such are not definitive, but once integrated into the total picture appear to fulfill an important function. It is thus the total picture: Mary’s unique position as Mother of God” (SRKD, 180–181).



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The typological meaning of the text—a mode of the spiritual sense of the text—is beyond the literal sense of the text—which is the sense of the text intended by the author—but it can only be “reached through the literal sense.”206 Aquinas sharply defined the real source and foundation of typology in the text by arguing that since the primary author of Holy Scripture is God, the Holy Spirit, he “has it within his power to signify his meaning, not by words only (as a person can do), but also by things [persons, events] themselves.” He explains: “the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification. Therefore that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal. That signification whereby things signified by words have themselves also a signification is called the spiritual sense, which is based on the literal, and presupposes it.”207 Further, typology is a theologically necessary way to understand the unity of Holy Scripture by comparing major correspondences—type (the original) and the antitype (the after copy)—between two persons, things, or events in the Old and New Testaments that have been ordained by providence; the former foreshadows something greater in the latter, as Ratzinger says, “in an interior unity of promise and fulfillment.”208 Typological interpretation, then, presupposes that there are discernible patterns—analogy, similarity in dissimilarity, unity in diversity—in Holy Scripture. This presupposition is based on two things: First, there is a providential connection between the persons and events of biblical history. Second, God is consistent in his communication with us. If we accept these two postulates of divine providence and divine consistency, then we shall find that not only can texts speak of the future, as in prophecy; events can also speak of the future. Events can possess an afterlife. Such a typological approach enables us to enjoy a richer view of one event by seeing it in relation to an earlier event, which, so to say, sketched it out in advance. Moreover, each event, earlier and later, throws light on the other. Thus, the crossing of the Sea of Reeds in Exodus throws light on the crucifixion, which is also a passage from an old world sunk in sin to a new world of liberation and joy. But retrospectively, the crucifixion also illumines the Exodus by confirming that the way of God is always a way through suffering to deliverance and growth.209 206 Congar, Tradition and Traditions, 388. 207 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 1, a. 10. 208 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 63. See Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 128–130). 209 Nichols, Shape of Catholic Theology, 158. For Nichols more general account of typology, see Lovely Like Jerusalem, The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 167–173. Jean Daniélou, S.J., helpfully expands on

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How, then, according to minimalists, does Mary typify the Church?210 In other words, how is it that Mary possesses archetypical faith? Berkouwer answers this question: “Rather than emphasizing Mary’s active fiat as an expression of human ‘co-operation’, they lay stress on Mary’s faith, which associated her with the sovereign and gracious saving acts of God” (VCNT, 297 [236]). For example, the major typological correspondence here is between Mary and Abraham.211 Says Berkouwer, “Abraham exhibited the abandon and the perseverance of faith that made him a model within the history of salvation. In this sense, Abraham forms a parallel with Mary. His kind of faith was Mary’s kind of faith. And so Mary is seen standing on the side of believers. . . . We would misunderstand this parallel, however, were we to jump to the conclusion that Mary is now being leveled off to the stature of Abraham. For her faith and sacrifice is directly related Nichols’ point that typology “denotes a relationship between various events belonging to sacred history.” He continues: “It is called typology, from the wording of two passages in the New Testament: one where it is said of Adam that he ‘was the type’ . . . of him who was to come’ [Rom 5:14]; and another where baptism is called the ‘type . . . of the Flood’ [I Pet 3:21]. This figurative sense of Scripture is grounded in the structural unity of God’s design: the same divine characteristics are revealed in the successive strata of history” (The Lord of History, Translated by Nigel Abercrombie (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1958), 140). Daniélou reminds us in his work, The Bible and the Liturgy, that the foundation of typology “is to be found in the Old Testament itself. At the time of the Captivity, the prophets announced to the people of Israel that in the future God would perform for their benefit deeds analogous to, and even greater than those He had performed in the past. So there would be a new Deluge, in which the sinful world would be annihilated, and a few men, a ‘remnant,’ would be preserved to inaugurate a new humanity; there would be a new Exodus in which, by His power, God would set mankind free from its bondage to idols; there would be a new Paradise into which God would introduce the people He had redeemed. These prophecies constitute a primary typology that might be called eschatological, for the prophets saw these future events as happening at the end of time. The New Testament, therefore, did not invent typology, but simply showed that it was fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth” (4–5). For an overview of the notion of typology, see Catherine Brown Tkacz, “Typology Today,” New Blackfriars 88 (September 2007): 564–580. For a recent defense of typological exegesis, see Peter J. Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), 36–39, 44, 51, 64–66, 72–74, 170–171, 174–181, 183–184. 210 Vatican II refers to Mary as a “type” of the Church (Lumen Gentium, no. 63). 211 For those who object that we must not set forth types between the Testaments except those which are explicit in them, wise words were once written by Orthodox Presbyterian theologian, educator, and pastor, Edmund P. Clowney (1917–2005): “To conclude that we can never see a type where the New Testament does not identify it is to confess hermeneutical bankruptcy” (Preaching Christ in all the Scriptures [Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2003], 31). Does Clowney’s claim mean that he is open to seeing Mary as a type of Eve? Perhaps, but not all Protestants would agree with Clowney. Kaiser, for one, writes: “The most essential characteristic of a ‘type’ is that it is divinely designated. Without such an indication from the text or the original writer of Scripture, the type loses all authority and approval from God” (Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics, 103).



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to the mystery of the Word become flesh, and this context makes Mary completely unique” (VCNT, 291 [233]).212 Although Berkouwer makes an important point here about the singularly unique character of Mary’s faith, he does not examine the sense of her uniqueness, let alone the idea of Mary as a type of the Church. Doing so, however, would help bring out more fully the idea of Mary as a type of the Church, as well as open the door to other major correspondences in typological interpretation, and it would also lay the foundation for other Marian dogmas. Drawing on the works of minimalists mentioned above, I will sketch a minimalist reply to the question, not whether, but why and how there is a place for Mariology in Holy Scripture. (1) First, methodologically speaking, the Bible must be read as a canonical whole in typological interpretations of Mary. In this light, we can understand why Ratzinger argues that the warp and woof of “Mary’s image in the New Testament is woven entirely of Old Testament threads.” There is a female line in the Scripture—from Eve through the Matriarchs to Deborah, Esther, Ruth, and onward to Mary—and in particular three major strands of tradition, indeed, of salvation history, that have theological significance for understanding Mary’s place. “First, the portrait of Mary includes the likeness of the great mothers of the Old Testament: Sarah and especially Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Second, into that portrait is woven the whole theology of daughter Zion [Zeph 3:14; Zech 2:10], in which, above all, the prophets announced the mystery of election and covenant, the mystery of God’s love for Israel.” This second strand for understanding that Mary plays a key role in salvation history as the faithful remnant of Israel, or as Ratzinger also says, daughter of Zion— Mary is not only the messianic personification of the people of Israel but also of the new messianic people, the Church.213 Ratzinger continues: “A third strand can perhaps be identified in the Gospel of John: the figure of Eve, the ‘woman’ par excellence, is borrowed to interpret Mary.”214 Pared down for my purpose here, the third strand is particularly important. The

212 I slightly, but significantly, altered the English translation: Berkouwer says that in comparing Abraham’s faith with Mary’s faith, he refers to the latter as a “volstrekt unieke” [completely unique]. 213 In Lumen Gentium, no. 55, Vatican Council II gives Mary the biblical title “Daughter of Zion.” On Mary as “Daughter of Zion,” see Ignace de la Potterie, S.J., Mary in the Mystery of the Covenant, Translated by Bertrand Buby, S.M. (New York: Alba House, 1992), “The Biblical Background for the New Testament Image of Mary,” XXIII–XL, and XXXVII. 214 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 12.

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type/anti-type parallel of “Eve-Mary,” with Mary being the Second Eve,215 may be justified by considering the fact that Mary is addressed as the “woman par excellence.”216 How so? In John 19:26, Jesus, as he is dying on the cross, calls his mother “Woman” when he gives her as mother to John the apostle. There is an intertestamental echo here of Genesis 2:23 where “Woman” is the name Adam gives to Eve.217 Is Scott Hahn correct that “Jesus, then, is addressing Mary as Eve to the New Adam [?]”218 Further, there is another intertestamental echo of the use of the word “woman” at the centerpiece of Revelation 12:1.219 We find written there: “A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant with child.” Who is this woman? At the very least it should give us pause, remarks Ratzinger, that John “does not use Mary’s proper name, nor the title ‘mother’, but ‘Woman’. The correlation to chapter three of Genesis and chapter twelve of Revelation, to the ‘Sign of the Woman’, is thus suggested by these texts.” Ratzinger concludes, “Without doubt, John’s specific expressions are designed to show Mary simply as ‘the woman’, a figure of general and symbolic significance.”220 I think we have avoided here Berkouwer’s charge (VCNT, 286 [227]) that traditional Catholics have been remarkably nonchalant in interpreting this text by assuming that “everyone knows” that the woman here is 215 The earliest Fathers of the Church, such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, John Chrysotom, Jerome, speak of Mary as the New Eve. For instance, St. Irenaeus memorably writes: “Thus the knot formed by Eve’s disobedience was untied by the obedience of Mary. What the Virgin Eve tied through unbelief, the Virgin Mary untied through faith” (cited in John Henry Newman, The New Eve [Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1952], 15). For a brief history of the Eve/Mary parallel, see Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 26–57. 216 Berkouwer notes that “although the Eve-and-Mary parallel does not find a place in Scripture, the Catholic form of that parallel is dependent on the structures of Roman 5 and 1 Corinthians 15” (De Zonde, II, 285). Berkouwer rightly emphasizes that “it is not true that Rome desires to supplant the Adam-and-Christ parallel by that of Eve-and-Mary” (284). Still, on exegetical grounds Berkouwer rejects the claim that “the Eve-and-Mary parallel is interwoven with and depicted in the categories of Romans 5” (288). ET: Sin, 503, 507, respectively. 217 Francis Martin writes, “Perhaps the most satisfactory explanation, one adopted by many commentators, is that the term alludes to Eve (‘she shall be called woman because she was taken from her man’ [Gen 2:23]). Such a designation is even more apt when one considers Jesus’ words to her [Mary] from the cross” (“Mary in Sacred Scripture: An Ecumenical reflection,” The Thomist 32 [2008]: 525–69, and for this quote, 537). 218 Hahn, Hail, Holy Queen, 37. 219 Fr. Martin also says that “this opinion is that of Raymond Brown who links the ‘woman’ here to Revelation 12” (“Mary in Sacred Scripture,” 537n24). 220 Ratzinger, “The Sign of the Woman,” in Mary, The Church at the Source, 58.



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Mary. Yes, we must recognize that “the identity of the woman has been debated,” as one among several commentators puts it. “A traditional Roman Catholic interpretation has been that she is Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is also the new Eve. Other suggestions are that she is the new heavenly Jerusalem, personified, or the church.”221 It is entirely probable that this text supports all three of these references: the People of God, the Church, and Mary. Therefore, this interpretation is not inconsistent, Hahn rightly explains, with the traditional one supported by Ratzinger above: Tradition tells us that she is the same person [italics added] whom Jesus calls ‘woman’ in John’s gospel, the reprise of the person Adam calls ‘woman’ in the garden of Eden. Like the beginning of John’s gospel, this episode of the Apocalypse repeatedly evoked the Protoevangelium of Genesis [3:15]. The first clue is that John—here, as in the gospel—never reveals this person’s name; he refers to her only by the name Adam gave to Eve in the garden: she is ‘woman’. Later in the same chapter of the Apocalypse, we learn also that, like Eve—who was ‘mother of all the living’ (Gen 3:20)—the woman of John’s vision is mother not only to the ‘male child’ but also to ‘the rest of her offspring’, further identified as ‘those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus’ (Rev 12:17). Her offspring, then are all those who have new life in Jesus Christ. The New Eve, then, fulfills the promise of the old to be, more perfectly, the mother of all the living.222

The upshot of the Eve/Mary parallel that is made by John in Revelation is that Mary, the Second Eve, is the Mother of all the living that have new life in Christ, namely, “those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rev 12:17). “Here again Mary is seen clearly,” as Semmelroth remarks, “as the Type of the Church which mediates salvation. The Church gives birth to the children of salvation enclosed in her womb in a manner prefigured by Mary.”223 We don’t have, however, the full picture yet. There are two other features I am defending here of the minimalist interpretation. (a) The reference to the Protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 is particularly important because the text itself sets up the drama of history as a whole unfolding in three actors, namely, the woman, her offspring, and the serpent. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Ratzinger explains: “The Church Fathers took this judgment on 221 The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999), 1008, no. 43. 222 Hahn, Hail, Holy Queen, 59. 223 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 40.

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the serpent after the Fall as the first promise of a Redeemer, a reference to the offspring who will smash the serpent’s head. History, then, was never without ‘gospel’, without the Good News. . . . The Fathers considered it important, too, that right at this first beginning [of the promise] we find the Christological and Mariological themes intimately intertwined. The first promise of Christ, which stands in a chiaroscuro (light-dark contrast) and which only the light to come finally deciphers, is a promise to the woman, to come about through the woman.”224 Significantly, in Revelation 12, the drama of history reaches its climax in the interaction between these three actors because the outcome of this drama has already been accomplished in Christ, the Lamb of God. “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of Christ have come, for the accuser [the devil] of our brothers has been thrown down [Rev 12:9], who accuses them day and night before our God” (Rev 12:10). Of course, Mary does not determine the final outcome of that dramatic conflict between Christ and Satan, but she is nevertheless placed, as the Mother of the Incarnate Word, “at the very center of that enmity.”225 Yes, Berkouwer is right that “the great antithesis [type/anti-type] in the history of the world is not that between Eve and Mary, but that between Adam and Christ” (CR, 235 [176]). He is right, furthermore, as Semmelroth rightly notes, because “original sin . . . had only one principle, Adam; Eve, formally speaking, is not a co-principle of original sin. It was Adam alone who transmitted original sin to mankind.”226 Pace Berkouwer, however, seen in the light of a canonical interpretation, there are Christological and Mariological themes inseparably interwoven in Gen 3:15: the promise of Christ given to the ‘woman’ is fulfilled in Mary’s fiat in faith, the “woman par excellence,” and it is “not only in her but also from her,” or through her, that the Incarnate Word became flesh, with Mary “participating in the formation of the hypostatic union.”227 (b) This brings us back to the question of the sense in which Mary co-operates in the Redemptive work of Christ. Significantly, a complete denial that Mary’s co-operates in Christ’s redemptive work in a kind of synergism is, according to Semmelroth, “not the same as a complete

224 Ratzinger, “The Sign of the Woman,” 51–52. 225 John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 11. 226 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 76. 227 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Who is the Church?,” in Explorations in Theology, II, translated by A.V. Littledale with Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991 [1961]), 143–193, and for this quote, 163.



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denial of any co-operation on the part of Mary with the Redemption.”228 So long as we understand that Mary is not in any sense whatsoever a “second principle of saving grace which, though subordinate to Christ’s, co-operates and co-merits as such,”229 the controversial term “cooperation” loses much of its difficulty. To understand properly the nature of her co-operation, I want to reiterate two points I made earlier. One, the divine plan of salvation reserves a singularly unique place for the election of Mary, “the ‘woman’ who is the Mother of him to whom the Father has entrusted the work of salvation.”230 Thus, there is an absolute divine priority to the election of Mary. God has bestowed grace upon her, or favored her, in an entirely special and exceptional way such that her free ‘Yes’ in its entirety is the fruit of that grace. “Hail [Mary], full of grace [Gk. Kécharitôméné; Lat. Gratia plena], the Lord is with you” (Lk 1:28).231 228 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 78. 229 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 76. It is impossible to consider here the distinction between merit “de congruo” and merit “de condigno” with respect to Mary’s co-operation. Consider the statement of Pius X (Ad Diem Laetissimum, Encyclical Letter, 1904, no. 14) that Mary “merits for us de congruo, in the language of theologians, what Jesus Christ merits for us de condigno” (no. 14). For a helpful discussion, see Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 85, 103, 129. 230 John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 7. Elsewhere in this encyclical, he writes: “For it must be recognized that before anyone else it was God himself, the Eternal Father, who entrusted himself in the Virgin of Nazareth, giving her his own Son in the mystery of the Incarnation. Her election to the supreme office and dignity of Mother of the Son of God refers, on the ontological level, to the very reality of the union of the two natures in the person of the Word (hypostatic union). This basic fact of being the Mother of the Son of God is from the very beginning a complete openness to the person of Christ, to his whole work, to his whole mission” (Ibid., no. 39). 231 I realize that “favored or graced one” is the literal translation in Greek, and “full of grace” is an interpretation. Here is John Paul II’s justification for translating the Greek word kécharitôméné: “The expression ‘full of grace’ is the translation of the Greek word kécharitôméné, which is a passive participle. Therefore, to render more exactly the nuance of the Greek word, one should not say merely ‘full of grace’, but ‘made full of grace’, or even ‘filled with grace’, which would clearly indicate that this was a gift God gave to the Blessed Virgin. This term, in the form of a perfect [passive] participle, enhances the image of a perfect and lasting grace [a complete and enduring condition] which implies fullness. The same verb, in the sense of ‘to bestow grace’ is used in Ephesians to indicate the abundance of grace the Father granted to us in his beloved Son (Eph 1:6), and which Mary received as the first fruits of redemption (cf. Redemptoris Mater 10)” (General Audience, May 8, 1966, in Theotókos, 88). In other words, as Jean Galot, S.J., makes clear, “In order to show the distinction contained in the use of the perfect participle, kécharitôméné, which represents a completed action continuing into the present, we would have to translate: ‘She who has received grace and who continues to possess it’. It is not, then, a question simply of the favor which Mary will enjoy when the child is conceived within her, but of a grace already granted which remains permanently within here. Furthermore, this grace belongs to her personally because the word, kécharitôméné, is the equivalent of a proper name and because it expresses the beauty emanating from Mary” (Mary in the Gospel,

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Her response:232 “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word” (Lk 1:38). The “singularity and uniqueness of her place in the mystery of Christ” is found “above all” in that she and Christ are “indissolubly joined: he who is the Church’s Lord and Head and she who, uttering the first fiat of the New Covenant, prefigures the Church’s condition as spouse and mother.”233 The second point is that Mary’s co-operation was influenced by graces whose singular source is Christ’s completed work of salvation, and hence her action (“Fiat”) does not add to the saving action of God in Christ. Put differently, whatever “saving influences” Mary may have “flow forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rest on his mediation, depend entirely on it, and draw all their power from it.”234 Thus, if by objective redemption we mean, then, the work of Christ alone, Mary does not cooperate with that Redemption without it ceasing to be the full and sufficient cause of our salvation. But we also must not relegate Mary’s role Translated by Sister Maria Constance, S.C.H. [Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1965], 18–19). 232 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, “God’s Word really brings forth fruit. . . . [He] is not the only actor in history, as if history were only his monologue, but [rather] he finds a response [in Mary] that is truly a response. . . . Because she is entirely response, correspondence [Entsprechung], she cannot be understood where grace seems to be opposition, and response, the real response of the creature, appears to be a denial of grace; for a Word that never arrived, a grace that remained solely at God’s disposal without becoming a response to him would be no grace at all, but a futile game” (65). 233 John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, nos. 9, 1, respectively. Kevin Vanhoozer suggests, following Calvin’s commentary on Luke 1:28, that “the text does not say that grace extends throughout Mary’s being but that God extends her, in Calvin’s words, ‘a singular distinction’ ” (“A Drama-of-Redemption Model,” in Moving beyond the Bible to Theology, Four Views, general editor, Gary T. Meadors (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 151–199, and for this quote, 188n. 83. As if to downplay the significance of Mary being addressed as “full of grace,” Vanhoozer adds: “Note also that Stephen is said to be ‘full of grace’ in Acts 6:8” (Ibid.). Well, the straightforward answer to Vanhoozer’s comparison between Mary and Stephen is that she is greeted by Elizabeth as “blessed among woman” (Lk 1:42), but also blessed in a special and exceptional degree because she “believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (Lk 1:45). Furthermore, Mary herself echoes this blessing in her own Magnificat: “From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Lk 1:48). This privilege does not extend to Stephen. What is, then, Mary’s singular distinction? The singular distinction is that it is not only in Mary but also from Mary “that the Incarnation of the Word, the hypostatic union of the Son of God with human nature, is accomplished and fulfilled” (John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 9). Like Berkouwer, of course, Vanhoozer affirms that Mary is the Mother of God, and holds that ‘what is ultimately at stake in calling Mary ‘God-bearer’ is Christology: the identity of Jesus Christ, one person in two natures” (Ibid., 188). And like Berkouwer, Vanhoozer wants a “Christology without mariological consequences” (Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 35). 234 Lumen Gentium, no. 60, cited in John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 38.



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to the realm of subjective redemption in the plan of God, meaning thereby limiting it “to . . . only the application of the fruits of redemption to individual men.”235 Does this mean that we have to reject any kind of cooperating role for Mary? If so, Semmelroth is correct: “Such a denial would stand in opposition to both tradition and ecclesiastical magisterium . . . to the extent that the Church has spoken on the subject up to now.” Indeed, he adds, “Tradition has stressed the juxtaposition of Mary, the Second Eve, with Eve herself, through whom death came upon the world. This tradition is so uninterrupted and so unanimous that it would be rash to reject it out of hand. The Eve-Mary parallel was intended to suggest some kind of co-operation with the Redemption of the world.”236 Yes, but what kind of co-operation? A singularly unique co-operation in that Mary’s ‘Fiat’ “becomes in a certain sense the counterpoise to the disobedience and disbelief embodied in the sin of our first parents.” With her ‘Fiat,’ Mary becomes the ‘New Eve.’ John Paul II elaborates: Thus teach the Fathers of the Church and especially Saint Irenaeus, quoted by the Constitution Lumen Gentium: “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, Mary loosened by her faith” [no. 56]. In the light of this comparison with Eve, the Fathers of the Church—as the Council also says—call Mary the “mother of the living” and often speak of “death through Eve, life through Mary” [Ibid]. In the expression “Blessed is she who believed” [Lk 1:45], we can therefore rightly find a kind of “key” which unlocks for us the innermost reality of Mary, whom the angel hailed as “full of grace.” If as “full of grace” she has been eternally present in the mystery of Christ, through faith she became a sharer in that mystery in every extension of her earthly journey.237

Mary’s ‘Yes,’ her act of faith, indeed, her co-operation with the realization of God’s plan of salvation in the redemptive work of Christ may be called ‘receptive’ rather than productive because it is Christ alone who possesses the productive power of grace,238 who saves and hence who is the full and sufficient cause of our salvation. Still, her receptivity is genuinely

235 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 89. 236 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 78. 237 John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 19. It is impossible to consider here John Paul’s reflection on Mary’s “maternal mediation” (see Redemptoris Mater, nos. 38–41). 238 Pius X states, “We are then, it will be seen, very far from attributing to the Mother of God a productive power of grace—a power which belongs to God alone” (Ad Diem Laetissimum, no. 14).

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causal—“receptive causality,” as Semmelroth calls it. “It is a very real and essential causality . . . receiving and giving the Life that conquered Eve’s deed. The Fathers hold Mary to be the cause of salvation because of her receptivity—based on her active belief—to the coming of the Logos and the accomplishment of His work. In the words of Irenaeus, Mary becomes the Advocate Evae, the solicitor of mankind awaiting Redemption, a mankind which must open itself for the work of the Redemption and which actually did so in Mary.”239 (2) There is a second point to be made here regarding a minimalist reply to Berkouwer’s objections. Mary’s fiat in faith, as we read in the Gospel of Luke, plays a decisive role in the history of redemption; it cannot be regarded merely as Mary’s personal history. “The Fiat of the mother of God was spoken loco totius generis humani and not, for instance, loco totius Ecclesiae.”240 This is the case because in Mary “the Incarnation of the Word, the hypostatic union of the Son of God with human nature, is accomplished and fulfilled.”241 John Paul explains: The Mother of the Redeemer has a precise place in the plan of salvation, for “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman” [Gal 4:4]. . . . This “fullness [of time]” indicates the moment fixed from all eternity when the Father sent his Son, “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). It denotes the blessed moment when the Word that “was with God . . . became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:1, 14), and made himself our brother. It marks the moment when the Holy Spirit, who had already infused the fullness of grace into Mary of Nazareth [Lk 1:28], formed in her virginal womb the human nature of Christ. This “fullness” marks the moment when, with the entrance of the eternal into time, time itself is redeemed, and being filled with the mystery of Christ becomes definitively “salvation time.”242

239 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, 86. In the General audience of April 9, 1997, John Paul II speaks of Mary in a way that might suggest that he is maximalist. “In union with Christ and in submission to him, she collaborated in obtaining the grace of salvation for all humanity” (Theotókos, 186). But I would argue that read in the context of the whole talk, in particular, to the answer the pope gives the question: “what is the meaning of Mary’s unique cooperation in the plan of salvation?” (186), it is sufficiently clear that Mary’s cooperation is a genuine, receptive causality, as Semmelroth puts it, namely, manifested in the woman par excellence, Mary, the Second Eve (see Theotókos, 61–63, 96, 136–138, 186). 240 Von Balthasar, “Who is the Church?,” 163. Von Balthasar holds that this is Aquinas’ view. 241 John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 9. 242 John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 1.



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Indeed, Rahner rightly calls this an ‘Event’ of public saving history243 because Mary’s motherhood is most intimately involved with the Incarnation. Further, in truth, there is an irreducible correlation between the Christological affirmation of God’s incarnation in Christ and the Marian affirmation that Mary is the Mother of God, Theotókos (Council of Ephesus, 431). Berkouwer states that he—and indeed, the Protestant Reformers as a whole—affirm the Christological sense entailed by the title “Mother of God”: the person born of Mary is really and truly God. That is, at stake in affirming Mary to be the Mother of God is the identity of Jesus, one person in two natures.244 Thus, he rejects Nestorianism—Christ was two distinct persons, divine and human—and affirms the unity of the person in the two natures, divine and human (CR, 225–226 [169]). Indeed, he urges, “divine redemption . . . occurs in a correlative bond with Mary’s faith and surrender. Christmas preaching must, unless it is an abstract doctrinal dissertation on the incarnation, deal with Mary seriously if it is to be gospel preaching. For if we de-historicize the gospel stories of Jesus’ birth in an effort to stress the divine character of redemption, we can only fall into a docetic emasculation of the mystery” (VCNT, 300 [238]). Excellent! But Berkouwer’s Christology purports to be a “Christology without mariological consequences.”245 He resists the idea that Mary’s title as ‘Mother of God’ can be taken to be the basis for deducing one claim after another in the course of dogmatic development: “Mary’s virginity before, during, and after Jesus’ birth, her exemption from any sin of commission and from original sin, and finally the idea of her function as co-redemptrix and her assumption into heaven were incorporated in the papal pronouncements of the nineteenth and twentieth century” (CR, 226–227 [170]). In reply to Berkouwer, we may agree with him that “Mariology can never be purely mariological.”246 Rather, there is an intrinsic interwovenness of Mariology with Christology and ecclesiology. 243 Rahner, Mary, Mother of the Lord, “By reason of the hypostatic union of the Son of God with the human nature received from Mary, Mary is truly the ‘mother of the Lord’ (Luke 1:43), mother of God (Council of Ephesus ad 431). Her divine motherhood is effected by her faith (Luke 1:43; 2:27ff.), and so it is not a merely biological occurrence. Nor is this consequence of her faith an event that belongs only to her private life-history. It is the accomplishment of her divine motherhood, in other words the central event of the whole public history of redemption itself ” (13). 244 Ratzinger rightly remarks, “Thus in Mariology Christology was defended” (Daughter Zion, 36). 245 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 35. 246 Ratzinger, “Thoughts on the Place of Marian Doctrine and Piety in Faith and Theology as a Whole,” 30.

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Still, let me suggest—given Berkouwer’s wholehearted acceptance of the Christological creed of 431—that the creed necessarily entails a Marian affirmation: the Christological affirmation of God’s incarnation in Christ “touches Mary and becomes Mariology,” argues Ratzinger correctly, for it is only then that “Christology itself [is] as radical as the faith of the Church requires.”247 He adds, “The appearance of a truly Marian awareness serves as the touchstone indicating whether or not the christological substance is fully present.”248 The upshot is that Berkouwer must accept that his Christology has at least one Mariological consequence, namely, that Mary is the Mother of God. Further, this means that we cannot regard her mother­ hood from a merely biological viewpoint; “she is Mother personally,” as Rahner succinctly states.249 In this connection, I cannot fail to note the minimalist insistence, as Berkouwer correctly notes, “that everyone ought to recognize that the typological significance of Mary has an ontological aspect to it; after all, she is the mother of our Lord” (VCNT, 306 [247]). Given that Mary is the Mother of God, personally, not just biologically, we must recognize the correlation of Christ and his Mother as a theological reality in order to understand the significance of Mary’s motherhood “as the ultimate personal concretization of Church.”250 The brute fact alone of Mary’s biological motherhood will not give us the theological meaning of her motherhood. Mary’s motherhood “is a theological reality, because it realizes the deepest spiritual content of the covenant that God intended to make with Israel.”251 How then do we justify the typological identification of Mary and Israel? This question brings me to my next point. The only way to understand how Mary personally concretizes the New Israel/Church when she says “Yes” is to see Mariology in light of a hermeneutics of salvation history. I said earlier that Mary plays a key role in salvation history as the faithful remnant of Israel, or as Ratzinger also says, daughter of Zion. Thus, “as the holy remnant Mary signifies that in herself Old and New Covenants are really one. She is entirely a Jewess, a child of Israel, of the Old Covenant, and as such a child of the full covenant, entirely a Christian: Mother of the Word. She is the New Covenant in the 247 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 35. 248 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 35. 249 Rahner, “The Immaculate Conception,” 203. 250 Ratzinger, “Thoughts on the Place of Marian Doctrine and Piety in Faith and Theology as a Whole,” in Mary, The Church at the Source, 30. 251 Ratzinger, “Thoughts on the Place of Marian Doctrine and Piety in Faith and Theology as a Whole,” 30.



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Old Covenant; she is the New Covenant as the Old Covenant, as Israel: thus no one can comprehend her mission or her person if the unity of the Old and New Testaments collapses.”252 The question arises as to how we can justify the personification of the Church in Mary. The brief answer to this important question here must be answered in light of this hermeneutics: the rebirth of the Old Covenant into the New Covenant achieves in Mary its concrete accomplishment. Significantly, it is Mary’s faith that is the archetype of the Church in that she brings to fulfillment the Abrahamic faith of the Old Testament. Recall the greeting of Elizabeth to Mary. “ ‘Filled with the Holy Spirit’ she greets Mary with a loud cry (Lk 1:42): ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’” Of even more importance in this hermeneutics of salvation history are Elizabeth’s final words: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (Lk 1:45). We can, in addition, link these words (“blessed is she who believed”) with Luke 11:28, “blessed . . . are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.” John Paul adds helpfully, “These words can be linked with the title ‘full of grace’ of the angel’s greetings. Both of these texts reveal an essential Mariological content, namely, the truth about Mary who has become really present in the mystery of Christ precisely because she ‘has believed’. The fullness of grace announced by the angel means the gift of God himself. Mary’s faith, proclaimed by Elizabeth at the Visitation, indicates how the Virgin of Nazareth responded to this gift.”253 What is more, in Mary’s Magnificat she refers to herself as the one whom all generations will call blessed because in saying “Yes” she becomes the bodily Mother of the Lord. As the Magnificat proclaims: “For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. . . . He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, to Abraham and to his offspring forever” (Lk 1:46–55). Here, too, it is obvious that Mary understood herself to have fulfilled the Old Covenant, and that “in herself Old and New Covenants are really one.”254

252 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 65. 253 John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, no. 12. 254 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 65.

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There remains to say a few words on how a typological identification of Mary and the Church may yield an understanding of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Berkouwer rightly notes that the minimalist resists the move of merely logically deriving the Assumption from the Immaculate Conception and the latter from Mary’s motherhood, as if each of these is necessarily implied by the other (VCNT, 305 [241]). Of course logical inference plays a subsidiary role in the typological identification of scriptural facts, such as Mary being the ‘Mother of God,’ the Second Eve, the woman par excellence, as well as Mary, the woman of faith whose ‘fiat’ fulfills the faith of Abraham being the one who possesses archetypal faith.255 Rather than mere logical derivation, given that Mary is the personal concretization of the Type of the Church, as I showed above, minimalists, such as Ratzinger, sketch a typological identification of Mary and Church, a typologically developed ecclesiology, as it were, grounding Mary’s freedom from original sin. In this connection, the idea of Mary as a type of the Church is further explored by turning to St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians wherein he describes the new Israel/Church, the bride of Christ, “as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph 5:27). Ratzinger calls this description an “image of the Ecclesia immaculata in passages of lyrical beauty.” He adds insightfully: Here the doctrine of the Immaculata, like the whole of later Mariology, is first anticipated as ecclesiology. The image of the Church, virgin and mother, is secondarily transferred to Mary, not vice versa. So if the dogma of the Immaculate Conception transferred to the concrete figure of Mary those assertions which primarily belong to the antithesis new-old Israel, are in this sense of typologically developed ecclesiology, this means that Mary is presented as the beginning and the personal concreteness of the Church. It entails the conviction that the rebirth of the Old Israel into the new Israel, of which the Epistle to the Ephesians spoke, achieves in Mary its concrete accomplishment.256

But this typologically developed ecclesiology may fail to persuade. How can we justify the personification of the type with Mary and nowhere else? Ratzinger’s brief but pointed reply to this question brings us back to the claim of minimalists that Mary is the archetype of the Church: Mary’s

255 “Mary represents not a mere occasion for God’s entry into the world but the full realization of his salvific plan,” in John M. McDermott, S.J., “Mary’s Position in Catholic Faith,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review 98, n. 8 (1993–1994): 47–53, and for this quote, 49. 256 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 67.



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‘Yes,’ her fiat in faith, brings to fulfillment the Abrahamic faith of the Old Testament. “For the typological identification of Mary and Israel, the presence of the type in the person, is clearly present in Luke’s writings—and, in a different way, in John’s.”257 In Luke’s writings because Mary is the woman of faith: “Blessed is she who believed” (Lk 1:45); and in John’s writings because Mary is the ‘woman par excellence.’ Ratzinger concludes: Thus the doctrine of the Immaculata reflects ultimately faith’s certitude that there really is a holy Church—as a person and in a person. In this sense it expresses the Church’s certitude of salvation. Included therein is the knowledge that God’s covenant in Israel did not fail but produced a shoot out of which emerged the blossom, the Savior. The doctrine of the Immaculata testifies accordingly that God’s grace was powerful enough to awaken a response, that grace and freedom, grace and being oneself, renunciation and fulfillment are only apparent contradictories; in reality one conditions the other and grants it its very existence.258

There is another typological context to consider with respect to the dogma of Mary’s Assumption. Berkouwer correctly understands that minimalists, such as Semmelroth, Rahner, Ratzinger, John Paul II, and others, give what Berkouwer correctly calls a “kerygmatic and eschatological interpretation of Mary’s assumption.” This interpretation contrasts sharply with the attempt to logically derive the assumption merely from Mary’s motherhood. In typological interpretation Mary’s assumption is not a deductive conclusion from the hope for the general resurrection of the redeemed. Still, as Nichols correctly notes, “the more particular statement illuminates the more general, and vice versa.” Berkouwer explains: “Since 1950 [Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus], Mary’s assumption has been frequently put forward by Mariologists as the kerugmatic dogma which proclaims our faith in the resurrection of the body. Salvation came into the world through the Word become flesh, and this grace was manifested in the immaculate conception as God’s ‘Yes!’ The same ‘Yes’ of divine grace is manifest anew in the assumption of Mary as it signifies the total redemption of mankind from bodily death. The assumption is a form of [partially] realized eschatology” (VCNT, 307 [242]).259 Berkouwer rightly notes that

257 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 68. 258 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 71. 259 Berkouwer discusses the matter of realized eschatology and Mary’s assumption in greater detail in a volume of his Studies in Dogmatics, De Wederkomst van Christus I (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1961), 257–264. ET: The Return of Christ, Translated by James van Oosterom, Edited by Marlin J. Van Elderen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 204–210.

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the Church unquestionably affirms a correlation between the actual and deepest guarantee of that total redemption and Jesus Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead.260 Properly understood, the assumption of Mary is a meaningful sign of the certainty of that eschatological expectation. Berkouwer places the assumption of Mary in the context of the distinction between “already” possessing salvation in Christ, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit being the guarantee or deposit (II Cor 1:22), the seal (Eph 1:13; 4:30), the first fruits (Rom 8:23), and the down payment (II Cor 5:5) of the fullness of our Redemption in the future (‘not yet’). In between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet,’ according to Rahner, the Church confesses that the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the eschatological event that has ‘already’ inaugurated, even now, the fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation but it is ‘not yet’ fully consummated. In this connection, adds Rahner, Mary’s assumption is understood as a manifestation of this ‘already.’ As Rahner puts it, “The Church looks on high and greets in [Mary’s assumption] her own type and model, her own future in the resurrection of the body.”261 In this sense, Berkouwer remarks about the eschatological significance of the assumption that it is a “partially realized eschatology.”262 Again, of course, we meet with an objection. “What is decisive for the correctness of the doctrine of the assumption is whether or not it is a legitimate consequence of the New Testament ‘already’. The gospel itself says nothing about an eschaton, albeit partially, realized in Mary: why would one want to supplement the biblical ‘already’ of the first fruits of the Spirit poured out upon man at the time of Christ’s departure, or go beyond the biblical ‘not yet’ of the promised destruction of death, the last enemy, in the great transformation of the parousía of the Lord?”263 This is the crux of Berkouwer’s objection to the dogma of Mary’s assumption. In light of what I have argued in this section about Mary as the type of the Church, indeed as the beginning and the personal concretization of the Church itself because in Mary’s fiat the Church has already said ‘Yes’ to her Lord,264 it is fitting to judge that Mary’s assumption is a legitimate 260 Berkouwer, Wederkomst van Christus I, 260 [206]. Berkouwer assures us: “”Nowhere in the Catholic Church or its theology is the New Testament witness to the correlation of these denied or called into question” (Ibid). 261 Rahner, Mary, Mother of the Lord, 92. 262 Berkouwer, Wederkomst van Christus I, 258 [207]. 263 Berkouwer, Wederkomst van Christus I, 263 [209]. 264 Léonard, Drie (niet) geliefden? Maria, de Kerk, and de vrouw, 38.



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consequence of the New Testament ‘already.’ This is so, as Ratzinger succinctly states, because “Mary stands for the Church itself, for its [Church’s] definitive state of salvation, which is no longer a promise awaiting fulfillment but a fact.”265 Indeed, John Paul II states that “the Mother of God is already the eschatological fulfillment of the Church.”266 There are three elements to this argument. First, Mary gave birth to God. She is ‘mother of God’ or ‘God-bearer’ (theotokos). “She bears him who is the death of death and is life in the full sense of the word.”267 This ‘new birth,’ in, from and through Mary, is a ‘pure beginning.’ What could this last phrase mean? Briefly, I suggest it means that Christ is the root of the new and reborn humanity, and this meaning dovetails with the understanding that the Church is then a truly new subject called into being by the Word and in the Holy Spirit. This ‘new subject,’ the Church, finds its personal concretization in Mary. This ‘new birth’ is a ‘pure beginning’ in a related sense: Mary’s sinlessness is a sign of her total response to God’s plan of salvation, marking the triumph of God’s gracious mercy.268 Since Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit, rather than by man, this “new way of giving birth [was] inserted into the old way, just as Mary is the New Covenant in the Old Covenant, even as a member of the Old Covenant.”269 The title Mother of God, then, points back to Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus as a ‘pure beginning.’ That same title points ahead to her Assumption since “from this birth comes only life, no death,” namely, the resurrection of the flesh and life everlasting.270 Second, Mary’s fiat in faith results in her unique co-operation not only with the Incarnation itself, but also Jesus’ saving work in its entirety, and hence every grace he merited by it. In this sense, she is ‘full of grace’ and hence she has been preserved at her conception from the sin of Adam “by a singular privilege and grace of the omnipotent God, in consideration of the merits of Jesus Christ,” as Pius IX states. Clearly, then, Mary, too, was in need of salvation, and, yes, she was saved, like everyone else, through 265 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 79. 266 Redemptoris Mater, no. 6. The pope is here picking up an emphasis of Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, no. 65: “In the most Blessed Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle (cf. Eph 5:27).” As I argued in the text, following Ratzinger, the typological identification of Mary and the Church as Ecclesia immaculata (Eph 5:27), and then secondarily transferred to Mary. 267 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 78. 268 McDermott, “Mary’s Position in Catholic Faith,” 49. 269 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 78. 270 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 78.

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the blood of Christ her Son, “although it worked ‘retroactively’ as it were, so as to effect her even at her conception.” In fact, given Mary’s totally unreserved ‘Yes,’ her ‘Fiat’ in faith, grace extends throughout Mary’s whole being since it is not only in her but also from her, or through her that the Word became flesh. “In her Yes to the birth of God’s Son from her own womb, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary makes her body, her very self, into the place of God’s presence.”271 This ‘singular privilege and grace’ did not make her constitutionally incapable of temptation and hence of actual sin. Mankowski rightly notes that if that were the case, then there would be a “theological difficulty in attributing to Mary that freedom from temptation which her own Son did not cling to” (see Heb 4:15). He adds, “If we speak of the Virgin Mary as constitutionally incapable of sin, it is all the more difficult to discover in her the humanity which is by its very weakness transparent to God’s power” (see II Cor 10:12). Thus, the upshot of this reasoning is this: She was as capable of sin as they [Adam and Eve] were; her life, to this extent like ours, was a series of choices between good and bad, self and other, God’s will and her own. Her glory, for which all generations will call her blessed, is that in every instance she said, “I am your servant. Let it be done to me in accordance with your word.” She, who was full of grace, said, “Your will be done, not mine. When she praised God because he had looked on her in her lowliness, she was not feigning humility. She was uniquely aware that it was God’s grace, and not her own merit, in virtue of which she had been set apart. And the consciousness of the gap between her humanity and God’s power was uniquely acute in her case.272

This ‘singular privilege and grace’ extends throughout Mary’s whole being such that there exists in her the fullness of salvation, the definitive state of salvation. Again, given this “singular privilege and grace” she no longer exists in the “fractured state of simul justus et peccator.” Rather, Mary exists in pure ‘Yes,’ and in that state, “death, sin’s jailor, has no place.” Third, and last, what is the importance of the claim that Mary personally represents the Church itself in its definitive state of salvation, not as a promise awaiting fulfillment but a fact? Ratzinger extends the argument that responds to Berkouwer’s critical question: Is the assumption a 271 Ratzinger, “The Sign of the Woman,” 25. Similarly, John Paul writes, “The words ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord’ [Lk 1:38] express the fact that from the outset she accepted and understood her own motherhood as a total gift of self, a gift of her person to the service of the saving plans of the Most High” (Redemptoris Mater, no. 39). 272 Paul Mankowski, S.J., “Why the Immaculate Conception?” in Women for Faith & Family, 5, 1990, No. 1, online: http://www.wf-f.org/mankowski.html.



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legitimate consequence of the New Testament ‘already’? Let me answer this question, and conclude this chapter, with an insightful reply from Ratzinger: Here Colossians 3:3 seems to me to be significant: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” That is, there is something like an ‘ascension’ of the baptized, of which Ephesians 2:6 explicitly speaks: “He raised you up with him and placed you in heaven at the right hand of Christ Jesus.” According to that text Baptism is a participation in Jesus’ ascension as well as his resurrection. The baptized person, as such and on that account, is already included in the ascension and lives his hidden (his most individual) life there, in the elevated Lord. The formula of the “assumption” of Mary’s body and soul loses every trace of speculative arbitrariness in this perspective. . . . She gave birth to the Lord “with her heart before her body” (Augustine), and therefore faith, i.e., the interior substance of Baptism according to Luke 1:45, can be predicated of her without restriction, realizing in her the very quintessence of Baptism. Thus it is said that, in her, death was swallowed up by Christ’s victory and that, in her, everything still resisting Baptism (faith) has been conquered without remainder through the death of the earthly life. On the basis of the New Testament, through the integration of Luke 1:45 [“Blessed is she who has believed”] and Ephesians 2:6, this affirmation refers transparently to Mary, and it forms a bond with the typological contexts which we have been investigating: she who is wholly baptized, as the personal reality of the true Church, is at the same time not merely the Church’s promised certitude of salvation but its bodily certitude also. The Church is already saved in her: the new Israel is no more to be rejected. It has already ascended into heaven.273

Now the upshot is this: Ratzinger’s interpretation is, as Berkouwer calls it, a “kerygmatic and eschatological interpretation of Mary’s significance” (VCNT, 312 [248]). It is kerygmatic because it deepens our faith in the Gospel’s proclamation regarding the resurrection of the body. Furthermore, Mary’s assumption is a form of realized eschatology, as Berkouwer rightly notes, because in the dialectical tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet,’ it is a singularly unique manifestation of the ‘already’ inaugurated fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Viewed in the light of a kerygmatic and eschatological interpretation of Mary’s significance, then, the Assumption of Mary deepens the grace of assurance in the life of the Church regarding the consummation of God’s plan of salvation.

273 Ratzinger, Daughter Zion, 79–81.

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In Berkouwer’s first two books on Catholicism, his reflections on the issue of doctrinal development, minimal as they were, did not focus on the problem regarding the relationship between the unchangeability of the truth of dogma and the historical conditionedness of its formulation, in short, on the relationship between truth and history. There was substantial change, however, in 1957 with his reassessment of the Rome-Reformation controversy, namely, from then on, under the influence of the nouvelle théologie, Berkouwer now considered this problem to be a real problem for all dogmatics, Reformed and Catholic alike. What, then, according to Berkouwer, is the nature of dogmatic development? Berkouwer never actually directly answers this question. So in order to infer what his position might be I described four possible positions on the nature of dogmatic development. He rejects the modernist view of experiential expressivism; the view that development is merely a logical activity of explanation and deduction from given premises or revealed data; the view that absolutizes concepts, resulting an immobilism or hide-bound traditionalism with development then being merely a restatement or clearer statement of what is already conceptually possessed. Berkouwer’s view comes closes to the view that “Development [is a] properly theological contemplation of revealed reality by a necessarily historically conditioned reason illumined by faith (Newman, Möhler, Blondel). Recognition of the historical conditionedness of reason accounts for the leaps in development that cannot be logically bridged as a passage from already possessed premises to previously unarticulated conclusion.” In this connection, I also expounded on the five presuppositions that inform Berkouwer’s understanding of dogmatic development. First, dogmatic development is not based on historical relativism. Second, since truth is unchangeable, dogmatic development involves ‘noetic progress,’ meaning thereby not a progress of revelation, but rather progress in our understanding of revelation, of the revealed deposit. The third and fourth presuppositions are closely connected. Under the influence of the nouvelle théologie, Berkouwer distinguishes between truth and its formulations, unchangeable affirmations and changeable representations, with that distinction resting upon a more particular epistemological presupposition, namely, that all formulations or expressions of the truth are inadequate. Berkouwer, I concluded, is careful to distinguish inadequacy of expression from inexpressibility of truth. Lastly, what drives Berkouwer’s with the responsibility of ‘determining the relation between divine truth



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and the church’s confession’—in Bavinck’s words that I cited earlier, in short, with the issue of truth and its formulations—is faithfulness to the Gospel. I share Berkouwer’s five presuppositions informing his brief reflections on dogmatic development. Notwithstanding this common starting-point, Berkouwer’s view suffers from a failure to address the fundamental philosophical and theological issues of meaning and truth pertaining to dogmatic development. In particular, Berkouwer does not give us an account of the substantial identity of dogma over time. He emphasizes the general problem of the inadequacy and limitations of dogmatic expressions in history of unchangeable truth to such an extent, that it is unclear not only to what extent—and, if so, how—these dogmatic propositions are true, but also the sense, if any, in which they “may be considered irrevocable, continuous, universal, materially identical, and objectively true.”274 Therefore, to fill in the lacunae of Berkouwer’s view, I conclude that five elements are necessary for developing a Catholic position on dogmatic development. This position requires (1) a doctrine of special revelation, (2) a theological epistemology in which the act of faith is a way of knowing divine reality through the mediation of propositions, (3) tacit knowing, or a living contact with the reality itself, in which the claim is defended that knowledge in faith involves knowing much more than we can state in propositions, (4) the relation between knowing and propositional knowledge on the one hand, and the logical connection of the formally and virtually revealed on the other, and (5) theological criteria for development, namely, “Scripture as interpreted, preeminently, by the universal and consential judgments of ecumenical councils, but also by the consensus of holy and learned doctors, by the faithful generally, and by the bishop of Rome.”275 Last, one may certainly agree with the American Evangelical Baptist, Walter C. Kaiser, when he says of typological interpretation of the Scriptures that “Typology is a legitimate way to express the relationship between the Testaments.”276 Hence, I concluded this chapter with an attempt to root the Marian dogmas in Scripture, typologically understood.

274 Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology, 6. 275 Guarino, Vincent of Lérins, 84. 276 Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., and Moisés Silva, Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics, 103.

Epilogue The Significance of Berkouwer for the Adventure of Ecumenicity The very mystery of the Church invites, rather compels us, to ask about the perspective ahead for the difficult way of estrangement and rapprochement, of dialogue, contact, controversy, and for the ecumenical striving to overcome the divisions of the Church.1

Berkouwer’s commitment to what he suggestively calls “the adventure of ecumenicity”2 (VCNT, 321 [254]) in the Epilogue to his 1964 book on Vatican II, Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie is evident throughout his writings on Catholicism since 1957, Nieuwe Perspectieven in De Controvers: Rome-Reformatie. This adventure is about the gospel dynamic “that is meant to lead us all on one pilgrimage in one faith toward the future that will reveal the one truth to us all” (VCNT, 321 [254]). And this pilgrimage on the path toward “the unity of the Church will have meaning for our time,” says Berkouwer, “only when the question of unity is both honestly and stubbornly faced as the important issue” (VCNT, 321 [254]). He continues: “The Church as it is now, with its tensions and problems, its guilt and dividedness is the Church for which we share responsibility. New Testament eschatology—pointing as it does to the Church’s final victory—is charged with a sense of urgency as it calls us to do for the Church, here and now, what our hands find to do. It is no accident that Christ’s prayer for the unity of the Church in John 17 [20–23] includes a prayer that the Church may be kept from the Evil One [17:15]” (VCNT, 316 [249–250]. Lead us not into the temptation of regarding our disunity as normal, rather than as scandal and wound, but deliver us from the evil of our divisions. Berkouwer makes an ecumenically decisive point here,

1 Berkouwer, VCNT, 316 [249]. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. 2 This intriguing phrase although occurring in the English edition does not occur in the original Dutch text. The French Catholic and Protestant Reformed ecumenical group, Groupe des Dombes defines “adventure of ecumenicity” as “an adventure undertaken together in the ecumenical movement: unity lies at the end of the road only if it is at the very heart of that adventure” (For the Conversion of the Churches, Translated by James Greig [Geneva: WCC Publications, 1993], 8). Berkouwer agrees with this perspective.



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namely, it is no longer possible to remain divided because in willing the Church, God willed unity, “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21) . This point was briefly discussed in Chapter One in the section dealing with Berkouwer’s reflections on the Church’s confession: credo unam ecclesiam, and the division among Christians, disunity in the Church. Berkouwer is persuaded that the New Testament teaches that there is only one Church, here and now, rather than many churches, and this Church is the concrete, visible Church, and thus “the being of the Church, as willed by God, implies unity.”3 “Our conviction that the plural for ‘Church’ is an inner contradiction is confirmed by the numerous characterizations of the Church of Christ in the whole of the New Testament: the one people of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the building of God, the flock of the good Shepherd. These images indicate in various ways the one reality of the Church.”4 Therefore: “Unity belongs essentially to the Church’s being: the expression ‘one Church’ is really a pleonasm.”5 Of course there is diversity, but it is “the pluriformity of the Church” and not a “plurality of churches.”6 Yes, there is division among Christians, disunity in the one Church, but this division is the fruit of human sin, and such disunity, antagonism and conflict, is sharply placed “under the criticism of the gospel.”7 In this book, I have considered at length some of the disputed questions between Catholicism and the Reformed tradition in the writings on Catholicism of Dutch Reformed dogmatician and ecumenical theologian, Berkouwer. In this concluding chapter, I shall draw some conclusions about what I have learned from this Catholic ecumenical engagement with his writings for the future of Roman Catholic and Protestant ecumenical 3 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 32–33 [30]. 4 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 94 [77]. Leslie Newbigin concurs, “Any serious reading of the New Testament must surely make [the fact] inescapable, that to speak of a plurality of Churches, is strictly absurd; that we can only do so in so far as we have ceased to understand by the word ‘Church’ what the New Testament means by it” (Household of God, 17). 5 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 33 [30]. Newbegin adds, “It is necessary to seek penitently and realistically for the source of the tendency to endless fissiparation which has characterized Protestantism in its actual history. How has it come about that the vast majority of Protestant Christians are content to see the Church of Jesus Christ split up into hundreds of separate sects, feel no sense of shame about such a situation, and sometimes even glory in it and claim the support of the New Testament for it? Where is the theological root of the error which can produce such an astounding blinding of the eyes of good Christian men and women? I submit that we are not responsible participants in the ecumenical conversation if we do not try to answer these questions” (Household of God, 63–64). 6 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 61 [51]. 7 Berkouwer, De Kerk, I, 37 [33].

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dialogue.8 I think it is helpful to begin my reflections in this epilogue by considering Berkouwer’s own perspective for the future of ecumenism and interconfessional dialogues in the Epilogue to his 1964 book on Vatican II. I will also be developing some of Berkouwer’s points, looking back occasionally to earlier chapters in this book, describing the major Reformed and Evangelical attitudes toward the Roman Catholic Church in the last half a century, and, last, considering some of the ecumenical ventures for promoting Christian unity in that time. In the opening line of Berkouwer’s epilogue, he asks: “What of the future for the Vatican Council and for the Catholic theology?”9 Writing almost a half a century ago with the understanding that the Vatican Council had created unmistakable tensions in the Catholic Church, Berkouwer urges interpreters of the Council to avoid exacerbating those tensions into insurmountable dilemmas where each side of the contrast runs into excess: ecumenical despair vs. false irrenicism; continuity vs. discontinuity of historic Christian teaching; conservative vs. progressive; and unchangeable truth vs. historicity. According to Berkouwer, these tensions are not uniquely Catholic; indeed, and he is right, they are present in all the Christian communities. Therefore, he adds, “our thoughts about the future of the Church must come out of tensions in the present, tensions that must creatively produce watchfulness, prayer, faith and commitment, love for truth and unity, love for unity and truth” (VCNT, 316 [250]). Love for the truth of faith and doctrine is the dynamic behind any authentic quest for unity between Christians, and the love for unity—“Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 1:3)—for acceptance, reconciliation, and communion, is a desire for unity in the truth of faith and doctrine. Clearly, Berkouwer does not play truth and unity against one another. Berkouwer died in 1996, which is one year after the publication of John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter, Ut Unun Sint. Although Berkouwer never remarked in that last year of his life upon that Encyclical, I dare to say that 8 My focus in this epilogue is limited to Berkouwer’s significance for ecumenism, particularly with respect to the ecumenical dialogue between Reformed Protestants and Catholicism. 9 It is impossible to deal with this important question in this Epilogue. There is a veritable library that is devoted to answering this question both by Catholics and Protestants in the last half a century. Here are only two recent examples: Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, editors, Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); John O’Malley, S.J., What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010).



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his ecumenical vision expressed succinctly in the concluding sentence of the last paragraph regarding the interplay between love, truth and unity is at the heart of this encyclical. In that Encyclical, the pope expresses the Catholic Church’s irrevocable commitment to the ecumenical venture along the path of unity and communion between Christians. One central aspect of that venture is what John Paul calls the “ecumenism of conversion.”10 The actual practice of interconfessional dialogue presupposes a mutual commitment for “interior conversion, of a renewal of mind.” “There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without a change of heart.”11 John Paul explains the nature of this interior conversion: Thanks to ecumenism, our contemplation of the “mighty works of God” (mirabilia Dei) has been enriched by new horizons, for which the Triune God calls us to give thanks: the knowledge that the Spirit is at work in other Christian communities, the discovery of example of holiness, the experience of the immense riches present in the communion of saints, and contact with unexpected dimensions of Christian commitment. In a corresponding way, there is an increased sense of the need for repentance: an awareness of certain exclusions which seriously harm fraternal charity, of certain refusals to forgive, of a certain pride, of an unevangelical insistence on condemning the “other side,” of a disdain born of an unhealthy presumption. Thus, the entire life of Christians is marked by a concern for ecumenism; and they are called to let themselves be shaped, as it were, by that concern.12

Thus, the indivisible connection between renewal, conversion, and ecumenical reform is a theme of Vatican II, as it is of this encyclical, and it is driven by common prayer. Indeed, Vatican II calls prayer, according to John Paul, “the soul of the whole ecumenical movement.” John Paul continues: “This prayer is ‘a very effective means of petitioning for the grace of unity’, ‘a genuine expression of the ties which even now bind Catholics to their separated brethren’.”13 Further, the pope adds, “If prayer is the ‘soul’ of ecumenical renewal and of the yearning for unity, it is the basis and support for everything the Council defines as ‘dialogue’.”14 One important way of expressing the ecumenical venture along the path of unity and communion between Christians is, consequently, interconfessional dialogue at the theological and doctrinal level. As I have illustrated throughout this book, Berkouwer understands, as does John Paul II, that authentic 10 Ut Unum Sint, nos. 5–30, 33–40. 11  Ut Unum Sint, no. 15. 12 Ut Unum Sint, no. 15. 13 Ut Unum Sint, no. 21. 14 Ut Unum Sint, no. 28.

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“dialogue involves an openness to intellectual repentance.”15 What, then, is the nature of such dialogue, according to the pope? He replies: “Although the concept of ‘dialogue’ might appear to give priority to the cognitive dimension (dia-logos), all dialogue implies a global, existential dimension. [Dialogue] involves the human subject in his or her entirety; dialogue between communities involves in a particular way the subjectivity of each.”16 In other words, the acting subjects of dialogue, the full wealth of convictions of each of these participants from the different communities, must begin with the principle of reciprocity regarding the importance of “every effort to eliminate words, judgments, and actions which do not respond to the condition of separated brethren with truth and fairness and so make much relations between them more difficult.”17 This is necessary in order to pass from “antagonism and conflict to a situation where each party recognizes the other as a partner.” To recognize the “subjectivities” of others in this context means to recognize them as brothers and sisters in Christ; and to recognize the “subjectivities” of different communities is to recognize each one as an acceptable Christian communion, whatever else any given community might claim for itself. Further, “when undertaking dialogue, each side must presuppose in the other a desire for reconciliation, for unity in truth. For this to happen, any display of mutual opposition must disappear. Only thus will dialogue help to overcome division and lead us closer to unity.”18 In short, the ecumenism of conversion embodies the conviction that “dialogue is not simply an exchange of ideas. In some way it is always an ‘exchange of gifts,” indeed, a “dialogue of love.”19 One of the aims of this book is to show that Berkouwer, over time, increasingly came to embrace, in his own fashion, the ecumenism of conversion. Most significant is the emphasis of Berkouwer that the ‘adventure of ecumenicity,’ is about the Church “standing under the Cross, the Church also plac[ing] itself within the grace and under the judgment of Him who through His Cross has become the one Shepherd of the sheep.” He continues: “The Shepherd will not let the Church escape the question of its divisions, will give the churches no rest as long as they are guilty of

15 Michael Root, “Is the Reformation Over? And what if it is?,” Pro Ecclesia, XVI, No. 3, Summer 2007: 334–344, and for this quote, 343. 16 Ut Unum Sint, no. 28. 17 Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 4. 18 Ut Unum Sint, no. 29. 19 Ut Unum Sint, nos. 28, 47, respectively.



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dispersing His one flock and of making a travesty of His one sheepfold” (VCNT, 321 [258]). Berkouwer proposes here with conviction and vigor the ecumenical task of the restoration of unity among all Christians. In light of the interplay between love, truth and unity, Berkouwer warns of the real danger in certain kinds of ecumenical dialogue leading to dilution of confessional standards, leveling out all genuine differences, doctrinal minimalism, or what he also calls common-denominator ecumenicity, all of which has resulted in darkening the light of truth such that “believers do not even know at what points they are really one, to say nothing on the points on which they are divided” (VCNT, 317[250]). Indeed, Berkouwer adds, “common denominator ecumenicity is a fruitless way to see unity” (VCNT, 325 [257]). Against this background, we can easily understand why Berkouwer expresses “thanks that the Second Vatican Council, including its ecumenical aspects, has steered clear of such simplistic thinking.” He continues: “There is a strong feeling for getting at the real meaning of past controversy so that popular caricatures that each side holds of the other can be corrected. But the desire to get rid of misunderstanding is motivated by an equally strong will to get at the real and abiding differences. And it is at these points of differences that the ecumenical dialogue comes alive with both urgency and desire” (VCNT, 317 [250–251]). When ecumenical dialogue arrives at the real and abiding differences, the question will need to be raised regarding the criteria, as Michael Root puts it, “that will determine whether a doctrinal difference justifies ongoing church division (or, alternatively put, a theological difference is in fact doctrinal)?”20 Regarding criteria for discerning this difference, given our analysis of Berkouwer’s views regarding the relation of Scripture and tradition, clearly he would agree with the formulation of John Paul II who wrote that “Sacred Scripture is the highest authority in matters of faith,” the norma non normata, and “Sacred Tradition is indispensable to the interpretation of the Word of God.”21 Further, I would add that the question of criteria reflects ‘four crucial defining commitments of a catholic and evangelical theology.’ Pared down for my purpose in this Epilogue, these commitments are: First, a catholic and evangelical theology is committed to the Christological and Trinitarian dogmas of the early church as the permanently normative context for the explication of the Christian stain. . . . Second, a catholic

20 Root, “Is the Reformation Over? And what if it is?,” 343. 21 Ut Unum Sint, no. 79.

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epilogue: the significance of berkouwer and evangelical theology is committed to the constitutive significance of the church for the reality and the interpretation of the faith. . . . Third, a catholic and evangelical theology is committed to the message of God’s free gift of salvation, as that has been articulated at different times and places in the history of the church. . . . Finally, a catholic and evangelical theology is committed to the unity of the church and the reconciliation of divided Christians.22

Berkouwer’s theology was both catholic and evangelical in the sense defined above. Ecumenically engaging his writings on Catholicism regarding revelation, faith and knowledge, scripture and tradition, dogmatic development, and the fundamental Mariological principle was motivated by the twofold desire to get rid of misunderstanding as well as to arrive at real and abiding differences. And, as far as the motive for the adventure of ecumenicity is concerned, Berkouwer refers us to the “inescapable duty of us all to subject ourselves constantly to the touchstone of the gospel that is meant to lead us all on one pilgrimage in one faith toward the future that will reveal the one truth to us all” (VCNT, 321–322 [254]). Further, Berkouwer affirms that in ecumenical dialogue the historic differences—the real and abiding differences—between Catholic and Reformed do not lose their importance. Berkouwer does see that not taking seriously one’s own confessional tradition is a defeat for ecumenism. For taking these differences seriously—such as the disputed questions I have examined in this book—means that one takes, he rightly says, “the question of faith and its content seriously.”23 That means, in my judgment, that some of these real and abiding differences are best understood as matters of doctrine. Further, in discerning misunderstandings from real and abiding differences, it also means asking “whether separate traditions have hardened into positions that have their origin, not in the gospel, but in historical situations and the limited human insights that have gradually distorted the truth on both sides.” Here is where Berkouwer’s approach to ecumenism differs radically from common-denominator ecumenicity. As I showed in this book, he engages in a “serious inquiry into the true nature of unity in Christ and how it came about that this unity was broken” (VCNT, 321 [253]). As John Paul II was to say some fifteen years later in an address to the Roman Curia on June 28, 1980: “the unity of Chris22 Michael Root, “Catholic and Evangelical Theology,” Pro Ecclesia XV, No. 1, 2006: 9–16, and for this quote, 10–12. I have eliminated Root’s excessive italicizing in these sentences. 23 This quote is not in Vatikaans Concilie en de nieuwe theologie, but it is in the English translation on 253.



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tians cannot be sought in a ‘compromise’ between the various theological positions, but only in a common meeting in the most ample and mature fullness of Christian truth.”24 In other words, “authentic ecumenism is a gift at the service of truth.”25 Let us now briefly consider some examples Berkouwer gives of contrasts that have run into excess when one or the other side of the contrast is absolutized. What begins as contrasts—different accents of one side or another—eventually runs into excess, pulling in different as well as opposite directions. Consider the following examples of such contrasts running into excess that can be found among Protestants and Catholics. On the one hand, we have the excess of a “polite ecumenicity that always underestimates the problems and road-blocks in the way of unity and is intoxicated with a romantic vision of the Church’s possibilities for unity, an optimism which is bound to be sobered by ultimate disillusionment” (VCNT, 317 [250]). On the other hand, we have the excess of an ecumenical fatalism that results from the assumption “that the gospel is so unclear that it is open to anybody’s interpretation” (VCNT, 321 [254]). This is fatalism about the future that derives from separate Christian traditions having “hardened into positions that have their origin, not in the gospel, but in historical situations and the limited human insights that have gradually distorted the truth on both sides” (VCNT, 321 [253]). We may avoid these excesses by embracing the position that Yves Congar called “realistic ecumenicity,” that is, a “realism that will keep us from misjudging the present situation, with all her challenges, but must not keep us from a believing consideration of the unity of all believers in Christ, of the reality of the One Shepherd and the One flock” (VCNT, 317 [250]).26 Further, we have the excess of emphasizing the continuity of the tradition to such an extent that we run the “greater danger of static irrelevance

24 John Paul II, “Discurso de su Santidad Juan Pablo II a los Cardenales y a los Colaboradores en los Organismos de la Curia Romana,” no. 17: “The union of all Christians cannot be found in a ‘compromise’ between various theological positions but only in a common meeting in the broadest and most mature fullness of Christian truth. It is our desire and theirs. It is a duty of mutual loyalty. The Second Vatican Council stated: ‘Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism, in which the purity of Catholic doctrine suffers loss and its genuine and certain meaning is clouded’ [Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 11]” (my translation from the Spanish). Online: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ ii/speeches/1980/june/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19800628_collaboratori-governo_sp.html. 25 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 39. Online: http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0221/_ INDEX.HTM. 26 In Chapter One, I examined Berkouwer’s reflections on the Church’s confession: credo unam ecclesiam.

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to the times, of traditionalism and confessionalism, and of seeking to put the Church under control of a school of theology, notwithstanding the assumption that the particular ‘school’ identifies itself with the gospel” (VCNT, 323 [255]).27 On the other hand, we have the excess of emphasizing discontinuity between the culture and the gospel, the Church’s confessions, dogma, and the like, which results in becoming so open to the culture of the times that we fail to acknowledge, indeed, insufficiently honor, “the critical, testing power of the gospel” (VCNT, 323 [255]). This emphasis “faces the temptation to engage the issues of the day so openly that it neglects to bring the power and hence the blessing of the unchangeable gospel to bear on the situation” (VCNT, 323 [255–256]). We may avoid these excesses, according to Berkouwer, by responding to the challenges of the culture with the “conviction that the truth the Church guards is ‘ever the same’ [semper eadem], but in the conviction that this truth has to be made relevant” (VCNT, 324 [256]). Another version of the excesses just considered is the contrast of conservatism vs. progressivism. One or the other excess here, too, must be avoided. This contrast, according to Berkouwer, “explains almost nothing at all” (VCNT, [254]). It is sometimes described as a contrast between “closed mindedness” and “open mindedness,” (VCNT, 322 [255]), or the closed church and the open church. One possible way through these excesses is, according to Berkouwer, to avoid absolutizing28 what is, properly understood, a difference in accent. Berkouwer explains:

27 Groupe des Dombes defines “confessionalism” aptly as “the hardening of confessional identity into an attitude of self-justification. Confessionalism, also called ‘denominationalism’, withdraws into itself and rejects real confrontation with other confessions or denominations. Without going to this extreme, each, even in ecumenical dialogue, is tempted to safeguard its own identity jealously and to be little open to the share of truth present in its partner” (For the Conversion of the Churches, 24). Especially withdrawal into itself, rejection of ecumenical dialogue, and the lack of openness is not characteristic of Catholic ecumenism, as expressed in Vatican II’s Unitatis Redintegratio. “For although the Catholic Church has been endowed with all divinely revealed truth and with all means of grace . . . Catholics must gladly acknowledge and esteem the truly Christian endowments from our common heritage which are to be found among our separated brethren. . . . Nor should we forget that anything wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren can be a help to our own edification. Whatever is truly Christian is never contrary to what genuinely belongs to the faith; indeed, it can always bring a deeper realization of the mystery of Christ and the Church” (no. 4). 28 Each side of the conservative/progressive contrast “see profound implications in the position of the other side” (VCNT, 323[255]), and when any one of the contrasts is “absolutized” that is true.



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The “progressives” are surely not of a mind to break with the past of Roman Catholicism, for example, teaching authority of the Church. They are making a plea for applying the old to the new, the teachings of the Church formulated in the past to the new situations and ideas of the present. To them, for the Church to be the guardian of the truth does not mean seclusion and rigidity regarding the truth the Church has, but openness and courage to let the truth be manifest in new forms as the Church confronts new times. The “conservatives,” being less impressed by the impact of history upon doctrinal truth, want to accent the immutability of truth in the face of historical relativism, to accent the Church’s duty to encounter the changing times with the one unchangeable truth (VCNT, 323 [255]).29

At the center of this contrast is the question regarding the sense in which “the Church [is] to be the guardian of the unchangeable truth as expressed at the First Vatican Council” (VCNT, 323 [255]). What exactly did that council say? Essentially this: “In matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of Christian doctrine, that meaning of Holy Scripture must be held to be the true one, which Holy mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture.” Elsewhere, the Council also states in the same vein: “Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.”30 We have already had several occasions in this book to explain that the Council did not at all oppose the deepening of our understanding of the sacred dogmas. Rather, it encouraged an increase in understanding, knowledge and wisdom, indeed, that these would flourish “greatly and vigorously . . . in the individual and in the whole Church, but this only in its own proper kind, that is to say, in the same doctrine, the same meaning, and the same judgment (in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu, eademque sententia).”31 In this connection, it would also be helpful to recall the famous statement of John XXIII at the opening of Vatican Council II where he calls for suitable restatement 29 I have made some slight alterations to the English translation in order to capture more adequately some of the nuances in the original Dutch text that in my opinion were missed by the American translator, Lewis Smedes. 30 Dei Filius, Chapter 2, On revelation, no. 8, and Chapter 4, on faith and reason, no. 14, respectively. 31 Dei Filius, Chapter 4, no. 14. It is worth repeating here that the last sentence of this quotation refers the reader to Vincent of Lérins (died c. 445), Commonitorium, Chapter XXIII, §28, “Of what kind of Improvement Christian Doctrine is susceptible.”

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of Catholic dogma. Significantly, the pope holds that this restatement or reformulation is only possible because “the deposit or the truths of faith, contained in our sacred teaching, are one thing, while the mode in which they are enunciated, keeping the same meaning and the same judgment [eodem sensu, eademque sententia], is another.” Clearly, then, the teaching of Vatican I is consistent with the import of the pope’s distinction between truth and its formulations, that is, truths of revelation and their linguistic expressions, propositions and sentences, content and context. The chief aim of such distinctions is to come to an ever better understanding of the same dogma by preserving the same judgments, even if not the same formulations, enacted in the truths of revelation. Berkouwer’s acceptance of this distinction between truth and its formulations opened the door for him to enter into a reappraisal of Catholicism. This distinction between truth and its formulations has ecumenical implications because it encourages an ecumenism of convergence, namely, since the “element which determines communion in truth is the meaning of truth,” and hence “expression of truth can take different forms,”32 theological disagreements over what appear as incompatible assertions may be understood as differences of language, theological elaboration, and emphasis, in short, as two different ways of expressing the truth, the same judgment about the same reality, rather than as disagreements about judgments regarding the truth. As Unitatis Redintegratio puts it: “It is hardly surprising if sometimes one tradition has come nearer than the other to an apt appreciation of certain aspects of the revealed mystery or has expressed them in a clearer manner. As a result, these various theological formulations are often to be considered as complementary rather than conflicting. Communion is made fruitful by the exchange of gifts between the Churches [and ecclesial communities] insofar as they complement each other.”33 Yes, of course not all theological disagreements can be treated in light of the distinction between truth and its formulations; some are matters of fundamental difference in judgments regarding dogmas. In such cases, I would suggest following the lead of the recent doctrinal note on some aspects of evangelization from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This note distinguishes three dimensions to the work of ecumenism: listening, theological discussion, and witness/ testimony.

32 Ut Unum Sint, no. 19. 33 Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 57.



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Different dimensions of the work of ecumenism can be distinguished: above all, there is listening, as a fundamental condition for any dialogue, then, theological discussion, in which, by seeking to understand the beliefs, traditions and convictions of others, agreement can be found, at times hidden under disagreement. Inseparably united with this is another essential dimension of the ecumenical commitment: witness and proclamation of elements which are not particular traditions or theological subtleties, but which belong rather to the Tradition of the faith itself.34

Moreover, the distinction between truth and its formulations also helped Berkouwer to realize that all Christian communities, and not just Catholics, must accept the challenge of John XXIII both to guard the unchangeable truth but to make it relevant as well. Indeed, Berkouwer adds, “the matter of [the Church’s] own unchangeability and continuity is the issue” (VCNT, 325[257]). This is an ecumenical challenge par excellence, touching “the depths of the one Christian faith and affect[ing] the churches that ought to be and are not visibly the one flock of the one Shepherd, that ought to be and are not giving witness to that one faith with one voice and with a single power” (VCNT, 325 [257]). This challenge, then, according to Berkouwer, alludes to one final contrast: unchangeable truth vs. historicity. Perhaps behind all these other contrasts is the fundamental problem of truth and history, of authentic identity and really genuine development, in short, of the persistence of identity in change. Berkouwer writes: This problem takes on unique relevance for the Church, for here the decisions of faith made in the past are binding decisions, making the past in some determinative of the future. Are these decisions irrevocable in every sense [italics added], or are they so historically defined that we can shake ourselves loose from them in the face of each new insight and challenge? Is the Church, like every other institution, caught up in the relativity of historical thought, and must it accept all the radical consequences of this relativity for its faith and life? We know something these days [1960s] of situational ethics. Does the latter have a parallel in situational-faith—and dogmatics? Or are whatever changes that do occur merely innocent variations of form as compared to the light of unchanging truth, of the gospel that sheds an undeviating illumination over the Church (VCNT, 318–319 [251])?

One may say that Berkouwer’s acceptance of the ecumenical imperative, “that they all may be one . . . so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21), expressed itself from 1957 onwards “to engage in a fresh constructive and 34 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, December 3, 2007, “Doctrinal Note on some Aspects of Evangelization,” no. 12. Online: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congre gations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20071203_nota-evangelizzazione_en.html.

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critical evaluation both of the contemporary teaching and practice of the Roman Catholic Church and of the classical controverted issues.” One may find examples of this approach in the ecumenical alliance formed in 1994 called Evangelical and Catholics Together.35 One may also give as an example of this approach, Pro Ecclesia, a journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, published by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. I dare say that if Berkouwer were still living and working, he would have been an ardent contributor to both ecumenical alliances. But this is only one actual approach of Reformed and Evangelical Christians to the Roman Catholic Church. There are two others that have remained essentially negative: “some because they remain to be convinced that the modern developments of the Roman Catholic Church has really addressed the issues of the Reformation, and others because they have been largely untouched by the ecumenical exchanges of recent times and have therefore not been challenged or encouraged to reconsider their traditional stance.”36 One may find an example of the last approach in Michael S. Horton,37 the author of “Resolutions for Roman Catholic and Evangelical Dialogue.”38 What we find represented with the latter is an 35 For their founding document see, “Evangelical & Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium,” First Things 43 (May 1994): 15–22. See also, In One Body Through the Cross, The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity, Edited by Carl E. Braaten & Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). 36 “Towards a Common Understanding of the Church” in Deepening Communion, International Ecumenical Documents with Roman Catholic Participation, Edited by William G. Rusch and Jeffrey Gros (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1998), 179–229, and for this quote, 187. As one example of the former, see Leonardo De Chirico, Evangelical Theological Perspectives on post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism, Vol. 19, Religion and Discourse (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). One example of the latter approach is that of Michael S. Horton, “Resolutions for Roman Catholic and Evangelical Dialogue,” 1995 Statement by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Online: http://www.modernreformation.org/. 37 Michael S. Horton is currently Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, California. He is a prolific author of works, including a four-volume work on Covenant theology: God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology (2006), Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (2002), Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (2005), Covenant & Salvation: Union with Christ (2007). Most recently, he published in 2011 a one-volume work in systematic theology, The Christian Faith: Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way. 38 Horton is also an example of an approach that remains unconvinced that modern developments in, say, the Roman Catholic understanding of the relation between Scripture and Tradition has really addressed the issue of the Reformation. There are others, like Gregg Allison and Chris Castaldo, who appear to have been largely untouched by the ecumenical exchanges in the second half of the twentieth century on the question of Scripture and Tradition and hence have therefore not been challenged or encouraged to reconsider their traditional stance. See Michael S. Horton, “Sufficient for Faith and Practice: Covenant



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exclusively antithetical attitude toward Roman Catholicism. He seems, for either the second or third reason above, or both, not to have passed from antagonism and conflict to “a desire for reconciliation, for unity in truth,” as “ecumenical partners” in a search for full communion.39 Why is this so? Briefly, I suggest that an answer can be found in the statement of resolutions just mentioned, drawn up by Horton, and revised by another well know Evangelical Protestant, R.C. Sproul, in response to the 1994 ecumenical alliance of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which affirms the commitments of a catholic and evangelical theology as I defined above. In “Resolution 4” we find the statement that “the creedal consensus that binds orthodox Evangelicals and Roman Catholics together warrants the making of common cause on moral and cultural issues in society,” but not “cooperation among Christians as common ecclesial action in fulfilling a common ecclesial mission.”40 In other words, Catholics and Evangelicals may engage in “cultural co-belligerence,”41 but Horton denies, as do others, like Albert Mohler and R.C. Sproul,42 that any such alliances express an ecumenical partnership, a common ecclesial action, fulfilling a common ecclesial mission among brothers and sisters in Christ. In short, Horton’s denial, and that of the other signatories to this statement of resolutions, and Canon,” Modern Reformation, Issue: “Canon Formation” May/June 2010, 19, no. 3: 10–15. Unfortunately, Horton does not engage Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, with the seriousness of Berkouwer. For example, he claims: “The key difference [on church authority] is that whereas the Roman Catholic view treats the church’s authority as magisterial (sovereign), churches of the Reformation view it as ministerial (subordinate to Christ’s scriptural Word).” Prima facie, this claim is inconsistent with Dei Verbum, no. 10: “The living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ . . . is not above the Word of God, but serves it” (“Non supra verbum Dei, sed eidem ministrant”). I gave the analysis this claim deserves, in response to Berkouwer’s appreciation and critique of Dei Verbum, in Chapters Four and Five. For Allison and Castaldo, see their essays in Journeys of Faith, Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism, editor, Robert L. Plummer (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 115–128, 137–164, respectively. They both assume that the “two-source theory” of revelation is the Catholic teaching on the relation of Scripture and tradition. This claim, too, was analyzed in Chapters Four and Five. 39 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 29. 40 Horton, “Resolutions for Roman Catholic and Evangelical Dialogue,” Resolution 6. 41 R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Standing Together, Standing Apart: Cultural Co-belligerence without Theological Compromise,” Touchstone, A Journal of Mere Christianity, July/August 2003: 70–80. 42 In his most recent book on Catholicism, Are we Together? A Protestant Analyses Roman Catholicism (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2012), Sproul writes: “I am happy to make common cause with Roman Catholicism on social issues, but we have no common cause in the gospel. . . . When our involvement in social issues brings us into contact and camaraderie with Roman Catholics, we need not draw back. But we must not assume that we are brothers and sisters with them in the gospel” (121–122).

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can only mean that Evangelicals and Roman Catholics are not in fellowship with each other, even imperfectly by the grace of Christ and through the power of the Spirit. This statement does not mean to deny that individual Catholics may be real Christians, but it does mean that they cannot be real Christians if the theological explanation they give for their doctrinal assertions regarding salvation, the atonement, sacramental theology, divine election, and the like derive from the ecclesiastical Magisterium of the Catholic Church.43 In other words, they cannot be real Christians for Catholic reasons because the Catholic Church is not an ‘acceptable Christian communion.’ As Horton explains: We affirm that individual Roman Catholics who for whatever reason do not self-consciously assent to the precise definitions of the Roman Catholic Magisterium regarding justification, the sole mediation of Christ, the relation between faith and the sacraments, the divine monergism of the new birth, and similar matters of evangelical conviction, but who think and speak evangelically about these things, are indeed our brothers and sisters in Christ, despite Rome’s official position. We perceive that the Roman Catholic Church contains many such [genuine] believers. We deny, however, that in its present confession it is an acceptable Christian communion, let alone being the mother of all the faithful to whom every believer needs to be related.44

This resolution rejects not merely the uniquely Catholic claim that the Catholic Church is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, the Household of God. Rather, it also rejects the lesser claim that the Catholic Church is a true visible expression of Christ’s body, and hence an acceptable Christian communion. Furthermore, it rejects the claim that someone

43 Similarly, Mohler writes: “Evangelicals must measure the claims of any church or individual by the simplicity of the gospel. If the true gospel is not preached, this is no true church. Again, any thoughtful Evangelical would acknowledge that there are certainly true Christians within the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, but that these true believers must in some sense come to the simplicity of faith through means other than the official teaching of these churches” (“Standing Together, Standing Apart,” 76). 44 Horton, “Resolutions,” Resolution 6. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, a co-founder along with Charles Colson of Evangelical & Catholics Together, replied sharply to Horton: “I take note also of your opinion that the Church sanctified by the martyred blood of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the Church in continuity with the Petrine ministry established by Christ, the Church that has sustained the Scriptural, patristic, conciliar, and the theological traditions that define Christian orthodoxy (also for Protestants), the Church that has claimed the allegiance of the great majority of Christians over two millennia is not ‘an acceptable Christian communion’. Really” (cited in Mark A. Noll & Carolyn Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over? [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005], 157).



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can be a genuine believer if he holds his Christian beliefs to be true in virtue of the official teaching of the Catholic Church. Of course it follows from this resolution that Roman Catholics cannot be fellow believers by virtue of sharing a love of Jesus Christ, of accepting him as Lord and Savior, affirming the faith of the ecumenical creeds, and a familial bond in baptism and God’s Word. The objection here in this resolution is anti-Catholicism simplicter; it reflects the position that I earlier called, following Reinhart Hütter, an ‘essential Protestant.’ “Essential Protestantism requires for its identity Catholicism as the ‘other’.” Hütter explains: “Much of essential Protestantism assumes that at the time of the Reformation the true Gospel—lost or at least significantly distorted shortly after the apostle Paul—was rediscovered and the Church in the true sense reconstituted.” He continues: “Virtually everything in-between, the few exceptions only affirming the rule, pertains to the aberration of Roman Catholicism. Essential Protestantism, therefore, in a large measure needs Roman Catholicism and especially the papacy to know itself, to have a hold of its identity as Protestantism.”45 In distinction to ‘essential Protestantism,’ Hütter also speaks of ‘accidental Protestantism.’46 This sort of Protestantism “sees itself as the result of a particular, specific protestation,” in short, it “has seen itself to a large degree as a reform movement in the Church catholic.”47 “For accidental Protestants, there tends to be one fundamental difference—and it can be the Petrine office itself—that prevents them from being Catholic. This difference cannot be just any but must be one without which the truth of the Gospel is decisively distorted or even abandoned. Being Protestant in this vein amounts to an emergency position necessary for the sake of the Gospel’s truth and the Church’s faithfulness; in short, accidental Protestantism does not understand itself as ecclesial normalcy.”48 My thesis is that G.C. Berkouwer gradually became an ‘accidental Protestant’ in the Reformed tradition because he came to the conviction that the division between Protestants themselves as well as the division of the latter with Catholics must not be accepted as “ecclesial normalcy.”49 45 Reinhard Hütter, “Why does the Pope Matter to Protestants?,” 676. 46 Hütter, “Why does the Pope Matter to Protestants?,” 676. 47 Hütter, “Why does the Pope Matter to Protestants?,” 678. 48 Hütter, “Why does the Pope Matter to Protestants?,” 676–677. 49 The importance of the ecumenical imperative is already evident in Berkouwer’s 1952 Calvin Foundation Lectures that he delivered at Calvin College and Seminary. He wrote in regard to the desire for the visible unity of the Church the following: “That [desire] can be

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Hence, Berkouwer’s commitment to the unity of the church and the reconciliation of divided Christians led him seriously to engage Catholics as ecumenical partners in the search for full communion. Berkouwer’s writings on Catholicism continue to be relevant for the project of catholic and evangelical theology in the twenty-first century because engaging these writings, working through them, struggling with the issues raised by him remains the road to take so as to come to ecumenical partnership with the Catholic Church in the search for full communion. It is my thesis that taking that road with Berkouwer will lead to engaging “in a fresh constructive and critical evaluation both of the contemporary teaching and practice of the Roman Catholic Church and of the classical controverted issues.”

according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and his prayer: ‘That they all may be one; as thou father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me’. But never are we, in this longing for unity, allowed to separate this unity from the truth of which He speaks in the same prayer. I think this relation between unity and truth is one of the most urgent problems the Church has to face in our times.” Still, Berkouwer adds, alerting us to several dangers: “[1] There is on the one side the danger that we no longer feel the distress of the divided Church of Christ in the divided world, that we accept dissension as a fact and that we get more and more accustomed to it. But on the other hand [2] there is the danger that the Church may think: we have only a short time and will have to unite, now or never, in a divided, broken world. And [3] there is third danger, that against the background of this unity an ‘ecumenical’ theology will be created without the primacy of the truth of the Gospel. One of the features of such an ecumenical theology is that it is no longer obvious and apparent what the words of the church really mean” (Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith, 82). Of course we may avoid this third danger by creating an ecumenical theology that is grounded in the truth of the Gospel and the normative sources of the Christian faith.

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INDEX Adam, Karl, 69n165, 137–138, 138n72, 202n53 Ad Gentes, 184n215 Aggiornamento, 45–49 Anknüpfungspunkt, 188, 223–242, 271 Anti-Modernist Oath, 131–132, 132n54 Aquinas, Thomas, natural knowledge of God, 169–171, 240, 240n191 Reason and sin, 155n134, 162–163, 166n174, 212–213, 236, 236n176, 236n177 Testimony, reason, and authority, 252, 262–264 Theological epistemology, 121, 421, 424–425 Typology, 451 Aubert, Roger, 248n225 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 34, 34–35n39, 110, 111, 115, 127–129, 142–145, 147n106, 148n108, 150–152, 154–155, 172–173, 182–183, 184–185, 186n220, 193, 196–197, 199, 205–207, 209–213, 215, 219–220, 456n227, 460 Barth, Karl, 4, 130n50, 133, 157n144, 282n30 Bavinck, Herman, 1–2, 2n3, 3, 10–11, 25, 25n14, 136, 140, 156, 194n29, 195, 197, 221, 225n134, 281, 295n63, 300n80, 323n10, 324n14, 329, 330–331, 351, 386, 409n46, 421, 423, 438n174 Beinert, Wolfgang, 403 Belgic Confession of Faith, 114n13, 180n202 Berkhof, Hendrikus, 1n2, 12n33, 49n87, 449n201 Berkhof, Louis, 2n5 Berkouwer, G.C. Aggiornamento, 45–49 Correlation Principle, 49–56 Credo Unam Ecclesiam, 41–44 Development of Dogma, 395–413, 413–420 Duplex ordo cognitionis, 163–165, 185–186, 205–206, 271 Ecumenism, 4–9, 21–34, 472–488 Faith, Reason, and Sin, 149–167, 206–223 General Revelation, 191–195 God of the Phiosophers/Bible, 173–178 Hierarchy of Truth, 101–108

Infallibility/Indefectibility, 339–349 Marian Dogma, 437–449 Motives of Credibility, 248–255 Natural Theology, 195–206 Nature and Grace, 139–144, 206–207, 221, 223–242 Nouvelle théologie, 4n12, 21–27, 56–58, 60–65, 409, 470 Objections to Natural theology, 128–149 Positivism of Revelation, 255–265 Post-Vatican II, faith and reason, 242–248, 265–270 Presumption of Coincidence, 320–327 Reformed Objections to Natural Theology, 129–149 Ressourcement, 45–49 Revelation, Unity and Differentiation, 114–128, 178–185 Revelation and Truth, 56–101 Romans 1, 167–173 Scripture and Tradition, 286–307, 349–358 Sola Scriptura, 276–281, 307–317 Structure and Direction, 223–242 Subjectivism/Objectivism, 371–393 Theological Epistemology, 420–437 Tradition, 358–371 Bernstein, Richard, 335n49 Biblicism, 277, 277n13 Blocher, Henri, 123n40 Boersma, Hans, 285 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 257–259, 258n262 Bouillard, Henri, 56, 57n121, 72, 85n213, 119–120 Braaten, Carl, 284n37, 318, 326n23, 326n24, 340 Brown, Jeannine, K., 83 Brunner, Emil, 125n41, 173n192 Brownsberger, William, 145n100, 250n231, 261 Budziszewski, J., 163n162 Bultmann, Rudolph, 116n18 Bushman, Douglas G., 46n75 Cajetan, Cardinal, 325 Calvin, John, 31n31, 166n173, 178n201, 325n15 Canons of Dordt, 180n202

504

index

Capax Dei, 223–242 Causa cognoscendi, 194–195 Causa essendi, 194–195 Catechism of the Catholic Church creation and providence, nos. 279–324, 355–368 divine revelation, nos. 50–100 ecclesiology, nos. 888–892 end of man, 1716–1729 faith and knowing, nos. 150–159 faith, reason, and sin, nos. 36–38 grace and justification, nos. 1987–2029 natural theology, nos. 31–35 theological anthropology, nos. 27–30, 2566–2567 typology, nos. 128–130 Cessario, Romanus, 424–425 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, 279n19 Clowney, Edmund P., 542n211 Common Grace, 180–184, 215 Congar, Yves M-J., 4n13, 16, 35n40, 37n44, 44n71, 60–61, 100, 101,103n279, 106, 284n38, 298n71, 298n74, 307n107, 319, 339n63, 350n104, 352, 355, 357, 358–364, 366–370, 383–386, 400n21, 426n130, 437n173, 439n177, 448n198, 450n204, 451n206 Content/context Distinction, 67n157, 81–95 Contrast and Contradiction, 100–101 Correlation Principle, 49–56 Cottingham, John, 140n77, 101, 101n273, 204n58 Council of Chalcedon, 84–87 Council of Trent, 296 Counter-Reformation Catholics, 208n74 Craig, William Lane, 147n107, 201n51, 250n234 Crisp, Oliver, 278n18 Cullman, Oscar, 21n3, 45n73, 47n77, 101n273, 102n274, 125n41 Daniélou, Jean, S.J., 22, 69n69, 117n19, 118n22, 133, 182n209, 351, 451n209 Davies, Brian, 86n219 Davis, Stephen T., 68n161 D’Costa, Gavin, 281n27, 303n94, 350n100, 352, 355 De Chirico, Leonardo, 484n36 De la Potterie, Ignace, 453n213 De Lubac, Henri, 17n43,150n115, 192n20, 194–195, 197, 221–222, 239–241, 420n99 Development of Dogma, 394–403 Berkouwer, 403–420

Rahner, 426–437 Schillebeeckx, 421, 423, 426, 434n161 Tacit Knowing, 431–436 Theological Epistemology, 420–437 Difference between general revelation, natural theology, and special divine revelation, 114–121 Doctrinal Commentary on Professio Fidei, 395n5, 396, 397n12, 416–418 Doctrinal Note on some Aspects of Evangelization, 483 Dogmatic facts, 396n11 Donum Veritatis, 343 Dooyeweerd, Herman, 10–12, 111–112, 158n145, 169–171, 230n154 Douma, J., 230n154 Dulles, Avery, 64–65, 67. 75–76, 79, 85n213, 109n293, 190, 323n10, 325n20, 328, 332, 333n43, 334, 335, 336, 341n68, 342n76, 343, 344, 383n224, 341, 383n224 Dünzl, Franz, 71n171 Duplex ordo cognitionis, 163–165, 185–186, 205–206, 271 Ecclesiastical positivism, 323n10 Epistemic Objectivity, 52–54, 374–375 Evangelicals and Catholics Together, 32n34, 484 Eve-and-Mary parallel, 453–454 Extraordinary Synod of Bishop, 1985, 95 Feckes, Carl, 309n110 Fides et Ratio, 83n207, 96–97, 98, 113n11, 135, 184, 234–235, 237–238, 255, 265n297, 277, 337–338, 347, 372n185 Fiorenza, Francis S., 49n86, 87n225, 259n264, 279n19, 372n186, 372n187 Frame, John M., 3n9, 192n20, 234n168 Fourth Lateran Council, 133n60 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 88–89 Galot, Jean, 411n59, 457n231 Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, 92–93 Geiselmann, J.R., 16, 283, 300, 363–365 George, Timothy, 278n16, 303n93, 310n113 Gilson, Etienne, 125, 134n63, 141–142, 155n134, 166n175, 169, 172, 200, 208, 212, 218–220, 221, 222n125, 223, 225, 227 God Met Ons, 52n104 Gregory, Brad S., 284 Greijdanus, Seakle, 168 Grisez, Germain, 65–67, 67n158, 68–69, 71, 75n185, 75n186, 115n15, 254n247, 378n206



index

Groot, Jan C., 157, 231, 231n157 Groothuis, Douglas, 145n99, 174n194, 175n198 Groupe des Dombes, 324n14, 412n66, 437n173, 446n190, 447n193, 472n2, 480n27 Guarino, Thomas G., xi–xiii, 24n11, 54n112, 71, 88n226, 93, 94n246, 95, 96n247, 95n250, 98n258, 100n265, 101n271, 106n287, 106n288, 134–135, 183n212, 227n144, 275n7, 317, 320–322, 334n47, 335, 349, 391–392, 394n1, 411–414, 420, 424, 426, 471 Guinness, Os, 237–238 Gunton, Colin, E., 390 Hahn, Scott, 437n173, 454–455 Haight, Roger, 116n18 Hart, Trevor, 122n37, 123n40, 226n139 Healy, Nicholas J., 240n190 Heidelberg Catechism, 253 Helm, Paul, 49n87, 52, 52n103, 52n105, 53, 68, 90n235, 91, 262, 374–375, 382, 387–391, 427n137 Hendriks, Jan, 437n173, 440n178, 446n190 Henn, William, 102n275 Hermeneutics of Continuity and Renewal, 47–48 Hierarchy of Truths, 101–108 Hodge, Charles, 2n5 Horton, Michael S., 134, 159n150, 159n152, 226n143, 236n178, 241, 278n17, 412, 484n37, 484n38, 486 Hütter, Reinhard, 28, 412n66, 487 International Theological Commission, On the Interpretation of Dogmas, 93n243, 95, 346n86, 347, 347n92 Interpreting Ecclesial Texts, 34–41 Jeffrey, David Lyle, 284, 333 Jenson, Robert, 351, 356n120 John XXIII, 46, 48, 65–66, 90n233, 96, 337n57, 481–482 John Paul II Ecumenism, 7, 9, 12, 21, 24, 26, 27n20, 39, 40n54, 41, 475–479 Faith and reason, 113n11, 144,145n100, 165–166, 184, 234–235, 251, 255, Faith and Testimony, 235, 261–265, 265 God and man relationship, 237–238 Marian Dogma, 447, 449–469, Theology and Philosophy, 83n207, 135

505

Truth and its formulations, 96–101, 337–338, 347, 371–372, 375, 392 Journet, Charles, 328n32, 340n65, 343n80, 425 Kaiser, Walter C., 449n202, 452n211, 471 Kasper, Walter, xiii, 3n9, 104–105, 233n166, 243–244, 266 Ker, Ian, 48 Kerr, Fergus, Vatican I, 129n46, 131, 132n54, 151n118, 151n119, 193n22 Kerygmatic/Eschatological interpretation of Mary’s Assumption, 465–469 Kimel, Alvin, 285n39, 316, 332n41 Knowledge of God’s Existence, quaestio facti or quaestio iuris, 149–167, 206–223 Küng, Hans, 36n43, 116n18, 342 Kuyper, Abraham, 1–2, 180–184, 212n88 Ladd, George E., 382 Lamont, John. R.T., 64n144, 81n202, 87n221 Leithart, Peter J., 451n209 Léonard, André-Mutien, 437n173, 466n264 Leo XIII, 211n81, 211n82, 289n49, 291 Lindbeck, George, 335n48 Lonergan, Bernard J.F., 54, 66, 69, 84n211,85–87, 152–154, 188n2, 202n52, 203n56, 208, 262n280, 388 Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church], 184n216, 338n61, 452n210, 453n213, 458n234 Mankowski, Paul, 468 Mansini, Guy F. 404, 405, 406n36, 429 Marian Dogma Berkouwer, 437–449 Maximalist, 442–449 Minimalist, 442–449 Monophysitism, 448–449 Objective Redemption, 439–442, 443–449 Ratzinger, 449–469 Typology, 449–469 Maritain, Jacques, 150, 165n171, 198n41 Marlet, Michael J., 10n27, 128n45 Martin, Francis, 51n96, 130, 149n113, 167n178, 168–169, 171n188, 184n216, 191n18, 192n19, 192–193, 209n74, 421–422, 454n217, Mascall, E.L., 226n139 McCabe, Herbert, 78n195 McDermott, John M., 4n12, 58, 118, 387, 464n255, 467n268 McGrath, Alister, 284

506

index

McInerny, Ralph, 253n243 Meilaender, Gilbert, 8n22 Mettepenningen, Jürgen, 60n134 Mohler, Albert R., 485, 486n43 Moltmann, Jürgen, 208n70 Morerod, Charles, 102n275, 105n286, 325n17, 325n18 Motives of Credibility, 248–255 Mouroux, Jean, 143n90, 252n240, 261–264 Mouw, Richard, 25n17, 31n31 Müller, Gerhard, 324n12, 346n86 Muller Richard, 282n30 Murray, John, 167n180 Mysterium Ecclesiae, 79–81, 345n83, 346n87 Mysterium Fidei, 73–79 Nature and Grace, 139–144, 206–207, 221, 223–242 Neo-Calvinist philosophical tradition, 2n3 Newbigin, Leslie, 25, 64, 64n59, 330, 473n5 Neuhaus, Richard John, 303n92, 486n44 Newman, John Henry, 187n3, 188, 198, 203n57, 217–218, 328n31, 428, 454n215 Nichols, Aidan, 10n28, 13n35, 17n43, 37, 56, 57, 58, 61, 67, 111n3, 113, 142, 149n113, 198, 205n60, 206, 210–211, 216n103, 217n104, 246, 251, 254, 256, 361n139, 266, 269, 269n315, 280, 282, 322, 366n161, 387, 394, 417, 421, 429, 451 Nouvelle théologie, 4n12, 21–27, 56–58, 60–65, 409, 470 Oakes, Edward T., 134n62, 445n186 Oberman, Heiko A., 17n40, 20n1, 277n15, 345n82, 350 Objectivism, 50–54, 374–375 O’Connor, James T., 77n193 Ontological Objectivity, 52–54, 374 Ormerod, Neil, 69n164, 203n56 Ott, Heinrich, 208n70 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 130n50, 196, 196n34, 197n35 Paul VI, 40n55, 46, 72–79, 138n71 Penelhum, Terence, 147n107 Pius IX, 58, 144, 281, 398, 447 Pius X, 59, 291, 405n35, 459n238 Pius XI, 36, 105 Pius XII, 63, 64n143, 138n71, 149, 160–161, 163, 200,202, 206, 217n105, 281, 291, 339, 398, 465 Polanyi, Michael, 429n146 Positivism of Revelation, 255–265

Presumption of Coincidence, 275–276, 302, 320–322 Protestantism, Essential and Accidental, 28–34 Przywara, Eric, 130, 167n179, 181n205, 182n207 Puchinger, George, 21n5 Rahner, Karl, 48n84, 74n183, 87, 92, 94, 102n275, 103, 216n102, 234–234, 248–249, 251, 282, 333, 342, 398461n243, 400, 405n35, 407n40, 411, 413–419, 426–436, 449n199, 461, 462, Ratzinger, Joseph (Benedict XVI) Ecumenism, 1, 6, 7n18, 37 Ecclesiology, 47, 48, 323–324, 327, 330, 342 Faith and Reason, 175–176, 190, 203–204, 207, 214–215, 336, 337 Faith and Testimony, 261–265 Faith and Truth (Reality), 373, 376 God and man relationship, 242 Marian Dogma, 446n189, 449–469 Nature and Grace, 227n144 Revelation, 378, 385–386 Scripture and Tradition, 273, 276, 281, 282, 293–294, 301, 310, 311n114, 322, 323, 338, 354, 356, 357, 362 Reformed-Roman Catholic Ecumenism, 30n28, 32n34, 484n36 Reformed Objections to Natural Theology, 129–149 Anthropological Objection, 116–117 Autonomy Objection, 116, 129–135 Hellenization Objection, 116, 134–135, 173–177 Historicist Objection, 116 Kantian Objection, 116, 176–178 Ressourcement, 45–49 Rogers, Jack, 381n220 Rondet, Henri, 395n4, 407n42 Root, Michael, 9n23, 476–478 Rowland, Tracey, 47n78 Scheler, Max, 135–137 Schillebeeckx, Edward, 62, 81n201, 274, 341n67, 345, 345n82, 379, 398, 414n75, 415, 421, 423, 426, 432n157, 434n161, 436n171, 437n173, 447n197 Schlier, Heinrich, 387n243 Schoonenberg, Piet, 66n152 Seerveld, Calvin, 3 Semmelroth, Otto, 297, 297n69, 297n70, 440n178, 443, 445–446, 448, 450



index

Silva, Moisés, 449n202, 471n276 Smedes, Lewis, 1n2, 8n21, 9, 49n87, 293n56, 306n101, 313n116 Sokolowski, Robert, 77n194, 99n263, 328n30 Sola Scriptura, 276–281, 307–317 Sproul, R.C., 485 Steinmetz, David C., 296n66 Structure and Direction, 223–242 Subjectivism, 50–54, 371–374 Sudduth, Michael, 116n17, 141n80 Swinburne, Richard, 263n289, 379n211 Tacit Knowing, 431–436 Theories of Dogmatic Development, 404 Tkacz, Catherine Brown, 451n209 Trigg, Roger, 232, 232n163, 253n242, 255n249, 372, 373n194 Truth and its Formulations, 21–27, 65–72 Two sources of revelation General and special, 178–185 Scripture and Tradition, 282–283 Before, during and after Vatican II, 286–307 Typology, 449–469 Unitatis Redintegratio [Decree on Ecumenism], 38, 101–108, 102, 102n275, 103n276, 480n27, 482 Unity and Distinctness of God’s Revelation, 121–128 Ut Unum Sint [On Commitment to Ecumenism], 7, 9, 21, 24, 26, 27n20, 39–41, 100, 475–477, 479, 482n32 Vacant, J.M.A., 153n123 Van de Beek, A., 5–6

507

Van den Brink, Gijsbert, 2n7, 112, 112n9 Van der Kooi, Cornelis, 1n2, 326n22 Van der Ploeg, J., 288n48 Vandervelde, George, 100n264, 107–108 Van Genderen, J., 279n19, 298n72, 422n108, 424n118 Vanhoozer, Kevin, 273, 275n6, 276n8, 277, 279n19, 309, 458n233 Van Keulen, Dirk, 1n2, 30, 30n30, 49n87, 53n107 Van Til, Cornelius, 5n13, 29n27, 192n20 Van Woudenberg, Réne, 98n261 Vatican Council I, Dei Filius, 47n38, 59,113, 120, 139, 143, 144, 145, 149n113, 154–157, 190, 193–194, 200n48, 201n49, 202, 210, 217, 220, 250, 251, 255–261, 278n18, 287n46, 291, 333n44, 336, 395n7, 481 Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum [Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation], 120n33, 276, 293, 336, 339, 379, 379n211, 392n254, 422 Veenhof, Jan, 9n26 Velema, W.H., 279n19, 298n72, 422n108, 424n118 Versteeg, J.P., 449n202 Vincent of Lérins, 38n47, 394n1 Viviano, Benedict Thomas, 283n33 Vorgrimler, Herbert, 216n102, 233–234, 251 Vos, Arvin, 139n75 Ward, Timothy, 279n19 Wicks, J., 281n25, 291n53, 339n62 Williams, Stephen, 8n20 Wolters, Albert, 2n3, 11, 223–224, 277n13 Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 88–89, 187n2, 200