In the fall of 2011, I began studying for my doctorate in theology at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. I was in my mid-30s and a practising Anglican who was thoroughly enamoured with the work of an Orthodox theologian named Alexander Schmemann.
I was keen to devour everything he wrote. However, my PhD supervisor recommended that my work should involve a western interlocutor. I suggested Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He suggested the German Catholic theologian, Joseph Ratzinger, who was Pope Benedict XVI at the time. I followed his lead, and little did my supervisor or I know how much this would change my life.
Over the next year, I read, read some more, and then read some more – the typical life of a PhD student. After a few months of focused reading on Schmemann, I began reading books written by Ratzinger before he was Pope, including: The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000), The Feast of the Faith (1986), and Principles of Catholic Theology (1987). I appreciated these books, but I was still captivated by Schmemann’s poetic prose and liturgical meditations.
Yet, Cardinal Ratzinger’s thoughts slowly began to have their effect, and the Holy Spirit was planting seeds. I became friends with several Catholics and, in order to better understand Cardinal Ratzinger’s writing, I began attending weekday Mass. In late spring of that academic year, I read his Introduction to Christianity (1968). It was a landmark moment for me. I was astounded. I had never read anything like this – I still have not. This is a book that is as profoundly trinitarian as it is deeply human. Let me explain.
The first section of the introduction sets out the dilemma of belief that besets us in the world of today. How can we prioritize the invisible over the visible? Can the centre of my reality be a first century Jewish carpenter? Isn’t belief in God old-fashioned? Can we speak of tradition in an age of progress?
Cardinal Ratzinger walks us through these human experiences of doubt, a phenomenological excursus that closely resonates with our experiences. He does not offer easy apologetic one-liners but has us enter into the other side of faith, namely doubt (a universal human experience).
However, Cardinal Ratzinger does not leave the reader in an existential panic. He provides an answer by setting out what he refers to as the basic attitudes toward reality and shows why, if we map our belief onto these paradigms of knowing (e.g., scientism), belief is next to impossible. The realm of belief resides beneath these basic attitudes not within.
Cardinal Ratzinger writes, “What is belief really? We can now reply like this: It is a human way of taking up a stand in the totality of reality, a way that cannot be reduced to knowledge and is incommensurable with knowledge; it is the bestowal of meaning without which the totality of man would remain homeless, on which man’s calculations and actions are based, and without which in the last resort he could not calculate and act, because he can only do this in the context of a meaning that bears him up.”
Belief resides in the realm of meaning and all meaning is rooted in the mode of belief, of taking a stand on something beyond oneself. Man cannot live on a bread alone; he is a creature who lives from a context of meaning. Belief is a profoundly human way of understanding!
After establishing the first two words of the creed – “I believe” – Cardinal Ratzinger, through a trinitarian framework, expounds the content of the Apostles’ Creed. The heart of reality is a relationship of love between the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Persons are beings in relation; reality is personal. Every dogma and doctrine are rooted in this personalist/relational framework, and this means that the Church, by uniting us with the persons of the Blessed Trinity, makes us fully persons.
This is the good news of the Gospel. “The future of man,” writes Cardinal Ratzinger, “hangs on the Cross – the redemption of man is the Cross. And he can only come to himself by letting the walls of his existence be broken down, by looking on him who has been pierced (Jn 19:37), and by following him who as the pierced and opened one has opened the path into the future.” The human person only comes to himself through Jesus Christ.
Cardinal Ratzinger opened my eyes to the beauty of the Gospel message. He helped me understand that to be in Christ is to truly live. Soon after reading this magnificent book, my wife, our oldest daughter, and I were received into the Church at the Easter vigil.
Cardinal Ratzinger accompanied me into the Church, and he continues to accompany me on the path of faith. I am deeply grateful; may he rest in peace.
Andrew Kaethler is Assistant Professor of Theology at Catholic Pacific College in Langley.
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