Rediscovering Our Roots
The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift
by Emery de Gaál
Palgrave/Macmillian, 2010
(392 pages, $35.00, paperback)
reviewed by Thomas A. Baima
Dogmatic theology seeks to show the interconnectedness and relationship of individual doctrines to one another and to the whole of the theological enterprise. The task is to comprehend the trees, the forest, and the vast panorama of the world in which they exist.
Forests are not all the same. The redwood forests of the Pacific coast are dramatic precisely because the trees are redwoods. A forest of pines or elms would not measure up to the grandeur of the redwoods. One school of theology, in Emery de Gaál's view, may not be just another forest. Some schools of thought have the capacity to be like the redwoods.
De Gaál is a master of the big picture. In his previous book, The Art of Equanimity, he synthesized a comprehensive vision of St. Anselm of Canterbury's corpus of work. In The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift, he undertakes a similar synthesis. This ambitious book has no less a goal than to change our understanding of theology, and even our understanding of the Christian life, by showing us the witness of the life of Joseph Ratzinger and by giving us the key to his theological project. It would not be too far-fetched to suggest that the author could have begun this book by quoting from St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians: "Now let me show you a more excellent way. . . ."
The Ressourcement Vision
The more excellent way is the patristic vision of Christianity as expounded by the Ressourcement School in general and by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in particular, who blends this vision with the insights of personalist philosophy. While the book takes as its subject the Bishop Emeritus of Rome, it is, in fact, a sustained apologetic for a stream of theological development of monumental significance, but that was eclipsed by the publishing successes of another school of thought, the transcendental Thomism of Joseph Marechal, and the anthropocentric shift that followed.
Ressourcement's patristic vision is not anachronistic, but it expresses the same dynamism as the Fathers, while welcoming philosophical insights that offer assistance to theology. But it is always careful to use philosophy only as an assistant to, not the defining element of, dogmatic theology. Philosophy can assist so long as the Word of God remains primary.
De Gaál's agenda is clearly stated in the Forward of the book. His goal is to show that there are compelling reasons to favor the Ressourcement School over all the other twentieth-century schools of theology. While all the schools reacted against the earlier "manualist" systems (i.e., abstractive theologies built on interpretation of and deduction from authoritative dogmatic statements), some of them take us farther off the track than the system they were trying to reform.
De Gaál argues that the main trend of the theology that flowed into the Second Vatican Council was not anthropocentric, but the Christological theology of the Ressourcement. He suggests that the central insight of Ratzingerian theology may be its application of the Bonaventurian insight of "Christ as the Center" to the theology of revelation. Accordingly, he tracks Ratzinger's lifelong engagement with the question of Scripture and Tradition, as well as of Tradition and the traditions.
A Form of Doxology
Thomas A. Baima is a Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago and provost of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. He holds a doctorate from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome/Angelicum.
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