Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church, and the World
Product Description
In Many Religions, One Covenant, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spans the deep divides in modern Catholic scholarship to present a compelling biblical theology, modern in its concerns yet classical in its breadth. It is his classical mastery, his ressourcement, that enables the Cardinal to build a bridge.
Cardinal Ratzinger seeks to deepen our understanding of the Bible’s most fundamental principle. The covenant defines religion for Christians and Jews. We cannot discern God’s design or his will if we do not meditate upon his covenant.
The covenant, then, is the principle that unites the New Testament with the Old, the Scriptures with Tradition, and each of the various branches of theology with all the others. The covenant does more than bridge the gaps between these elements; it fills in the gaps, so that biblical scholarship, dogmatic theology, and magesterial authority all stand on common ground solid ground.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German
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Cardinal Ratzinger presents a lucid summary of the central theological issues arising out of the covenant shared by Jews and Christians. Insisting (properly) that the Abrahamic and Chrisitian covenants represent a single movement of God in his work of reconciliation of human kind, Ratzinger shows how the work of Christ is a fulfillment of God’s promise announced in the covenant with Abraham– ‘all the nations of the world shall be blessed through you’
Ratzinger recognizes that for this blessing to be realized, priority must be given to the relationship between Jews and Christians. Until Christians recognize their fundamental kinship with Judaism and Jews, and until that recognition leads to reconciliation between them, the proclamation of God’s reconciling work in the world will be truncated and compromised. He recognizes that the often tragic misunderstandings in Chrisitian Jewish relationships raise very specific difficulties, especially for Jews, and Christians have a major responsibility to address those difficulties.
Ratzinger’s presentation should be read by Christians, Jews and others for the clear and consise scriptural and theological perspective it offers. I am not a Roamn Catholic but one need not be Roman Catholic to appreciate the charity and discipline that inform this work.
Jim Woods
Cardinal Ratzinger, the new pope Benedict XVI, spent much of his career prior to being in the Vatican teaching theology and philosophy; after his move to the Vatican, he spent much of his time in the work of clarifying the theology of the church. One of the hallmarks of his predecessor’s papacy (John Paul II) was a concerted effort at Jewish-Christian dialogue, and Benedict XVI as Joseph Ratzinger was an integral part of these conversations.
Ratzinger is a theologian of wide reading and study, and not just within the confines of official Catholic doctrine. One of his frequent references, in this work and in others, is to the twentieth-century Jewish theologian, Martin Buber. His work on Jewish-Christian dialogue in this text is very biblically grounded, looking at ideas of ‘covenant’ and ‘testament’, seeing the covenant of God as crucial for understanding our relationship to God either as Christians or as Jews. Israel is the root from which Christianity’s branches grow, so a clear understanding of that basis as well as the understanding of the continuing covenant God has with the Jews is an important consideration.
This work falls under the category of post-Holocaust or post-Shoah theology. Ratzinger wrote, ‘After Auschwitz the mission of reconciliation [of Jews and Christians] permits no deferral.’ Very importantly, Ratzinger dispels the age-old idea of the collective guilt of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus, arguing that ‘all sinners’ participate in the problem of Jesus’ death.
Jewish-Christian dialogue and post-Shoah theology is one of the issues that concerns me greatly in my theological studies, so this text has been an important one. There are a few pieces where Ratzinger and I might have more extended discussions - he tries hard to avoid the simple supersessionism that has long plagued Christian thinking with regard to the status of Judaism, but there is still some fuzziness in this regard when one speaks of ‘fulfillment’. It just goes to show that there are conversations still worth continuing.
The work of Jewish-Christian dialogue, begun in earnest by the Roman Catholic Church in Vatican II, and intensified during the papacy of John Paul II, should be in capable hands with the new pope. This book is a good guide to see the points from with Benedict XVI will start in this ongoing, developing relationship.
This book by Joseph Ratzinger is not, as one might expect, a treatise on the relationship between Catholicism and Judaism. Rather, it is a collection of four lectures that the author gave at different points on different occasions, all dealing with the subject of the meaning of the “New Covenant” as contrasted with the covenants (plural) in the old testament. One of the talks does address slightly the implications for this study for current-day Jewish/Catholic interaction, but a footnote indicates that this section was appended later to a previously written lecture.
The third piece in this collection is simply a homily that Ratzinger gave one Sunday on the subject of God’s covenantial relations with us. The fourth piece deals more with ecumenism in general, and only peripherally in relation to Judaism.
I don’t speak German, so I can’t be sure, but I strongly suspect that the title of this book is mistranslated. The German title is “Die Vielfalt der Religionen und der Eine Bund.” If this were translated as “The variety of religions and the one covenant,” this certainly would better reflect the content of the book. With the current title one is inclined to suspect the author of a mealy-mouthed relativism; this is decidedly not the case. The title seems to come from a phrase in the fourth lecture, but in context the author is presenting a case that the headship of Peter (i.e. the Pope) is the proper expression of the one new and everlasting covenant of Christ’s body and blood. This is seemingly the opposite of what the title implies.
I find it useful to contrast this author with the works of the previous Pope. John Paul II shows a propensity to break a question down into every possible category, and then fully analyze each category. Perhaps it is the limitation of the form in this book, but Ratzinger here instead will explain the limited scope of the particular question he wants to answer, and then find one or two small germs of truth that advance the discussion without fully answering it. The result is touching and very affecting. His analysis in the first section on what does it mean when Christ says he is the fulfillment of the law is striking: Jesus is speaking of his own death as the fulfillment of the ritual sacrifices of the law. Ratzinger’s treatment of new-age style “ecumenism” as offsive to human dignity cuts right to the heart.
This book is an easy read for an educated layman. It won’t give you in itself a full understanding of the relationship between Catholicism and Judaism, but it will lay out some of the stones along the path in beautiful detail.