Lehrbrief 00 2 en Online

CATTEDRA PER LA TEOLOGIA DEL POPOLO DI DIO
Introduction
and Overview
Distance Theology of the People of God –

Learning The Meaning of Judaeo-Christian
Contents 1
Contents
1 Preliminary Remarks 2
1.1 Impulses 2
1.2 A basic hermeneutical rule 3
1.3 Mutually supportive hermeneutical methods 4
1.4 Authors of the lessons 4
2 Basic Features of the Lessons 6
2.1 Theology of the people of God: A little ‘summa’ 6
2.2 The question of distinctions 6
2.3 The continuity of Old and New Testaments, of Israel and the church 7
2.4 Summary: special features of a postgraduate study
of the “Theology of the People of God –
The Meaning of Judaeo-Christian” 8
2.5 The court of the gentiles 8
3 The God who creates a people for Godself 10
3.1 The God-question in context 10
3.2 The context that no longer exists and the consequences:
all is merely human 11
4 Catholicism as an Ongoing Process 12
4.1 The same process in changing historical contexts 12
4.2 The distinction of what is Christian as a continuing task 13
4.3 Significance of this study for the church’s pastoral calling 13
4.4 Pastoral discernment in the church 16
5 Structure and Thematic Sequence of the
Lessons 18
5.1 Year I 18
5.2 Year II 18
5.3 Short summary of the content of the lessons 19
5.3.1 Year I: The development of the people of God within and from the world of the
religions 19
5.3.2 Year II: Description, changing forms, and endurance of the people of God in
history 28
6 Survey of the epochs of the history of theology 40

2 Preliminary Remarks
1.1 Impulses
What moved the authors of this series to want to offer a course of distance learn-
ing in the Theology of the People of God? Three things in particular:
1) The gap between the theology being taught in the universities and the knowl-
edge of the baptized about their faith is growing, especially in Europe. It is evi-
dent, and not only from statistics and questionnaires, that the most elementary
truths of the Christian creed are foreign to the majority of the baptized. A new
paganism is spreading through the church, and scholarly theology cannot put
a brake on it in the rich, secularized countries.
2) One reason for this is that standard, highly-developed theological scholarship
in the wealthy and secularized countries is a world apart from the place of
its application, the place that must also be the place of its hermeneutics, (the
explanation and understanding of biblical and dogmatic texts): That place is
the Church, in its concrete communities. This distance learning program uses
theological reflection, as well as the critique of religion developed by the Eu-
ropean Enlightenment, to help make the basics of Christian faith and action
so clear that they may be an inspiring encouragement for the baptized, for the
Church's parishes, communities, and institutions and that this may be seen as
a task of any theology. Basic truths of Christian identity such as “redemption,”
“salvation,” “forgiveness of sins,” “eternal life,” “heaven,” and “judgment” are
to be retrieved and expressed in new language, so that they represent a reality
that will awaken the interest of our contemporaries.1
3) The acceptance and the updating transformation in present practice of the
unique Jewish-Christian tradition threatens to cease in our present day. But an
understanding of this heritage presupposes conditions that are scarcely pres-
ent at all in the self-concept and experience of many of the baptized: name-
ly, participation today in the history of God with Israel and the church, and in
God's desire to save the world (sentire cum ecclesia).
1 See Pope Benedict XVI's proposed response to the crisis of theology in the universities: “[Romano]
Guardini depicts his arduous path to the doctorate and to academic professorship, which proved so
difficult for him because German theology had submitted itself unreservedly to the methodological
canon of the university, where only history and the natural sciences counted as science. Scientific
theology was accordingly reduced to historical theology. Guardini, in contrast, did not wish to be-
come a historian but a theologian and philosopher. In other words, he did not desire to find out what
was once the case in the past but rather what is true in the past and in the present and is therefore of
concern to us. Such being his endeavor, he had no place in the theology judged fit for the doctorate.
Because he was conscious of doing something which was nevertheless entirely worthy of the univer-
sity, he would say that he was working for a university of the future which did not yet exist. As far as
I can see, it still does not exist even today, but it ought to exist, and we ought to continue to work for
it.” Joseph Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Theology in Today’s Debates
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 78, referring to Romano Guardini, Berichte über mein Leben.
Autobiographische Schriften. Aus dem Nachlass hg. von F. Henrich (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1985).
Preliminary Remarks 3
1.2 A basic hermeneutical rule

The conditions for understanding, and the obstacles that stand in the way of
such understanding today, were formulated as follows by the Catholic exegete
Helmut Merklein (1940–1999):
“The simplest, most effective, and enduring basic h e r m e n e ut i c al rule is:

a (theological) understanding of the Bible presupposes that it is read in th e
c ommunit y of b e li e ve rs . This rule does not disqualify a scholarly interpre-
tation, for scientific exegesis, as a scholarly discipline, sees its activity as a service
to the believing community whereby – in accordance with its unique task – it
seeks to preserve it from arbitrary readings and to call it to a listening obedience.
However, exegesis must accept the criticism that its awareness of and attention
to this e c c l e si al f un c t i on and dimension of its work have been deficient.
On the other hand, exegesis is faced with the problem that it speaks of the faith
experiences of earliest Christianity to a church that, while it is well organized,
scarcely sees itself as a c ommunit y of e x p e r i e n c e made up of b e li e ve rs .
As a result, the faith experiences to be found in the Bible can scarcely be com-
municated today, or they are perceived even less clearly in light of the current
d e f i c it of e x p e r i e n c e . Of course, the sensorium of exegesis suffers from that
same deficit. Exegesis must exercise its church function more vigorously, and
the church must become more ecclesial (in the sense of its unique calling as
ekklesia). The more ecclesial the church is, the better it – and exegesis with it – will
be able to understand the Word of the Bible. And the more deliberately exegesis
confronts its ecclesial function, the more it can contribute to the transformation
of the churchliness of the church. The fact that the church communities in their
current reality are only able to carry out a hermeneutical function in limited
fashion has probably contributed to the present situation in which the process of
understanding the Bible has shifted more and more to the individual sphere.” 2
The Protestant exegete Peter Stuhlmacher (*1932) arrives at a very similar

view in his interpretation of 1 Cor 2:6-16:
"Inner clarity about the biblical testimony to faith is available only to men and
women who, as interpreters of Scripture, allow themselves to be interpreted by
it and share in the spiritual life of Christ’s community. […] To state it in terms of
the biblical wisdom tradition: spiritual knowledge of the Gospel is a matter of
an understanding heart. It involves noetic effort [aimed at understanding] and
a practical surrender of life (cf. 1 Cor 13:1-3; John 7:16-17). Spiritual knowledge
finds its natural place in the community of believers and increases most fruit-
2 Helmut Merklein, „Integrative Bibelauslegung”, in idem, Studien zu Jesus und Paulus II (Tübingen:
Mohr-Siebeck, 1998), 115–22, at 119.
fully per mutuum colloquium et consolationem fratrum" [through the mutual

conversation and consolation of brethren].3
1.3 Mutually supportive hermeneutical methods

The conditions for understanding (or pre-understanding) are one thing; method-
ological approaches are different, though connected. From the beginning Chris-
tian theologians have valued the application of methods approved by scholarship.
Thus in the third century Origen adopted the allegorical method that had been
developed by Greek philosophers in order to understand Homer anew. The meth-
od recommended itself also because it rested on the literal (historical) sense and,
in a second step, evoked a presumed deeper sense (the spiritual or theological
sense), something that slumbered in the “letters” as their “spirit.”
With the rise of the historical-critical method at the beginning of the Modern
period as the only “scholarly” method, the allegorical method was discredited.
Because, inter alia, of the biases of the allegorical method, from its beginnings
the historical-critical method was interested primarily in the “historical sense.”
It enriched understanding by developing assorted branches: history of religions,
redaction criticism, source criticism, tradition criticism, textual criticism, literary
criticism. But at the same time it had only one eye – the historical – and lacked the
theological. It has been recognized that the historical-critical method needs to be
augmented; this recognition has led to the gradual development of what is vari-
ously known as the “canonical” or “theological” approach. The same is reflected in
the methodological variety of these lessons; after all, this is about understanding
a subject that is not one dimensional: anchored in the historical as its indispens-
able basis, the study aims to open access to the actions of God.
1.4 Authors of the lessons

The authors of these lessons are theologians and priests belonging to the Catholic
Integrated Community, whose members – a majority of whom are lay people, both
married and unmarried – according to their church-authorized statutes, see it as
their task “to make the Gospel present in such a way that those who are alienated
may find a way to the faith of the Catholic Church again.”
3 Peter Stuhlmacher, “Die Relevanz der Lehre des Paulus,” in idem, Biblische Theologie und Evangelium.
Gesammelte Aufsätze (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2002), 165. At the end of the essay he points to Mar-
tin Luther, who in 1536 — believing that he was dying — wrote in the “Smalcald Articles” (III, 4): “for
God is superabundantly rich [and liberal] in His grace [and goodness]. First, through the spoken Word
by which the forgiveness of sins is preached [He commands to be preached] in the whole world; which
is the peculiar office of the Gospel. Secondly, through Baptism. Thirdly, through the holy Sacrament of
the Altar. Fourthly, through the power of the keys, and also per mutuum colloquium et consolationem
fratrum [through the mutual conversation and consolation of brethren], Matt. 18:20: “Where two or
three are gathered together, etc.” For the text of the Smalcald articles see http://bookofconcord.
org/smalcald.php.
Preliminary Remarks 5
The authors of the lessons have for many years been firmly rooted in an “experien-
tial community of believers,” as the exegetes postulate is necessary for an under-
standing of the biblical witness to faith, so that the community’s reality may once
again carry out a hermeneutical function.
The statutes of the Catholic Integrated Community put it this way: “They join their
lives together in a variety of ways.” These lessons have grown out of an ongoing
dialogue: exchange among theologians, the secular activities of the community,
and their reflection on their church-assigned task in their assemblies, a task that
integrates the community into the mission and doctrine of the whole church .
6 Basic Features of the Lessons

The course of study, “Theology of the People of God,” is made up of twenty-four
lessons, together with this introduction and an additional session at the end of the
second year that uses an iconographic theme as an example of the expression of
our questions in art. The course is planned to take two years and will be supported
by regular face-to-face meetings. The lessons do not treat or present the panorama
of traditional theological disciplines, divided and distinguished as separate sub-
jects. Instead, a new perspective on the whole subject is opened by the interaction
of historical, dogmatic, exegetical, and above all fundamental theology.
2.1 Theology of the people of God: A little ‘summa’

The course will offer all those who have achieved an academic degree in any field
of study and who are interested in scholarly theology and the church the opportu-
nity to become acquainted, in a kind of summa, with the truth at the heart of the
Jewish-Christian tradition that remains a powerful impetus within it to this day:
“To the end of the ages you do not cease to gather a people to yourself.” The focus on
the “people of God” in God’s history with the world is likewise the scarlet thread
running through the whole course, as the Church confesses in the third anaphora
of the Eucharist.
This focus is not a narrowing to a special theology. On the contrary: by the fact
that this subject of the “people of God,” which is encountered in and can be de-
scribed from experience within history – and in its changing forms throughout
history – is made the center of study and reflection one’s horizon will be widened
to encompass everything: the initiator, the historical process of the people's or-
igins, its changing story, its growing awareness of its identity, its self-concept in
relation to the “other peoples,” and its unique assignment in the world.
2.2 The question of distinctions

This introduces the tonic chord that sounds through all the lessons: the question
of distinctions. Nations have always had their gods and their religions; the people
of God emerged as a late element in history. What is its character? Is it a niche for
those with a ‘perfect pitch’ in matters of religion? Is it an oasis in a dry land, as
Karl Rahner once said? Is it made up of a network of “synagogues of truth” that
God has established throughout the world?4 Is it the “seat of Wisdom” – somehow
the multiplied throne of divine Wisdom, who found her resting place in Israel5
and goes forth from there as God’s logos and torah?6 In much the same way, in the
nineteenth century John Henry Newman, confronted with Darwin’s theory of
4 Cf. Clement of Alexandria, To Autolychus II, 14.

5 Cf. the praise of Wisdom in Sirach 24:8, 11.
6 Cf. Isa 2:3.
Basic Features of the Lessons 7
evolution, considered the church’s task, which, in the best tradition of the church
fathers, he saw beginning with Abraham in Ur of Chaldea.7 Why was Israel not to
be “like the other nations”? How did this difference come about? How did it pre-
serve its identity? Why did it not exist from the outset as something perfect, but
instead have to develop? Were there interruptions and continuities? How could
Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict X VI) say: “In Christianity, rationality be-
came religion and was no longer its adversary”? 8
The place in which we learn and behold this is above all the unique and particular
history of Israel with its God, to which the history of Jesus and the earliest com-
munities is added as a continuation and universalization: one history, because it
has the same origin. It is “canonical” also in the sense that it cannot be replaced by
Indian Vedas or Germanic sagas. The God of Israel, who was gradually recognized
as the one, universal God, “could” descend only on Sinai, not on Fuji or Olympus,
because it was only by Moses that he could be identified as the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.
2.3 The continuity of Old and New Testaments, of Israel and the
church
This, then, is the third line that runs through all the lessons: the continuity of the
one history of God with Israel and the church, since Abraham, and so the unity of
Old and New Testaments and the church’s enduring rootedness in Israel. And all
that even though the “people of God” does not exist as one, in factual perception
or in the consciousness of those belonging to it; to this day it is divided by the pri-
mal schism into Jews and Christians. The later divisions of the church in 1054 and
1517 and all the other ones are less momentous in comparison.
Then are there two “peoples of God?” Or is the church the “new people of God,”
taking the place of Israel, the “old people of God?” That is a notion that has left
profound and ominous traces in the minds and actions of Christians.9 The bond
(vinculum)10 that irrevocably ties together Israel and the church, the Old and the
7 “And wherever she [the church] went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind
and voice of the Most High; ‘sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them
questions;’ claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects,
completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarg-
ing the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So …[she] has been [enabled] to draw and
collect [knowledge] together out of the world …” John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development
of Christian Doctrine, chap. 8, §1, part 12 (London: James Tovey, 1845). Accessible at http://www.
newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html, last accessed 22.1.2016.
8 Christianity. The Victory of Intelligence over the World of Religions, lecture by Cardinal Joseph Ratzin-
ger, 27 November 1999 at a colloquium at the Sorbonne, Paris, on the theme: “2000 Years After
What?” Accessible at http://inters.org/ratzinger-truth-christianity, last accessed 13 July 2016.
9 Cf. the line in Thomas Aquinas’s hymn, Pange lingua: “Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui”
(“types and shadows have their ending, for the newer rite is here”).
10 Nostra aetate 4: Mysterium Ecclesiae perscrutans, Sacra haec Synodus meminit vinculi quo populus
Novi Testamenti cum stirpe Abrahae spiritualiter coniunctus est (“As the sacred synod searches into
New Testament, is at the same time the foundation of the individual lessons; for
only if we keep that ordained constellation before our eyes will it be possible to
give a foundation to the mystery of the church, as Vatican II has said.
2.4 Summary: special features of a postgraduate study

of the “Theology of the People of God –
The Meaning of Judaeo-Christian”
1) The soul of this theological perspective is the oneness of the two, the Old and
the New Testament, as normative Sacred Scripture, as Vatican II demands of
theology as a whole. The methods of modern scriptural exegesis are applied as
the means to understanding, including canonical exegesis, which has recently
attracted special interest.
2) The distinction between “religion” and “revelation,” for which Israel struggled,
and which it made the subject of reflection throughout its history, is one of the
most remarkable achievements of the people of God. This “enlightenment”
is sought in the course of the particular and yet representative history of Is-
rael, through a purification and clarification of the religious features of faith.
Twentieth-century “dialectical theology” gave an incisive formulation of these
findings. It can be seen as the indispensable background in experience for an
appropriate understanding of the Bible. The awareness of distinction handed
down by the people of God qualifies its history as a story of freedom.
3) Not least, on that basis a theological study from the perspective of “the people
of God” will place special emphasis on the cooperation of faith and reason. The
“enlightened” way of thinking already apparent in the Old Testament is of the
essence of Judaism and also shapes Christianity, especially through the recep-
tion of the questioning thought of Greece in the wisdom literature of the Old
Testament and in the early church. Hence no one will be surprised to find the
thinkers and theologians of the Jewish-Christian-Western traditions adduced
as the primary “fathers” and witnesses; this is owing to the fact that the “word”
and “instruction” that went forth from Jerusalem and Zion11 found their first,
precedent-setting space for development in the historical connection to Athens
and Rome.
2.5 The court of the gentiles

Still another thread will run through the individual lessons: maintaining and
keeping a focus on the questions of the unbaptized and of “baptized pagans,”12 that
the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant
to Abraham’s stock.”). Accessible at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_coun-
cil/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html.
11 Cf. Isa 2:3.
12 This was Joseph Ratzinger's analysis as early as 1972: “Currently there are more and more baptized
pagans, meaning persons who have become Christian by means of baptism but do not believe and
Basic Features of the Lessons 9
is, above all those of our contemporaries and their worldview. They are marked
by secularization and individualization; as conscious members of the post-En-
lightenment they are increasingly alienated from the traditions of the church and
from everything that claims not to be “from us” and “humanly made.” In a sense
this project is aimed at creating a kind of “court of the Gentiles” for them, as Pope
Benedict X VI intended when he announced a Year of Faith in 2012.
have never known the faith. This is a paradoxical situation.” In German in idem, "Zur Frage nach der
Unauflöslichkeit der Ehe. Bemerkungen zum dogmengeschichtlichen Befund und zu seiner gegenwär-
tigen Bedeutung", Gesammelte Schriften 4, (Freiburg, et al: Herder, 2014), 620).
10 The God who creates a people for Godself
3 The God who creates a people for Godself

The God-question will not be treated in isolation but in its context in history and
the history of salvation: the God who could be referred to in Neoplatonist-Thom-
istic language as the “highest good” (summum bonum) in order to guarantee ab-
solute divine transcendence was first known to be the One God through the crea-
tion of a people for Godself, a people deriving its existence and self-understanding
from its relationship to this distinctive God: “you shall be my people, and I will be
your God” (Jer 30:22). This insight, that one can only speak rightly of God when
God’s will is kept in view13 will be brought home in the lessons.
3.1 The God-question in context

This history, so far lasting 3,500 years, has left its traces everywhere in the
world. Walker Percy, an American Catholic author (1916–1996), became
aware of that when he was strolling in New York City and asked himself: “If
there are Jews here, why are there not Hittites here?”14 (For him the Jews, like
the ecclesia, were a “sign”).15
John Henry Newman, who later became convert and cardinal of the Catholic
Church, said in his New Year’s address at St. Mary in Oxford in 1837: “Unbe-
lievers of this day, who profess to be philosophical, speak of Christianity as a
wonderful fact indeed in the history of the world, but still as being human.”16
Here he saw the advent of something that, introduced by the European Enlight-
enment and its critique of religion, was to become the more and more dominant
mark of modern consciousness and practical living: that something transcen-
dent, supernatural, “beyond this world” (as expressed in traditional language and
ideas), the Wholly Other beyond what lies before our eyes, can neither be recog-
nized with certainty (thus the critique of knowledge since Immanuel Kant) nor
13 Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Paed 1.6: “For as His will is work, and this is named the world; so also His
counsel is the salvation of men, and this has been called the church.”
14 Walker Percy, Message in the Bottle (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975).
15 “The only other sign in the world [besides one’s own self] which cannot be encompassed by theory is
the Jews, their unique history, their suffering and achievements, what they started (both Judaism and
Christianity), and their presence in the here-and-now. […] The Jews are both a sign and a stumbling
block. […] Judaism is offensive because it claims that God entered into a covenant with a single tribe,
with it and no other. Christianity is doubly offensive because it claims not only this but also that God
became one man, He and no other. […] Only two signs are of significance in a world where all theo-
retical cats are gray. One is oneself and the other is the Jews. But for the self that finds itself lost in
the desert of theory and consumption, there is nothing to do but set out as a pilgrim in the desert in
search of a sign. In this desert, […] there remains only one sign, the Jews. By “the Jews” I mean not
only Israel, the exclusive people of God, but the worldwide ecclesia instituted by one of them, God
become man, a Jew.” Walker Percy, “Why Are You a Catholic? The Late Novelist’s Parting Reflections,”
Crisis 8 (1 Sept. 1990): 14–19, at 18; repr. in: idem, Signposts in a Strange Land, Patrick Samway S. J.
(ed.), (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991).
16 Sermon at St. Mary’s, Oxford, 1st of January 1837, The Church and the World; cf. http://www.new-
manfriendsinternational.org/newman/?p=599.
The God who creates a people for Godself 11
experienced as an all-determining factor in the lives of contemporaries. It is sim-

ply absent, at best marvelous, but in any case merely human.
3.2 The context that no longer exists and the consequences:

all is merely human
What Newman asserted of Christianity – that it is regarded as an exclusive-
ly “human thing” – was substantiated by a deep-seated change in worldview, a
paradigm shift: The individual is defined only by what he or she is and makes of
himself or herself; there is no horizon of salvation – whether salvation-historical
or philosophical – from which one might derive coordinates for or advice about
the meaning of one’s life or self-understanding. This radical individualization and
gaping absence of meaning was already looming in the late Middle Ages.
The consequences of this dissolution were dramatized by Friedrich Nietzsche

in the speech of the madman about the “death of God”: "What did we do when
we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we
move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways,
forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as
through infinite nothingness?" 17 This shudder has again arisen in the present, per-
haps in the form of laments at the disintegration of values, the decline in the level
of culture, in verbal evocations of a diffuse Christian West. In fact, Jesus’ saying:
“Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are
God’s” (Mark 12:17) is losing its defining power: everything threatens to become
“Caesar’s.”
17 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006), 90.
12 Catholicism as an Ongoing Process

The Colombian Catholic philosopher Nicolas Gómez Dávila (1913–1994) for-
mulated the aphorism: “Whereas the Protestant depends on a text, we Catholics
are the process where the text was born.” 18 Such a pointed expression can push
us toward a more nuanced view that can advance and focus the lessons: what is
specific about Christian faith, then, is the process, still ongoing today, of coming
into a relationship of simultaneity19 with the New Testament and onto a level with
the canonical texts, as Pope Francis said to the German bishops:20 “we can let
ourselves be inspired by the life of the first Christians. Suffice it to think of Priscilla
and Aquila, those faithful collaborators of Saint Paul. As a married couple they wit-
nessed, with convincing words (cf. Acts 18:26), but especially with their life, that the
truth, founded on the love of Christ for His Church, is truly worthy of faith.”
4.1 The same process in changing historical contexts

If we approach the past history of the project “people of God” from this perspec-
tive we will see that the context within which this process is taking place is indeed
permanently and radically changing – according to time, nation, continent, cul-
ture – but the subject of reflection has always remained the same “since Abra-
ham,” and must remain the same. It was Israel on whom God laid the task, a little
nation in Western Asia, and it was first the lands of southern Europe and north-
ern Africa in which the idea of what Christianity might be was formulated and
developed; it was there, around the Mediterranean, that the early communities
formed. All of them had to accept the history of the little West-Asian land of Israel
as their own history.
It was Greek philosophy, not religion, that became the dialogue partner of Chris-
tian theology. Hence early points of contact, dialogues and arguments, and coun-
18 Scholion 1,360: Mientras que el protestante depende de un texto, los católicos somos el proceso
donde el texto nació, accessible at http://don-colacho.blogspot.com/2010/01/god-religion.html,
last accessed 24.1.2016. See Gómez Dávila’s Scholia to an Implicit Text, Bilingual Selected ed., trans.
Roberto Pinzón (Bogotá: Villegas Editores, 2013).
19 Søren Kierkegaard reflected and wrote a great deal on this simultaneity; cf. “The Situation of the
Contemporary Follower,” chap. 4 in: Kierkegaard, Works, vol. 7: [Johannes Climacus], Philosophical
Fragments, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1985), 55–88. Kierkegaard saw himself as an “individual before God” and tried to answer
the question, similar to that posed previously by the Enlightenment philosopher Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing: “can a historical point of departure be given for eternal consciousness; how can such a
point of departure be of more than historical interest; can an eternal happiness be built on historical
knowledge?” SKS 4, 213, quoted in István Czakó, “Rethinking Religion Existentially: New Approaches
to Classical Problems of Religious Philosophy in Kierkegaard,” in: A Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Jon
Stewart (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 281–94, at 286. This was printed on the title page of the
first edition of Kierkegaard’s works (Copenhagen: 1844).
20 Address to the German bishops, 20.11.2015, at http://zenit.org/articles/pope-s-address-to-german-
bishops.
Catholicism as an Ongoing Process 13
cils clarified how it is possible to speak of the miracle of God’s immanence, “God-
man,” “Son of God.”
What was achieved in the time of the church fathers and early communities thus
became the history of Christians in all places, then and in the future. It was con-
tinued in the Latin Church and the Eastern Church, in the Orders being founded,
in theological schools, always in dialogue with philosophy and especially in the
centuries-long struggle to separate church and state. This reality that developed
in the European lands – though there were also mighty nations and noteworthy
cultures elsewhere – became a tool, so to speak, for fulfilling Jesus’ command:
“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel,” and so became the common his-
tory of the one body of all Christians.
Therefore in these lessons this path will be presented together with the names of
many persons, believers and nonbelievers, through whose faith and failure, effort
and charismas, criticism and doubt, faith was enabled to develop further, even
though witness embodied in the life of Christians was continually obscured by a
great deal of injustice, sin, and failure.
4.2 The distinction of what is Christian as a continuing task

One thematic focus of the whole project will be found in Lessons 1–4 of the first
year: “why Christianity is not a religion.” This negative formulation – what Christi-
anity is not – signals something essential. The people of God’s (that is, Israel’s and
the church’s) discovery of its identity is the historical equivalent of a process of
conflict/rejection that continues today: conflict with and turning away from what
“is otherwise the case,” whether that is somewhat diffusely called “religion” or
“not being like the other nations”. It can also take place through a critical adoption
and adaptation of the images and experiences of others. The primal form of this
differentiation is rooted in the command to Abraham: “Go” (Gen 12:1); it was made
a reality in Israel's exodus from Egypt, and it has its Christian continuation in our
baptismal rejection (abrenuntiatio) of Satan and his works and displays.
What a church father (Tertullian) calls vera religio – or, when one realizes that
what is being reclaimed as one’s own is plunder (Irenaeus of Lyons) – finds a
contemporary echo in Joseph Ratzinger's dictum: “In Christianity, rationality
became religion.”21 The differentiation of what is Christian implies a tendency to
distinctiveness, and thus to a different life.
4.3 Significance of this study for the church’s pastoral calling

The methodical progression of the lessons, starting with central themes of faith
and opening them up for our contemporaries, is oriented to the fundamental in-
tent of Vatican II, as, for example, Pope John Paul II said on the publication of
21 See footnote n. 8 above.
the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The principal task entrusted to the Coun-
cil by Pope John X XIII was to guard and present better the precious deposit of
Christian doctrine in order to make it more accessible to the Christian faithful
and to all people of good will.”22
We see that this approach, namely thinking from the center, is a counterweight
to the fragmentation often to be witnessed in academic theology.23 This course is
therefore a theological foundation for pastoral work intended to bridge the gap be-
tween scholarly theology and pastoral practice. “Talking about God” (theo-logy)
is first and above all “pastoral” when it makes clear what is God’s “pastoral plan,”
namely, to gather a people for God. It is this “project of God,” as it can be derived
from the history of revelation, that these lessons seek to make more transparent.
This can be illustrated with an example from Lesson 12: the statement “God be-
came human” is often interpreted in current pastoral practice – especially during
the Christmas season – in the sense of an appeal to a more intensive humanism.
(“Do what God does: become human!”) Considered from the theological center,
however, the feast of Christmas means that God found an enduring “dwelling
place” in Jesus, the Jew. The human being proves, precisely through the history of
Israel’s salvation, present in Jesus (son of David), to be really “capax Dei” (capable
of knowing God). That is a consequential insight especially for the church’s pasto-
ral calling: instead of falling prey to the recurrent temptation “to be like the other
nations,” against which the prophets warned,24 accepting the pastoral challenge:
Christians – like Israel – can find and bring about a different way of living on the
basis of a new understanding of their existence. It is precisely the distinction be-
tween the religions and biblical revelation that underlies these lessons that makes
it possible to make this purpose of God's shepherding (= pastoral) care a reality.
In answer to the question what the effort to acquire theological insights can con-
tribute to daily pastoral activity we may quote a statement by Pope Francis in his
apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (EG)25 in which he describes some ap-
proaches that are necessary for preparing a good sermon. The Sunday sermon is,
in fact, an outstanding locus of church preaching and thus of the church’s pastoral
activity.26 Preachers, according to Pope Francis, must “give our entire attention
22 Pope John Paul II, apostolic constitution Fidei Depositum, Introduction. Available at http://www.vati-
can.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/aposcons.htm (accessed 25.1.2016).
23 This is also presented positively, for example as “an ensemble of plural, differently accented practical
theological propositions” (Walter Fürst, “Praktische Theologie,” LThK 8, ed. Walter Kasper (Freiburg:
Herder, 2009), 502.
24 Cf., for example, Ezek 20:32: “What is in your mind shall never happen — the thought, ‘Let us be like
the nations, like the tribes of the countries, and worship wood and stone.’”
25 Pope Francis, apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (24 Nov. 2013), accessible at http://w2.
vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazi-
one-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html (accessed 25.1.2016).
26 On this see Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s advice to preachers (he was at the time a pastor in London-Syden-
ham): “The days are over in which we thought we had time, in the pulpit, to bring in all sorts of edifying
to the biblical text, which needs to be the basis of our preaching.”27 This presupposes
that we recognize “that the word [of God] is always beyond us.” Hence there is need
for “taking the time to study it with the greatest care and a holy fear lest we distort
it. To interpret a biblical text, we need to be patient, to put aside all other concerns,
and to give it our time, interest and undivided attention” (EG 146). Each biblical
text must be related “to the teaching of the entire Bible as handed on by the Church”
and at the same time “transmit the intrinsic power of the text which has been pro-
claimed” (EG 148). In this sense the lessons in this course are also intended to
make the whole of the teaching fruitful on the basis of the particular “intrinsic
power” of the elements of the biblical message.
Finally, who are the intended recipients of these lessons? It is clear enough that the
church’s pastoral work is directed to people in the widest variety of contexts.28 The
lessons offered here are addressed to all those who are interested in diving into
central theological questions, but especially to people involved in the church’s
pastoral work, who have the task of “simplifying” the content for their particular
contexts.
Ultimately, the goal is the same for all: shaping one’s personal, ecclesial, and so-
cial life out of the center of faith – as “people of God.” Therefore these lessons are
aware of their obligation to the community character of the church, as it has been
and is repeatedly emphasized by past and present popes. Thus, for example, Pope
John Paul II said in his encyclical “Novo millenio ineunte”, “To make the Church
the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the
millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God’s plan and re-
spond to the world’s deepest yearnings” (no. 43). In his programmatic lecture on
Western culture at the Collège des Bernardins (Paris), Pope Benedict X VI – bas-
ing his remarks on the monks’ search for God (quaerere Deum) – also spoke of
Scripture, which “requires exegesis, and it requires the context of the community in
which it came to birth and in which it is lived. This is where its unity is to be found,
and here too its unifying meaning is opened up. To put it yet another way: there are
dimensions of meaning in the word and in words which only come to light within the
living community of this history-generating word.” 29
literature, philosophy, everyday wisdom, and politics. The's time the church has is short […] The thirty
minutes that the pastor has each week in which to speak to the congregation really leave no time for
aesthetics or politics […] People who are looking for such things can find them much better elsewhere
at any time.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Works. English; v. 13: London, 1933-1935; translated from the Ger-
man edition edited by H. Goedeking, M. Heimbucher, and H.-W.Schleicher; English edition edited by
K. Clements; translated by Isabel Best; supplementary material trans. Douglas W. Stott. (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2007), 301 (=291-292 in the German ed.).
27 In the same sense, Vatican II already desired that the basis for homilies should be the explanation of
the text of Scripture; cf. Dei verbum 24.
28 On this see, for example, the milieu-studies done in recent years on contemporary “life-worlds,”
available, e.g., at http://www.milieus-kirche.de (accessed 30.11.2015).
29 Pope Benedict XVI, Address at the Collège des Bernardins, Paris, 12 Sept. 2008. Available at http://
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/206663?eng=y (accessed 29.1.2016).
4.4 Pastoral discernment in the church

The key phrase “discerning what is Christian,” which runs like a scarlet thread
through this distance-learning course (cf. 4.2) was shaped by Romano Guar-
dini (1885–1968). It is intended to contribute to making visible the unique way
of thinking and living that results from biblical revelation. But “discernment” is
also necessary within the people of God. In a central section of his first letter to
the community in Corinth, Paul speaks of “discernment of spirits” (1 Cor 12:10),
something he lists as one of the charisms in the community. Testing what is said
in the Jesus community and how life is lived there is not simply a matter of com-
mon sense about what is most obvious and practical; it is always necessary to test
what in the language of the time, events, or persons is God’s address to the com-
munity and what is not. The African theologian Origen (185–254) made a point
of that in his commentary on the Song of Songs when he said that it is a matter
of realizing what is secundum Deum (according to the will of God) and what is
ex diabolo (of the devil).30 Making that distinction is sometimes difficult because
what is seductive may appear to be both true and useful. The “signs of the times,”
as Vatican II calls this “language” (“Gaudium et spes”, no. 4) are not always clear
and obvious. Particularly in difficult personal situations within which Christians
live there is consequently the necessity for “pastoral discernment.”
Therefore it is no accident that Pope Francis’s apostolic letter on the family31

contains the words “discernment” and “pastoral discernment” more than thirty
times, especially when the Pope speaks of difficult personal decisions, for exam-
ple regarding divorce and remarriage. It is insufficient to appeal to general prin-
ciples in order to recognize whether the individual or the community as a whole
is being faithful to God’s will.32 At the same time, what is often called “real life” is
always marked by time-conditioned attitudes and can, therefore, not be a simple
measure of life according to God’s will. This imposes on us the task of finding the
right path between accommodation to the spirit of the times and a kind of legal-
ism.33 The Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) recalled, in this
connection, a “fundamental biblical law” of discernment, one to which these les-
sons are likewise indebted: “Our salvation is ‘from outside ourselves’ (extra nos).
I find salvation not in my life story, but only in the story of Jesus Christ.” 34
30 Cf. Origen, In Cant. Cant. 3 (CGS 33,326).

31 Pope Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, 19 March 2016, accessable at
https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_es-
ortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia.html, last access 12 May 2017.
32 Cf. Amoris laetitia 304; in the Instrumentum laboris (working paper) for the episcopal synod of 2015 a
whole section (Part II) is called “Discernment of Spirits with regard to the Vocation of the Family.”
33 On this cf. Denis Biju-Duval, La profondità del cuore (Cantalupa: Effatà, 2009).
34 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Bonhoeffer’s Works 5 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 47.
In a letter of 5 September 2016, Pope Francis noted that this discernment is too
little practiced, and hence he demands: “I regard education in personal and com-
munity discernment as something urgent.” 35
Previously, in 1988, Pope St. John Paul II pointed out in his post-synodal docu-
ment Christifideles laici that discernment is “always necessary.”36 The theology of
the people of God is intended to support that urgent task and thus, in the sense of
that document, attends to the opportunities for the many. There is, according to
Pope John Paul II, an “extraordinary variety of ways the Church becomes ‘present’
in life; one and all are called to work for the coming of the Kingdom of God according
to the diversity of callings and situations, charisms and ministries.” 37
35 Considero urgente . . . la formazione nel discernimento, personale e comunitario (http://it.radio-

vaticana.va/news/2016/09/12/amoris_laetitia_lettera_del_papa_ai_vescovi_di_buenos_ai-
res/1257574, accessed 4 May 2017).
36 John Paul II, Postsynodal document Christifideles laici, on the vocation and mission of the laity in the
church and the world (30 December 1988), no. 24, at http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/
apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_30121988_christifideles-laici.html.
37 Christifideles laici, no. 45.
18 Structure and Thematic Sequence of the Lessons
5 Structure and Thematic Sequence of the

Lessons
The twenty-four lessons in the course are equally divided over two years, with
twelve lessons per year. The sequence of subjects and the individual development
of themes are subject to a deliberate plan: the themes and tractates particular to
the individual, specific theological disciplines (fundamental theology, dogmatics,
exegesis of the Old and New Testaments, etc.) and the methods employed by each
will be treated in overview, from a bird’s-eye perspective, and each taken up in
such a way as to offer a view of the whole of theology.
5.1 Year I
In Year I (lessons 1-12), “The Development of the People of God Within and Outside
the World of the Religions,” discipline-specific knowledge of the major theological
themes (distinguishing what is Christian, the one and triune God, God’s omnipo-
tence and the theodicy question, the doctrine of the creation/new creation of the
world and Israel, revelation, Christology, mediation between God and the world,
miracles) will be linked and organized within an overarching horizon: the dy-
namic of the unique historical process by which Israel came to knowledge of the
one God and His will and, in the process, constituted itself as the people of God.
5.2 Year II
In Year II (lessons 13-24), “Description, Changing Forms, and Endurance of the
People of God in History,” this process will be developed as ecclesiology in the
broader sense. On the one hand, the continuity of Israel and the church will be
discussed, and on the other hand we will engage the different interpretations of
the dynamic of their common history to that point. Out of the awareness of the
universalizing of the concept of Israel as the holy people of God, on the basis of
God’s new action in Israel’s history in Jesus, the church emerges as a “sacrament,”
for the many now made up of Jews a nd Gentiles. In this context – as in the case
of the Marian dogmas – the unfolding of the “sacrament Church” in the individu-
al sacraments will be understood as a constantly renewed and present pledge to
those assembled in the Spirit of Jesus, giving a palpable shape to the “immaculata
conceptio” in its worldly existence. Seen on the background of this mission and
the resulting “Otherness”, the lessons will discuss ethics, the position and call of
individuals within the people of God, mission (inculturation), and the Christian
view of the world and reality (eschatology).
Structure and Thematic Sequence of the Lessons 19
5.3 Short summary of the content of the lessons
5.3.1 Year I: The development of the people of God within and from the
world of the religions
Lesson 1 – Ludwig Weimer
Why Christianity is Not a Religion (1):

The Beginning of the Distinction Within the Particular History of Israel
In what sense is Christianity (and Judaism as well) more than a “religion”? Why is
the great theme of distinction between faith and religion found only in the work
of Søren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, and no longer in Catholicism? How
can it respond to the fascination of today’s religious pluralism? How can it count-
er the thesis that there are only subjective truths and no real knowledge of God?
How can it reconcile faith and reason? And how would a lived biblical faith as “re-
ligionless Christianity” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) look in Catholicism?
First we must clarify the twofold face of religion, the reason why it has to be
cleansed and purified by the faith of the Bible. Why can the religions not control
human limitations, still less get beyond them? In seeking an answer, we will apply
the theories of religious studies and sociology about the reasons for the origins
of existing and lost religions. Human cultural history shows a great variety and
difference among religions, as well as an evolution of religious movements and,
in Far Eastern currents, forms that were or still are more wisdom teaching than
religion.
The history of the origins of distinctive biblical faith cannot be reconstructed in

all its details. In retrospect, the figure of Abraham became a focus at which the
distinction began to emerge. The experience of the Jewish people of God, now be-
come literature, reveals the stages in a process of purification of religion in the
pre-history of the tribes of Israel in confrontation with its Canaanite environment.
The process cannot be reconstructed with historical exactitude, above all because
the texts, or layers of the text, for the most part cannot be dated with precision,
especially since they ripened through a process of growth and were expanded in
light of later events. The history of ancient Israel with God, a history of grumbling
and falling away, but also of obedience and the fidelity of a “holy remnant,” be-
came Sacred Scripture through a series of revisions and redactions. The process
of later redaction made it clear that this growth and deepening resulted in an “en-
lightenment of humanity by God.”

Illustration Through Myths and Biblical Texts
Today’s pluralistic religious relativizing is the consequence of an incomplete

reading of the Bible. A comparativist relativization is blind to distinctions. This
lesson shows this through some particularly relevant examples, making it a prac-
tical model for biblical catecheses. A series of themes will be addressed: cosmol-
ogy, sin, the people of God as model, crises of war, healing of the body, and the
relationship between the Jewish Messiah and the Gentiles:
The history of creation is different from the cosmogonic myths and the world of
the gods. A clear indication of the difference is the motif of constant grumbling
against the impositions of God, who desires to intervene in history through be-
lievers.
The singular monotheism of the Bible – belief in a God of freedom and humanity
who cares for the sinful world – is illustrated by the reworking of Pharaoh
Akhenaten's hymn to the sun in Psalm 104.
The undivided total working-together of God and human is especially clear in the
story of the calling of the savior-figure Gideon (Judges 6).
In the legend of Balaam (Numbers 22–24) every artistic method is used to show
that in some circumstances a she-ass understands the thoughts of God better
than a pagan magician, and to tell how he becomes a preacher of the blessed
people of God.
The narrative of the healing of the Syrian leper Naaman by the prophet Elisha
(2 Kings 5) demonstrates the points of distinction between shamanistic and
believing therapy.
Finally, one story from the New Testament is adduced: How did the pagan astrol-
ogers come to Jesus’ crib (Matthew 2)?
Illustrating the difference between faith in the one God and religion within the
limitations of men does not require the reconstruction of the history of the text,
but it does call for recognition of the differences in the cause itself. Distinguishing
is a difficult task because it is not about something black-and-white but about a
mixed and fallible entity, a subtle falling away from wholeness and truth. Still, the
study is made easier when we use practical examples, most of them narrative in
character.
Why Christianity is not a religion (3):

The Distinction in the History of Jesus and in the New Testament
The completion of the distinction begun with the figure of Abraham is identical
with the truth of Christianity. If the one who began the process of going beyond
the self is a miracle, the one who perfected it is certainly so. Thus Jesus' critique of
religion becomes our subject. It will appear that it was only his disciples' under-
standing of his death that brought the history of salvation-as-enlightenment to its
perfection.
What modernity has called the Bible's “revelation,” what was previously called
“salvation history,” or “faith,” thus came about in a process of purification and
cleansing of religion. This history of human enlightenment by God was not ac-
complished by a few great philosophers but was the result of a more-than-thou-
sand-year-long existential effort by a sequence of generations. It was not achieved
solely through reflection, but also by the attempt to test the stuff of life in a con-
crete place, to discover what knowledge of God and liberation of human beings
really are, and how the two belong together.
The prophets have special importance for the distinction between religion and
faith. But the wisdom literature also has its role, playing the part of a precursor of
the later links forged by the church fathers between Greek reason and faith.
Jesus’ contribution to the distinction derives from his revolutionary interpreta-

tion of Moses through a liberating look back to the original will of the Creator and
to a present eschatology that for the first time confronted Israel’s faith with the ut-
ter nearness of God. The resistance to this challenge, which led to Jesus’ crucifix-
ion, was recognized by the disciples as the condemnation of the “religion” of the
Temple and the leadership. The experience of Jesus’ exaltation to the right hand of
God, however, also indicates the rediscovered bridge to God and God’s true will,
and a farewell to “religion” with its violence, state, temple, and sacrifices.

The Confusion of Religious Pluralism and the Truth of Faith
Today’s religious-pluralist confusion is the result of an expanded knowledge of

foreign religions and the desire for a dialogue that attempts to encounter the
stranger with tolerance, together with the spiritual distress set off by the philo-
sophical critique of knowledge that has reduced the concept of truth to a set of
subjective “truths.” The principal reasons for the collapse of a critical theology
of religions in favor of pluralism are the defects of an incomplete enlightenment

and a superficial-humanistic reading of the Bible. If Judaism and Christianity are
more than a religion, the process of clarification must be reflected in the texts of
the Bible and in doctrines.
An exact reading of the two Testaments reveals the true form of human enlight-
enment through the discovery of the redeeming will of God. Revelation, of course,
serves as a mediator, that is, it is the Word of God in human words. Initiatives
toward the rediscovery of the distinction appear in the works of Søren Kierke-
gaard (1813–1855), Karl Barth (1886–1968), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–
1945), and Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929).
While the religions are responses to the human situation, in original sin and anx-
iety, they are a “not-yet” of redemption in comparison to the freedom of the chil-
dren of God. Christian critique of religions is not a judgment on other religions; it
is a task to be accomplished within the church.
The principal criteria for distinction appear to be: genuine transcendence, de-di-
vinization of the world and monotheism, the discovery of humanity and the peo-
ple of God as full co-operators in God’s work. We find a purifying critique of reli-
gion in the Old Testament, describing a thousand years of experience. Hence the
Old Testament is indispensable for any new inculturation in mission and for every
new evangelization.
But for this purpose we need a canonical exegesis of the Bible, which must not
work in fundamentalist fashion but must receive and have built into it both his-
torical (inculturated) and historical-critical views.
Lesson 5 – Arnold Stötzel
How Faith and History are Connected
This lesson treats the outcomes of Lessons 1–4 in a kind of resumé, from a system-
atic point of view. On the one hand there is the question of history, that is, what
really happened or can be discerned from the witness of archaeology and the bib-
lical writings themselves; this is an indispensable basis and has been expanded
by the historical-critical exegesis of the last hundred years to an extent that goes
far beyond what, for example, the early church fathers knew. But it was precisely
this growing knowledge of the facts and the real course of Israel’s history and that
of Jesus that in turn raised new questions: what is the relationship of this new
knowledge of history to the interpretation recorded in the scriptures of the believ-
ing community Israel–Church? How can the “surplus” of that history be justified
so that, despite its particularity, it can be accorded a theological and universal
significance? In other words: what is the significance of faith, which experiences
and understands this history as a history with God, and how is it brought to ex-
pression?
The early church fathers and exegetes sought for centuries to find a hermeneutical
approach to this surplus, breaking open the literal, historical sense of the biblical
writings as if cracking a nut in order to expose the spiritual sense contained with-
in it – the theological meaning, what speaks of God and God’s will, what can be
discerned of it. They brought their faith to the task as a pre-understanding they
shared with the authors of the Scriptures. So-called canonical exegesis, which
augments the historical-critical approach and encounters the biblical writings in
their final form as witnesses to the faith-community that is Israel–Church, links
to that pre-understanding. The bond that unites faith and history is the people of
God in its factual historical shape, even today.
How the One and Only God was Recognized
For this as for other themes, the presentation starts with a post-Enlightenment
consciousness for which the proofs of God offered in previous centuries no lon-
ger make sense. We begin with a saying of the philosopher and mathematician
Blaise Pascal, who sensed, at the beginning of the Enlightenment, that it
was about “not the god of the philosophers, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob.” That does not mean turning away from the religion-critical impetus of the
Enlightenment or a retreat to fundamentalist positions, but an invitation to trace
the historical process by which Israel was led to knowledge of God.
That knowledge was not “finished” or complete from the beginning; it hap-
pened in traceable stages linked to historical events. At the same time, this is
a religion-critical process. The God question was clarified through confrontation
with the surrounding religions and on the basis of reflection on the people’s own
experiences as people of God (e. g. the Exodus tradition). Then, in the period of
early Judaism (3rd–1st centuries) came the confrontation with Greek-Hellenistic
culture and its critical acceptance. It was this fearless openness to the world of the
Greek Enlightenment (accomplished, e. g. by the translation of the Hebrew Bible
into Greek – the Septuagint – and in the wisdom literature) that laid the ground-
work for, on the one hand, making comprehensible, on the intellectual plane of
the era, the advances of the prophets known as Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah toward
a universalizing of the particular God YHWH to ho theos. On the other hand, this
became the basis for introducing the new history and the new phenomenon of
Jesus of Nazareth into Israel's previous history and its concept of God, without
violating monotheism. This process of clarification, whose fundamental lines are
already given in the New Testament writings, will be demonstrated, at least in

broad strokes, up to the time of the great councils.
What the Theology of the People of God Can Contribute

to the Theodicy Question
Does God want to act in face of the evil in the world, or not? Can God act? How
can God be called almighty? – That is the theodicy question, but at the same time,
a question about the idea of God people have created for themselves, and about
the state of the world. Depending on one's standpoint, there are different answers
to these urgent questions. For many, atheism remains the only option, and their
position is more credible than that of the optimists or the humanists. But whom
do we mean when we say “God”, and demand self-justification from this “God”?
These are the questions this lesson pursues, and it reveals some surprising an-
swers.
Lesson 8 – Achim Buckenmaier
How God Can Act in the World – How to Understand Miracles
This lesson attempts to respond to the Enlightenment criticisms of miracles in the

Bible and in hagiography. The bases for false and outdated methods, such as the
naturalistic explanation of biblical miracles by the rationalists, will be examined,
as well as the explanation based on psychologizing the concept of miracle. An
apologetical solution, such as reduction of divine action to something simply un-
explainable will also be shown to be inadequate. We will show that biblical faith
is compatible with the “modern worldview” so long as the limitations of natural
science are respected.
Miracle language in the New Testament must be seen as a separate category,

different from magical ideas. Miracles are “signs” for believers, recognizable as
works or hints of God. The action of the transcendent God through human beings
has its own causality. Miracles require witnesses. Because of human freedom, di-
vine action that affects human beings presumes the hiddenness of God. It evokes
faith. In many cases the miracle occurs in the context of call; thus following Jesus
is an appropriate response to the miracle.
The modern question is: how can God act in a world governed by natural laws?
Can the Creator desire to act in conflict with the natural laws he has established?
An enlightened view of the matter appears as early as the thought of Moses Mai-
monides (1135–1204), namely, that the world is oriented to miracles. The older
theological idea of miracles placed them beyond the limitation of being “contrary
to natural law.” Miracles are defined in terms of their rarity.
Many biblical miracles are in the category of promise and fulfillment. The fulfill-
ment, made possible within history by a great moment of faith, as in the case of
Augustine, shows faith itself to be the fundamental miracle. Finally, we will ask
about the contemporary possibility of God’s acting and develop new conceptual
starting points, for example, “not from us.”
How the Spirit of God Acts in Creation and in New-Creation
This lesson deals with pneumatology: on the one hand, it shows the connection
between creation and new-creation; on the other, it speaks of the communion of
the Spirit of God and the people of God, which are connected to the adventure of
salvation history. The Spirit effects the elimination of the absolute distinction in
the relationship between God and the human, just as love makes the other our
equal. There are also points of contact in reason and wisdom, and in the human
longing for beauty. The Spirit, as a love that seizes us, brings about the union
of the wills of two who are free by making us free for the love of God and God's
cause. It is called Spirit because it is not a magical force such as those summoned
by shamans or medicine men. There is, so to speak, nothing between God and
the assembly of believers in Christ, for both will the same thing. God works
through the ekklesia, just as God worked through Jesus.
Speculations (such as those of Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling and Hans Jo-

nas) about how a God beyond worlds could create a world at all, how a spirit could
create matter, will show the problems that the worldview of natural science has
posed for philosophers since the Enlightenment, and the direction in which an-
swers have been sought.
Without the gift of the Holy Spirit to the people of God, revealed in God's history
with them, the already-begunness of the eschatological reign of God would not
be real, and the strength needed to resist the freedom to sin would be lacking.
The inclination to sin would hold the church down so heavily that it would be as
joyless as ordinary society. The Holy Spirit is the one heavenly reality the people
of God already possesses.
Experiences of the Spirit are important to the church's life that, when it coincides
with the life of the earliest communities, must have the same experiences of the
Spirit and its power. Experience of the miracle of the new-creation “people of
God” makes it easier today to conclude to the fundamental miracle of Creator and
creation.
How the Principle of Mediation Links the Old Testament With the New
It is true that throughout its history Christianity has maintained the unity of Scrip-
ture, made up of Old and New Testaments, and has always defended it against
attempts to ban the Jewish Scriptures from the Church. Nevertheless, Christol-
ogy – the heart of theology – in particular has often been developed solely out
of the New Testament. When Old Testament prophecies or titles are used, this is
frequently done in a way that is disconcerting today, given the knowledge pro-
vided by historical-critical exegesis. Such topics as the virgin birth, the Suffering
Servant, the high priest, etc. seem, through the eyes of scholarship and also in the
eyes of Judaism, to have been illegitimately and offensively colonized for the use
of Christology.
There is a possible response that preserves peace with Judaism, namely, accepting
two readings, one Jewish and the other Christian.
On the one hand, that seems justified: Jewish reading of the Old Testament is
also relevant and helpful for Christians. On the other hand, Christians do not
read the Jewish Bible for its philological or cultural interest, but in the conviction
that, as Luther said, it “drives Christ” – it shows and reveals Jesus to Christians.
The scholarly interpretation of the figure of Jesus, that he was theologically a Jew
and remained so, and that his desire was for the eschatological gathering of Isra-
el, challenges the church, which is obligated to scholarly exegesis, to a new and
repeated reading of the Jewish Bible. The New Testament cannot be understood
without the Old; Jesus cannot be adequately understood from the New Testament
alone. The following questions arise:
What forms the unity of the canon made up of two parts?

Is there a unity of salvation history, and if so, what is its content?
How is the unity of creation and revelation evident in Jesus' wisdom interpreta-
tion of the Law and in his unique idea of the inbreaking of the end-time?
How are the two to be combined for the church: the Torah of Moses as letter and
the Torah in the person of Jesus?
How is Jewish interpretation of the figure of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53,
which today regards that figure more as collective, representative of the rem-
nant of the people, compatible with the Christian christological view that sees
there a single person?
Under the conditions that are now recognized as existing, how can a reading of
the Jewish Bible that is seen as pointing toward New Testament Christology be
conceived in such a way that Jews do not see the Christian interpretation as a
mutilation of their Bible, but rather as part of the fulfillment of the promise of
the pilgrimage of the nations to Mount Zion, the center of God’s covenant with
Israel, never revoked?
How the Transcendent God Became Immanent in the Person of Jesus

Christ: Jesus' Message of the Basileia.
In this lesson the question of the relationship between faith and history becomes
newly vivid in light of Jesus of Nazareth. The topic is hotly discussed, even today,
as a question of the relationship of the historical Jesus to the Christ of faith. The
synthesis formulated by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict X VI, “The Christ
of the church is the unique historical Jesus,” which he attempted to make acces-
sible in his Jesus-books, is not a general consensus among exegetes and theolo-
gians. This lesson takes Ratzinger's fundamental conviction, with its powerful
link to Christian self-understanding, as its starting point: The Jewish man Jesus,
inspired by the prophet John the Baptist, receives his call to assemble the people
of God anew, in the tradition of Israel, under the sign of the coming-near of God's
basileia. This message – affirmed by Jesus' words and deeds – is not separable from
his person, precisely in its theocentric orientation. Implicit Christology is unfold-
ed as explicit (Johannine Christology is regarded as “high Christology”), prepared
for especially in the oldest Christian hymns, found in Philippians and Colossians,
and carried forward and made precise in the early councils.
The logic of the path from the skeptical question: “Is not this the carpenter, the son
of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? Are not his sisters here with
us?” (Mark 6:3) to the hymnic statement: “He is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15) will be shown. This is only a hint at what it means
– also in dialogue with our contemporaries in Judaism – that Jesus of Nazareth
radicalizes Jewish monotheism; that the universalizing of the concept of God also
tends toward the universalizing of the people of God; that one historical person
reflects and makes present on earth the transcendent God through what that per-
son is, says, and does.
How the Doctrine of the Trinity Advances Faith in the One God
This lesson is about fidelity to Jewish monotheism and its enrichment by the
definition of God in terms of the prophetic critique of religion and the person of
the Messiah, Jesus. The lesson begins with the offense taken by Jews at Christian
statements that are subject to misunderstanding. It will be shown that Christian-
ity is not a doctrine of three gods but is intended to clarify how the transcendent
Creator can communicate the divine Self to the world within the human history.
In the Jewish Bible God's relationship to the world reaches its summit in a love-re-
lationship with God’s people, and this makes possible the further Christian dis-
covery of the nature of God. The human being is not only capax Dei (capable of
knowing God); Jewish Christianity, through its response to its history with God,
was also able to get a glimpse of the mysterion, the wondrous plan God has for the
world (Rom 11:11-12, 25, 33).
Through the monotheism of Jesus and the New Testament authors, we can show
in the crucified Messiah the “more”: the difference between our adoption as chil-
dren of God and the unique divine sonship of Jesus Christ.
Christian doctrine describes God's self-communication to the people Israel and

the world in analogies, images, and definitions. The exegesis of doctrine and the
hermeneutics that are possible today are derived from the breakthroughs at the
Council of Chalcedon in 451 (what is indivisible is also unconfused) and that of
Constantinople in 680/681 (in Jesus, the human and divine wills are united) and
demonstrated in terms of the formula of the Lateran Council of 1215 (all analogies
are more unlike than like): “Son of God” is more than a mere metaphor; this title is
the best possible analogy, but the theo-logic of monotheism shows us the limita-
tions of the trinitarian metaphor.
5.3.2 Year II: Description, changing forms, and endurance of the people of
God in history

How the Concept of “Israel as the Holy People” Was Recognized and
Specified
This lesson addresses a broad spectrum of meaning expressed in the words “Holy
people; holy; making holy; hallowing the name of God; holiness; sanctification;
the holy ones (saints).” These are the unique mark of the self-understanding and
historical existence of the people of God, what sets them apart from all others.
They express in various ways the mission of the people of God in the world. The
first petition of the Our Father refers to this in asking “hallowed be Thy Name.”
This is made still more explicit by the next two petitions, “Thy kingdom come,”
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
The lesson will examine the contributions of the Priestly writing to the Pentateuch
as a biblical basis, above all the so-called “Holiness Code” (Leviticus 17–26). In
it God’s concern for the world, grounded in God’s work of creation, is developed
as Yhwh’s dwelling among the Israelites. This introduces a process aimed at the
transformation of the world, anchored in the Exodus, the originating event that,
after the loss of the Land, was newly understood and lived as “separation” and
“sanctification.”
From this basis many questions arise, and they have become even more acute
because Jews and Christians have gone separate ways. Can we really speak of a
common mission of the people of God made up of Jews and Christians, given what
Jacob Neusner emphatically claimed when he wrote that “Judaism is simply
another religion, not merely non-Christianity”?38 What does it mean that Jescha-
jahu Leibowitz is convinced that “The faith grounded on the idea that I have
precise knowledge of God is idolatry […] God without the Torah is always an idol” 39?
To what extent does the Torah remain valid and binding? To what extent has it
found its goal and end in Christ? What was Jesus’ relationship to the Torah? Are
Christians in the “church of the Gentiles” largely Torah-less, continually exposed
to the danger of idolatry?
When Jesus, like a new Moses on the mountain, says “Be perfect, therefore, as your
heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48) he explicitly places himself and his audi-
ence in the tradition of the Holiness Code. When Paul writes to “the church of God
that is in Corinth, including all the saints throughout Achaia” (2 Cor 1:1) he signals
that the New Testament communities have entered into Israel’s mission to be a
holy people among the nations.
The representative positions of some Jewish and Christian theologians on the

relationship between Judaism and Christianity will be presented. Above all, the
newly-popular thesis of two ways of salvation running parallel to one another will
be subjected to a critical examination. A theology of the people of God will, in
contrast, mark a way that can be traveled by Jews and Christians together, athwart
the two extremes of substitution (the church as “new people of God”) and the idea
of two completely separate peoples of God (Israel alongside the church).
Lesson 14 – Michael P. Maier

How the Universalization of the People of God Emerged
How did Israel, “YHWH’s own people,” become an international people of God
opened to non-Jews? How did it happen that the distinction acquired in the histo-
ry of an ethnically-defined group became the standard for people from all other
nations?
This lesson will describe the Old Testament bases of this process: the awareness,
formulated already in Genesis, of Israel’s universal vocation and the expectation,
appearing in the prophets, that even non-Israelites will turn to the one God. The
idea that Israel would, indeed mu s t open itself to the other nations was an es-
sential consequence of the universalization of the concept of God, that is, the in-
38 Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus (eBook, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2000), 6.
39 Jeschajahu Leibowitz und Michael Shashar, Gespräche über Gott und die Welt, trans. Matthias Schmidt
(Frankfurt: Insel, 1994), 128.
sight achieved during the Babylonian exile and associated with the name “Deu-
tero-Isaiah,” that YHWH is not a national god alongside others, but the only God
whom all people must know and acknowledge. Then a vision was achieved, in
the form of the “pilgrimage of the nations,” that reconciled the idea of particulate
election with the expectation of universal salvation.
The New Testament part of the lesson will pursue the question of the way in which
the Gentiles were included in the Jewish people of God. A first section is devoted
to Jesus’ attitude toward non-Jews. Then the decisions of the “Apostolic Council”
(Acts 15), pointing the way, and the statements in the letters to the Romans and
the Ephesians about the salvation-historical community of Jews and Gentiles will
be presented. The New Testament part closes with the vision in the last book of
the New Testament, the Revelation to John, depicting a gathered eschatological
community made up of the tribes of Israel and the nations.
In the next-to-last chapter the history of the divided people of God is disussed as
a necessary addition to the texts of the Jewish-Christian Bible. First we will depict
the reasons for the increasing alienation and ultimate separation between Juda-
ism and Christianity. Then we will summarize the stages of that process whereby
separation, discrimination, expulsion, and persecution prepared the way for the
Shoah (even though that last was motivated not by religion but by racism).
This will form the background to the final chapter, which will contain a critical
confrontation with the model of two separate paths to salvation (for Jews, the To-
rah; for Christians, Jesus of Nazareth) and will present ten theses for a theology of
the people of God. These are meant to stake out the “terrain” on which Jews and
Christians can encounter one another, secluded from the extremes of substitution
(the church as “new people of God”) and the idea of two completely separated
peoples of God (Israel as Old Testament, church as New Testament people of God).
Lesson 15 – Tamás Czopf and Wolfgang Blech

Why Judaism is Indispensable to the Church
Lesson 14 described the process of universalization, in the course of which the

people of God was expanded to include the church that, very soon after its begin-
ning, was made up equally of Jewish and Gentile Christians. But further develop-
ment led to a complete loss of the Jewish-Christian presence within the church.
Against this background Lesson 15 asks, among other things, what this finding
means in light of the historical fact that the church emerged from Israel, the peo-
ple of God, and thus from Judaism. Jews and Christians are already enduringly
bound together by their common Sacred Scriptures (the so-called Old Testament)
in a kind of “biblical ecumenism” (Pinchas Lapide).
But a theological question has resurfaced, especially in light of the Shoah, and its
breadth and depth have not been fully explored. What is the salvation-historical
significance of the fact that Jesus himself, his disciples, all the apostles, the mem-
bers of the original community, and Paul, were Jews and thus members of the
first-elected people of God, Israel? Against that background, how should we as-
sess the church’s loss of its exclusively Jewish-Christian shape in the beginning?
Throughout the church’s history and the course of its theology it has again and
again been the case that this inheritance was neglected or even denied. Must we
not say as clearly as possible that a form of church separated from Israel is wrong
in calling itself the (new) people of God, and that it is in no position to represent
the “original” people of God authorized by the saving will of God?
First we will evaluate relevant texts from the Old and New Testaments to see how
the theme of “renewal of the people of God” is enunciated in them. Then, in light
of the conciliar document “Nostra aetate”, we will show to what extent the church,
through Vatican II, underwent a fundamental change of perspective with regard
to its relationship to Judaism, and what may be drawn from it for an interpretation
of the ecclesiological term “new people of God.” Finally, we will demonstrate en-
during aspects of Judaism in the church that are at the same time indispensable
components of a theology of the one people of God that Jews and Christians must
develop together.
Lesson 16 – Hans Hubert Klein

How the Spirit of Jesus Remains Present in the Church as Assembly
The biblical books reveal throughout that God is gathering a people for himself,
that he desires to dwell in the midst of that people, and that he continually as-
sembles his people anew. Such gatherings are so characteristic of the people of
God that “assembly” became its proper name: kahal, synagoge, ekklesia. Does
that fact have theological consequences? What pastoral-theological conclusions
can be drawn from the finding that in Scripture ekklesia means “people of God,”
“church,” “community,” and first of all “assembly”? Where are assemblies explic-
itly described in the Old and New Testaments? Where are they assumed? How are
they described? What functions could such assemblies have?
Beginning with the great assemblies of Israel, examples will be presented from the
New Testament writings, and the assembly-texts of the Acts of the Apostles will be
examined in more detail. It will appear that assemblies were an essential part of
the lives of Jesus’ disciples. The primary assembly, of course, was the eucharistic
gathering on the first day of the week. But the “breaking of bread” is surrounded
by other gatherings with differing content. For example, current events such as
persecution, conflict, and questions of growth are reflected upon in light of events
of past history, and this could open new perspectives for a future that emerges for
the assembly as the will of God. Thus the ekklesia takes form in concrete assem-
blies within the people of God and develops in space and time. According to the
New Testament witness, the instrument of the assembly is indispensable for the
lives of disciples in the Spirit of Jesus.

How Community in the Body of Christ and Primacy of the Person are
Related
The purpose of this lesson is to describe the progress from the question “How
much community does a Christian need?” to another perspective, “How much
community does God need for his instrument in the world?” But how can an in-
dividual become free and competent for this? Modern individualism is both an
achievement and a curse. Liberation in order to be able to love and God’s help
to this liberation reach the individual through others. The horizontal I-thou rela-
tionship is linked, in Judaism/Christianity, to a vertical tie to God’s “THOU,” and
derives from it both its measure and its enabling. This lesson will describe com-
munio theology against the background of the philosophy of personalism (Em-
manuel Mounier, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, Nikolai Berdyaev)
and linked to the practical reflections of philosophical-theological thinkers (Fer-
dinand Ebner, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas, et al.).
The various forms of community within society and in the people of God (mar-
riage, family, friendship, neighborhood and the neighbor, clan, tribe, tribal as-
sociation, nation/people – community united through its center, communities
of life and table, coenobitic monasteries) have different possibilities and tasks.
The subject for worship, tradition, and the handing-on of faith is a community
of memory and narration. The form of synagogal/house community as the local
basis for the people of God will be clarified in light of the Bible, and the Pauline
metaphor “body of Christ” will be made concrete in light of the statements of re-
cent theologians.

Why the People of God is called “Sacrament of salvation”
The themes “people of God as sacrament of salvation” and “sacraments” belong

together. The role played by the sacraments in the life of believers and the way
they are understood theologically also shows how believers see the sacrament
that is church. Lesson 18, the first of two on the sacraments, gives extended atten-
tion to the long-forgotten Old Testament background, not with regard to individ-
ual sacraments but in respect to the people of God in its mission to the world. The
application of the genuinely catholic concept of sacraments to Israel constitutes
the external frame for describing the sacramental function of Israel, its “priestly,”
that is, salvation-mediating role for the nations. That function is expressed in the
biblical metaphors “light for the nations” and “star.” The process can also be con-
cretely described in terms of the example of development to a democratic form of
the state.
In the course of its history the church has again and again reflected on itself. Be-
cause the word “sacrament” in classical theology, at the latest since the Council of
Trent, has been reserved for the designation of the seven salvific signs, theology
at first hesitated to use it, in the sense of “basic sacrament,” for the church. But
preliminary work by important theologians prepared the way for the use of the
term in the theology of Vatican II. This lesson reflects both the contribution of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s phrase “religionless Christianity” to this subject and
the effects of the sacramental action of the people of God. In this, both the rela-
tionship between church and state and the role of theology in the people of God
will come into view.

How the Church is the Source of the Sacraments
The previous Lesson 18 created a basis, in the form of a “general doctrine of sacra-
ments,” for viewing the seven “classic” Catholic sacraments. The people of God is
the basic sacrament; the individual sacraments are expressions of the instrumen-
tal character of the people of God. As God acts in the world through a people, so
he can act on individuals in the people of God and thus build up and strengthen
that instrument in the world.
This perspective achieves two things: first, the relationship between sacraments
and church is made visible. They are not celebrations of turning-points in life for
which the parish, in a sense, only makes available a space, a master of ceremonies,
and an uplifting symbolic aesthetic. They are acts of the community with and for
Jesus’ disciples today. Nor are they administrative actions conveying rights and
obligations; they are celebrations. Their festal joy is meant to strengthen the in-
dividual, or the couple, and the congregation itself. Second, it will be made clear
that today’s sacraments are also rooted in salvation history, in progress since
Abraham.
That cannot be true of each individual sacrament in the same way. Thomas Aqui-
nas counted only three sacraments corresponding to the Old Covenant: baptism,
Eucharist, and ordination. The lesson will consider that point of view, and yet the
concept of the lesson is that “people of God made up of Israel and the church” is
the framework for all the sacraments. Thus there is no need to go into details about
the general definitions of the sacraments. These will be examined briefly and can
be studied in detail in the “Catechism of the Catholic Church”. Primary attention
will be given to those questions that arise for a theology of the sacraments today,
in the post-modern situation, and that find their answers in the theology of the
people of God, grounded in the Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
The sacraments of initiation, baptism and confirmation, in relation also (as re-
gards baptism) to Jewish circumcision of boys and men, acutely pose the question
of a necessary freedom of belief and the criteria for membership in the people of
God. The Eucharist, as the church’s central sacrament, inquires about the nature
of the people as assembly, how that assembly comes to be, what distinguishes it
from every other form of community, the source from which it lives, and what it
effects. That difference will be made concretely visible in the cases of individuals
within the church: office in the church is not a mere function but is conveyed as a
sacrament. In the Roman Catholic Church celibacy is furthermore demanded of
priests and bishops. Is that only a relic of an epoch in Christianity that was hostile
to sex, one that made specially-chosen candidates the designated subjects of of-
fice, or does it contain an indication of the new, not religious-functional character
of office that is already sketched in Scripture? By no means least, office will in this
way be placed within the larger context of discipleship of Jesus, within which the
sacrament of marriage must also be situated if it is to be not merely a blessing of
the relationship of two people but also the reception into service of the natural
condition of the human person “for the sake of the reign of God.”

The Forms and Effects Produced by the Concept “People of God”
The history of the effects of “you shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”
(Lev 19:2; cp. Lesson 13) will be presented in terms of certain phenomena and
lines of development. It is assumed that this mission is imposed on the whole peo-
ple of God un div i d e d l y, even though history has produced a multitude of forms
and developments; even though Jews and Christians have gone their separate
ways; even though only now, after long centuries of alienation, persecution, and
“contempt” (Jules Isaac), is an attempt being made on both sides to rediscover

what they have in common.
Today there seems to be a situation similar to those with which Israel, over a mil-
lennium, was confronted individually and alone. Now it is the case that the church
also must live as a holy people among the (new) pagans and so hallow God’s name.
The Christians are less well-equipped for this than the Jews, who have never
ceased to see themselves as a “people” obligated to the Torah and the “different-
ness” that goes with it. In 1933, as the heavens were darkening over the Jews, the
theologian Erik Peterson wrote in his commentary on chapters 9–11 in Paul’s
letters to the Romans: “The Gentile who loses faith is nothing. The Jew who does not
believe in Christ nevertheless does not cease to belong to the noble olive tree of God.
[…] The Christian peoples who lose their faith do in fact descend to a measure of bar-
barism and insubstantiality that is impossible for the Jews.” 40
Since the post-Constantinian period Christians let themselves in for building up a

majority religion, held together by the promise of an afterlife. The Jews, as a people
of faith – without state structures or land – have survived. And in the historical
moment when the church had also lost its secular power in the form of a church
state, they founded a Jewish state intended to be oriented both to secular dem-
ocratic principles and to the Torah of Sinai – a balancing act that concerns Jews
very deeply, and indeed divides them.
The people of God and its mission in the world are factors with which almost no
one still reckons. Even in the early Christian period, and still more obviously
during the time of the nearly complete Christianization of the West, “the saint,”
the “cleric” moved into the foreground, taking the place of the holy people, and
standing in contrast to the “people.”
But alongside this we can observe a complementary development over the centu-
ries: in various places and through different initiatives “the saints” have gathered
and continue to gather in a transformed shape; now they are called “hermits” or
“monks,” people who come together in communities of celibates undertaking vol-
untary poverty – initiatives toward a new form of the people of God under new
conditions.
Today the Jewish faith tradition encounters in Christianity a mixture of faith and
religion that cannot withstand the European Enlightenment and the critique of
religion. But now that, at last, even secular utopias have proven to be of little help,
and many have collapsed – could it be that the “promises” entrusted to the people
of God are not yet exhausted?
40 Erik Peterson, “The Church of Jews and Gentiles,” in idem, Theological Tractates, trans. Michael J.
Hollerich (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
Lesson 21 – Bernhard Koch, Ludwig Weimer

What Is Special About the Ethics of the People of God
The church that, until Vatican II, was so very eurocentric now finds itself in a new
position. It no longer sees itself as a universe that, quite naturally, encompasses
everything, an Ordo in the sense of the medieval symbiosis of “spiritual” and “sec-
ular” such as was expressed, for example, in the phrase “The Holy Roman Empire
of the German Nation.”
While the union of church and empire had for the most part adopted what is spe-
cific to Christianity, its biblically-founded profile, but at the same time allowed it
to fade away as something proper to Christianity, the breaking-up of that unity
inevitably raised the question of the particular mission of the Jewish-Christian
way to the increasingly secularized world society. This is eminently true in the
realm of ethics, since it touches every person as a person insofar as each must
in some way account for her or his attitudes and behaviors, independent of one’s
own worldview.
This lesson seeks to confront that development. First it examines the heritage of
ethical standards already rooted in pre-Christian antiquity and later combined
with biblical statements. Thus the ancient philosophical “order of nature” became
the “order of creation,” understood in biblical terms. That combination entered
Christian ethics as a kind of axiom: “natural law.”
Beginning with ethical guidelines in the Old Testament and Jesus’ ethics, ground-
ed therein, the lesson then shows what is different in Christian ethics as devel-
oped in the New Testament communities and up to the time of Constantine: as a
provocative minority “salt” in the majority-pagan Roman society.
With reference to that period of the church the lesson will show how, in contrast
to the past image of the church as an “empire,” in this new situation, in which the
church is again a minority in a secular society estranged from God, the proprium
of the Jewish-Christian way of life can be made present as a people of God in small
communities. That way of life, as a mission – because that is really what this is
about – accordingly requires ethics that is not fully represented by the human-
ly-rational orientation to rules of behavior and action proper to the post-Christian
era.
Lesson 22 – Arnold Stötzel and Ludwig Weimer

What Eschatology Means
Around the subject of “eschatology” the history of theology and piety has built a
ring of the most varied expectations and ideas about the future. Is there any evi-
dence about what happens to individuals beyond physical death? Can we expect
to live on because of our immortal souls and be reunited with our loved ones in
heaven? Do we, in the end, pass through the personal initial judgment into heaven
to the vision of God, or into hell? Can we conceive that Christ will return in glory?
Without avoiding these and similar questions, the lesson will provide access to
what the church calls the doctrine of the “last things,” though its primary interest
will not be in the future. It builds on two pillars rooted in the fundamental state-
ment of the Incarnation:
The first pillar is formulated in the Credo and gives the fundamental direction:
“For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,” which Gerhard von
Rad interpreted as the “overpowering will of God for immanence.”
The other pillar is the enlightened modern awareness represented by Spinoza,

who called it the “adventure of immanence,” an awareness now shared by many
of our contemporaries.
The tension thus given will be illustrated, by way of example, in the question:
“What and where is the Land?” of which the biblical texts so often speak? To what
extent can the things-before-the-last be the locus of the “last things,” or: to what
degree can immanence be the location of God’s transcendence, the now-already
despite all the not-yet?

What the Marian Dogmas Say About the „True Israel“ and the Role of
Women in the Church
The twentieth century saw a recovery of ecclesiological Mariology, but only a few
rediscovered the long-forgotten theology of Judaism in Mariology, for the Catholic
church also has teachings about Judaism and its holy remnant. However, femi-
nism also laid claim to the figure of Mary for its own reasons.
Mary is a self-critical real symbol for the whole church. Everything dogmatically
defined about her had previously been said about the church. Because the church
held to faith in persons and knew itself as sinful it more and more clearly took this
person as a model. “Marylike” faith and life are appropriate for both genders and
for the church as such.
In this lesson the connection among all the dogmas and their common root (“the
thicket of dogma”) will be presented. The fruits of the Mariological branch are
especially close to the themes of Israel and church. We see that Mary is nothing
special without the christological branch; both limbs are attached to the doctrine
of sin and that in turn to God’s plan for creation. Among the four Marian dogmas
the least-known is the statement about Mary’s begetting by her parents: this girl
without original sin represents the concept of unspoiled creation for which Isra-
el’s prophets fought.
Mary’s character as model for the church reveals the freedom of God’s bride (free-
dom from the state as well) and the home of the world’s wisdom in the church.
In the person of Mary the theology of grace illustrates a concrete case of human
cooperation in the realization of God’s will.
The theology of women reveals the charism typical of non-ordained laity. The cor-
relative difference of women is a charism and an opportunity. In an age of women
bishops in other Christian confessions, we will present the Roman Catholic (“pri-
mal feminist”) view of a Marian church, just as Luke saw the Twelve around Jesus
together with Mary and the women in his Pentecost account.
Lesson 24 – Wolfgang Blech

What the Theology of the People of God Can Contribute to the
Question of Ecumenism
The final lesson, number 24, treats in a paradigmatic fashion some questions of
ecumenism that present themselves in the context of the theology of the people
of God. In the foreground are aspects of church division connected to the church
communities that emerged from the sixteenth-century Reformation, and the Ro-
man Catholic position toward them. But we will begin with a brief overview of
the current state of ecumenism in regard to the Orthodox churches based on the
results of the Pan-Orthodox council of 2016.
The basis is provided by a short presentation of Martin Luther’s Protestant im-

age of the church and its theological implications; by connecting with and contra-
dicting that image we will develop the theme of church in ecumenical perspec-
tive.
The ecclesiology of Johann Adam Möhler will be presented as representative

of the Roman Catholic image of the church. The vision of that outstanding Tübin-
gen theologian points clearly beyond his own time (the 19th century). Möhler
would have found a very promising conversation partner in Dietrich Bon-
hoeffer, a twentieth-century theologian whose ecclesiology will be described
in connection with that of Möhler. It has within it the potential for a consensual
ecumenical theology. We will show that the reception of the contributions of these
two theologians could overcome constricted theological perspectives in ecumen-
ical discourse.
Current (postmodern) developments like those discussed in this lesson show how
urgently necessary that is. These include the rapid growth of Pentecostal churches
and the founding of congregations that define themselves as multi-confessional

or nonconfessional, something that also tends toward a dissolution of the classic
concept of church.
In light of the overall situation thus described, the question of perspectives for a
resolution of ecumenical questions arises. The theology of the (one) people of God
made up of Jews and Christians represents a very promising initiative for further
progress. At the same time it is a challenge to the ecumenism of the churches. The
Jewish religious studies scholar David Flusser saw a promising perspective in
the effort toward a renewal of Christianity out of Judaism.
In closing we will document, with a list of ten aspects, the facets of the content in
question. Those aspects will allow us to describe the special character of the (one)
people of God made up of Jews and Gentiles.
Finally: Bruno Alber

How the Relationship Between Jews and Christians is Mirrored in
Iconography
40 Survey of the epochs of the history of theology
6 Survey of the epochs of the history of

theology
The following survey (pp. 41–43) presents a summary whose purpose is to offer
the reader a concise view of individual contributions to theology within the frame-
work of history and in the larger context of other contributions, and to make it
easier to trace theology’s developments. It should serve as an orientation for sub-
sequent lessons. This survey is primarily oriented toward the Roman Catholic form
of theology; important contributions of Protestant theology are placed in relation
to these. The great variety of theologies developed in the churches of the Reforma-
tion makes it necessary to limit the scope of this survey, which here is restricted
mainly to Lutheran theology. Individual trends in Eastern theology are difficult to
distinguish; here only a few important examples have been chosen.
As regards the theology of our own time, the survey must remain incomplete even
in the Roman Catholic field. In order to have a fairly complete list we would have
to mention, besides systematic theologians, those in the non-systematic fields,
and attention would have to be paid to non-European theologians. We have es-
chewed this in order not to overload the survey.
The survey in its present form was compiled by Achim Buckenmaier. It is a

revision of a similar survey, “Überblick über die Epochen der Theologie und Dog-
mengeschichte,“ by Wolfgang Beinert [in idem, ed., Lexikon der katholischen
Dogmatik (Freiburg, et al.: Herder, 1987), 497–502].

Century Epoc Main representatives Characteristics

1st-7th
Early Church until late antiquity
century
Paraenesis (admonition):problems of the community; ethical life of the
First Epistle of Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Epistle of
1st/2nd century Apostolic fathers Christians, Christocentric, eschatological orientation. Method: often
Barnabas, The Shepherd of Hermas, Didache
allegorical
Aristides, Tatian, Athenagoras, Justin, Theophilus, Attempt to come to terms with Greek philosophy; first conclusions of
2nd century Apologists
Epistle to Diognetus Christology
Development of the regula fidei (rule of faith) against gnosis, montanism,
Development of a Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Irenaeus, and chiliasm; first syntheses; unity of the Church and solidarity among the
2nd/3rd century
systematic theology Hippolytus, Cyprian of Carthage communities; development of a theological terminology, allegorical
method
Alexandrians : Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria Speculative thinking; emphasis on the deity of Jesus
Consolidation of the christological insights: theology of the Trinity,

Formation of the Cappadocians: Basil, Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of
3rd/4th century development of a Christian mysticism through communal life (rule of life
theological schools Nyssa
for lay people); last reference points with the experience of the martyrs.
Antiochians: Theodore of Mopsuestia, Cyril of Empirical theology; historical-critical exegesis,emphasis on the humanitiy
Jerusalem, John Chrysostom of Jesus
In the East: creation and defense of the christological and trinitarian
Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, Leo the Great, Hilary of dogmas against Arianism, monophysitism, and Nestorianism; in the West:
4th/5th century Heyday of patristic
Poitiers, Ephrem the Syrian Foundation of the soteriological Dogma (grace, freedom) against Donatists
and Pelagians
Tranformation of the monastic ideals (vita apostolica/evangelica) of
6th century Monasticism Benedict of Nursia
hermits into a practical communitarian rule
Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, Maximus the Systematisation of what had been acquired theologically ; collections of
6th/7th century late patristic Confessor, Pseudo-Dionysius, Boëthius, John of quotations open the earlier results up to contemporaries; first martyrs of
Damascus the state church, which controls theology.
Survey of the epochs of the history of theology
41
42
Main
Century Epoc Main representatives Characteristics Century Epoc represent- Characteristics
atives
8th-15th
medieval Church in the West
century
Imparting patristic theology to the world
8th/9th Carolingian Bede the Venerable, Alcuin, John
of the Franks and Germans; doctrines of Christian East
century theology Scotus Eriugena, Walafrid Strabo
Eucharist and Predestination
Imparting patristic theology, mainly of

Bernard of Clairvaux, Rupert of

11th/12th Augustine, for theology und practice
Monasticism Deutz, Hugh and Richard of Saint
century (understanding Eucharist, sacraments),
Victor
exegesis
"Faith seeking understanding" (fides
quaerens intellectum) ; instead of
Anselm of Canterbury, Gilbert of referring to auctoritas: the argumentum
11th/12th Early
Poitiers, Anselm of Laon, Peter becomes important (form: quaestio );
century scholasticism
Abelard, Peter Lombard comments on former works, the
problem of universals, Eucharist, Only apophatic
Symeon the
soteriology (negative)
New
14th/15th Mystical theology can
Adoption of Aristotelian philosophy; Theologian,
century theology say anything
Albertus Magnus, Alexander of synthesis of faith and reason; Gregory
about the
Hales, Thomas Aquinas development of theological systems Palamas
ineffable God.
High ("summae"); comments on earlier works
13th century
Scholasticism
Franciscan tradition: Radical way of life
Bonaventure, Duns Scotus of the vita evangelica shapes a theology
emphasizing the will and mysticism.
Gap between faith and reason;

14th/15th Late
William of Ockham, Gabriel Biel nominalism; the problem of universals
century Scholasticism
again; end of Scholasticism

Time Epoc Main representatives Epoc Main representatives Time Epoc Main representatives
16th/17th
Ecclesiastical Modernity: Catholic Theology Protestant Theology
century
Counter- Cajetan de Vio, Gasparo Contarini, Christian East
Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli,
16th century reformation Robert Bellarmine, Jacopo Sadolet, Reformation
(Catholic Heinrich Bullinger
Ambrosius Catharinus
reformation)
Francisco Suarez, Gabriel Vazquez, Lutheran Martin Chemnitz, Leonhard Hutter, Georg
16th/17th baroque 17th coming to terms with Cyril Loukaris, Petrus
Gregory of Valencia, Melchior Cano, Orthodoxy Calixt
century Scholasticism century western thinking Moglias, Dositheus
Denis Pétau Pietism Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf
Charles-René Billuart, Josef Kleutgen, Edward Herbert of Cherbury, Mathew Tindal,
18th/19th Neo- Carlo Passaglia, Giovanni Perrone, Enligh-
Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten, Johann Salomo
century Scholasticism Clemens Schrader, Johann Baptist tenment
Semler, Hermann Samuel Reimarus
Franzelin
Ferdinand Schleiermacher, Philipp Marheineke,
David Friedrich Strauss
Neo-Lutherans: Wilhelm Löhe, August Friedrich
Christian Vilmar
Catholic Tübingen School : Johann Adam Aleksey Stepanovich
Søren Kierkegaard 19th
Möhler, Sebastian Drey, Johann Slavophile theology Khoyjakov, Philaret of
theology of century
theological Evangelist Kuhn; Liberal Protestantism : Ferdinand Christian Moscow
19th century the 19th Bauer, Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, Adolf von
revival Ambroise Gardeil, John Henry Newman,
century Harnack, Albrecht Ritschl
Mathias Josef Scheeben, Hermann Schell,
Maurice Blondel Biblically oriented theology : Adolf Schlatter,
Martin Kähler;
Religion-historical school : Ernst Troeltsch,
Albert Schweitzer, Hermann Gunkel; Johannes
Weiß; Julius Wellhausen
Théologie nouvelle : Henri de Lubac, Jean Dialectic theology: Karl Barth, Eduard
theology
20th century Daniélou, Henri Bouillard; Romano Thurneysen, Emil Brunner, Friedrich Gogarten; Vladimir Lossky, John
between the wars
Guardini; Gustav Söhngen Dietrich Bonhoeffer Meyendorff, George
present 20th Neo-patristic
Florovsky, Alexander D.
Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, theology Existential theology : Rudolf Bultmann, Paul century theology
Schmemann, Nikolai
20th/21st theology of and Hans Küng, Johann Baptist Metz; Tillich, Ernst Käsemann, Jürgen Moltmann; Afanasiev
century after the Council Bernhard Welte; Joseph Ratzinger Wolfhart Pannenberg; religious pluralistic
(Germany; Systematist); Yves Congar school; gendered theology
43
44 Space for your notes
Imprint
Publisher
Chair for the Theology of the people of God

at the Pontifical Lateran-University, Rome
Piazza S. Giovanni in Laterano, 4
00120 Città del Vaticano
E-mail: segr-popolodidio@pul.it – www.popolodidio.org
director of the Chair: Prof. Dr. Achim Buckenmaier
Authors and collaborators
Bruno Alber, Wolfgang Blech, Achim Buckenmaier, Tamás Czopf, Hans Hubert Klein,
Bernhard Koch, Gerhard Lohfink, Michael P. Maier, Arnold Stötzel, Ludwig Weimer;
Bernhard Anderl, Isabell Austermann, Michael Drieschner, Maria Jaklitsch, Rudolf
Kutschera, Angelika Matzka, Anton Wintermayr, Ehrentraud Wintermayr, Heinrich
Wolfrum, Peter Zitta
Editorial administration
Angelika Matzka
Translation from German

Linda M. Maloney
2nd edition 2017
© 2017 P. i. D. Priester im Dienst an Katholischen Integrierten Gemeinden e. V., Icking.

All rights reserved. Reprinting, copying and translation as well as electronic processing
and distribution – even in parts – only with written permission by the publisher.

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CATTEDRA PER LA TEOLOGIA DEL POPOLO DI DIO

Distance Theology of the People of God –

6 Survey of the epochs of the history of theology 40

1.2 A basic hermeneutical rule

“The simplest, most effective, and enduring basic h e r m e n e ut i c al rule is:

The Protestant exegete Peter Stuhlmacher (*1932) arrives at a very similar

fully per mutuum colloquium et consolationem fratrum" [through the mutual

1.3 Mutually supportive hermeneutical methods

1.4 Authors of the lessons

2 Basic Features of the Lessons

2.1 Theology of the people of God: A little ‘summa’

2.2 The question of distinctions

4 Cf. Clement of Alexandria, To Autolychus II, 14.

2.4 Summary: special features of a postgraduate study

2.5 The court of the gentiles

3 The God who creates a people for Godself

3.1 The God-question in context

experienced as an all-determining factor in the lives of contemporaries. It is sim-

3.2 The context that no longer exists and the consequences:

The consequences of this dissolution were dramatized by Friedrich Nietzsche

4 Catholicism as an Ongoing Process

4.1 The same process in changing historical contexts

4.2 The distinction of what is Christian as a continuing task

4.3 Significance of this study for the church’s pastoral calling

4.4 Pastoral discernment in the church

Therefore it is no accident that Pope Francis’s apostolic letter on the family31

30 Cf. Origen, In Cant. Cant. 3 (CGS 33,326).

35 Considero urgente . . . la formazione nel discernimento, personale e comunitario (http://it.radio-

5 Structure and Thematic Sequence of the

5.3 Short summary of the content of the lessons

Lesson 1 – Ludwig Weimer

Why Christianity is Not a Religion (1):

The history of the origins of distinctive biblical faith cannot be reconstructed in

Lesson 2 – Ludwig Weimer

Why Christianity is Not a Religion (2):

Today’s pluralistic religious relativizing is the consequence of an incomplete

Lesson 3 – Ludwig Weimer

Why Christianity is not a religion (3):

Jesus’ contribution to the distinction derives from his revolutionary interpreta-

Lesson 4 – Ludwig Weimer

Why Christianity is Not a Religion (4):

Today’s religious-pluralist confusion is the result of an expanded knowledge of

of religions in favor of pluralism are the defects of an incomplete enlightenment

Lesson 5 – Arnold Stötzel

How Faith and History are Connected

Lesson 6 – Arnold Stötzel

How the One and Only God was Recognized

already given in the New Testament writings, will be demonstrated, at least in

Lesson 7 – Arnold Stötzel

What the Theology of the People of God Can Contribute

Lesson 8 – Achim Buckenmaier

How God Can Act in the World – How to Understand Miracles

This lesson attempts to respond to the Enlightenment criticisms of miracles in the

Miracle language in the New Testament must be seen as a separate category,

Lesson 9 – Ludwig Weimer

How the Spirit of God Acts in Creation and in New-Creation

Speculations (such as those of Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling and Hans Jo-

Lesson 10 – Achim Buckenmaier

What forms the unity of the canon made up of two parts?

How the Transcendent God Became Immanent in the Person of Jesus

Lesson 12 – Ludwig Weimer

Christian doctrine describes God's self-communication to the people Israel and

Lesson 13 – Arnold Stötzel

The representative positions of some Jewish and Christian theologians on the