The Theology Of History In St. Bonaventure [NEW]
In this academic treatise, then-Father Ratzinger, a young university professor, delves into the work of the Seraphic Doctor to come to a critical and yet appreciative understanding of the theological meaning of history in his work. Particularly interested in Bonaventure's Collationes in Hexaemeron, the study sets the saint's thought against his remote and immediate predecessors, as well as his medieval contemporaries.While bringing out Bonaventure's hope for history, Ratzinger must collect the spread-out and sometimes enigmatic references to eschatology and time and, comparing them against Bonaventure's wider writings, place the saint in the tradition of Christian thought on the subjects. Key to this new theology of time, claims Ratzinger, is Bonaventure's encounter with the prophecy of Joachim of Fioreprophecy that threatened to tear the Franciscan Order apart. Author Biography Reviews (No reviews yet) Write a Review OK Other products you might like Add to Cart A Theology of History (Digital) eBook $16.95 $11.02 Add to Cart Add to Cart A Theology of History Paperback $16.95 $15.26 Add to Cart Add to Cart Theology in History (Digital) eBook $34.95 $22.72 Add to Cart Add to Cart Theology in History Paperback $34.95 $31.46 Add to Cart Add to Cart Saints and History 1: American History Set $62.74 Add to Cart Customers Also Viewed Add to Cart Theology in History Paperback $34.95 $31.46 Add to Cart Add to Cart Theology in History (Digital) eBook $34.95 $22.72 Add to Cart Add to Cart A Theology of History Paperback $16.95 $15.26 Add to Cart Add to Cart A Theology of History (Digital) eBook $16.95 $11.02 Add to Cart Add to Cart The Nature and Mission of Theology (Digital) eBook $17.95 $11.67 Add to Cart Add to Cart The Nature and Mission of Theology Paperback $17.95 $16.16 Add to Cart
The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure
Joseph Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927 in Marktl am Inn in the state of Bavaria, Germany. Ratzinger entered the minor seminary in Traunstein, in 1939 and in 1943 along with the rest of his seminary class he was drafted into the Flak [anti-aircraft corps]. In 1944 he was released from the Flak and returned home only to be drafted into labor detail under the infamous Austrian Legion. In the spring of 1945 Ratzinger deserted the army and headed home but when the Americans arrived at his village shortly thereafter, he was identified as a German soldier and incarcerated in a POW camp for a brief time. Following his release he re-entered the seminary. In 1951 Joseph was ordained into the priesthood and began lectures as a full professor of fundamental theology at the University of Bonn. From 1962-65 Ratzinger was present during all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council as a peritus, or chief theological advisor to Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne, Germany.. In 1977 Joseph Ratzinger was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising and on June 27 elevated to Cardinal of Munich by Pope Paul VI. In 1981 Ratzinger accepted Pope John Paul II's invitation to take over as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and in 1986 he was appointed head of a 12-member commission responsible for drafting the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Ratzinger was elected vice dean of the College of Cardinals in 1988. In 2002 Pope John Paul II, approved his election as dean of the College of Cardinals. On April 8, 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger presided over the funeral of Pope John Paul II. On April 19, 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Bishop of Rome on the fourth ballot of the conclave and took the name Benedict XVI.
After the publication of my writings on the liturgy, in the complete edition of my works a book now follows of studies on the theology of Bonaventure of Fidanza, a great Franciscan and Doctor of the Church. It was clear from the start that this book would also contain my studies on the Holy Doctor's concept of Revelation, conducted from 1953-55, together with the interpretation of his theology of history, so far unpublished.
In order to finalize this work, the manuscript needed to be revised and corrected according to modern editorial standards, something I did not feel capable of doing. The Viennese Prof. Marianne Schlosser, who has an extensive knowledge of medieval theology and especially of the works of St Bonaventure, graciously offered to undertake this noteworthy and far from straightforward task. She deserves my heartfelt thanks for this. In discussing the project, we immediately agreed that no attempt should be made to revise the book's content or to bring the research up to date. After more than half a century since the text was drafted, this would have meant, in practice, writing a new book. Rather, I wanted it to be a "historical" edition which offered as it were a text conceived in a remote past, leaving to research the possibility of still drawing useful material from it today.
In the second part of the book, The Theology of History in St Bonaventure is presented anew, just as it was published in 1959. The subsequent essays, with rare exceptions, are taken from the study of the interpretation of Revelation and of the theology of history. In certain cases they have been adapted, in order to make them self-contained texts, with slight modifications dictated by the context.
At first sight, the presentation of the theme of this work might seem surprising and indeed is. After my thesis on the conception of the Church in St Augustine, my teacher, Gottlieb Söhngen, suggested that I devote myself to the Middle Ages and in particular to St Bonaventure, who was the most important representative of the Augustinian movement in medieval theology.
As regards the content, I had to face the second important question which is addressed by fundamental theology: the theme of Revelation. At that time, especially through Oscar Cullmann's eminent work, Christus und die Zeit [Christ and Time] (Zurich, 1946), the theological focus shifted to the theme of salvation history, particularly its relationship with metaphysics.
If neo-scholastic theology essentially understood Revelation as the divine transmission of mysteries that remain inaccessible to the human intellect, today Revelation is viewed as God's manifestation of himself in historical action, and salvation history is considered a central element of Revelation. My task was to attempt to discover how Bonaventure understood Revelation, and whether it gave him an approximative idea of "salvation history".
It was a difficult undertaking. Medieval theology does not give any treatises de Revelatione (on Revelation), as is the case with modern theology. Furthermore, I immediately showed that medieval theology does not even have a term that expresses, from the perspective of content, our modern concept of Revelation.
As has been shown, the word revelatio,which is common in neo-scholastic and medieval theology, does not have the same meaning in medieval theology as it has in modern theology. I therefore had to seek the answers to my thesis in other forms of language and thought, and in the process the form of the proposition was also modified with regard to my first encounter with Bonaventure's works. In the first place, challenging research had to be done on his use of language. Our own concepts had to be set aside in order to understand what Bonaventure meant by Revelation. In any case, it has been demonstrated that the conceptual content of Revelation was adapted to a large number of concepts: revelatio, manifestatio, doctrina, fides,and so on. It is only these concepts and their usage viewed as a whole that reveal an image of how Bonaventure saw "Revelation".
From the outset it was clear that the doctrine of medieval theology had no concept of "salvation history" in the modern sense of the term. Nonetheless, there are two indications that the problem of revelation as a historical process was present in Bonaventure's writings.
To this classic form of the problem of the relationship between history and truth, which Bonaventure shared with the theology of his time and addressed in his own way, he also added his own new historical point of view, in which history, as God's far-reaching work, becomes a dramatic challenge.
Joachim of Fiore, who died 1202, had taught a Trinitarian rhythm in history. The age of the Father (Old Testament) and the age of the Son (New Testament, Church) must be followed by an age of the Holy Spirit, in which, together with the observance of the Sermon on the Mount, would be manifest a spirit of poverty, reconciliation between Greeks and Latins, reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and a time of peace would come. By means of a combination of symbolic numbers, the learned Abbot had predicted the beginning of a new age in 1260. Around 1240 the Franciscan movement came upon these writings, which had an electrifying effect on many: had this new age not begun, perhaps, with Francis of Assisi? Thus a dramatic tension built up within the Order between the "realists," who wanted to make use of St Francis' legacy, in accordance with the actual possibilities of the life of the Order as it had been passed down, and the "spiritualists", who focused instead on the radical novelty of a new historical period.
As Minister General of the Order, Bonaventure had to confront the tremendous challenge this tension posed, which in his opinion was not an academic question but, rather, a practical problem of his office as the seventh successor of St Francis. In this sense, history became suddenly tangibly real, and as such had to be confronted with practical action and theological reflection. In my study, I have sought to explain how Bonaventure met this challenge and the connection he made between "salvation history" and "Revelation".
Joseph Ratzinger is one of the most revered Catholic prelates, scholars, theologians, teachers, and authors of our time. He has spoken on many crucial subjects, including sexual consumerism, roles of men and women today, marriage, the priesthood, and the future of the world. On June 29, 1951, Joseph Ratzinger was ordained to the priesthood in the Cathedral of Freising on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. He also received his doctorate in theology in 1953 from the University of Munich. Starting in 1959, Ratzinger taught theology at the University of Bonn. 041b061a72