Abstract
This article explores Joseph Ratzinger’s account of Bonaventure’s theological development in his Habilitationsschrift: The Theology of History in St Bonaventure. It shows that there are several parallels between the intellectual transitus which Ratzinger attributes to Bonaventure during the 1260s and 1270s and his own much studied intellectual journey. Ratzinger portrays Bonaventure as a thinker who, because of a series of crises at the University of Paris shifted from a sympathetic engagement with the Peripatetic and Thomist schools to a much more critical, openly hostile, attitude towards them. While much has been made of Ratzinger’s Bonaventurian heritage, this article argues that his relationship with the Franciscan possesses a dimension that goes beyond simple indebtedness: in his Habilitationsschrift, Ratzinger presents us with a blueprint of what was to be his own future development and, more importantly, a new way of approaching the controversial question of whether his core theological ideas changed.
In 1959, the young Fr Joseph Ratzinger published his Habilitationsschrift—the second doctoral thesis required to teach at German universities. 1 Published in English several years later as The Theology of History in St Bonaventure, Ratzinger’s text quickly established itself as one of the most important modern studies on St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. 2 Not only did it help cement the young German priest’s already considerable reputation as a first rate historical theologian, and his alignment with the Nouvelle théologie movement pioneered by the likes of Henri De Lubac and Yves Congar, but it also served to generate a significant renewal of interest in the Seraphic Doctor’s thought. 3 It did so by offering a highly novel interpretation of Bonaventure’s theological vision and intellectual journey. The Bonaventure with whom Ratzinger presents us is a thinker whose theological style, persona, and churchmanship—at least prima facie—evolved substantially during his lifetime. Where the young Franciscan had willingly engaged, albeit cautiously, with the Aristotelian synthesis, and thus sympathised with the attempts to harmonise it with the Christian faith articulated by the likes of Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great, the mature Bonaventure, by contrast, adopted a far more critical attitude. Indeed, for the Bonaventure of the 1260s and 1270s, Aristotle’s philosophy not only erred significantly on key metaphysical issues, but, in the hands of his Christian disciples, particularly those working in the Parisian Arts Faculty, it had become a portent of the Anti-Christ. In this article I will outline Ratzinger’s thinking on the nature of this change and what precipitated it. 4 The purpose of doing this is to highlight the considerable degree of overlap between the intellectual transitus which Ratzinger attributes to Bonaventure during the 1260s and 1270s and his own journey from the mid-1960s onwards. As we will see, this overlap between the intellectual lives of these two thinkers is especially ironic given the central thrust of Ratzinger’s thesis: namely, that for Bonaventure the past predicts the future. 5
In turn, the thesis is advanced that this concordance between Ratzinger’s intellectual journey and the one which he attributes to Bonaventure provides us with a new way of reading the apparent tension between the late Pontiff’s early and mature thinking. As we will see, Ratzinger contends that while, on the surface, Bonaventure’s thought did indeed change vis-à-vis Aristotelianism, and notably so, nevertheless its core pillars and central thrust, and even its opposition to Peripatetic thought, albeit in a latent format, were in fact set from his youth. What changed, so we are told, was the intellectual climate in which Bonaventure found himself and the impact which this had upon his estimation of Aristotelianism. During his final decade, Bonaventure was faced with having to oppose several novel Aristotelian trends which had been absent, or at least had not emerged fully, during his youth—namely, the heterodox philosophy of figures like Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia, and certain aspects of Thomism. Faced with these challenges, and through appropriating elements of Joachim of Fiore’s apocalyptic thought, Bonaventure came to reassert more forcefully his core theological beliefs, which in turn, helped germinate their latent opposition to certain aspects of Aristotelianism. This resulted in his theology taking on a genuinely new colouration, one very different to that of his earlier writings. In short, for Ratzinger, Bonaventure’s change during the 1260s and 1270s was symptomatic not of a shift in his most basic theological ideas, but rather, paradoxically, of his renewed allegiance to them.
Most, if not all, of those who study Ratzinger acknowledge that the late Pontiff’s thought underwent some sort of evolution during his lifetime, most notably in terms of his attitude towards modern culture and “progressive” theological ideas. Sharp disagreement, however, has emerged as to the precise nature of this evolution. For some, Ratzinger’s thought remained unchanged throughout his life, with any changes being only minor and occurring at the very peripheries of his theology. For others, however, it involved a radical shift to the “theological right,” one in which Ratzinger abandoned his earlier, supposedly “liberal,” theological principles and repositioned himself as the champion of the renewed “conservatism” which took root in Catholicism post Vatican II. In this article I shall argue that both interpretations contain aspects of the truth yet, crucially, both fall short. Instead, a third position is to be preferred. Critical here is Ratzinger’s own understanding of Bonaventure’s intellectual journey.
The thesis is advanced that, like Bonaventure’s, Ratzinger’s theology did indeed undergo a significant “metamorphosis,” both in terms of its presentation and style, as well as its place within the theological landscape which it occupied. Crucially, this change did not involve a theological U-turn on Ratzinger’s part—a jumping ship, as it were, from the sinking ark of “progressivism” to the terra firma of “conservatism”; nor, for that matter, did it involve an abandonment of his core theological principles. Rather quite the opposite is true. Ratzinger’s thought, just like Bonaventure’s, changed precisely because he sought to remain loyal to his seminal theological ideals. When faced with a radically evolving theological landscape, one in which many of his former colleagues increasingly embraced positions which he could not condone, Ratzinger responded by reaffirming in ever stronger ways the positions which he had advanced since his youth. However, the exposure of these principles to ideas which had not been present when they were first formed caused them to generate within Ratzinger’s thinking a “new” polemical spirit, one which significantly changed both the tone and outward appearance of his theology. Crucially though, this reactionary spirit was already seeded within Ratzinger’s thought, but it remained dormant until his thinking encountered new challenges.
This article consists of two parts. The first part considers the importance of Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift and one of the key areas of enquiry which it addresses—namely Bonaventure’s divergent positions regarding Aristotle and Thomism in his early and mature writings. Attention is also paid to Ratzinger’s own well-studied intellectual journey, focusing on the two schools of thought which have emerged on it. The second part of the article introduces Ratzinger’s thinking on the mature Bonaventure’s Joachite doctrine of biblical prophecy in his Collationes in hexaemeron and his shift towards the belief that all forms of philosophical deviancy—i.e. heterodox Aristotelianism—constitute an apocalyptic phenomenon fated to overthrow the Church. Attention is likewise paid to Ratzinger’s description of Bonaventure’s intellectual journey during the late 1260s and early 1270s, while also comparing his description of Bonaventure’s attitude towards Aristotelianism and Thomism with those offered by Étienne Gilson and Fernand Van Steenberghen. Finally, the investigation will conclude by reflecting on the overlap between the Bonaventure which Ratzinger describes in his Habilitationsschrift and his own theological journey. Here the article will outline how this overlap presents us with the framework for a fresh approach towards the longstanding points of confusion and debate which have taken hold concerning the apparent divergences between Ratzinger’s early and mature theology.
Part I
Bonaventure, Ratzinger, and the Importance of the Habilitationsschrift
It is fair to say that amongst Bonaventurian scholars The Theology of History in St Bonaventure constitutes an essential read. As Andreas Speer has noted, the text has gained almost canonical status within Bonaventurian circles. 6 However, among those who approach Ratzinger’s thought at the level of his contribution to contemporary systematics and the central role which he has played in shaping modern church teaching, very few have engaged with his study on Bonaventure in any real depth. 7 This is perhaps understandable given the study’s overtly historical focus. What becomes clear, however, upon a serious engagement with The Theology of History in St Bonaventure is that this text is critical to understanding the development of Joseph Ratzinger, both as a theologian and as a person. 8 As Aidan Nichols notes, while the text may be an exercise in the study of medieval Franciscan theology, most of the key principles which we now associate with Ratzinger’s thought—in particular his rich understanding of the symbiotic relationship between revelation, scripture, and tradition—all trace their origins back to what he discovered in Bonaventure’s teaching while preparing his Habilitationsschrift. 9 Indeed, as Hansjürgen Verweyen—a member of the Ratzingerschuller (one of the various familiae of graduate students which Ratzinger established during his academic career)—has stated, the late pontiff’s Habilitationsschrift, along with his earlier doctoral thesis on Augustine, is very much the lens sine qua non for understanding his entire theological vision and its various subtleties. 10 Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift takes as its focal point Bonaventure’s last—and arguably greatest—work: the Collationes in hexaemeron (1273). 11 Consisting of over twenty academic sermons, the Hexaemeron, despite being unfinished, contains Bonaventure’s most coherent expression of his mature theology. In it, the Franciscan offers a sweeping Christocentric vision of the role which both faith and reason play in the soul’s—and indeed the Church’s—journey back to God, all of which he frames against a complex theology of history, revelation, and prophecy. Perhaps most crucially for Ratzinger’s description of Bonaventure’s intellectual journey, the Hexaemeron, building upon the slightly earlier Collationes de decem praeceptis (1267) and Collationes de septem donis (1268), contains the saint’s most systematic reflections on both the value and limitations of Aristotelianism, Thomism, and philosophy in general.
As has long been observed, Bonaventure’s later writings offer a far more critical stance towards Peripatetic thought than is found in his earlier works, in particular his Sentences commentary (1252–1254) and his important, though little studied, Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis (1256). 12 In these earlier works, and in several of the texts which have yet to be edited, Bonaventure not only offers a thorough-going engagement with the Aristotelian synthesis, and its creative interpretation by the Islamicate tradition, in particular by the likes of Avicenna and Averroes, but he even shows himself willing, and actively so, to excuse Aristotle when he falls into heresy, arguing that such mistakes arose on Aristotle’s part as a result of his ignorance of the Christian faith. 13 In the Hexaemeron, by contrast, Bonaventure openly calls out what he explains he has come to see as the unforgivable errors of the Peripatetic tradition, and those who, in his opinion, concede too much to it. Employing biblical archetypes to typecast its opponents, and the protreptic style of argument typical of many late thirteenth-century academic sermons, the Hexaemeron articulates a strikingly anti-Peripatetic, anti-philosophical vision. Unsurprisingly, this tension between the early and mature Bonaventurian syntheses has led to much debate concerning Bonaventure’s true attitude towards Aristotelianism, and indeed philosophy more generally, with Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift constituting one of the most critical interjections on this subject. For most scholars, including Ratzinger himself, the key dividing line between Bonaventure’s early and mature theology is the year 1257—the year Bonaventure formally left academic life and became Minister General of the Franciscan Order. 14 For the most part, the major positive appraisals and appropriations of Aristotelianism are to be found in Bonaventure’s pre-1257 works, while the negative assessments are to be found following his departure from academic life.
Closely related to the question of Bonaventure’s attitude towards Aristotle and his Islamicate interpreters is, of course, his relationship to the Christian Aristotelianism pioneered by Aquinas. The prevailing view within the Neo-Scholastic tradition, in which Ratzinger himself was first schooled, and for which, as he repeatedly tells us in his later writings, he felt a strong distaste as a young man, was that Bonaventure was an incipient Thomist. 15 Bonaventure’s thought, so the Neo-Scholastic consensus asserted, contained a nascent Christian Aristotelian philosophy, one which, seeking to follow in the steps of Albert and Thomas, sought to appropriate Aristotle’s learning, but which, ultimately, failed to articulate a mature or coherent philosophical system. 16 Bonaventure, in effect, was the stella matutina of the Thomist dawn. As we will see, prior to Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift, this view had been challenged by figures like Gilson, who had argued that, far from sharing in the agenda pursued by Aquinas, Bonaventure pioneered a very different theological and philosophical pathway, one which looked to Augustine, and not the Philosophus, as its principal teacher, especially in metaphysics. However, as with Bonaventure’s attitude towards Aristotle, his relationship to Aquinas is by no means clear cut. Moreover, it follows a similar pattern of development. In his early writings—at least according to some, including Ratzinger—it is possible to detect a significant degree of concordance with several key Thomistic principles, whereas in his later works, in particular the Collationes in hexaemeron, Bonaventure appears to distance himself from Thomas and is openly caustic about some of his central philosophical claims—including his denial of universal hylomorphism, his assertions about reason’s inability to disprove the eternity of the world, and his rejection of the plurality of forms within the human soul. 17 Key here is, of course, Bonaventure’s shifting attitude towards peripatetic thought itself and its compatibility, or lack thereof, with Christian faith.
Change and Continuity: The Riddle of Joseph Ratzinger
Regardless of the intensity of the debate as to whether Ratzinger’s theology changed during his lifetime, particularly during his 40s, all those who have studied the late pontiff’s thinking concur that, broadly speaking, his theology, like that of Bonaventure’s, falls into two main periods. First, there is the “young” Ratzinger, or what Roberto Tura called as early as 1978 “un primo Ratzinger.” 18 This is the Ratzinger who, having worked closely with Karl Rahner and Hans Küng, helped to push against what he saw as the theologically stagnating influences of Neo-Scholasticism, and who, as one of the leading periti at Vatican II, did much to help steer the Council fathers towards the ideals of La nouvelle théologie. Indeed, recent research has uncovered that it was Ratzinger who drafted the famous speech which Cardinal Frings presented in Genoa in the preparatory deliberations for Vatican II, and which John XXIII, upon receiving a copy of the text, privately communicated to Frings his belief that the text voiced the spirit of theological openness and aggiornamento which the Pope hoped the Council would embody. 19 Second, there is the “mature” Ratzinger—or to use Tura’s phrase “un secundo Ratzinger”—who, finding himself convinced that the Council’s teachings were being wilfully misappropriated by progressive voices, including those of Küng and Rahner, emphasised the Church’s magisterium as the primary horizon of theological dialogue and who, in turn, increasingly expressed his belief that modern culture was not a suitable partner for Catholic theology to embrace, but instead resembled an errant child in need of correction by sound Christian doctrine. 20 This is the Ratzinger who, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), famously earned the nickname of the “Panzekardinal” and who oversaw the Vatican’s censuring of Leonardo Boff and Charles Curran. It is also the Ratzinger who, prior to his appointment to the CDF in 1981, had supported the Vatican’s revocation of Küng’s missio canonica in 1979 and who repeatedly attacked John Baptist Metz, even prohibiting the latter’s appointment to a professorship in Munich, thus earning him Rahner’s ire. 21 Indeed, in the years following the Church’s efforts to prohibit him from teaching, Küng publicly accused Ratzinger of behaving little better than a “smiling inquisitor” who governed the CDF like “the head of the KGB.” 22 Most scholars accept that the point of caesura between these two periods occurred during the late 1960s, with the year 1968 occupying a critical place. Just what brought about this transition, and the extent to which Ratzinger’s later thought represented either a sharp break from, or continuation of his earlier thinking, is, however, as alluded to above, a hotly disputed topic within Ratzinger studies.
One school of thought which has gained much traction, particularly thanks to the contributions of John L. Allen Jr, Küng, Wolfgang Beinert, and several of Ratzinger’s own doctoral students, including Verweyen and Werner Bökenförde, is that the divide between Ratzinger’s early and mature theology is indeed a significant one, with his later thinking representing a radical departure from his earlier theological “progressivism.” 23 Broadly speaking, according to this position, the catalyst which brought about Ratzinger’s intellectual metamorphosis was the student riots in Germany during the mid-to-late-1960s, coupled, in turn, with what he regarded as the doctrinal ambiguities taking root in the post-Vatican II period, especially the crisis provoked by the critical reception of Humanae Vitae. 24 In particular, what horrified Ratzinger, so Allen and Küng contend, was the Marxist ideology espoused by much of the German student body, its aggressive politicisation of Christian faith, and what Ratzinger saw as its latent anti-Catholic spirit. As Küng recounts, in the summer of 1968 the students of Tübingen—the university at which Ratzinger was then a professor—began to riot, and Ratzinger’s lectures, on account of both their popularity and focus, did not escape disturbance. Küng tells us that both his and Ratzinger’s lectures became targets for sit-ins and disruption by leftist students who opposed what they saw as the social and political conservatism of Catholicism. Likewise, some students aggressively occupied the lecterns in lecture halls, silencing their teachers and preaching their Marxist ideologies to those in attendance. 25 “Even for a strong personality like me,” Küng recounts, “this was unpleasant,” yet “for someone timid like Ratzinger it was horrifying.” 26 While Ratzinger was later to deny repeatedly Küng’s claims about students interrupting his lectures, Küng nonetheless insisted that Ratzinger had stated to him, on several occasions, that he was not only shaken by what he saw as the students’ aggression, but felt threatened personally by their militant tendencies. 27 Thus, provoked by the anarchy unleashed by the riots, and what he now perceived as the dangers of his own earlier “progressivism,” Ratzinger sought solace in the stability of a far more “conservative” theology and churchmanship.
At one level, it is impossible to deny that the 1968 student riots at Tübingen did indeed colour Ratzinger’s thinking and outlook. As he himself was to admit several years later, what shocked him most was not so much the climate of intellectual intimidation which the protests unleashed within the university community, but rather the willingness with which some of the theology students, and even some of his own colleagues, accommodated the Marxist ideology espoused by the protest leaders and, in some cases, even embraced it. 28 For Ratzinger it was this—the willingness of those who identified themselves as Christian to secede to a philosophy which was at its heart irredeemably atheistic, and thus radically opposed to the Gospel—and not the disruption caused to university life which was the true point of horror and trauma caused by the riots. “The blasphemous manner in which the cross now came to be despised as a sign of sadomasochism,” Ratzinger recounts, coupled with “the hypocrisy with which some still passed themselves off as believers when this was useful” was in his judgement at the time a very real and dangerous threat to Christian faith. 29 Moreover, it was one which “could not and should not be made to look harmless or just another academic quarrel.” 30 Instead, so he tells us, it was necessary to enter into the “battle zone” and defend the Gospel. This is something which Ratzinger insists both he and several of his colleagues did. 31 Nonetheless, Ratzinger is honest about the fact that what he witnessed in 1968 wounded his confidence in modern culture and hardened his stance towards non-Catholic thought: “I myself have seen the face of this atheistic piety unveiled, its psychological terror, the abandon with which every moral consideration could be thrown overboard as bourgeois residue.” 32
The second school of thought, by contrast, articulates a notably different account of Ratzinger’s noetic identity. Adherents of this line of thinking acknowledge the impact which the 1968 student riots at Tübingen had on Ratzinger, but claim that any change within his thinking during the late 1960s and in the decades after was either minor or simply non-existent. Advocates of this position include several of Ratzinger’s students from his period at Regensburg, like D. Vincent Twomey and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, as well as two of his most respected contemporary interpreters: Joseph A. Komonchak and Tracey Rowland. 33 Each of these authors has sought, with varying degrees of forcefulness, to refute the claim that both Ratzinger’s theology and personality underwent a significant change.
According to Schüssler Fiorenza, it was not Ratzinger’s thought which changed during the 1960s, but rather that of several of his colleagues associated with the Nouvelle théologie movement. 34 As their theology became increasingly progressive, it left Ratzinger’s thought behind, thereby casting it in an ever more conservative light. Any apparent change in Ratzinger’s thought and its position within the post-Vatican II landscape, Schüssler Fiorenza insists, was thus only minor and “not due to some personal traumatic event, but rather to the ambiguities of the [Nouvelle théologie] movement itself.” 35 Komonchak has been even more strident. In his opinion, Ratzinger’s thought underwent no change at all. He writes: “from Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity (1968) down to the homily he delivered on his installation as Pope Benedict XVI, a distinctive and consistent approach has been visible.” 36
Likewise, Rowland argues that the Augustinian-Bonaventurian vision of faith and reason so characteristic of Ratzinger’s mature theology and, in particular, his teachings as pontiff, were very much present within the work of his younger self. 37 For the young Ratzinger, just as much as the mature one, it is beyond question—as both Augustine and Bonaventure had so forcefully argued—that reason, by itself at least, is insufficient to describe the world accurately. 38 Concurring with this position, Twomey argues that, while Ratzinger’s theology may have undergone refinement at the edges, its substantial identity never changed or underwent any revision. 39
Surveying the Evidence: A Tale of Two Ratzingers
Given the length of Ratzinger’s career and the sheer number of his writings, it is impossible in an article such as this to summarise all the evidence needed to measure the veracity of the above two schools of thought. Having said this, some cursory reflections on the available evidence seem in order. On the one hand, approaching this issue from the perspective of a Bonaventurian specialist, this author can see much in Ratzinger’s thinking which lends itself, prima facie at least, to the position of Schüssler Fiorenza, Komonchak, Rowland, and Twomey. When one looks at Ratzinger’s thought through the lens of its Bonaventurian characteristics, and in particular its indebtedness to the Franciscan saint’s insights regarding what he sees as the mutually enriching relationship between revelation, scripture, and tradition, it is clear that much of Ratzinger’s theological synthesis was, at least in terms of its most basic pillars and logic, established from the 1950s. 40 Indeed, it is possible to argue that it is his weddedness to the Bonaventurian vision, and, in turn, that of Augustine, which serves to sustain much of the consistency at work within Ratzinger’s thought. For example, Ratzinger’s early “progressive” contributions to Dei verbum (1965) contain the voice of Bonaventure as much as do the texts associated with his most “conservative” pronouncements, including Dominus Iesus (2000) and the now infamous Regensburg Address (2006). 41 Indeed, as Ratzinger himself often noted in his later reflections, particularly those found in his writings from his time as prefect for the CDF (1981–2005) and then as Pontiff (2005–2013) and Pontiff Emeritus (2013–2022), what he learned from his early Bonaventure studies not only deeply coloured his theological outlook but helped set its horizons. 42
There are other, more specific, aspects of Ratzinger’s theology which remained consistent throughout his career. For example, Ratzinger’s critique of modern philosophy’s abandonment of classical metaphysics in his Regensburg Address, represents a faithful, albeit condensed, rearticulation of his discussion of the ills of modern philosophy in his 1968 Introduction to Christianity. 43 Similarly, as Emery de Gaál has shown, there is a notable degree of continuity in Ratzinger’s Christology. 44 From his early Christological lectures at Munich, Regensburg, and Tübingen, as well as his commentary on Gaudium et Spes, to his later Jesus of Nazareth, Ratzinger, de Gaál notes, stressed the “irreplaceable value of personally encountering Jesus Christ as the raison d’être of human existence.” 45 Likewise, a strong degree of continuity is to be found in Ratzinger’s Trinitarian and political theologies. 46 Thus in his Habilitationsschrift, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (1988), Church, Ecumenism, and Politics (1988), and his much later Values in a Time of Upheaval (2006), Ratzinger consistently rejects any attempt to incorporate political philosophy, be it of the left or the right, within Catholic theology or to reduce the redemptive agency of God’s grace to a temporal and socio-economic affair. 47
On the other hand, there is also a by no means insignificant body of evidence, both in Ratzinger’s writings and his various personal reflections, which indicates that, on certain issues at least, his mature thinking did indeed possess a notably different tone and outlook to his pre-Vatican II views. For example, where the pre-Vatican II Ratzinger, seeking to promote ecclesial and theological plurality, had openly called for the world’s bishops to play a greater role in the Church’s governance (Ratzinger had helped draft the important remarks on the necessity of episcopal collegiality found in Lumen gentium 3, par. 23) and had stressed the right of theologians to subject Church teaching to critical reflection, the post-Vatican II Ratzinger—especially the Ratzinger who headed the CDF and then occupied the papal throne as Benedict XVI—made notably different noises. Driven by concerns about the proliferation of doctrinal ambiguity and the perceived dangers of bestowing too much teaching authority upon the local church, Ratzinger as cardinal and then pope stressed the papacy’s primacy over the Bishops’ Synod while also helping to author documents like Donum veritatis (1990). Famously, this text unambiguously affirms that the theologian’s role is neither to question church teaching nor to render it more palatable to modern culture. Rather the theologian’s vocation is simply to elucidate, defend, and obey the magisterium. “The theologian,” Donum veritatis states, “is officially charged with the task of presenting and illustrating the doctrine of the faith in its integrity and with full accuracy.” 48
Likewise, while Ratzinger’s thinking on the relationship between scripture and tradition may show a strong degree of continuity, there are nonetheless several points of fluidity to be found therein. For example, over the years Ratzinger’s understanding of scripture’s capacity to critique tradition appears to have become more nuanced. In his “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis” (1989) and his Jesus of Nazareth (2007), Ratzinger is clear that, since tradition, just as much as scripture, is part of God’s self-revelation, it is an indispensable tool for scripture’s correct interpretation. Tradition, in other words, possesses a degree of hermeneutic authority over scripture. 49 “The faith of the Church,” Ratzinger wrote in 1989, “is a form of sympathia without which the Bible remains a closed book.” 50 Ratzinger’s 1968 commentary on Dei verbum (1965), however, strikes a different tone. Here he critiques the conciliar text, claiming that it fails to acknowledge sufficiently that tradition is accountable to scripture and can, as such, be challenged by it. 51 “There is, in fact, no explicit mention [in Dei verbum],” the young Ratzinger notes, “of a distorting tradition and of the place of Scripture as an element within the church that is also critical of tradition.” 52
Similarly, while Ratzinger’s emphasis on the liturgy’s centrality never wavered, there are, at least according to Allen and the like, some notable points of tension between the early and mature Ratzinger’s liturgical thought, the chief one being his attitude towards the Latin Mass. 53 During his leadership of the CDF and then as Pope, Ratzinger repeatedly stressed what he saw as the value and beauty of the Tridentine Rite, and did much to actively encourage it. For example, in his 2007 Summorum pontificium, Ratzinger permitted the Rite’s widespread reintroduction. Likewise, in Milestones he lamented what he saw as the “tragic” rupture in liturgical history which Paul VI’s prohibition of the Latin mass entailed. 54 “It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal. . .above all because of the introduction of the vernacular. But more than this happened: the old building was demolished and another built.” 55 Ratzinger’s comments on the Latin Mass in his early writings, however, strike a different tone. Thus, in his account of Vatican II’s first session, Ratzinger greeted Sacrosanctum concilium (1963) with enthusiasm, criticising what he saw as the Tridentine Mass’s “archaeological” nature and the fact that it was “a closed book to the laity.” 56 Indeed, he described it as “a picture so encrusted that the original image could hardly be seen.” 57
Important to consider of course is what Ratzinger himself had to say on whether his theology ever changed. Critical here are his Salt of the Earth (1996), Milestones (1997), and Last Testament (2016). On several occasions in Milestones and Salt of the Earth, Ratzinger highlights what he sees as the continuity of his thought. 58 It is, however, in his Last Testament—composed in the form of an interview with Peter Seewald—that Ratzinger offers his clearest thoughts on the issue. In response to Seewald’s comment that he had always stressed that he had never performed any form of theological U-turn, Ratzinger replied: “I believe that anyone who has read what I have written can confirm that.” 59 Likewise, when asked about his famous rupture with Küng, Ratzinger insisted that it was Küng, and not himself, who had changed his position: “well, his theological path just went someplace else, and he got increasingly radical.” 60 On why he had collaborated with Küng during his early career, Ratzinger stated: “I had made the assessment that Küng had a big mouth and said impudent things, but fundamentally wanted to be a Catholic theologian. . .I had not foreseen that he would then go on to break ranks repeatedly.” 61 For Ratzinger himself at least there was no true change in either his theology’s substance or its presentation. Any change occurred purely on the part of his erstwhile colleagues.
We thus see that, when it comes to understanding Ratzinger’s thought, the evidence available is by no means clear cut. There is material to support each of the sharply divergent readings of Ratzinger’s theological identity. Indeed, as with the man himself, Ratzinger’s theology is a synthesis which is as elusive as it is deep. As such, it resists any attempts to neatly categorise it. Are we therefore fated to accept that any effort to explain the relationship between Ratzinger’s early and mature thinking—and therefore the controversial question of whether his theology changed—is doomed to fail? Moreover, even if such an effort is viable, can it succeed only if it is framed in the loosest possible terms, or if it is willing to overlook important strands of the available evidence, as certain branches of the two existing schools of thought appear willing to do? The answer to these questions, I suggest, is no. It is possible to construct a reading of the relationship between Ratzinger’s early and mature thinking which not only accommodates and renders intelligible the tension between the opposing strands of evidence but, more importantly, provides a coherent and defensible resolution to the question of the evolution or non-evolution of his thought. To understand how this is so we must turn to Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift and grasp how in this text he provides us with the contours of a framework to understand his theological identity and journey.
Part II
Ratzinger insists that key to grasping Bonaventure’s intellectual journey is his decision in the Collationes in hexaemeron to appropriate elements of the apocalyptic speculation of Joachim of Fiore (d. 1203). While on first inspection this aspect of the mature Bonaventure’s thought may appear tangential to our investigation, it is in fact critical to appreciating the sharp caesura between Bonaventure’s early and mature attitude towards Aristotelianism and, in turn, Thomism.
Reimagining History and Prophecy: Bonaventure on Revelation and Eschatology
By way of an attempt to offer a counterbalance to what he regarded as the static account of revelation articulated by Neo-Scholasticism, Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift shows how for Bonaventure—just like other thirteenth-century theologians—God’s self-revelation is not a simple propositional or one-off affair, but rather something which is ongoing, and thus ever-present, throughout the Church’s history. Key here, Ratzinger makes clear, is Bonaventure’s assimilation of Joachite apocalypticism and its distinctive theology of prophecy. While Bonaventure explicitly rejects Joachim’s infamous Trinitarian theory of the three ages of history, and had even caustically dismissed Joachim as “simplex” during his youth, Ratzinger shows how in the Hexaemeron Bonaventure, accepting Joachim’s theory of concordia between the Old and New Testaments, came to adopt his less well-known double seven schema of history and its belief that past events as described in scripture can be used to predict the future. 62
According to Bonaventure, there are seven ages in the Old Testament and seven ages in the New. 63 Not only do these correspond to one another, but the ages of the Old Testament prefigure, and thus foretell, those of the New. Crucially, the New Testament period did not end with the death of the last Apostle, but extends to the current day, and will, in turn, endure until the Last Judgement. The Church, in other words, is still living in the time of the New Testament. Following Joachim, Bonaventure argues that it is possible to use the Old Testament as a prophetic lens to predict the remaining future events within the current New Testament era. Based on his biblical calculations, he deduces that humanity currently lives at the end of the sixth age of the New Testament and is awaiting the eschatological trauma of the opening of the final seal. 64 This, Bonaventure conjectures, will involve the Anti-Christ’s advent and his temporary triumph over the Church through heresy. 65
In a move which serves to further underscore the radical nature of Bonaventure’s eschatology, Ratzinger shows how for Bonaventure there will come, following this period of great tribulation, a final “age of peace.” 66 The seventh age of the New Testament, this coming age will represent a true renovatio mundi, during which Christ will overthrow the Anti-Christ and restore the Church to a state of evangelical perfection. 67 Returned to its original purity, the Church of this coming period will follow the example of St Francis and the Apostles by living in a state of perfect simplicity and poverty. 68 Ratzinger notes that Bonaventure does not say how long this prophesied “return to Eden” will last, but he is clear that it will run concordant with what he terms the eighth age of the eternal Kingdom of God.
Ratzinger on Bonaventure’s Intellectual Journey
As noted in part I of this article, in the decades prior to Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift, two major studies on Bonaventure emerged, each of which painted a very different picture of his attitude towards Aristotelianism and Thomism, as well as his intellectual journey. The first, and by far the most influential, was Gilson’s The Philosophy of St Bonaventure. Published in 1924, Gilson’s study presented what was then considered to be a very radical image of the Franciscan saint. Contrary to the predominant Neo-Scholastic consensus, Bonaventure, Gilson argued, was no co-worker of Thomas, still less a stepping stone towards the Thomist revolution. Instead, seeking to defend the traditional Augustinian synthesis, he represented an unswerving conservative critic of Aquinas and his efforts to appropriate Aristotelian learning. Bonaventure, in other words, attempted to give what Gilson termed the “traditional Augustinianism” of the preceding centuries its final and most coherent “swansong.” 69 According to Gilson, the thirteenth century was thus a time in which two competing “twin peaks” of theological tradition emerged: the first being the novel Christian Aristotelian project pioneered by Aquinas, the other the conservative, highly systematised Augustinianism of Bonaventure. 70 Important for our purposes is the fact that, for Gilson, Bonaventure’s resistance to Aristotelianism was not something which emerged later in his life. Instead, it was firmly established from his youth. “From his first contact with the pagan thought of Aristotle,” Gilson writes, “St. Bonaventure is as one who has understood it, seen through it, and passed beyond it.” 71 Moreover, throughout his life, Bonaventure remained a sceptic of Thomism and the wider Christian Aristotelian movement. For Gilson, as such, at no point did Bonaventure support or seek to be a co-worker with the Thomist project. 72
The second major study on Bonaventure was published nearly two decades before Ratzinger’s Habilitationsschrift went into print. This is Fernand Van Steenberghen’s Aristotle in the West. Focusing exclusively on Bonaventure’s treatment of Aristotle in his early Sentences commentary, Van Steenberghen presented a very different picture of Bonaventure to that of Gilson. The Franciscan, he argued, was not a harsh critic of Aristotle, but rather a patient student of his, one who, like many of the thinkers immediately prior to Thomas, held him in the highest esteem. “His attitude towards Aristotle,” Van Steenberghen writes, “shows neither mistrust, nor hostility, nor condemnation, but only esteem, respect and sympathy.” 73 Indeed, Bonaventure “pushes the favourable interpretation of Aristotle to the utmost and, when his errors are undeniable, even tries to excuse them.” 74 Moreover, in stark contrast to Gilson’s portrayal of Bonaventure, Van Steenberghen argued that the Franciscan saint was a sympathiser of the Thomist project. He not only accepted Thomas’s distinction between fides and ratio, but presupposed many of the key tenets of his understanding of philosophy’s place within Christian learning. At best, Van Steenberghen argues, Bonaventure was “an eclectic Aristotelian” with “neo-Platonizing tendencies.” 75 Moreover, Bonaventure’s positive attitude towards Aristotelianism and his respect for the Thomist project did not change throughout his life. From his time as a student to his final years as the leader of the Franciscan Order, Bonaventure was a faithful friend of both Aristotle and Thomas. 76
For Ratzinger, while both Gilson’s and Van Steenberghen’s positions express elements of the truth, they each fall short. Gilson, on the one hand, is right to detect within Bonaventure a strong opposition to Aristotelianism and Thomism. For the Franciscan, Aristotle’s philosophy, at least in the hands of the Radical Aristotelians of the Paris Arts Faculty during the 1260s, and Aquinas’s later writings, represented a direct threat to Christian revelation as they seek to sever reason from faith by granting philosophy too much autonomy. Crucially, this anti-Aristotelianism and anti-Thomism did not emerge until late in Bonaventure’s life. Moreover, it coincides with an increased Christocentrism in his theological reasoning and a growing emphasis on the impoverished nature of human ratio. 77 On the other hand, Ratzinger argues that Van Steenberghen is correct to see in the early Bonaventure a patient student of Aristotle and a desire to work alongside Aquinas in appropriating Aristotelian and Islamicate learning. The young Bonaventure, so he argues, “does not break the line of development leading to Thomas,” but rather “develops it consistently further and shows a very close approximation to the position of Thomas.” 78 Indeed, “[i]n the Quaestiones disputatae of his period as Magister, his thought had taken a path which would have led him in a direction similar to that of Thomas had he developed it consistently to the end.” 79 This willingness to tread the same “path” as Thomas by seeking to be open to the Peripatetic tradition is, however, present only in Bonaventure’s earliest writings.
What Ratzinger presents us with, in essence, is a portrait of Bonaventure in which his theological outlook underwent a significant metamorphosis. Bonaventure shifted from being a sympathiser of the “progressive” Christian Aristotelian project pioneered by Thomas and his mentor Albert the Great to a harsh critic of it, one who openly aligned himself with a more “conservative” theological stance.
The Cause of Bonaventure’s Change
Ratzinger argues that the chief catalyst which brought about this sharp change in Bonaventure’s thinking is to be found in the events which unfolded at the University of Paris during the 1260s and early 1270s—namely, the emergence of the overtly heterodox strand of Aristotelian philosophy in the Arts Faculty known as “Radical Aristotelianism,” or, to use its alternate name, “Latin Averroism.” Associated with Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia, this novel school of Christian Peripateticism read Aristotle’s philosophy through the lens of the writings of the Islamicate scholar Averroes. Advocating overly heterodox doctrines, it gained much traction amongst the masters of the Paris Arts Faculty and, in Bonaventure’s judgement, even took root within the Theology Faculty itself. Taking their lead from Averroes’s so-called—though often deeply misunderstood—doctrine of “double truth” (i.e. that something can be accepted as true at the level of faith and yet disproved at the level of reason, and vice-versa) the proponents of this new branch of Aristotelianism argued that philosophy could not only falsify key theological doctrines, and, by extension, divine revelation itself, but that it represented a completely autonomous scientia, one which could speak with the same authority as theology and even challenge it as the primary means whereby the soul discovers its final end. Radical Aristotelianism thus posited the eternity of the world, the existence of a single active intellect shared by the whole of humanity, and denied the immortality of the soul, arguing that the latter was of purely material origins.
When confronted with such openly heterodox thought, Ratzinger contends that Bonaventure’s stance regarding Peripatetic philosophy, and its capacity for harmonisation with Christian noetic, could not but shift and did so dramatically. Radical Aristotelianism convinced the Franciscan ex-professor that Aristotelianism in all its forms—Greek, Islamicate, and Latin—was a nest of error, one which ought to be condemned in the harshest terms possible. 80 Key to understanding this change, Ratzinger tells us, is Bonaventure’s indebtedness to Joachite thought, particularly its belief in an impending age of eschatological trauma. Having established that the Church is awaiting the opening of the sixth seal and the Anti-Christ’s coming, Bonaventure settled on Radical Aristotelianism and what he saw as the over-infiltration of Peripatetic thought into Christian learning in general, as the prophesied sign of impending doom. Aristotle’s philosophy, he lamented, was little better than the black magic of “Pharaoh’s magicians.” 81 Those foolish enough to listen to its false claims were guilty of intellectual adultery. They “want to go back to Egypt, to the lowliest food, since we reject the food from heaven.” 82 More pointedly, Radical Aristotelianism bears the mark of the Beast. 83 Those Arts Masters foolish enough to support its doctrines are, as such, to be ostracised as servants of the coming darkness. 84
Ratzinger notes, however, that Bonaventure is particularly concerned about those in the Theology Faculty—i.e. Thomas and those who sympathise with the Christian Aristotelian project—who allow Aristotelian and Islamicate thought too much influence within the sphere of theology itself. “Indeed, not so much of the water of philosophy,” Bonaventure laments, “should be mixed with the wine of sacred scripture that it turns from wine to water. This would be the worst of miracles (hoc pessimum miraculum esset).” 85 Those who permit Aristotelian thought too much sway within their theological speculation are guilty of imbibing the poisoned waters of Sileo in which there is only “eternal deceit.” 86 As a result, they depart from sound scriptural wisdom and invent novel doctrines. Crucially, such errors lead to theological ambiguity and error not only on the part of the theologians themselves, but also their students. Already, Bonaventure notes with great alarm, there are some Parisian theology students who, like their masters, are rebelling against tradition by preferring to read, in secret, the notebooks of the philosophers rather than scripture and the writings of the saints. 87
What is surprising is that while Ratzinger posits that Bonaventure’s attitude towards Aristotelianism and Thomism underwent a significant shift, he contends that this transformation did not represent a radical caesura on Bonaventure’s part, or his having abandoned his earlier theological principles. 88 Rather quite the opposite. The anti-Aristotelianism of Bonaventure’s mature theology and its capacity to bestow upon his thinking a new, strikingly harsh, tonality, Ratzinger argues, had always been present in Bonaventure’s thought. “The codification of anti-Aristotelianism found in the [Hexaemeron],” Ratzinger writes, “is, in a sense, a development of the objective anti-Aristotelianism which had been present already in the Sentences Commentary.” 89 The mature Bonaventure’s anti-Aristotelianism, in other words, was the natural outworking of the core theological principles to which he had adhered since his youth. These principles had an innate anti-Aristotelian spirit. This, however, lay dormant until Aristotelianism’s aggressively heterodox ideology emerged. Once this occurred, Ratzinger tells us, the latent anti-Aristotelianism embedded within Bonaventure’s core theological principles was “activated.” Married to the genuinely novel strand of Joachite thought, which emerged within Bonaventure’s later thinking, this served to alter significantly both the tone and coloration of his theological synthesis, thereby bestowing upon it a genuinely new appearance and setting it at variance with those theological movements with which it once shared ground—e.g. Thomism.
History as Prophecy—Sketching the Contours of a New Understanding of Ratzinger’s Intellectual Journey
Even Ratzinger’s most hardened critics must accept that the visceral apocalyptic tonality which he attributes to the late Bonaventure bears no resemblance to his own mature theological style and persona. Indeed, in the light of what we have seen, it is surely safe to say that it is Bonaventure, and not Ratzinger, who is the true “Panzerkardinal.” Having said this, the overlapping contours between the shape of Ratzinger’s intellectual development and that of his medieval subject are obvious and striking. The Bonaventure which Ratzinger uncovered in his 1959 Habilitationsschrift is one whose intellectual journey bears more than a passing resemblance to the metamorphosis which he himself underwent. As the mature Bonaventure found himself alarmed by, and having to confront, during the late 1260s and early 1270s those who adopted heterodox Aristotelian ideas, so Ratzinger, exactly seven hundred years later, was forced to react against those who either sought to accommodate within Catholic faith anti-Christian Marxist ideals or were, in his opinion, wilfully misrepresenting Vatican II’s teachings. Conversely, both Bonaventure and Ratzinger during their early careers found themselves sharing common ground and, on occasion, actively co-operating, with the very same thinkers whom they would later condemn—in Bonaventure’s case, Aquinas, in Ratzinger’s, Küng.
While this overlap is interesting, its true significance, I suggest, lies in its capacity to help us reconfigure the way we understand the relationship between Ratzinger’s early and mature thought and the polarised debate which has emerged on the question of whether his theology changed.
In the first part of this article we noted the division, on the one hand, between the likes of Allen and Küng who claim that there is a sharp caesura within Ratzinger’s theology, with the post-conciliar Ratzinger having abandoned his earlier “progressivism” in favour of the very “conservatism” and ecclesial authoritarianism which he had critiqued in his youth; and, on the other hand, the likes of Schüssler Fiorenza and Komonchak, who argue that Ratzinger’s thought did not change in any meaningful way, be it at the level of its substance or its presentation. We also noted that there is a by no means insignificant body of evidence to support both these positions. However, when we view Ratzinger in the light of the uncanny overlap between his own theological journey and the one which he attributes to Bonaventure we discover something new—that is, a third way of approaching and articulating Ratzinger’s intellectual journey. This tertia via offers a notably different picture of the relationship between Ratzinger’s early and mature thought to the two existing interpretations and, in turn, it lays the basis for a creative reimagining of what it means to say that his thinking “changed.” Limits of space, though, mean that only the basic contours of this new approach can be sketched here.
In short, it affirms that Ratzinger’s core theological principles—just like Bonaventure’s—remained constant, at least in terms of their substance, throughout his career. Yet it also posits that these very same principles, when exposed to new ideas opposed to them, significantly altered their behaviour, and, because of this, changed—and markedly so—both the tonality and coloration of Ratzinger’s theology as whole. They did so by bestowing upon it a new language and orientation, one focused upon defending what Ratzinger increasingly emphasised was the unchanging and uncompromising nature of Catholic doctrine and practice. From this perspective Schüssler Fiorenza, Komonchak, and the likes are right to claim that Ratzinger’s core theological principles remained unchanged. They err, however, in assuming that the behaviour of these principles was static. Likewise, Allen and Küng are right to say that the tone of Ratzinger’s theology changed notably in the immediate aftermath of Vatican II. They are mistaken though in claiming that this arose due to Ratzinger having exchanged his earlier “progressive” theological principles for “conservative” ones. The key point is this: Ratzinger’s core theological principles—just like Bonaventure’s—were, at least in terms of their substantial identity, set from his youth. Their behaviour, however, changed markedly when challenged by new ideas which sat ill with them. This occurred when Ratzinger’s erstwhile colleagues and others within the Church began to articulate positions which he could not but reject and speak out against.
Thus, as Bonaventure’s exposure to heterodox Aristotelianism caused him to reaffirm his deepest held principles yet, by doing so, activated the latent anti-Aristotelianism seeded within them, and thereby bestowed upon his thought a “new,” increasingly uncompromising conservatism, so something similar occurred with Ratzinger from the mid-1960s onwards. What Ratzinger regarded as the distasteful forces at work during the immediate aftermath of Vatican II and in the decades beyond—be it the student riots, what he perceived as the “watering down” of Catholic teaching, or the misuse of faith and tradition by the likes of Metz, Boff, and Küng—sat ill with the ideas which had been at the heart of his theology since his earliest days, and, as a result, caused them to express themselves in a manner which they had not previously employed. Consequent upon this, Ratzinger’s theological synthesis acquired a new colouration, one which aligned it with the rapidly emerging new theological “right” of post-Vatican II Catholic theology. This “shift” was made even more pronounced by the fact that as Ratzinger’s thinking “hardened,” so those with whom he had once shared common ground with—Küng and Rahner—moved increasingly in the opposite direction, advancing ideas sharply at variance from Ratzinger’s thought, thereby further highlighting its newfound “conservative” appearance.
From this perspective, we thus see that, when it comes to the change detectable within Ratzinger’s thought, we should not focus too much on the precise identity of the external forces with which his thinking clashed. Instead, we should focus more on how Ratzinger’s thought responded to being challenged. This, in turn, points us to the fact that the intellectual metamorphosis which Ratzinger underwent during the 1960s, and which was reinforced in the decades after, arose not because of any wilful change on his own part, but rather because his theology found itself having to operate within a new environment. Thus, in the same way that potassium, when exposed to water, will ignite, thereby radically altering its behaviour and presentation, even though its chemical composition remains the same, so something similar occurred with Ratzinger’s thought during, and after, Vatican II. Indeed, in the same way that potassium’s capacity to generate fire when exposed to water is a predetermined behavioural characteristic of its chemical identity, yet remains hidden until water is thrown upon it, so Ratzinger’s combative “conservativism”—his “inner inquisitor” to paraphrase Küng—was truly present, and in many ways fully formed, during his early period. However, it lay dormant until it was “activated” by the events of the 1960s. Thus, when in his post-Vatican II writings Ratzinger spoke in a reactionary and “conservative” tone, he was simply behaving in a way demanded by the principles to which he had aligned himself in his youth. Indeed, one could argue that—as with Bonaventure—had Ratzinger’s thought not taken on a more “conservative” tone in his later years, then this would in itself have entailed a break from the ideas which he had adopted in his youth.
When brought to bear on Ratzinger’s supposed “progressivism” and “conservatism”—the language which the two leading schools of thought, despite their very different interpretations, repeatedly employ when debating Ratzinger’s intellectual journey—we see that the proposed reading of the late pontiff’s theological career has significant implications. If the theological principles which Ratzinger articulated in his pre-Vatican II period did not change and were, in part, the catalyst which helped to generate a new coloration within his later thinking, then we are left with a picture in which what is described as Ratzinger’s early “progressivism” was in fact the same, at least in terms of its core substance, though not its presentation, as his later “conservatism”, and his later “conservatism” was in reality his “progressivism”, albeit in a very different guise. This, of course, involves a significant stretching of the terms “progressivism” and “conservatism”—a stretching which, it could be argued, goes too far. Perhaps, therefore, it ought to be conceded that the labels “progressivism” and “conservatism,” despite their heritage in the debate concerning Ratzinger’s theology, are neither the best nor the most helpful ones to employ. They are, I venture, too blunt a linguistic instrument to use when it comes to trying to tease out the subtleties at work within Ratzinger’s noetic evolution.
Of course, it is important to acknowledge that, despite the parallels between Ratzinger and Bonaventure, there are nonetheless differences between them, some of which reveal much about how their respective styles of theological polemic diverge. The most important surely centres around their conflicting attitudes on how to confront noetic deviancy. In his Habilitationsschrift, and in several subsequent works, Ratzinger makes clear his reservations about Bonaventure’s use of heterodox Joachite thought to support his attack on the Aristotelian hydra. In part, this reservation appears to stem from Ratzinger’s concerns about the potential parallels between Joachim’s belief in an impending renovatio mundi and the Marxist call for political revolution, parallels which, as Nichols has observed, led Ratzinger, as early as the Habilitationsschrift itself, to anticipate the emergence of Liberation Theology and his future clash with it. 90 Indeed, it is the potential for lending legitimacy to revolutionary movements, and in particular theologies imbued with notions of class struggle and social upheaval, which Ratzinger sees as the primary lacuna of Bonaventure’s mature thinking. To be clear, however, Ratzinger does not believe that Bonaventure himself lapsed into heresy or was a proto-Liberation theologian. Rather he merely perceives in the Franciscan’s thought something which could lend weight to the Liberationist agenda. The difference between Ratzinger and Bonaventure can thus be expressed as follows: where Bonaventure was willing to appropriate what he believed to be the redeemable elements of a theological heresy to help combat an emergent philosophical heterodoxy, Ratzinger, by contrast, could never undertake such a rapprochement. In the eyes of the cardinal who headed the CDF, heresy is always heresy, and thus is always alien to Catholic truth. 91 This is where, despite their significant common ground, both theological and personal, the congruence between Ratzinger and Bonaventure ultimately begins to fade, and where the “purity” or “rigour” of the mature Ratzinger’s defence of tradition and orthodoxy outstrips and outmanoeuvres that of his medieval predecessor.
By way of a conclusion, therefore, we see, that the “smiling inquisitor” who oversaw Boff’s disciplining, and who was, in turn, charged by the likes of Verweyen, Beinert, and Küng with having abandoned his early ideas, was indeed the same—at least in terms of the core composition of his theological vision—as the one who won the admiration of John XXIII and who, in turn, helped steer the bishops at Vatican II towards a full throated endorsement of the Nouvelle théologie. Yet, at the same time, it is also true that Ratzinger’s thought did indeed change, and markedly so, both in terms of its presentation and tone as well as where it stood within the shifting landscape of twentieth-century Catholic theology. Key to understanding all this is a firm grasp of Ratzinger’s own theory of Bonaventure’s intellectual journey. In his Habilitationsschrift, Ratzinger not only shed light on the thought and personality of one of the most enigmatic theologians of the Middle Ages, but succeeded in offering what was to be an uncanny blueprint—perhaps even (dare it be said?) a prophetia—of what was to be his own noetic journey following the publication of his thesis. When it comes to understanding Ratzinger, therefore, and the much-contested question of whether his thinking changed, it is his seminal study on St Bonaventure which is very much the missing and critical piece of the puzzle. Indeed, anyone seeking to understand the late pontiff and his theological vision would do well to turn to Bonaventure and ponder his remarks in the Collationes in hexaemeron on the intrinsic relationship between history and prophecy: “one who ignores the past cannot know the future.” 92
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.