'It is First and Foremost the Lord Who Labors in Us'
Father Joseph Carola, S.J., received his doctorate in theology and patristic sciences from the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum (the Patristic Institute Augustinianum ) in Rome and is currently a professor of patristic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University also in Rome. His most recent work, Augustine of Hippo: The Role of the Laity in Ecclesial Reconciliation , was published by the Gregorian University Press in its series Analecta Gregoriana . Carola recently sat down with Inside the Vatican to discuss Augustine and the role of Augustine's thought in Benedict XVI's theology.
1. Benedict's Augustinian Ecclesiology of Communio
We now have a Pope who began his academic career in the 1950s by focusing on St. Augustine's ecclesiology in a work titled Volk and Haus Gottes in Augustinus Lehre von der Kirche (The People and House of God in Augustine's Teaching on the Church, 1951). He has developed and refined his thought on this subject in some of his more mature theological works, such as Zur Gemeinschaft gerufen: Kirche heute verstehen (Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, 1991). What is the central thesis of Augustine's ecclesiology as Pope Benedict sees it?
FATHER JOSEPH CAROLA: The primary thesis is an ecclesiology of communio : to see the Church in terms of communion. Yet Augustine's ecclesiology is very much rooted in his Christology.
The Church for Augustine is the Body of Christ, a Pauline image. Augustine speaks of the Totus Christus , the whole Christ, Head and Body. We, the baptized, are members incorporated into Christ's Body and are united intimately through Baptism and the Eucharist with Christ our Head. Augustine goes so far as to preach to his congregation that we are Christ: "Christus sumus." We are His members, members, that is, not in the sense that we have enrolled in the same country club, but rather members in the sense that we are His arms, His legs, His vital organs. We are members of His Body, an intimate, integral part of who He is. It is a profound image of what it means to be in the Church, of what and indeed who the Church is.
Communio means "to be one with" — cum meaning "with" and unus "one" So, there is an intimate unity among the Church's members with themselves and with Christ their Head. That unity is Christological because what makes us one is being one in Christ — in fact, being one Christ, the "Unus Christus," as Augustine says. Christ is the source of the Church's unity. Christ and our union with Him are what bind us together. Therefore, as Ratzinger has pointed out, it is really important to stress that the Church is not something of our own creation, but rather that the Church is Christ.
Again, as Augustine insists, it is Christ who binds us together. It is His Spirit, given to us in Baptism, who unites us in charity and love. In this manner, the living God establishes His Church among us. It is a fundamental question to ask: Where does the Church come from, how is the Church established? Is it we who, in a Pelagian sense, construct the Church? Do we rightly labor for the Kingdom of God here and now, but fail to realize that it is first and foremost the Lord who labors in us and through us for the sake of His Kingdom in which we actively participate?
The great danger, then, is to presume that we are the Church by our own making, failing to perceive the primacy of God's agency. As Pope Benedict has said in the past, the greatest perennial heresy with which modern man must contend is Pelagianism. Our response to the following question is crucial: Is the Church merely a human organization dependent upon man's administration, or is it in fact, yes, human in her pilgrim members, but fundamentally united as one through the divine initiative and sustained in unity through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit?
But if the now Holy Father is in fact retrieving and implementing this patristic-Augustinian ecclesiology of communio, is he not taking a huge and arguably unnecessary risk at such a critical juncture in the Church's history? In other words, some would argue that, although it is grounded in the Church's authentic and living tradition and therefore intrinsically good, emphasizing an ecclesiology of communio is an imprudent risk precisely because this ecclesial vision has been, is being and will continue to be distorted by certain forces within the Church in order to propagate a very false sense of ecclesial collegiality, one whose ultimate goal is an enfeebled Petrine ministry that kowtows to the ideological whims of certain bishops in the name of a purported "collegial communio," episcopal fraternity. So, although it is certainly traditional at its core and does not call for a weakened Petrine ministry, wouldn't an ecclesiology of communio be risky and imprudent given the known theological tendency to twist it for ulterior motives?
FATHER JOSEPH CAROLA: Perhaps what you are touching upon is more fundamentally the question between the universal Church and the particular Churches. Certainly, the communio, as I understand it, is not just simply a loose federation, by any means. It is really an argument for ecclesial unity. Her communion makes her one, and it is Christ who is the heart of that union.
As Pope Benedict has pointed out in his works on this question regarding the relationship between the universal Church and the particular Churches, from her very inception the Church is already one and universal.
From the Upper Room, the moment of Pentecost, the Church already speaks in the languages of all men. So, communio in its truest sense entails a radical unity and universality from the very beginning.
Secondly, in placing particular emphasis upon an ecclesiology of communio, the Holy Father would be doing nothing new. Rather, he would be faithfully implementing the Second Vatican Council whose Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, authoritatively puts forward this ecclesiological vision.
So would it then be fair to say that, as far as Augustine and Benedict see it, the communio of the Church is made incarnate or manifest in the Petrine ministry?
FATHER CAROLA: Right. For Augustine, Peter's particular role is the ministry of unity. When Augustine comments on the passage in Matthew 16, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church," he says that Peter receives the keys, but he receives the keys in persona ecclesiae, in the person of the whole Church, and that it is Peter's unique vocation. As first among the apostles, he represents all of the apostles and, indeed, the whole Church.
And so in Peter the whole Church receives the keys. Peter's particular ministry is that of unity, indeed, of universality and unity. It is a powerful image which Augustine develops.
2. Strong Papacy & Active Laity?
So, according to you, would St. Augustine — and perhaps Pope Benedict too — be in favor of both a strong papacy and an active laity, simultaneously?
FATHER CAROLA: Well, I think it is perhaps anachronistic to speak of Augustine as being in favor of a strong papacy. Augustine certainly was more a Roman provincial in North Africa than a North African. His own theological vision reflects more what he received from Ambrose in Milan than what he inherited from the North African tradition. He is very much in line with a theological vision that he received on the other side of the seas, as it were, in Milan and even here in Rome where he lived for a time. He corresponded with Pope Innocent regarding the Pelagian controversy.
Augustine, moreover, was mindful of the role of Peter in the ancient Church and of the Petrine ministry of unity and universality. There are those who argue that he laid the foundation for a stronger papal role in North Africa by appealing to Innocent and engaging him.
Nonetheless, I would not want to say that he favored a strong papacy, as we might imagine it, say, in terms of 19th-century concerns which bore fruit in the First Vatican Council. By no means was he opposed to the particular ministry of the Bishop of Rome, but he would not have envisioned it in terms of its later legitimate development. On the other hand, Augustine vigorously affirmed his own episcopal authority, while simultaneously calling the lay faithful of Hippo and the province of Carthage to an active role in ecclesial life and to a mature and responsible form of Christianity.
This idea of a mature, active and responsible form of Christianity reminds me of something Pope Benedict XVI said in St. Peter's Basilica at the opening Mass of the recent conclave, when he gave what was to be his last public sermon as Cardinal Ratzinger. On that occasion he encouraged the faithful to be mature adults in the faith as opposed to easily swayed children.
FATHER CAROLA: Right, he was referring to those who are continually swayed one way or the other by the winds of contemporary culture. He was making reference, in fact, to St. Paul, who in his Letter to the Ephesians 4:14 was exhorting the early Christians to grow into the fullness of faith in Christ as opposed to simply giving themselves over to whatever might be the latest trend in belief.
And is that not the same type of cultural flux of trends with which not only St. Paul but also St. Augustine found himself inundated: namely, a market of ideas filled with a vast array of ideological trends, religious wares and philosophical currents?
FATHER CAROLA: Yes, Augustine certainly had his fair share of ideological trends, as it were, schism and heresies to contend with: Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism, Arianism, astrology, etc. In reference to the similar situation in which we find ourselves today, Pope Benedict, in his last public sermon as cardinal as you just noted, also urges us not to remain children in faith, in the condition of minors: "And what does it mean to be children in faith? St Paul answers: it means being 'tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine' (Eph 4: 14).
This description is very timely!
How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves — flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St. Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
3. Augustine's Influence
By the age of fourteen, Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, had read and memorized large chunks of Augustine's City of God and then frequently cited Augustine during his pontificate. In light of the current pontiff's personal preference for the Fathers in general and Augustine in particular, what can we expect from Pope Benedict XVI?
FATHER CAROLA: I think we can begin by simply looking at the first sermons which Pope Benedict XVI has preached. They contain beautiful imagery and a very appealing exegesis of Scripture.
For example, let us consider the sermon which he preached at the inauguration of his pontificate. He made reference to that great catch of fish from the Resurrection narratives in St. John's Gospel, applying to it a symbolically rich exegesis taken from the Church Fathers.
The Pope is steeped in the Tradition of the Church. He is steeped in a patristic reading of Scripture, which lies at the foundation of all theological discourse. Scripture is certainly the heart and soul of theology.
But the Fathers' reading of Sacred Scripture and their elaboration upon it by means of an allegorical or spiritual exegesis is, in fact, the beginning of the Church's theological enterprise.
Pope Benedict is immersed in that patristic project. I believe, therefore, that in his preaching we are going to experience a modern form of patristic exegesis, if you will. He will be drawing upon his own knowledge of how the Fathers treated Scripture, and I believe, in the spirit of the Fathers he will read Scripture in a similar way.
He will not necessarily cite explicit examples of how particular Fathers read a particular passage, but more likely he will simply apply their method in a legitimate way to help us understand the Scriptures today.
You know, I read a secular commentator's remarks about the beauty of Pope Benedict's language in his first sermons and I thought to myself: why, yes, of course, that is how the Fathers preached.
Yes, we can even take as a small but noteworthy example the first image Pope Benedict used the evening he was announced to be the new Pope. He accepted the daunting task as successor of St. Peter by referring to himself as "a humble servant in the vineyard of the Lord" . . .
FATHER JOSEPH CAROLA: Agreed. It is a lovely image.
Can we say then that Pope Benedict's homiletic method is patristic, at least in so far as he first confronts the text of Scripture itself head on, particularly some of its more beautiful images, and from there he begins to expound upon the chosen text with a certain theological verve and aesthetic? In short, would it be fair to say that Pope Benedict is a biblical theologian, much in the same way the Fathers were?
FATHER CAROLA: Yes, true, but the distinction we make today between biblical theology and systematic theology did not exist at the time of the Fathers.
To read Scripture and to comment on it was the object, the heart and soul of all theology.
But to go back a bit and answer the question of what can we possibly expect from Pope Benedict in terms of his Augustinian theology, we must go back to Augustine's central idea of grace and the primacy of the divine initiative in the life of the Church and the individual.
As I said, Benedict believes that Pelagianism is the chief perennial heresy of today. This, I think, will certainly shape and direct his continuing theological enterprise and his way of living in the Church and governing her.
4. Thomas vs. Augustine
Does the current pontiff's Augustinian-patristic proclivity and his Franciscan-Bonaventuran preference conflict with the perennial theology and philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas that the Church has always esteemed so highly?
FATHER CAROLA: I would never go so far as to say that Pope Benedict XVI is a Thomist. One more likely finds him in an Augustinian-Bonaventuran line of thought.
But let me share with you a story. Annually, I would take the students of my patristics seminar to the Thursday morning Mass which Cardinal Ratzinger celebrated each week at the Teutonic College inside the Vatican. The last time that I went happened also to be the day on which you asked His Eminence to celebrate your wedding.
When he greeted my students, he asked us what we were studying, and I told him that the previous afternoon, in conjunction with the works of Origen and Augustine, we had discussed his sermons on Creation.
He said to me: "Well, I hope you were gentle."
He meant, of course, with him and his writings!
I told him that we did, in fact, have some questions.
He asked: "What are they?"
Here was the Cardinal Prefect of the CDF willing to engage a group of seminarians and their professor in debate! I was humbled and amazed.
I pointed out that in his sermons he preached that God created man in view of becoming man.
So, I asked him if he held a Scotist view of the Incarnation, in other words, that the Incarnation was always intended regardless of whether the Fall would have happened or not, as opposed to a Thomistic view, which argues that the Incarnation is a direct result of the Fall.
Cardinal Ratzinger advised me that I should not create an undue opposition between the Scotist and the Thomistic positions.
And it struck me then and still does now that Pope Benedict holds to a hermeneutic of continuity rather than one of opposition. He holds to a reconciliatory vision of what others would possibly see as opposing lines of thought. And so, the cardinal pointed out that St. Thomas in fact wrote that God created man in view of Christ (Summa Theologiae II-II, question 2, article 7).
For clarification's sake, I asked him: "You mean the second chapter of Genesis, not the third which deals with the Fall?"
He responded: "Correct, the second chapter."
I use this brief exchange as an example to point out that although the Holy Father is clearly Augustinian and Bonaventuran in his personal theological vision he is not so to the detriment of other schools of thought in the Catholic tradition, in particular to the venerable contributions of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Anthony Valle is an American writer in Rome.
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