The Importance of Theology According to Joseph Ratzinger

Joseph Ratzinger, later known as Pope Benedict XVI, was one the most intelligent, creative, and influential theologians of the 20th century. He wrote on a vast number of theological topics from Christology, to ecclesiology, to the relationship between science and religion (Stanford 1). Moreover, from the beginning of his professional theological career he held important theological positions first being a professor of theology at the “University of Bonn,” “Munster,” “Tübingen” and finally “Regensburg” (Stanford 1). Serving as a theological advisor to Cardinal Josef Frings during the Second Vatican Council, later becoming a cardinal himself and serving as the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for 34 years, and finally holding the office of Pope for 8 years until his retirement (Stanford 1). Such a vast and impactful theological career meant that Ratzinger wrote and developed several themes and interests throughout his long career, but one of the most important ones was his desire to provide a rational foundation for Christianity in the modern world.

This desire is clearly displayed in Ratzinger’s 1968 work Introduction to Christianity. This essay will explore this wonderful work by Pope Benedict XVI and aim to articulate how he defends the rational basis for Christianity in the 20th century. Firstly, his image of the clown and the perceived baselessness of theology in academia, and the modern world in general, will be examined in order to provide a backdrop for the bulk of his work in the book, which defends the rationality of Christian belief. Then, there will be two sections exploring how he refutes this perception of theology. The first section will be dedicated to how he defines belief in a way which evades modern man’s accusation and the second section will focus on how he defends the rationality of Christian faith through philosophical and historical study. In the end, Ratzinger’s defense of Christian belief is successful because he undermines the central assumption of modern man’s dismissal of it: Christianity, and theology more generally, does not reveal any information about reality.

Ratzinger begins his book by illustrating how modern man sees theology as a “clown” who cannot ever convince or rationally defend his position because he is, by nature, not to be taken seriously. Here is how explicates it:

“In his medieval, or at any rate old-fashioned, clown’s costume, he is simply not taken seriously. Whatever he says, he is ticketed and classified, so to speak, by his role. Whatever he does in his attempts to demonstrate the seriousness of the position, people always know in advance that he is in fact just—a clown. They are already familiar with what he is talking about and know that he is just giving a performance that has little or nothing to do with reality. So they can listen to him quite happily without having to be seriously concerned about what he is saying. This picture indubitably contains an element of truth in it; it reflects the oppressive reality in which theology and theological discussion are imprisoned today and their frustrating inability to break through accepted patterns of thought and speech and make people recognize the subject matter of theology as a serious aspect of human life.” (Ratzinger 21)

The passage skillfully presents how modern man views theology. He views the subject as, at best, irrelevant since it does not deal with anything important within human life. He perceives theology as something not linked with reality in any way. This sentiment is shown in another passage describing the condition of the believer in the modern world, but serves to further reveal why modern man is so dismissive of theology: 

Fastened to the cross—with the cross fastened to nothing, drifting over the abyss. The situation of the contemporary believer could hardly be more accurately and impressively described. Only a loose plank bobbing over the void seems to hold him up, and it looks as if he must eventually sink. Only a loose plank connects him to God, though certainly it connects him inescapably, and in the last analysis he knows that this wood is stronger than the void that seethes beneath him and that remains nevertheless the really threatening force in his day-to-day life. (Ratzinger 22-23)

Both the image of the clown and being adrift at sea, evoke a sense of disconnectedness from reality. That is, modern man believes that theology, and consequently religious belief, is disconnected from reality and so cannot exist within the domain of rational discourse. This disconnectedness is what completely undermines scholarly attempts to present Christianity in a rational way as, according to modern man, theologians are attempting to convince others of something which others know cannot inherently be taken seriously.

In order to begin his response to this perception of theology, and Christian belief more generally, he first provides a robust definition of faith and belief. Ratzinger commences this task by exploring the difference between “religion” and “belief” as the two are often conflated as being identical (Ratzinger 25). An example he provides to illustrate this is how “the Old Testament as a whole classified itself, not as ‘belief,’ but as ‘law’ … it is primarily a way of life, in which … the act of belief acquires … more and more importance” (Ratzinger 25). He then goes onto describe belief:

We now begin to discern a first vague outline of the attitude signified by the word credo. It means that man does not regard seeing, hearing, and touching as the totality of what concerns him, that he does not view the area of his world as marked off by what he can see and touch but seeks a second mode of access to reality, a mode he calls in fact belief … it signifies, not the observation of this or that fact, but a fundamental mode of behavior toward being, toward existence, … toward reality as a whole. It signifies the deliberate view that what cannot be seen, … is not unreal; that, on the contrary, what cannot be seen in fact represents true reality, the element that supports and makes possible all the rest of reality … “belief signifies the decision that at the very core of human existence there is a point that cannot be nourished and supported on the visible and tangible, that encounters and comes into contact with what cannot be seen and finds that it is a necessity for its own existence. (Ratzinger 25-26)

Belief, at least religious belief, for Ratzinger is a turning back towards reality and it recognizes that the immaterial, what exists beyond the physical, is a key component of reality. The crucial aspect of this definition is the fact that belief, for him, necessarily involves a turning back towards reality. Indeed, true belief always involves such a turning towards reality since belief occurs in things which are real, but are not fully understood capable of being fully comprehended. This turning towards reality, inherent in the nature of belief, undermines modern man’s perception of theology as disconnected from since being linked with reality is a vital part of what belief is, under his account.

Furthermore, this account of the nature of belief is buttressed when Ratzinger discusses how Christianity makes philosophical and historical claims and so it can be engaged rationally through these subjects. He first discusses the philosophical nature of the Christian faith, particularly as it applies to the doctrine of God. He starts by exploring how the God of Christianity is categorically different from the pagan gods of more primitive religions. As a response to these pagan worshippers, Ratzinger writes that it is “to none of the gods to whom you pray but solely and alone to him to whom you do not pray, to that highest being of whom your philosophers speak” (Ratzinger 69). This is in line with his previous statements about how belief is turning towards, and recognition of, the hidden layers of reality as this God is beyond the sensible world. Moreover, this God is the God of the philosophers, which provides evidence that belief in Him is not blind as philosophy is a rational discipline. This God is also identified with the “logos” in Christianity, which, in historical terms, “meant the definitive demythologization of the world and of religion” (Ratzinger 69). The logos signifies reason in Greek and so the God that is the Logos is not an unintelligible being, but the source of all intelligibility and truth in reality. Therefore, belief in this foundation of reality cannot possibly be irrational since it is the foundation of all rationality as well. Moreover, the fact that this God can be accessed through philosophy, a discipline which modern man recognizes as legitimate, means that modern man cannot view this being as illusory as He can be found through philosophy, which does describe reality.

Another avenue where modern man can see the connection between Chirstian doctrine and reality, which is history. Christianity centers on “Jesus, an individual executed in Palestine round about the year 30, the Christus (anointed, chosen) of God, indeed God’s own Son, is the central and decisive point of all human history” (Ratzinger 97). As a result, Christianity can be critically examined through the lens of history, making Christianity rationally accessible for modern man.

These reflections by Ratzinger reveal his deep insight into the religious problems that face modern man, and also his great capacity for finding remedies to these issues in order to make the truth receivable for modern man. His pastoral heart enables him to offer these solutions in a loving way, which is the only way that the truth can be fully expressed. The central of these problems, which he diagnoses in his Introduction to Christianity, is that modern man views religious belief, and therefore Christian belief, inherently subrational. This, before even entering a religious dialogue, closes him off to the possibility of religious truth and so completely undermines theological, and other rational, methods of convincing him. The solution that Ratzinger proposes is to undermine the undermining, to reestablish the rationality of Christian by first presenting a robust definition of belief, which is then bolstered by demonstrating that Christianity’s central claims can be investigated through philosophical and historical study. This project is awfully worthwhile and Ratzinger is successful in achieving his goal of defending Christianity’s rationality. When reading this in the 21st century, one is struck with the question, though, of whether Ratzinger would have written his book differently if it was primarily for a 21st century audience. It seems that much of the book could remain the same and still be relevant in a 21st century context as many people today hold “that there is no positive truth in religion,” as St. John Henry Newman said in regards to liberalism in religion, which has now become the prevailing viewpoint in the Western world (Newman 1). However, there is a difference in that people in the 21st century are much less optimistic about the secular world, as shown through the increased sense of nihilism, even within more traditional and religious cultures (Jahangiri & Ghareh 20-21). If Ratzinger were to respond to this, he could have, and probably would have, adopted a tone which communicates more of the intrinsic beauty and appeal of Christianity, than a more defensive and purely intellectual one. Nevertheless, his work was made for a 20th century audience and it is well-suited for such an audience and successfully confronts and shows modern man the way towards “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).

Works Cited

Jahangiri, Jahangir, and Rayehe Ghareh. “A Sociological Study of Nihilism: A Case Study.” International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science , vol. 3, no. 5, June 2015, pp. 16–24, https://doi.org/https://ijlass.org/data/frontImages/gallery/Vol._3_No._5/2._16-24.pdf.

Newman, St. John Henry Cardinal. “Biglietto Speech: EWTN.” EWTN Global Catholic Television Network, 14 Apr. 2010, www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/biglietto-speech-5245.

Ratzinger, Joseph Aloisius. Introduction to Christianity. Ignatius Press, 2004.

Stanford, Peter. “Pope Benedict XVI Obituary.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 31 Dec. 2022, www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/31/pope-benedict-obituary. 

Suggs, M. Jack, et al. The Oxford Study Bible: Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha. Oxford University Press, 1992.