Monday, March 20, 2006
Between Christ and the Church there is no opposition
Pope Benedict XVI has just initiated a cycle of Catechism in his weekly
audience on Wednesday's. The series entitled Credo Apostolicam Ecclesiam
began with a discussion of the unity of Christ and the Church - Between
Christ and the Church there is no opposition.
He condemns a heresy which has become common in the Church over the last 40
years: the individualistic interpretation of Christ's proclamation of the
Kingdom as proposed by liberal theology is unilateral and unfounded. Here
is how the great liberal theologian Adolf von Harnack summarized this
interpretattion, in a series of lectures in 1900 entitled "What is
Christianity?": "The Kingdom of God comes in the degree in which it comes
to specific men, finds an opening into the soul and is accepted by them.
The Kingdom of God is the 'lordship' of God, that is to say, the dominion
of the Holy God in each different heart" (Third Lecture, 100ff).
His response is that "The individualist Jesus is a fantasy. We cannot find
Jesus without the reality that he created and through which he communicates
himself".
He addresses the Jews specifically: "By their mere existence, the twelve
called from different backgrounds have become a summons to all Israel to
conversion and to allow themselves to be reunited in a new covenant, full
and perfect accomplishment of the old".
Apparently the concept which has been proposed of late, that the Jews are
saved by the old covenant until the second coming, and that we should
demure from attempts at evangelisation is in err.
Analysis and an unofficial translation here on Chiesa.
Praise be to Jesus Christ.
