Maverick Philosopher

Philosophy and Christianity

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Ruminations on Ratzinger 

Pope Benedict XVI Dead at 95

I was mightily impressed with the power of Joseph Ratzinger's intellect when I first read his Introduction to Christianity in 2016. I have been recently re-reading it. Ratzinger makes quite the contrast with the benighted Bergoglio.

How do we best honor a thinker? By re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically yet critically, appropriating and developing what stands up to scrutiny.  One attempt on my part is my Substack article, Ratzinger on the Resurrection of the Body. Another is The Ultimate Paradox of Divine Creation. A third is my defense of the controversial Regensburg speech.

Other minor pieces are collected in my Ratzinger category.   Here is an excerpt from one of them:

Jerusalem needs Athens if theism is not to degenerate into a tribal mythology. (That Athens needs Jerusalem is also true, but not my present theme.)

I don't believe I am saying anything different from what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict  XVI) says in his Introduction to Christianity (Ignatius, 2004, orig. publ. in German in 1968).  Here is one relevant quotation among several:

The Christian faith opted, we have seen, against the gods of the various religions and in favor of the God of the philosophers, that is, against the myth of custom and in favor of the truth of Being itself and nothing else. (142) 

Writing of the unity of belief and thought, Ratzinger tells us that

. . . the Fathers of the Church believed that they had discovered here the deepest unity between philosophy and faith, Plato and Moses, the Greek mind and the biblical mind. (118)

Plato and Moses!  The God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are one and the same.

The problematic is rich and many-sided. More later. 

Ratzinger on the Resurrection of the Body

Substack latest.

You will note that in my writings I use the gender-neutral 'man' and 'he.'  It is important to stand in defense of the mother tongue. She is under vicious assault these days. You owe a lot to your mother; show her some respect. On Easter Sunday and on every day. Anyone who takes offense at standard English takes offense inappropriately.

Platonism and Christianity

Brother Dave writes,

I'm re-reading Boethius' Consolation. Boethius does have a foot in Athens and one in Jerusalem, it seems to me. Now you sir are a Christian, and argue your positions in a blog subtitled Footnotes to Plato . . . .  Would it be fair to refer to you, as I would to Boethius, as a Christian Platonist?

As for whether I am a Platonist,  all of us who uphold the Western (Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman) tradition are Platonists broadly construed if Alfred North Whitehead is right in his observation that:

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.  I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings.  I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.  [. . .] Thus in one sense by stating my belief that the train of thought in these lectures is Platonic, I am doing no more than expressing the hope that it falls within the European tradition. (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, The Free Press, 1978, p. 39)

So in that general sense I am a Platonist.  And I also like the modesty conveyed by "footnotes to Plato."  Some say the whole of philosophy is a battle between Plato and Aristotle.  That is not bad as simplifications go, and if you forced me to choose, I would throw in my lot with Plato and the Platonists.  So that is a more specific sense in which I provide "footnotes to Plato." 

As for Platonism and Christianity, you could refer to me fairly as a Christian Platonist. But what does that come to?

Part of what it means for me is that a de-Hellenized Christianity is of no interest.  Christianity is a type of monotheism. The monotheistic claim is not merely that there is one god as opposed to many gods.  Monotheism as I see it overturns the entire pantheon; it does not reduce its membership to one god, the tribal god of the Jews. Monotheism does of course imply that there is exactly one God, but it also implies that God is the One, and that therefore God is unique, and indeed uniquely unique.  To understand that you will have to follow the link and study the entry to which it leads. Now if God is uniquely unique, then God is not a being among beings, but Being itself.  He is not an ens among entia, but esse: ipsum esse subsistens.  Kein Seiendes, sondern das Sein selbst.

Now we are well up into the Platonic stratosphere. Jerusalem needs Athens if theism is not to degenerate into a tribal mythology. (That Athens needs Jerusalem is also true, but not my present theme.)

I don't believe I am saying anything different from what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict  XVI) says in his Introduction to Christianity (Ignatius, 2004, orig. publ. in German in 1968).  Here is one relevant quotation among several:

The Christian faith opted, we have seen, against the gods of the various religions and in favor of the God of the philosophers, that is, against the myth of custom and in favor of the truth of Being itself and nothing else. (142) 

Writing of the unity of belief and thought, Ratzinger tells us that

. . . the Fathers of the Church believed that they had discovered here the deepest unity between philosophy and faith, Plato and Moses, the Greek mind and the biblical mind. (118)

Plato and Moses!  The God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are one and the same.

The problematic is rich and many-sided. More later.

Self-Made Meaning is Unmeaning

One can bake bread, buy bread, or beg bread. Can one bake for oneself the bread of meaning? Or must one ask for it? (One cannot buy it.) Some say that the only meaning a life has is the meaning the liver of the life gives it.  This is a mistake as I will argue in painful detail in a separate entry. For now I merely invoke the authority of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trs. Foster and Miller, Ignatius Press, 1969, p. 73, orig. publ. in German in 1968:

Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand or live, cannot be made but only received.

To which I add: if there is no meaning there to be received, then there is no meaning.

Meaning as Bread

As an addendum to yesterday's Platonizing entry on "Give us this day our daily bread," I draw upon Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trs. Foster and Miller, Ignatius Press, 1969, p. 73, orig. publ. in German in 1968:

Meaning is the bread on which man, in the intrinsically human part of his being, subsists.