‘In the Beginning …’
A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall
Pope Benedict XVI
Joseph Ratzinger
Translated by
Boniface Ramsey, O.P.
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Homilies 1–4 first published 1986 by Erich Wewel Verlag
under the title Im Anfang schuf Gott
© 1986 Erich Wewel Verlag
English translation © 1990 by
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., Huntington, Indiana
Appendix first published 1979 by Univ. Verlag A. Pustet under the title
Konsequenzen des Schöpfungsglaubens
This edition, augmented with the Appendix, © 1995 by
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
2140 Oak Industrial N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ratzinger, Joseph.
[Im Anfang schuf Gott. English]
In the beginning — : a Catholic understanding of the story of Creation and the Fall /
Joseph Ratzinger; translated by Boniface Ramsey.
p. cm. — (Ressourcement)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8028-4106-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Creation — Sermons. 2. Fall of man — Sermons. 3. Bible. O.T.
Genesis I-III — Sermons. 4. Catholic Church — Sermons. 5. Sermons, English.
I. Title. II. Series: Ressourcement (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
BS651.R34513 1995
231.7′65 — dc20
95-36683
CIP
retrieval & renewal
Ressourcement
in catholic thought
The middle years of this century marked a particularly intense time of crisis and change in European society. During this period (1930–1950), a broad intellectual and spiritual movement arose within the European Catholic community, largely in response to the secularism that lay at the core of the crisis. The movement drew inspiration from earlier theologians and philosophers such as Möhler, Newman, Gardeil, Rousselot, and Blondel, as well as from men of letters like Charles Péguy and Paul Claudel.
The group of academic theologians included in the movement extended into Belgium and Germany, in the work of men like Emile Mersch, Dom Odo Casel, Romano Guardini, and Karl Adam. But above all the theological activity during this period centered in France. Led principally by the Jesuits at Fourviére and the Dominicans at Le Saulchoir, the French revival included many of the greatest names in twentieth-century Catholic thought: Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Yves Congar, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Louis Bouyer, and, in association, Hans Urs von Balthasar.
It is not true—as subsequent folklore has it—that those theologians represented any sort of self-conscious “school”: indeed, the differences among them, for example, between Fourviére and Saulchoir, were important. At the same time, most of them were united in the double conviction that theology had to speak to the present situation, and that the condition for doing so faithfully lay in a recovery of the Church’s past. In other words, they saw clearly that the first step in what later came to be known as aggiornamento had to be ressourcement—a rediscovery of the riches of the whole of the Church’s two-thousand-year tradition. According to de Lubac, for example, all of his own works as well as the entire Sources chrétiennes collection are based on the presupposition that “the renewal of Christian vitality is linked at least partially to a renewed exploration of the periods and of the works where the Christian tradition is expressed with particular intensity.”
In sum, for the ressourcement theologians theology involved a “return to the sources” of Christian faith, for the purpose of drawing out the meaning and significance of these sources for the critical questions of our time. What these theologians sought was a spiritual and intellectual communion with Christianity in its most vital moments as transmitted to us in its classic texts, a communion which would nourish, invigorate, and rejuvenate twentieth-century Catholicism.
The ressourcement movement bore great fruit in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and has deeply influenced the work of Pope John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger, formerly Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, now Pope Benedict XVI.
The present series is rooted in this twentieth-century renewal of theology, above all as the renewal is carried in the spirit of de Lubac and von Balthasar. In keeping with that spirit, the series understands ressourcement as revitalization: a return to the sources, for the purpose of developing a theology that will truly meet the challenges of our time. Some of the features of the series, then, will be:
• a return to classical (patristic-mediaeval) sources;
• a renewed interpretation of St. Thomas;
• a dialogue with the major movements and thinkers of the twentieth century, with particular attention to problems associated with the Enlightenment, modernity, liberalism.
The series will publish out-of-print or as yet untranslated studies by earlier authors associated with the ressourcement movement. The series also plans to publish works by contemporary authors sharing in the aim and spirit of this earlier movement. This will include interpretations of de Lubac and von Balthasar and, more generally, any works in theology, philosophy, history, literature, and the arts which give renewed expression to an authentic Catholic sensibility.
The editor of the Ressourcement series, David L. Schindler, is Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D. C., and editor of the North American edition of Communio: International Catholic Review, a federation of journals in thirteen countries founded in Europe in 1972 by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and others.
those who heard these homilies
in the Liebfrauenkirche in Munich
The Difference Between Form and Content in the Creation Narrative
The Unity of the Bible as a Criterion for Its Interpretation
The Meaning of the Biblical Creation Accounts
The Reasonableness of Faith in Creation
The Enduring Significance of the Symbolic Elements in the Text (§ Creation and Worship § The Sabbath Structure of Creation § Exploiting the Earth?)
The Creation of the Human Being
The Human Being—Taken from the Earth
Limitations and Freedom of the Human Being
The Response of the New Testament
The Consequences of Faith in Creation
The Suppression of Faith in Creation in Modern Thought
The Concept of Creation in Present-Day Thought: Three Forms of Concealment
Faith in Creation as a Basic Decision about Human Beings
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