THE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD: FAITH
Christian brotherhood, unlike the purely secular brotherhood of Marxism, is, above all, brotherhood based on the common paternity of God. Unlike the impersonal Stoic idea of God the father and the vague paternal idea of Englightenment, the fatherhood of God is a fatherhood mediated by the Son including brotherly union in the Son.
If, therefore, Christian brotherhood is to be vitally realized, both a vital knowledge of the fatherhood of God and a vital joining with Jesus Christ in a unity of grace are necessary.
The fatherhood of God gives Christian brotherhood its firm foundation. It is important to understand fully the new knowledge that the Christian Faith has given us of God’s paternity. Mythical religion, Plato and Stoics, and eighteenth-century deism all speak od God as a father. And yet it is something quite different when the Christian says “Our Father.” Early mythical thought conceived of the sky as the world-creating force which, together with Mother Earth, produced all the life of the world. In this naturalistic sense, then, the sky can be called the “father” of men. Greek philosophy spiritualized this idea without completely removing its basic assumption. In the eternal, trancendent idea of the good, Plato sees the father and the lord, but its quality as “person” remains in doubt, and there is no question of a personal relationship with the creatures of the world. With the Stoics the return to naturalism is quite clear. Their doctrine of the fatherhood of God depends on a reinterpretation in terms of natural philosophy of the old myth of hieros gamos (sacred marriage) of Zeus and Hera. Thus it remains ultimately a proposiiton of natural philosophy when man appears in Epictetus as idios huios tou theou (God’s own son). It certainly does not mean that he is seen in relation to a personal, caring and loving, angry and forgiving, paternal God. He is merely the culminating point of cosmos, the one most filled by its sublime powers. The uncosmic, strictly personalist idea of Father, which gives to the paternity of God the seriousness of a true claim on us and to the fraternity of his children life and significance, is revealed only in the words of the Bible and is thus apparent only to the eyes of faith. Insight into the brotherhood of men is given ultimately only to him who has seen, in faith the full paternity of God.
At the same time the concreteness of God, his personal relation to man, also undergoes an increasing spiritualization in the language of Scripture—an increasing spiritualization which does not, however, lead to increasing rarification (as is always the danger) but, only to the contrary, serves to intensify the concreteness and the livig reality of his fatherhood. This God never becomes a God of the philosophers; he remains the living God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob; more, he becomes the God of Jesus Christ and thus the God who has taken our flesh and blood and our whole human nature. In Jesus Christ, God has not only spoken to men but has also finally and radically made it possible for them to speak to him; for in him God became man and, as man, finally stepped out of his totally different being and entered into the dialogic situation of all men. Jesus the man stands as such within the community of discourse which unites all men as beings of the same order. The man Jesus can be addressed by every man, but in him it is God who is addressed. Thus the question of how changeable man can address a totally different, unchangeable God is resolved. In Christ, God has taken a piece of this world’s time and of changeable creature-liness, drawn it to himself, and finally thrown open the door between himself and his creatures. In Christ, God has become God more concretely, more personally and more “addressably,” “a partner of men.” We are better placed to understand the importance of his for the Christian conception of fatherhood and brotherhood if we consider more closely the biblical growth of the idea. We have already seen that the Old Testament distinguishes two kinds of divine paternity and, correspondingly, two kinds of human childhood: the sonship of all peoples because of its creation; the sonship of Israel’s priority by (among other things) calling Israel the “firstborn son of God” (Ex. 4:22). . . .
Christian brotherhood is ultimately founded on the faith that gives us our assurance of our real sonship in relation to the heavenly Father and of our brotherhood among one another. But here it is necessary to emphasize the social dimension of faith more than is generally done. To take only one example: when theologians today interpret the opening words of the Our Father, they usually restrict themselves to an analysis of the word “father,” and this is in tune with our contemporary religious awareness. But a theologian such as Cyprian, on the other hand, chose to give special attention to the word “our.” In fact this word does have great importance, for only one man has the right to say “my Father” to God, and this is Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son. All other men must say “our Father” to God, for the Father is Hod for us only so long as we are part of the community of his children. For “me” he becomes a Father only through my being in the “we” of his children. The Christian prayer to the Father “is not the call of a soul that knows nothing outside God and itself,” but is bound to the community of brothers. Together with these brothers we make up the one Christ, in whom and through whom alone we are able to say “Father,” because only through Christ and in Christ are we his “children.” Thus, strictly speaking, we should not say that Christ taught men to call God “Father,” but rather that it was he who taught them to say “Our Father”—and the “Our” is no less important than the “Father,” for it locates faith and prayer, assigning them their christological component. When we see this, Harnack’s view that the “Son” does not form part of the gospel proclaimed by Christ is shown to be obviously false. Its place is firmly fixed in the word “our” and, in a logically developing kerygma, could not fail to emerge as the social dimension of faith. It is important that this social dimension should once more be brought to the consciousness of the faithful, that Christian belief in God the Father should be shown necessarily to involve the affirmation of our brothers, the brotherhood of all Christians.
Excerpts from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (San Fransisco: Ignatius, 1993) 45-52.
Christian brotherhood, unlike the purely secular brotherhood of Marxism, is, above all, brotherhood based on the common paternity of God. Unlike the impersonal Stoic idea of God the father and the vague paternal idea of Englightenment, the fatherhood of God is a fatherhood mediated by the Son including brotherly union in the Son.
If, therefore, Christian brotherhood is to be vitally realized, both a vital knowledge of the fatherhood of God and a vital joining with Jesus Christ in a unity of grace are necessary.
The fatherhood of God gives Christian brotherhood its firm foundation. It is important to understand fully the new knowledge that the Christian Faith has given us of God’s paternity. Mythical religion, Plato and Stoics, and eighteenth-century deism all speak od God as a father. And yet it is something quite different when the Christian says “Our Father.” Early mythical thought conceived of the sky as the world-creating force which, together with Mother Earth, produced all the life of the world. In this naturalistic sense, then, the sky can be called the “father” of men. Greek philosophy spiritualized this idea without completely removing its basic assumption. In the eternal, trancendent idea of the good, Plato sees the father and the lord, but its quality as “person” remains in doubt, and there is no question of a personal relationship with the creatures of the world. With the Stoics the return to naturalism is quite clear. Their doctrine of the fatherhood of God depends on a reinterpretation in terms of natural philosophy of the old myth of hieros gamos (sacred marriage) of Zeus and Hera. Thus it remains ultimately a proposiiton of natural philosophy when man appears in Epictetus as idios huios tou theou (God’s own son). It certainly does not mean that he is seen in relation to a personal, caring and loving, angry and forgiving, paternal God. He is merely the culminating point of cosmos, the one most filled by its sublime powers. The uncosmic, strictly personalist idea of Father, which gives to the paternity of God the seriousness of a true claim on us and to the fraternity of his children life and significance, is revealed only in the words of the Bible and is thus apparent only to the eyes of faith. Insight into the brotherhood of men is given ultimately only to him who has seen, in faith the full paternity of God.
At the same time the concreteness of God, his personal relation to man, also undergoes an increasing spiritualization in the language of Scripture—an increasing spiritualization which does not, however, lead to increasing rarification (as is always the danger) but, only to the contrary, serves to intensify the concreteness and the livig reality of his fatherhood. This God never becomes a God of the philosophers; he remains the living God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob; more, he becomes the God of Jesus Christ and thus the God who has taken our flesh and blood and our whole human nature. In Jesus Christ, God has not only spoken to men but has also finally and radically made it possible for them to speak to him; for in him God became man and, as man, finally stepped out of his totally different being and entered into the dialogic situation of all men. Jesus the man stands as such within the community of discourse which unites all men as beings of the same order. The man Jesus can be addressed by every man, but in him it is God who is addressed. Thus the question of how changeable man can address a totally different, unchangeable God is resolved. In Christ, God has taken a piece of this world’s time and of changeable creature-liness, drawn it to himself, and finally thrown open the door between himself and his creatures. In Christ, God has become God more concretely, more personally and more “addressably,” “a partner of men.” We are better placed to understand the importance of his for the Christian conception of fatherhood and brotherhood if we consider more closely the biblical growth of the idea. We have already seen that the Old Testament distinguishes two kinds of divine paternity and, correspondingly, two kinds of human childhood: the sonship of all peoples because of its creation; the sonship of Israel’s priority by (among other things) calling Israel the “firstborn son of God” (Ex. 4:22). . . .
Christian brotherhood is ultimately founded on the faith that gives us our assurance of our real sonship in relation to the heavenly Father and of our brotherhood among one another. But here it is necessary to emphasize the social dimension of faith more than is generally done. To take only one example: when theologians today interpret the opening words of the Our Father, they usually restrict themselves to an analysis of the word “father,” and this is in tune with our contemporary religious awareness. But a theologian such as Cyprian, on the other hand, chose to give special attention to the word “our.” In fact this word does have great importance, for only one man has the right to say “my Father” to God, and this is Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son. All other men must say “our Father” to God, for the Father is Hod for us only so long as we are part of the community of his children. For “me” he becomes a Father only through my being in the “we” of his children. The Christian prayer to the Father “is not the call of a soul that knows nothing outside God and itself,” but is bound to the community of brothers. Together with these brothers we make up the one Christ, in whom and through whom alone we are able to say “Father,” because only through Christ and in Christ are we his “children.” Thus, strictly speaking, we should not say that Christ taught men to call God “Father,” but rather that it was he who taught them to say “Our Father”—and the “Our” is no less important than the “Father,” for it locates faith and prayer, assigning them their christological component. When we see this, Harnack’s view that the “Son” does not form part of the gospel proclaimed by Christ is shown to be obviously false. Its place is firmly fixed in the word “our” and, in a logically developing kerygma, could not fail to emerge as the social dimension of faith. It is important that this social dimension should once more be brought to the consciousness of the faithful, that Christian belief in God the Father should be shown necessarily to involve the affirmation of our brothers, the brotherhood of all Christians.
Excerpts from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (San Fransisco: Ignatius, 1993) 45-52.
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