In an address on the vigil of the beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI told the crowd, “As you know, Newman has long been an important influence in my own life and thought.”Footnote 1 Benedict did not elaborate, either in the remainder of this address or in his beatification homily on the subsequent day, how Newman influenced him. But in an address on the centenary of the death of Newman two decades earlier, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in an autobiographical reflection, did describe “my own way to Newman.”Footnote 2 While a seminarian in Germany after the Second World War, a fellow seminarian and two theologians introduced Ratzinger to Newman's thoughts on conscience and the development of doctrine; in his address Ratzinger called Newman's teaching on these two themes “his decisive contribution to the renewal of theology.”Footnote 3 Regarding the latter teaching Ratzinger stated that Newman “had placed the key in our hand to build historical thought in theology, or much more, he taught us to think historically in theology and so to recognize the identity of faith in all developments.”Footnote 4
Despite the importance of history in Ratzinger's theological project,Footnote 5 he makes only a few glancing references to Newman in his work on the theology of tradition. Ratzinger exhibits clear knowledge of Newman's work on the development of doctrine,Footnote 6 yet he does not engage or draw on Newman directly in his own work on tradition. In fact, Ratzinger recalled in his memoirs that he owed his understanding of revelation, Scripture, and tradition to St. Bonaventure, not to anyone else.Footnote 7 This essay argues that even though a straight line between Newman and Ratzinger on tradition cannot be easily drawn, Ratzinger's understanding of the Church's living tradition certainly shares many similarities with Newman, and the future pope's centenary address points to the common element of their respective perspectives: the understanding of revelation as objectively revealed by God yet living and developing in history through subjective encounters in the Church.
Revelation as the Source of Tradition in Newman's Theology
According to Günter Biemer, Newman's fifteenth sermon before the University of Oxford marked his “break-through to a new concept of tradition.”Footnote 8 Prior to this point, “Newman had really envisaged only the mechanical concept of tradition which was generally in vogue. He had cherished the idea that formulas verbally identical had been handed on, and that this repetition had assured the essential identity of doctrine.”Footnote 9 This “mechanical concept” receives sharp criticism from Ratzinger on account of its positivistic understanding of revelation, which limits God's action to one particular moment after which he ceased speaking to man in history.Footnote 10 For this reason he deems insufficient Vincent of Lérins's “static semper”—taken from his understanding of tradition as what has been held semper, ubique, ab omnibus—because in twentieth century theology, revelation is “no longer adequately expressed by the simple ideas of a given fact and its explanation.”Footnote 11
Newman, reflecting in his fifteenth Oxford sermon on Mary's own internal pondering of the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, expressed a “new concept of tradition” that “represents a decisive turning-point not only in Newman's life, but in the theology of tradition.”Footnote 12
[A]ccording to Newman, Mary represents the prototype and model of the true Christian and of true Christianity. Christianity too, the true Church, has the duty of preserving well the revelation entrusted to it. The Church too will meditate upon it in the course of time. The result of the Church's meditation in the course of time on the word of God is displayed constantly through new insights. The exploring and explicating thought of the Church is actually necessary, if it is to be true to the structure and content of the gospels.Footnote 13
In imitation of Mary, the Church does more than simply propose the revealed word of God entrusted to her as a mirror reflects light: the Church meditates on the revelation she has received, and, over time and with the help of external circumstances, this reflection gives rise to new insights and understandings of this revelation. Revelation, therefore, is not a positivistic “static semper” but a living and growing encounter with the word of God.Footnote 14
In his writings Newman uses the term “revelation” broadly and colorfully, defining it as “God's voice speaking”Footnote 15 and “the manifestation of the Invisible Divine Power, or in the substitution of the voice of a Lawgiver for the voice of conscience.”Footnote 16 However, by underscoring the reality of God's voice, these poetic images coincide with the more technical definition he gives in his brief essay known as “The Newman-Perrone Paper on Development:” “[T]he revealed word of God is that gift of Gospel truth, or deposit of faith, given in its fullness by Christ to his Apostles and by his Apostles to the Church, and transmitted whole and entire through the ages, even to the final consummation.”Footnote 17 God's own voice reveals his word, the deposit of faith that has been entrusted to the Church by Christ and the Apostles. Revelation, then, as “word,” necessarily requires a recipient to hear it and put it into practice. A sort of dialogue thus ensues whereby the word communicates and develops in the minds of the faithful. This “dialogue,” since it takes place “through the ages,” creates a diachronic dimension in Newman's understanding of revelation as living in history. Additionally, his inclusion of conscience in his more florid definitions is significant: just as conscience is the supreme element of natural religion, Scripture, the Church, and the see of Rome are the guiding elements of revealed religion.Footnote 18
In his exchange with Perrone, Newman introduces a very significant distinction into his understanding of the word of God.
God's word has two aspects. In part it is subjective and in part objective. It is to be termed objective insofar as it has been, and will continue to be transmitted, from Christ, from the Apostles, from the Supreme Pontiff, from Ecumenical Councils in dogmas. But everything that has been everywhere handed down unanimously, not by design or in virtue of any definition, but freely and spontaneously, with depth of feeling and variety of expression, is subjective to the mind of Catholics.Footnote 19
This distinction between subjective and objective aspects of revelation allows Newman to moor his account of the development of Christian doctrine in the harbor of the Council of Trent without falling into the opposing errors of liberalism and positivistic understanding of revelation.Footnote 20 The word of God, which exists in itself or “in the form of dogma,” is objective primarily “in the intellect of the Holy Spirit, to whom, as its supreme author and giver, the whole revelation is in every respect entirely manifest,” and also “in the intellect” of the Apostles and the Church of Rome.Footnote 21 This objective revelation, given once and for all in Christ, impresses itself into the minds and hearts of the faithful, the “subjects” of the Church, in whom, upon meditation and instruction, the word of God becomes “alive and active in the intellect, no longer as a shadow of truth but as a reality, with its own foundation and properties.”Footnote 22 However, “[e]ven though the word of God has parts, those parts are not thrown together randomly but constitute a single whole. Their coherence and consistency are such that all together comprise one totality.”Footnote 23 The singular event of revelation, then, has both static and dynamic elements.Footnote 24 It is not a dead proposition but the living word of God in history.
Newman does not examine the relationship between revelation and tradition in a systematic or ordered manner. According to Biemer, Newman sees tradition in its sacred sense as beginning after revelation ceased with the death of the last Apostle.Footnote 25 Yet a continuum between revelation and tradition becomes evident by comparing Newman's definition of objective and subjective revelation with his terms “Episcopal Tradition” and “Prophetic Tradition,” which he describes in his Via Media.Footnote 26
Episcopal Tradition consists of both the Creed, which “is delineated and recognized in Scripture itself…and again, in the writings of the Fathers,”Footnote 27 and has been passed along at baptism through the guarantee of episcopal succession, as well as traditions handed on orally or in practice, such as rites and ceremonies, from the earliest days of Christianity. Tradition in oral form or in practices “is of the nature of a written document, and has an evidence of its Apostolical origin the same in kind with that adducible for the Scriptures.”Footnote 28 Newman's Episcopal Tradition, then, is the authoritative continuation of the objective word of God revealed by Christ and passed on to the Church. Since Newman holds that the Creed expresses the deposit of faith,Footnote 29 then, in addition to a means of instruction, the Creed functions as an extension of the gospel in time. However, the Apostolic traditions (in the sense of practices) of the Church are as authoritative as Scripture, implying that, first, revelation is more than Scripture alone, and, second, that these traditions also belong to the deposit of faith. Because Newman's definition of the word of God includes a diachronic element, it follows that revelation, after the death of the last Apostle, is handed on authoritatively by the Church in the Episcopal Tradition in the form of dogma, as mentioned above.
Prophetic Tradition, on the other hand, is a manifestation of Newman's understanding of the subjective aspect of the word of God. The Prophetic Tradition consists of the teachings and interpretations of revelation by the Church's prophets—doctors—whose teachings form
a certain body of Truth, pervading the Church like an atmosphere…partly written, partly unwritten, partly the interpretation, partly the supplement of Scripture, partly preserved in intellectual expressions, partly latent in the spirit and temper of Christians; poured to and fro in closets and upon the housetops, in liturgies, in controversial works, in obscure fragments, in sermons, in popular prejudices, in local customs.Footnote 30
After objective revelation impresses itself on the subjective mind of the believer, understanding of revelation grows and develops in the life of the Church through a variety of expressions and practices, as discussed above. Biemer argues that Newman's Prophetic Tradition “brings out better the dynamic nature of the faith as attested by the Church” because of its ongoing nature.Footnote 31 This prophetic form of tradition, therefore, is alive and growing.
Newman has this form of living tradition in mind in his Lectures on the Present Condition of Catholics in England, where he argues that practices, thinking, principles, judgments, and the like reveal the very life of Catholics, “and what is here called life the Catholic calls Tradition.”Footnote 32 Against Protestants who believe Catholic tradition is a thesaurus of written statements, Newman counters that tradition is necessarily unwritten because “Tradition is uniform custom. It is silent, but it lives. It is silent like the rapids of a river, before the rocks intercept it. It is the Church's…habit of opinion and feeling, which she reflects upon, masters and expresses, according to the emergency.”Footnote 33 Catholic tradition, like a flowing river, exhibits its dynamism and vitality as it is experienced in history in the lives of believers.
Continuing Newman's analogy, the source of the river of tradition is revelation, the understanding of which, though definitively revealed once and for all, continues to grow and develop in time, and it does so precisely because it subsists in the Church.Footnote 34 Thus the Church is the sine qua non of revelation, for to her alone has the word of God been entrusted; she forms the banks in which the river is contained. Because of this Biemer calls Newman's conception of the Catholic Church
the key to the integration of the prophetic and episcopal tradition, and to their indissoluble connexion with scripture as the source of faith. He thus did justice to the historical reality of the Church, that is, to the changes constantly seen in creeds and dogmas. And he also gave due place to the human and dynamic aspect of the Church: the effort of thought and penetration, of formulation and re-formulation which the inadequacy of human words makes imperative. Finally, he also included in his new principle the divine and all-transcendent element of the Church: the work of the Paraclete, who alone preserves the truth of revelation and the revelation of truth.Footnote 35
In his Essay Newman addresses the relationship between revelation, the Church, and her infallibility. In arguing against Protestants who deny the doctrinal authority of the Church, Newman asserts that “common sense” implies “that some authority must there be if there is a revelation given, and other authority there is none” except the Church.Footnote 36 Without an authority infallible in its judgment there can be no agreement on the truth of Christianity; thus the gift of infallibility “secures the object, while it gives definiteness and force to the matter, of the Revelation.”Footnote 37 Here Newman's understanding of the relationship of Scripture and tradition becomes apparent: although Scripture is pre-eminent since it is inspired by God,Footnote 38 the Church's tradition interprets Scripture. However, Scripture functions as a “guardian” for tradition by supplying “a certain negative norm” against which the doctrines of tradition may be measured lest they contradict revelation in some way.Footnote 39
It is significant that Newman's theology of tradition begins with revelation and finds its expression within the Church. In this way Newman anticipated, or perhaps influenced, the approach of the Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum a century later; this is also the approach of Joseph Ratzinger, as will be examined below. By way of summary, Newman believes that the Incarnation is the central idea of Christianity:Footnote 40 Christ himself taught his Apostles, who in turn handed on his divine word to the Church. What the Apostles and their successors the bishops handed on and believed, in the form of writings and oral practices, constitute Catholic tradition for Newman.Footnote 41 Thus revelation precedes Scripture in time and exceeds it in scope, although the former cannot be separated from the latter.Footnote 42 The “ears of faith” bring the objective word of God into “the mind of the Catholic world” through “the ministering and teaching Church.”Footnote 43 Once received in the mind, this divine word is
distinguished and arranged; it is given a shape, strengthened by tests…. It goes through alterations, displaying different complexions and different learnings in accordance with different ages. In its manifestations it resembles ideas occupying the mind of some philosopher who, over the course of many years, ponders them, discusses them, and brings them to maturity.Footnote 44
Through meditation and study, the subjective aspect of the word not only helps the Church comprehend the objective word, but it can also pass into and become objective dogma. This is the essence of Newman's teaching on the development of doctrine, which elucidates his view of tradition: “Christian dogma really grows, rather than accumulates; there is no new beginning of truth, but the continuance of a real tradition.”Footnote 45 This tradition itself has grown from revelation, which is the voice of God communicated by his Son, Jesus Christ, to the Apostles and to the Church.
Ratzinger's Knowledge of Newman's Theology of Tradition
Whereas Newman's theology of revelation and tradition must be pieced together from his various writings, Joseph Ratzinger, writing a century after Newman and in a very different theological milieu, devoted, early in his career, a book length essay to their relationship, entitled Revelation and Tradition,Footnote 46 which was written in the midst of the conciliar debates surrounding the document that would become Dei Verbum. According to Ratzinger a “new view of the phenomenon of tradition, which had been developing, for various reasons, from the beginning of the last century”Footnote 47 contributed to this new milieu:
The first impetus towards a new attitude to tradition came with the Romantic movement, for which tradition became a leading philosophical and theological idea. In the one case it was seen as an organically evolving process, and in the other appeared to be practically identical with the voice of the Church as living tradition. The controversy concerning the dogma of 1854 was a further milestone, for which—in default of biblical proof—tradition was made responsible, which could now, however, no longer be understood as the simple passing on of something that had been handed down once and for all, but had to be understood in terms of categories of growth, progress and the knowledge of faith that Romanticism had developed. The ideas that were developed in this connection by the Jesuit School in Rome not only had a decided influence on Newman's idea of development, which in turn gave rise to a varied literature on the subject of the development of dogma, but were also the basis of the later discussion that arose, in similar circumstances, concerning the dogma of 1950 and now placed the idea of the Church's knowledge through faith in the forefront of the idea of tradition.Footnote 48
Ratzinger's assertion that the Roman College influenced Newman's idea of development is noteworthy: Biemer names only Englishmen, namely Edward Hawkins, Richard Froude, and John Keble, as influences for Newman's thoughts on tradition.Footnote 49 Furthermore, Newman composed his Fifteenth Oxford Sermon and his Essay, his most complete works on the subject, before he studied in Rome. Biemer, Gerald McCool, and Aidan Nichols suggest that Newman's approach took shape alongside the similar approach developed by the nineteenth century Tübingen School that incorporated Schelling's idealism into an historical, as opposed to a Kantian and positivistic, theology of tradition.Footnote 50 Yves Congar also sees Newman's “decisive contribution to the problem of the relationship between magisterium and history in tradition” as developing independently from continental influence.Footnote 51 In fact, Congar presents Newman as an original thinker whose theology of tradition and revelation grew from his rejection of the Anglican Church's “completely textual and historical idea of tradition.”Footnote 52 As for Ratzinger's statement concerning the influence of the Roman College on Newman, both sides were cool to the other: Newman maintained that the professors in Rome were ignorant in matters of history, while the Roman academics viewed Newman's work with suspicion.Footnote 53 To Newman's criticism, Congar maintains that the Roman College's theology of tradition was far from advanced; J.B. Franzelin eventually made contributions to this field, but he did not arrive at the College until 1851, four years after Newman's departure and six years after the publication of his Essay.Footnote 54
Given his account of the sources of Newman's theology, it is fair to ask how intimately Ratzinger was acquainted with the intricacies of Newman's theology of tradition and development. As mentioned initially, Ratzinger certainly demonstrates knowledge of the heart of Newman's theory on development. For example, in an essay on the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, Ratzinger speaks of “the idea of development” and “the historical dynamism of the Church” in a manner reminiscent of Newman's stream analogy: “a body maintains its identity by the fact that it constantly becomes new in the process of living…. There is real identity with the origin only when there is at the same time a living continuity that unfolds it and thereby preserves it.”Footnote 55
In his Centenary Address quoted above, Ratzinger notes that he first “found access to Newman's teaching on the development of doctrine” as a seminarian through the work of Heinrich Fries. Tracey Rowland identifies one of Fries's works, Die Religionsphilosophie Newmans, which appeared in 1948 while Ratzinger was still a seminarian.Footnote 56 In subsequent years, Fries also published two articles focused more pointedly on Newman's work on tradition and development.Footnote 57 These two articles appeared just before the 1957 acceptance and publication of Ratzinger's own habilitationschrift on St. Bonaventure's theology of revelation, a work that does not mention Newman.Footnote 58 It is perhaps through these two detailed summaries by Fries of the heart of Newman's thought that Ratzinger “found access” (“trovai l'accesso”) to Newman, a term that is difficult to measure, particularly in such a testimony, but it seems to imply two related points. First, at this stage in his studies Ratzinger did not read Newman directly, but through Fries. Second, at least early in his career, Ratzinger's encounter with Newman's theory of development differed in degree from the formal study that he had of Newman's theory on conscience and of his Grammar of Assent during his seminary years. Newman's theory on conscience not only figures as the leitmotif in Ratzinger's aforementioned Address, but it is also the subject of a presentation the future pope made in the United States in 1991.Footnote 59
Yet given the precision with which Fries summarized and analyzed Newman, Ratzinger's comment about the Roman School influencing Newman's thought remains mysterious: Fries explains how Newman, after he arrived in Rome, willingly submitted a Latin version of his theory of development to Giovanni Perrone, S.J., a professor at the Roman College.Footnote 60 Perrone made comments and minor criticisms in the margins of Newman's work, but, on the whole, accepted Newman's thesis on development as it had been written by Newman before he came to Rome.Footnote 61
It seems, then, that on the topic of tradition and development Ratzinger did not pour over Newman to the same extent that he did Augustine on ecclesiology or Bonaventure on revelation.Footnote 62 Aside from Newman, Ratzinger's theology of tradition also has other influences, with Bonaventure and the Tübingen School's major exponent J.R. Geiselmann most prominent among them.Footnote 63 Ratzinger's varied explanation of the source of Newman's theology of development anticipates the conclusion of this essay: that the new theological milieu of the mid-twentieth century makes Ratzinger an heir, rather than a direct student or disciple, of Newman's work on tradition.
The Revelation of Christ and the Living Tradition in Ratzinger's Theology
In the midst of the conciliar debates, Ratzinger, spurred by the discussion of the material sufficiency of Scripture, sought to solve the tension between the relation of Scripture and tradition by reaching beyond them
to their inner source: the revelation, the living word of God, from which Scripture and tradition both spring and without which neither can be grasped in the importance they have for faith. The question of “Scripture and tradition” remains insoluble so long as it is not expanded to a question of “revelation and tradition” and thereby inserted into the larger context in which it belongs.Footnote 64
Ratzinger begins his answer to “the question of ‘revelation and tradition’” by addressing the source of tradition's existence:
The fact that there is “tradition” rests first of all on the incongruence between the two entities “revelation” and “Scripture”. For revelation signifies all God's acts and utterances directed to man; it signifies a reality of which Scripture gives us information but that is not simply Scripture itself. Revelation goes beyond Scripture, then, to the same extent as reality goes beyond information about it. We could also say that Scripture is the material principal of revelation…but is not that revelation itself.Footnote 65
Ratzinger sees revelation as preceding Scripture in time and exceeding it in scope because “God's acts and utterances” come first and transcend the limits of any text. Although this coincides with Newman's thinking, as mentioned above, Ratzinger acknowledges Bonaventure as his source for the formal and temporal priority of revelation.Footnote 66
Ratzinger makes the further point that “revelation always and only becomes a reality where there is faith” because, as a living reality, revelation “requires a living person as the locus of its presence.”Footnote 67 From this Ratzinger concludes that revelation “has its basis in God” yet it also simultaneously “happens to man in faith.”Footnote 68 This distinction resonates with Newman's objective and subjective aspects of the word of God: the former, the deposit of faith, exists “alive and active in the intellect” of the faithful “as a reality.”Footnote 69 In both cases revelation is a living reality that is experienced throughout history as a dynamic encounter between God and man in faith. However, Ratzinger's insight cannot be attributed, at least solely, to Newman: Aaron Canty has demonstrated that Ratzinger's understanding of the objective and subjective dimensions of revelation and their dependence on faith stem directly from Bonaventure and is expressed in Ratzinger's The Theology of History of St. Bonaventure.Footnote 70 Yet the similarity between Ratzinger and Newman on this point is too great to ignore.
With regard to their understanding of what God revealed, Ratzinger goes beyond Newman, who, defining revelation as “God's voice speaking” and “the manifestation of the Invisible Divine Power,” does not, at least explicitly, highlight the role of Jesus Christ in revelation. For Ratzinger
[t]he reality that comes to be in Christian revelation is nothing and no one other than Christ himself…. Accordingly, receiving revelation is considered equivalent to entering the reality of Christ, from which emerges that dual objective situation that Paul describes alternately with the words “Christ in us” and “we in Christ.”Footnote 71
Whereas Newman in his exchange with Perrone called revelation the word of God given by Christ, Ratzinger realizes that with Christ “we have the Word. Christ no longer speaks merely of God, but he is himself the speech of God.”Footnote 72 The revelation of Christ the Word is received in the dialogical act of faith both by the individual and by the community of believers, the Church. Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, is both the speaker and the content of “the dialogue of salvation, the communication from person to person that takes place in the word.”Footnote 73 Thus Ratzinger concludes “that the presence of revelation essentially has to do with the realities of ‘faith’ and ‘Church,’” which are closely related.Footnote 74 Because the Church is Christ's body, Christ is living and present as his Spirit works within her.Footnote 75 Moreover, in the Church the reality of Christ is proclaimed, and “proclamation, accordingly, is by its nature interpretation (explication).”Footnote 76
With this background, Ratzinger sets forth four “strata” concerning “the concept of tradition (or rather, the reality called tradition).”Footnote 77 First, because of Christ's enduring presence in the Church, “the entire mystery of Christ's presence is in the first instance the whole reality that is transmitted in tradition, the decisive and fundamental reality that is always antecedent to all individual explications, even those of Scripture.” Second, tradition “exists in concrete form as presence in faith, which in turn, as the indwelling of Christ, is antecedent to all particular explications and is fruitful and living, and, thus, explaining itself throughout all ages.” Third, tradition “has its organ in the authority of the Church, that is, in those who have authority in her.” Fourth, tradition “also exists, however, as already articulated in what has, on the basis of the authority of faith, already become the rule of faith (the creed, fides quae).”Footnote 78 In sum, tradition is the abiding reality of Christ's living and enduring presence in his body as is expressed in the rule of faith and is transmitted through and interpreted by the Church.Footnote 79
There are noteworthy differences in the accounts of the relationship of revelation and tradition by Newman and Ratzinger. First, Newman does not explicitly define the precise relationship between revelation and tradition; Ratzinger, as was noted, made their relationship the focus of his study. Second, Ratzinger's depiction is deeply Christological, which is reflective of the different milieu in which he was writing. Third, whereas by “tradition” Newman intends the Tridentine sense of concrete practices and beliefs, Ratzinger, following the work of Congar later incorporated into Dei Verbum, uses “tradition” in the singular—“Tradition” with a capital “T”—and therefore general sense of the Church's interpretation of revelation.Footnote 80 Fourth, Newman bases his understanding of living tradition on the development of doctrine that explains how the word of God grows over time; for Ratzinger tradition is living because in the Church “Christ is not dead, but living; not merely the Christ of yesterday, but just as much the Christ of today and tomorrow.”Footnote 81
In an essay concerning the Anglican-Catholic dialogue two decades later, Ratzinger reformulated these last two points on tradition as interpretation and as living. Especially noteworthy is the fact that the two points are now closer to Newman's formulations.
[I]n the Catholic Church the principle of “tradition” refers not only and not even in the first place to the permanency of ancient doctrines or texts that have been handed down, but to a certain way of coordinating the living word of the Church and the decisive written word of the Bible. Here “tradition” means above all that the Church, living in the form of apostolic succession with the Petrine office at its center, is the place in which the Bible is lived and interpreted in a binding way. This interpretation forms a historical continuity, setting fixed standards but never itself reaching a definitive point of completion after which it is a thing of the past. “Revelation” is completed, but the binding interpretation thereof is not…. So in Catholicism tradition is essentially characterized by the “living voice”—that is, by the obligatory nature of the teaching of the universal Church.Footnote 82
Although “tradition” as singular is still a development beyond Newman, the emphasis on apostolic successionFootnote 83 in interpreting the Bible to form “a historical continuity” resembles Newman's account of doctrine developing from its subjective status in the Prophetic Tradition to dogma by virtue of the teaching of the Episcopal Tradition. Ratzinger's “relecture” sees the interpretation of tradition more along the lines of developing doctrine, yet Christ is still palpably present as the Church's ultimate “living voice.”
One additional similarity between Newman and Ratzinger is the emphasis they place on criticizing tradition: they assign to Scripture the role of “guardian” of tradition, as discussed above in regard to Newman.Footnote 84 Ratzinger argues that Dei Verbum should have mentioned “the possibility of a distorting tradition, and of the place of Scripture as an element within the Church that is also critical of tradition.”Footnote 85 He deemed this “an unfortunate omission” for “a council that saw itself consciously as a council of reform and thus implicitly acknowledged the possibility and reality of distortion in tradition.”Footnote 86 History attests the possibility of distortion of tradition, and because of this “tradition must not be considered only affirmatively, but also critically; we have Scripture as a criterion for this indispensable criticism of tradition, and tradition must therefore always be related back to it and measured by it.”Footnote 87
Conclusion: An Heir More Than a Disciple
The century that passed between John Henry Newman and Joseph Ratzinger's respective work on the theology of revelation and its relationship to traditionFootnote 88 was extraordinarily innovative and fertile. Although Ratzinger mentioned that he learned a good deal from Newman, it is very difficult, given the lack of citations to Newman in Ratzinger's work, the strong influence of Bonaventure and the Tübingen School in Ratzinger's thought, and the radically different theological milieus in which they lived, to measure what exactly Ratzinger learned from Newman regarding revelation and tradition. Yet undoubtedly there are multiple similarities between the two thinkers that stem from two shared thoughts: revelation as the source of tradition, and tradition as living and developing in history within the Church.
But more significant than the exact correlation between Newman and Ratzinger on this score is the former's contribution, acknowledged by Ratzinger in his Centenary Address and mentioned at the outset, to thinking historically within theology. If the mediation of history within the realm of ontology is the “fundamental crisis of our age” and a major component of Ratzinger's theological work,Footnote 89 then Newman has contributed the foundation stones for dealing with this crisis. Hence, while an exact measure between the two thinkers on this topic may lie beyond our grasp, in a certain sense Joseph Ratzinger is an heir to the theological project of John Henry Newman, a project that Ratzinger has taken up and advanced to address his own, very different, theological audience.
