Ecclesiologie fondamentale

Sommaire

L’auteur s’interroge dans cet article sur la gense, la nature et la structure méthodologique de l’ecclésiologie fondamentale. Il démontre que l’originalité de cette discipline théologique consiste en l’exploration de la conscience que l’Eglise a d’ellememe sous l’angle de la crédiblité. Cette exploration doit avoir un caractre rationnel et empirico-historique et non confessionnel-dogmatique ou confessionnel-apologetique. A la fin le pére Seweryniak consacre ses réflexions aux modes de l’argumentation dans l’ecclésiologie fondamentale (viae: paradoxae, notarum, historica, aujourd’hui encore: dialogica, communionis, ethica) et ses thmes principaux.

The anthropology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is strictly theological. Its basis is Christocentric theocentrism. The whole approach is embedded in ecclesiology. The question of who a man is and how to be a man must be directed to God. His answer, which is heard in the Church, is Jesus Christ. The Body of Christ is the space of the communion between God and man. Thus, Christ is God’s tool for the transformation of human existence – its liberation and fulfillment. Man is not an independent being. He comes from God. He exists because he is loved. Being created in God’s image determines the relational - dialogical - nature of his being. A scratch on God’s work is made by sin which undermines the truth about creation. Asking about who he is, man should turn his eyes to God’s perfect image, Jesus who is both God and man. The categories of sonship, childhood and pro-existence are characteristic here. All this is available by entering into the existence of the Son of God, which is done through baptism in the Church. There, man can realize his relational existence. The liturgy, however, provides us with the access to our eschatological destiny.

The article aims at an exegetical exploration of the theme of reconciliation in Eph 2:11-22. First it is argued that the passage has chiastic literary structure (ABCDD’C’B’A’). Reconciliation is in the structure a central (pivotal) theme around which go all other theo-logical motifs. The first element of pragmatic strategy of the author in Eph 2:11-22 is to show the condition of the addressee of the letter from the point of view of the Old Testament religion. As Gentiles they were deprived of God and His salvific promises. Thanks to the work of reconciliation accomplished by Christ’s death on the cross, both previously divided parts of the world (namely Gentiles and Jews) have become one. Christ’s work of reconcil-iation restores above all the relationship of each hostile group with God. The reconciliation between the two groups is a consequence of their prior reconciliation with God by Christ in the Holy Spirit (Trinitarian theology). Thanks to Christ’s work of reconciliation Gentiles are not strangers to God any more but together with the faithful Christians of Jewish origin form one “holy temple”, “Gods dwelling through the Spirit”, namely the Church.

The paper’s authors undertake the reflection on the stages of the evolution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s views on the Church and its role as it is played in the lives of its singular members and in the context of the Reformation’s ethical heritage. One can distinguish among three stages of the Bonhoefferian ecclesiology, deepening his vision of the Church. As far as the first one is considered, the Church is defined as the spiritual community of believers, outside of which salvation is impossible. At the second stage the German theologian accentuates the sinfulness of man as a member of the Church. Its recognition constitutes the basis for the transformation that can take place in the human individual due to accepting Christ into oneself. The third stage is stepping into the world of „before-final” matters in the full responsibility for the choices made by particular members of the ecclesial community. The Church, as Bonhoeffer saw it, was supposed to support itself on strong pillars: on freedom, personal responsibility, imitating Christ, neighbourly love, on sacraments and Gospel. In this aspect Bonhoeffer was the faithful continuator of the Reformation program.

For the Mariology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI it is fundamental that the Mother of the Lord is not viewed in isolation, but is seen in the totality of the Christian faith. To the Marian texts of the New Testament he added the lines of the great feminine saviour figures of the Old Testament, which have drawn down the power of God by their faith and inspired salvific histories. In Mary these women are revisited, in her “Fiat” the people of Israel experience a concrete personification. Ratzinger traces Maria as a “church in the origin”, in her the church receives a personal centre with corresponding consequences. His Marian dogmatics is based on his own biblical theological approach, and especially gives the teachings of the recent church history its own well-comprehensible depth structure.

Sobór Watykański II, który był największym wydarzeniem we współczesnej historii chrześcijaństwa, zainicjował proces otwarcia i reformy Kościoła katolickiego na niespotykaną dotąd skalę. Przez trzy lata dyskutowano na temat najważniejszych tematów, zarówno natury czysto teologicznej i eklezjalnej, jak i pastoralnej i misyjnej. Jednym z tych soborowych tematów było także ożywienie braterskich relacji między katolikami i nie-katolikami. W artykułe dokonano analizy jednego z najważniejszych teologicznych tematów, który niestety pozostał w wyniku soborowej i postsoborowej dyskusji przeszkodą w rzeczywistym dialogu o przywróceniu jedności między katolikami a prawosławnymi. Jest nim prymat papieski, który prawosławni postrzegają jako wynik ludzkiej inwencji, pozbawionej solidnych biblijnych i patrystycznych podstaw. Ternin ten pojawił się po 1054 roku jako podstawowa cecha polityki religijnej związanej z prymatem Rzymu. Kościół prawosławny wierzy w możliwość przywrócenia jedności chrześcijan, jednak nie zgadza się na interkomunię bez uprzedniego osiągnięcia jedności w wierze. Stąd też oczekuje się od Kościoła katolickiego decyzji porzucenia roszczenia prymatu i papieskiej nieomylności bądź też ich przekształcenia zgodnie tradycją pierwszych wieków. Również oczekuje się redefinicji relacji między biskupem Rzymu a kolegium katolickich biskupów w sensie rzeczywistej i efektywnej synodlaności.

Methodology of Fundamental Theology. Demonstratio Christiana

Summary

The article addresses the issue of demonstratio christiana in fundamental theology in three parts. First, traditional grounds for revelation fulfilled in Jesus Christ are demonstrated (1), followed by the contemporary presentation of the Christological treatise (2). Finally, a possibility of presentation of Christological and ecclesiological facts in harmonized categories is suggested (3).

”The 500th anniversary of the Reformation for the Orthodox Church is not a special reason for joy, because that was another division in the Church” – Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) said. Although it concerned the relationship between Luther and the Western Church, its reference became the Orthodox Church, in which Luther sought primary teaching and ecclesiology. The proof of this was the Leipzig dispute, during which the primacy, liturgy, structure of the Church, the teaching of justification and purgatory, Luther confronted with the teaching of the Orthodox Church. If Luther saw in the Orthodox Church a framework for his reform, why did he not decide to convert to the Eastern Church? Karmires, emphasizing Luther’s great knowledge of the Orthodox Church, claims, however, that it had only a superficial character, lacking empirical knowledge. He also concludes that Luther neither wanted nor accepted Orthodoxy because of his affection to the mentality of the Western Church and to scholastic theology as well.

The reconstruction of Francis’ gestures, behaviors, and words in terms of his understanding of the Church is fraught with considerable difficulties. On the one hand, the ecclesiological concept he introduced attracts crowds of followers, but on the other, it provokes many individuals to criticize and to adopt the attitude of rejection. In order to understand his teaching on the Church without any distortions, one needs to refer to the Aparecida Document of Latin American Bishops (2007) and to his papal exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2014). The battered Church of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is located primarily on the outskirts of Christianity and grows out of the Argentinian option that encompasses various types of excluded people. Hence, such a community imprudently exposes itself to the accusations, which are not groundless, of promoting religious syncretism, weakening the uniqueness and oneness of Jesus Christ, and questioning ecclesiastical sacramentality.

Intellectual and spiritual formation of Joseph Ratzinger - Pope Benedict XVI - requires talk about the process of his development. The article refers to the most overlooked phase of the young Ratzinger, who moves from the position of a progres-sive and sometimes irresponsible theorizing academic theologian to the position of a thinker grounded in the community of faith, becoming the guardian and teacher of Christian doctrine in line with the spirit and tradition of the Church. A lot of light on the change in the attitude of the German professor sheds the preparatory phase to the Second Vatican Council and its debates, as well as the unpleasant experience of the student revolt in 1968, which finds our professor in Tübingen. And in this way the liberal German theologian grows into to an outstanding Catholic theologian of the universal Church.