Von Balthasar and Theological Freedom
As the magisterium continues to try to do its job, something for it, and us, always to remember. Von Balthasar speaks to the need for allowing the necessary freedom for theological reflection to take place:
Heresy is an analogical concept. Even if a sharp boundary line is drawn between those heresies that have earned an express judgment of condemnation and those that never met with such a condemnation and thus continue to claim a part of the Church’s heart, still we should consider how much objective distortion was held in the course of time by the most important Doctors of the Church, how much was lost out of sheer accident or as a necessary adjunct to an express condemnation, how many erroneous and inexact views float around in the heads of nearly all believers!
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This!
I also point out that Von Balthasar was one of John Paul II’s favorite theologians, and would have been made Cardinal had he not died.
Nathan,
I swear I not just trying to be contentious. But how is a statement like that different in substance from the Maoist notion of perpetual revolution against “capitalist roaders” — in this case unaware heretics– who don’t yet know they are treasonous?? I really have a hard time accepting that smart people accept seemingly paranoid statements as a mode of contemporary thought. But maybe my view of smart people is still much too sanguine, even in the religious vein.
Von Balthazar makes, made an important point. Virtually all the theologians we consider major architects of today’s orthodoxy were at one time or another condemned by the Church authorities of their day, including Aquinas. But even more telling, every one of them, including Augustine and Aquinas, has spread at least some tiny error amid great truths. If no one ever called them on those matters, if no thinker ever had the right or got up the gumption to question the status quo, where would we be?
Was Balthasar a Heretic?
Oct 15, 2008
R.R. Reno
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2008/10/was-balthasar-a-heretic
……….Griffiths helps us understand why both John Paul II and Benedict XVI felt no reservations celebrating Balthasar’s intellectual contributions to the Church. Balthasar may have been wrong or one-sided when he was bold and unconventional, but he was not rejecting or undermining magisterial teaching…………….
Hmmmmmm… Lets think about this…….
……………he was not rejecting or undermining magisterial teaching…………….
None of this justifies wacky explorations out of curiosity or vanity. So the Doctors of the Church were not always 100% right, big deal. None of them would have ever gone against the “current” magisterium of their time to push their own pet novelties. I doubt any of them would have bucked the current status quo on even non-defined positions without the proper distinctions and proper prudence measures. Now anybody with a piece of parchment can publish their funny ideas in paperback popular editions or all over the internet.
Even in instances like St. Thomas’ position on the Immaculate Conception, at the time it was much more open for discussion and he ultimately left it to the future judgement of the Church.