[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Hitman

I meant that he wants badly his concept of Christ to be accepted both as historic and conceptual. Of course he wants both to match, but he doesn't care if that is historically correct or not. He doesn't like any opinions/revisions that show that the historic Christ is not what the classical catholic doctrine says he was, even if it could be wrong -when compared to the reality-. Have you read the episode of Dostojewsky I refered before? It is difficult for me to express what I mean, but if you read it, it could be more clear. More or less the idea is: "Look, this is what mankind need badly to have a lighthouse in their lives. If you start discussing this or proving that this was not so historically, you might do a lot of harm to the good things we have developed starting from that idealization of a person. I do not care if I am lying or being inexact. The message and idea is what counts"

I'm sorry, but I still must disagree. Ratzinger is expert in old languages, he even used his own translations of the old scriptures and bible-verses, he says, so when it is about reunite the historical Jesus with the Christ of faith, he really is serious in trying to point out that orginally, and in the meaning of the intention in which the gospels had been written, both the historical man and the theological object of belief were one and the same, once. The question if the reunification of both Jesus-"versions" is historically correct, is misleading that way, and distracts from his real intention. What he seeks for is authenticity. No matter if you believe in Jesus doing wonders, or just acting wisely, point is that it must have been historical fact that there was something special happening around him that left so much an impression in people, that the gospels were written the way they actuall had been written (else they wouldn't have been written at all). So, they necessarily must describe both the to-be-believed-Jesus, and the historically correct Jesus, necessarily. When you say Ratzinger does not care if his understanding of both historical Jesus and Christ to be believed is "historically correct", then you describe it wrong.

To a certain extent, this goes paralell to a more teologically developed mind like Ratzinger's. To many teologs, religion and a superior God is what matters, and the forms or religions -cults- that are around are some kind of "child tales" that help the less intelectually developed or interested understand and accept the essential concepts.

I don't understand your distinction between religion and forms of religion here, because this or that theologian by definition is basing on a theoretical set of assumptions that in your description falls under the term "cult". Do you mean a culture-free form of spirituality, maybe? Or mysticism like in Christian mystic's understanding? A theologian always bases on the institutional form of religion (that has brought him forward). If they leave that frame that educated them, once, they get expelled in any form, or even declared heretic.

I have always thought that Ratzinger was one of those. For him, the catholic church is just a way of bringing to mankind a message in a form that is understandable even by the most simplest. If that simplistic form starts being questioned, the religious message might fail to reach everybody, as not everybody is able to get the concepts above the "historical" characters.

See above. I think you misunderstand him somehow. According to him the message of Jesus has stopped to attract the people because the one, unified, non-separated identity of Jesus (the historical figure and the christ that people believe in: both being one and the same) no longer is clear to people. Again:

"Die Fortschritte der historisch kritischen Forschung führten zu immer weiter verfeinerten Unterscheidungen zwischen Traditionsschichten, hinter denen die Gestalt Jesu, auf die sich doch der Glaube bezieht, immer undeutlicher wurde, immer mehr an Kontur verlor. zugleich wurden die Rekonstruktionen dieses Jesus (...) immer gegensätzlicher: vom antirömischen Revolutionär, der auf den Umsturz der bestehenden Mächte hinarbeitete und freilich scheiterte, bis zum sanften Moralisten, der alles billigt und dabei unbegreiflicherweise selber unter die Räder kommt. (...) Als gemeinsames Ergebnis dieser Versuche ist der Eindruck zurückgeblieben, dass wir jedenfalls wenig sicheres über Jesus wissen, und dass der Glaube an seine Gottheit erst nachträglich sein Bild geformt habe. Dieser eindruck ist inzwischen weit ins allgemeine Bewusstsein der Christenheit vorgedrungen. eine solche Situation ist dramatisch für den Glauben, weil sein eigentlicher bezugspunkt unsicher wird. Die innere Freundschaft mit Jesus, auf die doch alles ankommt, droht ins leere zu greifen."