GREGORIAN PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITY

The Notion of Person and the Creed as a Personalistically Structured Existence

Professor: WALTER INSEROStudent: GARRETT JOHNSON

Matricola: 161590

FACULTY OF THEOLOGY– 1 YEAR, I CYCLE

Rome 2015

INTRODUCTION

In his work, Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger attempts to go beyond a mere presentation of the intellectual content that one might consider to be essential to Christianity. While this is certainly included, Ratzinger seeks rather to present Christianity as it is: a way of existing in relationship with the living God. One of the notions that he depends and expounds upon in this endeavor is that of ‘person’. Of common use today, the notion was developed in a predominantly theological context. Accompanying Ratzinger in his brief historical treatment of the term, allows us to better understand why and how it becomes a central notion to the catechetical project in his Introduction. As we will see, the term in its specifically Christian conception arises from a historical experience of the God of Israel in parallel to the fundamental intuitions of Greek philosophers, all of which was, in one sense, assumed, synthesized and revolutionized thanks to the existence and teaching of Jesus Christ and those disciples who reflected over it in the beginnings of the Catholic Church.

While Ratzinger attributes the term’s full meaning to the Christological and Trinitarian debates, especially to those in the 5th century, the unpacking of this term, both intellectually and existentially, continues today. Behind every word there is an event; and in the case of “person” this event, which is nothing less than the encounter with God-Person, continues on today. The freshness of Ratzinger’s approach lies in his intuition of the fact that while the notions and terms themselves are indeed necessary, we must do all that we can to get to the reality that gives them life. In this way, even terms that seem foreign or antique regain their vitality in our own existences because we are able to gaze upon the same reality, albeit with out own proper eyes and mentalities, as those who first pronounced them.

Thus, when speaking of the Creed and renouncing words “I believe”, one can never be content with the mere intellectual assent to a series of doctrines or formulas. Even in times when Christian thought permeated social structures, the existential decision demanded by the faith had to be made by each believer. It is precisely the notion of “person”, that allows us to enter and better understand the existential dimension that is required in order to not only say but to live out this new mode of existence that was offered by Christ and which came to give birth to the Catholic creed.

1. THE ORIGIN OF NOTION ‘PERSON’

At the origin of every word there is an event, a happening that erupts into history defining a before and after. In reality, there is both and origin and a beginning. The latter refers to a concrete historical event or encounter, or a series of these, which opens a new horizon in the interior of a person or a group of people. This event is unique and unrepeatable; it refers to the time and place where such a word begins to take on its meaning and exercise its impact. While they are synonyms in one sense, origin differs in that, more than a concrete historical moment, it recalls the source of the event, that which founds and sustains it.

Generally speaking, Ratzinger deals with both the historical beginning as well as the origin of the notion “person”. The first is found in the initial encounters with a certain Jesus of Nazareth and the following attempts of later disciples to categorize such experience. Such knowledge is certainly useful and is key to obtaining a richer understanding of the term. That said, the origin in this case is a living one; it is the triune God himself. And only through a vital encounter with him that we can truly plunge into not only the intellectual, but also existential and spiritual depths deposited in the notion of “person.”

With time, those who participated in the initial encounters sought out a deeper comprehension so as to be able to share it with others. For we who are arriving “late” in one sense we must be wary so as to not content ourselves with a mere dictionary-type grasp of the term. Ratzinger makes notary efforts to render explicit just how extensive the ramifications of this term, which in reality manifests a comprehensive mode of interacting with reality. For this, when speaking of the term “person,” Ratzinger is keen on pointing out that it is not one that simply grew out of «mere human philosophizing»1. It is instead an historical encounter that brought with it something similar to Voeglin’s idea of a «leap in being»2,” indicating an experience that leads to a new insight into the truth of existence which in turn can constitute a period in history, in other words, the Christian faith.

Initially the term’s meaning was simple enough. Persona referred to a role in a drama or the mask of the actor. It was not until it’s assumption in the developing Christian environment that its meaning began to evolve until the point of undergoing a sort of transfiguration. Without precisely loosing its old meaning, it began to be seen in a completely different light. As the first Christians began to reflect back on their encounter with Christ and his earliest disciples, two fundamental questions arose: “Who is God?”; and “Who is Christ?” Assumed within this context of faith, the term was subject to a kind of baptism in which it received a new meaning and served to open up a new horizon in both thought and existence.

As the first key figure in this development, Ratzinger designates the western theologian Tertullian. Thanks to his formula “una substantia-tres personae, the word “person” «entered

1 J. RATZINGER, «Concerning the notion of person in theology», 439.2 E.VOEGELIN, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Michale Franz, Columbia 2000, 46: «There were indeed the epochal, differentiating events, the “leaps in being,” which engendered the consciousness of a Before and After and, in their respective societies, motivated the symbolism of a historical “course” that was meaningfully structured by the event of the leap. The experiences of a new insight into the truth of existence, accompanied by the consciousness of the event as constituting an epoch in history, were real enough. There was really an advance in time from compact to differentiated experiences of reality and, correspondingly, an advance from compact to differentiated symbolizations of the order of being.»

intellectual history for the first time with its full weight»3. Still, the question arises: why did Tertullian use that word? Was it solely an ingenious intuition or was there some contextual explanation to be found? Following in the footsteps of a study done by the dogmatic historian, Carl Andresen, Ratzinger traces the origin to “prosopographic exegesis” which refers to a form of interpretation that was already developed by literary scholars of Antiquity.

«The ancient scholars noticed that in order to give dramatic life to events, the great poets of Antiquity did not simply narrate these events, but allowed persons to make their appearance and to speak […] The literary scholar uncovers these roles; he shows that the persons have been created as “roles” in order to give dramatic life to events»4.

This form of interpretation was not foreign to Christian writers; it was easy enough to discover similar examples in Scripture in which events come to life in dialogue. The creation story of Genesis would be a prime example5. Nevertheless, the presence of roles, masks and dialogue, at a first glance, seem to reveal an anthropomorphization of the divine. According to the Greek mentality of the time, anything betraying a type of plurality was necessarily excluded from the divine sphere as something «secondary», as the «disintegration of unity»6. We must ask, then, are these roles simply literary devices or are they something more?

1.2 Person: Role or Reality?

The creation of roles allowed events to be dramatized in the form of dialogue. Initially, one might suspect such a move to be one based simply on a desire to satisfy the limits of the public. Such plurality could be considered a necessary, pedagogical path which allows us to grasp at the ungraspable simplicity of divine unity. Nevertheless, according to Ratzinger, the novelty of the Christian conception lies precisely here: «The “role” truly exists; it is the prosopon, the face, the person of the Logos who truly speaks […] the one who plays the true role here, the Logos, the prosopon, the person of the Word [is] no longer merely role, but person»7.

In recognizing the reality of the person, one is led to the mysterious conclusion that reality itself is personal, that is, that behind the events there is an “I”, a personal agent. The challenge with this is to avoid fencing this idea into a solely theological field, avoiding it to have the true impact that it should have on all areas of our life8. Encounter with Christ in scripture

3 Ibid., 440. 4 Ibid., 441. 5 Cfr. Genesis 1,26: “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” or Genesi 3,22: “Adam has become like one of us.”6 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 127. 7 J. RATZINGER, «Concerning the notion of person», 442.8 Enlightening is the critique made by Ratzinger of Saint Thomas: «In Antiquity philosophy was limited entirely to the level of essence. Scholastic theology developed categories of existence out of this contribution given by Christian faith to the human mind. Its defect was that it limited these categories to Christology and to the doctrine of the. Trinity and did not make them fruitful in the whole extent of spiritual reality. This seems to me also the limit of St. Thomas in the matter, namely, that within theology he operates, with Richard of St. Victor, on the level of existence, but treats the whole thing as a theological exception, as it were. In philosophy, however, he remains faithful to the different approach of pre-Christian philosophy. The contribution of Christian faith to the whole of human thought is not realized; it remains at first detached from it as a theological exception, although it is precisely the

redefines the conception of “person” and, in doing so, redefines – or at least invites us to redefine – our metaphysical perspective in relation to all and each reality in our lives.

Keeping in mind what was said about prosopographic exegesis, we can now see how in Scripture the dramatic roles are not added as something secondary in order to simply narrate an event, rather the event itself is dramatic, that is, it can never be understand outside the contact of dialogue between a plurality of roles (God and God, God and man, man and man). The convenience of narration, of proclaiming the event in a dialogical way, is nothing else but the manifestation of the dialogical nature of the event itself, that is, of the fact that it is narratable precisely because it is personal. More than narrate, the dramatic transmission reveals reality in its more fundamental, dialogical nature.

The temptation to divide the two, role and reality, relation and substance, surfaced when Greek philosophers began to question mythological religious beliefs. Thinkers such as Plato began proposing new mythologies which would replace the antique Homerian ones and would be more adequate for his vision of logos. This movement of the logos against the myth also took place in the prophet’s criticism of the gods in Israel. The people of Israel, however, did not oppose role and reality and developed a concept of God, albeit an insipient one, which paved the way for the young Christian Church’s decision later on.

2. The Path Towards a Personal God

The dialogue between God and Moises found in Exodus 3:13-15, a key text for the Old Testament’s understanding of God, presents the revelation of the name of God to Moses: “Yahweh”. Here, Ratzinger suggests that the the name’s two syllables denote two elements: the «element of the personal, of proximity, of invocability, of self-bestowal» and the other element of «timeless power», of He who «stands above space and time, bound to nothing and binding everything to himself»9. The first matches with the personal dimension, the second with reality or Being itself. Thus here we see the convergence and union of two dimensions. The personal element which is revealed in the fact that God gives his name to mankind, a name which is fulfilled in Jesus who makes perfect God’s invocability – God’s role, his dramatic face directed toward man is indeed real – is united to the more enigmatic vision of absolute being, as we find in the Greek vision of logos, one which eludes all attempt to be grasped or defined. Put synthetically, «being is accepted as a person, and the person accepted as Being itself, […] only what is hidden is accepted as the One who is near, only the inaccessible as the One who is accessible, the one as the One who exists for all men and for whom all exist»10.

With this we can begin to piece together certain factors that are key to Ratzinger’s conception of person. In Israel’s choice for Yahweh, we discover the belief that the origin of being is a personal one: one of freedom and creative love. Still, how does the Greek decision for the primacy of logos fit it into this? In this option, Ratzinger locates another key ingredient in the concept of person and in what we will see later on in a personal existence: openness to a meaning that precedes man. According to this vision, the world is «objective mind; it meets us in an intellectual structure, that is, it offers itself to our mind as something that can be reflected upon and understood»; this leads to understand however that «objective mind is the product of a

meaning of this new element to call into question the whole of human thought and to set it on a new course». Ibid., 449.9 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 93. 10 Ibid.

subjective mind and con only exist at all as the declension of it, […] in other words, being-though as we find it present in the structure of the world) is not possible without thinking»11. Rational reflection implies discovering an objective structure that was designed or brought about to thanks to a subjective one. If one were to reject this vision of an objective mind, of an obecjtive truth that is embedded in reality, as in the case of those who supported the consuetudo Romana, it becomes easy enough to formulate customs and religious gods just as easily as one might draw up a dramatic play with roles and masks. This places man at the origin of meaning and opens the door for self-idolization and, as seen in the twentieth century, totalitarianism. The decision for primacy of logos, then, is the decision to accept that meaning and truth are first received from another, one that man cannot manipulate and submit to his whims. Reason serves as a way of reflection, of thinking upon that which has already been thought. The existential disposition of openness to receive meaning is essential to idea of ‘person.’

Summarizing, in this section, we looked at the prosopographic exegesis which Ratzinger believes to be the origin of Tertullian’s choice of the term ‘person.’ The use of roles we found to be present in both the Old Testament as well as ancient literary texts. In the former, the we looked at Israel’s choice to define God as personal Being. In the latter, while we found the tendency to go against the dramatic roles of the mythical God’s, we nevertheless discover a key aspect to personhood in the decision to receive meaning and truth and not to claim the right to invent it. The Christian belief’s option for a personal God can be thus explained:

«If Christian belief in God is first of all an option in favor of the primacy of the logos, faith in the preexisting, world-supporting reality of the creative meaning, it is as the same time, as belief in the personal nature of that meaning, the belief that the original thought, whose being-thought is represented by the world, is not an anonymous, neutral consciousness but rather freedom, creative love, a person»12.

Nevertheless, if left alone, the primacy of logos implies the primacy of being over the person, over relation. Openness would be a trait inherent to man and not to God, something necessary due to his ontological inferiority. Likewise, God’s decision to reveal his name and be invoked by man could be consider a benevolent act of self-lowering on God’s part, leaving relationship as, again, a sort of bridge which unites superior with inferior. It is not until we analyze the idea of person consolidated in the Trinitarian and Christological debates that we are able to glimpse the radical nature of the idea.

3. The New Category of Relation

It is on the path between the revelation of God’s dialogical being in the encounters between God and man towards the encounters which occur within the Trinity itself that the category of relationship reaches its full ontological splendor, allowing in turn for the meaning of person to be manifested in its authentic light. Ratzinger is clear in affirming that the concept of ‘person’ reaches its «full maturity» at the turn of the fifth century when «Christian theology reached the point of being able to express in articulated concepts what is meant in the thesis: God is a being in three persons» because in this context «person must be understand as relation»13.

11 Ibid., 108.12 Ibid., 111.13 J. RATZINGER, «Concerning the notion of person», 444.

The experience of dealing with God in a triple form, God as Father, God as Brother or God-with-Us, and God as Spirit, that is, God-in-Us, is a «sheer fact» that we can observe in the initial Christian experience. The question is again whether these are simple roles or actual realities. «The point at issue here is whether man in his relations with God is only dealing with the reflections of his own consciousness or whether it is given to him to reach out beyond himself and to encounter God himself»14. The key response of the orthodox faith as been simple: «God is as he shows himself; God does not show himself in a way in which he is not. On this assertion rests the Christian relation with God; in it is grounded the doctrine of the Trinity; indeed, it is this doctrine»15.

What then to do with these three roles that we must accept to be real persons, each one of which is divine? Ratzinger indicates Augustine as another fundamental pillar and considers his proposal to be a «very important»: «In God, person means relation. Relation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but it is the person itself»16. With this we find a precise definition of what person-as-relation is for Ratzinger: «… the first person is self-donation in fruitful knowledge and love; it is not the one who gives himself, in whom the act of self-donation is found, but it is the self-donation, pure reality of act»17. Person refers thus to this reality of act, this dynamic state which founds identity and being. On example that aids in our compression is Ratzinger allusions to – he does this both in the cited article as well as in his Introduction – the recent discovery-conception of modern physics regarding pure act-being. It is also interesting to recall and draw a certain parallel between this and how the name revealed by God to Moises is indeed a verb, the verb to be. In one sense, we might venture to say that “person” is a dynamic act, or better, a verb; it is the relational declination of the verb “to be.”

It is thanks to the Trinitarian reflection that relation is «recognized as a third specific fundamental category between substance and accident, the two great categorical forms of thought in Antiquity»18. The consequences of such a recognition are difficult to fully grasp because relationship is, by nature, ungraspable. Relationship is lived out in communication and dialogue which evades any and all attempts of static reduction. The fundamental categories are those which can not be precisely explained or justified, they are rather lights that illuminate from behind and allow us to organize how we see reality. By inserting relation into this level of comprehension, Christian thought is allowing for a certain kind of non-category to be a part of our categorical vision. For biblical examples of this we can return our gaze to the name-not-name revealed by God to Moises, or the sign-not-sign of Jonah. It is as if we are invited to intentionally insert a missing link into our chain of thought; but doing so is the only path towards allowing for contact with reality to truly take place.

In saying that dialogue, that relatio, «stands besides the substances as an equally primordial form of being»19, Ratzinger is pointing to a «revolution»20 in how we are called to see the world: «the sole dominion of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call

14 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 116.15 Ibid., 117.16 J. RATZINGER, «Concerning the notion of person», 444.17 Ibid., 444.18 Ibid., 444-44519 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 13120 Ibid., 132.

today “objectifying thought”; a new plane of being comes into view»21. The recognition of the ungraspable element of relation allows for a view of reality open to mystery. While categories such as substance and accident do indeed help us to understand reality, Christian experience teaches us that the only way to understand reality is to accept that it goes beyond our own human logic. Rationality closed to transcendence, to that which goes beyond its conceptual grasp ends up being anti-rational. In this regard, when we speak about “person” we are in reality speaking of a term that comes about from an experience of something, or better, Someone that left us speechless and unable to fully describe which we now struggle to describe in a very limited fashion: «The doctrine of the Trinity did not arise out of speculation about God, out an attempt by philosophical thinking to figure out what the fount of all being was like; it developed out of the effort to digest historical experiences»22.

The digestion of this experience however reveals a context tension between reality and language, between Divine action and human logic. “Person” was forged in this fire and can only be understood if we take into account the dramatic nature of its birth. «Every one of the main basic concepts in the doctrine of the Trinity was condemned at one time or another; they were all adopted only after the frustration of a condemnation; they are accepted only inasmuch as they are at the same time branded as unusable and admitted simply as poor stammering utterances—and no more». This includes the concept of persona (or prosopon). Even so, the condemnation, more than a negative force, is a safeguard for reality; it prevents Christian thinkers from trapping an Infinity God in finite terms. It pushed them to keep walking, to recognize that the intellectual reflection was to be put in service of reality – Divine reality in this case – and not the other way around.

In treating the more positive development of the doctrine of the Trinity, and consequentially of ‘relation’ and ‘person’, Ratzinger presents three theses. The first deals with the new conception of unity that arose. The insertion of relation into the fundamental categories was not only an addition, but truly a revolution. In allowing a form of plurality to be accepted in the divine sphere, the concept of divine unity underwent a profound transformation. In the same terms of relation, any form of plurality was once considered as a disintegration or degradation of unity. The belief in the Trinity however recognizes plurality in unity. This means that «not only is unity divine; plurality, too, is something primordial and has its inner ground in God himself. Plurality is not just disintegration that sets in outside the divinity… it corresponds to the creative fullness of God, who himself stands above plurality and unity, encompassing both»23.

The second thesis deals with how this new, paradoxical vision of unity is an intrinsic implication of the concept of person. Union is no longer founder on singularity, rather on relationship. God as Absolute is Absolute Unity not because he is one, rather because He is a communion of love between three. Or, in the words of one Christian thinker, «God is not way despite being three, rather he is one because he is three»24. And this is the same logic we found in the novel concept of person. In some way, we can say that there is one only because there is more than one:

«[…] the Greek word prosopon means literally “look toward”; with the prefix pros (toward), it includes the notion of relatedness as an integral part of itself. It is the same

21 Ibid.22 Ibid., 114-115.23 Ibid., 128.24 G. MASPERO, Essere e relazione. L’ontologia trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa, 70. [My translation]

with the Latin persona = “sounding through”; again, the per = “through … to” expresses relatedness, this time in the form of communication through speech. In other words, if the absolute is person, it is not an absolute singular»25.

The third thesis Ratzinger the grounds the reflection the biblical context, above all in Johannine Christ who on the one hand says: «The son can do nothing on his own accord»26, while also saying: «I and the Father are one»27. It is the seemingly contradictory logic that the person of Jesus Christ presents to us that founds the paradoxical nature of the person. This because

«the being of Jesus as Christ is a completely open being, a being “from” and “toward”, which nowhere clings to itself and nowhere stands on its own, then it is also clear at the same time that this being is pure relation (not substantiality) and, as pure relation, pure unity. This fundamental state about Christ becomes […] at the same time the explanation of Christian existence»28.

In summary, behind the conception of person Ratzinger indicates a series of important factors: 1) both it’s beginning and its origin lies in the encounter with Jesus Christ, the man-God who brought to fulfillment certain truths present in secular history and especially in Salvation history; 2) the development of the term underwent a revolution and reached its maturity in the context of Trinitarian and Christological debates in the first centuries of the Catholic Church 3) seeing that it refers to intrinsically mysterious realities and Reality, it’s comprehension and use requires the recognition of our proper capacities-limits of understanding 4) more than just a new term or idea, the notion of “person” demands a revolution in our way of understanding reality and of how we live out our existence.

4. The “I Believe” of the Creed: Path of Personal Existence

The first chapter of of Ratzinger’s Introduction deals with belief in today’s word. Before strictly treating content of such belief – that is done in later chapters – here, he deals with the very act of believing. Recalling what we have said up until this point, we can sustain that, for Ratzinger, the structure ‘I Belief-Amen’ is much more than the introduction and conclusion of a formula, it is rather the structure of a personal existence.

As we have distinguished the specifically Christian vision of person, we can do likewise in the case of belief. To begin with, we must be wary of too quickly associating belief and religion. For the Romans, for example, religio referred more to the «observance of certain ritual forms and customs. It was not crucial that there should be an act of faith […]»29. In such a mentality, one can be religious without necessarily being a believer. Indeed, it is simple enough to follow through with certain external rituals without putting anything interior into play. All of these activities can be formulated and exercised under the dominion of one’s “I”, in the sense that they can be submitted to it and put into it’s service. Instead, in Christianity, we will see that the intimate like between belief and religion responds to a personalistic conception.

25 Ibid., 128-129.26 John 5:1927 John 10:3128 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 134.29 Ibid., 23.

As with the notion of person, it is important for Ratzinger to indicate the existential meaning that gives life to the terms rather than solely treat their conceptual notion. When we say that a Catholic “believes”, we are referring to a certain mode of belief, one which is intimately tied to a mode of existence: «it signifies, not the observation of this or that fact, but a fundamental mode of behavior toward being, toward existence, toward one’s own sector of reality, and toward reality as a whole»30. As such, one’s fundamental relationship with reality, how one understands “reality”, becomes fundamental to understand what belief means.

If one opens himself to the encounter with God, with the Totally Other, one’s definition of reality is informed in a certain way. Positivistic criteria that seek to reduce God to one’s own capacity of comprehension are consequentially shattered. The paradoxical revelations with God who reveals-hides himself demands an openness to mystery, to that which is intrinsically invisible. While invisibility prevents clarity and certainty, it does not prevent relationship. What’s more, lack of clarity, lack of certainty can even became fruitful channels of openness that allow for a personal relationship. Even doubt can serve this purpose: «It prevents both from enjoying complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer; for one, it is his share in the fate of the unbeliever; for the other, the form in which belief remains nevertheless a challenge to him»31. The possibility to relate which that which is, at least in some dimension, invisible forces the conclusion that reality too is composed of things that are invisible.

This takes places in its fullest sense when in relationship with God, for He is not only outside our field of vision now, but rather «stands essentially outside it»32. Thus the to “believe” in Christian terms is founded on an existential decision, it «signifies the deliberate view that what cannot be seen, what can in no wise move into the field of vision, is not unreal; that, on the contrary, what cannot be seen in fact represents true reality, the element that supports and makes possible all the rest of reality»33. Still, this mode of existence is not restricted to our relationship with God alone; in every person therein lies dimensions of their reality that remain unseen, mysterious. Even in the most common of encounters, there are traces of transcendence which refuse to be reduced to the category of “seeable” or “understandable”.

It is in this sense that belief turns out to be a mode of existence which embarks our entire lives, not only our relationship with God. The open structure of belief which allows and embraces the dimensions of mystery is in fact inherent to what being a “person” is all about. To embrace the mode of existence of belief is to embrace the invitation to base our lives on an initial and founding moment of openness to the others and, above all, to the Other:

«...it signifies the view that this element that makes reality as a whole possible is also what grants man a truly human existence, what makes him possible as a human being existing in a human way. In other words, belief signifies the decision that at the very core of human existence there is a point that cannot be nourished and supported on the visible and tangible, that encounters and comes into contact with what cannot be seen and finds that it is a necessity for its own existence»34.

30 Ibid., 24.31 Ibid., 21.32 Ibid., 24.33 Ibid.34 Ibid.

As a final consideration in this section, it is important to remember that the mode of existence of Christian belief cannot be separated by the content of Christian belief which, in turn, cannot be separated from the historical event that inspires them. The conception of this personal mode of existence is a fruit of the encounter with the Personal God revealed throughout salvation history which reached its culmination in Jesus Christ.

4.2 The Creed’s Ecclesial Form

While belief refers to a way of existence and an act through which someone decides to embrace such existence, a creed refers to a concrete text, a concrete formula. In describing the nature of creed, Ratzinger continues to draw upon the distinction between an individualistic conception of existence and a personal one. While a “thought” derives from the individual and later made comprehensible to others when put into words, the “word” «represents the element that unites us with others. It is the way in which intellectual communication takes place, the form in which the mind is, as it were human, that is, corporeal and social»35. The creed, in so far as a “word” that is received from those who encounter the Word and which is recited in a dialogical context, is another manifestation is the personalistic conception that implied by the Christian faith.

The active union between the “I” and “We” Trinitarian becomes model and origin of a life of faith which is «fundamentally centered on “You” and “We”»36. As such, much more than a simple recitation of certain doctrinal formulas, to pray and live the creed means to found one’s life, one’s “I”, on relationship with the others, on communion, on “We”. This communion comes about as fruit, not of a consensus of individual through, rather of the unity established by a preceding word: «In philosophy, what comes first is the private search for truth, which then, secondarily, seeks and finds traveling companions. Faith, on the other hand, is first of all a call to community, to unity of mind through the unity of the word. Indeed, its significance is, a priori, an essentially social one: it aims at establishing unity of mind through the unity of word. Only secondarily will it then open the way for each individual’s private venture in search of truth»37.

In this context, Ratzinger also clarifies the concept and finality of the “word” in general. Again the key passage is from the individualistic to the personal view. While a word certainly serves as a means of communication something, its principal function is that of creating relationship. The creed then, again, more than the intellectual assent regarding certain truths, presents the truths not so much as an end in themselves, rather as a means of creating relationship with the the truths, the Persons, that they refer to. The creed is in its most essential nature a dialogical reality. Dialogue, however, does not «yet take place where men are still only talking about something. The conversation between men comes into its own only when they are trying, no longer to express something, but to express themselves, when dialogue comes communication»38.

As a final observation, it is important to observe the essential harmony and mutual necessity there is between creed and belief. A belief without a creed, in this conception, is contradictory. For the written word serves as a place of communion in which each “I” is able to

35 Ibid., 59.36 Ibid.37 Ibid.38 Ibid., 61.

decide to open himself in belief to a received word which transmit the encounter with the Word-Person which, in the end, makes all of this possible.

CONCLUSION

Speaking of the transition from antiquity to Christianity, Ratzinger comments: «The Christian sees in man, not an individual, but a person»39. From what we have seen, this transition be can be applied not only to antiquity to Christianity, but to the Christian path of conversion and transformation in the life of every Christian. Person is thus not only a term but also a mode of existence which derives from to an encounter with the Holy Trinity, with God-Person, and conduces us along a progressive journey of digestion through which one can better grasp the implications of such encounter and allow them to take root in one’s life. In short, person is an act act, a the relational declension of the verb “to be”.

In this regard, Ratzinger’s focus on this passage allows for him discover a new and refreshing approach to both to the act of belief and the Catholic creed. The “act of belief” is understand not only as an intellectual assent to a series of doctrine, but as a way of existing which responds to the deepest, personal reality of the human being and indeed allows for an authentically human existence. This act of belief is in turn intimately connected with its content, that is the Creed, which does not take the form of an individual thought that seeks consensus, rather the form of a word which becomes a place of encounter through open reception. With this we can conclude by recognizing how not only the content but the very structure itself of the Catholic faith began and continues to originate in the encounter with the Triune God-Person and, as such, responds to the deepest levels of reality itself – an more importantly – of our reality as human persons.

39 Introduction

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

RATZINGER, J., Introduction to Christianity, tr. J. Foster, San Franisco 2005.

———, «Concerning the notion of person in theology», Communio 17 (Fall 1990) 439-454.

Secondary Sources

VOEGELIN, E., The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 17, Order and History, Volume IV, the Ecumenic Age, ed. Michale Franz, Columbia 2000.

MASPERO, G., Essere e relazione. L’ontologia trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa, Roma 2013.

GENERAL INDEX

Introduction.........................................................................................................21. The Origin of notion ‘Person’................................................................................3

1.2 Person: Role or Reality?..................................................................................42. The Path Towards a Personal God..........................................................................53. The New Category of Relation..............................................................................64. The “I Believe” of the Creed: Path of Personal Existence..............................................9

4.2 The Creed’s Ecclesial Form...........................................................................10Conclusion........................................................................................................12