Tiêu đề Modern Period - 1750 to the present.docx ✅

1 The Modern Period, 1750 to the Present Day 1. Methodological Considerations From Pre-critical to Critical Christology - Pre-critical:  The biblical stories in functioned as a prescientific worldview and it was taken literally  It lasts up to 17 th century - Critical:  A product of modernity, started from the 17 th century – empirical; 18 th century with the enlightenment  Apply scientific method to the Biblical study: historical-critical methods (form criticism, redaction criticism, source criticism, source criticism, text criticism…) - Modern biblical study scholarship and the Catholic Church  First saw the enlightenment as an attack – reject new findings; requires scholars to hold on the “pre-critical” understanding. E.g. Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, single authorship of Isaiah, priority of Matthew’s Gospel, Paul as author of the letter to the Hebrew, historical account of the creation…  Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943): The Catholic opened to new tools of research  1964: the Church acknowledges there are three stages of forming the Gospels  The period of Jesus’ life  Oral tradition  The Period of the Evangelists: gradual collection and compilation of knowledge and notions, which led to the writing of the Gospels.  1965 – Dei Verbum: Scripture are inspired – but also through human true authors; pay attention to the literary forms; using scientific methods. - Conclusion:   This is the movement from deductive method to inductive method.  Two offshoots of the modernity  Rationalism:   Upheld the primacy of the human reason  Rejected divine revelation  Let to skepticism and atheism among many rationalists  Fideism  Overstressed the divine revelation by rejecting the data, the “truth” discovered by human reason  Upheld biblical truth against scientific truths

3 o Act: w/c all Christians are to accept and obey c. Conditions governing exercise of papal infallibility   Subject - Who is teaching?  The pope acting as supreme pastor (office of shepherd) and teacher of all Christians.  When the pope speaks as bishop of Rome, primate of Italy, as a theologian, philosopher, etc., he is not teaching ex cathedra.  Object - What is taught?  Defines doctrines of faith and morals (rarely in morality because of understanding of human nature, context, our learning never ceases --> dangerous to make infallible statements) contained in revelation. irreformable of themselves, not because of the consent of the Church   Act - How is it being taught?  Teaching ex cathedra (from his chair as head of the Church) o To be held by the universal Church;  o as binding on the entire Church. o matters of faith and morals  Times the pope taught infallibly: Immaculate Conception 1854 and Assumption 1950   Infallibility of ecumenical council o Context: college of bishops gather in an ecumenical council o Conditions o Subject: Ecumenical council o Object: on faith and morals o Act: w/c all Christians are to accept and obey  Who is the supreme authority? o The pope  o But according to Vat II: college of bishop with the pope as the head: collegiality   SUPREME AUTHORITY o Pre-Vat II  2 subjects holding supreme authority: the pope (without the approval of college of bishops) and college of bishops  Rahner: how about the case of conflict bt Pope and college of bishops?  Vat II: Collegiality: there is only one subject of supreme authority = college of bishops with bishop of Rome as the head. BUT two ways of exercising this supreme authority  1. When the pope speaks ex cathedra  2. College of bishops gathers in an ecumenical council  Similarly, one source of Revelation but two channels: SS and Tradition
4  In reality, over centralization in Rome --> Pope Francis wants to change 3. Vatican II on the church Vatican II: a new vitality into the discussion of the doctrine of the church, partly through its reappropriation of traditional biblical imagery relating to the church. Before Vatican II: Church = perfect society: emphasized the institutional credentials of the church, especially in the light of the increasing power of European nation- states.  Roberto Bellarmine: the church was as visible and tangible a social reality as “the kingdom of France or the republic of Venice.”  The church is (a) an infallible society, (b) a perfect society, (c) a hierarchical society, and (d) a monarchic society.  This approach to ecclesiology led to the church being defined primarily in terms of its visible aspects, and particularly its visible structures of government and its codes of belief and conduct.  Increasing papal political power and a growing determination to fend off attacks on the institutions of the church (particularly the papacy and hierarchy) led to a growing tendency to defend these institutions by making them integral to a proper understanding of the church.  Responding to dangerous political situation in Europe (secularism and anti- Catholicism), Vatican I defined the church in strongly institutionalist terms  the church has all the marks of a true society.  The church of Christ: not a community of equals but rather a society of unequals because the difference between clergy and laity, the power from God by which it is given to some to sanctify, teach, and govern, and to others it is not.  The way for a recovery of biblical and patristic insights which had been overlooked on account of the trend toward institutionalization.  Yves Congar: the recovery of a theology of the laity, concerned over their marginalization in institutional models of the church.  Vatican II was in a position to revitalize Roman Catholic thinking on this vital area of theology, with all its implications for ecumenism and evangelism.  The church as communion: koinonia as the nature of the Church o The basic biblical theme which is expressed by this term is that of sharing in a common life, whether this life is thought of as the life of the Trinity itself, or the common life of believers within the church. o The term possesses both vertical and horizontal aspects, the former referring to the relation between the believer and God, and the latter to the relationship between individual believers.  The church as the people of God – The most important model of the Church o A strongly biblical idea, with deep roots in both Old and New Testaments. o Avoid the direct identification of “the people of God” with “the Roman Catholic church,” or the suggestion that the church has somehow displaced