ON THE TRUE RELIGION

ON THE TRUE RELIGION 

 

The fact of supernatural revelation as the basic of true religion;

Nature, object and finality of Revelation

as taught in the First Vatican Council and Vatican Council II particularly in the document Dei Verbum;

Characteristics and merits of Dei Verbum.

I.          The Fact of Supernatural Revelation as the basis of the True Religion.

    A. Definition of Terms:

       1. Religion:

a.   It is the sum total of theoretical and practical truths pertaining to God and our relationship with Him.

b.   St. Thomas defines it as the recognition on the part of an intelligent creature of his origin from and ordination to God. .

c.  Huby defines it as the set of beliefs, feelings, rules and rites, individual or collective in reference to a Power or imposed by whom man can actually recognize as Sovereign, on whom man is dependent and with whom he can enter into personal relationship.

            d.   It is the conversation of man, individual or social, with his God.

        2. True Religion. It is that which does not admit any error in doctrine or creed, with no error in practical matters in its precepts or anything unbecoming or inordinate in its cult. On the contrary, False Religion is that which admits 1) error in its doctrine, e.g., idolatry; 2) error in moral matters, e.g., abortion, divorce; 3) erroneous or immoral practices in its cult.

        3. Divine Revelation is defined as the disclosure of His truth by God to an intelligent creature, particularly man.

        4. Supernatural Revelation is the revelation of a truth done by God directly to man beyond the order of nature and beyond the natural exigencies and capabilities of man.

   

    B. The essential quality of the Catholic religion stands in the fact that, besides the precious elements contained in the natural religion as perceived by man's mind, the Catholic religion is based on the teaching that God, Himself has offered to man by His personal intervention. Thus, we have the marvelous blend of faith and reason, with reason illumined by God's own word.

      Of course, if religion is presented, which with some real plausibility claims to be revealed by God, man must investigate that seriously and embrace it, should its claim be rational and to use the words of Pius IX in this matter: "... since indeed our most holy religion had not been invented by reason but has been mercifully disclosed to men by God, thus everyone understands that religion itself acquires all its force from the authority of the same God speaking, and drawn or perfected by human reason. Indeed human reason lest it be deceived or errs in matters of so great importance ought to search diligently for the fact of divine revelation so that it can be known with certainty that God has spoken and so we render to Him as the Apostle so wisely teaches, "a rational service"

 

II.        Revelation in Vatican I

    C. On Divine Revelation and Man's Ability to know God.

      1. The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and the end of all things, may be certainly be known by the natural light of reason, by means of created things, 'for the invisible realities, God's power and divinity, have become visible and recognized through the things he has made.' (Rom 1,20)

      2. "God because of his infinite goodness has ordained man to a supernatural end, to be sharers of divine blessings which utterly exceed the intelligence of the human mind."

      3. "In another and supernatural way, God reveals Himself and the eternal decrees of His will to mankind 'in time past, to the fathers through the prophets, in these days he has spoken to us by His Son" (Heb 1,1-2).

      4. "Truths of the divine are not beyond human reason. It can be known by everyone with facility, with firm assurance and with no admixture of error."

      5. Supernatural revelation, according to the universal belief of the Church, as declared by the Council of Trent and quoted by Vatican I, is "contained in the written books and unwritten Traditions which have come down to us, having been received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ, Himself..."

    D. On the Church

      In conjunction with the doctrine of revelation, Vatican I in its third session (1870), had to speak about the Church as the guardian of truth and at the same time, permanent and visible proof of the divine character of revelation which would lead us to the conclusion that the church established by Christ is the only True church that could lead us to the eternal union with God. Vatican I says that:

1. "So that we may be able to satisfy the obligation of embracing the true faith and of consistently preserving it, God has instituted the Church through His only begotten Son, and has bestowed on it manifest marks of that institution, so that is may be recognized by all men as the guardian and teacher of the Revealed Word; for to the Catholic Church alone belong all those many and admirable tokens which have been divinely established for the evident credibility of the Christian faith."

2. "The Church by itself, with its marvelous extension, its eminent holiness and its inexhaustible fruitfulness in every good thing, with its catholic unity and its invincible stability, .is a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefutable witness of its divine mission."

III. "The doctrine of faith which God has revealed, has not been proposed, like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human intelligence, but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Church, to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared."

 

IV.       Vatican II

    A. On Divine Revelation

      Vatican II in the prologue of the dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation, quotes St. John, who says, "We proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us - that which we have seen and heard we also proclaim to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." In doing so, it summarizes its intention to bring into completion the divine mission of proclaiming revelation of God so that "we may all have access to Him." The whole world as the recipient of divine revelation, may through hearing, believe, through belief it may hope, through hope it may come to love (Dei Verbum 1). The doctrine pointed out:

   
          1. God in His goodness and wisdom reveals Himself and makes known the mystery of His will (Eph 1,9). His will was that men should have access to the Father, by way of Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature (Eph 2,18)... God addresses men as HIS friends and moves them in order to invite and receive them into His own company. He wished in other words, 'to share with us divine benefits which surpass the powers of human mind to understand. (Cf. Vat 1). 
The Second Synod (Vat II) professes that 'God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world, by the natural light of reason' (Rm.1,20) it teaches that it is to His revelation that we must attribute the fact 'that those things, which in themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, can, in the present condition of the human race, be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty, and without the contamination of error. (Vat I) 

          2. The obedience of faith must be given to God as He reveals Himself. By faith, man freely commits his entire self to God, making the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals (Vat I), and willingly assenting to the revelation given by Him (Dei Verbum 5) 

           3. After God had spoken many times in various ways through the prophets, 'in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son (Heb 1,1-2). For He sent His Son, the eternal Word that enlightens all men, to dwell among men and tell them about the inner life of God. As a result, He Himself - to see whom is to se the Father an 14,9) - completed and perfected Revelation and confirmed it with divine guarantees. He did this by the total fact of his presence and self-­manifestation—by words and works, signs and miracles, but above all, by His death and glorious resurrection from the dead, and finally, by sending the Spirit of Truth. He revealed that God was with us, to deliver us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to eternal life.

   

    B. On the Church

1. Christ the Light of humanity shines out visibly from the Church... the Church as the sign and sacrament of Christ aims to proclaim Christ's gospel to every creature (Lumen Gentium 1)

2. The eternal Father... created the whole universe, and chose to raise up men to share in His own divine life... He determined to call together in a holy Church those who should believe in Christ (Lumen Gentium 2)                                                                                                  _

3. The Holy Spirit continually sanctifies the Church and that consequently those who believe might have access through Christ in one Spirit to the Father... the Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a temple. It guides the Church in the ways of all truth and unifies her so that she may be seen as a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

4. The Lord Jesus inaugurated His Church by preaching the good News, that is, the coming of the Kingdom of God, promised over the ages in the Scriptures. In the OT, the revelation of the Kingdom is often made under the forms of symbols. In similar fashion, the inner nature of the Church is now made known to us in various images.

The Church is a sheepfold, the sole necessary gateway to which is Christ. It is also a flock, of which God foretold that He would Himself be the Shepherd, and whose sheep are at all times led and brought to pasture by Christ Himself.

The Church is a cultivated field, the tillage of God the heavenly cultivator. The true vine is Christ who gives life and fruitfulness to the branches, that is, to us, who through the Church remain in Christ without whom we can do nothing. (Lumen Gentium 6)

5. The Head of the Church is Christ, the image of the invisible God and in Him all things came into being (Lumen Gentium 7). Christ as the one mediator, established and ever sustains here on earth His holy Church, the community of faith, hope and charity, a s a visible organization through which He communicates truth and grace to all men...and which is the 'pillar and mainstay of the truth (1 Tm 3,15). This Church constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with Him (Lumen Gentium 8).

Characteristics of Dei Verbum:

  

   1. The doctrine for the first time gives a correlated discussion on the fundamental principles of religion namely: Revelation, Inspiration, and Tradition.

     2. It gives a balanced description of revelation, defining in a more appropriate way the position of the Magisterium the guardian and keeper, in relation to Sacred Scripture and Divine Tradition.

     3. It gives a greater refinement of the notion of revelation and at the same time holding that God is the author of the bible. It also manifests inerrancy in matters of faith and morals.

   4. Sanctions are deemed important regarding the literary genre for the better understanding on the text. Nevertheless, it opens an invitation to other sects to study the sacred scriptures with us, Catholics.

      5. It shows the profound unity between the Old Testament and the New Testament – the OT prefigures the NT and the NT explicitates the OT.

     6. The restoration of the importance and the indispensability of the Sacred Scriptures in the teaching of the Church, liturgy and piety of the people are evident.

The Merits of Dei Verbum

    1. The Truth is contained, firmly furnishing the solid basis for a dogmatic treatise on Revelation. It gives us the essential points like the nature and object of revelation, the economy of salvation, the progress of revelation, the pedagogy of revelation, etc.

      2.  The arrangement of the whole thing is solid, concise and well constructed.

   3. The exposition is generally calm without anathemas, no condemnations and no polemics.

     4. The tone is profoundly religious.

     5. The text is elaborated in a Trinitarian perspective.

   6. There is the constant mention of the Divine Persons in the elaborations, which are characterized by personalist tones, e.g., conversation, communication, dialogue, love, participation, society, friendship, etc.

   7. It is Christocentric. Christ is presented as the unity of the economy of salvation, the object of revelation, the revealer and the mystery revealed.

    8. It presents the right position of the Church, and the right place of the Scriptures in the Church - in the Church, the Gospel is preserved, living and intact, being handed down by teaching, life and cult

 

CONCLUSION:

      Man in his quest for happiness and perfection, seeks a special communion with a supernatural Being, the Divine. This communion he expresses in an institution called religion and with it, he longs to come to the knowledge of the truth as the Divine Power in the natural levels reveals it. This revelation is made more and more meaningful as it qualifies man to be a child of the Divine and his being called to eternal salvation.

      God, the Supreme and Divine Being, wills that all men be saved and be eternally united to Him. In doing so, He revealed Himself in the many visible and created things since the beginning of the world, and in "these days, He revealed Himself through His Son", who is the external form of God, so that all men may become sharers of the divine blessings.

      As Christ saved all men from the slavery of sin, the Church has been instituted by Christ, the only true Church, continues the salvific work of Christ, and because she shares the saving power of Christ, the Son of God, she must exercise some sort of salvific mediation towards those who are saved. Since she is the body of Christ, the Kingdom of God and the Community of Salvation, every grace must proceed from her and is related to her as its source.

      The Church is therefore, necessary for the salvation of men. God acts through Christ who, in turn, acts through the sacramentality and instrumentality of the Church. If men, therefore, are saved, they are saved through the Church.

SOME THOUGHTS ON FILIPINO THEOLOGY

What might be called “Filipino theology”? What were and are its concerns? What is its reality? Whither is it now bound?

I. Perhaps we can begin this way: By common agreement, I think, more than any other single event in the past century of the history of Christianity, the Second Vatican Council was the most meaningful, even the most earth-shaking of all. Three of the greatest Catholic theologians of the century, asked to assess the Council some 25 years after its ending, gave remarkably converging interpretations of what its “bottom-line” significance was for the Church of our time.

The German Jesuit Karl Rahner said, that it marked the actual (if only inchoate) coming-to-be of a truly world Church: no longer a Church exported from Europe to other peoples, but a Church in truth becoming a Church within each people, truly of each people.

The French Dominican ecclesiologist Yves Congar saw the Council signaling the emergence of the local churches as subjects of their own histories, within the catholica unitas; the arrival [so he called it] of the “time of the heirs”.

The Canadian Bernard Lonergan judged it, perhaps most incisively, as the Church’s recognition or acknowledgment of history, a coming-to-terms with a Church within history, a Church with history at work within itself.

Others would say in a similar vein: the realization that world and history do not revolve around the Church, but that the Church circles around world and history instead (M. D. Chenu, O.P.). The world and history do not “define” the Church, but yet the Church “realizes” itself in the world, constitutes itself within history.

The Belgian theologian Edward Schillebeeckx would put the same insight, in more deliberately provocative terms. Not, he says, extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church, there is no salvation), but extramundum nulla salus (outside the world, outside history, no salvation takes place). Christ did not come to take us out of history and save us out of this world. He came to redeem history itself to save the world itself (John 3,16: “It was not to judge the world that God sent his Son into the world, but that through him the world may be saved.”)

The martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero said, — more pastorally (if you will) — in one of his homilies, “The mission of the Church in a given time and place is to strive to transform the history of a people into salvation history.”

Finally, let me put all this into something of a definition, borrowed from Joseph Komonchak of the Catholic University of America:

Theology is at the service of Christ’s redemptive presence and role in the world. It arises from within a community convinced that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, and the event and message on which it reflects is meant to have an effect upon the course of human history. Theology is thus one of many ways in which the Church seeks to be the sign and instrument by which Christ continues to be historically effective. This is a point which perhaps especially needs stressing today. (Joseph A. Komonchak, “Theologians in the Church,” In Church and Theology, Essays In memory of Carl J. Peter, edited by Peter C. Phan (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995) 83-87.)

Thus far, something of a definition. Now,a mandatory parenthesis. Before we move on, there is one absolutely necessary clarification to be made. Also in accordance with the “total ecclesiology” of Vatican II, what we mean by Church here is all of us who are baptized, laity as much as clergy, all who profess to be members of the Christian community, and followers of Jesus; all who make up what St. Paul calls the Body of Christ in the world. This is fundamental for what we are saying here.

Tying things together, then. For the theologian today, involvement in the Church’s responsibility in, and for, ongoing history, are mandatory, not optional. Involvement in the Church’s life, its engagement in changing society, its transformative praxis, — all have become part of “doing theology”. And if, as has been many times said, more has changed in our part of the globe and its history, — more has changed in the past fifty years than in the preceding five hundred, then theology and the theologian have to come to terms with these large evolutions and their meanings, with what we have come to name “signs of the times.” This kind of theology is a theology of “acompañar,” of “being with,” of “walking with”. This kind of theology has to interface Gospel and Church with a world in transition, in process, and help point it to its destination and its destiny, a theology that strives to transform a people’s journey into a pilgrimage towards what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

II. To turn now to “Filipino theology,” then, of the last forty years. Its endeavor has been to ensure that the Church in our country bears a word, bears the Gospel of Christ, precisely as it encounters what-is-going-forward in our common journey as a people, going forward towards building a nation (In the words of Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in terris) “grounded on truth, guided by justice, motivated by love, realized in freedom, and flowering in peace.” It has to be a theology in continual discernment, under the leading of the Spirit. It is a theology whose agent, whose real subject, is “the whole Church.”

To go into some detail, without trying to be exhaustive: I believe “Filipino theology” has made its journey with gradually increasing self-awareness since — to give a convenient date as peg — Pope Paul VI’s Populorumprogressio, his great 1967 encyclical on the progress of peoples, and that these were some of the milestones along the way:

• the concern for the human and faith meanings of social and economic development, from the sixties onward;

• the emergence of basic Christian communities, later “Basic Ecclesial Communities” or BEC’s, the Church coming-to-be at the grassroots;

• the growing struggle for social justice and human rights, and de facto, even before that label was imported, the “option for the poor”;

• our own home-grown reflection on liberation, born and bred no doubt in syntony with Marxist- Maoist ideological influences in the 70’s, helped much by interfusion with Latin American liberation theology, but shaped in substance by local events, especially by the growing resistance to the Marcos martial law and its oppressions;

• this resistance to the “ruinous dictatorship” in time gathered its disparate forces to a head, and moved — we believe, not without the guiding and saving hand of the Lord, toward those four fateful days which made EDSA and “the People Power” uprising a “miracle,” a gift bestowed, a task begun. Perhaps, we might add, in sorrow — later betrayed by our own lack of unity, of courage and political will.

• After EDSA, within the space created by our uneasily restored democracy, the urong-sulong moves to give some consistent embodiment to the historic presence and responsibility of the Church in our society.

• The work of interreligious dialogue, so necessary for the Church in Asia, has been something of a latecomer in the consciousness of many in our country, but henceforth it has to move to front and center, in the decades to come.

The Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP-II, 1991) was a summative moment, a remarkable effort at definition of the Church’s mission, explicitly formulated and articulated, as official in character as we could want it. It proposed a vision, rooted in the Gospel, discerned in and through the long historic process of“evangelization.” PCP-II set out upon a renewal of the Church, a renewal itself in service to this vision, with clergy and laity-meant to work together at the daunting task it named as the “building of the Church of thepoor.”

III. This “Filipino theology” could not have been the work of theologians in any real isolation from the crises and currents around us. It had to find expression in the midst of the movements and inter-crossings of the most diverse sectors of a Church at the heart of ‘history itself in the making’. A theology of bits-and-pieces gathered and scotch-taped together in hours of doing and suffering, in dialogue and confrontation, in reflection and prayer, in emptiness, in confusion and paralysis, — in all the times and seasons of Qoheleth, it would seem! — in struggle, sometimes in anguish and despair, sometimes with the shedding of real blood and tears. This “Filipino theology” has been the creation of an entire Church, and all these things — and more — were part of its story.

That is why I believe it can be argued that our bishops’ pastoral letters, coming to a focused term in the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, — documents which are a far cry from the magnificent summaeof the middle ages, texts which only poorly resemble the much-labored-over constitutions of Vatican II — these documents are yet the substantive Filipino theological texts of our generation.

May I submit that they can bear the weight of the name “theology”. They are pastoral and missionary reflections and directives, true, yet roughly articulating a developed practical ecclesiology in the line of what has been called “an ecclesiology of transformative praxis in history.” May I submit that they represent, despite obvious deficiencies, the FAITH and HOPE of the Filipino Catholic community seeking to understand itself and its mission today. And expressing its LOVE, in the Spirit, — a love seeking to name its imperatives and number its deeds. Is this not itself authentic theological endeavor? Even a prophetic theological word? You might even call it, the theology of our patristic age. For it is a true theological search to understand and live out the Gospel of Jesus and make it effectively redemptive in our history.

And thus is it not expected that the Filipino theologian of the present will continue to work this vein in years to come, laboring “from below,” in the urgent service of the Church’s mission in our time and place? But all the while, for this is the deeper consequence, constructing a local Church on mission in response to thekairos that is upon us? And not incidentally, this is the most concrete meaning of inculturation and its theology. For inculturation is at base the task of a local church in the process of its self-realization in history. (Cf. Theses on the Local Church. A Theological Reflection in the Asian Context. Theological Advisory Commission of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (TAC/FABC). Published as #60 of the FABCPapers, FABC Secretary General’s Office, 18 Caine Road, Hong Kong, January 1991.)

Litmus-paper test: Name all the Filipino theologians who are present on the scene today and, to your mind, making something of a difference, and you will see that (I believe without exception) this is where they are, and what they are doing. For this is what the Church in the Philippines today asks of them.

Other theological tasks, of course, accompany this work; we might call them maintenance tasks: some of them foundational and essential (grounding for worship, preaching, catechesis, pastoral practice), needful and useful concerns, which at all times and in all places must go on in the Church. We do not set them aside; none is to be omitted or belittled. Let them go forward, for what is and will be needed, now and in time to come.

So much for the Filipino theology of the recent past and the present.

IV. And what may be said of the future? An educated guess only is what may be offered. In the journey of post-Vatican II theology, 20th century ecclesiology has led, by inner nisus, to christological search. Already Pope Paul VI foresaw it: the deeper knowledge of the Church would take us to a renewed turning to Jesus. The “Council of the Church” which was Vatican II, was ultimately a re-centering on Christ. John Paul II, beginning his magisterium with Redemptor hominis, Christ as redeemer of humanity, has brought us, more explicitly than any Pope before him, to the crucified and risen Lord, and in and through him, to the Trinity and trinitarian labor in our world.

Thus the future search of our theology will center, I believe and I hope, on Jesus the Christ. And, repeating only what many outstanding theologians today are saying, it will be a theology constantly renewed by a personal and an ecclesial experience of Christ. The Holy Father said, in the United States in 1993, “Sometimes even we Catholics have lost or maybe never had the chance to experience Christ personally; not Christ as mere ‘paradigm’ or ‘value’, but Christ experienced as the living Lord: he who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Pages can be filled with similar statements from the most influential of contemporary theologians. And most recently and resoundingly, from the Asian bishops in this year’s Synod, in personal interventions and in their final message.

In the years ahead, I believe we will see a rediscovery of Jesus Christ in our Asian theology, and even within an acknowledged context of religious pluralism in Asia, we will see emerging — maybe for the first time, maybe in unexpected depth and splendor, and with wonderment, — the “Asian face of Christ.” In a truesense, the history of theology in Asia, in the Philippines, has not yet really begun in earnest. Rightly it will begin, in the deep mind and heart, with an encounter with Jesus Christ.

As I was writing these reflections, I re-read one of the last essays our Father Horacio de la Costa wrote before he went off to Rome to be one of Fr. Pedro Arrupe’s General Assistants. It is a paper written with the grace and originality we always expected of him, and bears the title, “The Eastern Face of Christ.” (Horaciode la Costa, “The Eastern Face of Christ,” in Asia and the Philippines. Collected Essays by H. de la Costa(Manila: Solidaridad Publishing), 1967, 162-169.) Without preaching, he suggests what the Asian Bishops on their own have repeated for years now, almost as refrain: that the “Asian face of Christ” will only emerge when we, with Asian faces, in a Church itself with an Asian face and voice, will incarnate anew to the 97% of Asians who are not of our faith and not of our Church, the One who, being the Way, the Truth and the Life, is “yesterday, today, and the same forever.” Now especially that the Asian Synod has sounded the call toinculturation with both insistence and authority, it gains added relevance for us, speaking as it does of Christ and his Gospel in whom all the deepest Asian aspirations will find fulfillment.

If I may cite Fr. de la Costa’s concluding paragraph also that I may pay this afternoon a tribute to his memory:

It cannot be without significance that the country which stands almost at the geographical center of the Far East, the Philippines, should also be that in which Christianity has taken the deepest root. There is a Providence that guides the course of human affairs, a Providence whose high purposes we can glimpse even if we cannot completely grasp them.

Surely, it is not presumptuous to see in this providential disposition the destiny to which we are called, weak and unworthy though we are: that of being a spiritual as well as a geographical center, a vital center, in which all Asia may find that which it has long sought but has not yet found: itself, its own mind and heart, not changed but transfigured and made whole in the mind and heart of Christ. Such, I suggest, might be our destiny as a people. (de la Costa, 169.)

V. One last point: Pope Paul VI said, many years ago, that the contemporary world, surfeited with words, pays little heed to teachers, who are after all mainly purveyors of words. (Include in this category, practitioners of theology).  If the world listens to teachers, Paul VI said, it is only because they are witnesses first of all. This is also what the Asian bishops said, in their recent Synod. (Cf. Synod for Asia, “Message to the People of God,” In Origins (28 May 1998)) This has become mandatory, they insist, for those of us who do theology as our métier, to live as witnesses, if there will be a rightful and honored place for us in the Church of Asia tomorrow.

- Catalino G. Arevalo, SJ