21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"God is the foundation of hope", April 21, 2008
This review is from: Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi (Hardcover)
So says Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi (paragraph 31), his second encyclical, and the entire elegant and closely reasoned essay is an argument in defense of the claim. As is typical of papal encyclicals, references in Spe Salvi tend to focus on scripture, the patristic fathers, and a handful of medieval theologians. But it also strikes me that Benedict's reflections on hope are informed as well by the 20th century's greatest Roman Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, although Rahner is never explicitly referenced.
It's no accident, Benedict argues, that in early drawings Christ was often depicted as a philosopher. Philosophy in the early centuries of the Christian era wasn't an academic discipline so much as a search for the proper way to live. Early Christians saw Jesus as offering the best way, one that made sense of the present by looking to the future. The good news brought by Christ, writes Benedict, was thus not only informative. It was also performative: that is, it provided an incentive and purpose for a particular lifestyle.
Faith, argues Benedict, is a "reaching out towards things that are still absent," but it also "gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a 'proof' of the things that are still unseen" (paragraph 7). This is the basis of the hope offered by Christ: that the future, although it can't be known, is nonetheless laden with promise, and that the awareness of this affects the way in which we live in the present. Hope, then, based on faith, isn't merely a yearning for the future; it's a present mode of living that's informed by hope in a positive future (shades of Rahner here).
This hope needs something infinite to ground it, to make it genuinely worthy of hope, and that infinite something is, of course, God (again, this is reminiscent of Rahner). The hope, furthermore, must be both personal and collective: that is, hope, like faith must be that which sustains the individual and binds together the community. In showing how this double movement is possible, Benedict does an especially fine job of arguing against private models of hope (such as those endorsed by some evangelicals) on the one hand and collectivist models (such as those endorsed by secular utopians) on the other (paragraphs 13-23). In the process, he also shows that Christian hope is compatible with human freedom, which always makes the future contingent, and human suffering, which is always voluntarily shared by God (paragraphs 24-31, 35-39).
This is Benedict at his finest: holding contraries in a creative tension, rather than rejecting one for the sake of the other to achieve logical neatness at the expense of theological depth. The personal and the communal, the present and the future, uncertainty and hope: these, the antipodes of human existence, are also the compass points Benedict wisely uses to help us better understand the manner of living taught by Jesus the philosopher.
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Broad Pastoral Call, March 23, 2008
This review is from: Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi (Hardcover)
This is a broadly written, short, and decidedly un-academic sermon to humanity on a central aspect of the Christian message. It is aimed as widely as possible and does not even pre-suppose a great deal of prior familiarity with Christianity on the part of the hearer. For all the talk of "the pastoral" in the Catholic post-Vatican 2 ambit, Benedict is the only pope of that era really using the papal encyclical as such a radically simple vehicle since John 23's Pacem in Terris. It is nonetheless an old tradition and mode, recalling the sermons of Gregory the Great.
This obviously isn't going to satisfy certain restless souls. But Pope Ratzinger, the academic pope, has churned out truckloads of the other sort of writing throughout his career, stuffed with footnotes and references aplenty for those so minded. There is little he hasn't written about in that vein and loads of it are still in print. Simply, in his discernment of his new role, he sees the encyclical as a different sort of opportunity and tool.
The sermon is aimed at the literate but somewhat tired and harried modern soul, nonetheless open to hearing the rudiment of the Christian message restated. It is fresh and does not give the feel of having been much vetted or run through several drafts. It will not convert Everybody; Christianity never worked that way anyway. But it is likely it will convert Somebody. You can read it in one sitting or between planes. It will give back what you give it. The 80 year old pope didn't feel like delivering a magnus opus this year and dashed this off on his vacation. Its aim was to refresh and it refreshed me to know that encyclicals could still be turned loose in this almost offhand manner. What it basically says is, all you Pharisees,take a holiday ... we'll call you in later ... today you look to be in Somebody's way, and today the shepherd is going for that Somebody.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Encyclical on Hope by Pope Benedict XVI, April 8, 2008
This review is from: Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi (Hardcover)
Once again Pope Benedict has written a clear, insightful, inspiring document for Catholics and people of faith everywhere. "Hope" is a word bandied about these days and offered as a panacea to the world's ills. In this latest encyclical, the Holy Father shows us (through scripture reference) that hope is a freedom with responsibility. The message here, I believe, is that there is hope through worship of God. All things begin and end with Him, our Creator on whom this generation has turned its back.
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