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Document Details : Title: Ratzinger Revisited Subtitle: Rereading Einführung in das Christentum Author(s): RIKHOF, Herwi Journal: Bijdragen Volume: 70 Issue: 1 Date: 2009 Pages: 3-27 DOI: 10.2143/BIJ.70.1.2035291 Abstract : When the author was asked to present his discipline (systematic theology) against the background of Ratzingers Einführung in das Christentum (originally published in 1968 and reissued with a new introduction by the then cardinal Ratzinger in 2000), he was surprised to discover some important difference between this book and his own introductory course. The cardinal remarks in his new introduction that he still thinks that the basic ideas of the Einführung are correct, namely the attention to the question about God and Christ. The analysis of the Einführung concentrates on how Ratzinger poses that question about God. Again and again, it appears that Ratzingers does not discusses that question in a fully trinitairian way, but rather deals with this central question in a way that is (still) influenced by the neo-scholastic manuals of the pre-conciliar period, by the treatise De Deo Uno. This locates this book firmly in the period of origin. It is amazing, though, that in the new introduction the cardinal does not pay any attention to the remarkable recent renaissance of the theology of the Trinity and the influence the central insights of that reniaissance have (or should have) on the question about God, not just for the discussion about God inside Christianity but also for the interreligious dialogue. |
