The Manuscripts of Joseph Ratzinger's Lectures on the Doctrine of Creation

The Manuscripts of Joseph Ratzinger's Lectures on the Doctrine of Creation Santiago Sanz Translated by Matthew J. Ramage1 Introduction It would be surprising for a pope to dedicate a homily for the Easter Vigil—the most important celebration of the liturgical year—to sketching the features of the Christian doctrine of creation, a topic that prima facie has minimal pastoral relevance. Yet Benedict XVI did precisely this on April 23, 2011, and again on April 8, 2012.2 Indeed, the now-emeritus Pontiff spoke frequently of the importance of faith in God the Creator and its consequences for the dialogue that Christians are called to undertake with the contemporary world,3 an approach that Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' has only confirmed. [End Page 273] In encountering Ratzinger's theological thought, what immediately comes to mind is his strong grounding in Scripture and in the tradition of the Fathers and medieval masters (especially St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure)—as well as the importance he accords to the Church's liturgical tradition (and thus his interest for ecclesiology and the sacraments, especially the Eucharist). If we add to this his early dedication to fundamental theology and his growing passion for Christology and eschatology,4 then it would appear that the doctrine of creation does not lie among the principal interests and theological contributions of our author. We could go further still—as some have done in the case of Introduction to Christianity, his most widespread and read work of theological synthesis—and decry the almost total absence of reference to the first article of faith in early Ratzingerian theology.5 Yet it is not accurate to say that the theme of creation is alien to Ratzinger's thought. Indeed, a glance at the bibliography reveals that the interest was present already at the beginning of his scholarly corpus,6 although it is true that it appears to grow in importance over time. [End Page 274] Aware of this evidence, there are those who have argued that Ratzinger changed his views over the years, first due to the post-conciliar situation, and then also to the continuing evolution of his ecclesial position (bishop, prefect, pope).7 I myself was convinced of this given that Ratzinger had grown in his appreciation for well-grounded moral theology and thereby to greater esteem for St. Thomas Aquinas even as he maintained his original Bonaventurian Augustinianism.8 Nevertheless, I began to rethink the notion that Ratzinger's views had changed after my "chance" discovery of a 1964 Münster manuscript in a Toronto library, a text to which I have dedicated a large study in three stages.9 As I have shown in other studies, this need for change was further reinforced over the course of a sabbatical in Regensburg at the Institut Papst Benedikt XVI, where I came into contact with other manuscripts germane to Ratzinger's doctrine of creation, one from 1958 and the other from 1976.10 These texts demonstrate that the doctrine of [End Page 275] creation has been present in Ratzinger's teaching through all the stages of his academic life.11 Given the importance of the topic, in this article I will present a summary of the results of my research into these manuscripts. First, however, we need to make some preliminary comments to contextualize the work and to explain what we stand to gain by studying the unpublished and therefore non-authoritative texts of an author like ours. Preliminary Considerations The Institut Papst Benedikt XVI houses many manuscripts of Ratzinger's lecture notes (Vorlesungsmitschriften) beginning with the 1955–1956 academic year, all the way up to 1976. According to the list made available to me and dated March 5, 2015, seventy-one manuscripts have been cataloged.12 It must be borne in mind that some of these are duplicates or versions of the same course from different writers. For some, it is specified whether they have been taken by hand (handschriftlich) or are typewritten (maschinenschriftlich), while for others nothing of this kind is specified. Sometimes it gives information about the text's provenance (i.e., the person who owns the notes), while other times it also...

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