NOTE: This book was originally written in 1968 and so I refer to the author as simply "Ratzinger" throughout the review, though he was later elevated to the rank of archbishop, then cardinal, and has now been ordained as Pope Benedict XVI. At the time of the book's initial publication, however, he was at Tübingen University. As such, I feel no need to refer to the author as "the Pope" or "his Eminence" or even "Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger".
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An Introduction to Chrsitianity by Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) is a work that was originally written in German as Einführing in das Christentum but I received it in English as a birthday gift from a friend who is infatuated with Ratzinger’s theology. I was apprehensive about reading the book because I was worried that it would be similar to the numerous Christian theology books on display at drugstores across America and like them contain simplistic attempts at persuasive arguments.

I was wrong.

Let me be clear: I knew that Ratzinger is a heavyweight in the realm of theology. However, based on the title I was expecting the treacle of his thought, not a serious discussion of the Christian faith. What I found was an extremely intelligent and sophisticated approach to the Christian faith, cutting no corners in its erudition and sound in its theory (to the extent one can believe theology sound in general). I am certain that the intended audience of the book was European rather than American, and giving the book to an evangelical to read would be as useful as giving the Feynman lectures on physics to a dog. In short, whether or not one agrees with his philosophy, Joseph Ratzinger is a formidable theologian and exegete, worthy of profound respect.

Ratzinger assumes, rather astutely, that many reading the book are fully informed about the actual history, dogma and beliefs of the Church but are skeptical or outright atheists. While he cannot convince an atheist on the basis of logic alone (a point he concedes), he does discuss the nature of the Christian faith and asks the reader to merely say to himself, “but perhaps it is true”, and continue reading. For the skeptic who believes in God but seeks to diminish the stature of Jesus, he has marshaled the best arguments of a reformed Catholic Church. I must admit that he did not convince me to change my own ideas concerning Christianity, but he argued his own vision with clarity and with logical precision.

Ratzinger’s book included some implicit assumptions that were not directly touched on, but which for me were some of the most profound points insofar as those assumptions direct the text. He views the development of the Bible as the flawed human attempt at understanding an interaction with God that was nonetheless taking place, and he all but states that Christianity represented an evolution in pre-existing thought rather than a revolution. Furthermore, he understands that faith must by its nature be alogical but never illogical. In other words, if we were able to use reason to arrive at the conclusions of faith, it would not be faith. At the same time, our faith need not contradict proven facts. In this, I generally agree with Ratzinger.

These assumptions form part of the basis of the Catholic Church’s current stance on issues of history and science, as well as its continued use of Platonic philosophy. The Church does not need to view the Bible as a literal document since it was written by men and flawed. This means that evolution need not be contested (which would be illogical), nor must we find a historical Noah’s Ark or Garden of Eden. Ratzinger overtly criticizes fundamentalists and Biblical literalists by saying that in them, “we have the retreat from the truth of reason into a realm of mere piety, mere faith, mere revelation; a retreat that in reality bears a fatal resemblance, whether by design or accident and whether the fact is admitted or not, to the ancient religion’s retreat before the logos, to the flight from truth to beautiful custom, from nature to politics.”

The Church would unlikely be able to take this understanding any further and look at Christ in a different light than has been the Pauline consensus of some seventeen centuries. One could ask, “Is Jesus talking about himself as a person or his role when he says, ‘I am the way and the light’?” Could this role not be referred to when it says in the Gospel of John that John the Baptist taught people to be “sons of God”? Could this concept of evolution not see the further modification of the meaning of Jesus based on the changing notions of faith that are relevant to people today?

Ratzinger does, however, challenge a great deal of Protestant theology about the role of Christ, particularly with respect to the meaning of the Crucifixion and the idea of salvation through the cross. He states that Catholics and Orthodox emphasize the incarnation of Christ, whereas Protestants emphasize the crucifixion. To Ratzinger, the real miracle is the incarnation. The cross is certainly important and plays a central role, but it is not the expiation of sin demanded by a petty and unforgiving God, but rather a humbling of God before man which results in the pardoning of sin for those who grasp the central principles of the Gospel. God so identified with man that he went down into the abyss and “judged him by saving him”. God came to Earth, on bended knee, essentially, and said, “You really do treat each other poorly. I gave you free will but I hoped you would love each other, not kill each other. Do you see what I’m willing to do to myself just to try to get you to be better people? Don’t you see how much I care? Let me save you.” The believer is, Ratzinger states, “in a dialogue with God”, and this forms the basis of salvation. The incarnation was meant to help initiate this dialogue, and the cross merely points the way.

Accordingly, Ratzinger sees the Eden myth and the “original sin” as a metaphor of our flawed nature, and so Christ’s sacrifice, while representing “vicarious salvation” (to use the standard term), is not to remove some terrible judgment on the human race but rather because Christ, by his example, showed himself to be a perfect man (eschatos Adam as referenced in Paul’s letters) where we are not. Where Adam blames his wife when confronted by God, Christ accepts responsibility. The implication is that we received freedom (symbolized by the fruit in Eden) but used it poorly and acted like children (and this, rather than the act of eating the fruit, is the real “original sin”), whereas Christ showed us how freedom is meant to be used, taking responsibility and acting as an adult and most of all, expressing God’s love for all of humanity. “God’s freedom is love” and “love triumphed over death” are statements Ratzinger repeats.

The resulting faith is far more sophisticated than many would assume when they think about Christianity, particularly when the dialogue is colored by some very vocal Protestant denominations in America, on the one hand, and militant atheists, on the other. For example, when one views Christianity as an evolution in the understanding of the Divine rather than as a historical, one-time event, the flawed nature of the Bible becomes irrelevant and many sophistries are removed. This defuses ab initio a great deal of the pseudo-intellectual attacks on the Bible which are popular these days. Ratzinger is very clear that he does believe that there was a historical, unique event in the past (namely, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus) but that it is only relevant to the extent that it is refreshed in new spiritual situations. I can agree with his latter comment without passing judgment on the former.

Seen through this lens of evolution, Christianity’s oddities begin to drop away. Why monotheism developed in Judah and Israel and not somewhere else is a question that needs no answer. It is like asking why the modern steam engine was invented in England or Microsoft in America – conditions were ripe. The shift from polytheism to national gods was a trend that arose where the cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt mingled, and from there to monotheism was but a step. The Jews took that step. Furthermore, their concept of monotheism added the concept of a savior, a Messiah, who would be born as a human and save his people.

Add to this mix the infusion of Greek thought which followed the conquest of the region by Alexander the Great, and one sees Platonic philosophy and its own form of monotheism, born of reason and reflection, superimposed on national monotheism and a Messiah. Plato and later philosophers had argued for the replacement of the absurd gods of the pagan world, but lacked the cultural force to actually achieve such replacement. At the same time, the Hebrew God would have been unsuited to the pagan world without a Greek gloss, and in particular without the elevation of a human figure to the divine by means of a mystery-cult story. As a result, neither the Greek nor the Hebrew tradition alone could have shaped a figure as universally important and relevant as Jesus, the Christ. Call it natural evolution or intelligent design, but the end result is the same. The teachings of Jesus were recorded in Greek and spread throughout the world with astonishing speed because they blended two traditions masterfully. Their mixed provenance was a necessary antecedent to their success. Ratzinger does not think that this invalidates the divinity of Christ (that would be to follow the “vulgarized form of modern theology”, as he says), merely that it shows the subtlety of God.

The wrong turn, the detour, of Christianity lies not in its spread, but in the way it was institutionalized. Many thinkers have noted the contradictions between the message of Jesus and the institution of the Church (one notable example being Dostoevsky, in his “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” portion of The Brothers Karamazov). The inflexibility of dogma (which only grew over time and became intertwined the power and attendant corruption of the Church) is what led to the Reformation, which in turn created its own inflexibility – a doctrine of sola scriptura which has led, quite naturally, to Biblical literalism. Ironically, the Catholic Church has “corrected course” on the matter of dogma to a large degree, and it is now the Protestants, particularly evangelicals, who are the primary source of uneducated and reactionary forces in Christianity. Ratzinger does not explicitly apologize for any excesses of the Church, but he does say (remember, this was before he became Benedict XVI), “dogma as a single tenet proclaimed by the pope ex cathedra is the latest and lowest way of forming dogma”, and at a later point states, “The centuries of the Church’s history are so filled with all sorts of human failure that we can quite understand Dante’s ghastly vision of the Bablyonian whore sitting in the Church’s chariot”. He also implies that current rigid Protestant dogma is calcifying the faith. It may seem that the pot is calling the kettle black, but in historical fairness this particular pot has undergone a stunning whitewashing.

While I am not sure that the reformed Catholic Church, following its aggorniamento at the Second Vatican Council, has evolved enough to bring Christianity in line with the latest evolutions in our understanding of the Divine, the fact remains that Ratzinger’s theological arguments remain compelling and have forced a re-think in my understanding of the place of Christianity in the future of the spiritual life of mankind. Just as Christianity did not toss aside the traditions on which it was founded, a future evolution in our understanding of the spiritual might do well to retain the powerful message of Jesus and the ubiquitous image of Christ on the cross.

Furthermore, Ratzinger makes a strong case for the retention of a “Church” in some form. A church (including the Church) is a spiritual community, and a spiritual community is needed for people who aren’t living as hermits in the wilderness. Ratzinger notes, quite correctly to my mind, that the modern trend to personal spirituality bereft of any institutionalization is not necessarily bad but it does mask some bad tendencies, namely, a personal rewriting of faith to suit selfish goals and a removal of the actual praxis of faith from its theoretical aspects. The consequence of these problems is a society that cares about others less and treats others worse.

Of course, I am not in agreement that the further (and entirely predictable) conclusion that Ratzinger makes – that once we accept that a Church is needed and that we do in fact believe, the natural logical result is that we adhere to the Roman Catholic faith. Certainly, modern Catholicism is a far more palatable creed for any thinking person than, say, the Churches of Christ or the snake-handlers. The question remains, however, of how faith will evolve and be “made afresh”, as Ratzinger puts it.

To my mind, the next evolution of spirituality must by definition address other ideas that have arisen or come to the attention of Christendom in the intervening thousand years. Christianity has rejected Marxism (and rightly so), and Ratzinger delivered a scathing rebuke of Liberation Theory in his introduction that was simply brilliant. Both lack the moral legitimacy to which they aspire. However, one can ask whether or not a good Christian should not try to see aspects of social democracy implemented, and to what sense this is a moral imperative. Likewise, while Christianity cannot be completely reconciled, theologically, with Eastern religions, a Christian should sincerely examine whether or not the idea of Christ is that far removed from the concept of the bodhisattva. Ratzinger certainly disapproves of this last point, calling it “interpretive Christianity” in which “the actual content is written off as dispensable phraseology”. However, if one uses the actual words of Christ to support conclusions, and takes the starting position of a flawed Bible to disregard certain isolated passages that today seem hateful, is one really doing anything different than what people have been doing ever since the dawn of Christianity? Is this not the continuation of our evolution?

Ratzinger would say no. I would say yes.

Regardless, it is clear that there are compelling reasons why Christianity has endured for 2,000 years, reasons far beyond simplistic and negative notions regarding ignorance and fear. Ratzinger’s book convinced me of this, something that I would hardly have believed before starting it, but it also helped show how the image of God “has to be made afresh in every spiritual situation”, as Ratzinger put it. The book is a wonderful read. Strict atheists will not enjoy it, and Ratzinger admits that against the demands for proof of God we are powerless to comply and any believer understands the “loneliness of the hour of doubt”. However, I feel that many agnostics and “spiritual” non-Christians will be able to appreciate many of Ratzinger’s ideas. It is additionally recommended to anyone who enjoys theology generally regardless of personal convictions.