The Leuven Project: Enhancing Catholic School Identity?

Literal and Post-critical Belief

According to the Project, the term ‘literal belief’ stands for ‘a literal affirmation of doctrinal belief contents.’ ¹⁵ A Catholic with a ‘literal’ style of belief believes in a God, a transcendent reality, to whom one can have immediate access. Such a person thinks it both possible and desirable to be present to God in an ‘unmediated [way] . . . to meet Him directly in words and rituals.’ ¹⁶ According to the Project, for literal Catholics, ‘Religious metaphors and truths of faith are objectified and interpreted literally. Biblical texts are mostly read literally and just accepted.’ ¹⁷ The Project portrays literal believers as being ‘often uncertain and afraid of new, complicating problems and, therefore, [desirous of] absolute certainty on matters of faith.’ ¹⁸ In lieu of a literal belief, the Project wishes to bring Catholics to a ‘post-critical belief,’ also called, with a term borrowed from Paul Ricoeur, a ‘second naiveté.’ This is a faith which has moved beyond not only ‘literal belief’ but also beyond a critical ‘literal disbelief’ which rejects a literal affirmation of doctrinal belief contents, and a relativism which accepts ‘a symbolic approach to religiosity but without belief in a transcendent reality.’ ¹⁹ Such a faith accepts the existence of a transcendent God while retaining a symbolic approach to religiosity.

The Project is not opposed to the transcendence of God. ‘Inclusion of transcendence’ is essential for post-critical belief. What is rejected is what it calls a belief in an immediate or unmediated access to the transcendent God. For the Project, such a belief supposes that one can meet God directly in words and rituals, and this is what makes a person a Catholic with a literal believing style. Rather, the correct way of understanding the transcendence of God in one’s belief is to hold that contact with God can never occur directly. Rather, it must always be mediated through symbols.

Symbolic

The next term is ‘symbolic.’ According to Pollefeyt;

Post-critical Belief stands for a symbolic affirmation of faith contents. It is characterised by faith in a transcendent God and in a religious interpretation of reality in which the transcendent is not considered literally present but is represented symbolically. God is the radical ‘other’ to whom we relate through a symbolical representation, through the interpretation of a sign that refers to the transcendent. People relate to the transcendent reality through mediations only: through stories, rituals, traditions, institutions, churches, ministries, communities, social organisations, and so forth. Faith is acquired through the active, creative, and interpretative handling of these mediations. . . . [To] believe is a continuous process of symbol-interpretation; the revelation of new layers of significance in the symbolic relationship with God. ²⁰

Catholic symbols communicate meaning. This meaning is found in ‘religious metaphors and truths of faith.’ ²¹ One’s understanding of God is mediated through ‘traditional Catholic objects and practices such as crucifixes, Bibles and Scripture quotations, statues and artwork, the school chapel, prayer tables, celebrations, posters, icons, candles.’ ²² The Project is not adverse to symbols. A key question will be, what is meant by the terms ‘symbol,’ ‘religious metaphors,’ and ‘truths of faith’? Since, for the Project, the transcendence of God is absolute, ‘God is the radical other,’ do these symbols communicate anything more than metaphorical meaning?

Interpretation

According to the Project, Catholics who have a post-critical belief can engage in a particular kind of ‘interpretation.’ The symbols which communicate metaphorical meaning about God from the realm of transcendence must be interpreted, for they are mythological and religious. So, the Bible does not mean what it seems to be saying to literal-minded believers, for example, that Jesus actually walked on water. Rather, the post-critical believer ‘is aware that the evangelist through the gospel story attempted to stress the special, divine nature of Jesus Christ by means of the available narrative patterns of the time.’ ²³ Furthermore, this task of interpretation is never finished, since we remain within our narrative context. When that context changes, we must recontextualise. The meaning communicated by the symbols keeps changing. ²⁴

Between Literalism and Relativism

What is Pollefeyt trying to accomplish? He claims that post-critical belief is not relativism, as it is sometimes portrayed by literal believers. ²⁵ Rather, it is an attempt to provide a via media for Catholic schools in a post-modern context, to set a course between what he sees as the Scylla of a literalism which accepts transcendence but rejects symbolism and the Charybdis of a relativism which accepts symbolism but rejects transcendence. For Pollefeyt, this is the world in which Catholic students and teachers now live, what they experience, one which seems to leave them with a choice between two inadequate alternatives. According to him, Catholic schools must resist both literalism and relativism. To understand how Pollefeyt proposes that this can be done it is necessary to examine his epistemological and theological premises.

Meta-narratives

A fundamental reason for this dissatisfaction with correlative and contextual theologies is that, epistemologically, Boeve draws on the thought of Jean-François Lyotard, who claimed that what he called ‘meta-narratives’ are no longer credible. Put simply, a meta-narrative is a Story Which Explains Everything. Lyotard identifies five modern meta-narratives: the Christian, Enlightenment, Hegelian, Marxist, and Capitalist. ²⁸ According to him, these meta-narratives are no longer credible because contemporary science has destroyed its own meta-narrative. Whereas the industrial society produced concrete things, the products of post-industrial society are linguistic and symbolic, caused by technological progress in communication, mass media, and computer science, and the development of artificial intelligence and machine translation. The result is that we can no longer communicate in a universally comprehensible ‘language.’ Lyotard aims to turn this contemporary Babel from a problem into an opportunity. We should accept the coexistence of this plurality of ‘petits récits,’ little narratives.

Recontextualisation

The fundamental theological premise of the Project is the contemporary need to ‘recontextualise’ what Catholics believe. This is because correlation theology is no longer viable, since

there is no longer an easily identifiable secular culture to which Christian faith is related and in which Christians live their faith. Theology is no longer engaged in a dialogue between two partners but immersed in a dynamic, irreducible, and often conflicting plurality of religions, worldviews, and lifeviews. ²⁹

Combined with the rejection of meta-narratives, this leads to a situation of dispute rather than dialogue. In response, Boeve proposes that theology should take its cue from Lyotard and ‘take the discontinuity between Christian faith and the contemporary context as its point of departure.’ ³⁰ Like Lyotard, Boeve sees this as an opportunity, writing that ‘the current context teaches theology to be aware of plurality, difference, and particularity, and warns against the facile appeal to consensus, harmony, and continuity.’ ³¹ What Boeve suggests is that the Catholic narrative needs to be ‘open,’ that is, open to being challenged and changed by a God who ‘interrupts history.’ This interruption can come from a non-Catholic narrative, thus revealing God in new ways. ³² From where does Boeve get this idea of interruption? He claims to find it in the Christian narrative itself. ³³ Thus he writes that ‘in the concreteness of particular histories, the God professed by Christians repeatedly breaks open the narratives of human beings and communities, including narratives about Godself.’ ³⁴ For example, there are the narratives of God sending Moses to bring Israel out of slavery in Egypt, and the many ways in which Jesus continually interrupted the Jewish narrative. ³⁵ Of all these interruptions, it is belief in the resurrection of Jesus that is God’s ultimate interruption. ³⁶

Literal

According to the Project, a Catholic with a ‘literal’ believing style believes in a transcendent God to whom one can have immediate access, and who reads the Bible ‘literally.’ For example, ‘the world was created in exactly seven days, Noah’s ark really existed, Gods [sic] voice sounded from the blackberry bush, Jesus actually walked over water, the deceased Lazarus came to life again.’ ⁴⁴ One problem here is that the definition of the term ‘literal’ makes no distinction between two different kinds of literalism. One form of literalism is that of someone who has grasped the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture, that is, the meaning intended by the human author. The second is that of a person who has misinterpreted the meaning intended by the author. So, someone in the second category, in thinking that the author intended to teach a six-day creation, would be incorrect. There are indications in the text itself, for example, the fact that the first creation story takes place over six days, while the second takes place in one day, as well as the fact that the order of creation is different in each story, that the teaching of a six-day creation was not the intention of the author.

A second problem is that no distinction is made between very different kinds of events. The miracles of Jesus reported in the Gospels are lumped in with pre-historic accounts such as the narratives of Creation and the Flood. The question here is: What did the Gospel authors intend to teach about the miracles of Jesus? Did the authors intend to teach that Jesus really walked on water or raised Lazarus from the dead, or did they intend to teach something else? Furthermore, the healings, exorcisms, and miracles of Jesus are affirmed by the Church as real events. ⁴⁵ Pollefeyt gives no indication as to how this contradiction with the magisterium could be reconciled.

The contemporary literalist who ‘draws the harsh conclusion that all this “religiousness” must be nonsense, because the literal interpretation – reasonably speaking – is untenable,’ loses his or her ‘literal’ faith, his or her ‘first naiveté,’ and adopts a position of ‘literal disbelief.’ ⁴⁶ By contrast, the post-critical believer, while retaining a belief in transcendence and the symbolic mediation of meaning, ‘tries to distinguish the mythological images from the religious message for us, alive in the here and now.’ ⁴⁷ Pollefeyt is a kind of ‘demythologist.’ Yet, in his belief in demythologisation, he is decidedly modern rather than post-modern, a disciple of Spinoza. ⁴⁸ Despite his rejection of meta-narratives, he retains at least this much of the Enlightenment meta-narrative.

Mediation

Because of its assertion of the absolute transcendence of God, the Project makes no distinction between different kinds of ‘mediation.’ The only alternative to ‘mediated’ is identified by the terms ‘literally present,’ ‘immediate,’ or ‘unmediated.’ ⁴⁹ It seems to present one with an either/or choice between ‘immediate’ and ‘mediated.’ This mediation occurs ‘symbolically.’ What exactly is meant by a symbolic presence of God? Apart from saying that a symbol is a sign that refers to the transcendent, Pollefeyt does not tell us, so we must turn to Boeve.

For Boeve, when it comes to the presence of God, like all our knowledge of reality, it is indeterminate. We can only construct narratives about his presence within the limits of his ‘present absence.’ ⁵⁰ When it comes to immanence and transcendence, these are merged together in the particularity of human narratives. ‘God becomes known as un-represented, hidden, ungraspable and incomprehensible.’ ⁵¹ God does not become present in us in any way that we can know. Rather, he becomes present in narratives through interrupting them. Thus, the Christian narrative only relates to transcendence when it ‘opens itself up, cultivating a sort of contemplative openness into which the transcendent as interruptive event can enter . . . [bearing witness] in its own non-hegemonic way to the transcendent with the help of its own fragmentary words, images, stories, and symbols and rituals.’ ⁵² For Boeve, God’s ‘interruption’ of the Christian narrative replaces Jesus Christ as the mediator between God and man.

The truth is that believers such as I do not think that we can have ‘immediate’ access to God. Rather, our access is through the one Mediator, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Tm 2:5; Heb 9:15 & 12:24). The question is: How does this mediation occur? To begin with, in Christ, God has become immanent. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us (cf. Mt 1:23). The Word has become flesh and pitched his tent among us (cf. Jn 1:14). Furthermore, we have been baptised into Christ and are now partakers of the divine nature (cf. 2 Pt 1:4). The transcendence barrier has been broken down by Christ. In Christ, God is now immanent, and, in Christ, we are now transcendent. The transcendence barrier has been broken, and now, with Christ, in the Holy Spirit, we can cry out ‘Abba! Father!’ (cf. Mk 14:36; Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6).

Rather than having a single understanding of ‘symbol,’ Catholics use three kinds of symbols. The first kind communicate meaning, for example, the procession of the Gospel at the beginning of the Eucharist in order to remind us that Christ is coming into our midst. The second we call sacramentals, whereby material things communicate the real blessing of God. An example would be blessing oneself with holy water when one enters or leaves a church. The third we call sacraments, which communicate the abiding presence of God. In Baptism, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come to dwell in us, and we dwell in them. In the Eucharist, we receive the abiding presence of the Son of God in the fullness of his divinity and his humanity. ⁵³ The language that we use about this presence is neither metaphorical nor literal, but may be called ‘sacramental.’ It is a new kind of language, since it describes something that, prior to the sacraments, had never happened before. This is why Jesus’ Jewish listeners could make nothing of his teaching that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood (cf. Jn 6:51–57). Metaphorically, this sounds like treating him as an enemy. Literally, it sounds like cannibalism. They had no conceptual category whereby they could understand him.

Presence

It is difficult to work out Pollefeyt’s understanding of what constitutes ‘presence.’ ⁵⁴ He leaves no clue as to if or how a post-critical Catholic might have access to the abiding presence of God. Moreover, he makes no distinction between two kinds of presences, the ontological presence by which God is present in everything that he has created, or more accurately, everything created is present in God (cf. Acts 17:28), and the relational presence which in the Gospel and Letters of John is called ‘abiding.’ The only point which he makes about presence is that literal belief ‘starts from the immediate presence of the transcendent.’ ⁵⁵ What kind of presence, then, does post-critical belief start with? ‘Literal’ believers such as I do not believe in the immediate presence of the transcendent. When it comes to what might be called ‘sacramental’ presence, we believe in a ‘mediated’ presence. The sacraments are a continuation of the Incarnation. They are ‘Christic.’ They are not symbols which mediate only metaphorical meaning via a narrative. Nor are they ‘literal’ in the sense assumed by Jesus’ Jewish listeners when they asked, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ (Jn 6:52). For a Catholic, the sacraments are mediations which not only convey meaning but the very life of God. They ‘are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament.’ ⁵⁶

Interpretation

The Project advocates engagement in ‘interpretation.’ The religious meaning of the mythological images must be deciphered. Moreover, the meaning of the symbols keeps changing as we move into new contexts. Pollefeyt actually writes of ‘deciphering’ the Bible. ⁵⁷ It is as though God sends us coded messages from the other side of the transcendence barrier. What is more, like the problem faced by the Allies during the Second World War, God’s Enigma Code keeps changing. ⁵⁸ The symbols must be continually re-deciphered. As Pollefeyt writes:

The term ‘post-critical faith’ refers to a well-considered faith in God despite critical reasons not to believe. After a renewed interpretation, religious contents become meaningful again. Destructive criticism on the literal understanding of faith is surmounted by a renewed faith understanding that lasts despite the ongoing possibility of rational critique. Post-critical faith is a continuous ‘searching for’ religious significance and meaning without ever finding a final, absolute, established, and certain answer. Symbolic believers live with the existential tension between uncertainty and trust. They feel called to question constantly the religious contents and personal convictions from which they live. They are prepared for reinterpretation, are open to change, and are receptive of complex faith questions that feed the hermeneutical process. ⁵⁹

However, although ‘interpreting’ Sacred Scripture, rightly understood, is necessary, it is not sufficient. Readers of Sacred Scripture need to move beyond ‘interpreting’ a text to ‘pondering’ a shared experience of reading the text with the Holy Spirit. Pollefeyt’s approach remains at a monological level, whereas one’s reading of Sacred Scripture needs to move to a dialogical level. According to Joseph Ratzinger, when Mary responded to the message of the angel, she ‘considered’ (dielogizeto) what kind of greeting this might be (cf. Lk 1:29). This word used for ‘consider’ derives from the Greek root word meaning ‘dialogue.’ ‘In other words, Mary enters into an interior dialogue with the Word . . . she speaks to it and lets it speak to her, in order to fathom its meaning.’ ⁶⁰ This ‘consideration’ continues for Mary. In response to the message of the shepherds, she kept all that had happened, pondering it in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19). The verb normally translated as ‘kept’ (syneteri) here means ‘kept together.’ ⁶¹ The second verb, normally translated as ‘pondering’ (symballousa), in its intransitive sense means to ‘meet.’ ⁶² This verb only occurs in Lukan writings. If one looks at the other uses of the verb by Luke, one finds that every single one involves an interaction with another person. Given that every other use by Luke has a ‘dialogic’ meaning, and given the dialogic meaning of 1:29, we should read 2:19 in the same way, that it indicates an interior dialogue with the Word. A third time we find Mary ‘considering/pondering.’ Although she does not understand what Jesus says to her in the Temple regarding his presence in his Father’s house, we are told that Mary ‘kept together’ (dieterei) all that she has heard in her heart (cf. Lk 2:51). As Ratzinger points out, this verb ‘emphasizes more the aspect of ‘together,’ of unifying contemplation, [while in Luke 2:51 the verb] stresses the element of ‘through,’ of carrying the word to term and holding it fast.’ ⁶³ Mary does not understand everything about Jesus, or about God’s plan. She needs to dialogically ponder all that has happened to grow in understanding it.

Faith

Looking at Pollefeyt’s understanding of ‘interpretation’ is a good place for critiquing what he means by ‘faith.’ It is here in particular that one can see Pollefeyt’s lack of a Christocentric trinitarianism. Two points can be made about his understanding of faith. First, although a dialogue school would supposedly promote a preferential option for the Catholic faith, the Project never makes clear why we should believe our narrative rather than someone else’s. ⁶⁴ Second, Pollefeyt speaks of ‘faith contents’ and ‘doctrinal belief contents.’ Traditionally these have been called the fides quae creditur, the faith that is believed. It is these ‘faith contents’ or ‘doctrinal belief contents’ that cannot be ‘literally’ affirmed, but must be symbolically affirmed by ‘post-critical belief.’ This ‘post-critical belief,’ also called ‘post-critical faith,’ is what is traditionally referred to as the fides qua creditur, the faith that believes. This faith ‘is acquired through the active, creative, and interpretive handling’ of mediations such as ‘stories, rituals, traditions, institutions, churches, ministries, communities, social organisations, and so forth.’ ⁶⁵ According to Pollefeyt, this is necessary in order to distinguish the ‘religious message’ from mythological images. We can see that, for him, the fides qua creditur, the faith that believes, is placed in ‘faith contents/doctrinal belief contents,’ what Catholics often mean when they speak about ‘the Faith,’ what Jude calls ‘the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3). Pollefeyt’s fides qua creditur is not faith in God per se, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not a faith wherein one entrusts oneself to God. In fact, fides qua creditur has two aspects. It is both faith in God and faith in what God reveals. For example, fides qua creditur is ‘faith in the Son of God (1) who loved me and gave himself for me (2)’ (Gal 2:20). One cannot have the first without the second, and to have only the second without the first is not to have a saving faith, since although one may believe that God is one, the demons also believe, and shudder (cf. Jas 2:19). For Pollefeyt, faith is not ‘personal’ in the sense that it is not the faith of a human person in an incarnated divine Person. So, there can be no response in faith, hope and love to ‘the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20).

We can also see that, for Pollefeyt, fides qua creditur is something that is acquired by human effort. This suggests something that is not the infused theological virtue of faith, which is a gift from God. Pollefeyt seems to have no place for grace. In his schema, human ‘interpretation,’ which makes an essential contribution, also seems to absorb that which is contributed by the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, if one’s ‘interpretation’ determines what the ‘faith contents’ mean, against what standard does one test the validity of one’s ‘interpretation’? What this position does is to open the way to ‘faith contents’ being whatever one wants them to be.

Pollefeyt characterises his hermeneutics as ‘future-oriented.’ He sees recontextualisation as something that has been occurring since ‘the dawn of Christianity.’ ‘As God walks with us on our path, new revelation occurs and the faith tradition keeps expanding itself.’ The ‘normative point’ for ‘our living faith lies in the eschatological future, not in the preservation of the past.’ ⁶⁶ He sees no contradiction between what he proposes and what John Henry Newman would have called ‘development of doctrine.’ However, since the ‘hermeneutical process’ is never ending, since there are no ‘certain answers,’ only ‘meaningful’ ones, any answer could be arrived at. Also, what is meaningful for one person may not be meaningful for another. Hence there is no guarantee that different Catholics will not arrive at contradictory reinterpretations of ‘faith contents,’ leading to multiple and mutually exclusive ‘Catholic identities.’ Moreover, a self-constructed faith is in danger of leading to a self-constructed god, one made in one’s own image and likeness.

In Pollefeyt’s schema, doubt is a virtue. However, rather than there being a tension between uncertainty and trust, when it come to the faith that believes, ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Heb 1:11, RSV translation). As Benedict XVI points out, the definition of faith given here in Hebrews 11:1 is: ‘Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen.’ ⁶⁷ In the Vulgate, this term hypostasis is translated as substantia. Following St Thomas, Benedict points out that faith is a habitus, a stable disposition of the spirit, ‘through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see.’ ⁶⁸ This is to say that the substance of eternal life for which we hope is already present in us through faith. This presence of eternal life creates a certainty that, although it does not yet appear in the external world, can be perceived interiorly. This substance is objectively present, not just subjectively present as an expression of an interior attitude. It is not just subjective conviction, but objective elenchos, proof. ⁶⁹ For example, it is doubtful that Peter understood at the time, any more than the other disciples who decided to walk no longer with Jesus, what Jesus meant by eating his body and drinking his blood, yet he accepted it because he had come to know Jesus, the Holy One of God (cf. Jn 6:68–69). Because Peter believed in and had come to know Jesus, he accepted what Jesus said, and he stayed. Post-resurrection, the apostles eventually gained some understanding of what Jesus meant (cf. 1 Cor 11:17–34). Understanding the teaching of Jesus follows faith in Jesus.

Ultimately, what underlies Pollefeyt’s understanding of faith is not a post-modern, but a modern epistemological assumption, that of Immanuel Kant. ⁷⁰ It is here that one can see Pollefeyt’s lack of attention to the integral education of the whole human person. Like most contemporary educational theory, his rests on Kant’s epistemological assumption that human knowledge is exclusively discursive: ‘The reason cannot intuit anything.’ ⁷¹ For Kant, ‘human knowing consists essentially in the act of investigating, articulating, joining, comparing, distinguishing, abstracting, deducing, proving.’ ⁷² The traditional name for this kind of reasoning is ratio, the active effort of discursive thought. This is the properly human element of our knowledge, and it requires effort. This is what grounds Pollefeyt’s understanding of faith. It is ‘acquired through the active, creative, and interpretive handling’ of various mediations, in other words, through ratio. Yet there is another kind of knowing, traditionally called intellectus. This could be called a simple vision in which the truth reveals itself, like a whole landscape revealing itself to the eye. ⁷³

Thomas Aquinas refers to this way of knowing thus: ‘Although the knowledge most characteristic of the human soul occurs in the ratio, nevertheless there is in it a sort of participation in the simple knowledge which is proper to higher beings, of whom it is therefore said that they possess the faculty of spiritual vision.’ ⁷⁴ Commenting on Aquinas’s position, Josef Pieper explains that, in intellectus, we participate in the angelic faculty of non-discursive vision. We apprehend the spiritual like the eye apprehends light. Our knowledge includes an element of non-activity, purely reflective vision. This is the fulfilment of the highest intellectual activity, the contemplative. As Aquinas says, this kind of knowledge is non propriae humana, sed superhumana (not properly human but super-human). ⁷⁵ Human spiritual knowledge is both ratio and intellectus. The discursive element is fused with intellectual contemplation. ⁷⁶

Another way of putting this is that Pollefeyt advocates what Newman called notional assent, but entirely neglects what he called real assent. Real assent is given to concrete objects of direct experience. What Newman called acts of religion require real assent. Notional assent is reserved for abstract propositions, Pollefeyt’s ‘faith contents/doctrinal belief contents.’ This kind of faith, being speculative, requires only notional assent. However, as Newman explains, there is a,

pre-eminence of strength in divine faith, which has a supernatural origin, when compared with all belief which is merely human and natural. [Its] pre-eminence consists, not in its differing from human faith, merely in degree of assent, but in its being superior in nature and kind, so that the one does not admit of a comparison with the other. ⁷⁷

With the theological virtue of faith, real assent proceeds notional assent.

Interpretation in Practice

What might Pollefeyt’s interpretation look like in practice? He does not give any concrete examples, but he attempts to portray his position as having some cataphatic content. Thus, he says that ‘faith may not “become symbolised” in such a way that belief in the objective existence of God would no longer be significant.’ ⁷⁸ Furthermore,

[A]n all too strong rejection of traditional faith contents is unfortunate . . . because symbolic-believing people also entrust themselves to the reality and truth of the triune God who reveals himself in the Christian tradition. Without an ontological referent, the symbol remains empty and meaningless. It is the closed, totalising attitude of Literal Belief that causes danger, not the traditional faith contents to which one relates in a symbolic-hermeneutical way. ⁷⁹

In other words, one does not reject doctrinal contents, but ‘re-interprets’ them. ‘Cataphatic’ content remains, but one’s interpretation of it keeps changing. The objective existence of God remains, but our subjective knowledge of God keeps changing.

In his explanation of the ‘preferred belief style on theological grounds’ on the Post-critical Belief Scale, Dirk Hutsebaut writes,

Prof. D. Pollefeyt’s normative viewpoint based on theological arguments (sic). Situated far inside transcendent belief (the inclusion of transcendence is maximal), in the quadrant of second naiveté, just below the boundary with literal belief (though never touching it). This is the symbolic position where the ontological referent is present the most, without ever being presented directly. The authentic believer tries to build a relationship with God as intensely as possible, but continuously withstands the temptation to cross the boundary, to grasp God. He’s standing in the fullest mediation between God and man. Here, believing is an ongoing process of symbol interpretation, whereby God never allows himself to be presented directly, but breaks through from ‘the other side.’ ⁸⁰

The ontological referent is ‘present’ but not ‘presented directly.’ Even though Hutsebaut refers to building a relationship with God, what is missing is the adjective ‘personal.’ What he calls ‘grasp God’ others would call ‘become a friend of God.’ By ‘ontological,’ Pollefeyt seems to mean nothing more than the acceptance that a transcendent God exists. There is no indication that we can make any absolute ontological statements about this God, or enter into a personal relationship with this God. One could characterise it as a kind of post-modern monotheism where there can be no personal relationship between the spiritual and the material, the transcendent and the immanent. We can only know and relate to symbols. In such a case, how does Pollefeyt propose that we relate to a tripersonal God? For him, faith is in propositions, even if these propositions keep changing, rather than in divine Persons. Faith is in changeable words rather than the Incarnate Word who is ‘the same yesterday, today and forever’ (Heb 13:8).

When it comes to how ‘interpretation’ might look like in practice, Boeve is more forthcoming. For example, he writes that the ‘Logos incarnated in the word, becomes signified in the word, but does not identify itself with the word. The word “evokes”, thereby determining the indeterminable, and precisely in this determining distinguishes itself from the Logos.’ ⁸¹ According to Conor Sweeney, Boeve is arguing ‘that Jesus’ humanity, as particular, embodies a radical hermeneutical path to God. To say that the Word is made flesh is to say that in becoming flesh the Word subjects itself to the hermeneutical condition of the humanum . . .. In other words, ‘word’ (note the lower case), as a phenomenon occurring within the limits of history, is not able to contain the divinity of Logos as such.’ ⁸² For Boeve, ‘The word never becomes Logos, but is the way to the Logos.’ ⁸³ Boeve writes this because he holds that one cannot make once for all statements about God. The faith is not ‘once delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3). Even statements that have been regarded as such, like the formula of Chalcedon, are actually contextually determined metaphorical statements. In the case of Chalcedon, this formula now needs to be recontexualised in a new metaphor. ⁸⁴ Moreover, Boeve holds that the formula of Chalcedon only seems to be a doctrinal statement, whereas it is, in fact, a ‘creedal’ one. ⁸⁵ By creedal he means the fides qua creditur, the faith that believes. This fides qua creditur is constant, whereas the fides quae creditur, the faith that is believed, must be recontexualised.

At least three criticisms can be made of Boeve’s position. First, the Creeds of the Church are both ‘creedal’ and ‘doctrinal.’ If it were only doctrinal the Nicene Creed would read, ‘I believe that God is the Father, the Almighty,’ and so on. This is why it says, ‘I believe’ in the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Church, but ‘I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins’ and ‘I look forward to the Resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.’ We believe in the three divine Persons, and in a Church which has become personalised through union with Christ. As both creedal and doctrinal, the two aspects of fides qua creditur mentioned earlier are not separated. ‘I believe in God (1), the Father, the Almighty . . .’ (2), ‘I believe in Jesus (1) Christ, his only Begotten Son . . .’ (2). As we have seen, fides qua creditur has two essential foci. It is faith in God, and faith in what God reveals. It is ‘faith in the Son of God (1) who loved me and gave himself for me (2)’ (Gal 2:20). As has been said, one cannot have the first without the second, and to have only the second without the first is not to have a saving faith (cf. Jas 2:19). Moreover, how can one truly believe in God and what God reveals while what one believes about him keeps changing?

Second, the purpose of the early creeds and ecumenical councils was to establish who was in the communion of faith, and who was outside it, that is to say, who was a heretic. The language of the creedal statements is not metaphorical but ‘exclusionary.’ Their purpose is to exclude false doctrines so that our limited understanding of God will be valid. Boeve implicitly rejects the distinction between names being attributed to God by metaphor or by analogy. The former imply limitation incompatible with divine perfection whereas the latter do not. As Gilles Emery explains, ‘For example, when we call God “wise,” we signify a perfection that really exists in God. However, the reality signified by this word “wise” surpasses our concept of wisdom.’ ⁸⁶ Furthermore, human wisdom is distinct from man’s essence, but God’s wisdom is not distinct from his essence. Wisdom, as signified in God, is beyond human comprehension. ⁸⁷ Yet it is a true statement to say that God is wise, as long as we remember that his wisdom is far beyond human wisdom. This is apophaticism à la Pseudo-Dionysius and Aquinas.

How could Boeve’s assertions about the word and the Logos refute a contemporary Nestorian who held that there were two persons in Christ, or a contemporary Adoptionist who held that the divine Logos, at some point, comes to dwell in the human Jesus? In fact, Boeve’s account of the relationship between the ‘Logos’ and the ‘word’ reads like some form of Adoptionism or Nestorianism. Jesus is a ‘sign’ of the Logos. He reveals the Logos, but is not the Logos, since the Logos does not identify itself with him.

Third, despite his rejection of once for all statements about God, Boeve himself makes such statements. It is my conviction that Boeve has an implicit metaphysics of which he is not aware. For example, in Christus Postmodernus he writes that, ‘In a Christian perspective “event” is a happening of grace, a grace-experience in which God reveals Godself as inexhaustible Love, to which every human expression and answer in word and deed falls short.’ ⁸⁸ Later he writes that, ‘Time and again believers have sought for clues in their personal and communal, historically developing and changing context in order to give form in word and deed to the experience of grace as inexhaustible divine gift of love.’ ⁸⁹ If we think of ‘inexhaustible’ as a synonym for ‘infinite,’ these are absolute statements about God. Boeve cannot have it both ways. Either all statements about God are metaphorical and contingent, or at least not all of them are. The reality is that one cannot have a completely apophatic theology. Such a theology must simply remain silent about God.

Regardless, what Boeve’s position means is that we cannot know if Jesus is truly the Son of God since, within the limits of history, the Logos does not share his ‘identity’ with the ‘word.’ In other words, we cannot know if the fullness of deity dwells bodily in Christ (cf. Col 2:9). Since Jesus cannot be known as truly the Son of God, he cannot reveal the Father to us or share his identity as Son with us. We cannot be adopted as children of God. (cf. Rom 8:16 & 21; Phil 2:15; 1 Jn 3:1–2 &10). Hence the Pelagian need to construct one’s own Christian identity. The irony is that, in reducing Christianity to nothing more than a narrative, and claiming to put forward a post-modern alternative to literal belief, the way is opened up for an understanding of revelation that has some kinship with a neo-scholastic understanding. Whereas the neo-scholastics regarded revelation as a communication of truths to the intellect, for Pollefeyt at least, what God reveals to the post-modern self-constructed believer is not himself via his historical action, that is, via salvation history, but ‘doctrinal belief contents.’ Yet, as Joseph Ratzinger has pointed out, revelation is not a collection of statements, but Christ himself. ⁹⁰

We do not need to engage in continual reinterpretation, although with the mind of Christ that we now possess we must continually strive to deepen our understanding of the mystery of Christ which was hidden in God from all time, but which has now been revealed (cf. 1 Cor 2:16; Eph 1:9–10 & 3:3–9; Col 1:26–27). Since Christ is in us and we are in Christ, he is not trapped in his context 2,000 years ago, and we are not trapped in ours. Because we are in Emmanuel, we have transcended the context of mere narrative. God has raised us up with Christ ‘and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ (Eph 2:6). We can encounter the abiding Father through Jesus Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit in prayer and the sacraments.

Interruption

Finally, Boeve’s idea of ‘interruption’ must be critiqued. It must be said that, in his speaking and writing on the Project, although Pollefeyt refers to Boeve’s work on this concept, he himself never uses the term ‘interruption.’ However, in the ‘International Speaker Series 2013’ of the Catholic Education Office Melbourne, Pollefeyt includes as an appendix an article by Boeve on interruption. ⁹¹ Furthermore, a 2010 Stimulus Paper prepared by Paul Sharkey, who has worked closely with Pollefeyt in the implementation of the Project in Australia, refers explicitly to Boeve’s notion of an ‘open and interruptive narrative,’ fully endorsing this approach in implementing the Project. ⁹²

Boeve finds the fullness of God’s interruption in the Resurrection. However, he does not say that the Resurrection of Jesus is the greatest of God’s interruptions, but that ‘belief’ in the Resurrection is. ⁹³ Since the Scriptures must be interpreted symbolically, that is, metaphorically, this is true of the Resurrection of Jesus. It cannot be understood as a real event. Rather, ‘God breaks open narratives.’ God does not interrupt via events, but only interrupts narratives. Or, to put it another way, the Judeo-Christian narrative does not narrate history in the sense of attempting to record what actually happened. God is not telling the story about what he has done but is confined to supposedly interjecting into stories which we tell ourselves. Nor do we have any way to distinguish between genuine and fanciful interruptions. An interruption may just be a story we are telling ourselves.

Boeve’s understanding of interruption radically affects his understanding of evangelisation. For him, the ‘Imitatio Christi . . . summons Christians to a praxis of being both interrupted and interrupting.’ ⁹⁴ The Christian narrative is a particular narrative rather than a meta-narrative. As such, it is interrupted by God, and challenged by God to itself interrupt other narratives. The Gospel becomes an interruption. Hence, the praxis of mission, evangelisation, is not a call to people to, ‘Repent, and be baptised, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 2:38). Rather, it is ‘respecting the very otherness of the other, questioning, challenging the other, criticizing him or her where he or she tends to become hegemonic.’ ⁹⁵

More Than a Narrative

The fundamental mistake of recontextual theologians such as Pollefeyt and Boeve is a failure to grasp that our context as Christians is much greater than that of a narrative. Christians do not just believe in and proclaim a narrative. As St Paul says, the Gospel has come to us ‘not only in word [narrative], but also in power and the Holy Spirit and with full conviction’ (1 Thes 1:5). Christians do not just believe in and proclaim a story. They are in the story! They have been baptised into Christ, and they invite others to be baptised into the story with them. The fullness of a Christian’s context is that, ‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20). This, and not some self-construct, is our true Catholic identity, our new birthright as children of God (cf. Rom 8:12–21).