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TrueLight
Guest
Where does it say this in the article?
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JReducation
Guest
But that’s not what the Archbishop says. That’s the interpretation that’s being given to what he says. Check out the whole chapter and you’ll see that he’s taking right out of Bonaventure and raising a question, not making a statement. His question is whether or not only those who had faith saw Christ or was his visible to all.
Bonaventure argues that Christ did not make himself visible to those who did not have faith and that explains why the Romans did not see anything. Archbishop Mueller used Bonaventure’s example of Mary to drive home his point. While Christ is walking about in the garden no one sees him. At first, Mary sees whom she believes to be a worker. It is when she make an act of faith that she sees him. She’s not in control. He is in control. However, he is choosing who will and will not see him. The Archbishop drives home the point by using Peter’s own words that Jesus did not show himself to everyone, but only to those who had faith and they were sent to tell the good news that he had risen.
Again, Bonaventure uses the experience of Paul, to which the Archbishop refers to in his chapter. Paul does not see Christ. He asks for the stranger’s identity. But it is not until Paul has made an act of faith that the scales fall off his eyes. Archbishop Mueller and Bonaventure are in agreement that the act of faith precedes the self-disclosure of the Risen Christ. The key phrase here is “self-disclosure”. It is Christ who is doing the disclosing, not the viewer doing the unveiling. Mueller never says this.
Mueller simply asks a question and he’s being crucified for asking it, as if it were wrong to do so. His question is very simple, yet complex, could the actual resurrection have been see, since no one believed that it would actually happen? Mueller believes that it is unlikely. That’s when he brings in his film analogy.
Personally, I don’t like the film analogy. I think it distracts rather than helps. But I like the question. The truth is that no one, not even his apostles believed that he was going to rise. Had that been the case, they would have not been locked in the upper room. They would have been out there, standing by the tomb waiting for him to come out.
We have to admit that it’s a great question. I don’t see the desire to crucify this man for something in which the Magisterium finds no fault. It’s others, playing Magisterium, who are dissecting and making loose associations. The Magisterium seems to be taking him at face value and allowing him to ask a rather interesting metaphysical question. It can also be considered a question for Mystical Theology. In Mystical Theology we do believe that the faith of the person having the experience is necessary. God works with what’s is substantially there in the person, even though it may not be fully visible or even known by the person having the experience until it actually happens.
Interesting questions. I hope that he has more time to finish the work. I’d like to see where he goes with it. I hope that there is a good English translation to it too.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
T
TrueLight
Guest
Hmm. This makes me very uncomfortable. Is this asking for example, if two people looked into the tomb, the non-believer would see his body and the believer would see an empty tomb? I hope I am misunderstanding. I might need to read the full chapter to get the full gist.
I do want to say that I don’t think we need to defend everything Mueller has written because it may be his opinion or musings. Often when one is placed in a position of great authority one is more careful about what one publishes, thereafter, as it can affect the faithful.
If as Prefect Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he introduces this opinion as worthy of belief, then that would be a problem IMHO.
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TrueLight
Guest
Did the magesterium meet and discuss these statements?
I’m not being facetious. Does the appointment of any highly-placed person in the CC affirm that the Magesterium has read every publication that the candidate for the position published or reviewed every speech that they gave?
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M-Dent
Guest
I disagree.
Müller affirms the objective truth of the resurrection and Christ’s glorified body. His theological query is the response of human reason to this objective truth.
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RogerDeCourcy
Guest
Well, one explanation for the nature of the Resurrection I read in an esoteric book was that Christ could materialise and de-materialise His body at will. So when he asked Mary not to touch Him, it was because His body was not entirely materialised. It was a practial request.
He dematerialised His body, previously, when he was about to be stoned. You can take that or leave it.
On a practical level, it is good that no body was available to be abused or prodded by the profane. “He’s gone. In your face, Romans!”. I know that might sound stupid, but there you are.
The sequence of events is that He went through a terrible death, incarnate, and was laid in a tomb. When the tomb was later visited, it was empty. The Turin Shroud suggests there was a burst of energy at some point in the Resurrection process.
What would any witness have seen? The question is moot. Those events happened privately.
It may has suited His purpose not to appear in a readily recognisable form to His apostles, later on. He wanted to sit amongst His dear disciples and talk with them like a man.
He dematerialised His body, previously, when he was about to be stoned. You can take that or leave it.
On a practical level, it is good that no body was available to be abused or prodded by the profane. “He’s gone. In your face, Romans!”. I know that might sound stupid, but there you are.
The sequence of events is that He went through a terrible death, incarnate, and was laid in a tomb. When the tomb was later visited, it was empty. The Turin Shroud suggests there was a burst of energy at some point in the Resurrection process.
What would any witness have seen? The question is moot. Those events happened privately.
It may has suited His purpose not to appear in a readily recognisable form to His apostles, later on. He wanted to sit amongst His dear disciples and talk with them like a man.
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Stylites
Guest
No, but his mission to work toward their reconciliation with the Church is the reason that the Archbishop’s words are being lifted out of context.
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JReducation
Guest
Not at all. What he’s speaking about is the actual event of the resurrection not the risen Christ.
We need to discriminate between the resurrection event and the risen Christ. The two are obviously different Chistological and metaphysical topics of discussion. :banghead:
*]No one saw the actual resurrection - the moment at which the dead corpse comes to life.
*]No one can see what happens when the coprse comes to life, because it’s a metaphysical reality. Metaphysical realities are not measurable or observable. We see the result, not the activity. Just as no one can see bread and wine changing substance and becoming living human-divine matter (flesh and blood).
*]In other words, just as we cannot see transubustantiation, but we believe it; no one saw the resurrection, but we believe it.
He’s raising a question that can only be answered by metaphysics. “Can the resurrection be seen?” His hypothesis is that it cannot be seen. Forget the camera, that was just a bad example. Instead of helping drive home his point, it derailed the discussion. Aquinas does that too. He throws in examples that you have to jump over in order to stay on task.
Any theologian can pose any question or hypothesis that is not contrary to doctrine. This is part of the Catholic theological tradition. The mission of the theologian is to answer the question or prove the hypothesis so that it supports the faith of the Church. As far as I can see, this piece of writing does Part A. Part B has not been written. It may be written by Mueller or someone else will pick it up. Who knows?
As Prefect, his job is to protect the faith. He is free to introduce as many questions and hypotheses as he wishes. Popes have done it, Doctors of the Church have done it, other theologians have too. What the Prefect must do is protect the faith. A question is not an attack, unless it’s meant to call into question that which is already believed. “Did Christ truly appear to the Apostles,” would be such a question. That’s an attack on what we believe. That’s not the kind of question that he’s asking or trying to answer.
The details to the resurrection are not defined and have never been defined. Just as the details of Mary’s end of days on earth. Those have never been defined either. The Church has never said that she died. If we observe the liturgy for the Assumption it says, “When the course of her earthly life came to an end . . .” It’s the faithful in the Latin Church that ran with it and interpreted that to mean that she died. None of the Apostolic Churches, Catholic or Orthodox ever said that. The Eastern Catholics and Orthodox avoid this whole problem by saying that she slept, hence the Dormition. Eastern Catholics do not have the hangups about the resurrection and the assumption that Roman Catholics have, because they use different language to explain it. Our problem is the words that we use.
Of course not. The Magisterium is not interested in these statements. They are not dogmatic proposals. The Holy Fathers concern themselves with dogma, not with questions, hypotheses and theological discussions that take place in classrooms and at the upper levels of scholarship. Whenever they can, they actually throw in a few statements of their own to see if they pass the test.
This is true of all theological writings. The Magisterium sat down and analyzed all of Aquinas, Bonaventure’s, Augustine’s writings either. These were prolific writers. As things come up, then the Magisterium reads it and incorporates what the writer has said into the doctrine of the Church, rejects it as a mistake or lays it aside as not relevant to the discussion at hand. It was not until recently that it became public that Augustine believed that life begins after conception. He was mistaken. However, the question was not on the table, so no on paid close attention to that statement.
For example, no one really paid any attention to Aquinas and Bonaventure’s denial of the Immaculate Conception until it there were so many explanations that the pope had to step in and clarify (define). Now, it’s no longer an issue for most people.
That’s why I always caution people when they throw any of the Doctors out there as if they were infallible truth. The Church has never said that about all of the writing and teachings of any doctor. They are named Doctors, because they are teachers, from the Latin to teach (docere). Their teachings have made significant contributions to the faith.
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JReducation
Guest
Never. It’s not necessary, nor required. In this particular case, Pope Benedict is very familiar with the work of Archbishop Mueller, because they’re former colleagues. It does not always happen that way. Sometimes, a man is appointed because he has a track record in a certain field. His resume indicates that he has experience, is knowledgeable in that field and had done good work in that field, such as the appointment of Archbishop DiNoia as Vice President of ED. He’s very familiar with the issues of the Traditionalist Movement.
We have to remember that the Holy Father has more important things to do than to read theology all day long. I think that we have an image of the Holy Father that he spends his time looking at Church teaching and what people teach. That’s not the case at all. He does not have that kind of time. He’s only one person. Popes have an agenda of their own. There are certain things that they want to deal with and the rest they leave to committees and departments.
If Archbishop Mueller’s writings had caused any stirrings, guess who would have been the person to review them. Cardinal Ratzinger. They were written before the era of Pope Benedict XVI. This man’s writings were not even known until a month ago. They are the kind of books read in classrooms, not by the man on the street.
That’s like me throwing out there the name Dermott Lane. How many Catholics know who he is? Yet, if you ask any theology student at the STD level, they know who he is. His work is only read by people at that level of academic interest. Yet, Lane’s work has holes in it. He leaves many unanswered questions. But what he does answer is well said.
This is very important to remember. Not everything that is written in theology is of interest or even affects the man in the pew. Much of it is boring to the man in the pew, because it has nothing to do with his life.
Less than 1% of the Catholics I know, including clergy and religious, have read Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth. The people whom I’ve asked, have found it to be very boring and have put it down after chapter one. Someone once said to me that he did not want to read a book to which he needed a commentary to explain it. That’s how convoluted Pope Benedict’s statements sounded to him. Scholars read it and find that it’s almost simplistic to a fault. This does not meant that it contains error. It means that they find that the message is obvious and don’t understand why one would find it complicated. I read them and found them interesting.
These same things happen with the writings of other theologians and philosophers such as Archbishop Mueller.
The issue between the Archbishop and the SSPX goes beyond the writing. The SSPX had paid no attention to his writing anymore than it has paid any attention to the writings of Cardinal Levada who wrote that not all of Humanae Vitae was infallible or Cardinal Ratzinger who wrote that the ordination of women was a question that could be entertained (until Pope John Paul II said it could not be entertained).
My feeling is that the bishop’s comments about the four SSPX bishops needing to go into retirement to do penance for accepting an ordination that was not authorized and the fact that he told them to take the SSPX seminary out of his diocese has stirred up some old issues that have less to do with his writing and more to do with conflicts with authority.
One way to attack a person’s authority is to attack his credibility. It’s a very human reaction and often done without even realizing the connection. We’re a very complicated species. Many things we do are not always clear even to those of us who are doing them and yet they are much clearer to the person who does not have a horse in the race. In other words, I don’t believe that there is an SSPX conspiracy to discredit Archbishop Mueller. There can be individuals who have that in mind. As a whole, I believe that someone like Bishop Fellay, who brought up these quotes did not see the connection between that action and the context in which he brought up those quotes. In the same sentence, Bishop Fellay said, “He told the bishops to retire, wanted us to send our seminarians back to their dioceses and close the seminary and treated us like lepers.”
Let’s take all of that and break it down as a psychologist would.
- The Resurrection and about Transubstantiation
- Bishops retire to do penance
- Close seminary
- Treated us like lepers
Answer: Number 1.
Why is it there, it’s probably an unconscious attempt to justify what one does not trust the person, not a conscious plot to discredit. The real issues are probably 2, 3 and 4.
Until I see a full book well translated into English, I’m not taking a position on this hypothesis. This hypothesis is part of a bigger painting. Even if I do get to read the whole book in English,which I probably won’t, because it’s a field of theology in which I’m not an expert, I may not understand half of it anyway. The other thing is that I don’t have to agree with it, because the man is not proposing a change in dogma. He’s raising a question of metaphysics.
As John Henry Newman found out, it’s OK to ask questions. Had he not asked questions, he would have not become Catholic. The key is to ask the right question. If one asks a question that has nothing to do with what’s on the table, one is not going to get a good answer. It’s like asking, “What’s for lunch,” when mom is serving birthday cake. Such a question only derails, it does not contribute to the birthday celebration.
That’s my :twocents:
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
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TrueLight
Guest
Good post!
I myself am not that interested in what he wrote to take a real good luck at it now. Maybe later, I’ll get more interested. I have enough to read!
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MikeDunphy
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TimothyH
Guest
Forgive me for snipping your post but this makes sense to me.
I have always thought that Christ’s presence after the ressurection as described in the Bible had a Eucharistic quality to it, if you will, or resembled the Blessed Sacrament.
He could appear and dissappear, transcending time and space. The Eucharist is the entire substance of Christ, but can be present in many tabernacles simultaneously and throughout time.
Whenever I read the passage about the Road to Emmaus and the way Chirst appeared and disappeared, I think of the Eucharist. I think of transubustantiation, and of the end of the 19th chapter of the Book of Wisdom. The same is true of his appearances in the upper room.
I have wondered what the actual ressurection event would have looked like, there alone in the tomb, but I have thought recently that it would have been Eucharistic, if that makes sense.
-Tim-
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JReducation
Guest
You and me both. I have been plowing through two books on Jesus and Judaism for over two weeks and have a third one waiting on Bonaventure’s letters. Archbishop Mueller’s hypothesis will have to wait. Besides, I probably won’t understand it anyway. Metaphysics was the one class in philosophy that I never scored higher than a 90. It was frustrating. The language is too convoluted.
You’re missing what he’s talking about. Read below at what Tim wrote. That’s what the Archbishop is talking about. Can a camera capture transubstantiation?
That’s an excellent post Tim. Thanks for sharing that. Great ideas in there.
I’m thinking of the Shroud of Turin. If it is truly the shroud of Jesus, there is no way that it could have been recorded. The scientists who are looking at it are thinking that the body passed through the cloth leaving its imprint in the molecular structure of the cloth, very much like the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is on the tilma. The molecular structure of the tilma has actually been altered. While it appears to be a simple tilma, it’s not decomposing like it should have. The threads are actually the color that they reflect. They are not died. This means that the hemp used to make it had to come in those colors, which we know is not the case.
How can one capture such change on camera? How can one observe such change with the human eye, if one does not know what one is looking at?
Look at the tilma again. We now know that the bishop and those in his company were not looking at an image on Juan Diego’s tilma. They were looking at Mary in real time. A close examination of the eyes on the tilma reflect the images of those who were looking at her, because the moisture on the cornea reflects that which is opposite the person. They didn’t realize that they were looking right into Mary’s eyes, because they did not know what they were looking at. They thought they were looking at a 2-dimensional image, when in fact they were staring into the eyes of a 3-dimensional person.
Mueller’s hypothesis has possibilities. It may be possible that those who did not see the risen Christ missed him, because they did not know what they were seeing or who they were seeing, just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus did not know and Mary did not know. They saw a man, but they did not know, until he revealed himself to them.
It’s fascinating. The how . . . that’s above my pay grade. I’ll stick with ascetical and mystical theology. The anatomy of the soul and the mind of God are much easier to understand than what God does with his mind.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
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CardManningFan
Guest
I’m quoting St. Thomas’s article’s sed contra.
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CardManningFan
Guest
Why?
Sure they did. They saw Him dead, then they saw Him alive.
So they didn’t see the Resurrection because “it’s a metaphysical reality”?
No one saw the Resurrection? Of course they did; they saw the Risen One, Who they previously saw dead.
Also, Doubting Thomas had no problem seeing the Risen One with his bodily eyes; he had a problem of faith recognizing Whom he saw to be the Living Christ.
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CardManningFan
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What I should’ve quoted was the preceding Summa article “Whether the clarity of the glorified body is visible to the non-glorified eye?”'s corpus:
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CardManningFan
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Mrs_Sally
Guest
No one is denying the fact of the resurrection. No one is saying the risen Christ was invisible.What I’m understanding from this conversation is that the Archbishop is proposing (as something to discuss not as dogma) that if we had been in the tomb we wouldn’t have seen the process of the resurrection. We would have seen the dead Christ then the living Christ, but not the resurrecting Christ.
Going back to the odd camera example: In movies with great special effects, we “see” things that wouldn’t be noticed in real life (or even possible). Ressurection–coming back to life when you are dead–is something that happens inside a person. We cannot see the spirit that reanimates the body.
The risen Christ was not a ghost, but he did “materialize” inside the locked upper room. He was not wearing a costume when the disciples didn’t recognize him.
He is God, and does have the ability to transcend physics. That is all metaphysics means - beyond the physical. Nobody is talking about ghosts, goblins, or transcendental meditation.
Going back to the odd camera example: In movies with great special effects, we “see” things that wouldn’t be noticed in real life (or even possible). Ressurection–coming back to life when you are dead–is something that happens inside a person. We cannot see the spirit that reanimates the body.
The risen Christ was not a ghost, but he did “materialize” inside the locked upper room. He was not wearing a costume when the disciples didn’t recognize him.
He is God, and does have the ability to transcend physics. That is all metaphysics means - beyond the physical. Nobody is talking about ghosts, goblins, or transcendental meditation.
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Melchior_1
Guest
Exactly. We would not see the verb. We do see the noun and the adjective.
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TrueLight
Guest
I guess I don’t understand the relevance of the whole thing. Why Is it important?
I never imagined I would see Jesus rise sputtering like a drowning victim when taking his first breaths. I didn’t imagine him elevating with angels around him either. I imagined everything as happening in the blink of a second.
What is the point of the speculation?
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