Friday, February 20, 2009

Mit Brennender Sorge continued p3 The plenitude of Revelation and The Old Testament

http://http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge_en.html

Inclusion and banishment of texts is a form of blasphemy . I have never heard blasphemy put into this specific frame of reference. I would not say the testaments are exclusively the word of God,though, but the word of God they are. Note the process of the description of the slow process of revelation and the term :subdued light which accords with the realization by God that revelation must be slow due to humanity's slow grasp of the ineffable at the right time and season . This is why revelation evolves in the context of linear time. Revelation must be subdued lest man be overtaken . The still small voice of God is a necessity and a kindness vouchsafed to man. Hence the age of miracles in the mighty sense are past and we have the phrase in Judaism, "G-d turned his face away from us".

In Jesus Christ, Son of God made Man, there shone the plentitude of divine
revelation. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times
past
to the fathers by the prophets last of all, in these days hath spoken
to us by
His Son" (Heb. i. 1). The sacred books of the Old Testament are
exclusively the
word of God, and constitute a substantial part of his
revelation; they are
penetrated by a subdued light,
harmonizing with the slow development of
revelation, the dawn of the bright
day of the redemption. As should be expected
in
historical and didactic books, they reflect in many particulars the
imperfection, the weakness and sinfulness of man. But
side by side with
innumerable touches of greatness and nobleness, they also
record the story of
the chosen people, bearers of the Revelation and
the Promise, repeatedly
straying from God and turning to the world. Eyes not blinded by prejudice or
passion will see in this
prevarication, as reported by the Biblical history, the
luminous splendor of
the divine light revealing the saving plan which finally
triumphs over every
fault and sin. It is precisely in the twilight of this
background
that one perceives the striking perspective of the divine tutorship
of
salvation, as it warms, admonishes, strikes, raises and beautifies its elect.
Nothing but ignorance and pride could blind one to the treasures hoarded in
the
Old Testament.
16. Whoever wishes to see banished from church and
school the
Biblical history and the wise doctrines of the Old Testament,
blasphemes the
name of God, blasphemes the Almighty's plan of salvation, and
makes limited and
narrow human thought the judge of God's designs over the
history of the world:
he denies his faith in the true Christ, such as He
appeared in the flesh, the
Christ who took His human nature from a people
that was to crucify Him; and he
understands nothing of that universal
tragedy of the Son of God who to His
torturer's sacrilege opposed the divine and priestly
sacrifice of His redeeming
death, and made the new alliance the goal of the
old alliance, its realization
and its crown
.

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