{478} (cont’d)

Of course, these criteria are purely moral criteria. And it is necessary to know if these possibilities, even satisfying these criteria, are actually fulfilled or not fulfilled in the deposit of revelation. The fulfillment of a possibility is what I call an event. And therefore, the fulfillment of a possibility in the order of comprehension is a truth, but a truth that has the characteristic of event. It is an historical truth. The fulfillment of some possibilities of comprehension, in this case the deposit of revelation, is historical¹. Consequently, the dogmas of the deposit of revelation are not brought out from it via the biologic way of evolving germination or via logical conclusion. They are brought out in a completely different manner, historically. In other words, through the richness of the internal possibilities that revelation itself offers. Because of this, strictly speaking, I do not believe the evolution of dogma exists, what exists is the history of dogma. Dogmas are what has been revealed before, but more revealed through the intellective seizure of man by the real truth already revealed.

Then we can ask how were these dogmas present before they were brought out? After what we have just said, I do not believe they are there virtually. This matter of virtualities is something never clearly defined in theology. I do not believe they are there implicitly. What do we mean by implicit? Do we mean, for example, that in the kecharitoméne the Immaculate Conception is implicit? {479} Why implicitly? I do not believe it is there virtually or implicitly. It is there in a different way. It is there as possibilities are in the reality that has properties, which makes that these possibilities may exist. The air, metals, engines have real properties dating back for a long time. Only recently a few years ago these properties have been the fundament of a possibility, aviation. Are the possibilities of aviation contained in the metals germinally, virtually or implicitly? This seems absurd to me. Does this mean metals have nothing to do with that reality? This also seems absurd. The possibilities are in the reality from which they emerge and of which they are possibilities in a different way that I might call fundamental. Every possibility is founded on real properties, and this is precisely what fundamentality is.

Hence, dogmas are in the deposit of revelation inasmuch as revelation is fundamenting its own properties of being more and better revealed. Because of this the history of dogmas is, ultimately, a stepping march towards them, but through a historical way, not through germination. Thus, when one places his faith on the Church at a certain moment, it is not the case that one implicitly believes the dogmas not yet defined. One may believe implicitly in the sense of saying “I believe everything that will be said later”. But that is not the case, the purpose is to know what this means objectively. And what is believed is that these dogmas not yet defined are in the deposit of revelation fundamentally (in the sense I have just explained), but undiscerningly². And what does undiscerningly mean? Here, it is not the case they may or may not be in act, but that they are not as act in historical actuality. {480} Before its definition the Immaculate Conception had no historical actuality. The dogmas are revealed, they are contained in revelation as possibilities are contained in that, which fundaments their possibilities. That is the reason why the definition itself, as I have said, is not a new revelation. Not even on its own, because with the death of the last Apostle revelation is finished and concluded. And not even in an equivalent way, as Suárez argued, a great theologian, but unfortunately the heir of the syllogistic prejudices of the XV century. It is not the case of a revelation, formal or equivalent.

Let us return to the starting point. All the history of revelation is purely and simply something that occurs in the body of the Church qua body of Christ, and personal communion with him. In other words, occurs with Christ present in the depth of the Church. Which means that just as the sacraments are the actions of Christ, which continue repeating the actions of his life in the persons that receive them, analogously the definitions revelation continues to experience in the course of history are really his actions. Certainly, men construct them, but with reference to Christ. Just as baptism is an action of Christ, also the dogmatic definitions that take place in history are his action. An action of his, which has a most precise characteristic, a dogmatic definition is not an action in which the Church defines revelation, but is purely and simply Christ defining himself, which is a different matter.

We have first class examples of this in the evangelical history. Under some particular circumstances the Pharisees told Christ, “We are descendants of Abraham” (Jn 8:33). And Christ answered them, “Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad” (Jn 8: 56). They told him, “You are not yet fifty years old and you pretend {481} to have seen Abraham?” (Jn 8:57). And he answered them, “before Abraham came to be, I AM” (Jn 8: 58). They tried to stone him, but Christ left. Obviously, Christ defined himself here due to the pressure of external circumstances. That was not a simple question they were making so that he might respond theoretically. It was pressure that made him define himself. There are other examples. At the Last Supper, when Philip said to Christ, “show us the Father, and that will be enough for us” (Jn 14:8). And Christ answered him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip?” (Jn 14:9). He defined himself there in his consubstantial filiation. Pressure made him define himself. Practically at the same time, when he said, “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later and you will see me” (Jn 16:16), the Apostles made him define in what his divine preexistence consisted (cf. Jn 16:17-28). And then they told him, “Now you are talking plainly, and not in parables” (Jn 16:29). Furthermore, when hours later Caiphas tells him in the name of the entire history of Israel, “I order you to tell us under oath before the living God whether you are the Messiah, the Son of God” (Mt 26:63). And he answered, “You have said so” (Mt 26:64). That was an act of definition by Christ. The questions they addressed were not questions for him to respond, but questions that forced him to define himself. All this was a definition by Christ. The history of the Church with all its dogmatic definitions precisely continues this history. Christ is defining himself throughout the historical circumstances. This is why the definition is an act of Christ just like the sacraments.

Then we may ask how do we achieve the definition? Precisely by that, which constitutes the presence of Christ in the bosom of the Church, the Spirit of Truth. This is the reason I mentioned above the infallibility of belief (infallibilitas credendi) in the entire body of the Church {482} taken historically. In some of its hierarchs there is the infallibilitas docendi, but the truth is that this second infallibility is granted and is real inasmuch as it forms part of the first. They are not two different infallibilities. To think that an ecumenical council receives its infallibility from the Pope is chimerical. It would not be infallible without the Pope, but it is not such because of the Pope. That was a bad theory of conciliarism, to believe that the Church is the Pope, the cardinals, and the bishops, while the rest of us join in. Not at all. The fact is that taken at one and the same time the infallibilitas docendi and the infallibilitas credendi constitute only one thing, the infallibilitas corporis Christi, the infallibility of the body of Christ. This infallibility is not merely negative, i.e., it is not assistance in order not to err, but in addition it is an interior illumination. Certainly, not in the form of a new revelation, but in an interior illumination that will allow us to be able to define accurately the identity of the revealed deposit. This is why infallibility is not something extrinsic, like a kind of guillotine, which falls on the history of revelation, but precisely the opposite. Infallibility is the organ of the historical identity of revelation. It is an organ of historicity. And this is precisely what makes it possible that there be a progress. The opposite would be to leave revelation in the hands of a motion, without knowing what it is going to give of itself in the course of history. Clearly, there is no progress except where we have a substrate of identity, whether in revelation or anything else.

The progress of revelation is, therefore, essential to revelation. In the first place, because the history of dogmas is not only the history of the vicissitudes of revelation in the bosom of human history, but that history is something that belongs to the very constitution of revelation. They are not external vicissitudes that befall it as if revelation might be better {483} without those great historical vicissitudes. Revelation is constitutively historical. History belongs to it. And what is constituted in it is precisely the body of truth. The body of Christ is what gives its consistency to the sóma tes aletheías, whose actuality, consistency, and expressivity are conferred to the dogmatic evolution by the presence of Christ. In the second place, historicity not only intrinsically belongs to revelation, but also belongs to it in a formal way. With this I mean, in the first place, that revelation is not historical simply because it is submerged in history. Of course it is. But revelation is historical, in the second place, because it is affected by history, just as Christ was affected by history. But there is something else. Revelation is not only historical because it is submerged in history, and affected by history, but because history belongs to it intrinsically. It is not simply revelation and Christ in history, but his presence in it historically. Revelation is in history, but historically. Christ revealed himself not only in history, but has revealed himself historically.

From this point of view the Spirit of Truth is nothing but the very history of revelation insofar as history. Progress is the revelation of the seizure of man in the Spirit of Truth. And precisely because of this it is an action of Christ, the action of being constituted as sóma into the body of the Church. That is what happened to Christ in his biographical and personal life. His entire biography was the theological experience of his own divine filiation. It can be said without fear of error that the history of dogmas is nothing but the theological and historical experience of the revelation Christ has, and with him, his Church.

This historical moment is essential to Christianity. Christianity in the modern world found itself facing, in first place, {484} a form of reason, scientific reason. She found herself facing scientists. This was the occasion for a lot of noise, but it had little effect on theology. In the second place, she faced philosophical reason. That was more serious. It was a philosophy that had an idea of intelligence and concepts quite different than the one the Greek world had. The Church debated, not with great success, because it did not have much, but it was not a total disaster. But at the same time Christianity had to present the content of revelation facing a third type of reason, historical reason, which acquires its great plenitude in the philosophy of Hegel.

Historical reason presents, from my perspective, a problem that is not usually considered in theology, but it should. Theology books, when they discuss dogmatic progress understand it in a way similar to the question, for example, whether the dogma of Chalcedon was or was not in the Synoptic Gospels. Or whether transubstantiation is or is not in the account of the Last Supper, etc. They try to justify each dogma. Of course, this is essential, and without it there would be no question, but I believe the question must be approached from a different point of view. We must approach the history of dogmas in the totality of the constitution of the sóma tes aletheías, the body of truth. Not each dogma, but the set of all dogmas in their internal connection, unfolding and constituting themselves during the course of history. That is the question, history as a whole. The history of dogmas is not purely and simply the history of one or twenty dogmatic definitions; it is precisely the very historicity with which revelation lives historically in the bosom of the Church. Because of this I believe the problem is much more important than justifying, as Newman did, each one of the dogmas. The history of dogmas, from the point of view of the present, is the confrontation of Christianity {485} with the entire theological history as a whole. For some, God in his history is dead, that was the phrase of Nietzsche. For others, like Hegel, God lives. The life of God consists in God making himself, is becoming a being. It is a becoming in himself. In that case, the historicity of Christianity as a becoming of God himself would be purely and simply the absolute reason, the idea, which is being molded in finite concepts through the course of history. It was, for example, the method introduced into the history of dogmas by F. C. Baur precisely at Tübingen³.

Nevertheless, in all modesty I do not believe that is the structure of the historical totality of the dogmas. In the first place, the history of dogmas is not the life of God. It is not the life of a God who is making himself, and is reaching to be, but is the life of a God who is making being by donation, something quite different. He is not making himself, but is making that creatures be. Therefore, the occurrence to which revelation is subjected in its most intimate and deepest strata is purely and simply God giving of himself, i.e., occurring in another, in this case, in the body of humanity. This occurrence, in the second place, is a projection ad extra of his Trinitarian life. And this projection manifests. The history of dogmas is the history of this revelation, and not the history of the physical reality of God himself. But still, in a deeper dimension, God not only gives himself ad extra to creatures, but also gives himself concretely and historically in the person of Christ. Therefore, God is not only in history, but in addition he is in it historically. And this historical being-there (Sp. estar) is a theological experience of the possibilities for manifestation of Christ. The dialectic of revelation is not the conceptual unfolding {486} of an idea, but the theological experience of God, historically, ad extra.

However, historicity is not what is most radical in Christianity. What is radical is that historicity is a giving of himself by God. And this giving of himself really and formally consists in deiforming that, which he creates, and that in which he is going to be realized. Because of this, above and below of history is precisely the personal deiformation of each man. Each man has to make his own substantive being religated by the power of the real. In this religation a problem formally occurs, which is the problem of the reality of God. And to this God that the intelligence discovers as personal reality, living and unique, man can surrender. And this action of surrender is precisely what we call faith. Molded in the entire reality of man, individual and collective, it is what we call religion. And, in the option of Christianity, it is precisely Christ and Christianity, as person and also as history.

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¹ The historicity of rational truth and its relationship with logical truth have been discussed by Zubiri in Inteligencia y razón (Intelligence and Reason), op. cit., pp. 301-307.
² In the seminar of 1967 Zubiri said “undefinably”.
³ Cf. F. C. Baur, Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte, Stuttgart, 1847, especially pp. 6-57.