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assumed in Christ and in the new law (on the basis of theresolution of the eternal law into the Christic predestination),and that which is assumed is not abolished: quod est assumpturnest senmtum. To one who does not believe, it is always possibleto demonstrate the intrinsic reasonableness of a norm which isknowable even naturally, without failing from the beginning topresent it as an ingredient of a whole which receives its fullfoundation only jn the Chdstic perspective.

Retrieving the TraditionConcerning the notion of personin theologyCardinal Joseph Ratzinger

Relativity toward the other constitutes thehuman person. The human person is the

event or being of relativity.The concept of person, as well as the idea that stands behindthis concept, is a product of Christian theology. In other words,it grew in the first place out of the interplay between humanthought and the data of Christian faith and so entered intellec-tual history. The concept of the person is thus, to speak withGilson, one of the contributions to human thought made pos-sible and provided by Christian faith. It did not simply growout of mere human philosophizing, but out of the interplaybetween philosophy and the antecedent given of faith, espe-cially Scripture. More specifically, the concept of person arosefrom two questions that have from the very beginning urgedthemselves upon Christian thought as central: namely, thequestion, 'What is God?" (i.e., the God whom we encounter inScripture); and, "Who is Christ?" In order to answer thesefundamental questions that arose as soon as faith began to re-flect, Christian thought made use of the philosophically insig-nificant or entirely unused concept "prosopon" = " ersona." Itthereby gave to this word a new meaning and opened up a newdimension of human thought. Although this thought has dis-tanced itself far from its origin and developed beyond it, itnevertheless lives, in a hidden way, from this origin. In my

Communio$ Fall, 1990).el990 by Communio: lnternaiional Catholic Review

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440 Cardinal Joseph Ratzingerjudgment one cannot, therefore, know what "person"' mosttruly means without fathoming this origin.For this reason please forgive me because, al-though I was asked to talk as a systematic theologian about thedogmatic concept of the person, I will not present the latestideas of modern theologians. Instead, Iwill attempt to go backto the origin, to the source and ground from which the idea of"person" was born and without which it could not exist. Theoutline flows from what was said above. Wewill simply take acloser look at the two origins of the concept of person, its originin the question of God and its origin in the question of Christ.

I. The concept of person in the doctrine of God LpA. The origin of the concept of person

The first figure we meet is that of the great Westerntheologian Tertullian. Tertullim'shaped Latin into a theologicallanguage and, with the almost incredible sureness of a genius,he knew how to develop a theological terminology that re-mained unsurpassable in later centuries, because already onthe first attempt it gave form permanently to valid formulae ofChristian thought. Thus it was Tertullian who gave to the Westits formula for expressing the Christian idea of God. God is"una substantia-tres personae," one being in three persons.1 Itwas here that the word "person" entered intellectual historyfor the first time with its full weight.It took centuries for this statement to be intellectu-ally penetrated and digested, until it was no longer a merestatement, but truly a means of reaching into the mystery,teaching us, not, of course, to comprehend it, but somehow tograsp it. When we realize that Tertullian was able to coin thephrase while its intellectual penetration was still in its infancy,the question arises, How could he find this word with almostsomnambulant sureness? Until recently, this was a puzzle. CarlAndresen, historian of dogma at Gottingen, has been able tosolve this puzzle so that the origin of the concept of person, its

'The final formula of the West was una essentia -tres personae;TertuUian hadsaid, una substan ia- -t personae, Augustine una essen ia-tres substan iae.

I Person in theology 441true source and ground,/ s somewhat clear to us today? Theanswer to the question of the origin of the concept "person" isthat it originated in "prosopographic exegesis." What does thismean? In the background stands the word prosopon, which isthe Greek equivalent of persona. Prosopographic exegesis is aform of interpretation developed already by the literary schol-ars of Antiquity. The ancient scholars noticed that in order togive dramatic: life to events, the great poets of Antiquity did notsimply narrate these events, but allowed persons to make theirappearance and to speak. For example, they placed words inthe mouths of divine figures and the drama progresses throughthese words. In other words, the poet creates the artistic deviceof roles through which the action can be depicted in dialogue.The literary scholar uncovers these roles; he shows that thepersons have been created as "roles" in order to give dramaticlife to events (in fact, the word "prosopon," later translated byI1persona," originally means simply "role," the mask of theactor). Prosopographic exegesis is thus an interpretation thatbrings to light this artistic device by making it clear that theauthor has created dramatic roles, dialogical roles, in order togive life to his poem or narrative.In their reading of Scripture, the Christian writerscame upon something quite similar. They found that, here too,events progress in dialogue. They found, aboveall, he peculiarfact that God speaks in the plural or speakswith himself (e.g.,"Let us make man in our image and likeness," or God's stat-ment in Genesis3, "Adam has become like one of us," or Psalm110, "The Lord said to my Lord which the Greek Fathers taketo be a conversation between God and his Son). The Fathersapproach this fact, namely, that God is introduced in the pluralas speaking with himself, by means of prosopographic exegesiswhich thereby takes on a new meaning. Justin, who wrote inthe first half of the second century (d.165), already says "Thesacred writer introduces different prosopa, different roles."However, now the word no longer really means "roles," be-cause it takes on a completely new reality in terms of faith inthe Word of God. The roles introduced by the sacred writer arerealities, they are dialogical realities. The word "prosopon" =

. :'C. ~ndresen,+ ~ u rntstehung und Geschichte des trinitarischen Person-begiffs,"Z N W 52 (1961):1-38.The Patristic texts ated below are taken from

Andresen's article.

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442 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger"role" is thus at the transitional point where it gives birth to-theidea of person. I will cite merely one text by Justin to danfy thisprocess. "When you hear that the p rophets make statements asif a person were speaking (hos apo prosopou), then do not sup-pose that they were spoken immediately by those filled withthe spirit (i.e., the prophets) but rather by the Logos who movesthem."3 Justin thus says that the dialogical roles introduced bythe prophets are not mere literary devices. The "role" trulyexists; it is the prosopon, the face, the person of the Logos whotruly speaks here and joins in dialogue with the prophet. It isqu te clear here how the data of Christian faith transform andrenew a pre-given ancient schema used in interpreting texts.The literary artistic device of letting roles appear to enliven thenarrative with their dialogue reveals to the theologians the onewho plays the true role here, the Logos, the prosopon, the personof the Word which is no longer merely role, but person.About .fifty years later, when Tertullian wrote hisworks, he was able to go back to an extensive tradition ofsuch Christian prosopographic exegesis in which the wordprosopon = persona had already found its full claim to reality.Two examples must suffice. In Adversus Praxean, Tertdianwrites, "How can a person who stands by himself say, 'Let usmake man in our image and likeness,' when he ought to havesaid, 'Let me make man in my image and likeness,' as someonewho is single and alone for himself. If he were only one andsingle, then God deceived and tricked also in what followswhen h e says, 'Behold, Adam has become like one bf us,'which he said in the plural. But he did not stand alone, becausethere stood with him the Son, his Word, and a third person,the Spirit in the Word. This is why he spoke in the plural, 'Letus make' and 'our' and 'us.'"4 One sees how the phenomenonof intra-divine dialogue gives birth here to the idea of the per-son who is person in an authentic sense. Tertullian similarlysays in his interpretation of "The Lord said to my Lord" (Psalm110:1), "Take note how even the Spirit as the third personspeaks of the Father and of the Son, 'The Lord said to my Lord,sit a t my right hand until I put your enemies at your feet.'Likewise through Isaiah, 'The Lord says these words to myLord Christ.'. . . In these few texts the distinction within the

qext cited by Andresen, rliid., 12.4Adv. Prax. 12,l-3; Corpus Chris ianorum Il, 1172f.; Andresen, 10-21.

Person in theology 443Trinity is dearly set before our eyes. For himself exists the onewho speaks, namely, the Spirit; further the Father to whom hespeaks, and inally the Son of whom he speaks."sI do not wish to enter into the historical details ofthese texts. I will merely summarize what results from them forthe issue of the idea "person." First, the concept "person"grew out of reacling the Bible, as something needed for itsinterpretation. It is a product of reading the Bible. Secondly, itgrew out of the idea of dialogue, more specifically, it grew as anexplanation of the phenomenon of the God who speaks dia-logically. The Bible with its phenomenon of the God whospeaks, the God who is in dialogue, stimulated the concept' I erson." The particular interpretations of Scripture texts of-fered by the Fathers are certainly accidental and outdated. Buttheir exegetical direction as a whole captures the spiritual di-rection of the Bible inasmuch as the fundamental phenomenoninto which we are placed by the Bible is the God who speaksand the human person who is addressed, the phenomenon ofthe partnership of the human person who is called by God tolove in the word. However, the core of what "person" can trulymean comes thereby to light. To summarize we can say: Theidea of person expresses in its origin the idea of dialogue andthe idea of God as the dialogical being. I t refers to God as thebeing that lives in the word and consists of the word as "I"and"you" and "we." In the light of this knowledge of God, thetrue nature of humanity became clear in a new way.

B. Person as relationThe first stage of the struggleefor he Christian con-

cept of God has been sketched above. I want to add a brief look'Adv. Prax. 11,7-10; ibid., 1172. In my judgment it would be important toinvestigate. he rabbinic antecedents of this prosopographic exegesis. Inter-esting relevant material is found in E. Sjoberg, "Geist im Judentum,"ThWNT6.385ff. Sjijberg shows that in rabbinic literature the Holy Spirit is often de-picted inpersonal categories: he speaks, cries, admonishes, mourns, weeps,rejoices, consoles, etc. He is also portrayed as speaking to God. Sjoberg noteson this '3hat the stylistic device of personification and dramatization s typicalfor rabbinic literature" and "that the pesonal reaction of the Spirit is alwaystied to words of.SacredScripture" (p.386). A closer analysis of the texts couldperhaps show that the patristic elaboration of the concept of person does nottake its point of departure from the literary criticism of antiquity, but from

this .rabbinic exegesis.

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446 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger Person in theology 447One could go much further in following out thisline of the idea of relation and of relativity in John, and inshowing that it is the dominant theme of his theology, at anyrate of his Christology. I want to mention only two examples.John picks up the theology of mission found in the Synopticsand in the Judaism of antiquity in which the idea is alreadyformulated that the emissary, inasmuch as he is an emissary, isnot important in himself, but stands for the sender and is onewith the sender. John extends this Je-%sh idea of mission,which is at first a merely functional idea, by depicting Christ asthe emissary who is in his entire nature "the one sent." TheJewish principle, "The emissary of a person is like that person"now takes on a completely new and deepened s i ~ c a n c e ,because Jesus has absolutely nothing besides being the emis-sary, but is in his nature "the one sent." He is like the one whosent him precisely because he stands in complete relativity ofexistence toward the~onewho sent him. The content of theJohannine concept "the one sentr' could be described as the

absorption of being in "being from someone and toward some-one." The content of Jesus' existence is "being from someoneand toward someone," the absolute openness of existencewithout any reservation of what is merely and properly one'sown. And again the idea is extended to Christian existence ofwhich it'is said, "As the Father has sent me, so I am sendingyou" (20:21). The other example is the doctrine of the Logos, theconcept of the Word which is applied to Jesus. Once again, Johnpicks up a schema of theological thought that was extremelywidespread in the Greek and Jewish world. Of course, hethereby adopts a whole series of contents that are already de-veloped therein and he applies them to Christ. However, therewas a new element he introduced into the concept of the Logos.In important respects, what was decisive for him was not somuch the idea of an eternal rationali ty-as among the Greeks,or whatever other speculation there may have been; what wasdecisive was much rather the relativity of existence which liesin the concept of the Logos.For again, the point is that a word is essentiallyfrom someone else and toward someone else; word is existencethat is completely path and openness. Some texts express thisidea differently and clanfy it, for instance when Christ says:"My teaching is not my teaching" (7:16). Augustine offers amarvellous commentary on this text by asking: Is this not acontradiction? It is either my teaching or not. He h d s an an-

swer in the statement, Christ's doctrine is he himself, and hehimself is not his own, because his "I" exists entirely from the"you." He goes on to say, "Quid tam tuum quam tu, quid tam nontuum quam tu-what beongs to you as much as your 'I,' andwhat belongs to you as little as your 'I?"' Your "I" is on the onehand what is most your own and at the same time what youhave least of yourself; it is most of all not your own, because itis only from the "you" that it can exist as an "I" in the firstplace. Let us summarize: in God there are three persons-which implies, according to the interpretation offered by the-ology, that persons are relations, pure relatedness. Although, this is in the first place only a statement about the Trinity, it isat the same time the fundamental statement about what is atstake in the concept of person. It opens the concept of personinto the human spirit and providesits foundation and origin.One final remark on this point. As already indi-cated, Augustine explicitly transposed this theological affirma-

tion into anthropology by attemptingto understand the humanperson as an image of the Trinity in terms of this idea'of God.Unfortunately, however, he committed a decisive mistake hereto which we will come back later. In his interpretation, heprojected the divine persons into the interior life of the humanperson and affirmed that intra-psychic processes correspond tothese-persons. The person as a whole,by contrast, correspondsto the divine substance. As a result, the trinitarian concept ofperson was no longer transferred to the human person in all itsimmediate impact. However, at present we can merely hint atthis point; it wiU become clearer below.11.The concept of person in Christology

The second origin of the concept of person lies inChristology. In order to find its way through difficult problems,theology again used the word persona and thus gave the humanmind a new task. Theology answered the riddle, "Who andwhat is this Christ?" by means of the formula, "He has twonatures and one person, a divine and a human nature, but onlya divine person." Here again the word persona is introduced.One must say that this statement suffered from tremendousmisunderstandings in Western thought. These misunderstand-. ings must be removed first, in order to approach the authenticm e a ~ gf the Christological concept of person. The first mis-

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450 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger !I Person in theology 451, .derstaflding radioactivity as an anomaly."7 Something meth-odologically decisive for all human thinking becomes visiblehere. The seeming exception is in reality very often the sym ptom that shows us the insufficiency of our previous schema oforder, which helps us to break open this schema and to con-quer a new realm of reality. The exception shows us that wehave built OLE closets too small, as it were, and that we mustbreak them open and go on in order to see the whole.This is the meaning of Christology from its origin:what is disclosed in Christ, whom faith certainly presents asunique, is not only a speculative exception; what is disclosedintruth is what the riddle of the human person really intends.Scripture expresses this point by calling Christ the last Adam or"the second Adam." It thereby characterizes him as the truefulfillment of the idea of the human person, in which the di-rection of meaning of this being comes fully to light for the firsttime. If it is true, however, that Christ is not the ontologicalexception, if from his ezceptional position he is, on the con-trary, the fulfillment of the entire human being, then the Chris-tological concept of person is an indication for theology of howperson is to be understood as such. In fact, this conce t ofperson, or simply the dimension that has become visible Kere,has always acted as a spark in intellectual history and it haspropelled development, even when it had long come to astandstill in theology.After these two fundamental misunderstandingshave been rejected, the question remains, What does the for-mula mean positively, "Christ has two natures in one person?"I must admit right away that a theological response has not yetcompletely matured. In the great struggles of .the first six cen-turies, theology worked out what the person is not, but it d idnot clarify with the same definiteness what the word meanspositively. For this reason I can only provide some hints thatpoint out the direction in which reflection should probablycontinue.

!1 I believe two points can be made. a) It is the natureof spirit to pu t itself in relation, the capacity to see itself and the, other. Hedwig Conrad-Martius speaks of the retroscendence ofi the spirit: the spirit is not merely there; it goes back upon itself,I as it were; it knows about itself; it constitutes a doubled exist-ence which not only is, but knows about itself, has itself. The: . difference between matter and spirit would, accordingly, con-sist in this, that matter is what is "das auf sich Geworfole" (thatwhich is thrown upon itself), while the spirit is "das sich selbstEntwerfende" (that which throws itself forth, guides itself ordesigns itself) which is not only there, but is itself in transcend-ing itself, in looking toward the other and in looking back uponI itself.9 However this may be in detail-we need not investigateI it here-openness, relatedness to the whole, lies in the essenceE1 of the spirit. And precisely in this, namely, that it not only is,I but reaches beyond itself, it coqes to itself. In transcenclingi itself it has itself; by being with the other it first becomes itself,it comes to itself. Expressed differently again: being with thei other is its form of being with itself. One is reminded of afundamental theological axiom that is applicable here in a pe-l ., culiar manner, namely Christ's saying, "Only the one whoII loses himself can find himself" (cf. Mt.10:36). This fundamen-tal law of human existence, which'Mt. 10:36 understands in the1 context of salvation, objectively characterizes the nature of the1 spirit which comes to itself and actualizes its own fullness onlyi by going away from itself, by going to what is other than itself.1' We must go one step further. The spirit is thatI .i being which is able to think about, not onlyitself and being in

1

i . general, but the wholly other, the transcendent God. This isj perhaps the mark that truly distinguishes the human spiriti. I from other forms of consciousness found in animals, namely,1 that the human spirit can reflect on the wholly other, the con-1i cept of God. We may accordingly say: The other throughi which the spirit comes to itself is finally that wholly other forwhich we use the stammering word "God." If this is true, thenwhat was said above can be further clarified in the horizon ofr , faith and we may say: If the human person is all the more with

7Quoted romQ.Tresmontant, Einfiihrung n das Denken Teilhard de Chardins(Munich, 1961), 41f.'on what follows, see. he instructive contribution of B. Welte, "Homoousiosbin,'" ina.Gdmeier and H. Bacht, Das Knozil von Chalcedon (vol. 3;Wiirzbwg, 1954), 51-80;H. Conrad-Martius, Dm Sein (Munich, 1957). For thepatristic period, speciid mention should be made of Maximus the Confessor

by whom the positive clarification of the Christological concept of person waspushed furthest;cf.H. U. von Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie:Das WeltbildMax-imus' des Bekenws (2nd ed.; Einsiedeln, 1961), 232-253.%.-Conrad-Martius, Das Sein, 133.

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454 Cardinal JosephRatzingerings, happened as a consequence sf the anthropological turn inAugustine's doctrine of the Trinity and was one of the mostmomentous developments of the Western Church. In funda-mental ways it influenced both the concept of the Church andthe understanding of the person which was now pushed offinto the individualistically narrowed "I and you" that finallyloses the "you" in this narrowing. It was indeed a result ofAugustine's doctrine of the Trinity that the persons of Godwere closed wholly into God's interior. Toward the outside,God became a simple "I," and the whole dimension of "we"lost its place in theology."l2 The individualized "I" and "you"narrows itself more and more until finally, for example inKmt's transcendental philosophy, the "you" is no longerfound.In Feuerbach (and thus ina place where one would leastsuspect it) this leveling of "I" and "you" into a single transcen-dental consaousness gave way to the breakthrough to personalreality. It thus gave the impetus to reflect more deeply on theorigin of our own being which faith recognizes as once and forall disclosed in the word of Jesus the Christ.*-Translated byMichael Waldstein

120n Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity up to 391, see 0.du Roy, L'intel-ligence de la foi en la T rinifk selon S f. Augusti n (Paris, 1966); for the furtherdevelopment, see M. Schmaus, Die psychologische Trinitiitslehre des heiligenAugustinus (2nd ed.; Miinster, 1967). Today, of course, I would not judge asharshly as I did in the lecture above, because for Augustine the "psycho-logical doctrine of the Trinity" remains an attempt to understand which isbalanced by the factors of the tradition. The turn brought about by Thomasthrough the separation of the doctrine of the one God and the theologicaldoctrine of the Trinity was more incisive. It led Thomas to consider theformula "God is one person" legithate, although it had been consideredheretical in the early Chuch (Summa TheologicaIII, 3, 3 ad 1). On the subjectof the "we," see H. Miihlen, Der Heilige Geist als Person (2nd ed.; Miinster,1967).*Thisarticle reproduces a lecture given at a congress on the understandingof the person in educational theory and related disciplines. The form of thelecture was preserved with slight modifications. This origin explains thesketchiness and preliminary nature of the text.-Author's note.The article is a translation of the chapter, "Zum Personenversthdnis n derTheologie," from Joseph Ratzinger, Dogma und Verkiindigung (Munich: ErichWewel Verlag, 1973), 205-223.-Ed.

Notes andCommentsRELATION, THE THOMlSTlCESSE, AN D AMERICANCULTURE: TOW ARD AMETAPHYSIC OF SANCTITYThe debate which has arisen be-tween George Weigel and DavidSchindler over the bourgeois state ofAmerica and its people can becomethe catalyst for an analysis intodeeper things. Those deeper thingswould be the question as to whetherhuman reality has as its ontologicalprius substance, relation, or both. IfSchindler' is correct n his analysis ofWeigel,2 then America i s built, how-ever unwittingly, on a k ind of meta-physic of substance which is the in-tellectual underpinning for a people

- -

'David Schindler, "Is America Bour-geios?'Communio, vol. 14, no. 3 (Fall,1987): 262-290; "Once Again: GeorgeWeigel, Catholicism and AmericanCulture," Communio vol. 15, no. 1(Spring, 1988): 92-121. See also, perti-nent to our theme here, Schindler's"Catholicity and the State of Contem-porary Theology: The Need for an Onto-logic of Holiness," Communio, vol. 14.no. 4 (Winter, 1987): 426-450.2George Weigel, "Is America Bour-geois?" Crisis (October, 1986); "IsAmerica Bourgeois? A Response toDavid " Schindler," Communio 15(Spring, 1988).

who do good, but are uncommittedin their deepest selves to the serviceof God and others. Their ontologicalprofile would be that of a self-con-tained substance, in i ts deepest re-cesses seeking self-fulfillment whileexternally performing statisticallyverifiable deeds of altruism and God-centeredness. In a word, they wouldbe a selfish people with a veneer ofdo-goodism. If Schindler s correct inhis own presentation and explicat ionof Cardinal Ratzinger's mind on thetopic, the dimension of relation hasto be included in he ontological pro-file, not merely as an accident of sub-stance, but as an equal category ofbeing which is necessary to describereality. Such an analysis, althoughprovoked by Revelation, would bemetaphysical. It would be telling usthat the notion o f person, besides in-cluding substance, must be formallyinclusive of relation. The notion ofperson would take its meaning andful fil lment from love. Person as suchcould only take place in he plural, i nthe presence of another.As a result, we would have ametaphysic which would coincidewith the asceticism of sanctity. Wewould have escaped from the two-tiered world of the minimum-themoral (based on the substancewhose primary exigency is to be foritself and in itself), and the maxi-mum-sanctity (based on the nowmerely superogatory relation whichconsists in being for the other). Thisexpansion of the notion of substancealone into substance and relationwhen dealing with the person evi-dently has deep implications for themeaning of secularization. If personi s merely substance, an in set thenthe actions whereby he or she relatesto others are all accidents which re-