GREGORIAN PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITY

The Notion of Person and the Creed as a

Personalistically Structured Existence

Professor: WALTER INSERO

Student: GARRETT JOHNSON
Matricola: 161590

FACULTY OF THEOLOGY 1 YEAR, I CYCLE

Rome 2015

INTRODUCTION
In his work, Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger attempts to go beyond a mere
presentation of the intellectual content that one might consider to be essential to Christianity.
While this is certainly included, Ratzinger seeks rather to present Christianity as it is: a way of
existing in relationship with the living God. One of the notions that he depends and expounds
upon in this endeavor is that of person. Of common use today, the notion was developed in a
predominantly theological context. Accompanying Ratzinger in his brief historical treatment of
the term, allows us to better understand why and how it becomes a central notion to the
catechetical project in his Introduction. As we will see, the term in its specifically Christian
conception arises from a historical experience of the God of Israel in parallel to the fundamental
intuitions of Greek philosophers, all of which was, in one sense, assumed, synthesized and
revolutionized thanks to the existence and teaching of Jesus Christ and those disciples who
reflected over it in the beginnings of the Catholic Church.
While Ratzinger attributes the terms full meaning to the Christological and Trinitarian
debates, especially to those in the 5 th century, the unpacking of this term, both intellectually and
existentially, continues today. Behind every word there is an event; and in the case of person
this event, which is nothing less than the encounter with God-Person, continues on today. The
freshness of Ratzingers approach lies in his intuition of the fact that while the notions and terms
themselves are indeed necessary, we must do all that we can to get to the reality that gives them
life. In this way, even terms that seem foreign or antique regain their vitality in our own
existences because we are able to gaze upon the same reality, albeit with out own proper eyes
and mentalities, as those who first pronounced them.
Thus, when speaking of the Creed and renouncing words I believe, one can never be
content with the mere intellectual assent to a series of doctrines or formulas. Even in times when
Christian thought permeated social structures, the existential decision demanded by the faith had
to be made by each believer. It is precisely the notion of person, that allows us to enter and
better understand the existential dimension that is required in order to not only say but to live out
this new mode of existence that was offered by Christ and which came to give birth to the
Catholic creed.

1. THE ORIGIN OF NOTION PERSON

At the origin of every word there is an event, a happening that erupts into history defining
a before and after. In reality, there is both and origin and a beginning. The latter refers to a
concrete historical event or encounter, or a series of these, which opens a new horizon in the
interior of a person or a group of people. This event is unique and unrepeatable; it refers to the
time and place where such a word begins to take on its meaning and exercise its impact. While
they are synonyms in one sense, origin differs in that, more than a concrete historical moment, it
recalls the source of the event, that which founds and sustains it.
Generally speaking, Ratzinger deals with both the historical beginning as well as the
origin of the notion person. The first is found in the initial encounters with a certain Jesus of
Nazareth and the following attempts of later disciples to categorize such experience. Such
knowledge is certainly useful and is key to obtaining a richer understanding of the term. That
said, the origin in this case is a living one; it is the triune God himself. And only through a vital
encounter with him that we can truly plunge into not only the intellectual, but also existential and
spiritual depths deposited in the notion of person.
With time, those who participated in the initial encounters sought out a deeper
comprehension so as to be able to share it with others. For we who are arriving late in one
sense we must be wary so as to not content ourselves with a mere dictionary-type grasp of the
term. Ratzinger makes notary efforts to render explicit just how extensive the ramifications of
this term, which in reality manifests a comprehensive mode of interacting with reality. For this,
when speaking of the term person, Ratzinger is keen on pointing out that it is not one that
simply grew out of mere human philosophizing 1. It is instead an historical encounter that
brought with it something similar to Voeglins idea of a leap in being 2, indicating an
experience that leads to a new insight into the truth of existence which in turn can constitute a
period in history, in other words, the Christian faith.
Initially the terms meaning was simple enough. Persona referred to a role in a drama or
the mask of the actor. It was not until its assumption in the developing Christian environment
that its meaning began to evolve until the point of undergoing a sort of transfiguration. Without
precisely loosing its old meaning, it began to be seen in a completely different light. As the first
Christians began to reflect back on their encounter with Christ and his earliest disciples, two
fundamental questions arose: Who is God?; and Who is Christ? Assumed within this context
of faith, the term was subject to a kind of baptism in which it received a new meaning and served
to open up a new horizon in both thought and existence.
As the first key figure in this development, Ratzinger designates the western theologian
Tertullian. Thanks to his formula una substantia-tres personae, the word person entered

1 J. RATZINGER, Concerning the notion of person in theology, 439.

2 E.VOEGELIN, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Michale Franz, Columbia 2000, 46: There
were indeed the epochal, differentiating events, the leaps in being, which engendered the consciousness
of a Before and After and, in their respective societies, motivated the symbolism of a historical course
that was meaningfully structured by the event of the leap. The experiences of a new insight into the truth
of existence, accompanied by the consciousness of the event as constituting an epoch in history, were real
enough. There was really an advance in time from compact to differentiated experiences of reality and,
correspondingly, an advance from compact to differentiated symbolizations of the order of being.

intellectual history for the first time with its full weight 3. Still, the question arises: why did
Tertullian use that word? Was it solely an ingenious intuition or was there some contextual
explanation to be found? Following in the footsteps of a study done by the dogmatic historian,
Carl Andresen, Ratzinger traces the origin to prosopographic exegesis which refers to a form
of interpretation that was already developed by literary scholars of Antiquity.
The ancient scholars noticed that in order to give dramatic life to events, the great poets of
Antiquity did not simply narrate these events, but allowed persons to make their appearance
and to speak [] The literary scholar uncovers these roles; he shows that the persons have
been created as roles in order to give dramatic life to events4.
This form of interpretation was not foreign to Christian writers; it was easy enough to discover
similar examples in Scripture in which events come to life in dialogue. The creation story of
Genesis would be a prime example5. Nevertheless, the presence of roles, masks and dialogue, at
a first glance, seem to reveal an anthropomorphization of the divine. According to the Greek
mentality of the time, anything betraying a type of plurality was necessarily excluded from the
divine sphere as something secondary, as the disintegration of unity 6. We must ask, then, are
these roles simply literary devices or are they something more?

1.2 Person: Role or Reality?

The creation of roles allowed events to be dramatized in the form of dialogue. Initially,
one might suspect such a move to be one based simply on a desire to satisfy the limits of the
public. Such plurality could be considered a necessary, pedagogical path which allows us to
grasp at the ungraspable simplicity of divine unity. Nevertheless, according to Ratzinger, the
novelty of the Christian conception lies precisely here: The role truly exists; it is the
prosopon, the face, the person of the Logos who truly speaks [] the one who plays the true role
here, the Logos, the prosopon, the person of the Word [is] no longer merely role, but person7.
In recognizing the reality of the person, one is led to the mysterious conclusion that
reality itself is personal, that is, that behind the events there is an I, a personal agent. The
challenge with this is to avoid fencing this idea into a solely theological field, avoiding it to have
the true impact that it should have on all areas of our life 8. Encounter with Christ in scripture
3 Ibid., 440.
4 Ibid., 441.
5 Cfr. Genesis 1,26: Let us make man in our image and likeness, or Genesi 3,22: Adam has become
like one of us.
6 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 127.
7 J. RATZINGER, Concerning the notion of person, 442.
8 Enlightening is the critique made by Ratzinger of Saint Thomas: In Antiquity philosophy was limited
entirely to the level of essence. Scholastic theology developed categories of existence out of this
contribution given by Christian faith to the human mind. Its defect was that it limited these categories to
Christology and to the doctrine of the. Trinity and did not make them fruitful in the whole extent of
spiritual reality. This seems to me also the limit of St. Thomas in the matter, namely, that within theology
he operates, with Richard of St. Victor, on the level of existence, but treats the whole thing as a
theological exception, as it were. In philosophy, however, he remains faithful to the different approach of
pre-Christian philosophy. The contribution of Christian faith to the whole of human thought is not
realized; it remains at first detached from it as a theological exception, although it is precisely the
meaning of this new element to call into question the whole of human thought and to set it on a new

redefines the conception of person and, in doing so, redefines or at least invites us to redefine
our metaphysical perspective in relation to all and each reality in our lives.
Keeping in mind what was said about prosopographic exegesis, we can now see how in
Scripture the dramatic roles are not added as something secondary in order to simply narrate an
event, rather the event itself is dramatic, that is, it can never be understand outside the contact of
dialogue between a plurality of roles (God and God, God and man, man and man). The
convenience of narration, of proclaiming the event in a dialogical way, is nothing else but the
manifestation of the dialogical nature of the event itself, that is, of the fact that it is narratable
precisely because it is personal. More than narrate, the dramatic transmission reveals reality in
its more fundamental, dialogical nature.
The temptation to divide the two, role and reality, relation and substance, surfaced when
Greek philosophers began to question mythological religious beliefs. Thinkers such as Plato
began proposing new mythologies which would replace the antique Homerian ones and would be
more adequate for his vision of logos. This movement of the logos against the myth also took
place in the prophets criticism of the gods in Israel. The people of Israel, however, did not
oppose role and reality and developed a concept of God, albeit an insipient one, which paved the
way for the young Christian Churchs decision later on.

2. The Path Towards a Personal God

The dialogue between God and Moises found in Exodus 3:13-15, a key text for the Old
Testaments understanding of God, presents the revelation of the name of God to Moses:
Yahweh. Here, Ratzinger suggests that the the names two syllables denote two elements: the
element of the personal, of proximity, of invocability, of self-bestowal and the other element of
timeless power, of He who stands above space and time, bound to nothing and binding
everything to himself9. The first matches with the personal dimension, the second with reality or
Being itself. Thus here we see the convergence and union of two dimensions. The personal
element which is revealed in the fact that God gives his name to mankind, a name which is
fulfilled in Jesus who makes perfect Gods invocability Gods role, his dramatic face directed
toward man is indeed real is united to the more enigmatic vision of absolute being, as we find
in the Greek vision of logos, one which eludes all attempt to be grasped or defined. Put
synthetically, being is accepted as a person, and the person accepted as Being itself, [] only
what is hidden is accepted as the One who is near, only the inaccessible as the One who is
accessible, the one as the One who exists for all men and for whom all exist10.
With this we can begin to piece together certain factors that are key to Ratzingers
conception of person. In Israels choice for Yahweh, we discover the belief that the origin of
being is a personal one: one of freedom and creative love. Still, how does the Greek decision for
the primacy of logos fit it into this? In this option, Ratzinger locates another key ingredient in the
concept of person and in what we will see later on in a personal existence: openness to a meaning
that precedes man. According to this vision, the world is objective mind; it meets us in an
intellectual structure, that is, it offers itself to our mind as something that can be reflected upon
and understood; this leads to understand however that objective mind is the product of a
subjective mind and con only exist at all as the declension of it, [] in other words, beingcourse. Ibid., 449.
9 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 93.
10 Ibid.

though as we find it present in the structure of the world) is not possible without thinking 11.
Rational reflection implies discovering an objective structure that was designed or brought about
to thanks to a subjective one. If one were to reject this vision of an objective mind, of an
obecjtive truth that is embedded in reality, as in the case of those who supported the consuetudo
Romana, it becomes easy enough to formulate customs and religious gods just as easily as one
might draw up a dramatic play with roles and masks. This places man at the origin of meaning
and opens the door for self-idolization and, as seen in the twentieth century, totalitarianism. The
decision for primacy of logos, then, is the decision to accept that meaning and truth are first
received from another, one that man cannot manipulate and submit to his whims. Reason serves
as a way of reflection, of thinking upon that which has already been thought. The existential
disposition of openness to receive meaning is essential to idea of person.
Summarizing, in this section, we looked at the prosopographic exegesis which Ratzinger
believes to be the origin of Tertullians choice of the term person. The use of roles we found to
be present in both the Old Testament as well as ancient literary texts. In the former, the we
looked at Israels choice to define God as personal Being. In the latter, while we found the
tendency to go against the dramatic roles of the mythical Gods, we nevertheless discover a key
aspect to personhood in the decision to receive meaning and truth and not to claim the right to
invent it. The Christian beliefs option for a personal God can be thus explained:
If Christian belief in God is first of all an option in favor of the primacy of the logos, faith in the
preexisting, world-supporting reality of the creative meaning, it is as the same time, as belief in the
personal nature of that meaning, the belief that the original thought, whose being-thought is
represented by the world, is not an anonymous, neutral consciousness but rather freedom, creative
love, a person12.

Nevertheless, if left alone, the primacy of logos implies the primacy of being over the
person, over relation. Openness would be a trait inherent to man and not to God, something
necessary due to his ontological inferiority. Likewise, Gods decision to reveal his name and be
invoked by man could be consider a benevolent act of self-lowering on Gods part, leaving
relationship as, again, a sort of bridge which unites superior with inferior. It is not until we
analyze the idea of person consolidated in the Trinitarian and Christological debates that we are
able to glimpse the radical nature of the idea.

3. The New Category of Relation

It is on the path between the revelation of Gods dialogical being in the encounters
between God and man towards the encounters which occur within the Trinity itself that the
category of relationship reaches its full ontological splendor, allowing in turn for the meaning of
person to be manifested in its authentic light. Ratzinger is clear in affirming that the concept of
person reaches its full maturity at the turn of the fifth century when Christian theology
reached the point of being able to express in articulated concepts what is meant in the thesis: God
is a being in three persons because in this context person must be understand as relation13.
The experience of dealing with God in a triple form, God as Father, God as Brother or God-withUs, and God as Spirit, that is, God-in-Us, is a sheer fact that we can observe in the initial
11 Ibid., 108.
12 Ibid., 111.
13 J. RATZINGER, Concerning the notion of person, 444.

Christian experience. The question is again whether these are simple roles or actual realities.
The point at issue here is whether man in his relations with God is only dealing with the
reflections of his own consciousness or whether it is given to him to reach out beyond himself
and to encounter God himself14. The key response of the orthodox faith as been simple: God is
as he shows himself; God does not show himself in a way in which he is not. On this assertion
rests the Christian relation with God; in it is grounded the doctrine of the Trinity; indeed, it is this
doctrine15.
What then to do with these three roles that we must accept to be real persons, each one of which
is divine? Ratzinger indicates Augustine as another fundamental pillar and considers his proposal
to be a very important: In God, person means relation. Relation, being related, is not
something superadded to the person, but it is the person itself16. With this we find a precise
definition of what person-as-relation is for Ratzinger: the first person is self-donation in
fruitful knowledge and love; it is not the one who gives himself, in whom the act of self-donation
is found, but it is the self-donation, pure reality of act 17. Person refers thus to this reality of act,
this dynamic state which founds identity and being. On example that aids in our compression is
Ratzinger allusions to he does this both in the cited article as well as in his Introduction the
recent discovery-conception of modern physics regarding pure act-being. It is also interesting to
recall and draw a certain parallel between this and how the name revealed by God to Moises is
indeed a verb, the verb to be. In one sense, we might venture to say that person is a dynamic
act, or better, a verb; it is the relational declination of the verb to be.
It is thanks to the Trinitarian reflection that relation is recognized as a third specific
fundamental category between substance and accident, the two great categorical forms of
thought in Antiquity18. The consequences of such a recognition are difficult to fully grasp
because relationship is, by nature, ungraspable. Relationship is lived out in communication and
dialogue which evades any and all attempts of static reduction. The fundamental categories are
those which can not be precisely explained or justified, they are rather lights that illuminate from
behind and allow us to organize how we see reality. By inserting relation into this level of
comprehension, Christian thought is allowing for a certain kind of non-category to be a part of
our categorical vision. For biblical examples of this we can return our gaze to the name-not-name
revealed by God to Moises, or the sign-not-sign of Jonah. It is as if we are invited to intentionally
insert a missing link into our chain of thought; but doing so is the only path towards allowing for
contact with reality to truly take place.
In saying that dialogue, that relatio, stands besides the substances as an equally primordial form
of being19, Ratzinger is pointing to a revolution 20 in how we are called to see the world: the
sole dominion of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally
valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call today
objectifying thought; a new plane of being comes into view 21. The recognition of the
ungraspable element of relation allows for a view of reality open to mystery. While categories
14 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 116.
15 Ibid., 117.
16 J. RATZINGER, Concerning the notion of person, 444.
17 Ibid., 444.
18 Ibid., 444-445
19 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 131
20 Ibid., 132.
21 Ibid.

such as substance and accident do indeed help us to understand reality, Christian experience
teaches us that the only way to understand reality is to accept that it goes beyond our own human
logic. Rationality closed to transcendence, to that which goes beyond its conceptual grasp ends
up being anti-rational. In this regard, when we speak about person we are in reality speaking of
a term that comes about from an experience of something, or better, Someone that left us
speechless and unable to fully describe which we now struggle to describe in a very limited
fashion: The doctrine of the Trinity did not arise out of speculation about God, out an attempt
by philosophical thinking to figure out what the fount of all being was like; it developed out of
the effort to digest historical experiences22.
The digestion of this experience however reveals a context tension between reality and
language, between Divine action and human logic. Person was forged in this fire and can only
be understood if we take into account the dramatic nature of its birth. Every one of the main
basic concepts in the doctrine of the Trinity was condemned at one time or another; they were all
adopted only after the frustration of a condemnation; they are accepted only inasmuch as they are
at the same time branded as unusable and admitted simply as poor stammering utterancesand
no more. This includes the concept of persona (or prosopon). Even so, the condemnation, more
than a negative force, is a safeguard for reality; it prevents Christian thinkers from trapping an
Infinity God in finite terms. It pushed them to keep walking, to recognize that the intellectual
reflection was to be put in service of reality Divine reality in this case and not the other way
around.
In treating the more positive development of the doctrine of the Trinity, and
consequentially of relation and person, Ratzinger presents three theses. The first deals with
the new conception of unity that arose. The insertion of relation into the fundamental categories
was not only an addition, but truly a revolution. In allowing a form of plurality to be accepted in
the divine sphere, the concept of divine unity underwent a profound transformation. In the same
terms of relation, any form of plurality was once considered as a disintegration or degradation of
unity. The belief in the Trinity however recognizes plurality in unity. This means that not only is
unity divine; plurality, too, is something primordial and has its inner ground in God himself.
Plurality is not just disintegration that sets in outside the divinity it corresponds to the creative
fullness of God, who himself stands above plurality and unity, encompassing both23.
The second thesis deals with how this new, paradoxical vision of unity is an intrinsic implication
of the concept of person. Union is no longer founder on singularity, rather on relationship. God
as Absolute is Absolute Unity not because he is one, rather because He is a communion of love
between three. Or, in the words of one Christian thinker, God is not way despite being three,
rather he is one because he is three24. And this is the same logic we found in the novel concept
of person. In some way, we can say that there is one only because there is more than one:
[] the Greek word prosopon means literally look toward; with the prefix pros
(toward), it includes the notion of relatedness as an integral part of itself. It is the same
with the Latin persona = sounding through; again, the per = through to expresses
relatedness, this time in the form of communication through speech. In other words, if the
absolute is person, it is not an absolute singular25.
22 Ibid., 114-115.
23 Ibid., 128.
24 G. MASPERO, Essere e relazione. Lontologia trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa, 70. [My translation]
25 Ibid., 128-129.

The third thesis Ratzinger the grounds the reflection the biblical context, above all in Johannine
Christ who on the one hand says: The son can do nothing on his own accord 26, while also
saying: I and the Father are one 27. It is the seemingly contradictory logic that the person of
Jesus Christ presents to us that founds the paradoxical nature of the person. This because
the being of Jesus as Christ is a completely open being, a being from and toward, which
nowhere clings to itself and nowhere stands on its own, then it is also clear at the same time
that this being is pure relation (not substantiality) and, as pure relation, pure unity. This
fundamental state about Christ becomes [] at the same time the explanation of Christian
existence28.
In summary, behind the conception of person Ratzinger indicates a series of important factors: 1)
both its beginning and its origin lies in the encounter with Jesus Christ, the man-God who
brought to fulfillment certain truths present in secular history and especially in Salvation history;
2) the development of the term underwent a revolution and reached its maturity in the context of
Trinitarian and Christological debates in the first centuries of the Catholic Church 3) seeing that
it refers to intrinsically mysterious realities and Reality, its comprehension and use requires the
recognition of our proper capacities-limits of understanding 4) more than just a new term or idea,
the notion of person demands a revolution in our way of understanding reality and of how we
live out our existence.

4. The I Believe of the Creed: Path of Personal Existence

The first chapter of of Ratzingers Introduction deals with belief in todays word. Before
strictly treating content of such belief that is done in later chapters here, he deals with the
very act of believing. Recalling what we have said up until this point, we can sustain that, for
Ratzinger, the structure I Belief-Amen is much more than the introduction and conclusion of a
formula, it is rather the structure of a personal existence.
As we have distinguished the specifically Christian vision of person, we can do likewise
in the case of belief. To begin with, we must be wary of too quickly associating belief and
religion. For the Romans, for example, religio referred more to the observance of certain ritual
forms and customs. It was not crucial that there should be an act of faith [] 29. In such a
mentality, one can be religious without necessarily being a believer. Indeed, it is simple enough
to follow through with certain external rituals without putting anything interior into play. All of
these activities can be formulated and exercised under the dominion of ones I, in the sense
that they can be submitted to it and put into its service. Instead, in Christianity, we will see that
the intimate like between belief and religion responds to a personalistic conception.
As with the notion of person, it is important for Ratzinger to indicate the existential
meaning that gives life to the terms rather than solely treat their conceptual notion. When we say
that a Catholic believes, we are referring to a certain mode of belief, one which is intimately
tied to a mode of existence: it signifies, not the observation of this or that fact, but a
fundamental mode of behavior toward being, toward existence, toward ones own sector of
26 John 5:19
27 John 10:31
28 J. RATZINGER, Introduction to Christianity, 134.
29 Ibid., 23.

reality, and toward reality as a whole 30. As such, ones fundamental relationship with reality,
how one understands reality, becomes fundamental to understand what belief means.
If one opens himself to the encounter with God, with the Totally Other, ones definition of
reality is informed in a certain way. Positivistic criteria that seek to reduce God to ones own
capacity of comprehension are consequentially shattered. The paradoxical revelations with God
who reveals-hides himself demands an openness to mystery, to that which is intrinsically
invisible. While invisibility prevents clarity and certainty, it does not prevent relationship. Whats
more, lack of clarity, lack of certainty can even became fruitful channels of openness that allow
for a personal relationship. Even doubt can serve this purpose: It prevents both from enjoying
complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer;
for one, it is his share in the fate of the unbeliever; for the other, the form in which belief remains
nevertheless a challenge to him31. The possibility to relate which that which is, at least in some
dimension, invisible forces the conclusion that reality too is composed of things that are
invisible.
This takes places in its fullest sense when in relationship with God, for He is not only
outside our field of vision now, but rather stands essentially outside it 32. Thus the to believe
in Christian terms is founded on an existential decision, it signifies the deliberate view that what
cannot be seen, what can in no wise move into the field of vision, is not unreal; that, on the
contrary, what cannot be seen in fact represents true reality, the element that supports and makes
possible all the rest of reality33. Still, this mode of existence is not restricted to our relationship
with God alone; in every person therein lies dimensions of their reality that remain unseen,
mysterious. Even in the most common of encounters, there are traces of transcendence which
refuse to be reduced to the category of seeable or understandable.
It is in this sense that belief turns out to be a mode of existence which embarks our entire
lives, not only our relationship with God. The open structure of belief which allows and
embraces the dimensions of mystery is in fact inherent to what being a person is all about. To
embrace the mode of existence of belief is to embrace the invitation to base our lives on an initial
and founding moment of openness to the others and, above all, to the Other:
...it signifies the view that this element that makes reality as a whole possible is also what
grants man a truly human existence, what makes him possible as a human being existing in a
human way. In other words, belief signifies the decision that at the very core of human
existence there is a point that cannot be nourished and supported on the visible and tangible,
that encounters and comes into contact with what cannot be seen and finds that it is a
necessity for its own existence34.
As a final consideration in this section, it is important to remember that the mode of
existence of Christian belief cannot be separated by the content of Christian belief which, in turn,
cannot be separated from the historical event that inspires them. The conception of this personal
mode of existence is a fruit of the encounter with the Personal God revealed throughout salvation
history which reached its culmination in Jesus Christ.
30 Ibid., 24.
31 Ibid., 21.
32 Ibid., 24.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.

4.2 The Creeds Ecclesial Form

While belief refers to a way of existence and an act through which someone decides to
embrace such existence, a creed refers to a concrete text, a concrete formula. In describing the
nature of creed, Ratzinger continues to draw upon the distinction between an individualistic
conception of existence and a personal one. While a thought derives from the individual and
later made comprehensible to others when put into words, the word represents the element
that unites us with others. It is the way in which intellectual communication takes place, the form
in which the mind is, as it were human, that is, corporeal and social 35. The creed, in so far as a
word that is received from those who encounter the Word and which is recited in a dialogical
context, is another manifestation is the personalistic conception that implied by the Christian
faith.
The active union between the I and We Trinitarian becomes model and origin of a life of
faith which is fundamentally centered on You and We 36. As such, much more than a
simple recitation of certain doctrinal formulas, to pray and live the creed means to found ones
life, ones I, on relationship with the others, on communion, on We. This communion comes
about as fruit, not of a consensus of individual through, rather of the unity established by a
preceding word: In philosophy, what comes first is the private search for truth, which then,
secondarily, seeks and finds traveling companions. Faith, on the other hand, is first of all a call to
community, to unity of mind through the unity of the word. Indeed, its significance is, a priori, an
essentially social one: it aims at establishing unity of mind through the unity of word. Only
secondarily will it then open the way for each individuals private venture in search of truth37.
In this context, Ratzinger also clarifies the concept and finality of the word in general. Again
the key passage is from the individualistic to the personal view. While a word certainly serves as
a means of communication something, its principal function is that of creating relationship. The
creed then, again, more than the intellectual assent regarding certain truths, presents the truths
not so much as an end in themselves, rather as a means of creating relationship with the the
truths, the Persons, that they refer to. The creed is in its most essential nature a dialogical reality.
Dialogue, however, does not yet take place where men are still only talking about something.
The conversation between men comes into its own only when they are trying, no longer to
express something, but to express themselves, when dialogue comes communication38.
As a final observation, it is important to observe the essential harmony and mutual necessity
there is between creed and belief. A belief without a creed, in this conception, is contradictory.
For the written word serves as a place of communion in which each I is able to decide to open
himself in belief to a received word which transmit the encounter with the Word-Person which,
in the end, makes all of this possible.

35 Ibid., 59.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 61.

CONCLUSION
Speaking of the transition from antiquity to Christianity, Ratzinger comments: The
Christian sees in man, not an individual, but a person39. From what we have seen, this transition
be can be applied not only to antiquity to Christianity, but to the Christian path of conversion and
transformation in the life of every Christian. Person is thus not only a term but also a mode of
existence which derives from to an encounter with the Holy Trinity, with God-Person, and
conduces us along a progressive journey of digestion through which one can better grasp the
implications of such encounter and allow them to take root in ones life. In short, person is an act
act, a the relational declension of the verb to be.
In this regard, Ratzingers focus on this passage allows for him discover a new and refreshing
approach to both to the act of belief and the Catholic creed. The act of belief is understand not
only as an intellectual assent to a series of doctrine, but as a way of existing which responds to
the deepest, personal reality of the human being and indeed allows for an authentically human
existence. This act of belief is in turn intimately connected with its content, that is the Creed,
which does not take the form of an individual thought that seeks consensus, rather the form of a
word which becomes a place of encounter through open reception. With this we can conclude by
recognizing how not only the content but the very structure itself of the Catholic faith began and
continues to originate in the encounter with the Triune God-Person and, as such, responds to the
deepest levels of reality itself an more importantly of our reality as human persons.

39 Introduction

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
RATZINGER, J., Introduction to Christianity, tr. J. Foster, San Franisco 2005.
, Concerning the notion of person in theology, Communio 17 (Fall 1990) 439-454.
Secondary Sources
VOEGELIN, E., The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 17, Order and History, Volume IV,
the Ecumenic Age, ed. Michale Franz, Columbia 2000.
MASPERO, G., Essere e relazione. Lontologia trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa, Roma 2013.

GENERAL INDEX
Introduction.............................................................................................................................2
1. The Origin of notion Person...............................................................................................3
1.2 Person: Role or Reality?.................................................................................................4
2. The Path Towards a Personal God.........................................................................................5
3. The New Category of Relation..............................................................................................6
4. The I Believe of the Creed: Path of Personal Existence.......................................................9
4.2 The Creeds Ecclesial Form...........................................................................................10
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................12