-
Chapter 6: A “ New Intellectual History” Model
- University of Notre Dame Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Conclusion 169 of activists on behalf of justice may lead to the assumption of the universal “rightness” of the ideas in future generations. Thus, the CST tradition is as much missional as any other Christian community or tradition. Keeping this in mind, the distanciation model holds great promise . It’s explicit aim is to help the reader of patristic texts see those texts as guides to how best to write oneself back into the biblical narrative , how best to relive that narrative, and how to create from that narrative new meaning. The model encourages play with the metaphors , with the dialogue, and with the intertextual readings from the Bible itself. This play shapes the moral imagination of the reader, which is precisely what will move the reader to action. One wonders, for example, how many readers of Luke 16 today have heard from their parish pulpits that it is concerned with just use of the environment , or, how many readers have heard from their parish pulpits the story retold as a dramatic play. I suspect very few, but this is precisely what Asterius and Jerome, respectively, have done. The distanciation model directs our attention not to Asterius and Jerome or the particular “issues” they faced in the late fourth or early fifth century, but with two texts that give us new ways of interpreting, new ways of imagining, this parable of the rich man and Lazarus. With countless biblical texts, the distanciation model invites CST today to open the texts of the patristic writers to discover what other new and interesting ways of reading the biblical texts are in store. This leads us to consider one final aspect of a dialogue between patristic text and CST. This is the concern to join Christ in proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of God on earth. Thus, while reading the patristic texts and discovering within them new ways of reading the biblical texts is good, the consequent forming of the moral imagination may not always necessarily be directed toward the promotion of the kingdom of God. This is where the NOF model distinguishes itself from the distanciation model. The NOF model is nothing, in fact, if not a guide for how Christians today may incorporate biblical and patristic texts into their framework for thinking about the call to justice, the call to proclaim the kingdom of God, in this world. 170 Patristics and Catholic Social Thought It is for this reason that this study concludes that the NOF model holds the greatest promise for forming a dialogue between the worlds of patristic and Christian social thought. It provides all the benefits of the distanciation model and adds to those a guide for reading biblical and patristic texts that is commensurate with the concerns of justice and equality. The NOF model appreciates the difficulties of reading biblical and patristic texts that are prejudicial, defamatory, and oppressive. Its analytical tools that distinguish such sin-filled aspects from a text’s grace-filled aspects cut across a spectrum of academic disciplines, which provides multiple entry points for scholars wishing to engage patristic texts. The very fact that this model embraces texts with difficulties makes it an agent of hope for a CST tradition that may, at times, see itself besieged by an increasingly secularized and polarized world. AN ILLUSTRATION OF THIS STUDY’S IMPACT ON A CST DOCUMENT Before concluding this study, the reader would be right to demand at least one example of how this study may be applied to a particular document of CST. Indeed, the study has taken sufficient pains to draw connections between two patristic texts and CST today via four hermeneutical models. It is only fitting now to connect the preferred hermeneutical model—NOF—to the use of a patristic source citation in a recent CST document. For this purpose, I propose two passages from an encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate. Remarkably , considering the fact Benedict’s previous social encyclical, Deus caritas est, was near bursting at the seams with patristic source citations, Caritas in veritate has only one patristic source citation.3 Even then, the encyclical’s discussion of the import of the citation is buried in a footnote. Also remarkable, it is not only patristic citations that suffer from a lack of inclusion in this text, but so does Thomas Aquinas (he is mentioned in only one footnote) and all other medieval sources. One is hard-pressed even to find more than a couple dozen...