The Ontology of the Gospel

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL T HE theological problem of Scripture and Tradition may be represented as an attempt to solve the Tridentine equation (Denz. 783) : Gospel= Scripture+ Traditions (I) or in its formulation by the First Vatican Council: Supernatural Revelation =Scripture+ Traditions (2) the equivalence between (1) and (2) resting on the quotation in Vatican I (Denz. 1787) of Trent. The attempted solutions ordinarily concern themselves with the determination of" Tradition (s)" as the unknown variable, assuming the constancy of the other terms. In what follows, an attempt will be made to determine the sense of "Gospel," in the hope that the other terms of the equation, including the plus-sign, will then be, if not determined, at least clarified by the provision of a significant context in which their interpretation may be pursued.1 We ask, then," What is the Gospel?" The sense of the question needs careful determination.2 (a) The question may be understood as asking what in detail is contained in the Gospel, its various teachings; this sense is not directly relevant to the present inquiry. (b) The question may be understood historically , as asking how in fact the word "Gospel" has been used at different periods in the history of the Church, and in particular in the Church in its beginnings. (c) The question may be understood ontologically, as asking what kind of reality is intended by the concept " Gospel," and how this reality is related 1 It may seem rash to raise this question while it is still under discussion in the present Council; yet it is in fact still under discussion, and according to reports at the time of writing no agreement has yet been reached on this topic by the special Commission under Cardinals Ottaviani and Bea appointed to revise the schema on the " Sources of Revelation." 2 I have tried to ask it before in Blackfriars, XLIII (1962), pp. 301-13. 170 THE ONTOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL 171 to other realities o£ our experience. It is this third, ontological sense o£ the question which is the primary one envisaged in this essay, though it goes without saying that no answer could be offered to it without some investigation o£ the question in its second, historical sense. It does, on the other hand, patently need saying that the question in its historical sense cannot be adequately raised either without some preliminary examination o£ its ontological presuppositions; for the accustomed techniques o£ historical scholarship, being confined largely to lexical procedures , frequently fail to observe that different words may refer to the same reality, in that the difference between the terms rests not on a difference in the reality indicated but on the ways in which it is indicated. I shall argue that the reality referred to, say, in the New Testament by the term evayyeA.wv is also referred to by other terms in those writings; and that a question (our third, ontological question) then arises which insistently demands an answer. Thus the third sense o£ the question" What is the Gospel?" will have as its answer a statement about a reality which may £or reasons o£ tradition and convenience be called the " Gospel," but where this term has now become a technical theological term intended to refer to a many-sided reality, one o£ whose aspects is brought to light in the NT term evayyeA.wv (itself multiply significant) .3 The term " revelation " has this technical theological sense, but on the other hand, suffers from the disadvantage of being cut off from its sources; the connection between " revelation " and a7ToKaA.vlfw; is rarely made, and indeed is not particularly significant. It may be useful here to recall a classical instance of an ontological account of the nature of the Gospel. In the opening of his commentary on St. John,4 Origen proceeds to what may be called an " analogical " analysis of the notion of " Gospel." He uses the idea of a7Tapx1J, first fruits, as a means of appraising the different realizations of the Gospel: thus the Gospel is " Compare for instance the relationship between NT xapts and the theological "grace." • References by paragraph and page to volume I of the edition...