A Patristic Reflection on the Nature and Method of Theology in the New Evangelization

The very notion of a new evangelization immediately provokes a sense of excitement and ready assent in the hearts and minds of many sincere Christians. But in reflecting on the intellectual task of the new evangelization, it seems appropriate to probe more analytically into the attractiveness of this notion. While the rationale for evangelization should not at any time require justification, the fact that, at this moment in the history of the Church and the world, we are impelled to qualify that evangelization as needing to be new requires closer scrutiny. Why is it that we now feel the need to speak of a new evangelization?

Notwithstanding all the cogent and compelling explanations that refer to the need for Christians to respond to the steadily increasing hegemony of a secularist worldview, I would like to suggest that there is an even deeper reason why many Christians respond to the call for a new evangelization with great enthusiasm and joy. I believe that the deepest ground for this joy is that the Gospel itself is essentially and incorruptibly new and that whenever we are moved to authentically welcome its message, we are impelled first and foremost to proclaim its undiminishable newness.

This clarification allows us to properly identify the contrast of old and new implicit in the notion of a “new evangelization,” especially insofar as it considers itself as responding to modern secularism. In the very last analysis, this contrast cannot be between an old proclamation of the Gospel and a new one. Rather, what is ultimately at stake is the proclamation of the ineradicable newness of the Gospel over against the oldness of what the fourth evangelist calls “the world,” which is not the created world as such, but precisely the posture of self-sufficiency that characterizes all kinds of secularism, both modern and ancient. We desire and need a new evangelization, first and foremost, because we need and desire a new world, a new heaven, and a new earth, and we know that the content of this newness is present only in Christ. As Irenaeus put it, “He brought all newness in bringing himself.”²

In light of these considerations, it seems to me that the theological foundation of the new evangelization must begin by properly locating the designation of newness within the scriptural contrast between the essential “oldness” of the world, to the precise extent that it resists the newness of Christ, and the unsurpassable newness of Christ himself that redeems and restores this old world. In the Old Testament, we see the foundation of this contrast in the psalmist’s opposition between the radical corruptibility of the material creation and the undiminishable vitality of Israel’s God:

Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth,and the heavens are the work of your hands.They will perish, but you endure;they will all wear out like a garment.You change them like clothing, and they pass away;but you are the same, and your years have no end.³

Human beings, despite their divine likeness, are also perishable and, again, the psalmist contrasts the corruptibility of the human condition with the immutable and undiminishable vitality of God’s love:

As for mortals, their days are like grass;They flourish like a flower of the field;For the wind passes over it, and it is gone. … But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.⁴

In Second Isaiah (Isa. 40–54), we find intimations that the abyss between human corruptibility and the unflagging newness of divine life will one day be bridged over. In the midst of Israel’s exile, the prophet announces in the name of Israel’s God:

Do not remember the former things [τὰ πρῶτα],Or consider the things of old.I am about to do a new thing;Now, it springs forth, do you not perceive it?⁵

But it is not until the New Testament that it becomes fully manifest that the new thing that God has done is nothing less than to...