Cardinal Barragán, On Catholic Teachers of Medicine

On Catholic Teachers of Medicine
"To Reveal Christ the Healer"



ROME, JULY 21, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is the text of an message written by Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, the president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry on the profile of the Catholic teacher of medicine.

* * *

PROFILE OF THE CATHOLIC TEACHER OF MEDICINE

Introduction

It is a very drawn out task to establish the profile of the Catholic teacher of Medicine. It involves understanding what a teacher is, what a teacher of medicine is, and knowing what it means to describe them as Catholic.

In the following reflection I will especially look at the term "Catholic." The question has to be asked whether a non-Catholic teacher of medicine will really be different from a Catholic teacher of medicine. And, if so, of what will this difference consist?

I will try to begin by following this sequence in order to answer these questions: the teacher as the one who teaches, the teacher as professor, and the teacher as a Catholic.

To talk about a teacher is to talk about culture. Culture has been defined in very many ways; here I understand it as the humanization of nature. I understand nature to be everything outside individuals that they need to live. Education, seeing culture like this, will be the assimilation of culture. It is necessary to understand the process of culture to understand the process of education. This involves four basic stages: introspection, tradition, assimilation and progress. In introspection, individuals realize their own needs. In tradition, they see what they are offered to meet these needs. In assimilation, they meet them. And in progress, they detect new needs and proceed to create new satisfiers which they have not found in tradition.

I. The Catholic professor of medicine

1. The teacher of medicine as a "teacher"

Teachers of medicine are teachers; they teach. The word "teach" comes from a word meaning a sign. The teacher gives the students the signs that they need and must appropriate. This means that first of all the teacher has to know what the students need in order to guide them in their own introspection and to realize what their needs are.

Once the teacher has taught the students to know their own needs, they show them how they can meet these needs in tradition. This is what tends to be called a "cultural asset."

Having detected the "cultural asset" they also signal the way to be able to appropriate this asset and assimilate it.

They also need to signal new horizons, both in relation to needs and in relation to possible new horizons. They teach the research which leads to the "creation" of new cultural assets as something necessary.

Consequently, medical culture consists of the humanization of medicine, and medical education consists of the assimilation of the humanization of medicine. The task of the teacher of medicine is to signal to the medical student how to assimilate the humanization of medicine.

Following the steps of all culture, in the introspection stage, the teacher of medicine needs to signal to the students the path so that it is the students themselves who find the needs that they have, which lead them to seek the medical tradition as a satisfier of these needs. Here we can see firstly whether or not the students have the aptitude to learn medical culture. If their needs, which are related to their abilities, are not those which are fulfilled with medical culture, the teacher should indicate to the possible student that they should not be educated in a culture that they do not need, or for which they are not capable.

Having passed the introspection step in medical culture, the teacher of medicine should signal the medical tradition. This is the whole set of medical "cultural assets" that exist. Here we find the complex field of medical science, technology and art. The teacher of medicine should have a command of this field, or, given the complexity of current medical know-how, at least the specialty that they are teaching.

In addition to scientific and technical competence, the teacher of medicine, like any other teacher, should be an expert in educational science, especially in Didactics, as when "teaching," they should do so with such clarity that the students can find the medical cultural asset that they are being shown. The teacher of medicine thus tackles the third step of culture, assimilation. It is not sufficient to teach medical culture; rather it is necessary to indicate to the students the practical path which has to be taken to have a command of it.

Once the teacher of medicine has completed this third step, they should open up subsequent paths for the students to recognize subsequent medical needs and, based on that already existing, to succeed in "creating" new medical cultural assets in the future. In particular, they should indicate the paths of medical progress, and how their students should move along these previously unexplored paths.

2. The teacher of medicine as a professor

In addition to a teacher, the teacher of medicine should be a professor, and here we expand our thoughts to enter the field of the Catholic teacher of medicine. As teachers, to a certain extent, they share their personality with any other teacher of medicine, of whatever mentality or ideology. As a professor, it is different.

Indeed, the word professor contains a religious connotation, as it comes from the verb to profess, which means adherence to a faith and its profession. If the teacher just remains at the level of teacher, they will be frustrated and so will their students. They signal health and life sciences and technology but, being realistic, they indicate that the whole of medical science and technology finally lose the battle, because death arrives and, in the face of death, all medical science and technology are shown to be impotent and fail. Being sincere with themselves and with their students, at the levels of introspection and assimilation of medicine to overcome disease, they should signal the ultimate failure of all medical science, technology and art, as death can be found at the end of all their efforts.

Only if they are capable of signaling, together with the same medicine and in a way from it, the overcoming of death, does their teaching have a lasting value and is not lost in just delaying the end as much as possible.

For this they must go beyond the mere level of the teacher and truly become a professor. To profess a faith which opens up health and life to transcendence.

3. The teacher of medicine as a Catholic professor

If the professor of medicine is a Catholic, then this transcendence and this victory over death are not merely beautiful desires which, for many, in our secularized culture, do not go beyond good intentions and palliatives for the failure of death, but rather they are based on the same reality of an irrefutable historical event, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

On professing this faith, the teacher of medicine becomes a triumphant professor. He and his students advance toward medical culture with the certainty and the joy of knowing that the progress in health science is a foretaste of the full health that they will find for themselves and for their patients in the resurrected Christ.

It is obvious that this is incomprehensible for those who do not profess this faith. For a physician who does not have faith in Christ and in his Church, nothing here means anything, and rather it is something absurd which would appear to be for ignorant and mad people as it goes against the biological experimental knowledge which they believe to be the only one valid in medicine: "evidence-based medicine." However, here is another type of evidence, even stronger than laboratory evidence, the evidence of a faith based on an irrefutable fact which is reached for the same reason, but which arises from a free and firm decision of the will of each person. St Paul already said that the announcement of a crucified Messiah was offensive for the Jews and madness for the Gentiles, but it is much wiser than all human wisdom, and what may seem to be weakness in God, is stronger than all human strength (1 Corinthians 1:23-25).

In accordance with this profession of faith, what then should a Catholic professor of medicine be like? The answer is to teach how a physician should be who is not frustrated but rather who opens up health science and technology, the art of curing, toward the full victory over death in the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. A Catholic professor of medicine is one who teaches, signals, to their students, how to be a Catholic physician.

Below I propose a few lines which set out the figure of the Catholic physician and which can be used as a basis for a Catholic professor of medicine to signal to their students how to be a Catholic physician.

II. The Catholic physician

I take as the basis the Charter for Health Care Workers published by the Pontifical Council for the Health Pastoral Care, which in turn refers to the thought of God's Servant John Paul II in this respect and from the identity expressed by the Pope, and in it I try to put together a few ideas to interpret and discuss it.

CHARTER FOR HEALTH CARE WORKERS

The Catholic physician is described as follows in the Charter for Health Care Workers:

The Catholic physician's profession requires them to be a custodian and server of human life. They should do this through a watchful and solicitous presence with the sick. The medical and healthcare activity is based on an interpersonal relationship. It is an encounter between trust and conscience. The trust of a man marked by suffering and disease who trusts in another man who can take care of his need and who is going to go to him to assist him, care for him and heal him.

The patient is not just a clinical case, but rather a sick man toward whom the physician should adopt an attitude of sincere sympathy, suffering together with him, through personal participation in the specific situations of the individual patient. Sickness and suffering are phenomena which, when dealt with in depth, go beyond medicine and deal with the essence of the human condition in this world.

The physician who cares for them must be aware that the whole of humanity is involved, and that complete dedication is required. This is their mission, and is the fruit of a call or vocation that the physician hears, personified in the suffering and invoking face of the patient who trusts in their care. Here the physician's mission to give life is linked to the life of Christ, who came to give life and to give it in abundance (Jn 10,10). This life transcends the physical life, to reach the height of the Holy Trinity. It is the new and eternal life that consists of communion with the Father to whom every man is called freely in the Son, through the work of the Holy Spirit.

The physician is like the Good Samaritan who stops by the side of the sick man to become his neighbor, because of his understanding and sympathy, in short because of his charity. The physician thus shares the love of God as an instrument of diffusion and at the same time becomes infected with the love of God for man.

This is the therapeutic charity of Christ who went around doing good and healing all (Acts 10:38). At the same time, it is the charity toward Christ represented in each patient. It is he who is cured in each man or woman, "I was sick, and you looked after me," as the Lord will say in the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-40).

It thus results that the physicians' identity is the identity received from their therapeutic ministry, their ministry of life. They collaborate with God in the recovery of health in the sick person's body. The Church accepts the work of the physician as part of its ministry, as it considers the service to sick people to be an integral part of its mission. It knows that physical harm imprisons the spirit, and the evil of the spirit overpowers the body. Through their therapeutic ministry, physicians thus share in the pastoral and evangelizing action of the Church. The paths that they should take are those marked by the dignity of the human being and therefore by Moral law, especially when it is a question of practising their activity in the field of Biogenetics and Biotechnology. Bioethics will provide a channel for them, outlining their principles of action.[1]

THE IDENTITY OF THE PHYSICIAN

A short summary of the Christian identity of the physician can be found in this position of the Pontifical Council for the Health Pastoral Care. As already mentioned, I will strive to reflect on this identity, paying particular attention to the fact that it is an identity received from a vocation and a mission which founds a very special ministry, the therapeutic ministry, the ministry of life, the ministry of health.

The Vocation and the Church

We can begin by referring to the meaning of a vocation in the Church. Etymologies often help to take us back to the original meaning of the words that we use frequently and which appear to be weakened through use. One of them is the word Church. There are two etymologies, the Greek and the Latin. Its Greek etymology takes us to the verb "ekkalein," to call. The Church, "ekklesia," would be the plural participle of the verb "ekkalein," and would mean those who have been called.

Looking from the Latin etymological perspective, the Church is the effect of the "Vocation." The "Vocation," etymologically speaking, is the nominalized Latin acceptance of the Latin verb "vocare," to call, (the same as "ekkalein") and would this mean the same calling which brings together those who have been called, that is which congregates them in the Church. The vocation thus makes the Church.

The only "Vocation" or fundamental calling is the one made by God with the Word with which he calls into existence everything that exists, and this calling, this primitive "vocation," is Christ, who is the Word of God through which everything that exists and each of us is called into existence (cf. Ephesians 1:3-10; Colossians 1:15-20). It is especially interesting to see that God's maximum way to call everything that exists, the maximum presence of Christ in the world, is through the Eucharist, as it is the memorial, the presence of Christ in the present of history (cf. Luke 22:19).

In this calling from God, we discover three essential moments which make it up and which we can summarize in three words: "BEING," "WITH," "FOR." We are thus called to be (to exist), with God, for others.

We can verify this in Christ's call to his apostles (Mark 3:14-15), and most especially his call to the Virgin Mary to be the Mother of God, the Messiah (Luke 1:26-38). But it is a paradigm that spreads throughout the history of Salvation.

We are going to use these three words of the Vocation as a guideline to reflect on the pontifical doctrine on the identity of the Catholic physician which we set out in the Charter of the Pontifical Council.

1. "BEING"

When we talk about "Being" in the vocation, we are talking about total existence. God speaks and everything begins to exist. Genesis says: "God said, Let there be light. And there was light ... (1:3). When God pronounces his Word, it is practical: he does what he says, and everything has its consistency, its beginning and its end, its totality, in it.

When we talk about true Catholic physicians, they are so because of a true vocation received from the same God from which they receive their whole existence, obviously without excluding the same physician's collaboration with the calling. How does God call the physician to the medical vocation, and of what does this vocation consist? Below we offer some characteristics of the " being" of this calling.

1.1. The profession

Firstly, we will say that God calls the physician for a profession which is not the same as for a trade. Historically, three professions are recognized, that of the priest, that of the physician and that of the ruler or judge. It should be noted that, as we said earlier, the profession is somewhat linked to the profession of the faith, is something religious. The profession is not strictly speaking something legal, as what is legal may or may not be carried out, or changed depending on the will of those who take on an obligation. On the contrary, the profession is an obligation and a responsibility which is contracted with God himself. It is a responsibility and responsibility originally meant the capacity to respond, and respond comes from the Greek "Spenden" which originally meant to offer a sacrifice of libation to God. Medical professional responsibility means a commitment (Commitment is "syngrafein" in Greek, which means to write together), which is written jointly by man and God.

This sacred nature of the medical profession led to the Hippocratic oath, which is the oath not to harm the patient, to always do good to them and to look after all stages of life, an oath which is not a promise made to the patient, but rather directly to God. In this context the physician's vocation is a vocation which is born from the love of God, and it is God that the physician follows in this profession, as extremely benevolent Good.[2]

1.2. The love of God in the physician

However, despite the sublime nature of this Hippocratic position, it is limited and defective. We were talking about the love of God, but this love, in accordance with the classical Greek mentality, the mentality of Socrates and Plato, which Hippocrates shared, is defective because it presupposes need and is never plenitude. Indeed, for classical Greek philosophy, God does not love. He is extremely benevolent, but he does not love, as love would mean a lack and God cannot lack anything. Love is only characteristic of the needy man interested in sating himself, not of God the All-perfect. In Greek mythology, love arises from Poros and Penia in Aphrodite's wedding. Poros represents expediency, need, and Penia, poverty; on bringing together need and poverty, love is born as self-interested desire.

This mentality is completely corrected by the divine Revelation: God himself is Love. This is the deepest definition of God. His love does not consist of him lacking something, but rather of the greatest circulation of his kindness, which is presented is such a way that God the Father loves the world that he created so much that, out of his love for it, he gives his one and only Son in death (John 3:16).

The Christian medical profession is therefore centered on love, but not on self-interested and poor, Hippocratic, love, but rather it imitates the perfect love of God and has its paradigm in the Good Samaritan, thus suffering together with the sick, pitying them and providing them with everything they need to cure them. The Good Samaritan is thus the example to be imitated by the Christian physician. The Good Samaritan is the figure of Christ who takes pity on the whole of sick and fallen humanity, and raises it up to deification. He is infinite love and is in both those who love and those who are loved. He is in both as plenitude. The Good Samaritan is thus the figure which identifies the physician who takes pity to such an extent on their patient that they do everything they can to return them to health, out of love of plenitude.[3]

Talking about the love that physicians must have for God and thus for their patients, Pope Pius XII talks to us about the commandments of the law of God in the sphere of medicine. He talks to us about the first commandment which is to love God above all else and about the second which is to love your neighbor like yourself, and the identity of physicians consists of this love when their relations with the patient are surrounded by humanity and understanding, gentleness and devotion.

The same Pope Pius XII complements the characteristics of the physician on referring to two other commandments in particular, the fifth, "you shall not murder" and the eighth, "you shall not give false testimony."[4]

1.3. Respect for and Defense of Life

The fifth commandment reminds us how the identity of the Christian physician means that, because of the love they are obliged to have for God and for their patient, they are totally obliged to defend life at any of its stages, but especially at the stages at which it feels the weakest, which are the initial and the terminal stages. Their personality is formed from a clear and absolute no to abortion and no to euthanasia. The whole meaning of human life is contained in the fifth commandment, as a gift given by God to be merely administered by man and by woman, and which should only have its origin in marriage.

1.4. Medical training

The eighth commandment, "you shall not give false testimony," tells us about the physician's clear commitment to the truth, both to the truth of disease and of health, and to the truth of medical science.[5]

The physician's identity comes from the training that they receive. However, if we look at what is occurring in many Faculties of Medicine, we can see that this training has many defects. Indeed, the curriculum of the medical degree has two essential parts. The first is the basic knowledge and the second is the knowledge that is obtained from the clinical science divided into disciplines or from a consideration of the different organs of the human body. It is obvious that these subjects should be taught, but at the same time it is noted that there is a bio-technical reductionism. On presenting the subjects, their anthropocentric value and the ethical, affective and existential values have been lost. The physician is seen from the requirements of the patient and the demands of an economicist health system with complete indifference for the violations of human rights, especially human life.

We often find as a paradigm of the current clinical applications a fragmentation and reduction of the patient to organs and biological or technological functions and to medicines. The intention is to obtain a command of fragmented specialized knowledge without the perspective of the whole, through knowledge and relational competence with other human fields outside medicine. The idea of health is proposed as a passive adaptation to pathogenic stimuli and to those of a bio-physical nature. The adaptation of the clinic is carried out with often exclusive reference to the requirements, even of an economic nature, of the national health system. A loss of the ethical values in medicine and the anonymity of the patients are observed. It is even seen that little value is given to the existential aspects of the medical profession, to the person of the patient, of the physician and of the nurse.

In the face of these problems of the medical "being" from the beginning of the training that is received, a series of methods has been conceived to make the teaching active, especially from the so-called PBL (Problem-Based Learning) and the teaching method oriented toward the community which sees the physician as a necessarily competent person on a relational and scientific level, inserted in a community reality, capable of collaborating with other health figures and of administering the resources available with continuing learning, always an advocate of the patient's health, capable of combining knowledge with medical practice, and therefore with continuing training.

This kind of medical training would offer a new understanding of health and of disease. It would deal with prevention and the handling of the disease in the context of the individuality of the patient complemented by their own family and society as a whole. It would thus develop a learning based more on curiosity and continuous investigation than on passive acquisitions. It would reduce the information load. It would encourage direct contact with the patients through a personalized analysis of their problems and of the whole of their curriculum.

A program should therefore be prepared which is based on the following principles: 1. Existence of a comprehensive and ultimate meaning of medical knowledge. 2. Definition of its epistemological orientation. 3. Definition of the values, the motivations, the psychological maturity, the quality of the objective knowledge and the methodological, relational and technical capacities, applied to the exercising of the profession. 4. Definition of the values, the motivations, the capacities and the quality of the training of the teachers. 5. Definition of the general and partial objectives of the training. 6. Definition of the teaching methods. These principles contain the epistemological knowledge of present-day medicine which considers health as a psycho-biological construction determined by the possibility and the quality of the person's resources and whose aim is to give a single response to the fundamental questions of human existence.[6]

1.5. Lifelong learning

The physician's identity is not shaped once and for all in their initial training, but rather is prolonged in their lifelong learning. It demands a very careful preparation of students of medicine, but at the same time requires the continuing and progressive preparation of the lecturers who teach any medical subject, a preparation that should never be lacking. The lecturers in particular have the responsibility to promote new physicians, and they will never achieve this if they are not sure of each student's capacity to carry out such a delicate mission.

The same eighth commandment obliges all physicians to keep professional secrecy and, as we have already mentioned, to have a sound medical culture which should be improved constantly through lifelong learning.[7]

2. "WITH"

We said that the second characteristic of the Christian vocation is expressed with the preposition "with," with God. That is to say that any vocation is to be with God our Lord, who prepares man to carry out a mission which, without his strength, it would be pointless to carry out. In the book of Exodus we can read what Moses says to God on mount Horeb: "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt, and God said: I will be with you ..." (Exodus 3:12).

2.1. Revelation of Christ the physician

In this section we set out the deepest values that should shape the identity of the Catholic physician. The personality of the Christian physician is identified with the revelation of Christ the physician. Christ sent his apostles to cure all ailment and disease and said to them, I will be with you to the end of the age (Mark 16:17; Matthew 28:20). The physician performs the therapeutic ministry in this way, beside the apostles, as a continuation of the mission of Christ and with his revelation.

The whole breadth of this revelation should be understood. The physician should reveal the whole life of Christ, which is the presence of Christ in the physician. Because Christ cures all ailments and disease with all his action taken as a whole. The miracle cures that he performed, including the resurrection of the dead, were not definitive in his struggle against the evil that exists in humanity, against its ailments and death, but rather just a sign of the profound reality that entails his own death and resurrection.

2.2. Pain

He took all suffering, all ailments, all disease, without exception, and summarized them in his own death as the death of God who had become man, so that no pain would remain outside, and from his death he exploited death itself, he conquered it in the plenitude of his resurrection. One of the physician's main doubts is always the problem of pain. This question only has its answer here, when pain does not appear as something negative, but rather as a positivity which, it is true, ends in death, but in a death full of resurrection.

The physician should thus cure, revealing the death and the resurrection of Christ. An identification of the physician as such, as a healer, with Christ the healer, is necessary for this revelation. This identification is now carried out especially through the Eucharist and through the other sacraments. The sacraments are the historic presence of Christ in the present, at the specific moment that we are crossing in life.

2.3. Health

Consequently, the physician should realize that health is complexive and bodily health should not be talked about as something radically different from the complete health that we call eternal health or salvation. The physician's ministry is therefore an ecclesiastic ministry which is directed toward the salvation of man from his body, but which involves other aspects.

We thus describe health as a dynamic tension toward physical, mental, social and spiritual harmony and not just the absence of disease, which prepares men to carry out the mission with which God has entrusted them, in accordance with the stage of life at which they are.

The physician's mission is therefore to ensure that this dynamic tension toward complete harmony exists, as required at each stage of the life of this specific man who is their patient, so that they can carry out the mission with which God has entrusted them. Thus, the contradiction of reducing the medical function to the single physical and chemical aspect of the disease. This function is complete and moreover cannot be static, but rather should be inserted within the dynamism of the patients who tend toward their own harmony.

In this context, death is not a frustration for the physician, but rather a triumph, as they have accompanied their patient in such a way that they have been able to use their talents to the full at each stage of their life. When it has reached its end, the medical function ends, not with a cry of impotence, but rather with the satisfaction of a mission fulfilled, both by the patient and by the physician.

Thus, the physician truly is with Christ and their profession is identified in this communion with Christ, and then the physician joins together with our Father God like a son with his father, and their professional love becomes the action of the Love of God in himself, which is the Holy Spirit. A Christian physician is therefore one who is always guided by the Holy Spirit. From the Holy Spirit and with the Holy Spirit is all the sympathy that must exist between the physician and the patient, all the due humanization of medicine and all the demand for updating and lifelong learning, as the Love of the Holy Spirit makes the physician an essentially open person for the rest, as they are obliged to do so before God because of their profession of Faith represented by their medical profession. We thus succeed in outlining the third trait of the medical identity, being for others, is the "FOR" of their vocation and of their professional identity.

3. "FOR"

When God chose Moses, it is very clear that he did so to remove his people from the power of the Egyptians. God says, "I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians" (Exodus 3:8).

Physicians cannot withdraw into themselves. They cannot simply think that they already have enough money, that they do not need to work any more, and that therefore they will now leave their profession. A true physician is a physician for life. If they have truly received this vocation, they will have it for ever and they must practice it for humanity as a mission specifically received for the good of all, and for which they must account to God when He says to them, "I was sick, and you looked after me" (Matthew 25:36,43).

3.1. Openness to the patient

We said that love of the medical profession imitates the love of God which is disseminated. Physicians cannot hide their knowledge in pure theories and laboratories, but rather should expand them in favor of the community. They have received the gift of taking care of life and making it grow. Their vocation is for life, never for death, which would be to blind the mission with which God has entrusted each human being. According to Pope John Paul II, nowadays the religious ministry is connected to the therapeutic ministry of physicians in the affirmation of human life and of all those specific contingencies in which life itself can be endangered by deliberate human will. Their deepest identity involves being ministers of life and never instruments of death. This is the most intimate nature of their noble profession. They are called to humanize medicine and the places where they practice it, and to use the most advanced technologies for life and not for death, always having Christ, the physician of bodies and of souls, as their supreme model.[8]

According to Pope Pius XII, Catholic physicians should place their knowledge, their strengths, their heart and their devotion at the disposal of the sick. They should understand that they and their patients are subject to the will of God. Medicine is a reflection of the goodness of God. They should help the sick to accept their illness, and they should make sure they are not dazzled by technology and use the gifts that God has given them and not give in to the pressure to assaults on life. They should remain firm in the face of the temptations of materialism.[9]

The good physician must therefore have dianoetic virtues and skills and convert them into virtuosity, that is to say into a habit, so that both the virtues of theoretical science and those of practice come together in them as if they were second nature.[10]

3.2. Fundamental qualities of the physician

The fundamental qualities of the physician have thus been classified under 5 sections: Awareness of responsibility, humbleness, respect, love and truthfulness. Awareness of responsibility leads them to work with the patient and be aware that it is the physician who gives the direction. Humbleness tells them that physicians look after their patients and not the opposite. Humbleness makes them see themselves as indebted to the patient. Physicians cannot talk about "their" patients, but rather the patients will talk about "their" physician. Physicians should receive their patients as written on the lintel of an old German hospital: "recipere quasi Christum"; they should receive their patients as if they were Christ himself.

Respect and love for the patient, about which we have already spoken, are the basis for their humbleness. They know that they have received a mission for which they do not have the necessary strength, but rather they receive it from the person who sends it for this reason. Truthfulness entails being aware of the great trust that the patient places in them on revealing their personal matters. Truthfulness is required in the diagnosis and in the therapy, not just on the bodily but also on the complete, mental, social, psychic, spiritual level. They should never experiment on the patient if this involves a danger disproportionate to the good that they intend to do. This must be absolutely necessary and the patient must agree to it. They should notify the patient of the development of their illness, tell them the truth about their condition in the most appropriate way and at the most appropriate time possible. They should complement their action with the action of the priest as both missions, that of the priest and that of the physician, are closely connected.[11]

3.3. Portrait of the physician

The "Portrait of the perfect physician," described by Enrique Jorge Enriquez in 16th century Spain in the flowery language of the time, is still current: "The physician should be fearful of the Lord and very humble, and not haughty and arrogant, and be charitable to the poor, meek, kind, affable and not vengeful. They should maintain secrecy, should not be talkative or gossipy, flattering or envious. They should be prudent, restrained, not be too audacious … should be distinguished and given to honesty and reserved. They should work on their skill and flee from idleness. They should be a well-read physician and should know how to give information about everything."[12]

Nowadays, we would talk about medical excellence. This would be what Aristotle called the "Teleios iatrós" (perfect physician), or Galen called "Aristós iatrós" (best physician).

3.4. Morality and Law

Initially we said that the medical profession is something that goes beyond the Law and is positioned in the framework of Morality, and this is true, but this does not mean that we can do without medical Law. Medical Law without adequate morality would be arbitrariness based on shameful interests. Morality without medical Law would just be general principles without direct application. The rules of medical Law must be sufficiently clear and brief to aid the physician's action. The leading principle is always the same: the physician's purpose is to help and to heal, not to do harm or to kill.

It is worth mentioning in particular the field of Ethics, the field of Morality, in which the physician must be competent, but in which so often they are not specialists. Bioethical committees are therefore required in each health centre, and should also be created in the teaching centers, in open dialogue with the specialists in the different subjects taught.

Physicians are thus trained to bear witness to God in all the medical, trade union and political environments, etc. They can even be valid bearers of ecumenical dialogue and dialogue with other religions, as sickness does not know religious barriers. The physician will thus actively belong to the Church as an individual person and as a group.[13]

3.5. Teamwork

In order to carry out such a demanding mission, physicians cannot stay enclosed in their own individuality, but rather should first open up to other physicians and be sufficiently humble to work in collaboration and as a team, both on strictly physiological matters, and especially on those relational matters connected to fields of which they do not necessarily have a command and which to a certain extent are outside their competence, namely sociological, anthropological and political aspects, and those from technical fields beyond their profession, namely everything connected to the strictly computing field.

In a certain way, within this opening-up, in the Spanish field of medicine what two authors call the decalogue of the new physician is designed. They express it like this: 1. Multidisciplinary teamwork with a single person ultimately responsible. 2. The more scientific the professional, the better. 3. The human aspects will be strengthened in professional practice. 4. Action will be adapted to agreed scientific diagnostic and therapeutic protocols. 5. They will be aware of the expense. In addition to the protocols, they will use guides to good practice. 6. They shall aid coexistence and solidarity with work colleagues and with the patients. 7. They shall think that all healthcare acts can involve a preventive action, and even a promotion of health. 8. They shall bear in mind at all times the need to care for the satisfaction of the user of the service. 9. The Patient Service Units will be strengthened, circulating the complaints and suggestions which arise among the people affected. Frequent opinion surveys will be held. 10. It will be essential to apply ethical principles to the professional activities.[14]

CONCLUSION

Being a Catholic physician is a ministry which arises from a vocation in the Church. It is a therapeutic ministry. It is closely linked to God our Father, revealed in Christ the physician, full of the Love which is the Holy Spirit. Being a physician is a path to achieve the plenitude of the human being, to initiate the resurrection already. It involves proximity and a special intimacy with God, and at the same time represents an opening-up and a complete gift to others. This is the Catholic identity of the physician, to reveal Christ the healer.

Being a Catholic professor of medicine is to have far-reaching sight to be able to see the resurrection in death. It is not just this, though. It is the ability to sense a harmonious tension in health which leads to plenitude, in accordance with the different stages of the life of people. And it is to feel in medical science, technology and skills the all-powerful force of God who resurrects his Son Jesus Christ and who already gives us a foretaste of the resurrection in medical progress. Being a Catholic professor of medicine is to teach the Love with which the Holy Spirit delivers Jesus Christ on the cross to the Father, who with his loving strength brings him back to life. Being a Catholic professor of medicine is to teach the physician to be the loving caress of God who looks after his children in sickness and in death, making their condition more bearable for them and opening up for them a complete expectation of health which will not now be tension toward harmony, but rather the total harmony of love. Being a Catholic professor of medicine is to teach the physician to be the revelation of Christ the healer.


Vatican City, 15 April, 2007.

+ Javier Card. Lozano Barragán
President, Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry

--- --- ---

[1] Cf. Pontifical Council for the Health Pastoral Care, Charter for Health Care Workers, Vatican City, May 1995, 1-7.

[2] Cf. Gracia Diego, "El Juramento de Hipócrates en el desarrollo de la medicina," Dolentium Hominum, 31, 1996, 12-14.

[3] Cf. Capelletti Vincenzo, "Donde hay amor por el arte médico hay amor por el hombre," Dolentium Hominum, 31, 1996, 22-28.

[4] Cf. Pius XII, "Discorsi ai medici," Orizonti Medici , Rome (1959), 46-54.

[5] Cf. Pius XII, "Discorsi ai medici," Orizonti Medici , Rome (1959), 46-54.

[6] Brera Giuseppe Rodolfo, "La formazione dei medici del terzo Millennio. La scuola medica come scuola di uomini e di umanità." Conferenza inaugurale dell'anno accademico 1998-1999. Università Ambrosiana di Milano, inaugurazione della scuola di Medicina.

[7] Cf. Pius XII, "Discorso ai medici...," op. cit .

[8] Cf. John Paul II, in the XV Congresso dei Medici Cattolici, AMCI, "Cinquent'anni di vita per la vita," Orizonti Medici (1994), 105-114.

[9] Cf. Pius XII, Radio Messaggio al VII Congresso Internazionale dei Medici Cattolici (11.09.1956), "Discorso ai medici," 503.

[10] Cf. Gracia Diego, "El Juramento de Hipócrates...," 12-14.

[11] Cf. Martini P., "Arzt und Seelsorge," in LTK (1).

[12] Cited by Gracia Diego, "El Juramento de Hipócrates...," op. cit., 26.

[13] Cf. Leone Salvino, Orizonte Medico, 6, Nov-Dec.1996 , 10-11.

[14] Asenjo Miguel Angel-Trilla A., "Necesidad de nuevos profesionales para las nuevas situaciones sanitarias," Todo Hospital, 149, Sept.1988, 497-499.

[Text adapted]

Joseph Ratzinger's Primer on Ecclesiology

A ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH

Joseph Ratzinger's Primer on Ecclesiology

Interview With Ave Maria University's Father Matthew Lamb
Part 1

NAPLES, Florida, 23 JUNE 2005 (ZENIT)

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger released his book "Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today," he called it a primer of Catholic ecclesiology.

In it, the future Benedict XVI outlined the origin and essence of the Church, the role of the papacy and the primacy of Peter, and the Body of Christ's unity and "communio."

Father Matthew Lamb, director of the graduate school of theology and professor of theology at Ave Maria University, shared with ZENIT an overview of some of those themes as they appear in Cardinal Ratzinger's book.

Part 2 of this interview will appear Friday.

Q: What is Cardinal Ratzinger's understanding of the origin and essence of the Church, as outlined in his book?

Father Lamb: Reading "Called to Communion" is a feast for mind and heart.

At the time of its release, Cardinal Ratzinger called it a "primer of Catholic ecclesiology." As with his other theological writings, this book beautifully recovers for our time the great Catholic tradition of wisdom, of attunement to the "whole" of the Triune God's creative and redemptive presence.

"Catholic" means living out of the "whole" of this divine presence. Such a sapiential approach shows how the New Covenant draws upon and fulfills the covenant with Israel. Israel was chosen and led out of Egypt in order to worship the true and only God and thus witness to all the nations.

In his preaching, teaching and actions, Jesus Christ fulfilled the messianic promises. At the last supper Our Lord initiated the New Covenant in his most sacred body and blood. Ratzinger wrote in "Called to Communion": "Jesus announces the collapse of the old ritual and ... promises a new, higher worship whose center will be his own glorified body."

Jesus announces the eternal Kingdom of God as "the present action of God" in his own divine person incarnate. As the Father sends Jesus Christ, so Jesus in turn sends his apostles and disciples.

The origin of the Church is Jesus Christ who sends the Church forth as the Father sent him. The Apostles and disciples, with their successors down the ages, form the Church as the "ecclesia," the gathering of the "people of God."

Drawing upon his own doctoral dissertation on the Church in the theology of St. Augustine, Ratzinger shows that the people of God are what St. Paul calls the "body of Christ." The essence of the Church is the people of God as the Body of Christ, head and members united by the Holy Spirit in visible communion with the successors of the Apostles, united with the Pope as successor to Peter.

The Church continues down the ages the visible and invisible missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit through preaching and teaching, the sanctifying sacraments and the unifying governance of her communion with the successor of Peter.

Q: In "Called to Communion," what were his thoughts on the role of the Pope in the Church?

Father Lamb: "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church ... I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven." In Matthew 16:17-19, these true words of the Lord Jesus transcend confessional polemics. From them Ratzinger brings out the role of the Pope.

Reflecting on the commission given to Peter he sees that he is commissioned to forgive sins. As he writes in "Called to Communion," it is a commission to dispense "the grace of forgiveness. It constitutes the Church. The Church is founded upon forgiveness. Peter himself is the personal embodiment of this truth, for he is permitted to be the bearer of the keys after having stumbled, confessed and received the grace of pardon."

Q: What did Cardinal Ratzinger note about the primacy of Peter and the unity of the Church?

Father Lamb: He first shows the mission of Peter in the whole of the New Testament tradition. The essence of apostleship is witnessing to the resurrection of Jesus. Ratzinger shows the primacy of Peter in this role, as attested by St. Paul who, even when confronting St. Peter, acknowledges him in First Corinthians 15:5 as "Cephas" — the Aramaic word for "rock" — in his witness to the risen Lord.

As such he is the guarantor of the one common Gospel. All the synoptic Gospels agree in giving Peter the primacy in their lists of apostles. The mission of Peter is above all to embody the unity of the apostles in their witness to the risen Lord and the mission he entrusted to them.

As Ratzinger states in "Called to Communion," later the sees or bishoprics identified with apostles become pre-eminent and, as Irenaeus testifies in the second century, these sees are to acknowledge the decisive criterion exercised by "the Church of Rome, where Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom. It was with this Church that every community had to agree; Rome was the standard of the authentic apostolic tradition as a whole."

Q: How does the papacy facilitate communion or "communio" in the Church?

Father Lamb: The papacy facilitates "communio" precisely by witnessing to the transcendent reality of the risen Lord. This was evident in the first successors to Peter. Like him, they witnessed to the commission Peter received — many early popes were martyred.

The keys of the Kingdom are the words of forgiveness only God can truly empower. The papacy promotes communion by fidelity to the truth of the gospel and the redemptive sacramental mission of forgiveness. In "Called to Communion" Ratzinger writes: "By his death Jesus has rolled the stone over the mouth of death, which is the power of hell, so that from his death the power of forgiveness flows without cease."

Later Ratzinger returns to this theme of the need of the apostles and their successors for forgiveness as they are given a mission only the Triune God could fulfill.

His words in "Called to Communion," then, find an echo after he was elected Benedict XVI: "The men in question" — the apostles — "are so glaringly, so blatantly unequal to this function" — of being rock solid in their faith and practice — "that the very empowerment of man to be the rock makes evident how little it is they who sustain the Church but God alone who does so, who does so more in spite of men than through them."

Only through such forgiveness in total fidelity to Jesus Christ and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit will full communion in the Body of Christ come about. Ratzinger's "Eucharistic ecclesiology" follows the Fathers of Church in uniting the vertical dimension of the risen body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ in the Eucharist with the horizontal dimension of the gathering of the followers of Christ.

"The Fathers summed up these two aspects — Eucharist and gathering — in the word 'communio,' which is once more returning to favor today," Ratzinger wrote. ZE05062321


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interview With Ave Maria University's Father Matthew Lamb

Part 2

NAPLES, Florida, 24 JUNE 2005 (ZENIT)

Benedict XVI sees the teachings of the Second Vatican Council as a compass for Catholicism in the third millennium, says an American theologian.

Father Matthew Lamb, director of the graduate school of theology at Ave Maria University, shared with ZENIT highlights from the then Joseph Ratzinger's book "Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today" and his first statement as Pope.

Part 1 of this interview appeared Thursday.

Q: In his first statement, Pope Benedict said he wanted to pursue the commitment to enact the Second Vatican Council. What does that mean?

Father Lamb: It means that he is fully committed to follow his predecessors in enacting the teachings of Vatican II. He sees the Council as a "compass" with which to embark on the third millennium of Catholicism. We do not need another Council — the Church is still drawing upon the riches of Vatican II.

He also indicates how this enactment is truly "Catholic," or according to the "whole." For such an enacting can only occur "in faithful continuity with the two- thousand-year tradition of the Church." Only in communion with the whole Church as the body of Christ down the ages "do we encounter the real Christ."

Cardinal Ratzinger vigorously counteracted those theologians and others who misread Vatican II as a break from the Church's past. Unable to ground such misreading in the texts of the Council itself, they often resorted to such terms as the "spirit" or "style" of the Council. The Pope pledges that he will follow his predecessors in promoting the genuine renewal of the Council within the whole of the Catholic tradition.

Q: In the same statement, Pope Benedict struck a cord of collegiality. What is his understanding of the papacy and the role collegiality plays in it?

Father Lamb: The relation between the pope and the college of bishops is the continuation of the primacy of Peter among the Twelve Apostles.

As he stated: "As Peter and the other apostles were, through the will of the Lord, one apostolic college, in the same way the Successor of Peter and the bishops, successors of the apostles — and the Council forcefully repeated this — must be closely united among themselves."

This unity and collegiality is, as the Pope remarks, "concerned solely with proclaiming to the world the living presence of Christ." This first statement of the Holy Father illustrates how his theology is born from his own profound friendship with Jesus Christ in his total dedication to the mission Jesus entrusted to his Church.

Q: What did Cardinal Ratzinger outline as the nature of bishop and priest in his book "Called to Communion"?

Father Lamb: The Eucharist and the other sacraments are not something any human person by his own powers can do truthfully. The Word Incarnate in Christ Jesus is the only one who can truthfully speak "This is my body" or "Your sins are forgiven." Only because Jesus sent forth his apostles as he was sent by the Father do we have a Church with her sacraments.

The Church as Eucharistic can only be found in communion with the bishops as successors of the apostles. Gathered around the altar, the Church is Eucharist. It is always both local and universal, just as it unites the vertical and horizontal.

Cardinal Ratzinger has emphasized that the universality of the Church was present in Jesus Christ as the Word Incarnate. The Church is Eucharist — each local community celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is taken up within the whole Christ embracing all of the faithful throughout all time. At Mass we invoke the heavenly hosts as well as Our Lady and all the saints, as well as praying for the dead.

No local community on its own can give itself a bishop, any more than it is simply a celebration of itself cut off from the whole Catholic Church. The consecration of bishops make evident how they are in communion with the successor of Peter and receive their mission from the Lord himself mediated down the ages in communion with the apostles themselves who were called by Jesus.

Benedict XVI referred to this in his beautiful first statement as Pope reflecting on his being called to be a successor of Peter: "We have been thinking in these hours about what happened in Caesarea of Philippi 2000 year ago: 'You are Christ the Son of the living God,' and the solemn affirmation of the Lord: 'You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church ... I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.'"

Like the Holy Father, each bishop is entrusted with the mission of fostering the unity and the catholicity of the Church entrusted to his care. Without unity, as Ratzinger observes, there would be no true holiness, for this demands the gifted love that is the bond of unity.

The bishop must cultivate an ever-deepening union with Christ — like the apostles he must be "Christ's contemporary" — for otherwise he would only be an ecclesiastical functionary.

Similarly, ordained priests share in the mission of the bishops just as chosen disciples shared in the mission of the apostles. As genuine apostolic activity is not the product of their own capabilities, so it is with ordained bishops and priests.

It is Christ speaking and acting through them as his instruments when they teach true doctrine, celebrate the sacraments, and govern properly. They can call "nothing" their own. It is all Christ's presence and action, just as all he had is from the Father in the Holy Spirit.

Cardinal Ratzinger sums this up well in "Called to Communion": "This is precisely what we mean when we call the ordination of priests a sacrament: ordination is not about the development of one's own powers and gifts. It is not the appointment of a man as a functionary because he is especially good at it, or because it suits him, or simply because it strikes him as a good way to earn his bread. ...

"Sacrament means: I give what I myself cannot give; I do something that is not my work; I am on a mission and have become a bearer of that which another has committed to my charge."

As with the bishop, so the "foundation of priestly ministry is a deep personal bond to Jesus Christ."
ZE05062429

Study stirs up debate over human origins

Study stirs up debate over human origins
It claims we came from sub-Saharan Africa; others argue multiple locations
Scientists can't agree on where we came from. A new study says humanity arose in sub-Saharan Africa, represented by the Nigerian skull at left. The researchers compared African skulls with those from other regions including Australia, where the skull at right originated.
By Jeanna Bryner
Staff writer

Updated: 2:03 p.m. ET July 18, 2007
All modern humans originated in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new study touted by its funders as the “final blow” against an opposing viewpoint. Not so fast, says one anthropologist who finds flaws in the evidence.

Debate over the origins of modern humans has simmered among anthropologists for years, with one theory asserting that Homo sapiens migrated across the world from a single point in Africa. The other theory states that multiple populations of Homo sapiens independently evolved from Homo erectus in regions beyond Africa.

The new study, published in the July 19 issue of the journal Nature, delivers what the researchers say could be the final verdict in support of the single point "Out of Africa" theory.

“We have combined our genetic data with new measurements of a large sample of skulls to show definitively that modern humans originated from a single area in sub-Saharan Africa,” said lead researcher Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge.

Out of Africa
Manica and colleagues took multiple measurements of more than 4,500 male fossil skulls from 105 populations around the globe. They combined the results with data from studies of global genetic variations in humans, finding that both genetic and skull variability decreased with distance from Africa. So populations in southeastern Africa held the highest variability compared with populations in other countries.

“Humans seem to have poured out of Africa, spread out across the world, but at a really quite uniform rate such that you get this lovely gradual loss of diversity,” said study team member William Amos of the University of Cambridge.

The results held even when the scientists accounted for climate, since climate conditions can lead to changes in skull features. “In very cold climates you tend to generate a slightly thicker brow ridge. Whether or not that’s to keep horrible blizzards out of your eyes, I don’t know,” Amos said.

Past studies based on skull morphology have been weak and have supported both of the human-origin views.

This study “adds a strong line of evidence to the Out of Africa (hypothesis) using such morphology,” said paleontologist Will Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Harcourt-Smith was not involved in the current research.

Dissenting voice
However, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison says the paper is “mistaken.” A major flaw is that the current research is largely based on skull variability.

“You can’t find the origin of people by measuring the variability of their skulls,” Hawks told LiveScience.

Differences in skull features are related to genetics, and genetic variation depends on how much mixing occurs with other populations. “The main problem with the paper is that it takes some assumptions from genetics papers of 10 to 15 years ago that we now know are wrong,” Hawks said.

Other scenarios, besides the single-origin theory, could account for the link between distance and skull variability. “Africa is ecologically diverse, and cranial variation is a function of environments,” he said. In environments supporting hardy foods such as roots, people would need bigger jaw muscles, and thus larger areas for muscle attachments.

Also, correcting for climate is not a good idea, according to Hawks. “The most important feature that is related to climate is skull size. So by correcting for climate, they are subtracting a major component of variability," he said.

Impossible to solve?
In his own research, Hawks is finding that natural selection has led to changes in thousands of genes during only the past few thousand years.

“I’m really thinking just the opposite of this paper,” Hawks said. “There are differences in the skull between populations, including their variability, but it is mostly due to very recent effects and not the origin of modern humans.”

At the end of the day, a resolution to the "Out of Africa" debate may be impossible, he said. Most of the evidence can be interpreted as supporting both human-origins theories. “It’s really hard to find observations that distinguish the two,” Hawks said.

“The multiregional idea is identical to the recent African origin idea, except for its prediction that Europeans and Asians were part of the single population of origin and didn’t become extinct.”

Finding an answer still intrigues paleontologists. “To know the manner in which our direct ancestors evolved from earlier hominins, as well as which species died out and which didn't,” Harcourt-Smith said, “provides us with an insight into the actual process of human evolution.”

The recent study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

© 2007 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

St. Paul Center links on covenant

Covenant and Divine Economy
Plus, from Fr. Most: Our Father's Plan: God's Arrangements and Our Response, and...

A Biblical Theology of Redemption in a Covenant Framework

Current biblical theologies of redemption seem to leave room for further work. For if one asks, why did God want the death of Christ for our redemption, and how did his death bring about redemption, the answers given are not completely satisfying. We do say that Christ is our head, that He is the way, that He is the suffering servant ..., but these explanations, while quite true, do not go far enough in answering the why and the how.

It is possible to approach the redemption through several avenues. In choosing to follow up one of these avenues, we do not mean to exclude the others, nor do we claim to be considering all aspects of the redemption. We wish, however, to follow up one approach that has been rather little used, namely, through the covenant. The reason why it has been little used is the fact that there have been and still are so many debates about the nature of both the old and the new covenant and of the relations between them.

The Problem of Sinai

We must obviously begin with the Sinai covenant. Immediately we are in the midst of the debates on its nature: Was it unilateral,1 or bilateral?2

At the outset it is important to clarify what we mean by a bilateral covenant, for there has been much confusion on this point. A good example is provided by Bonsirven: "Jewish thought apparently tends more and more to the idea of a reciprocal choice, which is a distortion of the biblical concept of election. Despite appearances, including that of the Hebrew word berith, the covenant is not a bilateral contract.... God took the initiative ... he did not leave his people free to refuse the alliance that was offered. God's only commitment was to protect and reward his people if they were faithful to their promises and kept the commandment."3

Bonsirven apparently has not noticed that there are at least three distinct questions: 1) Why did God decide to make a covenant? 2) Why did He choose Israel as the partner in it? 3) Having made the covenant, why did He keep His part in it?

As to the first, Bonsirven simply says that "God took the initiative." He does not attempt to say why God made a covenant at all. As to the second, Bonsirven notes that Jewish thought tended to the notion that Israel's merits led to her choice.4 He rightly rejected such a notion as "a distortion of the biblical concept of election."5 As to the third question, why God kept His commitment under the covenant, Bonsirven says: "God's only commitment was to protect and to reward His people if they were faithful...." Now this latter statement clearly admits bilaterality in the sense that God had made a commitment, on the condition of the fidelity of His people. And yet, Bonsirven had said flatly a few lines earlier, "the covenant is not a bilateral contract."

We believe that the three questions must be kept carefully distinct. The bilaterality we wish to examine would be merely this: Was not only Israel, but also God under a commitment, so that both assumed an obligation?

Many have hoped for light from a study of the literary form of the Sinai pact, and have thought that covenant must be unilateral since the Hittite vassal treaties, which it has been said to follow, are considered unilateral. Today we cannot so readily accept that means of solution: first, because recent studies, especially those of McCarthy,6 have shown that it is at least strongly probable that Sinai does not follow the Hittite pattern;7 secondly, because even if it did, at least some of the vassal treaties do show at least some bilaterality.8

It is best to approach the problem of the Sinai covenant by strictly exegetical means. Before beginning, it is good to put ourselves on guard against the use of aprioristic considerations. For such considerations, unfortunately, seem at least to have entered this debate. One gets the impression, for example, that some interpreters have excluded in advance any bilaterality because they reject all human conditions or cooperation in divine works,9 or because they fear bilaterality would mean that God would owe10 something to His creatures, which is, we grant, impossible. Still more common is the fear that any bilaterality would contradict St. Paul.11 Now of course, we do not intend to accept any interpretation that would really contradict St. Paul. Yet, sound method requires us not to prejudge the solution by what we think St. Paul means. For perhaps new light on St. Paul will be found through a more careful study of the Sinai covenant.

The first aprioristic difficulty is easily handled, for it really applies only to Protestant, not to Catholic interpreters. As to the second: It is true God cannot, strictly, owe anything to a creature. But He can owe something to Himself if He chooses freely to make a covenant pledge. He can owe it to Himself to keep His word. That, in practice, produces substantially the same result.

We will return to the problem about St. Paul later. But first, sound procedure urges that we try to find the interpretation of Sinai by strictly exegetical means.

We notice at the outset what at least appears to be a bilateral statement in Ex 19,5-6: "Therefore if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people...." In these words God seems to commit Himself to showing special favor, if His people observe the terms of the covenant which He delivers to Moses in the decalog. But before making a judgment on the matter, it is better to see how other parts of the OT understand this relationship.

Much light can be gleaned from a study of the uses of hesed in the Psalms, especially where it is used in parallelism.

First of all, we find a direct appeal to the covenant in Ps 74,20: "Look to your covenant, for the hiding places in the land and the plains are full of violence."

There are likewise appeals to the covenant bond, hesed: "Return, O Yahweh, save my life, rescue me because of your hesed."12

But we also find appeals to God's sedaqa: "In you, O Yahweh, I take refuge, let me never be put to shame, in your sedaqa rescue me and deliver me."13 And again: "Behold I long for your precepts; in your sedaqa give me life."14 We note that these appeals to sedaqa at least seem parallel to the appeals to the covenant, and so begin to suspect that for Yahweh to fulfill hesed is a matter of sedaqa.

This suspicion finds support in the many Psalm verses in which hesed is put into parallelism with sedaqa: "Keep up your hesed towards your friends; your sedaqa to the upright of heart."15 And similarly: "For your name's sake, O Yahweh, preserve me, in your sedaqa free me from distress; and in your hesed destroy my enemies, bring to naught all my foes, for I am your servant."16 In view of the parallelism in these verses, it would seem that God's exercise of hesed is considered also as an exercise of sedaqa. That is, for him to keep his part under the covenant, is a matter of moral righteousness. Hence, he must have bound himself.

We find a similar parallelism of 'emuna, fidelity to the covenant, with sedaqa. For example: "O Yahweh, hear my prayer, listen to my supplication in your 'emuna, answer me in your sedaqa."17 Again, God has bound himself.

Is our conclusion that the writers of these Psalms considered that Yahweh had bound himself vitiated by the fact that on the one hand, hesed is some times used loosely of mere mercy, rather than of the precise covenant bond, and on the other hand sedaqa in later times18 could be used also in a more vague sense? It seems not, and for several reasons:

1) We note that a condition is required, in our citations, for the exercise of hesed: "All the ways of the Lord are hesed and 'emet towards those who keep His covenant and His decrees."19 Now if a condition is required for hesed, then hesed cannot be mere mercy in the exact sense of that word, for mercy as such is gratuitous, and so does not require a condition. But here it is required that the human partner keep the covenant. Similarly: "The hesed of Yahweh is from eternity to eternity toward those who fear him; and his sedaqa toward children's children, among those who keep his covenant and remember to fulfill his precepts."20 Again, the presence of a condition, for the carrying out of hesed-sedaqa by Yahweh is not promised to all, but "toward those who fear him" and "among those who keep his covenant." Similar conditions are contained in the verses cited above: Pss 36,11 and 143,11-12.21 We note too the citation given above from Ps 25,10: "All the ways of the Lord are hesed and 'emet toward those who keep his covenant...." The coupling of hesed with 'emet shows that hesed is not a matter of mere mercy, for this exercise of hesed is a matter of 'emet, fidelity-that is, fidelity to the covenant. But fidelity to a covenant is not mere gratuitous mercy, it is the carrying out of a pledge.

2) Not a few texts put Yahweh and Israel in parallel positions. In remarkably bold language, Dt 26,17-18 asserts: "You have caused Yahweh today to say he will be a God to you ... and Yahweh has caused you today to say you will be to him a people, a special possession." Similarly, Ex 24,8 says: "Behold the blood of the covenant which Yahweh has cut with you." We note it does not say "for you," but "with you." Hence Ps 62,13 says flatly: "And you, Adonai, have hesed, for you will pay a man according to his work." In other words, a reason is given why the Lord can be said to have hesed: the reason is that he pays a man according to that man's work. So that is what hesed involves. Similarly, Dt 7,12 plainly tells the people of Israel: "As your reward for heeding these decrees and observing them carefully, Yahweh your God will keep for you the covenant and the hesed which he promised...."

3) The imagery of the marriage22 between Yahweh and his people plainly conveys the same sort of mutual bond. As Father Stuhlmueller has so well observed: "Marriage is a mutual contract, a two way agreement; what is true for one party, is true for the other. God dares to oblige himself by such an agreement."23

4) We might add too that the LXX at times renders hesed by dikaiosyne, the Greek word for justice, thereby reflecting the idea that God had bound himself. For example, in Ex 34,6-7 God describes himself as "continuing hesed [dikaiosyne] for a thousand generations." And the victory hymn of Ex 15,13 sings: "In your hesed [dikaiosyne] you led the people you redeemed."24

5) Finally, St. Paul definitely seems to consider Sinai to be bilateral, for it is that very fact that raises a difficult problem in his thought in Gal 3,16-18,25 where he tries to explain how it can be that the Sinai covenant, being conditioned on human response, did not conflict with the unconditioned promises to Abraham.

The conclusion seems to emerge that Sinai was bilateral, so that both Yahweh and His people undertook obligations, with him promising to make them his favored people on condition of their obedience. But someone may wonder if this is not rather cold legalism, and if it can fit with the gratuity of God's love. We return, therefore, to the three questions raised earlier, namely: 1) Why did God want any covenant? 2) Why did He choose Israel as the partner? 3) Why does he observe his part in it?

It is only the third question which we seem to have answered thus far, and even that only partially. The answer we have reached is that part of the reason why God keeps his part in the covenant is that he bound himself to do so. But to understand the remaining, and more basic part of the answer to this third question, we must take up the first two questions.

In regard to why God wanted any covenant: Of course, it was not to gain anything for himself: "Can a man be profitable to God ... ? Is it of advantage to the Almighty if you are just? Or is it a gain to him if you make your ways perfect?"26 Since he could not want a covenant for gain to himself, it must be that He made it out of spontaneous, unmerited, generous love. But we may still ask why that love decided to use a covenant form. At least two reasons seem obvious: 1) Human beings in general are apt to mistrust God, saying: His ways are above ours as the heavens are above the earth: Who can understand them? Israel in particular came from a milieu in which the gods were the object of mistrust.27 A covenant could be a device of love to make men know where they stand, to reassure them that at least under specified conditions they may have confidence. 2) His spontaneous love wants to give favors to men. But it is necessary, as a minimum, that men should not make themselves indisposed, so as to be incapable of receiving. The covenant could be a device to lead men to be properly disposed, so that his love could give. For love to bind itself is a testimony to its intensity, just as a man who makes a vow at least supposedly does so out of intense love, wishing to assure his own perseverance in a good course. God, of course, could not doubt his own perseverance, but he knew that men could. So again, to prove his love and thereby to move them to respond is an obvious reason for a covenant regime. Sifre on Numbers says well: "God's ways are not like those of 'flesh and blood.' For a man acquires slaves that they may look after and sustain him, but God acquires slaves that he may look after and sustain them."28

Why was Israel chosen? Of course not because after the Torah was translated into seventy languages, all but Israel refused it.29 The real reason is given in Dt 7,7: "It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the Lord set His heart on you, and chose you.... It was because the Lord loved you...." And if we press further and ask why he made that particular choice out of love, we may not unreasonably conjecture that Israel, being a stiff-necked people, needed special help and care, more so than other nations.30 A good Father gives more care to a child who needs it.

If we return now to the third question, why God kept his part of the covenant, we can easily see that the most basic reason was simply his generous, unmerited love. That love led him to make a covenant; the same love led him to observe it. The obedience, such as it was, of his people, would then be only an added and secondary reason, not the basic reason, for his giving favors under the covenant.

Jeremiah and the New Covenant

Before turning to the NT itself, we must consider the prophecy of Jer 31,31-34: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers ... for they broke my covenant, and I had to show myself their master31.... But this is the covenant.... I will place my law within them and write it on their hearts: I will be their God, and they shall be my people." Although the immediate reference32 of this prophecy seems to be the time of the return from exile, yet, following Vatican II,33 we can see that its vision was not limited to that time, but embraced also the Christian dispensation. For, 1) The new covenant is to be made with all of God's people, with "the house of Israel and the house of Judah." But, in the merely literal and genealogical sense, only Judah, not also Israel, returned from exile. So it is best to make the full reference to Israel in the Pauline sense of spiritual descendants. Father Vawter is quite right in saying: "Anyone whose view is limited to the Old Testament's account of itself would have had to say that prophecy had failed, and that Jeremiah had ... failed worst of all. Luckily ... we have been taught by One greater than the prophets to see its fulfillment in an Israel that is truly new, an Israel that is not of the flesh but of the spirit."34 2) Christ Himself in the Cenacle clearly alludes to and intends to fulfill this prophecy, in his words about the cup of the new covenant.

We note at once that the new is to be different from the old in two ways: 1) The old was broken, but the new will be eternal; 2) The old law was written on stone, but in the new, the law will be written in hearts.35

But it is equally clear that the new is parallel to the old in the essential respects First, the old covenant created a people of God: so does the new. Second, the favor of God in the old required as a condition, the obedience of his people; in the new, obedience is likewise required, even though it is not to an external law written on stone, but to an interior law written in hearts.

The Pauline View of the New Covenant

One of the aprioristic objections to a bilateral view of Sinai was that it would not fit with the spirit of St. Paul. It is true that Paul gives no synthesis in which he describes a new covenant that is parallel to Sinai. But it is not to be expected that Paul would make such a synthesis. First, because the Semitic mind is not inclined to synthetic constructions. Second, because Paul had to argue with all vigor against those who overstressed the Sinai covenant in a distorted way. With our modern ecumenical approach, we would have made all possible concessions to the Judaizers, and would have made many a distinction in attempting to admit all possible truth in their stand. Not so Paul. As a true Semite, he did not indulge in distinctions, nor in concessions to adversaries. Instead, he barely admitted any good at all in their position, and attacked them with every bit of force he could muster.

Yet, in spite of all this, though we cannot look for a synthesis, we can look for the essential elements of the covenant view we are considering. We have already noted in regard to Jer 31 that there are two essential features needed if the new covenant is really parallel to a bilateral old covenant. That is: Does the new covenant 1) Make a new people of God ? 2) Require that that new people obey a law as a condition of obtaining divine favor?

Paul clearly teaches that the new covenant creates a new people of God: "You are the temple of the living God, as God says: For I will dwell among them and will walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people."36 In Rom 11 he envisions this new people as not entirely distinct from the old people of God, but rather as grafted into the old;37 and he applies to the new people the words of Hosea, originally written of the old people of God:38 "A people not mine I will call my people, and an unbeloved, beloved, and her who has not obtained mercy, one who has obtained mercy. And it shall be in the place where it was said to them: You are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living God."39

Paul teaches that this new covenant was established in the Cenacle: "I myself have received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which he was betrayed, took bread ... and also the cup, saying: 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood.'"40 This blood is the price, which has bought the people of acquisition: "For you have been bought at a great price,"41 and "now that we are justified by his blood, we shall be saved through him...."42 But it is not just the mere physical shedding of the blood of Christ which wrought redemption, for Paul told the Romans: "Just as by the disobedience of the one man the many were constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many will be constituted just."43 So the obedience of Christ to the will of the Father was the basic required condition on the human side of the new covenant, just as the obedience of Israel was the human condition in the old covenant.

But Paul does not confine the requirement of obedience to Christ himself: Those who belong to his body, in order to come under the covenant with him, must do all things syn Christo. They too must obey. Paul presents this requirement in the vein inaugurated by the words of Jer 31. For he tells the Romans that the spirit of Christ writes in Christians the "law of the Spirit,"44 so that they "do not walk according to the flesh."45 But Paul knows well that Christians can refuse to follow the spirit, and so he injects a condition into his assertions, "if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ."46 And similarly: "if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live."47 Or, "Whoever are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God."48 We see that those who are not led by the spirit, are not sons. Paul does not even shrink from using the imagery of slavery to describe this obedience, and does so in the very epistle in which he so splendidly extols the freedom of the sons of God: "Do you not know that to whom you offer yourselves as slaves for obedience, to him whom you obey you are the slaves, whether to sin unto death, or to obedience unto justice. But thanks be to God, that you who were the slaves of sin have now obeyed ... that form of doctrine into which you have been delivered and ... you have become the slaves of justice."49

If we add up these data, we shall see that the result is really parallel to the old covenant on the essential points.50 In both, the covenant creates a people of God, to whom God binds Himself to show favor. In both, the people receive the favor on condition of obedience. In the new covenant, that obedience is basically the obedience of Christ, by which the many are constituted just. But to come under the covenant with Christ, one must be syn Christo in the double sense of pertaining to His body, and of being like Him in obedience to the law of the spirit.

The Problem of Gratuity in St. Paul

But someone will object that we seem to have destroyed the gratuity of grace, a theme so dear to Paul. To understand the situation, we must recall that Paul, like his Master, used the Semitic style of presenting complex matters. We today would construct a synthesis with many delicately drawn distinctions. But just as Christ was capable of saying on one occasion: "when you pray ... pray to your Father in secret, and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you,"51 and on another: "let your light shine before men, in order that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven,"52 so also Paul taught by means of two series of affirmations seemingly opposed to each other. It was up to the hearer to put them together mentally if he could, or, if unable or if lacking in inclination to speculate, to simply accept in faith both series of seemingly irreconcilable teachings.

One series of Pauline texts vigorously affirms gratuity: "For we reckon that a man is justified by faith independently of the works of the Law ... to him who works, the reward is not credited as a favor, but as something due. But to him who does not work, but believes ... his faith is credited to him as justice."53 Again, Paul stresses that we are heirs since we are sons: "the spirit himself gives testimony ... that we are sons of God. But if we are sons, we are heirs also...."54 This clearly implies gratuity, for no son is said to earn his inheritance. Similarly: "... the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is life everlasting."55 Death is indeed earned, it is the wages of sin. But everlasting life is not earned, it is "the gift of God."

The apparently opposite series of Pauline statements includes chiefly those already cited on the required obedience of the new people of God. To them we might add his teaching that we are "heirs ... provided however we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified with him."56 Or, "Do we therefore through faith destroy the Law? By no means. Rather, we establish the Law."57 And again, "Circumcision does not matter, and uncircumcision does not matter, but the keeping of the commandments of God is what matters."58 And also, "For it is not they who hear the Law that are just in the sight of God; but it is they who follow the Law that will be justified."59 And Paul himself looks forward to his reward as something earned: "For the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will give to me in that day...."60

To find the synthesis which Paul did not express-and which he may never have worked out in his own mind-there are two lines of approach, each of which will reveal a different part of the complete picture.

One line begins with the three questions we asked in reference to Sinai. Briefly, we saw that there was a basic reason why God wanted to make a covenant and why he kept his part under it: that reason was unmerited, spontaneous, generous love. Having made it, there was the added reason that he had bound Himself. The same answers are to be given to these questions in regard to the new covenant. Therefore, one set of Pauline assertions brings out the most basic and fundamental reason, gratuitous love. The other set brings out the fact that there is an added reason why God honors his commitment, namely, that in his generosity he really did bind himself, so that he owes it to himself (though not, technically, to his creatures) to keep his pledge.

The second line of approach would distinguish two stages in the process the application of redemption to each man: 1) The initial becoming a member of Christ and heir of God, 2) the subsequent living out of this status.

The one series of Pauline assertions, those that stress gratuity, bring out the fact that no man by his own power merits to become a member of Christ. That status is given him without any merit on his part. It is Christ alone who has earned that favor for each man. Until a man becomes a member of Christ, he cannot earn anything under the covenant, for it is only as a member of Christ, not as a private individual, that he can come under the covenant and earn favor. So he must first become a member, and only after that can he earn divine favor by fulfilling the covenant terms. So that first stage, the most essential, is gratuitous.

The other series of Pauline teachings brings out the fact that once a man has, without any merit of his, been made a member of Christ and a sharer with him in the covenant, from then on that man can earn divine favor. And further, he is expected to, for as Paul says, those who do not walk according to the spirit do not belong to Christ, and so are not heirs with him.61

The Epistle to the Hebrews

The nature of the covenant concept held by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has been questioned, partly because of alleged changes in the concept of covenant due to the use of the Greek diatheke,62 partly because of the remarks in Heb 9,15-17, in which the concept of testament is dominant, as contrasted with that of a bilateral pact.

We readily grant that Heb 9,15-17 does use the word in the sense of last will. However, we believe that the correct view is given by Mendenhall, who writes: "There is an incidental argument drawn from the Greek usage of diatheke to refer to a 'last will and testament.' There can be no doubt, however, that this is simply an apologetical argument, and cannot be taken seriously as the framework of the author's concept of the covenant, which is entirely within the OT pattern of thought."63

A closer inspection of all pertinent passages in Hebrews reveals that, with the one exception noted, the writer's covenant concept is as Mendenhall asserts. For the writer clearly teaches the essential points which we have seen above, namely: 1) The covenant creates a new people of God, to whom He binds Himself to show favor; 2) this favor is dependent on a condition, obedience.

First, the new covenant does create a new people of God. This appears clearly in the long passage of 8,6-13 in which Jer 31,31ff is quoted and applied to the new covenant. We note especially v.10: "For this is the covenant ... I will put my laws into their mind and upon their hearts I will write them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people." The fact that God binds Himself is clear in v.6 of the same passage, which speaks. Of a "superior covenant enacted on the basis of superior promises." Since God has promised, He is bound by His promise.

Secondly, there is a human condition, obedience. That this condition is really required, so that there is not just a unilateral promise is made clear in several places. First in v.10, just cited: "I will put my laws into their mind and upon their hearts I will write them." But, still more clearly, 10,36 says: "For you have need of patience, that, doing the will of God, you may receive the promise." Here it is explicitly stated that for the people to receive what is promised, they must do the will of God, must obey. So it is evident that God's promise is not unilateral: it is conditioned by men's "doing the will of God."

We saw that in the thought of Paul, the essential obedience by which the new covenant is constituted is that of Christ: the obedience of others is required but is secondary. The Epistle to the Hebrews has the same teaching: "... in coming into the world He says: 'Sacrifice and oblation you did not want, but a body you have fitted to me....' Then said I: 'Behold I come to do your will, O God.' In saying in the first place, 'Sacrifices and oblations ... you did not want' ... and then saying: 'Behold I come to do your will, O God,' He annuls the first [covenant] in order to establish the second. It is in this 'will'64 that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."65 So Christ, who "learned obedience from the things He suffered,"66 sanctified men, and established the second covenant by this "will," that is, by the will he proclaimed on entering into the world: "Behold I come to do your will, O God." Thus "He became to all who obey him the cause of eternal salvation."67

A confirmation of the bilaterality of the covenant appears also in the repeated assertions68 that Christ is the "mediator" or "surety" of a new covenant. In the framework of a last will concept, there is neither need nor place for a mediator. In the framework of a bilateral covenant, parallel to that of Sinai, in which Moses was the mediator, there is place for the New Moses,69 Christ. As Paul says, "there is no intermediary where there is only one"70 party. But a bilateral agreement has room for an intermediary.

Other NT Writings

Elsewhere in the NT71 we do not find the clarity of covenant thought that we saw in Paul and in Hebrews. Yet the essential notions are widespread.

First, the Synoptics all present Christ as saying in the Cenacle that the cup is the new72 covenant in his blood. In so doing he is plainly alluding to and intentionally fulfilling Jer 31,31. As Mendenhall says: "In the light of covenant forms, there seems to be no reason to doubt that this act was intended as the formal rite which established a covenant relationship."73

Again, the frequent theme that Christ is the New Moses,74 points to his making a new covenant. To that new people, he gives a new law in the Sermon on the Mount. In saying that he came not to destroy but to fulfill the old law, he makes clear the parallelism of old and new. Again in the Cenacle he is depicted as giving a new law.75 Similarly, the promises of reward for following his way reveal the similarity to the old.

There is a specially explicit mention of the new people of God in 1 Pt 2,9-10, with an obvious allusion to Ex 19,5 6: "You however are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people.... You who in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God...." A similar allusion to Exodus is found in the new canticle of Ap 5,9-10: "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us for God with your blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and made them for our God a kingdom and priests...." The eternity of the covenant is depicted in Ap 21,24, in the OT bridal covenant imagery: "And I John saw the holy city Jerusalem coming down from heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: Look at the dwelling of God with men, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and he will be their God with them...."

Summary and Conclusions

In the Cenacle, Christ made a new covenant in his blood. This covenant was remarkably parallel to the old on all essential points. For both covenants brought into being a people of God. In both God bound himself to show favor to his people, but he bound himself on a condition, obedience. In the old, that obedience was to the covenant law, the decalog. In the new, that decalog is not destroyed but fulfilled, but the obedience that basically creates the new covenant is not merely that of men, but that of Christ. He did not sign a document, nor did he say in explicit words that he would do all that the Father commanded. Rather, he chose a symbolic or dramatized acceptance. For if a man's body is in one place, and his blood in another, that man is dead. In putting his body under the appearance of bread, his blood under that of wine, he in effect said: "Father, I know the command you have laid upon me, to die tomorrow. Here is my body, here is my blood: I accept." But for men to enter the new people of God and come under the new covenant they must be members of him who made it, that is, members of Christ. They must, further, be conformed to him, especially in his obedience to the Father.

Finally, we are far from any legalism, in spite of the many mentions of law. For not only did the Father make neither covenant in order to gain, but also he did not choose his old or new people on the basis of merits.76 We must add that in both covenants, the basic reason why he gives his gifts is not the obedience of his people, nor even the obedience of Christ. The basic reason is simply that the Father's generous love wanted to give. He chose to use the covenant framework as a device for giving. But that covenant is not the basic reason that moved the Father. The basic reason is, in both covenants, his love. The intensity of that love was such that it wanted to bind itself. It wanted to bind itself so as to reassure77 his people of his love, and thereby to move them to respond, not for his gain, but so that he might find in them the disposition needed to receive abundantly.

That is why Paul, who is so averse to legalism, can still describe himself and the other apostles as "qualified ministers of the new covenant."78




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


END NOTES
1 E.g., L. Cerfaux, Le Christ dans la théologie de Saint Paul (Paris, 21954) 110: "L'initiative de la reconciliation vient de Dieu (par le Christ) et de même qu'il n'y a pas d'alliance véritable entre Dieu et l'homme mais que l'alliance s'entend plutôt d'une disposition généreuse de Dieu acceptant l'homme dans son amitié, ainsi, dans la reconciliation, Dieu seul agit ..." [italics added]; J. Bonsirven, S.J., Theology of the New Testament (tr. S. F. Tye; Westminster, 1963) 280: "The essence of the covenant, unilateral rather than bilateral, was the promises God made.... We cannot say that blood played any part in it. This is truer still of the new covenant ..."; J. Giblet, "God's Covenant with Men," The God of Israel, the God of Christians (tr. Kathryn Sullivan, R.S.C.J.; Deus Books, 1966) 27: "Of course, this Covenant was essentially a favor and is, in no sense, a bilateral contract ...", Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology (tr. D. M. G. Stalker; New York, 1962) 1,131: "... the text [of J] clearly understands the covenant ... as a unilateral protective relationship. In the Elohist's picture in Ex xxiv.3-8 ... the human partner is ... called on to make a decision and only as he declares himself ready to play his part is the covenant made." Cf. also H. B. Huffmon, "The Exodus, Sinai and the Credo," CBQ 27 (1965) 101-113; and the excellent survey by D. J. McCarthy, "Covenant in the Old Testament: The Present State of Inquiry," CBQ 27 (1965) 217-240.
2 E.g., Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament (tr. J. A. Baker; Philadelphia, 1961) I, 37: "... the use of the covenant concept in secular life argues that the religious berit too was always regarded as a bilateral relationship; for even though the burden is most unequally distributed ... this makes no difference to the fact that the relationship is still essentially two sided. The idea that in ancient Israel the berit was always and only thought of as Yahweh's pledging of himself to which human effort was required to make no kind of response (Kraetzschmar), can therefore be proved to be erroneous"; Bruce Vawter, C.M., "Our God is the God of History," Worship (April, 1958) 289: "For Amos a covenant by its very nature consists in rahamim, a term which means the spontaneous dedicated love that a mother feels for her child. The other prophets join to this the virtue of hesed, the dutiful love which results from a common bond and which conveys mutual obligations. From these two fonts have sprung the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians and the Last Supper discourse of John's Gospel" [italics added].
3 J. Bonsirven, Palestinian Judaism in the Time of Christ (tr. W. Wolf; New York, 1965) 46. [Italics added.]
4 Cf. ibid., 45: "Apart from his own people, God found no nation or land capable of receiving the Torah (R. Simeon ben Yohai, ca. A.D. 150, Sifre on Deut., 32:8). God foresaw the future merits of Israel."
5 Ibid. 46.
6 D. J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant (Rome, 1963) 172: "... the great, original covenant of Sinai ... does not show the covenant form." We might add too that even if Sinai had much stronger resemblance than it actually does to the Hittite form, one might still observe with McCarthy (p. 58): "... it should be an axiom of form study that similar situations call forth similar responses, and thus formal similarity hardly proves a causal nexus between similar manifestations in different cultures."
7 Cyrus H. Gordon, in spite of the fact that he at times goes beyond his evidence, yet seems to have shown an at least probable existence of what could be called the Amarna culture, i.e., many common cultural features in the civilizations of Egypt, Palestine, and even Greece and some other near eastern areas during the Amarna period. He is clearly correct in saying (The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations, New York, 1965, 96): "One of the most remarkable documents of ancient Anatolia is the Apology of Hattusili III. Though a son of King Mursili, Hattusili was not in line to succeed his father. And yet he did ... wrest the throne for himself. To justify himself he composed this Apology showing how he had been wronged and how he and the goddess Ishtar entered into a covenant, whereby she protected him and advanced his career in return for his devotion to her and for his elevation of her to the foremost place among the gods. The relationship between the king and the protecting deity is of a piece with the personal Covenant relationship between the Patriarchs and Yahweh in which human devotion is matched by divine protection. Greek heroic literature is replete with illustrations of such covenant relationships between a particular man and a particular deity." Cf. also ibid., 256-257, and H. Mattingly, Roman Imperial Civilization (New York, 1959) 262: "The usual form of prayer was the vow, the prayer accompanied by the promise to pay some tribute named when the prayer was answered."
8 Cf. the treaty of Duppi-Tessub (in ANET 204): "When I, the Sun, sought after you in accordance with your father's word and put you in your father's place, I took you in oath for the king of the Hatti land, and for my sons and grandsons. So honor the oath to the king and the king's kin! And I, the king, will be loyal toward you, Duppi-Tessub" [italics added]. Cf. also McCarthy, "Three Covenants in Genesis," CBQ 26 (1964) 188-189.
9 There is a tendency to consider that the divine favors had been given in advance of Sinai. This eliminates, or seems to eliminate, a need to return in bilaterality. Cf. Huffmon, art. cit., 108: "... Sinai ... based upon prior gracious acts of the suzerain...."
10 Cf. the comment in ThWNT 2, 477: "Nur muss man dabei festhalten, dass es immer de hesed ist, den Gott verheizen hat, den man zwar nicht beanspruchen kann, den man aber erwartet...."
11 Cf. McCarthy, "Covenant in the Old Testament...," 233.
12 Ps 6,5.
13 Ps 71,1-2.
14 Ps 119,40. Cf. Pss 116,3-6; 31,2, and Dt 32,4.
15 Ps 36,11.
16 Ps 143, 11-12. Cf. Ps 40,11.
17 Ps 143,1. Cf. also parallelisms of hesed with mishpat (often with sedaqa in the same passage): Ps 33,4-5; 36,6-7; 89,15, 119,149.
18 Cf. Bonsirven, Palestinian Judaism 19.
19 Ps 25,10.
20 Ps 103,17-18.
21 Cf. also Ps 32,10; Dt 7,9-10; Dn 9,4.
22 Hos 2,18-22; Jer 2,2; 3,1; Ez 16,8; Is 50,1; 54,5, 62,5.
23 Carroll Stuhlmueller, C.P., The Prophets and the Word of God (Notre Dame, 1964) 103.
24 Cf. Is 38,19; Gn 24,27; 32,11.
25 Paul tries to solve the problem by saying in 3,21 that if a law had been given that could give life, there would be a conflict between law and promise: but, the law cannot give life; so, there is no conflict. His interpretation is hardly meant as literal, but is rather of the Rabbinic type which can ignore the literal sense. This is shown by the fact that Paul in 3,15-16 takes sperma to refer to Christ because it is singular. This of course ignores the fact that both the Greek and the Hebrew nouns though singular in form are commonly collective in sense. Paul himself takes the same sperma as collective in Rom 9,7; 4,13.16. Further, Paul ignores the original literal object of the old promise, i.e., the land and temporal favor, which were later understood more and more of spiritual favors (S. Lyonnet, De peccato et redemptione [Romae, 1957, 1960] I,34; II,36) but in their original literal sense as seen by the first readers could not have been taken of eternal salvation, of which the first readers probably had no concept.
26 Jb 22,2-3.
27 Cf. a Mesopotamian hymn: "What is in Enlil's holy mind? What has he planned against me in his holy mind? A net he spread: that is the net of an enemy. A snare he set: that is the snare of an enemy.' Cited from Thorkild Jacobsen, "Mesopotamia," The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago, 1946) 144.
28 Sifre on Numbers, Shelah § 115,35a, cited from C. K. Barrett, The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (New York, 1961) 152.
29 Cf. Bonsirven, Palestinian Judaism 53.
30 Paul asserts that men are chosen for the people of God, not on the basis of merits (Rom 9), but that instead, "the foolish things of the world has God chosen to put to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world has God chosen to shame the strong' (1 Cor 1,26-27); Ezekiel is told (3,5-7) that he is not being sent to strange nations but to Israel who will reject him, though the nations would accept him; the book of Jonah depicts the Assyrians, the worst of all people in the Jewish mind, as readily listening to a prophet, though Israel stoned her prophets; the Gospels depict just one cured leper, a Samaritan, as returning to say thanks while nine of the chosen people did not, and again, represents officials of the chosen people passing by the wounded man on the way to Jericho, while only a Samaritan showed charity. Cf. W. Most, De gratia et praedestinatione (Romae, 1963) §§ 68-69.
31 J. Coppens ("La nouvelle alliance en Jer 31,31-34," CBQ 25 [1963] 14) translates "car eux ont violé mon alliance et, moi, j'ai dû agir envers eux en maître-époux." The CCD translation brings out better the fact that the violation of the covenant made it necessary for Yahweh to act not as a kinsman but as a master.
32 Paul indulges in a similar amplification of the words of Hosea in Rom 9,24ff.
33 De Ecclesia 2,9: "'Ecce dies veniunt, dicit Dominus, et feriam domui Israel et domui Iuda foedus novum....' Quod foedus novum Christus instituit, novum scilicet testamentum in suo sanguine, ex Iudaeis ac gentibus plebem vocans, quae non secundum carnem sed in Spiritu ad unitatem coalesceret, essetque novus Populus Dei."
34 Bruce Vawter, C.M., The Conscience of Israel (New York, 1961) 277. Cf. Rom 9,6-8.
35 W. D. Davies, Torah in the Messianic Age and/or the Age to Come (JBL Monograph Series, VII; Philadelphia, 1952) 21-28, argues convincingly that the interior character of the new law does not preclude that law being simultaneously written.
36 2 Cor 6,16.
37 Rom 11,13-22.
38 S. Lyonnet, Quaestiones in Epistulam ad Romanos (Rome, 1956) II, 60-61.
39 Rom 9,25-26.
40 1 Cor 11,23-25. Cf. W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London, 1962) 250-253, esp. 253: "It is not then as sacrificial and expiatory but as covenantal that Paul chiefly thinks of the Death of Jesus in the context of the Last Supper, although of course everything covenantal had a sacrificial basis."
41 1 Cor 6,20.
42 Rom 5,9; cf. 3,25 and Eph 1,7; 2,13; Col 1,14-20.
43 Rom 5,19. Cf. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism 265-66: "... the death of the Messiah could only have one meaning for him, it would be the expression of obedience to the demands of God.... Paul's emphasis on the category of obedience as the clue to the Death of Jesus is essentially Rabbinic."
44 Rom 8,2.
45 Rom 8,1.
46 Rom 8,9.
47 Rom 8,13.
48 Rom 8,14.
49 Rom 6,16-18. Davies (Paul and Rabbinic Judaism 148-150, 222, 223, 225-226) holds that Paul thought of Jesus as Himself the New Torah. As to the slave imagery, we note that in Col 3,23-24 Paul glides without effort between the sonship imagery ("inheritance") and slave imagery.
50 Cf. G. E. Mendenhall, s.v. "Covenant," Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (New York, 1962) 723: "... the Sinai covenant of the OT and the NT covenant in Christ's blood are one: each created a people of God out of those who were no people, demanded the complete self-surrender to God as a joyful response to the love of God which preceded. The simple stipulations of the Decalogue were summed up in the yet simpler obligation of love at Jesus' command...."
51 Mt 6,6.
52 Mt 5,16.
53 Rom 3,28; 4,4-5.
54 Rom 8,16-17.
55 Rom 6,23.
56 Rom 8,17.
57 Rom 3,31.
58 1 Cor 7,19.
59 Rom 2;13-14. Paul does not consider this as a mere speculative hypothesis, but as a reality, for he says that the Gentiles "do what the Law prescribes" and that they show "the work of the Law written in their hearts"-by the spirit, spoken of in chapter 8.
60 2 Tm 4,8. Paul's thought on merit is fully in accord with the Rabbinic thought the time and with his own Rabbinic training, as Davies shows well (Paul and Rabbinic Judaism 268-273).
61 Pauline faith is closely related to the covenant condition, obedience. For Pauline faith, being the adherence of the whole man to God, will vary according to the type of encounter. If God speaks a truth, total adherence means intellectual assent; if God makes a promise, it requires full confidence; if God gives a command, adherence means obedience. The faith of Abraham of which Paul speaks in Rom 4 is both intellectual assent and confidence. But it is, in a way, also obedience, for God ordered Abraham to believe, and Abraham did so. Yet, in view of what we said above about the need of first becoming a member of Christ and only after that being able to earn under the covenant, Abraham's response here would not earn his justification, for that justification was the OT counterpart of Christian justification in which a man first becomes a member of Christ, the prerequisite for earning anything. Cf. W. Most, op. cit., §§ 77-87.
62 As early as the 1920's exegetes began to give up the too Hellenistic interpretation of diatheke. L. G. Da Fonseca concluded an exhaustive philological study ("Diatheke -Foedus an Testamentum," Bib 9 [1928] 158) with this result: "Veterem diatheken intelligunt NT Aa qualem veteres Hagiographi concipiebant: Foedus inter Deum et homines, uno Deo auctore instituto, sed in se ipso bilaterale, iniquum (maximam partem) hypotheticum.... Novam autem diatheken modo prorsus parallelo concipiunt' [italics his]. He found no instance at all in the LXX where diatheke meant last will. The entry in ThWNT 2,137 agrees: "Form und Inhalt des Begriffes diatheke verdankt das NT dem AT. Was zwischen AT und NT liegt, ist der Schritt von der Weissagung zur Erfüllung." Moulton-Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament (London, 1957) 148, says: "we may fairly put aside the idea that in LXX 'testament' is the invariable meaning: it takes some courage to find it there at all." Various commentators agree, e.g., the article on "Covenant" in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible (New York, 1963) says: "Throughout, the sacred writers of the NT appear to have kept the OT concepts; a contrary opinion is held by some who conclude that the NT writers misunderstood the OT, and intentionally or unintentionally transformed diatheke='covenant' into diatheke='testament.' But such a thing is hardly likely for writers who were born Jews.... It can hardly be doubted that Paul understands diatheke in the OT sense.... Only in Gal 3,15 ff is diatheke used in the Hellenistic sense of testament ... the writer [of Hebrews] understood diatheke in the OT sense." Cf. also the citation from Mendenhall below, at note 63. For certain, it is not possible to hold that the OT notion of covenant was forgotten by NT times. Lyonnet (Quaestiones in Epistulam ad Romanos [Roma, 21962] 89-101) has shown that it was well known. And Paul had to fight against a distortion of that covenant idea, which, however, was objectionable only in that it attributed to man's unaided power the ability to merit justification. Paul himself, as we saw above, clearly understood the old covenant as bilateral, in Gal 3,16-18, where he tried to solve a difficult problem brought on by that bilaterality. Cf. note 25 above. We also saw above that Paul has all the essential elements of the bilateral covenant in his own teaching. The Qumran community certainly had the old idea of covenant, which permeated all their writings. Cf., e.g., Hymn 5,5-19 (T. H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures [New York, 1964] 153): "... to them that seek after that truth, Thou bindest Thyself in pledge"; and the Zadokite document (Gaster, op. cit., 75) speaks of "the covenant which he made with those ancients to forgive their iniquities." (The thought that God had even bound himself to forgive perhaps reflects such passages as Mi 7,9 and Ps 51,16.) We might add that not all scriptural usage of words corresponds to the secular use; cf., e.g., `ilaskesthai in the study by Lyonnet, De peccato et redemptione (Romae, 1960) II, 67-117.
63 Art. cit., 723.
64 Thus even though Hebrews stresses sacrifice more than covenant, it does recognize obedience as the heart of sacrifice. Cf. the comment of Sifre on Numbers 28,8 in regard to the prescription of offering a second lamb at evening "as a sweet-smelling oblation to the Lord":-"This is said to teach you that it makes no difference to God whether one offers much or little. For precisely as it says 'a sweet-smelling oblation' in regard to the offering of an ox, so does it also in regard to the offering of a sheep or a goat and so also in regard to the offering of a bird. It is said to teach you that in his sight eating and drinking are nothing, but much more ... because he has said [commanded] it, and now, in the presentation of the offering, His will is done." This is clearly an echo of 1 Sm 15,22: "Obedience is better than sacrifices"; cf. Hos 6,6: "For hesed is my pleasure, and not sacrifice." That is, what counts is obedience to the covenant.
65 Heb 10,5-10.
66 Heb 5,8.
67 Heb 5,9.
68 Heb 7,22; 8,6; 9,15; 12,24.
69 Cf. Heb 3,1-6. The New Moses theme is common in the NT elsewhere too; cf., for example, Mt 2,15.20; Jn 1,17; Acts 3,22. The SBJ in a note on Dt 18,18 says: "Sur la base de ce texte du Dt, les Juifs ont attendu le Messie comme un nouveau Moïse." Cf. also Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, chapters 7-9, esp. p. 144, and H. M. Teeple, The Mosaic Eschatological Prophet (JBL Monograph Series, X; Philadelphia 1957).
70 Gal 3,20.
71 It is interesting to note also Pliny, Epistles 10,96: "Adfirmabant autem hanc fuisse summam vel culpae suae vel erroris, quod essent soliti stato die ante lucem convenire carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere s cum invicem, seque sacramento non in scelus aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent...." Mendenhall (art. cit.) thinks, rightly, that this may reflect a covenant notion.
72 The word new is lacking in the better MSS of Mt 26,28 and Mk 14,24, but is present in Lk 22,20 and in 1 Cor 11,25.
73 Mendenhall, art. cit., 722.
74 Cf. note 69 above.
75 Jn 13,34.
76 Rom 9,11-18.
77 Cf. Rom 5,8-9: "But God proves His love for us, because when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
78 2 Cor 3,6.