Description

0. Preamble

In the light of the «disappointing» results that the exegete recognizes at the end of his work and of the «conflict of interpretations» which we are still experiencing, one can understand – but is not obliged at all to share, on the contrary one should firmly oppose – the temptation to take refuge in reassuring catechetical or dogmatic formulations, settling for them in the knowledge of Christ that the faithful are called to cultivate. I think of the «pious seminarian» who takes this debate as an alibi for disengagement, and to whom I will never stop repeating the famous rabbinic saying: «the ignorant cannot be pious».

1. The intrusion of the term «metaphysical» between exegesis and theology

The perspective that I intend to propose once again here is rooted in the conviction that the gestures and words of Christ, as well as the Christological event itself, enclose a deep and inseparable relationship between the historical and meta-historical, physical and metaphysical, so as to require that their deep speculative and philosophical significance be brought out2.

Way back in 1904, in the midst of the modernist crisis, when Maurice Blondel dared to challenge that monster of philological and exegetical erudition of Alfred Loisy, he intended to denounce the «philosophical lacunae of modern exegesis» and introduced a sense of «metaphysics», from which it is appropriate to let ourselves be challenged here: «It should never be thought, that one should grasp with only historical sciences, a fact that is only a fact and is the whole fact. In regard to every link, as to the entire chain, psychological and moral problems which are implied in even the smallest action and derived from the most minimal testimony are suspended. And it is easy to understand why. Real history is made up of human lives; and human life is metaphysics in act. Pretending to establish historical science independently of any ideal concern […] means letting oneself be dominated, under the […]