Before I draw the
conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to
the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light
of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that
the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a
preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures.
The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of
the New Testament [to
a message that came to appear as simple,
in comparison with the doctrinal labyrinth of papal 'hellenism']
prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own
particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and
lacking in precision. [Faith
is not a living communion with God, it is an Object at the Laboratory of
reasoning, and as such it needs a scientific objective approach.
Therefore, since] the
New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek
spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed
[and since Greek is
the Aristotelian, studying God's word without studying Aristotle would
give you only a coarse and lacking in precision idea of the metaphysical
Object of God]. True,
there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have
to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions
made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are
part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature
of faith itself.
Thus we come to the papal
equation, that refusing 'hellenization' = refusing 'human reason' = refusing
'faith', with quotation marks everywhere, since all the words have a reduced
meaning. This is what happens when a Church acquires artificial soul,
having as salvation the objectification and discipline to an
ideology and programming.
