In its role as hermeneutics, theology has the job, not of retrieving an original meaning, but on the contrary, of producing, starting especially from the text of the Scriptures, new texts, that is, new practices which foster the emergence of a new world. Its truth is always to be made; it resides in a future constantly happening. “Thus, the Christian truth is not,” Geffré emphasizes, “an invariant core that is passed on from century to century in the form of a frozen deposit. It resides in a continual advent exposed to the risks of history and of the Church’s interpretative freedom under the Spirit’s inspiration. In regard to the content of the faith, it is manifestly inadequate to always speak of a rapport between some invariant core and variable cultural expressions. One must guard against the illusion of a semantic invariability which somehow subsists beyond all contingencies of expression; to believe this is to retain an instrumental and vehicular conception of language. Rather, one must speak of a relation of relations.
Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, Translated by Patrick Madigan, S.J., and Madeleine Beaumont, pg. 69.
David,
The title of Chauvet’s book piqued my interest. I don’t know how far you’ve gotten into the book, but does the author discuss how a sacramental understanding might affect our conceptions of space-time? I’m working on a paper and I’m wondering if this book might be helpful.
Thanks.
I’ve only read 200 pages of the 555, but I have come across the author discussing corporality. Looking at the table of contents at the very end, there is a section on Barth and then the conclusion titled “Sacrament: Creation, History, and Eschatology” which you may find more helpful.