5. CONCLUSION

I would like to conclude this paper by first quoting two more paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which will form the basis of my concluding comments:

"By attributing to Jesus the divine title 'Lord', the first faith confessions of the Church, from the very beginning, affirm that the power, the honour, and the glory due to God the Father are due also to Jesus, because he is 'in the form of God' (Phil 2:6) [another pre-Pauline faith formula!]. At the same time these faith confessions also affirm that God has manifested this lordship of Jesus raising him from the dead and exalting him to his own glory." (No. 449)

"From the beginning of Christian history, the affirmation of Jesus' lordship over the world and history implies also the acknowledgement that man must not submit his or her own personal liberty in an absolute way to any worldly power, but only to God the Father and to the Lord Jesus Christ: Caesar is not 'the Lord'. 'The Church believes...that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point, and the goal of all human history.' ( (Gaudium et Spes, 10)." (No. 450)

No human being must submit his or her personal liberty to any worldly power in an absolute way. This challenge also faces all Christian exegesis of the Bible. The spirit of the Enlightenment has been in one sense the breakthrough of the Spirit of God, rich in fruits of tolerance, justice, sense of brotherhood and equality, desire for peace and universal communion, based on the principle that God-given reason is the common charism of all human beingsa nd freedom is of the essence of human nature. But the Enlightenment can also become a source of new slaveries and unimaginable oppressions, if it becomes detached from the ideal source of its world-stirring ideals, God.

By denying that "personal faith is presuppositional for proper exegesis", Conzelmann and Lindemann appear to me to fall into the pitfall of making an idol out of the spirit of the Enlightenment. By saying this, they are actually submitting themselves to the Caesar of modern rationalism, a contradictory form of rationalism, which devours its own childen: modern constitutionalism and democracy are as much the fruit of the Enlightenment as the two World Wars and the breakdown in morality which will characterize the 20th century in all future history.

Protestant (and Catholic) liberal critical exegesis seem to me, therefore, to be capitulating before the Moloch of modern godless rationalism. On the other hand, Protestant Fundamentalism apparently believes that, to meet the challenge of preserving the Christian faith in its pristine purity, it must deny the necessity and inevitability of the critical approach. Moderate Catholic Critical Exegesis stands between these two extremes. Why should it be given central place, if not because it is the only exegesis that effectively affirms the Mystery of God in Christ, while at the same time respecting the integrity of this rational animal, the human person?