Normative and Performative: The Authority of Scripture for Catholic Theology and Worship in the Thought of Pope Benedict XVI

This essay addresses Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini, which explained authoritatively the three central principles of Catholic scriptural interpretation found in the Vatican II constitution Dei Verbum. In Verbum Domini, much of Benedict’s prior work as a private theologian gained a magisterial voice. Hence, this essay will engage both with Verbum Domini and Benedict’s previous writings. For Benedict, theology is more than information. When practiced as a “spiritual science,” theology is a real contact with the living Word. The authors of scripture are, accordingly, “normative theologians.” The real contact with the living Word contained in scripture is most profoundly mediated by the Church’s liturgy. The biblical Word’s liturgical setting is the source of its theological normativity. Thus, for Benedict, the performativity of the Word implies a unity between Scripture and liturgy, and the resultant normativity of the Word implies a unity between Scripture and theology. Without these unities, and the life of continuous conversion that flows from their recognition, there can be no theology in the true sense of the word. If these unities are recognized, however, the task of the theologian becomes letting God himself “speak”—to be the servant or handmaiden of revelation.