Before Mary’s bodily Assumption
into heaven was defined, all theological faculties in the world were consulted
for their opinion. Our teachers’ answer was emphatically negative. What here
became evident was the one-sidedness, not only of the historical, but also of
the historicist method in theology. “Tradition” was identified with what could
be proved on the basis of texts. Altaner, the patrologist from Würzburg (who also had come from
Breslau), had proven in a scientifically persuasive manner that the doctrine of
Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was unknown before the fifth century; this
doctrine, therefore, he argued, could not belong to the “apostolic tradition”.
And this was his conclusion, which my teachers at Munich shared. This argument
is compelling if you understand “tradition” strictly as the handing down of
fixed formulas and texts. This was the position that our teachers represented.
But if you conceive of “tradition” as the living process whereby the Holy
Spirit introduces us to the fullness of truth and teaches us how to understand
what previously we could still not grasp (cf. Jn 16:12-13), then subsequent
“remembering” (cf. Jn 16:4, for instance) can come to recognize what it had not
caught sight of previously and yet was already handed down in the original
Word. But such a perspective was still quite unattainable by German theological
thought. (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 [trans. Erasmo
Leiva-Merikakis; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998], 58-59)
