Throughout his prodigious theological and ecclesiastical career, Joseph Ratzinger advanced a rich and nuanced theology of Revelation, reflecting at length on the nature, unity, and interrelationship of Scripture and Tradition, on their native ecclesial context, and on their transformative, Christ-centered purpose and aim. Ratzinger’s many writings in this area are marked not only by an unwavering fidelity to divinely revealed truth, but also by sensitivity to the difficulties of its interpretation, to the dynamics of historical progress and regress, and to the needs of the Church and the world within the modern era.

In Revelation, Hermeneutics, and Doctrinal Development in Joseph Ratzinger, Mauro Gagliardi offers a penetrating diachronic study of Ratzinger’s thought on these foundational themes. Beginning with his 1955 Habilitationsschrift on St. Bonaventure’s understanding of Revelation and continuing in his works of the conciliar and post-conciliar periods through those of his episcopacy and later pontificate, Gagliardi traces Ratzinger’s vision of Scripture and Tradition, of the Magisterium and theology, and of faith and its transmission today. By turns critical and appreciative, Gagliardi elucidates the German theologian’s teaching on Revelation in depth, exploring its underlying hermeneutic commitments, and, in the book’s final chapter, elaborating its implications for the question of the development of doctrine, a topic of both longstanding and pressing importance within Catholic theology and Christian thought.

Mauro Gagliardi, a priest of the Archdiocese of Salerno, Italy, holds an S.T.D. (Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome), an M.Phil. (University of Naples, “L’Orientale”), and a Diploma as Expert in University Teaching (Francisco de Vitoria University, Madrid). He is ordinary professor at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, and invited professor at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, and has also taught as a visiting professor in Spain and the United States. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as Consultor to the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Ponti_ and Consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments. Gagliardi is author of more than a dozen books, including the one-volume dogmatic theology Truth Is a Synthesis: Catholic Dogmatic Theology (Emmaus Academic, 2020).

“Joseph Ratzinger expressed his original theology of Revelation and biblical interpretation over a span of six decades, through a wide variety of genres, in writings that partly remain untranslated. Father Mauro Gagliardi’s mastery of the immense Ratzingerian corpus and pedagogical skill allow him to introduce in an effective way beginners and young scholars to the thought of this giant of twentieth-century Catholic theology.”
Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.
University of Fribourg

“In this volume, Fr. Gagliardi provides readers with a sophisticated yet crystal-clear presentation of Joseph Ratzinger’s Christocentric fundamental theology. Briskly written, the book offers a penetrating analysis of pivotal themes in Ratzinger’s thought—revelation, tradition, hermeneutics, and development—dogmatic themes that are crucial for advancing theology in service to the Gospel and to the Catholic Church. Highly recommended.”
Thomas G. Guarino
Seton Hall University

“In this careful and lucid study Father Mauro Gagliardi explores the heart of Joseph Ratzinger’s theological vision: his Christocentric understanding of divine Revelation. At the same time, he shows its continued importance as the Church newly wrestles with issues of synodality and doctrinal development. For synodality is most fundamentally the Church’s ‘walking with’ its Lord Jesus Christ. And authentic development is ever to enter more fully into the inexhaustible riches of the mystery of Christ.”
Robert Imbelli
Boston College

“This a timely work on a theologian whose legacy is yet to be fully appreciated, by a theologian who brings a fresh take on Ratzinger’s fundamental theology. A seasoned and holistic theologian in his own right, Rev. Dr. Gagliardi not only knows Ratzinger’s corpus, but approaches it with his characteristically catholic and synthetic approach (et-et) to dogmatics. The result is an interpretation of Ratzinger’s thought that is sympathetic, but not sycophantic. This is not simply an exposition and commentary on Ratzinger’s works, but a constructive contribution to contemporary theological discourse.”
Andrew Meszaros
St. Patrick’s Pontifical University

“Upon the death of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), there have been a number of edited books of essays that have treated various aspects of his theological corpus. However, Mauro Gagliardi’s Revelation, Hermeneutic, and Doctrinal Development in Joseph Ratzinger is the first work to assess almost the entirety of Ratzinger’s work. Gagliardi has mastered Ratzinger’s theology, and he presents it in a manner that is clear and yet scholarly. He creatively and insightfully allows the reader to appreciate the thought of the twentieth-century’s most brilliant theologian.”
Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap.
Former member of the Vatican’s Internation Theological Commission

“In this book, Mauro Gagliardi offers access to some important themes in Joseph Ratzinger’s theology—namely, Revelation and hermeneutics and the question of the development of the Church’s doctrine. Gagliardi’s presentation of these themes culminates in a reflection in which he not only offers perspectives for further reflection starting from Ratzinger’s theology, but also ventures to offer a constructive critique of points that seem to him to leave room for improvement. “Ratzinger saw Revelation not so much as what God said in the past, but as God’s current speaking to man; through the Church, Scripture becomes a living proclamation. Scripture and Tradition thus form one stream emanating from Revelation. According to Ratzinger, the Tradition of the Church is always an interpretation of Scripture.

“Ratzinger stressed that Scripture should not be read as a ‘dead historical book’ but understood as part of the Revelation that continues today through the Church in the hearts of the faithful. “Gagliardi appreciates Ratzinger’s explicit fidelity to Scripture and his view of the Church’s Tradition based on a hermeneutic of reform in continuity. However, according to Gagliardi, in Ratzinger’s way of thinking about the Tradition, the role of the Magisterium was not always sufficiently clear. How exactly do Tradition and Magisterium relate? After all, both interpret Scripture. And how can a sufficient distinction be made between what is truly revealed and is therefore binding and what is related to the Revelation but not part of the Revelation itself ? That question was left open by Ratzinger. Moreover, Gagliardi fears, the emphasis on the present of Revelation could be misunderstood as if it were a priority for today’s fashionable ideas, rather than the presence of the liturgy and the presence of Christ who is and remains always the same.

“The present book by Gagliardi is worth reading because it offers an orderly introduction to themes in the thinking of the great theologian Joseph Ratzinger and identifies questions that require further reflection.”
Willem Jacobus Cardinal Eijk
Archbishop of Utrecht

“Joseph Ratzinger never wrote specifically on development of doctrine. Yet, it would not be out of order to explore, as Mauro Gagliardi does, how his writings bear presuppositions and implications regarding development of doctrine. They in fact eminently illustrate a right application of the theory of development of doctrine.

“In this impressive work, Gagliardi has shown how it can be deduced from studying Joseph Ratzinger’s writings, particularly his writings on divine Revelation, that, for Ratzinger, as it was for John Henry Newman, development of doctrine is faithful reception, deeper understanding, and authentic explication of doctrine within apostolic Tradition. It is the narrative of the Christ-event witnessed in Scripture presented in the ‘history of the Church’s faith.’ It requires the theologian and the Magisterium to read the Fathers. It is, above all, the ongoing reception of divine Revelation within the horizon of apostolic Tradition. Doctrines, like touchlines of a soccer pitch, are touchlines of theological teaching within Tradition. Development of doctrine could then be understood in and by Ratzinger—in avoidance of archeologism and doctrinal progressivism—as ‘content and act.’

“To Gagliardi goes the credit of showing himself a faithful interpreter of Ratzinger, skillfully explaining the often overlooked continuity in Ratzinger’s theological thought from his youth to his old age. In these days of synodal sessions and discourses, this work serves as a useful reminder that the pilgrim Church, navigating through history to her perfect manifestation at the eschaton, must be ceaselessly guided by the light of divine Revelation—Christ himself who is light of the nations—without whom she might drift on the vast ocean of cacophonous ideologies and stray from the Truth.”
Anthony Akinwale, O.P.
Augustine University