Metaphysics is the Core of History

Sagrada Familia, Gaudí

[S]alvation history and eschatology, the theology of the great acts of God in history and the theology of existence, can coincide if they are willing to reflect deeply on themselves and to open themselves to this reflection. God's action is, precisely in the objectivity of its "in-itself-ness", not a hopeless objectivity, but the true formula of human existence, which has its "in-itself-ness" outside of itself and can find its true center only in ex-sistere, in going-out-from itself. It is also no empty past but that "perfect tense" that is therefore man's true "present tense" because it is always antecedent to it, always at the same time its promise and its future. Thus it implies, of necessity, that "is" that faith soon formulated explicitly: Jesus is Christ, God is man. Hence man's future means being one with God and so being one with mankind, which will be a single, final man in the manifold unity that is created by the exodus of love. God "is" man--it is in this formula that the whole greatness of the Easter reality has first been fully apprehended and has become, from a passing point in history, its axis, which bears us all.

Footnote: In view of the fundamental meaning of this "is", I would stress more strongly today* than I have in these pages the irreplaceability and preeminence of the ontological aspect and, therefore, of metaphysics as the basis of any history. Precisely as a confession of Jesus Christ, Christian faith--and in this it is completely loyal to the faith of Abraham--is faith in a living God. The fact that the first article of faith forms the basis of all Christian belief includes, theologically, the basic character of the ontological statements and the indispensability of the metaphysical, that is, of the Creator God who is before all becoming.

Cf. on this subject Introduction to Christianity (New York: 1970), 77-104; The God Jesus Christ (Chicago: 1979), 18-30; Principles of Catholic Theology, Part One, Chapter One, Section 2b and Part Three, Chapter One, Section A.

Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987, 189-190 and n172.
*This footnote is from the 1982 publication of the Principles volume, the essay written in 1967 (Cf., Principles, 396).