Some Eastern Orthodox bloggers at a “Nicene Truth” have accused the Holy Father of heresy – Nestorianism no less! They have found two quotations in Ratzinger’s God and the World (pp. 293-294) that they believe proves that Benedict XVI is heretical.

I took a look at the quotes and they are not as tight as one might expect, but I think that one should first check the English translation of the work. It may be just fine in the German. The Ratzinger zinger-line is this one, which does sound a little strange:

“[Mary] was in the sense of having been the mother of the man that was entirely at one with God.”

One would expect “the mother of the person” because “man” in English does not necessarily mean “person”. But we don’t know what it was in German. Also, we should be willing to grant that Cardinal Ratzinger was not being absolutely precise. I don’t think that makes him a formal heretic. I guarantee that if you asked him personally, the Holy Father would provide a beautiful and orthodox account of the incarnation.

For those unfamiliar with the Nestorian controversy, the Catholic Church teaches Christ’s “human nature was assumed, not absorbed”, in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ’s human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ’s human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from “one of the Trinity”. The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity…” (CCC, no. 470)

Anybody else wish to comment on the matter?