Credo for Today: What Christians Believe
Overview
What do Christians believe? What gives meaning to our life? What is the purpose of life? The Christian answer to these questions is found in the Creed, in the profession of faith. But what do the articles of this confession actually mean? And how do they affect our lives?
Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, takes a fresh look at these timeless questions. Credo for Today is a reflection of the profound, personal insights of Benedict XVI, but also of the great foundations of Christianity: faith, hope, and charity.
Ratzinger writes eloquently and persuasively about the importance for followers of Christ to understand well what they believe so one can live as a serious Christian in today’s secular world. He talks in depth about the true meaning of faith, hope, and love—the love of God and the love of neighbor. He also discusses the crucial importance of a lived faith, for the believer himself as well as for witnessing and striving to bring faith in line with the present age, which has veered off into rampant secularism and materialism.
With the Logos Bible Software edition of Credo for Today, you have an abundance of resources that offer applicable and insightful material for study. You can easily search the subject of Christian unity and access an assortment of useful resources and perspectives from a variety of pastors and theologians.
>- Theological profile of Benedict XVI
- Bibliographical references
Top Highlights
“Being a Christian means having love; it means achieving the Copernican revolution in our existence, by which we cease to make ourselves the center of the universe, with everyone else revolving around us.” (Page 11)
“Becoming a Christian, according to what we have just said, is something quite simple and yet completely revolutionary. It is just this: achieving the Copernican revolution and no longer seeing ourselves as the center of the universe, around which everyone else must turn, because instead of that we have begun to accept quite seriously that we are one of many among God’s creatures, all of whom turn around God as their center.” (Pages 10–11)
“‘What must I do to achieve salvation?’ This is the question of what Christ himself sees as absolutely essential in his message. The Lord’s reply was this: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets’ (Mt 22:35–40). That, then, is the whole of Jesus Christ’s demand. Anyone who does this—who has love—is a Christian; he has everything (see also Rom 13:9–10).” (Page 8)
“The Judge will say to them, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ And these people, too, will ask, ‘When was all this? If we had seen you, we would have given you everything.’ And to them, in turn, will be said, ‘As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me’ (Mt 25:31–46). In this parable, the Judge does not ask what kind of theory a person has held about God and the world. He is not asking about a confession of dogma, solely about love. That is enough, and it saves a man. Whoever loves is a Christian.” (Page 9)
- Title: Credo for Today: What Christians Believe
- Author: Joseph Ratzinger
- Translators: Michael J. Miller, Henry Taylor, Sister Mary Frances McCarthy, Adrian Walker, J. R. Foster, Graham Harrison, and Matthew J. O’Connell
- Publisher: Ignatius
- Publication Date: 2009
- Pages: 225
Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI, is one of our time’s most revered Catholic prelates, scholars, theologians, teachers, and authors. He has spoken on many crucial subjects, including sexual consumerism, modern gender roles, marriage, the priesthood, and the future. As a teenager, he studied classical languages and, in 1939, entered the minor seminary in Traunstein. Though he was drafted into the German antiaircraft corps in 1943, he reentered the seminary in 1945, when World War II ended. On June 29, 1951, Joseph Ratzinger was ordained to the priesthood in the Cathedral of Freising on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. He received his doctorate in theology in 1953, from the University of Munich. Starting in 1959, Ratzinger taught theology at the University of Bonn.
At 35, Joseph Ratzinger was appointed chief theological advisor to the archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joseph Frings, and he maintained that title for four years. After many years of teaching at several German universities, Ratzinger was appointed by Pope Paul VI as archbishop of Munich and Freising in March 1977 and, in June 1977, was elevated to cardinal. In November 1981, Ratzinger was summoned by Pope John Paul II to Rome, where he was named prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and president of the International Theological Commission.
On April 19, 2005, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to be the 265th pope. He took the name Benedict XVI, after St. Benedict of Nursia. Since that time, he has continued to receive worldwide respect and has been a spiritual influence to Christians and non-Christians alike.