It is true the Pope Benedict is being evaluated in the media after his death as a conservative theologian of the Catholic Church. He had a very long innings as the prefect of the Congregation for Faith with John Paul II. That role earned him the disparaging moniker “God’s Rottweiler” from the media for his uncompromising defence of the Catholic teaching in the face of open dissent within the Church and growing indifference to the faith in the Western society at large. However, the contribution he made as a theologian of the Second Vatican Council cannot be erased. His striking gifts as a theologian drew the attention of Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne. At the cardinal’s invitation, he served as peritus (theological expert) at the Second Vatican Council, and was influential in the development of the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium as well as the document on divine revelation Dei Verbum.

Thus, Ratzinger had the opportunity to have his own insights presented before the Council with the full weight of Cardinal Frings’s influential status. As Ratzinger had suggested, the linguistic style of Dei verbum is more scriptural and pastoral than scholastic, in contrast to De Fontibus Revelationis.   For him, the three realities, Scripture, Tradition, and the Church’s Magisterium are not static entities placed beside each other, but have to be seen as one living organism of the Word of God, which from Christ lives on in the Church.  Rudolf Voderholzer claims: “Joseph Ratzinger made a major contribution to the development of the constitution on revelation.” Speaking of Dei Verbum, Voderholzer even refers to Ratzinger as “one of its most important co-creators.” Christopher Collins similarly remarks: “Ultimately, serving as Frings’speritus, Ratzinger would contribute along with several other theologians, including Karl Rahner, to the crafting of the Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum).” John L. Allen goes as far as proclaiming that “Dei verbum (On the word of God) is the Vatican II document over which Ratzinger exercised his influence.”

The Melkite Archbishop of Akka-Nazareth, George Hakim, expressed his concerns about this matter in his own oral intervention at the Council. “He declared that every separation between Scripture and Tradition, as the project De Fontibus has done, should be severely judged as a violent act against the effective unity of the ways of transmission, which are never separated in Eastern theology and which we cannot even conceive separately.” Rudolf Voderholzer described Ratzinger’s contribution to that series from 1967 as being “relevant for a long time and still not outdated.”

Ratzinger’s most notable contribution to the interpretation of Dei verbum is found in the third volume of Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II edited by Herbert Vorgrimler. Sacred tradition is thus defined as the handing over (tradere) of apostolic authority to the apostles’ successors.  Ratzinger sees a vague possibility of a criticism of tradition here: “… for when everything is seen and read only in a mirror, one must expect distortions and shifts in emphasis.” In Article 8, one finds a “dynamic and organic idea of tradition.” As in Article 7, tradition is shown to be multi-faceted, involving the Church’s.

This stands as one of Ratzinger’s most explicit negative criticisms of Dei Verbum and of the Council in general: “On this point Vatican II has unfortunately not made any progress, but has more or less ignored the whole question of the criticism of tradition. By doing this, it has missed an important opportunity for ecumenical dialogue.” Thus, this lacuna is not only a failure of the Church to speak adequately ad intra but also a failure to improve her relations with her separated brethren. Ultimately, Dei verbum tried to express that “the growth of tradition is a growth in the understanding of the reality that was given at the beginning.”

Scripture requires tradition in order to be a proper source of the knowledge of revelation. The Church’s understanding of scripture is a necessary component of scripture, if one may put it that way. Thus, while tradition is not an entirely independent reality alongside scripture, neither is scripture independent of tradition. They work symbiotically. They belong together, and only together can they bear witness to revelation properly. Scripture and tradition flow from revelation, the one source, and thus both scripture and tradition are needed for us to gain sufficient access to the knowledge of revelation.