"an elevation of the [original] sense of the text"

"Over against this [recent exegetical trend] stands the dogmatic heritage of church history [(der dogmengeschichtliche Befund)], according to which the doctrinal pronouncements of the Church on the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (Ineffabilis Deus (Pius IX in 1854); Fulgens corona (Pius XII in 1953)) and the Bodily Assumption (Munificentissimus Deus (1950)) recognized the Protoevangelium as [a] biblical argument independently of the reading ipsa and without [an] authoritative ruling as to the [(ohne Festlegung auf)] literal or typological sense [of Gen 3:15], but rather under [the impact of an] immersion in the proof from the Fathers [(allerdings unter Einfügung in den Väterbeweis)] and in consideration of the prevailing certainty of faith [(der vorwaltenden Glaubensüberzeugung)] (the factum ecclesiae).  According to Munificentissimus Deus the Assumption has thus its fundamentum in Scripture, which wants to signify not a formal being-contained [therein (ein förmaliches Enthaltensein)], but yet functions in a more than merely supportive way.  There is in this sense no independent proof from Scripture, but an elevation [(Erhebung)] of the meaning [(Sinnes)] of the text in the light of the complete whole that is the Church’s confession of faith [(des integralen Glaubensbekenntnisses der Kirche)], which the historical-critical method is incapable of [either reaching or] representing [(zu repräsentieren)], just as it is fundamentally incompetent to decide concerning credenda [(das zu Gaubende) in general].  It is on the grounds of this faithfully ecclesial [(gläubig-kirchlichen)] interpretation that one is referred to the sensus plenior and/or to the sensus spiritualis [of Scripture].  But with reference to this there exists between exegesis and dogmatics [at present?] no agreement."

     Leo Cardinal Scheffczyk, "Protoevangelium," in vol. 5 (1993) of the Marienlexikon ed. Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheffczyk for the Instititutum Marianum Regensburg (St. Ottilien:  EOS Verlag, 1988-1994), p. 343, underscoring mine.

Newman on Mary

"It was not enough in accordance with that heresy to proclaim Him as having an ineffable origin before all worlds; not enough to place Him high above all creatures as the type of all the works of God’s Hands; not enough to make Him the King of all Saints, the Intercessor for man with God, the Object of worship, the Image of the Father; not enough because it was not all, and between all and anything short of all, there was an infinite interval.  The highest of creatures is levelled with the lowest in comparison of the One Creator Himself.  That is, the Nicene Council recognized the eventful principle, that, while we believe and profess any being to subsist in a created nature, such a being is really no God to us, though honoured by us with whatever high titles and with whatever homage.  Arius or Asterius did all but confess that Christ was the Almighty; they said much more than St. Bernard or St. Alphonso have since said of the Blessed Mary; yet they left him a creature and were found wanting. . . .  The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it.  The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy."

     John Henry Cardinal Newman, An essay on the development of Christian doctrine I.iv.2.8, underscoring mine.

"a greater hope"

Yale Divinity School

"Not everything can or should be made Christian, but too many peoples never got the chance to do that discerning work before everything was shattered into pieces.
     "Some have always worked to turn these fragments against the faith in hopes of finding what was lost and securing a vision of a world fortified against the formation of a Christian and freed from its derogatory logics and suspicious gazes.  These fragment workers believed against Christianity, not within it.
     "I have watched many a student become converted to this quest while in the midst of their theological education, become secret agents for the fragment, looking and hoping for ways to put together an alternative to a Christian world or an alternative Christian world to the Christian one that they had inherited.  This is the perennial struggle at the site of this fragment work. . . .
". . . Yet I wanted for them all a greater hope than only restoring a sense of indigenous worlds now in pieces.  I wanted a drawing of those pieces together, a throwing of them into the air, an allowing of the Spirit of the living God to take those pieces and fit them together in new and life-giving ways that would be familiar, singing familiar songs, remembering people and lands, struggles and hopes, but also new, with new songs, new futures that would mark a path toward what Christianity could be at the site of fragments."

     Willie James Jennings, After whiteness:  an education in belonging (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2020), 37-39 (chap. 1, Fragments), underscoring mine.  One might argue that this is precisely what Aquinas—though roundly criticized for it on pp. 30-31—was (and some, if indeed not many, "missionaries" were) doing, when he sought to reconcile Graeco-Roman insight into "human grandeur" with Christian humility, arguing that "there is no competition between man's grandeur and the humility he must have in relation to [the Christian] God."  I would stress also that the ultimate object of Christian theology is hardly a "fragment," however dimly it sees and partially it knows him.  No, "in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily" (Col 2:9; cf. Heb 1:1-3a, as interpreted by St. John of the Cross and Simone Weil (she of the no small change); and many other passages as well).  And that this is no mere quibble, given that the ultimate object of theology is not this or that theology, not even [1] "the [very] fragment formed by faith itself," every trace of which is said to be available to us "in slices and slivers" only (32), but the triune God.  Etc.
     But I did like this, at least.