Anti-theological theology

By contrast with "Phariseeism," "Sadduceeism" is "the liberalist [(liberalistische)] misunderstanding that, in its determination to approximate the faith to the world, attempts to remove from it everything unlikely to please the world.  Here is indeed the walling-in of what is Christian [(die Ummaurerung des Christlichen)] that keeps it from having an effect in the world, decisively tattered [(entschieden abgerissen) as it is], such that [(aber)] the faith no longer serves the world as leaven, but . . . is transformed into the world and [becomes] for that reason neither interesting nor effective, but [rather] completely superfluous.  One cannot rightly [(wohl)] deny that it is like that today to a great extent.  There is a form of anti-theological theology, in which the important business of hermeneutics is converted into a method of transforming the whole of the Christian message into words without content, and of proving that it means just about the opposite of what must normally be taken to be its sense.  The content of such [a] theology consists fundamentally in this alone [(nur noch)], to explain to man that nothing was really meant as it is meant; that [it] all means fundamentally nothing; that from the whole, which appears at first so exciting and faith-necessitating, can be extracted, if only one employs the right hermeneutic, wholly plausible and harmless Existenzialien about which, however, no one can really be bothered because they are so commonplace [(allgemein)]; that one would consider them [mere] banalities had they not been extracted with such a display of learning from texts that, for the unpretentious mind, signify [however] something else entirely.  It’s not just that I am convinced that with such a sorry effort [(Machwerk)] one entices no cat out from behind the stove (which is to say, leads no one to Christianity); it’s that I am of the further opinion that whoever arrives at such judgments [(Meinungen)] would do better to strike the flag; to confess that he no longer extracts from Christianity any meaning [whatsoever], and therefore renounces the pretentious long-windedness [(Umständlichkeit)] of extracting from historical texts Existenzialien that can be had [far] more easily without them."

     Joseph Ratzinger, "Was heißt Erneuerung der Kirche?," Diakonia:  internationale Zeitschrift für die Praxis der Kirche 1 (1966):  ??? (303-316) =in Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie, 2nd ed. (Düsseldorf:  Patmos, 1970), ??? (267-281) =in Kirche:  Zeichen unter den Völkern:  Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene 2, Gesammelte Schriften 8/2 (Freiburg i. Br.:  2010), 1200 ff. (1186-1202), as quoted at Wolfgang Klausnitzer, "'Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn':  neue Bibelhermeneutik oder Abschied vom Schriftprinzip in der ökumenisch umstrittenen Frage der Homosexualität," Catholica 67, no. 4 (2013):  265 (253-280), translation mine.  (So far as I've been able to tell, this essay has yet to be translated into English.)

"God of angels, of powers, of all creation, of all the race of saints who live in your sight"

"Lord, almighty God, Father of your beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, through whom we have come to knowledge of yourself, God of angels, of powers, of all creation, of all the race of saints who live in your sight, I bless you. . . ."

Κύριε, ὁ Θεὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ, ὁ τοῦ ἀγαπητοῦ καὶ εὐλογητοῦ παιδός σου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ πατήρ, δἰ οὗ τὴν περὶ σοῦ ἐπίγνωσιν εἰλήφαμεν, ὁ θεὸς ἀγγέλων καὶ δυνάμεων καὶ πάσης τῆς κτίσεως παντός τε τοῦ γένους τῶν δικαίων, οἳ ζῶσιν ἐνώπιόν σου·  εὐλογῶ σε. . . .

     Martyrdom of St. Polycarp xiv.1, as trans. Universalis.  ". . . for judging me worthy of this day, this hour, so that in the company of the martyrs I may share the cup of Christ, your anointed one, and so rise again, in soul and body, immortal through the power of the Holy Spirit. . . ."

"no evidence for" "an ongoing opposition between a repressive, orthodox Christianity and a suppressed, often feminist and sex-positive 'paganism'"

"the idea of an ongoing opposition between a repressive, orthodox Christianity and a suppressed, often feminist and sex-positive 'paganism' (defined here as the umbrella term for 'the ancient pre-Christian religions of Europe') endured for much of the twentieth century.  Margaret Murray's influential witch-cult hypothesis, which held that the witch trials of early modern Europe were an attempt to stamp out a more joyful, female-led 'Old Religion', was rapidly accepted by many historians less familiar with the trials.  In 1929, she was invited to write the Encyclop[a]edia Britannica entry for witchcraft, further cementing her authority with the public.  Her ideas filtered through into the work of writers such as John Buchan and Rosemary Sutcliff, and she provided an approving foreward for Wicca founder Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today in 1954.
     "However, as Hutton suggests in his opening chapter, the idea that 'in some form and to some extent, the ancient pagan religion or religions of Britain had persisted actively long after the introduction of Christianity as the official faith' was largely a late Victorian creation, stoked by the waning dominance of the Church of England and the rapid urbanization of British society.  It was further propagated by James Frazer's highly influential book The Golden Bough (1890) and the newly formed Folk-Lore Society. . . .  Together with Murray's witch-cult hypothesis, these affected popular historical accounts until the 1960s and 70s, when a more systematic study of historical records revealed no evidence for such theories."

    Elizabeth Dearnley, "Blessed ladies:  the rise of the fairy queen in Christian Europe," a review of Ronald Hutton, Queens of the wild:  pagan goddesses in Christian Europe:  an investigation (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2022) in Times literary supplement no. 6254 (February 3, 2023):  26.  The point seems to be that these figures first arose in the late medieval and early modern but especially late Victorian periods, not pagan antiquity.  Take the Green Man, for example.  "The Green Man was linked in the twentieth century with an ancient vegetation deity, largely on the strength of a single article from 1939.  Hutton (italics mine):

'it is perfectly legitimate to pick foliate or woodland figures . . . and group them together now as expressions of the human relationship with green and fertile nature[.] . . .  The trouble only starts if those who embrace such beliefs back-project them onto the past and declare that they are revealing an ancient mystery'.