Thesis Thoughts 4: RAHNER’S CHRISTOLOGY/SOTERIOLOGY

Before we move on to directly examine what Rahner has to say about salvation for non-Christians, we must consider his Christology and Soteriology more generally speaking. As a Christian, and more specifically as a Jesuit priest, Rahner firmly believes that Jesus is the savior of the world, but, as Ratzinger explains, the problem is for Rahner that of “the dichotomy between the particularity of Christian history and its claim to the whole being man. Can a particular history justly claim to be salvation not just for a particular historical period but for man precisely qua man?”[1] Marshall identifies two possible approaches for answering this dichotomy. The first approach focuses on the Jesus’ life, passion, death, and resurrection as that which makes him meaningful and significant for salvation generally speaking. In other words it is an appeal to the particularity of Jesus in his historical situation rather than an appeal which demonstrates how Jesus fulfills some general criteria for universal salvific significance, which is precisely what the second approach attempts to exhibit. Proponents of the second approach believe that one must first show that anything can be significant for the salvation of all, and until that is shown to be credible, belief in Jesus as the savior must be in-credible.[2]
Rahner, following Kant, Schleiermacher and Transcendentalism, chooses the second approach. He believes that before one can reasonably believe in a universal savior one must determine the general criteria necessary for there to be an absolute savior and then must demonstrate that a particular person or entity, in this case Jesus Christ, fulfills the criteria. Rahner writes: “how can he [Jesus], the concrete one, in his historical-concrete reality, which is not at all generally valid, be a norm for me?”[3]
In addition to his philosophical allegiances, Rahner chooses the second approach because of his understanding of the problem of apologetics. He rightly believes that Christians have a responsibility to preach the gospel, that is, the Good News of Jesus’ salvation, to the world, but recognizes that the modern world, due to modernity and some of the developments of the Enlightenment, finds this message harder to believe than earlier generations did.[4] Rahner believed this was because the kinds of things said by Christians, specifically in the tradition of the Neo-scholasticism of his time, are found to be in-credible by modern people; the teachings of the faith were presented in way that modern people had difficulty relating to.
Kilby explains Rahner’s perspective: for Rahner “what we need is to get away from a propositionalist system of theology so that we can relate Christian doctrines to what we experience in the depths of our being.”[5] [6]Therefore, according to Rahner, the presentation of the doctrines of the Faith must be adapted to the philosophy and perspectives of the day, redolent of the anthropological turn following the Enlightenment. Here, it seems, Pope Benedict XVI would disagree with him. Rahner believes the problem is on the side of the presentation of the information, the content of the faith. However, in Spe Salvi Pope Benedict XVI explains that the faith must not be merely informative, but performative;[7] more important than the delivering of the information is the evangelical witness of performing, of living, the faith.[8]
Regardless of his reasons, Rahner chooses to follow Kant and Schleiermacher in Transcendental approach and Marechal by incorporating the thought of Aquinas in an attempt to solve the apparent paradox between Jesus’ particularity as a 1^st Century Jew from Nazareth and his supposed significance as the absolute savior. In following the second approach, the Transcendental approach, Rahner will make an anthropological turn; much of his system will thus start with man. Thus, Marshall elucidates Rahner’s goal:

If the goal of a transcendental Christology is to show how Jesus Christ can be significant for salvation, the method of transcendental Christology is to show that an absolute savior can be significant for salvation, can be that kind of reality. Once this established, it must indicate the way in which absolute savior can be asserted of Jesus, and the goal would then be achieved.[9]

As we have discussed above, for Rahner, all people, in their essence, anticipate the unsurpassable self-communication of God,[10] which is made possible by the supernatural existential, but for them to receive this very real self-revelation as communication, it must occur historically and categorically. This requires that the a priori transcendental experience of man be mediated historically as human freedom is mediated categorically. Thus, in Rahner’s system, the absolute savior must be a historical individual who freely and unconditionally accepts God’s self-offer, while not only pointing to, but actually being God’s self-communication. Thus, Rahner’s system demands a sort of Hypostatic Union in order for there to be an absolute savior, and, because the absolute savior is one of us, he must merely be the prime example of what we are oriented towards. He elucidates, “The incarnation of God is therefore the unique, supreme, case of the total actualization of human reality, which consists of the fact that man is in so far as he surrenders himself.”[11] Therefore, “The concrete human essence (wesen) is nothing other than a potential obedentialis for hypostatic union,”[12] and accordingly, Rahner can axiomatically claim, “anthropology is defective Christology.”[13] In light of this, Marshall rightly asks how any of us can be satisfied with anything less than hypostatic union is that is what we are ordered towards?[14]
Rahner has shown than man has an a priori orientation or dynamism toward transcendence. A transcendent openness can only open towards the Absolute Horizon of being. Therefore, the telos of the world, or mankind at the least, is in receiving God’s self-communication, in fulfilling this potential for reception of God’s grace.[15] Because man is not merely spiritual, but physical as well, this self-communication must take place historically and spatio-temporally. It must be a real event with a permanent beginning.[16] Thus, for Rahner, “we give the title of Savior simply to that historical person who, coming in space and time, signifies that beginning of God’s absolute communication of himself which inaugurates the self-communication for all men as something happening irrevocably and which shows this to be happening.”[17] It is not necessary that the historical advent of the Savior mark the beginning of God’s self-revelation, but it must be the irrevocable and absolute form and climax of the communication. However, in addition to the historical advent of God’s absolute self-communication in the Savior, in order for the Savior to be the universally significant for all men, he must be “the object of a radical orientation of our whole being, on account of which such a reality is capable of affecting [mankind] as a whole.”[18]
Perhaps we should summarize what we have thus far discussed. A being can only be absolute savior if mankind is dynamically oriented toward it. We see in the essence of man the supernatural existential, the preparation for the offer of God’s self-communication as grace, that transcendent openness to the Absolute Horizon. Thus, only God, the Horizon, can be our savior. The savior must be the real pledge of God, must actually be God’s self-communication, and this communication must be historical. In the absolute savior, God be must enter into history, and he must do so as one of us so that we can fully receive this communication.
We can now see how Rahner’s system has led to recognition of Jesus as the absolute savior of the world. Jesus is the divine Son of God. He is the eternal Logos, the Word of God, God’s self-communication, enfleshed. In the Hypostatic Union the Word of God has become one of us to fully reveal himself to us. Although he may only contact a portion of us in his historicity and particularity, because we are transcendentally a priori oriented to receive this self-communication as grace, all men, even those who have no contact with this “consummation of human reality at the hands of God, towards which all person are oriented in grace”[19], can receive this new salvific grace of Christ in their transcendence. He can be significant, efficacious for their salvation as the historical fulfillment of the pledge made by God in the supernatural existential, the openness to receiving him.
Marshall attempts to critique Rahner’s transcendental Christology. He is critical not of Rahner’s execution, which he finds to be masterful, but of the problem inherent in applying the transcendental method to Christ. Marshall believes that Rahner’s system forces him to make implications which result in the loss of particularity of Christ, which, Marshall admits, even Rahner says is unacceptable. In this regard, Marshall references Rahner as having said that the Catholic faith is indissolubly bound up with Jesus of Nazareth and that when Jesus becomes only one among several exemplary persons, we are no longer dealing with Christianity.[20] Nevertheless, Marshall describes Rahner’s definition of what is necessary for something to be an absolute savior, “any reality/person can be significant for salvation only because and in so far as we are oriented toward it by our very nature; only by falling within the scope of this transcendental orientation can any reality affect us as a whole and so be genuinely saving”[21], and adds that Jesus cannot possibly fulfill this criterion.

We are not and cannot be, oriented in this way toward Jesus Christ; he himself can in no we be derived or deduced from our transcendental orientation and its content. Therefore, Jesus is not and cannot be significant for salvation…Since he, as a particular person, cannot be significant for salvation, he cannot be the absolute savior, according to Rahner’s logic.[22]

Thus, Marshall believes that Rahner’s transcendental method forces into choosing between two alternatives. On the one hand, Marshall argues that Rahner can argue that Jesus fulfills the general criteria he has set forth for being generally significant for salvation, but this requires Rahner to let go of Jesus’ particular as emphasized by the Christian faith because it has nothing to do with significance for salvation. On the other hand, Marshall explains, Rahner can uphold the importance of Jesus’ particularity as the faith does, emphasizing his being a first century Jew who fulfills the specifically Jewish prophecies for the Messiah, his poverty, his miracles, his death, etc. while recognizing that Jesus, in his particularity, does not fulfill the general criteria for being the absolute savior. [23]
However, despite Marshall’s sharp intellect, we must conclude that his critique is flawed and incorrect. We could argue, as some critics do, that Rahner’s transcendental method puts Christianity on a slippery slope which may relativize Christ’s unicity, but we cannot say it is incompatible with Christianity. The deficiency in Marshall’s critique appears to be that he forgotten about the Hypostatic Union. Jesus is fully God and fully man. In his divinity he fulfills the general criteria for being significant for salvation. In his humanity we can honor his particular place in human history. Jesus of Nazareth is the divine Logos. He is the son of Mary and the Son of God. He is a man who lived near Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago, and he is the absolute savior of the world.

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[1]Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 163.

[2] Marshall, 19.

[3] Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, Vol. 15, 234; emphasis added: “wie kann er, der Konkrete, in seiner gar nicht allgemeingültigen, sondern in seiner geschichtlich-konkreten Wirklichkeit für mich eine Norm sein?”

[4] Marshall, 19.

[5] Kilby, 263.

[6] Note that here Balthasar and Rahner differ as well. “For Balthasar, neo-scholasticism was inadequate because it was dry as dust and reductive, because it fialed to bring out, indeed it positively obscured, the reality and beauty of the thing presented, the object of revelation.” (Kilby, 263).

[7] Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, par. 2.

[8] Here Benedict is reminiscent of Balthasar and his emphasis on the Cross and martyrdom as witnessing to the faith.

[9] Marshall, 28.

[10] Ibid., 34.

[11] Ibid., 110; Rahner’s emphases; translation slightly altered.

[12] Ibid., 36

[13]Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations Volume I: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, (New York, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1973), 122.

[14] Marshall, 36.

[15] McCool, 167.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., 168.

[18] Marshall, 33-34.

[19] Ibid., 34.

[20] Ibid.,53.

[21] Ibid., 56.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., 57.

Thesis Thoughts 3: Rahner's Theological Anthropology

more thesis thoughts which are still somewhat rough, especially the footnotes, but have at it.

RAHNER’S THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

The Supernatural Existential

Rahner’s first two works were primarily philosophical in nature. Spirit of the World, his doctoral dissertation, is a philosophical conversation with Heidegger coming from the perspective of Kant’s transcendentalism accompanied by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Rahner’s other seminal philosophical work, Hearers of the Word, continues with groundwork he laid out in Spirit of the World and proposes new solutions to problems he perceived in the theological explanations and presentations of his time. This primarily had to do with his discomfort with the relationship between nature and grace as explicated by scholastic neo-Thomism.
All grace was seen as the grace of Christ, but was ontologically grounded in God’s redemptive will. In other words, there was no inherent relationship between the offer and reception of grace and the reception of God’s self-communication through the Incarnate Son.¹ McCool explains, “[Rahner’s] theological anthropology enabled him to see that, contrary to the manuals' purely entitative understanding of grace, grace must have a perceptible effect on human consciousness,”² all human consciousness regardless of whether a person had been exposed to the Gospel or not.

In this regard, we must keep in mind Rahner’s appreciation of and affiliation with Transcendental Thomism. He feels impelled to offer an explanation of how Christ can be the universal savior. Rahner proceeds to develop a system which will identify in man the possibility of receiving salvation and present Jesus as the realization of that possibility. For something to be universally salvific for mankind, man must be a priori oriented to it; it must be capable of affecting mankind as a whole.³ As we have said above, following his Transcendental method, in order for Rahner to remain consistent with his system and hold that Christianity is true and that divine revelation has occurred, he must show that it is generally credible to believe in revelation; he must show that man has a capacity to receive revelation. Rahner explains,

If we start from ourselves, God’s revelation cannot be validated either in its actuality, or in its necessity, or in its inner nature. … It remains questionable (at least for the time being) whether and in what sense we can discover in ourselves something like a “power of hearing” for an eventual revelation of God, before we have in fact heard it, and have thus found out that we are capable of hearing it.⁴

Nevertheless, Rahner argues that man is essentially a “hearer of the word” and develops a theological anthropology which views man ontologically and essentially as such. Ratzinger explains, “The paradox of the being man is that he can find the ‘universal’ in himself only in tension with the ‘particular’, with a history that comes from without, so that man can be described and postulated, as it were, a priori¸as the receiver of a revelation history, as a “hearer of the word.”^{5 6}

Thus, Rahner sees in man an ontological dynamism and openness towards the Ultimate Horizon of Being, God.⁷ Knowing that God desires all men to be saved and therefore that He offers salvific grace to all men, Rahner reasons that God has created man with the capacity to receive grace and to perceive it precisely as grace.⁸ Rahner proposes that God creates a creature, man, that he could love, that could “receive this Love which is God himself” and receive it for what it is, “the unexpected unexacted gift.”⁹ This ability to receive God’s self-gift must be an intrinsic part of the makeup of man.

This 'potency' is what is inmost and most authentic in him, the centre and root of what he is absolutely. He must have it always: for even one of the damned, who has turned away from this Love and made himself incapable of receiving this Love, must still be really able to experience this Love (which being scorned now burns like fire) as that to which he is ordained in the ground of his concrete being; he must consequently always remain what he was created as: the burning longing for God himself in the immediacy of his own threefold life. The capacity for the God of self-bestowing personal Love is the central and abiding existential of man as he really is.¹⁰

Rahner refer to this as the “supernatural existential.” McCool explains, “God's real offer of his grace produces a "supernatural existential" in the human soul. This "existential" is a permanent modification of the human spirit which transforms its natural dynamism into an ontological drive to the God of grace and glory.”¹¹ Rahner intended his supernatural existential to unify nature and grace which had become too distinct and separate in neo-scholasticism. Thus on top of man’s theoretical pure nature is added the supernatural existential, this transcendent potential or openness to receiving grace prior to the actual offer of divine grace and revelation.¹² Klaus Riesenhuber further clarifies, “This is only a way of saying that man’s nature must be spirit, in the sense of unlimited transcendental openness to unrestricted being. What is called man’s “obediential potency” to receive revelation is not some competence coordinated with various others, but is his spiritual nature itself.”¹³ Riesenhuber explains that here Rahner follows Marechal by formulating in a new way Aquinas’ “natural desire of the beatific vision.”¹⁴

We can now begin to see, with a preliminary and still blurry vision, how Rahner’s theological anthropology will attempt to posit Christ’s universal significance for salvation, for, following the Christ event, the grace of which also extent in to past times prior to Christ, the supernatural existential places all men, not merely those who have had historical contact with Jesus or his followers, in a new and improved condition.

[The unbaptized man] exists in a different situation because of the ‘objective redemption,’ which is a real and basic moment in the ‘subjective’ salvation situation of every man…because of the ‘supernatural existential,’ because of God’s continual offer of the grace for supernatural salvific acts, his situation is other than it would be if it were determined only by his ‘nature’ and by original sin.¹⁵

But how is it that Jesus’ salvific grace is offered to and accepted by those who have had no contact with Christianity? What is the effect of this offer and acceptance? What of those who have had contact with Christianity? Can they accept the grace while rejecting the Christianity that has been offered to them?

Transcendental and Categorial

We shall explore Rahner’s answers to the above questions shortly, but before we do so, we must examine how his theological anthropology sets the stage for his response.

Having posited the supernatural existential in man, Rahner continues the development of his system by discussing his technical terms “transcendental” and “categorial.” Rahner explains what he means by “transcendental” fairly clearly. In “a ‘transcendental experience,’ that is an experience of the unlimited openness of the spirit to being as such, there is on the subjective side of all knowledge a knowledge of God that is real although implicit, that is, not necessarily objectified.”¹⁶ In other words, the transcendental aspect of man is a realization of the supernatural existential. God gives man this openness to receive his revelation as grace. A transcendental experience is one in which man receives this grace and responds to it positively, but without consciously identifying it as God’s offer of Christ’s salvific grace.

Unfortunately, Rahner never explicitly clarifies the ontological status or precise meaning of his “categorial,” however, we can surmise it’s approximate meaning from its juxtapositions with the “transcendental.” Marshall attempts to approximate Rahner’s meaning as follows:

‘Categorial’ simply means ‘what can be put into categories.’ … More precisely (since for Rahner the transcendental too can, at least indirectly, be evoked in language), the ‘categorial’ is circumscribed in space and time; in this sense human words, the sacraments, the church and Scripture can all be called ‘something categorial.’ Rahner is especially given to contrasting transcendental with ‘historical,’ where ‘historical’ has the broad meaning of ‘spatio-temporal,’ and so is equivalent to categorial.”¹⁷

The problem of determining the precise meaning and ontological status of the “categorial,” is compounded by the reality that the debates and difficulties over understanding how God’s grace can work to save non-Christians take place specifically in the categorical and historical circumstances of each generation. Thus, a man can transcendentally be in a positive relationship to God regardless of whether or not he has received and accepted the Gospel as communicated categorically in the historical categories of the Christian faith. This begs of the questions of the importance of the categorical presentation of the faith. Is it not relativized by the emphasis of the transcendental revelation?

Even with this rather long-winded explanation, the precise status and import of the categorical remains vague and elusive. It should become somewhat more clear once we apply it practically using Rahner’s system and theory of “anonymous” or implicit Christians or Christianity, for which the “transcendental” and “categorical” are vital.

1 McCool, Rahner Reader 173.

2 McCool, 174.

3 Marshall, Christology Conflict, 33.

4 Rahner, Hearers of the Word, 5; Rahner’s emphasis.

5 Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 163.

6 Hearers of the Word is the title of one of Rahner’s earliest philosophical works and, according to Balthasar, Marshall, Oakes, McCool, etc. lays the foundation for the rest of his thought……fill in with more detail!!!!!

7 McCool, 174. [SeeRahner (Theological Investigations, vol. IV, p166-69, 174-84 for more quotes and info]

8 Rahner, Theological investigations, vol 1, 300-302…quoted in McCool 185.

9 Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations, vol I, p300-02, 310-315. (McCool 186)

10 Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations, vol I, p300-02, 310-315. (McCool 187)

11 McCool, 185.

12 McCool 188 = Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations, vol I, p300-02, 310-315. (McCool 188)

13 Riesenhuber, 165.

14 Riesenhuber, 166.

15 Rahner, Implicit Christianity, 44.

16 Rahner, Karl. "Implicit Christianity." Theology Digest. Sesquicentennial Issue (1968), 49-50.

17 Marshall, 17-18.

Thesis Thoughts 2 - Rahner's Philosophical Background

For my Master's thesis I will be researching and writing on the debate between Karl Rahner and Hans urs von Balthasar regarding their conceptions of Christology and the salvation of non-Christians. I shall attempt to post summaries of research, random quotes and the like on a somewhat regular basis. Please feel free to share your own thoughts, ideas, questions, sources, etc.

Before diving more directly into the thought of Karl Rahner or Hans Urs von Baltashar and their soteriologies, we would be imprudent to ignore the historical and philosophical situations to which they are responding and in which they are living. If Plato lived today the manner in which he communicated his genius would certainly be quite different that it actually was. The same could be said of Nietzsche have lived in pre-Christian times. Therefore we must consider Rahner’s philosophical sitz im leben before attempting to grasp his system.

For most of the middle ages and up until the 17^th Century most people in the Western world saw Jesus Christ as the universal redeemer. In other words, their world view suggested that whatever could be said to be universally or generally meaningful or significant for humanity must in way relate to Christ (Marshall 2). However, Deistic thought countered that Christian presumption, reasoning that for something to universally valid and meaningful, it must also be universally and generally available to everyone. At this time the world was realizing that knowledge of Jesus was not, or had not been, readily available to all people, specifically those living in the Americas. (Marshall 3-4)

Many Christians embraced this Deistic critique while attempting to maintain the universal meaningfulness of the historical Jesus. John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity is a prime example of such an attempt. German Christians made the most profound attempts at finding a middle ground between these two assumptions: that of Jesus’ universal significance, and that of the necessity of universally availability of that which is said to be significant. They attempted to reinterpret the heart of Christianity, which saw Jesus as the unique historical redeemer, in such a way as to maintain the concrete notion of the Christian understanding of redemption while dissolving the “indissoluble bond to Jesus” (Marshall 4). [It is because of this new understanding of redemption that Marx can posit a world in which man is redeemed on his own merits with a Christ figure.]

Thus, Kant enters the scene with his transcendental approach and states that “the unique redeemer is an ideal of perfection, a moral archetype for which we need no empirical example, since the archetype ‘is to be sought nowhere but in our own reason.’”(Marshall 5), leading to Schleiermacher, who offers the most profound and powerful statement of the coalescence of the new deistic assumptions with redemption as posited by Christianity.

Schleiermacher develops a general criterion for redemption – the relative domination of a universal God-consciousness (‘feeling of absolute dependence’) in all experience. All people can experience the need for God in their dependence. (Marshall 6). He argues that the Christian concept of redemption exemplifies the most clear coherence with this criterion. Ever since, transcendentalists, Rahner included, have adopted Schleiermacher’s general approach and method while modifying the criterion necessary for a meaningful understand of redemption which generally available to all of humanity.

At this point, before jumping into Rahner we must consider a couple other thinkers who are especially relevant to any discussion of Rahner and Balthasar and who critiqued and revised some the thought of those mentioned above.

Joseph Marechal, a Jesuit priest from Belgium, critiqued Kant for failing to account for the dynamism of the human intellect since objective knowledge can only be obtained from categorical judgment of speculative reason. (McCool xiv). Marechal attempted to remedy Kant’s transcendental approach to make it cohere with the foundations of St. Thomas Aquinas’ thought. “Marechal believed that the transcendental method could be extended beyond epistemology and could be used to ground a general metaphysics whose form and structure would resemble the metaphysics of St. Thomas” (McCool xvi). Rahner, following Marechal, becomes the most influential proponent of Transcendental Thomism. However, he attempts to improve upon Marechal’s approach by developing a self-grounding metaphysics rather relying on epistemology and by putting more emphasis on the conscious of the human person.

Around the same time, a Protestant theologian by the name of Karl Barth is heavily critiquing Schleiermacher and his method. “Barth saw Schleiermacher as adapting to modernity where he should have resisted it, and distorting theology by moving its center from God and God’s revelation to man” (Kilby 257). Barth was especially critical of the anthropological turn taken by Schleiermacher and others as well as of the notion of having a anthropological or transcendent system on which to rely. Barth countered, “I have no Christological principle and no Christological method. Rather in each individual theological question I seek to orientate myself afresh…not on a Christological dogma but on Jesus Christ himself)” (quoted in Marshall 116).

To a certain extent, Balthasar will take a quasi-Barthian approach. His critique of Rahner vaguely parallels Barth’s critique of Schleiermacher, and his Christology attempted to be Christocentric, like Barth, rather than anthropocentric, like Rahner and the other transcendental Thomists.

In our next post we shall look explicitly at Rahner’s philosophical system and transcendental method.

Sources

Kilby, Karen. “Balthasar and Karl Rahner.” Cambridge Companion to Hans urs von Balthasar. Oakes, Moss, ed., Cambridge UP: 2004

Marshall, Bruce. Christology in Conflict: the identity of a Savior in Rahner and Barth. NY: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1987.

Rahner, Karl. Rahner Reader. Ed. McCool, Gerald. London: Darton,Longman & Todd Ltd, 1975.