FEBRUARY 2004 - ISSUE 2 - ISSN 1448 - 632
A RAHNERIAN RESPONSE TO DOMINUS JESUS
Harvey D. Egan, S.J.
Abstract: This article confronts the widespread negative reaction to the Vatican document, Dominus Jesus, in its affirmation of the absolute singularity of Jesus Christ in the context of inter-religious dialogue. This document can find strong theological support in the writings of Karl Rahner, especially in his treatment of such themes as the incarnation, the universality of grace, the role of the Church, 'anonymous Christianity'. and 'one mediator, many mediations'. The author especially emphasises Rahner's tender and personal relationship to Jesus Christ.
Given the current inter-religious climate here at Boston College and in many places in the wider church, I welcome the Vatican declaration Dominus Jesus because it rightly eschews “that mentality of indifferentism characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that one religion is as good as another” (§22), while at the same time rejecting “nothing of what is true and holy in these religions” (§2). Moreover, the declaration “seeks to recall to Bishops, theologians, and all the Catholic faithful, certain indispensable elements of Christian doctrine” (§3), namely, that Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and humanity, that Jesus Christ died and rose for all, that Jesus Christ is the definitive and full revelation of God, that the Holy Spirit always was and is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, that the salvific work of the Logos and the Spirit can never be dissociated from Christ, and that the “Church of Christ … continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, and that, on the other hand, outside of her structure, many elements can be found of sanctification and truth” (§16).
Thus, the declaration strives to speak to a Roman Catholic audience about truths of the faith which should be self-evident. Some critics of the declaration accuse the magisterium of bad faith because of the somewhat public nature of promulgating it. However, these critics might be the same people who would be the first to brand church authorities as “secretive,” had they chosen a more private forum.
The torrent of negative responses to this document prompted the media to proclaim it a “public relations disaster.”[1] But after several careful readings of this admirable declaration — a document which in fact says little beyond what one reads in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the two encyclical letters of Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris missio and Fides et ratio — I concluded that both the negative responses to it, and the contemporary theological and pastoral scene, prove convincingly just how necessary and timely this declaration is. Now even the apex in the “hierarchy of truths” must be defended.
Two concerns immediately sprang to mind as I read Dominus Jesus. The first is represented by an event that occurred a few years ago when emergency surgery prompted a colleague to ask me to replace him at an international, inter-religious symposium on mysticism in Israel. Given the short notice, I requested a brief description of his planned lectures. When I asked why they focused almost exclusively on the negative way[2] in Christian mysticism, he replied that believers in other religions do not like to hear about Jesus Christ. However, I went to Israel as a member of the Society of Jesus — in no way hesitant to speak about the riches of a tradition that has penetrated to the heart of the mystery of the Triune God in Christ. In fact, these talks were well received.
The second concern has to do with the passion for inter-religious dialogue, which sometimes leads scholars to encourage students to participate in various forms of non-Christian worship. For these scholars, one must promote non-Christian religions – not only tolerate them.
I would maintain, however, that most Catholic students do not know their own tradition. Helping to promote non-Christian religions does not aid Christian students to deepen their own identity by coming to terms with the internal criteria by which they can measure their fidelity to the Christian tradition. If one truly worships the crucified and risen Christ, the only Son of God, then this indeed casts a different light on how one ought to approach religious pluralism. The question early Christians put to the heretical Arians remains apposite: “Why do you worship a creature?” If one truly worships Jesus Christ as the God-Man, pluralism must give way to singularity.
The declaration urges theologians to seek to understand “the way in which the salvific grace of God — which is always given by means of Christ and has a mysterious relationship to the Church — comes to individual non-Christians” (§21). No theologian has struggled harder to find a theological explanation of this “way” than Karl Rahner.
Dominus Iesus — A criticism of Rahner's theology?
Some theologians read Dominus Jesus as a veiled attack on the great German theologian, Karl Rahner, S.J., who died in 1984. In part, I was invited to respond to Dominus Jesus because of my work on this theological titan. Let me say right off that Rahner's theology definitely agrees with almost everything in this document, especially its self-evident high Christology and its Christocentric pneumatology and ecclesiology. Moreover, Rahner took to heart what Ignatius of Loyola wrote in his Spiritual Exercises: “it is necessary to suppose that every good Christian is more ready to put a good interpretation on another's statement than to condemn it as false.”[3] Rahner never demonized or patronized his theological or ecclesiastical opponents. Critical reverence for church authority and tradition flowed from what he called his “indissoluble relationship” to the church.
Perhaps the secret of Rahner's appeal is his synthesis of three elements: an awesome respect for the Roman Catholic tradition, an indefatigable effort to bring about Christian unity, and a deep respect for non-Christian religions. He would have applauded the declaration's desire to hold together both inter-religious dialogue and “the missio ad gentes, directed toward that ‘mystery of unity,' from which ‘it follows that all men and women who are saved share, though differently, in the same mystery of salvation in Jesus Christ through his Spirit'” (§2). Still, he would have undoubtedly recommended reading Dominus Jesus along with the more ecumenically directed encyclical, Ut Unum Sint.
A reading of Rahner's monumental Foundations of Christian Faith[4] and various articles in the twenty-three English volumes of his Theological Investigations evinces his profound Christocentrism, his unabashed Roman Catholic identity, and his ecumenical and inter-religious openness. He stated repeatedly that Jesus Christ is the absolute, eschatological expression and offer of God's own self, without which Christology is not Christian.[5]
Toward the end of his life Rahner said: “Despite my ecumenical openness, … the fact remains that I must be and want to be a Catholic, a Roman Catholic. … Even today I consider religious indifference as something completely erroneous, despite my conviction that the Christian confessions can and must do more than they have done to unite in the one Church of Christ.”[6] The question posed by some disgruntled Catholics — “Shall I stay in the Church?” — made Rahner almost physically ill.[7] Still, his last book, Unity of the Churches: A Real Possibility,[8] and the prayer composed on his death bed, “Prayer for the Reunion of All Christians,”[9] demonstrate his theological daring in matters ecumenical. Also, his article (to cite but one), “On the Importance of Non-Christian Religions for Salvation,”[10] witnesses to his genuine openness to non-Christian religions.
Rahner understood that because of sin, one aspect of God's loving self-communication — which reached its high point in Jesus crucified and risen — is the forgiveness and healing of sins now required to make us partakers of the divine life. However, like Duns Scotus, he also maintained that even if Adam had not sinned, the incarnation would have still taken place because God creates in order to communicate self. Covenant, our deification — not redemption from sin — is God's primary purpose for creation and the incarnation. From the very beginning, all creation, the one human race, the one history of revelation and salvation, and the whole of world history are all oriented to the incarnate Word.
Rahner often cited 1 Timothy 2:3-5: “This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as ransom for all … ” He insisted, moreover, that God desires efficaciously “everyone to be saved” because God's self-offer in Christ stamps the being of every single person — even of those who lived prior to the incarnation. “Antecedently to justification by grace, received sacramentally or extra-sacramentally,” Rahner wrote,
man is already subject to the universal salvific will of God, he is already redeemed and absolutely obliged to tend to his supernatural end. This ‘situation' is not merely an external one; it is inclusively and inalienably precedent to man's free action, and determines that action; it does not only exist in God's thoughts and intentions, but is a real modification of man, added indeed to his nature by God's grace and therefore supernatural, but in fact never lacking in the real order.[11]
Therefore, everyone comes into this world — even before the actual birth of Jesus Christ — already redeemed objectively, that is, graced by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. No time or place ever existed in which people were not offered Christ's Spirit. Even those born before Jesus are predestined in Christ, a predestination which must freely either be accepted or rejected.
Revelation in non-Christian religions?
God's self-communication in Christ also transforms every person's consciousness, which Rahner understood as an infinite, multi-dimensional sphere. He spoke of marginal consciousness and of explicit consciousness, of implicit and explicit awareness, of a transcendental and implicit knowing embedded in the subjective pole of consciousness, of a preconceptual knowledge and of a direct, conceptual knowledge. Knowledge may be of a connatural kind or of a kind expressed in propositions. Both repressed and unrepressed knowledge exist. One must also distinguish between the spiritual activities of consciousness itself and the interpretations of these activities. Finally, Rahner emphasized the difference between direct, conceptual knowledge and the implicit, unthematic knowledge of the horizon in which explicit knowledge takes place. In short, both a posteriori conceptual knowledge and a priori unthematic knowledge exist.
Because God's self-offer in Christ alters every person's consciousness, God truly reveals himself to everyone. In every person's graced consciousness, God's self-offer is marginally, preconceptually, connaturally, and unthematically known as the graced “eyeglasses” through which everything else is known. This implicit but real knowledge of God's self offer in Christ enables every person to respond freely to it in true supernatural faith — without which salvation is impossible. Since revelation is universal, the possibility of genuine faith is universal. The purely natural person, the person to whom God has not revealed himself, the uninspired person, to Rahner, does not exist.
Rahner also emphasized the social and historical dimensions of the human person. Thus, God's self-communication and self-revelation penetrate not only the hidden depths of every person's being and consciousness. They also incarnate and interpret themselves — with varying degrees of success — in diverse societies throughout history. To Rahner, non-Christian religions are the more or less successful historical, social incarnations and interpretation of God's self-communion and revelation. However, the one history of the one human race is directed by Christ's Spirit to reach its full incarnation and revelation in the person of Jesus Christ and his Church.
Dominus Jesus distinguishes sharply between “theological faith” in the Judeo-Christian tradition and “belief in other religions” (§7). It focuses on the error which occurs when “theological faith (the acceptance of the truth revealed by the One and Triune God) is … identified with belief in other religions, which is religious experience still in search of the absolute truth and still lacking assent to God who reveals himself” (§7). Thus, only in the Judeo-Christian tradition can one find divine revelation without which theological faith is impossible. Outside of this tradition, one finds only the human striving for God which underpins belief — “that sum of experience and thought that constitutes the human treasury of wisdom and religious aspiration, which man in his search for truth has conceived and acted upon in his relationship to God and the Absolute” (§7).
However, the declaration affirms with previous documents that one can be saved even in non-Christian religions (§§2, 21). It states further that the “various religious traditions contain and offer religious elements which come from God, and which are part of what the ‘Spirit brings about in human hearts and in the history of peoples, in cultures, and religions'” (§21, emphasis added). Can these statements be reconciled with the passages just quoted concerning “belief” and only the “human” striving for God? The church teaches explicitly that a person is saved through faith. Mere belief never suffices. For faith to exist, revelation must exist — not merely a “religious experience still in search of absolute truth.” Has not Rahner offered the real theological grounds for maintaining that both revelation and faith can be found in people outside the Judeo-Christian tradition?
Thus, he defended the view that non-Christian salvation in faith, hope, and love exists. And if a non-Christian attains salvation, then non-Christian religions must play a positive role in its attainment. The social-historical nature of the human person demands that even the most interior of decisions be somehow mediated by the concreteness of one's social and historical life — in this case, a person's non-Christian religion.
Nonetheless, Rahner always upheld Christianity's absolute claim to be the religion intended for all humankind. He even spoke of a possible “depravity” in non-Christian religions, called attention to their “provisional character,” and said that they might even have a “negative effect” on the event of a non-Christian's salvation. Thus, he would have agreed with the declaration that: “If it is true that followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient[12] situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation” (§22).
Many critics stress what they consider to be the insulting tone of this section of the declaration. One might ask, however, if most adherents of non-Christian religions judge their religions any differently. To nearly all believers of non-Christian religions, are not those outside of their religion at a serious disadvantage with respect to life's ultimate goal? Most — if not all — religions eschew indifferentism and religious relativism.[13]
The Christological character of the act of faith
Rahner argued that the act of faith itself — which is always and everywhere possible — has a Christological character. Thus, no time or place existed in which Jesus Christ was not present and operative in non-Christian believers and religions. People were, are, and will be saved only through faith in Jesus Christ. Thus, the salvific revelation and faith found in non-Christian religions cannot be dissociated from the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Even prior to the crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus Christ was present and operative through his Spirit in non-Christian believers and their religions. Only Jesus' Spirit makes faith possible. Catholic theology has long maintained that the Spirit is given “in view of Christ's merits.” The crucified and risen Word — and no other — is the reason the Spirit is given. Thus, a real, intrinsic connection exists between the person of Jesus Christ and the grace of the Spirit present always and everywhere. From the initial creation of the world, the Spirit of Jesus Christ has been the inner dynamism of a revelation and salvation always mediated historically and socially. The Spirit directs this one history of revelation and salvation to its high point: the crucified and risen Christ. Only Jesus Christ is the absolute savior, the fullness of God's revelation and salvation. No theologian has shown so clearly the intrinsic relationship between the Holy Spirit and the crucified and risen One as Karl Rahner, or why pluralism must bow before the singularity of God's revealing and saving activity in Jesus Christ.
This is consonant with the view in the declaration which instructs us that “there are also those who propose the hypothesis of an economy of the Holy Spirit with a more universal breadth than that of the Incarnate Word, crucified and risen. This position also is contrary to the Catholic faith, which, considers the salvific incarnation of the Word as a trinitarian event. In the New Testament, the mystery of Jesus, the Incarnate Word, constitutes the place of the Holy Spirit's presence as well as the principle of the Spirit's effusion on humanity, not only in messianic times, … but also prior to his coming in history” (§12).
Rahner's warm, passionate love for Jesus Christ refused to reduce the real flesh-and-blood person of Jesus of Nazareth either to an abstract religious ideal, or to just another charismatic human being, prophet, wise man, or enlightened one of history, or to a “cosmic Christ,” a cosmotheandric principle which asks no one to renounce his or her religion for the sake of accepting this universal Christ. Only Jesus of Nazareth is the absolute savior, the God-Man, the one mediator between God and humanity — in short, the one ultimately sought by the “seeking Christology” written into every person's being and consciousness by the grace of God's Christocentric self-communication. Of course, this “seeking Christology” may objectify itself in myths or be projected onto historical savior figures. “Savior figures in this history of religion,” Rahner wrote, “can readily be regarded as an indication of the fact that humanity, moved always and everywhere by grace, anticipates and looks for that event in which its absolute hope becomes irreversible in history, and becomes manifest in its irreversibility.”[14] This event, to Rahner, is none other than Jesus crucified and risen. Christianity's superiority resides not in Christians themselves but in Jesus' person, his message, and his salvific work. Only Jesus of Nazareth is that which nothing greater can be thought because God himself can do nothing greater.
Moreover, only Jesus of Nazareth is the absolute savior, because only Jesus of Nazareth was raised bodily from the dead. The New Testament interprets everything concerning Jesus in the light of his resurrection. To Rahner, the resurrected Jesus is neither a resuscitated corpse called back to ordinary life, nor the charismatic impression made on his disciples during his life, nor a God-given revelation given to the disciples after his death. The bodily resurrection happened to Jesus of Nazareth, not to his disciples. Through the resurrection, God communicates himself to the world in the Son whom the resurrection has definitely identified. Christians must take seriously that resurrection has not been predicated of any historical figure with any degree of credibility other than Jesus of Nazareth. Exclusive and singular indeed is this salvific activity of God in which one finds the Father's “yes” to the human situation. Christianity without a bodily resurrection is a deceitful oxymoron.
One finds a similar theology expressed in the declaration. For example, it states that “in contemporary theological reflection there often emerges an approach to Jesus of Nazareth that considers him a particular, finite, historical figure, who reveals the divine not in an exclusive way, but in a way complementary with other revelatory and salvific figures. … More concretely, for some, Jesus would be one of the many faces which the Logos has assumed in the course of time to communicate with humanity in a salvific way. … The doctrine of faith must be firmly believed which proclaims that Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, and he alone, is the Son and the Word of the Father” (§9-10). Dominus Jesus further teaches that “it is likewise contrary to the Catholic faith to introduce a separation between the salvific action of the Word as such and that of the Word made man. … Therefore, the theory which would attribute, after the incarnation as well, a salvific activity to the Logos as such in his divinity, exercised ‘in addition to' or ‘beyond' the humanity of Christ, is not compatible with the Catholic faith” (§10).
One mediator but many mediations
Rahner stressed both Jesus Christ as the one mediator between God and humanity and the many mediations of Christ's grace: the Church, the sacraments, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints. However, to Rahner, non-Christian religions and their various savior figures also participate — to some extent — in the mediation of the grace of God's self-communication in Jesus Christ. This is consonant with what one finds in the declaration where it quotes both Lumen Gentium and Redemptoris Missio as follows: “the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude, but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a participation in this one source. … Although participated forms of mediation of different kinds and degrees are not excluded, they acquire meaning and value only from Christ's own mediation, and they cannot be understood as parallel or complementary to his” (§14).
The anonymous Christian
Rahner daringly called a non-Christian — even an agnostic or an atheist — an “anonymous Christian,” if that person has surrendered to the deepest depths of his or her being. The person who follows his or her conscience lives a life of salvific faith, a faith — not mere belief — made possible by God's self offer in Christ. To be sure, a person may not be able to or will not so name it. None other than Jesus' Spirit efficaciously enlightens and inspires people everywhere and always. Everyone is called to be a Christian — and nothing less. Insofar as the faith of the anonymous Christian has not fully flowered into explicit Christian life, objectively speaking, the non-Christian lives in a “disadvantaged” situation with respect to salvation, as pointed out in the declaration (§22). Thus, Rahner considers missionary activity essential — not because non-Christians do not already know in a hidden way something about the mystery of God's love in Christ — but because they must be awakened to what they really are in the depths of their being and consciousness: namely, those graced by God's self-communication in Christ.
Rahner's controversial anonymous Christian theory, moreover, offers to Christians a “way” requested by the declaration (§21) to understand how truly saving faith is possible outside of explicit Christianity and how this grace is always based on Christ's grace. He never wanted this theory to be used to patronize virtuous non-Christians by telling them that they are Christians without knowing it. In fact, Rahner allowed himself to be called an “anonymous Zen Buddhist” by Nishitani, an eminent Japanese philosopher. Rahner asked if the Buddha nature were everywhere and if Nishitani found him to be even a bit enlightened. Of course, Nishitani replied “yes.” According to Zen Buddhist principles, therefore, Rahner was indeed an “anonymous Zen Buddhist.”
Non-Christian religions: A preparation for the gospel
The Second Vatican Council's document on Divine Revelation says: “God … wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New. For, though Christ established the New Covenant in His blood … , still the books of the Old Testament with all their parts, caught up into the proclamation of the gospel, acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament … and in turn shed light on it and explain it.”[15] Jesus is a Jew and understood himself and his mission in terms of the Old Testament. The early Christians interpreted Jesus and themselves in the light of the Old Testament. The intrinsic relationship between the Old and New Testaments means that Christians cannot and do not regard Judaism as simply another world religion. “Salvation comes from the Jews,” Jesus said (Jn. 4:22); Paul saw Israel as the “rich root” (Rom 11:17) onto which all other people are grafted. The singularity of God's salvific action toward his chosen people offers yet another reason for rejecting the relativism of pluralism.
In their missions to the Gentile world, the early Christians found “seeds of the Word” there and praised Greek culture as a “preparation for the Gospel.” If one correctly understands Christ as the fullness of God's revelation, is it not true that Christianity deepened its own understanding of that fullness through its encounter with the Greek world? And will not contemporary Christianity further deepen its own understanding of the mystery of Christ through its encounter with non-Christian religions?
Rahner would have unhesitatingly maintained that the “seeds of the Word” can be found in these religions and that they, too, in some sense, are a “preparation for the Gospel.” If the New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament, then it is likewise hidden in differing degrees in non-Christian religions. And the sacred texts of other world religions in differing degrees will likewise “acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament … and in turn shed light on it and explain it.”
A Christian reads and interprets the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament. Rahner also maintained that the holy scriptures of other religions be read and interpreted in the light of Jesus Christ because they also — to some extent — may be inspired. Thus, without denying the normative status of the Christian Bible or that Christ is the hermeneutical principle for interpreting both the Hebrew scriptures and those of non-Christian religions, Rahner would have therefore qualified the declaration's statement that “the Church's tradition … reserves the designation of inspired texts to the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments … ” (§8).
The declaration states that “some prayers and rituals of other religions may assume a role of preparation for the Gospel, in that they are occasions or pedagogical helps in which the human heart is prompted to be open to the action of God. One cannot attribute to these, however, a divine origin or an ex opere operato salvific efficacy, which is proper to the Christian sacraments. Furthermore, it cannot be overlooked that other rituals, insofar as they depend on superstition and other errors, … constitute an obstacle to salvation” (§21). Rahner held that the Christian sacraments caused grace by “signifying” it. He spoke of them as the “outbursts” or “epiphanizations” of God's self-communication in Christ. Moreover, Aquinas's use of the term “natural sacraments” for the rites and rituals found in the Hebrew tradition fascinated Rahner. Consequently, without denying the normative status of the Christian sacraments, he argued for sacraments — and not merely natural ones — in an analogous way in non-Christian religions because God's universal self-communication in Christ attains social-historical manifestations in these religions and in their rites and rituals.[16]
Rahner understood well that the Christian view of Jesus Christ as the God-Man posed one of the greatest difficulties in inter-religious dialogue. However, serious and honest inter-religious dialogue demands that no side water down its position. And admitting that European theology had traditionally treated Christology before theologizing about the Holy Spirit and grace, Rahner added: “Perhaps an Eastern theology will one day reverse this perspective. Because of God's universal salvific will and in legitimate respect for all the major world religions outside of Christianity, perhaps an Eastern theology will one day make pneumatology, a teaching of the inmost, divinizing gift of grace for all human beings (as an offer to their freedom) the fundamental point of departure for its entire theology, and then attempt from this point — and this is something that might be achieved only with considerable effort — to gain a real and radical understanding of Christology.”[17] Thus, for the sake of genuine dialogue with non-Christian religions, Rahner suggested, tentatively, that one begin with the Holy Spirit and the primordial experience of God and from this perspective come to a deeper understanding of Jesus Christ.
Proponents of religious pluralism often quote this text to buttress their own view of the Holy Spirit. However, Rahner's text clearly states that starting with the Holy Spirit and with the primordial experience of God leads one more deeply into the mystery of Jesus Christ. To Rahner, the Holy Spirit always was, is, and will be the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Responding to an interviewer's query, Rahner once said, The center of my theology? Good Lord, that can't be anything else but God as mystery and Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one, as the historical event in which this God turns irreversibly toward us in self-communication. … We have to remember that humanity is unconditionally directed toward God, a God which we ourselves are not. And yet, with this God, who in every respect infinitely surpasses us, with this God himself, we do have something to do; God is indeed not only the absolutely distant one, but also the absolutely near one, absolutely near, also, in his history. It is precisely because of this that God — the center of our existence — simultaneously makes Jesus Christ also the center.[18]
Singularity — not pluralism
It has been suggested that a respect for religious pluralism renders both the theology of the declaration and of Karl Rahner moot. I do not share this position. In fact, both the declaration and Rahner rightly emphasize the immense singularity of many of God's mighty deeds: the one order of creation, the one human race, the one history of revelation and salvation, the one incarnation, the one crucifixion and resurrection, the one mediator between God and humanity, the one triune God, and the one God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Moreover, the Catholic Church has become a world Church. Jesuits from six continents now work or study at Boston College. Should one urge them to preach a soft gospel when they return to their respective countries, or a gospel which definitely emphasizes the singularity of the triune God and of this God's salvific work? Should pluralism or inculturation of the gospel be uppermost in their minds? The early Christians reinterpreted and transformed Judaism. Should not the same process of reinterpretation and transformation occur through Christianity's encounter with world religions? Still, genuine inter-religious dialogue and service mean neither unfeeling tolerance nor the promotion of non-Christian religions. One must preach the gospel of Jesus Christ — the way the early Christians did in their encounter with Greek culture. These Christians found seeds of the gospel and a ray of truth among the Greeks. However, they never backed down from preaching Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the light.
Finally, Rahner once said of Thomas Aquinas that his “theology is his spiritual life and his spiritual life is his theology.”[19] This can certainly be said of Rahner, whose theological thinking definitely flowed from his spiritual life and whose spiritual life was nurtured by his powerful Christian thinking. His theology flowed from and into prayer. This was brought home to me at the end of a particularly difficult theological evening, when Rahner reminded his graduate students that theological problems always remain. However, he said that before going to bed, he would throw his arms around Christ and worship: “My Lord and my God, Dominus Iesus.”
[1]Leonardo Boff's and Robert Kaiser's infelicitous responses to the Declaration (to give but two examples) prompted me to remark that it used to be said that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church; now there is no salvation in the church.
[2]The negative way demands the abandonment of all concepts, thoughts, images, and symbols — even and especially those of God. God is thereby experienced and known only through unknowing, darkness, and negation. God is not this, not that. The person of Jesus Christ in such mysticisms is usually absent and his role ambiguous. See my “Negative Way,” The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993) 700-704.
[3] Trans. George E. Ganss, S.J. (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992) §22.
[4]Trans. William V. Dych (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1978).
[5] For examples of Rahner's uncompromising Christocentrism, see the two sections in Foundations on “The History of Salvation and Revelation” and “The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation,” 128-321; “One Mediator and Many Mediations,” Theological Investigations IX, trans. Graham Harrison (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972) 169-84; “The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation,” Theological Investigations XVI, trans. David Moreland, O.S.B. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979) 199-224.
[6]Faith in a Wintry Season (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1990), 177.
[7] Only a few months before his death, Rahner said in an interview: “That idle chatter ‘why do I still stay in the Church?' turns my stomach.” See his Bekenntnisse: Rückblick auf 80 Jahre, ed. Georg Sporschill, S.J. (Munich: Herold Druck, 1984) 44, my translation.
[8]Co-authored with Heinrich Fries, trans. Ruth C. L. Gritsch and Eric W. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985).
[9]Prayers for a Lifetime (New York, The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1984) 163-65.
[10]Theological Investigations XVIII, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1983) 288-95.
[11]Co-authored with Herbert Vorgrimler, Dictionary of Theology, 2nd edition (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1981) 163-64.
[12]My colleague Francis A. Sullivan alerted me to the problem of translating the Italian word deficitaria as deficient. “Disadvantage” is, perhaps, a better rendering.
[13] See Gavin D'Costa The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2000) for an excellent debunking of the pluralist proposal, which he refers to as “veiled exclusivism.” Also see, Gavin D'Costa, ed., Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (New York: Orbis Books, 1990). The subtitle says it all.
[14] Foundations of Christian Faith, 321.
[15] The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J. (New York: America Press, 1966) 122, §16.
[17] “Aspects of European Theology,” Theological Investigations XXI, trans. Hugh M. Riley (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1988) 97-98. Translation emended.
[18]Karl Rahner in Dialogue, ed. Hubert Biallowons, Harvey Egan, and Paul Imhof (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1986) 196.
[19] “Thomas Aquinas: Patron of Theological Studies,” The Great Church Year: The Best of Karl Rahner's Homilies, Sermons, and Meditations, ed. Albert Raffelt and Harvey D. Egan, S.J. (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1993) 313.
Harvey Egan SJ is Professor of Theology at Boston College where he has been a faculty-member for thirty years. In 1973 under the direction of Karl Rahner, Fr Egan gained his doctorate from the University of Munster on the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyala. His prior degrees were in engineering, philosophy ( Boston College / Western College ) and theology ( Woodstock College ). He is regarded internationally as an expert on Karl Rahner and Christian mysticism. Professor Egan is the author and/or editor of some twenty-five books and numerous scholarly articles. He was also the 1999 recipient of the Robert Goddard Alumni Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
