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Rahner Retrospective: II—The Historicity of Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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Karl Rahner, as we saw last time (New Blackfriars May 1980), believes that, however much of Barth’s work may endure, it has not settled the questions raised by Liberal Protestantism To that extent, then, Rahner sides with those who think that no amount of massive reaffirmation of classical Christian doctrine can ever dispense us from facing Bultmann’s programme of demythologization.
Schleiermacher, who died in 1834, was the first theologian to face up to the problems of making sense of Christian faith in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. No doubt, by the close of the century, the movement he initiated had degenerated into mere accommodation of Christianity to the spirit of the age. Barth’s outcry, particularly in the 1921 version of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, was a necessary protest against critical methods in biblical exegesis which amounted to rationalism, and against an emphasis on religious experience in systematic theology which promoted subjectivism. The counterpart in the Catholic Church to Barth’s protest was the encyclical letter Pascendi issued by St Pius X in 1907 condemning Catholic Modernism on much the same grounds as Barth rejected Liberal Protestantism. Even allowing for the difference in literary genre, and ecclesiastical function, Barth’s commentary is obviously an incomparably richer human and Christian document, and of altogether greater intellectual distinction. The papal letter, as far as the doctrinal part goes, was apparently composed by Joseph Lemius (1860-1923), an extremely influential Roman theologian otherwise known best as an effective protector of Mercier’s reputation and of the kind of neo-Thomism he was promoting at Louvain, which others in the Vatican suspected (rightly, as it turned out) of being disturbingly open to ‘modem’ philosophy.
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- Copyright © 1980 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Overlapping and both somewhat long-winded the essential books are: Pierre Thibault, Savoir et pouvoir: philosophic thomiste et politique cléricale au XIXe siècle (Quebec, 1972), and Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method (Chicago, 1977).
2 The last place to look for a critique or even an account of “transcendental Christology” is A New Christology, by Karl Rahner and Wilhelm Thüsing, translated by David Smith and Verdant Green (Bums & Oates, London, 1980, price £7.95).
To get biblical scholars and systematic theologians to collaborate to such an extent that they would subject their work to each other for real criticism might seem a pipedream. Nearly ten years ago now, however, in an attempt at just such an “interdisciplinary lecture course”, Rahner gave his usual set of lectures on Christology at Münster but invited his New Testament colleague, Wilhelm Thüsing, to reflect on his “results”. This gave rise to an extremely interesting book, published in 1972 and now out of print, in which Rahner’s course, reduced to pemmican, provided the theme for much more extensive and elaborate reflections by Thüsing. In a nutshell, while Rahner sought to show that classical Chalcedonian Christology can be secured against monophysite and mythological misunderstandings (“the myth of God incarnate”) only by something like his own “transcendental” approach, Thüsing insisted that a retrieval of the diverse New Testament Christologies would ensure an even richer starting point. In the English version, however, Rahner’s contribution has been replaced by three essays of a more popular kind, dating from the period 1976-77. The regular and detailed references by Thüsing to Rahner’s text are either elided or blurred. There is no clear admission of, or reason given for, this bizarre procedure of publishing an extended commentary by Thusing on one (important) text by Rahner for which another (much less important) has been substituted. The translation, moreover, is very unsatisfactory, e.g. on page 61 for “Christ” read “Christian”, on page 67 for “mortal sin” read “original sin”, on page 84 for “succession” read “discipleship” or “following”; and so on. The book, to speak plainly, is a fraud and should be withdrawn by the publishers.
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