Besond Ge se Father (Moston. Beacon, 197%). a good and representative tion is Whondespin Rising: A Fema? Reauer ta Rctigion. ed. Carol Chit and Judith Phiskow (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979). 1 wisi 10 express my thanks (o Mary Knutser for her work tp feminist theology. especially her work ia Process, “Shreiking Heaven,” win her critical guidance through the growing liter ature. On ethnicity, see Andrew Greeley and Gregory Baum, eds, Eiinicins (=Concilians 107: New York: Seabury, 1977). 61, (New York: Macmillan, 1970). idem, Gud fs Red (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973); see also Benjamin Reist, Theology in Red White and Black (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), ‘82. See Valerie Saving Goldstein, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View" {1024}; and Judith Plaskow. Sex, Sin and Grace: Women's Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (Washington Univ. Press of ‘America, 1979). 63, Theology of Liberation (IV/SO), p. 13. (64, On the “God who acts” moti'in these theologies, see chap. 2, n. 108 65. See n. 6 66. For references (in order) see: Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation {150}, pp. 203-13; Rosemary Ruether, New Woman, New Earth {1V/SQ); Sheila Collins, A Different Heaven and Earth (60); Charles Long, “Civil Rights-Civil Religion: Visible People and Invisible Religion,” in American Civil Religion [139}, pp. 211-22: the essays on “African Perspectives" in Mission Trends $ [60]; Benja min Reist, Theology in Red, White and Black {61}; Segundo Galilea, ‘Latin Amer- fica: The Debate on Popular Religion,” Concilium 136 {LV/9]; and the articles by Viral Elizondo, Joan Llopis, Vincent Garcia and David Power, in Herman ‘Schmidt and David Power. eds... Liturey and Cultural Religious Draditione (—Com ‘illum 102; New York: Seabury 1977); and Robert Stark, “Religious Ritual and Class Formation’ (Ph.D. diss.. University of Chicago). 67. See Schubert Ogden, Faith and Freedom (IVIS8}, pp. 97-124 68. See Leonardo Boll, Liberating Grace (Maryknolly Orbis, 1979); Roger Haight, The Experience ard Language of Grace (New York: Paul 143-86; Juan Luis Segundo, Grace and the Human Condition, {57} David Trocy Chapter 10 A Christian Systematic Analogical Imagination Classical Theological Languages: Analogy and Dialectic As each Christian systematic theology within these three classical fami- lies of manifestation, proclamation and action—vision, hearing and act—moves forward into the particularity of its experience of the event of Jesus Christ, two realities take hold in the properly systematic theological journey. First, creative reinterpretations of the major classical symbols, texts, events, images, persons, rituals will occur in and for an understand- ing of the fundamental questions disclosed in the situation. Inevitably this, involves the risk of a personal interpretation, not the false security of mere tepctition. Inevitably, too, the power of critical reason and its emancipa- tory interest towards both tradition and situation will be employed. For all systematic theologies, like all fundamental theologies before and alongside them, live by the power of the critical freedom granted as grace and command in the originating religious event itself. ‘The theotogian’s sense of belonging to that event of manifestation, proc- Iamation and action is the primordial ground releasing the power of the freedom of the theological search for the meaning and truth of Christianity in the contemporary situation. The symbol does “give rise to critical thought before returning to the symbol.”” Systematic theologians cannot simply repeat; they must critically interpret the tradition mediating the event. Theologians cannot collapse into, they must critically interpret the ituation in the light of the event. From Schleiermacher’s liberating insight into the modern critical need for a new form for systematics, a Glaubenstehre, through Karl Rahner's struggle against the neo-Scholastic ‘manuals and for the risk of an authentic retrieval of the classical doctrines, through Karl Barth’s reinterpretations of the Reformed tradition (interpre. tations which remain not orthodox but neoorthodox), to Rudolf Bultmann’s recognition that demythologizing is demanded by both the subject matter of the kerygma and the contemporary situation, to Paul Tillich’s masterful insight into the doubt at the heart of authentic contem:406 GEAPTC IES porary faith, to Reinhold Niebuhr’s insight—an insight shared by all the later political and liberation theologians—thiat the contemporary socioethical crisis and its demand for criteria of transformation and praxis, is at least as vital a crisis for the Christian spirit as the cognitive crises Posed by modernity, to Hans King's theological struggle with the distor- tions of the ecclesial traditions and society, the same recognition of the systematic theologian’s ownmost task endures. That task is the risk of a creative, as both participatory and critical. interpretation of the event (and the traditions and forms mediating the event) in and for the interpreted situation. Each theologian articulates some personal theological response to that event: a response focussed upon some major form (or forms) expressing the event (manifestation-proclamation-action), a response a ticulating some series of mutually critical correlations between an in. terpretation of the event (and the traditions and forms mediating the event the present) and an interpretation of the situation (and the traditions and forms mediating that reality). The particular response will be determined, above all, by the particular subject matter under analysis. The general, heuristic form of response will follow the pattern of mutually critical correlations between interpretations of situation and event as each reality influences (confronts, correlates, informs, transforms) the understanding of the other. In the theolugy uf Langdon Gilkey, for example, We may note this pro- cess at work with unusual clarity.' Gilkey always provides a theological interpretation of the “religious dimension” present in some major reality in the contemporary situation and then provides a new theological in- terpretation of the significance of the explicitly religious, Christian event and its major symbols for and in that situation. Mutually critical correla- tions between situation and event are established at every major point in the analysis. Yet Gilkey does not allow his general method a more than heuristic value. For the particular subject matter under study in both situation and event takes hermeneutical precedence over the method to allow for a whole spectrum of possible particular correlatives (confronta. tion, identity, transformation) depending on the subject matter itself. An informed reader of Gilkey’s work soon learns his general theological ‘method. The reader can, therefore, make an informed guess but never ana priori prediction on Gilkey’s position on a particular issue. For there, as in all good interpretation, the particular subject matter takes over and the heuristic value of the method guides but ultimately yields to the subject matter itself. A second reality also comes into play in properly systematic theologies. ‘The full range of the Christian symbol system comes more and more clearly into view as demanding attention from each theologian in a strug le to articulate some envisionment of the heart of ihe matter in rela- tionship to the whole symbol system. Each theologian also searches, therefore, for criteria of internal coherence among the symbols. Each eel. A CIMESTEAS SOSTLMATIE SR ALOGICAL IMAGINATION © 4) theologian is oblived to develop criteria of internal coherence for that symbol system and is usually content to achieve some “rough coherence among the major symbols. That coherence will basically be forged by a theologian’s correlation of some personal interpretation of the core sym- bolism of the tradition (usually under the guidance of either manifestation, proclamation or action) and some interpretation of the situation, That initiat coherence will demand the development of further criteria for the internal coherence of the whole range of symbols. Those latter criteria, in turn, will range from the “‘rough coherence” of Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr and most theologians to the rigorously systematic coherence of Aquinas, Palamas, Calvin, Schleiermacher and Hegel. A theologian may prove so gripped by a particular original, revelatory insight in the event—as was Luther, as was Barth, as are many contempo- rary liberation theologians—that other classic theological alternatives cannot but seem sub-Christian, even “right, strawy" monstrosities. Yet ‘what is dismissed in one’s early work with a resounding “no” often returns in one’s later reflections: now, to be sure, in a transformed, more relatively adequate form. Yet, however intense a particular experience of Christian manifestation or proclamation or action may prove for any theologian, all systematic theologians eventually find the initial experi cence of the event demands accountability to the fuller reality of the entire range of classics in the Christian tradition if one is to have a relatively adequate systematic theology. All the classic systematic theologies from Paul and John to our own day are de jure inadequate, de facto relatively adequate accounts of the fuller range of the entire symbol system from the dominating perspective of a singular stance of personal response. Thus does the search for relative adequacy in any systematics occur: ‘The search is always bounded by the theological knowledge of the intrin- sic inadequacy of any theology in relationship to the event itself. That search, within that liberating sense of boundedness. is the fate become the welcome destiny of every systematic theology. The criteria of relative adequacy formulated by the forms of emancipatory and critical reason released by both situation and event—criteria of internal conceptual coherence, existential meaningfulness and adequacy to common human experience and language in fundamental theologies—join the major crite- ria for truth in systematic and practical theologies as disclosure and (rans: formation, Each set of criteria plays its conscious or unconscious role in every systematic theology that risks its true task of creative, eritical, Practical, participatory interpretation of event and situation alike. The relatively internal criteria of relative adequacy demanded in all interpreta. tion also hold firm: the hermeneutical criteria demanded for any interpre- tation of any classic: the criteria of interna) coherence for the full range of the classic forms and symbols articulating the full significance of the event All these sets of criteria of relative adequacy come into play in explicit20K EMM LES and. implicit form, moreaver, when the theologian also recalls that the language of theology is usually not the same kind of language as that ofthe originating religious experience and expression. Theological linguage is ordinarily a second-order, reflective language bearing further criteria for its reflective task. To develop a language that is both faithful tothe tensive character of the religious language employed for the originating religious event an¢ faithful to the demands of critical reflection is a major aspect of theology’s task. The theologian, as theologian, develops 2 properly reflec- tive language of critique and participation by means of the articulation of theological concepus that are neither mere categories nor simple replace- ments of the originating tensive religious language. In that effort for an adequate conceptual, reflective language. all the criteria of relative ade- ‘quacy and all the asks proper ( a relatively adequate systematic theo! ogy as reflective upon the original religious language emerge as the final theological task. Two major conceptual languages have served as the principal candidates for this task in theology: analogical and dialectical languages. Both language traditions, I believe, continue to function as the classic heological languages par excellence The first of these languages, analogy, is @ language of ordered relation- ships articulating similarity-in-difference. The order among the relation- ships is constituted by the distinct but similar relationships of each analogue te some primary focal meaning, some prime analogue.* A prin cipal aim of all properly analogical languages is the production of some order, at the limit, some harmony to the several analogues, the similavties-in-dfference. constituting the whole of reality. The order is developed by explicating the analogous relationships among. various realities (self, others, world, God), by clarifying the relationship of each to the primary analogue. the meaning chosen as the primary focus for inter- preting reality.? In Christian systematics, the primary focal meaning will be the event of Jesus Christ (usually mediated through particular forms and particular traditions). That focal meaning as event will prove the primary analogue for the interpretation of the whole of reality. The event will prove the major clue to the similarities-indifference awaiting explica- tion among the realities God, self, other selves and world (society, his tory, nature). These now articulated similarities-in-difference will prove Clues to the possibly ordered relationships disclosed by the event as each analogue is focussed, interpreted, related through newly formed proposi- tions to the other analogues as similarities-in-difference by the primary analogue, the Christ event." Where theologically exact. the resultant order is never purchased at the price of either intensity or variety. Any harmony present in the order is never forced (never, for example, cheaply affirmative) but recurs through and by means of the common focus upon the intensity of the originating tensive event releasing its foc side the entive seties of SCIRISES SS SEEM IO YN SEOGIESE ESEGIN CGS © 409 intespretations of reab-similacities-in-realliflerence. When the Christ event is acknowledged ay the radical mystery of the self-manifestation of Gou, the guidance of a more particular focal mening for the event (ee incarnation} will alert the theologian to the need for negations in the interpretation of each reality (God-self-world). Negations of any claims 10 full adequacy (for example, any attempts at exhaustive, univocal mean. ings in any analogue) are negations to assure that the similarities remain similarities-in-difference, to assure that the analogous relationships of proportion are related to the uncontrollable event, negations to keep the principles of order and harmony from becoming merely affirmative, The negations function as principles of intensification constituted by the ten- sive event-character of the focal meaning to negate any slackening of the sense of radical mystery. any grasp at control of the event and the similarities-in-difference of the realities (God, self, world) focussed upon and interpreted by that event.° ‘The negations with their disclosure of radical dissimilarity in similarity, by their concentration upon the tensive event-character in the focal mean ing will also manifest the genuine similarities disclosed by means of the defamiliarizing difference exposed in the event. The presence of the nega- tions continue in the real similarities articulated as similarities-in- difference. For these reasons, the major explicitly analogical traditions in theology have correctly insisted that in the theological use of analogies, the dissimilarities between God and world are as great as the similarities: the via eminentiae is possible only on condition of its constant fidelity 10 the via negationis.* In the more familiar contemporary formulation, God. language is by definition “perfection-language’; and the logic of perfection-language is grounded in the radical, irreducible logical differ- ence of “all” from the logical alternatives “some” and “‘none.""? Systematic theological analogical language, therefore, is a second-order reflective language reexpressing the meanings of the originating religious event and its original religious language to and for a reflective mind: a mind searching for some order, yet recognizing, at every moment in its search, the irreducible tension at the heart of its own participatory and. distancing experience of the originating event as an event of a disclosure- concealment to focus the entire search; a mind recognizing, therefore, the ultimate incomprehensibility of the event that provides the focal meaning. for developing both anaiogies-in-difference and order from chaos; a mind also recognizing the self-constituting, dynamic demands of the spirit of inguiry's ownmost need for critical reflection and the human mind’s and heart's need for some similarities-in-difference, some analogues, some Principles of order, some ultimate harmony in the whole of reality Al these realities assure that any moves to order and, at the limit, to harmony in systematic theology will be won only by a mode of reflection faithful to the power of the uncanny negatives disclosed in the event, won,only bya mode of reflection faithlul ss well te the aed for th negative in the very dynsmism of critical reflection itself, Any analogical concepts that emerge from that constantly expanding. never-ending dialectical reli. Honship between authentically critical reflection and real puticipation in the negating, defamiliarizing, disclosing event will be concepts that never lose the tensive power of the negative, If that power is lost, analogical concepts become mere categories of easy likenesses slipping quietly from their status as similarities-in-difference to mere likenesses, falling finally into the sterility of a relaxed univocity and a facilely affirmative harmony. ‘The analogies will be produced by the reflective and imaginative power of an individual theologian involved in the dialectical relationships of par- ticipation and critique. For example, a first-order tensive religious lan- guage like the metaphorical language in the parables of Jesus may receive a distinct, but never separate, reflective sublation into the second-order reflective language of theological analogy—as they do in the Johannine tradition." The analogies-in-difference will express a whole series of somehow ordered relationships (the relationships within the self, the relationships of the self to other sclves, to society, history, the cosmos) all established in and through reflection upon the selfs primordial experience of its similarity-in-difference to the event. The analogies will bring to expres: sion some production by means of a theological analogical imagination: production produced by the power of an analogical imagination released by the religious event and reflected upon by the critical powers of each theologian. The power of an analogical imagination as imagination was honored by Aristotle in his famous dictum “to spot the similar in the dissimilar is the mark of poetic genius.” That same power—at once par- ticipatory in the originating event of wonder, trust, disclosure and concealment by the whole, and positively distancing itself from that event by its own self-constituting demands of critical reflection—releases the analogical imagination of the systematic theologian to note the profound similarities-in-difference in all reality These now articulated analogues will be further developed into a pattern of ordered analogical relationships among God-self-world, The pattern, in turn, follows the same path. The pattern is first disclosed by the critical Spirit's focussed attention upon the revelatory power of the constitutive event and its disclosure of radical, all pervasive grace, With grace, some order, some religious sense of the reality of cosmos informing what once seemed pure chaos, some fundamental trust in reality itself as constituting 4an order in spite of all absurdity and chaos ultimately emerges The theologian articulates those principles of order disclosed in the event by refashioning the original disclosure, First, the theologian articu. lates one particular theological focal meaning or prime analogate (c.48 incarnation). Then, by means of some principles of philosophical reflec. VCIRISIAS SSEESCTC SALOU ME TAGISH dT tion (¢.8., neo-Platonic emanation theory) that seem or. better, are apued to bear a real affinity (© that focal meaning. the theologian devetops a properly systemiitic theology. As systematic, that theology is now uble to artictlate the similarities in difference among God-sell-world by formutat ing some ordering principle (e.g.. the exitus-reditus scheme) to express the relations of proportion in that order, even the harmony. in the newly envisioned, theologically reinterpreted, analogically imagined whole of reality. Throughout its deliberate journey, the analogical imagination of the systematic theologian at its best is always guided by the original religious-theological focal meaning, its singular key. its prime analogue for understanding the ordered whole of an originally pluralistic, conflictual, chaotic reality, Any theological analogical vision retrieves in a second. ‘order language proper to reflective thought the originating religious ex- periences of trust, wonder, threat and giftedness released by the event. The symbol has given rise to thought but thought now returns reflectively to the symbol expressing the event. But the reflective journey of a theological analogical imagination has not been in vain. For the theologian returns to the symbol bearing the fruits of that reflection: a now-ordered series of analogical relationships among God-self-world ordered to and by some focal meaning for the event (e.g., Jesus Christ as Logos), a focal meaning which has proved itself a relatively adequate reflective analague for understanding the originating religious event and the similarities difference that event discloses. is hardly surprising that the religious traditions focussed upon man- ifestation in the event are usually oriented, on the theological level, to explicitly analogical language systems. The great traditions of neo- Platonic, Thomist and later idealist speculative theologies have produced analogical envisionments of the whole of reality. Those envisionments are ordered by and (o a particular focal meaning (e.g., the logos} which speculative reason believed it found in the originating event's disclosure of trust, wonder, threat, gift, That envisionment is enhanced by the daring traditions of ordering principles of proportionality produced by specula- tive reason (the exitus-reditus schema, the “great chain of being,” the nature-spirit relationships of Schelling). The system is open to correction at every crucial moment in its analogical journey by the negations de. manded both by the focal meaning and by the classical experience of Feason that guides its reflections (the via negationis, the apophatic tradi- tions, the powerful negations present in nature mysticism and in Schel- ling's speculative philosophy and theology). The shifi from the speculative reason of classical patristie, medieval and later idealist theologies to the more troubled, more modest reflections of the post-Kantian critical reason of modern theologies is, to be sure, a major shift. And yet even that profound shift should not becloud the continuing presence of the same kind of analogical imagination in posteritAID arsenic ans ical systematic theologies. From the originat impact of Schleiermaches's discovery of the nonreducibility, the primordial event-character of relt, gious experience in the Speeches to his systematic delineation of the whole series of ordered relationships ordered to and by the transformation of that religious experience into the explicitly Christian religious event: experience of sin and grace in the Glaubenslehre. the presence of an analogical imagination in a now critical, not speculative mode is clear. A similarly critical and participatory analogical journey. I believe, may be witnessed in all the major Liberal and “post-Liberal” Protestant theologies from Schleiermacher to contemporary process theologies, experiential theologies and Wolfhart Pannenberg's daring analogical search for a theology focussed on a proleptic universal history, That analogical imagination was present as well in the distinct but related jour- neys of the courageous early twentieth-century Catholic modernists and their successors. The same kind of theological journey may be witnessed in a distinc- tively Catholic and critically reflective form, as we saw above, in Karl Rahner. Rabner’s carly transcendental discovery of human being as struggling, striving, restless, reflective, historical spirit-in-world, as always-already present to a horizon of radical mystery and real incom- prehensibility, yields in his later systematics to an explicitly Catholic retrieval of the incomprehensibility of God and our own humanity in the light of the disclosure-concealment of both God and humanity in-the Christ event, and in the further light of a systematic retrieval of the order, the rough coherence, hidden in the classical doctrines of the Catholic tradition, The obscure, for Rabner, is understood as obscure only on the other side of the clarity provided by those analogies and that order. The incomprehensible is theologically retrieved as incomprehensible only on the other side of a theological comprehensibility of those analogies and that order.” Radical mystery is theologically understood not as puzzle or problem but as mystery only on the other side of a critical, reflective retrieval of the intelligibility of the concepts in the doctrines and the ordered relationships among the major doctrines, ° The unity achieved is never the deadening uniformity beloved by a univocal mind but a unity- in-difference disclosed by similarities-in-difference to an analogical mind. For Rahner, reality not merely has analogies but i+ analogy through and through. As the analogous journeys of the mystical rheologies remind us, ‘even the religious silence evoked by an intensified (i.e., mystical) religious experience of the originating event is sheologically understood as silence only on the other side of that speech, that reflective, second-order. kataphatic speech proper to the mystical theologian as speaker Moreover. the distinct but related principles of order grounded in the focal meanings of the extraordinariness of the ordinary and the reality of the paradigmatic yield. in a genuinely theological-analogical imagination, their own patterns of ordered relationships. Indeed, as these two distinct A CRRISIIS SSIESIATIO ASAE HORE IGINS HON 43 streams of manifestation-experience expand into systematic theologies they tend to converge into mutusi self-recognition. Then the radical sense of “likenesses” in the gifted variety of the ordinary joins a sense for ‘an intensity negating the “>profane’” and the everyday in the paradiginatic to yield, as in Bonaventure and Teilhard de Chardin, theologies empowered by a vision of a recognition of “a coincidence of opposites.""" Ail reality is now understood theologically in Bonaventure us it was religiously exper ‘enced in Francis: The entire world, the ordinary in all its variety, is now theologically envisioned as sacrament—a sacrament ematiating from Jesus Christ as the paradigmatic sacrament of God, the paradigmatic clue to humanity and nature alike In all these theologies in the explicitly analogical language traditions, Just as in all the religious expressions of manifestation, experience will ordinarily focus upon the religious experiences of trust, wonder, gifted- ness. So too the theological emphasis, clarified by some manifested focal ‘meaning, will focus upon the similarties-in-difference in the extraordinary variety of reality. They will also focus upon the possible order, and, at the limit, the emerging harmony disclosed to reffection by concentration upon the disclosures provided by the focal meaning of a manifestation event and by reflection’s own manifestory dynamism towards that same event Yet to interpret these theological traditions, the interpreter must note that the llkenesses discovered in variety, the emerging harmony discovered in order are produced by the presence of those moments of intensity, the necessary negations: similarity-in-difference, the negation of any univoc: ity, the manifestation in the event of sheer giftedness. the concealment in every disclosure, the absence in every presence, the incomprehensibitity in every moment of genuine comprehensibility, the radical mystery em powering all intelligibility Where analogical theologies lose that sense for the negative, that dialec- tical sense within analogy itself. they produce not a believable harmony among various likenesses in all reality but the theological equivalent of “cheap grace”: boredom, sterility and an atheological vision of a deaden ing univocity. Some such loss seems to have occurred in the Thomist tradition’s later invention (in Cajetan) of a “doctrine of analogy": a “doc- trine™ historically unfaithful to the pluralistic uses of analogy and the sense for the importance of negations in Aquinas’ own extraordinarily fruitful theological analogical imagination."® For the later Thomistic “doc- Urine of analogy” proved fateful in its consequences for Catholic theology hy its antidialectical (and, finally its antianalogical) stance. That doctrine ultimately yielded" in the neo-Scholastic manuals to the clear and dis- Linct, the all-too-ordered and certain, the deadening, undisclosive and untransformative world of the dead analogies of : manualist Thomism committed to certitude. not understanding. veering towards univocity, not unity-in-difference. As the great twentieth-century rettievals of Thomas's own anatogicitlaid cunsets Vision show. however, the “analogy of being,” af really grovaded philo Sopbiically in Thomas” own original metaphysical insight inte the radical dialectical otherness of esse, can prove a genuine philosophical analogy to the theological “analogy of grace" grounded in the Christian religious experience of the radical gifiedness and all-pervasiveness of gruce." In spite of their important internal differences, the many movements of the Post-neo-Scholastic Thomist revival in the modern period united to re- trieve (whether metaphysically in Gilson, Maritain and Preywara, trans- cendentally in Maréchal. Rousselot, Rahner and Coreth, or linguistically in Burrell) the powerful negative dialectics and the pluralistic use of analogies at the heart of both Thomas’ philosophical “analogy of being” and his theological “analogy of grace." With this Thomist method of some authentic retrieval of the analogical core of both Thomas’ philoso: Phy of esse and his theology of grace and nature, these modern interpret ers of Thomas freed Thomism from its captivity to Cajetan’s “doctrine of analogy.”* They retrieved the classic status of Thomas’ analogical envi- sionment of all reality by way of tis analogies of nature and grace, his reinterpretation of the exitus-reditus schema for some order into the grand architecture of the Summa Theologiae Most modern forms of Thomist theology have remained faithful to the liberating intellectual idea! of the Scholastic tradition: “to distinguish without separation in order to unute without confusion."° That ideal does genuinely liberate the thinker by rendering explicit one clear set of criteria for all authentic conversation. All forms of authentic modem Thomism have lived by the power of Aquinas’ own analogical imagination and his demands for a conversation held in fidelity to the ideal of that kind of unity-in-difference, not uniformity. Singly and together, these modern forms of Thomist theology have undone the fatal hold of an ahistorical nneo-Scholasticism on the Catholic theological analogical tradition. The power in those diverse expressions of a Thomist analogical imagination ‘eventually released the fuller dynamism and variety in the Catholic theological tradition as a whole and thus assured the existence of @ pluralism of analogical conceptual frameworks in Catholic theology." Within our now-wider pluralism, the various modern Thomist theologians—and, behind them, the still astonishing elassic achievements of Thomas Aquinas himself-—Iive as genuine options, as classic alterna: tives in the continuing theological conversation within Catholic Chi tianity, indeed within all Christian theology in our period The same kind of sense for the necessity of negation at the heart ofall genuine analogy has received even sharper emphasis in the contemporary Fetrieval of the tradition of the mystical theologies. indeed, in any theol- ogy principally focussed upon some intensified experience of the parudig matic character of the originating event as manifestation. In those theologies focussed upon the paradigmatic character of the procheimed word sind the prophetic action, moreover, a sense of the importance of negation, now become an intense sense for « theological negative diatec- tics, has exploded into the center of contemporary theologicil conscious. ness. It has produced new dialectical lane ally new analogical languages The religious experience of the explosive power in the proclaimed Word empowered Kierkegaard as it empowered Banh, Bultmann, Gogarten. Brunner, Niebuhr and Tillich in their early period to insist upon the irre tievably dialectical character of all authentically Christian theological lan. guage hermeneutically faithful to that word. Neither the participatory trust in similarities and continuities of the analogical language traditions for the presumptuous Aufhebung of Hegel's positive dialectical language could account for the rupture at the heart of human pretension, guilt and sin—a rupture disclosed for Kierkegaard in the event of the “absolute paradox" of Jesus Christ proclaimed in that judging, negating, releasing word Amidst all the genuine differences in the formulations of theological language as dialectical language by the theologians of the word, one major characteristic unites themi_all into a genuine family resemblance: the necessity of radical theological negations to constitute all Christian theological language. What the proclaimed word reveals to authentic Christian faith, theological language must reexpress in the reflective form initially of a negative dialectics. Indeed, the dialectics of theological lan- guage is constituted by the negative dialectic inherent to the subject mat- ter of the proclaimed word itself. To reflect this reality theologically is to develop a second-order language expressive of a negation of all human efforts to save oneself, the negation of all poisonous dreams of establish: ing any easy continuities between Christianity and culture, the negation of all claims to a deluded, self-propelling “progress” within society and culture, the negation of all aesthetic, ethical, and “pagan religious pos- sibilities. These negations in the proclamation must be reexpressed in any theological language that dares to claim hermeneutical fidelity to authentic Christian faith hearing the Word of Jesus Christ: a word disclosing the reality of the infinite, qualitative distinction between that God and this flawed, guilty, sinful, presumptuous, self-justifying self ‘Thus does the theological language of the dialectical theologians of the word first emerge: expressionist in its defamiliarizing, negating, unsettling thetoric: alive in its concepts with the tensive power of radical negations upon all claims to similarity, cortinuity, ordered relations. For the theolo- gians of the word, all nondialectical Language does not express Christian th, for the Christian knows that “only God can speak nondialectically Let God be God” becomes the watchword of the theologians of the Word. Jesus Christ as Word-Event becomes the prime focus to disclose the delusions in Liberal Christianity. It matters little to these the es in theology—and eventu:what form thie delusion tikes: from the comic pathos of “eultural Chris tianity.” through the selt-confidence of Catholic philosophieal-theolagical anitlogies or mystical siscents. to the arrogance of Hegel's claim to Philosophical sublation of all the negations in religious representations through the Absolute Concept The same power of a radically theological negative dialectics of the proclaimed word erupts in the works of most of the political and liberation theologians. Jirgen Moltmann concentrates on that word to attack both “analogies’* and “epiphanies” in his appeal to the tradition of negative dialectics in Adorno and Horkheimer.'* Moltmann reformulates their sec- ular negative dialectic of the present as nonidentical to the rational into theological. reflective, negatively dialectical terms formulated in fidelity to both the explosive power of the positive word of promise in the resur ection and the prophetic negative word in a theology of the cross. The ‘cross, as cross, exposes the contradictions in the present, the nonidentity of the present with God's word, the need for a theological negative dialec. tics. Johann Baptist Metz appeals to the interruptive power of the kind of temporality disclosed in apocalyptic to negate any present claims to iden- tity between rationality and actuality. Metz conducts a sustained theologi- cal polemic against all “evolutionary” schemas for history and time. He even partly replaces his own earlier analogical language and its grounding in incarnation with a narrative language that, he argues, is better able to ‘maintain the tensions, the interruptions, the negations and discontinuities in a Christian-as-eschatological vision of time, suffering and history. The liberation theologians’ language also functions as a powerful theological form of negative dialectics through and through: explicit nega- tions of oppressive systemic realities in church and society alike, practical negations of the “‘wisdom tradition’ in theatogy in either its earlier or its present ‘academic’ forms: radical. even enraged, negations of all theological theories and languages not purified and transformed in the crucible of concrete situations and communities of liberating praxis. So powerful docs this concentration on negation by way of liberating praxis become that it can occasion deliberately extreme formulations— reminiscent of the early Kari Barth”s denunciation of the tradition of the “analogy of being’ as the “anti-Christ''—as when José Miranda feels free to dismiss Rahner's entire theology as nonbiblical.'* All these theological masters of prophetic suspicion and negative dialectics cling to the radical negative insight of Melville: “Say no with thunder, for all who say yes. lie.” In reading these theologies no one need fear that the intensity embedded in all negation has lost its power. Like the German expressionist paintings of the 1920s, like the revolutionary art and action of the 1960s. the theologies of word and prophetic-apocalyptic action have retrieved that tradition of Christian intensity by recovering the necessity of some confrontational. coniictual mw 10 any complacent self SCHIRISIL NS SYSTEMATIC AN AL OGIC SE EMIAUIN ATION © AIF culture or society. They will not let those negations disuppear into the quicksand of an encompassing affirmative culture. With Bonhoeffer. they will struggle to unmask ull “cheap grace,” all too easy continuities and relaxed similarities between Christianity and culture, between God and the human, God and world. ‘When the purging fire ends, the reader of these contemporary theologies of negative dialectics wonders: What hope remains for any similarity, any continuity, any order? Yet an interpreter of these theologies need not construct hypotheses. The facts are clear enough. Each of the theologians of the dialectical word moved forward into the fuller range of the Christian symbol system and the fuller range of the contemporary situation. In making that journey, each developed alternative theological languages whose emphasis and power remained rooted in the power of proclamatory negation while rearticulating the similarities-in-difference, the con- tinuities, even the order disclosed by the proclamation into new theologi cal as analogical languages. Karl Barth, through his study of Anselm. released, himself from a purely negative dialectics and articulated, in his Church Dogmatics, ever-new reformulations of a new theological language of analogy—his “analogy of grace” language.” Like all analogical lan- guages, Barth's focussed on some primal meaning to provide the primary focus for interpreting all reality and for articulating the order implicit in the relationships among God, self, world. That focal meaning, to be sure, will never be allowed to admit any despised, negated “point of contact between this God and this humanity.*° Rather the focus will always prove to be the irrevocably dialectical reality of God's Revealed Word in Jesus Christ. That focus, constantly reformulated throughout the Dogmati will serve to reorder and transform the ordered relationships among all the major doctrines of the Christian church, To assure that this analogical language never becomes some “pagan’’ substitute, the language of the Dogmatics always includes a constitutive dialectical component within its general analogical form. As every reader of the Dogmatics quickly learns, for every yes in Barth, a no is turking. For every no, there will soon follow some resounding yes. Yet grounding and eliciting all the negations in the Dogmatics is the yes of the gracious and merciful God disclosed in the ‘event of Jesus Christ. Indeed, that pervasive “yes” so takes over as the Dogmatics moves forward through the entire range of Christian doctrines that some of his fellow Reformed theologians began to doubt whether Karl Barth really possessed an adequate doctrine of sin, whether Katl Barth, defender of Calvin, was in fact headed towards a universalism!” Whatever the truth of those ~ charges,” one fact is clear: In the Dovnaties of Karl Barth negative dialectics endures but does not prevail. To prevail is the role of the radical yes, the triumph of grace, which his dizlectical: analogical theological language focussed on the event of Jesus Christ ex- Presses over and over again. Symbolizing this classic Barthian journey’,AIS Snserncans believe, was Barth's own noble kist message 1 his former adversiry Emil Brunner, once the recipient of one of the fiercest nos in Kutl Barth's senal: “If he is still alive and it is possible. tell him again, "Commended to our God’, even by me. And tell him Yes. that the time when I thought that I had to say *No’ to him is now long past, since we all live only by virtue of the fact that a great and merciful God says his gracious Yes to all of us” (emphasis his). All the other ‘giants’ of the theology of the word in that explosive period of theological tumult took their separate journeys to a theological language that was finally both dialectical and analogical. No one of them ever betrayed the focussed and intense original vision of the negations released by the word as necessary in all properly theological language. Rudolf Bultmann's kerygmatic theological program of demythologizing and existential reinterpretation did demand a negation of both biblical and doctrinal mythotogies and all human cultural pretensions. Yet Bultmann also insisted that there is a proper, human, theological speech for God- talk—the language of analogy." Without ever betraying his own dialecti- cal vision of reality——a vision that sees that, because we are freed by God from ourselves and from the world, we are thereby freed for the world and for authentic decision and action, Bultmann articulated @ genuinely theological as analogical-dialectical language correlating the reality of God and the reatity of the human in existentially meaningful terms. More than any other theologian from that period, Paul Tillich from his earliest work to the Systematic Theology forged a theological language that maintained fidelity to both the intensity of negative dialectics and the ambiguous, estranged, broken yet real continuities, similarities-in- difference and order in all reality. In developing his method of correlation and his ontological doctrine of the New Being, Tillich never yielded his original theological belief on the need for every correlation to include a ‘moment of negative dialectics (“the Protestant Principle) nor his pro- foundly analogical sense of the need for areunion of the really separated. With his now-famitiar doctrine on how symbols as distinct from signs participate in the realities they signify, with his demand for ontological analyses in theology, with his unfolding dialectic of the ordered relation- ships among essence, existence and actuality in the basic structure of the Systematic Theology, Tillich explicated a theological language of symbol that bore, as he recognized, striking resemblances to the classical tradi- tions of analogy. Yet what makes the Sysiematir Theology so masterful an achievement is not the individual parts in the system but the pervasive presence throughout the whole of a theological imagination articulating @ reflective, second-order, theological language designed to unite intensity, variety and order. That articulation included a new analogical language that never simply “-sublated” the negative dialectical realities revealed in both our estranged “situation” and the proclaiming. confronting word af the “message.” SESE SYSTESEE WS AEDEIE A IMAGIN SHON © 419 Fillich’s Systemare: Thealowe is a theological expression of the conte porary need to find mutually critical correlations between thealogically informed interpretations of both situation and message, the need to at tempt fidelity to both religious manifestation and proclamation—in Til: ‘h's words, both “Protestant principle and Catholic substance." AS ‘any reader of the S»stemaric Theology knows, whatever one’s criticisms of Tillich’s formulations on particular issues, his. dialectical language of “*both-and,” unlike the compromising “both-ands" of theological “mod- erates,” never yields to any easy, relaxed harmony. It admits of no easy “middle” position between “extremes.” Rather, in Tillich, the analogies are always intrinsically dialectical, the negations are always present in the very expression of the equally real affirmations. Our essential goodness for Tillich is as real as our existential estrangement, Radical ambiguity and similarities-in-difference throughout all reality are as real as the ‘graced event and the ordered relationships disclosed in and by the power of the New Being, the Spirit and the Kingdom. In a theological, reflective language at once dialectical and analogical, Tillich’s Systematic Theology articulates the ideal of a contemporary search for some internal coherence among the major symbols of the Christian faith correlated to the major fundamental questions in the contemporary situation. Like his Catholic theological analogue, Karl Rahner, Tillich insisted upon the reflective, even ontological nature of ticulugical language as theological. Again like Rahner, Tillich never hesitated to commit himself to develop a theological language that would attempt to retrieve the strength of the analogical traditions: a strength retrievable only through a contemporary appropria- tion of the necessary and constantly corrective truth in all the negative dialectical moments, in both situation and message. In the political and liberation theologies the same kind of reminders of teal similarities-in-real-difference elicited by the full Christian symbol sys- tem also emerge. Moltmann's negative dialectics in The Crucified God posits its theology of the cross only in relationship to the resurrection hope and promise of his earlier Theology of Hope. Met's narrative theo ogy of apocalyptic and its memory of suffering posits itself only in rela~ tionship to his own earlier theology of the world and the secular, and his, still earlier and continuing relationship to the transcendental-incarnational theology of Rahner. Even Metz’s most apocalyptic expression of negative dialectics posits itself as a political theology by its grounding in a political-mystical praxis. The negation of the individualism of earlier exis- tentialist and transcendental theologies by Moltmann, Metz and Schit lebeeckx is not purchased at the price of the loss of the personal, of the Subject as subject. Their insistence, like King’s, upon the reality of the ‘ot-vet in cross and apocalyptic posits itself only by also positing its own round in the even-now of the prophetic promise disclosed in resurrection and incarnation, As the manifestation-realities recently emerging in the liberationtheologies take hold, i seems safe to predict shat the Force of the radical alfirmations already empowering their liberating negations will become yet more prominent to reveal the actual similarities-in-ifference implicit in their positions. The intrinsic dignity of the human being (a dignity ulreauy known as constitutive by the demand for authentic human libera tion, a dignity already believed to be present in the proleptic reality of Christ the Liberator) was manifested, proclaimed and acted upon as both not yel here yet here even now in the prophets, in the teaching and ministry of Jesus, in the cross-resurreetion-incarnation of Jesus Christ, in the great Magna Carta for a Christian humanity in Galatians 3:28, in the radical demands for ell humanity in Matthew 25, in the hopes for a collec tive, historical, cosmic liberation in the Book of Revelation. All these favored biblical themes of the liberation theologies pulsate not only with the power of their negations upon our distorted present and fixated past, but aiso with the recognition of what, in God's liberating act in Jesus Christ, is present even now as a force let loose in history to undo even our sin, both personal and structural, as the power of God's future impinges and erupts upon the present. As these realities come more and more to the fore in the political and liberation theologies, I believe, the similarities in dissimilarity, the possi- bility of theological conversation even in conflict, the order and continuity disclosed iu Gou’s liberating act for the oppressed as that act unfolds its meaning through the entire Christian symbol system (redemption and ere- ation; cross and resurrection; and, yes, liberation and reconciliation) will release yet new analogical languages. Their new analogical ordered rela- tionships will be so focussed upon the negating, judging reality of libera- tion that they will liberate even the healing similarities and continuities present even now in our sinful and graced state. Each of these traditions—the religious traditions of manifestation, proc- lamation and action, the theological language traditions of analogy and sialectics, the experiential situational traditions of fundamental trust and suffering—posit themselves as theologies within an uncanny journey ‘through and in the event-gift-grace disclosed in the entire Christian sym- bol system. The self-corrective process of that fuller reality may be trusted in the present and the future to continue to work its development, its corrections and confrontations of all Christian theological perspec. tives. The self-corrective nature of reflective reason, both critical and Practical, proper to theology may also be trusted to work within each theological tradition and within the conflicts, confrontations, arguments and conversation among them all. Thus can we be assured of the never: ‘ending emergence of new, more relatively adequate analogical languages languages which have not lessened their demand for the incorporation of ever new, ever more intense negations in both situation and event and thereby the reformulation of new similarities-in-dtference, continuities in-discomtinuity and ordered relationships-in-diorder, All similarities and negations must finally be controlled by 3 hermeneutical fidelity to the Christ event itself Without the ever-renewed power of the negative, all analogical con: cepts eventually collapse into the false harmony, the brittle sterility, the cheap grace of an all-too-canny univocity or an unreal compromise pleas: ing no one who understands the real issues. Without the similarities pro duced through differences and negations, without the continuities, the order and even the possible, actual or proleptic harmony produced by an internal theological demand for some new mode of analogical language, negative dialectics, left to itself, eventually explodes its energies into rage or dissipates them in despair, For alone, a theological negative dialectics leads into the uncanny whirlpoot of the chaos of pure equivocity: a chaos whose own uncanny fascinans et remendum power must one day discover that its own radicality and liberating power is ultimately empowered by, because rooted in, the same reality as its analogical counterparts: the always-already, not-yet event of the yes disclosed in the grace of Jesus Christ fi, A Christian Systematic Analogical Imaginatio [A Proposal Inn already lengthy work, it would be inappropriate and impossible to attempt a full systematics. And yet an outline of what the arguments and interpretations of this work suggest for the basic form of a Christian systematics seems in order. A schematic summary of what we have al- ready seen allied with some suggestions on other symbols is all I can attempt here. Yet that much, at least, seems needed if the implicit order: ing principles (and thereby the rough coherence of the system") implicit throughout the present analysis of systematic theology may receive the kind of explication needed for the criticism of other theologians. The major aim of all systematic theology is to formulate a theological understanding of the originating religious event into a theological focal ‘meaning. The particular focal meaning chosen for that theological under- standing will prove an “essentially contested concept." More exactly, the ultimate incomprehensibility of the religious event itself as well as the inability of critical intelligence to master either situation or event will yield a recognition that all theological proposals are necessarily and intrinsi cally inadequate. Kael Barth spoke for all theologians when he stated “the angels will laugh when they read my theology.” Any claim to final ade- quacy masks a manipulative spirit which does justice to neither the i reducibility of the original religious event nor the real but finite powers of critical, discursive reason. Yet a relative adequacy for 4 particular theo!at particular sinsation ea he hoped for, Ifthe journeys of intensifies on and critique are allowed, that relative adequiacy ean sometimes be schieved. The classical theologies of the tradition, the vacious candidates for classical status in the contemporary period exist as firm reminders that relative adequacy is indeed possible. How well the initial focal meuning is formutated through interpretations of event and situation and in fidelity to enteria of both appropriateness and understandability. how fruitful that focal meaning proves as the journey through the entire range of Christian symbols occurs and as the relationships of the religious and Christian focus to the other moments of the human spitit (ethics, art, science. history. the other religions) ensue, will determine the relative adequacy or inadequacy of any systematic theology. Whether explicitly formu lated oF not, criteria like those we have seen throughout this work will be employed: criteria for the interpretation of religious classics and other cultural realities; criteria of internal coherence among the major catego- ries: eriteria of a rough coherence in the whole; criteria of existential meaningfulness to the situation; criteria of truth as both disclosure and transformation; criteria for adjudicating the inevitable confficts that emerge in the concrete exercise of the mutually critical correlations be- {tween the interpreted meanings of the tradition and the interpreted mean. ings of the situation. In sum, criteria are an essential moment in the reality of any authentically theological conversation: a conversation with the subject matter disclosed in the classical texts, events, images, rituals, symbols, persons expressive of the originating religious event ‘The ideal of conversation signals to the theologian that, even at this initial systematic moment of personal choice and interpretation leading to a formulation of the paradigmatic focal meaning for a systematics, the {theologian is embedded in the history of a religious tradition expressing and communicating the event and the history of the effects of a particular cultural history now newly expressed in the contemporary situation. The choice and formulation of a focal meaning is always highly personal yet never solitary. The fact that most systematic theologies are also calied ‘church theologies” only serves to underline the historicity of every theologian. Tradition as tradisio. as the living reality of that event in the present, is the major concrete social, historical and theological power in every systematic theology. That religious event comes to us as the living reality of Spirit in the proclamations, manifestation and actions of an ccclesial community. The event may, of course, come more through some movement in the world than through an explicit church tradition. Yet even there it may come indirectly as church: as the living reality of the originating religious event in the world of history.2" The church as both sacrament of the Christ und eschatological sacrament of the world re mains the primary concrete, social and thealogical locus of ull systematic theologies. Gace «focal meaning is chosen and formulated. the rest of the jouiney of «systematic analogical imagination begins. For then euch theologian strives—through critical interpretations of the core symbols in the full range of the Christian tradition and through critical interpretations of the realities of the contemporary situation—to find some ordered relation ships for understanding the similarities-in-difference in the whole: the realities globally named God-self-world. By concentrating throughout this journey on a particular focal meaning to reinterpret both tradition and situation, cach systematic theology risks its unfolding into a series of ordered relationships among the realities of God-self-world. The primary key to the order is provided by the focal meaning. At the same time, the understanding of the focal meaning itself is inevitably transformed by its. exposure to the full range of the Christian symbols and the full range of questions in the situation. The reformulations of the focal meaning 2s the systematic theology unfolds are sometimes a clue to the relative inade- quacy of the original choice. More often, the reformulations prove not negations but transformations of that focal meaning as the fuller realities of the symbot system and the further critical questions in the situation disclose themselves to the critical consciousness of the theologian. As the ordered relationships emerge in their demands upon the focal meaning, the initial insights into God-self-world provided by the inital formulation of the focal meaning are inevitably transformed. For example, a further understanding of both the biblical symbols for God and a contemporary philosophical understanding of the internal relationships among God self-world may cause a particular theologian to shift from an understand ing of the reality of God in “classically theistic” terms to a panentheistic set of concepts. AS the fuller reality of a particular symbol is retrieved by some contemporary. situational rediscovery of a half-forgotten classical theme in the tradition, the focal meaning is also reformulated: as when the symbols of eschatology are released from their earlier individualism to societal, political, historical reality in order ta disclose that the originating redemptive event is both always-already here yet always-already not-yet here, not only to individual historicity but to history ‘Through such developments does the search for relative adequacy oc- ‘cur: a choice of some focal meaning. the development of ordered relation- ships of God-self-world by means of the focal meaning: the continuous transformation of relationships and focus alike as the fuller reality of the symbols and the fuller demands of the situation are critically responded to in every systematic theology ‘The present work, however unsystematic in form, has also risked the articulation of a focal meaning and an implied set of similarties-i- difference and ordered relationships for the whole, for the realities of God-self-world. The concrete focal meaning for a Christian systematics is, the always-already, not-yei evenvgifvgrace of Jesus Christ. This fociAM cnarrans, mewning presupposes, by re-presenting, the always-alretidy event of tgrace—the event experienced. even if not named. as from and by the power of the whole. The event is an always-already actuality which is yet nol-yer: always-already, nol-yet in experience and knowledge through a disclosure that is also 4 concealment; in praxis through its releasement of the pull to a right way of living in and by the power of the whole and its intensification in that very releasement of the counterthrust of a not-yet transformed human spirit, tempted always to disperse itself away from the whole, or even to stand in defiance against the encompassing whole. For the Christian in responding to the event of Jesus Christ senses that the very concreteness of that focus intensifies. clarifies, transforms the experience always-already, not-yet present in all human experience, The principal focus remains on the event and gift of Jesus Christ now renamed grace. Yet the focus of radical grace is itself always focussed by and towards the event of Jesus Christ. For the Christ event lays hold upon an individual as pure gift. Through that sense of giftedness, in the Christ event, the Christian rediscovers an experience of the whole which is, in fact, the experience of the power of judging, healing love wha is God. This experience intensifies the experience of a fundamental trust working as the same kind of love disclosed as the final power with whom we must all ultimately deal ‘The Christ event is itself constantly refucussed for the tradition by a continual recall of its own grounding in the dangerous and provocative memory of Jesus of Nazareth, the one proclaimed and manifested as the Christ. In fidelity to the memories of this loving, suffering and vindicated Jesus of the earliest apostolic witnesses, the church focusses its present experience of that event not upon itself but upon the entire Christian tradition’s experience of the event. That focus will constantly be reinter- preted by new interpretations in the present of the church's memory of the Jesus proclaimed as the Christ in the proclamation, narratives, sym- bols and theologies of the Christian scriptures. That memory—the mem: ory of the one who preached the reign of God, who lived and ministered. who met the fate of crucifixion and was vindicated by God in resurrection—lives throughout Christian history as @ presence transform- ing all Christian experiences of the event into the living praxis of an imitatio Christi. The Jesus the church remembers is none other than the Jesus remembered as the Christ by the early communities and proclaimed in the confessional narratives and theologies of the New Testament. The Jesus the Church must remember. as historical criticism in its liberating even prophetic function makes clexr, should include historical criticism’s ‘own portrait of that apostolic wilness 10 Jesus, When thus remembered by a church open to the demands and gift of historical criticism, the tempta- tions of the church to withdraw from the gift and demand of the kind af life disclosed in Jesus Christ, the temptations to domesticiute and mythiologize eames ys osetia Sante SE EMEA ANION 2 Uthat cealty are fomght through the ever-renewed Christian Focus spon the dangerous, provocative. subversive memories af this Jesus The ulwaysalready. not-yet event of grace named Jesus Christ medi ited through the tradition serves, therefore, as the paradigmatic focal meaning for any Christian systematic theology. That event discloses the theological possibilities of a series of ordered relationships among God self-world. And yet, as we have seen throughout this work, the history of Christian reflection on that event has also been shaped both by different situational questions and by three further major focal meanings for inter preting the paradigmatic focus of the Christ event. Each focus—whether ‘manifestation, proclamation or historical action—both clarifies and inten sifies some major aspects and emphases in the originating event. At the same time, each focus limits, occasionally even distorts, the vision of ‘ther major disclosures in the same paradigmatic event. In contemporary Christian systematics, moreover—in a situation where the hope that global humanity may yet emerge from our pluralistic present and in an inner-Christian situation where the kairotic event of an ecumenical spirit hhas at last taken hold in most major Christian theologies—the need for all three focal meanings is clear, In the past, the emphasis upon one of these three focal meanings has ordinarily meant that each theology necessarily ‘emphasized, even exaggerated, some dimensions of the event and obscured other dimensions. The self-respect necessary 10 Christian setf- identity was present in all these classic Christian theologies. And yet the necessary dialectical counterpart to that self-identity—the necessary self-exposure to the full range of the Christian symbol system, to the full range of the theologies and spiritualities in the entire ecumenical Christian church, the full range of the fundamental questions in the situation—was too often disowned in the heady exhilaration occasioned by one particular wividual or ecclesial focal meaning chosen to interpret the paradigmatic focal meaning for all Christians—the event of Jesus Christ. In christology itself this reality is clear enough. When interpreting the reality of the Christ event through the focus of manifestation, theologians emphasize the reality of “incarnation’” as God's radical immanence in all reality through the manifesting Logos. These christologies will ordinarily prove representative or sacramental christologies—re-prescnting the orig inal grace that is always already given to us by a gracious God, decisively skiven as gift and demand in Jesus Christ, So pervasive does that always- already reality become that its not-yet is relatively downplayed by the dominant note of re-presentation and the radical, fundamental trust dis- closed by and to the journey of manifestation in the tradition of logos theologies from John through Justin to Rahner, Ogden and Cobb. In interpreting the reality of the Christ event through the prism of proclamation, most “theologians of the word” will focus upon the radicalization of that judging-healing word of address in either the cor:26 Givin Fessed parables of Jesus or the theology of justification in Paul's theology of the cross. The tensive. negating language of Paul will be retrieved in new forms to disclose the centrality of the cross, the recognition that Jesus Christi the Crucified One, a judgment upon all human pretensions. Any ‘lready'* (much less any claim to the always-already character to that event) will come in these christologies of the cross only through the cruci ble of a radical Christian hermeneutics of suspicion upon all “works” as those works are confronted by the cross and the memory of this suffering, vindicated Jesus, Thus will Karl Barth speak of the “tangent” to the circle, Bultmann of the canonical priority of the Pauline proclamation of the eschatological event of Jesus Christ, Moltmann of the negative dialec tics released by recognizing the God-forsakenness of the crucified one, ‘iingel of the sense of absence present in the revelation of the crucified one, and Kiing of the radical “*not-yet” released in Paul's theology of Justification—a “not-yet” dialectically related not to the “always already" language of Rabner, but to the “even-now" language of Kiing's ‘own christology. In interpreting the event through the paradigm of historical action, the political and liberation theologians formulate their christologies in rela. tionship to the same not-yet power in the symbol “cross united to the historical (prophetic and apocalyptic) proleptic, promissory reality of res. uurrection and the radical not-yet present in apocalyptic. Ihe resurrection Of the crucified one liberates our hope for all history. all the living and the dead: a hope promised as interruption of the suffering, alienated, ‘oppressed—the overwhelmingly “not-yet"—actuality of history itself. To live the discipleship of a following of Christ through the cross of the Present, empowered by the dangerous memory of Jesus and by the future hope promised to all through his resurrection is the route to a christology where the not-yet of the present, the hope of the future as God’s future, and the need to enter the historical struggle for justice now are highlighted. All these christologies possess their own disclosive truth. And yet the event of Jesus Christ, as most theologians eventually acknowledge, is expressed with relative adequacy only in the full range of the symbols ‘sross-resurrection-incarnation. That event is genuinely understood as the focal meaning of Christian faith only by being interpreted as at once decisive manifestation, true word and authentic action of God by God. That event discloses simultaneously an always-already and yet a not-yet. ‘That event demands that every christology allow the self-corrective, self-exposing journey through all three major symbols (cross, resurrec. ‘ion, incarnation), through proclamation, narrative, thought, symbol, doc: trine and apocalyptic. through all three major focal meanings (proclama- tion, action, manifestation) of the classical christological journeys in the Christian tradition The reality of that Christ event is often refocussed and constantly SSHEMIVTE SS aba ME AME VGANATIOS a2 judged and corrected in contemporary christology through its. concen: trated focus upon the memory of Jesus of Nazareth. That reality is dis closed through a spirituality, a praxis of discipleship employing appropri: ate Jesuanic imagery (as in Sobrino and Metz) or through the focus now available through the practice of historical-critical methods upon the ear liest apostolic memories (as in Ogden) or through the focus of the present experience of a recognition of the whole tradition as mediating that event [Link] (as in Troeltsch or in this work) Christianity does not live by an idea, a principle, an axiom but by an event and a person—the event of Jesus Christ occurring now and grounded in none other than Jesus of Nazareth. What memories do we have of the actual Jesus? The memory of the one proclaimed in all the confessions and forms of expression of the New Testament, the memory lived in the discipleship of an imitatio Christi throughout the history of Christianity, the memory proclaimed in word and manifested in sacra- ment in the Christian church. Those memories—all of them—are what exist to impel every christology to attempt relative adequacy. What is that memory in the New Testament? It is the dangerous and subversive mem- ory of Jesus—dangerous, above all, for the church which confesses it: the ‘memory of the one who proclaimed the coming reign of God, who taught and lived the truth that God's cause will prevail for the future belongs to God: who acted with a radical love towards all—a harsh love, both judging and healing; who lived with a freedom which did not hesitate to unmask human pretensions or to take the side of the outcast. That memory is the memory of this Jewish layman, this Jesus of Nazareth, who taught and ministered, who met rejection at every step, who received the fate of crucifixion, who was raised and vindicated by God. It is the memory of this one person which freed the earliest witnesses to believe that the Crucified One lives amongst us, that the Jesus the Christ. The church’s own memory of Jesus—a memory purified of early. late and present dis- tortions by historical and social-scienttic criticism, literary criticism and ideology critique, purified by the living praxis of discipleship and by the critical reflections of theologies—serves as the necessary focus for under- standing and criticizing all christologies. The christologies of manifestation need the dangerous memory of Jesus to keep their representative christologies grounded in the full event of Jesus Christ witnessed to by the church—as Rahner's move from a trans- ccendental to a categorial christology testifies. as Ogden’s theological de velopment of Marxsen’s analysis of the original apostolic Jesus-kerygma witnesses, as Troeltsch’s uses of historical criticism on the whole tradition showed.” The christologies of proclamation and action need that full memory-image as well—as such distinct christologies employing histori- cal criticism as those of Kasper, Kilng, Pannenberg and Schillebeecks indicate.** in developing un adequate christology. each Christian theoto