title: Fundamental

Theology
author: Fries, Heinrich.
publisher: Catholic University of America Press
isbn10 | asin: 0813208637
print isbn13: 9780813208633
ebook isbn13: 9780813210513
language: English
Theology, Doctrinal, Catholic Church--
subject
Doctrines.
publication date: 1996
lcc: BT771.2.F7313 1996eb
ddc: 230/.01
Theology, Doctrinal, Catholic Church--
subject:
Doctrines.
Page iii

Fundamental Theology
Heinrich Fries

Translated by Robert J. Daly, S.J.

With an Epilogue by Thomas M. Kelly

Page iv
Originally published as Fundamentaltheologie
© 1985 by Verlag Styria, Graz, Austria
English translation copyright © 1996 by
The Catholic University of America Press
620 Michigan Ave, NE
Washington, D.C. 20064
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Fries, Heinrich, 1911

[Fundamentaltheologie. English]
Fundamental theology / Heinrich Fries; translated by Robert J.
Daly, S.J.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Faith. 2. Revelation. 3. Church. I. Title
BT771.2F7313 1996
230'.01dc20
96-17346
ISBN 0-8132-0862-9 (cloth). ISBN 0-8132-0863-7 (pbk.)
The biblical quotations in this publication are for the most part from
the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946, 1952 ©
1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National
Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and used by permission.
The quotations from the Second Vatican Council are taken from The
Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., general editor,
copyrighted 1966 by The America Press, and used with permission.

Page v

CONTENTS
Translator's Foreword xii
Abbreviations xix
Foreword 1
Introduction 3
Book One. Faith and the Science of Faith
Part One. Faith
I. The Anthropological Specifications of Faith 10
§ 1 Faith as Personal Act 11
The Meaning of Faith/Belief 11
The Implications of Faith 14
Affirmational (Propositional) Faith 16
Credibility 18
The Transcending Dimension 21
§ 2 Faith in the Horizon of the Question of Meaning 23
The Meaning of Sinn (Sense) 24
Experiences of Sense (Sinn) 25
How Is It That Human Beings Have an Experience 27
of Sense?
The Question of the Giver of Sense 30
§ 3 Philosophical Faith 35
Immanuel Kant 35
Karl Jaspers 41
§ 4 The Logic of Act and Transcendence The Theory 46
of Maurice Blondel
The Analysis of Act 46
Faith 48
§ 5 Faith in God in the Light of the Anthropological 52
Characteristics of Faith
II. The Theological Characteristics of Faith: A Correlate 61
of the Anthropological Theory
§ 6 Faith in the Old Testament 62
The Faith of Abraham 63
The Faith of the People of Israel 66
Faith and Existence 68
The Confession of Faith (Creed) 70

Page vi

§ 7 Faith in the New Testament 73

Continuity with the Old Testmaent 73
Jesus and Faith 74
The Discontinuity: Faith in Jesus Christ 76
The Earthly Jesus and the Christ of Faith 78
The Gospel of John 80
§ 8 Faith as Hearing and Seeing 83
In the Old and New Testaments 83
In the Tradition of the Origin 86
Correct Hearing and Seeing 87
§ 9 Faith and Confession 93
Their Coordination 93
The Function of the Confession 96
Faith and Confession Today 98
§ 10 Faith under the Sign of Doctrine, Dogma, Truth, 102
and Praxis
Doctrine 102
Dogma 105
Truths and Truth 108
The Doing of Truth: Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy 111
Part Two. The Science of Faith
§ 11 Faith and Understanding 118
The Biblical Data 118
Pistis and Gnosis as Problem in the Early Church 120
The Program of Scholasticism 122
The Intention of the Reformers 123
Faith and the Understanding of Faith in the 125
Modern Age
§ 12 The Science of Faith, or, Theology 130
The Meaning of the Word 130
Theology as Science in Thomas Aquinas 132
The Significance of This Concept of Theology 134
§ 13 Theology and Historical Thinking 139
The Realm of History 139
Faith and History 140
Historical Excursus on the Coordination of 142
Theology and History
§ 14 Theology in the Scientific Discussion of the 145
Modern Age
The Objection of Positivism 145
Theology and Existential Philosophy 146
The Problem of Hermeneutics 148
Political Theology 151
§ 15 Theology and Theory of Knowledge 155
Theses of the Theory of Knowledge 155
Encounter with Theology 157
§ 16 Theologia Crucifixi (Theology of the Crucified) 161
Description 161
Assessment 164
§ 17 Theology and Theologies 167
Theology in the Singular 167
The "Good Old Days" 169
The Change 170
The Reason for the Change 172
Concluding Theses 174

Page vii

Book Two. Revelation

§ 18 The Concept of Revelation 179
Part One. The Revelational Dimension of Reality
§ 19 Reality and Revelation Revelation and Reality 186
Being Manifest 186
Symbol 187
Symbol of Transcendence 188
§ 20 The Witness of Religion and the History of 191
Religions
Hierophany and Theophany 191
Present-Day Understanding of the World 193
God in Heaven 196
Hymn to Matter 199
§ 21 Reality as Creation 201
Created Being 201
The Fundamental Structure of All Reality 204
§ 22 The Secularized World as Contradiction to the 206
World as Creation and as Revelation
Description of the Concept 206
Secularization and Faith 207
Secularization and Secularism 211
§ 23 The Human Being as Revelation 214
The Human Being as Creature 214
Human Beings in Their Behavior 216
§ 24 The Revelational Dimension of Word and 219
Language
Language and Human Reality 219
Speaking of God 222
The Word "God" 224
§ 25 Conscience 225
Description of Conscience 225
The Dialectic of Conscience 226
The Interpretation of Conscience 227
Other Interpretations of Conscience 231
Reflections on Sigmund Freud's Analyses of 234
Conscience
§ 26 The Revelational Dimension of History 237
What Is History? 237
History and Revelation 238
Critical Distance 244
Meaning of History 245
Part Two. Special Historical Revelation as Ground and
Horizon of the Christian Faith
I. The Possibility of This Revelation 250
§ 27 The Objection against the Possibility of Such a 251
Revelation
The Objection of Modern Thought 251
The Objection of Karl Jaspers 254

Page viii

§ 28 The Possibility of a Special, Supernatural 261

Revelation as a Fundamental Theological Problem
The Human Being as Questioner 261
The Seeker of Salvation 262
Conscience 263
Religion 264
The Supernatural Existential 265
§ 29 The Place of a Possible Special Supernatural 267
Revelation
History 267
The Word 268
The Unconditioned Concretion 269
The Problem of Exclusivity 271
II. Special, Supernatural Revelation according to Its 274
Self-Witness
§ 30 Revelation in Its Origin 275
The Problem 275
Primitive Revelation 277
Its Significance 279
§ 31 Revelation in the History of Israel 282
Patriarchal History 282
The People of Israel 285
The Institution/Phenomenon of Prophecy 290
§ 32 The Contents of the Revelation Witnessed in the 294
Old Testament
The God of Israel 294
The Lord of History 294
The Holy One of Israel 295
The Creator of Heaven and Earth 295
The Personal God 296
Distance from Its Milieu 296
The Aspect of the Future 297
§ 33 The Revelation of God in Jesus, the Christ, 300
Witnessed in the New Testament
§ 34 Revelation in Jesus, the Christ, as Fulfillment 304
Fulfillment in the Sense of the Now, the Today 304
Fulfillment in the Sense of the "Here" of the Ecce 310
The Fulfillment of the Contents and the 316
Characteristics of Revelation in the Old Testament
The Fulfillment of the Revelation of Creation 319
Revelation in the Cross 321
Transcendentental Christology 324
§ 35 Revelation as Consummation 327
§ 36 The Grounding and Justification of the Claim of 331
Revelation The Problem of Credibility and Criteria
The Problem of Miracles 331
The Problem of Faith and Credibility according to 335
the Witness of the Bible
Some Individual Themes 339
Miracle-Signs and Faith 342
The Objection of Lessing 347
The Mode of Reality of Miracle 349
§ 37 The Resurrection (Raising) of Jesus from the 354
Dead
The Meaning of the Resurrection Message 355
The Question of the Resurrection Event 356
Theology of the Resurrection 360

Page ix

Part Three. Revelation as Theme of Church Tradition and

of Theological Reflection
§ 38 Revelation as Theme of Two Councils 367
The Contribution and Result of the First Vatican 367
Council
Revelation as Theme of the Second Vatican 375
Council
Book Three. The Church
§ 39 The Church as Theme of Fundamental 385
Theology
Part One. The Origin of the Church from the Origin of
Faith Church in the Horizon of Revelation
§ 40 Israel as Community of Belief and Believers 392
Church from the Beginning 392
Church in Israel 394
§ 41 The Organs of the Community of the People of 400
Israel as Community of Faith
The Patriarchs 400
Moses and the Priesthood 400
The Judges 401
The Kings 402
The Prophets 403
The Elders 405
§ 42 Israel and the Church 407
Different Definitions of the Relationship 407
The Historical Path 411
The Statements of Vatican II 415
Part Two. Jesus and the Church
§ 43 Jesus' Proclamation of God's Rule and Kingdom 418
What Is the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of 419
Heaven?
Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God 421
§ 44 "Imminent Expectation" and the Problem of the 425
Church
The Texts of Imminent Expectation 425
Attempts at Interpretation 426
The Result 430
§ 45 Kingdom of God and Church 435
Interpretations 435
The Relationship between Kingdom of God and 438
Church
§ 46 Church and Kingdom of God in the Horizon of 442
the "Theology of Hope"
The Basic Theses 442
The Understanding of Church 443
Evaluation 445

Page x

§ 47 The Historical (Earthly) Jesus and the 452

Possibility of the Church
Founding of the Church? 452
Decisive Facts 454
The Call of the Disciples 457
The Appointing of the Twelve 457
The Call of Simon Peter 460
§ 48 The Text on the Building of the Church 464
The Problematic of Matthew 16:1719 464
On the Interpretation of Matthew 16:1719 466
The Results 467
The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 469
Binding and Loosing 470
Peter, the Shepherd 471
The Tension Present in Peter and His Ministry 472
(Office)
Current Perspectives 474
§ 49 The Last Supper of Jesus and the Church 479
Origin of the Last Supper 479
Is There a History and a Development of the 482
Eucharist? Are There Different Forms of the
Eucharist?
Further Inquiries 483
Result 487
Part Three. The Church of Christ
§ 50 The Raising (Resurrection) of Jesus and the 493
Church
The Significance of the Raising of Jesus 493
The Baptismal Commission 494
§ 51 The Church as Work of the Spirit 497
Jesus and the Spirit 497
The Effects of the Spirit 499
Signs of the Spirit Today 502
Part Four. The Church as Mediation and Re-Presentation
of Revelation
§ 52 The Theological Place of the Question of the 506
Structure of the Church
§ 53 Structures of the Church at the Beginning of the 510
Church
Misunderstanding of the Church? 510
The Primitive Community 511
Structure of the Primitive Community 512
The Pauline Communities 515
Contradictory Structures? 516
Purely Charismatic Communities? 518
§ 54 The Pluriform Development of Christian 521
Origins
The Witness of the Acts of the Apostles 521
The Witness of the Pastoral Letters 523
The First Letter of Clement 527
The Letters of Ignatius of Antioch 528
Falling Away or Progress? 530
§ 55 Tradition and Succession 532
Tradition of the Origin 533
Contents and Form 536
The Historical Development 538
The Layperson 540

Page xi

§ 56 The Question of Office in Contemporary 544

Ecumenical Discussion
On the Method of Ecumenical Dialogue 544
The Importance of the Question 546
The Document "Das geistliche Amt in der Kirche 547
(Spiritual Office in the Church)"
The Problem of Apostolic Succession 550
Convergence Declarations of the World Council of 552
Churches
The Meaning of "Recognition" 556
§ 57 The Papacy as Ecumenical Question 560
The State of the Question 560
A Look at History 561
The Reformation 565
The Catholic Response 568
The First Vatican Council 569
The Second Vatican Council 571
The Dialogue with the Orthodox Churches 572
The Dialogue with the Churches of the 575
Reformation
The Dialogue with the Anglican Church 579
§ 58 The Problem of Infallibility 582
The First Vatican Council 582
The Meaning of the Text of the Council 585
Points of Orientation 587
The Historical Background 590
The Second Vatican Council 591
The Authentic Magisterium 595
Critical Questions 596
Magisterium and the Word of God 599
§ 59 The Ecclesiastical Magisterium and Holy 602
Scripture
Dogma and Holy Scripture 603
The Magisterium and the Interpretation of 604
Scripture
Authority over Scripture? 606
The New Situation 609
The Doctrine of Inspiration 612
§ 60 Church and Churches 615
The "demonstratio catholica" 615
The Signs/Marks of the Church 617
The Church and the Question of Salvation 620
The New Situation from the Statements of Vatican 622
II
The Question of Membership 624
Church and Churches in New Form 630
§ 61 Epilogue: The Challenge of Postmodernism and 634
Fundamental Theology
Postmodernism: A General Overview 635
A Postmodern Theological Attempt 639
Current Theological Theories of Religion and 640
Doctrine
Religion and Experience 643
Experiential-Expressivism 643
A Cultural-Linguistic Alternative 644
Theory of Religion vs. Theology, and the Purpose 646
of Theology
Language and Experience 650
Conclusion 653
Index of Names 655
Subject Index 659

Page xii

TRANSLATOR'S FOREWORD
Why publish in 1996 the translation of a book written over 10 years
ago? A comparison of the contents of this work and situation of
contemporary Roman Catholic theological education reveals the
answer.
Catholic theology in North America is in a very different place than it
was three or four decades ago. It is no longer just a seminary affair. It
is taken up by women as well as men, by laypersons as well as clerics
and religious. It is studied in preparation for professional and
academic as well as ministerial work. And increasingly, it is
undertaken in a variety of institutes, colleges, and universities, some
of which have limited ability to mediate to their students the wealth of
the Catholic theological tradition.
The seminary has also changed. One could say that seminaries used to
educate future priests as if they were all destined to be scholars, and
then, somewhat as an afterthought, ''declared" them to be prepared for
ministry. The seminaries offered a heavy diet of scholastic philosophy
and theology, often in Latin, along with significant attention to the
ancient biblical languages and the other languages of theological
scholarship. The more promising seminarians were often sent to Rome
or Louvain for significant parts of their training. This made them more
or less at home in the international world of Catholic theology. In
effect, the major seminaries of Western Catholicism used to provide
basic training for an ever replenishing supply of theological scholars.
Now, because of the decline in seminary vocations, and because of
changes in seminary education itself, this is no longer the case.
Not all these changes have been for the worse. Seminaries now do a
better job of preparing students for pastoral and ministerial work, and
the Church in general is responding better to the call of the Second
Vatican Council to be attentive to the signs of the times. But this
improvement has been accompanied by a general decline in the level
of traditional theological education. For a Church which, even in its
progressive forms, has always drawn much of its life from traditionas
for example in the reforms of Vatican IIthis is a cause for concern.
Some of the influences which are at work in Catholic theology in the
waning years of the 20th century, and which help explain this complex
situation of both improvement and decline, can be enumerated as
follows.

Page xiii
1. Neothomism. Let this term stand in general for the great scholastic
system which "reigned" in Catholic theology in the first half of this
century. This was the common base for the theological minds both
"conservative" and "progressive," which guided the Church up to and
through Vatican II. This system formed people who were at home in
the rich intricacies of the scholastic philosophical and theological
tradition, who were at least incipiently aware of historicity, who were
at home in Latin, the traditional language of the Western Church's
intellectual heritage, and who enjoyed functional familiarity with
many of the other theological languages, ancient and modern.
2. Transcendental Thomism. Commonly associated with the names of
Bernard Lonergan and Karl Rahner, this can be described as the
marriage of Thomism with historicity, hermeneutics, and
phenomenology. It may once have been possible to identify this
narrowly with the "progressive" element in the Church, but no longer.
Many of its positions have become part of mainstream Catholic
theology.
3. The Reform of the Church (sometimes called aggiornamento). For
centuries, the post-Tridentine Church had lived with very little
change. When, under the leadership of Pope John XXIII and the
Second Vatican Council, the Church finally opened its windows and
set itself on the road to reform and renewal, a great deal of pent-up
energy was released and not always constructively channeled. The
thirty years since Vatican II have settled down into a phase of ongoing
reform and renewal with no end in sight. This ongoing phase will
probably have its ebbs and flows, but a return to the stasis that
characterized pre-Vatican II Catholicism seems unlikely.
4. Liturgical Reform. Sacrosanctum concilium, on the sacred liturgy,
was the first constitution produced by Vatican II. Appropriating
developments already under way in some parts of the Church, this
constitution set in motion a process that has revolutionized Catholic
life. Major elements in this process have been: the translation of the
liturgical and sacramental rituals into the vernacular; the introduction
of an expanded lectionary, subsequently also adopted by many of the
other Christian churches; the purification, adaptatation, and,
increasingly, inculturation of these rites; the recovery of the
kerygmatic and salvation-history nature and structure of the
Eucharistic Prayer. In sum, the faithful are now encouraged to
experience themselves as active participants in the universal
priesthood of Jesus Christ. The revolutionary or reformational
consequences of this development are still being worked out, indeed
perhaps just beginning to be felt.
5. Liberation Theology. Quickly developing in the years following
Vatican II, especially in the less developed countries of Latin
America, liberation theology has brought something of a cultural
revolution to

Page xiv
some parts of the Church. No longer automatically identified with the
established ruling classes, as it generally had been since colonial
times, the Church now often sides specifically with the poor,
expressing and exercising a "preferential option for the poor." Much
of the spiritual force for this movement has come from the small local
cells called "base communities." But because it has not always been
easy to distinguish Communist revolution and Marxist critique from
authentic Christian social reform, the history of liberation theology
has often been characterized by conflict, confusion, or at least tension,
the effects of which can be found even in the highest Vatican and
papal pronouncements.
6. Political Theology. This arose at the same time as liberation
theology, but in the specifically European context of Christianity's
appropriation of the political and social implications of Gaudium et
spes, the Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World. In some ways, it is the first-world equivalent of liberation
theology.
7. Feminist, Womanist, and Mujerista Theology. By the early 1970's,
some of the women entering into the theological disciplines formerly
ruled almost exclusively by men, began to expose the patriarchal
structure and bias that has traditionally characterized Christian
theology, and to call for a reconceptualization of theology in terms
that were inclusive of women's experience, and which did not assume
the natural or spiritual superiority of women over men. Proponents of
feminist theology represent a full spectrum of positions, from those
that are entirely faithful to the Church and to traditional
understandings of Christianity, to those that are sharply critical or
antagonistic. Women's ordination is only one of many questions
raised. In recent years, Black women and Hispanic women,
increasingly aware of the particular characteristics of their own
experiences, and also wanting to separate themselves from the anti-
Christian affect of some of the more radical feminist theologians, have
begun to stake out their own Black Woman Christian (i.e. Womanist)
and Hispanic Woman Christian (i.e. Mujerista) areas of theology.
8. Inculturation and the Shift from an Eurocentric to a World Church.
For the past two decades, Catholic Christians have become
increasingly conscious that their Church is in the process of
developing from an Eurocentric to a World Church. The task of
evangelizing the world, formerly conceived of in terms of adapting
(i.e. merely translating) Christianity and its forms of worship to
different cultures, is now seen as the vastly more demanding task and
responsibility of allowing the gospel to be experienced and expressed
more naturally in cultural forms that are often quite different than
those of Western Europe. Many of the cultural assumptions and
theological presuppositions which inspired the missionary efforts of
the colonial and even postcolonial

Page xv
periods have been superseded. The resulting efforts to inculturate
Christianity in different parts of the world is proving, along with other
recent developments, to be a source of both enrichment and tension.
We have barely even begun to work out the religious and theological
ramifications of this process.
9. Ecumenical Movement. In the earlier part of the 20th century,
Christian ecumenism, usually associated with the World Council of
Churches, was predominantly a Protestant movement. After Vatican
II, Roman Catholicism, which had hitherto largely looked in from the
outside, became a major player. Some of the Catholic contributions,
for example in the areas of liturgical scholarship and reform, have
helped contribute to the promising situation in which, for the first
time, the major Christian churches are using the same lectionary and
celebrating the Eucharist with an increasingly common understanding
of what is happening in that central mystery. Major bilateral
agreements on broad ranges of formerly divisive issues have been
reached, even to the point of some Protestant churches recognizing a
certain spiritual primacy in the Roman Pontiff. In recent years,
however, a plateau seems to have been reached in which the striking
advances of earlier years have become less frequent. However,
Christians can rejoice that Catholic-Protestant relations have
transcended much of their traditional antagonism. Looking ahead, the
major long-term leavening effects of Catholics and Protestants
beginning to worship in substantially the same way are probably still
to be felt.
10. Interreligious Dialogue. Vatican II carefully distinguished
Christian ecumenism from interreligious dialogue by devoting
separate documents to each. Nevertheless, apart from the still
incalculable benefits of Christianity's progressive recovery and
reappropriation of its Jewish roots, especially in its forms of ritual and
prayer, interreligious dialogue has remained something of a stepchild
in comparison with Christian ecumenism. However, the increasing
attention which scholars of different faiths and cultures have been
giving to themes relating to interreligious dialogue, especially in the
last decade, suggests that this may soon change.
11. Traditionalism. Originally, "traditionalism" referred to the
teaching of some Catholic philosophers and theologians of the 18th
and 19th centuries who, against the Enlightenment, insisted that
divine revelation is passed down within a tradition that provides
instruction through the written and spoken word. In contemporary
usage it has also become a (sometimes polemical) term to designate
those opposed to the central reforms of Vatican II. That there are
traditionalists in this sense is a matter of fact. What is harder to agree
upon is the precise meaning of terms like: revolutionary, radical,
progressive, moderate, conservative, reactionary, traditionalist, etc.

Page xvi
That the definitions of these terms are fluid, depending on who is
doing the defining, is a matter of common experience. Such fluidity is,
among other things, a sign of vigorous health. But when that fluidity
makes it difficult, as it often does, to distinguish clearly and fairly
between those who support and those who oppose the central reforms
of Vatican II, it also becomes a danger.
12. Progressive Movements. At the other end of the spectrum from the
traditionalism we have just mentioned are a number of movements,
some of them ongoing, others ad hoc, whose purpose, generally, is to
accelerate or go beyond the reform developments introduced by
Vatican II. Again, the existence of such movements is a sign of
vigorous health. But also again, the difficulty, indeed practical
impossibility, of deciding where the precise boundary lies between
healthy criticism and challenge and unhealthy opposition means that
contemporary Catholics are being asked to live with much more
ambiguity than characterized the decades immediately preceding
Vatican II.
13. Rapprochement with Modernity. For most of the 19th and much of
the 20th century, the Catholic Church found itself, more often than
not, in opposition to those developments in the social and natural
sciences which most characterized modernity. This was a position
untypical of most of the history of the Church which generally
patronized or at least tolerated developments in the arts and sciences.
In recent decades, especially since Vatican II, and following the
guidance of Gaudium et spes, The Pastoral Constitution on the Church
in the Modern World, the Church has been making something of an
alliance, albeit an uneasy one, with many of these developments.
14. Postmodernism. While much of the Church is still struggling to
come to terms with modernity, the world itself, especially Western
civilization which still supplies the Eurocentirc base for much of
Christianity, has been exploring new ways of understanding itself
which call into question some of the most basic presuppositions that
have been common to both radical modernity and conservative
Christianity. This may well be the most significant development for
fundamental theology in the past decade, which explains why we have
added an additional chapter on this theme at the end of the book. This
chapter, § 61, was written by Thomas Kelly who assisted me with
much of the work of this translation.
15. The Collapse of Soviet Communism. It may not be possible to
foretell the precise theological implications of this recent
development. However, since great cultural and historical turning
points of this kind have generally signaled eventual religious and
theological changes, and since Christian theology is in the process of
becoming much more aware of the eschatological dynamics of
Christian faith, we should be alert to what may be developing from
the fact that for

Page xvii
the first time in a century, the words of Karl Marx: "A spectre is
haunting Europethe spectre of Communism," no longer sound very
threatening.
One could easily extend this list, but this is more than enough to make
the point that the current world of theology is an exceedingly complex
one. Students entering into theological studies characteristically have
some familiarity with the contemporary side of many of the issues we
have just listed. But just as characteristically, they have little
knowledge of their historical background, even in the relatively recent
past. Thus, in their efforts to understand what is now going forward,
as Lonergan used to put it, in their efforts to read the theological signs
of the times, they are at a crippling disadvantage.
Heinrich Fries (b. 1911) grew up in the years of Catholicism's
conservative reaction against the ventures of Modernism, cut his teeth
as a theologian when Neothomism reigned supreme and when the
Church, unknown to itself, was being guided by the Spirit towards the
Second Vatican Council. As a young theologian, and especially in his
middle years, he personally helped contribute to the great
achievements of the Council, and since that time has played a leading
role in the contemporary development of the Catholic theology of
revelation and ecumenism. His personal appropriation of that brand of
Transcendental Thomism associated with Karl Rahner, with whom he
worked closely on a number of issues, places him at the center of
those theological developments which have most characterized post-
Vatican II Catholic theology. In addition, his earlier work on and
continuing discussion with the modern European philosophies of
religion has significantly contributed to his unique qualifications to
write a fundamental theology which will give to younger students a
chance to understand what is now going forward.
About This Translation
This translation, which in many ways amounts to a revised English
edition of the German original, is designed to meet the basic
background educational needs of English-speaking students of
Catholic theology in college, seminary, and graduate school. Our aim
has been to produce an English edition and not just a translation.
Thus, the footnote documentation has been expanded to include the
commonly accessible English equivalents to German theological
reference works. Unless otherwise noted, the translations of quoted
texts and documents are from Fries's German text. However, as an aid
to the English-reading student, we have generally provided page
references not to the original German works but to their English
translations, when such existed and could be identified. English works
quoted by Fries in German translation, have

Page xviii
been quoted in their original English, unless otherwise noted. The
Name Index is basically a translation from the original. The Subject
Index is designed to be an English adaptation of the original
Sachregister. The Select Bibliography has been added as an aid to the
English-speaking reader, and thus also includes works which have
appeared since the original 1985 publication.
Finally, this work is much indebted to several Research Expense
Grants both from Boston College itself and from the Jesuit
Community at Boston College. Much of what is of quality in the
editing and production of the book is due to the conscientious copy
editing of Susan Needham of The Catholic University of America
Press, and also most especially to the generous technical and scholarly
assistance of John Boyd Turner, Thomas M. Kelly, and Tiffany Israel
Shiner, theology graduate students at Boston College.
ROBERT J. DALY, S.J.
BOSTON COLLEGE, AUGUST 1996

Page xix

ABBREVIATIONS
BZ Biblische Zeitschrift, Paderborn 1957ff.
Cath Catholica. Jahrbuch für ökumenische Theologie, Münster 1932ff.
DS H. Denzinger A. Schönmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum
definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, Freiburg,
33d ed. 1965
DT Dictionary of Theology, ed. K. Rahner and H. Vorgrimler, 2d ed.,
New York 1981
DFT Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, ed. R. Latourelle and R.
Fisichella, New York 1994
ER Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. M. Eliade et al., New York,
MacMillan 1987
FZThPh Freiburger Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie, Fribourg
1955ff.
HerKorrHerder-Korrespondenz, Freiburg 1946ff.
HThG Handbuch theologischer Grundbegriffe, ed. H. Fries, Munich
1962f.
LThK Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. J. Höfer and K. Rahner, 2d
ed., Freiburg 1957ff.
MThZ Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, Munich 1950ff
MySal Mysterium Salutis. Grundrib heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, ed. J.
Feiner and M. Löhrer, EinsiedelnZurichCologne, 1965ff.
NCE New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Catholic University of America,
New York 1967
NDT New Dictionary of Theology, ed J. Komonchak, M. Collins, D.
Lane, Collegeville, Minn. 1991
RGG Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. K. Galling, 3d ed.,
Tübingen 1956ff.
SM Sacramentum Mundi, New YorkLondon 1968
StdZ Stimmen der Zeit, Freiburg 1871ff.
StdZ Stimmen der Zeit, Freiburg 1871ff.
STh Summa Theologiae (Thomas Aquinas)
ThGl Theologie und Glaube, Paderborn 1909ff.
ThQ Theologische Quartalschrift, Tübingen 1819ff., Munich
ThW Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, ed. G. Kittel,
continued by G. Friedrich, Stuttgart 1933ff.
ZKG Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Stuttgart 1878ff.
ZSTh Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie, Berlin 1923ff.

Page 1

FOREWORD
In a number of earlier works I argued that a contemporary
fundamental theology could be produced only by a team, so
comprehensive and so differentiated are the themes of this basic
theological discipline. In addition, the specialization that now
characterizes theology, leaves no individual adequate to the job. A
further complication is that fundamental theology is the place where
most of the challenges and opportunities for theology to be up to date
are located. It is not enough, therefore, just to repeat old truths; there
has to be translation in the truest sense of the word, from shore to
shore, from the past to today; there has to be a merging of horizons. It
is precisely fundamental theology that has the duty of being both true
to origins and adapted to contemporary situations, or attending to the
message of faith as well as to the needs of concrete human beings. For
they are the ones to whom the message must be mediated in such a
way that they can understand and experience it as an answer to their
questions as well as a challenge to their own attempted answers.
Where there are no questions, answers useless.
The magnitude and complexity of the tasks that constitute
fundamental theology make a good case for making the treatment of
this theological discipline a team project. This was how it was done in
the quickly sold-out Handbuch der Fundamentaltheologie edited by
Walter Kern, Herman Josef Pottmeyer and Max Seckler. The
advantage of this model is that individual themes are treated with both
thoroughness and variety. But the inner relationships of the individual
parts to the whole remain problematic.
This is why it makes sense to attempt a fundamental theology as the
work of a single author. It has the advantages of unity, consistency and
continuity. My qualifications for such an attempt can be found in the
many years I have taught fundamental theology. This book has grown
out of that teaching and has gone through many stages. It owes much
to the lively cooperation of my students.
Even in its present form, this volume of fundamental theology is an
incomplete work. How could it be otherwise? It is like speaking of a
forest while leaving the details of every individual tree uninvestigated.

Page 2
As for the structure of the book, the question of religion and the
critique of religion are not given their own thematic development.
This is not just because the book would otherwise have become too
large, and also not just because a great deal is now being written on
these questionsone could mention Bernhard Welte, Philosophy of
Religion, (Freiburg/Basel/Wien, 1978); Hans Küng, Does God Exist?
(München, Zurich 1978); Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ
(Mainz 1982), but also because these themes are taken up in our
treatment of faith and of revelation. I myself have repeatedly gone
into print on these questions, such as in the book edited by me:
Gottdie Frage unserer Zeit (Munich 1973); and together with Peter
Glockmann: Ich sehe keinen Gott (Freiburg 1971); and together with
Aloys Buch: Die Frage nach Gott als Frage nach dem Menschen
(Düsseldorf 1981).
In the treatment of fundamental-theological problems, I devoted
special attention to contemporary ecumenical questions. Ecumenical
theology is not a discipline within theology but a dimension of all of
theology.
In spite of everything, I would never have dared to publish this work
of fundamental theology if the editorial director of Styria Press, Dr.
Gerhard Trenkler, had not repeatedly requested and encouraged me to
do so. I owe him therefore special thanks. I am likewise grateful to
Herr Josef Helmut Machowetz, who in a thoroughly helpful way
assumed the task of reader and produced the Index of Names. The
lengthy and not always easily readable manuscript was typed by Frau
Hildegard Förschner. For that, my heartfelt thanks.
Herr (Ministerialrat) Dr. Otto Martz assisted in the reading of proofs.
My colleague Johannes Brosseder, together with his institute through
Frau Katharina Altmeier and Frau Roswitha Mombauer, produced the
comprehensive Subject Index. For all this help I would like to express
my thanks.
HEINRICH FRIES
MUNICH, JANUARY 1985

Page 3

INTRODUCTION
Fundamental theology treats the fundamentals, the foundations of
theology. Under ''fundamental" and "foundation" is meant the
presuppositions and conditions for the possibility of theology. Such
presuppositions and conditions are not invented or constructed
arbitrarily, or brought in from outside; they are rather required by the
subject itself, theology.
Theology is the methodical reflection on faith in God which is
witnessed, communicated, and revealed in many ways, but
definitively, and in a way that cannot be superseded, in Jesus Christ,
whose presence, word and work is alive in the Church.
The foundations of theology deal thus with the question of faith itself,
and especially with its correlative: revelation as the principle of all
theology and its specific contents. These foundations also deal with
the question of the mediation of revelation as a question of [about] the
Church, insofar as it is the bearer and traditor of revelation. These
foundations, in the fundamental-theological perspective, are not
objects of belief in themselves; they are rather the object of human
understanding and rationality.
In this way, it should become possible to make the same demand of
faith and of the believer which is already found in the New Testament
where one finds the classical description of the purpose of
fundamental theology: "Be always ready to answer the question of
anyone who asks about the hope with which you are filled" (1 Pet
3:15). Hope is a synonym for faith; hope is the future form of faith.
The question of the believability of faith is the special characteristic of
fundamental theology and its specific mode of questioning, at least in
the understanding of a Catholic fundamental theology.1
1 Cf. the introductory reflections in the different presentations of
fundamental theology. In addition: G. Söhngen, Fundamentaltheologie, in
LThK 4, 45259; H. Fries, Fundamentaltheologie, in SM 2, 14050; Zum
heutigen Stand der Fundamentaltheologie, in: Glaube und Kirche als
Angebot (GrazViennaCologne 1976) 15471; die ökumenische dimension
der Fundamentaltheologie, in: ibid., 17286; H. Stirnimann, Erwägungen
zur Fundamentaltheologie, in: FZThPh 24 (1977) 291365; J. Schmitz, Die
Fundamentaltheologie im 20. Jahrhundert, in: H. VorgrimlerR. van der
Gucht, eds., Bilanz der Theologie in 20. Jahrhundert II
(FreiburgBaselVienna 1969) 197245; R. LatourelleG. O'Collins, Problemi
e Prospettive di Teologia fondamentale (Brescia 1980); H. Wagner,
Einführung in die
(footnote continued on next page)

Page 4
The term "fundamental theology" has taken the place of apologetics.2
This does not mean that the "business" of apologeticthe readiness-to-
give-answer of the Christian faith, in the sense of giving an account,
of defending, of taking a position over against the questions directed
against itis done away with or outmoded. Apologetic is already found
in the Old and New Testament, and the first theological efforts in the
Early Church were produced by the apologists. Apologetic remains an
ever-valid dimension of theology which, for its own sake, must attend
to its encountering and creatively coming to terms with the spirit of
the historical epoch in which it finds itself. The term "fundamental
theology" is intended to express that the apologetic task can and
should be integrated in a comprehensive theological reflection: in the
believing reason's self-examination of its foundations and
presuppositions. Fundamental theology is, in this sense, a
transcendental-theological reality.
This clarifies how fundamental theology is the foundation of theology.
This claim would be excessive if it were saying that fundamental
theology, in the questions it asks and the answers it gives, was the one
and only foundation of theology in the sense that the Christian faith
would followlike a conclusion from premiseswith logical necessity or
psychological compulsion from the grounds of believability.
In that scenario, faith would no longer be faith. It is more accurate to
say that the grounds of believability create the presuppositions and
conditions under which faith becomes something that is responsible,
or perhaps even binding. This is the significance of what Thomas took
from Augustine: "Nemo crederet nisi videret esse credendum"no one
would believe if (s)he did not see that (s)he should believe. On the
other hand, it is also true that no believability, no intelligibility of
(footnote continued from previous page)
Fundamentaltheologie (Darmstadt 1980); "Fundamentaltheologie," in:
Theologische Realencyklopädie 9.73852. Zur Fundamentaltheologie
innerhalb der evangelischen Theologie (G. Ebeling, W. Pannenberg, W.
Joest) vgl. M. Seckler, "Evangelische Fundamentaltheologie. Erwägungen
zu einem Novum aus katholischer Sicht," ThQ 155 (1975) 28199; H. Petri,
"Die Entdeckung der Fundamentaltheologie in der evangelischen
Theologie." Cath 33 (1979) 24161; H. Wagner, op. cit., 10924.
2 Still classical are: J. S. Drey, Die Apologetik als wissenschaftliche
Nachweisung der Göttlichkeit des Christentums in seiner Erscheinung
(Mainz 19381947, reprint: Frankfurt 1967; F. Hettinger, Apologie des
Christentums Freiburg 18631967; A. M. Weiß, Apologie des Christentums
(Freiburg 18781889); P. Schanz, Apologie des Christentums Freiburg
(18871988 [sic]); H. Schell, Apologie des Christentums (Paderborn 1901); K.
Aland, Die Apologie der Apologetik (Berlin 1948); E. KamlahC. AndresenH.
H. SchreyC. G. SchweizerH. Fries, "Apologetik, in: RGG 1.47795; H. LaisW.
Lohff, "Apologetik" in: LThK 1, 72331; E. Seiterich, Die
Glaubwürdigketiserkenntnis. Eine theologische Untersuchung zur Grundlage
der Apologetik (Heidelberg 1948): H. Lais, Probleme einer zeitgemäßen
Apologetik (Vienna 1958); J. B. Metz, "Apologetics" in SM 1.6670.
On the history: K. Werner, Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen
Literatur der christlichen Theologie (Schaffhausen 18611876); A. Lang, Die
Entfaltung des apologetischen Problems in der Scholastik des Mittelalters
(Freiburg 1962).

Page 5
faith dispenses from faith or can replace faith. It is, and remains, a
new act of its own.
As for the presuppositions and conditions for the possibility of
Christian faith, i.e., grounds for believability, there are many. With
regard to the theme: "Faith and the Science of Faith," I would propose
as a fundamental thesis: Whatever has to do with the act and the
content of Christian faith, that faith is possible, is capable of being
responded to, and is fulfillable only when it has a relationship to
human being. This is not just any old relationship, or an external or
alienated one, but an original and inner relationship to the human and
to what essentially belongs to it: namely, world and history. In other
words, Christian faith, on which theology reflects, is only possible
when there is in human beings and in the conditions which make them
such, the possibility and disposition for Christian faith, when human
beings are so constituted that they can believe (also and precisely in
the sense of Christian faith). When such conditions of possibility are
not present or cannot be detected, the Christian faith becomes, both in
general and in particular, unrealistic, external, and ideological. Indeed
it doesn't even seriously come into question.
The themes of fundamental theology are precisely those which people
of today talk and argue about. That gives this theological discipline a
high degree of actuality. For today's questions are not about this or
that individual aspect of Christian faith, today's questions are about
the foundation of faith that precedes everything, and about the faith as
foundation.
It is no longer enough merely to proclaim or solemnly assert the
Christian faith. One has to lay out its grounds in the face of the
overwhelming power of the contemporary experience of world and
existence and of the challenges which accompany this experience. It is
a massive task, but also a great opportunity.

Page 7

BOOK ONE
FAITH AND THE SCIENCE OF FAITH

Page 9

Part One
Faith
What we will now present under the theme of faith is basic to all
aspects of fundamental theology. We encounter it along with the
theme of revelation. In other words, faith is the subjective correlate of
revelation. Faith signifies revelation which has reached its addressees
and thus its goal. Without faith, revelation ceases to be what it should
be and is intended to be: revelation for human beings. If Church
belongs to the theme of fundamental theology, the question arises
whether and in what sense the Church has to do with the
presuppositions and conditions of the possibility of faith, and what
function it assumes as the official locus for the mediation of faith.
Generally speaking, it can be said that whatever has to do with faith,
with revelation, with Church, or with simply being a Christian, can be
traced back to some basic structures. The confusing variety and
complexity found in theology take on a context and a simple
transparent structure when one opens up these fundamental structures.
What often looks like overlap or repetition is actually an indication of
a pervasive form one will encounter again and again. The theology of
a theologian, when it is not the synthesizing of material from
elsewhere, is characterized by large patterns such as these, patterns
typical of and specific to that theologian.
That these fundamental structures repeatedly recur in relation to many
different subjects is not a sign of carelessness; it is rather an indication
that what is being done is appropriate not just to the particular subject
being treated but also to numerous others.

Page 10

I
The Anthropological Specifications of Faith
We cannot today, any more than we could previously, begin with faith
and its contents as from an obviously accepted reality and then go on
to further developments or derivations. We must first open up access
to God, to God's revelation, and to the faith that is ordered to God.
Otherwise our theological enterprise runs the risk of appearing as
some strange, foreign body, and of having no relationship to reality,
above all to the activity and behavior of human beings. Thus, we look
to the realm of the anthropological for possible starting points for
theological faith.
When we speak of faith in the theological and anthropological sense,
that indicates there is something common to them. Otherwise, we
wouldn't be able to use the same word, unless we assumed that we
were dealing with a mere equivocation. This indicates where we must
begin.
This doesn't mean that we could thus commit ourselves to the
Christian faith in this way without noticing it; but rather that we can
thus become aware of connections which nowadays need to be
specifically spelled out. It is quite possible for these connections to
become something which goes along with Christian faith, which,
indeed, consists of inner connections.

Page 11
§ 1
Faith As Personal Act
The concept and the word "faith" are extraordinarily many-sided and
ambiguous.1 Should one ask by questionnaire what ideas individuals
connect with the word faith, one would get the most varied of
answers. In everyday language one encounters the following
conceptions.
The Meanings of Faith/Belief
I believe. This could have meanings such as: I don't know; I think; it
could be, but so could the opposite. Faith in this sense has only a very
small degree of reliability and certainty; it really means something
like don't know. One comes to a somewhat higher level with phrases
such as "I believe that XY has gone away." Those who speak this way
mean that they have reasons and indications for such an assertion, but
that these reasons are not sufficient for a firm and sure statement. This
form of belief is higher than vague assumption, but belief in this sense
is less than a knowledge and recognition based on sufficient grounds.
In this manner of speaking faith means more or less: to know this only
approximately.
Thus measured, faith is from the outset a provisional or deficient
mode of knowing and recognizing. It can, at best, serve as a kind of
mid-
1 Literature on the theme of faith is so comprehensive that one cannot
even come close to listing it all. Reference has to be made to the
corresponding articles in the theological dictionaries, lexicons and
handbooks.
For the formulation of the question treated here, one can mention: J.
Mouroux, I Believe; The Personal Structure of Faith (New York: Sheed and
Ward, 1959); A. Brunner, Glaube und Erkenntnis (Munich, 1951); G.
Søhngen, Einübung in die Theologie (FreiburgMunich, 1955); C. CirneLima,
Der personale Glaube (Innsbruck, 1959); Heinrich Fries, GlaubenWissen
(Berlin, 1960); Josef Pieper, Belief and Faith A Philosophical Tract trans.
Richard and Clara Winston (Westport: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1975);
H. GollwitzerW. Weishcedel, Denken und Glauben (Stuttgart, 1965); Henry
Bouillard, The Logic of Faith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967); H. Fries,
Faith Under Challenge (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969); also Was hieft
glauben? (Düsseldorf, 1969); Walter Kasper, Einführung in den Glauben
(Mainz, 1972): H. Beck, Anthropologischer Zugang zum Glauben (Sazburg,
1979); B. Welte, Was ist glauben? (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1982).

Page 12
dle status between mere supposition and exact, grounded insight. But
in terms of knowledge and cognition, it never escapes its inferior
position. If this is where one starts, faith in the theological sense is
inevitably something quite suspicious and vulnerable. It is easy to see
why the connection of faith with the science of faith seems like the
union of irreconcilables.
In everyday language, faith has still another form. We find it in
sentences like "I believe in youI believe you." In this form, faith is
related to a person. Faith is primarily an act of encounter and of trust;
it embraces understanding, will, and feeling in primordial union. The
form "I believe in you" is radical and comprehensive. It goes to the
totality of the person, more than does the formulation "I believe you,"
which is subject to a possible reservation. In any case, faith in this
form operates primarily not in the realm of I and it, of I and the world
of objects, but in the realm of encounter between I and You. It is a
personal act.
In the German and English languages, faith has the same word root as
geloben and lieben, believe and love. The Latin credere comes, as one
possible derivation suggests, from cor dare: give one's heart. The
Hebrew word for believeit is taken up in the word "Amen"means
stand fast, set firmly, or make firm.
In the form of "I believe in you" and "I believe you," faith is not only
an act of encounter but an eminent mode of cognition. This holds
above all for personal cognition. So true is this that one has to say:
Faith, understood as "I believe in youI believe you," is the mode and
manner in which I gain knowing access to the person of the other:
Without this faith, the person as person, in its own reality, in its depth,
in that which moves it, in its self, remains shut off from me.
That this is the case is clear from the following consideration. How
can I come to know the persons of others in their own selves? Much
of this is accomplished by the fact that I observe and analyze those
persons, that I do with them what I will, that I subject them to
experiment, test, and control, and from all this I get the results and
conclusions that I draw about the persons themselves, from their
words, actions, gestures, and dreams.
Without doubt, a broad and deep knowledge of the person is possible
in this way. We know much more than we used to know about the
many factors and conditions on which the human being is dependent.
But the question has to be asked: Isn't it now a fairly widespread idea
that human beings are only the product, only the ensemble of the kind
of psychological, biological, societal, and economic conditions that
determine them, and thus just the results of the factors influencing
them, and that human beings are known when one knows the factors
that determine them? If earlier anthropological theories ran the risk of
not giving enough attention to the external conditions that shaped
human

Page 13
beings and had the tendency to determine what human beings are only
from their own metaphysical nature, we have today the opposite, no
less one-sided tendency to forget this self of the human being as its
own reality. Our tendency today is to underestimate this reality, to
banish it into the realm of the "extraterritorial," and from there to
explain the human being as a being directed from without.
Note this too: When I, in order to come to know the human being as
person, restrict myself to analysis, test, and external observationi.e.,
when I work according to scientific, exact methodI obtain a more or
less foreground knowledge of the person, a perhaps average or typical
knowledge, or a knowledge of certain qualities, abilities, and modes
of reaction, but in no way do I gain a proper, individual knowledge.
But precisely this is what is important and needed for personal
knowledge.
When depth psychology seeks to illumine this "depth" as the
individual and/or collective unconscious of the personthe depth that
lies within and is perhaps suppressed within this unconsciousit
frequently bring to light some astonishing and previously unknown
things. But one still has to ask: Is that a knowledge of the person in its
real individual, conscious, and personal self and not just in its
impersonal and unconscious self? But more important is the factand
herein lies the distinction of the knowledge of a person from the
knowledge of a nature or a thingthat person is not an object like other
scientific objects. A knowledge that, from the external and from
observed expressions, draws conclusions about the person,
presupposes that the person expresses itself, that it doesn't close itself
off and refuse to communicate. It could decline and refuse to express
anything about itself, it could remain dumb, closed and defensive; it
could even energetically forbid all attempts to observe and test it. Of
course, even that would be an expression, and that too would result in
an important bit of knowledge. But could one maintain that such a
knowledge had grasped the essence, the uniqueness, the depth of a
person in its innermost self?
It would, in addition, be possible that the persons who are expressing
themselves, and about whom one could make conclusions from their
expressions about their selves and their natures, are misrepresenting
themselves, that they are deceiving the one making the observations,
that they are presenting themselves as something quite other than what
they are. One can perhaps recognize that a person is doing that; but
could one thereby also recognize what that person now is, in his/her
own proper being and depth? This kind of knowledge is possible only
when one can believe the person and believe in the person. In
addition, we have to keep in mind that we are not talking here about
knowledge of persons such as is possible to the professional
psychologist, but knowledge of person in the everyday, average sense.

Page 14
From all this we can conclude: the knowledge of person that comes
from the external remains confined to the realm of external
expression, and thus reveals nothing at all about the person itself. But
if this knowledge wants to move beyond the external, and would like
to understand and interpret the expressions as expressions of an inner,
unique, and essential aspect of person, this presupposes that the
person is giving himself to be known, that she is revealing herself in
the manifold modes of her possibility, i.e., in expression and bearing,
in work and deed, in gesture, but above all in word, in conversation. It
is further presupposed that one can give credence to the person, and
that the external corresponds to the internal from which it comes. In
other words, persons themselves can be known as persons themselves
and in their uniqueness only when they gives themselves to be known,
when they reveal themselves. Persons can do this because they
possess themselves, because they have the capacity to exist in and for
themselves.
That persons show themselves in self-revelation is their own free
decision and will; they can also close themselves off in silence. At the
same time such self-revelation is an act of their readiness to open
themselves, indeedone must sayan act of their self-giving. They could
also refuse to do this; they could dissemble or deceive.
I become part of this revelation of the person when I believe the
person and believe in the person. The act of faith and the
understanding in faith that is opened and laid before one corresponds
to the revelation of the person. But this act too stands under the sign
of freedom. I do not have to believe, but I can and may do so.
The Implications of Faith
What happens in the act of faith in the form of the "I believe in youI
believe you"? What is included in this? First and foremost: I confirm
and value you, I acknowledge and affirm you, I love you. We believe
because we love, says John Henry Newman. But what we are also
sayingas becomes clear above all in the "I believe you"is that we, in
our acknowledging, gain access to the person. We have communion
with it and take part in it and in its life, in its thinking, knowing,
recognizing, and willing, and in the way in which it sees itself, and the
world of things, and human beings. We take over the person who
reveals him/herself to us and to whom webelieving and in faithgive
ourselves.
Through the "I believe in youI believe you" something new grows in
me that I didn't have before, a new possibility, a new seeing and
recognizing. I see with the eyes of another, and thereby, to a certain
extent, something new comes into existence. I am grounded in
another.

Page 15
From this comes, in the realm of knowing, a with-one-another in the
form of intersubjectivity; it is knowledge through communication.
With faith as encounter with the person and as mode of knowledge of
the person, something further is given and expressed: The higher a
person stands in human rank, the more does that person have to say
and to give, and so much the more am I, for my knowledge of this
person and for my encounter with it, dependent on its self-opening
revelation and on its ''I believe in you" and "I believe you." But it is
also true that the more that happens, so much the more has this person
a right and claim on my faith in this way. Thus, such a faith with its
respective intensity and depth becomes a sign of the high estimation
and an expression of the respect, honor, and reverence I have for the
person in whom I believe and whom I believe. If I say to someone, I
don't believe you, I don't believe one word of yours, this refusal is the
strongest expression of a low estimation and disrespect, of offense and
insult. Finally, the more deeply and the more uniquely I would like to
have experience and knowledge of the person whom I revere, value,
and love, the more am I dependent on that person's "I believe in youI
believe you." In this connection, one can make sense of what authority
means as source and origin, and one can make sense of the dictum:
Authority has to do not with subjection, but with recognition.2
Consequently, when faith is really understood and seen as it is in
itself, nothing would be more wrong and inappropriate than to see in it
only a lesser or unimportant kind of knowing, as if faith meant not to
know, or only to half know, or to know only approximately, or only to
surmise, or merely to have an opinion about something. Faith, in the
form we are describing here, means knowing in the fullest meaning of
the word. Faith, like love, makes one blind, but seeing. The
knowledge made possible in faith has its fulfillment precisely where it
concerns knowledge of the person. Without faith, persons and their
world remain closed and inaccessible. But it is just as clear that faith,
as a means of knowledge, has no place and no rights in the realm of
the exact sciences, of mathematics, and of logic.
The modes of knowledge in all the realms and dimensions of the
human are not hindered or limited by faith; they are instead led to new
possibilities that would otherwise be closed to them. A rejection of
faith in this sense is thus no liberation for knowledge but a loss of
knowledge, or at least the lessening of the possibilities of knowledge,
and precisely of those forms of knowledge that are vitally important
and even of existential significance for human beings as persons and
for their lives. No human being, and above all no community and
society, can live humanly without faith.
2 HansGeorg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and
Donald Marshall, 2nd ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1989) 27785.

Page 16
Affirmational (Propositional) Faith
Faith in the form of "I believe in youI believe you" comes to
fulfillment only when it is ready to accept its consequences, that is
when the personal You-faith, the faith of trust, is unfolded and given
shape in so-called affirmational faith. You-faith would not be fulfilled
and brought to its full potential if affirmational faith were not
recognized as part of it. This means: to believe someone and to
believe something go together. The "I believe in youI believe you"
includes the individual, the concrete, and the definite, somewhat in the
form: I believe what you say, what you promise, what you entrust to
me, what you give me to believe.
Faith thus takes on that shape under which it is most often presented:
It becomes the taking over of contents of quite definite and concrete
form; it becomes affirmational faith. These affirmationsand this is
decisive for faithare not accessible to me, or at least not primarily
through my own insight and experience. Instead, I take them over
from, in, and whom I believe, on the basis of that person's witness,
cognition, knowledge, and vision, and on the basis of the authority
inherent in them. Through this taking over, there takes place that
which we have already mentioned: I have community with him/her; I
enter into the seeing, thinking, cognition, and knowledge of him
whom I believe; I am taken up into the community of her spirit and
heart. The other becomes the surety, the guarantee, and the witness for
truth and cognition. From this it follows that if there were no one who
had cognition, no one who saw, and knew, and who was ready to
disclose this, there would also be no faith.
Through the coordination of affirmational faith with faith as trust, it
turns out that faith in something, in propositions, in truths, is no
longer an isolated, relationless and freely suspended act; it becomes
rather grounded, borne, and encompassed by the Greater and the More
Encompassing. It becomes grounded in the Person of the One in
whom I believe.
Thus is disclosed the fundamental structure of faith. Its core is the
trust, the affirmation, and recognition of the person, and the cognition
that is manifested therein. Thereby and therein is also affirmed what
comes from this person by way of individual proposition and
expression: first and foremost as proposition of the person about itself,
about its sentiment, about its intention, about its self. Person-related
affirmational faith has its foundation in the you-faith. The affirmation,
which has to do with the person involved, is affirmed because the
person in whom I believe and whom I believe is affirmed.
I can also give my yes to affirmations that have to do not with the
disclosure of the person itself, but with affirmations which the person
makes, thus affirmations of a factual nature, and do thisin the first

Page 17
instancefor the sake of the person, for the sake of the person's
qualification and competence, on the basis, therefore, of authority.
Thus begins the process of learning. But here one immediately sees
the possibility, indeed the necessity, of freeing such affirmations from
the person. To accept in principle propositions of a factual nature only,
completely and always because of the person in whom and whom I
believe, would leave affirmational faith on the level of immaturity and
would, on the other hand, grant to the persons whom I believe a
qualification or authority no longer appropriate to them.
The dependent child believes what its mother says for no other reason
than that she says it. But the fact that for the child there is no other
reason to hold something to be truethat precisely is what constitutes
its dependency. The human being can and should move beyond this
stage. This process of separation begins quite early; it begins when the
child starts asking, "Why?" Since proof from authority is the weakest
proof, as Thomas Aquinas says, human beings should not accept
factual propositions and knowledge of factual situations just from
authority, even though the actual process of cognition might have
begun with authority. Human beings should cognitionally appropriate
something because, through a learning process which is oriented to
factual reality, they have gained an insight into and an understanding
of the factual situation confronting them.
At this point of the phenomenon of faith, of the intertwining of you-
faith and affirmational faith, of you-faith and that-faith, the boundaries
set for the human being in the inner-human realm become clear. This
clarification of boundaries does not, however, exclude but includes,
on the basis of this anthropological model, the attempt to enter into an
understanding of faith which encompasses faith in God and in God's
revelation. Why? Because, for the cognition of the person as person,
there is, through faith, a cognitional access for which faith remains
indispensable.
Faith in God is an act that is encountered not primarily in the relation
subject-object, I-it, but in the relation I-You. God, the all-determining
reality, cannot stand beneath the level of the personal to which being-
self, spirit, self-possession, freedom, and love primarily belong. Belief
in God is primarily a personal act which is situated in the relation of I
and You. It is therefore reasonable and appropriate to emphasize this
perspective of faith. It is, in addition, to be surmised from the outset
that the content of a possible revelation of God has a whole lot more
to do with God and God's mystery, and remains inseparable from God,
than is the case with factual assertions of an empirical kind, which are
communicated from human beings and are accepted initially in faith
but then are separated from faith and become aspects of independent
insight and knowledge on the part of the subject. The earlier

Page 18
theological distinction between credere in Deum/believe in God (as
personal faith), credere Deo/have faith in God (as ground of faith) and
credere Deum/believe God (as expression for the content aspect of this
faith) makes this differentiation both clear and vivid.
From what has been said so far we can conclude: The question of God
and of a dependent orientation of the human being to God is not only
a question of rational cognition but a concern of the whole human
being.
Martin Buber, who in his book Gottesfinsternis [The Darkness of
God] describes the "extinguishing of the light of heaven," the
extinguishing of the reality of God in our time, says: The question of
the reality of God will, for the individual human being, be decisively
determined by whether the I-You relation takes its appropriate place
next to the I-it relation in that individual's life without being absorbed
by the I-it relation. The question of God is not so much a question of
capacity for cognition as it is of capacity for encounter. The question
of God, the infinite You, will awaken, according to Buber, when the
encounter of I and You in the inner-human realm once again prevails,
in the acts of inter-human faith and trust, of speaking and loving.3
Credibility
One important question still needs answering. Doesn't personal faith
itself as inter-human encounter still need to be grounded? Can I, may
I, affirm the other completely and unreservedly just as s/he is? Doesn't
that mean that I affirm that person's limits, mistakes, and weaknesses?
Doesn't that mean delivering myself thoughtlessly and
unquestioningly to error and deception? Is faith grounded only in the
rationally ungraspable freedom of human beings, in their even less
rationally graspable sympathy and love for the You of the other
person? Doesn't that place faith once again on an extremely shaky
basis? Can not faith then turn into mere child's faith, into an
irresponsible blind faith and a blind decision?
And further: Can my "I believe in youI believe you" be said to anyone
at all, even to those who do not know anything and have nothing to
say, to those who misuse and mislead me, who deceive and blind me?
Doesn't this threaten the end, even the perversion of all the knowing
that is or can be included in faithand with that the end of trust, love,
encounter, and community? Even if we don't push the questions to the
limitare there not stages of faith, of personal faith?
This question must of course be answered affirmatively. It is precisely
from this question that the thought naturally arises: It depends on
those in whom I believe and to whom I give belief. It depends on
whether those in whom and whom I believe, can or should themselves
3 M. Buber, Werke I (MunichHeidelberg, 1962) 505603.

Page 19
believe, whether they themselves are worthy of belief and can be
believed. My "I believe in you" presupposes the credibility of the one
whom I believe, in whom I believe. But this credibility cannot, in
principle, be itself believed; it must be known and recognized: I must
know the one whom I believe; I must be acquainted with the one in
whom I believe. The old proverb "Trau, schau, wemtrust, but check
the credentials" expresses this connection clearly and pregnantly.
Those in whom I believe, those whom I believe, must be legitimized.
They must be made believable, be made recognizable, and give
themselves to be recognized as worthy of belief. Being worthy of
belief belongs thus to the presuppositions of faith, just as being
worthy of love belongs to the presuppositions of love. It is not a part
of what the believer believes; it belongs rather to what the believer
knows or at least must be able to know. If everything is supposed to
be faith, there is no faith at all. The credibility of a person belongs to
the conditions and presuppositions of faith/belief in that person.
How this "Trust, but check the credentials," that is, how this
knowledge of credibility, is precisely constituted is not easy to say.
This knowledge is in any case not a conceptual, abstract knowledge
culminating in a definition, but a knowledge oriented to the concrete.
It is also not a logical conclusion from evident premises, but a
knowledge in the sense of a synoptic view of the whole which is all-
inclusive, and takes into account and considers many signs and
indicators. John Henry Newman dealt with this problem repeatedly,
especially in his major work An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of
Assent.4 Assent is for him a description of faith. Newman spoke of
argumentation as a convergence of arguments and attributed to it a
special intellectual sense and faculty, the so-called "illative sense"
which is not related to abstract concepts but looks to concrete
experiences, individual facts, and individual observations. It is their
convergence into knowledge which makes it possible to give and to
justify that assent which is faith.
The argument from the convergence of data5 is grounded in the fact
that human beings have different kinds of experience and sources of
experience, but are unable to grasp everything at once. The
convergence of proofs is dependent on the working together of several
elements and factors. An individual phenomenon is not enough to
come to a knowledge of the "real" in this area. Yet this process brings
about that security which is as necessary as it is sufficient for our
concrete life and decisions. We undertake this operation, e.g., in our
decisions about a vocation or for the lifelong joining with another
human being in matrimony, for important decisions in political,
juridical, and especially ethical questions. The doctor, the judge, the
politician, the pastorthey are
4 C.f. H. Fries, Die Religionsphilosophie Newmans (Stuttgart, 1948).
5 Karl Rahner and H. Vorgrimler, "Argument of Convergence," DT (1981)
2627.

Page 20
all dependent on "convergence of data" and cannot do their job
without it. As Newman explains it: "What I mean can be best
illustrated by a cable that is assembled from a number of wires, each
of which is weak, but together are a strong as a rod of iron."6 A rod of
iron embodies, in his view, mathematical or strict demonstration; a
cable represents the nonmathematical, the so-called moral
demonstration and the moral certitudei.e., necessary and sufficient for
actionthat comes from it. He adds the important bit of experiential
wisdom: If we required a mathematical or logically stringent proof for
all decisions, we would never get to do anything, never come to a
decision. To this law we must also add: it makes no sense to want to
do everything "more geometricoin a geometrical way."
Regarding this knowledge of credibility, it must be emphasized that it
cannot be forced. "There may well be cogent arguments for the
credibility of a human being, but no argument can force us to accept
it. It stands in the horizon of freedom and will: Nemo credit nisi
volensno one believes unwillingly."7
The "I believe in youI believe you" thus presupposes the credibility
and the proof of the credibility of the one whom I believe; the
"trautrust" is conditioned by the "schau, wemcheck the credentials."
But while this proof is provided as it always is, in the faith-preceding
and faith-conditioning knowledge of credibility, we also find that the
space is opened and the condition created for the possibilities and for
the realization of my "I believe in youI believe you."
This proof of credibility is also the reason why there are levels and
degrees of personal faith. It is due to the differences between persons
and the differences between their respective qualifications and
competence, which come to light in the proof of credibility. This
knowledge of credibility also grounds the fact that my "I believe in
youI believe you," has limitations. These limitations are also due to
individual persons; for not everything that comes from an individual
person is taken over and accepted in faith, but only those things in
which the person is specifically qualified and proven to be credible.
The knowledge of credibility that precedes faith can also be the very
reason belief is not achieved, or cannot be achieved, why belief must
be refused. That would be because the one whom I know or have
come to know does not deserve belief.
6 John Henry Newman, "Briefe und Tagebuchauszeichnungen aus der
katholoschen Zeit seines Lebens," in: Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. M. Laros
and W. Becker, Bd. II and III (Mainz, 1957), 378; On this theme,
prominent in Newman's Grammar of Assent and numerous other works,
see Thomas J. Norris, Newman and His Theological Method (Leiden:
Brill, 1977) 1922.
7 Pieper, Belief and Faith A Philosophical Tract, 2526.

Page 21
The Transcending Dimension
From this previous knowledge of the person, which precedes belief as
its condition and presupposition, something extraordinarily important
becomes clear: The complete, unlimited, and absolutely perfect
exercise of faith is neither possible nor permissible in the realm of
human existence and action. The very knowledge of credibility makes
one aware of the weaknesses, imperfections, and limitations inherent
in humanity both in general and in particular, which prevent human
beings from carrying out in the act of belief what they want and are
striving for: an "I believe in youI believe you" that is complete and
without limitation.
Wherever, in the relationship of human being to human being, belief
is demanded or given in the radical, extreme, unlimited sense,
something inhuman is taking place, something that is reconcilable
neither with the limitedness nor with the dignity of the human being.
For no mature human being is by nature so inferior or superior to
another that one can stand over against the other as an absolutely valid
authority.
This means that faith in the full and unlimited sense is possible only
on the condition that "there is someone who stands incomparably
higher than mature human beings as they stand over the immature,
and that this Someone has spoken in a way that is understandable to
human beings."8 Thus belief, which is so much a part of human
beings and their intersubjectivity, in both its fundamental structure and
its finality points beyond human beings. This is not because they
construct an artificial superstructure, but because they take themselves
seriously. This gives us a starting point and a kind of mediation for
our reflection on faith/belief in the theological sense.
Naturally, such considerations neither prove or even sufficiently
indicate that God exists as the infinite You, nor that God does reveal
and has revealed Godself to human beings. But it is affirmed, and that
is important enough, that in human beings themselves, in the
fundamental living out of faith/belief as a personal act, as an act of
encounter and trust, there is already a presupposition, a condition of
the possibility of faith in God and God's possible revelation. This is
because faith points beyond every finite You, because faith, in its
radical execution, cannot be infinitely fulfilled. Of course, the
presupposition for a reality is not the reality itself; the awaited or
hoped-for is not the fulfillment. But without expectation and hope
there can be no fulfillment, any more than there can be an answer
without a question.
The "I believe in youI believe you," related to the You of God and to a
possible revelation of God, would not in any case be something
8 Ibid. 2324.

Page 22
alienating to human beings; it would, rather, represent their highest
fulfillment, insofar as encounter, trust, faith, and love, which
transcend the human, belong to the human.
Such an indication is no proof of facticity but a dismantling of fences
and barriers that often, especially nowadays are obstructions to faith
and its full and genuine understanding. It is a positive preparation for
the horizon of questions for which a possible revelation on the part of
God comes into question.

Page 23
§ 2
Faith in the Horizon of the Question of Meaning
The purpose of this theme is to work out a further access to faith in
the theological sense. This is done under the conviction that, for
theological faith, personal faith is insufficient, however important and
broadly inclusive it may be. For while personal faith is of vital
importance for the inner-personal and inter-human sphere, it is so only
for those immediately affected by it. Faith thus understood is limited
in its sphere of application; it is privatized, so to speak, into just the "I
and You," however much it would like to spread out into the sphere of
persons. But if faith in the theological sense applies to all human
beings, which we do presuppose, and if, beyond that, it makes a public
claim, if it is supposed to have a relationship to the whole of reality
and to the whole experience of reality, then yet another dimension of
faith than just the personal-dialogical must be brought into play.
There is a further important consideration: In the inner-human realm,
the personal thrust as encounter of I and You may seem
limitedalthough this need not mean a closing offbut can be an opening
to the greater and to the whole. For the personal concretization does
not exclude but includes the possibility of a comprehensive
universality. This is true especially in the relationship between the
human being and God. For human beings, all human beings, are
dependently oriented totally to God, totally to the infinite You as the
all (including themselves)-determining reality. God is the infinite You
for every human being; and God would not be that if God were only
my God, the "je meinige GottGod just for me" (K. Jaspers). What is
specific for belief in God lies in the fact that, in contrast with the
human sphere, the personal is connected with the whole and the whole
with the personal.
It is nevertheless correct and appropriate also to bring expressly into
play and to articulate the other anthropological specification of faith,
that dimension that is connected with the word Sinnsense.1
1 On this theme: R. Lauth, Die Frage nach dem Sinn des Daseins,
(Munich, 1953); B. Welte, Auf der Spur des Ewigen (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1963); H. Gollwitzer, Krummes

(footnote continued on next page)

Page 24
This brings in the whole of reality, also the whole of human existence.
Sinn (sense/meaning )which will be further explainedhas to do with
the whole. God, who as "You" is encountered in faith and as "You" is
spoken to in the language of faith, in prayer, is both the all-
determinative and the sense/meaning-giving reality. Thus the question
of sense/meaning (Sinn) becomes an important context for
understanding faith.
The Meaning of "Sinn" (Sense/Meaning)
First we will attempt a description of sense/meaning. When one looks
at the German word [Sinn], sense belongs together with "path" or
"journey," and it signifies the direction of the "whither" and the "what
for," the goal of a journeyas, for example, is also suggested by the
related French word, sentier. Sense is originally the determination of
direction in an all-encompassing system of relationship, and thus the
ordering of the individual to the whole, in and with an obvious
connection. We talk of meaning in this sense when something is "just
right,'' when we ascertain that it is good this way, that something is
turning out the way it should. Sense is thus the agreement between
what is and what really should be. I find meaning when something
works out well and successfully, when an awareness of the sense and
interconnectedness of things illuminates my mind and fills my heart
with joy. I find meaning when I can say, so to speak, Yes and Amen to
what is, to what I encounter, to what I do: as confirmation and
agreement, as peace, as happiness, as fulfillment and joy.
Sense is connected with the experience of being healthy and whole,
with the true reality of human beings in and with their world. The
often-described and often-reproached, but secretly longed-for whole
and healthy world ("heile Welt") would be the world that is filled
(footnote continued from previous page)
Holzaufrechter Gang. Zur Frage nach dem Sinn des Lebens (Munich,
1970); Walter Kasper, Möglichkeiten der Gotteserfahrung heute, in:
Glaube und Geschichte (Mainz, 1970) 12043; P. L. Berger, A Rumor of
Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (Garden
City, N.Y.: Double Day, 1969); Viktor Frankl, Der Mensch auf der Suche
nach dem Sinn (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1972); Man's Search for Meaning:
An Introduction to Logotherapy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962); Heinrich
Fries, "Gott und der Sinn des Lebens" in: Heinrich Fries (ed.) Gottdie
Frage unserer Zeit (Munich, 1973) 16070 (Conference Papers); A Paus,
ed., Suche nach SinnSuche nach Gott, (GrazViennaKöln 1978); Hans
Küng, Does God Exist?: An Answer For Today (Garden City, N.Y.:
Double Day, 1980); R. SpaemannR. Loew, Die Frage Wozu? (Munich,
1981); Nichttheologische Texte zur Gottesfrage im 20. Jahrhundert. Mit
einer Einleitung von L. Kolakowski (Berlin, 1981); H. DöringF. X.
Kaufmann, "Kontingenzerfahrung und sinnfrage," in: Christlicher Glaube
in moderner Gesellschaft IX (1982) 767; Karl Rahner, "The Question of
Meaning as a Question of God," Theological Investigations 21.196207
(New York, 1988); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in a Theological
Perspective, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (Philadelphia: The Westminster
Press, 1985).

Page 25
with meaning and that is revealed in its quality of being filled with
meaning.
Experiences of Sense/Meaning (Sinn)
Sense/meaning is experienced in the moments of success and good
fortune. Expressions of this experience of sense are an answer that has
been found; insight and knowledge that has been gained; a hope
fulfilled; a good deed; a perfect piece of work; a goal reached; a deep,
understanding, self-squandering and thereby self-winning love; a
forgiveness given; but just as much also the experience of the
beautiful in nature and art.
But the question of meaning is concretely and primarily encountered
much more frequently and even more intensively by negative
experiences: there where sense seems to be concealed, disturbed, or
broken; in the experiences of unhappiness in its various forms and
shapes; in pain and suffering, in loss, in plans gone awry, in failing to
reach one's goal, in the destruction of life's work, in the unhappiness
of innocent suffering. Here we experience the absence of meaning,
senselessness/ meaninglessness, because we cannot make sense of
what has happened, because what has happened cuts across our
thinking and our concepts, the causal and correlational schemata we
have of ourselves, of human beings, and of the world. These
formulations of questions are articulated in the questions: "Why? Why
must I . . . ? Why me? That we find or receive no answer constitutes
the experience of the senseless.
The question of meaning also becomes particularly acute when we
meet human beings who have been, as the expression goes, "written
off": human beings and human destinies that are, so to speak,
explained and legitimated by no achievement, by no work, by nothing
useful. These are the seriously incapacitated, the ones who cannot care
for themselves, the incurably ill, the intellectually extinguished, where
no sensible "What for" that makes any sense to the reason can be
detected.
There is still another experience of senselessness as the deprivation of
meaning or as the absence of sense in the form of satiety, boredom,
revulsion. Along with the other signs of prosperity, this can be one of
the byproducts of technical civilization: human beings unfulfilled
because their existence remains without happiness and excitement,
without depth, without center. It is the fate of human beings who don't
know what to do with themselves, who do their thing and perform
their job without becoming part of it, without inner relation to the
whole or even to themselves, who, as they say, live carefree lives, who
while away time, who, according to a well-known saying of Pascal,
couldn't stand to be alone in a room. This is what, in the, mind of this
philosopher, con-

Page 26
stitutes the unhappiness of human beings.2 It is the situation of human
beings who are consumed in pure superficiality, indifference, or
bustling about, or in constant flight from themselves into activities,
into numerous "diversionary maneuvers," or into the consciousness-
extinguishing and illusion-producing world of drugs, which results
only in a more wretched disillusionment. The symbol of this
experience and condition is yawning boredom and, often enough, the
ending-of-it-all in the form of suicide. For, as the reports often say: it's
all senseless. The experience of meaninglessness as "existential
vacuum" is numbered among the principal causes of neurosis. Viktor
Frankl has pointed this out emphatically, and, in contrast to S. Freud
and C. G. Jung, but with A. Adler as well, he spoke of "noogenen
neurosesnoogenous neuroses'' and turned them into a field of
penetrating diagnosis and therapy.
The most extreme form of meaning-experience in the negative sense
is the experience of deathnot that death which is the end of a mature
life that has been satisfied with life, a so-called natural death, or as the
end of an incurable disease, which is the experience of death as
redemption (wherein the problem of incurable disease still remains the
problem of death as radical departure from everything), but the
unexpected death, the death that snuffs out a young, blossoming life
and all the expectations connected with it, the death that makes
parents look into the grave of their child, the death that robs children
of their mother, the death which in war, in extermination camps, in the
form of crime and brutality. This death is the end of everything, the
end of expectations, of hopes, of life's dreams. Dust and ashes are the
surviving remains of a life that struggled with all its might against
death, that drove death from consciousness, kept it at a distance, and
didn't want to admit its existence.
In the face of death, said the Second Vatican Council:
The riddle of human existence is at its strongest. Human beings experience
not only the pain and the progressive breaking down of the body, but also,
and even more, the fear of everlasting extinction. But they are judging
correctly in the instinct of their heart when they reject with revulsion the
complete destruction and final ruin of their person. The kernel of eternity
in human beings cannot be reduced to mere matter and struggles against
death. But all the precautions of technology, however useful, are unable to
assuage human anxiety. The temporal extension of biological life is unable
to satisfy that longing for a further life which lives unconquerably in the
human heart.3

Our experiences of sense/meaning, seen positively and negatively, are,

however, not just soberly rational observations. They are, rather,
connected with a vivid longing and a passionate emotion. Our
articulation of this is at first negative: we sense that the irrational and
the
2 Pensées No. 184.
3 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et
Spes) no. 18.

Page 27
meaningless, that, above all, evil, hate and injustice, egoism and
brutality, the might of the stronger, and even death, cannot be allowed
the final victory. We sense that the conquering of all these darknesses
and our "longing after the totally Other"4 is not just utopian longing.
And there is also the readiness not to let it remain with mere wishes,
but to resist injustice and help tear down the power of evil piece.
We have the hopeand that is part of our experience of meaningthat the
piercing questions will find an answer, the torturing doubts a solution,
that anxiety will disappear in a sense of security, that we will no
longer suffer and be consumed by our defects and lack of so many
thingsand that eventually the unsolved question of meaning will be
answered. But we also have the hope that love does not die, that true
life is still to come.
We have a variegated experience of sense in the form of the
experience of negativity and meaninglessness. Those who reject the
question of meaning as irrelevant also use the term senselessness or
meaninglessness. But whoever speaks about senselessness always
presupposes a certain knowledge and understanding, a
preunderstanding of meaning from which sense lessness is set apart or
distinguished as the contrast or opposite of meaning. Otherwise one
wouldn't be able to speak of senselessness.
Those who explain: Everything is senseless; those who see in this a
legitimate, eloquent, and even sensible statement, have no easy task of
it in grounding their decision for non-meaning as the fundamental
option of their life, in making non-sense that which gives meaning to
the world, to history, to life, and in professing allegiance to this [non]
meaning. Whoever explains: Everything is non-sense, is unable to
explain why human beings fight against senselessness in all forms,
shapes, and manifestations, why they attempt to overcome it and are
unwilling to concede, especially to it, the last word or final victory.
This means that the in-tune comes before the out-of-tune [Der klang
kommt vor dem Mißklang (Th. Haecker)], the Yes comes as
preliminary sign before the No, the No is borne by a Yes, not vice
versa.
How Is It That Human Beings Have an Experience of
Sense/Meaning?
The answer lies in the specific human characteristic of openness to the
world. Human beings are not like animals fitted into an already
established environment ordered to them, in which they move in the
security of instinct. On the contrary, the human being is, as they say,5
a
4 M. Horkheimer, "Die Sehnsucht nach dem ganz Anderen." An interview
with commentary by H. Gummnior (Hamburg, 1975).
5 A. Gehlen, Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt, 12th
ed. (Bonn, 1978); W. Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective.

Page 28
"biologically defective being," poorly equipped and in need of many
artificial limbs. But the world of human beings is not the
"environment" but the world as a whole. The human being is open to
the world as a whole as a questioning, thinking, shaping, planning
being. What human beings lack biologically and in instinct, they more
than make up for by intellect and freedom, by spirit and will. In that
way the human becomes, in a certain sense, everything: ''Homo
quodammodo est omnia." In their capacity of knowing, human beings
appropriate the world, make this knowledge serviceable, and, shaping
and changing, intervene in the world. They turn the world they find
into their own world, a world which serves them, and for which they
are responsible.
Their questioning cognition does not allow human beings to be
satisfied with information about this or that, to be content with the
factual or with what happens to be, and simply to acknowledge,
affirm, and legitimate what is there, what happens to be the case in
any situation, particular or general. Human beings want to know the
whole, they want to see through to connections, they want to get
behind things. In so doing they repeatedly come to know that their
thinking, as also their willing and their longing, finds no satisfaction
in individual things, that every answer is the beginning of a new
question, that every finished work lays the foundation for a new one,
that every goal achieved becomes a point of transfer to new goals, that
every successful encounter holds open the longing for the totally
Other, that the quest of human beings for meaning is a quest for the
whole as its ground in the limitlessly open human spirit which
documents its limitlessness in its questioning.
That human beings articulate and specify the question of meaning in
this way, that they protest against evil, against letting hate, violence,
and injustice have the last word, that they want the victory of the good
and the triumph of justice, which has its ground in the conscience of
human beings and in the determination of their will by the good. The
good as such, unconditioned and in itself, is the horizon within which
the human being does the individual good. And every individual good
deed points to the good as such. The question of meaning in human
beings is determined by spirit and conscience; that is where it is
grounded.
Bernhard Welte has this situation, this "condition humaine," and these
unavoidable consequences of the "sense/meaning
postulateSinnpostulat" of existence in mind when he speaks. Our
existence as such presupposes sense/meaning, even demands it,
without needing an explicit act to do so. Take away this
presupposition and human existence is done in. This is clearly
recognizable in the negative mirror image. Welte asks: If everything
should fall into nothingness, if every-

Page 29
thing should one day turn into an endless nothing, would then those
immanent fulfillments of meaning be really and truly relevant?
[Do] then, e.g., love and fidelity, still really have any meaning? Can one
then still seriously maintain the distinction between justice and injustice,
between truth and falsehood, between freedom and servitude? To what
does it all lead when important and pure human beings dedicate their lives
in service to the sick or in the selfless service of freedom and justice? To
nothing? Analogous questions are raised even more sharply on the basis of
negative experiences and situations. May one think that the suffering of the
innocent is senseless? May one and can one think that the great questions
which both Dostoyevski and Camus have asked with regard to suffering
have no answer? If everything, sooner or later, is finally nothing, then they
really have no answer. And then the short-term answers are no help either.
The prophesied future paradise is no authentic solution to the problem. For
if only the final generation can enter into paradise and all preceding ones
are given given over to nothingness, and then ifsomething we all need to
think abouteven this prophesied future paradise is also surrendered to
nothingness: where does it all lead: to nothingness? If everything, bad as
well as good, happiness as well as unhappiness, is finally be thrown
indifferently onto the scrap heap of nothingness and there left to rot
forever, does it really still make sense/meaning to commit oneself to truth
and justice rather than to falsity and injustice? To commit oneself to the
happiness of human beings rather than indifferently to accept their
unhappiness? Nothingness, understood and interpreted as futile
nothingness, puts an absolutely fundamental question mark before all
meaning and thereby before every ethical attitude of human beings. There
is no real way to evade this consequence. But human beings, fortunately,
do repeatedly evade it. They seem to be protected from the final
consequence by an ineradicable ethical instinct. But our job is precisely to
look this final consequence fearlessly in the eye. If everything is absolutely
and forever surrendered to nothingness, and this is only an empty
nothingness, then all this truly makes no real sense.
But this solution is unbearable; it must not be be accepted. The sense-
postulate of our human and interhuman existence stands in direct
contradiction to it. This postulate, if one will only look it in the eye
concretely enough, is indispensable. It becomes a fundamental ethical
postulate. It can be expressed in the sentence: Everything has meaning. For
one may not give up the distinction between good and evil. It must be
firmly held that love makes sense. That the fight for freedom and justice
makes sense. That the pain of the sufferer makes sense. The indispensable
fundamental ethical postulate must be held valid against the absolute threat
from the total and universal meaninglessness which comes from clinging
to the consequences of the experience of nothingness.6

In this context the matter of faith surfaces: as option, as decision of the

whole human being for the whole of his/her life. This decision does
not take place groundlessly, but it is more than the considerable sum
of the possible grounds; it is a Yes spoken in reason, freedom and
courage. In the context of the totality of existence, world, and history,
this decision is not the result of an exact scientific investigation made
with logical cogency and irrefutable proofs. It is rather an act of faith
of the human being: an act of which everyone is capable and to which
6 B. Welte, "Versuch zur Frage nach Gott" in: Zeit und Geschichte
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1976) 12439, here 13536.

Page 30
everyone is called, an act that necessarily concerns everyone, an act
that even they perform who deny that they have faith. Even those who
do not decide have thereby and therein made a decision, even if the
worst of all: the decision for the non-committal, the decision of the
one who wants to catch a hundred hares, but catches none.
The Question of the Giver of Sense/Meaning
We now go a step further and ask: Do we ourselves give meaning to
our action, to our life, and, beyond that, to things, to happenings,
events and reality? Or do we receive that meaning, receive it because
it exists, because something makes sense?
Doubtless we give our action meaning when we put it at the service of
a plan, when we place it within the total horizon of life, when we take
what is individual, put it in some sort of ordered context, and seek to
make it real as part of a whole. With these observations, however, we
are already recognizing that plans and goals, horizon and context, and
what we mean by "the whole," are in no way made and produced by
us. We find this "whole" already there, it is "given" to us, we receive
it. This moment of determining the sense becomes still more
obviously recognizable in other experiences of meaning: in the
experience of love, of friendship, of forgiveness, of recognition. Here
is where meaning becomes illuminated, and that brings about peace,
joy, harmony, and happiness. But none of thatpeace, friendship,
forgiveness, recognitionis made by us; nor can we force it to come.
We receive it, it is imparted to us, given. Certainly we ourselves can
be for others the ones who give, and who thereby bestow meaning;
but the principal characteristic of the experience of meaning reads:
Receiving comes before doing, being comes before having (E.
Fromm).7
That we are not the real givers of meaning, however much we try to
be, even with partial success in some instances, is also clear from the
fact that we don't have before us the whole, which is what the
question of meaning and the answer it requires are all about. We don't
have the whole in view; we don't control it, neither the whole of the
world, nor that of history, nor the whole of our life. We entrust
ourselves to a making sense that doesn't come from us. The same state
of affairs is demonstrated in the fact that every answer generates a
new question, because in our cognition and questioning we cannot
take in the whole of reality; it is always greater than our finite
thinking and comprehending. We likewise experience that we often
fail in our attempts to make sense of specific experiences and events,
that we sometimes even fail to know and recognize any meaning, that
we, with every attempt at an an-
7 E. Fromm, Haben oder Sein. Die seelischen Grundlagen einer neuen
Gesellschaft, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1977).

Page 31
swer to our question, can react allergically or with outrage, like the
friends of Job.
The fact that, in the question of meaning, receiving comes before
doing, is shown by the fact that, when things go well for us and we are
successful, that is also of course our doing; however, we experience it
predominantly as gift, as dispensation. The "Thank God!" expressed a
thousand times and in all possible situations in life is perhaps a worn
and thoughtless usage, but still an important indication that thinking in
all forms is connected with thanking, and thanking with thinking.
How little we ourselves and from ourselves are the ones who give and
make sense can be seen in our inability to illuminate or
counterbalance the negation of meaning which we come to know in
misfortune, sickness, suffering, and deathhowever much we can
provide meaning, help, alleviation, and prophylaxis in particular
thingsand that is more true today than it used to be. But more sources
and fields of meaning-denial are arising. The water-mark of finiteness,
the dissonances, the lack of fulfillment, the unanswered questions:
"Why? Why me?" remain. Even the most beautiful theoriesthose, for
example, like Leibnitz's theodicy, or that infer meaning from the signs
of light and darknessare no help. On the contrary, they only sharpen
the question.
Further, when we attempt to create a better, more just and more free
world, we ourselves often stand under conditions of injustice and
violence. The great powers arm themselves in order to prevent the
terrors of war. We don't break out of this vicious circle of violence and
counterviolence, of injustice and revenge. We can't step beyond the
borders of the senseless or meaning-negated.
And yet, strangely enough, despite all negative experience, despite
failure and defeat, we start again; we begin again with life, with time,
with the future; we create hope that life will go on, even begin anew;
we believe that the mother can console her child without deception
but full of confidence: Don't be afraid, it's going to be alright.8
How does the mother know that? She knows it out of an invincible
and constantly renewed primeval trust in the goodness of the whole, in
its sense, even if she cannot prove it mathematically. Mother and child
live from this. It is not based on any "lie of love." This describes the
situation of human beings. The truth of their trust in the meaning of
the whole lies in the testing carried out and proven to be true in life.
This is something different from and more than a mathematical or
logical formula, for one cannot live, persevere, and face suffering and
death with that. It isn't true what Max Frisch says: "Mathematics is
enough for me." No, it isn't enough for him either. Viktor Frankl wrote
a book about his time in a concentration camp entitled "Trotzdem Ja
zum Leben sagen! Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager
[Despite Every-
8 P. L. Berger, A Rumor of Angels.

Page 32
thing, Say Yes to Life: the Experience of a Psychologist in a
Concentration Camp]."9 This book went through fifty editions in
America and first appeared in German in 1977although without much
acclaim. Documents like this are important and revelatory. We have
here a desperately serious case of searching for meaning, not a
theoretical mind game. Frankl writes:
While the worry of most prisoners focused on the question: Will we
survive the camp? Because if not, all this suffering will have made no
sensethe question that troubled me was quite different: Does all this
suffering and dying make any sense for us? If not, then ultimately it
wouldn't make any sense at all to survive the camp. For a life whose
meaning stands and falls by whether one escapes from it or not, a life,
therefore, whose meaning depends on the grace of such an accident, such a
life really wouldn't be worth having lived at all.10
Two other sentences from this book seem to me to be important. One
of them is a quotation from Nietzsche: "He who has a Why for [his]
life bears up under almost any How," and: "It is not really all that
important what we still have to expect from life, but rather, what life
expects of us. Not life in general, but the way life, in various concrete
situations, demands a concrete answer from us. Our concern was for
the meaning of life in that totality which also included death, and thus
accepted responsibility not only for the meaning of life but also for the
meaning of suffering and dyingit was about this meaning that we
struggled."11 In other words: Life makes has meaning only if it makes
sense together with death.
In these phrases and what stands behind them, as well as in the words
of the mother to her child: "Everything will turn out alright," one can
see that the space of the presently experienced and the horizon of the
factual and the human is being transcended, that a reality with the
dimension of a totality is being opened up, which transcends the
measure of the human, the measure of human possibilities and human
achievement. For a human being, of his/her own power, has no
disposition over a totality that includes life, suffering, and death, and
neither does humanity. An absolute primordial trust is, for human
beings, neither possible nor admissible.
As Wolfhart Pannenberg says,
Although this basic trust is directed to the nearest relational persons, by its
unrestrictedness it is implicitly but always directed beyond mother and
parents to an instance which can justify the limitlessness of such trust. This
instance must measure up to the unique unrestrictedness of the basic
trust.12
9 Munich, 1977, ET: Man's Search for Meaning; An Introduction to
Logotherapy.
10 Ibid. 117.
11 Cf. Ibid. This is Fries's approximate rendition of what Frankl wrote on pp.
7677.
12 W. Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective 233.

Page 33
Here the borders of the human are qualitatively transcended; there
comes into view here a reality that has to do with encompassing
totality, with wholeness, which can give a context and a meaning to all
things in life and death, something we ourselves cannot create, but
which can be given us, which we can receive. To rely on this is what it
means to believe.
It is from this new and totally Other reality that human beings live,
those who ask and seek for meaning, those who cannot live, suffer,
and die as human beings without letting themselves be shaped by the
meaning of life. It is living from a meaning which encompasses the
boundless totalityof which historically living, finite human beings are
not capableof all reality. It is living from a meaning which human
beings cannot generate, but can only receive and accept in order to
help them through their finite life. If one is talking about meaning in
this sense, then it is pointing as source and ground to a reality which is
the all-determining reality. This "all-determining reality," is a
paraphrase of what is meant by the word God.
Corresponding to the limitlessness of the basic trust which, beyond the
mother as its primary object, points to God, is its relationship to the
wholeness of the self. The basic trust is oriented, in its own proper sense or
meaning to that instance which can protect and support the self in its
wholeness. Thus, in the actual living out of basic trust, God and salvation
stand in the closest possible relationship.13
Let us return to the beginning of this reflection: faith in the horizon of
the question of meaning. Faith is the way in which human beings
relate themselves to the questions of the whole of their life and of
reality, how they see them, how they answer them. One can of course
reject these questions as theoretical and intellectually irrelevant, as
positivism does, but in praxis it is impossible to escape them. Every
person lives, consciously or unconsciously, admittedly or
inadmittedly, out of some kind of comprehensive view of existence.
But these questions can't be answered in the manner of individual
problems. The one Whole [Totality] cannot be encompassed in the
same way as the individual. It encompasses all questions, and so we
cannot objectify it; it encompasses us also. Where one is dealing with
the decisions and basic questions of life, with sense or non-sense,
hope or desperation, where the basic option and the fundamental
orientation of our life are in play, there all exact knowledge of
individual reality ceases, there everyone believes, even the one who
does not use the word faith, even the one who denies faith. Even
unbelief is a basic decision which, because of its option for the Whole,
is different from exact knowledge of individual realitythat holds for
science tooand cannot be simply covered by that kind of
13 Ibid. 234.

Page 34
knowledge. On this level one is dealing not with knowledge or faith
but with forms and modes of faith.
Faith in the horizon of the question of sense/meaning produces a very
important context for the text of faith in the theological sense, for faith
in God in which the personal and the universal, the infinite You and
the ground of all reality come together.

Page 35
§ 3
Philosophical Faith
In order to come to the problem of faith in the theological sense, the
overall context requires us to say something about the phenomenon of
philosophical faith, i.e., about the fact that faith is also encountered in
the philosophical realm, not, to be sure, in contradiction to philosophy
but in its horizon. This mode of reflection will also illustrate and
strengthen the idea that faith does not stand under the sign of a
deficient phenomenon, because it is measured by a quite different,
apparently superior, standard.
As models for philosophical faith we can mention philosophical faith
in Kant and the philosophical faith of Karl Jaspers.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Kant belongs among the great figures in the history of philosophy. His
insights and cognitions are decisive for philosophy to this day. "After
Kant," goes the popular adage, "there is no going back."
Reminiscent of Copernicus, Kant himself speaks of the "turn" that
was introduced by his philosophy, which stands so prominently under
the sign of the critique of reason. On the basis of the model of natural
science in modernity, he showed that the investigator does not simply
take note of individual observations in nature and describe individual
processes in it. Modern science has, according to Kant, become
possible in that nature is forcedby repeated experimentto align itself
according to the questions and presuppositions in the subject of the
investigator. Investigators approaches their investigation of nature not
with the attitude of questioning and learning students, but with that of
judges who force the witnesses, i.e., nature, to answer the questions
which they put to it.1
1 See Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason
]. Vorrede zur zweiten Auflage, ed. R. Schmidt, Ausgabe Meiner (Leipzig,
1930) 1721.

Page 36
The result is knowledge of the natural laws, presented in mathematical
concepts, which wants to know not what nature is according to its
essence, but how it works, and which verifies its knowledge by the
clear reckonings and predictions and practical-technical applications
of its processes that can be made.
This characterizes the fundamental thrust of Kant's "Copernican turn":
the turn to the subject and the orientation to it. Cognition is,
accordingly, not the copy or image of an objectively ordered reality;
cognition is also not the agreement of thought and thing. Cognition is
rather the possibility, produced by the subject and the subject's
capability, of seeing reality objectively, of ordering, synthesizing, and
thereby knowing it. Thus, cognition in the proper sense is possible
only where there is an experience mediated through meaning which,
through the intuitive forms of space and time, is brought to perception
and conception, which is then ordered to cognition through the
categories of understanding. Hence the axiom: concepts without
intuition are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.2 Generality
and necessity in cognitionthat is, knowledgeare not impeded by the
turn to the subject, but are made initially possible. For the subject (and
its function) is the subject of all knowing human beings, it is the being
of the knowing spirit. Kant speaks accordingly of the transcendental
subject. It becomes clear from this that world and thing are
recognized/known and determined/ specified in the way in which they
"appear/seem" to us.
The second meaning of transcendentality in Kantian thinking refers
the ability of the subject and the capacities of the understanding prior
to any perception and cognition; in other words, the aprioristic
specification.
For a long time Kant and his philosophy were seen as the great
adversary and the antipodes of what, in fact, theological faith was
about, especially the specifically Catholic understanding of faith. For
reasons we will not pursue here, but apparently because of his turn to
the subject and because of his critique of reason, Kant was called the
philosopher of Protestantism. But this is not an accurate
characterization. Catholic theology and apologetics saw Kant as the
"Alleszermalmerhe who smashes everything," because he undermined
faith in God by his critique of the traditional proofs for the existence
of God. Against this view, one has to agree with Gottlieb Söhngen:
If the theology of today has not yet finished working out its inner
relationship with Kant the way theology previously did with Plato and
Aristotle, that should be blamed less on Kant than on the fact that the
generation of theologians of today no longer seem to be of the kind that is
strong in faith and in science
2 Ibid. 95.

Page 37
as were the theological generations of Origen, Augustine, Anselm, Albert,
and Thomas of Aquinas.3
Against a one-sidedly negative perspective, we should remember that
the God question comes up in Kant in other contexts. This is best seen
by naming the questions that Kant himself formulated as the
fundamental questions of philosophy:
What can I know?
What should I do?
For what may I hope?4
The God question cannot, according to Kant, be answered positively
in connection with the question: "What can I know?" For, according to
his presuppositions and conditions, true human cognition is, strictly
speakingas necessary and generally valid cognitionfound only in
natural science and mathematics in the specifically modern sense of
these words. For only there, according to Kant, are found the
conditions necessary for knowledge and cognition: experience,
intuition mediated by the senses, and the conceptuality fashioned by
the categories of the mind.
If, according to Kant, there is cognition only under these conditionsif
thus no cognition beyond our experience is possiblethen it is clear that
there can be no cognition of God, no proof of the existence of God in
the strict sense.
But this critique of pure reason is only the answer to the first question:
What can I know? The other questions remain open: What should I
do? For what may I hope? What is the human being? They are
proclaimed in the famous words of Kant from the Foreword of the
second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason: "I had to get rid of
knowledge in order to make room for faith."5 This means: because
God cannot be known in the sense of theoretical reason, the matter of
faith is not done away with, buton the contraryopened; it must be
thought out anew. Kant expressly emphasizes that the fact that the
theoretical reason cannot know God does not say that the reality of
God as "highest Being and foundation of everything" does not exist.
Theoretically, the inability to prove God by no means confers the right
to deny God. Kant intends by his critique to bar the way to dogmatic
atheism.
The other way to make sure of the reality of God and to gain access to
it for human beings is what Kant called practical reason, which
comes into play with the question: What should I do? which is
actualized in the practical, above all, in the moral action of human
beings. In
3 G. Söhngen, "Die Theologie im Streit der Fakultäten" in: Die Einheit in
der Theologie (Munich, 1952) 12.
4 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason 635.
5 Ibid. 29.

Page 38
the moral action of human beings, something unconditioned and
absolute, according to Kant, makes its appearance. Kant calls it the
categorical imperative, which makes apodictic claims and imposes
obligations on human beings, and of which they are certain. It is a law
of action residing in human beings which affirms the will as the
absolute law of their being. Kant says of it: It contains a determination
of the will which is unavoidable and forces itself on us, although it
doesn't rest on empirical principles.
The imperative is called categorical in distinction from hypothetical
because it is motivated by no other intention, neither by desire nor by
inclination nor by any material outcome. The categorical imperative is
motivated only by itself through the law of morality recognizable in
human beings; they feel obliged to follow it. Kant gives this so-called
categorical imperative not a specification as to its contents but a
formal specification when he says: ''Act in such a way that the maxim
of your will could serve as a general or universal law."6 This does not
mean that nothing is said about content, for content is, in fact,
specified, namely all those things that, in modern terms, make
possible life in human societyor negatively: the prohibition of what
destroys human community: violence, oppression, lying, injustice,
hate, etc.
That becomes even more clear in another Kantian formulation of the
categorical imperative: "Act in such a way that you use humanity, as
well in your own person as in the person of everyone else, always as
purpose, but never merely as means.""In the whole of creation
everything that one wishes and over which one has any power can
also be used merely as means. Only human beings, and with them all
rational creatures, are ends in themselves. Human beings are the
subjects of the moral law, which is holy."7 The human being
experiences the demands of the categorical imperative as
unconditional, absolute demandsas "holy obligations." The organ and
faculty for this is practical reason, another word for conscience.
This brings into discussion areas of inquiry which are not encountered
in that of theoretical, pure reason and which, nevertheless, are no less
real and, for human beings, are even more important. Further, the area
of the ethical, with which the quality of the unconditioned and
absolute, even holy, is connected, needs confirmation and grounding.
This comes about not through the theoretical knowledge of categorial
cognition through reason, but through thinking of the unconditioned
as a postulate of the practical reason which is directed to action.
Without this postulate, moral action, practical reason, doesn't have its
condi-
6 I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck, 3rd ed.
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993) 30; Groundwork of
the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1964) 88.
7 I. Kant, The Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991) 255.

Page 39
tion of possibility. This thinking of the unconditioned as postulate of
moral action Kant also calls faith.
Along with the categorical imperative experienced in the conscience
with unconditioned obligatory character comes, according to Kant, the
fact also experienced in conscience that the action of human beings is
judged, it is put on trial as if in court, with roles for defendant and
judge. He gives the following analysis:
All human beings have a conscience and find themselves watched over by
an inner judge, threatened, and kept in line; and this power watching over
the laws within them is not something that they themselves arbitrarily
make, but is embodied in their being. It follows them like their shadow,
when they think about escaping. . . . This condition . . . called conscience,
has this special characteristic in itself that, although its business is a
business of human beings with themselves, they are still forced by their
reason to attribute it to the bidding of another person. For the action taking
place is the conduct of a trial in court. But since the defendant, through
his/her conscience, is presented as one and the same person with the judge,
we have an absurd concept of a trial court; for in that case the plaintiff
would lose every time. Thus the conscience of the human being will
necessarily have to think of someone other than itself as judge of its
actions, if it is not to stand in contradiction with itself.8

About this someone Other, Kant says:

Since such a moral being must also have all power in heaven and on earth,
because it otherwise would be unable to give its laws their appropriate
effect (which necessarily belongs to the office of judge), and since such a
being is called God, conscience will thus have to be thought of as the
subjective principle of a responsibility to be carried out before God for its
deeds.9

With that, Kant comes to the idea of God as highest guarantor of

morality, who has the attributes of justice and holiness, who thus has
personal traits: "At the basis of the imperative is the idea of someone
imperating."
When Kant speaks of the idea of God, he doesn't mean that God is in
reality only an idea to which no reality corresponds; he means only,
and quite decisively, that access to God does not come about by way
of theoretical cognition, but through thinking, through the postulate of
practical reason, through faith. The fact of the really experienced
unconditioned obligation, and the, for Kant, likewise given connection
of morality and happiness, lead inevitably to the acceptance of God
distinct from nature and from human beings as the real supposition of
moral action. "The moral law has to postulate the existence of God as
necessarily belonging to the possibility of the highest good."
When Kant describes the acceptance of the reality of God as a
postulate of reason, he means that it is the real presupposition of
moral action. Kant speaks of the objective reality of God, different
from that of
8 Ibid, 23334.
9 Ibid. 234.

Page 40
human beings, which is postulated by the practical law, which is
accepted, whichin other wordsis believed. But faith is accordinglyand
this is the real pointnot a deficient mode of knowledge but a specific
way of perceiving the reality of the ethical and its presuppositions, a
mode that has its own methods. It is a faith that Kant also calls
philosophical faith: the faith grounded in and taken from practical
reason.
If one follows this line of thought, then theoretical reason prepares the
way for practical reason. Knowledge, in this scientific sense, in which
cognition takes place, does not have the last word about the meaning
of the world and of life. Science cannot give final answers to the
questions: What should I do? For what may I hope? What is the
human being? Thus understanding cannot provide the final insight
into the nature of the human being. Over and above the conditioned,
which is uniquely accessible to science, arises an unconditioned,
which is thinkable by reason but not objectively knowable in its
objectivity through reason. But it doesn't merely arise as a
continuation, so to speak, beyond the empirical world; it also is the
ultimate meaning of all reality; nature must ultimately serve the spirit.
Knowing must yield its primacy to another, to willing, i.e., for Kant,
moral reason. Ethics is the heart of Kantian philosophy, for that is
where Kant's ultimate longing and the deepest motive for his thought
is fulfilled: finding room for faith. For the sake of faith, i.e., for the
sake of the practical reason's belief in the convictions about God,
freedom and immortality taken over from the Enlightenment, he had
to sublate knowledge.10
This is the positive side of the boundaries established by Kant, of the
limitation of cognition he carried out: the goal of his philosophy. It
gives to science what belongs to science, but also to faith what
belongs to faith.
It follows that the concept of God belongs not to science, to natural
science, but to ethics. Human beings believe in God because they
believe in the sense or meaning of the ethical, which contains in it the
idea of the highest good, the unification of morality and happiness,
which would be sense-less if there were no God to make it real.
In Kant's system, ideas bear the characteristic of a subjective freedom
which actually belongs to every subject. That is how and where ideas
get their guarantee, their objective and, though only practical, still
indubitable reality. God's existence is adequately assured in the moral
reason's idea of the highest good. With the fact of the freedom and
existence of God, immortality is given a warrant which is valid in
10 Cf. Th. Steinbüchel, Immanuel Kant I. Einführung in seine Welt und
den Sinn seiner Philosophie (Düsseldorf, 1931); G. Krüger, Philosophie
und Moral in der Kantischen Ethik (Tübingen, 1931).

Page 41
practical intention. And this practical intention is also the only one
religion needs.
In order to evaluate properly the seriousness and the significance of
this belief of reason, one must understand Kant's concern also to
remove moral reality from the realm of individual opinion, to say
nothing of arbitrariness.
The "subjectivism" of Kant is, in ethics as in the theory of knowledge
not an individualistic subjectivism but a subjectivism of consciousness
as such, of reason as such. It is the structure proper to its being and the
internal law of the spirit, of reason itself, on which Kant grounds the
general validity of cognition as well as morality. To say this does not
prevent one from expressly pointing out that the content of
philosophical faith in Kant is clearly different from the content of the
Christian faith, and even stands in contrast to it. Kant sees in
philosophical faith, in the faith of reason, the superiority over and the
victory over what he calls dogmatic church faith.11 But this brings up
a theme to be treated not here but later on (§27).
Karl Jaspers (1883-1969)
The secondrepresentative and still currentmodel of philosophical faith
is to be found in Karl Jaspers.12 The theme of philosophical faith runs
through his whole work from the beginning: from his major work
Philosophie (1933, ET Philosophy, 1969) to Philosophischer
GlaubePhilosophical Faith (1947), and one of his last publications:
Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung (1962, ET
Philosophical Faith and Revelation, 1967). Jaspers took over quite a
bit of his thematic of philosophical faith from Kant, but he also gave it
his own, more comprehensive shape.
Philosophy as doing philosophy belongs, according to Jaspers, to
humanity and to being human, if being human is not to remain
beneath its own level. Already in this definition one encounters the
word faith: in doing philosophy a faith is expressed, "appealing to
him/her who
11 Cf. B. Jansen, Die Religionsphilosophie Kants (BerlinBonn, 1929); J.
L. Bruch, La philosophie religieuse de Kant (AubierMontaigne, 1969).
12 Major works of Karl Jaspers on this theme: Die geistige Situation der Zeit
(Berlin, 1931); Philosophy trans. E. B. Ashton, 3 vols. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 19691971) (the later editions are unchanged);
Philosophical Faith and Revelation, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Harper
& Row, Publishers, 1967); The Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to
Philosophy, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1951); Reason and Existenz; Five Lectures, trans. William Earle (New York,
Noonday Press, 1955) 11.
Taking issue with Jaspers: B. Welte, "Der philosophische Glaube bei Karl
Jaspers und die Möglichkeit seiner Deutung durch die thomistische
Philosophie" in: Symposion. Jahrbuch für Philosophie II (FreiburgMunich,
1947); W. Lohff, glaube und Freiheit. Das theologische Problem der
Religionskritik von Karl Jaspers (Gütersloh, 1957); Heinrich Fries, "Karl
Jaspers und das Christentum, ThQ 132 (1952) 157287; "Der philosophische
Glaube: Karl Jaspers" in: Ärgernis und Widerspruch, 2nd ed. (Würzburg,
1968) 4199.

Page 42
is on the same road; it is not an objective guide in the confusion; each
one takes only what (s)he is as possibility through him/herself. In a
world that has become questionable in everything, we seek in
philosophizing to keep to the right way."13 This "seeking in
philosophizing to keep to the right way" is the act of philosophical
faith and takes place through it.
From these remarks something further becomes clear: Jaspers's
philosophy is philosophy of existence; for he doesn't see philosophy as
only theory, nor existence as an objectifiable object. Existence is
always origin and subject. Existential philosophy would in no sense
be philosophy if it were to do without reason and thinking, but it
would never be philosophy of existence if it wanted to be emancipated
timelessly, apparently purely objectively, from existence, i.e., from the
subject, from the individual who thinks and asks and who, in
philosophical thinking, clarifies him/herself. Without reason,
"Existence," according to Jaspers, would be "blind; without
existence,s reason would be without obligation; in this, existence
wants its own, reason wants the whole." Through such philosophizing
out of their origins, human beings should have not so much objective
cognition; they should rather come to themselves.
Existence, according to Jaspers, is always connected with
transcendence. Transcendence means, first of all, orientation beyond
oneself, over and beyond existence. Existence is open, limitlessly
open; it is possible only in relation to an over-against that is not itself.
It is open to the world, without which relation it would remain empty
and, as thinking existence, continually running up against its own
limits. This is because it can never comprehend the whole of the
world. A further transcending relationship of existence is history,
situation. Through history, through the shapes and intellectual
movements encountered in it, human beings are to be not primarily
taught but awakened and inspired, struck with impulses. The over-
against of the other person in You and We represents another form of
transcendence, to which belongs existence in dialogical form.
In all these relationships, which represent a kind of transcendence as a
kind of over-against, no real essential knowledge of existence is
produced; instead the manner is described in which existence is
actualized: "I am not what I know; I know not what I am."
The true mode of transcendence is transcendence in the specific sense
as origin of origin, as existence understands itself. Jaspers says of this:
"No existence without transcendence." The definition of existence is
thus expanded: "Existence is the self-being which is related to itself
and through that to transcendence, through which it knows itself to be
13Philosophy 1.v.

Page 43
gifted and on which it is grounded."14 Existence is gifted, received
existence. In the same way in which I am certain of the existence
which I am, I am certain of the transcendence through which I am.
From the indubitable That of existence, the That of transcendence
becomes immediately certain.15
This is for Jaspers so certain that he declares that a proof for
transcendence is not necessary. To be sure, it is also not possible,
because transcendence goes beyond the dimensions of the orientation
of the world and cannot be the object of actual objective knowledge.
But what is not possible to cognition is supplied by faith, i.e. through
the faith of human beings philosophizing, thinking, illuminating
existence, questing after the origins and conditions of existence, and
fulfilling existence. For Jaspers as for Kant, philosophical faith is that
act of thinking human beings in which transcendence as existence-
grounding and existence-determining reality becomes conscious to
them, that act in which the assurance one has about transcendence and
about existence comes about as godsend and gift: "I cannot think God,
and yet cannot stop thinking Him."
Pursuing this more deeply, Jaspers sees faith in God as coming not so
much from the limits of the experience of the world but from the
human experience of freedom. Freedom which, in modern thought,
especially in N. Hartmann and J. P. Sartre, is used as an argument or
postulate against the possibility of a Transcendent Godatheism is a
postulate of freedombecomes for Jaspers an intensive confirmation
that God is: the more human beings are free, the more certain is God
for them. For the freedom of human beings is a freedom that is given.
Of this I am certain: in my freedom I am not the one who gives, but
the one who receives. I cannot take freedom by force; I receive it. But
I do not receive it from the existing orientation of the world, for there
is no freedom here, but only the compulsion of things. Thus the
freedom through which I am raised beyond the compulsion of things,
through which I strive for what is new, and through which I create,
cannot be mediated through the world. I receive it from the ground of
my existence, from transcendence, from God.
This is why Jaspers explains: God is certain for me with the
decisiveness in which I myself freely exist. God is not certain to me as
content of knowledge but as presence of freedom for existence. This
yields the consequence: If the certitude of freedom includes in itself
the certitude of God's being, there is a connection between the denial
of freedom and the denial of God. If I do not experience the miracle of
myself being,
14 K. Jaspers, Reason and Existence, First Lecture: "Origin of the
Contemporary Philosophical Situation" 1950.
15 See Jasper's treatement of transcendence in, Philosophy 3. 3112.

Page 44
then I need no relationship to God but am satisfied with the existence
of nature and things.
There is on the other hand a connection between the assertion of a
freedom without God and the idolizing of human beings. It is the
mock freedom of arbitrariness, which understands itself as the
supposed absolute independence of the "I will." But this deception
about myself, that I myself am through myself alone, changes freedom
into the perplexity of emptiness.
Freedom as freedom from arbitrariness, as decision for the
unconditioned, needs guidance. But this can happen only through the
transcendence that determines me, that is the ground of my existence.
On the other hand, it remains true: Freedom is the place where
transcendence becomes perceptible.16
Philosophical faith is, according to Jaspers, a faith that is not
articulated objectively, but is enlivened in many kinds of encounter. It
is a faith without dogmas, without confessional content. But what
seems to be its weakness is precisely its strength and greatness:
Philosophical faith is connected with breadth, openness, oscillation,
swinging, which never comes to rest and for that precise reason
remains living and existential.
That is why Jaspers can make only a few concrete, content statements
about transcendence. But this much he does articulate: "God is""There
is unconditioned demand""The world has a disappearing existence
between God and existence""If everything disappears, God
remains."17
Jaspers loves the word about the hidden God. He holds it as
irreconcilable with transcendence that it should reveal itself: in word,
history, or persons. Jaspers allows only the ambiguous cipher to stand
as language of transcendence, as indicator and trace. "Cipher is the
sign that transcendence is hidden but not disappeared."18
However ambiguous the cipher and writing of about transcendence
might be, the attempt must be made to read this writing. It is read,
according to Jaspers, not through science, but through laying claim to
the whole of existence. "Just as the organs of sense must be intact so
that the world can be perceived, so must the being self [Selbstsein] of
possible existence be present in order to be struck by transcendence. If
I am existentially deaf, so too, in the object, is the language of
transcendence inaudible."19 "I take from transcendence only as much
as I myself am and become." All remains dark to those who are not
themselves, i.e., who
16 K. Jaspers, The Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy 45.
17 K. Jaspers, Der philsophische Glaube (Munich, 1984) 2931, 82. Jaspers
revisited this theme in the 1962 book translated as Philosophical Faith and
Revelation, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Harper & Row, 1967)
18 K. Jaspers, Philosophy 3.180.
19 Ibid. 132.

Page 45
do not exist in openness, freedom, readiness for communication, in
the courage to face disquiet and oscillation. Doubt about
transcendence is possible only out of a failure of existence. This
transcendenceto repeat againis for Jaspers indubitable reality, the true
being, it is the reality that grounds the world and existence as creative
free origin. Transcendence is the reality in which rest and stability is
to be found; it is ultimately that "from which I live and towards which
I die."
Thus it is possible for Jaspers to speak of the subjective and objective
side of faith. "If I took only the subjective side, faith would remain, as
piety, without object, a faith which, so to speak, believes only itself,
faith without contents. If I took only the objective side, the content of
faith would remain as object, a dead something as it were." Faith is
the one and the whole; it encompasses subject and object.
A series of questions from the side of theology can and must be put to
this conception of philosophical faith, especially since Jaspers sets
philosophical faith over against content-articulated revelational faith
in the Christian sense, and sets it in direct contrast with it. This brings
us to the question: revealed or hidden God? We will look into this
alternative in another context (§ 27).
What concerns us in this contest is this: The phenomenon of faith as
philosophical faith takes on, in Jaspers's model, a central position,
even more, more comprehensively, and more existentially than the
faith encountered in Kant. The phenomenon of faith in the theological
sense/meaning is given through this context the irreplaceable and
thereby also unsurpassable rank that is its due. In this way faith is
from the outset freed from the false, pejorative perspective and related
disparagement which is still associated with it.
Let us conclude these observations with an appeal from Jaspers:
Revelational faith and philosophical faith should not stand over
against each other as enemies. They can, according to Jaspers, be in
agreement over what one can know and cannot know. They can be in
agreement about the limits of scientific cognition, in defense against
scientific superstition and scientific contempt, and in the will for truth.
"We should come so far in understanding others in faith, without
following them in it, but precisely thereby to put ourselves all the
more in that union with them which unites us against all the vanities
there are as powerful forces in the world, physically and
psychologically almost overwhelming: in union against godlessness
and nihilism."20
20 K. JaspersH. Zahrnt, Philosophie und Offenbarungsglaube. Ein
Zwiegespräch (Hamburg, 1963) 1012.

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§ 4
The Logic of Act and Transcendence the Theory of Maurice Blondel
(1861-1949)
In our efforts to gain access to faith in the theological sense, let us
present the ideas contained in the work of the French philosopher
Maurice Blondel.1 He is one of the most important inspirations for
theology to this day, especially in France. The fundamental theologian
H. Bouillard has highlighted the significance of Blondel and made it
extensively accessible. Blondel's significance lies in the fact that he
resisted the reigning split in his time between believing and thinking,
and the claim that serious thought could only be unbelieving. He
sought to illuminate and to ground philosophically the coordination
and the relationship of believing and thinking.
Important for the question we are asking is Blondel's philosophy of
"Action"as his major work is called, a philosophy of human action,
praxis. Blondel's purpose was to provide an analysis and a
phenomenology of action, and an exposition of its internal logic.
The Analysis of Act
"Action" or act, for Blondel is not praxis in the emphasized or in the
socio-political sense, i.e., praxis with which human beings change
nature, society, and structures, but action, deed, activity of the kind
encountered in the many everyday radii of action, in the ordinary
activity of human beings. Blondel seeks to gain knowledge about the
inner determination and dynamic of activity and praxis. In doing so he
first notes something of fundamental importance: Reflection over
praxis
1 Major works: Action: Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of
Practice (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984); La
Pensée I and II, Paris 1934, German translation (R. Scherer): Das Denken
2 vols. (FreiburgMunich, 1953/56); Exigences philosophiques du
christianisme (Paris, 1950), German translation (R. Scherer):
Philosophische Ansprüche des Christentums (ViennaMunich, 1954);
Henry Bouillard, Blondel and Christianity, trans. James M. Somerville
(Washington: Corpus Books, 1970); The Logic of Faith (Dublin, 1967).

Page 47
shows that there is no substitute for praxis, action. The problem of life
is to be solved only by living. Never to say or to prove anything does
not dispense one from action. Through act and activity, a reality is
disclosed and an experience mediated which one can then
theoretically represent. But the experience itself and the reality
contained and disclosed therein are not won by way of knowledge
(i.e., scholarship/research). The theory of magnanimity is a long, long
way from one act of magnanimity. But it is quite true that the act of
magnanimity can, for a subsequent reflection, disclose what
magnanimity is. Praxis is never only application of theory; it can
become the foundation of theory.
In the analysis of act and the logic needed for it, Blondel observes this
remarkable discrepancy: Human beings want and strive for more than
they ever attain or realize in act and praxis. They never arrive at the
full identity of what they originally wanted and sometimes realize.
Wanting and act turn out to be similar to asking and knowing, in that
human beings infinitely surpass human beings. The perfection of the
human act, of human action in terms of its goal, succeedsas far as we
can seenot through human beings themselves and not through any
activity in the course of human life. Blondel examines this point more
deeply. It is impossible, he says, not to recognize the inadequacies of
the whole natural order, and not to experience a need reaching far
beyond it; it is impossible to find in oneself the fulfillment of this
neediness. It is necessary, and it is unachievable."2 This means: The
perfection of the human act is unreachable through human action
itself. This results in the dialectic set up by Blondelit is the pivotal
point of his thought: the perfection of our action lies in its logic; but
the perfection of action is at the same timeand this is the other side of
the dialecticunattainable by human beings and their action.
According to Blondel, this situation is experienced above all in the
fact of failure. The failure of human action in its most manifold
dimensions wouldn't come into the consciousness of human beings if
there were no human will [with its "mind"] set on perfection, to which
will the factually attainedor rather, not attainedstands in contrast or in
no satisfactory correspondence. The failure of the act willed testifies
to the indestructibility of the intentional act, i.e., that act which is from
the will of human beings themselves and which they, nevertheless, are
unable to produce from themselves.
This is the situation as Blondel sees it: I cannot withdraw myself from
the necessity of willing myself, and at the same time it is impossible
for me wholly to attain myself. The natural act of the human being
thus contains in itself an inner dynamic, which is borne by and
connected with the element of the unconditionally necessary. This
explains the
2 See H. Bouillard, Blondel and Christianity 8, 62.

Page 48
impulse and the specific logic of human act and activity. In their act
human beings point beyond themselves and verge on the horizon of a
perfection which they strive for and need, which is constitutive of
their act, but which they cannot reach with their own power.
This situation leads to Blondel's thesis: Human beings cannot make
themselves perfect in their activity unless perfection is bestowed on
them: through an act which is not their own, which they can only
receive, but which nevertheless appears as the perfection of their
action.
From these presuppositions Blondel derives the concept of the
supernatural (surnaturel)3 as distinguished from the natural order in
whose field the human act is carried out. The analysis of act shows,
according to Blondel, that the supernatural is the ''cry of human
nature," that the supernatural necessarily belongs to human beings and
their act and is demanded by them and their logic; but on the other
hand it is not attainable by human beings themselves. The
supernatural is for human beings absolutely impossible and, at the
same time, absolutely necessarythis is the specification and
characteristic of the supernatural according to Blondel. But because
all this has to do with the perfection of human action, with the human
act, the supernatural itself cannot be understood as a dumb, passive,
lifeless reality; it must be living, it must be able to be active, it cannot
lie beneath the level of the human being as person. This
supernaturalunderstood as personal and activewhich, in activity, turns
out to be the reality of transcendence, is for human beings the both
necessary and unattainable condition and presupposition of their
"action," their act.
Faith
Faith enters into this view of things in the sense of the option of the
whole human being, in the sense of a basic decision, similarly to the
thematic of the experience of meaning. Human beings are, as acting
and through their action, given a choice. They must choose for or
against the acceptance of the transcendence of the supernatural. They
can choose the possibility that they remain totally masters in their own
house, closed in on themselves, and restricted to the empirical realm
of their action. But in so doing they contradict the infinite dynamic of
their will, or the dynamic of their act towards infinite perfection and
fulfillment. But it is also possibleand in this, human beings remain
true to themselves in their activitythat they open themselves for the
transcendence to which their conscience gives witness,4 for
supernature and its possible act as gift, as perfection and goal of their
own activity.
3 Ibid. 47102.
4 Cf. Ibid. 8, 73.

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About such an act and gift, Blondel as philosopher says nothing, or at
most this: that it cannot be forced, but can indeed be expected.
Whether the expectation is or has been fulfilled cannot be determined
philosophically. Blondel wants only to open up an approach for such a
possibility precisely through the reflection that the analysis and the
logic of human action has on this theme. The act that brings about this
decision is an act of faith, and this is encountered in a horizon similar
to that of the question of sense: It is more than exact knowledge of
particulars. It is at the same time a free act. The philosophical
reflection that poses the problem of faith does not force one to faith.
Against these considerations one could raise the obvious objection: It
seems that a hidden postulate could lie behind this way of thinking. Is
not the dissatisfaction of the human will with the finite and its
orientation to a naturally unattainable goal presupposed rather than
proven?
This was precisely the objection raised against Blondel in the public
defense of his thesis: Is the orientation of the will towards the infinite
not the starting point of your investigation? And does not this involve
a petitio principii (begging of the question)? Blondel's answer was:
The will for the infinite is not the starting point but the result of the
philosophical investigation of act. But precisely this led to the knowledge
that the will for the infinite is the real principle of human activity.
If one wishes to avoid an impermissible prejudgment, it should first of all
be neither accepted nor rejected. In those cases where, through education
or history, it is offered to the consciousness as a hypothesis, one will first
try to resist it. I tried thatfrom that comes the negative character of the
method which seemed to me to have a purely scientific rigor. I check out
the number of objections which could be raised against my secret
postulate; I take pains not to be influenced by this postulate, to repress it; I
think up possibilities of ridding myself of it. But from all these attempts
comes a system of positive indicators showing that, before conscious
reflection and before the decision of the will, one still finds that what one
was fleeing from at the beginning of the process was already present: the
will for the infinite. The a posteriori established and recognized fact of the
will for the infinite is the a priori factual presupposition of human act and
activity.5

Several things come from this analysis. It shows that human beings in
their act and activity are oriented beyond themselves and to
transcendence, the supernatural. It shows, further, that transcendence,
the supernatural, is not a mere accident of nature, that it must be
understood not as static and dumb but as dynamic and living; free act
and unforcedindeed unforcibleinitiative are its characteristics. It also
shows how much this "supernatural" act of Godwhich thought does
require but which human beings look forreally fits in with what
human beings are. Thus the call, act and action of God upon their
actions
5 Ibid. 10.

Page 50
is, with the supernatural as gift and act being so much the fulfillment
of an expectation, the realization of a disposition. It thereby signifies
not alienation but perfected human realization.
The terminology frequently used today, above all by Karl Rahner, of
the supernatural existential of the human being, and the attempts to
understand theology existentially, i.e., from the existence of the
human being and as an interpretation and realization of the human
being seen individually, socially and historically, all these are
anticipated in Blondel's theses.6 Against the reservation or objection
of numerous theologians that he immanentizes or "naturalizes" the
supernatural, that he turns free grace into a postulate of the human
being, Blondel responds with the statement that what is absolutely
necessary for human beings and their act is at the same time
something that is unachievable by them, but [only] granted them in
grace.
The call of human nature for the Messiahthis is Blondel's image7does
not turn this call into a human creature; but such a call can recognize
and acknowledge him [the Messiah], when he appears, as sent by
God. But it can and should be pointed out that the Messiah, when he
comes, that the word and the act of God, when they become real,
correspond to a disposition, an expectation, and an a priori of the
human being, because the human being can and must be described as
one who is by nature and essence open for this. Or, put another way:
If transcendence, if the supernatural, has a universal claim on human
beings and should correspond to them, then an echo of this claim must
be recognizable in human beings themselves; "a trace of this" must
"be found in the logic of the human act."8 Otherwise the claim cannot
be known and mediated.
To find and to name this trace was the goal of the philosopher
Blondel, who, in so doing, intends to remain faithful to his
philosophical goals, but who, precisely in an unmasked philosophy,
makes room for revelation and faith, and manifests this faith in its
humanity. From this position Blondel can formulate the proposition:
The more unique, independent, and autonomous philosophy is and so
understands itself, so much the more is it, in the sense of a
presupposition, appropriate for revelation and the Christian faith. Or
still more pointedly: "The only philosophy which Catholicism allows
is philosophy itself."
It can certainly be said that, without the fact of Christian revelation,
and the faith that responds to it, and the history of faith that has come
from it, Blondel would never have written such a philosophy.
6 Cf. H. Fries, "Theologie als Anthropologie" in: K. RahnerH. Fries,
Theologie in Freiheit und Verantwortung (Munich, 1981) 3069.
7 H. Bouillard, Blondel and Christianity 64, 66.
8 Ibid. 18, 56.

Page 51
Blondel doesn't deny this, but that doesn't prevent or exclude the
thought awakened by such an impulse from being philosophical
thought, which, as such, flows from human thought and behavior.
Blondel's thought and method remain in the philosophical horizon and
in the human realm.
When Blondel says of himself that he has done the work of a
philosopher as a believerand that is his claimthen his intention is to
make a philosophical contribution that can remain true to the believer
and to the philosophizer, without intellectual dishonesty, without a bad
conscience, without inauthentic compromises. The philosophy
Blondel represents consists in the fact that it, as unadulterated
philosophy, rests on those presuppositions and names those conditions
that are there and must be there for a possible revelation, if revelation,
even if it is only hypothetically accepted, is going to reach human
beings. Blondel's philosophy does not require God's self-revelation, it
only uncovers the a priori in which a revelation can be grasped and
recognized.9
In addition, Blondel shows that the "supernatural," which speaks to
and encounters the human being in revelation, is a concretion of the
philosophically not sufficiently specified idea of the supernatural; it is
a concretion in the sense of personality, initiative, gratuity, historicity,
and bodiliness. In the personal self-disclosure of God in Jesus Christ it
has found its absolute and unsurpassable final form, and is thus, seen
in terms of the phenomenology of religion, incomparable.10
This self-disclosure has a human, subjective a priori which is
theologically, as one would expect, presupposed. But this
presupposition has to be illuminated philosophically and, for its part,
described in the possibilities and modes of its perfection that come
from the supernatural. Thus the philosopher cannot have knowledge
of any ground to forsake faith for the sake of philosophy, or to become
unfaithful to philosophy for the sake of faith.
9 Ibid. 59, 96.
10 M. Blondel, The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, trans.
Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1965).

Page 52
§ 5
Faith in God in the Light of the Anthropological Characteristics of
Faith
These reflections on the anthropological characteristics of faith, of
faith in God, of faith in the theological sense were directed to the
question of presuppositions and conditions. Ifas is the case todayfaith
as such is questioned, if it is described and thus rejected as
intellectually deficient, alienating, or unwarranted, we then have to
ask about its anthropological characteristics, i.e., about whether and
how the human being, humanly and existentially, has anything to do
with what is called faith in God.
In addition, we must also, by order, relation, and correlation, bring
faith in God into relationship with anthropological characteristics.
This correlation can take the shape of question and answer, of answer
and question, or the shape of expectation and fulfillment, of
probability and event, of fragment and whole, of inauthentic and
authentic. In any case, it has to do with the mode of the connection
without which faith in the theological sense cannot be mediated. The
mere assertion and exhortation, the loud adjuration "We believe," is
not enough these days.
Theology in our day is possible only in its anthropological form, in
relationship to human beings and human societyone could also say,
only in a fundamental-theological basic orientation.1 This brings us to
the question: How does one get from anthropological presuppositions
to God? Some things that can be said about this have already been
mentioned. We will now, on this basis, once again specifically take up
this theme.
The manner in which belief as personal act contains an indication of
belief in God has already been described. We pointed out that the
radical and unlimited practice of faith in the horizon of the human
person and persons is not possible, however much the faith itself
intends this.
1 The basis for this can be found in K. Rahner, Foundations of Christian
Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych
(New York: Crossroad, 1994).

Page 53
The full realization of faith repeatedly fails because of the intellectual
and ethical limitation of human beings, because of the deficiency, the
weakness and unreliability, because of the very different and to-be-
differentiated credibility of the person and persons in whom I believe
and whom I believe.
The highest level and intensity of personal belief is found between
persons who are bound to each other in love. But here too, faith is
often disappointed or broken by failure, narrowness, infidelity,
fickleness, and questionability. So also, precisely those human beings
who strive in faith and love for their fulfillment know best and most
painfully that they will not succeed in actualizing their faith unbroken
and undisturbed, uncurtailed and unconditioned. Thus it becomes
clear not only from the deficient modes of faith but also from its most
authentic and highest human realizations that faith points beyond the
horizon and beyond the possibilities of its interhuman relationship,
that as personal faith it seeks a mode of realization free from and
raised above these limits and inadequacies.
Thus, from its interhuman and interpersonal actualization, faith
creates space in which it gains the genuine fulfillment of itself. This
fulfillment is not possible in the interhuman realm; it is found when
and where faith can be related to a personal You that is different from
every finite personality, and possesses not less but more personality;
that is person in the absolute sense, in the sense of freedom, love,
knowledge, word, self-disclosure, inability to be used as an object;
that allows and makes possible an unlimited "grounding of myself in
another." On the other hand, this fulfillment of human faith in a
personality transcending the human is the fulfillment of the deepest
intention of faith as human actualization.
One cannot of course say: From this conception of faith follows the
reality of a transcendent and absolute You in which faith is radically
realized and wholly fulfilled. But this conception does provide a
horizon of expectation and hope. It is therefore true that when the
transcendent, absolute You is encountered in any form of self-
disclosure, there resides within the faith related to it the fullness of the
possibility of faith. For there the limitations and hindrances which
determine faith as an encounter of one human being with another fall
away. It becomes immediately manifest how human and existential
such an encounter is when human beings believe in this transcendent
personal reality and find therein the fulfillment of the sense of their
being, and how, on the other hand, human beings and their deepest
intention in faith and the love connected to it would be nothing but
failure and vanity if the idea of transcendence were an illusion.
In connection with these reflections on personal faith, let me add a
remark on the phenomenon of word, which is of central significance
in

Page 54
the field of faith. The "I believe You" is articulated in the spoken
word. The opening up of what is to be believed also takes place in
word: "I believe what you say." Gerhard Ebeling addressed this
question in many of his works.2 The whole of theology, the whole of
revelation is described by him as word-event, as speech-event. He
develops the following ideas: So comprehensively can human beings
bring everything to actuality in word, even be able to create reality in
the performative wordthey experience again and again that they do not
have power over their word, that they have neither the first nor the last
word, that often enough they are speechless in the face of many
actualities and events. Because their own human word is an
inadequate, often lying word which one cannot trust, on which one
cannot build, they hunger after another word that does not come from
human beings, from which word they can live, in which are truth,
light, and fidelity. Thus, according to Ebeling, human word as
articulation of personal faith points not only to the dialogic aspects of
shared human existence, but also beyond, to a deeper dimension of
human beings and human word, not as mere extension on the same
level but as the deepest ground, as origin and goal of word that stands
out in the word of human beings and is at the same time awaited by
them, over against which the "I believe in You" has its absolutely
limitless right. It is that You to which the human You points, and the
ultimate ground for that is that the human being encounters and is
encountered as You.
God is encountered also in the context of the question of meaning
which is connected with the question of faith. If meaning points to the
whole and to the ground of reality, and if, in addition, the whole and
its ground are not encountered in this world and in history, this points
to the existence of an unobjective, all-determining, transcendent
reality which is called God.
If it is established that we ourselves, in many human experiences, are
not really the ones who are the source of meaning, if it is established
that we, in the midst of all experiences of meaninglessness and the
absence of meaning, nevertheless entrust ourselves to a meaning,
draw new assurance and hope, and therein realize a fundamental and
primordial trust to which, after all empirical experiences, we have no
right at all, but from which these same experiences do not keep us,
this reveals a dimension of reality that is qualitatively new, that comes
from another origin and is directed towards an "over-against" that is
quite different from the many possible origins and goal-forms that
arise from within world, life, and history.
2 G. Ebeling, The Nature of Faith, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith
(Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961); Word and Faith (London, 1984);
Gott und Wort (Tübingen, 1966); Introduction to a Theological Theory of
Language, trans. R. A. Wilson (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973);
Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens I (Tübingen, 1979).

Page 55
This reality that surpasses the world and inner historical experience is
what that thematic of meaning runs up against, even when and where
human beings themselves can find no meaning but still believe in a
meaning and act accordingly. There are concrete instances of this, as
we have indicated, even among people where no immanent practical
value, no identifiable benefit, no obvious or even discernible
achievement or usefulness seems to be found.
Where there is no longer any kind of use and function, there still
remains a characteristic of sense which, coming from someplace else,
extends like a strange dignity over these human beings, even when we
do not know this sense. Precisely these human beings also have a
dignity that does not allow them to be used or encroached upon. They
are creatures who point to the Creator and are related to the Creator
and thereby receive their "infinite value" which raises them to the
dignity of human beings, to the level that human beings are never a
means to the goal and purpose of another but are themselves goal and
purpose.
If this guarantee for the right and dignity of human beings should
disappear, where could one then get protection and hope for those
who don't or who no longer come up to the norms of achievement and
productivity demanded by society? To the question: "For what do you
really need God?" Heinz Zahrnt answers:
In the sense of what is effectively useful to get through life well, to support
the state or to change society, the human being has no need of God.3
God is rather that which is completely and wholly unnecessary in the life
of human beings, and precisely that reason, the only thing they need. For
only this Not-necessary protects them from being calculated, used, and
sacrificed to the considerations of usefulness and necessity.4
To remember God for God's sake and thereby help human beings to
preserve their true measure and dignityfor that Christianity is good. In
doing this it contributes to the balance of the intellectual economy of the
time and thus makes an original contribution to the life of the individual
and of society.5

Belief in God is expressly thematized in the philosophical faith of

Kant and Jaspers.
For Kant, God is the security, guarantee, and ground of the moral,
which as categorical imperative makes its demand on human beings
and is effective both as command and sanction, as judgment and
court. According to Kant, God is different from nature and human
beings. God is not to be known categorically, but to be thought of as a
being with reason and freedom, whose basic characteristic is holiness
as the cen-
3 H. Zahrnt, Wozu ist das Christentum gut? (Munich, 1974) 59.
4 Ibid. 70.
5 Ibid. 245. Cf. also H. Gollwitzer, Krummes Holzaufrechter Gang. Zur
Frage nach dem Sinn des Lebens, 7th ed. (Munich, 1976); also Von der
Stellvertretung Gottes. Christlicher Glaube in der Erfahrung der
Verborgenheit Gottes (Munich, 1967).

Page 56
tral concept of the moral and the happy. Belief in God as a postulate
of practical reason holds a very distinguished place in the thinking of
Kant. Faith does not stand under the sign of a defective intellectual
faculty. Instead, place is to be made for faith. In faith human beings
are given sure answer to the most important questions: What should I
do? For what may I hope? What is the human being?
For Jaspers and for the philosophical faith he sketched out,
transcendence is the ground of existence. Existentially actualized faith
is the assurance of transcendence, which neither requires nor is
capable of proof. Transcendence is, according to Jaspers, necessarily
hidden transcendence; its language is only the ambiguous cipher, not
revelation.
In Jaspers's philosophical faith, which can be defined as the possibility
of human beings to be certain of their transcendence, it is most
impressive how he connects the ideas of transcendence and of God
with the freedom of the human beingas the ability of the human being
to decide for the unconditioned and for the new. Freedom has its place
not in the world of laws, compulsions, and repetitions, in the world of
the conditioned, but in the origin of subject and existence which
Jaspers calls transcendence or God. Denial of God leads to atrophy
and to the loss of freedom.
The philosophy of act in Blondel's reflections on human action is
characterized by the fact that it makes one conscious of the
discrepancy between what is willed and what is done, i.e., the non-
identity of willing and the completed. Blondel sees in this an
indication of transcendence, of the supernatural, which cannot be any
lifeless and dumb reality, but action itself; thus not only wordthat
toobut act is activity in the most comprehensive sense. This act of
transcendence, the gift of the supernatural, is bestowed on human
beings as the perfection of their human willing. This act presses for its
realization in act and activity. In this process the human will makes
demands that far surpass its capacity and its own power. In view of
this situation, Blondel talks about faith as the unavoidable option, as
the decision of human beings over the whole of their existence and
their action. This involves the alternatives, whether human beings
open themselves to transcendence and its possible supernatural
application in faith in the mode of openness and expectation, or
whether they decline to do this, whether they withdraw into
themselves and make the empirical horizon the only and ultimate
horizon of their life. The consequence of the latter is, according to
Blondel, that human beings become unfaithful to all that they
experience as the strongest dynamic of their will and act: perfection in
the absolute and infinite sense.
In this concept faith in God is clearly and expressly given its place.
This is so much the case that, according to Blondel, the human act
without this dimension of the transcendent and the supernatural be-

Page 57
comes incomprehensible in its logic and in its actualization
condemned to failure. All this produces the condition of the
possibility for faith in God, for faith in the theological sense.
Faith in God unites for faith critical dimensions, the way they are
encountered in faith as inner- and inter-human reality, but without
coming to their radical and ultimate fulfillment there.
In conclusion we add another reflection in view of the fact that the
word "God" seems today to be overworked, and misused, and to have
become superficial. Some have recommended that we do without the
word "God" entirely, or at least for a while. However much one can
understand this recommendation and the reason for itthe same holds
true for the words "love, freedom"it is not to be accepted. For if the
word "God'' disappears, i.e., the absolute personal identity which is
not identical with the human being and the world, but is what grounds
it, disposes it, questions it, and calls it to responsibility, the reality of
the world and of human beings will then be falsified; it will be
deprived of its deepest truth and ultimate mystery. When God is not or
no longer talked about, when the word "God" disappears, an
irreplaceable anthropological dimension then drops out: the reality of
human beingsand of the worldwill be lost.
"God" is not to be replaced by any other word; God is the all-
determining reality and as such is the absolute and free over-against of
the human being. If one does without the word "God," one runs into
the danger of giving up and losing the reality that is intended by
"God" and can be replaced by nothing else. One should rather try
everything in order to rescue the word "God" from superficiality and
the trash heap, from the thoughtlessness into which we have brought
it, and to speak it freshly and authentically. Karl Rahner reflects: What
would happen if the word "God" disappeared without trace and clue,
and without even a visible gap being left in its place? He answers:
Human beings would have forgotten the whole and its ground and at
the same time have forgotten that they had forgotten. What would
happen then?We can only say that the human beings would have
ceased to be human. They would have crossbred themselves back into
being clever animals.6
In this context we can share a text of Martin Buber from his book
Eclipse of God. He is reminiscing about a visit with a professor in
Germanyit was the famous philosopher, Karl Jaspers. In the morning
Buber corrected proofs of a book and read to his host what was
printed. Buber's account then reads:
He listened in a friendly manner, but obviously astonished, even with
growing alienation. When I had finished he said, hesitatingly, and then,
driven by his deep concern, more and more passionately: "How can you go
on like that, saying
6 K. Rahner, "Meditation über das Wort 'Gott"' in: H. J. Schulz, ed., Wer is
das eigentlich, Gott? (Munich, 1969) 18; Foundations of Christian Faith
4748.

Page 58
'God' time and time again? How can you expect your readers to take the
word in the meaning which you intend? What you mean by it is elevated
far beyond all human concept and understanding; and you mean precisely
this elevation; but in saying it you throw it into human clutches. What
word in the human language is so misused, so stained, so desecrated as this
one! All the innocent blood that has been shed for it has robbed it of its
luster. All the injustice which had to be brought in to cover it has wiped
away its character. When I hear the name of the Most High God, it
sometimes sounds to me like a blasphemy."
The kindly, clear eyes burned. The voice itself burned. We then sat there
for a while in silence, across from each other. The study lay in the fluid
brightness of early morning. It was as if I was drawing power into myself
from the light. What my response was I am now unable to repeat exactly,
but can only give an indication of it.
"Yes," I said, "it is the most heavily loaded of all human words. No word is
so befouled, so tattered. That is precisely why I cannot do without it.
Generations of humans have loaded the burden of their anxious lives onto
this word and pressed it to the ground; it lies in the dust and bears all their
burden. Generation of humans with their religious factions have torn this
word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it; it bears all their
fingerprints and all their blood. Where could I find a word like it to
characterize the Most High! If I took the purest, most sparkling concept
from the innermost treasure chamber of the philosophers, I could pick up
there only a non-committal thought-image, but not the presence of the One
whom I mean, of the One whom generations of humans, with their
monstrous living and dying, have honored and degraded. . . . Of course,
they draw caricatures and underneath write the name of God; they murder
one another and say: 'In God's Name.' But when all madness and deceit has
crumbled away, when they stand over against God in lonely darkness and
say no longer 'He' but 'You,' groan 'You,' cry out 'You,' all saying that
single 'You,' and when they then add 'God,' is it not the real God upon
whom they all call, the one, living God, the God of the children of men?!
Is it not He, God, who hears them? To whom theylisten? And is it not that,
precisely that way, the word 'God,' the word of our crying out, the word
that has become Name, in all human languages and for all times become
holy? We must pay attention to those who prohibit/despise it because they
are protesting against the injustice and mischief for whose authorization
they so readily appeal to God; but we still dare not give it up. What many
propose makes a lot of sense, i.e., to keep silence for a while about the last
things, so that the misused words can be redeemed! But that is not the way
to redeem them. We are unable to wash clean the word God, and we
cannot make it whole; but, stained and tattered as it is, we can lift it from
the ground and raise it above a time of great trouble."
It had become bright in the study. The light was no longer following, it
was there. The old man stood up, came to me, laid his hands on my
shoulders and said: "We want to say 'you' to each other." The conversation
was finished. For, where two really are together, they are there in the
Name of God.7

We have by now established the presuppositions and set up the

context that will enable us to speak of faith in the theological sense.
By this we mean faith as the act and behavior of human beings, acts
that are personal and engage the totality of those persons, acts that are
7 M. Buber, "Gottesfinsternis" in: Werke 1.50810.

Page 59
related to the personal reality that is indeed the all-determining reality
called by the name "God."
Corresponding now to this possibility on the part of human beings is a
fact: it is the fact of religion, the religions of human beings, the
history of religions in the world. They all speak and treat of human
behavior that is expressed in relationship to God and can be described
as religious faith. This faith has a universal and unmistakable
expression in that mode of expression called prayer (in part also
sacrifice)8 which is typical of all religions and at the same time
characteristic of them. Prayer is the language of faith. In prayer is
found all those characteristics that are specific to faith. First there is
the personal characteristic: In prayer, human beings turn towards a
personally understood You, but a You that is not identical with any
human being. They turn to this You as a reality that can hear and see,
that has sovereign disposition over human beings, to whom they
entrust themselves, to whom they take flight, where they seek
protection, from whom they expect help, consolation, and the key to
the meaning of things, and also answers where human beings can no
longer find any answers.
All the prayers in the world, with all their differences, mean the one
mystery: The Holy, the Transcendent, the Divinity, God. They are a
sign that the orientation of human beings to transcendence is one of
their indestructible characteristics, that there are no human beings
who, in this comprehensive sense, do not believe. The only question is
whether, in this faith, they acknowledge transcendence, the true,
personal over-against, or break off their infinity-oriented intention,
that is, divert it to a finite, earthly instance: a person, a collective, or
some immanent value.
The differences in religion and prayer comes from the differences in
human beings, in nations, and from the many different experiences
human beings have. The difference also comes from the richness and
multiformity of the divinity to whom the one praying turns. But with
all this difference there are also many common melodies as contents
of prayer: praise, honor, thanksgiving, petition, dedication. Nicholas
of Cusa speaks of the "una religio in rituum varietateone religion in a
variety of rites." This also holds when the religion one is talking about
is not a composite of the world religions or a hybrid form from them,
but also an actual religion that, however, has a relationship with the
other religions and cannot be understood without them.
8 Still important: F. Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History of Psychology
of Religion, trans. Samuel McComb and J. Edgar Park (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1932); O. Karrer, Das Religiöse in der Menschheit und
das Christentum, 3rd ed. (Freiburg, 1936); Th. Ohm, Die Liebe zu Gott in
den nichtchristlichen Religionen. Die Tatsachen der Religionsgeschichte
und die christliche Religion (Krailling, 1950); P. W. Scheele, Opfer des
Wortes. Gebete der Heiden aus fünf Jahrtausenden (Paderborn, 1960); H.
R. Schlette, ed., Alter Gott, höre! Gebete der Welt (Munich, 1961); F.
Mildenberger, Das Gebet als Übung und Probe des Gebetes (Mainz,
1970).

Page 60
That holds also for the specifically religious characteristic in the form
of Christian faith. If we, then, concern ourselves primarily with
Christian faith and not with the religions of the world, it is not to
declare everything outside of that faith, i.e., the religions of the world,
to be irrelevant or false. Our purpose is, by way of reflection on the
Christian faith, also to consider what the discussion is about in world
religions.
This idea is strengthened by the fact that the Christian faith, the
religion represented in being Christian, makes the claim and the
promise of being "for all": to be there for all, thus to be what is called
a world religion. One cannot, to be sure, maintain what Adolf Harnack
meant: Whoever knows the Christian religion knows all religion. But
one can indeed say: Whoever claims to know the Christian religion
really cannot do this without knowing the universal context in which
the Christian faith, as religion, exists.

Page 61

II
The Theological Characteristics of Faith:
A Correlate of the Anthropological Theory
The following considerations will take up the other side of our theme:
the question of whether and howin the matter of the anthropological
characteristics of faith, the indicators which point beyond itselfthe
expectations and openings that lay therein are factually and
historically verifiable in the actual and radical practice of faith. It is
the question of whether these expectations have a correspondence and
answer which give assurance of fulfillment.
There is, as we have already indicated, an answer in a universal sense:
in the fact of religion, of religions, of the history of religions. They are
all characterized by behavior that transcends the immanent
anthropological horizon and is related to transcendence, to the
Divinity, to the Holy, to holy things. This relation is documented in
religious faith, whose language is prayer and sacrifice, which turn out
to be basic and universal phenomena of all religions.
This more universal answer, which is grounded in the very fact of the
existence of religions, should not be superseded by the following
considerations. It is, rather, to be specified and concretized through
the correspondences found in the horizon of biblical faith and the
reality of revelation ordered to it.

Page 62
§ 6
Faith in the Old Testament
It is a questionable venture when a nonOld Testament scholar, a non-
exegete, sets out to say something about such a huge and demanding
theme. The suspicion could arise that the one who attempts this has no
inkling of the multiplicity and breadth of what the Old Testament is,
that such a person could talk only in general terms.
But when such a personto look at the other side of this problemspeaks
systematically, in a context of fundamental theology, about faith
without going into the original witness of the Bible, then (s)he cannot
speak of faith in the theological sense. But (s)he cannot, on the other
hand, wait until all individual aspects of this question have been
treated in scholarly exegetical monographs. This is a dilemma we
constantly encounter, one we cannot avoid. One can evade the
dilemma, to some extent, when the specialist is open to the whole and
when the systematician remains open to the particulars without getting
lost in them. Karl Rahner discusses this when talking about a first
level of reflection which he describes with the, admittedly
problematical, concept "evasive maneuvreUmgehungsmanöver."1
Despite the breadth of time and content comprised in the Old
Testament, something binds the differences into a unity. But it can
bring these differences together only if, through all the different
historical events, there actually is a thread of commonality, a real
connection. In addition there are in the Old Testament unchallenged
starting points, high points, and pivotal points which are determinative
for the individual [aspects]. Old Testament scholarship itself points
this out. A theology or theologies of the Old Testament are possible
only on the basis of a connection existing in the Old Testament which
overlaps the individual element, however such a connection is
specified: covenant, revelation, salvation history. All these
conceptions intend to show, and to show factually, that there are not
only trees but also a forest. To see
1 Cf. preliminary remarks on the theory of knowledge in: Foundations of
Christian Faith, 810.

Page 63
a forest and to talk about a forest is also possible and allowable for
someone who doesn't know or hasn't investigated all the trees in all
their details.
This is the situation of systematicians who, when they treat a
theological theme, cannot prescind from the biblical witness, and yet
must do more than simply summarize the countless details. But in
their desire to get to a ground or whole, they do not do away with the
individual element as if this were unnecessary. But they are concerned
to point out that every individual element is not a random erratic block
but is encompassed by a whole. One needs to be aware of this for the
way we approach the problem.
It is incontestable that faith is a fundamental concept of the Old
Testament.2 Faith has this characteristic because there is beneath it an
experience which runs through the whole Old Testament and is one of
the decisive reasons why one can speak of a unity. Martin Buber
speaks of the history of Israel as faith history. The fact that the
Hebrew word for faith varies is no argument against this: the reality
remains. The basic word for faith is formed from the stem hääminthe
familiar "Amen" comes from the same root. The meaning of this word
is first of all of a formal kind and says that a thing is firm, reliable,
that one can stand on it, build on it, live with it. This characteristic is
carried over into Israel's relationship with the God of Israel.
The Faith of Abraham
We begin our brief analysis where the phenomenon of faith is found in
the Old Testament in an exemplary and model formin the figure and
history of Abraham.3 The story of Abraham forms the center of the
so-called patriarchal history, which represents the transition from
primitive history to the history of the People of Israel.4 In the
patriarchal histories or stories of the patriarchs, the beginnings and
origins of the People of Israel are described. This means not just the
natural, genealogical origins, but also the origins of the faith that is
2 On the theme "Faith in the Old Testament": M. Buber, The Prophetic
Faith, trans. Carlyle Witton-Dans (New York: Harper and Row, 1960);
"Zwei Glaubensweisen" in: Werke I, 651782; A. Weiser, "The Old
Testament Concept," TDNT 6.18296; F. Stier, Geschichte Gottes mit den
Menschen (Düsseldorf, 1959); Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology
(New York: Harper, 1962); W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament,
trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967); L. Wachinger,
Der Glaubensbegriff Martin Bubers (Munich, 1970); W. Zimmerli, Old
Testament Theology in Outline, trans. David E. Green (Atlanta: John Knox
Press, 1978); A. Kolping, Fundamentaltheologie II (Münster, 1964)
74234; A. Deissler, Die Grundbotschaft des Alten Testaments, 6th ed.
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1978); Claus Westermann, Elements of Old
Testament Theology (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982); J. Scharbert,
Sachbuch zum Alten Testament (Aschaffenburg, 1981).
3 F. von Trigt, Die Geschichte der Patriarchen (Mainz, 1963).
4 H. Renckens, Urgeschichte und Heilsgeschichte (Mainz, 1959).

Page 64
the actual foundation of the existence of the People of Israel and its
history.
Abraham's behavior, his life, his history, the fate that befalls him are,
according to the witness of the Old andquite remarkablyalso of the
New Testament, raised to a representation of what faith is. Abraham is
called by Paul (Rom 4:11) Father of Faith. Abraham's faith is
repeatedly praised and presented as a model. All who believe like
Abraham are, for that reason, Abraham's children (Gal 3:6f).
According to the Gospel of John, faith in Jesus Christ is the
fulfillment of the faith of Abraham (John 8:33). In the praise of the
fathers (Sir 44:1921) and the "heroes of faith" (Heb [Link]),
Abraham is given the highest rank. The way of his faith is described
in the most thorough way and in its high points in the Letter to the
Hebrews.
The source of our presentation is the book of Genesis, chapter 12 and
following. Abramthat is his original namea nomadic shepherd or
nomadic chief, leaves his homeland in Ur, Chaldea (in Mesopotamia).
In doing so he leaves behind his land and his relatives. He does this,
according to the witness of Genesis (which is not a protocol and direct
reporting but the writing down of a long narrative tradition and has to
be interpreted as such) not on the basis of a decision of his own, but at
bottom against his intention, against his will. He does it on the basis
of an order which became for him an experience. The Bible interprets
it and says: "The Lord spoke" to Abraham. This order tells him to:
"Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to
the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation,
and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a
blessing . . . By you all the families of the earth shall bless
themselves" (Gen 12:13).
A breaking loose, as described here, and a wandering into the
unknown are, for human beings in antiquity, an almost unfulfillable
demand. It could, according to the expectations of the time, lead only
to destruction. But Abram nevertheless decides to do this; he bases his
life and his future on it, and precisely this is described as his faith. The
faith of Abraham is subjected to severe testingfirst with respect to the
land that is promised him, the land of Canaan, which is already in the
possession of a population, and then with respect to the progeny
promised him in his old age, and thenmost difficultin the testing (Gen
22:219) that orders him: "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom
you love, . . . and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the
mountains of which I shall tell you." We cannot here go into detail
about the problem of the sacrifice of Isaac and its possible meaning,
e.g., as narrative representation of the prohibition of child sacrifice;
rather, we want to see it in connection with the faith thematic
graphically presented here: the faith demanded of Abraham and

Page 65
lived by him means giving up the past ("Go from . . .") and giving up
the future ("Take your son . . .").
From this merely cursory witness several things become clear: The
faith of Abraham is reaction to an action, to an order; it is an answer
to a word, however experienced and perceived by him, a word
directed to him and imposing an obligation on him, and which for him
is a word of God: "God spoke." In his believing, Abraham is ready to
rely on word, order, and promise, to ground himself in these, to set his
life and future on them, and to them to say the Yes of his amen: "So is
it, so be it."
The faith of Abraham was, accordingly, a personal faith; he was
obedient to a call experienced. This call was at the same time very
concrete and required his "I believe that . . ." It was in addition a
fundamental decision which determined his whole future life; it was
faith in the form of an all-encompassing making sense (Sinngebung),
even if this sense was at first withdrawn from all human
understanding.
For the faith of Abraham, the possible death of his son Isaac did not
mean the contradiction and destruction of all the promises, but
became a motive to leave making sense to the one to whom he had
believingly entrusted himself, that is the way Paul in his Letter to the
Romans saw it and wrote about it. Abraham is
". . . the father of many nations"in the presence of God in whom he
believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that
do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the
father of many nations, as he had been told. "So shall your descendants
be." He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which
was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old, or when he
considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No distrust made him waiver
concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave
glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had
promised. That is why his faith was "reckoned to him as righteousness."
(Rom 4:1722)

This faith of Abraham bears in all the sign of the "Nevertheless," of

the "In spite of everything"against all appearances. Thus faith,
according to the model of Abraham's faith, is a unique form of
existence of the human being: a setting-oneself-outside-the-world, a
being-grounded-in-God, a being-bound-to-God. Faith understood in
this wayin any other way, it is not faithis significantly elevated beyond
the anxiety and fear that befalls human beings, as well as beyond all
false self-confidence and vain glory; but it is also stronger than all
doubt that can rise up against faith from appearances and the factual.
We must also specifically point out that, even according to the witness
of the Old Testament, the magnificently described faith of Abraham
was itself not realized so magnificently in every instance (cf. Gen
12:10-20). The prayer "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!" is not
foreign to him.

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A further remark in this context: It concerns the name of God in the
Abrahamic history. The God who moves through the events of the
patriarchal histories is called Yahweh. This is, historically, an
anachronism, or the pre-Mosaic ancestors of Israel did not yet know
Yahweh-faith. The revelation of this name comes in the much later
time of Moses (Exodus 3) and is described as a new beginning of the
history of faith.
The God of the fathers had various names: El-Elohim. These are
related mostly to persons and are respectively called, e.g., the God of
Our Fathers, the God of Abraham, the Fright of Isaac, the Strength of
Jacob. Because the later Yahweh-faith is related to the earlier God of
the Fathers, and because the later history of Israel was brought into an
inner relationship with the earliest history of the Fathers, the
connection that is made between the earlier God of the Fathers and the
later Yahweh, the God of Israel is, chronologically speaking, false.
The connection can, however, be factually grounded; both are brought
together into a grand inner relationship.
The Faith of the People of Israel
The Abrahamic and patriarchal histories point beyond themselves to a
greater fulfillment than was given to the fathers themselves. Abraham
takes possession of Canaan only to a small extent, and temporarily.
The fulfillment given to him is interrupted as a result of the Egyptian
interlude introduced by Joseph. The descendants of Abraham, the sons
of Jacob, move to Egypt where, in the course of some 400 years, they
become a large group. Even if we cannot give exact numbers, the
Israelites did apparently seem to be so strong that the king of Egypt,
apparently Ramses II, saw in them a threat to his own people. He thus
ordered the repression of the Israelites. They had to provide slave
labor in the brick factories, in agriculture, in the building of military
installations and fortifications. The goal wasin modern
termsannihilation through work. As a last measure, it was finally
ordered that all new-born baby boys should be killed. Thus Egypt
became for Israel the land of bondage, repression, and slavery.
In this situation occurred a second great thrust in the history/faith-
history of Israel. It is again an emigration, although in another form
than with Abraham. The new emigration is connected with the call of
Moses, first with his miraculous rescue by the daughter of Pharaoh,
then with the theophany granted to him (Exodus 3).5 This is described
as follows:
5 P. WeimarE. Zenger, Exodus. Geschichten und Geschichte der Befreiung
Israels (Stuttgart, 1975).

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''I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob . . . I have seen the affliction of my people who are in
Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their
sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the
Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land,
a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites . . . I
will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the sons of
Israel, out of Egypt." (Exod 3:6,78,10)
Moses takes on this task and carries it out. The events connected with
itthe night of the escape, the Egyptian plagues, the rescue at the Sea of
Reeds, the wandering in the desert, the event on Sinai, the making of
the covenant, the taking over of the land in Canaancannot and need
not be described here. For our thematic is important: All these events
are no accident, and they are also not achievements of the leader,
Moses, and his band; they are, ratherthis is ineradicably stamped on
the consciousness of Israelthey are the act, the providence, the
guidance of the God of Israel. The one acting so powerfully is a living
God, to whom one can call, to whom one can turn. The word and the
manifestation of this God are shown in historical facts and events, in
the language of factsgrouped around the great theme of Exodus and
liberation. And these factsthat's the other sideare not to be seen as
mere facts, but to be understood as language, word, and act of God.
As such they are knowable only in faith.
The answer to this was the readiness of the people to acknowledge
this God, Yahweh, in faith, to entrust themselves further and always to
his powerful guidance, and to see in this trusting faith the grounding
of their own existence and history. The history of Israel thereby
becomes faith history. Faith is the illuminating interpretation of the
external history. Israel is the People of GodYahweh is the God of this
people.
From this larger horizon the meaning of the name of Yahweh described
in Exod 3:14 becomes understandable. 'Yahweh' does not mean, as the
Vulgate translates and as scholasticism has interpreted it: "I am who I
am" or I am the ipsum esse, being itself. The name 'Yahweh' contains
no definition but a message. It goes: "I am there/here," "I will be
there/here." The verification of this message takes place in the
historical events of the rescuing of Israel. Thus, 'Yahweh' also means,
concretely: I will be there for you as the rescuing, redeeming,
liberating God of My People. This means: Israel's existence,
historically seen, is grounded in the liberation from Egypt. But this is
the proof of the power and love of the God who chose and called
Israel. To assure itself of this is the task of the faith of the People of
Israel; in this faith is grounded its history. This is what is meant by the
phrase "Chosen People."
This makes once again clear what significance there is in the
proclamation of the name of Yahweh. It doesn't serve, as is the case in

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other religions, to gain power over God in order to put God at the
disposition of human beings. In Israel, calling on the Name should
rather open up the possibility of assuring oneself of the presence and
nearness of Yahweh; to call upon the name is to let oneself be made
use of by Him, and to heed his instructions in his guiding and
controlling of history.
Further, in all the external historical changes of this peoplein the
transition from nomadic to sedentary life, in the establishment of the
kingdom, in the division of the nation after the death of Solomon, in
the destruction of the northern and then the southern kingdoms, in
captivity, in exile, in the return, in the new foundation and subsequent
foreign dominationthis faith remains as light on the way. This faith
history is no simple history of progress in which faith grows and
becomes more deep, but an extremely dramatic history of ups and
downs, of turning to, of falling away, of readiness, of recalcitrancy.
Faith is a path.
But Israel's history, with and under all the political factors that move
its history, remains a faith history and vice versa: It is from the history
of faith that Israel's external history is determined. And it is important
to remember that not only victories and successes, but also defeats,
captivity, and exile are for Israel the voice of God, a work, a
revelation of Yahweh. This is what constitutes the special character of
the faith of Israel in contrast to many other religions.
Faith and Existence
The history of Israel as faith history cannot here be gone into in detail.
We will point out only one scene which, in the opinion of Old
Testament scholarship, represents a high point in this history and, at
the same time, describes in a highly concentrated way what faith
means for this people.
The scene develops as follows: Judah's King Ahaz (739734 B.C.) is in
a difficult political situation. The neighboring kings of Samaria and
Damascus want to force him, by besieging Jerusalem, into a coalition
against Assyria. But Ahaz, for his part, is playing with the idea of
asking Assyria for help against this threat. In this situation, the
prophet Isaiah appeals to the ambivalent and anxious king neither to
be afraid of the neighboring kingshe calls them "pieces of firewood"
and "smouldering stumps" (Isa 7:4)nor to ally himself with Assyria
against these kings, but to set himself on the ground of faith and
thereon to take his stand. He does this with the words: "If you will not
believe, surely you shall not be established ("have no stability" or "not
survive'') (Isa 7:9). To have stability is the fruit of faith. Not to have
faith means to fall, not remain, be unable to survive.

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Thus, for Isaiah, faith and being are identical. Therefore, faith is the
fundamental question for the survival and being of the People of
Israel, who are in danger of falling away from this ground of existence
into unbelief and non belief, and who, both in their fear of the peoples
and powers threatening them as well as in their union with and trust in
them, are betraying their faith and thus moving toward destruction.
This basic understanding of faith as existing in and grounding in God
is repeatedly emphasized in the Old Testament and called up, as both
demand and gift, into the consciousness of the people (the Psalms).
This basic understanding unfolds the richness which comes with this
fundamental sensitivity of faith: the trusting in and hoping in God, the
being safe and protected in God, the freedom from anxiety and self-
glory, the new power of existence and life-energy opened up therein:
"They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall
mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they
shall walk and not faint (Isa 40:31). No less a part of this, given with
and in this faith, is the power and the obligation to the "Nevertheless"
in spite of all appearances, in spite of all the hiddenness of this God
(Job).
The points of reference of faith are thus brought out in all clarity. It
becomes recognizable that the faith of Israel means a double
exclusivity: God aloneexclusively Godnothing outside of God. The
whole human beinghuman beings with all their powers, human beings
with whole and undivided hearts.
In the agitated history of Israel, in its history of faith, the fundamental
sources and motivations of this faith are named and presented again
and again: the great acts that took place in the calling, the history, and
the leading of the People of Israel. In them Yahweh demonstrated his
fidelity and power which obligate the people, in its turn, to fidelity.
There are, further, the promises which Yahweh has given, which he
fulfilled and will always fulfill anew on the basis of the already
fulfilled, which obligate and encourage to faith and trust. There are, in
addition, the concrete demands and instructions, above all in the Law,
in the Torah, which are perceived not as burden but as help and light,
and in the word and mission proclaimed by the prophets, which call to
the obedience of faith: in general and in the concrete here and now of
an historic hour, and which always make possible and require a new
decision for this living God, for his word and his will.
There is no question about it: In the witness of the Old Testament,
faith has the fundamental form: "I believe in you, I believe you." Faith
is meant as credere in Deum, credere Deo, as belief in Godin the sense
of existential and total grounding in God and towards God and at the
same time as an unconditioned acceptance and recognition of
whatever God says, promises, orders. Faith is a You-faith and a
propositional

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faith, which in the concrete and individual recognizes the You that is
revealing itself, and which makes possible and demands believing
dedication to the You of the living God, of the guiding God, of the
God who can be called upon. At the same time, this faith is the sense-
giving power for the whole of its history.
The history of Israel is faith history mediated by secular history. The
historical happenings and events are the actual language in which
Yahweh speaks; that is the sense in which they are interpreted by the
prophets.
The Confession of Faith (Creed)
The sources of faith were at the same time also the contents of the so-
called creeds, the propositional faith found in the Old Testament.
These are related to the fundamental developments in the history of
this people. Biblical scholars often point toas does Gerhard von
Rad6the fundamental Old Testament creed as described, e.g., in Deut
26:59 or Jos 24:213. The creed reads:
A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and
sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great,
mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and afflicted
us, and laid upon us hard bondage. Then we cried to the Lord and God of
our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil,
and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty
hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders;
and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with
milk and honey. (Deut 26:59)
The content of this credo does not consist of doctrines or propositions
which one must hold as true; the credo consists of a history which one
narrates, hands on, which one remembers and out of which one can
meet the present and the future. The history of Israel began with the
fact that helpless people cried out to God and had the experience of
being heard and saved. They knew this God not only in reality; they
could even cry out to him.
The Old Testament recounts on the whole a history in which there are
many changes, even in the image of God, in the worship of God, and
in the way one spoke of God. But this content of the faith doesn't
change; God is always the God who is open to the suffering of human
beings, and that is how God is experienced in faith.
Thus, also belonging to the history of Israel is a history of
lamentation, a history of the oppressed in Egypt, a history of
suffering. We hear the lament arising from all kinds of need of the
individual
6Theologie des Alten Testaments 1 (12734); taking a critical position on
this point: W. Richter, "Beobachtungen zur theologischen Systembildung
in der alttestamentlichen Literatur anhand des 'kleinen geschichtlichen
Credo"' in: Wahrheit und Verkündigung, hrsg. von L. Scheffczyk, W.
Dettloff, R. Heinzmann (Festschrift M. Schmaus),
(MunichPaderbornVienna) 1967, 175212.

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and of the whole people (Psalms); we hear the laments over the fall of
Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Lamentations stemming
from the personal suffering of the individual come to their high point
in the Book of Job: a man accuses God from the depth of his
desperation, and, in doing precisely that, holds fast to God.
But in answer to the experience of being rescued come the jubilation
and praise of the liberated. The oldest song in the Old Testament,
Exod 15:121, comes after the account of the rescuing from Egypt.
No less than lament, praise runs through the whole Old Testament
from the beginning. Praise signifies the joy coming out in words that
cannot but recountand this with exuberancewhat the liberated
experienced. The Old Testament credo has the literary form of the
narrating praise of God, and vice versa: Israel's tradition of history is
rooted in the praise of the great deeds of God, which is, for its part, an
expression of faith.
The contents of another confession of faith is represented by the
prayer that Israelites must recite daily: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our
God is one Lord" (Deut 6:4). A still further side of the faith, in terms
of content, are the Ten Words (known as the Ten Commandments,
although never called this in the Old Testament), which begin with the
sentence "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods
before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any
likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." (Exod 20:24) God
alonethe whole human being: here too an indication of the exclusivity
of Old Testament faith.
This is the fundamental pillar of the Law which, for the faith of Israel,
is perceived not so much as burden but as light on the way of life, as
orientation and instruction (cf. Psalms 18 and 119). The fundamental
characteristic attributed to the Law with these words was that of
peace-creating justice. For that, praise and thanks are given: "The
heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his
handiwork" (Ps 19:1). This means: Yahweh, the God of Israel, is also
the creator of heaven and earth, the Lord of the world.
In the course of the history of Israel, above all after the exile and with
the continued growth of diaspora Judaism, the Law, the word was the
only faith-orientation of the people, there begins a process in which
the Law became an absolute reality. It stepped out beyond its serving
function and became dictation which demanded verbal and literal
obedience and laid claim to timeless validity, which therefore saw in
obedience to the Law the proper realization of faith. A further
fundamental characteristic of this faith is its form in terms of promise
and hope, in other words, the fact that, for the faith of Israel, which

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is so connected to history and the present, the future opens up even
greater dimensions.
Summing up: Faith is described according to the Old Testament as a
comprehensive characteristic of the existence of human beings and of
a people. No situation is excluded from this. Faith is trust, getting
involved, grounding oneself in the God of the fathers, the God of
Israel, the God who has a name and can be called upon, the God who
has manifested himself through magnificent events and deeds
attributable only to him, through his calling and guiding of human
beings, and who makes himself, i.e., his being God and Lord, known
in the history of a people, in the language of factsso much so that this
history is understood as a faith history.
The same Hebrew root ('mn') underlies the Hebrew words which are
translated as the verb to believe, and Amen. This word is never used
in the Old Testament in order to describe the relationship of human
beings to the gods. It remains restricted to the relationship to the God
of Israel as the only God.
It is not a projection into the Old Testament but the exegesis of its
findings and witness when we say: Faith is encountered here in the
form of personal faith, of "I believe in you, I believe you." To this is
added affirmational faith as encountered in the forms of the Old
Testament credo. Faith understood this way assures and establishes a
making-sense in the existence of an individual human being and in the
history of a people.
None of this was supposed to be a privilege of just this nation; it was
supposed to become a sign for the other nations. But it is
characteristic of other nations that they do not describe their
relationship to God and to the Divinity with the attitude of faith.
From time immemorial, the religion of the Greek people flowed from
the idea that the depth of the world is divine, that everyone can
perceive by reflection, and that faith is not needed to do this. Even the
cult of the sovereign was not based on faith. The fact that a sovereign
was divine was obvious to anyone who could see, because of the
sovereign's authority, which disseminated order, peace, and prosperity
for all. In popular Stoic philosophy, the divinity was proven through
rational conclusions from nature and history. In the mysteries and in
gnosis it was ecstatically experienced or mystically contemplated.
Thus, in Hellenistic religion, there was no talk of faith.7
7 L. Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982) 14950.

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§ 7
Faith in the New Testament
Continuity with the Old Testament
The faith1 which is found in the synoptics in Jesus' preaching of God's
rule and kingdom is in the form of Old Testament faith. Its central
expression is found in the double form: "Repent, and believe in the
gospel" (Mark 1:15). Faith is encountered as surrendering to and
trusting in the God to whom and through whom everything is
possible: "All things are possible to him who believes" (Mark 9:23).
Hence the requirement: "Pray and ask for whatever you will; believe
that you have received it, and it will be yours" (Mark 11:24). Faith is,
metaphorically speaking, a mountain-moving faith (Mark 11:23). It is
also the overcoming of fear: "Do not be afraid, but believe." Hence
the significance of the plea: ''Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" (Mark
9:24).
These statements are not talking about an explicit faith in Jesus. They
are about faith in the God who can rescue, who is good and merciful,
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the People of
Israel, who now speaks and acts through Jesus. Faith is the opposite of
faint-heartedness, fear, despondency. It is faith in the form already
mentioned: the whole human beingGod alone. In the New Testament,
faith is not described with one word and concept, but is co-signified in
1 Cf. the theological dictionaries, lexicons and reference works: RGG
C.2.15881611 (F. BaumgärtelH. BraunA.A. von RulerH. Graß);
Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson,
1994) 3.11016; TDNT 6.182228; P. K. Meagher, "Faith," NCE 5. 792804;
M. Seckler, HThG 1.52848; J. Alfaro, SM 2.310409.
See also the presentations of the theology of the New Testament: Hans
Conzelmann, An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament (New York:
Harper & Row, 1969); K. H. Schelkle, Theology of the New Testament
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1974); R. Bultmann, Theology of the
New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1970); Leonhard Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982). Monographs: A. Schlatter,
Der Glaube im Neuen Testament, 4th ed. (Stuttgart 1927); Rudolf
Schnackenburg, Christian Existence in the New Testament (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1968) 6798.

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the following field of words: trust, confidence, being unafraid,
rejecting care and anxiety; but above all in the command to love God
"with all your soul, with all your strength."
It is precisely this same form of faith that is found in the gospel
healing stories: If you believe you will be whole, you will be healed,
you will be helped. This is affirming that the well-being and the
becoming well of human beings is opened up by means of faith in this
broad, open sense. Where this faith is lived, one finds a healing of
existence and of the whole human being, the sign of which is the
external healing: "Your faith has saved you."
When this faith is not there, Jesus appears unable to work signs and
miracles, as was the case in Nazareth, his native city (Matt 13:58),
apparently because specification of meaning connected with the sign
as sign and language of God is absent in this case. It is something that
can be perceived only in the believing sense; the sign degenerates to a
mere miracle or sensation. Equally significant is the other moment in
the synoptics: Faith saves, in the sense that the forgiveness of sins is
connected with it. "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the
paralytic, 'My son, your sins are forgiven"' (Mark 2:5).
A conceptual and formal characterization of faith understood in this
way is given in the well-known ("classical") text of Heb [Link] Faith is
the hypostasis, i.e., the foundation of reality for what one hopes for,
the rock of conviction of things one does not see: "Faith is the
assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
Jesus and Faith
In the synopticswith the exception of Matthew [Link] "Whoever causes
one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,"the formula "believe
in Jesus" is never found.
This raises the question: Is Jesus also a believer?2 Is he to be ranked
among the crowd of the "heroes of faith"? Does the fulfillment of faith
take place in him as it did with Abraham and Moses? Jesus is the son
of Abraham, the father of faith. In the letter to the Hebrews, after the
enumeration of the Old Testament heroes of faith, Jesus is
apostrophized as "Pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (Heb 12:2). Can
this be said of Jesus because he makes faith perfect in his person, in
that he proclaims the message of God's rule and kingdom and himself
stands believingly in the service of this message, and thus is a radical
believer in the sense of "the whole human beingGod alone"?
2 Thomas of Aquinas, Utrum in Christo fuerit fides in: STh 3.7.3; Karl
Rahner, "The Eternal Significance of the Humanity of Jesus for Our
Relationship with God," Theological Investigations 3.3546; Hans Urs von
Balthasar, "Fides Christi" in : SponsaVerbi (Einsiedeln, 1960) 4579, ET:
Spouse of the Word (San Francisco, 1991); Gerhard Ebeling, "Jesus and
Faith" in: Word and Faith (Philadelia: Fortress Press, 1963) 20146.

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Is Jesus, therefore, as Martin Buber and Shalom Ben Chorin say, the
continuation, indeed the perfection of the Old Testament line of faith
and faith history? If so, then Jesus is for believing Jewspast and
presenttheir great brother in faith, of whom Buber said that he had
revered him from his youth.
Or is it the case that, as traditional Catholic Christology affirms, Jesus
is not a believer because he, as son of God, as God-human, possessed
immediate knowledge of God, yes the vision of God, and thus was not
a believer but a knower? To say of Jesus that he believes would be to
bring him down in everything to the level of the mere human. But that
is apparently inconsistent with theGod-humanmystery of his unique
person: for Jesus sees and knows what we believe.
Over-against that comes the opposite question: What is to be made of
the fact and the truth: Jesus is true man? Perhaps the following . . .
consideration can help: If Faith is primarily what we said it was: a
mode of existing understood as grounding in God, a dedication of the
whole person to God, an unshakable and unreserved trusting and
living from this ground, then Jesus is a radical believer. He is the
perfecter of faith because in him, in his person and in his whole
existence, faith has found its perfection: Jesus lives from the God
whom he calls his Father. Jesus' existence is dialogue with his Father,
he lives from the Father's word, to do his will is his food (John 4:34).
If prayer is the language of faith, then it is precisely in and from the
prayer of Jesus to his Father, from his prayer of thanks, of petition, of
readiness, of obedience, but also of need, of anxiety, of loneliness, of
powerlessness as in Gethsemani and on the cross, that the life of faith
in the sense of the perfection of faith becomes discernible. All this is
confirmed and intensified by statements like the following:
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with
loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he
was heard for his godly fear. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience
through what he suffered. (Heb 5:78)

With faith understood in this way, Jesus is now seen as being a part of
Old Testament faith history. Jesus is a Jew; he belongs to his people
and isas a long-time lost sonfinally being taken home; he has come
home. Jesus moreover represents a real culminating point in the
history of faith. In this connection one could repeat with variation a
word from Karl Jaspers, who not only ranks Jesus among the
influential figures of world history, like Buddha, Confucius and
Socrates, but speaks of Jesus as the most definitive. For, as Jaspers
explains: "Jesus led humankind to a frontier which is the most
revolutionary in all history. He has broken through to that place where
there is nothing but love and God. This

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place, conceived like a place in the world, is in fact no place."3 In
place of "love," one could also say "faith," remembering that both
words come from the same root.
If, in a one-sided view "from above," the reality of the faith of Jesus
understood this way is not attended to, it is a loss for Christology,
because it is a curtailment of Jesus' humanity. For human faith is part
of the mysteries of the life of Jesus. The situation becomes even more
serious if, as we see sometimes happening in contemporary
Christologies, attempts to do this are qualified as unorthodox, and
there are facile accusations of "Nestorianism." That there is also the
Christological heresy of monophysitism, and that it is still alive today,
is far less noticed, let alone challenged.
The Discontinuity:
Faith in Jesus Christ
If there were no other witness in the New Testament regarding faith
and the revelation corresponding to it, then the New Testament would
be only the final act of the Old, and the line of continuation of its
promise. The logical consequence of this perspective would be that
the only thing of abiding value in the New Testament would be what
was conformed to the Old, turning the New Testament, so to speak,
into the last book of the Old Testament. Martin Buber formulated the
consequences of this position:
What is creative in Christianity is not Christianity but Judaism, and we
don't need to establish contact with that. We need only to recognize it in
ourselves and take possession of it, for we bear it unforgettably in
ourselves.4
But this perspective doesn't do justice to the New Testament, to the
differences, to the discontinuity in, with, and under the continuity. The
specific difference can be illustrated in one sentence from Buber:
"Belief in Jesus unites us, belief in Christ divides us."
What is specific in the faith we encounter in the New Testament is the
Christian faith. This is understood as faith in a final and definitive
revelation of the God witnessed in the Old Testament, the God of
Israel. It is the revelation in Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ. The
event connected with Jesus of Nazareth is not related to the history of
a people but to the person, way, word, and deed of an individual.
Faith thus understood is, accordingly, oriented not just to the
proclaiming and believing Jesus, the man from Galilee, not just to the
3 Karl Jaspers, The Great Philosophers (New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, Inc.) unable to find precise location of this quote.
4 Martin Buber, "Die Erneuerung des Judentums" in: Reden über das
Judentum (Berlin, 1923) 54; on this: H. U. von Balthasar, Martin Buber and
Christianity: A Dialogue Between Israel and the Church, trans. Alexander
Dru (New York: Macmillan, 1961).

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message of God's rule and kingdom; it is oriented above all to the
Jesus who is proclaimed as the one in whom the message of God's
rule and kingdom was fulfilled and made present, as the one who is
witnessed in Old Testament terms as the one who has come, as the
oneand this is the decisive pointwhom God has authenticated through
acts and works, and above all through the resurrection from the dead:
as Messiah and Lord. There is where the power of God's rule and
kingdom has made its appearance. In this sense, New Testament faith
is Christian faith, faith in Jesus Christ, or, more precisely, in Jesus the
Christ.
Basically, this is the theme of the New Testament as a whole. It is
most clearly expressed by Paul and, in his own way, by John. Paul5
formulates his own confession of faith: I live in faith in Jesus Christ,
"the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20).
This sentence affirms that Christian faith is a personal faith ("faith in
Jesus Christ") as well as an affirmational/propositional faith, i.e., faith
in the Son of God who "loves me and gave himself for me." It is
important to note that this affirmation intends not only to inform but
also to move, to effect, to make an impact.
The repeatedly emphasized difficulty of actualizing faith in God as
personal encounter is now overcome. It is realized in a unique way
through faith in the person named Jesus Christ. This is also the way by
which we come also to the other dimension: that of affirmational faith
with concrete content which is inseparably connected with, and is the
revelation of, the person of Christ.
This content of faith is described, like Old Testament faith, in credal
formulas, which are connected with a history. We cite two well-known
texts:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was
buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the
scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Cor 15:3-
5)
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart
that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom 10:9)

It is clear from these texts that, according to Paul, faith as faith in

Jesus, the Messiah and the Lord, finds its high point and ultimate
grounding in confessing Jesus whom God raised from the dead. Thus,
the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the pivotal point of
specifically Christian faith. The extent to which faith in God,
Abrahamic faith, is concretized and at the same time transcended in
this event, Paul makes clear by his coordination of creation and
resurrection from the dead. He speaks (Rom 4:17) of faith in God who
raises the dead and calls into being that which is not. This
concentration is so strong in Paul that, for
5 O. Kuss, "Der Glaube nach den paulinischen Hauptbriefen" in:
Auslegung und Verkündigung 1 (Regensburg, 1963) 187202.

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him, the preaching of Jesus, indeed the earthly Jesus as such, hardly
makes an appearance.
Paul further characterizes faith as obediential faith and as confession
in its manifold possibilities of articulation: as praise, witness,
thanksgiving, public testimony. Through faith in Jesus, the Christ and
the Lord, a new personal and existential situation which is
characteristic of faith is created. Faith bestows a new being, "being in
Christ." This is actualized in that the believers co-consummate the life
and fate of Jesus in their own lives. In other words, faith as suffering
with, being crucified with, being buried with him, faith as resurrection
and as glorification further signifies entering into the knowledge and
comprehension of Jesus Christ, which transcends all reason (Phil 4:7).
Faith means having the Spirit of Christ (1 Cor 2:16). Faith is the
acceptance of the wisdom of God, which, in view of the folly of the
cross, is foolishness for the world (1 Cor 1:18). Faith means the
surrendering of the human being to the God who was in Christ and
who reconciles the world with himself (2 Cor 5:9).
Faith in Jesus Christ is, in Paul, the repudiation of the self-
glorification and self-justification that tries to gain salvation by its
own power and thus denies Jesus Christ and the act of God living
within. Justification takes place, therefore, by faith alone. For only in
faith does that which happens for me in and through Christ become
accessible, mediated, and appropriated.
The Earthly Jesus and the Christ of Faith
From this starting point, let us go again to the Synoptic Gospels,
which, in their witness to the proclaiming Jesus, do not mention faith
in Jesus the Christ. But these Gospels are also written in the light of
the Easter message and resurrection faith. They make the statement
"Jesus is the Christ" in the form: "Christ is Jesus of Nazareth" in order
to give witness to the identity of the earthly Jesus with the proclaimed
Christ, with the Christ of faith, in order thus to protect the Christ-
kerygma from the suspicion of an unhistorical myth.
The problem "historical, earthly JesusChrist of Faith" is thus not a
new theme, but is already the basic theme of the New Testament itself.
There is no contradiction between these two aspects and dimensions;
what there is instead is that continuity and discontinuity, that
connection and radical break which are found in the way and the fate
of Jesus: death and resurrection from the dead.
All the writings of the New Testament proceed from faith in Jesus the
risen, the Messiah and Lord. The Synoptic Gospels look from this
horizon back to the earthly Jesus and recognize, already in the life and
deeds of the pre-Easter Jesus, the traits of his coming glory. Important

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for them is the affirmation and confession: The Christ is Jesus of
Nazareth. Paul speaks hardly at all of the earthly Jesus. His whole
concern is to speak of the salvation opened up in Christ the crucified
and risen, to speak of the justification and atonement granted to
human beings in Christ, to speak of the new creation. Jesus is the
Christ. That is the witness of Paul and, for him the decisive
affirmation. There is no contradiction between Paul and the synoptics,
but the respectively different accenting of the one gift of God to
human beings in Jesus, the Christ.
The Synoptic Gospels show that Jesus demands conversion and faith
in the royal rule of God, which was not only proclaimed by him but
already breaking in and coming near in his person and in his deeds.
They show how Jesus also claims faith for himself and how he
articulates this claim by his "But I say to you"; "Amen, I say to you";
"Here is more than" the temple, prophet, king, more than Moses;
''Today that word has come to fulfillment"; "One is your teacher";
"One is your Father." The verification of this claim and the words
associated with it is found in the acts of Jesus, not least the act of
forgiving sins.
From this claim come consequences like: "Follow me!" This demand
is placed above even love for father and mother (Matt 10:3439) and
includes the readiness to leave everything. This radical following is
related to the appeal to do and suffer "for my sake." With this also
comes the demand for a clear decision in the sense of being for or
against Jesus himself: "He who is not with me is against me, and he
who does not gather with me scatters (Matt 12:30; cf. Mark 9:40).
Confessing Jesus is, according to the synoptics, decisive for the
position of human beings in relation to God: "Every one who
acknowledges me before men, I [the Son of Man] also will
acknowledge before my father who is in heaven; but whoever denies
me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven"
(Matt 10:32f; Luke 9:26; 12:8f; Mark 8:38).
These words correspond to the affirmation that can be described as the
high point of the synoptic gospels: "All things have been delivered to
me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no
one knows the Father except the son and any one to whom the Son
chooses to reveal him" (Matt 11:27).
Thus, already present in the framework of the earthly image of Jesus
is that condition which is necessary for faith: Faith presupposes
someone who has seen and knows. Corresponding to this position is
the fact that Jesus is the judge, that he exercises that act which
establishes the absolute and definitive truth about human beings and
their existence. The criterion of the court and the definitive judgment,
however, is not a general norm; it is Jesus himself: What you have
done to the least of my brothersor not donethat you have done to meor

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not done (Matt 25:3444). Jesus is the definitive what and why of the
action. These words not only contain an utmost kenosis [emptying] in
the sense of solidarity with the least of human beings, they are at the
same time an exorbitant, superhuman claim: Who can claim that what
was done or not done to human beings was done to him/her?
It follows from this that, precisely from the witness of the first three
gospels, Jesus can be understood as the one who believes in a radical
manner, and thus is the perfecter of faith, and at the same time the one
to whom the faith of human beingsand its implications in discipleship,
confession, and decisionare related. If God's rule and kingdom are
claimed as present in Jesus, if the Jesus who proclaims also proclaims
himself and the mystery of his person in the parables, then there is
also in the Synoptic Gospels an implicit Christology whose distinct
development takes place after the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Thus is built the bridge from the proclaiming Jesus to the proclaimed
Christ, from the faith of Jesus to faith in Christ.6
The Gospel of John
The significance that faith has in the Gospel of John7 becomes clear
from the statement of its goal. We read: "that you may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have
life in his name" (John 20:31).
The Gospel of John does not, for the most part, use the substantive
"the faith," but rather the verb "to believe" and describes faith as a
doing. This gospel says expressly: To believe means to believe in
Jesus. "Believe in God, believe in me'' (cf. John 14:9-12). This is
possible because Jesus is he in whom the Logos has become flesh, in
whom the doxa of God can be seen as the doxa of the "only begotten
son of the Father" (John 1:18). This doxa already shines in Jesus'
earthly life, through which shines the glory of God.
Believing in Jesus is possible and indeed commanded because Jesus,
as Son, knows and sees the Father and on that account"No one has
ever seen God" John 1:18)has brought tidings from him. Believing in
Jesus is possible because he comes "from above," because he "comes
from God," because he "speaks the words of God," because he is the
revealer.
6 H. RistowK. Matthiae, ed., "Der historische Jesus und der kerygmatische
Christus. Beiträge zum Christusverständnis" in: Forschumg und
Verkündigung (Berlin, 1960); K. Rahner, Ich glaube an Jesus Christus
(Einsiedeln, 1968); cf. Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, trans. V. Green
(New York: Paulist Press, 1977).
7 Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John; A Commentary, trans. G. R.
BeasleyMurray (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971); H. Schlier,
"Glauben, Erkennen, Lieben nach dem Johannesevangelium" in: The
Relevance of the New Testament (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968)
15671; cf. R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to John, trans. Kevin
Smyth (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968) esp. 1.55878 (Excursus:
Johannine Faith).

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Believing means to believe that it is Jesus by whom the "I am"
statements are made. I am the shepherd, the door, the bread, the light,
the vine, the resurrection, the life, the way, the truthstatements that are
not parables but images taken from human life and therefore have
their relationship to human beings, and to their being as existence.
The Johannine statements are understood as answer to the question of
who the human being actually is. Believing means, in John above all,
to accept the absolute claim that Jesus is the absolute predicateless "I
am he," words reminiscent of the theophany of Exodus 3:14. That is
why Jesus can say: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John
14:9).
Faith, according to the Gospel of John, is, as faith in Jesus, a You-
faith. It is at the same time an affirmational faith: Faith in Jesus' words
and, above all, in the works that give witness of him, witness that the
Father has sent him. They are works such as "no human being can
do." At the same time, these works point to the mystery of His person,
as bread, as light, and as resurrection. Their intention is to affirm what
Jesus Christ meant for human beings.
Faith encompasses and moves all that human beings are and all that is
in them. This is shown in the fact that faith is connected with the
"coming to Jesus," with "receiving him," "loving him," and "abiding
in him." But the extent to which faith is knowing becomes clear in this
Gospel; believing and knowing are seen as almost identical: ''We have
believed and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God"
(John 6:69).
All believing is, according to John, also a coming to know; all coming
to know is a believing coming to know. And yet, between believing
and knowing there is a difference, which gets expressed by the fact
that the relationship of Jesus to His Father is always described with
"knowing," never with "believing." In the Gospel of John,
accordingly, there is no faith of Jesus. But that is no contradiction to
the synoptic gospels because knowing is the faith that has come to
perfection. Knowing in the biblical sense signifies more than a
"knowing about"; knowing is community between persons as the
highest personal unity; it is community of life and exchange of life
with the one who is knownin the sense of the "I and the Father are
one" (John 10:30). For the one who believes in Jesus, the Christ, a
knowing is possible in which the faith will be made perfect. Whoever
believes is taken up into the community of knowledge of the Son and
the Father.
The effect of faith being expounded here helps one to understand that
faith is a crossing over into new existence. Being grounded in "He
who believes in the Son has eternal life" (John 3:36; 6:40,47; 20:31),
"he is born again," has "passed out of death into life" (1 John 3:14),
"will not be condemned." In faith, eternal life has already broken in.
Faith

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takes part in the new beginning of existence opened up in Jesus, while
in unbelief judgment has already taken effect (John 3:14,21; 5:24). In
faith, decision is made between life and death, light and darkness,
truth and lying, a decision in favor of life, light, and truth. This does
not refer to "cosmic powers" but to characteristics of existence.
Finally, it is said that faith is a gift of God: "No one can come to me
unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44). That means
neither that the human being has no part in it nor that unbelief is free
of guiltquite the contrary. Unbelief is the No to Jesus spoken against
one's better knowledge, to the Jesus whom the Father attests in unique
"signs" and "works.'' The role of human beings in all this is to let
themselves be drawn in, not to refuse or close themselves off. Their
receiving becomes their greatest act.
Our intention in these reflections has been, in order to complement the
phenomenologically developed "a priori" of faith, to present its
biblical "a posteriori." We hope that no artificial construction has been
presented, for we have been attempting to describe what arises from
the matter itself. This description is both an application and a
verification of faith in its fundamental form: as personal act, as
content-specific relationship, as option of human beings for the whole
of what they are, for their existence, their act, their history, and their
world.

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§ 8
Faith as Hearing and Seeing
In the Old and New Testaments
It has often been pointed out that the difference between the revelation
of the Old and New Testaments and other religions consists especially
in the fact that other religions, especially in their highest forms, e.g.,
the Greeks, are primarily concerned with contemplation of the
divinity. The divine is not something to be believed or heard, but to be
seen. It thus reveals itself in contemplation, in theophany, in
hierophany, in image and in form. Consequently, cult, mysteries, and
initiations are all at the service of this contemplation.
In contrast, the revelation, of the Old and New Testament is
predominantly characterized by hearing: "Thus speaks the Lord";
"Hear, O Israel"; "Land of the Lord, hear the word of the Lord";
"Hear, you heavens and the earth, hearken to it"that is the fundamental
tenor of revelation in the Old Testament and its daily admonition to
the people of God. The Law and the Prophets proclaim the word of
the Lord, and all the promises for the future are likewise given in the
word. This word is to be heard; it is to be obeyed, believed; this word
is to be done. Out of this ground of the word and of faith the People of
Israel are to exist and historically live and work. The real sin of the
people consists in not hearing, in not having heard, thus in its
"obstinacy'' and hardness of heart. Word and image really do come
together frequently in the Old Testament, especially in its earlier
history, and the idea of "seeing God" is not foreign to it. The same is
true of the notion of the seeking for and gazing upon the face of the
Lord and the longing for this. But this wanting to see happens for the
sake of the word, and in the visions of the prophets it is the frame for
the word that is entrusted to them. Image and sight especially need the
interpreting word. The unveiled vision of God is withheld from
human beings. No living human being can look on God as God is;
whoever looks on God dies. The Old Testament prohibition of images
is the correlation and

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the consequence of this faith perspective: "You shall not make for
yourself a graven image" (Exod 20: 4).
This is how Israel's faith was distinguished from the religions of its
surrounding world, from the temples, idols and cults, which were
concerned with a bodily presence as well as with seeing, initiation,
ecstasy, and rapture. The Temple of Jerusalem, however, contains no
images. Its only image is light.
In the New Testament too, word and hearing along with its manifold
forms obviously predominate, even if no longer with that obvious
emphasis found in the Old Testament. The classical description of the
phases of revelation (Heb 1:1) speaks explicitly of God speaking
through the prophets and finally in His Son. "The Word" is not by
accident a decisive name for the majesty of Christ. Jesus is the Word
of the Father from whom he brings the decisive and definitive word.
Therefore Jesus knows he is sent to preach the good news. His
messianic task consists essentially in announcing the message of
God's rule and kingdom: "Repent, and believe!" (Mark 1:14).
The gospel also gives witness to what Jesus did and experienced,
witness to the decisive salvific activity in Jesus, and above all, witness
to who he is. The answer, given in the language of Scripture: Jesus is
the Lord and the Christ (Paul). "The Word has become fleshwe have
seen his glory"; "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John).
Nevertheless, the deeds of Jesus and the events in his life, as saving
events, have to be proven and interpreted through the word. Jesus
himself interprets his death and resurrection as saving events (Luke
24:2527). When the synoptics hand on the gospel of the proclaiming
Jesus, and John hands on the gospel of the Christ proclaiming himself,
and when Paul and the Acts of the Apostles are witnesses of the
proclaimed Christ, of Jesus the Christ and Kyrios, all this stands under
the sign of the word, under the sign of hearing, and of believing,
especially of believing in him whom they have seen and whose works
and deeds they have seen. But for the eventabove all the crossto be
seen and interpreted as act and revelation of God, for that the word is
needed, the word from the cross. What is seen and what takes place
are, by themselves, not enough; they allow ambiguity. The cross is
folly and scandal. Faith comes from hearing, hearing from
proclaiming, proclaiming from being sent (cf. Rom 10:1415).
However much the New Testament speaks of what we have heard and
seen, and however much are the eyes that see what the disciples saw
called blessed (Matt 13:16), so much does the witness of the New
Testament nevertheless know that Jesus is not just the revealed but
also the hidden God, God in the form of a servant in whom one does
not immediately see the form of God, whom one does not know even
though he stands in the midst of all (John 1:26).

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But even more: In the New Testament the desire to see and
contemplate is often expressly rejected, and seeing and wanting-to-see
is rejected as lack of faith, as flight and evasion from the true
message. The desire for miraculous signs in the sense of spectacular
miracles is rejected by Jesus because they do not lead to faith. "They
have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. If they do not hear
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone
should rise from the dead" (Luke 16:2931). This is the reason for the
principle: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe"
(John 20:29). For "faith is the conviction of things not seen'' (Heb
11:1). This is the understanding of the emphatic antithesis: "For Jews
demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ
crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles" (1 Cor
1:22). All who were not eye- and ear-witnesses to Jesus, all whom the
Risen One did not appear to and encounter, are dependent on the word
of the disciples: Through the word, through hearing the word, they
come to faith in Jesus, the Christ.
If, despite all this, we can legitimately talk about human beings of
faith seeing and contemplating in this life, that is no contradiction, nor
is it an inappropriate incursion of Greek ideas and Greek religion into
the realm of biblical revelation. It is, rather, a witness to the fact that
the eschaton, the last things, have already broken in and made an
appearance in Jesus Christ, that they thus can be seen in his person, in
his deeds, in the events of the life of Jesus, and that what is to come at
the end is only the perfection/fulfillment of what has already become
event in Jesus Christ, the last word which God has spoken to us, his
incarnate Word. Christ is "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15).
Therefore, seeing now has a legitimate place; it points to the last
things and is, in a certain sense, their anticipation: the seeing from
face to face, "seeing God as he is." Hans Urs von Balthasar's major
work, Herrlichkeit, builds on this characteristic. It is called a
theological aesthetic, a theological "theory of perception"; its first
volume has the significant title Seeing the Form (Schau der Gestalt.)1
Christ is spoken of as the "center of the form of revelation." This
vision, however, is made visible not through images but through the
word.
The union of hearing and seeing is the legitimate appropriation of the
concerns of religion. It is an expression of the existence and history
brought about through Jesus Christ, an expression of the "already" and
the "not yet," which is characteristic of Christian faith. That is why
there is, in the name of the revelation of God in one person, Jesus
Christ, no longer any absolute and rigorous prohibition of images. It is
superseded by the "image of the invisible God" in Jesus Christ. It is
notable that the representation of Jesus Christ came about first in
1 Einsiedeln 1961, ET: The Glory of the Lord. A Theological Aesthetics. I:
Seeing the Form (San Francisco: IgnatiusNew York: Crossroad, 1982).

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images and symbols: shepherd, alpha and omega, above all the cross.
Only later was the representation of the figure of Jesus added.
In the Tradition of the Origin
This fundamental law of the origin of revelation applies also, and
most significantly, to the time of the tradition of revelation, which is a
tradition of the origin, because revelation itself is the origin of the
tradition. Tradition in the community of believers, the Church, takes
place corresponding to the origin, revelation, not only in the audible
word but also in the visible sacrament; but these two modes are bound
together in a higher unity: The proclamation is also proclamation and
mysterium fidei, verbum visibile. But only through the word is it
disclosed what reality is being referred to. The sacraments are signs of
faith. Baptism is not "mere water, it is water encompassed in God's
word."2 This comes out even more emphatically in the events of the
Last Supper. The signifying words of the Eucharistic words of
institution disclose the reality of the visible forms of bread and wine.
One can likewise say that proclamation stands in the horizon of the
sacramental, effective sign. It is "sacramentum audibile," audible
sacrament, a sacrament of life.
There follow from this some conclusions that are important : for the
Church, for its life and activity.3
If the Church is founded on Jesus Christ, if it is to make present and
equally available to all times the word and work of God, which has in
Christ become event and person, then the Church that is understood as
such must be, originally and in its essence, both word-church and
sacrament-church. Only as primordial word and as primordial
sacrament can the Church have part in Jesus Christ, in the truth and
love of God which has become history and person through him.
If Jesus Christ is the Word of God, if "Word of God" is a full and
comprehensive description of the mystery of Jesus Christ, then Word
is that comprehensive reality in which the sacrament is also taken up
and into which it can be integrated. If, in the self-disclosure of God
and in communion with him, grace comes about through Jesus Christ
in the Holy Spirit, then its application to human beings is not
something that happens to things; it is a personal process. As such, it
must ultimately come about through word and, if it comes about as
sign, be determined by word. For word is uniquely and essentially
ordered to person and to self-communication. The reformational cry
"Verbum solum habemuswe
2 Martin Luther, Dr. Martin Luther's Small Cathechism (St. Louis,
Concordia Publishing House, 1943) 170.
3 Cf. Heinrich Fries, "Wort und Sakrament" in: Wort und Sakrament
(Munich, 1966) 2122.

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have only the word," when seen this way, can no longer be a cry that
divides the confessions; rather, it is a confession that all Christians can
profess. But precisely because the Word of God entered into the
visibility and bodiliness of the human, precisely because it became
flesh, there is, consequently, sacrament.
But sacrament stand's not outside but inside the word of God and
appears as its special form and mode of intensity. On the other hand,
sacrament is the highest realization of the word of God definitively
and victoriously spoken in Jesus Christ. Thus one can, indeed must
say: Because the Church is Church of the theologically correctly
understood word, it is the Church of sacrament; and because the
Church is Church of sacrament, it is Church of the word. The
sacraments do not say anything other than the word, but they say it in
their specific way: in sign, in act, in execution.
The sacraments make clear what in word can be overlooked or remain
hidden: that one is dealing with the healing, effective, and graced
word of God. Sacrament is the highest realization of the essence of the
effective word of God as a making-present of the saving act of God in
the radical engagement of the Church in the decisive salvific
situations of the individual. Under this aspect, the Eucharist is the
sacrament of the sacraments, and, at the same time, the absolute
instance of the word of God.
From this come the practical consequences which Karl Rahner
formulates: If the Church were only to preach, without the courage to
speak its most radical, creative word in sacrament, then its preaching
would unavoidably be theoretical and ultimately empty talk about
something, instead of being the word that does the thing it is
affirming. If the Church were to neglect the proclamation of the word
in bare confidence in the opus operatum, that would leave out what
the sacraments point to and intend to bring about: personal faith and
personal love.4
Correct Hearing and Seeing
We will now speak again of how the hearing and seeing of faith
should be done. As dimensions of faith, hearing and seeing must be
existential and existentiell.5
Existential hearing and seeing is an act in which human beings
understand and interpret themselves and present themselves as human
beings. It is a hearing and seeing in which the whole human being is
4 Karl Rahner, in: Handbuch der Pastoraltheologie I
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1964) 329; see Bernard L. Marthaler, "Creeds,"
NDT 25964.
5 H. Fries, Vom Hören des Wortes Gottes. Eine fundamentaltheologische
Überlegung in: Joseph RatzingerH. Fries (Hrsg.), Einsicht und Glaube
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1962) 1527.

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present with the whole "awakedness" and truth of his/her "I am." It is
a hearing and seeing that takes place in full openness of the spirit and
heart and in which this openness finds its ultimate goal, its true
whence and whither. It is a hearing in the sense of a genuine listening
to, in the sense of a living readiness for a word which is not and
cannot be my own word springing out of myself, but which is said to
me and for me, and which I can perceive and receive. It is a hearing in
the sense of a willingness to step out of oneself and one's shell, to
transcend oneself, to be "all ears," to be attentive with one's whole
understanding being. The same is true of seeing, which is an open,
unobstructed seeing, which is ''all eyes" and thereby "existential."
Becoming adept in such a hearing and seeing takes place in the
everyday, in the way in which human beings can hear, listen to, and
see each other.
Existential hearing and seeing is the kind of hearing and seeing in
which the ground and origin of my self, of my existing, is just as
present as the whither, the goal of this existing. That is the meaning of
the Psalm verse: "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my
path" (Ps 119:105). Word is supposed to illuminate, spread light, open
up understanding for and of the path to be taken. The reality coming
to us is expressed in a new way. The word of God is accordingly not a
light which God beams out, but which beams out from God and
illuminates the place of human existence and historical reality.6
Because there is such an existential hearing and seeing, there is also
an existentiell hearing and seeing. This is hearing and seeing in the
sense of commitment, of being "hit" or personally "struck": "You are
the man" (2 Sam 12:7), "tua, mea res agitur." This res is not separable
from me, this res I am myself. It is about me, about the sense and
salvation of my existence, for it is about God, who belongs to the
definition of my self. It is about the salvation of which I have need,
towards which my being strives, and in which it is to be fulfilled and
made perfect.
From this it follows: I can correctly and truly hear and see only if I act
in a manner that is both existential and existentiell, out of the
fundamental structure and fundamental constitution of my existence
as an existence opened towards God because grounded in God and
related to God. The fundamental presupposition of this act is,
biblically seen, metanoia, conversion from the false way, from the
false direction, and getting pointed towards and set out on the right
course, the reversal of poles, so that my existence is understood as
existence before God and is actualized as such. I can hear and see
correctlyin Johannine languageonly if I am "of the truth" (John
18:37). Truth in the sense of the Gospel of John is true reality: the
reality of God and the open, human, historical reality unveiled before
the reality of God. If human
6 G. Ebeling, The Nature of Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967)
18990.

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beings are characterized by their origin, then they are of the truth
because they are of God, and they are of God because they are of the
truth. Only as such do they hear the word of God. They who do not
hear don't hear because they are not of God, because they are not of
the truth (John 8:4647).
Next to this authentic existential and existentiell hearing and seeing is
inauthentic hearing and seeing, unsubstantial and decadent hearing,
inexistentiell hearing. There are always, especially prevalent in
today's human beings, deficient modes of hearing, of which we
become daily aware in ourselves and in converse with the world and
others around us: the prejudiced, deluded hearing, that is not a
listening to someone else but only a hearing and listening to oneself;
the undeveloped hearing, which only incidentally hears; the cold,
uninvolved hearing; the bad, mistrustful hearing; the hearing that
lurks, seeking out failures and weaknesses, wanting to catch someone
in the act. Add to this the diminishment of hearing, because there is no
room left where anything can be heard: no space of quiet and silence,
because the backdrops of the stage on which we play our play and our
role are backdrops of sound and without them we can hardly continue
to play at all. We drive away and banish the stillness. These
phenomena are well known and have been described often enough.
Such a deficiency of hearing has a real effect on hearing as a
dimension of faith. It is even worse here, because the word of faith is
not to be found in noise, but needs the stillness in which it can be
heard and perceived, and because this hearing is not about anything
arbitrary or irrelevant but is about the decisive reality of my existence
and its relationship to meaning.
The same is true of seeing. There is the narrow, one-sided, the
loveless and inimical seeing, the nasty, hate-filled glance, there is the
"overlooking"' and the looking away, the seeing with a blind spot, the
seeing through blinders. These deficient modes are multiplied and
strengthened in our optic age in the overflow of the images daily
brought before our eyes, which leave behind no lasting impression.
Scripture speaks extensively of the deficient modes of hearing. We
will mention only the key words: "Hear, and yet not hear"; "hearing
they do not hear, nor do they understand" (Matt 13:13); and the words
about slow and non-comprehending hearing. Recall the parable of the
different types of earth which receive the seed (Mark 4:19; Matt
13:19; Luke 8:48) and the interpretation given in the gospel itself
which above all is also to be understood in the sense that the different
kinds of ground not only refer to the different types of hearers, but
also to the individual hearers and the different kinds of ground in one's
own heart. Recall too the repeated call to awakening: "They who have
ears to hear, let them hear," which is found in the synoptics as well as
in the

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seven letters of the Apocalypse. Recall that text about correct hearing:
"If any man has ears to hear, let him hear." And he said to them, "Take
heed what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you
get, and still more will be given you. For to him who has will more be
given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken
away" (Mark 4:2325). Finally, recall the drama of the speech of
Stephen, which speaks about the "stiff-necked people, uncircumcised
in heart and ears" who ''always resist the Holy Spirit" (Acts 7:51) and
of whom is said: "They cried out with a loud voice and stopped their
ears and rushed together upon him and stoned him" (Acts 7:5758).
The New Testament describes a similar situation with regard to
seeing. It speaks of seeing and yet not seeing, of not seeing with
seeing eyes (Matt 13:13), of the blind leading the blind (Matt 15:14),
of people who with seeing eyes are blind, of people who see
disproportionately (speck and log) (Matt 7:3).
A fundamental analysis of the phenomenon of inauthentic, obstructed
hearing and seeing reveals its cause to be an existentiell and
anthropological deficiency. It goes back to human beings refusing to
hear, or receive anything, to their wanting to hear only their own
word, to hear and listen only to themselves; to their refusal to let
anything be said. This behavior is based on human beings not wanting
to be indebted, not wanting anything to be given them, not wanting to
receive anything, but demanding to be autonomous lords of
themselves and the measure of all things.
It is the same with seeing. Human beings want above all to see
themselves and what has been brought about and achieved by
themselves. It is in this that they see their own significance or what is
useful and helpful to themselves, their "reputation." The selfless and
free glance of the gift given, the tranquillity and fulfillment that come
from this and from an unhurried gaze have become quite strange to
them. It is in themselves and in their own doing that they recognize
the source of all light and every illumination. Doing comes before
receiving.
It is obvious that the contemporary world offers an especially rich
field for such behavior. This is the world which human beings make,
have made, and will make. Human beings fancy themselves as the
creators of all things. They have the feeling of being able to make and
produce everything. They are convinced that there is no right and no
boundary that would prevent them from doing this. This claim and
will of human beings is both factually and impressively confirmed
everyday. Human beings today manage and organize the world so that
it is more and more their own world, at theirand only theirown
disposition, indebted to no one and received from no one but
themselves. Human beings in this world of their own making consume
and use it as its absolute lord, as the ones who give the orders and pull
the strings.

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They plunder itunaccountable to anyonefor themselves, and their own
needs and purposes. So true is this that even the human person in the
world is used and consumed and takes its worth from its
"consumption value." Human beings in this world have insured
themselves for everything and against everything possible: against
sickness, accident, death, fire, and flood, and they have ways and
means for everything. They no longer need any help, any providence,
any blessing, or any prayer of petition.
Much more could be added to this description of a manufactured,
managed, organized, and insured world of human beings, a world
which is claiming and threatening to become something that it is
sufficient for itself; and that in becoming part of this world these
human beings are endangering their nature and the true structure of
their being; that, immanently and monologically caught up in
themselves, they are losing the openness, the power that transcends
them, that quality which brings them out of themselves, and in which
they recognize their true whither and whence, and which lets them
become what they truly are: hearers of the word, receivers of the light.
This line of thinking can be pushed by pointing out that this described
anthropological deficiency can also be conditioned by external
political and social factors: by systems or conditions of exploitation
and oppression that lead to pauperization, poverty, and hunger. It is
especially from here that the lack of the hearing and seeing that
characterize faith can come. Metanoia under these conditions cannot
take place without a change which helps human beings towards a
humanly worthy subjectivity and freedom. Before one can say to these
people: "Man shall not live by bread alone" (Matt 4:4), one should
consider the imperative and its consequences: "Give them to eat!"
Luke 9:13).
However, this description of the situation would be incomplete
without indicating how, along with these incontestable signs of
deterioration, new possibilities for an open and authentic hearing and
seeing are also opening up. In the overflowing of sound and image, a
new longing for "stillness in the noise," for meditation, for self-
discovery is awakening. This is so because the nature of the human
being, which is open, seeking, asking, and characterized by receiving,
can indeed be covered over and damaged, but it can never be
destroyed.
The question of existence and its sense, of well-being and ruin, of
living and dying, of happiness and joy, of anxiety and security, of
truth, justice, and peace, cannot be choked off or replaced. Nor can
these problems be solved solely by science and technology. This is
exactly what human beings in today's world are experiencing. The
more they use up, manage, and insure, the more obvious it becomes
how little all this can fulfill them. There is awakening the hunger for a
new world

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and reality, which is not made but which is there and abides. The
desire for a new word is being stirred up, a word that comes from
somewhere else than the ephemeral words of the day, a word that is
quite different from the words one hears everyday to the point of
boredom. What the prophet Amos said is coming true: "Behold the
days are coming," says the Lord God, "when I will send a famine on
the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing
the words of the Lord" (Amos 8:11). In addition, the longing is
awakening for the one who is light and the source of all light, the
longing for the totally other.
Let us also add that the made, administered, and insured world reveals
how little it can rely on itself and reach fulfillment in itself. Do not all
insurances owe their existence to the fact that we cannot do away with
what we are insuring ourselves against: sickness, age, accident, death?
And do we not, especially today, have the question, the anxiety and
worry, about how we human beings are going to deal with this mighty
world we have constructed and organized for ourselves? Do not we
human beings of today know that the answer to this question can be
drawn from no computer and that power over power must be drawn
from a source totally other than the world of motors? The questions of
technical reality press beyond the purely technical and seek a word
and a light which they themselves cannot give. Haven't we already
gained the experience that a world which is even more managed and
organized will cause human beings and what is characteristic of
themencounter in word, love, and personal communicationto suffer
more and more deprivation?
Along with all the perfection of technology, its boundaries are
discernible: the boundaries of growth which, left to itself, lead to
destruction. To that comes the a priori of the perfect means and the
confused end. The irremovable limit situations of human existence
remain. Contemporary anthropology has spoken of the decadence and
finitude of human beings and also in a positive way, about their
indebtedness and dependency, and thus opened that flank which offers
the openness of human beings for the possibility of faith and for the
hearing and seeing present in them.7
7 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans.
Matthew J. O'Connell (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985).

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§ 9
Faith and Confession
Their Coordination
Confessing as activity and expression, confession as form of what gets
verbalized in confessing, is the voice, answer, and witness of faith.1
Confession is a sign that faith and its contents have been heard and
perceived, that its word has reached its goal and can be made
perceptible. But confession is not, be it noted, the voice of religion in
general, nor of those religions of which it is characteristic that the
Divine manifests itself in manifold forms and in which the
dependency of human beings on God and the Divine is witnessed in
all imaginable forms. These religions, e.g., the nature religions, come
to no clear propositional affirmation, to no historicity, to no
decisiveness, and thus also to no confession. This is the way it was in
Greek and Roman religion. In the pantheon of the gods, they see the
legitimate representation of themselves. The pantheon is not closed
off and can be constantly increased. It is limitlessly assimilable;
everything has its place in it. It even accepts and gives place and voice
to the contradictory. The obligatory veneration of the emperor as
divine, which caused conflict with the Christians, was primarily
something political which, religiously, was pushed to excess. It is
likewise characteristic of these religions that they are oriented to and
connected with no time, no historical event, no historical person, but
are found in the circle of constant recurrence so that, of the content of
the religion it can be said:
1 H. Dörries, Das Bekenntnis in der Geschichte der Kirche, 2d ed.
(Göttingen, 1947); R. M. Speight and B. A. Gerrish, "Creeds," ER 4
(1987) 13850; F. X. Murphy, "Creed," NCE 4 (1967) 43238; N. Brox,
Zeuge und Märtyrer. Untersuchungen zur frühchristlichen
Zeugnisterminologie (Munich, 1966); P. T. Camelot, ''Creeds," SM 2.3740;
Helmut Gollwitzer, "Die Bedeutung des Bekenntnisses für die Kirche," in:
Hören und Handeln, Festschrift E. Wolf (Munich, 1962) 15390.

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"It happened nowhere, but always is." There is no confession here
because there is no clear statement.2
The same can be said of the religions of the East with their flowing,
seeing-everything-in-one conceptions of the divine and with the
infinite form of expression which the divine takesthe one light in
thousands of waters, which consciously does not explain or define
itself. These religions are quite ready to plant even Christianity as a
flower in their garden, but they refuse to acknowledge in Christianity
anything other than what they acknowledge in the other flowers. For
the special place of what is Christian, or even for Christianity's claim
to be definitive or unique, they have no understanding; indeed, they
expressly resist this and see in it a lessening of religion itself.3
Consequently, confession as voice, as expression and witness of faith,
is found only where faith is articulated, where faith says and has
something to say, where something historical took place, where
historical persons are encountered as bearers and mediators of faith,
where faith is not the echo of one's own self-reflection but is an
answer to a word which is not a human word, an answer to an
historical event which human beings themselves have not designed
and brought into being.
Confession as confession of faith is found preeminently within
biblical revelation, which culminates in the self-disclosure of God in
Jesus Christ, and also in those religions which, like Islam, stand in the
horizon and under the influence of biblical revelation. Confession as
confession of faith in the proper sense is, accordingly, possible only
where there is faith in the precise and specific sense: within what is
witnessed by the Bible of the Old and New Testaments, and within the
historical radius of influence determined by it, as this is realized
through the community of faith and believers. Confession as an
answer of faith is really possible only where there is faith as an
answer.
That is why confessions as professions of faith in the clear,
circumscribed sense are found in the Old Testament. One finds there
the profession: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut
6:4); there is the profession of Yahweh who led Israel out of Egypt
(cf. Exod 12:17; Deut 25:59; Jos 24:213); there is profession of the
most important events in Israel's history which, as acts of God in the
past, provide the guarantee of God's fidelity in the present and future.
There are further the professions of Yahweh, "the creator of heaven
and the earth." In all these instances there is a clear affirmation as well
as simultaneously a clear rejection of the other gods, of the other
nations. Not to
2 Cf. Heinrich Fries, "Mythos und Offenbarung," in: Fragen der Theologie
heute, ed. J. FeinerJ. TrütschF. Böckle (EinsiedelnZurichCologne, 1960)
1143; "Neudruck" in: J. Bernard, ed. Offenbarung.
PhänomenBegriffDimension (Leipzig, 1981) 10642.
3 Walter Kasper, Dogma unter dem wort Gottes (Mainz, 1968) 36.

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be like the other nations, not to do what the other nations do, that was
Israel's destiny and election. That does not exclude but includes that
Israel had a special vocation and mission for the other nations.
The coordination of confession and faith continued and intensified in
the New Testament and concentrated on what is witnessed to there.
The confession of Simon Peter as answer to the question of Jesus:
"Who do men say that I am?". . . . "You are the Christ," is a high point
in the gospel (Mark 8:2729); likewise the words of Jesus: "Every one
who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my
Father who is in heaven'' (Matt 10:32; Luke 12:8). The reflection of
Paul over the state and content of the Christian faith is formulated in
the sentence: "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and
believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he
confesses with his lips and so is saved" (Rom 10:910). In the hymn of
the Letter to the Philippians (2:11) it is said in response to the way of
Jesus: "Every tongue [shall] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." The
First Letter of John says: "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of
God, God abides in him, and he in God" (1 John 4:15).
Confession thus contains a clear, content-specified and articulated
affirmation. This confessional affirmation, however, does not describe
everything possible, but expresses the center, the decisive core of that
to which faith relates and to which it answers. From this core of the
biblical confession have come the expanded confessions of the faith:
the so-called Apostles' Creed and the subsequent symbols of the
faith.4 Symbols come from throwing together, binding together. In the
case of the symbols of faith, this means not an accretion of articles but
an inner interweaving, a cohesion of contents.
In addition, confession means that one does not have a mere
affirmation, and also not just a committed affirmation, but an act of
homage, glory, and praise. Confession honors and praises the God
who has made himself known and present to human beings in word
and act, in event and person, especially in Jesus Christ, who is the
salvation of humankind. The place of confession is worship,5 more
precisely, the response of the gathered community after they have
heard the message of the revelation of God in the gospel (confession
as confession of sins does not need to be mentioned in this context).
4 Oscar Cullmann, Die ersten christlichen Glaubensbekenntnisse (Zurich,
1949); Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1990); Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Apostles' Creed in the
Light of Today's Questions, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: S. C. M. Press,
1972).
5 H. Schlier, Die Verkündigung im Gottesdienst der Kirche (Köln, 1958).

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The Function of Confession
Confession is supposed to make clear that faith, which can and should
be made known, is distinguished from what it itself is not.6 Its
purpose is to make clear that, concretely expressed, the Christian faith
is set apart from religion in general and from the religions in
particular, as well as from ideologies. The purpose of confession is to
articulate that its uniqueness, differentiation, and clarity are
characteristics of the Christian faith. This also affirms that Jesus
Christ, whom this faith confesses, is not the founder of a religion after
the manner of other religions. He and his work cannot be confused as
happens, for example, in Lessing's Parable of the Ring, where the
authentic ring cannot be distinguished from the inauthentic, and even
gets lost. The purpose of confession is, thus, demarcation over against
possible misinterpretations and one-sided interpretations of faith;
confession also means demarcation against unbelief.
But that is not the only perspective that is represented in the
confession of faith. In the Christian confession of faith the
universality of this faith can and should come to expression: the
openness of Christianity towards the world, towards humanity,
towards the other religions and world views. In the Christian
confession, therefore, there should be not only the articulation of what
and whom the demarcation and consequent exclusion concerns, but
also an expression of that which can be included in this faith, which is
represented in the confession.
There is not just the text: "He who is not with me is against me" (Matt
12:30); there is also the other, less often cited statement: "He that is
not against you is for you" (Luke 9:50). We have, as biblical
affirmation, not only the text about the folly of the cross (1 Cor 1:23),
but also the quite different "What therefore you worship as unknown,
this I proclaim to you" (Acts 17:23).
This universality is based not on the supposition that everything is
equal or equally valid, but in the fact that the concrete center of
Christian faith, Jesus Christ, has a universal dimension: as the second
Adam, as that person to whom creation and humanity are related (Col
1:16-20).
From these points come a number of things: First, that the Christian
faith is not a private matter and cannot be privatized, but is oriented
towards the public, towards community, and is represented in it. This
is a consequence of the fact that the revelation that the faith in its
response confesses, is revelation for all. Faith as answer to the word of
God is thus that which founds the community of believers, which is
called by the word from the world; and this is the biblical term for
Church (ecclesia). Those who believe and want to come to faith must
be
6 H. Gollwitzer, The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965).

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joined to this community of believers, become part of it, be accepted
into it, and be brought into harmony with it.
Confession, however, whenever it is not just formal, thoughtless lip
service, makes and becomes in itself the foundation of new
community, keeps it alive, and brings it together ever a new as
community of believers and confessors. Confession as elucidation,
confession as demarcation over against another as well as power of
universal integration, presupposes the possibility that the community
of faith can find and speak this clear word, thatin other, concrete
wordsthe community of those who believe abides in the truth and the
truth abides in it.
The confession that is in the community of believers as expression,
witness, and voice of faith must be an abiding one if this community
is to be an abiding one. The confession is elucidated on the occasion
of certain situations, events, challenges, critical and sceptical
questions, controversies, difficulties, attacks.
The confession of the faith and of the believers has to be actualized in
view of these realities. The confessionas becomes clear from the fact
of the situationhas to emphasize those accents which are especially
needed or called into question. The confession must do this in its
concern to protect and not to falsify the matter of faithabove all, the
matter of its normative origin. But it is not enough simply to repeat
the old formulas and words with which the confessions are made. It
can be necessary, for the sake of abiding continuity, to say the old,
true things in a new and different way, so that they can be said to
human beings who live under other conditions of understanding, who
speak another language. The confessions need interpretation that is
constantly being renewed.
The history of faith is also stamped by the history of its confessions.
In them is expressed the faith, the understanding of faith, insight into
faith, and growth into faith. It is characteristic of the confessions that
they stand and wish to stand under the sign of continuity, that they
make possible not only a horizontal community, i.e., the community
of brothers and sisters in faith, but also a community in the depth
dimension of history, i.e., community with those who have gone
before them in faith, who are to be honored and respected because we
are indebted to them and would not even exist without them.
Because the confessions have to do with a genuine history, continuity
cannot be the only element of the historical path. That would lead to
fixations and ossifications. To historicity belongs the upwardness and
future of the ever new. For the confession of faith this cannot mean
simply that more and more new revelations are given, but must mean
rather that faith, through historical challenges, gives new

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answers to the questions being asked here and now. It must give these
answers, but it also has the ability to do so.
Through confession and through the confessions, therefore, there is
expressed not just what faith used to be, but an opening up of what
faith is, what aspects and dimensions it has, what wealth it can
produce. The historical does not bring about the relativization of what
is valid or the repeated dissolution of the things of yesterday; it turns
into that comprehensive time-space in which faith unfolds, interprets
and makes itself and its perspectives current. The historical path of
faith, to be sure, should not be seen in a highly uncalled-for
triumphalism as constant progress towards ever greater perfection; but
even less is this path a mere history of decline. The path of faith is
characterized by the dialectic of continuity and discontinuity that
characterizes the history of faith and of the faith community and
requires from every present reality its respective appropriation.
Finally, included in the meaning of confession is that it must speak out
and be answerable before the public, before the neutral as well as the
hostile, the scholarly as well as the societal and political. This
corresponds to the demand "Always be prepared to make a defense to
anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you" (1 Pet
3:15). Confession means that the persons confessing can be brought to
court, that they will have to represent their confession there, that the
scenes will be repeated that are sufficiently known from history and
from the present; that for the sake of this confession, scorn, mockery,
prejudicial treatment, exploitation, andin still more serious
casespunishment, persecution, and finally death, is to be expected.
That is why believers and confessors stand in the discipleship of him
of whom the First Letter to Timothy says that Jesus Christ under
Pontius Pilate "made the good confession" (1 Tim 6:13); they stand in
the great line of figures and witnesses of the faith described in the
eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. They stand in the
discipleship of him "that is spoken against" (Luke 2:34), whose cross
represents the answer of the world to the offer of God. Martyrdom
represents the utmost extreme case of confession.
Faith and Confession Today
Confession nowadays means, first of all, that if faith is to be and to be
abiding, confession too must be abidingand, to be sure, all that
implies, i.e., content, expressibility, binding character, answerability,
public character, relationship to community and authority, definition,
specificity, and differentiation. Confession nowadays means to stand
in continuity with the confession from yesterday and with the
confession in the beginning. Confession today means that we must not
start from

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the beginning, making nothing out of nothing; rather, we are to accept
the given and the handed on in order to make it our own. Confession
today means to stand in the tradition as the real history of faith.
Confession today also means not to fall back into the greater
uncertainty that lies behind what has been recognized and expressed
in faith; but confession today also means not just repeating the past; it
means leading the past over into today, into the possibility, into the
understanding and into the language of the present. Confession today
means having the courage to accept the content character and
objectivity of faith, it means knowing that escape from what is
binding is likewise, in principle, a decision, even if a bad one. For
human beings are oriented to the concrete and to something binding;
they don't have to decide for anything and everything, but at least for
something concrete, in life, in vocation or profession, in encounter
with others, in the question of God and salvation. Corresponding to
this tendency to concreteness is the articulated content character of
Christian faith and Christian confession. Or perhaps it is the other way
around: To the concretization of revelation in its supreme form in
Jesus Christ corresponds the concretization of our answer in faith and
confession.
Confession today also means knowing about that situation of the
Christian faith and Christian confessions which, through historical
events and decisions, have brought it about that out of the creed have
come creeds, out of the confession have come confessions, and that
from this have come such different understandings of faith as the
decision of one confession against another, which has led to
separation in the community of believers. Confessions of faith have
become counter-confessions.
Confession today means knowing that separation in faith is set over
against the demand for unity in faith. Confession today means
knowing that what has happened cannot of course be made not to have
happened, but that it can be changed because it is human, i.e., an event
situated in human freedom. This change becomes obligatory when the
event is something that is not supposed to be, an event involving guilt
and scandal.
In view of this, confession today means to place oneself in this painful
situation and to attempt, in the power of faith and love, in the
confidence of hope, to change it: Counter-confessions should become
co-confessions. In this question of confession, a highly unusual
observation can be made these days: there is in our time revaluation of
the reality and the word "confession" in the realm of modern
ideologies (the confession of Marxism and Leninism), but likewise in
the realm of religion. And we are learning every day about the kind of
intensity of confession of which contemporary Islam is again capable.

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Whether one can discover the same kind of thing within the Christian
community of faith is not easy to decide. The confessions made on
"Church Day" or "Catholic Day" or at other public events is indeed
impressive. But it is difficult to decide whether such gatherings can as
a whole be judged to be confessions of the Christian faith or as
confession to the Christian faith.
The value and position that confession held in earlier times in the
community of Christians is well known. Recall the respect which the
word "confessors," who in crisis became martyrs, aroused in the realm
of Christianity and, one hopes, will continue to arouse. The word
"Confessing Church" in connection with the Barmen Declaration was
and is a glory of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the time of
National Socialism [Nazism].
If today the word and the matter of confession within the Christian
community of faith, within the Church, no longer has the same
significance and high value, one can ask whether we have here a
change of nomenclature, a play on words, or a breakdown in reality
and behavior which is a dubious development for Christian faith. This
raises some questions. Are there not some worrisome causes behind
what is recognizable today as a devaluation of confession? Is it not
because one is no longer sure and can no longer exactly say to what
one can and should confess? And is that not due to the fact that there
is no longer any abiding content or valid orientation, because
everything has been sucked into the wake of the relative and non-
binding, because there is apparently nothing that abides in all
changeability because everything is said and adapted in new ways
through interpretation? Isn't there a connection between the
devaluation of confession and the inclination to do without the truth
and content factor of affirmation according to the motto "What is
truth?" to put no value on orientations, to maintain consciously a
balancing act of the more-or-less, of the possible, of the open, and
even cultivate oscillation in order to be always able to plead for the
"could be," for the "it depends," for the ''it's possible"?
Isn't this low estimation of confession also connected with the other
attitude of shying away from what is binding, of refusing to set any
kind of a course, make a concrete decision, commit oneself to
accomplish something, undertake something venturesome? One wants
to stand "outside," one wants to be totally uninvolved, an "objective"
onlooker standing in the distance.
To push these considerations further or illustrate them, one would
really have to say that the very death of Jesus, that the serious case of
a confession to Jesus, the true Lord, that the refusal to offer sacrifice
to the Roman Caesar or any contemporary Caesar, and the readiness
to take on oneself the resulting consequences including the giving of
one's

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lifeone would really have to say that all this was, to put it mildly, a
misunderstanding. One could argue these things could and perhaps
even should actually have been put aside by interpretation and
enlightenment.
Are we not in danger these days of qualifying a serious intention or
even the clarity of an affirmation as fanaticism, intolerance, and
narrowness? Aren't we in danger of avoiding, or at least smoothing
out, all rigor in decisive questions, and, in Christian terms, tearing
down enough of the content of faith and confession that the folly and
scandal of the cross can be avoided, that it can be gotten rid of by
hermeneutics and dialogue? Doesn't it sometimes seem that what
people, especially the people of today, think is possible is made into
the yardstick of faith? Isn't modernity, contemporaneity, being up-to-
date, the first commandment, even for the Christian faith, when it
wants to avoid the risk of being only a tail light?
Aren't we in danger of turning dialogue into a dialogism in which
everyone talks uncommittedly about anything? Isn't that what
consitutes true brotherliness? Isn't it possible that such important and
helpful theological expressions as "anonymous Christian," which
describe a critically important way for Christians to see and value
non-Christian people, can be misused and misinterpreted into a
leveling universal principle in whose horizon one has to leave
everything the way it is?7 Aren't we in danger of tearing down or
leveling out all Christian differentiations, and thus turning every
profile and contour into something faceless?
These remarks are intended as motivating questions to help us deal
with the matter of faith and confession, in order to clarify the now-
recognizable difference between "is" and "should" and in order to
indicate the problems and difficulties with which confessions of faith
have to deal in our day. These difficulties do appear to be
surmountable, and are perhaps already being surrounded. After all,
why should Christians leave to others the possibility and the chance of
confession? Would we not then be pushing the matter of our faith into
a corner and putting our light under a bushel, which of course we
shouldn't do (cf. Mark 4:21; Luke 8:16)?
7 On this cf. H. Fries, "Der anonyme ChristDas anonyme Christentum als
Kategorien christlichen Denkens" in: E. Klinger, Christentum innerhalb
und außerhalb der Kirche (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1976) 2541; N.
Schwerdtfeger, Gnade und Welt. Zum Grundgefüge von Karl Rahners
Theorie der "anonymen Christen" (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1982).

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§ 10
Faith under the Sign of Doctrine, Dogma, Truth, and Praxis
Doctrine
Like the relation of confession to the content of faith, doctrine is
related to what can be affirmed about faith and to what is
communicable in the form of instruction, information,
communication. Doctrine does not have the same existential
dimension as confession. Doctrine brings out the content aspects of
faith and seeks, by way of thorough reflection, to establish a
connection, a relationship.
The form and linguistic character of faith formulated in doctrine is
already found to an impressive degree in the doctrinal writings of the
Old Testament, among which one can list the books of Job, Wisdom,
Proverbs, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), Sirach, and many Psalms. That the
doctrinal writings come from the later period of the Old Testament
and, like the Book of Wisdom, reach into the second century before
Christ, is an indication of the level of reflection which presupposes the
proclaimed, the narrated, and the actualized, and turns it into the
content of a new mode of reflectioni.e., doctrine.
Another reason for this late development is to be found in the fact that
these writings of the Old Testament are influenced by the intellectual
milieu of Hellenism. Many Jews lived in the Diaspora. In the doctrinal
writings, an attempt is made to translate the faith of Israel into a
language in which the people of the time, and also they themselves,
lived: into the language of Greek thought, of the logos, to which
wisdom and teaching belong. In this way a new mediation of the faith
was to be made possible.
In the New Testament we find the fact that Jesus appears in the form
of a teacher whose teaching was above all interpretation of Scripture,
and that his preaching is presented under the concept of teaching
(Matt 7:28; Mark 6:2). One must note here that the doctrine and
teachings of Jesus are characterized as a speaking and teaching "in

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power" (Matt 7:28; Mark 6:2), and thus distinguished from the
teachings of the scribes. This characterization comes about in
Matthew after the so-called Sermon on the Mount, in which the
teaching in power becomes visible: in the Beatitudes, for example, but
above all in the multiple antitheses: "You have heard that it was said
to the men of old but I say to you, in the matter of killing, of adultery,
divorce, swearing, revenge, love of enemies" (cf. Matt 5:2148). This
goes far beyond the differences in teaching customary among the
Jewish rabbis. Jesus sets himself above the otherwise unchallenged
authority of Moses.
Accordingly Jesus also says: "You are not to be called rabbi, for you
have one teacher, and you are all brethren. . . . Neither be called
masters, for you have one master, the Christ" (Matt 23:8,10).
"Teacher" did not, to be sure, become a Christological title. In his
trial, Jesus is questioned by the high priest about his teaching (John
18:19).
None of this keeps Jesus, as we read in the synoptic gospels, from
sending out his disciples to teach (Mark 6:30). The mission command
of the Risen One, "Make disciples of all nations" (Matt 29:19),
includes the moment of teaching. The teaching of the disciples and
apostles is a teaching of the teaching of Jesus and a teaching/doctrine
about him as the Christ and the Kyrios. In the writings of Paul,
teaching is described as a special charism, as a gift of the Spirit for the
building up of the community (Rom 12:7). In the Acts of the Apostles
(1:1) Luke describes the contents of his gospel with the words that he
has written down everything "that Jesus did and taught." The Acts of
the Apostles describes life in the community of Jerusalem and
mentions first the holding fast to the teaching of the apostles (Acts
4:2).
In the late New Testament writings, above all in the Pastoral Letters
where the expectation of the parousia is ebbing, where the concern is
to be prepared for the continuation of history, in the letters to Titus
and Timothy, the word and the reality of teaching take on a towering
significance. The proclamation is presented primarily in the form of
teaching. The Apostle is the teacher; the disciples of the Apostle, Titus
and Timothy, have primarily the task of attending to "right," "true,"
"sound" teaching, warding off heresy, of guarding and protecting the
treasure of a precious heritage mediated and entrusted to them in the
form of teaching.
Such a process, the way from kerygma to teaching, is important in two
ways: first, as information and instruction about the content and
context of faiththat supplied an element of stabilizationand second, as
rejection of the false teachings about the faith, the heresies. These are
described even in the New Testament, especially in the late writings,
the Pastoral Letters and the letters of John. The true and sound
teaching was set apart from these heresies.

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The significance of teaching as figure and language of faith became
important in subsequent times in the encounter and controversy of the
Christian faith with the intellectual tendencies of a particular time and
with the teaching mediated there. In the beginning of Christianity this
encounter was above all with Greek thought in the form of colorful,
glittering gnosticism.1 Thus it is not surprising that Greek thought,
concerned as it was with logos, with essence, and with insight into
essence, also asked the Christian faith about its logos, its essence, and
that the representatives of this faith, on their side, represented the
matter of faith in an objectifiable form, in the form of truth, of
teaching. From that grew the form of orthodoxy, right teaching as sign
and expression of faith. In that way the faith became knowable,
ascertainable, capable of being questioned. Its literary form is the
catechism in the form of important propositions and dogmas. Thus
truth is related to true propositions, to agreement of the teaching with
the reality, and it is then said: "The word is reliable."
All this is a legitimate, necessary process, part of the reality of faith
and its historical development. Teaching is a sign that the content of
faith has an inner relationship to reason and understanding. Teaching,
orthodoxy, has its right, as long as it does not push aside the other
languages of faith: prayer, praise, proclamation, narration, or even
want to replace them. The word, doctrine of the faith, is just as
legitimate as that of confession of faith. It is constitutive of faith and
the community of faith.
Orthodoxy, however, becomes dubious when it makes itself
autonomous and absolutizes itself as the central concept of true
teaching. Orthodoxy becomes objectionable when it reduces the faith
to statements and propositions, and when the act of faith as option of
the whole human being in freedom, when the life of faith and the
fruits of faith, become secondary to it: Orthodoxy becomes a problem
when the only question asked is: Are you orthodox?, and when this is
tested only for the important propositions of dogma. When orthodoxy
becomes the only and exclusive criterion of being truly Christian, then
orthodoxy can become a weapon. It leads to suspicion, persecution,
and condemnation. Without consideration for concrete human beings
and for the freedom to which their faith lays claim, it attempts to win
the day with all means in the name of the true faith. That the
customary punishment of heretics in the Middle Ages was deatha
worse punishment, they say, than for money counterfeiters, who
deserved deathwas a consequence of this attitude. Here ruled that
principle which
1 Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion; the Message of the Alien God and the
Beginnings of Christianity, 2nd. ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963); E.
Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum, Gnosis (Freiburg, 1959); R. Haardt,
"Gnosis," SM 2.37479; N. Brox, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos bei
Irenäus von Lyon (Salzburg, 1966).

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was applied against Jesus, but was certainly no Christian law: "We
have a law, and by that law he ought to die" (John 19:7).
The other consequence consists in thinking that, in the matter of faith
and of being Christian, it is best when orthodoxy, the true teaching, is
accepted in the most literally faithful and externally controllable way
by all the faithful and without reservation or limitation.
In the Reformation of the sixteenth century, Erasmus diagnosed as a
sign of the times the fact that the articles of faith, doctrine, were
increasing, but love was continually decreasing. He correctly saw in
that a loss of faith; at the same time he pointed out that the most
correct preservation of the articles of faith had not prevented the
arising for the sake of faith, of a movement able to burst the unity of
Western Christianity. The popes and bishops of that time were
doubtless blameless as far as their orthodoxy was concerned. It
wouldn't have occurred to them to deny a truth; they just kept
multiplying them with new additions. But if they had really been
serious about living from faith, doing the truth, and drawing from
their orthodoxy the consequences of orthopraxy, how much would
Christianity and humanity have then been spared!
Generally it can be said: a correct answer to a doctrinal and catechism
question is still no indication of personal dedication in faith. An
incorrect answer is still no indication of a lack of faith. The fides
quae, faith as doctrine [the faith which is believed] can be preserved
only if it is believed by human beings and handed on to others in a
living way. We have today picked up an awakened feeling for this
important dimension and with it also new criteria for the "measure of
faith," which is more than just holding firmly to doctrines.
Dogma
In distinction from doctrine or teaching as representation of the whole
content of faith, dogma2 has a more specific meaning. It signifies that
part of Christian doctrine which was formulated by the Church at a
particular time and in response to specific questions or challenges. It
is the expression of a clearly recognizable intention to formulate
something as an authentic and binding expression of the Church's
faith to be held and believed by all the faithful.
The concept and word "dogma" did not at the outset seem appropriate
as an expression of this state of affairs. Originally, "dogma," a word
from the Greek, meant: the opinion, then conclusion, instruction or
2 E. Schlink, "Die Struktur der dogmatischen Aussage als ökumenisches
Problem in: Der kommende Christus und die kirchliche Traditionen
(Göttingen, 1961) 2479; N. Ring, "Dogma," NDT (1991) 29395; Karl
Rahner, "Dogma," SM 2. 9598; Walter Kasper, Dogma under dem Wort
Gottes (Mainz, 1968); J. Finkenzeller, Glaube ohne Dogma? (Düsseldorf,
1972).

Page 106
doctrinal view of a philosophical school. There was, accordingly,
considerable scepticism against the reception of the word "dogma" in
the realm of Christian belief. One couldn't recognize in this word
precisely what was meant in the name of the faith: i.e., a binding
statement and decision in questions and matters of the Christian faith.
In the ancient Church, "dogma" meant disciplinary, juridical
determination. The Eastern Church understood under "dogma" those
traditions of the Church not explicitly spelled out in Scripture; there in
the East, liturgy, dogma and doxology remained very closely
connected. Among the theologians of the Middle Ages, the concept
"dogma" played hardly any role at all; they spoke of "articuli fidei"
[articles of the faith] and understood by that the individual parts of the
confession of faith. Only in more recent times has the concept
"dogma'' become accepted in its now customary sense. The theologian
Chrisman (1751-1810) specified dogma as a truth revealed by God
which is so presented by the public judgment of the Church as (truth)
to be believed with divine faith, that its contrary is condemned by the
Church as heretical doctrine.3
Dogma as binding articulation of the faith qualified with its claim to
truth is, so to speak, a line of defense, a reaction to a recognizable
emergency: to attacks, confusions, and falsifications in the area of
faith. Dogmas should thus, as John Henry Newman thought in looking
towards Vatican I (1870), not be a luxury and not involve indulging in
submissiveness.4 Dogmas should also come not just from finding
pleasure in the unfolding of the faith; they should rather, like the
dogmas of the ancient Church, grow out of a necessary decision to be
made.
Because of this characteristic, dogma always represents an articulation
and interpretation of the truth of faith that has become necessary in a
particular historical period. One can understand dogmas properly only
when one knows the questions (and addressees) they intend to answer.
Dogmas should thus neither be seen in isolation nor be considered as
exhaustive statements. That would mean turning one aspect into the
only aspect. When one, e.g., separates the antireformationally
determined dogmatic definitions of the Council of Trent from their
addressees and turns the statements of this council on priesthood,
Mass and sacraments into exhaustive, comprehensive statements, one
does not do justice to the historicity of these dogmatic decisions. For a
long time, attention was not paid to this in post-Tridentine theology.
Ecclesiastical and theological development thus became one-sided. It
remained antireformational, and this was made to
3 W. Kasper, Dogma unter dem Wort Gottes (Mainz, 1968) 36.
4 Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen aus der katholischen Zeit, Mainz
1957, 543.

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equal Catholic. Only quite recently has history-of-doctrinal
hermeneutics, with its often liberating tendencies, consciously been
applied.5
There is a second consequence: Dogmas are formulated with the help
of the language and conceptuality of a specific time; until now this has
been above all with the help of Greek and scholastic philosophy. How
a dogma can be grasped in the linguistic and conceptual form of a
quite different way of thinking, as, e.g., of the Far East, is a problem
both open and difficult. When concepts and language have a history, it
can then become necessary, if the concepts change, to say a thing in a
different way so that the reality of faith remains the same. One must
ask, for example, whether concepts like nature, essence, substance,
etc. can simply be repeated today in dogmatic formulations in order to
preserve the identity of faith. These concepts, intended earlier in a
metaphysical way, have become physical and chemical concepts in
today's language and thought, and have thus taken on a quite different
meaning.
For this reason it has been rightly said, with regard to the
understanding and evaluation of dogmas, that they are a matter of
language regulation. The language of dogmas as language regulation
makes sense and is in some instances necessary for the questions of
faith itself and for a faith community in a concrete historical situation.
This language regulation is a foundation of its unity.
But let it be said at the same time that a language regulation must take
place in another sense when the language field as a whole is changed,
whether by history or by a changed social and cultural milieu. The
fact of language regulation is an indication that a dogma bears the sign
of obligation as well as of public character, that dogma is a sign of the
historical form of faith. Some attempts to understand the medieval
dogma of eucharistic transubstantiation in another conceptual world
are an (obviously controversial) illustration of that.
For the most part, dogmatic decisions also represent a compromise, a
compromise in the sense that an attempt is made to find a way
between the different theological opinions and orientations that were
the occasion for a dogmatic decision, a way that took pains to take up
the justified concerns of the different perspectives.6 This is
recognizable in the ancient councils, e.g., of Chalcedon with the
situation there between Nestorius and Eutyches. This "law" also came
into play in
5 K. Rahner, "Considerations of the Development of Dogma," Theological
Investigations 4 (1974) 335; K. Rahner and H. Vorgrimler, "Historicity,"
DT (1981) 20910; A. Darlap and J. Splett, "History,'' SM 3.3139; Joseph
Ratzinger, Das Problem der Dogmengeschichte in der Sicht der
katholischen Theologie (Cologne, 1966) Summaries in English and
French; Wolfhart Pannenberg, "Die Geschichtlichkeit der Wahrheit und die
ökumenische Diskussion," in: M. SecklerO. PeschJ. BrossederW.
Pannenberg, Begegnung. Beiträge zu einer Hermeneutik des theologischen
Gesprächs (GrazViennaCologne, 1972) 3143.
6 M. Seckler, "Über den Kompromiß in Sachen der Lehre" in: Begegnung
4557.

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Vatican I with regard to the radical papalists and episcopalists. For a
dogmatic decision in a specific situation is not already established
from the outset, even if there have been repeated tendencies at
councils, as in Vatican I and at the beginning of Vatican II, which
wanted it that way. A dogmatic decision is the result of a struggle and
search where dialogue, discussions, and argument play a role, and of
course other factors too, and where, as everyone knows, a vote is
takenwithout prejudice to the necessity of a final approval by the
pope.
For the most part, therefore, a compromise is no matter of captivating
brilliance but the result of a laborious struggle, traces of which can
often still be seen in the records. The result is that no side is
completely happy with the result. Yet it is true that, without this result
achieved as a compromise, there would be no common foundation.
The compromise is not a sign of weakness. It is, when it comes about
honestly, much more a sign of recognition of others and of their
justified intention, a sign of humility and modesty.
Dogma is a dynamic functional concept. It is the result of previous
experiences of faith in converse with Scripture and in dialogue with
the respective historical hour. But this result is at the same time the
opening for experiences of the faith in the future in and with new
dimensions.
Truths and Truth
In the contents of confession, doctrine, and dogmas, one repeatedly
runs up against the concept of truth.7 Truth of faith means the
disclosure of reality found in it. Truth of dogmas means the
articulation of this disclosure of the reality of faith found in them. But
when faith is specified by history as past and future, then the concept
of truth which is ordered to faith must also be stamped by this. And
when faith's disclosure of reality is related to events and persons,
when the word and act of truth is met in the realm of faith, when Jesus
claims to be the truth, then the truth must also be affected by all these
moments which are met in the realm of Christian faith. The truth
spoken of in Christian faith can also be merely philosophical or
logical truth involved only with knowing or understanding; but the
truth of Christian faith involves comprehensive encounter with the
reality of the historically and personally self-communicating God.
7 H. von Soden, "Was ist Wahrheit? Vom geschichtlichen Begriff der
Wahrheit" in: Urchristentum und Geschichte I (Tübingen, 1951) 124;
TDNT 1.23351; Emil Brunner, Truth as Encounter (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1964); Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Truth Will Make
You Free (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966); Wolfhart Pannenberg,
"Was ist Wahrheit?" in: Grundfragen systematischer Theologie (Göttingen,
1967) 200222; W. Kasper, Dogma unter dem Wort Gottes 6567.

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There is an exposition of the contents of faith as truths of faith that
moves into ever-new unfoldings. These help in disclosing the
dimensions and perspectives of faith. Along with them is the
"infolding" (Einfaltung), the concentration of the contents of faith:
concentrated on its center, which is not an idea but an event, a person.
The purpose of this infolding is not only to count the truths but also to
evaluate them according to their proportion with respect to their
position in the framework of revelation and for the question of
salvation. A brief formula [of faith] attempted according to this
principle will express not a part but the whole of Christian faith, even
if not all the consequences that flow from it are mentioned.8
In these investigations there is a tendency to differentiate between
fundamental or nonfundamental articles of faith, between truths that
concern the center and such contents as unfold out of this center.
Against this has been and still is raised the often-heard objection and
disagreement expressed in the well-known image: Whoever takes the
truth of a single dogma as less important, or overlooks or even
opposes one, endangers the whole system, the well-assembled
structure of Catholic dogma, doctrine, and faith possibly even to the
point of collapse. Hence the demand that all truths are to be believed
in the same way, for behind all of them stand the promise and
authority of God. Whoever calls them into question in one place
denies them all.
But we need to recall what has already been said about the manifold
dimensions of faith: as personal and existential act, as option for the
whole, as affirmational/propositional faith imbedded in the greater
reality of personal faith. One must add, in addition, that faith itself
stands under the sign of the incomplete and the partial. It follows from
this that faith is not a closed system but a way, that faith has a center,
that it is characterized by history and person. If this is true, then, with
respect to the demand that all truths of faith are to be believed in the
same obligatory manner, it can be determined along with Walter
Kasper:
One-sided emphasis on the formal obligatory character of each dogma on
the basis of the authority of God and of the Church inevitably has an
especially fatal effect in the modern age with its emphasis on subjectivity.
Can I hold the Christological central truths with the same subjective
intensity as the Marian dogmas? They don't concern the question of
salvation and damnation in the same way. Accordingly, the same degree of
subjective engagement is also not possible. Furthermore, in preaching and
in devotional praxis, this conception has led to a fatal shift of balance. The
image of the Church in the modern age is extensively stamped by the
secondary and tertiary characteristics of its teaching. In defending against
Protestantism, the antireformational truths were overly emphasized; that
led to an overemphasis on truths that concern the means of salvation
(Church, sacraments, office) over against the real Christological and
soteriological truths of salvation. In the last century and this one there have
appeared more encyclicals
8 K. Lehmann, "Kurzformeln des christlichen Glaubens" in: Gegenwart
des Glaubens (Mainz, 1974) 17599.

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on questions of Mariology than on questions of Christology or of modern
atheism. Such disturbances of equilibrium are a sign that heart and
circulation are no longer functioning properly. One-sided insistence on
verbal and formal orthodoxy bears some of the guilt for the fact that faith
is reaching people in the modern age less and less.9
If this is not kept in mind, then orthodoxy is no longer what it should
be, but is getting derailed.
An important aid in finding one's way through this question is
provided by a text from Vatican II. In the decree on ecumenism we
read: "When comparing doctrines, they [Catholic theologians] should
remember that in Catholic teaching there exists an order or 'hierarchy'
of truths, since they vary in their relationship to the foundation of the
Christian faith" (no. 11).
Add to this that this foundation consists in the riches of Christ (Eph
3:8). In the Modus accompanying explanation (Modus) which led to
the acceptance of this text it says that truths must be weighed rather
than counted. In this text of the council, therefore, what we have is the
replacement of a quantitative and formal understanding of truth by
one that is qualitatively determined, i.e., according to content. There
would indeed be a misunderstanding of the doctrine of the hierarchy
of truths and a return to quantitative rather than qualitative thinking if
one were to so understand them as if one could number, so to speak,
the individual truths of faith and in this way distinguish the important
truths from the less important. Properly understood, the doctrine of the
hierarchy of truths is based on the realization that the content of faith
represents not just the sum of individual propositions, but a whole
edifice of teachings which has definite, established proportions. The
principle of the hierarchy of truths is not a principle of choice but a
principle of interpretation. Its purpose is to assist in understanding and
explaining the truths of faith in the proper way.
Connected with this description of hierarchy of truths is another
experience. It is psychologically not possible for the believer to hold
fast to all the contents of faith, all developments from the center of
faith, with the same constant and undifferentiated intensity of
conscious affirmation: the believer will necessarily set accents. The
same holds true for the Church as community of faith and of the
faithful. Here too, in the course of history, there have been
accentuations and shifts; there has also been a certain becoming silent,
a submerging of what was once the raging question in an epoch. This
is all determined according to different factors and motives, which are
not only of inner-Church origin but are often brought up as a question
or challenge from outside, as a question or challenge to the Church.
9 W. Kasper, Einübing in den Glauben (Mainz, 1972) 93; cf. also
"Kirchliche LehreSkepsis der Gläubigen" in: Kirche im Gespräch
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1970) 8283.

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The Common Synod of the Bishoprics of the Federal Republic of
Germany formulated this idea as follows: "Neither for the Church nor
for the individual Christian is it possible to be equally conscious of all
the historical unfoldings of faith. There will always be centers of
gravity. Of course, the accentuation that one finds must be tested for
its reliability. But differences in the understanding of the one faith are
unavoidable."10 These processes are legitimate when that which is not
expressly and consciously affirmed or can be affirmed, is not
expressly denied or contested.
If it is right that one cannot believe all truths of faith in the same way,
then it is also not to be demanded that all truths of faith, for the sake
of the church community, must be believed in the same way. Nor can
one demand from other confessions more than one expects from the
members of one's own community of faith.11 The text of the Synod of
the Dioceses of the Federal Republic of Germany, "Pastoral
Cooperation of the Churches in the Service of Christian Unity" has
said the following in its "Theological Reflections" on this question:
It is to be asked how far it is necessary for the unity of faith that all
developments and derivations, which in the history of faith and of dogmas
have been drawn from revelation, must be affirmed by all Christians in the
same way. The Catholic Church does not even demand that of its own
members, but is satisfied with an inclusive assent to the faith of the
Church. A union in faith is, to be sure, not possible where one church sees
it necessary to judge a binding doctrine of the other church as contrary to
the gospel. In dialogue between churches and church communities it is to
be tested whether a union in faith is possible in such a way that one church
can respect and recognize the special tradition of the other as a legitimate
unfolding of revelation, even if it does not want to take it over for itself
(e.g., veneration of saints, sacraments, indulgences).12

The Doing of Truth:

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy
Today the problem of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, i.e., correct doctrine,
correct theory and practice of the faith, is under intensive discussion.
It is a legitimate question. But today it is often seen alternatively, or
even solved, in the sense that orthodoxy is unimportant and it is
orthopraxy that really counts. This would turn orthodoxy into a
marginal problem or into an outmoded stage in the history of faith. Of
course, the question has to be asked right away: "Wherein lies the
"Ortho," i.e., the criterion of correctness for correct action as the way
in which faith is articulated? It has to be an action coming from faith,
10Gemeinsame Synode der Bistümer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,
Offiziele Gesamtausgabe (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1976) 782 (Beschluß
Ökumene 3.3.2).
11 On this, cf. H. FriesK. Rahner, Unity of the Churchesan Actual Possibility,
trans. Ruth C. L. Gritsch and Eric W. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1985) esp. 2542.
12 Gemeinsame Synode, 780f. (Beschluß Ökumene 3.2.3).

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motivated by faith, and giving witness from faith, an action, a praxis
in which faith makes an appearance.
But first let us give some indications of this dimension of faith called
orthopraxy. Recall the text: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord,
Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of
my Father who is in heaven" (Matt 7:21). This will is recognizable in
what constitutes God's rule and kingdom: justice, peace,
reconciliation, mercy, love, the overcoming of injustice, hate, and
oppression. Recall, too, what is expressed in the New Testament as
including the unity of love of God and love of neighbor: "He who
does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom
he has not seen" (1 John 4:20). Recall the absolutely decisive criterion
for the definitive determination or characterization of human beings:
"As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it [or
did not do it] to me" (Matt 25). Recall the New Testament statement
about the faith that must bring forth fruit by which it will be measured
(Matt 7:22); about the faith which, without deeds, is dead (Jas
2:1426); about faith that is effective in love (Gal 5:6). Recall the text
in the Gospel of John about ''doing the truth": "He who does what is
true comes to the light" (John 3:21). From the doing of truth comes its
verification.
Faith does indeed mediate a disclosure of reality with regard to the
reality of God and of human beings. But faith is not just illumination
of existence, it is also a renewal and transformation of existence. It is
new praxis, which naturally cannot dispense with seeking after that
illumination which can show one in what way and direction renewal
and transformation are to take place. Johann Baptist Metz says this in
a concentrated formulation: Christianity is not in the first instance a
doctrine that must be kept as pure as possible but a praxis that must be
lived more radically.13
The relationship between theory and praxis is nevertheless not simply
to be determined in such a way that out of theory, in the form of a
conclusion, a practical case of application is made. If that were the
case, "out of sheer theory and reflection on theory," one would hardly
come to action. There is still a difference between praxis and
reflection. In praxis, theory is manifested. From the realization, i.e.,
from the praxis of friendship, love, self-giving, and forgiveness, is
disclosed what friendship, love, self-giving, and forgiveness are, what
they contain, what they mean. From bearing, accepting, or resisting
suffering, one can come up with what suffering is more than in a
theory of suffering with little connection to praxis. The doing of truth
is a way to come into the light of truth. That is the way it also, and
especially, is in the realm of faith and the truth of faith. Only they who
love God
13 Johannes Baptist Metz, in: Gott nach Auschwitz (FreiburgBaselWien,
1979) 136.

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know God. The reason for this lies simply in the fact that the truth,
which is what faith is about, is not a theory that prescinds from the
person or existence, but is truth as way and life, as existential
characteristic of the whole human being. Thus theology can be
characterized as the self-consciousness of a specific praxis.14
Schillebeeckx points out that orthopraxy is not simply the
consequence of a theoretical insight, but is the way in which a
common conviction is concretely realized.15 From the unity of praxis,
even with a pluralist understanding of faith, the unity of the same faith
can be recognized. The symbol of faith, the creed, was the theoretical
model of an ecclesiastical action: baptism. The saying, the
proclamation, was contained in the act. The celebration of the Lord's
Supper is expressly seen as the proclamation of the death of the Lord
until he comes (1 Cor 11:26).
Thus, according to Schillebeeckx, gnosis is the Christian heresy. It
narrows Christianity down to a doctrine that changes nothing and
presents itself as orthodoxy. The criterion of orthodoxy, therefore, lies
less in a correct answer to a catechism question than in the question of
what the truth of faith means as motivational power for life.
Schillebeeckx cites in this context a word of the American theologian
Paul van Buren, a representative of the so-called "God is Dead"
theology: Talking about God is senseless. But Christ is my only rule
in life." The real orthodox meaning of this profane statement depends,
according to Schillebeeckx, on the influence of this word on life.
One's behavior in life will show whether van Buren is in truth
affirming something unique in Christ, even though he presents this
statement in theologically deficient thematizing.
Consequently, a living praxis radically oriented to Christ can
Christologically, i.e., according to the theoretical implication of such a
praxis, come closer to orthodoxy than the merely verbal theoretical
statement: Christ is one person in two natures, if this statement
remains without consequences or confirmation in the praxis of living
behavior. The sense of such a profane, worldly statement as "Christ is
my only rule in life" is ultimately and really an appropriate,
comprehensive Christian and Christological statement. For the sense
of what is said in a specific play of language is determined by the
totality of human behavior and cannot be expressed purely
theoretically. Heresy, accordingly, does not mean saying something
different from the Bible, but to speak of something different from the
Bible and then to represent this as speaking true to the Bible. New
interpretation means to speak
14 Edward Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith: Interpretation and
Criticism (New York: Seabury Press, 1974) 143.
15 Ibid. 59.

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in a different way about the same thing while preserving the biblical
intentionality.16
A further dimension in the question of theory and praxis comes from
the fact that the matter of Christian faith and the salvation connected
with it is not only a private matter played out between "God and the
soul." It also involves the public and society, and has in this sense a
political dimension.17 This means that the already-mentioned contents
and demands of faithjustice, peace, freedom, reconciliationhave their
realm of application not only in the I-You relationship but also in the
public domain: for society, as justice in conditions and structures, as
peace among nations, as freedom for all.
The sense and the mission of faith are, accordingly, not fulfilled if the
relationship to the world is lacking, if one doesn't move beyond the
exclusive concern: "If only I am at peace with God, if only I find a
gracious God," it is enough, regardless of how the world turns out.
The biblical content of peace, justice, and freedom grow instead into a
critical instance over against apoliticalpublic reality of state and
society where these biblical contents are not realized or where they
are repressed.
The existence of unjust, repressive conditions is a contradiction to the
faith. Such conditions must be not only be recognized but also
vigorously opposed. For however strong the motivating force of the
ultimately invincible freedom of the imprisoned and oppressed can
beoften equal to even the heaviest burdensone may not derive from
that massive power any legitimation of conditions supported by
imprisonment and oppression.
Under the sign of this orthopraxy today stands the so-called liberation
theology.18 There is no disagreement that societal, social liberation
from conditions of unfreedom and oppression are a direct
consequence of faith understood as praxis, but only whether, in saying
this, everything is said that is meant biblically and theologically by
freedom. The other question is: By what means should this social
16 Ibid. 6869.
17 This is developed above all in the political theology of J. B. Metz:
Theology of the World, trans. William GlenDoepel (New York: Herder and
Herder, 1969); "Political Theology" in: SM 5.3438; Faith in History and
Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. David Smith (New
York: Seabury Press, 1980); W. Peukert, Diskussion zur politischen Theologie
(MainzMunich, 1969); S. Wiedenhofer, Politische Theologie (Stuttgart,
1976).
18 Major work: G. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and
Salvation, trans. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, N.Y.:
Orbis Books, 1988); K. Lehmann, ed., Theologie der Befreiung (Einsiedeln,
1977); L. Boff, "Eine kreative Rezeption des II. Vatikanums aus der Sicht der
Armen. Theologie der Befreiung" in: E. Klinger K. Wittstadt, Glaube im
Prozeß. Für Karl Rahner (FrieburgBaselVienna, 1983) 62854; C. Boff,
Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations, trans. Robert R. Barr
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1987).

Page 115
liberation take place? With force, which can create new injustices, or
with nonviolence?
One thing must still be kept in mind and said in this context. In the
New Testament, salvation is expected primarily not from the changing
of societal structureswhich was at that time perhaps not even
possiblebut from change through the conversion of human beings.
That a change of structures can and should come from this is not
denied but expressly affirmed and accepted. Jesus associated with
human beings, entering into solidarity with those whom society and
the social order of that time had rejected. But he rejected every offer
to become a political messiah. The revolution intended by him is one
of personal disposition, a revolution of the heart, not the overthrowing
of social conditions.
An especially interesting and moving example is the question of
slavery in the New Testament.19 As an institution of that time it is not
directly opposed in the New Testament, nor was its dissolution sought
after as a goal of the Christian faith and its requirement of justice,
freedom and familial love. Paul expressly took up this theme and dealt
with it in this way: Even as slave you are a free person in Christ;
Christ has freed you too. Christ himself took on the form of a slave. In
Christ the distinction between slave and free no longer holds. The
socially free, the citizen, has become the slave of Christ. "But if you
can gain your freedom," counsels Paul in his First Letter to the
Corinthians which, to be sure, stands under the sign of imminent
expectation of the parousia, "make use of your present condition
instead" [N.B.: a textual variant preferred by the RSV reads: "avail
yourself of the opportunity'']. "For he who was called in the Lord as a
slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when
called is a slave of Christ" (1 Cor 7:21-22).
Certainly, with words like this, one can create legitimizing theories for
existing unjust conditions, with the wellknown consoling effectsthat
has indeed happened and often enough. But when one takes seriously
the truth Paul spoke, there turn out to be not just practical
consequences for the behavior of masters towards slaves, whom they
can no longer treat as disposable goods, but must respect as brothers
and sisters. The Letter to Philemon is a beautiful, personal illustration
for this praxis. With these themes was also introduced and
disseminated a process at the end of which stood, and necessarily, the
abolition of slavery as an institution. That this process took so long is
due partly to the weakness and negligence of Christians, and also to
the Church's lack of power; but it is also due to the resistance that
came
19 Cf. J. Vogt, Sklavenfrage und Humanität im klassischen Griechentum
(Mainz, 1953); ferner die Kommentare zum Philemonbrief von P.
Stuhlmacher und J. Gnilka.

Page 116
from outside which, politically, socially, and economically, was
interested in the preservation of the institution of slavery.
Some final words on the theme of orthopraxy: The concrete
realization of orthopraxy takes on many forms. It has two points of
orientation: one, the reality, challenge, and inspiration of the Christian
faith, and two, the concrete situation in a society for which the praxis
of faith, orthopraxy, must be concretely found and done. Thus it is
true, for the most part, that there is a broad consensus regarding the
knowledge and condemnation of what is negative in the human
sphere, of evil in the form of injustice and lack of freedom, but that
for the concrete and positive solution and answer, numerous ways are
possible. Here, exclusivity is to be avoided; here, a tolerance is to be
striven for which has the power to outlast tensions and differences.
The fulfillment of the Christian command of love can no longer
consist only in binding the wounds of someone who, as in the well-
known parable of Jesus (Luke 10, 25-37) fell in with robbers, but that
one does one's best to prevent someone from falling in with robbers,
to prevent wounds from being inflicted. In other words, the realization
of love includes also the changing of conditions and structures that
hinder justice and love. But to this must be added that the changing of
structures does not automatically produce love, justice, and new
human beings, for the human being is not just the ensemble or result
of structural conditions, but, as person and individual, is a center of
nondisposable reality. The changing of the human being and the
changing of consciousness must go hand in hand with the creation of
better conditions.
The intention of these reflections was to bring out the dimension of
orthopraxy as a constitutive dimension of faith. False alternativessuch
as orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy, service of humanity instead of
service of God, developmental assistance instead of preaching,
kindergartens instead of places of worshipare to be avoided. Only the
togetherness and interrelationship that come from the intertwining of
theory and praxis can do justice to the whole of faith in its various
gifts and requirements. Only the whole is the true. But the main thing
remains: orthopraxy has to begin with human beings themselves. Then
it can and should bear its manifold fruits.

Page 117

Part Two
The Science of Faith

Page 118
§ 11
Faith and Understanding
This theme brings to mind the specific interrelationship of the
expressions "standing in faith" and "understanding in faith," as
Söhngen would put it. This interpenetration of "faith and
understanding,'' this core of the analysis of faith will now be the object
of a brief reflection which we shall present by way of some important
instances of it from biblical times to the present day.
The Biblical Data
The word for understanding is not a specifically biblical word, but a
common word of human language (gnosis). With respect to its use the
following can be said. In the Greek, understanding and cognition
mean a kind of seeing-in, a comprehension on the basis of seeing.
Cognition is the seeing of the spirit. Corresponding to it is the thing
seen: the idea, the eidos, the truth in the form of aletheia, of
inobscurity. The seeing/gazing of the spirit stands for the Greeks as
the perfection of human activity, the seeing of the divinity as the state
of happiness.
In contrast, the cognition found in the Old Testament is ordered to the
realm of hearing. It is understanding on the basis of a heard word or
call. Understanding is not, as in Greek, ordered to a timeless idea but
to an historical experience, to the word and will of persons. Hence,
cognition/knowing does also mean to take cognizance of, but in a way
that presses towards recognition; knowing turns out to be a kind of
encounter, the event of a living community.
In the New Testament we find, corresponding to the already-
mentioned unity of hearing and seeing, a connection of the two
aspects of cognition as a mode of spiritual hearing and seeing,
cognition and recognition. In the synoptics one finds the
characterizing word of Jesus to the Twelve: "To you it has been given
to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not
been given" (Matt 13:11).

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These words don't stand isolated in the New Testament, but are taken
up above all in the proclamation of Jesus as the Christ and Kyrios.
Paul speaks of the gnosis connected with pistis, faith. Gnosis as
knowledge is a gift of the Spirit of God granted to believers to enable
them to grasp God's gift of grace. "Now we have received not the
spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might
understand the gifts bestowed on us by God" (1 Cor 2:12). Gnosis is
often mentioned by Paul together with sophia, wisdom. It mediates a
penetration into the mysteries of God, it opens up a reality that
remains closed to merely natural human beings and their capability.
Even when the wisdom of God is presented in the form of the cross
and hence is folly in the eyes of the world, it is and remains wisdom.
If it requires a conversion of human wisdom, it also provides new
wisdom from this new source. For knowledge in faith, it is decisive
that it, as knowledge, remain in the horizon of faith. Faith may not be
dissolved and absorbed into that form of gnosis which Paul already
knew in Corinth: into a gnosis that leaps over faith as a primitive stage
in order to absorb it and its contents as well into a higher level, that of
gnosis emancipated or emancipating itself from faith. Against this
kind of gnosis and its wisdom, Paul sets the folly of God, which is
manifested on the cross and which, at bottom, is the wisdom of God
(1 Cor 2:6-16).
On the other hand, it was important for Paul to separate the
knowledge of faith, the "understanding in faith," from the highly
prized but incomprehensible glossolalia: "I thank God that I speak in
tongues more than you all; nevertheless, in church I would rather
speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others, than ten
thousand words in a tongue" (1 Cor 14:18-19).
How the knowledge of faith is ordered to seeing in faith is shown in
the statement: "For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of
darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor 4:6).
The hearing that is granted along with the knowledge of faith is
expressed in the text: "We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that
you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual
wisdom and understanding" (Col 1:19). The Christocentric
perspective leads Paul to coordinate knowledge of God and
knowledge of Christ: " . . . .as they are knit together in love, to have
all the riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God's
mystery, of Christ" (Col 2:2); ". . . . that I may know him and the
power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like
him in his death'' (Phil 3:10). This knowledge brings about community
with Christ, which finds its expression in love. The whole meaning of
the apostolic office consists in leading human beings to this
knowledge.

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The close connection of faith, knowledge and understanding found in
the Gospel of John has already been mentioned: faith is the beginning
of knowing, knowing is the perfection of faith.
From this we see that faith and knowledge are not contradictions but
coordinates; they both relate to the same thing: to the truth of God
made visible in Jesus. There is believing knowledge and knowing
faith. The knowing remains in the horizon of faith; in knowledge faith
comes to itself. Knowing is a structural element of faith. But knowing
also means not a mere taking-cognizance-of and theorizing about;
knowing means relationship to reality made perfect. Its unattained and
unattainable image is the knowledge of the Father through the Son.
Pistis and Gnosis as Problem in the Early Church
From the coordination and tension between pistis and gnosis arise the
constant possibility, danger, and temptation to dissolve the tension, to
separate pistis from gnosis and gnosis from pistis. The result is either
a blind, irrational faith not involving any kind of understanding, or a
faithless gnosis which qualifies faith as an attitude proper and suitable
for those who are unknowing and inarticulate, but not expected of
those with knowledge and understanding.
This gnosis, rejected already by Paul, was the great danger in the time
of the early Church. It was the danger of gnosticism1 as inner concept,
mixture and conglomerate of philosophy, mystery religions and
elements of Christian faith. Their was a tendency to outdo faith
according to the criterion of gnosis, rather than come to know faith
more deeply through gnosis. The contents of faith were not
understood from themselves but from the higher view and insight of
the gnostic consciously separating himself from them. In addition,
gnostics had the idea that they were thereby meeting the real intention
and true reality of faith. It is quite remarkable how the answer to the
situation and challenge of gnosticism developed.
The one answerdeveloped above all in the Latin Church of the West
by the early Christian apologists2was a decisive "no" to gnosis, the
rejection of its intention and contents. This "no" found its most
decisive, most impressive, and most brilliant representative in the
African, Tertullian. In his writing De carne Christi [On the Flesh of
Christ] he explains as a principle, so to speak: "Reason is nailed to the
cross." The often-quoted, "Credo quia absurdum [I believe because it
is
1 W. Völker,. Quellen zur Geschichte der Gnosis (Tübingen, 1932); Hans
Jonas, The Gnostic Religion; the Message of the Alien God and the
Beginnings of Christianity, 2d ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963); H.
Leisegang, die Gnosis, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1955); also Le Gnose (Paris,
1971); E. Peterson, Frühkirche, Judentum, Gnosis (Freiburg, 1959); R.
Haardt, "Gnosis," SM 2.37479;
2 N. Brox, Offenbarung, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos bei Irenäus von
Lyon (Salzburg, 1966); P. Stockmeier, Glaube und Religion in der frühen
Kirche (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1973).

Page 121
absurd]," from him verbatim but in line with his intention, expresses
this view pregnantly. The following statements from Tertullian are
illustrative: "God's Son has died; this is credible because it is an
absurdity. He was buried and rose again; that is certain because it is
impossible." Paradox becomes the criterion of the truth of faith.
Tertullian joins with this his polemic against Greek philosophy and
especially against Aristotle. "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
What has the Greek Academy to do with the Christian Church? Jesus
arranged for fishermen and not philosophers to preach his message."
The sign of philosophy is curiosity and humility; the sign of faith is
readiness and humility. In addition one finds in Tertullian the
astonishing affirmation about the human soul, which is Christian by
nature (anima naturaliter christiana [the soul is naturally Christian]).
Nevertheless, this is not the only answer of the Christian faith and its
self-understanding against the challenge of gnosis that has been left to
us. Along with this radical "no" to gnosis is also a faith-inspired "yes."
This "yes" sought its grounding in the fact that the questions raised by
gnosis and gnosticism, the questions of understanding and knowledge,
were granted their rightful importance for the faith. Believers could
appeal to the legitimacy of a properly understood gnosis already
witnessed in the New Testament by Paul and John. They appealed also
to their own past and origin in gnosis and in Greek philosophy, which
were not obstacles for their faith but preparation for it. The
representatives of this direction come from the Greek Church, above
all from the school of Alexandria. Its most important representatives
are Clement of Alexandria3 (150-215) and Origen4 (185254). These
two great theologians recognized in the Greek philosophy from which
they came a significance, a position, similar to that of the Old
Testament. Both are "pedagogues for Christ." In the ancient religions,
even in the mystery cults, they saw not just error and idolatry but
prototypes and questions which came to fulfillment in the Christian
faith.5 Even in faith, according to these theologians, one cannot do
without the way of gnosis. This path is to be followed to the extent
that faith needs life and growth, maturity and the ability to articulate,
and hence, gnosis.
But this is not something that can be done without philosophy. In
gnosis thus understood, the intention of the gnostic is "superseded" in
the manifold senses of this word. With false gnosis, the intention of
the
3 J. Bernard, Die apologetische Methode bei Klemens von Alexandrien.
Entfaltung der Theologie (Leipzig, 1968).
4 W. Völker, Das Vollkommenheitsideal des Origenes (Tübingen, 1931); H.
von Campenhausen, The Fathers of the Greek Church, trans. Stanley
Godman (New York: Pantheon, 1959); R. Gögler, Zur Theologie des
biblischen Wortes bei Origenes (Düsseldorf, 1963).
5 Hugo Rahner, Greek Myths and Christian Mystery, trans. Brian Battershaw
(New York: Harper & Row, 1963).

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gnostic is done away with; with true gnosis, it is preserved and
elevated. The Christian is the true gnostic. Christian faith is thereby
distinguished from many religions and myths in that it makes room
for understanding and commits itself to the fulfillment of
understanding. It doesn't need, like many mystery teachings, to shy
away from the light of reason. In this Alexandrian theology one finds
an astonishing breadth, freedom, and boldness, far removed from all
fear of adulteration or fear that the Christian faith could be mythically
corrupted. Quite the contrary: the religious world of myths is given a
positive interpretation grounded on faith.
This program was given its classical formulation by Augustine:
Credo, ut intelligam [I believe that I may understand]. Faith is the
beginning and impulse of a thought movement. It also knows the other
formula: Intelligo, ut credam [I understand that I may believe]. This
way describes Augustine's own path from Neoplatonism to Christian
faith. He was, moreover, of the opinion that Neoplatonism and
Christian faith are not different as to their goal: in both instances it is
"communion with God"; the difference lies in the path to the goal.
The Program of Scholasticism
In Scholasticism, in the time of the eleventh to the thirteenth
centuries, the principle of faith and understanding was taken up under
the program Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding).
Reason (ratio) as principle was placed in the service of faith. This is
shown in the following noteworthy characteristic.
The methods of faith instruction and understanding previously used to
gain an understanding of the faith by commenting on the
authoritiesthe writing and doctrine of the Church Fathersin which
auctoritas [authority] and sententia [sentence/position] were the
constitutive elements, were expanded by the element of the quaestio
and by the method of the disputatio.6 Not the sentence but the
question and the disputation sparked by it were to set in movement an
intellectual concern for the faith. This made demands on reason in a
special way, above all in the search for grounds for the fittingness
[convenientia] of faith. This way of thinking was not satisfied with the
acceptance of "that which is," but was concerned with the question
whether and why "that which is" is supposed to be or has to be that
way. An exemplary instance of this is the Cur Deus homo [Why God
Became Human] of Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm7 searches for the
rationes necessariae
6 Cf. A. Lang, Die Entfaltung des apologetischen Problems in der
Scholastik des Mittelalters (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1962).
7 Cf. R. Heinzmann, "Anselm von Canterbury" in: H. FriesG. Kretschmar,
Klassiker der Theologie I (Munich, 1981) 16580.

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fidei, the necessary reasons of faith, i.e., for the reason why what is
disclosed in faith about the Incarnation of God must be that way and
thus cannot be any other way.
The utilization of reason for faith within Scholasticism led also to the
result that reason, even outside of faith, is conceded its own
importance. Within a comprehensive horizon, namely the Summa, a
theologically conceived overview, reason now makes it possible to
know and to distinguish a twofold order, that of reason and that of
faith. This was, above all, the work of Thomas Aquinas.8 He arrived
at a theologia naturalis, a theology of the philosophers. This was a
knowledge and an affirmation about God possible to the philosopher
(the representative is Aristotle), in which, by the so-called proofs for
the existence of God, God can be known as the ground and goal of the
world and of the self. Thomas calls the proofs "ways."9 They proceed
from the experiential world and its quality of beingfiniteness, causal
connection, goal orientation and orderand, with the help of the
principle of causality, recognize God as the unconditioned, absolute
being which is the condition of every finite being, as being itself, the
ipsum esse. Distinguished from this was another theology called sacra
doctrina [sacred doctrine] in which God is considered as origin of a
supernatural revelation.10 In this, God is not so much object as subject
of a theology called "understanding of the faith."
The two orders which are unfolded and represented in the theological
summa are bound in an inner unity. According to Thomas, this unity is
given by God, who manifests [him]self in the order of creation as well
as that of redemption, it thereby possesses the unity of his action. This
unity is also found in human beings, who are distinguished by
understanding, insight, and the ability to believe, and who thus can
remain human. How the relationship of the two orders is determined is
shown in the well-known guiding principles: Grace presupposes
nature, perfects and completes it. Philosophy is the handmaid of
theology.
8 M. Grabmann, Introduction to the Theological Summa of St. Thomas,
trans. John Zybura (St. Louis, Mo.: Herder Book Co., 1930); Die Werke
des Thomas von Aquin, 2d ed. (Münster, 1949); A. D. Sertillanges, Saint
Thomas Aquinas and His Work, trans. Godfrey Anstruther (London:
Blackfriars, 1957); J. Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, trans. Richard and
Clara Winston (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991); M. D. Chenu,
Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A. M. Landry and D. Hughes
(Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1964); H. Meyer, Thomas von Aquin, 2d ed.
(Paderborn, 1961); W. A. WallaceJ. A. Weisheipl, "St. Thomas Aquinas,"
NCE 14, 1967, 10215; U. Kühn, "Thomas von Aquin" in: Klassiker der
Theologie I (Munich, 1981) 21225.
9STh 1.2.2 and 3.
10STh 1.1.

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The Intention of the Reformers
This impressive conception lasted a long time. Late Scholasticism,
however, did show unmistakable signs and tendencies that called into
question the unity of Summa and Ordo. With regard to the contents of
faith, late Scholasticism made less use of rational reasons than it did
of unprovable, unintelligible decrees of divine will. From this
developed the principle of the double truth: something can be at the
same time philosophically true and theologically false, and vice versa.
An express contradiction was formulated by the Reformation. In the
name of faith, it rejected the form and intention of Scholasticism. The
reformers speak in the spirit of Tertullian, of the infiltration and even
the falsification of faith by philosophy. Above all, Luther11 accuses
Scholasticism of reading the Bible in the spirit and according to the
criterion of Aristotle, of making theology, despite claims to the
contrary, factually the handmaid of philosophy, of violating the
principle of biblical hermeneutics according to which Scripture was to
be read and interpreted according to the measure in which it Christum
treibet [does Christ's business], indeed according to which Scripture,
because of its clarity, is its own interpreter.12 What is needed is to free
the Churchso Lutherfrom this "Babylonian Captivity." What is needed
is to raise up the theologia crucis against the theologia gloriae, i.e.,
natural theology, in order to preserve the divinity of God.13
From these teachings comes the scepticism of the reformers with
regard to the use of philosophy in theology. They see it as a danger to
the faith and to the trust and obedience ordered to faith. Theology has
the task, not of erecting systems or producing summas, but of
interpreting Scripture.14
But in this it is often overlooked that the interpretation of Scripture
has its own systematic-theological presuppositions. Interpretation of
Scripture is interpretation not simply of "what was written," but of
how it is seen in each particular perspectiveotherwise there would
11 Cf. B. Lohse, Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work,
trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986); O. H. Pesch,
Hinführung zu Luther (Mainz, 1982); The God Question in Thomas
Aquinas and Martin Luther (Philadelphia, 1972); Gerhard Ebeling, Luther,
An Introduction to his Thought, trans. R. A. Wilson (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1970); H. Fries, "Die Grundlanliegen der Theologie Luthers in der
Sicht der katholischen Theologie der Gegenwart" in: Wandlungen des
Lutherbildes, ed. K. Forster (Würzburg 1966,) 15791; E. Iserloh, "Die
protestantische Reformation" in: H. Jedin ed., Handbuch der
Kirchengeschichte IV (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1967) 3.446; J. Brosseder,
"Martin Luther" in: Klassiker der Theologie I (1982) 283313.
12 M. Luther, "De servo arbitrio" in: Martin Luther. Ausgewählte Werke, ed.,
H. A. BorcherdtG. Metz, Ergänzungsband I (Munich, 1962); P. NeuneF.
Schröger, "Luthers These von der Klarheit der Schrift" in: ThGl74 (1984)
3958.
13 "Die Heidelberger Disputation" in: Ausgewählte Werke I, 12539.
14 W. Link, Das Ringen Luthers um die Freiheit der Theologie von der
Philosophie, 2d ed. (Munich, 1955).

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be no explanation for the great differences in the interpretation of
Scripture from the beginning to this day.
Faith and the Understanding of Faith in the Modern Age
The further history of the understanding of faith was determined by
the following factors. The understanding of faith itself was no longer
seen, as it had been in the different schools, as a unity in multiplicity.
It became a principle of separation according to the different
confessions. It was a faith-understanding "against others."
With regard to the questions of the time and their relationship to the
Christian faith, there was in the confessions profound
misunderstandings vis-a-vis the newly developing natural sciences.
The trials of Galileo and Keplerthe one carried out by the Inquisition
and the other by the Evangelical Consistoriumbrought about, because
of the alienation of Church and World, the alienation of faith and
knowledge. The result was that knowledge and science were more and
more separated from faith and the understanding of faith; they became
independent and entered into opposition to faith.15
In the autonomous, subject-grounded thinking of the modern age, this
process took on an ever more comprehensive and intensive form,
especially in the thought of the Enlightenment, with its exhortation to
awake from "dogmatic slumber" with the program formulated by
Kant: Sapere aude [dare to know]. Dare to make use of your own
understanding and put an end to your self-inflicted immaturity."16
To the extent that any connection was made from this autonomous
thinking to the Christian faith, it took place in such a way that
revelation and faith were still affirmed as a means of introduction into
the "education of the human race"; but of course they would have to
be "superseded" in the stage when humanity had become articulate
and mature (G. E. Lessing). Kant describes the path of this
development as the path "from faith in the Bible, through faith in the
Church, to faith in reason," in which the contents of faith receive their
true moral significance and find their real fulfillment. The moral was
turned into the hermeneutical principle of the understanding of
faith.17 Hegel, the great reconciler of knowledge and faith, of
theology and philosophy, of Christianity and religion or religions, sees
in the Christian faith a high point in the history of Spiritin a form of
presentation, to be sure, which is preliminary to and remained
subordinate to the higher form of the concept of Spirit, and which is
"superseded" in it.
15 H. Fries, GlaubenWissen (Berlin, 1960).
16 "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" in: I. Kant, Werke IX,
Ausgabe W. Weischedel, 4th ed. (Darmstadt, 1975) 5361.
17 Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M.
Green and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper, 1960) esp. 14255.

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Space does not allow us to speak in detail of the great movements of
modern intellectual history. We can say only that faith and the
understanding of faith were not much affected by them. This is true of
the faith understanding of the Catholic Church even more than of the
churches of the Reformation. But even the great theologian D. F. W.
Schleiermacher asks the worried question: should the knot of history
be so loosened that Christianity goes with barbarism and science with
unbelief? The very understanding of faith developed as confessions
within the Church, especially with a view to each particular
confessional orthodoxy.
Some theologians attempted to enter into a "creative controversy"
with the "spirit of the time" and thus come to a contemporary
understanding of faith. Drey, Möhler, Hirscher, Staudenmaier, and
Kuhn, theologians of the Catholic Tübingen School of the 19th
century, courageously encountered the Romanticism and German
Idealism.18 Other attempts such as those of Hermes in Bonn and
Günther in Vienna, were condemned by the magisterium. Thus, in the
second half of the cen tury, the line was drawn. It was the line of
demarcation between Christian faith and "modern thought" which, as
autonomous and above all natural-scientifically oriented thought, was
emancipated from authoritatively stamped revelational faith and then
was declared by this same faith and understanding to be irreconcilable
with it. Modern philosophy was declared to be unusable as an
instrument for the understanding of faith and, against it,
NeoScholasticism as true philosophy, as philosophia perennis, was
recommended. Thomas Aquinas was declared by Pope Leo XIII as
"universal teacher."19
That would in itself have been a good recommendation, above all if
one took on the responsibility to work "in the spirit" and according to
the principles of Thomas Aquinas.20 Thomas had done precisely what
now, under his mantle, one sought to prevent: discussion with the
spirit and thought of the time. Thomas was, in modern terms, a
progressive. He began something new by entering into discussion with
the newly discovered and powerfully developing Aristotelianism and
making it a dialogue partner of his theology. He saw it as
representative of what human thought can achieve in the realms of
philosophy, ethics, and politics. Taken as a whole, however,
NeoScholasticism did not have this spirit.
The affirmations of Vatican I stand wholly under the sign of this
Neoscholastic understanding of faith, especially the statements in the
chapter with the heading: Dei filius. De fide catholica [Son of God.
On
18 J. R. Geiselmann, Die katholische Tübinger Schule
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1964).
19 Encyclical Aeterni patris (1879) DS 31353140. In the new Code of Canon
Law (§ 252) Thomas of Aquinas is still especially recommended.
20 Cf. H. Fries, "Im Geist des hl. Thomas von Aquin" in: ThQ 131 (1951)
13962.

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the Catholic Faith]. 21 Vatican I is an explicitly apologetic council. It
treated, above all, those themes in which the opposition of modern
thought to the Catholic faith is manifested, the errors already
mentioned in the syllabus errorum [Syllabus of Errors] of Pius IX in
1864:22 the intellectual currents of atheism, materialism, agnosticism,
positivism, rationalism, and pantheism,but also those of irrationalism
and fideism. The council treats in definitive propositional form the
rights and limits of human reason in the horizon of revelational faith.
It speaks on the one hand of the possibility of the rational knowledge
of the existence and essence of God, and it speaks on the other hand
of the fact and the function of the alia supernaturalis via, of the other,
the supernatural way, in which God, beyond God's manifestation in
creation which is accessible to all, "has communicated Himself and
the eternal decrees of His will to the human race." The council was
especially concerned with the credibility of supernatural revelation: it
took pains to make concrete mention of motives and criteria of
revelation that are fundamentally accessible and perceivable to
everyone.23 Correct as this principle is, the criteria specifically
mentioned in Vatican Imiracles and prophecies, form and history of
the Churchhave themselves become in our contemporary situation
more a difficult problem than an applicable guide to faith.
It was an important concern of the council to express the
intelligibility, the reasonableness of faith. A whole chapter treats the
relationship of faith and reason. We find there remarkable
propositions about the understanding of faith: "When reason
illuminated by faith seeks diligently, honestly, and conscientiously
(sedulo, pie et sobrie quaerit), it gains with God's help a certain
insight (a certain understanding) with respect to the mysteries (of
faith) (aliquam intelligentiam)." Mentioned as ways and modes of this
understanding of faith are the natural analogy to these mysteries and
the knowledge of the "nexus mysteriorum," i.e., the connections of the
mysteries of faithand this both in their connection with each other and
in their connection with the "last end of human beings" (ultimus finis
hominis).24
These are affirmations that open up a broad horizon of understanding.
It is said that an understanding of faith is possible with the help of a
natural analogy. This should mean that between the contents of faith
and the experiences of human beings with themselves and their world
there are correspondences, similarities in dissimilaritiesthat
21 DS 30003045; on this: H. J. Pottmeyer, Der Glaube vor dem Anspruch
der Wissenschaft. Die Konstitution über den katholischen Glauben "Dei
Filius" des I. Vatikanischen Konzils und die unveröffentlichten Voten der
vorbereitenden Kommission (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1968).
22 DS 290180.
23 DS 3009.
24 DS 3016.

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is the concept of analogy. In the mysteries of faith one meets words
and concepts like father, son, grace, love, peace, reconciliation, joy,
justice, light, life, but also concepts like person, substance, nature,
essence; these words and concepts are taken from human language
and experience. Even for faith there is no other language and
conceptual world than the human. The basis of this is the analogia
entis [analogy of being] grounded in creation, and the explicit
similarity and dissimilarity therein between Creator and creature. But
this means that in the experience and understanding of these words
and concepts there is an understanding, or at least a pre-understanding
of those concepts of the mysteries of faith which are mediated through
these words and concepts. That doesn't exclude but rather includes
that this understanding and pre-understanding is itself modified,
surpassed or changed by the content of faith. But without this natural
content there is no understanding of the supernatural contents of faith.
The second way to gain an understanding of faith is, according to the
words of Vatican I, the nexus mysteriorum inter se, insight into the
interconnection of the contents of faith, in the sense of a mutual
dependence. Although no example is mentioned, what comes to mind
is something like the connection between creation and covenant,
between creation, redemption, and fulfillment; the connection within
the history of revelation: revelation in the beginning, revelation as
promise, as fulfillment, and then as final fulfillment; the connection
between the earthly Jesus and the proclaimed Christ, between
kingdom of God and Church, between word and sacrament. A nexus
mysteriorum inter se also results from attending to the "hierarchy of
truths." But the knowledge of the connection is caused by one's
understanding in faith; it is not given of itself just with "standing in
the faith."
The nexus mysteriorum [interconnection of the mysteries] in
connection with the ultimus finis hominis [final end of the human
being] is called a third way to come to an understanding of faith. Now
this does not mean only the "ordering of the truths of faith towards
their fulfillment in the hereafter,"25 but the anthropological,
existential and existentiell level and content of the mysteries of faith.
It is the case that the contents of faith are related to human beings and
their existence, that in them human beings truly understand
themselves, that they interiorly involve and correspond to human
beings, that they change and renew human beings, that they involve
humans' salvation and their quest for sense, purpose, and wholeness.
The ultimus finis [final end] is not so much a specification of time as a
description of quality. Its purpose is to express what ultimately, and
therefore definitively and unconditionally, involves the human being.
25 As in J. Beumer in: Theologie als Glaubensverständnis (Würzburg,
1953) 183.

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It does no violence to the text to recognize in it that understanding of
the faith which is today sought after in existential theology, or in
theology properly understood as a comprehensive anthropology or
comprehensive description of reality. The content of faith is mediated
as answer to the question and the questions of human beings, to the
questions human beings ask, to the question that human beings
themselves are.
This doesn't mean that the answer of faith is anticipated or even
predetermined and decided by the questions of human beings, but it
does mean that the contents, affirmations, events, and promises found
in faith are related to human beings and to their questioning,
existential, and real situation. This is the motivation of such different
theological conceptions as those of Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann,
and Karl Rahner, but also of Karl Barth in his later theological period.
It is the way from dialectic to analogy.26 Faith is in this way protected
from becoming ''extrinsicist"; it becomes, without becoming
"naturalized" and "immanentized," that word from which one can live
as from daily bread, that light which illumines the ways of existence,
of the world, and of history. Faith becomes the power and the courage
to go this way.
26 Hans Urs. von Balthasar, Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner
Theologie (Cologne, 1950).

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§ 12
The Science of Faith, or, Theology
Science is qualified knowledge. It is knowledge that is methodically
laid out and gives an account of how it was arrived at. Theology is the
scientia fidei [science of faith], fides in statu scientiae [faith in the
state of science], "the luminous and clear existence of that which is
known" (B. Welte). The object of the science of faith, of theology, can
thus be nothing other than faith and the reality that is disclosed in faith
and in faith understandingin other words, God and God's revelation.
From the understanding of faith to the science of faith has proven to
be a long step. It is that step which leads from knowing to science. All
science is knowing, but not all knowing is science. Thus, the science
of faith is always an understanding of the faith, but not all
understanding of the faith is science of the faith (theology) in the
explicit sense of the word.
The Meaning of the Word
The word "theology"1 is not a "theological" creation in the sense that
Christian understanding of revelation and faith understanding would
have created for its own reality and purpose a conceptual form taken
from the Greek language. Theology is, as word and concept, at
1 On this, cf. the theological dictionaries, handbooks and lexicons: RGG 6
(1962) 754-838 A. KremerMarietti, "Positivism," ER 11 (1987) 45860;
Karl RahnerW. Post, "Theology," SM 6 (1970) 23349; B. F. Van AckerenP.
De Letter, "Theology," NCE 14 (1967) 3958; Further: G. Söhngen,
Philosophische Einübung in die Theologie (FreiburgMunich, 1955); C.
Hefling, "Science and Religion,''NDT 9 3845; Edward Schillebeeckx,
Revelation and Theology (London, 1974); B. Welte, Auf der Spur des
Ewigen (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1965) esp. 351426; E. NeuhäuslerE.
Gößmann, Was ist Theologie? (Munich, 1966); K. Rahner, "Ecclesiology,"
Theological Investigations 10 (1973) 3121; B. CasparK. HemmerleP.
Hünermann, Theologie als Wissenschaft (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1970); M.
Seckler, Im Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft und Kirche. Theologie als
schöpferische Auslegung der Wirklichkeit (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1980);
"Theologien. Eine Grundidee in dreifacher Ausgestaltung" in: ThQ 163
(1983) 24164.

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home in Greek thought. It was only hesitatingly, and not without
resistance and modification, taken up within the horizon and inner
space of the Christian faith and its possibilities of affirmation and
understanding. Theology as a concept in Greek thought occurs first in
Plato. He understands by it the myths and the legends and histories of
the gods, purified of everything scandalous, Judged philosophically
and critically, demythologized, and interpreted in the sense and
according to the criteria of political education. Theology thus
represents the path from myth to logos, which begins with Heraclitus
and Anaximander and ends with Plato. The function of logos
consisted in uncovering in the mode of aletheia [truth] the truth
hidden by the gods in mythology and myths; this was, thus, a mode of
revelation. A quite different meaning of theology is found in Aristotle.
There it means the philosophical-metaphysical consideration of [what
has] being in its being; it forms the theme of what Aristotle called
"first philosophy." Thus, what Aristotle is doing is an ontological
theology: "The God of the philosophers became the end and goal of a
first philosophy which has as its subject [that which has] being in its
being, and which makes affirmations about its original relationships
and first causes until it comes to the proof that there is a first-of-all, a
first cause, on which heaven and earth depend."2
In these philosophical reflections, and in their treatment of religion
and things religious, there is a recognizable effort to consider talk
about God and the divinity as a philosophical possibility. This
intention remained connected with assigning the name "theology" and
"theologian" to the religious realm. Theologians are proclaimers of
God; theology is religious talk about the gods. Theology is above all
the talking to God that is carried out in cult. That is why Homer and
Hesiod were called theologians.3
From these presuppositions there resulted, especially in Stoicism, the
distinction of a threefold type of theology: the mythical theology of
the poets and legends of the gods; the "physical" theology of the
philosophers which had to do with the natura deorum, the true nature
of the gods; and political theology, the theologia civilis [civil
theology] of the lawgiver and the official state cult (M. Varro, 116-27
B. C.).
The definitive appropriation of the word "theology" by the Christian
faith came about in the course of the fourth and fifth centuries, when
theology became the customary name for the true study of God and
specifically came to be applied to the Trinitarian and Christological
affirmations. The biblical writers as a whole were
2 G. Söhngen, "Theologie" in: Staatslexikon 7 (Freiburg, 1962) 966.
3 Gerhard Ebeling in: RGG 6 (1962) 753.

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called theologians. Some, like the evangelist John, were given the
name with very special emphasis.
A further enrichment in the acceptance and use of the concept of
theology is represented by Dionysius the Areopagite's Neoplatonic
reflection on how God is to be spoken of; this resulted in the
distinction between an apophatic (negative), kataphatic (affirmative),
and mystical theology.
It took much longer before the word and concept of theology which
Augustine characterized as ratio sive sermo de divinitatethinking or
talking about the Divinitybegan to have that comprehensive sense of
science of faith which is related to the whole of revelation and the
faith ordered to it. This transition took place in the Latin language at
the time of the beginning of high Scholasticism. This was the time, of
course, when revelational faith was being questioned as to its
relationship to science, above all to philosophy, when it was coming
into contact with Aristotelianism and, in connection with the founding
of the universities, had to set itself up scientifically within the artes
liberales. The whole of Christian faith was being reflected on
dialectically in the form of the quaestio. Abelard, Gilbert of
Porretania, Henry of Ghent, and above all Thomas Aquinas were
important figures in this.
Theology as Science in Thomas Aquinas
The question of theology as science and of the scientific character of
theology was raised and discussed principally by Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274). Central to this development was the concept of science,
taken from Aristotle, and its potential application to theology.4 In
article two of the first question of the Summa theologiae, Thomas
asks: Utrum doctrina sacra sit scientia (Whether sacred doctrine
[theology] is a science). Thomas begins his answer from Aristotle's
concept of science.5
According to Aristotle, science consists in the knowledge of the
general essence of things and in the knowledge of their grounds. This
knowledge, which at the same time makes logical connections, comes
about in the form of deriving and drawing conclusions and in the
proof thus produced. The ultimate grounds of these conclusions and
proofs are the highest principles of being and thinking; they cannot be
derived or proved but are evident, discernible and cogent in
themselves: principia per se nota [principles known through
themselves]. Principles, knowl-
4 W. A. WallaceJ. A. Weisheipl, "St. Thomas Aquinas," NCE 14.10215.
5 Cf. the notes and commentary in the GermanLatin edition (Die Deutsche
Thomasausgabe), (SalzburgVienna, 1934); M. Seckler, "Geist der
Katholizität. Thomas von Aquin und die Theologie" in: Im Spannungsfeld
von Wissenschaft und Kirche 16377.

Page 133
edge of essence, and drawing conclusions are the framework of this
concept of science.
On the basis of these presuppositions, Thomas asks whether theology
is a science. At first, all indications are to the contrary, for "theology,"
as Thomas observes, "proceeds from the articles of faith, which are
not necessary to thought, which are not acknowledged by all. For not
all have faith, says the Scripture (2 Thes 3:2). Thus, theology is not
science. Faith is the conviction of things not seen" (Heb 11:1).
Furthermore, "Science is not concerned with the individual but with
the general. But theology treats of specially particular things, e.g., the
history of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the like. Thus, theology is
not science.''
Then follows Thomas's response:
Theology is a science. But one has to consider that there are two kinds of
sciences. One proceeds from principles that are given by the natural light
of reason, like arithmetic, geometry and the like. Others proceed from
principles that come from the light of another, higher, science, as
perspective proceeds from the principles that geometry teaches, and as
music proceeds from arithmetic realities. It is in this latter manner that
theology is a science, because it proceeds from principles given it from the
light of a higher science, namely the knowledge of God and of the blessed.
Just as the musician relies on the principles provided by the
mathematician, so theology relies on the principles of the divinely revealed
faith.
These principles are evident to God; human beings share in them
through faith. That which in philosophy functions as principles, in
theology is faith. Theology is thus a scientia subalternata, a science
which draws its legitimation from a "higher" science, namely the
knowledge of God and of the saints. In a precise qualification,
Thomas adds that, in contrast to philosophy, theology seeks to know
God "as God is knowable only to Himself, and as God communicates
Himself to others through revelation" (1.6).
According to Thomas, theology relates to faith as a conclusion to its
principle. Consequently he says: "Theology is learned by study even
though its principles flow from revelation." Thus theology is a formal,
natural science, like other sciences, but in its principles in is a
"supernatural" science.
If reason is the subject of the understanding of faith, this is all the
more so in the qualified faith-knowledge of theology, i.e., when it is
ratio fide illustrata, reason illuminated by faith. The ability and
function of the intellect is here raised to its highest actualization. It
does not lose but gains when it is placed and places itself at the
service of something higher. Thomas is guided here by the conviction
that the smallest knowledge that we have of the highest and most
sublime things is worth more and is more worthy of our longing than
the most certain knowledge of less important things.

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In order to understand and correctly evaluate this characterization of
the science of faith, one must recall the concept of science prevailing
at that time. And indeed, as an attempt to make possible theology as
science, it was an attempt, by no means uncontroversial even in its
own day, in which unexplainable and artificial solutions were also to
be found.
Acceptance of a "science of God" may have been possible in a
situation of unbroken faith. This presupposition is no longer fulfillable
in our day. What was taken for granted in another time has become a
problem of the first order today. Nevertheless, the attempt of Thomas
was a significant and original novelty. It is to be compared with our
contemporary effort to characterize and legitimize theology from the
theory of science. Thomas's contemporaries Duns Scotus and
Bonaventure rejected his conception. They, instead, spoke of theology
not as science (scientia), but as wisdom (sapientia), or called theology
the science of the holy Scripture.
The Significance of This Concept of Theology
In his characterization of theology, Thomas sees revelation and faith
above all under the sign of truth. With his construction of the
knowledge of God and of the blessed, Thomas seeks to represent the
principle and evidence-character of theology as science and at the
same time to describe its special character. Under these
presuppositions it is possible to describe the scientific aspect of
theology in formally the same structure as knowledge through
derivation and conclusion from the highest principles and to
characterize theology as "a discerning knowledge mediated through a
process of conclusions from the articles of faith as revealed and
believingly presupposed warrants."6 The discernment or insight of
theology is thus related to the discernibility of its derivations and
conclusions. Thus no new content is added to the articles of faiththey
are instead, by their translation into the language of science and its
concepts, unfolded in content, interpreted, and thus given a more
precise and profound understanding. Theology thus is related to faith
as a conclusion to its principle. But no distancing from faith is
expressed by the conclusions; instead, faith in its substance and
content is brought to understanding.
This process can be illustrated by two well-known examples: the
characterization of the sonship of Jesus as "one in nature with the
Father" (consubstantialis Patri), and the concept of
"transubstantiation" in the doctrine of the Eucharist. There is no claim
that these two expressions can be found as such in the apostolic,
biblical message and at all times in the tradition of the Church. Nor
can it be denied that
6 G. Söhngen, Philosophische Einübung in die Theologie 124.

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the two expressions were first developed and became part of the
Church's preaching only through the scientific work of theologians
and through the application of concepts to the content of revelation.
Without the assistance of Greek metaphysics in the first instance and,
with the second expression, of the idea of a change in nature or
essence derived from Aristotelian metaphysics, the emergence of both
expressions in theology would be unthinkable. In other words, both
expressions came as something new to the proclamation of the faith
by way of theological concept-building. The expressions did not
spring from divine revelation itself but from specifically theological
thought. However, both of the realities to which the two expressions
are related are apostolic affirmations of faith, i.e., the unique divine
Sonship of Christ and the essentially real presence of Christ in the
Eucharist. What is new are specific concepts, not new specific
realities. It is not as if these realities were not already contained in the
apostolic heritage of faith and in the Church's proclamation of the
faith, and even clearly expressed there. The contents of faith are
expressed, but they are said and given to us there in different, let us
say pre-scientific, language, and thus leave plenty of room for
working out the concept theologically.7
Such examples are easy to multiply, so one can well imagine how
much the faith as history of faith, as dogma and development of
dogma owes to the theological "stretching of concepts [Anstrengung
des Begriffs]." This provides as an explication the internal and
external clarification that is helpful for distinguishing and
demarcating. That is something that is legitimate and, under certain
conditions, even necessary for faith. There is, of course, danger that
theology could become too concept- and conclusion-happy, that it
could make itself independent, that for sheer joy at the play of
concepts it could lose its hold on the original witness of Scripture and
history. There is the further danger that a theology of conclusions,
which comes to its results with the help of philosophy and
metaphysical concepts, could forget that the concepts have a history,
that they can change, and that in another context they might no longer
say what they originally meant. In other words, the reality might have
to be expressed differently today if the same thing is to be described.
To understand theology in this way implies that the reality of faith can
and must be expressible in another philosophy than traditional Greek
and scholastic philosophy. For example, theology can and must be
expressible in the contemporary philosophy of modernity and the
contemporary world, and even in the philosophy of the Far East
something that is far more difficult and, up to now, barely even
averted to by Christian thinkers.
7 Ibid. 132.

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A still stronger misgiving is raised against the presuppositions of this
theology. According to Thomas, these presuppositions are to be found
in the phenomenon of the characterization of faith as doctrine or
teaching, that is, as truth which is thought to be as eternal and as
timeless as the principles of logic and mathematics. The fact that faith
is connected to history, to events, and to persons, or as Thomas says,
to the singular, and to the individual, represents a genuine difficulty.
How can this be science if science is to be characterized as knowledge
from principles, as knowledge that is determined by the universal, the
general?
Thomas sees this difficulty and responds to it in the Summa
theologiae by pointing out that the individual, the "singular," is not
important in itself but only as type, as example of a general truth or
rule of life, or as introduction it.
With respect to the singular within faith and theology, one must point
out, against Thomas, that the singular means a great deal more than
that it is simply the bearer of something common. The singular as
person and history is essentially connected with revelation, the
relational point of faith. Revelation cannot be separated from its
historical ground, especially from its fulfillment in the person of Jesus
of Nazareth, the way some other religions can be separated from their
founder. The truth of which revelation speaks and at which theology
aims is not a theory that calls for a closed and complete system; it
consists rather of events and human beings. Accordingly, history and
historicity belong not only to the presupposition or the frame, they
belong to the content of that which, theologically, has to be asked
about. That is why the content and truth of faith are concrete. The
concrete is by no means a disturbing contradiction of the general
nature, but its concrete realization. The best expression of this is the
fact that Jesus Christ is the essence of Christianity. This fact does not
exclude but includes the stretching of this concept of the relative
importance of the singular and the general. But at the same time one
can see where the relational point of these efforts lies: not in the
essence of general ideas but in the concretion of history and person.
Therefore the reason that is made use of in theology is not only
speculative but also historical reason. Only in the combining of these
two dimensions, of these "two eyes," as I. Döllinger says,8 can
revelation as truth, event, and history, and can truth as person be
mediated. This is the only way to assure that no side is overlooked or
beaten down at the expense of the other. What this can mean
concretely may be illustrated in the words of Cardinal Manning, who,
when historical
8 "Die Vergangenheit und die Genenwart der katholischen Theologie" in:
J. Finsterhölzl, Ignaz von Döllinger, Wegbereiter heutiger theologie
(GrazViennaCologne, 1969) 22769.

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problems surfaced in connection with the discussion of the infallibility
of papal ex cathedra decisions, said: Dogma decides history. No less
one-sided would be the opposite thesis that history makes dogma
impossible.
In connection with the question of whether and to what extent Thomas
Aquinas actually did justice theologically to the dimension of history
as a structural element of revelation, take note of the following: More
recent research into Thomas has pointed out that a fundamental
starting point for the historical is also present in Thomas Aquinas.
Max Seckler, for example, has impressively portrayed this in his book,
Das Heil in der Geschichte. Geschichtstheologisches Denken bei
Thomas von Aquin (Salvation in History: Historico-Theological
Thought in Thomas Aquinas).9
In this context the following two points are especially important. First,
the fact that in Thomas, the singular cannot be the object of a science
of the universal does not really make the singular unimportant. It is
rather an indication of the limits of human knowledge and an insight
into the individual and the uniqueness, incalculability, especially the
freedom of the individual, which cannot be confined within an all-
knowing speculation. In Thomas, the singular is not reduced to
unimportance, but freed from the clutches of a science that sees in the
universal the object and goal of its efforts. Individuum est ineffabile
[the individual is inexpressibly valuable].
This shows that science cannot simply be made the measure of all
things. This is visible in the work of Thomas from the fact that, along
with his systematically organized summae are his still unfortunately
little-read and studied Scripture commentaries. And ultimately, one
must also talk about Thomas the mystic, whose last word was about
the hidden God, about the Thomas who, months before his death
completely stopped writing. As he put it: Everything I have written
seems to me like rubbish.
A second critical point in assessing Thomas's concept of theology is
this. The Summa theologiae stands under the threfold schema of
departurejourneyreturn. This is a Neoplatonic model, which Thomas
takes over in order to characterize the formal structure of revelation
and faith. This schema describes the structure not of a timeless idea
but of an event, which is characterized by origin and goal and the path
that leads between the two. This opens up room for history. When
revelation is characterized with this schema, it is specified in its
historicity.
History, in its significance and positivity, is emphasized in Thomas by
another motivation, which is mentioned by Seckler: as to the ground
of history, Thomas answers that it lies in the inner-
9 (Munich, 1964).

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trinitarian process. The God of Thomas is not the unmoved mover but
the living God, God in the relation of three Persons.
Even if the moment of the historical is not done justice to in all
aspects of Thomas, especially when one examines it from the point of
view of the historical critical method in the modern sense, the
coordination and inner-connection of truth and event, of truth and
history, is indeed seen by Thomas and it is thought through in
surprising profundity. As little as the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept
of science may satisfy all concerns, it does contain in its elements a
totally committed openness.

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Theology and Historical Thinking1
The Realm of History
The affirmation that science is knowledge of something through
knowledge of its causes is also applicable in the realm of history, as
long as we don't forget that historical causality is different from
natural causality, and also different from the causes in a self-evident
principle. For in the realm of historical causality, along with causes of
economic, social, and cultural kinds, the causes that predominantly
come into play are those having to do with person, spirit, and
freedom.
In the realm of history and the historical, therefore, knowledge is
possible not in the sense of knowing how things have to bethat is the
claim of a science which proceeds by way of conclusionsbut in a
knowledge of things as they are, indeed a knowledge that seeks to
grasp the thing to be known in the causes that lead up to it, and to
bring it into a context of understanding. Understanding as
understanding from sense (or as getting a feel for something) is
different from causal explanation.
The phenomenon of history and of the historical as object and element
of theology is significant for two reasons: first that to which history
relates, namely revelation, has an historical origin and thus is history
in historical events; second the extent to which history is the way in
which faith is both represented from its origins and interpreted in a
history which can be described as tradition or trajectory. In history,
therefore, we don't get something handed on to us that is timeless,
formulated unchangeably once and for all. Instead of that, we get in
history, through believing and thinking human beings, an inter-
1 A. Brunner, Geschichtlichkeit (Bern, 1961); F. Wiplinger, Wahrheit und
Geschichtlichkeit (FreiburgMunich, 1961); A Darlapp, "Geschichtlichkeit"
in: HThG I (1962) 49197; "History of Salvation," SM 5.41119; Karl
Rahner, SM 5.41923; P. Hünermann, Der Durchbruch des geschichtlichen
Denkens im 19. Jahrhundert (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1967); W. Kasper,
Glaube und Geschichte (Mainz, 1970) esp. 932; "Tradition als
Erkenntnisprinzip. Zur theologischen Relevanz der Geschichte" in: ThQ
155 (1975) 198215.

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pretation of that which theology is all about: faith and the
understanding of faith. Faith which sees in Jesus Christ the goal and
end of the history and the forms of revelation that went before him,
also sees in that goal a beginning, a "beginning in fullness," as Möhler
put it.2 Nothing coming after this as effect can rise any higher than
this origin, this source, which is at the same time a critical norm of
everything in the future. But at the same time, this "origin in fullness"
has need of time as way and process in order to interpret this fullness
of the beginning and its dimensions, and thereby to unfold its
richness.
Faith and History
Faith is dependent on history. Through history its contents come to
light. Through history these contents are analyzed, so to speak, in the
colored spectrum of the one stream of light. Through history,
therefore, faith, its content and its truth, are not endangered or denied
but are affirmed in themselves. Through history, the yesterday is not
abrogated; rather, the yesterday is taken up and enlivened and
enriched through new things. In that sense, the historicity of faith does
not mean the relativizing of the valid but, as perspectivity, the gaining
of its aspects and dimensions whereby the individual, i.e., truths, are
related to the one Truth and thus remain protected from the danger of
isolation and disassociation. This process of faith will never come to
an end as long as there is faith and human beings with faith.
The historicity of faith takes on still further contours if we consider
the following. Historicity is, of course, perspectivity. Historicity of
truth, however, means that always only one perspective of faith can be
brought to expression as a result of the humanity and the finiteness
and the conditionedness of the ability to believe. Our faith
consciousness, and also that of the Church as the community of
believers, stands under the condition of the narrowness of
consciousness. Consequently, while other perspectives, or the whole
of the truth of faith, is not actually denied, it is nevertheless not
existentially present or not present with enough vitality. This can
cause shifts and displacements, even disturbances, in the framework
of faith. Faith needs history in order to find its voice therein; the truth
of faith becomes real in history. But it is also true that no historical
form or realization is the pure realization of faith; it is always at the
same time, its time-conditioned limitation.
Thus, the historically believing human being, as well as the respective
community of believers, must not consider itself and its understanding
of the faith to be whole, perfect, and definitive; they must rather
remain open for the whole of the past and the future of
2Grundgedanke des Werkes: die Einheit in der Kirche oder das Prinzip
des Katholizismus, herausgegeben, eingeleitet und kommentiert von J. R.
Geiselmann (CologneOlten, 1956).

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faith. That they frequently do not is one of the reasons for many of the
contemporary symptoms of crisis.
One of the causes of difficulty and aberration in many contemporary
questions is the way in which what has developed and become valid
for today is raised to ultimate validity and normativity, and turned into
an insurmountable barrier, with the result that people refuse to look at
new possibilities which at one time had a legitimate historical
existence. Looking into history liberates one from this and opens up
new possibilities.
Faith and history are intimately interconnected. But history always
represents only one possible and limited realization of faith,
understanding of faith, science of faith, and community of faith.
Hence it falls to faith and to the art of theology as the science of faith
to differentiate faith, its contents and the historicity necessarily
connected with it from the time-conditionedness of its respective
realizations. The truth of faith is not affected, but how it gets worked
out becomes a problem.
Whoever takes all contemporary manifestations, forms, and
realizations of faith to be the unbroken, uniquely legitimate, ever-valid
form of faith itself, and mourns the loss of that form, turns faith into
ideology; that person enslaves faith and thus makes it incapable of
opening up a new hour of faith and of Church and of bringing about
living, effective forms of its realization.
The coordination of faith and history is ultimately produced by the
fact that faith and the community of believers not only create out of
themselves a realization in time and history, but thereby and therein
encounter an historical situation and constellation, a milieu that is
conditioned and created not by faith but by many other factors,
political, social, and cultural. Faith must stand up to this historical
situation. But the same situation also puts questions to the faith,
questions that are born of this hour. Faith understands itself fully and
correctly only when it is in a position to give its affirmations as
answers to questions that are asked today. This doesn't work when it
unreflectingly and insensitively passes on old truth in its old form.
That is nothing more than giving answers to questions that are not
even being asked; the affirmations, while themselves true, fall into a
vacuum. Faith and its truth is faced with new questions from the
reality of the hour at hand. Through new questions, new claims are
made of faith; it is in part understood anew and empowered to new
affirmations, to affirmations that earlier and until then did not even
exist, for the hour had not yet come for them.
The course of the history of faith and of theology can thus be
adequately described neither with the categories of progress nor with

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those of decline.3 One can only say that in every age and every
generation of believers, those concerned with the science of faith seek
to do their own thing. Whether and how far they succeed is not to be
settled here.
Historical Excursus on the Coordination of Theology and History
The coordination of theology and history, which we have just
discussed in various ways and which seems to be taken for granted
today, was programmatically represented by the theologians of the so-
called Tübingen School in the last century.4
At the outset of the nineteenth century, there awoke within the
romantic movement an intensive historical consciousness, a return to
the sources, a new discovery of the manifold traditions in the life of
peoples, of literature and of the "national spirit" moving them. There
was a related discovery of the emotional capacities of human beings,
of temperament, feeling and fantasy, and a corresponding
revitalization of myths and sagas, of the immanence of the Divine in
the world and in history. This was a clear countermovement against
the Enlightenment, which separated God and world deistically
according to the idea of God as master builder and engineer of the
world who, after creation, left the world to its own laws which are in
force and work without God, without being dependent on God. It was
also a countermovement to the extent that the Enlightenment had
raised abstract, conceptual thinking to the highest norm of all
activities of the human spirit. That which is true is that which is clear.
There was still another moment alive in the historical consciousness
of the nineteenth century, and expressed above all in the philosophy of
German Idealism, most impressively in Hegel. We have already
mentioned that, for Hegel, the Absolute Spirit is the ground of all
reality, that the Absolute Spirit does not present itself statically in
reality but is unfolded in a dialectical process. It follows that history
can be seen not only as a collection of factsin which case history
would be blind. History is much more determined by inner
connections, which have their ground in ideas. Spirit and ideas are the
impulse of historical movement; they create in history relationships of
sense. This
3 M. Seckler, "Der Fortschrittsgedanke in der Theologie" in: Im
Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft und Kirche 12748.
4 On this, cf. J. R. Geiselmann, "Die Glaubenswissenschaft der katholischen
Tübinger Schule in der Grundlegung durch J. S. Drey" in: ThQ 112 (1930)
9117; Geist des Christentums und des Katholizismus. Ausgewählte Schriften
katholischer Theologie im Zeitalter des Deutschen Idealismus und der
Romantik (Mainz, 1940); Lebendiger Glaube aus geheiligter Überlieferung.
Der Grundgedanke der Theologie Johann Adam Möhlers und der
katholischen Tübinger Schule (Mainz, 1942); Die katholische Tübinger
Schule. Ihre theologische Eigenart (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1964); M. B.
Schepers, "Tübingen," NCE, 14, (1967) 339.

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is all the more true when in the reality of history the Absolute Divine
Spirit manifests itself.
The theologians of the Tübingen School, especially J. S. Drey, J. A.
Möhler, and F. A. Staudenmaier as well as J. von Kuhn, directly faced
this contemporary and intellectual-historical situation as opportunity
and as challenge with much the same kind of courage as Thomas
Aquinas had shown with regard to Aristotle. They believed that they
were all the more allowed and obliged to do this because, as they put
it, the Christian religion is an historical and positive religion, which
cannot be sublimated into a timeless idea because, in historical
revelation, an inner connection, an idea, a principle is given by the
economy [divine plan] of God, by God's plan for the salvation of
humankind, and finally, because Christian revelation has come to us
by historical revelation.
But the Tübingen theologians were standing alone on a broad plain.
Both the then-influential Roman school (under Perrone) and the
Mainz faculty (under Liebermann) rejected the encounter of theology
with the thought of the time. Their grounds were that Romanticism,
German Idealism, and above all Hegel, did not sufficiently affirm the
transcendence of God, that they drew God into the historical process
in a pantheistic way, and would thus abrogate God's freedom.
The impulse and the stimuli of the Tübingen theologians were cut
short.5 The victory of NeoScholasticism pushed the dimension of
history in theology into the background again, one could even say
suppressed it, in favor of an understanding of theology as a conceptual
idea of the faith understood as timeless doctrine and truth. Connected
with this was the idea that what was now achieved, known, and
formulated was the authoritative norm. A consideration of history
signified, in this view of things, the foolhardy enterprise of deciding
the clear and the clarified on the basis of the unclear and the not yet
clarified, of wanting to illuminate the brilliant today by the dark
yesterday. Therefore the most important book and the immediate norm
for this kind of theological thinking was the catechism, preferably the
Catechismus Romanus and ''Denzinger": the Enchiridion
Symbolorum, Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et
Morum [Collection of Symbols, Definitions and Declarations on
Matters of Faith and Morals] eds. 16 (1854-1888).6
5 Cf. L. Scheffczyk, Theologie im Aufbruch und Widerstreit. Die deutsche
katholische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Bremen, 1965); B. Welte,
"Zum Strukturwandel der katholischen Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert" in:
Auf der Spur des Ewigen (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1965) 380409.
6 Cf. Y. Congar, Über den rechten Gebrauch des "Denzinger" in: Situation
und Aufgabe der Theologie heute (Paderborn, 1971) 125ß50, (Spanish and
French translations); J. Schumacher, Der "Denzinger," Geschichte und
Bedeutung eines Buches in der Praxis der neueren Theologie
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974).

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But repression is not a good thing, and certainly not a good solution.
For the repressed will one fine day force itself into the light with all
the more intensity.
This process is playing itself out, after the interlude of Modernism,
before all our eyes in the theology of today. The themes of this
thinking are clearly recognizable in Vatican II, both in its constitution
on divine revelation and in the affirmations about the Church as
People of God on its journey and about the Church in the world of
today.
If there is a science of history that makes use of the historical-critical
method in the interpretation of sources, texts, and documents, asks
about the sense of the text, seeks out the grounds and contexts of what
has happened as well as the consequences and effects that result from
the events, and gives much attention both to explaining and to
understanding, this all has great relevance for the possibilities and
conditions of theology as a science of faith. This historical thinking
becomes a decisive, indispensable constitutive element of such a
theology. The history of the faith and of the community of faith of the
Church, as history of dogmas, is absolutely indispensable for
theology, even if it is not at all valued but often perceived by the
present-day Church as disruptive and disturbing the peace.
By reflection on the historical and on history we thus learn not just
what has been and how something has been; we also come to know
through history, and not by any other way, that which is and how it is.
We are thus protected from the opinion that the situation of faith,
theology, and Church that is before us here and now is the bestor
worstof all worlds and times, or that there is no possibility or no form
of realizing faith and Church beyond what is already here. We are
saved from thinking that the way things are will, or must, remain
forever the way they are.
Nothing, therefore, prevents us from applying the methods of
scientific history to the history of faith and the faith community, and
thus, in the name of that science, to present them as science. This is
preferable and in many ways more comfortably possible than with the
form of science that Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas admitted only for
the knowledge of general essence, which was unable to do justice to
all that is meant by history and by revelation as history.

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§ 14
Theology in the Scientific Discussion of the Modern Age
The Objection of Positivism
The possibility of talking about theology as science became
problematic once again when, in the victorious wake of the natural
sciences and mathematics in the modern age, the concept and the
conditions of science were oriented to the model of natural science
and mathematics. The ideal was to measure everything else according
to them, as was actually done, fundamentally and explicitly, by
positivism as theory of science.
Positivism was prepared for by Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and
David Hume, and classically represented by Auguste Comte (1789-
1857).1 In his proposed "Three-Stage Law" he makes positivism the
goal of a development: from (1) theological or fictitious, through (2)
metaphysical-abstract, to (3) scientific-positivistic study. In this last
stage the useless questions and the fruitless problems about the
essence and ground of things are done away with. Positivism asks
about the laws of the world and the course of things. It asks in order to
know and, through knowledge, to gain control over the things
themselves and the world. As for the theme of God, Comte
prophesies: God will disappear without having left behind a question.
What Comte initiated is effective to this day in many variations as the
model for science.
If the only things that can claim to be scientific are those that are
sensibly or technically perceivable, things that can be dealt with
mathematically, things that are predictable, repeatable, and
controllable, then theology has no chance to be a science. But then,
this is the
1Einleitung in die positive Philosophie. Deutsch (Leipzig, 1880);
Soziologie, deutsch von V. Dorn (Jena, 1907). On Comte: Max Scheler,
Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre I (Leipzig, 1923);
Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (ClevelandNew York,
1966); R. O. Johann, "Positivism," SM 5 (1969) 6062.

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fate not just of theology but of most of the fields of the so-called
intellectual disciplines: history, literature, philosophy, law, politics,
art.
It is thus understandable that the attempt was made, above all in the
nineteenth century, to distinguish between natural science and
intellectual science, to work out the methods specific to each, and to
accord to each the quality of science when they seek to give an
account of their methods and to gain knowledge according to the
standards of these methods. The difference between the two kinds of
sciences was characterized by the difference between explainingas the
goal of natural scienceand understanding as the goal of intellectual
science. Explaining means to raise something out of its physical,
chemical, biological causes and laws. Understanding means to be
concerned about the sense of a thing, about the sense of a text, a work
of art, or an event.
This brings us to the problem of hermeneutics, which was thought out
by Schleiermacher and Dilthey in the nineteenth century and remains
a problem to this day even if, as we will point out, under different
circumstances. In this new horizon of science and scientific
procedure, it was possible for theology also to regain its position as
science, above all as historical theology, as theology that appropriates
the historical-critical method for the interpretation of biblical texts and
its historical documents.
Theology and Existential Philosophy
The philosophy of existence, especially as represented by Karl Jaspers
andin a different wayby Martin Heidegger, has become vitally
important for the understanding of both the content and the form of
theology today. This is an obvious development, since the "moment"
of existence is a characteristic of faith. If faith did not have a
foundation in humanity itself, it could not be appropriated in such a
way that human beings could say their personal, existential "I
believe." Certainly this connection has always been known; but
conscious, explicit reflection on it has taken place especially in recent
times. This connection has become a special characteristic of
contemporary theology and its most significant representative, Rudolf
Bultmann (1883-1976).2 The demythologization he demanded and
undertook is only the reverse side of a task understood in an eminently
positive way: to interpret the text and the matter of faith in existen-
2 Major works: Faith and Understanding, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith
(Philadelphia: Fotress Press, 1987); Theology of the New Testament, trans.
Kendrick Grobel (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970); The Gospel
of John; A Commentary, trans. G. R. BeasleyMurray (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1971).
On Bultmann: Walter Schmitthals, An Introduction to the Theology of Rudolf
Bultmann (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publishing House, 1968); Heirich
Fries, "Rudolf Bultmann" in: Klassiker der Theologie II, ed. H. Fries and G.
Kretschmar (Munich, 1983) 297317.

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tially interpretative and existentially relevant ways, i.e., to do theology
as existential theology. Bultmann is of the opinion that the
"existentials" in the philosophy of Heidegger correspond to the
fundamental characteristics of biblical faith, which, in turn, are given
new expression today in the philosophy of existence. Sin is the closing
off and self-alienation of human beings, their inauthenticity; faith is
freedom from ourselves and for ourselves; faith is the overcoming of
the incommunicativity and inauthenticity of human beings, and their
opening to the future.
According to Bultmann, the specific questions of theology arise from
the fact that the path from inauthenticity to authenticity, from
incommunicativity to freedom, is neither the work of human beings
nor the result of philosophy; it is the work of God in Jesus Christ, a
gift of God which can be received only through the kerygma and in
faith.
Bultmann's attempt to mediate theology with existence, as expressed
in the principle that to talk about human beings means to talk about
God, and to talk about God means to talk about human beings, and to
talk about human beings means to talk about existence, was provided
with a rather broad base from the fact that theology as a whole is
connected with anthropology in a theological anthropology and an
anthropological theology. This is the form of the theology of Karl
Rahner.3
Human beings are the starting point of this theological way of
thinking. As questioning and loving beings in the transcendental
openness of their spirit and heart, they are dependent on the absolute,
infinite, incomprehensible mystery of themselves. When Rahner asks
about faith, he is asking first and foremost a fundamental-theological
question about the transcendental conditions of the possibility of this
faith. From this perspective, faith is constituted in such a way that the
"objectively" believed is always at the same time the "subjectively"
expected, i.e., an answer to a question human beings have and, indeed,
themselves are. This is Rahner's way of escaping from "extrinsicism"
within faith and theology, i.e., that position which holds the whole of
what concerns faithas affirmation, as disclosure of reality, as grace
and salvationto be something that comes to human beings from
outside. The gratuity of revelation is preserved, but this is done at the
cost of the external, of what is "laid on us from outside." Without
3 Foundational works: Spirit in the World, trans. William Dych (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1969); Hearers of the Word, trans. Michael
Richards (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969); Theological
Investigations, 24 vols; Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to
the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad,
1994).
On Rahner for this particular theme: P. Eicher, Die anthropologische Wende.
Karl Rahners philosophischer Weg vom Wesen des Menschen zur personalen
Existenz (Friborg/Switzerland, 1970); K. Fischer, Der Mensch als Geheimnis.
Die Anthropologie Karl Rahners (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974); Heinrich
Fries, "Theologie als Anthropologie" in: K. RahnerH. Fries, Theologie in
Freiheit und Verantwortung (Munich, 1981) 3069.

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the least bit doubting or undercutting this gratuity, Rahner's intention,
in view of the whole of what is meant by salvation and grace, in view
of the individual contents of faith, is to find a way of expressing what
these contents have to do with human beings, with their experience,
with their life, with their expectations and hopes, and of expressing
how, on the other hand, human beings know that they are not alienated
by revelation but are brought back home to themselves.
Rahner's formulation is: Christian reality is the conscious taking
possession of the mystery of being human. He does not, of course,
make historical revelation derive a priori from human beings. It is
positively and personally bestowed; as much as human beings as
"Hearers of the Word" expect a possible special revelation in the
realm of history and under the sign of the word, so much do human
beings possess a transcendental openness towards the human mode of
the self-communication of God to spirit-gifted creatures. Thus Rahner
conceives the hypostatic union as "a truly unique realization, which
takes place nowhere else and is the work of God, of that which being
human really says." Beginning in this way, from existence and
anthropology, the business of theology is in no way manipulated,
narrowed, or determined from the outset. It is only explained that the
business of faith is related to human beings and to their existence, that
an existence analysis and a comprehensive anthropology can also
make this clear of itself. In human beings and in human existence we
find sketched out the conditions and the presuppositions of the
possibility of faith and revelation. This is true above all in view of an
interpretative horizon in which the human being as a whole is
sketched.4
The Problem of Hermeneutics
In the horizon of existential theology, the already previously acute
problem of hermeneutics took on new life.5 In the hermeneutical
principle of Bultmann, who placed his theological work under the sign
of faith and understanding, it found a particularly impressive form of
presentation.
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), who most persistently represented the
methodical distinction between the natural and the intellectual
sciences, dealt extensively with the question of hermeneutics, and
with
4 His Foudnations of Faith offers the comprehensive presentation of this
program.
5 J. Wach, Das Verstehen (Tübingen, 19281933); V. A. Harvey,
"Hermeneutics," ER 6 (1987) 27987; E. Betti, Die Hermeneutik als
allgemeine Methode der Geisteswissenschaften (Tübingen, 1962): H. G.
Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall
(New York: Crossroad, 1989); R. Marlé. Introduction to Hermeneutics
(London, 1968); K. Lehmann, "Hermeneutics," SM 3 (1969) 2327; "Der
hermeneutische Horizont der historischkritischen Exegese" in: Gegenwart
des Glaubens (Mainz, 1970) 5493; E. Biser, Glaubensverständnis. Grundriß
einer hermeneutischen Fundamentaltheologie (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1975).

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understanding as distinct from explaining. Dilthey sees the possibility
of understanding in the identity of life and experience. This identity is
possible between one's own living and experiencing in the respective
present and the expression of living and experiencing in the past,
whereby the expression encompasses both word and wordless event.
Living and experiencing are the connecting powers and elements of
past and presentunderstanding becomes possible through them.
At the beginning of hermeneutical reflection stands the
muchdiscussed, unavoidable hermeneutical circle. Understanding is
not possible without the subjective elements which belong to the
process of understanding i.e., without a preunderstanding. Thus
knowing is, basically, a knowing of the already known. It is not
possible to break out of this circle, out of this context; one can only
see it and, so to speak, come into it.
Understanding is not blocked by this process; it is also not identified
with the preunderstanding. Rather, understanding is disclosed when it
is said how the process comes about. The preunderstanding can and
should be modified or corrected by the process of understanding.
When this is the case, the image of the circle is, strictly speaking, not
accurate.
For Bultmann,6 understanding means understanding oneself. Every
text to be understood is to be asked the question, what understanding
of existence is expressed in it. Understanding thus does not mean
determining what is at hand, but figuring out what a text, a thing, an
event or a person means for the understanding and realization of
existence. To understand means to ask what understanding of
existence, respectively, is presupposed. From that grows the
possibility of an existential interpretation of faith, its actualization as
well as its contents. Contents are not registered, but movements of
existence are encountered and led from inauthenticity to authenticity.
As Bultmann explains, one cannot tell people what death and life are
in same way one can explain to them that there are flesh-eating plants.
Unknown things are not made known in the text, but possibilities of
myself are disclosed which I can understand only if I am open for my
possibilities.7 Potentially this principle, is for all practical purposes,
indefinitely applicable. The only questions are whether the
presupposition, to understand means to understand oneself, is really
true in this universal sense, and whether every text is intended to
express just such an understanding.
6 Cf. H. Fries, BultmannBarth and Catholic Theology, trans. Leonard
Swidler (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1967); M. Boutin,
Relationalität als Verstehensprinzip bei Rudolf Bultmann (Munich, 1974).
7 Rudolf Bultmann, Glauben und Verstehen 3.5, ET: Faith and
Understanding, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press)
only first volume translated into English.

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This leads to another consideration: If understanding means simply
and exclusively to understand oneself, doesn't this lead to a narrowing
of understanding? For everything that cannot be covered by this
hermeneutical principle remains separated from the understanding. As
much as world, reality, and history are related to existence, the content
of all reality cannot be reduced to the understanding of existence that
lies therein. Being is greater than the self. Understanding of being is
not identical with understanding of self which, in the theology of
Bultmann, is conceived in a predominantly individualistic way. In
Bultmann's hermeneutical principle lies the danger that the new and
unexpected, the paradoxical and the strange will be removed from
understanding at the outset.
Let it be pointed out in this context that many representatives of
intellectual science and philosophy have expressed themselves on the
problem of hermeneutics. In some cases it was theological questioning
that gave the push; in others, the reflections of the intellectual sciences
worked back on theology.
Martin Heidegger8 characterizes understanding as ability-to-be, and
sees therein a "being character [Seinscharakter]" of human life. This
brings out that existence as human life cannot mean a "freestanding
self-possession of existence"; it is experienced much more as limited
existence, as being and time, as being determined by history and
historicity.
Hans Georg Gadamer brought this reflection somewhat further. He
relates understanding to an event of tradition in which individuals live
and stand, which is given to them ahead of time, to which they
concede a certain advance measure of reliability, and which they must
bring to conscious recognition before they apply themselves to the
individual content of understanding and knowledge. They understand
this content, if they know the question, to which an answer was given
in the form of an historical affirmation. They gain thereby a
preunderstanding, even a kind of "life relationship" to the thing. The
preunderstanding, also the "prejudgment," is seen positively and also
given temporary recognition. At the same time it is subjected to a
broader process of the understanding of critical clarification. If a new
experience comes into this process which cannot be arranged under
the familiar, expected tendencies, this experience overthrows the
former prejudgment, takes up the unfamiliar one, and with it expands
and enriches the sphere of its own experience of the world. This
brings about what Gadamer calls a "melting of horizon." The medium
of such a hermeneutic as fundamental movement of human, historical,
finite existence is the language in which the tradition and its
conditions are preserved.
8 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962).

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All this makes it clear that Bultmann's hermeneutical principle is
significantly modified and freed from the narrowness of which we
have spoken.
Political Theology
The existential-existentiell, the anthropologically oriented theology of
the present, has been expanded by a further dimension, by the
dimension of the public and the societal. From this arose what is today
called political theology.9 Its purpose was to respond to the yawning
gap between faith and society, which is currently becoming more and
more obvious.
Political theologynot a good concept, because of its historical burdenis
applied critically against tendencies of "privatization" and "isolation,"
against a free-swinging subjectivity such as is found in many
representatives of existential theology, in which Christian faith seems
to be reduced to existential decision. It is likewise applied against that
desecularizing (R. Bultmann) in which there is a lack of responsibility
for the world and the shaping of its future.10 This political theology is
concerned not just with "understanding" and an activity derived from
it, but withto take up a word from Karl Marxchange, with a theory
that comes from praxis and is mediated by it. The problem of this
theology is thus not one of faith and reason but one of faith and
praxis, faith and action. In all, this theology tries to do justice to the
public dimension as well as to the social-critical function of faith and
Church.
This theology affirms that the fundamental biblical categories cannot
have meaning only in the framework of a relationship between God
and the individual human being, i.e., between God and the soul. These
categories also have a social and political level; they are originally
connected with an event and a history of liberation: the Exodus of the
people of Israel from servitude in Egypt.
Accordingly, the biblical message of redemption, freedom and
liberation must today be brought into the context of the liberation
movements that are also concerned with change from enslaving
circumstances and oppressive conditions. Thus deeds and works,
which bring about a better world of justice and freedom, anticipate
what is meant by the phrase "kingdom of God."
9 Johannes Baptis Metz, Theology of the World, trans. William
GlenDoepel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969); "Political Theology,"
SM 5 (1970) 3438; Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical
Fundamental Theology, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury Press,
1980); The Emergent Church: The Future of Christianity in a
Postbourgeois World, trans. Peter Mann (New York: Crossroad, 1981).
10 B. Dieckmann, "Welt" und "Entweltlichung" in der Theologie Rudolf
Bultmanns (MunichPaderbornVienna).

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Of course, a political theology as theology of liberation can fall into
the temptation of legitimizing all practical measures that stand under
the sign of political liberation and of perhaps even violent revolution.
Theology can be put to work for concrete and powerful interests, and
thus degenerate into ideology. There is not just an ideology of the way
things are but also an ideology of change.
This danger cannot be eliminated. Yet that does not eliminate the just
concerns of political theology and the theology of liberation. Its goals
are legitimized by the Christian faith. Necessary differentiations come
up with the question of ways and means to the goal. In the question of
force or violence, there is the danger that the cycle of evil will not be
broken.
In any case, however, one thing is clear, and it has practical
consequences. If its message and promise is to be heard and accepted
today in the Third World, the community of faith must set itself on the
side of the poor and the oppressed. But to side with the oppressed
means to be against the oppressor.
In the foreword of the book by Gustavo Gutierrez Theology of
Liberation, Johann Baptist Metz writes a sentence which also comes
up again in the Confession of Faith of the Synod of Bishops of the
Federal Republic of Germany: "The Church will more easily survive
its intellectual doubters than the speechless doubt and desperation of
its people, than [its] disdain of the little ones who were for Jesus the
privileged ones and who must also be the privileged ones for his
Church."11
An important element of this theology is its future aspect and,
connected with that, hope as the all-encompassing form of faith.12 For
this reason, it is only the future that, along with the past and present,
provides access to the authentic message of Jesus about the coming,
not yet fulfilled, Kingdom of God. This is what prevents faith and
theology from becoming theories of legitimation for the way things
are. The "eschatological proviso" offers an antidote against the
temptation of taking an inner-worldly theory or an inner-historical
social situation as fulfillment of the promise of faith, against the
possibility that, under the sign of the "left," a new integralism, a new
"Age of Constantine"under different premisesmight begin.
There are some questions that need to be asked of this conception of
theology:
Can the social-political, if it is turned into the authoritative criterion
for the theological, become, like the existential, a narrowing
11 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and
Salvation, trans. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, N. Y.:
Orbis Books 1988).
12 Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of
a Christian Eschatology (New York: Harper & Row, 1967); W. D. Marsch
ed., Diskussion über die Theologie der Hoffnung (Munich, 1967).

Page 153
element for faith and theology? Isn't there the danger that theological
expectations of salvation may turn into political realities? In political
theology do not faith and the community of faith take their mission
and orientations primarily from outside and from external realities
instead of from their own specific motivations and directions? Under
the intentions of political theology does not the community of faith
turn into a rival power among other political movements? Does it not
lose its independence in this way? Does it not, conversely, endanger
the autonomy of the political and social realms? Is the criticism
entirely unjustified that, in place of a rejected ecclesia triumphans
[triumphant church] a ''critically triumphing church" (H. Maier)13 will
be set up as a social-critical instance? If so, the question remains: To
what will it be oriented in general and in particular? And will it be
possible for criticism to have a continuing status, to be, so to speak,
established or institutionalized? Finally, one must ask: are hope and
future, central affirmations of political theology, meant in the same
sense as in the New Testament? Is not the content of hope and future
also what is popularly rejected today as privatization and reduction to
the intimate: the overcoming of death through resurrection life,
through eternal life, the overcoming of anxiety and desperation, the
hope of glory, of communion with God, which is to be granted also
and specifically to me personally, because the work of Christ was
done for me. The "deprivatization" of the New Testament message, it
has been said, is just as important as its "demythologization." But if
that is supposed to mean a neglect and a curtailment of person and
individuality in favor of some kind of conception of the "general,"
then an objection must be raised. For the fact is that subjectivity is for
the benefit of all human beings. That is, to be sure, also considered as
the goal of political theology itself.
With regard to the person, there is nothing to be superseded. Instead
everything must be done to win the person over. The changing of
structures and conditions has no right in itself but only in view of the
person to whose condition they belong. Individuals are not to be torn
apart but instead be enabled to realize themselves in the business of
changes and functions. Future and hope can be what they promise
only when they assure hope and future to the individualalso and
specifically to those who, humanly speaking, have no hope: the
incurably sick, the condemned, those abandoned by everybody. What
help is it to these people simply to hope that it might go better with
their grandchildren? If for these people there is no hope and no future,
then one should not say anything about either.14
13 H. Maier, "Politische Theologie? Einwände eines Laien" in: P. Peukert,
Diskussion zur "politischen Theologie" 126.

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Furthermore, could not the dimension of the future connected with
political theology also be a temptation to flee from the immediate
present and begin a forward retreat? Couldn't this be the cause of a
failure or refusal to attend to the present, just like the much-maligned
looking back into the past?
The representatives of political theology have clearly recognized the
justice of these questions and have taken account of them in their
"discussion" of political theology. This is what Johann Baptist Metz is
doing with his concept of the "eschatological proviso," with his
memoria thesis, with his dangerously liberating memory of the death
and resurrection of Jesus from the dead, with his narrative theology.
Jürgen Moltmann is doing the same with his impressive highlighting
of the theologia crucis.15
14 J. Pieper, On Hope, trans. Mary Francis McCarthy (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1986); Hope and History, trans. Richard and Clara Winston
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1969).
15 J. Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation
and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974).

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§ 15
Theology and Theory of Knowledge
The most recent source of challenging questioning for theology is the
modern theory of knowledge (Wissenschaftstheorie) and its
representatives.1
Theses of the Theory of Knowledge
The theory of knowledge deals with the scientific aspect of the
individual scholarly disciplines. Karl Popper, one of the most
influential representatives of the theory of knowledge, formulates the
problem as follows: How can general assertions and rules, in the way
they are established by the sciences the experiential and natural
sciences, and the legal sciences, be proven as true? The very question
implies that science has to do with the knowledge of generally valid
propositions and laws and that the so-called positive sciences
constitute the model of the sciences. It follows from this that the
problem of verification, the proving of propositions and laws,
becomes the central theme of the theory of knowledge.
In contrast to positivism, which explains that the verification of a
general assertion or rule takes place by induction, i.e., through the
greatest possible number of individual observations, of individual
cases, or through the most frequent possible repetitions in
experiments, Popper explains that it is not possible in this way to
arrive at the establishment of general rules that are valid always and
everywhere.
1 H. Albert, Treatise on Critical Research (Princeton, 1985); Theologische
Holzwege. G. Ebeling und der rechte Gebrauch der Vernunft (Tübingen,
1973); Gerhard Ebeling, Kritischer Rationalismus? Zu Hans Alberts
Traktat über kritische Vernunft (Tübingen, 1973); Wolfhart Pannenberg,
Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. Francis McDonagh
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976); Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific
Discovery (New York: Harper & Row, 1968); H. Peukert, Science, Action
and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of Communicative Action,
trans. James Bohman (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984); L.
Scheffczyk, Die Theologie und die Wissenschaften (Aschaffenburg, 1979);
G. Werbick, Glaube im Kontext. Prolegomena und Skizzen zu einer
elementaren Theologie (ZürichEinsiedelnCologne, 1983).

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For the number of observations is always limited, but the rules are
supposed to have universal validity. Between the limitation of the
number of observations and the universality of general rules or
formulations of law is an uncloseable gap, and it should not be
excluded that new experiences and observations might change the
assertions and rules.
From this it follows: All scientific theses are not irreversible
certainties but conjectures, hypotheses that must be verifiable. But this
is not achieved through the number of observations and experiences,
because these are always limited and do not exclude surprises, and
because they cannot be checked out against all possible applications.
Howeverthis is the other half of the methodthe assertions are
falsifiable. This means they can no longer be held as general
propositions if there is even so much as one case that contradicts the
accepted rule. An assertion then no longer has the strict universality of
a law, but represents at best an approximation to the factual state of
affairs and condition of things. The thesis "All lambs are white" is
falsified, and thus refuted, by one single black sheep.
It is thus proper and necessary to expose theories to failure and
thereby test the quality of their affirmation. The "critical rationalism"
of Popper wants to approach the truth by exposing bold theses to
severe opposition. In that way he learns most from mistakes.
Popper's philosophy is a decisive rejection of all ideologies and all
forms of thinking oriented towards totality. He is thus in contradiction
to all systems pretending to a comprehensive universality. This is as
true for the system of Hegel as for Marxism, which in response to the
cases that can falsify their system are willing to say: so much the
worse for the facts. "The attempt," says Popper, "to set up heaven on
earth always produces hell." The great philosophers were not
architects of subtle systems, they were above all seekers of the truth;
they sought for real solutions to genuine problems.
The progress of thought consists accordingly not in the gathering of
propositions that are supposedly true but are ultimately proven false.
Rather, progress takes place through trial and error. Therefore, we
must search for a system that puts the lowest possible trust in error,
abuse, and force.
It can legitimately be said of this system of verification, as Popper
explains it, that if an assertion survives the attempt of its falsification,
it can continue to be considered as confirmed. This holds all the more
when predictions that are found to be accurate can be derived from it.

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Encounter with Theology
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Leo Scheffczyk, and Helmut Peukert, in their
monographs on the theory of knowledge and theology, have
represented the conviction that theology cannot and may not evade the
questionings and challenges of the theory of knowledge simply by
arguing that theology is concerned with a completely different
experience and reality than what is discussed in the theory of
knowledge, by arguing that the concept of verifiability through
control, through verification and falsification, is not applicable in the
field of theology. Revelation as theme of theology, as the traditional
view sees it, is a situation not affected either by the judgment of
historical questions of fact or by philosophical questions of truth; for
revelation is not history but salvation history. For faith and the
theology that serves it, what is characteristic is the "nevertheless," the
"in spite of" all appearances, the ''despite" present countervailing
experiences. Faith would lose its characteristic as venture and decision
if it were to operate on the levels of argumentation and control of the
theory of knowledge, quite apart from the fact that the concept of truth
in theology and the theory of science are different. It follows from
this, according to the representatives of this view, that theology is a
special science with special methods and criteria, and that it must
develop a strategy of immunization, so to speak, in order not to be
infected by the pull of the theory of knowledge and thereby become
confused and uncertain of itself.
Wolfhart Pannenberg finds this position especially in a number of
representatives of evangelical [German Lutheran] theology, in the
early Karl Barth, and in Hermann Diem in his work Theologie als
kirchliche Wissenschaft [Theology as Ecclesiastical Science] (1951-
1963). The position is unacceptable to Pannenberg. His reason:
because theology is thus isolated from the other sciences and thereby
turns out to be without communication and incapable of dialogue;
because theology thereby puts itself into a situation that discredits it in
the face of contemporary thought. Pannenberg rightly asks how faith,
in such a position, can be mediated to the problems of our time, i.e., to
the human beings who live in this intellectual/spiritual world and
atmosphere. Connected with this is the question how such a position
can be reconciled with the universality of Christian faith, with its
claim to be word and answer [Wort und Antwort] for all times and
cultures.
Pannenberg asks us to consider the following: The fact that theology
as science of faith can prescind neither from the faith whether
considered subjectively or objectively, nor from the community of
faithin other words, the fact that theology has its own specific
presuppositionssays nothing against theology as a possible science.
For every science has its presuppositions, also and particularly those

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sciences which deny having them. But theology lays its cards on the
table, so to speak. For it is in the presuppositions of faith and in
revelation, that we encounter material which is about how it does its
work in its specific way: historical-critically, hermeneutically, and
systematically.
When the subjectivity of the faith of the theologian and its
intermingling with a community of faith and of believers is singled
out and introduced as an objection against theology as a possible
science, this question can be answered with the distinction (customary
in the theory of knowledge) between the disclosing function and the
proving function. The subjectivity of faith and the reality of the faith
community take over the function of the disclosing of the matter. But
disclosing is still not proving. The proving does not come from the
disclosing; but its intent is to make what comes from disclosure into a
scientific task, analogous to the other methods of historical-critical
understanding and of seeking out proofs and contexts of proof.
The second thing to be taken over from the theory of knowledge for
theology is the getting involved in the realm and the matter of reality
and experience. Theology must try to mediate its "thing"the thing of
faith, which is the thing of Godin the context of reality and
experience. This is possible if we understand by "reality" and
"experience'' not only this or that isolated, really existing thing but
everything that is, as well as the connection of the individual with the
whole. This presumes, above all, that the sphere of human experience
is drawn into consideration. Then theology, as talk about God, would
mean the following: In all experience, in all possible objects, in reality
as a whole is manifestednot in a direct but indeed in an indirect way-
the reality of God, who is to be called the all-determining reality. This
affirmation about God is confirmed, grounded and verified, by the fact
that it exposes itself to the test, that this reality as a whole turns out to
be determined by this all-determining reality called God. In other
words, that reality as a whole remains incomprehensible and cannot
be comprehensively described without God as the ground of all
reality.
According to Pannenberg, the reality of God is indirectly experienced
with the thematic of sense [Sinnthematik], which accompanies all
individual experience and which, for its part, is always related to the
whole, to a totality of sense [Sinntotalität], to an overarching context
of meaning without which there is no experience or knowledge of
individual realities.
This totality of sense is not simply given in human, historical, finite
reality; it is rather encountered in the anticipation of the whole. This
happens everywhere where the human being as free historical subject
transcends the mere present existenceand precisely this belongs to the
reality and the experience of the human being. Thus the

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freedom of the human being is no objection against the all-
determining reality called God, but is a strong indication of it.
The conclusion from all this is that the affirmations of theology in the
context of the conditions of the theory of knowledge do not appear in
the form of thesis but in the mode of hypothesis. This does not mean
the abolition of theology in favor of any old thing, but its coordination
with the criteria of the theory of knowledge.
Theology, properly understood, has nothing to fear from this
coordination. It can, in other words, pass the test of verification and
falsification; it can stand up to the test question which asks whether
the affirmations of theology can be falsified by any contrary fact, by
any instance, by any event. To be able to submit to and pass this test
belongs to the affirmations, claims and promises of faith whose
reflection is theology. "The traditional assertions of a religion can thus
be considered as hypotheses which, in the context of presently
accessible experience, are to be tested to see how far, when starting
from the traditional assertions of a particular religion, the pluriformity
of contemporary experience can be integrated."2
As a result of these reflections on the question of the possibility of
theology as science, Pannenberg finds that theology as a science of
God is possible only indirectly: in view of reality as a whole. This is
not the finished condition of a cosmos, but is found in a still-
unfinished process and is as a whole accessible only in the
subjectivity of human experience, i.e., as anticipated totality of sense
[Sinntotalität]. This, as a making known of divine reality, comes about
explicitly in religious experience; and the religious experience of the
individual in one way or another always already stands in the context
of the historical religions. Theology as science of God is thus possible
only as science of religion, but not as science of religion as such, but
of the historical religions. Christian theology would then be the
science of the Christian religion. This would then have to be tested in
competition with other religions. Theological affirmations "are proven
true when they disclose the contextual sense [Sinnzusammenhang] of
all reality in a more differentiated and convincing way than others."3
There are a lot of problems with this conception. There are problems,
for example, with respect to the characterization of the Christian
reality as Christian religion, or with the combining of elements which,
among other representatives of evangelical theology from the early
Barth to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were strictly separated, namely
Christian revelation or Christian faith, and religion. On the other hand
is the problem whether, in this context, what is distinctively and
specifically Christian can be adequately discussed at all.
2 W. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science 315.
3 Ibid. 347.

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This proposal, perhaps shocking to some, to present theological
affirmations as hypotheses can be brought into the proper light when
one sees that it is not about a hypothetically understood faith but about
theology as scientific reflection on faith within the method of the
modern theory of science. Put this way, the mention of hypothesis
loses the character of the theologically scandalous. It becomes rather
an indication of what is to be done in theology and what theology can
do. "God verifies [Him]self in that God verifies us, in that God brings
our life to truth."4
Theologians can understand each of their theological propositions as
provisional and subject to future confirmation and thus kept open to
dialogue and correction. However, they cannot treat the proclamation
of God in Jesus Christ as a provisional thesis which eventually could
be dropped, for with that proclamation is given not just the final
criterion to which theological propositions with regard to their
factuality must answer, but also the basis of the dialogue in which
they perform their mutual correction.5
4 G. Ebeling, Gott und Wort (Tübingen, 1966) 83.
5 W. Joest, Fundamentaltheologie (Stuttgart, 1974) 253.

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§ 16
Theologia Crucifixi [Theology of the Crucified]
Description
Eberhard Jüngel, in his impressive work Gott als Geheimnis der Welt.
Zur Begrundung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen
Theismus und Atheismus [God as Mystery of the World. Foundations
of a Theology of the Crucified in the Controversy Between Theism
and Atheism],1 presents a theological vision characterized by basic
reformational concerns. He describes his intention as follows: "My
purpose is to think about what we believe, and to that extent our task
remains the solution of the question of whether or not God is
thinkableor there is danger of superstition" (144). Through the crisis
of modern times, God, on the basis of the certainty of faith, is to be
made thinkable again.
Jüngel describes the goal of his work even more concretely and in
doing so he programmatically points out the way: "From the
experience of the humanity of God to illuminate the possibility of talk
about God, and on the basis of clear talk about God to learn again to
think about God" (IX). Jüngel thus starts from the specifically
Christian experience of faith: from the manifest humanity of God in
Jesus Christ, which has found its utmost realization in the crucified
Christ. Thus theology is theologia crucistheology of the Crucified:
"God identifies Himself with the crucified human, Jesus" (XII). From
this it follows: "The Crucified is the criterion for a possible concept of
God" (248). This thinkability of God and talk about God anchored in
Christology and developed from it stands in total contradiction to the
idea of God as the absolute, highest being, ''supra nos [above us]," to
the idea of God as actus purus [pure act], as reality without
possibility, the way it had been thought out in metaphysics since the
time of the Greeks and was
1 (Tübingen, 1977). The following quotations are taken from this book.
Cf. my review in: HerKorr 31 (1977) 52329.

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effectively present in history up to the theism and atheism of the
modern age. The destruction of such a God which runs under the
motto of "God is dead" does not, therefore, affect the God of Christian
theology; it is rather an opportunity for Christian theology. It opens up
room for the truth of the death of God, which is something that needs
to be theologically affirmed. As a consequence of these ideas, Jüngel
can set up his task of working out the "fragments of truth" found in
atheism, and can speak about a possibility, or a hope, or a future, since
''atheism has recognized faith in the crucified God as its twin brother"
(135).
According to Jüngel, this is confirmed by the manifest and profound
theological emptiness and confusion of the modern age. This comes
from the tension between a Christian theology grounded in the
crucified Jesus of Nazareth and an idea, firmly held in a long
tradition: the belief that one could think [of] God in God's divinity
without having thought [of] him as crucified.
However, that concept of God"theism"oriented to the axiom of
absoluteness was called into question in the modern age and led, when
it was discovered to be unnecessary, to the rejection and denial of God
as was expressed in the language of the "death of God." But that in no
way applied to the Christian idea of God; quite the contrary. What
resulted was the challenge and the possibility of taking up anew and in
a full and proper way the idea of the death of God as an affirmation of
Christian faith. Theology is thus called into question not so much by
the proclamation of the death of God as by the deliberate ignoring of
the problem contained in this proclamation. For what we really have
to fear is that theology is rushing to destruction not on the bastions of
unbelief but rather on its own sleepiness (57).
In his development of this thematic, Jüngel takes up Bonhoeffer's
assessment of Hegel's interpretation of the proposition: "God is dead."
He does this under the heading: "Hegel's Mediation of Contemporary
Atheistic Sensitivity with the Christological Truth of the Death of
God" (83). Hegel's intention is to give this theological proposition a
philosophical interpretation in the framework of his Will for
Reconciliation. "What faith in the crucified meant in the positive
Christian religion" was not to be "left to faith alone but thought
through by reason" (100). This is possible if it is recognized
thataccording to HegelGod is the depth of God's own self-conscious
Spirit and that the Spirit, if it wishes to come to its own depth and thus
to itself, must rise up out of itself and go into that which it is not, the
foreign, and appropriate it.
In this way the incarnation of God becomes philosophically
understandable, speculatively thinkable, even necessary. To
incarnation belongs dying. And precisely that is what God got
involved in with the Incarnation and dying of Jesus. The dying of
Jesus is, consequently, not

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the dying of the human Jesus. "It is not the human which dies, but the
divine which, precisely by that becomes human" (102). "Only in that
way does one get to the reconciliation of the infinite with the finite,
that the infinite experiences in itself the whole severity of the fate of
the finite" (103). But in death God abides as the death of death:
"Because God is, death negates itself" (122).
Hegel's words about [a] speculative Good Friday intends exactly the
opposite of an antitheological understanding of these words as a
farewell to God. It is instead an effort to preserve the orthodox
fundamental truth of the Christian, to think anew the truths forgotten
by theology. Hence Jüngel sees in Hegel's philosophy "an historical-
theological high point of the first order" (123). This does not prevent
him from noting that in this theory the concrete difference between
God and the human being, and above all the freedom of God, is
threatened.
Flowing from this principle is that constantly echoing basic
theological decision: The idea of God comes from the Christian faith;
it is not its presupposition. "The contrary position is to be opposed"
(207). Without the opening to God's self opened up by Godin Jesus
the crucifiedno thinking can ever find access to God (202). "Reason is
reasonable when it grasps that God can be thought [about] as God
only when thought as self-revealing God" (211). From this position
Jüngel develops the possibility of presenting God as speaking, which
in turn implies that the one thinking [of] God is already included in
being the one spoken to by God, "that God is concerned with human
beings." Jüngel thus connects with that play on words which is to be
more than a play on words: "that God [Him]self goes ways [daß Gott
selber Wege geht],'' that God's being is in his coming (213).
With the description of this faith-appropriating certainty, a dimension
is opened that lets God become thinkable in a new way. Christian faith
thinks God and ephemerality together. According to Jüngel, this
brings up the question to theology whether "it is ready to destroy its
understanding of the divine being supra nos in order to conceive God
as [He] reveals Godself in identity with the human Jesus" (252). For
"one cannot conceive God and ephemerality together without giving
up the metaphysically conceived idea of God. Ephemerality destroys
that idea" (276). However, against the God of the philosophers stands
not the abandonment of the conceivability of God but the newly
worked out idea that corresponds to the being of God (269).
This being of God is to be thought of as love. The proposition "God is
love" is so to be thought that God's truth remains narratable. However,
the proposition "God is love," because love necessarily includes the
over-against of lover and loved, necessarily leads to the
"selfdistinction of God from God" and thus to the affirmation of the
triune God whose vestigium [trace, footstep]this closes the circle"can
be

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only the being of the human being with whom God has identified"
(430).
Assessment
In assessment of the impressive work of this Tübingen theologian we
can say: Jüngel begins with what is concrete and specific in the
Christian experience of faith. It is the path which, beginning from the
Christological center, seeks to unfold the universal center of the
concept of God presented here. This is a necessary, indispensable task
of theology, a highly valued service to believers and to the community
of believers who need not only to believe but to think/conceive what
they believe.
In contrast to this, the other task, also a necessary one for theology at
this time. How do I get from without to within? What are, within
human beings or the world, the presuppositions and conditions of the
possibility of such a faith? Where is the believability of this faith
which is so much sought after these days? How is this faith to be
verified? Jüngel expressly says that the verification of the theological
claim cannot be the task of scientific theology (391).
So the question is: Doesn't theology thus run into the danger of
becoming a theology of claims and assertions? Jüngel explains: God is
not necessary for the world [weltlich]; the human being can be human
without God. Against this stand not only clouds of witnesses in
contemporary philosophy and theologyand basically the whole
tendency to understand theology as anthropology and anthropology as
theologybut above all the statements in the Old and New Testament
about the world as creation and the human being as image and
likeness of God. Even contemporary thought has retained traces of
this. God belongs in the definition of the world and of the human
being.
Although there are similarities between the metaphysical concept of
an absolute God and the first article of the Creed about God the
Father, the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, it remains quite
doubtful that the elimination of a much-maligned theism of an
absolute, almighty "God over us" could, in alliance with atheism,
discover anew the mystery of God as love. Presumably, there is a
description here. What interest should atheism have in the continued
proclamation of God, even in the form of the crucified? Furthermore,
contemporary atheism has no particular interest in the metaphysical
concept of God as such, but only in the form of the Christian religion.
Thus, Christian theology is making things too simple for itself when it
declares it isn't affected by atheism because its concern is not with

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theism but with something totally different, with the Christian
experience of God.2
Jüngel denies that the idea of God is the general anthropological
presupposition of Christian faith which, "to be sure is no longer
present but which, precisely for that reason, must be won back" (207).
According to Jüngel, belief in God follows exclusively from belief in
Jesus, in whom God has "become definitively accessible." No one can
contest this; but does it follow from this that the idea of God cannot be
the presupposition of Christian faith; does it mean a denial of the
definitive aspect of the self-revelation of God in Jesus? By no means.
But the question must be asked: How do human beings come to
recognize a manifestation of God in the person and event of Jesus of
Nazareth if they have no preunderstanding of what is meant by God?
This preunderstanding and understanding is found by no means only
in the metaphysical concept of God, or theism, but above all in that
anthropological and social reality which is meant by religion, in which
the original dependence of human beings on God comes to expression
in manifoldeven manifold brokenways.
Put in the form of a concrete question: How does the Roman centurion
come to confess: "This man was the Son of God" (Mark 15:39)? If
Jüngel in support of his thesis brings up the text of 1 Cor 1:18 about
the cross as scandal and folly, one needs to point out that different
statements are also found in the same New Testament, e.g., the
missionary sermons in the Acts of the Apostles in chapters 14, 16 and
17: "What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you"
(Acts 17:23). The popular reference to the failure, to the "miscarried
sermon" in the Areopagus, is no argument, because "success" is not a
theological category. The same theology which is quite familiar with
Christian discernment and the inner contradictions of Christianity, but
which, as we now put it, does not disregard the context, is found in a
plethora of Christian sources. It is found in the Prologue of John, in
the Captivity Letters, in the doctrine of the logos spermatikos and of
the anima naturaliter Christiana [naturally Christian soul], and in the
theology of the Church Fathers, especially the Alexandrians. This
theology is characteristically found in all the most convincing
representatives of a Christian mission. The message of the cross stood
not at the beginning but at the goal of their preaching.
The preunderstanding of God labeled as presupposition certainly can
and should be modified and transformed in a conversion of thought,
and this should be done through faith in the God who identifies
Himself with the human Jesus. But it is also not clear today how,
2 Cf. W. Pannenberg's reatment of "The Question of God" in: Grundfragen
systematischer Theologie (Göttingen, 1967) 36186; also: "Types of
Atheism and their Theological Significance, ibid. 34760.

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without such a presupposition which must be explicitly madee.g., in
dialogue with anthropologyChristian faith is to be mediated in our
time. Even if in faith in Jesus the Christ, even if in dealing with the
gospel it should occur to someone who and what God is, this
movement doesn't even get started without [a] presupposition.
One can also point out that the answer given in Jesus the Christ
presupposes a question. Humanityhuman beings themselves and the
mystery present in themis this question. This does not make God
dependent on questioning human beings. For, from the question alone
comes only the "that" of a possible answer; but its content is in no
way determined. That is why attention to the presuppositions of the
Christian faith is one of the central tasks of theology today. It seems to
me that it is not by chance that there is an interest in fundamental
theology within evangelical [Lutheran] theology today. Consequently,
the call of Jüngel to get beyond theism is a dubious thesis. A
grounding of the "Theology of the Crucified in the Struggle between
Theism and Atheism" names two partners, theism and atheism, which
are in no way to be considered equal or judged to be theologically
equal.

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§ 17
Theology and Theologies
The starting points for this theme and the questions connected with it
have already been given. In what follows they will now be given
special attention.1 We begin with an historical recollection.
Theology in the Singular
Until about twenty-five years ago, it was common, both within the
field of Catholic theology and also outside of it, to think of theology
not in the plural but in the singular. The model was: Theology is the
explicit and methodically thought out reflection on faith, more
specifically, the Christian faith. Theological reflection involves
disclosure, understanding, grounding, coherence, accountability.
Theology is to this day intellectus fidei: in other words faith which
seeks understanding.
Take for example the theology of the Christian faith in its Catholic
manifestation. For a long time it was the glory and characteristic of
this faith to be faith in the form of the one faith, as relationship to the
one God and to the one and only Christ in the realm of the one
Church. It seemed quite appropriate to this concept of unity,
apparently even required by it, that its theology as science of faith
should also have the form of unity. It was thought, in addition, that the
highest form of unity is uniformity. Thus developed the idea of a
theology in the singular, in which unity and uniformity were its
typically ideal characteristics.
In the last century, as we have already seen, this was thought to be
possible in Scholasticism, especially that of Thomas Aquinas, the
universal teacher of the church. His concept of theology was
recommended to Catholic theology as a universally binding
orientation in the form of NeoScholasticism. In its framework,
theology appeared as a closed
1 Cf. Karl Rahner, "Pluralism in Theology and the Unity of the Creed in
the Church," Theological Investigations 2 (1974) 323; Bernard Lonergan,
Theologie im Pluralismus heutiger Kulturen (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1975).

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system which, through derivation from the highest principles, the
propositions of faith, could become ever more unfolded and
differentiated.
Joined to this form of theology in the singular was the idea of a
theologia perennis, a theology that lasts through the years and is not
affected by them. It served as a special characteristic sign of goodness
and solidity amid the confusing spirit of the times. This confusion was
to be encountered with clear answers and instructions: sovereign and
helpful at the same time.
In this conception of things, theology could all the more live up to this
task since it carries out its specific service to the faith within the
Church as community of believers, but also because it understands
itself and its service explicitly as delegation from the side of
ecclesiastical leadership, the ecclesiastical magisterium, i.e., the
hierarchy, the pope and the bishops.
An orientation of Catholic theology to these articulations of faith is, of
course, indispensable. But the question arises: What place and what
value does one assign to them? Are they the most important, perhaps
even the unique orientation on the basis of which one can dispense
with other orientations, such as from the normative origin of the Bible
and from history, and do this with the remark that what is relevant has
gone into the decisions and the praxis of the believing and teaching
Church. It must come from, be interpreted from and be mediated from
there. That which factually does not appear is in reality either
insignificant or dangerous.
Those stamped with such ideas of theology can see, in a change
represented as theology in the plural of theologies, only a lamentable
erroneous development, a betrayal of a tried and true tradition, a loss
of identity. Theology in the plural of theologies isthey therefore
sayboth cause and expression of the crisis permeating the present with
its tendency to incertitude, to relativizing, to endless problematizing,
to never-ending discussion, to suspecting all positions, and finally to
dissolution.
So it not surprising that many people complain about and condemn
the situation of Catholic theology today as theology in the plural of
theologies. Along with this comes the recommendation to return to the
"good old days" when theology was an impressively uniform and
closed system, an organized and perspicuous, an obedient and
manageable system of faith, and when, unbothered by the noise of the
hour, it gave its witness: The unmodern is what is truly modern.

The "Good Old Days"
In effect we have already said that theology todayand that specifically includes
Catholic theology, is presented in the plural of theologies, as theology in theologie
But before we go further into that, a word needs to be said about the thesis of theo
in the singular and about the "good old days," and also about the recommendation
return to them as a cure for the difficulties and crises of the present.
But just how old is this time and tradition to which the laudatores temporis acti
[praisers of times gone by] appeal as the good times? These old days in no way
include the whole history of faith and theology. Instead it is a small part of it whic
strictly speaking, stretches for a hundred years from the time before and after Vati
I (1870) to Vatican II (1963-1965).
In the long time before that we find a quite different picture, very much the pictur
theology in the plural of theologies. This is already found in the fundamental and
normative origin of faith and theology: in the New Testament, which is a book of
[many] books. Almost every single one of them presents its own kind of theology
synopticPaulineJohanninenarrativekerygmaticapocalypticargumentativeHebraicG
Patristics in the Eastern and Western churches was characterized by the theologies
great theologians: Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine, by the Antiochene and
Alexandrian schools and their tensions.
Even Scholasticism, the theological school science of the Middle Ages, was not a
uniform school but consisted of a plurality of schools of very marked orientation a
profile, in the lively disputation of their quaestiones disputatae. Thomas Aquinas
a fiercely controversial innovator in his daring reception of Aristotle, the "modern
that time, the aggiornamento needed at that time. The system of Thomas was of
course a coordination of summa and ordo, but a long way from being something
closed off in an ossified, fixed way. His basic conception was that of an open syste
capable of adaptation.
And the second question: Was that old time so often appealed to today a good tim
Was it a good time at the turn of the century when, the theological awakening at th
turn of the century described as Modernism was labeled as a catch basin of all
heresies and administratively suppressed or held under suspicion as so-called refo
Catholicism? Was it a good time when the decisions of the so-called Biblical
Commission, which have all subsequently proven to be erroneous, hindered the w
of exegetes and drove its best representatives into resigning?2
2 Cf. Heinrich Fries, "Das kirchliche Lehramt und die exegetische Arbeit" in: H. Kahlefeld
Schriftauslegung aus dem Glauben (Frankfurt, 1979) 5690.

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To conclude from this sketch: the transformation in the form of
theology in the plural of theologies which is recognizable also and
especially in Catholic theology is indeed something new in
comparison with an epoch of theology which immediately preceded it.
But theology in theologies is a form of theology from its origin and in
the longest and best time of its history. The leveling of this form into a
theology in the singular was theological uniformity, atrophy and
impoverishment, a road leading in the wrong direction.
The Change
If one were to give a date for the change in Catholic theology today,
the Second Vatican Council (1963-1965) would be the most important
event of the century in the Catholic Church.
The Second Vatican Council, called by the so-called transitional Pope
John XXIII, was not primarily a council against something, against
the errors of the time which were to be diagnosed, lamented, and
condemned. Lamentation doesn't accomplish anything, thought this
pope, and he added: Through the condemnations of the past the
situation in the Church was not improved. Vatican II was a council for
something, for the faithful, for human beings, for the world. The
Church at this council encountered the world through dialogue, with
the desire for cooperation in the recognition of a common
responsibility for the future of humanity.
The way in which the Christian faith is to be mediated to the world
should not be one-sided instruction, correction, criticism and
condemnation, but the mediation of the gospel as a reality-disclosing,
liberating, joy-giving message.
But this is possible only to the extent that the time and the signs of the
time, that the present-day world and the human beings living in it, are
accepted. That the message of the faith understood as Good News is
related to human beings and to all that determines and characterizes
their life: history, society, culture, structure, and language. This
mediation should make it known that the Christian faith liberates
human beings for the truth and reality of themselves.
The possibility of successfully fulfilling this task requires attentive
listening to the content of Christian faith, and no less intensive
sensitivity to human beings; concrete, contemporary human beings
with their individuality, their fate, and their questions.
This intention, visible in the Council itself and expressed in many of
its texts, is called its pastoral dimension. That sounds a bit
sentimental, and the representatives of the "good old days" already see
a deficiency there, a sign of debility. The Council was capable neither
of a dogma nor of its attendant anathema. But pastoral dimension
means a

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turning towards human beings, which is still a lot more than the
embodiment of any kind of an "ism" which one can easily manipulate
and condemn.
This goal and the tasks connected with it were sufficient to set free a
theology in the plural of theologies. For how was a theology of
uniformity to do justice, to be even able to do justice, to the
comprehensive as well as many-sided and differentiated call of the
present hour?
Vatican II has become effective and still remained decisive for a
theology in theologies because of its express intention to be a council
of renewal with the program: "ecclesia semper reformanda [Church
always needing reform]." It was not enough for this Council to repeat
and give new emphasis to the old truths in old forms; its goal was to
bring the content and the truth of faith into "today" in a living way so
that the faith would remain itself but at the same time find its way to
human beings. This brings us to the so-called aggiornamento. This is
not a false and hasty adaptation anywhere and everywhere at any
price; Aggiornamento is the today, the bringing up-to-date of faith and
its contents.
Clearly, a Church that understands itself as capable of renewal and
needing renewal, reflection on the faith, i.e., theology, takes on great
importance. The orientation points of the renewal, their coordination
and their respective realization, must be considered; the manifold
things needing to be done in the sense of renewal need reflection,
need theory, so that a praxis in the service of renewal can become
orthopraxis. These tasks can be carried out only by a theology which
is a theologia semper reformanda, and this is necessarily theology in
the plural of theologies.
The ecumenical dimension of the Council, as far as the shape and
form of Catholic theology is concerned, opened up a new dimension
in that the theology of the other churches was not, as used to be done
in the "good old days," addressed primarily as a counter-position to be
condemned and rejected as heresy. It was instead, acknowledged in its
differences, as an important and helpful dialogue partner with whom a
comprehensive, fruitful dialogue was to be conducted, not only about
theology but also about the path and goal of ecumenism.
If our theme required us to talk this much about a Council that is now
so far behind us, this is not due to a council-euphoria or to a glorifying
nostalgia. It is based on the conviction that the Council remains
effective to this day in the history of the contemporary Catholic
Church. In the Council, the Catholic Church went through an epochal
change and struck out on a way whichin spite of every-

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thingfilled one with a hope and confidence, that also included the
other Christian churches and the time to come.3
Another reason for awakening the memory of the Council for our
theme is that there are voices today, even voices of theologians, who
look on the Council as a misfortune and make it responsible for the
crisis of the present and of all the damage inside the Church. But the
reality is quite different. The Council recognized an already existing
crisis and, in its opening for a theology in the plural of theologies,
pointed the way to a solution.
The Reason for the Change
What is the reason for theology in the plural of theologies? The reason
yesterday when it already existed, and the reason today when we have
become intensively conscious of it, and when this plurality has
become much more extensive than it ever was?
The first reason is the inexhaustibility of the material treated in
theology. According to Kant, the question: "What is the human
being?" is the ultimate and abiding question of human beings, a
question which, in the present age, in its inquiring into human beings,
into human dignity and human rights, has gained a worldwide
explosiveness and urgency. Hence theological inquiring, which takes
the form of questions about the human being and God, God and the
human being, God and the image of the human being, and God and
human dignity, is both an ongoing theme and one requiring a broad
range of reflection. It is a theme which human beings and theologians,
in any imaginable vision of progress, will never exhaust.
The idea of the inexhaustibility of the contents of theology can also be
given concrete form in the biblical text about the unsearchable riches
of Christ (Eph 3:8)a text that remains true to this day, not least in the
great attention being given to Jesus Christ these days from outside the
Christian Church.
Another reason for a theology in the form of theology in the plural lies
in the subjectivity of the theologians who in their own way, with their
perspectives, with their problems, with their intelligence, seek to
disclose, to understand, to ground, and to justify the Christian faith or,
even more comprehensively, Christian being.
The subjectivity of theologians and their theology always signifies
historically stamped subjectivity. Every form of historical description
is both a realization and a limitation of the particular contents being
historically mediated. Historicity means also perspectivity. From
3 K. Rahner, "Basic Theological Interpretation of the Second Vatican
Council" 7789, "The Abiding Significance of the Second Vatican
Council," 90102 in: "Concern for the Church," vol. 20, Theological
Inverstigations, 1981.

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perspectivity comes plurality as richness of the concrete perspectives
of the theologians looking at the matter of faith. It doesn't mean any
dissolution into relativism if the perspectives remain related to the
matter, if one perspective doesn't exclude the other but gives it room
and even makes it necessary.
The subjectivity of theologians is also the subjectivity of those who
exist in intersubjectivity, who are stamped by their situation, the
intellectual, cultural, social, and political context of their time and are
part of it. They have to take up the questions and doubts, the
challenges, difficulties, obstacles, and chances that come from this
context and bring them into the concerns of their theological work in
order to be able to represent theology here and now.
These questions are being asked of theology today not only, as in the
past, by philosophy, which, like theology, reflected on the whole of
reality and asked about ground [Grund] and nature. In philosophy, the
spirit of a time was conceptualized. That is why philosophy was the
preferred partner of theology. But philosophy today, from the
questions it asks, takes on a different face, one that puts it in the plural
of philosophies, e.g., as language theory of the empirical sciences.
Add to this the plurality of the other sciences, of psychology,
sociology, linguistics, theory of knowledge, then further the pluralism
of ideological, political and social systems, of natural science,
medicine and technology, of behavioral science and, not least, the
challenge from the non-Christian religions.
These questions are concentrated today in the question about human
beings, about their reality, about their experience, and about their
world. There is today no system and no ideology that does not
solemnly declare that their concern is for nothing other than the
human being, the human being as subject in this our world and time.
Thus, the anthropological context to which the reality of the world of
human beings belongs is the real text and the plural context of
contemporary theology. Theology has acknowledged this task and
challenge today and is attempting in all sorts of ways to do it justice.
The contents of the Christian faith are not drawn up by human beings,
but are received by them and brought into living correlation. The
connection of theology and anthropology, and vice versa, has its
concentration in the innermost relational point of Christian faith, in
the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Anthropological theology is
thereby concretized once again by the theology of Christ, by
Christology. Karl Rahner has formulated this inner connection:
Christian reality is the conscious taking possession of the mystery of
the human. ''The incarnation of God is the uniquely highest instance
of the fulfillment of the nature of the human being."4
4 K. Rahner, "Anonymous Christians," Theological Investigations 6
(1974) 39098.

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This is possible because in Jesus Christ the connectedness of the
human being with God, which determines human existence, was given
in the mode of a unique existence, in the mode of the Son.
Accordingly, Jesus Christ is also the image of the human being, the
"Ecce homo" in the formulation of Karl Rahner: Jesus Christ is the
highest instance of the human because this being human is oriented to
God as absolute self-transcendence. As it is found in Jesus, this
absolute self-transcendence becomes one with the self-transcendence
of God in relation to human beings.
Theology as anthropology, Christology as anthropologywhat this
means in the context of the contemporary anthropological question is:
Theology with its affirmations is in competition with contemporary
world views and ideologies and their conception of the human being.
Theology cannot evade them, but it does not need to be afraid of them
either. That which is authentically Christian can stand up to reality, to
the experience of human beings in life and in death, and it receives
through this testing also the sign of truth as confirmation, as
verification. In other words, the reality and the experience of human
beings in their living and their dying is simply not adequately
considered, or comprehensively known and, basically, not understood,
if the all-determining reality is not considered along with them. The
name of the all-determining reality is God.
The concentration of today's questions and challenges on the question
of God and the human being and on Jesus Christ sets before the eyes
of theology its original and real task; it points out the seriousness and
the magnitude of this historical hour. It makes us recognize anew that
the answer to this global and diversely motivated challenge is not to
be found by a uniform theology but only by the engagement of
theology in theologies, of theology in the plural of theologies.
Concluding Theses
1. The present form of theology in the plural of theologies and in its
concrete models is now taking the place of a theology that primarily
made assertions and claims and relied on data which was not to be
questioned. Theology used to claim a special status in which it was
sufficient to point to what was written, what was dogma. For such a
conception of theology, the question is irrelevant whether theology in
any sense can be called science and still have right of domicile in a
university. In such an option theology fails itself; it increasingly
succumbs to alienation from the world and finds its place in the
ghetto.5
5 Cf. G. Söhngen, "Die Theologie im Streit der Fakultäten" in: Die Einheit
der Theologie (Munich, 1953) 221; "Theologie im Haus der
Wissenschaften" in: ThQ 157 no. 3 (1977).

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2. Theology in the plural of theologies understands its task as an
independent, responsible function for the Christian faith and for
Christian existence with all its implications, existentially affirmed by
the theologian, in the community of believers, of Christians, of the
Church. To this extent every theology is church theology, for without
this it loses its place and its base. Theology which recognizes in this
its obligation and relationship to reality thus speaks of the
presuppositions that determine it. Other disciplines are often silent
about such presuppositions, or even try to disclaim that they have any.
In the community of believers, theology has the ministry of reflection.
It can be an inspiring, renewing, critical, and often also prophetic
ministry with the risks that the prophets of ancient and modern times
knew: persecution in their lifetime, monuments after their death.
The teaching office of the theologians does not stand in opposition to
the teaching office of the leaders of the Churchconcretely, of the pope
and bishopsbut rather, as is proper, in common service to the faith and
in responsibility for it. Pope John Paul II in his visit to Germany
explicitly emphasized the independence of theology as science of faith
which is distinct from the ecclesiastical teaching office. Theology and
teaching office have, accordingly, different task, and these cannot be
reduced to each other. Both serve the one totality. Cooperation and
readiness to dialogue are necessary between them. In the application
of its methods and analyses theology is, as science, free. But it stands
in a special relationship to the faith of the Church, which is built upon
the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Theology presupposes
faith; it cannot produce it. Theology stands on the shoulders of its
fathers in faith.6 Cooperation is all the more necessary since, in these
days, a merely formal authority, even in matters of faith and faith
community, is no longer enough. To this authority must accrue the
power of the argumentative, of reasoning and grounding; otherwise its
instruction incurs the danger of not being receivedto the damage of
all, not least to the damage of the authority itself, even if its decision-
making competence remains undisputed.
3. Controversies within theological discussionthey have to exist,
according to the old motto: theologia disputat [theology argues]should
not be broken off too quickly by official action. It doesn't work
anyway; the problems continue to seek out their way and force
themselves into the light. Controversies should be at home in the
responsibility of theology in the plural of theologies. The better
arguments will win out. Theology too can be a river that purifies
itself.
4. Theology in the plural of theologies does not contradict the unity of
faith and the unity in the faith which we so much need. This would
6 Pope John Paul II in Germany (Bonn, 1981) 16772 (Verlautbarungen
desApostolischen Stuhls 25).

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be the case only if theology itself had lost its point of relationship to
faith and its clearly recognizable center, God in Christ, the salvation
of the world. If it did lose this center, if it made itself absolutely the
one theology in the plural of theologies, it would no longer be
theology. Or if it refused dialogue and claimed itself alone as the
source of happiness and declared everything outside itself to be
heretical, it would no longer be theology. For it would have denied its
legitimate plural self and given it up in favor of an illegitimate
singular.
Theology in the plural of theologies, i.e., the contemporary form of
theology, is no contradiction to but expression of a unity of faith, to
whose characteristics it belongs to be living, dynamic, dialogical, and
creative. Truths can live only with each other; one truth alone dies.
5. A theology in the plural of theologies has its legitimate place in a
universality in the plurality of the sciences and their methods. If there
are continued attempts to drive theology out of the university, the
question must be asked whether the university is doing justice to its
claim to think through the whole of reality methodically, whether the
whole can be comprehensively thought through if the all-
encompassing reality, God, is shut out along with everything
associated with it in reality, experience and history. The departure of
theology means a loss of knowledge and orientation, a loss of culture
and tradition which have stamped and fundamentally determined us
and this our time and world, even if that should be largely forgotten.
The existence of theology in our faculties will and should remind us
of these foundations, so that the sources and well from which we live
to this day will not dry up.
Finally: With all the common that connect theology with the other
sciences in the disclosure and interpretation of the reality of the world
and humanity, there is one special task that theology and its subject-
matter, God, has in a university, in the house of the sciences. That
special task is to point out that the human being, the individual human
being is a great mystery. Human beings are more than and other than
simply what happens, they are, more than the ensemble of the factors
that determine them, more too than all "isms" and more than what can
be known, grasped and produced in the sciences. The human being
lives not from bread alone.7
7 C. Hefling, "Science and Religion," NDT 93845.

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BOOK TWO
REVELATION

Page 179
§ 18
The Concept of Revelation
The doctrine of revelation1 follows naturally upon the expositions of
faith and the science of faith. Revelation describes the point where
they come together. Revelation as a theological theme, like all
theology, has to do with God. The doctrine of revelation arises from
the question whether the God who is sought after from the greatest
variety of experiences and reflections and whose reality we run into
from the various dimensions of our own reality, whether this God is
indeed the distant, silent, unknown God totally withdrawn from our
possibilities, and hence the unknown God, or whether this God does
in fact make Himself perceptible, known, expressed, and
communicated. In other words, the theology of revelation arises from
the question whether this God has revealed Himself and in what way
and form this has happened. J. S. Drey, the founder of the Catholic
Tübingen School, described this situation as follows: "The revelation
of God is the representation of God's essence in another which is not
God and, to that extent, outside of God."2
On this question, the following point requires careful consideration. If
God has revealed, communicated, and made Himself known, we could
1 Cf. R. Guardini, Die Offenbarung (Würzburg, 1940); Religion und
Offenbarung (Würzburg, 1958); E. Brunner, Revelation and Reason: The
Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge, trans. Olive Wyon
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1946); A. Lang, Die Sendung Christi.
Fundamentaltheologie I, 3rd ed., (Munich, 1961); Heirich Fries,
Revelation (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969); R. Latourelle, Theology
of Revelation (New York: Alba House, 1988); A. Kolping,
Fundamentaltheologie, vol. I: Theorie der Glaubwürdigkeitserkenntnis der
Offenbarung (Münster, 1968); H. Waldenfels, Offenbarung. Das Zweite
Vatikanische Konzil auf dem Hintergrund der neueren Theologie (Munich,
1969); P. Tillich, Offenbarung und Glaube (Gesammelte Werke VIII),
(Stuttgart, 1970); Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte, ed., M. SchmausA.
GrillmeierL. Scheffczyk, vol. I: Die Offenbarung. vol. Ia, Von der Schrift
bis zum Ausgang der Väterzeit (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1971); Ib, Von der
Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (1977); F. Konrad, Das
Offenbarungsverständnis in der evangelischen Theologie
(MunichPaderbornVienna, 1971); P. Eicher, Offenbarung. Prinzip
neuzeitlicher Theologie (Munich, 1977); M. Seckler, "Aufklärung und
Offenbarung" in: Christlicher Glaube in Moderner Gesellschaft 21
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1980) 578.
2Kurze Einleitung in das Studium der Theologie, 1819, ed., F. Schupp
(Darmstadt, 1971) 10 (§ 16).

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talk about it only if this self-communication could be perceived and
received by human beings. Otherwise, it is not revelation. Revelation
is disclosure to and for human beings. If this is the case, then
revelation can take place only in a manner and form accessible to
human beings.
Revelation must be a revelation and encountering of God, and not just
a revelation of human beings and their own possibility and reality. It
reveals that reality which transcends human beings and their
possibilities, and also their world; it reveals that reality which cannot
be figured out in the terms of the reality that lies before one's eyes.
The theology of divine revelation does not deal with a piece of this
divine reality itself, but rather with that aspect of it that can be
humanly encounteredwhich, however, is quite other than the divine
reality itself.
This clarifies a further point. Revelation as description of the ways
and means in which God self-communicates and makes Himself
perceptible, encompasses absolutely everything that is talked about in
faith and in theology, in their themes and disciplines. The entire
contents of theology can be summed up formally under the concept of
revelation; they are all concretions and articulations of revelation.
This does not mean that everything that theology talks about has
already been summed up or that one must hold this concept
unconditionally.
The theology of the first centuries spoke not of revelation but of the
economy of salvation, i.e., of the series and coherence of God's
actions for the salvation of humankind.3 Today's theology speaks
similarly of salvation history as the central concept of what theology
has to talk about. Mysterium SalutisGrundriss einer
heilsgeschichtlichen Dogmatik [Mystery of Salvation: Basic Sketch of
a Salvation-Historical Dogmatics] is the name of a modern
representative presentation of Catholic doctrine. Another
comprehensive characterization expressing the central concept of
theology is: "Word of God." The most influential representatives of
athis approach, in which theology is doctrine of the Word of God, are
Karl Barth and, in his way, Gerhard Ebeling.
The "inflation" of the concept of revelation has already entered into
the discussion.4 The extensive investigation of P. Eicher,
Offenbarung. Studien zur Offenbarungstheologie [Revelation: Studies
on the Theology of Revelation] talks about an "overworked category."
Nevertheless, the category of revelation, as comprehensive concept of
the contents of faith and theology, is better suited than the others to
become the central concept with which theology deals. It is said, to be
3 P. Stockmeier, "Offenbarung in der frühchristlichen Kirche" in:
Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. Ia, 2687.
4 P. Althaus, "Die Inflation des Begriffs der Offenbarung in der
gegenwärtigen Theologie" in: ZSTh 18 (1941) 13449.

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sure, that the concept of revelation is too formal, too general, too
open, and too comprehensive. But one can answer that it is precisely
in its comprehensive generality that it is suited to unite in itself the
greatest content. It protects against narrowness and one-sidedness.
The other proposals, e.g., to say "salvation history" instead of
"revelation," also have their difficulties. For, how is salvation history
different from history? Is it identical with it, or just part of it with
special characteristics? Further: Can the concept "salvation history"
sufficiently describe what theology and faith is about; can it do justice
to the dimensions of truth, word, encounter, and person?
So too with the category "Word of God." Right away one has to
explain: is it the word that God speaksand how is that conceivable? Is
it the authentic word that is spoken about God? Is there, in the concept
of word, sufficient expression of the fact that faith and theology deal
above all with deeds and history, with events and person? There is no
denying that one can connect these contents with the concept "Word
of God." But all of this is not immediately visible in the term "Word
of God."
Thus the open, general concept of revelation is more suitable. For it
easily takes in the different modes, the modes of the historical, of
truth, of the word, of deeds, and of person. The concept of revelation
makes no prior decision about its possible contents apart from the
important requirement that revelation and its content are not the work
and project of human beings.
If, instead of "revelation," one were to make "religion" the central
concept of what theology talks about, that would be problematic for
another reason. In theology and in faith, one is of course dealing with
the relationship of the human being to God, as it is expressed in
religion and in the religions. One can, therefore, with good reason also
talk about the Christian religion. Thus, it is worth mentioning that
there are representations of theology that radically set apart the
Christian faith from what religion means, that criticize the religions in
the name of faith, and that speak of a "religionless Christianity."5 This
position is certainly one-sided and contains many problems. But the
danger no doubt exists that if religion is made the overall concept and
the Christian faith is subsumed under that, the Christian faith would
then have prescribed to it, in the name of religion so to speak, what its
contents would be, what it could have or should not have. In the name
of religion and of concepts of God connected with it, the cross, for
example, would not be possible or allowed as a possibility of God and
of divine revelation. It is folly and scandal (1 Cor 1:1825).
5 D. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge
(New York: Macmillan Press, 1972); on this see: H. Fries, "Die Botschaft
von Christus in einer Welt ohne Gott" in: Wir und die andern (Stuttgart,
1966) 273-314.

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In contrast, revelation as the central concept of the content of faith is
an open concept. It doesn't predetermine how God's revelation must
take place. In its favor, it can be said that revelation is a transcendental
theological concept, because it encompasses and transcends the
individual contents of theology and becausewhich corresponds to
what we are talking about hereall individual affirmations of faith are
intended as contents of God's revelation. Faith as a fundamental act is
oriented to this fundamental determination. Revelation and faith, in
their mutual dependence, are an indissoluble totality.
Faith is answered revelation. Accepted revelation is faith. Faith is
revelation arrived at its goal.
At the same time, revelation is the point of reference, the abiding
support, and the goal of faith. If it is the task of theology to provide
for the understanding of the faith according to its different contents,
then it is the task of fundamental theology to consider that
understanding of the faith which deals with its ground and its
foundationsin other words, revelation with its presuppositions,
conditions, and implications. Revelation is, accordingly, one of the
specific themes of fundamental theology.
A final addition to these preliminary considerations on revelation:
Revelation is a possibility and a modality that is also accessible to and
given to human beings. Human beings, as we have already pointed
out, have the capacity to reveal something of themselves. By virtue of
their freedom, their spirit, their language, their bodilinessand by virtue
of the possibility therein of being able to make themselves perceived,
heard, and understoodthey can reveal themselves Human beings can
communicate something of themselves, can communicate themselves,
by an act, a word, an "expression," or by omission and refusal. The
human being becomes present in these things. At the same time all
specifically human expressions (i.e., intercommunicative expression)
become transparent. Through them human beings open themselves
and give themselves to be known. We say: He/she has revealed
himself in them, shown her true self.
Consequently, and in contrast to what happens in revelation (the
fundamental act of communication and disclosure of person), person
does not become visible and it is not evident what human beings are,
what they really are and what is in them. On the other hand, one can
say: All talk about revelation involves person.
The analyses of faith in the human realm point out that personal self-
disclosure or self-communication is an act of the spirit and of
freedom, above all, an act of love and truth. Persons can close
themselves off, keep silent, or dissemble. Accordingly, the faith that is
coordinated to the revelation of person is an act of respect, honor, and
high

Page 183
esteem. The refusal of faith, the refusal to believe, is the sharpest
disparagement and disrespect of person there can be.
From the last remark one recognizes that the phenomena of revelation
and faith, which theology is about, have a correspondence, an analogy
in the human realm, in the realm of person. They are thus not
exorbitant, nor do they represent an inhuman alienation or
unreasonable expectation of human beings as persons. Revelation and
faith in the theological sense move in structures and conditions which
characterize human beings as human beings and concern them as
persons. They have their Sitz (situation) in the realm called reality and
experience. On the other hand, it is clear: as soon as one brings
revelation into contact with God, personal being is ascribed to God.
The first part of our considerations is devoted to the theme "Reality
and RevelationRevelation and Reality." This theme deals with the
connection between what is theologically called revelation and the
reality that we are and that determines us. It is a part of the great
theme of contemporary theology: Theology as anthropology,
anthropology as theologyor, more comprehensively: theology and
reality. We won't be able to bring up all that can be said about this, but
only a few models.

Page 185

Part One
The Revelational Dimension of Reality

Page 186
§ 19
Reality and RevelationRevelation and Reality
Everything that is, everything that happens and comes to pass, is and
has not only an existence but also a being-meaning, a being-sign, a
being-manifest. Everything that is and happens says something; it
makes something visible. What does it make visible? Certainly, at
first, the existing thing itself. But, in the existing thing, something
further becomes visible something different from just the existing
thing in the way it is first perceived and registered in its external
appearance.
Being Manifest
Let us choose a simple, perhaps even somewhat sentimental example.
What is a tear? What does it manifest? The tear can be described as a
''salty fluid." Chemically, that is doubtless correct. But does that say
what a tear is? What it is becomes manifest when I have occasion to
ask (when I see the tears of a human being): what is expressed in a
tear, what can be revealed in it? Tears are something more and
different than a salty fluid. This other, this "more," I see not in the
fluid of the tears but in the person who is shedding the tears. Reaching
out from this, I try to understand and interpret the individual thing as
manifestation of this human being. In the tears of a human
beingdepending on the situationpain, suffering, joy, enthusiasm,
helplessness, and anger can become manifest: invisible sentiments and
emotions move the interior of human beings. Thus, in what is
appearing, there also always appears at the same time that which does
not appear but is most profoundly real. Human beings can perceive
and come to know this.
For human beings canand this is important for our questionnot only
observe, count, calculate, and analyze individual things; human beings
can get a feeling for and understanding of someone. Human beings
hear not just vibrations but a melody; they do not just register optic
reflexes, they see a shape; they do not just take in syllables and
sounds, they understand a context and a meaning.

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Recognizable in all this is the special characteristic of human beings:
the openness and creativity of their spirit, the spontaneity of their
freedom, the receptivity of their sense, the functions of their
bodiliness as instrument of their capacity for expression, and as
revelation of their selves.
The being-revelation and being-meaning which transcend the being-
existent is not a destruction of reality, nor an imposition of something
foreign or something that obscures, but the perception of the whole, of
the real, of the center, of the profundity. If in the individual reality of
the tear, laugh, mimicry, gesture and hand movement, action, sign, the
whole of the context along with the human being is not seen, then the
existing individual thing is not seen properly and in its entirety.
Something further comes from these considerations. For human
beings, everything that is can become revelation-being, meaning-
being, can become metaphor or symbol: "Everything on earth is only
a metaphor."
Symbol
Symbol,1 literally a "something thrown together from external sign
and inner sense," is indissolubly connected with the meaning which it
represents in its sensibly perceivable givenness. For example, light,
physically seen, is energy emanating from a light source passing
through space with the speed of light as as electromagnetic wave.
Light is perceived as brightness, color, and warmth. Light can also
become a sign or symbol of a quality and characteristic of human
beings. This quality can in turn be described in graphic imagesimages
of light: brilliance of spirit, clarity of understanding, fire of
enthusiasm, glow of love. External light, with its powers, qualities,
effects, becomes the symbol of an "inner light" of human beings, of
their invisible reality, as spirit-beings endowed with freedom and love.
A symbol is not an arbitrary sign like a traffic sign whose function and
significance one can determine, make, and thus also change. A symbol
is inseparable from its meaning and sense orientation which, by the
nature of things, resides within it as quality of nature. Symbol is
inseparable from the symbolized. This means that a symbol is more
than what is immediately at hand and perceived. It is at the same time
less than that to which it points, less than that for which it is a symbol.
Along with the being-symbol of things, there are also symbolic
actions, which, in and with their execution, mean something: the
1 J. Splett, "Symbol," SM 6 (1970) 199201; S. Wisse, Das religiöse
Symbol (Essen, 1963); M. Becker, BildSymbolGlaube (Essen, 1964); W.
Heinen, ed., BildWortSymbol in der Theologie (Würzburg, 1968).

Page 188
laying on of hands as a sign of commissioning, the meal as sign of a
community, the symbolic actions of the prophets as representation of
divine activity.
Relatedly, a symbol is a universal human possibility of seeing reality.
It is never a symbol just for me; a symbol has an inner relationship to
community; it has a representing, gathering and integrating function.
In addition, a symbol has the power to vivify, strengthen, and deepen
the community.
Furthermore, in symbol, things that are separate from each other are
coordinated. Symbol, accordingly, points across to another being on
the basis of a similarity proper to it.
In a way similar to light, being-manifest and being-symbol can be
pointed out in other phenomena: for example, vivifying, fructifying,
refreshing, purifying water becomes the symbol of processes,
movements, and modes of behavior in human existence.
Symbol of Transcendence
If the thesis is correct that everything that is, is a revelational being, if
we ourselves have this understanding of reality and this way of
dealing with it, and if we come into contact with the dimensions of
reality through this being-manifest, this being-symbol, then the
question automatically arises: Is reality as being-manifest to be
understood in such a waythat in it the totality and ground becomes
transparent that is related not only to an inner-worldly context, to an
empirical form and totality, and to human beings, but also to the all-
encompassing ground and relational sense whom we call God?
If it is the case, that reality, precisely as symbolic, is indeed related to
its all-encompassing ground of being, we must then ask whether the
all-determining reality called God becomes manifest in the reality we
have before us? Is everything earthly a metaphor also of
transcendence, a symbol of God? The difficulty consists in the fact
that the reality of God as such does not directly appear, that it is not
identical with the present "world," and cannot be figured out from it.
God is no particular object, no object like the things we encounter.
God is rather the unobjectifiable ground of everything. And yet
empirical reality in its totality and depth cannot be described without
the ground.
In his reflection on revelation, Paul Tillich proceeds from the
presupposition that revelation is not an object and not a process
alongside others, but the dimension that is opened up in reality itself.
In it is found also dependence on transcendence, transparency towards
the unconditioned. Tillich speaks of this transparency of the
conditioned towards the unconditional as follows:

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The unconditioned enters into the context of the conditioned. But how can
it appear where there still can be nothing conditioned, no object? It can
only appear in/on/at the object, in/on/at the conditioned. This does not stop
being conditioned; the context of the conditioned is not disturbed. But in
this object, in this conditioned and its contexts, is hidden the possibility,
and it becomes reality to point to something that does not belong to its
conditionedness, that is most intimate to it and at the same time most
foreign to it, that becomes manifest in/on/at it as the unconditioned
Hidden.2

In the midst of the finitudes and relativities that surround and

determine us, we discover the sign and the trace of another, which
"unconditionally comes at me," which admits no "if" and "but," which
categorically calls me in, over which I have no disposition, which has
disposition over me.
Human beings can accept this transparency or openness of the
conditioned to the unconditioned, of the individually real to the all-
determining reality, as their ultimate ground because, by virtue of their
spirit, they seek after connections and transparency; because they not
only establish facts but pursue them to their ground; because they are
open to the world in its context, i.e., as a whole, and thus also to the
ground that bears it. This is the way human beings are in the openness
of their quest after their ground, in the inconclusiveness of their
knowing and their striving, which finally comes to rest on no finite
goal. This is what human beings are in the seemingly inexhaustible
possibility of their capacity for assertion and expression in language,
art, culture, and poetry.
The capacities and activities just mentioned are needed for human
beings to become aware of the openness of reality for the
transcendence that is mediated and comes to transparency through the
world, finiteness, and the conditioned. Reality is thus presented as
mediation between the singleness and conditionedness of the concrete
form on the one hand, and the infinity and absoluteness of the ground
on the other.
This line of thinking leads to the question: How does all this get
expressed? The being-manifest and being-meaning of reality, its
overall being-symbol and especially its being-symbol towards the
absolute, unconditionedthese come to expression and into being in
word, especially in the language of poetry. The language of poetry is a
language above all of images, symbols, metaphors, and stories, which
express the dimension of revelation. This is done quite differently
than, e.g., in conceptual, technical, natural-scientific mathematical
language. In the language of poetry, reality is not distorted; it isn't run
over roughshod; it has nothing foreign grafted onto it; poetry puts into
words something that belongs to the encompassing meaning of things,
something that can be expressed in no other language. Poetry as the
voice of the real being
2Systematische Theologie 8.3536.

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in things that are (W. Schadewaldt) reveals to human beings the truth
of their innermost beings.
The world as symbol, the symbolic form of the world, likewise makes
its appearance in art and in art work in its different forms: painting,
sculpture, architecture and music. According to Plato and Aristotle, art
is the imitation of nature. To our present-day understanding, that
seems inadequate, for the imitation of nature is today done better by
technology than by art. The conception of Plato and Aristotle must
thus be clarified by pointing out that Plato sees in things, not just what
now exists, but the reflection of the eternal ideas; Aristotle assigns to
art the task of representing the power of shaping that is at work in
nature. Art is supposed to bring to perfect form what is begun in
nature but is still incomplete. This corresponds to what the Greeks
saw as the purifying power of the work of art, the "catharsis."
Through works of art in poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture of
the kind found in Greece an achievement that has lasted even to our
own day, human beings are to find themselves; they are to be led to
their inner order, to their inner destiny. As Martin Heidegger said, art
is the mode "whereby, in a single human work, the whole of being
becomes visibly present to human beings, and whereby, vice versa,
human beings through this work of art set themselves before the truth
and to reflecting on their own nature."3
Finally, yet another way to gain access to the being-symbol and being-
manifest of things is nonconceptual, wordless meditation, the silent
surrender to what reality is in its depth. In this way the capacity and
the readiness is awakened to listen to the word and the language of
things and events right down into the mystery and the depth of their
ground [of being].
3 "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes" in: Holzwege (Frankfurt, 1950) 768.

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§ 20
The Witness of Religion and the History of Religions
Hierophany and Theophany
Religion as behavior, as deed and activity of human beings as well as
central concept of specific contents (affirmations, doctrines, rites,
instructions), is first a historical fact and a concrete human experience.
Religion is characterized by that which the religious actas in prayer
and cultand the history of religions calls the divine in the form of the
Holy. The Holy is the over-against, the point of reference, the
intention of religion. Its basic characteristic can be so described that
the Holy is not identical with any object within the world as such, nor
with the world as a whole; it is rather the "totally other," the
"unworldly," and at the same time the reality that bears and
encompasses the whole. It can in no way be inferior to what is meant
by "person." Otherwise it couldn't affect the human being as person
nor could itin prayerbe addressed.
But precisely this divine, holy [thing], according to the witness of
religion and the history of religions, is made manifest in the reality of
the world, and nothing at all that exists is excluded from it. Everything
can point to the Holy, in the sense that the Holy is manifest in it as
hierophany; the divine makes itself known therein as theophany. It is
made manifest in the world of experiential reality and is at the same
time other than that in which it appearsand precisely this belongs to
symbol, especially to religious symbol.
The most important contemporary scholars of the history of religions,
Gerardus van der Leeuw1 and Mircea Eliade,2 come to the following
conclusion on the basis of their comprehensive history of religions
1 G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans. J. E.
Turner (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1986).
2 M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New
York: New American Library, 1974); A History of Religious Ideas: vol. 3;
From Muhammad to the Age of Reform, trans. Willard R. Trask (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978).

Page 192
investigations and religious phenomenological analyses: We must
accustom ourselves to accept hierophanies everywhere, in every
sphere of being. We do not know whether, according to the evidence
of history of religions, anything at all existswhether object, action, or
eventthat has not at some time and in some place been transformed
into a hierophany, i.e., into a manifestation or revelation of the divine
and the holy perceived by religious human beings. Religious human
beings are not a special kind of human being; religious human beings
are human beings to whose fundamental characteristic belong religion
and religious experience.
The framework of our theme doesn't allow us to describe all of reality
according to this dimension of hierophany and theophany, but one
example, adapted from Eliade, seems to be on the one hand wholly
modern, and on the other completely outmoded.
The firmament with sun, moon, and stars, is one of the oldest and
most ubiquitous [places of appearance] of the divine, the Holy. The
sky is symbol, and thereby revelation to human beings, of a
fascinating power, majesty, greatness, wisdom, and reason, which is
both set apart from human beings but at the same time determinative
of them, the very source of light and life.
In the inaccessibility, infinity, eternity, and creative power of the heavens,
the divine transcendence is revealed. The mode of being of the heavens is
an inexhaustible hierophany. Further, everything that takes place in the
sphere of the upper atmospherethe course of the stars, the order of their
course, the movement of the clouds, storms, lightning and thunder,
meteors and rainbowsis a part of this hierophany.3

Nature is never just nature. Hierophany found expression in a

multiplicity of heavenly divinities; in Uranus, Zeus, Jupiter, Sol. The
phrase "God in heaven" shows the connection with this view of
things. The most widespread and oldest Christian prayer is addressed
to the "Father in heaven." It is connected with the consciousness that
where the heavens are, there is God and the divine. This shows what
is characteristic of the symbolic form of the religious: it transcends
our experiences and makes us conscious of our finiteness; at the same
time it is adequate enough to our experiences that we can say "You,"
that we can pray to Him.
The religious and history-of-religions data and perspectives that come
with the hierophany and theophany of the heavens cannot (and don't
need to) be described further at this point. But the obvious challenging
question should be considered: Does the very old and widespread
experience of "heaven," of sun, moon and stars, of the order and
beauty of the universe as a symbol revelatory of the divine, still work
today? Doesn't it seem completely anachronistic: a piece of the
3Die Religionen und das Heilige 64.

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past, naive mythical thinking, which, in the face of enlightened
science, can no longer be taken seriously? Science has figured out and
conquered the sky and made it subservient as part of reality. The laws
of the universe have been put at the service of human beings and their
goals. Thus, the heavens and their energy, put at the disposition of
human beings and their possibilities, are more a revelation of
humanity and its possibilities than a hierophany and theophany, than a
symbol of the divine and the Holy.
The Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin, upon returning from the first
space flight, declared: "Space is dark. I see no God." When, some
years later, the Americans landed on the moon, the captain of the
space ship, Borman, took up the Bible and recited the story of
creation: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth . . ." These two statements were the starting point of a discussion
in which I engaged some years ago with the physicist Peter
Glockmann, from which came a small book with the title: Ich sehe
keinen Gott [I See No God].4 Glockmann declared that he found both
affirmations "somewhat meaningless." Gagarin had made only one
tiny step into the universe; no wonder he didn't see God. But one
cannot conclude from this that God doesn't exist. That the American
read the beginning of Genesis is, according to Glockmann, likewise
"scientifically meaningless.'' He did add, however, that as a personal
affirmation and expression of an inner experience, the reading of the
American deserves recognition.
My answer was: these two affirmations should not be put on the same
level.
I think rather that the affirmation of the American indeed is not just a pious
elevation of feeling but has a real ground and inner relationship; to the
extent that Borman became aware of the magnificence of the cosmos in an
entirely new way, he was led to reflect. The American astronaut made a
statement which is anything but meaningless, even if not formulated
scientifically: i.e., at the basis of the experience of his space journey lay
something that is more than technical data and mathematical calculation.
His overwhelming experience gave him occasion to find new illustration
and confirmation of a very old message.5

Present-Day Understanding of the World

In connection with this theme let me make the following observations.
The laws that are made for the utility of human beings and their
possibilities, also for conquering the sky, are not made and created by
human beings; they are discovered, found to be already there.
Recognizable in them isthis is less challengeable today than evera
4 Munich, 1971; (FreiburgBaselVienna 1971) (Herderbücherei 469).
5 Ibid. (Herderbücherei).

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logos, a reason and a wisdom, that precedes human beings, which they
can "reflect."
The more the world is known in its scale and its governing laws, in its
powers and possibilities, the more can one's gaze be open and free for
that reality which is not identical with earth and heaven but what is
becoming manifest in them, which is the ultimate encompassing
ground of all things, the ultimate reason in all laws and systems. If
one makes room for this perspective and speaks of the mystery of the
world, that is not a concession to knowledge not yet achieved or to a
primitive world view; it is the result of an insight into the deepest
ground of things. This insight cannot, to be sure, be put into a
mathematical formula, but it need not therefore remain speechless.
The hymn sung more than 2000 years ago, "The heavens are telling
the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork" (Ps
19:1) is a possible and sensible manner of speaking even today. It has
been neither refuted nor superseded; rather, the meaning and content
of the words "heaven" and "earth" have simply become more
concrete.
If the heavens "tell the glory" and the firmament "proclaims," they are
a revelation, a theophany, a hierophany. Let us develop these
affirmations with some examples taken from the realm of natural
science and technology.
For Galileo Galilei, the founder of modern natural science, nature is a
book of God. Next to the Bible it contains the primeval proclamation
of the salvation of human beings. Nature reveals in the language of
mathematics the particulars of the greatness and wisdom of creation,
which not only can be known in pious surmises, but can be exactly
described, and which thus disclose the glory of the Creator more
intensively than ever before.6
Johannes Kepler understands his work as a humble description of the
work of the hands of God. He closes his work Harmonia Cosmi with
the words: "Since I have attempted to give human understanding a
glimpse into the universe with the help of geometry, may the
Originator of the universe keep me from saying anything about His
work that cannot stand before His glory and leads our capacity to
understand into error. May God make us hasten after the perfection of
His work of creation through the sanctification of our life."7
According to Albert Einstein, natural science reveals "so superior a
reason that all meaningful human thought and arranging is, in
contrast, a totally insignificant reflection."
6 Documentation in N. Schiffers, Fragen der Physik an die Theologie
(Düsseldorf, 1968).
7 In W. Heisenberg, Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft,
9th ed. (Stuttgart, 1959) 78.

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Werner Heisenberg in his work Der Teil und das Ganze [The Part and
the Whole]8 tells of a discussion in which he was asked: Do you
believe in a personal God? He answered:
H: May I formulate the question in a different way? . . . so that it would
ask: Can you or can anyone get so immediately close to the central order
of things about which there can really be no doubt, can one come so
immediately close to it, get so immediately in connection with it as is
possible with the soul of another human being? I am expressly using the
so-difficult-to-define word soul so as not to be misunderstood. If that is
what you ask, then my answer is yes.
Q: You mean, then, that the central order can be present with the same
intensity as the soul of another human being?
H: Perhaps.
Q: Why did you use the word "soul" here and not speak simply of other
human beings?
H: Because precisely here, the word "soul" describes the central order, the
center of a being which, in its external forms of manifestation, may be
quite manifold and difficult to take in at a glance.9

With these words it is not just said that there is something over against
human beings which simply towers over them and which they can
nevertheless perceive. The word "soul" is a reference not to an
impersonal it but to a personal reality.
It is for this reason difficult to see whyas one reads in many
theological presentations these daysit is no longer allowed, as
belonging to the outmoded Greek cosmic world view, to speak of the
religious symbolism and transparency of nature, of the universe, of the
cosmos, of the hierophany and theophany of the heavens. The
anthropological and anthropocentric epochs into which we have
entered do not exclude but include the consideration of nature as sign,
symbol, and revelation of transcendence, because the human being
cannot live without this relationship. The progress of natural science
and the growing knowledge of empirical causes connected with it do
not supersede the fundamental structure of nature to be symbolic of
transcendence; rather, they make it more clear.
Certainly this fundamental orientation can be by limiting attention to
the merely present, to what "the case is." But it isn't true what Bert
Brecht formulates in his poem "Der Ozeanflug" [The Ocean Flight]:
Participate in the banishing of every god, wherever he appears. Under the
sharpest microscopes, he falls. Our improved equipment drives him out of
existence. The cleaning up of the cities, the destruction of misery, make
him disappear and drive him back into the first millennium.10
8 (Munich, 1969).
9 Ibid. 193.
10 B. Brecht, Werke II (Frankfurt a. M., 1967) 57677.

Page 196
No technical invention, no piece of equipment, is a refutation of God,
as if God could ever be found with pieces of equipment or in
laboratories. The abolition of misery doesn't make God disappear, but
one sees therein one's task. Natural science is silent about God. It is,
methodologically atheistic. This justified and grounded silence is an
indication that God is not a piece or part of the world, i.e., not an
object that is, and also not an inner-worldly cause or substitute for it.
Thus God, transcendence, cannot be expressed in the language of
natural science, mathematics, and technology. In these methods and
according to them there is no hierophany and theophany. But the
language of natural science and mathematics is not the only language
of human beings; the reality disclosed by natural science and
technology and their corresponding methods is not reality as such, but
only a part of it.11
God in Heaven
In his book Honest to God,12 J. A. T. Robinson drew special attention
to the theme of hierophany and theophany and the expression "God in
heaven." The fact that this book is no longer making headlines is no
indication that its theme is out of date. We have simply become
acclimatized to it.
One main thesis of Robinson states that the language of "God in
heaven," the coordination of God and heaven, stems from a
mythological, now no longer reasonable image of the world and leads
to representing God "as the Old Man above the clouds," as "Father
over the starry tent." Speaking about the Father in heaven, talking
about heaven as the place where God lives, can, in these days of the
abolition of the heavens, easily lead to the abolition of what is meant
by "God." Robinson is very much aware of the difficulty that the
abolition of the heavens seems like a denial of God, hence like
atheism. He is not, however, trying to abolish the idea of God and
transcendence but to make them understandable for modern human
beings and to produce the conditions of the possibility of Christian
faith. Robinson expressly declares: ''We intend in no way to change
the Christian doctrine of God, but we want to prevent it from
disappearing along with outmoded views of the world."13
In view of this situation, which he calls a "reluctant revolution,"
Robinson takes over from Paul Tillich the idea that "God is not a
projection into the beyond, not some kind of Other above the clouds
of whose existence we would have to convince ourselves, but God is
the
11 Cf. Heinrich Fries, "Die Gottesfrage in der Begegnung mit der
modernen Naturwissenschaft" in: H. Fries, ed., Gottdie Frage unserer Zeit
(Munich, 1973) 1923.
12 Munich, 1963. On this, cf.: Diskussion zu Bischof Robinsons: Gott ist
Anders (Munich, 1964); H. Fries, in:Ärgernis und Widerspruch, 2d ed.
(Würzburg, 1968) 10132.
13Gott ist Anders 51.

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ground of our being."14 Not nearness but depth signifies God. And
depth, according to Tillich, signifies not the opposite of height but the
origin of being; it signifies that which "unconditionally concerns
human beings," that which they take seriously without reservation,
which "is ultimate reality" for us. This word, depth, is intended to
express that "God is not outside of us, and yet God is profoundly
transcendent.''15 To illustrate this, Robinson quotes a few sentences
from a sermon of Tillich:
The name of this endless depth and this inexhaustible ground of all being
is God. That depth is what is meant by the word "God." And if that word
doesn't have much meaning for you, then translate it and speak of the
depth in your life, of the origin of your being, of that which
unconditionally concerns you, of that which you take seriously without
any reservation whatsoever. If you do that, you will perhaps have to forget
some things you have learned about God, perhaps even the word itself. But
when you have come to know that God means depth, then you know a
great deal about God. You wouldn't be able to call yourselves atheists or
unbelievers any more, for you would no longer be able to think or say that
life has no depth, that life is shallow, that being is surface. Only if you
could say that in full seriousness would you be atheists. Otherwise, you
aren't. Whoever knows about depth knows about God.16

The idea of God as the transcendent depth within us and among us is

protected by Tillich and Robinson from a misunderstanding. God is
not another name for nature or humanity. To begin with, God is not
the unconscious of which depth psychology speaks. The depth that is
meant in connection with the idea of God is the transcendent depth of
the encompassing ground of being. But this is not found in an empty
"in itself," but in, with, and under the conditions of life and activities
of existence, especially in encounters with human beings, in the
readiness to be radically there for another. But here, too, it holds: the
eternal You is not the same as the temporal You; that would be
naturalism. God as depth means that our being has depths that
naturalism and positivism of all kinds cannot recognize or will not
recognize.
What is our assessment of this conception? First and fundamentally:
All talk about God is talk in human language, with human images and
ideas. These images and ideas may at times be historically
conditioned, but they also constitute the unique possibilities of human
beings and their language. The word "depth" as transparence and
epiphany of God is legitimate, if the thesis is correct that everything
that is can be revelation. But the word which comes from God as
depth is no less an image and symbol than that of height, of the
heavens. The image of depth also has its limits. This becomes clear in
the steps we have to take to protect this idea from sliding into
naturalism and to keep God from being turned into the equivalent of
the unconscious of
14 Ibid. 31.
15 Ibid. 66.
16 Ibid. 31.

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depth psychology. Nothing should be said against the image of depthit
is quite legitimate and is found everywhere in the language of religion
where one speaks of God dwelling, being, living, and abiding in
human beings and of God as the ground of all reality. If the image of
depth helps contemporary human beings to make present the
transcendent reality of God, then it is even necessary. Still, one has to
keep in mind that it, like the image of height, is an image and like all
images has limits; it cannot say everything, and its whole purpose is to
raise up and highlight what is meant by the image and idea. Here
again a distinction is to be made in view of the manifold use of "God"
and "heaven" and "God in heaven."
Heaven can be image, symbol, revelation of God, indeed even a name
for God in the way, e.g., it is met in the two biblical concepts
"Kingdom of God" and "Kingdom of Heaven." It is different from the
heaven spoken of when it is said that God created heaven and earth. In
this mode of expression, God and heaven are clearly and radically
different.
The phrase "God in heaven" thus needs interpretation. If by that is
meant that heaven is the place where God dwells and where God thus,
if God exists, can be found and even has to be met, then it does
follow: if the heaven traversed by the space ship is empty, then God
doesn't exist: God is not found in heaven. This is the "Sputnik
argument" proposed in similar ways in East and West: I see no God.
Only the double perspective of heaven as symbol and as epiphany of
the invisible God can protect against misunderstandings and confusion
and from having technical data or changes in one's view of life
weaken or confuse the faith. The most one could do is to ask why one
still holds onto the connection "God in heaven," ''Father in heaven."
It must be said that the symbolic content connected with the idea of
"up," height, heaven represents an elementary, fundamental human
apperception. It is connected quite by itself with the idea of qualitative
height, value, sublimity, and transcendence. This is so true that this
image, precisely in its application to God and in the orientation of
human beings to it, cannot be given up without losing a fundamental
truth about God. This shows that heaven is not an arbitrary,
exchangeable sign for God, but a symbol based in the thing itself.
This innerqualitativecharacterization of height is not changed by an
altered scientific view of the world any more than a Copernican view
of the world keeps us from talking about the sun rising and setting,
although such talk, scientifically speaking, is erroneous. At most, one
should consider whether one shouldn't make human beings again
aware of these elementary things and help them to appropriate anew
the original meaning of these ideas, and to make the sense of these
elementary signs, images, and symbols live again.

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Robinson accepts Rudolf Bultmann's demolition of outmoded
mythological thinking and world views. Significantly, Karl Jaspers,
disagrees, and declares that mythological thinking is necessary and
proper to human beings of every time; the point is not to do away with
it but to regain it in its essence.17 This idea is gaining in attention and
significance in the present age.
This opens up the possibility of accepting in a new way the word of
God in heaven, and thus of not writing off as an archaism or
mythological image, but as accepting as a disclosure of reality the
dimension of revelation that goes along with the physical, cosmic
reality of the heavens and the universe, and that can now be seen
better and in more detail.
Coming back to our point of departure: Everything that is can be a
hierophany and theophany and it thus has the dimension of revelation.
From all this was chosen one model which is found in religions and in
the history of religions and which is still valid today: heaven. Other
phenomena: springs, mountains, seas, rocks, trees, animals, because of
their quality of being hierophany and theophany, have been preferred,
above all in the so-called "cosmic religions." We should not
acknowledge these phenomena simply with the attitude of someone
who is interested in the curiosities of nature religions and collects as
many of them as possible, for in these phenomena shine out the
dimensions of reality: existing-being and revelation-being.
Hymn to Matter
At the end of these reflections, let us give one example of what such a
perspective could look like and how it could be expressed today.
Teilhard de Chardin, in an impressive and at times controversial way,
illuminated and expounded the facts of natural science in their
character of transparency. He did this in his whole literary work, but
especially in The Divine Milieu.18 We quote from his "Hymn to
Matter," in which he discovers a revelation of God:
Blessed are you, powerful matter, unstoppable development, constantly
becoming reality, you who every moment explode our boundaries, force us
to have to seek the truth ever further away.
Blessed are you, all-encompassing matter, duration without limits, ether
without coasts, threefold abyss of constellations, atoms and sexes, you
who spread beyond and wipe out our narrow measure, and reveal to us the
measure of God.
17 K. JaspersR. Bultmann, Die Frage der Entmythologisierung (Munich,
1954).
18 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (New York: Harper, 1968);
on Teilhard: A. Gläßer in: Klassiker der Theologie II (1983) 27798.

Page 200
Blessed are you, impenetrable matter, you who are spread out everywhere
between our souls and the world of essences, who make us yearn to break
through the seamless shell of appearances.
Without you, O matter, without your alluring, without your snatching
away, we would live dull, stagnant, childish, not knowing about ourselves
and about God.
I bless you, matter, not in the form in whichbelittled and distortedthe high
priests of science and the preachers of virtue describe youa medley, they
say, of brutal powers and lowly desires, but in the form in which you
appear to me today, in your wholeness and your truth.19

This is not spoken by an enthusiast who has no inkling of the matter

of which he speaks, but by someone with familiarity and knowledge,
who in this hymn does not forget or keep silent about what he has
researched and learned but brings it to new expression in these words.
Teilhard's words certainly don't automatically become someone else's.
Others perhaps may not be able to make them their own; not because
they think Teilhard's words are false but because they are content with
present existence. Because they don't let the transparency of things,
manifest-being, make an appearance or come to word. So the question
remains: Where will reality and all its dimensions and relations
receive the answer for which they cry out: in limiting everything to
the obviously perceivable reality, or in the effort and in the capacity to
express the revelation-being of things?
19 In: Wort und Wahrheit (1958) 25.

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§ 21
Reality as Creation
The relation of reality to revelation becomes especially clear when we
recall the fact that realityi.e., everything that iscan be known and seen
as creation, which, in its creational structure, invites inquiry into its
ground. This is why there are hierophanies and theophanies, why
existing-being is at the same time revelation-being.
Created Being
The world as a whole has borne from time immemorial the sign of
having been created; its finiteness is the clearest clue to this.
Finiteness says: something exists not by virtue of its nature, thus not
essentially or necessarily; otherwise it could have no beginning or
end, it would have to be, always and de facto endlessly. If something
finite exists, it exists "by chance," but not by natural necessity; it
could just as well not be. That something is created means that it is
grounded and is understood not in and of itself, but that it presupposes
a ground which can bestow and communicate being so that it can
actually be. That something is created means that it does indeed have
being, but that it does not possess the ground of being of itself, but has
received it. This structure is not tied to any historical phase or any
specific level of world theory. Therefore, because it expresses a
primordial, grounding relationship, it cannot be replaced by anything;
it cannot be fundamentally changed, much less done away with.
This kind of consideration becomes possible when one asks about the
ultimate origin of that which is. It is necessary for human beings not
to block off this possibility of their spirit, this questioning, this inquiry
after the ground, but to let it come to light so that they will learn to see
intellectually what Paul says in the Epistle to the Romans. He is
speaking of human beings (before and outside of Christ), who by their
wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is
plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the cre-

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ation of the world his visible nature, namely, his eternal power and
deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So
they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not
honor him as God or give thanks to him. (Rom 1:18-21)
Let us attempt to highlight the elements of this affirmation.1
a. It is said of God that God is a hidden, invisible God. The
hiddenness of God is not a part of God but the whole of God in a
certain perspective. God has stepped out of obscurity into inobscurity.
Inobscurity is the Greek word for truth. The truth of God is
accordingly the revelation of God, God's self-disclosure, thus an
action, a being active. Paul sets this true God over against the idols
which are dumb, do not reveal themselves, cannot do anything, and
have no self-realization in the truth (1 Cor 12:2).
b. The invisible God has revealed Himself and made Himself visible
"through the works of creation since the making of the world." As
their Creator, God is distinct from creatures, but this creation is related
to and dependent on God; it is nothing without God. Creation is thus
not nature come from itself or an eternally existing nature to which, in
the Greek view of things, the gods also belong, but creature, a work
that has a beginning and is dependent in origin and essence on the
Creator, who stands over against the world in freedom. The world is
God's; it is not God, and it is not full of gods. It is the characteristic of
idols that the symbol and the symbolized are not distinguished but are
made identical. Thus creation is also the counterconcept to myth as
interpretation of the world, when myth means the conflation of world
and the gods, of theogony and cosmogony, of history of the world and
history of the gods (and fate).2 That which is or has being is
manifested as created. In this being created, God is made manifest, the
hidden is revealed, the invisible becomes visible.
c. Because Godthrough creationis indeed self-disclosing, God,
according to Paul, can be known and indeed is known through
creation. Paul does not speculate about the possibility of our
knowledge of God, he declares it. What is knowable of God, namely
God's power and divinity, is intellectually perceived, is "gazed upon,"
by reason. But power and divinity are modes of the invisible God.
God's power is, as such, not directly accessible in an earthly mode of
knowing, any more
1 Cf. the presentation of the doctrine of creation in the handbooks and
textbooks of dogma. In addition: G. Söhngen, "Die Offenbarung Gottes in
seiner Schöpfung und unsere Glaubensverkündigung" in: Die Einheit in
der Theologie (Munich, 1952) 21234; O. Kuß, Der Römerbrief
(Regensburg, 1956) 2646; P. Smulders, "Creation," SM 2.2328; ibid., H.
Gross, 2933; A. Darlap, 3334; E. Loveley, D. J. Ehr, H. J. Sorenson, O. W.
Garrigan, "Creation," NCE 4.40728. L. Scheffczyk, Die Welt als
Schöpfung Gottes (Aschaffenburg, 1968); Ernst Käsemann, Commentary
on Romans, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1980); H. Schlier, Der Römerbrief (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1977) 4457.
2 Heinrich Fries, "Mythos und Offenbarung" in: J. Bernard ed., Offenbarung.
PhänomenBegriffDimensionen (Leipzig, 1983) 10642.

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than is God's divinity, which is reserved to God alone. God, who is
known from creation, resides as its originator precisely not in the mere
extension of the world but in God's own clearly marked transcendence
of the world. Nevertheless, as God's work, the world gives witness of
God. This witness lies in being created, in "being formed." This is not
given to the world, i.e., to all that is, after the fact; creatureliness is
rather the essence of all things one can and indeed does see in all
things. This intellectual seeing is more than a thought asking about
ground and cause; it is, rather, human beings becoming conscious
through spirit and heart. In this context Heinrich Schlier speaks of the
questioning and perceiving power of an illuminated heart.
d. The ideas expressed in the Letter to the Romans refer to a text
found in the Book of Wisdom, the latest book of the Old Testament
dating from the first century before Christ. It was composed in Egypt,
apparently in Alexandria, by a Hellenistic Jew, and has Egyptian
religiosity, above all the cult of animals and idols practiced there, as
its obvious point of opposition. One surmises that Paul, in the text just
cited from Romans, consciously relied on this text and in part took it
over. After a somewhat lengthy description of Egyptian idolatry, the
author says:
For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they
were unable from the good things that are seen to know him who exists,
nor did they recognize the craftsman while paying heed to his works; but
they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars,
or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the
world. If through delight in the beauty of these things men assumed them
to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the
author of beauty created them. And if men were amazed at their power and
working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is he who
formed them. For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a
corresponding perception of their Creator. (Wisdom 13:1-5)
e. The knowledge of God, possible to human beings from creation,
should not and indeed cannot be, anything like some objective taking
note of a fact. The knowledge of God as Creator of the world, as the
all-determining reality, naturally has consequences.
The knowledge must lead to recognition and affirming
acknowledgment, so that human beings allow themselves to be
determined by the knowledge experienced as truth. Put negatively:
human beings do not voluntarily "suppress" this truth in injustice but
"praise and thank God." Injustice is an offense against the right
established by the God of creation and holding sway therein, which
requires the veneration of the true God. If human beings do not allow
the possible knowledge of God to grow to recognition, they offend
against the reality of creation and succumb, according to Paul, into
vacuous thinking and a darkening of the heart. This darkening
becomes concrete in replacing God with idols and in the subversion of
moral behavior. According to Paul, that is not "fate" but guilt, and
thus also an object of indictment.

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These people make a switch. They exchange the glory of the
incorruptible God for the image of a corruptible human, or of animals.
They turn the world into God; they turn God into the world. This
switch is at the same time the deception and the folly that is seen as
wisdom by these people. The further consequence is, according to
Paul, a loss of orientation in ethical behavior. It consists, according to
the Epistle to the Romans (1:26-32), in sexual perversity and
"injustice of all kinds." People do all this and applaud others who do
the same. In summation it can be said: According to Paul, the pagan
has already been constantly involved with the real God. "For [the
pagan's] reality is constantly experienced creatureliness and, to that
extent, reality before God. If human beings do not deny their being
human, they are constantly encountering the power of the invisible
God: namely the knowable ground as well as the limits of their own
existence."3
The Fundamental Structure of All Reality
Creation, being created, is the fundamental structure of all reality, its
relation-being. This is not added to the reality of the world; it is the
reality of the world in truth. God is the ultimate determination,
specification, and characterization of reality. God is spoken of when
one is talking about the dependence of the world understood in this
way. They who want to talk about God must understand themselves as
creaturesand vice versa: we say something about God when we talk
about creation, i.e., about the fact that we are creatures. In this way,
the nonidentity of Creator and creature come to light along with the
fact of their innermost coordination.
Thus godlessness is not only a denial of God but also the denial of
one's own existence as creature. Denial of God is, in this view, a
denial of one's own self as indebted existence, as "existence in
reception"actually an "ontological impossibility" (K. Barth).
Reality is to be understood as creation, creation to be understood as
revelation. According to Paul, one can see this quality in creation.
This quality can also, as already pointed out, be specified with the
category of hearing: the things of the world can say something, they
can speak, they have word-character: "The heavens are telling the
glory of God" (Ps 19:1).
At the basis of this assessment is ultimately the theological truth that
creation came about by the word of God: "God spokeand it came to
be." By bringing every created thing back to the word, which calls
forth and makes possible answer, there arises a genuine situation of
encounter between the Creator and the created.
3 E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 38.

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This affirmation means: All being goes back to personal being, to
personsin contrast, e.g., to Eastern religions, in which the personal and
particular is led back to the impersonal and general. Tracing back all
reality to personal being is also a different characterization than the
characterization of God as "first cause." Causality is an inner worldly
quality for the explanation of the laws of activity and development
accessible to observation. But the creative activity of God is not really
the extension of the immanent causes and connections of events in
which the Creator functions as first link of a chain. The Creator does
not belong to the chain of being; the chain of being, as a whole,
belongs to the Creator.
The conceptual understanding of this relationship of God and world
through the conditional relation of Creator and creature has been
worked out in the well-known doctrine of analogia entis, the analogy
of being.4 Recall the description of created being: It means to have
being, not to possess the ground of being of itself, but to have
received it. This affirms that between that which receives being and
that which bestows it there is a similarity, a correspondence, an
analogy, an analogy of being. This means that being can be attributed
to the Creator and the creaturenot in the same way, however, but in a
different wayin accord with the relation: bestowing and receiving,
original and derived, and in accord with the specification: Creator and
creature. Consequently, no similarity can be greater than that between
Creator and creature. On the other hand, the distinction between being
Creator and being creature produces that greater dissimilarity which
exists between finite and infinite being.5
This brings up a new question: Does not the modern, secularized
world understand itself as opposite and contradictory to a world as
creation, and thus to the world as a revelation of God?
4 E. Przywara, Analogia Entis (Munich, 1932); Hans Uurs von Balthasar,
The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward
T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992); J. Splett and L. B. Puntel,
"Analogy of Being, " SM 1.2125; Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of
the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified in the
Dispute Between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Goder (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983).
5 The ideas of creatureliness and createdness is what P. Knauer makes the
starting point and foundation of his ecumenical fundamental theology: Der
Glaube kommt vom Hören (GrazViennaCologne, 1978): "Createdness means
a total relatedness to . . . in total difference from. . . . The object of this
relationship we call God" (21).

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§ 22
The Secularized World as Contradiction to the World as Creation and
Revelation
This theme is connected to the previous reflection and to the theme:
Reality as Revelation, Reality as Creation. We said that the creature-
liness of reality is an abiding characteristic and thus cannot be
superseded or changed. We take up this question once again and
confront it with a theme current today: the theme of the secularized
world. For this is the world that makes us what we are, the world in
which we live, and which has this kind of self-understanding.
Description of the Concept
The concept "secularized world" contains two elements:
"secularization" as description of a process and "secularism" as
description of a condition or of a philosophy or worldview related to
it.1
The process of secularization is to be described as "making worldly."
More precisely, it can be described as the breaking loose that took
place in all fields at the beginning of the so-called modern
agebreaking loose of the world from its confinement and domination
by faith and religion in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Secularization
is the liberation of the world from these entanglements, the taking
possession of itself as worldly, here-and-now, secular world. The
result of this process is a world conscious of its independence, neither
divinized nor bedeviled, the denumenized, dedemonized,
demythologized world,
1 Freidrich Gogarten, Despair and Hope for Our Time, trans. Thomas
Wieser (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1970); Hans Blumenberg, The
Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1983) Karl Rahner, "Theological Reflections on the
Problem of Secularisation," Theological Investigations 10 (1973) 31848;
A. Keller, "Secularization," SM 6.6470; C. Naveillan, Strukturen der
Theologie Friedrich Gogartens (Munich, 1972); H. Blumenberg,
Säkularisierung als Selbstbehauptung (Frankfurt, 1974); Heinrich Fries,
"Die Säkularisierung der Neuzeit im Licht des Glaubens und der
Theologie" in: Glaube und Kirche als Angebot (Graz, 1976) 3561; U. Ruh,
Säkularisierung als Interpretationskategorie (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1980);
"Säkularisierung" in: Christlicher Glaube in Moderner Gesellschaft 18
(1982) 60100.

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the world without taboos. This world is put at the disposition of
human beings as the sphere of their planning, researching, making,
conquering. Human beings take over the secularized world not as a
house given to them, but as material for the house they themselves
erect and furnish according to their will and taste. It is the striving for
the kingdom of human beings that occasions the petition for the
coming of the Kingdom of God. In addition, human beings no longer
experience themselves as object of an unfathomable fate, an
incalculable providence. Their highest virtues are no longer
acceptance, patience, suffering, obedience, and resignation. Human
beings understand themselves in a new and powerful way as doers,
shapers of their own fate, planners of their future. Not gratitude but
creativity and the transformation of the given into the willed, of nature
into culture and history, constitute the position of human beings in
their world. Secularization as emancipation is still in full course; the
end of the road still cannot be seen.
Secularization as wresting possession of the worldliness of the world
from the grasp and sovereignty of faith; secularization as the
establishment of human beings as lords, shapers, and creators of
nature over against what is bestowed by grace and providence;
secularization as setting up the kingdom of human beings in contrast
to praying for God's rule and kingdom; secularization as program of
anthropocentricity over against theocentricityall this turns out to be, if
one asks about the relationship of Christian teaching to this process,
counter-movement, opposition, and contradiction.
In describing secularization, one can point out that the subjectivity
that has come to consciousness in the philosophy of the modern age,
and the anthropocentricity and autonomy in thinking and doing in this
age, are in tune with this worldly world. It is characteristic of the
secularized world to set itself off as anthropocentric against
theocentric, as autonomy against theonomy.2
Secularization and Faith
Can it still be said of the secularized world, which is indeed our
world, that it is reality as revelation, that it is God's creation, that it is
possible to recognize God's traces in it? At first glance, everything
seems to speak against this, since secularization as a process
understood itself as opposition to religion and faith and drew its
intellectual energies, in part, from this opposition.
Furthermore, the authoritative representatives of religion, faith, and
theology rejected secularization and the secularized world because, in
their opinion, it stood in opposition to that understanding of the world
which the faith presupposed and took as its foundation. The sec-
2 Cf. Joharnnes Baptist Metz, Christliche Anthropozentrik (Munich,
1962).

Page 208
ularized world, it is said, is the radical and conscious ''no" to the world
as God's creation. Secularization as an intellectual-historical process
of the modern age is to be characterized as a history of decline. A
historical law can be detected in it: After the battle against the Church,
which broke out at the beginning of the modern age, came the battle
against Christian revelation, and finally the battle against God. In his
so-called "Syllabus of Errors" Pius IX presented a summary of the
errors of the new age as a program for the future: the bishop of Rome
will never be reconciled with or come to an understanding with
progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.3
The First Vatican Council (1869-1870) drew the final line, so to
speak, under this negative judgment by condemning, in its
Constitution on the Catholic Faith, expressly or in fact, the many
"isms" of the modern spirit: rationalism, atheism, materialism,
relativism.4
However, this theological consideration of secularization, which
attributes to Christian faith only the negative side of the page, is only
one side of the matter. Next to it lies a totally other mode of
theological judging and determining the role of Christian faith in the
phenomenon and process of secularization. Its proposition goes:
Secularization is a fruit of Christian faith. This proposition is
maintained against the objection of those who call secularization the
product of the battle against Christianity. It is maintained as a
clarification of the intention of the initiators and authoritative
representatives of secularization itself, who, one can say, would
protest if anyone were to project onto them any motivation from faith
and religion.
The fact that secularization may be a fruit of the Christian faith has
been proposed in the most emphatic way by Friedrich Gogarten, but
also by Max Weber5 and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.6 It has been
affirmed by J. B. Metz and Karl Rahner. And has become a kind of
theological-rhetorical commonplace.
Such a judgment rests on the following fact and consideration. The
fundamental phenomenon of secularizationnamely, the understanding
of the world as an immanent world with laws and functions, as a
world entrusted to the use and responsibility of human beingsis the
effect and fruit of belief in creation.
This thesis is not playing tricks with mirrors, much less looking
towards some ultimate triumphalism of the Christian faith. Only in a
faith that knows of the creation of the world by a sovereign, free, and
transcendent God; that puts God and world apart from each other; that
sets the world free in its own domain and qualifies it as finite world;
3 DS 2980.
4 DS 302125.
5Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (Tübingen, 1934).
6Die Tragweite der Wissenschaft, vol. 1, 2d ed. (Stuttgart, 1973).

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that orders the world to human beings and elevates human beings as
persons with spirit, freedom, and responsibility to the goal of creation;
that in addition understands the world as a becoming and, historically,
as a striving worldonly in such a faith do we find the possbile
intellectual conditions of secularization, the worldliness, of the world,
and a "hominized world" (J. B. Metz). What God makes, God does
not violate, does not swallow it up back into Himself. The acceptance
of the world by God means its liberation. The specific importance of
the world is not lessened but grows when it is understood as God's
creation.
To illustrate this, we quote a passage from Carl Friedrich von
Weizsäcker:
Whoever believes in God is no longer subject to the gods. The gods are the
powers of the world in and outside of us. When we believe in God we are
free in the world. The freedom from the gods, the demythologization of
thought through faith, empowers human beings to become the shaping
authority in the midst of nature. Only from this background can we, it
seems to me, understand the secularization and the belief in science of the
modern age.7

The control test shows this. Shaping and creatively intervening in the
world, putting it at the disposition of human beingsthese are
impossible in a philosophy that doesn't know the boundaries between
God and world, lets the divine and the human flow into each other,
understands the world as emanation of the divinity, is dependent for
its part on the world, and makes the divine worldly and the worldly
divine. These ideas were alive in the ancient religions, in their myths
and cultures. The myth of Prometheus, who was punished with eternal
torture for the robbery he committed against the gods, provides a well-
known example. By their belief in God the Creator and in Jesus Christ
as the Lord who freed the world of gods, the Christians were seen as
"godless," a reproach for whichamong othersthey were persecuted.
The difficulties for progress, development, and technical civilization
that come up, for example, from the side of the religion of Hinduism
and its conception of the immanence of the divine in all living beings,
and the untouchability thereby postulated, is well known. Thus one
can understand the thesis that the future of India lies in the further
continuation of secularization. This holds, as many other missionaries
and Christians living in India say, also for a possible future of the
Christian faith in this land.
From another perspective, take a world view or faith in which the
world is seen as a negative value or as mere appearance, as place of
entanglement in suffering. This seems to be the case in Buddhism,
where, in order to overcome suffering, human beings pursue the path
of interiorization, of separation from the world, of breaking free from
all things. In such a world view there can likewise be no real impulse
for
7 Ibid. 47.

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human beings to intervene actively, creatively, and controllingly in the
world and to change it and its conditions. If such active intervention
still happens, then it happens by prescinding from these
presuppositions.
Secularization is an effect of creation faith. This thesis becomes even
more concrete when one considers the great and liberating
empowerment contained in the much-quoted, also often
misunderstood words of Genesis, much more a blessing than a
command: "Fill the earth and subdue it" (1:28). For one can see in
natural science and technology a fulfilling of this mandate, the
continuation of the sixth and seventh days of creation. Human beings
are allowed to cooperate with God the Creator, with Christ the Lord of
the Cosmos, with the Holy Spirit the Lord and Giver of Life. These
words are no license for exploitation, but are intended to prevent
exploitation.
The thesis of the derivation of secularization from creation faith is
thus not a complacent, inner-theological assertion but a phenomenon
that remains philosophically and historically provable even outside of
faith. That should not, however, be the cause of any post-factum
triumphalism. It should rather be the source of a faith-engendered
courage to affirm this secularized world in its formal Christian
fundamental structure as "flesh of our flesh." Though Church
representatives initially and for centuries didn't want to recognize this
legitimacy, but denied and opposed it, with the understandable result
that the grownup sons of secularization no longer have any interest in
this genealogy, and even explicitly deny it.
Nevertheless, in theology and in the consciousness of Christian faith,
we should draw attention to these origins and inner contexts of
secularization. We should do this not to reap any unmerited thanks,
but to point out the real ground from which the present-day world
lives: namely, a correctly interpreted creation faith to which
admittedly the Christians and the churches of the past did not give
comprehensive enough and free enough witness, and which we are
only today able to estimate in its immeasurable dimensions. In this
way the alienations and needless fixations should be overcome that
have so long burdened the secularized world and the Church and their
mutual relationship. The view of reality and the path to it should be
opened up, that the Church may rediscover a relationship to the world
it has helped bring about. As Metz has said,
It is not making the world worldly that is really a misfortune of the
Christian faith, but that way in which we Christians factually faced the
world, or still do. Have we not, so to speak, failed to recognize our own
child, or denied it, so that it ran away from us early and now, in a
secularistically distorted and alienated [from us] form, now looks back on
us? Did not Christianity at the dawn of the modern age enter into this new
world horizon too hesitatingly, did we not close ourselves against it far too
much, for the most part fundamentally suspected and

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denigrated it, so that the world, which was set free into a radical
worldliness precisely by accepting the divine word, could stand before us
in its own right only with a bad conscience? And not the inner incertitude
and weakness of the worldly world, its lack of substantial authenticity but
also its hubris and its false will to autonomy, follow as a consequence from
the fact (but not as the only reason) that Christianity gave the world
freedom in its own realm much too hesitatingly and only under protest.8

In the meantime there has been a change. The Pastoral Constitution of

Vatican II, "The Church in the Modern World," is to date the Church's
most convincing official document of a new, open and affirming
specification of relationship between Church and "world." It is, so to
speak, a "Counter-Syllabus," at text of the reconciliation of Church
and world.
But today it seems as if this very constitution, which provided to
many people access to faith and Church, is criticized and pushed aside
not by people outside the Church, because it opened the Church for
the world. Many theologians are saying that the text of this document
is too naive and too optimistic, that it assumes a pre-theological
concept of world, that it pays too little heed to distance, that it
embraces an excessive belief in progress. The concepts of dialogue
and cooperation are not sufficient to describe the task of the Church;
there have to be clear distinctions and limitations. One no longer
wants to admit and live by the fact that the windows and doors of the
Church were once open. Uniformity is the new word, and the
summons is: Close the doors! One can only give the advice not to
follow this summons! For this uniformity leads to being closed off,
and being closed off leads to sect, which is contradictory to a Church
that calls itself Catholic.
Secularization and Secularism
This theme gets further clarified if, with Friedrich Gogarten, one
distinguishes between secularization and secularism. Secularism is the
transformation of a process into an idea and philosophy. Secularism,
which means the absolutizing of secularization, lets nothing exist and
have value except the empirical phenomena found in secularization.
From anthropocentrism the abolition of theocentrism is taken to be an
obvious conclusion. Because God doesn't appear in the secularized
world; because one does not meet God in the fundamental sciences of
the secularized world (mathematics, natural science, technology,
linguistics); because in laboratories one neither needs nor can know
God; therefore it is proclaimed by closed-system secularism: God is
dead.
Secularism is the degeneration of secularization, says Gogarten. As an
"ism," secularism wants to be understood as a total, "nothing but"
8 J. B. Metz, Theology of the World, trans. William GlenDoepel (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 39.

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system. It thereby denies its origin from creation faith and also
withdraws from secularization as the liberation of the world by God
the Creator, the bearing and liberating ground of itself. Thus
secularism turns into the theory of a God-denying world in the sense
of the Gospel of John. Secularism becomes an ideology, uncritical of
itself, fixated and closed off, deaf and blind to realities other than
those found in itself, thus making human beings into prisoners of their
own self-manipulated world, thus killing off what is the real sense of
secularizationsubjectivity, spontaneity, freedom, and responsibility.
For the sake of an authentic secularization, that secularism has to be
rejected which, in contrast to the methodical self-limitation possible in
secularization, denies the creation, transcendence and sovereignty of
God. For this reason secularism fends off from human beings the
religious possibility that is theirs as human beings when they reflect
sufficiently on themselves.9 Nature comes to meet these human
beings no longer as numinous divinity but as matter for the work of
God's hands. Thus nature can no longer distort the view towards the
true God in an erroneously understood "nature piety" or even in an
apotheosis of nature; instead it sets free an immediacy of the human
with the divine You and recognizes therein the ultimate realities
encountered in the technical world.
The rejection of secularism, for the sake of secularization, as rejection
of the total claims dominant there, is intended to assure to human
beings that power of enablement which they need for the existence of
secularization, of the world entrusted to human beings, and of the
history to which they are responsible. Human beings are thus
protected not only from titanism, but also from the not lesser danger
that, in this "ism" they might become only a means to an end or a
stage on the way to a process in which the individual experiences that
well-known and multi-faceted fate: "You are nothingthe whole is
everything."
The purpose of reflection on the secularized world is to ask whether it
makes sense and whether one is justified in seeing in the secularized
world, i.e., the world of today, a reality that can be connected with
reality as revelation, reality as creation. There are good reasons for
answering "yes." To be sure, the answer doesn't lie out in the open but
is disclosed to reflection on the origin, on the conditions of possibility
of a secularized world. One of these conditions, certainly not the only
one, is an understanding of the world as different from God and thus
as creation set free to be itself. By means of this its origin, and the
secularized world, precisely the secularized world, is also reality as
revelation.
9 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The God Question and Modern Man, trans.
Hilda Graef (New York: Seabury Press, 1967).

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That being the case, the secularized world is not contradiction to the
world as creation, to the world as revelation. The world as creation is,
instead, one of the most important conditions for the possibility and
the undistorted realization of the secularized world.
In the debate about the secularized world as world of the modern age,
Hans Blumenberg takes a remarkable position. The title of his
workDie Legitimität der Neuzeit [The Legitimacy of the Modern
Age]is consciously opposed to the concept of secularization.
"Secularization" according to Blumenberg is a "theologically
conditioned false category." They who connect modern age with
secularization expose it, according to Blumenberg, to a false category
and are thus actually speaking of the illegitimacy of the modern age.
The modern age is rather something genuine and original. It is a break
between epochs and signifies "human self-assertion over against
theological absolutism."
Yet one can speak that way only if one equates the concept of
secularization with that of illegitimacy and error. It was the purpose of
our preceding considerations to show precisely that this is not the
case. The modern age and the self-assertion that has awakened in it
clearly possess a legitimacy that is also theological. There is no
contesting that there is a theological absolutism, but we do indeed
contest that theology as such is to be identified with it.

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§ 23
The Human Being as Revelation
All that we have been saying about the world as creation and about
the revelational quality of reality, all that we have been saying about
the revelational quality of revelation itselfwhen we consider God the
Creator as the ground of all reality, who is indeed distinct from
creation but self-manifesting in itall this holds true in a special way
for human beings who are situated in the world. For their "being" can
be described as a being-in, being-with, and being-toward-the-world.
Thus it isn't just that human beings can know and express the
createdness of reality and the manifestation of the divine included
therein; for when human beings recognize their own creaturehood,
they also recognize how they are constituted and what makes them
what they are.
The Human Being as Creature
In all sorts of ways it is brought home to human beings that they are
not sovereign creators of all things. Human beings are finite, by no
means always and in all things masters of themselves. Many situations
demonstrate to them their finiteness, before which they are powerless
and speechless. It is in birth and death that human beings experience
most strongly their passivity; for there they become most aware that
they are not in control of themselves and their destiny. In all that they
are, and in all that they have, and in all that happens to them, they are
nothing but passive receptors. They are essentially dependent beings
with uncertain and shaky futures.
Whatever position one may take on the question of God, one will have to
take cognizance of the fact that human beings in any case are not their own
creators; in that regard they have no possibility of choosing place and time
and circumstances. One may take whatever attitude one wishes towards
death, it remains in any case decided that human beings have to die, even
if they enter death voluntarilyin which case they only execute in advance
the sentence passed on them. And also in

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their existence between birth and death, human beings as called, as subject
to account, as subject to question, are delivered up to passivity in all sorts
of ways.1
Human beings experience their finiteness in their being part of a
historical situation which is not of their own making; it is there and is
given to them before they have any say in the matter. Human beings
experience their finiteness in what happens to them without their say
and often despite it: in failure, in things gone awry, in the destruction
of their plans and projects, in the fragmentary character of their work,
in the fragility of their achievements. Human beings experience
creatureliness as finiteness in experiencing their limits and
incapacities.
But this experience can be quite different. Creaturehood can also be
experienced as happiness, as success, as gift, as help, as rescuing, as
benign providence, as favorable circumstances. The "revelation-
dimension" of these experiences gets expressed in the familiar
exclamation, often used thoughtlessly, but also still quite loaded with
meaning: "Thank God."
We are speaking of the human worth of every single human being
without exception, of inalienable human rights, of the inviolability
and "sanctity" of life, above all, of weak, unprotected, helpless life: in
the child, in sick people, in those needing constant care, whose life is
"justified" by no achievement, no usefulness, no remaining
recognizable purpose, but still stands incontestably under the sign of
nondisponibility. Human beings are not means to a purpose that is
different from them; human beings are themselves and in themselves
their own goal and purpose.
What is the ground of this inviolable dignity and nondisponibility
given to each human being, which others cannot appropriate or take
away? Is it enough just to point to it as fact, to point to tradition,
custom, or habit, or to the progress achieved by human beings of the
modern age? Or is the only ground that can explain even the extreme
cases to be found in acknowledging that there is in human beings, as
nowhere else, a revelation-being, and that this revelation-being points
them beyond the finite realities and structures of human being to the
"all-determining reality," namely the fact and reality of the
transcendent Creator who transcends human beings in their finiteness
and who, at the same time, is present in them as their deepest
mystery? Does the deepest and unassailable ground for the worth of
human beings lie in the fact that they are creatures of Godeven more;
image and likeness of Godthat they thus have a worth not owed to
human beings but a non-disponible worth that lays obligations on and
makes claims on
1 Gerhard. Ebeling, The Nature of Faith, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967).

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human beings? That and much more is contained in the proposition:
"To talk of human beings is to talk of God."2
Human Beings in Their Behavior
Human beings can encounter the world outside of themselves. They
can encounter it in persons, events, things, conditions. They do this by
knowing and acting. This world is given to and given over to human
beings. At the same time human beings are, in turn, dependent on this
world. Thus, one of the essential characteristic of human beings is
their open, receptive exposure to the world, which is, at the same time,
both different from them and necessary for them.3
The relationship of human beings to the world is characterized by the
fact that over against human beings who know themselves as a unity
we find the multiplicity and multiformity of things. This multiplicity,
however, does not dissolve the unity of their selves but brings it to
constantly new consciousness. This is clearly expressed in "I
consciousness" and in its unity.
Human beings experience their creatureliness in knowing, doing and
acting. At the same time they experience therein the fact of their
dependence over and beyond the present and the individual, on a
comprehensive, universal horizon. Human knowledge and human
activity have revelational quality not only insofar as human beings are
revealed, externalized, and made known therein, but also inasfar as
there is a relationship to transcendence here. When human beings
question, when they want to know, when they strive after something,
these acts are directed first to an individual something, to something,
quite specific: to an object. But human beings don't stop with this
individual something; they don't find fulfillment in it. All knowledge
initiates further questions; everything that is achieved becomes itself a
motive for new searching and striving. Knowing, willing and striving
are in motion toward the unlimited, the boundless. This boundless
something however is not only the intended goal, it is also the horizon
from which knowing and willing arise.
Manifest here is the oft-described phenomenon of the boundless
openness of the human spirit as well as the phenomenon of the
immanently unquenched fulfillment of willing, striving, and loving.
Manifest here is the inquietude of the human spirit and heart. The
openness of human beings allows them to perceive, in the
fundamental execution of
2 Rudolf Bultmann, "What Does it Mean to Speak of God?" in: Faith and
Understanding I, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1987).
3 The basic theme of Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World, trans. William Dych
(New York: Continuum, 1994).

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their actions, a reality constituted by that which it grounds: being,
truth, value.
In its knowing, the individual activity of human beings is related to
being in its intelligibility, i.e., in its truth; and in its striving and
loving, this individual activity is related to being in its desirability,
i.e., in its value. Consequently, this individual activity of human
beings presupposes in an unrestricted senseas indeed characteristic of
being itselfthe true and the good which transcend both the individual
act and human beings, while at the same time being realized and
affirmed in them.
The transcendentality opened up therein is the condition of the
possibility for the individual action of human beings. This action is
also open for the revelation present in it of a transcendence that
surpasses world and human beings. Transcendentality is the
presupposition of the categoriality in which it comes to expression.
Only because we know about being, preconceptually of course, do we
give the contents of our knowledge the predicate "being." Only
because we know about the good in general, do we have the capacity
to do the good in particular which, as particular good, refers to the
good as such.4
The tension and difference between known and asked, between
achieved and willed, is understandable only if knowing and acting are
not primarily grounded on the individual, concrete objectotherwise
they would go no further than thatand only if this tension and
difference, in an anticipatory way with the individual object, are
awakened in human beings by a "foreknowledge" of truth and value.
Coming again to the surface at this point is the transcendental horizon
of the [thing with] being, of the true and good from which human
beings are specified, and of which they have knowledge, however
unthematically, and which they coaffirm and coconstitute in the
individual execution of their act, and to which they turn repeatedly
and in ever new ways.
The relationship between nonobjectifiable transcendence and
objectifiable categoriality (transcendence as condition and ground of
the individual) is nowhere so visible as in the acts of unconditioned
decisions: in a radical, selfless, absolutely unshakeable and
unfrustratable goodness and love, in a forgiving that pardons all guilt,
in a reconciling that wipes away the traces of evil, in an absolutely
selfless commitment against inhumanity in all shapes and forms. What
must be done concretely in a given case stands under the sign of the
individual and thus of the conditioned. But the radical and
unconditioned that is
4 On the theme as a whole, cf. K. Rahner, Hearers of the Word, trans.
Michael Richards (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969); Foundations of
Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William
V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1994).

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being revealed therein comes out of the horizon and the ground of the
unconditioned.
In this way human beings become aware of the transcendence they
themselves are not but in their own action can experience as all-
determining reality, which is a paraphrase for God. This also holds
when, in human activity and behavior, God is not named in words.
God is factually, i.e. through the action, acknowledged in the mode of
an unconditioned, binding reality.
It follows that infiniteness and unconditionedness are not postulates
born of the longing of human beings for the infinite and
unconditioned, through a subsequently conceived projection of finite
perfection into endless perfection. The infinite is rather the prior
condition for the reality, knowability, and strivability of the individual
object and human beings themselves. It can thus be no less real and
valid than the world and human beings in their knowing and willing.
The unconditioned, the true and the good, can accordingly not be
lacking in what belongs to knowing and willing persons, i.e., the self-
presence [Bei-sich-Sein] in knowing and willing, hence freedom,
spirit, personality. Without the living reality of the spirit,
unconditioned being would be a dead reality; it couldn't be the
supporting ground and the fulfilling goal of the knowing, striving, and
acting human being.
The unconditioned, the absolute, who is called God, turns out in the
course of these reflections to be that reality which is the ground of the
knowing and willing world-affirmation of human beings, and therein
the ground of human beings and the world itself. It is that
unconditioned aspect of reality, truth, and value constantly aimed at
by human beings, which grounds everything immanently real, true,
and good, and which through its unconditionedness obligates the
freedom of human beings to truth and goodness.
The steps, proofs and conclusions described here are by no means, of
course, the reflections and expressions of all human beings. Human
beings are quite capable of rejecting all that and contenting
themselves with the surface reality even of their own action. But our
task is to point out the possible reflection, to label what is implied,
and to give it a name; our task is to lay open the origin of what is
really there. Furthermore, it is important to show that the process of
illumination attempted here is both possible and legitimate, that it
expresses not only that which often happens wordlessly, silently, and
anonymously, but also that which includes precisely in this process an
acknowledgment and thus implicit knowledge of the absolute and the
unconditioned as all-determining reality. The action of human beings
has thus the quality of ''revelation-being." It points to God.

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§ 24
The Revelational Dimension of Word and Language
Language and Human Reality
Language discloses the reality of human beings, inasmuch as it is the
sign, the expression, and the medium of their creatureliness. In the
positive sense, this means that human beings possess a creative
quality: creativity. This has its field of expression in language, in
speaking in its varied forms. Human beings are linguistically creative.
Modern language philosophy1 distinguishes between informative and
performative speech. Informative speech observes and describes. It
expresses facts, dates, and events. Through language, reality is
grasped; it becomes "language." Language is language of news. This
way of speaking should not conceal the fact that there is no such thing
as objective news as such, and that the so-called "act of speaking"
always gives to news some particular interpretation. Every reporting
of news is a selection. That selection and the accents it sets already
constitute an interpretation that depends on the subjective grounds and
motives which do not appear in the apparently objective news report.
News can be manipulated. This is most obvious in totalitarian
systems, but is by no means limited to them. Manipulation of news is
found everywhere in the age of the "mass media."
In contrast to informative language, performative language doesn't try
to report reality; instead it creates and constitutes reality. Language
becomes reality-creating, reality-changing activity. In expres-
1 H. J. Green, The World and Spiritual Realities (Ann Arbor, 1981,
Microfilm); L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus (Atlantic
Highlands, 1975); H. B. Müller-Schwefe, Die Sprache und das Wort
(Hamburg, 1961): Martin Heidegger, On the Way of Language, trans. Peter
D. Hertz (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982); Gerhard Ebeling, Gott
und Wort (Tübingen, 1966); F. X. Mayr, "Language," SM 3.26874;
Introduction to a Theological Theory of Language, trans. R. A. Wilson
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973); J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with
Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962); B. Casper,
Sprache und Theologie (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1972).

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sions like: I promise, I forgive, I love, I believe you, I give you my
"yes," or when passing judgment, it isn't so much that something
different from word and language is established or named; instead,
reality is constituted and opened up. Language creates reality, which,
without language and apart from it, simply would not be. This
becomes most clear in sacramental action. Sacraments receive their
"form" and their reality through word, e.g., "I baptize you," "I absolve
you," or the pronouncing of the words of institution at the Lord's
Supper. Thus one can say with Karl Rahner that sacrament is the
supreme instance of word.
Language discloses and reveals the reality of human beings, and to
that extent makes them free. Freedom, says Ebeling, 2 is dependent on
language. Through speech human beings achieve distance from the
speechless compulsion of instincts and habit, from the immediately
present and existing, from the apparently inevitable, and are led to the
possibility of decision. Freedom is called forth by speaking to human
beings in such a way that they are let into the space of freedom
promised and offered to them. The freedom movements gather around
the words of freedom: the Reformation with Luther's words "On the
Freedom of the Christian"; the French Revolution under the sign of
"Freedom, Equality, Fraternity" the Communist Manifesto: "You have
nothing to lose but your chains. Proletarians of all countries, unite!"
Because human beings have to learn how to speak, language discloses
their reality as indebted beings. It introduces them to an historical
origin and tradition, to all kinds of relationships of belonging and
communication, and they remain connected to these. Language
discloses the reality of human beings as beings stamped by origin,
tradition, society, and mediation, as historical beings.
Language discloses and reveals the reality of human beings insofar as,
they have, through language, the possibility of making invisible,
absent, past, and future things presentthe very essence of what is
meant by history or transcendence. Through their historicity, which is
stamped by remembering, making present, and expectation, and which
they can express in language, human beings are taken out of the
shackling, bewitching, fixating immediacy of the present moment and
liberated into the breadth of their possibilities.
Language and word disclose the reality of human beings insofar as
they open up the dialogical structure and situation of human beings,
their constitution as being with others, as being with one another. The
fundamental form of word and language is dialogue. Language is
conversation, dialogue; monologue is interrupted dialogue. No one
can speak [just] out of him/herself. And no one can be satisfied with
just speaking alone. Human beings speak not only because they have
received
2 G. Ebeling, Gott und Wort 49.

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language from others as spoken before them, but because they need to
receive an answer to their own word, a resonance to what they say.
In addition, in the interhuman realm disclosed by word and speech,
human beings are dependent on freedom so that the freedom of their
words as mediation and representation of themselves is guaranteed:
the freedom of speech. Language likewise includes the free presence
of the you with whom one is speaking. And in all this, human beings
become aware, in their orientation and dependence, that they cannot
force the acceptance and understanding of their words.
The extent to which language as revelation of human beings is the
expression and form of sociality and co-humanity, is shown in the fact
that human difficulties, inhibitions, blockages, misunderstandings find
their strongest expression and representation in human beings unable
to speak or talk with each other: they have nothing more to say; they
become aware of their barriers in the form of insuperable language
barriers; they misunderstand everything that is said or they become
speechless. Sicknesses and crises can result, also what is increasingly
recognized today: that fact that dialogue and the things leading up to it
have a healing, freeing, and often redeeming function, if the
"redeeming word" is spoken at the right time.
The problem of language at this particular moment in time becomes
especially recognizable where the question of the self-discovery of the
human being has become a major theme. Bernhard Casper thinks that
the problem of self-discovery is represented as a lack of language, as a
breaking down of the language community into many group-specific
languages which no longer understand each other. The language of the
older generation differs from the language of the younger generation. The
language of theory differs from the language of praxis. The language of
science from the language of lived life. The highly specialized languages
of technicians differ from the language that is understood on the street. The
language of bureaucrats differs from the language of those who are
administered by them. And the language of one ideological block differs
from the language of the other. Alienation is manifested immediately in the
difficulty or impossibility of talking with and understanding each other.
But this again shows that language is not a peripheral phenomenon for
human beings, as is often thought, not something that just happens to come
about with other human things. One has language not just in the way in
which one possesses a house, or stocks, or a tool. Rather, language is the
expression of actually being human. Insofar as anyone is human, he/she
exists due to language. Insofar as we are human beings with each other, we
exist with each other in our speaking.3

Word and language disclose the creatureliness of human beings as

finite and limited reality. How often it happens that the word remains
behind what it would like to make perceivable. We search for words,
we struggle for the right, the proper word. All too often the word
falsifies reality through error, deception, or lie. All too often word is
3 B. Casper, Sprache und Theologie 14.

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powerless in the face of certain overwhelming or impenetrable
situations and events. All too often word remains speechless, and
language "ties up human beings."
Human beings come hereby to the knowledge that they have neither
the first nor the last word, that they are oriented to a word that is not
their word or the word of other human beings, but is a word of power,
truth, love, and freedom. A word that hungers after all words and
languages, is present in all words and languages, but in the form of
limitedness, of inability, of brokenness, of fragmentation. In it the
"word beyond words" (H. U. von Balthasar) is awaited, the word is
not spoken by human beings to human beings, the word that comes
from the mouth of God, the word of God.
Through the power and the powerlessness of word and language,
language possesses dimensions of revelation. It opens up in very
special ways the reality of human beings as creatures in power and
helplessness, and keeps awake and alive the question of the ground of
created being. Thus its revelational relationship is described as
relationship to transcendence.
Speaking of God
If human beings can express everything through word, they can also
express that all-determining reality called God. God is a word of our
language. This is precisely where language manifests its greatness and
its limits.
The spirit and language of human beings are related to the "world" of
which they become aware through perception, observation and
encounter. Human beings are Spirit in World (K. Rahner); they know
nothing that they have not previously "apperceived" and ordered by
concepts and categories. Thus, with regard to speaking of God, who is
not an object of the world or in the world but its unobjective ground,
one can talk only indirectlymediated by the realities that have been
called world, creation, human being. At the same time we are
dependent on these in order to be able to say anything at all about
God. This is again possible through the "being-manifest" of all reality
which we spoke about earlier.
In other words, one can talk about God only analogously, in the form
of correspondence; this correspondence is grounded in the already-
mentioned analogia entis (analogy of being) between God and world,
between Creator and creature.
As an example of analogous speech Aristotle has referred to the many
uses of the word "healthy." One speaks of a healthy body, healthy
medicine, healthy blood, healthy nourishment, healthy clothing. Quite
different things are labeled with the word "healthy."

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The connection consists in the fact that all these objects mentioned
relate to one common thing. Medicine is healthy because it brings
about health, nourishment and clothing because they contribute to
health, blood because it is an indication of health, the body because it
is healthy or has been made healthy.4 The ground for analogy thus lies
in the fact that different things have a different relationship to one
common thing. It is health, being healthy, which can be said primarily
of the body and then of other things.
God can also be spoken of in the mode of analogous speech, when,
e.g., we say of God that God exists. That is said also of the world and
of human beings. The difference lies in the fact that God, as ground of
all being, possesses being and is its origin; the human being, in
contrast, receives being. Analogous speech also makes it possible for
God to be called Father in the sense of a relational analogy, or for the
attributes of perfection to be attributed to God. The invisible,
unperceivable God is spoken of with images and concepts from our
world of perception.
The ground of a possible analogous way of talking about God lies in
the fact that the reality of the world as a whole and in its individual
parts has a relation to one common [thing]. In other words, the
relational being of Creator and creature makes possible the analogy of
being as a possible way of talking about Godas talk about
correspondence, about similarity and dissimilarity. It is the fate and
the predicament of human beings to be able to talk about God, and to
have to talk about God, but without being able to do so in an adequate
way.
In his work Gott als Geheimnis der Welt [God as Mystery of the
World], Eberhard Jüngel made himself a firm advocate of analogy as a
theological category. But he stakes out a noteworthy difference from
our position. He says that there is only one analogy between God and
human beingsand that is in Jesus Christ. Thus, talk about Jesus Christ
is analogous talk; analogous talk about God can only be talk about
Jesus or telling the story of Jesus. Analogy is grounded not in creation
as the fundamental situation of all reality, but in Christology alone.5
Over against this way of grounding the analogy of God and world, the
question has to be asked: How do I get to the point of bringing God
into connection with Jesus, and Jesus with God, if before Christ and
outside of Christ there is no access to God? And how can Jesus speak
to his listeners about God and make himself understood if God were
somehow not already known to them?
Only if human beings, even before and apart from Christ and the
Christian message, are related to the reality of God in their being
4 Aristotle's Metaphysics G 1003a, 3335.; on this cf. Eberhard Jüngel, God
as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the
Crucified in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L
Guder (Grand Rapids. Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1983).
5 E. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World 261314.

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human, can the message of Jesus become relevant and can
communion with Jesus signify salvation. "Only for human beings
moved by the question of God, or in any case for human beings
touched by it, can Jesus the human take on authority grounded in
reason. We must be clear about the fact that to give up the idea of God
would bring us dangerously close to the end of Christianity."6
The Word "God"
"God," or its translations or correlates, is a word of our language and
is used with surprising frequency . These phrases and expressions
come from a time in which the consciousness of God as all-
determining reality was still very alive and intensive. Presumably our
technical world would be neither capable nor particularly well
disposed to the creation of such phrases. Yet it is noteworthy that
these words do come up in the language-play of human beings who,
when asked for the meaning of these usages, become embarrassed. It
is manifestly remarkable that there has been no success in getting rid
of this connection of our language with Godor in replacing it with
another word.
Ebeling asks:
What can the word God do? Isn't it in any case so full of meanings and so
unclear that it no longer says anything to someone looking for clear
concepts and precise definitions? The classical Christian doctrine of God
has, to be sure, always held for the non-definability of God as
corresponding to God's essence. But it has always seen therein the ground
of that about which the word God gives endless reason to think. The
apparent lack of precision of meaning is something that this word shares
with all words which are not labels for ready-made goods, but are, so to
speak, calls and signals which, in their content, demand of human beings
an inner movement to which the word in question points out the
direction.7
In support of this it can also be said, in an application of the
distinction between informative and performative language, that God
can and should also be spoken about above all in the performative
mode. The word "God" discloses and bestows reality, by bringing
things about, by creating change, conversion, and renewal, and by
putting into words what is meant by all-determining reality and what
concretely follows from that. This reality should not only be known,
but also be acknowledged by existence and praxis. It should not, to
use the words of the Epistle to the Romans, be "suppressed by
wickedness" (Rom 1:18).
6 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Gottesgedanke und Menschliche Freiheit
(Göttingen, 1972) 32 and 35.
7 G. Ebeling, Gott und Wort 63.

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§ 25
Conscience
Description of Conscience
Conscience1 is the venue of action assigned to human beings. It is a
constituent part of what is proper to them as human, like spirit, will, or
languagequalities that have an inner dynamic towards the
actualization of a specific function, namely the voice of conscience
and the decision of conscience. Conscience is characterized by that to
which it is related, the moral values: justice and injustice, good and
evil. These are the claim of reality on the human person. The Good is
thus that quality of reality which is ordered to human beings,2 that
quality within their being on the basis of which the Good can also be
aspired to as the goal of their will. Every obligation is thus grounded
in being. Reality is the foundation of the ethical.
If I thus want to know how I should conduct myself in marriage,
family, profession, government, technology, art, science, etc., I must
first know what significance these spheres of life have for human
persons and their social relationships, what laws are in effect in them,
what meaning-values are represented in them, what historical
possibilities are open to them, and what their limitations are. Only
then can it become clear to me how I must conduct myself with them
so that they can fulfill their meaning and function for human existence
in an optimal way. The true being of reality, the inner truth of things,
becomes the measure and norm of action.3
1 Cf. the textbooks and handbooks of moral theology. Ultimately, B.
Häring, Free and Faithful and Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and
Laity, vol 2; The Truth Will Set You Free (New York: Seabury Press,
1978); G. Stocker, Das Gewissen (Bonn, 1925); Martin Heidegger, Being
and Time (New York: Harper, 1962) 31525; M. Hollenbach, Sein und
Gewissen (BadenBaden, 1954); J. Stelzenberger, Syneidesis, Conscientia,
Gewissen (Paderborn, 1964).
2 J. Pieper, Living the Truth: The Truth of All Things and Reality and the
Good (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989).
3 A. Auer, Autonome Moral und sittlicher Glaube (Düsseldorf, 1971) 16.

Page 226
The function of conscience is described as follows. Conscience is a
knowledge of being insofar as being is a value which can be aspired
after, insofar as it is a "should-be," a knowledge of moral value, the
moral values themselves. This doesn't have to be reflexive knowledge;
a knowledge of the morally good or morally evil in general, and of its
concretization in a specific action is enough. Moral value is affirmed
by conscience, moral disvalue rejected. This is where the moment of
obligation, the moral imperative, comes in. Good is to be done
unconditionally; evil and injustice is to be refrained from, to be
rejected, avoided, and resisted.
Conscience has, finally, the function of a sanction, of a court of
judgment on action and on what has been done, on the deed done, on
the action not undertaken. In this function of conscience, witnesses,
prosecutors, and judges have their moments. The judgment made by
conscience after a deed of action can be approval and acquittal or
disapproval and condemnation. These phenomena are generally
described as a good or bad conscience. Conscience thus embraces all
the dimensions of human beings: recognition and knowledge, willing
and aspiring, joy and pain.
Conscience is a co-knowledge, is con-scientia. The knowledge that
comes about in conscience cannot prescind from the subject, and the
subject cannot in any distancing way "hold itself out." Conscience is
related to living unity: to the "I" of the human being as person. The
co-knowledge of conscience includes self-consciousness in
responsibility, and this co-knowledge found in conscience includes
still more: it includes, internal to the process of conscience itself, an
other as co-knower, as witness, as plaintiff, and as judge.
The Dialectic of Conscience
On the one hand I experience conscience as identical with myself.
Nothing is so much my own, indeed my "I," as my conscience. I
cannot get rid of the consciousness that ultimately I am responsible,
not someone else for me. When conscience speaks, I always answer
myself. So much am I one with my conscience that it would be more
proper to say "I am my conscience" than "I have conscience."
On the other hand, I experience the speaking of my conscience just as
intensively as something else: as the representative of a "not I," of
something else in me. I experience the venue of responsibility like the
ambassador of another power and reality, of a power located outside
of my "I-sphere." I have to bend to it because it is right. Even if I act
against itand especially thenI concede it its right in that I feel guilty.
As Martin Heidegger points out, the call of conscience is both
something that is in me and at the same time something that comes
over me.

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Conscience is represented to human beings as call and hearing
together.4 Conscience can be regarded as the basic characteristic of
human beings. They are characterized not by the fact that they have
understanding but by the fact they have conscience and responsibility.
Conscience is what makes the being-human of the human being.
Human beings experience themselves in conscience as individuals not
identical with themselves, but who are asked about their identity with
themselves. Their identity is found in this being-asked. Conscience is
thus a disclosure of the reality of human beings, of their greatness and
limitations, of their disposing and being disposed, of their
independence and dependence.
The Interpretation of Conscience
The direction of our interpretation is already indicated in our reference
to the totality aspect of conscience, in which claims are made on
human beings as person, on their self, in which they experience
themselves as both called to and listened to, in which word and
answer is demanded of them, since they become aware of the identity
and nonidentity of their self. The direction of the interpretation lies
also in the fact of the personal structure of conscience as well as its
transcending dimension recognizable in its obligatory and sanctioning
aspects.
Finally, one interpretation lies in the observation that conscience is a
call, a voice, more precisely, the echo of a voice. Call and voice,
which are in me and at the same time come over me, refer to person.
The person, however, to which conscience as echo refers, cannot be
the person of my own "I," but another, an essentially transcendent
person. An "echo" of the voice indicates intervention, possibly a
"breaking" of the call of conscience. This interpretation corresponds
to the phenomenon of conscience and what is observable there, and
does it justice. That is not the case for an interpretation that fails to do
this.
We will now present some interpretations of conscience which take
these experiences as their foundation. The reflections of Immanuel
Kant on this question have already been presented in our analysis of
his so called philosophical faith (see above § 3).
John Henry Newman5 interpreted the experiences of conscience as
follows. He calls conscience a primordial human experience. He
speaks of conscience as a moral instinct. Conscience is a moral sense
and a sense of obligation, a judgment of reason and an authoritative
command. Conscience does not rest in/on itself but touches on a
reality beyond itself and recognizes an approval of its actions that is
higher than
4 Gerhard Ebeling, "Theological Relections on Conscience" in: Word and
Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963) 41214.
5 Cf. Heinrich Fries, Die Religionsphilosophie Newmans (Stuttgart, 1948); J.
Schulte, "Das Gewissen in seinen sittlichen und religiösen Funktionen nach J.
H. Newman" in: Newman-Studien VII, ed. J. FriesW. Becker (Nuremberg
1968) 127246.

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itself. This becomes knowable in the consciousness of unconditional
obligation and responsibility.
If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at
transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to
whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims
upon us we fear . . . we have no remorse or compunction on breaking mere
human law: yet, so it is, conscience excites all these painful emotions,
confusion, foreboding, self-condemnation; and on the other hand it sheds
upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a resignation, and a hope, which
there is no sensible, no earthly object to elicit. 'The wicked flees, when no
one pursueth;' then why does he flee? whence his terror? Who is it that he
sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of his heart? If the
cause of these emotions does not belong to this visible world, the Object to
which his perception is directed must be Supernatural and Divine; and thus
the phenomena of Conscience, as a dictate, avail to impress the
imagination with the picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just,
powerful, all-seeing, retributive, and is the creative principle of religion, as
the Moral Sense is the principle of ethics.6

The phenomena of ontic flight, of ontic acquaintance [Bekanntsein]

and of ontic guilt (G. Stocker) have their roots here.
Max Scheler in his treatise Reue und Wiedergeburt [Repentance and
Rebirth] took the following position on the phenomenon of
conscience.
The stirrings of conscience seem like a wordless, natural language, which
God speaks with the soul and whose instructions concern its salvation. It is
a question whether it is even possible to separate the unity and sense of the
stirrings of conscience from this interpretation as a sign language of God,
and to do that in such a way that their unity, which we call conscience,
would still exist. It seems to me to require no real interpreting act in order
to give to the psychological material of these stirrings the function by
which they present such a judge. They themselves exercise of themselves
this God-presenting function, and vice versa; it requires a closing-of-the-
eyes and a looking-away in order not to experience these functions in
themselves.7

Scheler makes these fundamental considerations concrete with his

phenomenology of remorse. He says:
If there were nothing else in the world from which we were to form the
idea of God, remorse alone could make us aware of God's existence.
Remorse begins with an indictment. But before whom do we indict
ourselves? Isn't it essential of an indictment, even a necessary essential,
that there be a person who hears it and before whom the indictment takes
place? Remorse is, in addition, an inner confession of our guilt. But to
whom, then, do we confess, when lips are externally silent and we are
alone with our soul? And to whom is this guilt, which presses on us,
owed? The remorse comes to an end with the clear consciousness of the
removal of guilt, of the eradication of guilt. But who took the guilt from
us; who or what can do that? Remorse speaks its judgment according to a
law felt to be holy, which we have not given ourselves but which
nevertheless lives in our heart. And yet it releases us almost in the same
breath from the consequences of this law for us and
6 John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979) 101.
7 Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, trans. Bernard Nobel (Hamden,
Conn.: Archon Books, 1972) 35.

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our activity. But where is the lawgiver of this law, and who other than the
lawgiver could restrict the consequences of the law for us? Remorse gives
us a new power of purpose andin certain casesa new heart out of the ashes
of the old. But where is the source of power, and where is the idea for the
construction of this new heart, and where is the power that causes its
construction?
Thus from every partial stirring of this great moral process there is an
intentional movement aimed into an intentional sphere, a movement
which, left only to itself and not diverted by any hasty interpretation, also
sketches out as if by itself before the eyes of our spirit the mysterious lines
of an infinite judge, an infinite mercy and an infinite power and source of
life.8

We say that conscience is not just a representation of the reality of

human beings, but that it makes this very reality intelligible as the
revelation-being of human beings, as the revelation of a transcendent
instance which has power of disposition over human beings, makes
claims on them, and passes judgment on them. But is it then too much
to claim further that, since its dispository power over human beings is
so radical and unconditional, this instance cannot be beneath the level
of being of what is meant by person?
Conscience is thus the revelation of a reality transcending human
beings, profoundly affecting them, and with dispository power over
them. Thus considered, conscience is the place and the realization of
religion, in which the religion of human beings and God is represented
and realized.
Paul speaks explicitly about conscience in the Epistle to the Romans
when he describes the condition of human beings before and apart
from Christ. He says:
When the gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature what the law
requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the
law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while
their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse
or perhaps excuse them (Rom 2:14-15).

Ernst Käsemann interprets this passage as follows:

Paul is trying to say that even the pagans experience the transcendent
claim of the divine will. They have a sense that human beings are
challenged with questions and demands from outside of themselves, and
they experience it paradoxically from within, from the law written in their
hearts. Human beings are thereby brought up against the unconditionally
obligatory. Pagans experience the will of God not from the Torah (the
Law) like the Jews, but reflected, as it were, from the law written in their
hearts. Paul introduces the concept of conscience into the New Testament
as a perception of a claim made on human beings. In the same way,
conscience isin a kind of forensic processwitness, plaintiff, and defendant.
In the actio of their decision for that transcendent claim which human
beings experience in their own heart, and in the reactio of their self-
criticism, as in the unceasing dialectic of their judgments on themselves, it
becomes clear, in Paul's
8 Ibid. 61.

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view, that human beings have and live by criteria that do not come from
themselves. As far as they, in general, turn against him, they might deny
them or fight against them. But they don't silence them. Precisely in their
innermost being, human beings are not their own masters. They don't give
themselves the criteria directed against them, and each of them would, if
possible, put an end to the splitting of their own I. An other is looking at us
when we have to be critical of ourselves, and that other contradicts us in
the contradiction of our life. The shadow of the judge falls on our
innermost being and turns us into the tribunal.9

From this understanding of conscience involving the whole human

being and orienting him/her to transcendence, it is understandable that
conscience is the last, highest, and unconditional instance for human
action and behavior, and that there can be no higher obligation than to
follow one's conscience. In conscience the whole human being with
all his/her powers and capacities and all his/her dimensions is present.
The need to follow conscience unconditionally is, to be sure, possible
onlyand only then rational and permittedif and because a claim is
made on the conscience by that absolute, unconditioned reality whom
we call God, only ifhowever mediatedGod makes Himself known,
manifest and perceivable in the conscience. This also holds true for
the so-called ''errant" conscience, i.e., for a conscience that can be in
error with regard to a particular good required and right called for; but
conscience is incapable of error in its demand that the good
recognized should be done.
"Conscience stands up"is the title of a documentary volume in which
the deeds of the men of July 20, 1944, and their insurrection against
Hitler are described. The actions of the Scholl sister and brother, of
the White rose, of Professor Kurt Huber [Germans executed for
resisting Hitler] and many others were, according to their own
witness, confirmed in death, legitimated and demanded by their
conscience: as resistance against the person-enslaving power, against
the lie and the evil in its embodiment at that time. To follow the call of
conscience was worth more to them than life. This explains why it
was that Hitler made it his job, as he himself said, to take conscience
away from human beings on the grounds that conscience is a fantasy,
a Jewish-Christian invention. In fact, conscience is a constant counter-
instance and counter-force against all forms of humanity-confiscating,
yes humanity-destroying totalitarianism. A conscience decision is the
highest instance of human freedom.
Freedom is the contradiction of all forms of dictatorship. That is why
dictatorship sees in conscience its greatest enemy, which is to be
fought against with all means and which, if at all possible, must be
rooted out.
9 Ernst Käsemann Commentary on Romans, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley
(Grand Rapids: Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980)
6566.

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Other Interpretations of Conscience
The interpretation of conscience we have presented is, these days, not
without challenge. Other interpretations and derivations of conscience
have also sprung up. It must be asked, however, whether they
correspond to and take account of what conscience is overall and not
just in certain aspects.
For example, there is the thesis that conscience has been formed from
individual and social experiences of usefulness, which it then
validates. Against this is the fact that the voice of conscience and the
judgment of conscience often enough speak explicitly against
considerations of usefulness and purposefulness, because what is good
and just is in no way identical with what is useful. Every martyr is an
example of that.
Much more serious in its consequences, and more effectively
widespread, is the theory presented by Sigmund Freud in his critique
of religion. It comes under his program: The Future of an Illusion.10
According to Freud, it is primarily conscience that belongs to the
religion-supporting illusions. Freud describes it according to both its
obliging and guiding as well as its indicting and exonerating aspects.
He describes conscience as an inner perception of the rejection of
certain wish impulses within us. This rejection needs no appeal to
anything else; it is sure of itself. On the basis of his observations,
Freud can see this inner perception, called conscience, not as in inborn
quality of human beings; it arises from the ground of a feeling-
situation specific to childhood: ambivalence. According to Freud,
there is no primordial human decisionmaking capacity regarding good
and evil. Good and evil arise much more from foreign influences.
They determine what good and evil are supposed to be. This becomes
manifest above all in the life of the helpless child bonded to and
dependent on its parents, the most important persons in its
relationship.
For the child, good is what is willed and commanded by its parents
and for which the child is rewarded with recognition, praise, love, and
protection. Evil is what these relational persons explain as evil, what
one is not allowed to do. Evil is something that is punished by the
withdrawal of love. Accordingly, good and evil are to be determined
for the child originally and concretely by the bestowal or withdrawal
10 Albert Görres, The Methods and Experience of Psychoanalysis, trans.
Nicholas Wharton (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962); Joachim
Scharfenberg, Sigmund Freud and the Critique of Religion, trans. O. C.
Dean, Jr. (Philadelpia Fortress Press, 1988); J. Zahrnt, ed., Jesus und
Freud (Munich, 1972); Heinrich Fries, "Die Gottesfrage in der Begegnung
mit der Psychoanalyse" in: H. Fries, ed., Gottdie Frage unserer Zeit
(Munich, 1973) 6174; P. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences:
Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1981); Hans Küng, "Godan Infantile Illusion? Sigmund
Freud" in: Does God Exist? An Answer for Today, trans. Edward Quinn
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1980) 262340.

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of love or protection. Good is that for which one is rewarded, evil is
that for which one is punished. For this reason it doesn't make much
difference whether, e.g., the evil has already been done or is still to be
done; in either case it becomes dangerous only when the authority of
the parents, of the father, discovers it.
When one calls this condition bad conscience, that is not, according to
Freud, an accurate description. On the child's level, consciousness of
guilt is nothing but anxiety over the loss of love, i.e., social fear.
Social anxiety as real consciousness of guilt or as bad conscience
continues to exist when, in the course of one's life and development,
other human beings take the place of the parents. This takes the form
of the respective society or milieu, or of public opinion with its
patterns of behavior in the form: one does this, one does not do that;
this is becoming, this is expected. This sets up new instances for good
and evil. Up against this new authority of society, public opinion, and
milieu, the most important moral rule and behavioral norm of so-
called conscience consists in the matter, the act, the behavior not
becoming known. If there is no danger of this, there are also no moral
restraints of any kind. This means that it is not morality but possible
scandal that becomes the deciding voice and criterion of "conscience."
Evil is scandal; scandal, not the deed, brings the pangs of conscience
and causes remorse.
A decisive change in the development and life of human beings takes
place when Freud's so-called "superego" takes over in place of
parents, father, society, and milieu. This eliminates the external
influence. I myself am/become the relational person in the
establishment of the "superego," of the better "I," which still remains
wholly in the realm of the human. This lifts the phenomena of
conscience up to a new level. Basicallyaccording to Freudone should
only at this point begin to talk about conscience and guilt-feeling. In
the realm of the ego and superego, fear of discovery disappears and
with it the distinction between willing evil and doing evil. For I can
hide nothing from my ego and superego, not even intentions and
thoughts. Still, the pangs and anxiety of conscience remain. The
influence of formation makes the past of human beings live on from
the earliest levels of development. Thus the origins of human beings
live on in them even when they are grown up; things remain the way
they were in the beginning. The ''superego" torments the sinful ego
with the "same feeling of anxiety as in childhood, and lies in wait for
opportunities to make it suffer punishment from the outer world."
At the final level of development, conscience manifests, according to
Freud, a peculiarity that is not easy to explain. It acts more strictly and
more mistrustfully the more virtuous the human being, is so that, in
the end, precisely those who have made the greatest progress in
holiness accuse themselves of the worst sinfulness.

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As long as things go well for human beings, their conscience remains mild
and allows the ego all kinds of things; but when they suffer misfortune
they enter into themselves, acknowledge their sinfulness, increase the
claims of their consciences, impose deprivations on and punish themselves
with penance. Whole nations have acted and continue to act this way. But
this is explained by the original, infantile level of conscience, which, after
its interjection into the superego, is not left behind but continues to exist
beside and behind it. Fate is seen as substitute for the judgment of parents;
if one suffers misfortune, this means that one is no longer loved by this
highest power and is threatened by this loss of love.11

From his analyses of conscience, Freud comes to the conclusion: to

interpret conscience and its functions and reactions by appealing to
God as all-determining, transcending, personal reality is an illusion.
The God of human beings is in truth the exaggerated figure of a father
who threatens, who forbids, who also comforts and can reconcile
human beings with the hardness of life. But this father is not a god
different from human beings; he is a human beingas individual or
community or as superego. This connection should, according to
Freud, be made conscious; for that means the end of the illusion.
According to Freud, this illusion can be dissolved only by the "God
Logos"science,which destroys the wish-principle and acknowledges
its allegiance to the reality-principle.
For Freud, therefore, it is unimaginable that our "poor, ignorant,
unenlightened, unfree ancestors could have found the answer to this
difficult world riddle in their religious affirmations. That really can't
be true! Only the weak and the ignorant will hold on to this
conception of wishing and wish-world. The wishful thinking that gets
expressed in religion is, according to Freud, so patent, infantile and
estranged from reality that it becomes painful to think that the great
majority of mortals will never be able to raise themselves beyond this
conception of life. Against this Freud calls for an educational attitude
to reality, to insight, to enlightenment. Human beings cannot remain
children forever; experience tells us: "The world is not a children's
room."12
In his last work, in his lectures "Zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse"
[Introduction to Psychoanalysis], Freud is still writing:
Religion is an attempt to control the sense world [Sinnenwelt] with the
wish world. But it is unable to do this. Its doctrines bear the mark of the
times from which they come: the mark of ignorant children and of the
ignorant childhood of humanity. When one attempts to locate religion in
the course of development of humanity, it turns out to be the counter-piece
of the neurosis that individual cultured human beings have to work
through and overcome on their way from childhood to maturity.13
11 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey
(New York: W. W. Norton and Company) 73.
12Gesammelte Werke XIV, 6th ed. (Frankfurt, 1976) 356.
13Gesammelte Werke XV.

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Also taking place in this process, according to Freud, is the procedure,
carried out with full commitment by human beings of withdrawing
their expectations from transcendence and turning them to earthly
reality. This takes place through the "God Logos," through science,
through the power and the mandate to open up reality.
Our God Logos will turn into reality that part of these wishes nature gives
us. Scientific [i.e., scholarly] work is the only way that can lead to the
knowledge of reality outside ourselves. This science is no illusion. It
would be an illusion to believe that we could get from some place else
what science cannot give us.14

How far the power of the God Logos extends is made clear by the
following consideration. Taking off from the thesis of Wittgenstein
that, when all scientific problems have been solved, not a single
problem of life has yet been solved, we can say: when the problems of
neurosis are solved, the decisive problems of life make their
appearance. Freud asks himself the following question:
When I ask myself why I have always striven, honestly, to be ready to be
sparing of others and to be as kind as possible, and why I haven't given
that up when I noticed that one gets hurt in so doing, I really don't know
what to answer.15
Reflections on Sigmund Freud's Analyses of Conscience
What do we have to say about the phenomenon of conscience and its
development? Conscience takes part in the life, being, growth and
maturing of human beings and goes through the stages of conscience
based on custom, conscience based on authority, and mature,
independent, personal conscience. Thus it is no wonder that a role is
played here by those elements which characterize the life of human
beings on their journey: the authority of the father, of the parents, the
milieu, society and the system of norms which are dominant in it. It is
similar to the other processes of life, for example speaking and
language.
The Freudian so-called "superego" which, according to him, replaces
the early phases but maintains the patterns of behavior determined by
them, can participate in the maturing of the person as a kind of
psychological structure. It works in the manner of an easing of the
burden in situations which are predetermined by custom, taste and
convention. For all that we would still have to explain or give the
reason why, in situations of conventional action and behavior, there is
not only a formal aspect but also a consensus regarding content, above
all of a negative kind: i.e., this or that should not be done in any case:
hatred, lying, violence, oppression, terror, torture.
14 S. Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. W. D. Robson-Scott (Garden
City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1964) 5592.
15 Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic
Books, 1981) location of quote unavailable.

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But in the life and development of human beings there are also
situations in which conscience relativizes parents, authorities, and
conventions, and even abrogates them. The independent, mature, and
articulate conscience doesn't ask whether its voice and decision will
bring with it a loss of love, bad feelings, disadvantages, or
punishment; instead it asks above all whether "it's okay," whether the
deed to be answered for fits in with one's sense of being, or, more
concretely, whether it does or does not do justice to the claim of what
is authoritative reality for human beings. The determining proposition
is: the known good is to be done under all circumstances
independently of whether or not it pleases the authorities of childhood
or the present. This unconditional imperative of conscience admits of
no limitation or relativization, although it does require specification
with regard to the respective deed. In the realm of conscience,
therefore, there are aspects of unchangeability as well as
changeability. There is also misuse, when the appeal to conscience is
made to serve unconscientious purposes and interests. Still, what is
there that cannot be misused! And of course, corruptio optimi pessima
[the corruption of the best is the worst corruption of all]. But these
facts constitute no refutation of the matter of conscience itself and of
the authoritative ethical directive given in it.
The criterion is the serious case: the situation of the confessor, the
witness, the martyr. The Freudian interpretation of conscience by
father-image, society, milieu, and superego cannot explain the
extraordinary, exemplary decisions of conscience: i.e., the decision of
conscience made against the power of tradition or milieu, against the
norms of the respectively existing society. Decisions are made here
where neither earthly loss nor external gain come into question, but
only the matter itself: the overcoming of evil, its forms and powers,
and commitment for the known good thing, for justice.
Examples of such decisions are in good supply: Socrates, the
prophets, the confessors and martyrs of the Christian faith, Luther in
Worms, Thomas More, Alfred Delp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Graf
Moltke, Maximilian Kolbe, and Oscar Romero. These decisions of
conscience cannot be explained by Freud's theory of conscience.
But whoever is unable to do justice to a phenomenon in its most
outstanding form and realization, "at its best," to use the words of von
Hügel,16 doesn't do justice to the phenomenon as a whole, i.e., even in
its everyday manifestations. Such a person is not in a position to
explain the phenomenon with the depth and the power of reality
proper to and required by it.
There is an undeniable fascination that comes from the analyses and
interpretations of Freud which can indeed uncover many things in
16 On this, cf. P. Neuner, Erfahrung und geschichtliche Offenbarung. F.
von Hügels Grundlegung der Theologie (MunichPaderbornVienna, 1977).

Page 236
human action and behavior that claim to be decisions of conscience.
These decisions must be examined as to whether or not they
correspond to the human reality expressed in the word "conscience."
When the transcendental reality of God, which both differs from
human beings and profoundly affects them, enters into the discussion
(when we attempt to interpret conscience and examine its ground and
background, its depth and content), that entrance of God into the
discussion is neither an illusion, nor a flight from experience, nor an
obfuscation of reality. It is actually an indication of the deepest ground
of a reality which, as ground of reality, cannot be illusion, but is
reality in the paramount sense.
It is not apparent that a nonreligious interpretation, which prescinds from
the personal transcendence of God, corresponds better to the phenomenon
and reality of conscience than the interpretation of conscience as place and
realization of religion where human beings become aware of the internal
inner weaving of existence and transcendence which characterize them.
This is expressed in the words of Newman: Conscience is not a long-
sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a
messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us
behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience
is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch
in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and even
though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church could cease to be, in
it the sacerdotal principle would remain and would have a sway.17
17 J. H. Newman, "Conscience" in: A Letter Addressed to His Grace the
Duke of Norfolk (London: B. M. Pickering, 1875) 57.

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§ 26
The Revelational Dimension of History
What Is History?
The possible interrelationship of revelation and history comes from
the fact that history1 involves human beings. Every event could, in
itself, be described as history. We can speak of the history of the earth,
or the history of nature. But history in its true and specific sense is
distinguished from those necessary events that are explainable from
the laws of nature and are instances of nature's law and their effects.
History in the true sense concerns events brought about by the activity
and decision of human beings. Of course, human action also stands
under the necessities and laws of nature, and in addition under the
influence of social, cultural, and economic factors; but these too are
not natural forces but factors caused by human beings. But human
action carried out and manifested in history has its roots essentially in
the free decision of the human spirit and will. The event caused and
decided by human beings, in which one also encounters new,
unforeseen and unexpected things, is what one calls history. History
involves human beings as persons. The human being has history, has
his/her history. Human beings interpret their existence in the
successive events of time, in history.
But because human beings live in being with each other, in
intersubjectivity, in community, history is accordingly always related
1 J. Bernhart, Der Sinn der Geschichte (Freiburg, 1931); Th. Haecker, Der
Christ und die Geschichte (Leipzig, 1935); K. Löwith, Meaning in History
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949); Hans Urs von Balthasar, A
Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994); Wolfhart
Pannenberg, ed., Revelation as History, trans. David Granskou (New York:
Macmillan, 1979); M. Seckler, Das Heil in der Geschichte.
Geschichtstheologisches Denken bei Thomas von Aquin (Munich, 1964);
Heinrich Fries, "Die Zeit als Element der christlichen Offenbarung" in:
Interpretation der Welt, ed., H. KuhnH. KahlefeldK. Forster, Festschrift R.
Guardini (Würzburg, 1964) 70112; Walter Kasper, "Grundlinien einer
Theologie der Geschichte" in: ThQ 114 (1964) 12969; James M.
RobinsonJohn B. Cobb, Theology as History (New York: Harper & Row,
1967); M. Müller, Erfahrung und Geschichte (FreiburgMunich, 1971); G.
MannK. Rahner, "Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschichte'' in: Christliche
Glaube in moderner Gesellschaft 23 (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1982) 88125.

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to something above the individual. History is always history of a
community, a family, a tribe, a nation, history of humanity. The
superindividual event both caused by and related to human beings is
at the same time the context and the given situation, it is the space and
the time in which the individual exists and within which individuals
realize their existence, and to which they in turn take a position and
thus a relationship of responsibility.
The space and time that belong to history understood in this way are
not the external framework for an unchanging essence of human
beings; history is part of their inner constitution. Thus history is not
just involved in the contemporary interrelationships of human beings;
it is also related to their succession. This involves relationship to the
past as the place of an earlier event which, however, is not simply past
but is active in the memory and looks ahead to new possibilities of the
event in the future. The comprehensive event that involves individual
human beings and human beings in general, the present, the past, and
the future, and that at the same time describes the context of an event,
this is what is called history in the proper sense of the word.
History is the coming together of this event as the characterization and
the work of human beings. This event receives special accents through
epochal deeds or happenings which especially accentuate the human
aspects, which introduce new things in the sense of transformation
and change. One speaks of historical, world-historical events which
are then apostrophized in a special way when they bring about a
transformation in the plan of human beings or of the world: e.g., the
rising of the Roman Empire, the migration of nations, the alliance of
pope and emperor, the Crusades, Renaissance, Reformation, French
Revolution, October Revolution, Second World War, atomic age. The
point is this: transformation, what is new, is reserved to the realm of
history-in contrast to the cycle, to the hard and fast circle of events
which characterize nature in the sense of "every year the same."
History and Revelation
The question connected with our theme is: Is history, as the
predominant way in which the reality and activity of human beings is
made manifest, a revelation in the sense of an indicator pointing
beyond the observable event, in the sense of an indicator of a reality
other than inner-human, inner-worldly reality? Does history have a
revelational dimension in the theological sense? And if so, to what
extent?
A preliminary remark is necessary. That history be brought into
connection with God is by no means an obvious move. If God is
conceived, as in Greek thought, as timeless, eternal, static divinity, as
the unmoved mover, history can in no way be an indicator of God. For
history

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is the inner concept of the ephemeral, the passing, and the futile, and
thus the counter-image of the divine as incorruptible. History is, in the
Greek conception, the moved image of an unmoved eternity, separated
from and extraneous to the divinity. That is why history can turn up no
positive trace of God. History can be brought into connection with
God only if the concept of God as the unmoved mover, as the Deus
otiosus [inactive God], the timeless God, is replaced by the knowledge
of the living God already knowable from creation. Then history
becomes the image of a moved eternity.2
We repeat the question. Does history have a revelational dimension?
One could say right off that it does to the extent that a revelation is
given in human beings themselves, who are characterized by history.
In historicity it becomes particularly clear that human beings live in
the dialectic of what is given to them and taken from them, and at the
same time of what is given up to them and becomes responsible to
them.
History has a revelation-being to the extent that it, as history of human
beings, takes part in the revelation-being of human beings. For history
involves the quality of being usable, the finiteness and the
dependence, but also and above all the freedom, the responsibilityone
could almost say the conscienceto the extent that human beings in
history bring about things that are specifically human.
If there is in the phenomena of disponibility, finiteness, freedom,
responsibility, and conscience a mode of transcendence towards
revelation, then history can be called a reality that has a revelational
dimension and is oriented to and connected with revelation. But is
there beyond this a dimension of revelation that belongs to history in
the specific sense?
It has been said that history is present or felt in its intensity above all
in so-called special historical events, which bear the signs of a great
turning point, renewal, or transformation. From this has come and still
continues to come the idea that such events point beyond themselves
in a special way, that in them something of a transcendent reality,
something of the reality of God, of a divine guidance and providence,
is knowable and can be perceived, and that therefore history is a place
of the revelation of God.
Recall the way people talk about "god's activity in history" (Arnold
Toynbee). To take an example from ancient and modern times,
warring conflicts have been appealed to for the revelational quality of
history, and a "super-worldly governance," the "beating of the wings
of eternity" recognized in them. This is largely because history is
mainly understood as the history of wars and victories. Wars have
been the dominant, epoch-making historical events. It was believed
that the events of war could and should be brought into connection
with God, and
2 M. Seckler, Das Heil in der Geschichte (Munich, 1964).

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that a divine communication was to be perceived in them, since one
connected the risk and uncertainty of the events of war with divine
providence, with the reality of God as the decider of battles. One cried
to God for the victory of one's own forces by connecting, even
identifying one's own cause with the right cause and thus with God
and God's cause, and, further, by describing the outbreak of war as a
characteristic of existence in which individuals transcended their
earthly goals. The victory of arms was interpreted as a language in
which God made Himself clearly perceptible and which argued for the
cause of victory and the victors: God is "with us"with the strongest
battalions. Success was the criterion of the revelation of God: here
God has spoken.
Defeat wasaccording to this interpretationno less a pronouncement of
God: the pronouncement of wrath, punishment, judgment on the
vanquished: woe to the vanquished!
These statements are not exaggerations or figments of the
imagination. They can be documented in many ways. That an
ideology is at work in these attempts has become more clearly
recognizable today than in earlier times. The supposed revelation and
speaking of God has been used both to legitimize events and reject
them. The fact that wars, warlike events, and victories are
progressively less subject to such interpretationsall the more so in the
present age of a possible atomic warthis is a genuine step forward that
has been taken in our time and of which we are the witnesses.
Let us quote some examples from the work of K. Hammer, Deutsche
Kriegstheologie 1870-1918 [German War Theology 18701918],3
above all, from war sermons. "The war [1914] has come. It is
speaking to each one of us. Through it the Lord God is speaking.""If
Russia appeals to God, it is blasphemy. But it is allowable for us to do
so."(37). "God is pressing his sword into the hand of his people. We
must draw it in order to defend the holiest of goods. God is marching
through the German country with new revelations of his power" (98).
"Hail to the war which has brought us internal peace, social peace.
This has been done by the Lord, and it is a miracle before our eyes''
(101). "It is a holy war in which the holy God stands on our side and
in which our watchword is: Immanuel is here" (158). "Our cause is
God's cause" (220). "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (209).
"You can't fight against God. On the side of the Germans falls blow
upon blow, victory upon victory, and with each one the unavoidable
impression in our heart: here is the finger of God, here God is acting
and speaking, he is speaking in the thunder of battle, when consuming
iron goes forth before him" (284).
The German victories at the beginning of the Second World War were
likewise qualified as signs of a visibly ruling providence and special
blessings bestowed on Adolf Hitler. Especially the war against
3 Munich, 1971.

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Russia was apostrophized as holy war, as a crusade against
Bolshevism. And as the end drew near under apocalyptic signs,
Goebbels was talking about our soldiers "marching into battle as if
into worship."
Claiming God for war and victory, or the interpretation of war as a
revelation of God, has its grounding not only in a natural religious
feeling about divine power but also in the Old Testament, in the
experiences of Israel. Its founding experience, the Exodus from Egypt
and subsequent taking possession of the land, is an experience of
liberation and success, a grounding of and confirmation of their faith
in Yahweh. God thus turned out to be the God of this small nation,
since the constellation of circumstances, the passage through the Red
Sea, and the destruction of the super-powerful enemy, was represented
as revelation and proclamation of Yahweh. In the words of the victory
song of Moses and Miriam:
I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and rider
he has cast into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has
become my salvation; . . . The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name.
Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea; and his picked officers
are sunk in the Red Sea. . . . Thy right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, thy
right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy. In the greatness of thy majesty
thou overthrowest thy adversaries. (Exod 15:121, here 17)
In the Exodus event the presence of Yahweh turns out to be his "I am
here." This becomes more evident as the power relationships between
Moses' crowd and Pharaoh's army were wholly unequal, and
everything pointed to victory for Pharaoh. In the later history of Israel,
this model is repeated. Israel's wars are Yahweh's wars, holy wars;
Yahweh is Israel's standard, Yahweh is the commander of his warriors,
whom he consecrates. The priests march into battle along with them;
the ark of the covenant is the guarantee of victory. The victories of the
people are victories of Yahweh. In victory and success, Yahweh's
might, his presence, his covenant with his people are made manifest.
And because it is Yahweh, the booty of war is considered as belonging
to him. This means complete annihilation of the enemy, including
women and children, as in the conquest of Jericho, and the victory
over the Philistines by Saul, who is punished because hecertainly for
his own benefitdid not carry out the ban of war with sufficient
completeness.
These biblical passages are hard to swallow. The problem is not how
they reflect on a certain epoch of the People of Israel, but how the
Exodus and its theological interpretation are turned into the liturgical
presentin the celebration of the Easter Vigil. And the rubrics
emphasize that precisely this reading may not be left out under any
circumstances. It is indeed said by way of introduction and
commentary that all this is to be understood typologically: as
prototype of baptism. But precisely in our own day car be heard the
question: How can one expect

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Christians to make sense of such a story? The reference to baptism is
pushed aside by the poetically magnificent and extremely graphic
victory song about the annihilation of the enemy.
Of course, one can say that the whole thing is not a historical
description but a hymn; one shouldn't weigh every single word; this is
story and song. The hymn also comes from a much later time than the
actual event. Israel took over the customs of the peoples of the time
and did what all didbut this wasn't supposed to be. One can point out
that Israel was in a position of oppression, that it had a right to
freedomeven if this was bought with the destruction of its enemy. But
through all these explanations there still remains the untouched
problem: the victory, success, and annihilation of the enemy constitute
a revelation of Yahweh, a revelation of Yahweh's power and glory.
Yahweh, who grants Israel the victory, proves in battle over his
enemies to be the strongest and most powerful of the gods.
In the commentary of one of the best Old Testament exegetes [N.
Lohfink] one finds the following on the Exodus event: "War can
become a genuine experience for the consciousness of that time. We
can no longer experience the same. But we shouldn't shrink from
respecting our text when it, in astonishment, takes note: Yahweh is a
war hero, Yahweh is his name."4
I must confess, I find this respecting difficult. I grant the text its value
as an experience from an earlier time and as document of an
understandable reaction, but at the same time as document of a
situation that is for me neither authoritative nor to be imitated. But to
tell the whole story it must be noted that this war and victory-theology
did not win out in the course of the later history of Israel and in the
witness of the Old Testament, at least not in a dominant position.
If our explanation has just made reference to Israel's environment and
to the other peoples, we must also note (and this is extraordinarily
important as a corrective and differentiation): the destruction of
Jerusalem, the road to captivity, the exile, the victory of Israel's
enemies, the defeats of the People of Israel are, in contrast to the ideas
of the world around Israel, not seen as defeats of Yahweh and as signs
of his weakness; they are instead revelations of Yahweh's judgment on
his people. Here is manifest the non-identity of war and victory in
Israel with Yahweh's present power. Astonishingly, Israel preserved its
faith in Yahweh, the God of his people, through the most varied
phases of its history.
In the New Testament the connection of war and victory as sign of the
revelation of God is completely abandoned, transformed into the
paradox of the presence of God in weakness, in suffering, in the cross.
4 Norbert F. Lohfink, The Inerrancy of Scripture and Other Essays, trans.
R. A. Wilson (Berkley, Calif.: Bibal Press, 1992) 6786.

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The theologia gloriae in the form of victory, power, and success is
replaced and revoked by the theologia crucisa process without
analogy in the history of religions and phenomenology of religion.
This introduces a totally new perspective. Suffering, weakness, and
death become signs of the presence of God. This paradox is borne by
the faith: If God is God, the all-determining reality, then suffering and
death cannot be limits for God. Then in the folly and weakness of the
cross the wisdom, the power, of God become knowable, which is a
power of love.
These fundamental affirmations and determinations have, however,
been unable to prevent ideas about the coordination of power and
success as revealer of the governance of Godideas found in the Old
Testament as well as in the history of religionsfrom becoming
effective again and again in history since Christ. Examples are the
interpretation of the victory of Constantine, of Charles Martel, the
battle at Lechfeld or the battle of Lepanto, to say nothing about other
manifestations of the history of this idea.
A second, quite different, example of an attempt to see in
worldhistorical events a manifestation of God and to interpret them in
this sense, was Hitler's seizure of power in 1933. This was the
"breakout of the nation," which he conjured up from abasement and
humiliation, from the shame of Versailles. The rise of the unknown
soldier from the First World War to the leader of the nation is
something he himself considered or proclaimed as the working of
providence, and many acknowledged him as being sent by God. The
visible external success of the early years was declared, not just by
him, to be a blessing of the Almighty; likewise, the victories at the
beginning of the war. When the situation turned bad, the constant
assurance was given that the war could not be lost, the Almighty
could not leave in the lurch the people and the leader which had been
blessed with so many signs of excellence. Repeated unsuccessful
assassination attempts only strengthened this impression. In the events
of the year 1933 many saw a sign, the voice of God speaking. This
interpretation found its way even into many areas of theology. There
was at that time a theology that saw its task as accepting and
interpreting the realities that lay there for all to see. The time and the
signs of the time, vox temporis, vox Dei [voice of the time, voice of
God], were providing the hermeneutical principle for the
understanding of revelation and faith. This often took place as an
uncritical legitimation and with the imperative to become part of the
realities created at that time.
A third example is pressing on us even today and is influencing the
present situation. It also has a relationship to history. It is being said:
God is disclosed, revealed in the revolutionary eventand this, to be
sure, is the dynamic, the acting, the all-changing God. Revolution is

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brought into a positive relationship to God and God's work. Following
upon the theology of war, of national elevation, we have today a
theology of revolution. All affirmations and contents of faith are to be
interpreted in the horizon and context of the politico-revolutionary
principle. Changing, overthrowing, getting rid of the existing
structures are becoming categories of revelation. Jesus as Messiah is
becoming a political, revolutionary figure. His activity is
characterized by the text: "He has put down the mighty from their
thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with
good things, and the rich he has sent empty away" (Luke 1:52-53). If
this is the case, then the theological and also the Christian is to be
made present, above all, in the revolution event. The contribution of
the Christian consists in the task of humanizing, which, in revolution,
is connected with the service of justice and reconciliation.5
Critical Distance
Different as these models of history and revelation are in their
contents and points of relationship, they are similar with regard to
their structure and method. Over against all of them critical distance is
needed. Why? The historical events they pick out are made into a
direct revelation of God and held onto with quite apodictic
assertiveness. These models and conceptions are quite sure of the fact:
here and in this way God has spoken and acted. The factual event, or
the success, or what one wants to have happen, is used as a criterion.
There is a second reason. Only one part of the historical reality, a
subjectively chosen excerpt meant for practical application, is lifted
out as the place of revelation and transparency. The divine [aspect of
it] is understood as the ground of this and only this historical
development. In this way the divine is itself particularized and seen as
ground only of a partial reality. The rest of historical reality that is not
determined by war, victory, breakout, or revolutionthe everyday of
history or the negativity of history, the experience of suffering,
unhappiness, failureis, with the exception of the theology of liberation
and the memoria of the death of Christ recalled there, removed from
the possibility of relationship with the divine or brought into a merely
negative relationship. In other words: many fields of historical
happening are closed out. It is claimed that no positive transparency
toward the divine is to be found there. There is thus a rejection of that
characteristic which is connected with the divine: that it is the all-
determining reality.
5 T. RendtorffH. E. Tödt, Theologie der Revolution (edition Suhrkamp
258), (Frankfurt, 1968).

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A using of God for historical events and deeds, a one-sided
interpretation of one-sided historical processes as transparent of the
divine does not go back only to the early stage of the Old Testament;
it comes nowadays very close to what one calls ideology: theoretical
superstructures about events and things desired in order to ground,
legitimate, and justify them. When it takes place with an appeal to
"God wills it," then history take on a sanctioning, a kind of
transfiguration and a legitimation to which it has no right.
Suspicion of ideology is also there because such theological
reflections proceed from specific interests and purposes and are tied to
them. God and God's revelation are brought into play not to open up
reality or to interpret and make it transparent, but to take some event
that will strengthen or change something, some event motivated by
anything but religious grounds, and charge it up with God's word and
action. A difference perceived under the sign of God, a genuine over-
against, a theological proviso, a critical distancenone of these are
recognizable. God and God's activity are used without scruple and as
taken for granted. In order to ward off, from the outset, criticism and
opposition to what is taking place, theological affirmation is put to
use.
Meaning of History
If we want to talk about history in the dimension of God's revelation
in the sense of a reference to God and to the possibility, in so doing, of
speaking of God, a new starting point needs to be sought. This is not
to be found in individual events and processes, as in the views just
described, but in that aspect of the whole which is connected with
history when one speaks of the meaning of history. Meaning, already
spoken of as the opening to and place of manifest-being
[Offenbarsein], returns once again here in the realm of history. But
this turns up a considerable number of difficulties and problems.
The question of the meaning of history seems at first to be
unanswerable. There are many reasons for this. First, we don't have at
our disposition the whole of history to which the sense of its
significance, which overarches the individual, is related. We take over
the whole in the form of anticipation and expectation and in the form
of the action inspired by it. Second: history does not take place
according to the laws of necessity.
History is made by human beings; it is decisively co-determined by
human freedom. Consequently, there is not to be found in history any
straight-line progress to the ever better and more perfect. Again and
again we are disappointed; again and again best intentions come to
naught, best opportunities are missed. Stupidity and depravity,
injustice and hate, have always been the strongest experiential
objections

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against the acceptance of one overarching sense of history. Evil and
suffering in the world are still first and foremost the strongest
obstacles and challenging questions for faith in a comprehensive
sense.6
It has often been said that, after Auschwitz not only is poetry dead
(Adoro), but also praying and singing.7 This darkness has
extinguished the light of God and all meaning. For some, this may be
so. But it is not the whole story. For in Auschwitz itself, there was
praying and singing in the face of death, in the faith and confidence
that Auschwitz cannot be the last word in the fate of human beings,
that the executioner does not have the last word, that God cannot be
refuted by Auschwitz and has not died in Auschwitz, any more than
God was and is refuted by the event on Golgotha.8 The theology of
the cross comes into effect here in all its depth. There is a striking
verification of this: Auschwitz and the other extermination camps of
Birkenau and Maidanek are in Poland. There, even in Auschwitz,
people pray, sing, believe todayafter Auschwitz. Auschwitz in Poland
is no indictment against God but an indictment against human beings.
Auschwitz is, according to a statement of Pope Paul VI, the Golgotha
of our time.
Although the idea of the meaninglessness of event and history recurs
as a constant temptation, one must turn it away and deny it. For if
everything were meaningless, we would then, basically, be unable to
live any longer. In every act of life we affirm at the same time that this
life has a meaning, that being is better than not being. There is a
something within us that keeps us from simply giving up on ourselves,
on others, on the world, on history and its possible shape and shaping.
When one is troubled by the constantly repeated question, If God is,
why is there evil and the contradiction of meaning connected with it?
Si Deus est, unde mala?one can with the philosopher Boethius in
prison waiting for death answer with the counter-question, Bona vero,
unde, si Deus non est? If there is no God, where, then, does good
come from, where does even partial meaning come from, to say
nothing of initially comprehensive, possible, and real meaning?
Meaning [der Sinn] is not only the goal of our historical activity, but
also its ground and presupposition.
We experience meaning not as "something" that is merely our own idea
and projection, but as "something" that already encompasses us and begins
to make possible our wishes and questions about meaning. If we had never
experienced meaning we wouldn't be able to ask about it. But then we also
wouldn't be able to experience meaninglessness as such, still much less
understand our own activity which is borne by the factual affirmation of
meaning. For in that intersubjectivity
6 Walter Kasper, "Möglichkeiten der Gotteserfahrung heute" in: Glaube
und Geschichte 12043, here 135.
7 T. W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York, 1973); D Sölle, Suffering
(London, 1976).
8 Johannes Baptist Metz, Gott nach Auschwitz. Dimensionen des
Massenmordes am jüdischen Volk (FribourgBaselWien, 1979).

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in which history takes place, it is not we who create meaning but meaning
that presses in on us. We are not the ones who claim meaning for
ourselves; we are claimed by meaning.9
Meaning/sense is spoken to us and takes us in its service. It is, in the
double meaning of the word, a challenge and an encouragement for
human beings. This kind of experience of meaning can be a form of
transparency of history and of event towards revelation. Such an
experience of meaning not only keeps meaning from being explained
only from the part of human beings, it also requires reflection on the
source of this experience of meaning that is inderivably there, sent and
given; it is also not self-evident, but unexpected and surprising. "We
cannot simply nail down meaning; it immediately escapes us. It turns
out to be different and greater. When it comes out into the open it
immediately goes into hiding again." This shows that every
experienced meaning points to a mystery that is made known to us in
traces and signs. This mystery is not somehow beyond the world; it is
the truth, the depth, the non-obviousness and the mysteriousness of
the experienced sense itself. Thus we could say:
This ever-withdrawing and ever self-opening depth of meaning possesses a
reservedness and interiority which is not at our disposition but which has
disposition over us. It encounters us analogously to the way in which
persons meet. If therefore we are looking for a model from the rest of our
experience from which we could give it a name, we have available only
the model of the person. But even the concept of person immediately fails.
It withdraws, not indeed downwards but upwards. In no case is a less-than-
personal or an a-personal model enough. Thus we can characterize this
experience of meaning in the language of religious tradition as experience
of the Divine.10

It is encountered as the all-determining reality.

To affirm a meaning in history also means: it makes sense, it is proper
and required to be engaged in history, to get involved for justice,
peace, and freedom, and to believe in the good. To affirm a meaning
in history means never to stop beginning, never to begin to stop. It
means that a better realization of meaning and a comprehensive
fulfillment of meaningbestowed on usis to be hoped for in the future.
This expectation is the content of the hope grounded in the Christian
faith, which has its basis in Jesus' cross and his resurrection from the
dead.
It is thus understandable that hope has these days become the form of
faith, and the future has been claimed as an expression for
transcendence. Future actually becomes a paradigm for talking about
God (J. Moltmann); transcendence and future are connected: the "God
over us" and the "God for us" (J. B. Metz). The God of the future
grants the future and guarantees it as "absolute future" (K. Rahner) for
human beings.
9 W. Kasper, Glaube und Geschichte 136.
10 Ibid. 13637.

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This does not mean that God is "future," the Deus Spes [God Hope]
(E. Bloch). God is not dissolved into the future wherebyso BlochGod
is the cipher for the hiddenness of human beings; God remains the
God of the future.
This conception of future radicalizes human engagement for the world
of peace and justice. At the same time, everything already achieved is
relativized. It is not end and fulfillment, but new impulse and new
mandate.
Let us close these reflections with some ideas from Edward
Schillebeeckx. Whereas the transcendence of God surpassing all
forms of time used to be represented primarily in the mode of an
unchangeable or eternalized past, it is nowadays connected with the
future. God is the God for us, the Coming One, the God who is our
future.
Thus, a decisive shift has come about. That One whom we previously,
from an older conception of humanity and the world, had characterized as
the totally other, is now shown to be the totally new, the one who is our
future and creates human future anew. He shows Himself as God who, in
Jesus Christ, gives us the possibility of creating future, i.e., to make
everything new and to climb beyond the sinful history of ourselves and all
others. The new culture thus becomes the occasion to discover again in a
surprising way the Good News of the Old and New Testament: namely that
the God of promise gives us the mandate to get on the road to the promised
land, a land which we, trusting in the promises as did Israel before us,
must ourselves cultivate and build up.11

This provides at the same time a clear articulation of the special

character of Christian hope and the daily commitment for the world
and its future which springs from it.
The new concept of God, i.e., belief in the One Who Is to Come, in the
totally new, who gives us the possibility even now to make human events
into a salvation history, by virtue of an inner, new creation including the
new creation dead to sin, this idea of God thus radicalizes our engagement
for a world of more human dignity, but at the same time also relativizes
every result already achieved. The believer who knows about the
eschatological fulfillment promised to humanity and its history will thus
find it impossible to recognize in every already achieved result the promise
of the new heaven and the new earth. In contrast, e.g., to the Marxist, the
believer will not even dare to give a positive name to the coming final
fulfillment. Christians allow the future a greater openness than the Marxist.
They also discover that the latter destroys possibilities prematurely,
because for a Christian it is ideology to characterize a concrete stage as the
final point.12
11 Edward Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968) 18182; cf. also Wolfhart Pannenberg,
"The God of Hope" in: Basic Question in Theology, vol. 2 (London: S. C.
M. Press Ltd., 1971) 23449.
12 E. Schillebeeckx, The Future of Man 187.

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Part Two
Special Historical Revelation as Ground and Horizon of
the Christian Faith

Page 250

I
The Possibility of This Revelation

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§ 27
The Objection against the Possibility of Such a Revelation
The Objection of Modern Thought
Objections against a revelation of the kind found in the realm of
Christian faiththe special revelation witnessed in the Old and New
Testaments which found its culmination in the person, word, and fate
of Jesus Christhave been raised again and again in the course of
history. This has been especially in recent times.1 Basically, these
objections arise wherever no possibility or room for a special
revelation is allowed.
A particularly noteworthy example is the so-called deism of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, according to which the world is
explained as the work and creation of God and presented and
understood in the image of a precisely functioning machine. The
Creator is the world engineer who, after the construction of the
machinethe worldcan leave it to itself, i.e., to its functions, laws, and
mechanisms. All further activity on the part of God, in the sense of an
historically realized revelation, would disturb the course and running
of the world, would lessen, even discredit the perfection of the work
of creation and thus of the Creator, would qualify creation as an
incompetent job in need of correcting and perfecting. For that is
unworthy of the Creator and creation.
In other words, there is no room for a special revelation if its possible
contents are from the outset acceptable only if and to the extent they
can be interpreted as the possible contents of critical understanding
and of practical reasonas religion within the limits of pure reasonas
everything which, encountered in historical individuality and
uniqueness, can become an instance and sign of something general. In
this view,
1 Fundamental for what follows is: M. Seckler, ''Aufklärung und
Offenbarung" in: Christlicher Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 21
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1980) 678; cf. also Heinrich Fries, Die
Religionsphilosophie Newmans (Stuttgart, 1948) 1944.

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historical revelation, to which corresponds receiving by way of
perception, can at most be accepted as a child's stage of a
development or as "introduction." This is replaced by the stage of
mature, adult thinking, which admits recognition of its own
autonomous thinking, which has the courage to make use of its own
understanding and overcome the immaturity for which it bears
responsibility (Kant).
Based on this fundamental conception, Herbert of Cherbury,
considered the father of Deism, formulated five fundamental
propositions about God, freedom, and immortality: first, there is a
supreme being; second, this being should be venerated; third, morality
is the highest form of the veneration of God; fourth, faults and crimes
are to be atoned for by repentance; fifth, there is reward and
punishment after this life. According to Herbert of Cherbury, these
propositions constitute the basis of the different religions; they all
agree on them. They are at the same time the critical criterion for the
concrete religions, including Christianity. Additions are either priestly
deceit or allegory. The truly catholic church consists of the consensus
of creatures endowed with reason in matters of religion.
For John Locke, the content of the Christian religion is "so simple that
it is immediately intelligible to human reason, and so general that it
doesn't include a special confession." Christianity is not merely
rational, it is identical with the religion of reason; the gospel is the
summation and confirmation of the lex naturae (law of nature), the lex
rationis (law of reason).
Kant used the same basic ideas for the interpretation of the Bible.2
"Ther are writings which contain certain doctrines that are not only
theoretically proclaimed as holy, but also surpass every (even moral)
concept of reasonsuch writings and doctrines which contain
propositions contradictory to practical reason must be interpreted to
the advantage of the latter." Kant mentions in this connection the
doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. "The gradual transition of
church faith to the sole domination of pure religious faith is the
approximation of the Kingdom of God."
There is no room for a special revelation if, as in the system of
idealism, above all of Hegel, everything is revelation because the
human being (more precisely, the spirit of the human being) is the
place of the presence, the working, and the history of the Absolute
Divine Spirit, and because, further, world history is the movement of
the Absolute Spirit through and in the human spirit, because the way
of its "revelation" is the way in the form of dialectic with thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis.
2 Immaunuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans.
Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row,
1960).

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One of Hegel's primary concerns was the rigorous reconciliation of
faith and knowledge; specifically he insists that the content of the
Christian faith should not be left in the hands of faith but should be
carefully thought through by reason. This is possible if it is recognized
that God is the depth of the Spirit certain of itself, and that the Spirit,
when it wishes to come to itself, must go out of itself and go into that
which it is not, to what is strange, and make it its own. That holds also
for God, who must go into the world, into being human and into
history, in order to be able to be Himself. In this way the incarnation
of God becomes philosophically understandable, speculatively
thinkable, even necessary.3
In this great vision there is an objection against a special revelation
(such as Christianity as it is traditionally understood) for this
universalizing philosophical vision sees everything as revelation. If, in
addition, God and human beings are connected in the way that Hegel's
thought presupposes, the distinction between divine and human, finite
spirit is wiped out. This dismisses the possibility of speaking of a
revelation of God as distinct from a revelation of human beings. If
history is ultimately the path of Absolute Spirit in the form of
dialectic, then revelation as act of the freedom of God is not possible;
it is rather a path of necessity.
There is no room for a special revelation of God because such a
revelation would not be accessible to human beingsbut then it
wouldn't be revelation. This is the case when, as empiricism and
positivism represent it, the only things accessible to human beings are
what they can experience and perceive with their senses, what
therefore is immanent, objective, what the case is, what can be lifted
up and verified by observation, repetition, experiment, and control.
Natural science is accordingly the only form of human knowledge. All
knowledge stems from experience, is limited and restricted to
experience. Neither God nor any kind of a revelation belongs to this.
To bring reality into relationship with such things is not an
explanation but a camouflaging of reality.
That there is no room for a revelation in materialism of all shades,
above all in historical and dialectical materialism, is obvious.
Everything connected with revelation incurs the suspicion of being
wishful thinking, projection, or the ideological superstructure growing
out of certain economic and social conditions, and in that way
working as opium.
The attempt is made to subsume the modern age under the rubric of
the Enlightenment and its consequences; and to arrange under that
category all those "isms" mentioned here. The enlightenment is
considered
3 Cf. Hans Küng, The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's
Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology, trans. J. R.
Stephenson (New York: Crossroad, 1987); cf. also H. Fries, Die
Religionsphilosophie Newmans (Stuttgart, 1948) 1944.

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above all as criticism of revelation, as the core concept of what is
inimical to revelation. In a penetrating analysis, Max Seckler has
shown that the enlightenment was really concerned with the
reconciliation of revelation and reason, that the enlightenment's
critique of revelation is to be understood in a differentiated way
as critique of a supernaturalistic understanding of the revelation which, as
contrasting counterpart of naturalism, understands revelation as an
irrational superadditum which is not mediated through reason and to it as
truth, but which can be believed only in an act of giving up oneself. [The
Enlightenment's critique of revelation is to be understood in a
differentiated way] as critique of a revelational positivism which demands
belief for what is legislated and said by tradition and authority, and
demands this only because of itself, by equating positivity and validity;
and finally as critique of a revelation-theological absolutism which
attributes the deficit of proof for revelational assertions to
incomprehensible decrees of the will of the potentia absoluta of God and
demands an unquestioning subjection for which only extrinsic groundsi.e.,
relying on the externals and the external circumstances of revelation
(criteria externa revelationis)are possible.4
The discussion carried on in the enlightenment was a genuine
theological challenge. It led to the result that revelation was
recognized as a key concept of faith and theology, that revelation
constitutes the transcendental specification of what is Christian, that
the original and essential dimension of Christianity is to be
characterized by revelation.
On the level of language this gets expressed in the fact that Christian
theology is henceforth seen and characterized as revelational theology.
This means factually that revelation is recognized as both solid foundation
and ontic dimension of Christianity as a whole, and is also reflected on by
knowledge theory as condition of the possibility and ontological
specification of theology and faith.5
The Objection of Karl Jaspers
We will now treat the objection against the revelation witnessed in
biblical and Christian faith that comes from a contemporary
philosophical position: that of Karl Jaspers. He more than any other
philosopher in the recent past took up the issue of revelation,
especially in his book Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der
Offenbarung [Philosophical Faith in View of Revelation].6 This
thematic makes an especially strong impression because in the
fundamental traits of his philosophy, in his "existential philosophy,"
Jaspers seems to have set up all the presuppositions for a possible
revelation: In the already mentioned fundamental principles: "No
existence without
4 M. Seckler, "Aufklärung und Offenbarung" 33.
5 Ibid. 54.
6 (Munich, 1962). On the issue as a whole: H. Fries, "Der Philosophische
Glaube Karl Jaspers" in:Ärgernis und Widerspruch, 2d ed. (Würzburg, 1968)
4199.

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transcendence""No true image of human beings without God," in
which God is the encompassing reality distinct from human beings
and warrant for the ground of existence. Not from a denial of
transcendence but with explicit appeal to its acknowledgment, Jaspers
rejects revelation in the biblical, above all, in the Christian sense. His
position merits treatment also because it can be called representative
in its seriousness and urgency.
We now present Jasper's reflections on the theme of revelation, but
include our critique of them along with their description.
a. Revelation is, according to Jaspers "the immediate, temporarily and
spatially localized proclamation of God through word, demand,
action, event. God gives his commands, he establishes community, he
appears among human beings, he sets up the cult."7 Revelation is, in
itself, a phenomenon and a claim of every religion. But Christianity
does not understand itself as one type of such a grouping, as
revelation alongside other revelations; it claims rather to be the
unique, absolute, universal, and thus exclusive revelation.
But it is contradictory to the existence of human beings, so answers
Jaspers, that transcendence does not reveal itself clearly. This means a
one-sided and premature fixation of human beings on one definitive
situation, and thereby a limitation of their possibilities. But an
exclusively understood revelation also and above all carries with it as
consequence an improper drawing of boundaries for transcendence.
Jaspers explains: "To deny oneself revelation faith is not the result of
Godlessness but the consequence of belief in existence as freely
created by transcendence. Philosophical faith . . . must dispense with
real revelation in favor of the cipher in the movement of its
multiplicity of meanings."8 It is not about the alternatives, denial of
God or belief in God, but about the question, hidden or revealed
God.9
b. According to Jaspers, revelation faith implies authority. This is for
Jaspers an undeniable human necessity. "One human being alone
cannot live. In community, however, human beings are never without
binding authority which the individual, without knowing it, follows,
without feeling unfree about it."10 Authority is for Jaspers also not in
opposition to freedom. Freedom is possible only through authority,
through freedom in a connection; otherwise it becomes arbitrariness.
Consequently, there is authority also without revelation. The authority
claimed by revelation and revelation faith, however, provokes the
criticism of Jaspers, for it contradicts the essence of authority to
demand what revelation demands: to be the universally valid authority
bind-
7 Karl Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung
(Munich, 1962) 49, ET: Philosophical Faith and Revelation, trans. E. B.
Ashton (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
8 Ibid. 118.
9 Ibid. 481.
10 Ibid. 64.

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ing on all. All authority is historical and thus, of itself, relative. True
authority includes a multiplicity of forms: the authority doesn't exist;
there exist only authorities.
c. Revelation faith gives the promise and makes the claim of being not
just one truth among many, but the absolute truth, truth in itself.
Included in this is the other claim, to be truth for all, for all human
beings, for all times, for all conditions. One is valid for all, and all are
held and bound to the one, to one authority, to one church, to one
book, to one faith, to one God who is the God of all.
In the name of human beings it must be said in opposition that within
human existence, within reason, freedom, and history, there is no
universally valid, no absolute, eternal and all-obliging truth. There is
truth "only for me" and for each individual; there is truth only as my
truth. In this sense Jaspers takes over the thesis of Kierkegaard:
"Subjectivity is the truth." Truth is not universal, it is historical,
relative, polar, and dialectic. The one truth is the constantly obliging
but never reachable goal of all paths to truth. "What is historically,
what is existentially true is indeed unconditioned, but in its having
been spoken and in its manifestation it is not truth for all."11
The proclamation of truth for all, as it comes up in revelation, means,
humanly seen, the leveling of what is individual (indeed putting it in a
coffin), the elevation of the general over the particular, the triumph of
the impersonal over the person and the individual who is threatened
and snuffed out in this absolute truth for all.
d. When revelation claims to be truth for all, this leads unavoidably to
the claim to exclusivity which admits of nothing but itself, which
condemns everything that does not carry its name and sign. "One is
given the alternative to follow or not to follow it. Whoever is not for
me is against me."12
The intolerance of revelation faith means narrow-minded fanaticism
and brutal will to power, even to world dominance, which undertakes
to bring all human beings to the faith and to make them Christians,
which forces them to worship what it has worshipped and to burn
what it has burned. Politics, persecution, inquisition, and compulsion
become means of the faith, means of which the church, in a praxis that
dishonors it, has made historical use down to the last refined details.13
Such exclusivity, intolerance, and inability to communicate are,
according to Jaspers, a threat to human beings in the innermost part of
their existence. For it is of the nature of being human to be in
communi-
11 H. Fries, Der philosophische Galube: Karl Jaspers, in Ärgernis und
Widerspruch, 2d ed. (Würzburg, 1968) 70.
12 Ibid. 72.
13 Ibid. 8891.

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cation, to come into close living contact with the "you" of other
human beings both now and in history, and with the intellectual
movements, impulses, powers, and ideas of all times. Only in
relationship to and in encounter with that which it is not itself does
existence come to its openness in breadth and freedom. The claim to
exclusivity of revelation faith leaves no room and no possibility for
this.
The claim to exclusivity of faith is to be rejected not only in the name
of human beings but alsoas Jaspers assures usin the name of God:
"The claim to exclusivity is the work of human beings and not
grounded in God, who has opened up many ways to himself for
human beings."14 The assertion of an exclusive revelation of God is
basically an usurpation of the truth by individual human beings and
groups of human beings.
e. The truth for all claimed by revelation and by Christian faith not
only excludes everything different from itself, but promises also to be
the true answer to all questions and to fulfill all possibilities of
thinking and questioning. Revelation faithas Jaspers characterizes
itknows everything, knows everything exactly, knows everything
infallibly. It proposes a system of truth, a cosmos of certainties, a
structure of guarantees, a true world view in the form of a summa in
which everything has its place, rank, order, and context, in which are
gathered all the kernels of truth scattered throughout the world and
history, in which all traces and parts of the truth are brought home.
According to Jaspers, this kind of thinking found its keenest
conception and manifestation in Nicholas of Cusa.15 The principles of
the "complexio oppositorum [complex of opposites]" and of the
"concordantia discordantium [concordance of the discordant]"
developed and carried out by him open up the horizon for an
absolutely universal and unlimited breadth. In a conception of
revelation and faith configured and understood in this way there are
no gaps and riddles left.
Should not human beings welcome with joy this promise of certitude
and assurance, this chance of knowledge and cognition as the
fulfillment of their very selves? No, replies Jaspers. This call is like a
call of sirens. Those who follow it end up in the land of illusion and
will suffer shipwreck, at best only to themselves. Faith and its promise
lead human beings into a false security and peace, into the forbidden
satiety of they who possess, who have, who know.
Easing the burden of existence by faith takes place at the cost of truth.
Truth is there for human beings not as a system or state of being, truth
exists only as way and task, as an ever new and original event, as an
event unconditionally involving only myself. Truth doesn't come in
14 Ibid. 75.
15 K. Jaspers, Anselm and Nicholas of Cusa, trans. Ralph Manheim (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & Javanovich, 1974).

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clearly understandable and predictable sizes. Truth comes only in the
back and forth of dialectic. Truth doesn't exist in timeless validity;
truth exists only in historical and thus relative form. Those who say
anything else are confusing human thought with divine knowledge
and arrogating to themselves the status of a second Creator of the
world.16
When Christian faith and above all the "Catholic method" gather in
the scattered truths into a whole, claiming them for themselves and
assigning them a place within their universality and catholicity, they
do so at the cost of their own being, at the cost of life. "The cost of
this Catholic unity is the loss of merit and substance in everything that
was taken up, transformed, and appropriated from the outside." From
the originality, freshness, and vitality of the idea in its origin comes
"the corpse of something just barely objectively rational"the whole
thing becomes a cemetery.17
f. The special characteristic of faith in revelation brings something
further with it. It is, as Jaspers says, the coordination of revelation and
history, the conception of a salvation history as well as the
concentration of all historical events in the fact of the Incarnation of
God in Christ, the division of time into before and after Christ. It is
the determination claimed in revelation, indeed the perpetuation of an
historical fact: the life of Jesus. It is the absolutizing of an historical
figure, its claim and its demand: "Follow Me!" Jaspers calls this
process an inadmissible objectification of the individual, a false
universalization of the factual, and speaks of the ossification into a
powerful historicity of "congealed," foreign and inimical history.
Against such a conception of the historical and within the historical
Jaspers draws up his criticism. As he examines the history claimed by
revelation he can see only a false development, somethings which, for
human beings, constitutes a danger. Now existence really does need
history. But it is not acceptable to perpetuate one history or one
historical event, or to elevate it to an obligation for all human beings
of all times. It is not right to make one unique, historical figure into
the unsurpassable criterion of existence and model for all human
beings. History is unfinished and reveals no recognizable goal. What
Hegel could still express in the proposition "All history moves
towards Christ and comes from him. The appearance of the Son of
God is the axis of world history," Jaspers can no longer affirm. For
"the Christian faith is a faith, not the faith of humanity. . . . That on the
basis of which all
16 K. Jaspers, Von der Wahrheit (Munich, 1948) 393. Some material from
this book has been translated into English as: Truth and Symbol, trans.
Jean T. Wilde (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1959).
17 Ibid. 844.

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human beings can be connected is not revelation but must be the
experience that binds all."18
As long as they don't fall into a bottomless vacuum, human beings
live from history not in that they recognize the past as carrying,
abiding, and obliging [reality]that is "violent historicity"but in that
they, in "original historicity," are held in movement and disquiet by
history and exist in view of history and its figures. This happens not as
imitation of an historical "model," but by the awakening of existence
in reason and freedom before unique figures of history like Jesus and
Buddha or Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. They are allboth together and
in their differencesnecessary, not as teachers and proclaimers, but as
the "stormy awakeners of existence.'' They "want to have their effect,
but in such a way that they bring the other to himself, expect the
decisive from him, not give it to him."19
g. The tendency to reality, to bodiliness, to concretion found in
revelation faith has, according to Jaspers, reached its high point in the
Christian confession of the God-man Jesus Christ and in the
Christological dogmas. Here the absolutely real becomes detectable
and touchable; transcendence is identified with a human being. "The
drive of human beings towards bodiliness is satisfied here as nowhere
else. God's reality is guaranteed to the believer through the bodiliness
of a human being."20
Such positions on Christian revelation are in error and miss the mark
because they offend against the fundamental understanding of
transcendence. Although the THAT of transcendence may be
unquestionably experienced, its WHAT remains hidden. There isn't
anything at all that can be said about it, and every attempt to realize it,
to make it bodily and concretely present, falsifies transcendence or
extinguishes it. Transcendence remains and is only in the disappearing
of the object; it is without specification and knowability, without form
and figure.
But existence is also falsified. Existence-grounding behavior towards
the divinity, being before God, silence and reverence before the
Absolute, go for naught if human beings draw down to themselves,
concretize and materialize God when they talk with God in prayer,
when in dogma, ritual, and cult they dissolve the boundaries between
human beings and God. That is why Jaspers can say: It all comes
down to achieving "the step from slavery under bodiliness" to
"freedom in the realm of cipher,"21 and in that way to purify faith.
Against the possibility and claim of a bodily, human, personal
revelation of God, Jaspersfollowing Kantbrings up the argument: If
18 K. Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, trans. Michael Bullock
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953) 1920.
19Rechenschaft und Ausblick (Munich, 1952) 130.
20 K. Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung 226.
21 Ibid. 168.

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transcendence were to show itself unhidden, this would eliminate
freedom. "The divine wisdom is no less worthy of wonderment in that
which it gives us than in that which it refuses us; for if God were to
stand before us in his majesty, we would become marionettes in faith
and not remain as free as God has wanted us to be."22
The answer to these individual objections can and should not be given
here. It would have to anticipate all that is to come. The answer
becomes possible only when that revelation is described against which
Jaspers raises his objection.
22 Ibid. 481.

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§ 28
The Possibility of a Special, Supernatural Revelation as a
Fundamental Theological Problem
Now that we have presented the objections, we take up the question
ourselves. Is there a special and supernatural revelation of God over
and above the manifestation of God that is present in the reality of
creation? Are there possibilities of revelation in creation and above all
in human beings, or are these possibilities totally excluded? And if
excluded, is this merely de facto or are they excluded in principle, in
the sense that there is no possibility of any disclosure of God over and
above creation simply because human beings do not possess the
presuppositions for its access and reception? Our response to these
questions relies in part on the thoughts of Karl Rahner in his book
Hearers of the Word, which is still valid today and has been taken up
in his Foundations of Christian Faith.
The Human Being as Questioner
Asking questions is profoundly and characteristically human.
Question presupposes the questionability and thus knowability of the
questioned; otherwise there would be no question. One doesn't ask
about the totally unknown. The knowability of reality is, however,
possible because it is the effect of a knowing: knowability
presupposes being known.
The horizon of human questioning is infinite. Human beings ask about
everything that is, thus about existing-being and about being as the
ground of existing-being. Thus pertaining to all and to the ground of
all is above all knowability, intelligibility, i.e., truth in the ontological
sense. The cognition of human beings rests on the inner coordination
of spirit and being. Being and spirit are ordered to each other;
cognition is connaturality of being and spirit. The logos of human
beings recognizes the logos of things.

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Questioning contains, besides the moment of questionability
[Fragbarkeit], that of questionableness [Fraglichkeit]. This gives the
difference between question and questioned, and between knowing
and known, the nonidentity of (human) spirit and being or existing-
being. The question is accordingly also the sign of what is not
completely known, or not adequately recognized. The question, which
lays open the distantiation between being as such and knowing human
beings, is a sign of knowing and not knowing alike. It is a sign of the
greatness and limitation of human beings.
The human being as questioner, as person and subject, is the
presupposition of a possible special and free revelation. For the
horizon of questioning is unlimited. Human beings as questioners
cannot, in their knowledge, take in this horizon; they stand at a
distance from it: being and existing-being are more comprehensive
than the knowing questioning and the questioning knowing of human
beings. Seen this way, there is no impossibility for a revelation, in the
sense of an impossibility of anything new being disclosed to human
beings.
This situation is the condition of the possibility for a revelation in the
special sense. One can indeed speak of the transcendence of God as
the all-determining reality; but this takes place only indirectly and, in
addition, primarily in the form of negation: infinitely, in an unworldly
way, etc. Also the totality of the experience of reality, which we
characterized as revelation-being, in which the sign of transparency is
known and affirmed, has not superseded this fundamental
characteristic of our knowledge of transcendence: neither our own
existence, nor conscience, nor language, nor history. Nothing prevents
and a great deal speaks in favor of the fact that the transcendence
being referred to is proclaimed more clearly and more perceivably,
that human beings are learning from it a new word about creation. As
questioners, they are open for this. Our existence is characterized by
"being on the lookout." To be expecting a special self-disclosure of
God belongs, according to Newman, to the "likelihoods from the
outset."
The Seeker of Salvation
When we consider human willing, striving and loving, we come up
with a situation like that of the question and the questioning. Human
beings, the hearers of the word, are likewise the seekers of happiness,
salvation, fulfillment.
The goal and object of human striving and willing is the good, the
value of everything worth striving for, and from which nothing that
exists is excluded. This is the foundation of the ontology of good, of
value: reality and the good, the good as conformed to reality. The
striving and willing of human beings are ordered to a concrete,
specific

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value in which they find their realization. They are not, however,
exhausted therein but are open to the good as such, to the unlimited
good. We can recognize this in the fact that every goal achieved
becomes the beginning of some new willing and striving. No
individual or categorical good is the fulfillment of human striving.
The coordination of what is willed and what is striven for never
becomes identity. Just as with questioning, the differentiation between
transcendental and categorical remains. Thus, from the side of human
willing, striving, and loving arises the possibility of a further opening
to some reality in the mode of the goal, the good, the well-being, and
the fulfillment for human beings that lies therein. This is not
anticipated by any immanent determination of goal in such a way that
there would be nothing more to expect and to hope for. Das Prinzip
Hoffnung (E. Bloch, The Principle of Hope) lives from this impulse
and is thus an indication of the condition of possibility of something
new: of a perfect, unlimited form of the good, of well-being, of
fulfillment.
The French philosopher Maurice Blondel hasas we have already
discussedmade this phenomenon the object of an intensive reflection.
He summarizes his phenomenology of action in the form of a
conclusion:
"It is impossible not to recognize the inadequacy of the whole natural
order and not to feel a further need; it is impossible to find something
in oneself that can satisfy this comprehensive need. It is necessary;
and it is unachievable. These are, put quite bluntly, the conclusions of
the characteristic trait of human action." This is what constitutes the
logic of action and activity.
To solve this difficulty Blondel can identify only one course of action:
to make a decision. One must either make a decision for the finite and
consciously exclude the infinite, or one must open oneself to the
infinite and enter into the expectation that the infinite will fulfill in a
new way the ultimate orientation of our fundamental willing. This
happens when the infinite imparts itself and the human being
receptively accepts it.
Conscience
Conscience is so constituted that it can and will perceive a rather clear
articulation of the unconditioned. J. H. Newman has penetratingly
shown this in his analysis of conscience. He says:
If anything is true and divine, then it is the voice of our conscience, and it
would be terrible to assume the opposite. And yet there remain enough
weak points to raise doubt about the authority of conscience decisions; and
they who set up a critical investigation in a coldly testing way, skeptically
or superficially, or in order to find an excuse for their disobedience, they
will have no difficulty in bringing their reason into embarrassment and
confusion until they finally begin to

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ask whether that which they for their whole lives took to be sinful really is
a sin, and whether conscientiousness might not be a kind of superstition.1
The real constitution of human beings and the world requires, for the
support of conscience, and the safeguarding of the natural belief in
God, an instance outside of conscience, an authority that stands next
to conscience in order to protect and affirm the authority of
conscience.
Furthermore, the conscience that is not endangered by skepticism, and
that can carry out a living faith in God points beyond itself; it
transcends its own transcendence towards God by a still further
dimension. In spite of everything the voice of conscience does for
human beings,
it doesn't do enough, as we sharply and painfully feel. It thus turns out that
the very gift of conscience arouses a longing for something which it alone
cannot completely give. It mediates to the soul the idea of an authoritative
guiding, of a divine law, and at the same time the wish to possess this in a
fullness and not in mere fragments or indirect surmises. It awakens a thirst,
an impatience for the acquaintance of this invisible Lord, Guide and Judge
who so far was speaking only secretly to the soul, was whispering in the
heart, who was communicating something, but far from what one wanted
and needed. Thus, pious human beings who do not possess the blessing of
the infallible teaching of revelation find it necessary to go in search of it,
and indeed precisely because they are religious.2
Religion
The phenomenon of religion and the religions themselves, show
similarly that they too are open for a further supernatural revelation. It
is Newman's opinion that this expectation is one of the characteristics
of religion in the religions. Speaking as a phenomenologist of religion,
he says that "a revelation would be the greatest conceivable
benefaction that can come to human beings." For the God of religion
and of the religions is a hidden God; we don't see him, we only hear
about him. He works under a veil. We know too little of his will and
our obligations and prospects.
He has planted inklings of his majesty in your hearts, everywhere in
creation he has left behind the traces of his presence and scattered the
brilliance of his glory. You come to the place: you see, he has been
therebut he is gone . . . He has taught you his law, quite unambiguously,
but only by means of conclusions and suggestion, not by immediate
command. He never shows himself unveiled to your yearning eyes and
tortured heart; he does not step out openly before you as himself. What
might that mean? An intellectual/spiritual being abandoned by its creator!

That is the situation and existence of human beings within natural

religion, a limit situation in the truest sense of the word which, at the
same time, points beyond the limit.
1 This and the following two citations have been translated from the
German Newman anthology: Ausgewählte Werke II (Mainz, 1936) 300.
2 Ibid. 321.

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Thus the message of a revelationfar from being suspiciousis already born
in our hearts by the irresistible expectations of reason. It would be hard to
have to believe that there could be no revelation. The behavior of human
beings has proven it from time immemorial, you cannot do other than wait
for it from the hand of the All Merciful. Not as if you had any claim to it,
but he pours the hope of it into you. It is not you who are worthy of the
gift, but the gift is worthy of your creator . . . The fact that there is a
creatorand a hidden onecarries you right up to the threshold of revelation
and makes you seriously be on the lookout there for divine signs that there
is a revelation.3

Of course, the facticity and reality of a revelation cannot be proven

from the mere expectation of it. But it is just as unjustified to say
(with Ludwig Feuerbach) that expectation and wish are a proof of
nonreality. Why shouldn't reality also be able to represent itself as
fulfillment of an expectation, as answer to a question? Furthermore, it
is also clear that a revelation cannot be declared by human beings to
be either a contradiction or an alienation.
The Supernatural Existential
These analyses can be expanded and at the same time summarized in
Karl Rahner's phrase "supernatural existential."4 Its meaning: Human
beings are more than real, solely immanently structured "nature"; it
belongs to their existence, and to their fundamental situation
recognizable therein, to be oriented to and open to what transcends
nature. Hence, they are open to the supernatural in the sense of a self -
communication of God, which is a new event, a new goal in the sense
of a fulfillment of existence, and all that by means of what one calls
grace and salvation. "The human being is the event of the absolute
selfcommunication of God.''5
Karl Rahner makes this situation more precise in the following way:
When the human being stands before the God of a possible revelation,
something like a revelation actually always comes about: namely, the
speaking or the silence of God. And human beings always and
essentially hear the speaking or the silence of God; otherwise they
would not be spirit and freedom. Spirit is no claim that God will
speak. But when God does not speak, the spirit hears the silence of
God. As spirit the human being stands before the self-disclosing or
silent God as self-disclosing or silent.6
The whole problem, its vastness and the difficulty connected with it,
can be thought through in a further way by making the following point
clear. The possibilities human beings have to be hearers of the
3 Ibid. 311.
4 In: SM 1.12981300; Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith 12633.
5 K. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith 126.
6 K. Rahner, Hearers of the Word, cf. the whole chapter: "The Free
Unknown" 8393, esp. 9293.

Page 266
wordhearers of a possible free revelation of God, receivers of a hoped-
for salvationare not only a matter of knowing but also a matter of
freedom and decision. One important point of view is still to be
attended to here: truths given to all human beings, as in mathematics
or formal logic, are recognized by all only because they do not
directly affect human beings in the innermost part of their existence,
because they require no involvement, no decision of the person,
indeed they are unable to require it. As Karl Rahner puts it, it is a fact
that anyone with intelligence can make a mathematical truth or a
process of logical reasoning intelligible, but cannot do the same for
the possibility of the knowledge of God and of a possible revelation of
God. That fact, however, is not a sign of the strength of the one and
the weakness of the other, but a sign of the degree to which
knowledge requires the actual engagement and commitment of human
beings.7
It is an experience: Love is not merely a consequence of knowledge;
love also participates in what is known and determined in knowledge.
The most profound truth is thus always also the most free truth. Love
enables seeing. The truth of the knowledge of God, in the way in
which persons understand their God, is always also borne by the order
of their love or by its disorder and inversion. An act of knowledge like
this is at the same time always an engagement of the whole person in
free decision. A change in knowledge is in these things always
simultaneously a conversion, not just a change of opinion or a new
result of investigation. These connections and laws need to be borne
in mind in the questions being discussed here.
7 Ibid.: "The Free Listener" 94110, esp. 10910.

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§ 29
The Place of a Possible Special Supernatural Revelation
The answer to this question is characterized by two considerations that
have already been taken up. First, when one is talking about a
revelation from God, there may not and cannot be any prior
stipulation about it. On the other hand, when one is talking about a
revelation to human beings, it has to take place in such a way that it
can be received and accepted by them. This locates the answer to the
question of the place of the possible revelation: the place of a possible
revelation is the human being who is constituted by history and word.
History
Revelation as free act is, precisely as free action, oriented to history.
History, as history of human beings, is the place of a free event, which
means that it is not the place of something general or of a law that
would be subject to planning and calculation. Instead, it is always
something new, something unique, unprecedented and not yet existing
that is being discovered and produced. Not nature and its structure
determined by laws, but rather open history is the place of the special,
specific, new, unexpected, not-yet-existing things that involve human
beings.
Revelation as possible, new, special revelation is thus oriented to
history. That is why the objection of deism that a special
"supernatural" revelation would turn creation, i.e., nature, into a
patchwork misses the point. Special revelation does not involve a
change or correction of nature; it involves human beings who are
characterized by history and freedom.
That history is the place of possible revelation is also indicated by the
fact that human beings, the addressees and receivers of this revelation,
are characterized by history. In history, through encounters with other
human beings, through history-making events, works, and pro-

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ductions, human beings make their free decisions and perform their
acts of responsibility which, in turn, make new history.
Accordingly, human beings are oriented to history in all dimensions of
time: to the past, present, and future, to events, but above all to
persons. Human beings are the constant realities against which and
with which they are constituted as human beings. They cannot detach
themselves from or get away from the horizon of the historical. Thus,
whenever we are dealing with something that involves human beings
humanly in a comprehensive and existential manner, as is the case in
their orientation to transcendence, we are necessarily in the realm of
history.
Finally, history is the place of a possible revelation of God because, as
history of human beings, it is the place of non-disponibility. In
historically living persons I encounter both my own limit and the non-
disponibility of others, whom I cannot simply take over and through
whom I let myself be claimed and get involved, gain self-recognition
and fulfill myself. The non-disponibility of the other, of the You, is a
constant indication of an ego-surpassing transcendence, even of a
possible revelation of this transcendence. Thus it makes sense that the
non-disponibility to be ascribed to transcendence is mediated through
the non-disponibility of human beings, i.e., through historical
mediation.
Consequently, if revelation is a free event over which I have no
disposition, then this non-disponibility can be encountered only in the
realm of history.
The Word
The possible place of a revelation is also the word. Thus human
beings are once again spoken of as place of a possible revelation. In
word, everything that is can be presented and made present and
manifest: even the past, and what is not immediately objective, even
the not-sensible, the intellectual, the super-worldly, unworldly, divine
(the latter, however, in the form of negation).
However revelation may be described, whatever content it has, it
cannot dispense with mediation through word. Word is the way in
which revelation comes near to human beings, in which it can become
present for them. Word, accordingly, can witness an event. Beyond
that it can be an illuminating, interpreting, explaining word: for word
makes visible the meaning of an event, which, as mere fact and
without word, remains ambiguous. The event of the cross is
represented in its meaning in the word from the cross. This meaning is
not seen in the event as such: the crucifixion of a man. Quite the
contrary. For the event as such makes visible something quite
different: the tragic and terrible end of a human being.

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If word as performative word not only witnesses to or interprets
reality but creates reality, new, free, previously not existing, and not
achievable from presently existing reality, then word is once again the
place of a possible revelation, which is understood as new reality, as
establishing a new event which moves and changes human beings.
The word as word event, as dialogue, is the index of freedom, of non-
disponibility, of not being able to be forced, the index of a genuine,
free personal over-against. Word is, in addition, an expression of
inclination, of love. It is spoken for the sake of encounter and
communication. Word implies intersubjectivity, interpersonality,
communication, community.
If, in this (possible) revelation, one is talking about an event between
God and human beings, about a personal encounter, indeed about a
community in which, human beings find their realization as hearers of
the word, as seekers of salvation and happiness, but also God
communicates something of Himself to us, then word is, in the
multiplicity of its dimensions and "realities" (F. Ebner), the place of
such revelation.
The Unconditioned Concretion
In this question regarding the place of a special, supernatural
revelation, is there anything more specific to be found in the
immeasurable realm of history, event, words, and human beings?
Bernhard Welte has taken up this question thoroughly and extensively
in his book Heilsverständnis [The Understanding of Salvation].1 In it
he develops the following considerations.
Human beings are indeed fundamentally open for anything and
everything. It is in this openness that their humanity in spirit, freedom,
and love is made manifest. But they run the danger of getting lost if
they stick to this boundless openness, if they commit themselves to it
and thus hold everything in oscillating suspension. Human beings
have to choose, they have to decide, for one concrete thing among
many, for onetheir ownway, for one form of life, for one goal, for one
vocation, for one human being. Welte calls this phenomenon, which is
characteristic and unavoidable for human beings, the "unconditioned
concretion."2 It is grounded in the concrete individuality of human
beings and represents it.
Romano Guardini took the same idea and formulated it this way:
Human beings can't have everything; they must choose certain things; they
cannot live in the unlimited; they have to have a direction. The basis of
their existence is
1 B. Welte, Heilsverständnis. Philosophische Untersuchung Einiger
Voraussetzungen zum Verständnis des Christentums (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1966).
2 Ibid. 21631.

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not the infinity of space, but the here. Not the boundlessness of the world,
but the now. Not the incalculability of human possibilities, but those found
in one's own ego. And the content of fruitful action is not the endless that
can be accomplished but that which vocation and situation require. If
human beings are satisfied with this demand, a conversion takes place. The
right thing performed opens up one's glance into the whole. Those who do
justice to their own situation find therein the whole given to them.3

A good illustration of this reality is also provided by the model,

chosen by Welte, of human encounter in the realm of eros, love, and
choice of partner. After going through the zone of open encounters
and possibilities, eventually one human being becomes the one and
only partner for me. This choice and decision in the sense of a
concretion leads neither to a narrowing nor to a dissolution; it rather
becomes the appropriate realization of human essence in the field of a
concrete, abiding encounter anchored in responsibility and fidelity,
which is grounded in faith and love and which, from the basis of this
specification, finds the strength for openness, freedom, and
affirmation.4
Applied to the possible place of revelation, this means that the
revelation encountered in such a concretion of history, word, and
person does not fall outside of the conditions of human existence and
behavior but is in the highest way appropriate to it. It would be
astonishing if the unconditioned concretion in person, history, and
word were not the place of a possible revelation.
From this it follows that Lessings's axiom, "Fortuitous historical truths
cannot be the foundation of eternal truths," describes a problem that
can hardly be solved if it is considered in these categoriesfortuitous
history, eternal truth. But another aspect appears when, instead of
"fortuitous" history, one says concrete history, and when, instead of
using the misunderstood concept "eternal, timeless truth" in the
description of revelation, one keeps in mind that one is dealing with a
possible self-communication of God for human beings, which is
possible only in the realm of history. One thus deals not just with the
communication of theoretical truth, but with truth that is to be done,
with truth as the encounter and characterization, the calling and
realization of human beings.
The reference to unconditioned concretion as place of possible
revelation is important and helpful, above all in view of the nowadays
often conjured and appealed to situation of human beings, the
"conditio humana."
On the other hand, the problem of revelation also raises the question
as to how this possible revelation of God and the concretion or-
3 "Geschichtlichkeit und Absolutheit des Christentums" in: Christliche
Besinnung, vol. 2 (Würzburg, 1951) 1516.
4 B. Welte, Heilsverständnis 220.

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dered to it fits in with the many religions, the many religious
messages, forms, figures, and witnesses.
The Problem of Exclusivity
Does not the unconditioned concretion claimed for a possible
revelation lead to exclusivity and thus to the rejection and exclusion of
everything else?
Welte formulates the problem as follows:
The unconditioned concretion is exclusive in a specific and unique way.
For it must be kept in tension against other words, events, and witnesses
and their differing witness. In the plurality of human existence the
unconditioned concretion of faith is not possible without this at least
potential tension. For there are, after all, the other witnesses whom I, in my
faith, could not and have not chosen as authoritative for me, and their
different voices and different forms of faith and religion. And since I, in
the light of my being, am fundamentally open to all voices, I would be
untrue if I did not take cognizance of them. But to take cognizance of them
means to expose myself to the field of force of their claim. In principle,
therefore, no messenger and no message of this kind can be indifferent to
me, not even and even especially then when I, in the concretion of my
faith, have not recognized them as mine. Thus the tension and its possible
polemic, there at the edge, where the unconditioned concretion has its
outer limits, is unavoidable. This tension is a consequence of the
fundamental structure of human existence.
Hence the unconditioned concretion in its tension with the unlimited
breadth of existence brings with it the danger of a break in communication.
This becomes acute when I in my faith close myself off only negatively
against other modes of and exhortations to faith, when I simply don't take
cognizance of them, or do so only in sterile negativity, or merely combat
them without really taking cognizance of them. But this break in
communication would be like a betrayal of my humanity which still keeps
me open to all humanities, fundamentally ready for possible
communication everywhere.
However, the break in communication for the faith which understands
itself in absolute concretions is not necessary, and in the essential sense not
even possible. The danger can become acute only in a misunderstanding of
the absolute concretion in which it collapses into a merely finite
dogmatism. But if faith in the unconditioned concretion understands itself
in its true sense, then it will carry, enliven, and make free the way for open
communication with other forms of faith. It will then become similar to the
situation of successful concretion in human existence: One's decision
establishes a position, but precisely from this position comes an openness
and a power of affirmation and recognition. This then is the correctly
understood possibility and mode of the one and all.
In the light of the one and only I can see all in its light, and, I need to avoid
no other voice. Thus I can let everything be, every voice and every witness
and every possibility that may grow out of them for others. Precisely there
where I have become one in the indicated sense, I can and should also
become everything, if indeed I correctly understand myself in my highest
and most appropriate possibility of unconditioned concretion.5
5 Ibid. 22223.

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This expresses an important theological principle: Fidelity to one's
own position does not exclude but includes openness for the other and
the whole.
"I can and should wish that all human beings might experience and
find the light and its hope which shines on me from my witness and its
message." But I may not do this in the form of finite subjective force.
This is where we apply the principle: there is nothing to be demanded
here, but everything to be expected.
The genuine possibility to which the unconditioned concretion empowers
human beings with respect to other origins, and into which the tension
with them can be dissolved is the possibility of essential dialogue. For
those who entrust themselves to the one call and the one caller in the
matter of salvation, become thereby not only open for every other call and
origin that they do not want to choose, they are also touched by every
other call; for this call, coming from far away and not choosable for them,
nevertheless ultimately indicates the same thing. But they are not confused
by these other and strange things, for they have known and chosen their
basis for faith and trust; this supports them. And so there arises from origin
to origin an interest and a contact of interest, and from this, transcending
the strangeness, an exchange of ideas and questions. The result of this
exchange of ideas is not the victory of one over the other in the finite
sense, but the growth in clarity of each one. The process of this exchange
is supported by freely given respect for the ways of God and for the
dignity of the partnerespecially there where I do not wish to share his/her
ideasand at the same time by the seriousness of my fidelity to my own
origin. The unconditioned concretion in the matter of eternal salvation will
assure a seriousness that will keep the dialogue from falling into the
emptiness of mere small talk. However, belief in salvation for all will give
the dialogue the freedom and openness and ready willingness without
which the seriousness of the dialogue could easily harden into the sterile
negativity of ultimate dogmatism. In such seriousness and freedom of
dialogue, both partners can grow, especially where any victory by force
and any demonstrable result are kept distant.
In the freedom of essential dialogue the unconditioned concretion can
safely withstand and dissolve the danger of that polemic from which,
because of the fundamental human situation, it can never escape, and it can
nevertheless remain true to its own ground. It can, without denial and
without blindness for other calls and groups of humanity, remain what it is:
that in which human nature in its historical status can reach its highest
understanding of itself.
As such it is the most appropriate way in which an all-encompassing sign
and promise of salvation can be encountered and made understandable to
human existence in the context of its historical immanence and in the
horizon of its preunderstanding of its salvation. Human existence on its
dark journey has every reason to examine closely whether just such a
decisive and informative sign has been granted it.
This is the final and decisive determination into which the converging
lines of convenience can lead the human preunderstanding of salvation and
its possible signs. In it this preunderstanding comes to its culminating
peak.6

What is the result of these reflections?

6 Ibid. 22526.

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The a priori preunderstanding that precedes the positivity of Christianity
brings with it the possibility of humanly understanding and humanly living
out Christian revelation when it appears in its divine positivity. Christian
revelation can thus be allowed to become completely human without
encroaching upon the divine gift in its free divine character as grace.
It produces the possibility of understanding and, with that, of human
assimilation, both in view of the essential content of the Christian message
and in view of the special form in which it appeared in our history, at least
in its principal traits.7

Bernhard Welte thinks that the analyses he developed have made it

clear that
human nature, as long as it correctly understands its own situation,
possesses from within sufficient cause to look about itself for a binding
sign of salvation within the immanence of this existence, and indeed first
and foremost for a personally communicated and granted assurance of
salvation which speaks to the totality of the unconditioned concretion, and
requires it. If the expectations of humanity are so strongly oriented this
way, its possible understanding is also mostly pointed in this direction. But
the pre-understanding points to a personal bringer of salvation, and it
anticipates preunderstandingly the decisive traits of the special form in
which traits the Christian message positively appeared. For this message is
bound to a faith-demanding person of the bringer of salvation, Jesus the
Christ. From our way of looking at it, this manifestation and demand,
precisely in this form, become the most understandable because they are
the most human.8
But this analysis also shows, as a practical conclusion, that the human
being,, thus also the much-described and so hard to specify "modern
man," is open for that which, in revelation, the ground of faith is all
about. It is the task and the opportunity of dialogue, instruction, and
proclamation to bring these two poles into connection.
The preceding analyses have attempted, in view of human beings and
the reality that determines them, to examine that from which earlier
generations could begin as from something obvious and
unproblematic: from the positivity and from the fact of revelation
accepted and affirmed as an unquestioned given, to which one did not
need to bring anything, and from which one could work in order to
interpret it in its individual aspects.
We are no longer in this situation. But what is to be seen in this new
situation? Only a faith-threatening, faith-destroying crisis, or an
opportunity and mandate under which many other new things are to
be gained?
7 Ibid. 227.
8 Ibid. 228.

Page 274

II
Special, Supernatural Revelation according to Its Self-Witness
After so much has been said about the possibility and possible place
of a special revelation, we now turn to the fact itself, to the positive
reality of the revelation that characterizes the Christian faith. Our
purpose is to see how this revelation correlates with those moments
we have been discussing: history, word, and unconditioned
concretion. We will further see how all this relates to human beings as
hearers of the word and seekers of salvation. Our task is, by
description and by argument, to give an account of this concrete,
special revelation as the basis of faith.
Thus we turn to special, supernatural revelation according to its
concrete self-witness in the Old and New Testaments, in other words,
the matter, event, history, and content of the writings of the Old and
New Testaments. In doing this, we should keep in mind the
fundamental observations we have already made on the relationship of
exegesis and systematic theology.
Systematic theology, to which fundamental theology belongs, must
have the courage to bring things together and to connect them with
and under the individual thing. It must have the courage to think of a
center as origin in fullness, which does not forbid but makes it
possible to speak of the individual rays that stream out from the center
and of the circles that form around the center. For that which defines
Christian faith is not a confusing fullness of individualities, it is really
a radically simple reality that can be articulated, that can and should
be unfolded in many ways. But this pluriformity is the pluriformity of
the One only when it can be brought back to it. To attempt to do this,
and in this sense to think through the foundations and connections of
theology, this is the task of fundamental theology.

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§ 30
Revelation in Its Origin
The Problem
Everyone familiar with the Bible knows that it begins with Genesis
and its witness to the creation of the world. This (praising) witness is
presented in the so-called two creation accounts.
This witness about the origin and beginning of all things comes from
relatively late times, from the time of the kings of Israel and Judah
and in conscious argument with contemporary conceptions of the
world and its origins, above all with Babylonian myths, which can be
described as theogony and cosmogony or as ''battle of the Gods."
Chapters 111 of the Book of Genesis are called primitive history,
although the concept of history doesn't apply, if we understand by
history the concrete experience of an event recorded by observation or
witnesses. But one could speak of primitive history both because it
forms the basis of concrete, experienced and lived history as its
presupposition and because the fact of it contains historical effects.
Primitive history both precedes and forms the basis of the history of
Israel. This is not only a temporal "before," but a factual ground and
basis. The purpose of primitive history is to make clear in what
horizon the concrete history of this people stands. It intends further to
explain why the history experienced and lived in Israel became, so to
speak, necessary, and in what its special significance and function
consisted.
Primitive history is, in the popular and convincing contemporary
description, "Israel's look into its past" (H. Renckens). The first eleven
chapters of Genesis are the document, assembled from all kinds of
traditions, about how Israel, on the basis of its concrete historical
experience with God, thought about the beginning of the world and
the human race. They are the account, born out of living experience
and theological reflection, about how it was in the beginning, how it
must have been in the beginning, if things are the way they are.

Page 276
Genesis 111 is "protology" and "etiology"; account of the origins and
causes and grounds for the understanding and for the being of that
which now is; Genesis 111 is prophecy backwards into the past. The
beginning of the world and history is, according to Genesis, to be
interpreted antimythically: not as a process of cosmic powers, but as
work of the freedom of the God calling the world into existence by
God's word. This means radical difference between God and world
and at the same time innermost connection between uncreated Creator
and created world. The term "creation myth" is, de facto, an inner
contradiction. But this doesn't have to mean that the mythical mode of
speaking as a mode of narration has to be done away with. For in
creation thus understood, God has revealed Himself: not only in the
fact of divine existence, but also in God's being as Lord, in God's
power, wisdom, and goodness.
This can be found expressed in the creation psalmsespecially Psalm
104which were composed at about the same time that the book of
Genesis was being assembled into its present form (in the sixth
century, following the Babylonian Exile). The Epistle to the Romans
(1:19-20) also expressly refers to it. Along with affirmations about
creation, we find here the outline of a theological anthropology. There
is a description of what the human being is, and this description is
projected onto the genetic level. In telling the story of how human
beings used to be, it tells us what they now are.
This message does not exhaust the content of the so-called primitive
history. Genesis has knowledgeespecially in the so-called second
account of creation in Gen 2:4b-25 and in the paradise story of
Chapter 3about a human condition that extends beyond their creation
reality. Human beings are described as beings that share a special
proximity, love, and friendship with God. This condition, which is
described in the image of the garden of paradise and is also described
theologically with the categories of original graces, belongs to the
revelation of the beginning, to revelation at its origin, and is to be
understood in turn protologically and etiologically: as Israel's vision
into its own past and that of human beings.
The starting point and ground of understanding for this reflection in
the Book of Genesis is the historical and concrete experience of this
people: the experience of human guilt, of suffering, evil, grief, and
death, and the related question of the ground, of the why in the history
and constitution of human beings whowhat a paradox!are the most
sublime work, the crown of creation, and who simultaneously find
themselves in contradiction to and in dereliction of it. In the image of
paradise is described the counterimage of this situation, the totally
other world: the world without shadows, the world of peace, of
nearness to God, of solidarity with God. The present world and
situation of human beings are demonstrated as the loss of paradise
and its special

Page 277
gifts. According to Genesis, this loss came about through an act of
human beings, by their decision against their creatureliness and
indebtedness. Biblically speaking, it carne about through their refusal
to recognize their creatureliness and indebtedness, by the presumption
of wanting "to be like God," of putting themselves in God's place
"knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:5), as quintessence of what belongs
to God alone. When paradise was lost, human beings sank into a
guilty, broken, and impaired creatureliness, in which they historically
and presently and concretely find themselves, namely, human beings
in contradiction, inauthenticity, and deterioration. But in the guilt of
the beginning not just the past is affected; the present is also
described: the constantly present option of human beings against God,
happening again and again and again. The presence of sin is
illuminated in the light of the past. The purpose of the text is not so
much to say: this is the way human beings were, but to say: this is the
way human beings are.
Chapters 411 of Genesis give a drastic description of an
everdarkening story, of the increase of sin: from the fratricide of Cain
to the flood as sign and punishment for the universal sovereignty of
evil. Of course, there are also some figures of light: Abel, Enoch, and
Noah.
The Covenant of Noah (Genesis 9) is a new turning of God to the
humanity represented by Noah and a confirmation and renewal of the
possibility left in humanity to know God from creation, and to see
creation, above all its life and fruitfulness in the rhythm of the year
and seasons, as a gift bestowed, and with that to recognize this
creation as revelation and hierophany, and to give expression to this
knowledge and recognition in the form of religion. The Acts of the
Apostles refers to this situation when Paul proclaims: "God . . . made
the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. Yet he did
not leave himself without witness, for he did good and gave you from
heaven rains and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and
gladness" (Acts 14:15-17).
Even if all these statements are not to be regarded as factual historical
descriptions, they have validity as factual affirmations in the form of
narration. The reality represented in these affirmations is above all a
statement about human beingsthat is where it has its verificationand
about their orientation to God. This is given not only by the fact of
creation but also by the fact of guilt which, for its part, is an offense
against a special characteristic of human beings.
Primitive Revelation
This context will help make intelligible what is meant by the concept
"primitive revelation."1 This concept was introduced into theolog-
1 Cf. Heinrich Fries, "Primitive Revelation," SM 5.35558.

Page 278
ical terminology in the nineteenth century in order to put a name to
what we have just been discussing. The concept "primitive revelation"
was often used not only in order to describe phenomenologically but
also to explain and understand theologically the various religions
about which we have been learning more and more in the modern age,
along with their often astonishingly concrete common contents.2
In the religions of the world one finds contents like salvation, grace,
the Fall, guilt, judgment, atonement, redemption, rebirth, heaven. One
finds ideas of a luminous and healthy beginning (golden age) as well
as of paradise lost, and also witnesses of the flood. There are also
prayers, sacrifice, cults, rites, holy places, and holy times.
In these contents of religion one can recognize the continued effect of
what one thought of as original revelation, namely the continued
effect of primitive revelation still influencing human beings. This did
not remain limited to the single point of the beginning, but lives on in
the traditions, religions, and myths of the peoples. And these are
traditions of an origin called "primitive revelation."3
Looked at more closely, this means that original revelation, primitive
revelation with its contents (creation, paradise, guilt), is the condition
of religion. This is, for its part, the presupposition and source of the
many concrete religions. The common presupposition explains the
remarkable agreement in their contents. The different religions of the
earth can thus, theologically seen,4 be specified according to the mode
and manner in which they express the elements and contents of
original revelation, i.e., of primitive revelation. At the same time, the
concrete religions themselves are sign and expression of the greatness
and limits of human beings.
The so-called nature religions are, in this theological perspective, both
the positive and the negative answer to revelation in and from
creation. The redemptive religions are characterized by elements of
creation, golden age at the beginning, paradise, the Fall, guilt for
paradise lost, as well as by elements of longing for rescue, salvation,
redemption.
The ethical religions are authoritatively characterized by the message
of God given in the conscience of human beings: the unconditioned
obligation to the good, to the "voice of God" in conscience, to the
experience of guilt, to the ideas of retribution and forgiveness, of
judg-
2 N. Hötzel, Die Uroffenbarung im französischen Traditionalismus
(Munich, 1962).
3 J. Pieper, Tradition als Herausforderung (Munich, 1963).
4 Karl Rahner, "Christianity and the NonChristian Religions," Theological
Investigations 2 (1974) 323; H. R. Schlette, Towards a Theology of Religions,
trans. W. J. O'Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966); Joseph Ratzinger,
"Der Christliche Glaube und die Weltreligionen" in: Gott in Welt (Festschrift
K. Rahner) (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1964) 287305; H Fries, "Das Christentum
und die Religionen der Welt" in: Wir und die Anderen (Stuttgart, 1966)
240272; J. Heislbetz, Theologische Gründe der nichtchristlichen Religionen
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1967).

Page 279
ment and beatitude. This consensus of the religions requires a
theological explanation; it is found by going back to a so-called
primitive revelation.
This fact was present to the theology of Christian antiquity in an
astonishing way. Justin, picking up from the Prologue of John, spoke
of the sperm nuclei of the Logos [logoi spermatikoi] scattered among
the pagans; Tertullian coined the expression of the anima naturaliter
christiana [the naturally Christian soul]. Along with all their criticism
of religious practice, theologians like Clement of Alexandria and
Origen saw in the myths a preparation for Christ, and then in Christ
the answer to the questions behind the myths. From the Augustine of
the Retractations comes theespecially for himastonishing words: "The
reality itself, which is now called the Christian religion, was also
found among the ancients; indeed, from the beginning of the human
race it has not been absent, until Christ appeared. From then on the
true religion, which already existed, began to be called the Christian
religion." In developing this idea, Nicholas of Cusa spoke of the "una
religio in rituum varietate [one religion in a variety of rites]."
These ideas had been forgotten when, during the Middle Ages, the
opinion was held that there were practically no more non-Christian
religions, when one constructed the model of a "puer in silvis" [child
in the forest] in order to ask what possibilities of salvation there were
for him.5 The discovery of new continents at the beginning of the new
age with their religions came as a shock and was experienced as a
theological problem of the first order.
Its Significance
At the beginning of our century the attempt was made to construct an
historical demonstration of primitive revelation and the primitive
tradition that came with it as the foundation of religion and the
religions by proposing the thesis that the path of the historical
religions does not proceed from polytheism to monotheism by way of
an evolution, an ascending religious development, and as the result of
a more profound religious reflection, but that it works the other way
around. This was done above all by the ethnologist and historian of
religions Wilhelm Schmidt in his ten-volume work Der Ursprung der
Gottesidee [The Origin of the Idea of God].6 According to this view,
the high religion of primitive monotheism broke up into the many
different forms of polytheism, and the whole process is to be
interpreted as decline and
5 M. Seckler, "Das Heil der Nichtevangelisierten" in: ThQ 140 (1960)
3869.
6 Münster, 191213.; "Die Uroffenbarung als Anfang der Offenbarungen
Gottes" in: ReligionChristentumKirche I, eds. G. Esser, J. Mausbach
(Cologne, 1911) 541692.

Page 280
fall from an original height. Wilhelm Schmidt and his school7
attempted to prove this by investigating the religion of the oldest
peoples known today. They found in them the contents of belief in an
individual God or high God, as well as ideas of paradise and flood as
well as relatively high ethical teachings. The further history of
religion and religions is consequently to be characterized as a history
of falling away.
Schmidt's thesis was not accepted in the circles of the history of
religions, for they found that religion and the history of religions had a
far more differentiated content than would be the case with this theory
of the Fall. But even if the thesis of original religious monotheism
cannot be held historically, that does not eliminate the basic idea of an
original primitive revelation, even if there is no desire to take over this
concept.
In more recent evangelical [German Lutheran] theology, the concept
"primitive or fundamental revelation" has been taken up by Paul
Althaus.8 He understands it as a characterization of the fundamental
situation or fundamental reality of human beings. The idea of a
primitive revelation also came alive in the nineteenth century, because
one saw in tradition as such and as a whole an indispensable element
of life, of history, especially of the history of spirit, culture, and
religion (traditionalism). Tradition is the handing on of what one has
oneself received. Whatever a human being has or knows did not come
from within, but was perceived from outside, received from others.
"Whatever we are, we owe to others." A presupposition for tradition is
the authority of the one who hands on. This authority is grounded in
the fact that the one handing on has access to the origin or source of
the tradition. This means, in the case of religion, access to the
revelation that has been given to a "founder" as carrier of a religious
revelation.
The concept of primitive revelation, above all what it means, also
constitutes the theological presupposition and basis speaking of the
possibility of salvation for human beings before and apart from Jesus
Christ. This situation is especially applicable today. The matter was
less problematic as long as one thought that the age of the human race
was some 6000 years and that the Bible was the oldest book in the
world and that all knowledge of God was mediated through the Bible.
With the discovery of new continents, and of new peoples, religions,
and cultures, and with the discovery of a human history of millions of
years before and outside of the biblical message, one began to see an
explanation for the possibility of salvation thus opened up for human
beings before and apart from Christ. This was becoming visible
precisely in the idea of a revelation as primitive and basic revelation
given to
7 W. Koppers, Der Urmensch und Sein Weltbild (Vienna, 1949).
8Die Christliche Wahrheit. Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 3rd ed. (Gütersloh,
1952) 3794.

Page 281
human beings and humanity right from the beginning, and in the
living consciousness of God in humanity and its religions. This is also
the reason that, as Karl Rahner says, world history, history of
humanity, and salvation history are coextensive. This has to be so, if
God does indeed wish all human beings to come to salvation (1 Tim
2:4). The Second Vatican Council explicitly declares:
Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their
own do not know the gospel of Christ or His church, yet sincerely seek
God and, moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do His will as it is
known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does divine
Providence deny the help necessary for salvation to those who, without
blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God,
but who strive to live a good life, thanks to his grace. Whatever goodness
or truth is found among them is looked upon by the Church as a
preparation for the gospel. She regards such qualities as given by Him who
enlightens all men so that they may finally have life.9
Like primitive history, primitive revelation cannot be historically
proven. But it makes sense as authentic etiology. And because the
ground for reality is sought, the etiology is intended to speak as
reflection on the ground and cause of reality. It is the condition of a
possibility, the theory of a praxis.
9 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) § 16.

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§ 31
Revelation in the History of Israel
In our discussion of "History and (as) Revelation" (§ 26): we
mentioned a number of themesthe aspects of freedom and of not being
subject to manipulation or disposition of others; the experience of
rugged stability, of being guided and being successful in a way that
evades ultimate human explanation; the discrepancy between cause
and effect; the inkling and traces of another power than merely
military and political factorsall this becomes tangible in a special way
in Israel's history. The theme "Revelation as History"1 has a decisive
foundation in the history of Israel because God's revelation to Israel
took place in the mode of history, of historical events, actions, and
experiences.
Primitive history, revelation as origin, is the framework and horizon
for the history of the People of Israel created by the Old Testament
itself in an astonishing conception. The beginning of this history is set
down with the history of Abraham: Chapter 12 of Genesis. It
unmistakably narrows the horizon from that of primitive history
affecting the whole of humanity to the particularity and singularity of
one people and its historical fate.
Patriarchal History
Even the beginning of this special historical revelation has an
etiological intention. Its purpose is to describe the immediate origin
and prehistory of the history of the People of Israel, and to come to
know and establish in exemplary fashion the fate of this history: the
guiding, accompaniment, election, separating out, and mandate to
become different, but above all, the faith as ground of existence of this
people in its patriarchal origins.
1 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Revelation as History, trans. David Granskou
(New York: Macmillan, 1968).

Page 283
The revelation beginning with Abraham2 is logically and in accord
with its contents described as "revelation and promise." This specifies
what is new in this form of revelation. Corresponding to the promise,
we have on the human side, not primarily knowledge, but faith and
obedience. Promise points to history, to the future. This explains that
already described characteristic, which is ascribed to the figure of
Abraham throughout all of Scripture, that he is the father of faith
(Rom 4:16), that all true believers are called children of Abraham, and
that faith, not bodily lineage, bestows and represents the true heritage
of Abraham (Gal 3:6-9: Rom 4:1-3; John 8:33).
Abram, as he was originally called, lived in Ur of the Chaldees in a
milieu imbued with high culture and rich religiosity. Its most
impressive figure was Hammurabi, the king of Babylon. It is possible
to imagine, with Romano Guardini,3 that Abraham would be called
into solitude, led to interior liberation and illumination, and endowed
with religious knowledgeknowledge about what God is, how the path
and access to God become possible. This is how one can characterize
the figure and way of Buddha. Raised in the royal court, he is brought,
by the sight of a sick man, a beggar, an old man, and a dead man, to
recognize the ephemerality of all things. He leaves his home, changes
his life, and in profound meditation seeks out the paths of right action
and right living. In his "thirst for existence" he recognizes the ground
of all evil and, in its overcoming, sees true wisdom. In Abraham's
time, similar things were taking place in India among the Brahman
ascetics. The Vedas, the holy scriptures of the Brahmans, tell us about
them. But in the revelation to Abraham we find nothing of the kind.
Instead we find the following situation: Abram leaves his land, his
home, his former milieu, and travels to one unknown to him.
This event, the decision of a human being, isthis is its uniquenessnot
to be understood "naturally." The life and acts, the way and fate of
Abram, stand rather under the sign of obedience to an instruction and
a leading, which do not come from himself but which take control of
him and lead him where he does not want to go. They stand under the
sign of a power effective in him like a command, which he
acknowledges in the arrangements of his life, which are not mere facts
but realities in which something is said to him, in which someone else
acts, in which he shows and reveals himself whom Abram calls
"Lord."
According to the witness of Scripture, Abram's path and fate, his
history is to be interpreted theologically, i.e., as revelation. And this is
to be characterized as historical leading and guiding by another.
2 Emil Brunner, Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith
and Knowledge, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1968) 8195; Heinrich Fries, Revelation (New York: Herder and Herder,
1969) 5468.
3Die Offenbarung. Ihr Wesen und ihre Formen (Würzburg, 1940) 54.

Page 284
Corresponding to this fate is faith, which is a moment of the
revelation event, because it is through faith that this event is accepted.
The quality of revelation and faith in the form of leading and guiding
in the Abraham history is expressed in a very special way by the fact
that these qualities stand under the sign of promisethus in the future
and not accessible to human calculationand by the fact that they are
connected not only with the unknown but also with the unlikely, or
even the paradoxical. We have already discussed this in another
context ("The Faith of Abraham" in § 6).
The activity of Yahweh with and in Abraham is sealed by the
covenant, a covenant between unequal partners, which, again, comes
from the free initiative of God and is granted to human beings. This
covenant4 includes grace and obligation in itself and likewise stands
under the sign of the coming, the future, the promise: "The Lord
appeared to Abram, and said to him, 'I am God Almighty (El
Shaddai); walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my
covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly"'
(Gen 17:1-2; cf. Gen 15:28).
As a sign of the new thing that has taken place by the establishment of
the covenant, Abram receives a new name: "No longer shall your
name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham (i.e., 'father of a
multitude'); for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations"
(Gen 17:5). A change of name, in ancient oriental thinking, signifies a
change of fate. The further sealing and guarantee of the covenant of
God with Abraham and his descendants is to be circumcision (Gen
17:9ff). Circumcision is a sign of the covenant and at the same time a
sign of the fact that the one who bears it is God's property.
In the Abraham event, what special historical revelation is and what
dimension of reality it points to become recognizable: a life, a fate,
and all paths and decisions in it are the word, will, and act of another,
of a Lord and God who communicates Himself to an individual.5 The
history of Abraham also contains the model of the other patriarchal
histories of Isaac, Jacob, and the Joseph story, as well as the basic
structure of God's activity and guidance and the human response. The
patriarchal histories describe the special way in which the People of
Israel came into existence as God's own people and began its
historical path. The patriarchal histories are thus not simply story but
kerygma, backward-looking prophecy as well as doxology of history
with a view to the present. The present is conceived as fruit of the
promise; it understands itself and its task from the revelational activity
of God and from faith.
4 The idea of covenant is the dominant idea of Walther Eichrodt: Theology
of the Old Testament, vol. 1, trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1967).
5 H. Groß, "Zur Offenbarungsentwicklung im AT" in: Gott in Welt.
Festschrift Karl Rahner, vol. 1 (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1964) 40722.

Page 285
The founding history of the people of Israel itself contains the same
traits found in an exemplary mode in the history of the fathers,
especially in the Abraham event. They stand under the same sign and
under the same law, only everything is greatly expanded.
The People of Israel
The second great thrust of historical revelation takes place in the call
of Moses in Egypt, a highly cultivated political and religious land. It is
the time of Pharaoh Ramses II (1298-1225), who had in Amenophis
IV an extraordinary predecessor: the founder of the religion of the sun
god, who was venerated as unique lord, creator of all life and all
things. After the death of this king and at the time of Moses, the old
polytheistic and theriomorphic [animal-worship] religion revived.
The call of Moses takes place in the theophany described in Exodus 3.
It culminates in the communication and interpretation of the name of
God, of the name Yahweh (Exod 3:14). The interpretation of the name
of God, who is identified with the ''God of the Fathers" (El, El
Shaddaicf. Exod 6:2) is: "I AM WHO I AM. . . . this is my name
forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations"
(Exod 3:1415).
This "I am who I am," an interpretation of the special divine name of
Yahweh, is a message. Its meaning:
No holy place, no mountain, no temple is the location of the God who sent
Moses. He is not sedentary; he is here, he is here in the here and now of
the history of Israel. I am who amI am means not just: I exist (existence of
God); not just: I am everywhere in space (omnipresence of God); the
subject is not Yahweh's existence and essence when God reveals Himself
to Moses as I am who I am, but Yahweh's presence: Pharaoh will take
note, even if he doesn't want to acknowledge it, that someone mightier
than he now rules in his land. Israel, enslaved and condemned to
extermination, will have the experience of seeing its liberator and savior at
work. The Invisible One shows Himself visibly in historical deeds, reveals
Himself in the everyday world of human history.6

However, the situation of the Israelites in Egypt had in the course of

time become a genuine faith problem. Where is the God of our fathers
who has allowed us to come into such tribulation? Were not the gods
of Egypt in the form of animals and heavenly bodies more tangible,
more mighty than the God of our fathers? The memory of their God
had paled for many. If the power of Yahweh was to be demonstrated,
this could happen only by Yahweh being proven mightier than the
might of Pharaoh and his gods. God must be shown to be the victor.
This happened through the deeds of Moses. It happened in the actual
liberation of Moses' band from the servitude of Egypt, in their be-
6 F. Stier, Die Geschichte Gottes mit den Menschen, 2d ed. (Düsseldorf,
1962) 22.

Page 286
ing saved from Pharaoh's exterminating order, and in the crown of
wondrous deeds connected with it. It happened in the affliction of the
Egyptians, in the miracle of the Reed Sea and the desert journey, in
the encounter with God, in the sealing of the covenant at Sinai and the
taking possession of the land. These events in the history of the
People of Israel are the constitutive historical realities in its coming-
to-be. In their accumulated paradoxical character contradicting all
human expectations, calculations and ideas, they arethis is the sense
and purpose of the biblical witnessactions of divine activity, divine
leading and guiding, divine election and separating out. God's
revelation is realized as action and effect of that action in this history,
in its events and accomplishments.
For this reason, these events are ever after "remembered" and
celebrated in cult. Israel's confession expressed therein affirms the fact
and glorifies it: Yahweh led Israel out of Egypt in a wondrous manner.
This unique historical act is for Israel's faith the fundamental reason
and the ever-new guarantee of Yahweh's rescuing help and saving
power in the present and future.
The People of Israel, howeverthis is the other side of the
coinunderstands itself or should understand itself as Yahweh's people,
as his special possession, which understands the ground of its
existence in the promises and fulfilling deeds of Yahweh and in the
faith directed to him. The sense of Israel's historical calling is made
clear above all in the so-called "eagle saying" of Exodus:
You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's
wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my
voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all
peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of
priests and a holy nation. (Exod 19:4-6)
To this is added the warning:
You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, and you
shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.
(Lev 18:3)

The further history of this people is determined by the manner and

mode in which its foundations, namely God's revealing activity and
the faith and obedience ordered to it, unfolded and took shape in the
ebb and flow of history, and by the manner and mode in which Israel
fulfilled its specific mandate of being an exception among the nations
and at the same time a ferment for the rest of the world. The
temptations that went with this distinction were assimilation,
adaptation, the dispersion of Israel among the nations, thus giving up
the election; and on the other hand, the exact oppositeboasting about
being chosen, shutting themselves off, and closing themselves in, at
the cost of universality. Again and again in its history Israel has
succumbed to these two, so different, temptations. Regarding the
further history of Israel,

Page 287
as it relates to our question of revelation, only some fundamental acts
and structures still need to be mentioned.
In Canaan, Israel became a nation of the world. Expressed in biblical
language, it turned away from Yahweh, abandoned its God, and forgot
Yahweh's covenant. This is the judgment on the approximately five
hundred years of the history of Israel from its taking possession of the
land up to the second captivity in 586539. The leitmotif of this history
is assimilation to its religious and political milieu. In being
assimilated, Israel was acting against the condition of its having been
chosen. The assimilation followed from the natural course of things;
what seemed to be an obvious historical development led Israel into
conflict with its own special character. The land forces its law on the
new settler. A nomadic people becomes sedentary and experiences the
change from pasture to field, from shepherd's staff to plow, from tent
to house. Canaan made the Israelites comfortable with its old culture,
with its customs and laws, as well as with the indigenous religion of
the land; it taught them to know and love its gods.
Another generation arose which knew neither Yahweh nor the deeds
he had done for Israel. They forsook Yahweh and served the Ba'als
and the Ash'taroth (Judges 2:10, 13).
Yahweh did indeed remain Israel's God in veneration. Their forebears
had experienced him in Egypt, in the desert, in the battles for the land.
And although the experience of their forebears might pale in the
memory of the children, the story of the powerful and saving deeds of
Yahweh was never silenced. But the whole realm of cultivated field,
of generation and birth ruled by the cult and myth of Baal did not fit
into the image of the historical God whom Israel knew from Egypt
and Sinai. Nevertheless, faith puts no limits on its God; it sees
Yahweh as the Lord also of this realm and transfers to him, in
presumably faithful preservation of his uniqueness and field of power,
attributions, cultic customs, human sacrifice, and feasts of the
Canaanite fertility God. This appropriation in belief turned of course
into the mistaken path by which Baal, under the name of Yahweh,
could make a nest for himself in the heart of Israel. The Baalization of
Yahweh went so far that the Goddess Anath, Baal's spouse, was set up
as Yahweh's throne-companion.7
The ebb and flow between assimilation and distance, the struggle
between God and idols, Yahweh and Baal, reached its high point in
the challenge of Elijah to the priests and prophets of Baal: "If the Lord
is God, follow him; but if Ba'al, then follow him" (1 Kgs 18:21).
The second assimilation of the chosen people took place in the
political arena. The royal sovereignty of Yahweh over his people is
carried out at first in the mode of immediacy. God, God's Spirit, raises
7 Following F. Stier, Die Geschichte 4041.

Page 288
up persons who stand by the people in its hour of need, who lead and
guide it as leaders, judges, and military leaders who, as it is written,
wage "Yahweh's wars." It is the time of the judges: Deborah, Gideon,
Samson, Samuel. This free dominion emphasizes in a special way the
sovereignty of God, who is Israel's king. This king's might and
strength is to be the might and strength of the people: theocratically
charismatic, charismatic theocracy.
But that is not how it all turns out. The special nature of the People of
God is historically not maintained. It represents no genuine
realpolitische possibility. From Israel's bosom comes more and more
perceptibly the cry for a firm institution of power and for a visible
representation of the nation. These strivings finally force from
Samuel, the last judge, the decision: "We will have a king over us, that
we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us
and go out before us and fight our battles" (1 Sam 8:19f.).
As in religion, so in politics too, the People of Israel wants to be like
other nations. It looks like a natural and obvious development: the
development of a group of tribes to an organized government, is, in
the sight of faith, a falling away of the people from the rule of God. It
is the overthrowing of God's rule, the doubting of God's fidelity and
promise, of God's possibility in world and history.
And yet this breakout into the institution of the stubbornly won
kingdom is taken overand this is something newinto the law of the
people of God and given a place in it. This is in fact done in such a
way that the fundamental characteristics of the covenant and the
promise are preserved: "You shall be my people, I will be your God."
This assignment can be realized also within the kingdom: the kingdom
is to become an organ and instrument of the royal kingship of God.8
What was thus begun seems to be successful in the figure and the
kingdom of David. He brings the tribes of Israel together and by
successful military forays creates a powerful kingdom. The people's
unity is grounded in Yahweh who is the God common to all. David
expressed this tie by transferring to Jerusalem, to Mount Zion, the ark
of the covenant with the tablets of the Law, the document of the
covenant with God. There, next to the palace of the king, was to rise
the temple in place of the former tent: the one God as king of the king
of the people.
By means of the kingdom and priesthood, thought of Yahweh, the
God of Israel, was to be preserved and maintained in constant
remembrancenot only in words but in the living out of life for the
individual, for the community, and for the people. Israel's faith in
Yahweh, its remembrance of his promises and their fulfillment, its
orientation to his teachingin brief, its obligation to an existence based
on faith
8 Ibid. 46.

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was to be made present, practiced, and mediated by kingdom and
priesthood.
The high point in the life of David describes at the same time a
turning point in the history of the kingdom of Israel. Two lines cross
at this point: the horizontal line of assimilation to the milieu and the
vertical line which introduces into the plan of God the historical
developments of templebuilding and dynasty. These novelties lay in
the natural course of things, but they had severe consequences. Both
lines contain dangers. The building of the temple hides the danger of
changing the "One Who Goes with Us" (M. Buber), who is "there
wherever being may be," into a sedentary deity housed like the gods,
the non-disponible There into a fixed Here. This novelty is avoided
for a time, but is later approved for David's son. The other novelty
also lies on the dangerous path of assimilation: hereditary succession
to the throne. With Saul and David, the "Spirit of Yahweh" took part
in deciding their choice to be king. Now, in the place of charism, in
the place of the non-disponible power granted only to the one chosen,
in place of the one inspired to do battle and to rule, comes the "house,''
the dynasty, the principle of hereditary succession to power in effect
in Egypt and the other neighboring lands around Israel. And this
change from the one-time choice of an individual to the continuing
choice of a whole race, from "spirit" to "blood," takes place by virtue
of divine dispensation.9
It is not possible for us here to go into the question how this new level
and form of revelation in the situation of the kingdom was represented
and developed in the course of history. It wasseen as a wholenot
successful. Israel's playing with worldly power and attempt to
preserve and represent to the world its special, its chosen, character
failed. God's rule became human rule. The attempt failed visibly after
David's death in the separation of the kingdom into the northern and
southern kingdoms, and in the fall of both kingdoms, in the coming of
the people into the Babylonian captivityinto that very country from
which Abraham was once called out. Israel returns there in guilt.
Through suffering, through loss of land and freedom, the People of
God are to gain a deeper knowledge of its place in God's history with
the human race. Power and earthly kingdom were a poor instrument
and unsuitable organ for God's rule and kingdom.
The Institution/Phenomenon of Prophecy
But one phenomenon of this particular period of the kingdom (900500
BC) must be considered: prophecy.10 The prophets of Israel are the
9 Ibid. 5152.
10 R. RendtoffR. MeyerG. Friedrich in: ThW 6.781863; Gerhard von Rad,
Theologie der Prophetischen Überlieferungen Israels (Munich, 1962); N.
Füglister, "Prophet,"

(footnote continued on next page)

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counterweight against the kingdom and the priesthood and against the
dangers and constant temptations connected with the kingdom:
forgetting and falling away from the covenant and its obligations and
prophecies. The temptations of the priesthood consisted in contenting
oneself with the external and ritual performance of the cult and
neglecting faith and moral values. The prophets were distinguished
from the prophetic figures of the other religions as Yahweh was from
the gods. They are explicitly coordinated with certain kings: Elijah to
Ahab, Isaiah to Ahaz, Jeremiah to Jehoiakim and Zedekiahso also to
the respective representatives of the official priesthood.
What is a prophet? A prophet isif one starts from the primitive
meaning of the wordsomeone who speaks in place of another, thus
acts on behalf of someone. A prophet is someone who is "awakened,"
separated out, called and chosen. A prophet isas is contained in the
factually related word "seer"someone who sees. But the gaze of the
prophet is not first and foremost into the past and future, but into the
immediate present. The prophet sees, recognizes, and says how things
are in relation to God among the people, with the king, and with the
priests. The eye of the prophet is not blinded by the fact that
apparently everything is in order, that all services are functioning. The
prophet sees the emptiness of faith and love behind the external
facades, he recognizes the unwholeness in the midst of the external
wholeness which the court prophets, the false prophets, praise. In
addition, he is the consoler of the people in the face of misfortune,
exile, and hopelessness.
A prophet is someone who, with courage and authority, says what a
particular historical situation is all about: about faith and obedience,
about justice and love. A prophet stands up for his word and his
mission and is ready to seal his word with life and deed. The prophet
is to warn king and priesthood away from infidelity to the covenant,
and also from all false security. The prophet does not interpret
catastrophes and afflictions as external fate but as God's punishment
for incurred guilt: as a revelation event. The prophet stands
interceding before God as an advocate of his people. He prays God to
be mindful of the covenant, of the promises, of his "oath," so that
God's own work, God's own people, may not become a subject of
mockery in the eyes of the world.
From these characteristics it is also possible to pick out some criteria
for the authentic prophets, in contrast to the false prophets. The most
important mark of the prophetic state is its calling, on the basis of
inner evidence, to speak and act in the name of God. This is often
(footnote continued from previous page)
HThG 2.35072; K. Rahner, "Prophetism," SM 5.11013; G; LanczkowskiH.
GroßJ. SchmidK. Rahner in: LThK 7.794802; J. Scharbert, Die Propheten
Israels bis 700 v. Chr. (Cologne, 1965); Die Propheten Israels um 600 v.
Chr. (Cologne, 1967).

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enough expressed as contrary to personal aptitude and inclination, as
an obligation imposed, as burden and necessity. The false prophet
gives out his dreams as revelation and his own will as word of God.
In addition to this subjective criterion there is as an objective,
although post-factum sign of differentiation: the occurrence of what
has been said (Jer 28:9, 15), the consistency of the life and teaching of
the prophet, his fidelity towards God, and renunciation of all
opportunism. "A final differentiating characteristic is that the false
prophet has an answer always and for everything, while the prophet
who is called at times remains dumb because he does not have free
disposition over God's word but must wait for the hour of
revelation."11
The true prophet points from the situation of the present to a new
covenant, the greater, universal covenant being grounded within
human beings. This new covenant is frequently mentioned: Isa
19:1921; 55:3; 61:8; but above all in the famous "new covenant"
passage of Jeremiah:
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the
covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to
bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke,
though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I
will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will
put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be
their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man
teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they
shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for
I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer
31:3134)
The words of the prophet Jeremiah are spoken during the great
catastrophe of Israel: in the time of the besieging and destruction of
Jerusalem. In the time of need, of exile and foreign domination, there
awakens in the People of God a consciousness that lasts through the
subsequent time. It is moved by the questions: What has happened?
What will happen? What should we do?
After the judgment of God was carried out on Israel it would,
according to the prophetic word now coming forth, also affect other
nations, but then would come the time of salvation, the time of
liberation and new life in the kingdom of God. This is the word of the
prophets in this time, the time of Ezekiel and his vision of the field of
dead bones to which new life comes (Ezek 37:114; cf, also 40:1). God
is planning new things with his people: He will lead it into a new
promised land (Ezekiel 43). There will be a new exodus like the one
from Egypt. Cyrus, the Persian king, overthrows the power of
Babylon"for the sake of my servant, for the sake of Israel"and lets
Israel come home (2 Chr 36:23).
11 N. Füglister, "Prophet," 37071.

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In this world event, in Babylon's fall, Israel is supposed to recognize
the rule and revelational power of God. It should grow to maturity for
the new message of its God, for the new covenant, and for the coming
of that figure who is called "Servant of God," for the day and the
glory of the Lord.
But along with this salvation for all nations is brought up: The people
will come and make pilgrimage to the mountain of God (Jer 16:19; Isa
56:7; Zech 2:14). God, Israel's king, shall be king over all nations.
There will be a time in which the happiness of the primitive age,
paradise, returns (Isa 35:1-10). All flesh see the salvation of God; the
arrival of God is the epiphany of the God-king.
But the question "What shall we do that the rule of the king may
come?" will move the people in new ways after their return from
exile. Contributing to this new impetus will be both the experiences
they had made in captivity, and that which in exile had remained the
same: the memory of salvation history and the word of the prophets.
The great leaders and reformers, Ezra and Nehemiah, lead the people
to the path of an exact fulfilling of the Law which the nation knew
from the time of Moses and which was expanded and developed in the
course of the centuries, and which had been the ultimate binding
power during the exile. The praise of the law (Psalm 119) the
knowledge of it and zeal for the Law, the struggle to keep it pure, turn
into the characterizing leitmotif and specific form of revelation.
After the overthrow of the Persian kingdom by Alexander the Great
and the incorporation of the realm and dynasty of Israel into the
empire of the Ptolomies and Seleucids, the struggle with Greek
culture took place. In this time there developed again a dialectical
situation of assimilation (cf. 1 Macc 1: 11) or the self-isolating
preservation of Israel's special characteristic, the holy Law.
The Books of the Maccabees tell the story of the open religious war
that broke out when King Antiochus IV (176-164) prohibited temple
sacrifice, Sabbath and circumcision, ordered the Holy Scriptures
destroyed and forced the Jews under penalty of death to offer sacrifice
to Zeus, the God of the Greeks. These books also tell how, in contrast
to the many apostates, a small band remained true, the community of
the new covenant. Possibly this is the community that gathered around
the "Teacher of Righteousness" and whom we have come to know
more closely through the discoveries at Qumran.12 This community
was preparing itself for the day of God and the coming of God's
kingly rule. What must we do that the kingdom may come? An
extraordinarily
12 K. H. Schelkle, Die Gemeinde von Qumran und die Kirche des Neuen
Testaments (Düsseldorf, 1960); Rudolf Schnackenburg, God's Rule and
Kingdom, trans. John Murray (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963); P.
Hoffmann, "Reich Gottes," HThG 2.41428; P. Hunermann, "Reign of
God," SM 5.23340.

Page 293
strict following of the Law and a special community rule is the answer
of the people of Qumran. With the subjection of the People of Israel
under the rule of the Romans, the external history of the People of
God comes to an end.
In the time of Early Rabbinic Judaism the so-called apocalyptic13
took on a growing significance alongside and often in the place of the
institution of prophecy. Apocalyptica literary genrewas understood in
a very special way as revelation that was not mediated by a calling, as
with the prophets, but by dreams and visions. This revelation refers
above all to the future, more precisely, to the end of the ages and the
end of the world. The purpose of apocalyptic is to communicate a
secret wisdom. It relativizes life on earth, speaks dualistically of two
aeons, and describes in metaphorical language, often with a temporal
calculation, the omens of the end time: the tribulations, the last
judgment, the resurrection of the dead, beatitude and damnation. The
purpose of these descriptions in apocalyptic is to give comfort and
hope.
It is remarkable that Israel took into the its holy Scriptures only one
work of apocalyptic literature, namely the Book of Daniel. Individual
apocalyptic elements are also found in other Old Testament writings
(the Isaiah-Apocalypse of Isaiah 2427; Ezek 37:114;4048; Joel 34).
Most of the apocalyptic writings belong to the so-called apocryphal
writings. Certain figures of the Old Testament were designated as
their authors (Abraham, Enoch, Moses, Elijah, Baruch) to elevate the
reputation and significance of the writings in question. Apocalyptic
arose in a time of severe internal and external affliction of the People
of Israel, in the so-called Hellenistic milieu, especially under King
Antiochus IV in the second century before Christ. They belong to the
time and situation called "between the Testaments."14
This also establishes the connection to the New Testament in which
apocalyptic traits and elements are also found, specifically in the
sermons of Jesus about the end of the world and the end of times. But
note the marked differences from apocalyptic, for example, in the
question of setting down specific times. There is, in addition, one
"Apocalypse" raised to a special position: the last book of the Bible
which we will treat shortly in chapter 33.
13 J. Schreiner, Alttestamentlichjüdische Apokalyptik (Munich, 1969).
14 Ibid. 11.

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§ 32
The Contents of the Revelation Witnessed in the Old Testament
The God of Israel
In Israel's history, God reveals Himself as Yahweh, the God of Israel.
In the course of Israel's history, this path can be recognized: from the
God of the fathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and his various names
and forms to Yahweh, the God of Israel; a path from henotheism to
monotheism. Yahweh, the God of Israel, reveals himself as the one
and only Lord, in an exclusive and incomparable sense (Exod 20:3-6).
He tolerates no strange gods beside him; these are, in the concept of
the Old Testament, either creatures, images of human beings,
"nothings," or antidivine powers. This fundamental idea permeates the
history of Israel and is articulated ever more clearly in many
developments: "Hear, O Israel! the Lord your God is one Lord" (Deut
6:4), in the words of the credo to be confessed every day. It comes up
again as a demand in all prophetic proclamation. Polytheistic ideas of
any kind contradict this fundamental affirmation of the Old
Testament. Israel has no pantheon. Israel's belief in God is a
monotheism of act and praxis.1
The Lord of History
The God of Israel reveals Himself as the Lord of the history of this
people. But one must note here that Yahweh is not so woven into the
history of Israel as to risk his own fate therein and thus come to grief,
as frequently happens in the form of the purely national gods of other
religions. Yahweh remains the all-determining reality. Israel's victories
are above all, in the beginning, a manifestation of Yahweh's
1 A. Deißler, Die Grundbotschaft des Alten Testaments, 3rd ed.
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1972, 7th ed., 1979); H. W. Schmidt, The Faith of
the Old Testament: A History, trans. John Sturdy (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1983).

Page 295
power, which is greater than that of the Egyptians, of Pharaoh and
their gods. But Israel's political downfall, its suffering, defeat,
imprisonment, and Exile, are not defeats of Yahweh, not signs of
Yahweh's weakness, but the answer, caused and decreed by Yahweh,
to Israel's unbelief, disobedience, and apostasy. Yahweh remains the
all-determining reality. Suffering and defeat are no ground to break
away from Yahweh, but the occasion to ask questions, to take thought
to oneself, and to return to Yahweh. The weakness of the nation did
not destroy faith in Yahweh, but purified it.
The Holy One of Israel
God reveals Himself in Israel and its history as the Holy One, God is
the Holy One of Israel. The word "holy" first of all expresses that God
is other, that God is totally other: other than the world and all that is in
it. Holy is the special prerogative of God, sign of the indisponibility
[God can't be "used"] that is God's. Holiness is the expression of
God's sublimity and glory over against all creatureliness, before all
human beings, and expression of purity over against all "uncleanness"
(cf. Isaiah 6). If Israel is Yahweh's people, the consequence for its
behavior is: "I am the Lord . . . your God . . . be holy, for I am holy"
(Lev 11:44).
The being-holy of the people is to be represented in the assembly of
the people at worship, where the great deeds of God are remembered
in an atmosphere of praise, belief, and hope. It is to be represented
above all in moral behavior: concretely in behavior and action
supported by justice, love, and mercy (which, in cases of doubt, count
more than the cult, according to the words: "I desire steadfast love and
not sacrifice" [Hos 6:6]). It follows from this that the God of Israel is
no unpredictable, arbitrary God. In God's own self-describing words:
the holy God is the reliable and loyal God.
Alfons Deissler sees the fundamental message of the Old Testament
being given its most pointed expression in the words of the prophet
Micah: "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the
Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to
walk humbly with your God?" (Mic 6:8).
The Creator of Heaven and Earth
Yahweh reveals Himself as Creator of heaven and earth. Yahweh
creates the world out of nothing by his free, almighty word, and
preserves in being and life all that is. Israel's God transcends the
People of Israel; its God is the God who from the beginning, from the
time of creation in the world, was operative in humanity and manifest
to human

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beings. By its confession of God the Creator and its affirmation of the
world as free creation, Israel differs from the religions of its milieu, in
which the origin of the world is connected with the genesis of the
gods: cosmogony was theogony.
The Personal God
In Israel's history, God becomes manifest and experienced as personal
God. This happens not by way of speculation on the concept of person
but by the affirmation that Israel exists by reason of having been
spoken to by Yahweh, as well as by the constant formulation of the
word and the speaking of Yahweh, and finally by the emphasis on
Yahweh's free action. Especially graphic is the personality highlighted
in the affirmations: God has a face, God has a heart. Face signifies
one's "being turned towards," the turning of Yahweh [towards us] in
free mercy. With the word "heart" is described the totality of human
beings and what is in them. It is said that Yahweh has a heart. This is
spoken of when there is mention of Yahweh's love, compassion,
mercy, and grace. More personal affirmations than these are not
conceivable. The anthropomorphisms ascribed to Yahweh precisely in
connection with this image are not intended to bring Yahweh down to
the level of human beings, but to describe God as person. "Whoever
tries to remove surgically from the Bible the I and You, the He and the
Self of God as references to God's personality must be advised that
their operation results in a corpse."2
Distance from Its Milieu
The special characteristic of the revelation which took place in Israel
has as a consequence the distance of this nation over against its
milieu. Such a behavior is constantly under attack by the tendency, in
betrayal of its chosen statue, to a leveling assimilation, to be "like all
the other nations," to be like the Egyptians, to be like the people from
Canaan. But on the other hand it is also true that, in the revelation
given the People of Israel and in the faith historically lived by them,
that which was destined for all human beings and nations was
preserved and kept safe. What happened and happens in Israel belongs
not just to Israel; it is a "sign for the nations," it concerns all. The
unconditioned concretion recognizable in Israel's history is oriented to
universality. The law is written in the heart of every human being
(Rom 2:14). The God of Israel is the God of creation and the Lord of
all history.
2 A. Deiler, Grundbotschaft 46.

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The Aspect of the Future
As clear and palpable in the revelation to Israel may be its reaching
back into the past and to past history, and as unmistakably as the
prophet may interpret the present as the act and decree of God, even
more characteristic than this is the looking ahead, the trajectory
towards the future, which dominates the Old Testament and is evident
in many phenomena. What is to come is more important than the past
and the present; it is revelation as promise. Every event, however
great it may be and however strong may be its memory, points beyond
itself to something still greater. Even the greatest fulfillment within
Israel is still the promise of a future reality yet to come. So it is with
the bearers of revelation and the figures of the faith: Moses, the
judges, the kings, the prophets. They are not stopping points; they are
points to be passed through. They all signify: after us comes one who
is greater than we (cf. Luke 3:16). The One Who Is to Come is the
Real One, to whom all words and promises point and for whom all
persons are only forerunners and ones who prepare the way.
In all the promises within the Old Testament it is clear that they are
oriented to something beyond the nearest immediate reality. The
kingdom in which God's will rules first has to come. The king after
the heart of God must first be waited for; the final, definitive prophet
has not yet appeared. Nowhere does any earthly king represent the
whole realization, neither David nor Solomon, not to mention the
others.
Certainly the promised land, in the Exodus from Egypt and in the
return from Exile, is identified with the land of Canaan. Earthly power
and political brilliance were repeatedly considered the successful
consequence of the promise. But the consciousness was not lost that in
the earthly, factual situation, such as came about in the Old Testament,
only a shadow of the future has come alive, especially when this land
was again lost. In this situation, in captivity and exile, the idea of
promise and hope took on new content and more profound basis. At
the same time the certainty was strengthened that the promises of
Yahweh to Israel are not identical with political mastery.
The same situation of pointing out beyond oneself is manifested in the
many covenants and covenant agreements. They are not just
confirmations and rememberances, but signs of something pointing
beyond its particular self, expectations of the truly real, of the new and
eternal covenant. This consciousness that what is still to come is the
truly real becomes overwhelming as the political glory of the people
and land of Israel is struck down, as it becomes a people that walks in
"darkness and shadows," and possesses nothing more than the word
and guidance of Yahweh, the Law as Torah. The great prophets of that
time, Jeremiah and Ezekiel above all, are raised up not only to
disclose to the people the sense of the event as judgment on the
refusal and denial of

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faith, but to point promisingly to what is to come: the coming Day of
Yahweh, the coming kingdom, the coming prophet and king, the
anointed, the new covenant. In the expectation of "He-who-is-to-
come" is concentrated and concretized the expectation and hope of
Israel and its history.
Many elements and motifs are mixed in this figure. First the political
motif: He-who-is-to-come will be a king after the model of David but
will surpass him in power and glory; he will be lord over all nations.
Next figures the salvation motif (Isaiah 7; 9; 11): the Messiah is the
Prince of Peace who guarantees justice, mercy, and love; these, not
force, are the foundations of his dominion. Ezekiel adds the motif of
the good shepherd, who gathers in what has been scattered, binds up
the broken, strengthens the weak (Ezekiel 34, esp. 23-31). For Second
Isaiah the One-who-is-to-come is not a king but the Suffering Servant
of God who atones for the guilt of the world (Isaiah 42). He-who-is-
to-come appears in a new form in the visions of the Book of Daniel:
the great world kingdoms will be separated from the kingdom of God
and made subject to eternal dominion. This divine rule will be
introduced by someone who has the appearance of a Son of Man but
comes from heaven (Daniel 7). Messianic expectation and the
connection of political, religious, and soteriological motifs found in it
are a model and a proof of the fact that, and the great extent to which,
revelation of the Old Covenant and in the Old Covenant is revelation
in the form of promise.
Another view of this and at the same time confirmation of what we
have been saying, is the manner in which the specification of time is
seen within this form of revelation.
First, it is generally true that the decisive dimensions of revelation are
not so much of a spatial as of a temporal kind. They are called not
here in this world, and there in the next, but
yesterdaytodaytomorrow.3 For revelation in the Old Covenant, the
following specification of time is especially valid: An event takes
place here and now. But what is happening now is at the same time
promise of something future; the present always includes a future, and
this is greater, more comprehensive, and more real than that which
now is. In this way, of course, every salvation-historical moment or
event gains significance for itself, but is the same time relativized with
respect to what is to come. The image of time within this form and
phase of revelation, revelation as promise, is not the circlethe symbol
of what is closed off in itself, of what is always the same, of return,
the symbol of myth,4 but the image of a span of time or of a stream of
time. In this image, history is
3 Cf. Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian
Conception of Time and History, trans. Floyd V. Filson (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1964); Salvation in History, trans. Sidney G. Sowers
(New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
4 Heinrich Fries, "Mythos und Offenbarung" in: J. Bernard, ed., Offenbarung.
PhänomenBegriffDimensionen (Leipzig, 1983) 10642.

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understood as the new and the newly arriving. But the image also
expresses that, (in what is new,) something old is also given: tradition
and continuity.
If it must be decided whether this span flows evenly or
discontinuously, it should be noted that it flows evenly to the extent
that God's word and act are operative in time and history, even if not
always in obvious realization of the ''mystery of His will."5 This line
or span runs discursively, up and down, if we are looking at the
external course of history; successfailure, heightdepth, warpeace,
falling awaypunishment, conversionnew falling away. Finally, one can
say that span of time passes, rising and falling to the extent that, in the
revelation of the Old Covenant, something coming, something greater,
is promised and awaited. This coming and greater thing becomes ever
more pressing and clear in the external downfall of the People of
Israel. More and more, word and historical event tend towards what is
called "fullness of time."
What we have described here about the significance of Israel as bearer
of a special revelation of God has to this day not been abrogated.
Israel is and remains the figure and the realization of the People of
God. It remains the witness of God's calling, election, and fidelity; it
is and remains partner of the covenant with God and embodiment of
the promises of God as well as of the hope grounded therein. Israel's
history is and remains history of faith.
In the moving chapters 911 of his Epistle to the Romans, Paul gives
an account of the mystery of Israel: "I ask, then, has God rejected his
people? . . . God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew"
(Rom 11:1-2). and he answers further: "The gifts and the call of God
are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29). Thus Paul reminds the Christian: "It is
not you that supports the root, but the root that supports you" (Rom
11:18).
5 Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation (Dei Verbum) Second Vatican
Council.

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§ 33
The Revelation of God in Jesus the Christ Witnessed in the New
Testament
We know about Jesus the Christ primarily through the writings of the
New Testament. These are the expression and record of the memory,
the proclamation, the faith and the confession of the apostles and
disciples and the first communities. The writings of the New
Testament, above all the Gospels, are not a description of the life of
Jesus written with any concern for particular events and minute
details; they are not an exact record of his words and deeds, nor do
they offer any psychology of Jesus. Whoever subjects the New
Testament to these criteria will be disappointed; but above all they
will be mistaking the intent and concern of these writings to give
witness to Jesus Christ and to awaken faith in him (cf. John 20:31).
The New Testament is about confessing Jesus, the Christ, and about
faith in him. Since an historical person, a life, a proclamation, an
attitude, a claim, a fate (cross and resurrection) stand in the middle of
the New Testament, these writings are most interested in the historical
reality. The New Testament is about a faith that has historical ground
and content; without these, it could not be Christian faith.
If history is connected with faith, with witnesses and testimonies, the
weight and the significance of the history is not lessened by this but
strengthened. A testimony as testimony of facts and truth is connected
with the personal involvement of the witness who stands behind it. A
testimony is more than just a record, a news report, or an
announcement of which one takes cognizance. Testimony becomes
the more credible and solid the more the witness for the testimony
accepts dangers and risks and is ready to do so.
Therefore, proclamation, confession, and faith neither contradict nor
replace history. Instead, they live from history and have their
foundation in it. They are the living answer to it. The New Testament
proclaims through history; history becomes present and real through

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proclamation. The Jesus of history is the Christ of faith; the Christ of
faith is the Jesus of history.
When faith is connected with history and history with faith, it shows
that a historical reality has more levels than can be contained in a
narrative record. But it also lies in the nature of witness and testimony
that what is testified to is personally and subjectively mediated. Thus,
a better disclosure of the historical reality is brought about by the
testimony of many than by the account of one individual.
That may be difficult in individual cases, but in principle, it is
incontestable.
It can be maintained that only the believing witness can say what really
took place in the history of Jesus. A sound film of the Jerusalem review of
the week which represented the crucifixion of Jesus could indeed show us
many historical details. But what happened there, whether a harmless
enthusiast or a political resistance fighter was executed, and whether God
was speaking a definitive word to us, it couldn't say. Only the witness, to
whom we can grant or refuse to grant belief, can tell us that.1

The difference in the manner of seeing and representing produced in a

plurality of testimony is suited to represent a reality according to its
different sides. This reality is thereby neither colored nor falsified, but
disclosed. The multiplicity of voices does not lessen but elevates the
credibility as a whole.
The fact is that there are not one but four Gospels, and besides the
Gospels there are the quite diverse Epistles, and besides the letters
there are the Acts of the Apostles and the Revelation of John. Now all
of this is not some embarrassing accident that must be artificially
harmonized; it is in fact precisely what the New Testament is all
about: the witness of Jesus the Christ. The multiplicity of the witness
doesn't lead to confusionit can be made to serve the unity given
through its content; but this content is expressed in many voices.
In addition, one should note that truth is found not just in the form of
history; otherwise "unhistorical things" could not be true. There is
also truth in stories, parables, in teachings, poetry, legends. All these
1 Eduard Schweizer, Jesus, trans. David E. Green (Atlanta: John Knox
Press, 1971) 7. On the same theme: Günther Bornkamm, Jesus of
Nazareth, trans. Irene and Fraser McLuskey (New York: Harper & Row,
1975); A. Vögtle, "Jesus und die Geschichtlichen Quellen," LThK
6.92232; J. R. Geiselmann, Jesus der Christus, vol. 1, 2d ed. (Munich,
1965); Franz Mußner, The Historical Jesus in the Gospel of St. John, trans.
W. O'Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967); Rudolf Schnackenburg,
"Christologie des Neuen Testaments" in: MySal 3.227388, Ernst Käseman,
''Das Problem des Historischen Jesus" in: Exegetische Versuche und
Besinnungen I, 6th. ed. (Göttingen, 1970) 187214; J. Blank, Jesus von
Nazareth. Geschichte und Relevanz (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1972); K.
Kertelge, ed., Rückfrage nach Jesus (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974); Walter
Kasper, Jesus the Christ, trans. V. Green (New York: Paulist Press, 1977);
Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City, N.
Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1976); Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An
Experiment in Christology, trans. Herbert Hoskins (New York: Seabury,
1979); F. J. Schierse, Christologie (Düsseldorf, 1979).

Page 302
literary forms are found in the New Testament. From this comes the
key for the factual interpretation which asks: What was it that the
particular writing wanted to bring to expression?
The writings of the New Testament are, in addition, written out of the
conviction that Jesus is no figure of the past, but the living Lord, the
Christ remaining and acting in the present, who did indeed die on the
cross, but did not remain in death, but was raised from the dead. He
remains connected to his faithful ones in a new way, in a new life, in a
life, which has overcome death and opened up a new time and a new
reality that can be described with the words salvation, rescue,
reconciliation, grace, salvation, new creation, that means eternal life.
Jesus Christ's death and resurrection are the central events of his life.
They are at the same time, for human beings and their salvation, the
"saving events" which decide their eternal destination. The oldest
writings of the New Testament, the major letters of the Apostle Paul,
into which the original faith formulae and confessional formulae have
already come, are so overwhelmed by this "center" that "everything
else,'' e.g., the earthly, the pre-Easter life of Jesus, recedes into the
background, although everything comes down to witnessing that Jesus
of Nazareth, the Crucified, is the Christ, is the exalted-to-God "Lord."
In contrast to the letters, the four Gospels make the history of the
earthly, pre-Easter Jesus the object of their witness. Their concern is
to confess that Jesus is the Christ. Christ is not a figure of legend or
myth, he is a figure and person of real history. But the Gospels too and
their stories of the words and deeds of Jesus are primarily about
proclamation, about confession, about belief, about the saving
message. Thus the intention of the stories is not so much to tell who
Jesus was but to confess who Jesus is. Or, more precisely, in that
which was, the Gospels intend to express that which is. Nevertheless
there is also a remarkable agreement of the Gospels with Paul. The
Gospels too place the passion and the resurrection of Jesus at the
central point; they are "passion narratives with an extensive
introduction." The activity of Jesus is represented as the way to
Jerusalem.
This is what explains the fidelity of the Gospels to the historical
tradition of Jesus, as the preface of the Gospel of Luke expresses it:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things
which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us
by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the
word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for
some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent
Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which
you have been informed. (Luke 1: 14)

In their accounts and stories, the Gospels stand in the service of the
proclamation, the living and actual proclamation of the exalted Lord,
who lives in the midst of those who believe in him and who speaks his

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word to them. This helps account for the fact that, along with fidelity
to the history and its tradition, there is a remarkable measure of
freedom over against the "historical" text itself. Jesus' word is
preserved, no-t protected and fixed with anxious, archival devotion,
but handed on in living tradition and actual proclamation. One can
even flatly formulate it: the tradition doesn't actually repeat and hand
on the word he once spoke; instead, it is his word today. This explains
the manifold variations of the words of Jesus and the often-noted
variants in the accounts and stories of Jesus' activity.
This is no ground for historical skepticism or a welcome opportunity
to establish contrasts and contradictions in the New Testament. For
everything that is there, all the variety and multiplicity, is simply an
indication of the particular nature and the special purpose of the
writings of the New Testament. Only when one knows these and
keeps them before one's eyes is a real understanding possible.
Further, this special characteristic of the New Testament writings, of
being proclamation in the form of history and through history to
mediate the message of salvation, is really part of the core reality of
the New Testament: to proclaim, to confess, and to give witness that
Jesus is the Christ. Thus there is always the intention, in the saving
message of the Gospels, to seek out the history, but also to seek out
the saving message in this history. This accounts for the fact that the
earthly Jesus is described with the colors of the Christ who is risen
from the dead, the living and exalted Lord. The pre-Easter history of
Jesus is seen and represented in the light of the Easter event. If traits
of the Risen One have been brought into the picture of the earthly
Jesus, then this happened not from lack of precision or from a lack of
perspective, but from the plausible reason that in the light of the
resurrection of Jesus one can get a better and deeper understanding of
who Jesus already was in his earthly life and what his activity means.
This perspective applies to all the Gospels, most especially the Gospel
of John. The interpretation of the New Testament has to take this
factual situation into consideration. Certainly, in view of this situation,
the questions of our historical curiosity about the when, the who, the
how, and the why will not be answered. We learn nothing about how
Jesus looked; we learn practically nothing about his youth and about
the hidden years in Nazareth; we don't even know precisely how long
the public activity of Jesus lasted. Nevertheless, a true and real history
is produced whose profile and contour are unmistakable. We will now
try, from this perspective, to give a precise description of the
revelation that happened in Jesus Christ.

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§ 34
Revelation in Jesus, The Christ, as Fulfillment
Fulfillment in the Sense of the Now, the Today
For the old covenant, the futurethat which is to come and he who is to
comeis the decisive category. We could add that, for believing
Judaism, the future is the determining specification of time to the
present day.1
In the New Testament conception, conversely, the determining
category of time is the today, the now, the present, indeed the now that
has come about and happened in Jesus, the present that has appeared
in him. Mark expresses this factual situation with the words: "The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15).
According to Luke, Jesus says in the synagogue of Nazareth after he
had read Isaiah [Link] "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing" (Luke 4:21). Paul speaks in a similar manner: "When the
time had fully come, God sent forth his Son" (Gal 4:4).
What is the meaning of: The time is fulfilled? According to Luke 4 it
means that the messianic prophecies of the good news to the poor, the
liberation of those in prison, the announcement of a year of grace of
the Lord, have been fulfilled in Jesus.
"The time is fulfilled" does not mean just that a certain stretch of time
or a certain date has expired. Rather, the time has reached a certain
measurenot according to extension but to content. In history, the
specification intended by the God of Israel as Lord of history is
realized. Ephesians expresses it in a comprehensive theological
perspective, "the mystery of the will of God," who in Christ wills to
lead in the fullness of time "to unite all things in him, things in heaven
and things on earth" (Eph 1: 9-10; cf. Col 1: 20). "The time is
fulfilled,'' accordingly, means that the not yet actualized, but awaited
and hoped for royal kingship of God, the unity of God and human
beings, has taken
1 Cf. Martin Buber, "Zwei Glaubensweisen" in: Werke I (Munich, 1962)
651782.

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place in the person, word, life, and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, who is
the Christ.2
But there still remains for the New Testament understanding of
revelation a goal of time at the end of time. In the New Testament the
future is intensively addressed; ordered to the future is the living hope
for the coming of the kingdom of God "in great power and glory":
Thy kingdom come! To that extent there is "in, with, and under" the
fulfillment also the promise, the resurrection from the dead, eternal
life, the new heaven and the new earth. This promise had, however,
another form, another sense and relationship, than the promise which
characterized the Old Testament. ''Maranatha"the ancient liturgical
acclamation witnessed in the New Testament (1 Cor 16: 22; Rev 22:
20) gives this New Testament expectation and petition a lasting
expression: Let the Lord, who has come, come again! For this reason
one can speak of a real Maranatha-Christology.3
So it is no contradiction but a true expression of the situation that in
Jesus the Christ, the fulfillment has come about and that at the same
time the end is still to come; the event that has taken place in Jesus
includes in itself present reality and future expectation
simultaneously: the already and the not yet. But if it is asked where
the decisive point is, the answer is: in the presence of Jesus who is the
Christ, and in the presence of the Christ event, of what
happened/happens in Christ. Only from this is it possible to talk about
the end and goal of the times. Presence is future which has already
begun; future is presence which is brought to its goal. No other event,
either before or after Christ, has the central significance, of that which
has taken place in Him. Only from Him does the before-and-after of
the times receive its correct order and position; only from Him is it
really known and understood.
Without doubt the hope for the return of the Lord and the coming of
the kingdom of God in power are very much alive within the New
Testament. The fact that the primitive Christian hope is even more
intensive than the Jewish could be the reason for the opinions of such
theologians as Bernhard Weiß, Albert Schweitzer, and Martin Werner,
that the New Testament placed the future fulfillment at the center of
the event. But intensity and center are not the same thing and should
not be confused. In reality, the heightened hope in the future is to be
explained from the fact that an already real historical factthe coming
and the way of Jesus Christ through Incarnation, death and
resurrectionhas already taken place and that in it the future has already
begun. This means: Hope in the future is built on faith in the present.
2 Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Conception of Time
and History, trans. Floyd V. Filson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1964) 6980; A. Vögtle, Zeit und Zeitüberlegenheit im biblischen
Verständnis (Freiburg, 1961).
3 Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus. An Experiment in Christology, trans. Herbert
Hoskins (New York: Seabury, 1979) 40610.

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What has happened is the assurance and guarantee for what will
happen. Hope in the coming of Jesus Christ in power and glory is
grounded in the fact that He has already come and that He was raised
from the dead.
Faith in the already realized fulfillment, especially in the Easter event,
is thus not a substitute for the unfulfilled imminent expectation. It
actually goes the other way around. This faith has made imminent
expectation possible and brought it about. It is the ground for the
expectation of the return of Christ and the hope for its proximate
realization. From the living presence of Christ witnessed in the New
Testament, illumination falls on the paths that lead to the future. The
path into the future has become visible only since the today witnessed
in the New Testament, shedding its light in all directions, began to
illumine the previously dark stretch. The fulfillment of revelation in
the sense of now and today is also brought to powerful expression
within the New Testament by the statement, above all in Paul, that
what happened "once" in Christ happened "once-for-all" (Rom 6:10).
The revelation in Jesus the Christ witnessed in the New Testament,
revelation as fulfillment in the Today, is thus to be distinguished from
a conception such as is represented by Karl Barth.4 He looks upon the
relationship of old and new covenant through what at first seemed to
be the illuminating image of the forward-looking prophets and the
backward-looking apostles. Both thus see the same Christ; the prophet
sees him from the front, the apostle from behind. Expectation and
remembrance become identical.
There is, however, as Emil Brunner rightly objects,5 some confusion
in the use of this schema. Time is replaced by space. But forwards and
backwards in space is something different from forwards and
backwards in time. Between the prophetic looking ahead and what is
said and happens in the New Testament there is a difference which
lies between the promise and what was actually fulfilled and actually
took place. The fulfilled is actually, in the sense of the intention, the
same as the promised. Thus it has a good sense when Jesus in the
Gospel of John says: "Abraham saw my day and rejoiced" (John
8:56). But the fulfilled is at the same time something other, because it,
present reality, is no longer just a future to be looked to. In addition,
the "fulfillment" is by no means just the calculable result of what is
contained in the promises; fulfillment puts accents on the promises. In
addition it brings with it other, unexpected, new, transcending things.
Were that not so, then the fate of Jesus would be totally
incomprehensible. Not to see this difference means not to attend to the
historical steps and acts of revela-
4Church Dogmatics, 4 vols., (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 195675) vol. 1/2,
70120.
5 Emil Brunner, Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith
Knowledge, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1946)
99.

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tion. The Old Testament is, in the New Testament perspective, history
towards Christ, the Awaited One, as question about him; but it is still
prehistory, in which he is not yet there, not in the way in which he is
to come hereafter. The Old Testament doesn't say the same as the
New, but a different word, and precisely by that word it leads Israel
and humanity towards fulfillment in the kingdom of God. Thus,
despite all its connections and references, the Old Testament cannot
be made the exclusive criterion of what one meets in the New
Testament.
It must therefore be explicitly pointed out that the New Testament sets
very great value on the Now, the Today, the Hour, "my hour" (cf. John
2:4; 7:39; 17:1), and sees the special characteristic and quality of what
happens and takes place in the New Testament precisely in the fact
that what was expected and promised is now being fulfilled. This is
found most impressively in Rom 3:21. Paul is reflecting on the
situation of the Jews and pagans before Christ. He describes it as a
situation of being lost. This is superseded by the act of God in Jesus
Christ. The Apostle characterizes this with the words: "But now the
righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although
the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God
through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe" (Rom 3:21 - 22).
Just as remarkable is the accent of the Captivity Letters, that the
earlier, hidden mystery was now becoming manifest (Col 1:26; Eph
3:5). The beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews impressively
highlights this dimension: "In many and various ways God spoke of
old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken
to us by a Son" (Heb 1:1-2). From this way of speaking it becomes
clear that the concept "eschatological" in contemporary theology
means the time opened up in Jesus Christ as end-time.
When one weighs this situation and these facts, one sees the
correctness of the accentuation of the present found in the theology of
Rudolf Bultmann and his understanding of revelation.6 It accentuates
the Now and Today of the Christ event as the core of the revelation of
the New Testament and of what revelation as fulfillment can be, as
fulfillment in the sense of the Now, the Today, the Definitive.
Bultmann makes the "now" of the Christ event even more vital and
effective in a special way by raising the now of the proclamation, the
now of the kerygma, to be the decisive theological dimension. He
takes the words of the Second Letter to the Corinthians to be in
support of this:
6 Rudolf Bultmann, "Der Begriff der Offenbarung im Neuen Testament"
in: Glauben und Verstehen III (1960) 134. The first volume of the three-
volume work has been translated into English: Faith and Understanding,
trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).

Page 308
Working together with him, then, we entreat you not to accept the grace of
God in vain. For he says, "At the acceptable time I have listened to you,
and helped you on the day of salvation." Behold, now is the acceptable
time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2 Cor 6:1-2)
In the Now of the kerygma, the Once of the Christ event becomes
simultaneously present and effective, effective in such a way that
human beings in encounter with the word of proclamation, i.e., in
faith, move from the inauthenticity and alienation of themselves into
authenticity. Human beings come from themselves to themselves.
This is also what makes it possible for Bultmann, in view of the
concept of revelation in the New Testament, to say:
What then is revealed? Nothing at all, as long as the question about
revelation is asking about doctrines, about doctrines, e.g., at which no
human being could have arrived, about mysteries which, if they are
communicated, are known once and for all. But everything [is revealed] to
the extent that human beings have their eyes opened about themselves and
can again understand themselves.7

Revelation in the New Testament is understood not as communication

of knowledge but as an event that involves me. "To know about
revelation means to know about what makes us what we are, but along
with that, about our own limitation."8
The exclusive emphasis on the "that" of the coming of Jesus and of
the Christ event (which, according to Bultmann, is the sole
authoritative element), carries with it the consequence that, for
Bultmann, the historical Jesus is without significance for the kerygma
and the faith, and the proclamation of Jesus belongs not to the content
but to the presuppositions of the kerygma.
This theological position, the radical reduction to or concentration on
the "That" of the Christ event to which the That of the kerygma
corresponds, stands in contradiction to the striking fact that, in the
canon of the New Testament, along with the kerygma of Paul about
Jesus' cross and resurrection, are also the Gospels whichcertainly in
the light of the kerygmatell about the earthly Jesus. If Jesus is the
proclaimed Christ of faith, then it is not a matter of indifference who
Jesus was, what he proclaimed, how he conducted himself, what he
did. It is supremely important, and that is the intent of the New
Testament testimony itself, both how the kerygma about the Christ of
faith is to be connected with the earthly Jesus, and what basis
Christology has in the historical Jesus. Only through this connection
will the kerygma of Jesus the Christ be maintained and protected
against becoming a mere idea, doctrine, or mythology.
The time since Bultmann has been characterized by the fact that his
radical skepticism with respect to the historical Jesusarticulated
7 Ibid. 29.
8 Ibid. 6.

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in an exemplary way in his Jesus bookwas not accepted. Ernst
Käsemann with his article "Das Problem des historischen Jesus [The
Problem of the Historical Jesus]"9 introduced a new direction that has
basically held to this day. The books of Günther Bornkamm and
Eduard Schweizer spell out the important consequences of this new
direction:
The Gospels, although in a way very different from chronicles, make
visible before us the historical figure of Jesus in immediate forcefulness.
Too obvious is what the Gospels relate about Jesus' message, his deeds and
his stories, always characterized by an authenticity, a freshness which
point back immediately to the earthly figure of Jesus. Although the
Gospels don't talk about the history of Jesus in the sense of an exactly
traced curriculum vitae with its fortunes and stages, its outer or inner
development, they do talk about history as happening and event. The
Gospels give extensive information about that.10

Included in Bultmann's presuppositions are the all-determining Now

of the Christ event, and the kerygma as inseparably connected with it,
because the kerygma is what makes the Christ event present. From
these presuppositions it is understandable that, for Bultmann, all New
Testament affirmations about the futureand of the world and of
history, judgment and perfectionare mythological affirmations. One
can no longer expect them to be accepted by human beings of a
modern world view, of an enlightened historical consciousness, and of
modern self-understanding. These affirmations are, according to
Bultmann, to be interpreted existentially. Thus they become
affirmations that involve exclusively the present in the sense of
Johannine eschatology: "Now is the judgment of this world" (John
12:31), "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because
we love the brethren" (1 John 3:14).
In this way Bultmann does give his theological conception an
impressive consistency, but at the same time also a radicality and
onesidedness which cannot be supported by the New Testament as a
whole. Nevertheless, Bultmann's theological conception11
corresponds to the revelation event witnessed in the New Testament
more than those attempts which try to level out the Old Testament and
the New Testament and to remain behind the Now of the New
Testament, behind the pleroma [fullness] of times witnessed in the
New Testament, behind the kairos which has been filled, or which
make the expectation of the future into the center of New Testament
revelation, and precisely in this way fail to do justice to their own
fulfillment.
9 In: Exegetische Versuche und Abhandlungen I, 4th ed. (Göttingen, 1965)
187214; Sackgasse im Streit um den Historischen Jesus, ibid. II, 3168.
10 Günther Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (Minneapolis, 1995) 2425.
11 M. Boutin, Relationalität als Verstehensprinzip bei Rudolf Bultmann
(Munich, 1974).

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Fulfillment in the Sense of the "Here" of the Ecce
One can describe the revelation that has taken place in Jesus Christ
both with the word for hodie (today) and also with the
characterization of the ecce (behold), of the "here."12 Revelation is
brought to fulfillment by means of the demonstrable, concrete "here"
of a person, Jesus of Nazareth, of a life, a word, a work, a happening,
a fate, an event. Because there is fulfillment in the "ecce," there is also
a fulfillment in the ''hodie."13
The special characteristic and uniqueness of the ecce found in the
person and work of Jesus of Nazareth as fulfillment of revelation is
experienced, described, and reflected on in the Bible in numerous
ways. In doing this the New Testament takes over a variety of
categories.
1. Jesus is called rabbi, teacher. But when Jesus is spoken of as
teacher, this is done in an unmistakably elevated manner: "What is
this? A new teaching! With authority he commands even the unclean
spirits" (Mark 1:27). "You have one teacher, and you are all brethren"
(Matt 23:8). This sets it apart from other kinds of teaching. This
difference is further illustrated in a variety of ways: that it is not the
disciples who seek out their rabbi, but Jesus who calls to discipleship;
that in the case of Jesus, the disciple can never be or become the
master; that Jesus as teacherin an essential difference, e.g., from
Buddhadoes not step back behind the teaching but is one with what he
says; that the message he proclaims cannot be separated from his
person. The teaching is tied to discipleship. This process is realized in
the history witnessed in the New Testament by the fact that the
believing Jesusas the Christbecomes the content of faith.
2. Jesus is regarded as prophet.14 "A great prophet has risen among
us" (Luke 7:16). The words of the disciples at Emmaus also belong
here: "A prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the
people" (Luke 24:19). Jesus is considered a prophet in the question:
"'Who do men say that I am?' . . . And they told him, 'John the Baptist;
and others say, Elijah; and others one of the prophets."' (Mark 8:27-
30; cf.
12 Heinrich Fries, Revelation (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), [
MySal 1.21319]
13 Han Urs von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit I (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1961)
445505, ET: The Glory of the Lord: I: Seeing the Form (Ignatius Press, San
FranciscoCrossroad, New York, 1982) 463525; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus:
God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1977); Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, trans. Edward
Quinn (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1976); Walter
Kasper, Jesus the Christ, trans. V. Green (New York: Paulist Press, 1977)
Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. Herbert
Hoskins (New York: Seabury Press, 1979); A. SchilsonW. Kasper,
Christologie im Präsens. Kritische Sichtung neuer Entwürfe
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974).
14 Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, trans. Shirley C.
Guthrie and Charles A. M. Hall (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969)
1350; Franz Mußner, "Ursprünge und Entfaltung der Neutestamentlichen
Sohneschristologie" in: L. Scheffczyk, ed., Grundfragen der Christologie
Heute (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1975) 77113; F. Schnider, Jesus der Prophet
(Freiburg [Schweiz]Göttingen, 1979).

Page 311
Matt 16:13-20). In John 1:21 comes the question: "Are you the
prophet?" Connected with this is the idea that a final, definitive
prophet is to come, like Moses, who will bring prophecy to its
fulfillment and in his call for repentance make the last offer of God to
His people. This expectation was all the greater since prophecy had
died out in Judaism.
The image of the prophet is a suitable one to characterize the life,
behavior, and activity of Jesus: his vocation and mission; his criticism
not of the Temple but of the praxis done there; not of the Law but its
interpretation; his symbolic actions and finally his death as
culmination of a prophet's fate. This also shows how Jesus came to
know his own death.
3. Along with all this is found in the New Testament, as
characterization of Jesus, the picture of a prophet-transcending
"surplus", a "more-than," a "greater-than." It is reported that Jesus set
himself over against all prophets, even John the Baptist (Matt 11:13).
The New Testament also reports the claim of Jesus: ''Here is more
than Jonah" (Matt 12:41). What came to be in Jesus of Nazareth is not
an increase in what was already there previously in the Old
Testament; rather, he "is more than a prophet." Emil Brunner once
pointed out15 that no so-called liberal theology has yet been able to
say what is meant by "more than a prophet." Jesus is more than a
prophet in the sense that, like a prophet, his mission and sending
surpass the measure of the prophet as a human being; Jesus, however,
is identical with his mission. Thus Jesus, unlike the prophet, does not
say: "thus says the Lord," but "But I say to you""I will, be made
clean""I have come""I send you""I say to you, stand up""Lazarus,
come forth""Your sins are forgiven you." The claim, however, to
forgive sins turns out to be quite characteristic of Jesus' uniqueness in
that forgiving sins is an exclusive privilege of God. It is a privilege
which, according to current Old Testament ideas, is never granted to
God's commissioned, not even to the Messiah. One understands, then,
the protest: "Why does this man speak this? It is blasphemy! Who can
forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7).
The "Amen," which otherwise serves as confirmation of something
someone else has said, Jesus uses as introduction to his own words:
"Amen . . . I say to you." As Heinrich Schlier sees it, this manner of
speaking, which is characteristic of Jesus, includes a whole
Christology.16
Further, the biblical "more-than" is rewritten by Jesus' claim to be
more than Solomon (Matt 12:42), the representative of the divinely
established kingdom, indeed more than Moses, the greatest divine
messenger of the Old Testament. Jesus sets himself over him and
corrects
15 E. Brunner, Revelation and Reason, 1023.
16 In: ThW 1.341; with a different view: K. Berger, Die Amen-Worte Jesu
(Berlin, 1970).

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him by correcting the Law of Moses in the question of divorce.
Finally he even goes beyond the Law of Moses by the authority
claimed for himself: "You have heard that it was said to the men of
old . . . but I say to you" (Matt 5:21-22); this authority radicalizes the
Law down to the dispositions of the heart; and at the same time it
simplifies and concentrates it by characterizing it as expression of the
holiness of God, the will of God.
How much Jesus understands himself as fulfillment is shown by his
call to the radical following of himself.17 The following includes the
readiness to let oneself be held back by nothing and by no one, the
readiness to deny everything, leave everything, in order to share in the
community of life and fatethe cross includedwith Jesus: "Leave the
dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the
kingdom of God" (Luke 9:60).
The following of Jesus becomes the new principle of moral action.
This becomes clear in the sermon handed on at the end of the gospel,
where Jesus becomes the norm of human activity, indeed, where he is
the criterion of the definitive sentence of judgment: "As you did it to
one of the least of these my brethren, you did it [or did not do it] to
me" (Matt 25: 40).
Thus it is understandable that Jesus requires confession of his person
and that in the position that human beings take towards Jesus their
whole fate is decided: "Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I
also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but
whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father
who is in heaven." (Matt 10:32-33; cf. Luke 12:8; Mark 8:38).
Matthew's rewriting of "the Son of Man" (found in Mark and Luke)
with "I" is already an interpretation of what the title Son of Man
means.
Jesus declares that "here"in himis "more than the Temple" (Matt 12:6)
i.e., the location of the special and grace-giving presence of God He
expresses this sovereignty in the purification or cleaning out of the
Temple symbolically by appealing specifically to his own authority
He declares that the Son of Man is "Lord of the Sabbath" (Matt 12:8),
and sets himselfas no prophet could have daredabove the authentic
interpretation of the Sabbath law with the words ''The Sabbath was
made for man, not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27) In all these
formulas of going beyond, of the "more than," is expressed what the
ecce in Jesus of Nazareth means and contains, and in which consists
the fulfillment of revelationnamely, the "I" of Jesus takes the place of
the God of Israel whom Jesus calls his Father.
17 E. Neuhäusler, Anspruch und Antwort Gottes (Düsseldorf, 1962)
186214 (Baltimore, 1960) 186214; A. Schulz, Nachfolgen und Nachahmen
(Munich, 1962).

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The "more than" found in the ecce of Jesus of Nazareth can further be
described by the authority, absolute, exclusive, and derived from no
human being, that Jesus claims and realizes. If the word of the prophet
has and claims authority, then it is the authority of the message that is
entrusted to the prophet. If Jesus is more than prophet, then this is
grounded and demonstrated in the fact the authority of the word, the
will, the mission and sending of God has gone over to the person of
him who speaks. This happened in Jesus of Nazareth. The authority of
the prophetic word as fullness of power of a person, who is present
here and nowthat is the fulfillment of the revelation that took place in
and through Jesus.
4. Finally, revelation in the mode of fulfillment is given not only in
the fact that Jesus, like the prophets and, even at the end, John the
Baptist, is the proclaimer of the message of God's rule and
kingdom,18 but in the fact that Jesus makes this theme the central
point of his own proclamation, that he frees the idea of God's rule and
kingdom from all contemporary, earthly, political, and national
misunderstandings and understands it as God's graceful turning
towards us, as the establishment of the power of God against the
dominion of evil, sin, and death, as grace, peace, and "eternal" life, as
the salvation of human beings. God's kingdom is an exclusive gift for
which human beings must seek, for the granting of which they must
pray. Jesus announces in his proclamation the immediate and
imminent proximity of God's rule (Mark 1:15); he describes the
"entrance conditions" for the kingdom of God. These comprise not
only metanoia as the tearing down of all human self-glory and as
recognition of the lordship of God, readiness for selfgiving and to
become like a child, but above all the requirement of following him
and confessing him.
If, in the actual scope of the parables of the kingdom of God in which
Jesus proclaims his own mystery, it is already expressed that the
kingly rule of God is present in Jesus, then the deeds of Jesus are an
impressive confirmation of that. This will be treated later in another
context (see below § 36).
As acts of power the deeds of Jesus are not only, as his answer to the
question of John the Baptist put it, the fulfillment of messianic
promises (cf. Matt 11:4-11), but also signs of God's rule already
beginning in him, since sickness, death, and sin are overcome. A quite
impressive documentation of the presence of God's rule in Jesus is
contained in the logion accompanying Jesus' driving out of the
demons: "If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the
kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:20; Matt 12:28). The
expulsion of the demons means that Jesus is demolishing the rule of
the evil one. The rule of God
18 Rudolf Schnackenburg, God's Rule and Kingdom, trans. John Murray
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1963); P. Hünermann, "Reign of God," SM
5.23340.

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present and active in Jesus drives back the power of the evil one. The
power exercised by Jesus to forgive sins is an even more impressive
indication than the healing of sicknesses that "the kingdom of God is
in the midst of you" (Luke 17:21).
The "more than" and "greater than" present in Jesus is also shown by
the way Jesus breaks through the barriers of prevailing tradition and
convention and gets involved with human beings who are said to be
distant from and cut off from God: tax collectors, sinners, whores.
Jesus takes up table fellowship with them. He doesn't allow himself to
be taken to account over this but acts in a freedom that comes from
the center of his person and message: from the rule of God announced
and begun in him.
Thus it is that the event that has come about in Jesus' word and deed is
distinguished from the time that extended up to John the Baptist: up to
John the Baptist one had only "the law and the prophets . . . since then
the good news of the kingdom of God is preached" (Luke 16: 16);
thus it is that the eye and ear-witnesses of the works of Jesus are
called blessed: "Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for
they hear. Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men
longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you
hear, and did not hear it" (Matt 13:16-17).
The "more than" and the "greater than" made manifest in Jesus can
also be described as unity of action with Yahweh, a unity of action
which in Jesus, in contrast to the prophets, comes down to an equality
of power, and even presupposes a unity in being. This opens up the
path from prophet-Christology to Son-Christology.19
5. The unique fulfillment of revelation in the ecce of Jesus of
Nazareth is also expressed in the New Testament by the description of
the uniqueness of Jesus' being the Son of his Father. The title Son of
God is, as such, not at all clear. It had already been used in numerous
ways in the Old Testament.20 The People of Israel, the king, the just
person are called son of God. The special characteristic of Jesus' being
Son is described at a high point of the Synoptic Gospels in this
fashion: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no
one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father
except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him
(Matt 11:27). Here Jesus claims for himself a knowledge of God that
is perfectly equal to the knowledge the Father has of him. It is thus of
a divine kind and consequently presupposes divine nature. All
knowledge of God that human beings can possess, including that of
the prophets, is, compared with
19 Cf. F. Mußner, "Ursprünge und Entfaltung," 97, n. 14.
20 M. Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of
JewishHellenistic Religion, trans. John Bowden (London: S. C. M. Press,
1976).

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that which Jesus claims for himself, a non-knowing. This is grounded
in the fact that he and only he is the Son.21
The theme "Son of God" is in a special way the content of the Gospel
of John, which does not pass over the earthly Jesus but sees him
totally in the light of the "more than" and describes this in the
category of his special Sonship: "No one has ever seen God; the only
Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known''; he
[Jesus] has, literally, "exegeted" him (John 1:18). Jesus is the
exegesis, the interpretation of God; Jesus brings revelation from the
Father; therefore he is, as Son, the revealer of God.
The Sonship of Jesus is represented in John as community of
knowledge, of love, of life, of working with the Father. Jesus performs
the works he sees the Father do (John 5:19); he brings about the same
works as the Father (John 5:21, 22). "For as the Father has life in
himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself (John
5:26). Jesus brings the true and definitive knowledge of Godthis
means at the same time full community of life with him, "eternal life"
(John 17:3), because he knows the Father "'who has sent him," who
bears witness to him in the works that no human being can do (John
15:24). Jesus speaks what he has seen and heard (John 3:11, 28; 8:26,
28). The Father is in him and he is in the Father (John 14:10f); he and
the Father are one (John 10:30). "Everything that the Father has is
mine" (John 10:15). And so, Jesus makes the claim: "Whoever hates
me hates my Father" (John 15:23) and: "Whoever believes in me
believes not in me but in him who sent me" (John 12:44f). "Whoever
has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).
The Gospel of John paraphrases the fulfillment present in Jesus in the
sense of the ecce in yet another way: in the characteristic "I am"
passages22 which Jesus claims for himself: I am the shepherd, the
door, the light, the bread, the resurrection, the way, the truth, the life.
These formulas are neither mere allegory nor simple metaphors; they
rather make a claim to exclusivity and uniqueness, which is made
clear by the affirmations: "I am the door; whoever comes in through
me will be saved" (John 10:9). "No one comes to the Father except
through me" (John 14:6).
In these "I am" passages we have metaphorical speech. Under the sign
of an image the mystery of the person is to be expressed, the answer
given to the question: Who is this person? At the same time these
metaphorical expressions tell what Jesus means for human beings, for
me, what Jesus has to do with me and I with Jesus. For human
existence he is light, bread, way, life, truth, resurrection. The high
point of these "I am" expressions is, according to common
interpretation, the
21 J. Schmid, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, 4th ed. (Regensburg, 1959)
198.
22 Cf. "egô," E. Stauffer, in: TDNT 2.34362.

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form used absolutely and without predicate: "If you do not believe
that I am, you will die" (John 8:24-29). The predicateless "I am" is the
self-representation of God, the conscious reference back to the Old
Testament message of Exod [Link] ''I am who I am." The "I am he"
belongs only to Jesus (cf. also Mark 13:6). Therefore Jesus is
revelation as fulfillment in the sense of the ecce.
The "I am he" thus understood is the message of the New Testament
as revelation of God in Jesus Christ, revelation as fulfillment. Here, in
the hodie and ecce, lies the difference from the revelation as promise
witnessed in the Old Testament. In Jesus, the invisible God has
disclosed and communicated Himself visibly, humanly, personally:
"Deus se ipsum revelavit." This is fulfillment in the sense of the hodie
and ecce.
Therefore, the proclaiming Jesus can become the proclaimed Christ;
this is no contradiction but the consequence of the path from an
implicit to an explicit Christology. The kingdom of God, the central
theme of the proclamation of the historical Jesus, takes on, through
Cross and Resurrection, the "face of Jesus Christ" (E. Schillebeeckx)
and with that takes on its fulfillment.
The Fulfillment of the Contents and Characteristics of Revelation in
the Old Testament
1. The word is a fundamental characteristic of Old Testament
revelation. It is not just the word which treats of God and has God as
its content; it is above all the word of God in the sense of the genitive
of subject, the word that is attributed to God, the word that God
speaks as ground of God's historical and creating activity: "the word
of the Lord came forth""By the word of God the heavens were
created." Word, in the understanding of the Old Testament, is
connected with deed and work; it is act-word, history-word, event-
word, performative word.
The connection of God and word, word and God, is explicitly and
programmatically carried over to Jesus in the Prologue of John. Jesus
is the Word (the Logos) that was with God, "and the word was God."
The concept "Logos" in the Gospel of John connects the Old
Testament elements of the word of God in such a way that it says:
both the word about God and the Word of God have in Jesus come to
concrete, personal, human manifestation, and therewith to fulfillment.
In Jesus the Word of God which "already had always been in force in
Israel, has become completely and definitively present for us in
history. In this Word, God has expressed [his] Word, i.e., Himself, in
the world."23 The Word, which not only tells about reality but creates
reality, is encountered in a special way in Jesus' activity: in his
salvation and healing-producing
23 L. Scheffcyzk, "Word of God," SM 6.36268; see also E. Brunner,
Revelation and Reason, 10911.

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word, in the word that forgives sin, in the word of his self-giving unto
death enacted at the Last Supper.
A further element of Logos Christology is the connection with the
Greek and Stoic concept of world reason. The Logos, through whom
everything is, and without whom was made nothing that was made is
active in Jesus (John 1:3).
2. The name of God is, in the Old Testament, often a description of
God. The name signifies a form of the self-communication of God,
thus self-revelation. At the same time it signifies the divine nearness
and love directed to human beings. In making use of the divine name,
there was no sense of any magical control by human beings over
Yahweh. Rather, Yahweh is to be called upon and blessed through his
name and with his name: "The name of the Lord be praised!"
In the New Testament we find that Jesus identifies the "in-the-name-of
God," "in-the-name-of-the-Lord" with himself, with his name''in my
name," "for the sake of my name"and ties the same promise, the same
power, and the same fate to it. The substitution of the name of God by
the name of Jesus documents and describes in a graphic way the
fulfillment of the self-disclosure and revelation of God that has taken
place in Jesus Christ.
In the name of Jesus it becomes clear, in the ultimate, definitive sense,
what the name of God meant from the beginning, though it was never
fulfilled in full measure and meaning: God's own self as present,
personal reality, as disclosed and proclaimed mystery. In the name of
Jesus Christ, therefore, that name is given through which all are saved
(Acts 4:12), the name in which one can call upon God, in which one
can be assembled (Matt 18:20), in which God hears and will hear us:
"If you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name"
(John 16:23). The name of Jesus thus becomes the name "which is
above every name" (Phil 2:9-10).
3. It is similar with the category: face of the Lord. This is the
expression of divine grace and favor as well as of open access to it. In
this category the character of the Old Testament as promise becomes
especially manifest. For nowhere does the face that is sought become
really present. It is of course said that a brilliance came forth from the
face of Moses as he descended from Mount Sinai (Exod 33:1820;
34:2931). But his face is not the face of the Lord; his brilliance is only
a reflection of the revelation glory seen by him alone. In the prophets
this light turns into an eschatological reality and hope (cf. Isa 60:12).
But in the New Testament, fulfillment has taken place: "For it is the
God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our
hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Christ" (2 Cor 4:6).

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In the face of Jesus Christ, God's doxa [glory] shines out, but not, as
with Moses, as a reflection, but as brilliance of God's own self.
Prosoponthe word used here is the face of a person: of the incarnate
Word, whose glory can be seen on earth (John 1:14). That is why
Jesus says in the Gospel of John: "Whoever has seen me has seen the
Father" (John 14:9). No one could say that before Christ or apart from
him. He is the epiphany of God. That is why he is also the image, the
icon of the invisible God (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15), incomparably more
than the human being can be image and likeness of God. In the sense
of the New Testament, image is identical with, and signifies the
person present in, the image. Thus this affirmation, too, is a
confession of the exclusive, personal presence of God in Christ.
If that is the case, then the element of hearing and seeing is contained
in faith in Jesus Christ. The intellectual possibility of perception in
human beings is thereby brought to fulfillment in its full dimension
and put to use for faith. Hans Urs von Balthasar has, for this reason,
no qualms about talking about a "Christ-proof" for the believing
perception.24
God looks at human beings through the face of Jesus Christ. The face
of God, often mentioned and sought in the Old Testament, is the Word
that became flesh, the event in which definitive salvation came about,
in which God's name was definitively revealed.
4. The fulfillment of revelation that came about in Jesus Christ is
further present and expressed in the fact that Jesus is the founder of
the new and eternal covenant and, as such, he brings about one of the
decisive and most important promises of the Old Testament. The
multiplicity of covenants, their constantly repeated renewal, the
plurality of organs of the covenant, are noteworthy indications of the
fact that in the Old Testament there never was a definitive covenant,
but that it was being awaited (Jer 31: 31-34). In Jesus Christas, above
all, the event of the Last Supper and the self-giving of Jesus unto
death carried out there give witnessthe new and eternal covenant is
established and the new and definitive community of human beings,
founded by God in the form of reconciliation, is grounded (cf. Matt
26:2627; Luke 22:1920). The definitiveness of this covenant, and with
it the fulfillment of every preceding covenant-event, is made present.
The Letter to the Hebrews offers the most concentrated reflection on
this, especially in the fact that Jesus Christ, the mediator of the New
Covenant is the Son and thus towers over all mediating figures.
Hebrews focuses this reflection by pointing out that Jesus, going
beyond the Old Testament priesthood and the cult of the old covenant,
is priest and sacrificial gift in one. Jesus is both of these because he
offered himself up, because he is without guilt and thus need not offer
sacrifice on
24Herrlichkeit I: Schau der Gestalt (Einsiedeln, 1964).

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his own behalf; because hethe sign of God's acceptance of this
sacrifice of hishas stridden through the heavens; because his sacrifice
effects not only cultic purification but the forgiveness of sins (Heb
4:14; 5:1-9; 7:24, 28; and chaps. 810).25
5. The expectation and promise of the Old Testament culminates in
the expectation of one-who-is-to-come, the anointed, the Messiah, the
eschatological mediator of salvation. To be sure, Jesus does not call
himself Messiah; he is so named by others, especially in the
confession of Simon Peter. But Jesus carries out messianic actions,
i.e., actions attributed to the coming Messiah (Matt 11 2-6). At the
same time, the confession of the Messiah is connected with a
command to silence. "He ordered his disciples to tell no one that he is
the Messiah" (Matt 16:20). This is not intended to refer to a kind of
esotericism or arcane discipline; its purpose is to protect the messianic
secret of Jesus from misunderstandings, espcially those of a political
color.
What has been said thus far is intended to be an answer, gathered from
many elements and grounded with many proofs and facts, to the
question: "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?"
(Matt 11:3). Jesus himself answers this question affirmatively by
referring to the fulfillment in himself of the "coming" promise (Matt.
11:4-6). All the Gospels are characterized by this purpose and attempt
to realize it in their own way. The most emphatic of them is Matthew,
who puts all events in the fate and history of Jesus under the category
of the fulfillment of a messianic promise: "This took place so that the
Scripture might be fulfilled." The Gospel of John concluded originally
with the words: "These [signs] are written that you may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have
life in his name'' (John 20:31). The confession Jesus is the Christ is
thus, from the beginning, a core element of Christian believing,
praying, and praising, the legitimate representation and unfolding of
the behavior, the message, the claim, the deeds, and the history of
Jesus.
The Fulfillment of the Revelation of Creation
The revelation as fulfillment found in Jesus Christ would never do
justice to its claim unless Christ were also the fulfillment of original
revelation and of revelation in creation. Thus is his unique, definitive,
and incomparable position once again described and completed.
According to the affirmations of Scripture, Christ is "the image of the
invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things
25 O. Kuss, "Der theologische Grundgedanke des Hebräerbriefes" in:
Auslegung und Verkündigung (Regensburg, 1963) 281328; Der Brief an
die Hebräer, 2d ed. (Regensburg, 1966).

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were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or principalities or authoritiesall things were
created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him
all things hold together." (Col 1:15-17)
Accordingly, Christ is simultaneously the ground and the goal of
creation. He who came in the fullness of time is at the same time he
who was from the beginning and before all time.
The most convincing and strongest affirmations of this are to be found
in the Gospel of John and in the Captivity Letters. The "in the
beginning" of the Prologue of John (1:1) corresponds to the "in the
beginning" of Gen 1:1. In Jesus comesaccording to Johnthe Logos, the
Word, which was in the beginning and through which all was made.
He comes as the light which illumines every human being in the
world; He comes into the world, which is his own; He comes to
human beings, who are His own. Above all, the already-quoted hymn
of the Letter to the Colossians, but also the Letter to the Ephesians, lift
up the "cosmic position" of Christ in a special way. The same ideas
resonate also at the beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews: ''He [the
Son] reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature,
upholding the universe by His word of power" (Heb 1:3). Therefore
Christ is the head of the cosmos and the universe. Therefore He can
also be called the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the
Alpha and the Omega (Rev 1:17; 22:13). Here lie the sources for the
Christology of Teilhard de Chardin.
From here the structure and entelechy of revelation as history and
history as revelation are once again made clear. God "has made
known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will,
according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the
fullness of time, to unite all things in heaven and on earth" (Eph 1:9-
10).
Similar relationships to universality are found in the concept of
wisdom. In the Old Testament sapiential literature, "wisdom" is the
representative and proxy for God in God's effective claim on the
whole world, which is grounded in creation and in its order and
preservation. This category is related to Christ in the New Testament:
as Wisdom Christology which, in its universal, cosmic significance,
stands next to Logos Christology. In Jesus the "Wisdom of God"
speaks (Luke 11:4951); in Christ God's wisdom has appeared (1 Cor
2:13, 4).
If Jesus Christ is wisdom in person and the recapitulation and goal of all
reality, then reality as a whole and each individual reality acquires from
him and for him its definitive meaning. But then too that which is centre,
ground and goal of the existence of Jesushis sonship, his being for God
and for menmust intrinsically determine all reality in a hidden and yet
effective way.26
26 Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 188.

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If Christ is not only the ground but also the goal of creation, then the
revelational dimension of creation is again brought clearly to light in
Him. Creation was planned towards Christ, and He Himself is the
completion of creation, the final word of the words of creation, the
fulfillment and completion of the works of creation, above all of
human beings who have found in Christ their new and authentic
image. Therefore Jesus is the true human being, the second, the real
Adam; it is true of him as of no other: Ecce homo (cf. 1 Cor 15:2122,
4549). The picture of this human being is the one totally grounded in
God, the one boundlessly open for God, the hearer of God's word, the
obedient fulfiller of God's will, who loves God above everything and
is therefore bound to human beings in selfless dedication and fraternal
service. Therefore Jesus is the most authoritative among authoritative
standards. In this image of the human being is expressed the
fundamental anthropological law: the more human beings are with
God, the more they are with themselves.
Revelation in the Cross
The revelation that has taken place in Jesus as revelation in fulfillment
relates not only to creation or to individual elements one finds in the
Old Testament, like word, name, face, covenant, Messiah, faith;
rather, revelation happens now here, now there, here no one above all
no religion, expects it. Revelation takes place in the situation of
weakness, of suffering, of dying, of death.
Jesus is the fulfillment of revelation in an especially paradoxical
manner. In him the following has become event: What is apparently
the farthest distance from Godnot the human being who is created but
the human being who diesbecomes in a way the place where God
becomes manifest, where God is present, where the word of the power
and goodness of God does not lead ad absurdum but is fulfilled. The
cross and the death on the cross, apparently the complete collapse of
all expectations, hopes, and setting of goals, the sign of the most
profound external shame and humiliation, become signs of the
revelation of God.
This is where that truth comes to the fore that Luther formulated: God
becomes manifest in the form of contradiction (sub contrario)it is
revelation in hiddenness.27
What Luther says, however, is only taking up again what Paul said in
the First Letter to the Corinthians in an ever-so-expressive way:
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who
are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." Where
is the wise man?
27 "Die Heidelberger Disputation" in: Ausgewählte Werke I (Munich,
1951) 12538.

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Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made
foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the
world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly
of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and
Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to
Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the
foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger
than men. (1 Cor 1:1825)

In these words, human ideas about God are, in the truest sense of the
word, crossed out. If anywhere, then, it is in view of the cross that
there is a "distinction of what is Christian" over against Judaism and
over against the religions in the way they are prototypically
represented by the Greeks, over against the thesis of God's incapacity
to suffer. Paul doesn't take away the scandal and the foolishness of the
cross, but insists on them. "Far be it from me to glory except in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal 6: 14). The cross of Christ may
not be "emptied."
If we ask how it is that the cross of Christ is the special, indeed
incomparable, mode of the revelation of God, the answer turns out,
once again from Paul, as follows: The cross represents the highest
conceivable form of the self-emptying, the kenosis of God: unto
death, unto death on the cross (Phil 2:511). In this lies not a limiting
but a manifestation of the power of God: God is so great that [he] can
be small, insignificant, and lowly, that [he] can reach right to the
boundaries of death. God is more powerful than the power of death.
Therefore one can also say that God is nowhere greater than in [his]
abasement, nowhere more powerful than in [his] weakness.
The cross is a revelation of God because it is the revelation of a love
whose seriousness is shown in the fact that it is ready to give up its
life for others. This "for" is to be understood as representation:28 in
the place of, and, at the same time, as a fruit that is of benefit to the
many. To that extent the cross is the fulfillment of the words about the
suffering Servant of God from Second Isaiah: "He bore the sin of
many, and made intercession for the transgressor" (Isa 53:12; cf.
[Link]). "If God suffers, then God suffers in a divine way; that is,
God's suffering is an expression of God's freedom. God is not struck
by suffering, but allows Himself in freedom to be struck by it. God
does not suffer as a creature, because of a lack of being; God suffers
out of love and from [his] love, which is the superfluity of being."29
Such an affirmation about the presence and revelation of God in
suffering, dying, and death has transformed the situations and
experiences from which no human being is sparedthe suffering, dying,
and death
28 Joseph Ratzinger, "Stellvertretung," HThG 2.56675.
29 W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (New
York: Crossroad, 1984) 195.

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of human beings can become manifestations of the presence of God,
who, in the power of love, spared Himself from nothing human.
The revelation of God on the cross came to an extraordinarily deep
and vital realization in medieval mysticism, above all in Bernard and
Bonaventure. Even more impressive was Martin Luther's development
of the theology of the cross, for the first time in the theses of the
Heidelberg disputation 1518, where he says:
We rightly give the name of theologian not to those who perceive and
understand God's invisible nature through God's works; rather we rightly
give the name of theologian to those who understand that that part of God's
nature which is open and visible to the world is precisely what has been
represented in suffering and on the Cross. That part of God's nature which
is open and visible to the world, and contrasted to the invisible, is God's
humanity, weakness, and foolishness, as we learn from 1 Cor 1:25
speaking of the divine weakness and foolishness. (Theses 19 and 20)

To this Luther adds as a corrective:

Wisdom is, to be sure, not bad in itself, but without the theology of the
cross, human beings misuse the best and turn it to the worst by ascribing
wisdom and works to themselves. (Thesis 24)
It is when one keeps in mind the cross that, according to him, the
knowledge of God from the works of creation becomes of any benefit
for salvation.
Hegel made the attempt to recover philosophically the revelation
content of the cross and the crucified and also to reconcile philosophy
and theology on this point. He begins from the hymn verse: "O great
sorrow, God, very God is dead," and he converts the "historical" into
the "speculative" good Friday. He explains the death of Jesus as a
moment of the movement of the Absolute SpiritHegel's term for
Godon the way to itself. That is possible only if the Absolute Spirit
appropriates the most alien thingdeathin such form that it [Absolute
Spirit] supersedes it in the form of overcoming, preservation, and
exaltation.
Because the Absolute Spirit, because God, enters into death and is in
death, "God Himself is dead," death is overcome. The negation of the
negation takes place, if death is to be understood and described as
negation.30
This way of thinking has become active in contemporary theology in
Jürgen Moltmann: The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as Ground
and Critique of Christian Theology, and in Eberhard Jüngel: Gott als
Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begründing der Theologie des Gekreuzigten
im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus [God as Mystery of the
World. The Grounding of the Theology of the Crucified in the
Controversy
30Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion (Ausgabe Lasson) II/2,
5354.

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between Theism and Atheism]. Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks of the
death of God as a wellspring of salvation, revelation, and theology.31
This idea has also been taken up by Walter Kasper: "The cross is the
most extreme act which is possible to God in God's self-bestowing
love; it is the id quo maius cogitari nequit [that greater than which
cannot be thought], the absolutely unsurpassable self-definition of
God."32
Transcendental Christology
Transcendental theology works from the assumption that it is not
enough these days simply to proclaim and confess the truth of Jesus
Christ. Christology must be mediated. Karl Rahner attempts this33 by
asking whether there are not in human beings themselves
presuppositions and conditions through which they gain a knowledge
and understanding of what is meant by the definitive revelation in
Jesus Christ. Human beings haveRahner saysa transcendental idea of
Jesus Christ. The human being is so constituted that in questioning,
willing, loving, seeking, they are constantly transcending themselves
unto the deepest mystery of their selves, unto the all-determining
reality, which is called God.
He adds a further idea. Jesus Christ is the highest instance of
humanity. He is the unique and unparalleled realization of that
towards which every human being is oriented: self-transcendence
towards God, unity of the human being with God. This is found in
Jesus in the most perfect way; it comes together in Jesus with the self-
transcendence of God towards human beings. From this perspective,
Rahner formulates the thesis that Christology is self-transcending
anthropology and that anthropology can be represented as incomplete
Christology.34
It must be specifically added that Rahner does not, as some critics
claim, deduce his Christology from an a priori idea of Christ. He says:
"The transcendental deduction of an idea is always the historically
posterior reflection on a concrete experience, a reflection which
explicitly sees the 'necessary' in the factual."35
In other words, the idea of a transcendental Christology could be hit
upon only after the message of Jesus the Christ had been heard and
accepted as an event of history. Then, from this event, the question is
asked [back] whether, for this historical reality, there are in human
beings themselves concrete presuppositions, conditions, dispositions
together with their contents. This is done not in order to make Jesus
into a projection of these expectations, but to make intelligible in what
rela-
31 "Pachal Mystery," DFT 75876.
32 W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ 194.
33 Summed up in: Foundations of Christian Faith, 176264.
34 First of all in: Schriften 1.184.
35 "Transcendental theology," SM 6.28789.

Page 325
tionship and coordination Jesus the Christ stands towards human
beings, i.e., as answer to the question human beings not only have but
themselves are.36
Thus Rahner believes he is opening up a way to make comprehensible
to human beings what the claim and the mystery of Christ is all about,
how very much what was said by Jesus has to do with human beings
themselves, how Christology can be mediated as anthropology and
anthropology as Christology.
There is an additional idea that is of importance precisely for the
fundamental theological question:
The human being is that being which dares to hope that this mystery is not
just the distant goal of an endless movement, but that it bestows itself as
fulfillment of the highest yearnings of existence.
This most bold deed of hope seeks in history for that self-pledge of God
which, for humanity, gives up its ambivalence and becomes definitive and
irreversible.

The historical concreteness of the definitive self-pledge of God to the

world
can only be a human being who, on the one hand, gives up in death every
future in this world, and on the other hand, in this acceptance of death,
ends up being definitively accepted by God. Such a human being with this
destiny is what is meant by the phrase "absolute bringer of salvation."
"A transcendental Christology cannot presume to say that this absolute
bringer of salvation has been found precisely in Jesus of Nazareth."
But it "leads one to seek and in seeking to understand what one has
always found in Jesus of Nazareth."37
Summing up, it can be said that the designation "Jesus is the Christ,
the Messiah" is intended to describe the revelation that has taken place
in Jesus as the fulfillment of revelation as promise. This takes place in
the horizon of a faith and a way of thinking that is stamped by the Old
Testament. The designation "Jesus is the Lord, the Kyrios" indicates
first in what way Jesus is the Christ. In addition, the confession "Jesus
is the Kyrios" intends to express that He is the fulfillment of original
revelation and of revelation in creation. The meaning of the title
Kyrios as translation of the Old Testament name of God (Yahweh) is
that Jesus is this fulfillment both as messenger and bearer of God's
rule (which is a sovereignty of freedom, justice, and love) and as
bodily and personal presence of God.
If the proclamation of Jesus as the Christ was the appropriate
proclamation for the Jews, so too the proclamation of Jesus as the
Kyrios, the coordination of the Creator of heaven and earth to Jesus
36 K. RahnerW. Thüsing, ChristologieSystematisch und Exegetisch
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1972).
37 Ibid. 2024.

Page 326
Christ come in the flesh, was the appropriate proclamation for the
Gentiles, for all human beings. That doesn't prevent the revelation in
Jesus Christ from being apostrophized as scandal or folly.
The earliest Christian confession and the sum of the earliest Christian
faith are brought together in the words: JesusChristKyrios. Jesus is the
Christ; Jesus is the Lord (Phil 2:11).

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§ 35
Revelation as Consummation
By now, the most important aspects of revelation have already been
mentioned. The center of everythingthe revelation given in Jesus the
Christ and Lord and in his saving workis in a certain sense also the
end and the consummation, the eschatological event. Neverthelessas
we have already pointed out in different waysrevelation as fulfillment
still has a future, which is certainly the future of itself, but as future is
not yet present, but is awaited. This future is the consummation of
what has already definitively arrived and come; the future is the future
which has already broken in, in the center and in fulfillment, by which
it is borne, carried out, and preserved. It is grounded in the hodie and
ecce of that which has taken place, and can only mean the "bringing-
to-completion" of that which has already begun: the superseding of
the "not yet" in the already present "already."1
Let us now examine how the "not yet"and with it the future and the
consummation it containsfits into this understanding of revelation as
fulfillment.
The eschatological words of Jesus are an obvious place to begin: his
words about the "coming of the Son of man in great power and glory"
(Matt 24:30), his words about the judgment, about the new heaven
and the new earth (Rev 21:1). Further to be considered is that God's
rule and
1 Cf. the presentation of eschatology in the dogma textbooks and in the
theological reference works. Emil Brunner, Das Ewige als Zukunft und
Gegenwart (Zurich, 1953); P. Althaus, Die Letzten Dingen, 6th ed.
(Gütersloh, 1956); M. Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik IV/2; E. Brunner,
Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and Knowledge,
trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1946); Hans Urs
von Balthasar, "Eschatologie" in: Fragen der Theologie Heute, ed. J.
FeinerJ. TrütschF. Böckle, 3d ed. (EinsiedelnZurichCologne, 1960) 40324;
Karl Rahner, "Theologische Prinzipien der Hermeneutik eschatologischer
Aussagen," Schriften 4. 40128; A. Vögtle, Das Neue Testament und die
Zukunft des Kosmos (Düsseldorf, 1970); Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology,
Death and Eternal Life. trans. Aidan Nichols (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 1988); H. Vorgrimler, Hoffnung auf
Vollendung. Aufriß der Eschatologie (Düsseldorf, 1980); G. GreshakeG.
Lohfink, NaherwartungAuferstehungUnsterblichkeit, 4th ed.
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1982); M. Schmaus, Der Glaube der Kirche VI/2:
Gott Der Vollender (St. Ottilien, 1982).

Page 328
kingdom is announced and arrives in Jesus Christ. His word and
deeds, above all, his Resurrection from the dead and sending of the
Spirit, are the unmistakable signs of this fact. But at the same time, the
coming of this kingdom is prayed for: "Thy kingdom
come""Maranatha." The parables of growth refer to this future, as do
the imperatives to watching, to waiting, to readiness, to patience, to
struggle, to faith, to hope:
For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For
who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we
wait for it with patience. (Rom 8:24-25)

Revelation in Jesus is revelation in servant formin lowliness, in the

folly and scandal of the cross. It is thus, despite all revelation in power
and sovereignty, a hidden revelation and a revelation of the hidden
God. It can be misunderstood and overlooked, it can be the occasion
to take scandal and raise opposition. And this possibility is constantly
becoming real. Only faith is in a position to overcome this scandal and
stand up to the brightness and darkness of this revelation. This fact
must be preserved in, with, and under the message and the fact of the
resurrection. But to the resurrection itself we have access only through
the "witnesses of the resurrection." The Risen One did not appear
before the whole world but only before the witnesses chosen for it (cf.
Acts 10:40). All others are to come to faith in the Risen One through
their word. Thus faith is of course a gift of God and light on the way,
ground, firm anchoring and security, "victory over the world" (1 John
5:4). But He, as "virtue of the journey," points beyond himself to a
fulfillment which the Scripture describes as "seeing face to face" (1
Cor 13:12).
The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the completion; in it will
be what at the end will be without end, and it is the guarantee and
security of everything to be hoped for. Christ is the "hope of glory"
(Col 1:27). But the resurrection too is first a beginning; its fruit is not
yet effective everywhere. The signs of the anti-Godlysickness,
suffering, sin and deathare still present; creation still lies groaning,
and the already redeemed await the full "redemption of our bodies"
(Rom 8:23). The celebration of the saving deeds in sacrament, above
all and most supremely in the Eucharist, is the proclaiming of "the
Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor 11: 26).
The work of Jesus is continued and actualized through the Paraclete; it
is made present in the Church. The Church stands in its being and
activity under the sign of the way, of growth to the fullness, to the full
dimension of Christ: to the Christus totus [whole Christ]. The Church
is the "wandering People of God."
All that, and more, is a sign of the "not yet." But it cannot remain that
way definitively. The "already" which is present in the "not yet" must
come to unbroken completion and thus to the completion also of the

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revelation where Christ who is the Alpha will become manifest as the
Omega (Rev 1:8; 21:6; 22:13) and where that which has already
happened to us and in us will be completed: "It does not yet appear
what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like
him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).
Revelation as completion means, from the side of the revealer:
"Revelation in Power and Glory" for human beings means "to see
from face to face," "to know as I am known" (1 Cor 13: 12).
Revelation in power and glory strips off the servant form. The divine
doxa, the light of the glory of God, lordship, the rule, and the kingship
of God will become manifest to all the world, unbroken, unlimited,
without shadow. This rule will be recognized by all the world. The
differences between humanity and church will be dissolved and
brought to the perfected unity of the new heaven and the new earth
(Rev 21:1). The Son will hand over the kingdom to the Father, "so
that God will be all in all" (1 Cor 15:28). It is God's rule become
complete/perfect, and therewith and therein salvation made perfect.
The biblical image for this is the new Jerusalem, the holy city which
no longer has a temple, "for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty
and the Lamb." And this city "has no need of sun or moon to shine
upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb"
(Rev 21:2223).
What objectively is called power and glory is called, subjectively,
"seeing" as distinct from believing. To see includes the lifting of all
barriers that are found in faith as an indirect form of knowing. Seeing
is the most perfect form of knowing as immediate union and
possession. This seeing is characterized as a seeing face to face (1 Cor
13:12). Thus, end and completion in human beings also consists in a
self-presence: the more human beings are with God, the more are they
with themselves. Nor does this dissolve into a person-dissolving
absence of contours, for it preserves the over-against of the person
face to face, which, however, in this being over-against has lost all
alienation, and which connects the most profound unity with personal
encounter.
This seeing face to face is further interpreted by a "knowing as we are
known" (1 Cor 13:12). Knowing as partial knowing ceases, therewith
and thereby, when God knows in us. When we know as we are known,
then God is the knower and our knowing is a participation in divine
knowing, a becoming one with that knowledge in which God knows
himself, the highest perfection of the "In thy light do we see light"
(Psalm 36:9). But also, in this characterization, "I will know as I am
known," the boundary between God and human beings is not
dissolved. Both are, and they remain who they are. Here is over
against, community and unity, but not identity. The "I" remains in this
knowing; and if it can know as it is known, then it is not swallowed up
by the luminous Glory of God, but is quite genuinely brought to itself.

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Revelation as consummation is the rule of God completed; it is, in
other words, the form of life of completed human salvation.
The Synod of Bishops in the Federal Republic of Germany has made
''a confession of faith in this time" under the title "Our Hope." The
significance that revelation as completion has in it is shown by these
words:
We Christians hope for the new human being, the new heaven and the new
earth in the completion/perfection of the kingdom of God. We can speak of
this kingdom of God only in images and similitudes the way they are
narrated and witnessed in the Old Testament and in the New Testament of
our hope, and above all by Jesus himself. These images and similitudes of
the great peace of human beings and nature before the face of God, of the
one table fellowship of love, of homeland and of father, of the kingdom of
freedom, reconciliation and justice, of the tears wiped away and of the
laughing of the children of God, they are all accurate and irreplaceable. We
cannot simply "translate" them; we can really only protect them, remain
true to them, and resist their being dissolved into the mystery-less
language of our concepts and argumentation, which does indeed speak to
our needs and our plans, but not to our longing and our hopes.
The promises of the kingdom of God which, through Jesus, has
irrevocably broken in on us and is active in the community of the Church,
lead us into the midst of the world of our lifewith all its own plans for the
future and utopias. It is into these plans that these promises break in and
become clarified, even in our own time of science and technology, of great
social and political changes. . . .
Our hope looks for a completion of humanity from the transforming power
of God, as an eschatological event whose future has already irrevocably
begun for us in Jesus Christ. We belong to him; we are grafted into him.
Through baptism we are plunged into his new life, and in table fellowship
with him we receive the "pledge of future glory." By placing ourselves
under the "Law of Christ" (Gal 6:2) and living in his discipleship, we
become, even in the midst of our world of life, witnesses of this
transforming power of God: as peacemakers and merciful, as human
beings of purity and poverty of heart, as mourners and strugglers, in
unconquerable hunger and thirst for justice (cf. Matt 5:3-10).2
2 Gemeinsame Synode der Bistümer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,
Offizielle Gesamtausgabe (Offical Edition) 9597.

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§ 36
The Grounding and Justification of the Claim of RevelationThe
Problem of Credibility and Criteria
The Problem of Miracles
To this point, we have attempted to present both the pluriform
testimonies of the Old Testament, according to the revelation in
history that can be known there, and, with special emphasis, the
witnesses of the New Testament in their convergence on the central
figure of Jesus the Christ.
These biblical affirmations are frequently made under the sign of
claim, proclamation, and confession. But already in the Old
Testament, and even more clearly in the New Testament, we find
significant indications that the mere claim does not suffice, however
emphatically it may be raised. The claim must be mediated to those
for whom it is raised. In other words, there must be a grounding,
which justifies, legitimates, and confirms the claim. This brings us to
the problem of the criteria of revelation, the problem of their
credibility, their motives and grounds. The criteria can and should be,
for human beings an introduction and guide to faith in the revelation
before them. This is true even though no ground of credibility, not
even the sum of grounds, replaces faith or produces faith from itself
mechanically or automatically.
As we deal with this in our time, we are faced with the following
dilemma. Both from within and without, the questions being asked
today about the credibility of revelation and the verification of faith
have a critical sharpness. It is a sign of our radically rational age, the
age of a new enlightenment, of thinking oriented to experience, that
insists on verification. The answers that theology and above all
apologetics used to give are now of doubtful cogency. To the question,
"How does special historical revelation prove its claim to divine
origin and the self-disclosure of God?" the answer in traditional
theology was, "through miracles and fulfilled prophecies." For these
point in a spe-

Page 332
cial way to their origin in God and to God's special activity; they
document that here God has intervened, acted, spoken.
To illustrate this, we will take a text from Vatican I, a council that
dealt with specific fundamental-theological and apologetic issues. One
of the themes of the council was revelation and faith. This is the
content of the dogmatic constitution "Dei Filius" de fide catholica.
After the definition of faith as "act of obedience of human beings to
the truth disclosed by divine authority" it says:
In order that the service of obedience of our faith might correspond to
reason, God willed to connect, with the inner assistance of the Holy Spirit,
external proofs of his revelation: namely, divine works, above all miracles
and prophecies. Since they prove God's omnipotence and measureless
knowledge in rich measure, they are wholly certain signs of revelation
suited to the powers of understanding of everyone. Accordingly Moses, the
prophets, and especially Christ the Lord himself performed many and
obvious miracles and foretold future events. Of the apostles we read:
"They went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with
them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it" (Mark
16:20). And in another place: "We have the prophetic word made more
sure. You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark
place" (2 Pet 1:19).1

On the same theme two other canons of the same council are
important:
Whoever says that divine revelation cannot become credible through
outward signs, and that it must therefore move human beings to faith
through the purely inner experience of each individual or through personal
illumination, let him be anathema.

And further:
Whoever says that miracles cannot happen, and that therefore all miracle
stories, even those contained in Holy Scripture, are to be arranged under
legends and myths; or that miracles can never be certainly known, and that
the divine origin of the Christian religion can never be properly proven
through them, let him be anathema.2

If we let these words work on us, we recognize in them a massive

claim. It is the claim to universality. All human beings of all times are
addressed by these criteria, the facta divina, the divine actions,
especially by miracles and prophecies. It is the claim to objectivity and
finally the claim to certitude and assurance which are stronger than all
the questions and doubts brought up against them.
As necessary and helpful as this all might be for our present-day
questions, we can today no longer share in the certitude and assurance
expressed here, the epistemological optimism radiated from here. We
have difficulty thinking this way. What is more, what is offered in this
council as help and relief for the faith is precisely what makes
1 DS 3009.
2 DS 3033, 3034.

Page 333
difficulties for us and represents a problem precisely for the road to
faith.
If in earlier times one said of miracle that it is "the best-loved child of
faith," today it must be said that it has turned into a problem child.3
The primary source of our problems and difficulties seems to be the
historical-critical method and its results vis-a-vis the New Testament
miracle accountsin addition to the well-known thesis of Lessing that
mere reports about miracles are not actual miracles. Difficulties also
come from the present-day view of life under the sign of natural
science and technology, in which there is no more room for miracles,
most especially when one, as is usually the case, understands miracle
as a breaking through or lifting of laws of nature. But here too there is
already an indication that there may have been a change in the concept
of miracle. This could be one reason for these difficulties; but it could
also open up a path towards a possible solution of the problem.
We will try to approach this problem of credibility, above all of the
credibility produced by signs and wonders, in such a way that we first
deal with an objection that solves the problem by not even admitting it
but by rejecting it as illegitimate. This can be clarified by way of the
position of dialectical theology, e.g., of Emil Brunner. He declares that
revelation cannot be rationally grounded; otherwise revelation is no
longer revelation but truth of reason. To want to ground revelation
according to reason means not to understand and not to have
understood what revelation is.
Theologians who get involved with introducing proofs for the claim of
revelation are playing a lost game from the start. This is the just
punishment for the fact that they don't take seriously their own ground
and object. There is either faith or proof, but not both.
The doubting of faith is nothing but the intellectual form of sin. Doubt
is a form of hubris; it comes from an a priori rejection of revela-
3 Reginald Fuller, Interpreting the Miracles (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1963); R. Guardini, Wunder und Zeichen (Würzburg, 1959); L.
Monden, Signs and Wonders: A Study of the Miraculous Element in
Religion (New York: Desclee Co., 1966); J. MetzL. Monden, "Miracle,"
SM 4.4449; R. Latourelle, "Miracle," DFT 690709; C. SantT. G. Pater,
"Miracles," NCE 9.88694; Franz Mußner, The Miracles of Jesus: An
Introduction, trans. Albert Wimmer (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1968); R. Pesch, Jesu ureigene Taten? (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1970); K. Kertelge, Die Wunder im Markusevangelium (Munich, 1970;);
M. Seckler, "Plädoyer für Ehrlichkeit im Umgang mit Wundern,'' ThQ 151
(1971) 33745; B. Weißmahr, Gottes Wirken in der Welt, Ein
Diskussionsbeitrag zur Frage der Evolution und des Wunders (Frankfurt,
1973); K. Kertelge, "Die Überlieferung der Wunder Jesu und die Frage
nach dem historischen Jesus" in: K. Kertelge, ed., Rückfrage nach Jesus
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974); A. Kolping, Fundamentaltheologie II
(Münster, 1974) 438-66; Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 89; Hans Küng,
On Being a Christian, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City, N. Y.:
Doubleday, 1978) 226-38; Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in
Christology, trans. Herbert Hoskins (New York: Seabury Press, 1979)
179200; Leonhard Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament, trans. John E.
Alsup (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans Pulishing Co., 1981) 139-
57.

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tion.4 If faith is described primarily as a venture, as a "nevertheless,"
then one can see in the question of the credibility of faith only a
misunderstanding of faith. Then one must even be careful to cast away
the supports offered in the so-called criteria of credibility, so that faith
can be realized in the most radical and pure way possible.
The reformational doctrine of justification, so explains Rudolf
Bultmann, destroys every false certitude and every presumptuous
desire for certitude in human beings, even though the certitude may be
grounded on their good behavior or their confirming knowledge.
Human beings who want to believe in God as their God, must know
that they have nothing in their hand in which they can believe, that
they are, so to speak, left hanging in the air and can demand no
evidence for the truth of the words being spoken to them. The ground
and the object of faith are identical. Certitude is found only by those
who let all certitude go, whoto speak with Lutherare ready to go into
the inner darknesses.5
These positions are understood above all as opposed to the Catholic
conception as classically presented in the texts from Vatican I.
In answer, one can say that the question of the criteria of revelation is
not a presumption of human beings; instead, these criteria are
contained in the testimony of revelation itself. They are connected
with the revelation event and the revelation claim itself. Leaving these
criteria out of consideration is not a service towards the preservation
of the faith and the genuinity of revelation, but the withdrawal of an
important service.
The alternativeeither faith or proof, but not bothwould be correct if
faith were the necessary final sum resulting from a chain of proofs.
The grounds of credibility, however, operate in that sphere which is
paraphrased by: condition of possibility. They admit free decision,
indeed even demand it.
The proposition "A theology that gets involved with introducing
proofs for the claim of revelation is playing a lost game from the start"
is to be answered with the "counter-proposition": A theology that
refuses to make use of proofs in the sense of arguments about the
claim of revelation is playing a lost game; it makes the decision of
faith in revelation into a certain respectable but not grounded or
groundable option; it opts for an irrational decision of faith. Further, a
No to criteria of revelation doesn't do justice to the claim of revelation
as a whole, especially not to the relationship to the whole human
being with all of his/her powers and gifts. This relationship proceeds
from and is demanded by the claim of revelation.
4 Emil Brunner, Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith
and Knowledge, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,
1946) 24018.
5 In: Kerygma und Mythos II, ed. von H. W. Bartsch, (Hamburg, 1952) 207.

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The other thesis of Brunner refers to the following context:
Questioning comes from doubt; doubt is the intellectual form of sin;
questioning comes from hubris, from the assumed autonomy of
human beings, from human refusal over against God.
In reply we say, of course there are forms of questions and doubts that
basically are asked or brought forward only in order to disguise the
already decided No. But one must contest that these are the only
forms of doubt and question. Are there not questions that come from
openness, from the readiness to hear, to let something be said? Is not
questioningas was already suggestedperhaps nothing else than an
expression of the greatness and the limitation of human beings, an
admission of the fact that the questioner in no way already knows
everything and thus had decided everything, but that human beings,
precisely by their ability to ask and their need to ask gain the
qualification of being hearers of the wordan absolutely irreplaceable
qualification with respect to faith in revelation? Is not the question, as
Heidegger formulated it, precisely the "piety of thinking"?
And it still has to be added that there is no more intensive form of
closing off the self than that of not questioning or no longer
questioning. It is not by questioning but by the refusal of questioning
that doors for the acceptance of revelation are closed. Lacking here
are all possibilities of being able to be spoken to, of the "Speak, Lord,
your servant is listening" (1 Sam 3:9).
We conclude that to eliminate the difficulties that arise today from the
problem of the criteria of revelation and its connected thematic of the
credibility, grounding, and confirmation of revelation is not the right
way to go. It is not right to eliminate these difficulties by pushing
aside the whole question of criteria as theologically illegitimate. It is
not illegitimate. If it were, the result would be that theology would fall
into a total lack of relationship to the present situation.
The Problem of Faith and Credibility According to the Witness of the
Bible
That said, we can attempt a fresh approach to the matter and ask how
the Bible itself, above all the New Testament, the testimony and
record of revelation, expresses itself on this theme of ours. Does it
have anything to say, and if so, what, about the problems of faith and
credibility, claim, and criteria of revelation?
First, the question itself is not only known to the New Testament, it is
one of its important motifs. Its concern is not only to witness and
proclaim the claim of Jesus, but also to ground and justify it and to
produce grounds of credibility for it. This happens in many different
ways, most impressively by the deeds of Jesus presented as signs,
which one calls

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miracles. For a proper understanding and judgment on this subject,
there is an important first step: what is the literary genre of the
particular New Testament text under consideration? Is it an historical
account, a didactic story, a legend, an interpretation of the significance
of the person, behavior and words of Jesus? It is the task of exegesis
to point these things out.
On the question of interpretation with respect to the question of
miracles, the following guidelines have been worked out by
contemporary exegesis. They are an aid to interpretation, not to have
the biblical affirmations at reduced prices, but to avoid unnecessary
difficulties. One must first point out that the New Testament doesn't
use the concept "miracle." It speaks of "powerful deeds" or "signs."
Here are some of the particular principles of interpretation.6
We end up with a reduction of the number of miracle stories when we
take into consideration that the different Gospels have parallel
accounts of the same story and that there is a tendency to elevate,
enlarge, and multiply the miracles. According to Mark 1:34, Jesus
healed many who were sick; according to the parallel place in Matt
8:16, he healed all. In Mark, the daughter of Jairus is still dying; in
Matthew, she is already dead. From the healing of a blind man and a
possessed man, there turn out to be two blind men and two possessed
men. 4000 miraculously fed become 5000, and seven baskets left over
become twelve. This tendency to expand and multiply, detectable in
the Gospels themselves, is important for the factual question before
us. The fact itself [of the miracle] is not controverted, but the kind of
record-keeping precision we would like to have today is not the
purpose of the New Testament. But one thing is clear: this reflection
considerably lessens the material of the miracle stories.
A further clarification comes from comparison with rabbinic and
Hellenistic miracle stories. The New Testament miracle stories are
shaped analogously and with the help of motifs we know from the rest
of antiquity. There are rabbinic and Hellenistic miracle stories about
healings, driving out demons, raising the dead, stilling storms, etc.
There are numerous parallels to the contemporary of Jesus,
Apollonius of Tiana. Especially from the Aesculapius sanctuary in
Epidaurus comes the witness of many healings. One gets the
impression that the New Testament transfers motifs from outside of
Christianity to Jesus in order to underline his greatness and authority.
These indications have not blocked or led astray access to Jesus and
the interpretation of his activity, but opened it up. There is even a
quite specific technique of miracle stories, an established three-
membered scheme according to which they are narrated. First, the
failure of former attempts is depicted, the
6 What follows depends on the presentations of W. Kasper, Jesus the
Christ 10416, and H. Küng, On Being a Christian 22638.

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severe sickness described, in order to prepare for the greatness of the
miracle; then follows the description of the miraculous process;
finally the witnesses are mentioned who have seen and confirmed the
miracle (chorus conclusion). Without doubt there are also
characteristic differences between the miracles of Jesus and those
narrated elsewhere in antiquity. Jesus performs, for example, no
stipend, profit, penal or show-miracles. But in view of the clearly
established parallels, one can hardly reject all Jewish and Hellenistic
miracle stories as unhistorical lying and deceit, while accepting the
New Testament stories in contrast as thoroughly historical.
Many miracle stories turn out, by form-critical analysis, to be
projections of Easter experiences back into the earthly life of Jesus, or
as proleptic [anticipated] representation of the exalted Christ. Such
epiphany stories are, e.g., the miracle of rescue from the storm, the
transfiguration scene, the walking on the waters, the feeding of the
four thousand or five thousand, and the catch of fish by Peter. The
first and foremost intention of the raising from the dead of the
daughter of Jairus, of the young man of Naim, and of Lazarus is to
highlight Jesus as Lord over life and death.
All this indicates that many miracle stories of the Gospels are to be
categorized as legendary. Legends, however, are not fables or fairy
tales but a representation of realities which, to be sure, are to be
looked at less for their historical than for their theological
affirmational content. They speak not about individual facts of
salvation but about the salvific significance of the one saving event of
Jesus Christ. The indication that certain miracles cannot be ascribed to
the earthly Jesus in no way reduces to an assertion that they have no
significance theologically and kerygmatically. Such nonhistorical
miracle stories remain affirmations of faith about the salvific
significance of the person and message of Jesus. In other words, it is
of relatively little importance, in terms of the knowledge and the faith
that saves, whether or not the historical Jesus can be proven to have
performed this or that miracle. But taken as faith affirmations about
who Jesus is as Lord and Savior, miracles stories are at the heart of the
gospel message. In that sense they are true.
Nevertheless, it would be false to conclude from this thesis that there
are no historically supported miraculous deeds of Jesus at all. The
opposite is correct. There is practically no exegete who commands
respect who does not hold fast to a basic stock of historically certain
miraculous deeds of Jesus.
Even after a historical-critical examination of the miracle tradition of
the Gospels, it turns out that one can hardly contest a historical kernel
of the miracle tradition. Jesus performed extraordinary deeds which
struck his contemporaries with astonishment. Among these are

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cures of different sicknesses and of symptoms which one then
understood as signs of possession. But the so-called nature miracles
are different. There is some plausibility in not regarding them as
historical.
For Edward Schillebeeckx, the texts: "He has done all things well"
(Mark 7:37) and "He went about doing good" (Acts 10:38) form the
horizon of the miraculous works of Jesus. The problem is,
accordingly, not the miracle as act but the question, by what power
these deeds took place: the power of God or the power of the evil one.
Miracles are good deeds of power which respond to the suffering of
human beings. Jesus' miracles can, therefore, not be ambivalently
interpreted as do Jesus' opponents: "He drives out demons by
Beelzebub." Nature miracles are directed, according to Schillebeeckx,
against the disciples' weakness of faith, which is to be transformed by
a contrasting manifestation. Actually, faith shouldn't have any need of
such a thing.
One should also add to these reflections that, with His miracles, Jesus
is dealing with concrete human beings, especially with human beings
to whom His message is directed in a special way: the religiously and
socially discriminated against, the poor, the weak, the sinners, the
lepers, the blind, the lame, the mentally ill. An involvement becomes
visible here that is totally unknown among the ancient miracle
workers. It is to be explained by the way in which Jesus confirms and
illustrates His message by His deeds, by the way He corrects,
criticizes, and intends to overturn the customary hierarchies and
standards of existing society.
We will offer with these reflections no commentary on individual
texts, but rather describe orientations and horizons into which the
individual texts can be arranged.
One further remark of a fundamental nature is to be added here. As
impossible as it may be for every individual deed of Jesus witnessed
in the New Testament to have a historical proof in the modern sense,
as possible as it may be for many healings to find a natural
explanation, there is just as little argument in the opinion of
practically all the exegetes that Jesus' word and deeds belong close
together, that these deeds are to be interpreted by his word and his
word confirmed by his deeds. "The great number of the gospel
miracle stories would be unbelievable if corresponding processes in
the life of Jesus did not stand behind them. A Jesus freed of all
miracles is unhistorical."7
In addition, it would not be possible to talk about the claim of Jesus in
the form of fulfillment, about the incomparability of his person and
about the "more than" which is part of it, if absolutely nothing at all
were visible on the phenomenal level of his deeds and workshowever
difficult it may be to say anything certain about these in each
individual case. In a special deed is illuminated the special being of
the person
7 W. Trilling, Fragen zur Geschichtlichkeit Jesu (Düsseldorf, 1966) 97.

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who does such a deed: "Agere sequitur esse, esse sequitur agere
[doing follows being, being follows doing]."
Some Individual Themes
After these basic remarks we now add some reflections about how this
question is asked and answered: In the Gospels, how is the grounding
and confirmation of the claim expressedthe claim, contained in Jesus'
person, behavior, life and history, that he is revelation in the mode of
fulfillment?
1. The Gospel of Matthew, directed above all to the Jews, is
concerned with proving that Jesus of Nazareth is the awaited Messiah.
This proof is developed according to the schema "This happened that
the scripture might be fulfilled." Jesus fulfills the presuppositions of
(the) Messiah-being; he is the son of Abraham, he comes from the
tribe of David. Jesus is the true teacher and fulfiller of the Law. This is
the proof which the great sermon cycle of Matthew 57 intends to
produce: "He teaches as one who has power." Jesus' behavior is
legitimated with reference to the Old Testament: "Have you not
read?""It is written.''
The "miracle cycle" or "works cycle" (Matt [Link]) intends to
highlight the deeds of Jesus as works that attest [him as] Messiah.
Even the paradox of the suffering and dying of the Messiah is
fulfillment of Scripture. On this point one must note what the
Tübingen theologian J. E. Kuhn emphasized against D. F. Strauss: The
deeds and events witnessed in the New Testament are not projections
from the Old Testament; instead, the factual event witnessed in the
New Testament is interpreted with the help of the Old Testament.8
2. Where the addressees of the proclamation were human beings who
lived outside the horizon of the Old Testament, the proof of credibility
could not come only from the Old Testament. It came rather from the
special emphasis put on the deeds of Jesus which accompany,
illustrate, and give force to his words, and which are to justify and
legitimate Jesus' claim to be the revealer, the Son, the bringer of
salvation. The reference to the deeds of Jesus as deeds of power is
found in all the Gospels, especially emphasized in Mark and Luke and
in the thematization of the works as signs in the Gospel of John.
We see in the Bible a concept of miracle other than what we connect
with the current concept of miracle: the breaking through of natural
causality. This idea is not even possible in the biblical world view. For
8 J. R. Geiselmann, "Der Glaube an Jesus ChristusMythos oder
Geschichte? Zur Auseinandersetzung Joh. Ev. Kuhns mit David Friedrich
Strauß," ThQ 129 (1949) 258-72, 418-31; Die Lebendige Überlieferung
als Norm des christlichen Glaubens, Dargestellt im Geiste der
Traditionslehre Johannes E. Kuhns (Freiburg, 1959).

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everything that happens is done by God and is a reference to God,
thus having, as we said, a revelational dimension which is suited,
however it may be caused, to lead to astonishment and wonder. It is
the concern of the New Testament to highlight this transparency
towards the power of God.
The synoptic concept dynamis [power] as characterization of the
deeds of Jesus is at first ambivalent.9 Its fundamental meaning is the
power, the capability, the ability. But that can be a power for any
possible thing. This meaning becomes special within the Greco-
Hellenistic milieu to the extent that dynamis becomes the world
principle. Dynamis is the causal power from which the world comes.
In various transformations it is now made equal to the cosmos, now
with the divinity, or any divinity, whereby the relationship of the
divinity to nature often remains unclear. But the idea of dynamis as
cosmic divine power of nature, as divine principle of the world, but
which remains entangled with the world, is an idea current at the time.
The biblical concept of dynamis is different from these ideas, as
different as is the biblical world from the Greek world. It is to be
characterized thus: In the place of the divinity stands the God who is
person; in the place of the cosmic dynamis stands the power and might
of the personal God. This is connected with the word of this God
which itself is a powerful, effective, creative, performative word.
The dynamis of their God becomes knowable in the history of the
People of Israel. It becomes a stereotype formula: "With your power
and might, with your dynamis, you have led your people." But the
God of Israel is at the same time the creator and preserver of the
world, who does this with his word, which is at the same time the
bearer of his dynamis (cf. the Creation Psalms).
The Old Testament motifs are taken up in the New Testament.
Dynamis, the preserve of God, is transferred to Jesus; it is active in
him. Jesus' deeds come from the dynamis of God and bear its sign.
That is why they can themselves be called dynamis, deeds of power.
In Jesus' milieu, the question was understood as: Where does he get
this dynamis? (cf. Matt 13:54); so too the reproach of Jesus: "You
know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God" (Matt 22:29).
The dynamis, the powerful deeds performed by Jesus, are signs of the
rule of God, signs of its nearness, its presence. This is witnessed by
the already-quoted logion: "If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out
demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Matt 12:28).
The dynamis of Jesus is God's rule in deeds. These are for eye and
seeing what words are for ear and hearing. They make visible what is
heard. They are, in their way, an expression of the coming together of
hearing and seeing that are required in the response to revelation.
9 W. Grundmann, TDNT, 2.284317.

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This brings up the question of the function and meaning of the
dynamis, the powerful deeds of Jesus: They have an unlocking
function. They are supposed to make human beings attentive, make
them look up and listen attentively. They have an unlocking function
in the sense that human beings are freed from the spell of the hitherto,
the everyday, and the taken-for-granted, that their sense and spirit is
opened in the sense of questioning and wondering: "Who is this
man?" They have an argumentative, grounding function. They are to
bring questioning and reflecting human beings to the consciousness
that the deeds of Jesus, which stand in the selfless service of the good
and overcome the power of evil, can only be signs of God. They have
an advertising and inviting function. They are to provide guidance and
accompaniment for faith in and the following of Jesus. They have a
justifying function. They are to strengthen, support, and encourage the
disciples of Jesus, especially against misgivings, doubts, and
temptations. Finally, they have a judging function if, despite these
deeds, no conversion results. Accordingly, the refusal to believe or to
follow no longer really has any right or ground.
The faith required as presupposition for a miracle is, thus, the
readiness of human beings to open themselves to hear, to unlock
themselves; it is the willingness not to refuse.
3. The affirmations of the Gospel of John.10 Note first that we find the
same grounding relationships here in the Synoptics. In opposition to
the Jews, the repeated and extensive witness of the Baptist, who was
recognized by the Jews as a prophet, is brought up as the ground and
argument for the claim of Jesus (John 1:1938; 3:2731). The same
function is also served by the appeal to the Old Testament, to the Holy
Scriptures, to the witness of Abraham and the claim of being children
of Abraham.
These grounds are surpassed by the towering significance, accessible
to all human beings, which is ascribed to the works of Jesus and their
significance for the faith. To be sure, neither the singular nor the
plural of dynamis is found in the Gospel of John. Rather, the
substantive is replaced by the verb, which directs the gaze from the
external work to the one performing it: to Him who has the power to
bring about such things.
The Johannine word for the deeds of Jesus is the word sign orless
frequentlywork. "Sign" in the sense of the Gospel of John says: In the
signified lies an expression of the "capacity" and being-mighty which
is reserved to God alone. It is a living and effective power in Jesus
and his deeds, which is understood as the power of God. It is,
moreover, an effective power which is especially revelatory of the
glory of God. "No
10 Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, vol. 1, trans.
Kevin Smyth (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968) 35763.

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one can do these signs which you do unless God is with him" (John
3:2; cf. also 9:146). It is only another version of the unique unity of
action between Jesus and God when the Gospel of John says that the
works of Jesus are the witness of the Father for the Son. They function
therefore as grounding for the exclusively and inclusively meant "I
am" sayings found in this Gospel: Even though you do not believe me,
believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father
is in me and I am in the Father" (John 10:38).
The purpose of these signsthe multiplication of the loaves, the healing
of the blind, the raising of Lazarushowever interpreted, is to make a
reference to the person of Him who, in community and unity with the
Father, brings them about. Their purpose is to say that He who works
the miracle of the feeding is the bread of life, that He who gave light
to the blind is the light of the world; that He who raised Lazarus to life
is the resurrection and the life.
The Gospel of John, which sees the works of Jesus in the horizon of
sign and witness, as indication, grounding, confirmation, and
justification, lays special emphasis also on the judging function that
goes along with these works: "If I had not done among them the
works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they
have seen and hated both me and my Father" (John 15:24).
A special concern of the Gospel of John is to prove that a rejection of
the signs and works of Jesus cannot appeal to Abraham, for
Abraham's life stood under the sign of faith. In addition it is said that
the rejection of the works of Jesus is an indication that those who
reject Jesus do not know God (John 10:3139), that they are confusing
their own ideas and judgments with God's word. Thus the signs
become not a help to faith but the occasion of crisis, scandal, unbelief.
This has pointed out the greatness and limitation of the deeds, signs,
and works of Jesus and their function and significance. The function
of the signs and works of Jesus in the context of the whole Gospel
becomes clear in its conclusion:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are
not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in
his name (John 20:30-31).

Miracle-Signs and Faith

A glance at the biblical concept of miracle shows that what has been
already said is not all there is to say. Indeed, there are not a few
aspects that seem to contradict what we have said hitherto.
The theme still to be treated can be summed up in the oft-repeated
thesis: It is not miracles and the knowledge and recognition of them

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that constitute the presupposition and preparation for faith in the
divine revelation that has taken place in Jesusit is the other way
around: faith is the presupposition for the knowledge and recognition
of miracles as signs and works of God.11 Without faith, the miracles
lose their function and sense of direction; they lead to the opposite of
that to which the miracles are interiorly oriented. In other words,
miracles are not criteria of revelation, not even its protection,
grounding, or justification; they are rather an object of revelation and
thus content of faith. There are many illustrations of this.
On the visit of Jesus to his home city, Mark relates: "He could do no
mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick
people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief"
(Mark [Link] Matt 13:58).
How often we find the phrases: "Your faith has helped you, made you
well, saved you" (Mark 5:34). "Do not fear, only believe" (Mark
5:34). "Great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire" (Matt
15:28). Still more moving are the words to Jesus of the father of a sick
child: "'If you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.' And
Jesus said to him, 'If you can! All things are possible to him who
believes.' Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, 'I
believe; help my unbelief!''' (Mark 9:2224).
It is similar in the healing of the servant of the centurion of
Capernaum: "Not even in Israel have I found such faith. . . . Go; be it
done for you as you have believed" (Matt 8:113). In the storm at sea
Jesus asks: "Have you no faith?" (Mark 4:40). These texts bring out
the following connection. It is not through the mighty deeds Jesus
performs that human beings come to faith in Jesus, but through their
faith human beings come to expect Jesus' helping and healing power.
For their faith Jesus works the signs of his power. There is a further
point. Jesus repeatedly forbids the healed to report and tell of their
healing (Mark 1:4045; 7:3537). How is it to be understood that the
deeds and signs that are supposed to be a witness of the authority of
Jesus and are supposed to document his mission to all human beings
are accompanied with a command to silence: "Tell no one!"? Wouldn't
it make more sense to declare: "Tell it to everyone!"?
Jesus repeatedly refuses to perform a miracle in the manner expected
and demanded of him. "The Pharisees came and began to argue with
him, seeking from him a sign from heaven, to test him. And he sighed
deeply in his spirit, and said, 'Why does this generation seek a sign?
Truly I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation"' (Mark
8:1112; cf. Matt 12:39; 16:14; Luke 11:2932).
11 G. Söhngen, "Wunderzeichen und Glaube" in: Die Einheit in der
Theologie (Munich, 1952) 26585.

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Why does Jesus refuse to give a sign? It is manifestly, because there is
no faith corresponding to the desire for a sign, because even "a sign
from heaven" does not lead to faith. Precisely this idea comes up
repeatedlyfor example, in the parable of the rich glutton and the poor
Lazarus: "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they
be convinced if someone should rise from the dead" (Luke 16:31).
Even more drastic is the scene at the crucifixion of Jesus: "Let the
Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we
may see and believe" (Mark 15:32).
Jesus rejects these demands for a sign from heaven. The reason is, as
we see it, that unbelief prevents the signs from fulfilling their function
and achieving their intended purpose of being signs that Jesus is the
Messiah, the Revealer, Teacher, and Savior sent from God.
Of importance is also the judgment expressed in the Gospel of Johnin
the sense of a correction or reprimand: "Unless you see signs and
wonders you will not believe" (John 4:48). Corresponding to this is
the blessing for "those who have not seen and yet believe" (John
20:29). This means that to believe only in miracles and signs is a lack
of faith, is an expression of weak faith. The Bible speaks ultimately of
the fact that in the apocalyptic end time many a false Messiah and
many false prophets will perform great signs and miracles, and that
human beings will let themselves be led astray by them (Matt 24:24).
The severity of the situation here referred to is expressed above all in
the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus the Christ. The most emphatic
witness to it is Paul: "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek
wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews
and folly to Gentiles" (1 Cor 1:2223).
The situation here addressed, which seems to be a dilemma in respect
to the New Testament, can also be expressed, paradigmatically so to
speak, in the following antitheses: Pascal declares: "Without miracles
I would not be a Christian; without miracles it would not be a sin not
to believe in Jesus."12 Emil Brunner says, taking issue with this: No
one believes in Christ because of miracles. Revelation is not directed
to belief in miracles but to the conscience."
In response we can say that faith, which is presupposed for the
coming and effective working of signs and miracles, must first be
described negatively in view of the words of Jesus: "To this evil and
adulterous generation no sign will be given." Such a desire for a sign
does not come from an open readiness for which a sign could be of
further assistance, but from a disposition which either denies the
previous works of Jesus or attributes them to demonic influences,
which sets, so to speak, a negative sign before everything that has to
do with Jesus. As a consequence of this self-closing fundamental
attitude, shutting oneself off, a
12 Pascal, Pensées 812 and 813.

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sign is neither possible nor necessary; it changes nothing in one's
fundamental constitution even if one should rise from the dead, even
if the Messiah should climb down from the cross. Only if a genuine
metanoia, i.e., the other side of faith, were to take its place, could
signs fulfill their intention and function. Faith as condition and
presupposition of the sign worked by Jesus is, accordingly, the [state
of] being free from being closed off, from hardness of heart and
intellectual/spiritual pride of possession. Faith is, positively, openness
and readiness to want to see and hear what Yahweh, the God of our
Fathers, has manifested and worked in Jesus.
A striking description of this behavior can be found in the Gospel of
Luke. Immediately after the pericope which reported the demand for
signs Jesus says: "Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye
is sound, your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound,
your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you
be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part
dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you
light." (Luke 11:3436)
Light can be recognized only from light. From this fact the conclusion
is drawn: "Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness." In
other words, human beings are responsible for their fundamental
attitudeNewman would say: for the "first principles."13 All this means
that "the miraculous sign is directed not only to the external light of
the eye but also to the inner light of the heart." Gottlieb Söhngen
speaks of a rational witnessing function of the signs of revelation and
of a moral claiming function for personal conviction and
recognition.14
But could not this faith, faith as openness, as disposition, be awakened
and made real also by a "sign from heaven" so that all misgivings
would be overcome? It must be said on this point that in matters of
faith and what leads to it, there should not be and may not be any
overpowering. This would contradict the freedom of the human being,
which is claimed for them and for the faith. Against unbelief, against
an attitude of being closed off as a basic disposition of some human
beings, miracles are no helpon the contrary they bring that
fundamental disposition of human beings to light, [but] they leave the
human beings where and how they are.
As to the specific relationship of faith and miracle, this can be said:
Faith (in the sense described) is the presupposition of miracle, of sign,
of deed: "Your faith has made you healthy," to the extent that through
this faith the signs exercise the function and meaning that goes
13 Heirich Fries, Die Religionsphilosophie Newmans (Stuttgart, 1948).
14 G. Söhngen, "Wunderzeichen," 279.

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with them and lead to the knowledge that Jesus is the one sent from
God, in whom the dynamis of God is at work.
But one can also sayvery much in the sense of the biblical message
(and that is the other characterization of the relationship of miracle
and faith)Miracle is the presupposition of faith. The sign which is
seen, known, and recognized in the right disposition, readiness, and
openness can lead to faith in the specific sense: to the belief that Jesus
is the Messiah, the Christ. In the Gospel of John it is written at the
conclusion of the account of the wedding at Cana: "This, the first of
his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and
his disciples believed in him" (John 2:11). This connection between
seeing and believing is frequently pointed out in the Gospel of John at
the end of accounts of the great signs of Jesus. At the same time it
writes that the same sign (the multiplication of the loaves, the healing
of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus) according to the
respective inner disposition of human beings, can lead to faith as well
as to crisis, scandal, and division.
From all this we can say that Emil Brunner's thesis to the effect that
revelation is oriented not to faith in miracles but to conscience is not
at all antithetical to a supposed Catholic position. It actually expresses
exactly what this position means. For how the revelation encountered
in word and sign is answered and accepted does not depend on a
facile, sensation-hungry faith in miracles; it depends on conscience,
on faith.
The word, as Helmut Thielicke describes it, does not overpower the
ears so that they must hear, but makes a claim: They who have ears to
hear, let them hear! As the word is related to ears, so is miracle related
to eyes. The miracle also does not overpower the eyes so that they are
blinded. The miracle also makes a claim on the eyes: It stands there as
a sign which no one can pass by without asking: in whose name, in
whose power is this happening? (Matt 21:23) This question is asked
and must be decided. That is the claim of the miracle, no more, but
also no less.15
Thus, just as word and miracle are the two sides of revelation, so too
hearing and seeing belong together as the two functions of the same
human being, that human being to whom God's revelation is
directed.16 The signs are there to be seen, and to be attended to. The
signals are not the thing itself, but they should point out the thing,
direct the attention to it.
Let us come back to the two propositions. First the proposition of
Pascal: Without miracles I would not be a Christian. Such an
affirmation does not contravene a path to faith and an attestation of
faith of
15 H. Thielicke, "Das Wunder" in: Theologie der Anfechtung (Tübingen,
1949) 94134.
16 Ibid. 11415.

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the kind witnessed to and recorded in the Bible. But one cannot
declare Pascal's way to be the only legitimate way. The proposition of
Emil BrunnerNo one believes in Jesus because of miracles; miracles
are not the reason why someone believes in Jesushas in this extreme
and exclusive version a biblically witnessed fact against it. Brunner's
proposition is to be affirmed, that revelation is directed not to faith in
miracles but to conscience. But the proposition leaves out a
possibility: the possibility from conscience and in conscientiousness
and in an act characterized by that and called faith, of being turned to
the phenomenon of miracle, of connecting sign and conscience, and
seeing therein a possible preparation for faith.
When evaluating and arranging the deeds of Jesus that are labeled
with the word "miracle," one should keep in mind the following: One
should consider the signs and works of Jesus not just individually, and
thus in isolation; they must be seen together, in their convergence. The
thinking of J. H. Newman on the argument from convergence17 has its
justification and significance precisely for this question too. An
individual deed, an individual sign (miracle) alone and taken for itself
is not sufficient to be effective as a guiding sign; but taken together,
they carry a great deal of weight.
The miracles (signs) and works of Jesus are further to be seen in
connection with the word signifying the signs and, above all, in
connection with the person who does the deeds and who, in the deeds,
expresses the unfolding and representation of himself. This means that
Jesus is himself the great and decisive sign. J. H. Newman describes
this connection in the following words:
The right way to come to faith in Christ is by way of the person and figure
of our Lord as the Gospels describe him. Philip said to Nathaniel: Come
and see! And it is of precisely this that our present-day rationalists want to
deprive human beings. They confound and confuse them with preliminary
questions so as not to let them come under the influence of the genuine
eloquence of his divine life, his holy words and deeds.18

The Objection of Lessing

One thing are miracles which I see with my own eyes and have myself an
opportunity to check, another thing are miracles of which I know only
historically that others claim to have seen and checked them.
17 Karl Rahner and H. Vorgrimler, "Argument of Convergence," DT
(1981) 2627.
18 John Henry Newman, Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen aus der
Katholischen Zeit seines Lebens (Mainz, 1957) 602 (= Letters and Diaries).
On this theme, prominent in Newman's Grammar of Assent and numerous
other works, see Thomas J. Norris, Newman and His Theological Method
(Leiden: Brill, 1977) 1922.

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I don't deny that Christ performed miracles, but I deny that these miracles,
since their truth has fully ceased, are proven by miracles still accessible in
the present, since they are nothing but reports of miracles.
The problem is that this proof of spirit and power no longer has either
spirit or power but has descended to human witnesses of spirit and
power.19

The fact that some fact or event does not come to me through
immediate inspection but through the mediation of others does not
make the thing and the fact any different. The moment of mediation
through report applies to all events not immediately accessible to me.
Skepticism against mediation through report would be justified only if
the report were to be proven false. A radical skepticism in that regard
would reduce our knowledge and cognition to a minimum. Most of
what we live from, on which we depend, we receive through
mediation, through report; without report we would be in bottomless
chaos. That does not dispense us from the obligation and task of
checking the mediation for its credibility. But when this is produced,
there is no reasonable ground to call into question the fact and reality
mediated by it. It is not right that events, as soon as they become
mediated, should have all power taken from them.
This applies to our question all the more so since, as has already been
said, the signs and miracles witnessed in the New Testament are
mediated not in isolation but in convergence, and also in connection
with their context, i.e., of the word, and above all in connection with
the person and figure of Jesus of Nazareth.
The objection of Lessingthat the proof of spirit and power is no longer
valid today because no miracles are presently taking place that could
verify the pastoverlooks the fact that possible post-biblical miracles
have a totally different value than the miracles connected with the
person and work of Christ.
It is further to be noted that the signs witnessed in the New Testament
that belong to the content of the preaching of the message of Jesus
were directed, even in the times of the New Testament itself, not just
to the immediate eyewitnesses. Most of the hearers of the message
were no more witnesses of the events than we are. They were in fact,
and above all after Jesus' death and resurrection, in the same situation
we are: dependent on the witness and mediation of the proclaimers,
dependent on their word, message, and report. The historical distance
in space and time makes, in this consideration, no difference; it makes
the question of interpretation and appropriation into a problem to be
solved and a task to be performed.
Through the mediation of history by way of tradition and witnessand
not without this mediationthere is a possibility of hand-
19 "Über den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft" in: Lessings Werke, ed. K.
Wölfel (Frankfurt, 1967), Schriften 2.30712.

Page 349
ing on to the living present the historical past of persons, their words
and their deeds. In our case, this becomes the possibility of handing
on faith and the credibility of faith. Looked at this way, the wide, ugly
chasm between then and now of which Lessing speaks appears in
another light. His fundamental objection, however ("Contingent truths
of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason")
overlooks the fact that the truth of faith is not mediated in any way
except through history, and it is connected with history, that it is truth
as history and in history, thus not a falsely understood necessary truth
of reason, but truth connected with a person in the sense of the word
"I am the truth" (John 14:6). The historically concrete does not render
impossible the universality of some meaning; it actually brings about
that universality of meaning in the sense of the universale concretum
[concrete universal], in the sense of the "unconditioned concretion"
we have already discussed (see § 29).
The Mode of Reality of Miracle
The more traditional, and to some extent still customary way of
looking at this is as follows: A miracle is a perceivable event within
the world that diverges from the customary course of nature and its
laws and hence can be brought about only by God directly as its
cause. The essence of a miracle lies in the fact that it surpasses the
possibilities of nature and breaks through the laws of nature, as sign of
God's sovereign power and freedom as well as in attestation of a
revelation.
This description is inadequate for two reasons: We know neither the
possibilities nor all the laws, conditions, and interrelationships of
nature.
Even Augustine pointed out: "Miracles stand not against nature but
against what we know of nature." That holds for today too, although
we know a lot more about nature than Augustine could know.
Fundamentally, therefore, we can never be exactly sure that a
particular event or happening has not been caused by natural
conditions, that it has taken place outside of or against the order of
nature, and was caused immediately by God to the exclusion of
immanent causes. What is violated in a miracle is the level of our
knowledge of nature, not necessarily nature itself.
The natural science of today, with regard to the phenomenon of
miracle, is opening up a new situation, at least to the extent that the
earlier arguments brought forward in the name of natural science
against the affirmations of theology with respect to God and God's
possible action in the world, have largely been given up today. In the
earlier conception, according to which space was infinitely great,
matter

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infinite, space and time absolute and eternal and dependent on matter,
when the world as world was seen as without beginning and without
end, there was no possibility for the reality of God or for a possible
divine activity in the world. What goes as natural-scientific
knowledge nowadays is different: Space is finite, matter is finite and
dissolvable into radiation; space and time had a beginning, they are
relative and dependent on the condition of motion of matter. This
knowledge signifies that one can no longer use natural science in
principle as an argument against theological questions.
Quantum physics has opened up a new realm of nature, that of the
microcosmos, in which causality has taken on the form of probability
and of the calculation of probability under the guise of the uncertainty
principle. But for all knowledge of nature Heisenberg's maxim holds
that the laws of nature are not an image of nature but an image of our
relation to nature.20 This is, in turn, meaningful for our question.
Even more important is the knowledge that natural science today does
not identify the realm it can investigate with being as a whole, or
identify its knowledge with knowledge in general, or register claim to
an all-encompassing world view, but undertakes an explicit
description of its field. To that belongs the recognition of limits and
the knowledge of a beyond-the-limits, even if this no (longer) belongs
in its own sphere of investigation and observation.
To see in miracle an immediate intervention of God into nature, i.e.,
into the order and activity established by God, is theologically not
possible because God is thereby turned into a physical cause. God
would then no longer be the all-determining reality different from the
world as work of God. From this it follows that God does not take the
place of physical causes; God's working, whatever and however it be
(also God's working in the sense of a miracle) is mediated through
immanent, created secondary causes; God works through them.
If that were not the case, then what was produced by God without
immanent causes would stand like a relationless foreign body in the
world. We cannot think a God who is not God, no more than we can
think an event in the world which does not take place in the world and
in its contexts of events (B. Weißmahr). Natural laws are parts of the
creation of God who, in that creation, remains true to Himself.
Hence it follows: Miracle in the sense of an immediate, direct
intervention of God nullifying nature, its order, its conditions and its
laws is a theological non-concept. In a so-called miracle, the energies
and laws of nature are not nullified but made use of.
20 On this, cf. H. Dolch, Theologie und Physik (Freiburg, 1951); W.
Heisenberg, Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräch im Umkreis der
Atomphysik (Munich, 1969); Schritte über die Grenzen. Gesammelte
Reden und Aufsätze (Munich, 1971).

Page 351
But in what does the mode of reality of miracle consist? Does it
consist in the fact that everything that is, that happens, that is
encountered, also has the dimension of miracle, of the miraculous, so
that everything is a miracle, or at least in the qualification: miracles
are always happening; you only need eyes to see them? Is there
besides this still something specific or special, which can be meant
with the category "miracle"?
What happens in the world is, because it is the effect and
representation of the fact that God is the creative ground of
everything, the work of God. This does not hinder but frees up the
proper significance and proper reality of the natural on all levels. The
all-determining reality of God becomes recognizable in the variety of
the creaturely and is made manifest therein in different ways, for
example, in nature or in the free activity of human beings.
The power at work in everything, the action of God, becomes
different due to the differences in nature and the world; it can
therefore work and take on meaning in different ways. Therefore, a
happening caused by natural causalities can become through them
something special and extraordinary so that human beings come to
wonderment, astonishment, questioning, that they are moved and
challenged by the event and the circumstances surrounding it, that
they recognize in some happening a call, a word, or a message that
extends beyond what is factually present to them, which brings about
a disclosure.
But that is possible only if human beings have a relationship to reality
that goes beyond mere observation, a relationship characterized by the
fact that meaningful effects can come from reality. In other words, we
have here what we have called the revelational dimension of reality,
the special expressive power of event. So-called miracles, which only
take place but don't intend to say anything to anyone, are an absurd
idea.
Miracles presuppose human beings who are willing, in the depths of their
being, to let themselves be called in a willing openness for that which is in
their lives the singularly wonderful, which is part of the whole perceivable
world of experience and at the same time goes beyond it: i.e., in openness
and receptivity for the "beyond" in their world of experience.21

A further perspective for our question can be gained by looking at the

structure of all reality. No realm of being in reality is closed off and
belongs exclusively to itself; everything that exists stands in an open
relationship to everything else; without losing itself and its laws [of
nature, etc.], it becomes present in a new way in this relationship, and
is accepted in service and function by it. The inorganic is
"superseded" (in the sense of preserving and surmounting) in the
organically living, and
21 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 263.

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this, in turn, in the psycho-spiritual reality of the human person.
Nature on the whole is ordered to human beings not externally but
internally. The world of the physical and chemical is taken up and
preserved in the realm of the organic, biological and living. But the
living is more; it is something new in relation to physics and
chemistry and cannot be derived from them, although what is living
consists of physical elements and chemical material. Human beings as
persons in spirit, freedom, and love can, in turn, not be explained from
the data of physics, chemistry, and biology, however much they are
constituted by them. Homo quodammodo est omnia [The human being
is, in a certain sense, everything].
On every level something new becomes manifest which stands in
relation to what has preceded it and at the same time goes beyond it.
From this comes the principle: It cannot be decided from a lower level
what is possible on a higher level. The true image of the world is
therefore always to be gained a posteriori not a priori. But the spirit-
nature of human beings is itself open and receptive to a new,
historical, free activity of God, which opens up a realm beyond
creation. Creation and its order are not abrogated in this but find
therein their true fulfillment. They are taken up into the sense-context
of a "new creation," which, in turn, is sovereign.22
Jesus' works and deeds and his miracles are a sign that God's free,
historical initiative, that the new, the new eon, has already begun, that
it is turning out to be "in the world as if not in the world," a sign that
the world is not a closed book, definitively determined, standing
isolated over against its Creator, but that it is encompassed as a living
happening by this living God, who does not break through its order
and its lawsa formulation that indicates something destructivebut
preserves them and employs and engages them for a new mode of
activity.
Modern linguistics and philosophy of language can also make a
contribution to the problem of miracle. One can keep the language of
science and religious language separate from each other. Both forms
of language can be related to the same thing, but produce a different
context. Statements like "A low pressure area is causing an east wind"
and "God made an east wind come up" are logically different, since
they move in two different frames of reference.23 But this asserts that
affirmations on one level can never stand in direct contradiction with
assertions on the other level. Contradiction presupposes identity of
terms (categories of expression). Thus they move within different
language sets, even if it is about one and the same thing, which can be
presented
22 Basic ideas from R. Guardini, Wunder und Zeichen (Würzburg, 1959).
23 Example from W. Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 92.

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at one time in the context of an explanation (science), and at another
time in that of surprise (miracle).24
In conclusion: This way of looking at things enables us to see miracles
once again as coming close to the mighty deeds and signs of the Bible
and to the function assigned them there. That function neither forces
nor replaces faith but raises questions, which leads into wonderment
and astonishment and which, by the dynamic of sign, is put on the
track of an answer. The miracles of Jesus are signs of the salvation of
God's rule already entered into our world in Jesus. They are an
expression of the bodily and worldly dimension of the rule of God.
An answer that solves all problems is certainly not provided with
these manifold perspectives. But the variety of perspectives help put
us on the track of an answer, an answer that, although always open to
new questions, will, nevertheless, be able to give at least the
beginning of an answer.
24 ''Wunder in der Bibel," in: Bibel und Kirche (1974 no. 1).

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§ 37
The Resurrection (Raising) of Jesus from the Dead
The claim of Jesus to be the one who definitively reveals God seemed
to have ended in the debacle of his death. If death had been the end of
Jesus, there would be no history of the influence of Jesus, no reason to
get involved with Jesus, no faith in Jesus the Christ and no community
of those who believe in him, and there would be no Church, for Jesus
would ultimately have been uninteresting for his contemporaries and
his disciples. There would hardly have been any reason to say, one
day: "It can't be all over with Jesus; the business of Jesus goes on,"
and then have the further question of what this business is.
The confirmation Jesus' claim to be the definitive revealer, Messiah,
Son, lies, according to unanimous New Testament witness, in the
message and in the faith ordered to it: The Crucified One has been
raised from the dead; he is risen from the dead. Therefore the
resurrection of Jesus, along with all the meanings associated with it, is
also the sign and miracle. Karl Rahner says: The resurrection of Jesus
is
the essential miracle in the life of Jesus, in which his real meaning is
gathered up in radical unity and makes its appearance for us. The
resurrection of Jesus calls to us in a more radical way than the individual
miracles in the life of Jesus, since the resurrection has both the highest
identity of saving sign and saving reality (more than all other conceivable
miracles), and because it calls out to our hope of salvation and resurrection
which is given us with transcendental necessity.1

In First Corinthians, the first chronological witness to the Easter

message, this situation is just as unmistakably as radically formulated.
Paul expressly appeals to a tradition he himself has received:
That he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and
that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to more
than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive. Then
he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one
untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor 15:48)
1 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William V. Dych
(New York: Crossroad, 1994) 264.

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If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is
in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we
testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that
the dead are not raised. (1 Cor 15:1415)
The theme of the raising (resurrection) of Jesus needs only to be
mentioned and immediately there bursts upon us today not only a
flood of literature,2 butwith italso a plethora of questions and a whole
palette of meanings of what the raising (resurrection) of Jesus from
the dead is and means. It is in no way possible, however pressing and
desirable, to present in the framework of this book the whole
problematic as it is developing today. But the theme does come up
again under the theme of the Church of Christ (see below § 50).
We will seek first to unfold the sense of the resurrection message and
only then discuss the character of the resurrection event. For, from the
sense of the Easter message, many questions that can and have been
raised about the nature of the Easter event become superfluous.
The Meaning of the Resurrection Message
What the resurrection message of the New Testament says is this: God
has affirmed the way in which Jesus traveled to the cross, and with
that affirmed Jesus' death as the event through which His mission is
not in any way disavowed but brought to completion as the way of the
love of God for human beings.
The means by which God affirmed the way of Jesus was by not letting
him fall into nothingness but precisely by bringing him through
2 Cf. the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in the theological dictionaries,
handbooks, and reference works, and the presentations of this theme in the
treatises on dogma and fundamental theology, the theologies of the New
Testament, and the monographs on Jesus Christ. Walter Künneth, The
Theology of the Resurrection (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House,
1965); E. Hirsch, Die Auferstehungsgeschichten und der christliche
Glaube (Tübingen, 1940); K. H. Rengstorf, Die Auferstehung Jesu. Form
und Sinn der Urchristlichen Botschaftt 2d ed. (Witten, 1954); H. von
Campenhausen, Der Ablauf der Osterereignisse und das leere Grab, 2d ed.
(Heidelberg, 1958); H. Graß, Ostergeschehen und Ostergeschichte, 3d ed.
(Göttingen, 1964); Willi Marxsen, The Beginnings of Christology,
Together with the Lord's Supper as a Christological Problem, trans. Paul J.
Achtemeier and Lorenz Nieting (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979); J.
Kremer, Das älteste Zeugnis von der Auferstehung Christi, 2d ed.
(Stuttgart, 1967); W. MarxsenU. WilckensG. DellingH. G. Geyer, Die
Bedeutung der Auferstehungsbotschaft für den Glauben an Jesus Christus
(Gütersloh, 1967); K. Lehmann, Auferweckt am Dritten Tag nach der
Schrift (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1968); H. Schlier, Über die Auferstehung
Jesu Christi (Einsiedeln, 1968); F. Mußner, Die Auferstehung Jesu
(Munich, 1969); W. KernG. O'Collins, "Paschal Mystery," DFT 75876; A.
Kolping, Wunder und Auferstehung Jesu Christi (BergenEnkheim, 1969);
Ulrich Wilckens, Resurrection: Biblical Testimony to the Resurrection: An
Historical Examination and Explanation, trans. A. M. Stewart (Atlanta:
John Knox Press, 1978); A. Geense, Auferstehung und Offenbarung
(Göttingen, 1971), also "Die Entstehung des Auferstehungsglauben," ThQ
153 (1973); L. Scheffczyk, Auferstehung, Prinzip christlichen Glaubens
(Einsiedeln, 1975); K. Lienzler, Logik der Auferstehung
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1976); E. Schillebeeckx, Die Auferstehung Jesu als
Grund der Erlösung (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1979); A. VögtleR. Pesch, Wie
kam es zum Osterglauben? 2d ed. (Düsseldorf, 1984).

Page 356
death to the living goal of this way. The Risen Christ is "in person"
identical with Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified.
The sense of the Easter message is thus not, Jesus is dead but the
business of Jesus goes on, but, Jesus lives and therefore his business
goes on. The business of Jesus is not to be separated from his person.
But he lives not as one who comes back to life in order to die once
again, but as one who has definitively overcome death and now has it
behind him.
Jesus' resurrection asserts that he has entered into the future of the
coming kingdom of God. We cannot "conceive" this eschatological
future, since all human conception remains tied to the categories in
which our present life, which remains "under way" towards this
future, is constituted. It is qualified by the definitive victory of love
and as the definitive secure place of the love that is lived in
orientation towards this goal. The resurrection message asserts that
God has made Jesus the Lord who brings humanity towards the future
of God.
This makes clear the anthropological and existential sense of the
resurrection message. We are disposed towards it and at the same time
struck by it in the questions of life and death, and of sense and future.
In the question of ourselves, in the question of the ground and content
of our hope, in the question of our world and history, we have those
conditions and presuppositions needed to perceive the resurrection
message as word, as answer and as invitation as well as disclosure of
our being (Dasein).3
The Question of the Resurrection Event
But there is the historical problematic of the biblical accounts of
Easter. It is incontestable (above all, on the basis of 1 Corinthians 15)
that persons from the circle of the followers of Jesus had experiences
and encounters which they understood as self-manifestations of the
risen Jesus. But these experiences are not uniformly described in the
Easter accounts of the Gospels (cf. the synopsis of these accounts:
about the day of the resurrection, about people going to the grave,
about the appearances of the Risen One in Jerusalem, in Galilee).
In his writing Eine Duplik [A Rejoinder], Lessing takes issue with the
thesis "The resurrection of Christ is not to be believed because the
accounts of it in the Gospels are contradictory." Lessing replies: "The
resurrection can be allowed its proper accuracy even though the
accounts of the Gospels are contradictory"; he adds that in no secular
history reported in different ways by different authorseven in a
contradictory wayswould such a negative conclusion be drawn. In no
wise would the event itself on which they agree be denied.4 Lessing
rejects textual
3 K. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 26874.
4 G. E. Lessing, in: Lessings Werke, ed. K. Wölfel, vol. 3.323.

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harmonizing and sees a proof of its truth precisely in the fact that it is
not harmonizable. He discusses the textual contradictionsstill studied
todaybut is not moved from his fundamental conviction.
There is also the factual problematic of the biblical accounts of Easter.
The ideas about the bodiliness of the Risen One do not seem to be
uniform. In the Gospels, especially in Luke and John, the "tangibility"
of this body is in part strongly emphasized, even to the point of
touchability and the taking of food. Paul on the other hand emphasizes
the radical otherness of the "spiritual [pneumatikos] body" over
against the earthly form of existence. Reflected here is the difficulty
of describing what is new and specialthe character of being absolutely
without analogyin the mode of being of the Risen One.
The resurrection event itself is not described anywhere in the New
Testament. On the question of the resurrection event, there are
different positions in contemporary theology and discussion:
There took place in the spatio-temporal context only visions; and
connected with them the inner process that they to whom they were
communicated became certain of the abiding validity and future
power of the word and business of Jesus despite his execution (E.
Hirsch).
There took place in the spatio-temporal context visions; but connected
with them the inner process that they to whom they were
communicated became certain of the presence of Jesus himself
awakened from the dead to eschatological life. Thus, in the medium of
visions took place the self-attestation of the Risen Jesus. However the
presupposition for this cannot be placed as an event in the spatio-
temporal context (H. Graß).
There took place in the spatio-temporal context not only visions but a
real seeing of the Risen One in new bodiliness. The presupposition
here is that the body of the crucified was taken from the tomb and
restored, if not in an earthly form of existence, then transformed into a
pneumatic bodiliness. To that extent the raising up itself must be
understood at least as an event breaking into the spatio-temporal
context and being manifested therein by the emptied grave (W.
Künneth).
There took place nothing at all. The raising (resurrection) of Jesus
from the dead is a metaphor. Resurrection is an interpretation for the
fact that the business of Jesus goes on (W. Marxsen).
There took place nothing. The raising (resurrection) of Jesus is an
indication of the salvific significance of the cross, which alone can
stand as an historical event: Jesusthat means resurrectionis risen in the
word, in the kerygma (R. Bultmann).
The raising (resurrection) of Jesus is an historical event which took
place in the apocalyptic-traditional context of the raising from the
deadin this context belongs also the tradition of the empty tomb.

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The accounts of the empty tomb as confirmation of the resurrection of
Jesus, as found above all in the Gospels, primarily in Mark 16, are,
however, hard to harmonize in their differences; they don't admit of a
historical reconstruction, and they represent an independent tradition
of their own next to that of the appearances and encounters with the
Risen One.
The empty tomb as such is not an adequate grounding for the
resurrection of Jesus and the Easter faith of the disciples. The Gospels
themselves report that the fact of the empty tomb can be explained in
different ways (cf. Matt 28:1115; John 20:15). Thus one can say that
belief in the resurrection of Jesus took its beginning not from the so-
called stories of the empty tomb, but from the proclamation, the
confession and witness: "We have seen the Lord." This experience is
the grounding for the phenomenon of the empty tomb; it makes clear
why the tomb was empty.
"The empty tomb is for the faith not an indication, but rather a sign."5
This sign was important above all for the proclamation of the
resurrection message in Jerusalem.
In Jerusalem, at the place of the execution and tomb of Jesus, it was
proclaimed, not long after his death, that he was risen. This fact requires
that there was a reliable sign of this in the circle of the first community,
that the tomb had been found empty. The kerygma of the resurrection
could not have stood for a single day or for a single hour in Jerusalem if
the emptiness of the tomb had not held fast as a fact for all concerned.6
The fact of the empty tomb was also never contested by hostile
polemic.
If an historical event has to be characterized in such a way that an
inner-historical analogy, an immanent causality and a protocol about
the process of this causality belong to it, then the resurrection of Jesus
cannot be a historical event. It is a process completely without
parallel. Its only analogy is creation out of nothing (cf. Rom 4:17).
The raising (resurrection) of Jesus can, however, be called an
historical event to the extent that it opens up a new horizon in the
space of history and a new goal established as our future for
historically living human beings, and thus became historically
relevant in its effects. This is all the more true since what is new,
unexpected, unforeseen, and not-determinable also belongs in
principle to the reality of the historicalalong with continuity and
context.
Wolfhart Pannenberg speaks decisively of the resurrection as
historical event and declares that it is not those who assert but those
who dispute the resurrection as an historical event who have the
burden of
5 Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, trans. V. Green (New York: Paulist
Press, 1977) 135.
6 P. Althaus, in: Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, 2d ed., trans.
Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A Priebe (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1977).

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proof. The objections against the fact of the resurrection come not so
much from the accounts of the resurrection as from the presupposition
that the historian cannot accept as fact such an unusual kind of event.
But that is an unhistorical argument, an argument that rests on a quite
specific world view in which, it is claimed, the dead remain dead.
Pannenberg closes his reflections with the words:
If the origin of primitive Christianity which, apart from other traditions,
even in Paul is traced back to appearances of the Risen One, and if, despite
all critical examination of the content of the tradition, it becomes
understandable only if one considers it in the light of the eschatological
resurrection of the dead, and Jesus' resurrection from the dead within that,
then the event so described is an historical event even if we don't know
anything more about it. But without this historical base the Christian faith
would lose it foundation. Thus, an event is to be asserted as historical
which can be expressed only in [the context of] eschatological
expectation.7
However one might describe the character of the so-called
appearances, what they are all about is the attestation of Jesus who has
been taken up into the future of God, into the future without death,
into everlasting life. The causal ground of the resurrection experience,
the seeing and the meeting with the Risen One, is not the productivity
of the human power of imagination; it is rather the will of the
resurrected Jesus to meet his disciples and let himself be seen as the
Risen One. The experiences of the disciples, as witnesses of the Risen
One and thereby witnesses of the resurrection, are the self-attestations
of the Risen One.
How these experiences are represented in the disciples themselves is
shown in their radical conversion, which turns out to be like a new
creation: "From denyers have come confessors; from doubters,
believers; from persecutors, followers and persecuted; from those
running away, ambassadors; from failures, the called." They are the
answer to what happened in and to Jesus: "From the rejected, he has
become the accepted; from the abased, the exalted; from the dead, the
living; from the past, the one who is coming; from the absent, the one
abidingly present."8
Edward Schillebeeckx9 says that the resurrection of Jesus is both a
Jesus-event and a disciples-event. The resurrection of Jesus is for the
disciples an inner process; their unbelief is overcome by an experience
of conversion and grace. This conversion comes about by
illumination, by seeing Jesus. The disciples have experienced a
conversion: from disappointment in Jesus to metanoia and to the
recognition that he is the eschatological prophet, the one who is to
come, the Savior of the world, the Son of Man, the Son of God. Thus
Schillebeeckx can also say: since
7 W. Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, 98.
8 G. Ebeling, Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens II (Tübingen, 1979) 3012.
9 Edward Schillebeeckx, Die Auferstehung Jesu als Grund der Erlösung,
9091.

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the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the kingdom of God bears the
face of Jesus Christ.10
Theology of the Resurrection
Jürgen Moltmann makes the resurrection of Jesus from the dead the
starting point and middle point of his Theology of Hope; it is the
ground of the hope of the Christian faith. His interpretation of the
Easter event is clear and unambiguous. He declares that the Easter
event is not an "expression of" but an "affirmation about." The words
of the witnesses do not say: "I am certain,'' but "It is certain." The
historical misgivings brought forward as an objection against the
event-character of the resurrection of Jesus he answers with the
indication that Easter, as absolute, new, future-opening beginning is to
be described with other than the usual this-worldly categories. Thus,
from immanent or historical experience no argument against the
Easter event can be brought into play. It is rather from the Easter event
that experience is to be understood in a new way. The resurrection of
Jesus is no analogy to what always and otherwise can be experienced,
but is "analogy to that which is to come." The resurrection is historical
because it "instituted history in which one can and must live to the
extent that it points out the road to what will happen in the future. It is
historical because it opens up the eschatological future."11
If we ask what was revealed in the resurrection of Jesus from the
dead, we can say: Revealed was the being of God in the definitive
sense. What before shone in many beams is now brought together. If
God really is God, then death can be no limit for God, but a mode of
God's coming and a mode of God's revelation. Thus seen, resurrection
faith is "no addition to faith in God and in Jesus Christ; it is the
summing up and central concept of this faith."12
"The resurrection of Jesus is not only the decisive eschatological act of
God, but an eschatological self-revelation; in it becomes definitively and
unsurpassably manifest who God is: the one whose power encompasses
life and death, being and non-being, who is creative love and fidelity, the
power of new life, in whom therefore, even in the face of the shattering of
all human possibilities, there is still unconditioned trust.
The raising of Jesus is the revelation and the proclamation of the kingdom
of God proclaimed by Jesus. In the raising of Jesus from the dead God has
proven His fidelity and love and definitively identified Himself with Jesus
and his business.13
10 E. Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. Herbert
Hoskins (New York: Seabury Press, 1979) 320.
11 Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of
a Christian Eschatology (New York: Harper & Row, 1967) 18081.
12 W. Kasper, Jesus the Christ, 145.
13 Ibid.145.

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Karl Rahner has made the impressive attempt to bring the message of
the resurrection of Jesus and the content therein witnessed into
relationship with human beings and their existence. He speaks of the
"transcendental resurrection-hope as horizon for the experience of the
resurrection of Jesus."
All human beings carry out with transcendental necessity, in the mode of
either free acceptance or free rejection, the act of hope in their own
resurrection. For all human beings want to be affirmed in definitiveness,
and they experience this claim in the act of their own responsible freedom,
whether or not they are able to thematize this implication of their exercise
of freedom, whether they accept it believingly or reject it in doubt.14

This means:
We ourselves are not simply and absolutely outside the [circle of]
witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus: We do not perceive something that
lies totally outside of our horizon of experience. People experience their
own resurrection, hoping to survive death, and do that in view of the Risen
One standing before us in the apostolic witness. If this is taken into
consideration, what ground would there be to forbid us, before our moral
truth-conscience, from relying on the Easter experience of the first
disciples? Nothing forces us against our will to believe them if we choose
to remain skeptical. But much empowers us to believe them. Demanded of
us is the boldest, and yet again the most self-evident thing: namely, to risk
our existence on the fact that it is as a whole oriented to God, that it has a
definitive sense, that it can be healed and saved, that this is precisely what
took place in Jesus in an exemplary and productive manner, and that in
view of him it is possible to believe this of ourselves just as the first
disciples did, in whom that which we always wanted to do (i.e., believe)
and for which we search from the depth of our being the historical
objectivity, by which this faith can come in, has really happened with an
absoluteness right up to death.
Do we have a better solution for the fundamental question of the sense of
our existence? Is it really more honest, or simply on the deepest level more
cowardly, to shrug our shoulders skeptically before this fundamental
question and still go on (in that we live and try to live decently) as if
everything still had a sense? It doesn't need to be maintained that those
who think that they cannot believe in Jesus' resurrection would not like to
live in an ultimately unqualified fidelity to their conscience. But we do
maintain here that those who really do this, corresponding to or
contradicting their own reflexive interpretation of their existence, believe
in thefor them namelessRisen One, whether they expressly know it or not.
For it is also true of people such as this that, in the fundamental decision of
their existence, they are tending towards healed, redeemed existence (with
body and soul) as that which this earthly life itself transforms. They are
thus moving into history and even at best don't yet know whether it has
gotten to that point which even such a faith confesses to be the future of
history. But then this faith, which is also our faith, bathes in the light of
Jesus and the faith of his disciples, and does not need to shrink from
confessing: It has already happened.15
14 Foundations of Faith 268.
15 K. RahnerJ. SchmittW. BulstJ. SchmidJ. Ratzinger, "Resurrection," SM
5.32342.

Page 363

Part Three
Revelation as Theme of Church Tradition and of
Theological Reflection

Page 364
Ecclesiastical tradition is the tradition of the origin of Christianity,
more exactly, Christianity's biblically witnessed origin. This origin is
the content of tradition.
This is also true of the theme "revelation." And it is true in a special
way because revelation encompasses all individual contents and
presents them as contents of revelation. Hence one can also say: If
church is faith community, if ecclesiastical tradition is tradition of
faith, then the decisive and comprehensive point of reference is again
revelation.
Tradition is nevertheless not a mere repetition of the origin, the
handing on of some dead material, however precious that might still
be. But such a handing on was never possible because the origin to be
transmitted is an event which intends to bring something about, which
has brought something about. But this is possible only if the origin is
transmitted or transmits itself in historically living tradition. The
vitality comes about through the mediation of revelation and faith into
the respective time constituted by living human beings, who in turn
are stamped by the spiritual, intellectual, cultural, social, political, and
economic factors of an epoch. The tradition of the origin is to take
place for human beings and their faith. It follows that the tradition of
the origin must be a living handing-on. Therein lie both its constants
and its transformations and variants. But only through a vitality that
also includes transformation can fidelity to the origin be preserved.
This means, with a view to language, that it is not by repetition of old
words in old language and concepts from the past but by the effort to
articulate the origin in new language and concepts that the origin is
preserved.
For our theme, this means that if revelation is the comprehensive point
of reference of faith, if the Church is understood as the community of
faith and of the faithful, then revelation as theme of the origin must be
the constant, abiding theme of this community and its history, of its
revelation. Without this point of reference the community would lose
its ground and the abiding orientation that lies within it.

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It does not follow from this fact that the theme "revelation" has
always been expressly articulated and reflected on in the faith
community of the Church and its history of tradition.
The way of life that one takes for granted is not only preserved by life
itself, by the life of faith and of the community of faith, it also
achieves through this same life of faith its necessary continuity and
adaptability. It is different when what one has received and taken for
granted is challenged or attacked. What one took for granted must
now be looked into, clarified, and defined over against denials and
attacks. This is how most dogmas arose. They point to a situation of
urgency in which a matter of faith was under attack.
Let us apply this situation to our theme. In a time that understood
itself as self-evidently Christian, the comprehensive origin of what is
Christian, revelation, was not a controversial theme but a likely point
of origin and orientation. Within this horizon a controversy could be
sparked only with respect to individual contents of faith, but not with
respect to its comprehensive presuppositions, i.e., revelation.
This situation was not changed by the Reformation, except possibly in
the sense of a different interpretation of something that, in its fact, was
not controverted. The matter of the origin itself under the sign of sola
scriptura [Scripture alone] was awakened anew, deepened, and
brought to consciousness by the Reformation. Only with the onset of
the so-called modern age did there come a change. This took place as
the conflict between faith and knowledge broke out and was decided
in favor of knowledge; it took place as human beings freed themselves
from their previous bonds and authorities, emancipated themselves in
thought and behavior, became responsible only to themselves and
their own thought, and challenged revelation as a source of knowledge
and a disclosure of reality, challenged it as orientation for behavior or
as supernatural event, or simply called it inappropriate for enlightened
human beings. Thus it is not surprising that the question of revelation
as a theme expressly requiring theological articulation was first taken
up in the modern age: concretely in Vatican I andwith notable
differencesin the Second Vatican Council.
That it should become an object of theological reflection does not
mean that theology is to present, repeat, or justify what has been said
in, so to speak, official church language. But it is true that theology
cannot pass over these data inattentively. If councils, as gatherings of
bishops from the whole world, and their definitions or affirmations are
a point of reference for the faith, then they are that for theology too,
for reflection about the faith.
But first there is the task of understanding what has happened and
what has been said. One gets this through knowledge of the context
and

Page 366
the horizon of questioning to which the councils, in their answers,
were referring.
From the situation of the questioning in which some content of the
faith was expressly defined come the rules of a factual interpretation
and hermeneutic. This hermeneutic must above all consider that an
answer given for a specific situation of questioning cannot be an
exhaustive, all-encompassing affirmation in the matter, and that itthis
is a further conclusiondoes not intend to be turned into that. That this
has nevertheless been taking place is one of the reasons for the
problems and difficulties encountered today in theology and Church.

Page 367
§ 38
Revelation as Theme of Two Councils
The Contribution and Result of the First Vatican Council
It is indeed true that Vatican I focused specifically on fundamental-
theological issues and that it had a defensive-apologetic way of
formulating its questions. It treated the question "revelation and faith"
as well as a part of the thematic connected with the Church as a
fundamental-theological problem (the primacy of the pope and the
infallibility of his ex cathedra decisions).
The dogmatic constitution "Dei Filius" de fide catholica [On the
Catholic Faith] treats first of God, the Creator of all things. In the
second chapter it treats of revelation, in the third chapter of faith, in
the fourth chapter of faith and reason. As one can see, these are the
themes of this book.1
After the first chapter declares that God, as both ground and end
(principium et finis) of all things, can be known from created things
through the light of natural, human reason-this is a description of
natural revelation, the revelation of God in reality understood as
revelationthe constitution goes on to speak of God in the specific
supernatural sense. It says:
It was pleasing to the wisdom and goodness [of God] to reveal Himself
and the eternal decrees of God's will to the human race by a different way,
a supernatural way. As the Apostle says: At many times and in many ways
God formerly spoke to the Fathers through the Prophets. But in these last
days God has spoken to us in his Son (Heb. 1:1f.).
The Latin phrasing brings out even more the precision of this
assertion:
1 H. J. Pottmeyer, Der Glaube vor dem Anspruch der Wissenschaft. Die
Konstitution über den katholischen Glauben "Dei Filius" des I.
Vatikanischen Konzils und die unveröffentlichten theologischen Voten der
vorbereitended Kommision (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1968); P. Eicher,
Offenbarung. Prinzip Neuzeitlicher Theologie (Munich 1977) 73162.

Page 368
Sancta mater Ecclesia tenet et docet . . . placuisse eius sapientiae et
bonitati, alia eaque supernaturali via se ipsum ac aeterna voluntatis suae
decreta humano generi revelare.2
The formulations contained in these words need to be explained and
interpreted.
1. The text of the conciliar statement obviously speaks of different
forms and modes of revelation. It speaks of another and specifically
supernatural way, of an "alia eaque supernaturalis via," in which the
revelation of God is seen. Whoever speaks of an "alia viaanother
way," already presupposes one way. And if the alia via is called
"supernaturalis," then the one presupposed way can only be a via
naturalisnatural way, even if it is not explicitly called that. In other
words, supernatural revelation is contrasted with natural revelation.
According to the words of the council, natural revelation takes place
and is found in the work of creation: in the "res creataecreated
things," in the ''creatura mundicreated things of the world." It is said
of these things that they allow God to be known and seen. The Epistle
to the Romans (1:20) is quoted as the classical support for this
affirmation. Finally, it is said that this revelation of God is accessible
to the natural light of human reason: accessible in the form of
knowledge.
Nothing is said about the how of this knowledge, nor is anything said
about how many human beings actually have this knowledge. A very
important sentence, however, does speak clearly about the concrete
realization of this knowledge of God.3 Revelation in the supernatural
sense has its necessary function and meaning also in the fact that, as
Aquinas put it, "that aspect of the divine things which is accessible to
human reason as such can, even in the present situation of the human
race, be easily known by all, with firm certitude and without any
admittance of error."4
Therefore, in order to understand correctly these statements with
respect to natural revelation and the knowledge of God corresponding
to it, one must read both sentences together. This doesn't result in
something contradictory; it rather describes the whole in a
differentiated manner of speaking: the horizon of real possibility and
the fact of the extent to which this horizon is factually, concretely,
historically reached and fulfilled, or not reached and fulfilled. The
council describes what human beings have factually made or not made
of this possibility. It thus unites an abstract-metaphysical and a
concrete-salvation historical consideration of human beings.
These characteristics correspond to the twofold structure of the
affirmations of the Epistle to the Romans, to which the council
appeals.
2 DS 3004.
3 DS 3005.
4STh 1, q. 1, a. 1.

Page 369
There, along with the clearly formulated statements about the
knowledge of God, is placed the guilt of human beings: Human beings
are culpable because they "by their wickedness suppress the truth"
(Rom 1:18).
Building upon this text, theology speaks of the "natural revelation" of
God. This is an interpretation of what the Bible and the teaching
magisterium describe as revelation in and through creation and the
work of creation. Creation and nature, concepts we are accustomed to
put together and see together, stem by no means from the same roots
and origins. Natura, physis, is a concept of Greek philosophy which
has no place for creation by God out of nothing, and which even
denies this if, by physis and natura, one understands that which has
arisen and come to be from and of itself. Creation, creatura, is by
contrast, a theological concept which expressly contradicts any self-
actuated coming to be and any placing of the creature in the place of
nature. But it is possible and legitimateand this shows the possible
change in form of the conceptsto integrate nature into creation, and
thus to separate the concept "nature" from its original roots and to
understand it as creation. "Nature," "natural," is meant in this way in
the theological expression: ''natural revelation." It is revelation of God
in creation, revelation of God in His work.
To sum up: Under natural revelation we understand, objectively,
creation. At the pinnacle of creation are first and foremost, human
beings. On the basis of its creational being and consequent similarity
with the being of the Creator (on the basis, therefore, of the analogy of
being) creation makes known and points out the being and essence of
the superworldly, otherworldly God. Insofar, then, as human beings
can grasp, perceive, and know this making-known by the light of their
natural reason, they can to that extent express it in their words. For it
is in word that the openness that is there in being and is being pointed
out there is made manifest. That is why human beings as spirit-
endowed creatures are a revelation of God incomparably more than
creation apart from humanity. Humanity is made after "God's image
and likeness" and represents this dignity in its spirit-grounded lordship
over creation and in its ability to give creatures their names (cf. Gen
1:2627; 2:19).5
2. "Supernatural revelation" is to be distinguished from "natural
revelation." Supernatural revelation is that form of divine disclosure
which, objectively, is not given to human beings along with creation
and which, subjectively, cannot be attained by the unaided powers of
the human spirit.
5 G. Söhngen, "Die Biblische Lehre von der Gottebenbildlichkeit des
Menschen" in: Die Einheit in der Theologie 173211.

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Revelation in its so-called supernatural mode leads beyond the
revelation present in nature as work and creation of God. It consists in
the fact that God makes known "Himself and the decrees of His will"
in a way which cannot be disclosed and perceived by creation and by
human beings: "se ipsum ac aeterna voluntatis suae decreta revelare."
This making-known has the fundamental structure of mediation
through person and of the self-disclosure of person, the fundamental
structure of word, and it takes place in the realm of history. Based on
the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the council mentions
above all two historical epochs for the actualization of this revelation:
''in times past to the Fathers" through the prophets as bearers of divine
messages, decisions, and mandates; and to us "in these last days,"
now, in the Son, who is the Word of God in person. Revelation in
word is completed in revelation in person. It remains revelation in
word because the Son is the word.
Supernatural revelation takes place in history, in specific epochs and
moments, in the past and in the present. Connected with this is a
concretion in a specific Here and Now, in a "Within" the world.
Natural revelation stands at the beginning of history, insofar as history
begins with creation. Within this beginning, natural revelation is in
principle, from the outset, open to all human beings in every place and
every time; it is revelatio generalis (general revelation). Apart from
this, special supernatural revelation, which takes place through the
Prophets and the Son, and thus takes place in a specific historical and
personal concretion, and thus is revelatio specialis (special
revelation), is intended for all human beings, for the human race.
For clarity's sake, since it is not a question of different levels of
knowledge, it is both right and necessary to distinguish natural and
supernatural revelation, to characterize them with the terms revelatio
generalis and specialis, and to keep them separate in content. But, out
of the same need for precise, differentiated knowledge, it is equally
necessary to see the connection of the two modes of revelation: It is
one and the same God who is self-revealing in creation and in word,
deed, and history and finally, in personal, human form; and it is one
and the same human being to whom, as knower and believer,
revelation is given and to whom it is directed.
Revelation in creation, in work, in human beings, is the
presupposition for the revelation of God in deed, word, history, and
person. The well-known scholastic axiom sums it up in the phrase
"gratia praesupponit naturam (grace presupposes nature)."6
Supernatural revelation presupposes the world, creation and above all
human beings in their
6 Joseph Ratzinger, "Gratia praesupponit naturam. Erwägungen über Sinn
und Grenze eines scholastischen Axioms" in: J. RatzingerH. Fries,
Einsicht und Glaube (Festschrift G. Söhngen), (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1962) 13549.

Page 371
humanness as self-transcending created being. Supernatural revelation
makes use of the language, means of expression, and instrumentality
present in creation. On the other hand, it is also true that the natural is
integrated in the supernatural and factually brought to its ultimate
perfection: "gratia perficit et complet naturam (grace perfects and
completes nature)." The revelation of creation is taken up in the
revelation of word and person and brought to itself; it is made perfect
as new creation, as new life, as rebirth. In a now-familiar formulation,
Karl Barth speaks of creation as the external ground of the covenant
and of the covenant as the inner ground of creation.7
Supernatural revelation encounters human beings not as an objective
"in itself" and indifferent "over-against." It discloses to human beings
something decisive about themselves: If human beings, from their
origin, existence, and essence, are called to the self-transcending, thus
supernatural, goal of their selves; if the human being infinitely
surpasses the human being (Pascal); if God is the ultimate and
exclusive satisfaction of the human spirit and the human heartthen it is
not just for the sake of knowledge but for the sake of this ultimate
goal-destination of human beings and for the sake of the meaning of
human existence contained in it that supernatural revelation as
personal self-disclosure of God and as opening up of God's eternal
decrees of salvation is both called for and, in a certain sense, required.
The First Vatican Council grounds this in the words: Supernatural
revelation was necessary,
because God in his boundless goodness has ordained human beings to a
supernatural end, namely to participation in the divine realities which
totally surpass the vision of the human spirit: for "no eye has seen, nor ear
heard, nor the heart of man perceived, what God has prepared for those
who love him. (1 Corinthians 2:9)

To know of this goal and its contents is absolutely decisive for the
meaning of what it is to be human and for the orientation of human
existence.
From these connections we can see how much supernatural revelation
is related to human beings, and that it thus has existential meaning and
significance for themit both affects them and interprets their existence.
And since human beings are actually constituted in their "supernatural
existential" and their "desiderium naturale videndi Deum (natural
desire of seeing God)," we can also see that human beings are the
"nature" called to supernature, are not alienated by the truth and the
event of this revelation, but are thereby brought to what they really
are, in terms of uniqueness, actualization, and fulfillment. It is thus
"inexistential," unnatural, to close off and refuse to acknowledge
supernature thus understood.
7 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. (Louisville: John Knox Press
1994) III/1. 39, 42329.

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But what we are saying here need not be understood as if supernatural
revelation represented total perfection for human beings and for
human nature. For the concrete historical human being is defective
nature. Nature thus constituted cannot, therefore, in itself, i.e., in its
own fallen, perverted orientation, be brought to perfection; rather it
must, in its own misguided self-glorification, be transformed, if
human beings are to come into possession of their own perfection.
Human beings must, therefore, be converted, in order to be able to
become themselves. They must "deny themselves," they must break
out of their self-centered existence, their "cor incurvatum in se," in
order to recognize themselves in truth.8
3. Directly connected with the question of revelation is also the
question of faith. Faith as answer to revelation thus belongs to the
revelation event. On this point Vatican I comes out with a quite
impressive description when it defines faith by starting from human
beings, hence from a comprehensive anthropology. The proposition
reads:
Since human beings are totally dependent on God, their Creator and Lord,
and created reason is totally inferior to uncreated Wisdom, we are obliged
to render to the self-revealing God through faith the full obediential
service of understanding and will.9

Faith, it is said here, is the corresponding correlative to human beings

who understand themselves as created, who recognize the total
authority of God, and who, in faith, turn hearing into intensive hearing
in the sense of faith. In faith as act of hearing and hearkening, human
beings come to the truth about themselves. The refusal of faith, in the
sense of an absolute autonomy demanded by human beings, totally
misses what it means to be human.
Introducing a certain limiting specification, one that has become
normative for the clarification and understanding of faith, Vatican I
also states:
This faith, the beginning of human salvation, is, according to the teaching
of the Catholic church, a supernatural virtue by whose power, with the
inspiration and grace of God, holds as true everything that God has
revealed (emphasis ours), and indeed not because we see into the inner
truth of the matter by the natural light of reason, but because of the
authority of the revealing God, who can neither be deceived nor deceive
others. For, according to the claim of the Apostle, faith "is the assurance of
things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Heb. 11:1)10

The whole focus of this text is on the authority of God as

corresponding to the hearing and hearkening of believing human
beings, and this authority as both life-creating and faith-enabling
source. This authority is spoken of as the reality that makes human
beings what they
8 J. Ratzinger, "Gratia praesupponit naturam" 14649.
9 DS 3008
10 Ibid.

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are; it stands in opposition to a reason that recognizes nothing but
what comes from itself. But this authority does not stand in opposition
to knowledge as such. It is rather acknowledged as one way in which
knowledge is opened up for human beings.11
From this starting point, faith is described as a "holding to be true
what God has revealed." This sets up an "instruction-theoretic"
(instructionstheoretische) specification of faith, of which it has been
said with some justiceabove all by [Lutheran] evangelical
theologythat it is intellectualist and objectivist. What is presented here
is an impersonal "It-" and "That-faith"; the ''You-faith," truth as
encounter, is left out.12 That can be said only if one attends to the last
quoted sentence and separates it from the interconnectedness of this
faith in the full reality of human beings as creatures, as hearers of the
Word, as receivers of salvation.
In response, we have to go back again to the theme of revelation: The
specific description of special supernatural revelation by Vatican I in
the words "God has revealed Himself and the eternal decrees of His
salvific will" is, by all accounts, a classical description. It is a good
expression of those aspects of revelation having to do with word,
person, history, and event. There is no justification for accusing
Vatican I of onesidedness and narrowness on this particular point.
Vatican I is better than its reputation.
4. The statements of Vatican I have to be understood and evaluated in
their own time; their purpose was to be of service to the faith and to
the faithful.
They did this in the sense of the contradictions characterizing the
situation at that time. Against the theses of the time, which were
understood and expressly articulated as antitheses to faith and Church,
the Council established its own theses, understood as antitheses to the
spirit of the time. The possibility of thinking more syntheticallythat
perhaps the theses of the other side might contain something more
than just errorwas apparently not available to either side. They
remained two hostile fronts, and the Council did its best to emphasize
this opposition and to reject as confusion all attempts to break down
the fronts. Since the spirit of the time was articulated mostly in the
"isms" of the various world views, it was quite understandable that it
would be encountered in this way and that faith was spoken of
primarily as doctrine, as truth.
This kind of thinking was not restricted to the Church but was typical
of the whole time. The practical way of doing things was to set one-
11 H. G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and
Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1989) 27785.
12 Emil Brunner, Truth as Encounter, trans. Amandus W. Loos (London: S.
C. M. Press, 1964).

Page 374
self apart, to defend oneself, to be vigilant, and when necessary to flee
from the other in order not to come into contact.
Those who think historically will concede the justice of this situation.
They will not be able to charge Vatican I only with narrowness or fear,
retreat or failure. All the more so when one considers the
differentiations made at this council and the dialectical statements, for
example between possibility as such and facticity, or when one recalls
the attempts at synthesis between faith and reason, Church and
culture, which, to be sure, were not given enough attention later on
because an undifferentiated manner of speaking was in vogue. One
also has to take note of the dialectical situation, the fact that Vatican I
faced two fronts: over-against a radically conceived autonomy of
human reason, which denied from the outset any possibility of faith,
and over-against a rejection of reason in the name of a faith borne
only by feeling, personal experience, or inner experience. Against the
first position the council rightly spoke of faith and the limits of
reason; against the second position the council explicitly made itself
the advocate of reason in the realm of faith. This was done over-
against the despisers of reason in the name of faith. In doing this the
council upheld an astonishing epistemological optimism, something
which these days is no longer achievable to the same extent.
But the same viewpoint of an historical justification leads to a second
conclusion: to see that this historically conditioned perspective should
not be explained in an unhistorically timeless stasis as the whole
thing, as all of what faith means, or as all of what follows from faith
for encounter with the world. Not to see the historical perspective of
Vatican I, but to qualify it as a comprehensive, exhaustive
statementthat is a fundamental misunderstanding. This council of a
century ago had its point of reference, its addressees and its manner of
dealing with them. It could thus express itself only in the orientation
provided, in the orientation provided by the timeby and in which it
was also confined. They who overlook this conditionedness and turn
conditioned statements into universal theses not only do wrong to
Vatican I, they also fall short in the matter of faith.13
Thus it is that these statements of Vatican I not only allow but demand
that other perspectives be brought out, as for example in the signs of
the times which turned out to be different in Vatican II than in the time
of a hundred years ago. For the spirit of that age was characterized not
only by its unfortunate opposition to faith, but also by an atmosphere
that saw possibilities only in contradictions. One becomes aware of
the possibility of these other persepectives when a time is understood
not just in its "isms," but in its concrete human beings, who are
always more than the incarnation of an "ism." This happens when one
13 G. Schwaiger, ed., Hundert Jahre nach dem I. Vatikanum (Regensburg,
1970).

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talks not just dogmatically and theoretically, but pastorally and
existentially, not in the form of anathemas but in the style of the Good
News, of dialogue and invitation. This will lead to the recognition that
faith is to be understood not only in the form of doctrine butjust as
importantas the existential specification of human beings; that
relationship to others can consist not just in defense, in condemnation,
in flight, or in protecting. To understand faith as only a No to the
world is as narrow and unacceptable as understanding the world as
only a No to faith. Faith should also and above all be mediated as
offer, as light, as help, as orientation, as the specification of the
meaning of existence. Only in this way will we ward off the danger,
which lies in the purely defensive attitude of faith, the danger that
faith and Church become a worldless ghetto, and thus alienated and
misguided.
This is also the only to way to avoid what was not avoided in Vatican
I: exercising extensive criticism and passing judgment on the situation
and condition of the world and on the spirit of the time, but refusing to
subject to any criticism of its own the concrete Church itself, its
condition and its attitude in a falsely understood triumphalism, or in
an irrelevant timelessness, untouched and unmoved by any historical
fate, and thus failing to set up any presuppositions for a renewal of the
Church, but simply saying, with the general opinion of the time, that
the Church has no need of renewal.
Revelation as Theme of the Second Vatican Council
The Second Vatican Council, which is related not only in name but
also in issues with the context of Vatican I, without repeating it, did
this also with respect to the theme "Revelation." This was done in the
Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation which is known under
the label of its beginning words, Dei verbum.14
This constitution is considered by not a few theologians, particularly
Protestant theologians, as just as significant as the Constitution on the
Church (Lumen gentium) and the Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World (Gaudium et spes). Some, like Oscar Cullmann, even
hold it to be the most important declaration of the whole Council. One
sees the reason for this when one takes into consideration the
theological and ecumenical significance of this text.
14Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, 5 vols., ed. by H.
Vorgrimler, trans. Lalit Adolphus (New York: Crossroad, 1989),
"Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation," 3.15572.; J. Ch. Hampe,
ed., vol. 1, Die Autoritat der Freiheit (Munich, 1967) 109239; E.
Stakemeier, Die Konzilskonstitution uber die göttliche Offenbarung, 2d ed.
(Paderborn, 1967); P. Eicher, Offenbarung (483543); H. Sauer, "Von den
'Quellen der Offenbarung' zur 'Offenbarung selbst.' Zum theologischen
Hintergrund der Auseinandersetzung um das Schema 'Uber die göttliche
Offenbarung' beim II. Vatikanischen Konzil" in: Glaube im Prozess.
Christsein nach dem II. Vatikanum, ed., E. Klinger and K. Wittstadt, 5th
ed. (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1938) 51445.

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1. This constitution had a somewhat dramatic history at the council
itself. Its composition produced no fewer than six different versions.
We can touch only briefly upon this history. First, the theological
commission was given the job of working out a schema on the
"Sources of Revelation." This was done according to the old method:
that the sources of revelation are Scripture and Tradition as two
complementary realities. The text of the schema was taken up two
years later in the council hall and vigorously discussed. In this
discussion the schema was attacked for precisely what the
commission saw as the advantage of the text, that it repeated the old
truth, that it said nothing new, that itand this objection was even more
serioustook into account neither the biblical nor the pastoral nor the
ecumenical situation, and that it therefore represented a step
backwards. Pope John XXIII personally made this criticism his own.
He ordered the discussion to be broken off and he set up a new so-
called mixed commission, under the coequal presidency of Cardinals
Ottaviani and Bea, and gave it the charge to prepare a new text, taking
into consideration what had been omitted: the biblical, pastoral, and
ecumenical dimension. On November 18, 1965, the dogmatic
constitution was solemnly promulgated. It opened with the words Dei
verbumunder which title it takes its place among the council texts.
In the Kleinen Konzilskompendium by Karl Rahner and Herbert
Vorgrimler the observation is made that in what happened to this text
the spirits were discerned and the council discovered therein its self-
awareness.15 Other experts confirm this when they explain that the
decision of Pope John XXIII to have the text reworked and to have the
pastoral, biblical, and ecumenical points of view brought into it
became the decisive turning point of the Council. This gave the
Council its normative orientation that, until then, had not been clearly
present.
2. Let us now list its most important statements.
The proem of the constitution emphasized that it was moving in the
footsteps of the council of Trent and Vatican I. But this "vestigiis
inhaerens" meant not just an external, mechanical imitation butas Karl
Barth interpreted ita "going forward from the footsteps of those
councils."16
This going forward is to be seen first of all in the fact that the concept
"revelation" was replaced by the personal designation Word of God.
The Word of God has dominance over every speaking and doing of
the Church. The Church is described as that which hears and
proclaims the Word of God. The sense of this doing is, in the words of
the
15 (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1968) 361.
16 Karl Barth, Ad limina Apostolorum: An Appraisal of Vatican II, trans.
Keith R. Crim (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1968).

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Council, "so that the whole world in hearing the message of salvation
may believe, in believing may hope, and in hoping may love" (no. 1).
A different language is being spoken here than was spoken a hundred
years before.
Vatican II does not take up the distinction between the two modes or
paths of revelation (natural and supernatural), but describes the event
of revelation and the activity of revelation in a more comprehensive
way. Thus the Constitution on Revelation does not, like Vatican I,
proceed from the qualities of God, from God's wisdom and goodness,
but calls God Himself, in His wisdom and goodness, the origin of all
revelation. In this way the theocentric and personal starting point is
incomparably more strongly articulated than at Vatican I. Revelation
is, as in Vatican I, described as God's self-communication, as a "se
ipsum revelare"; but the former "decreta voluntatis suae revelare" is
replaced by "sacramentum voluntatis suae"; in place of the legal view
comes the sacramental perspective, which brings together law and
grace, word and deed, message and sign, in the unity of the
sacramentmysteryin the biblical sense.
The theocentricity of revelation is even more clearly expressed in that
we have described here a Trinitarian movement which goes forth from
God the Father, comes to us through Christ, and in the Holy Spirit
provides access to communion with God (no. 2).
The doctrinal accent of Vatican I's conception of revelation is
expanded by the dialogical and the presential element of revelation:
God speaks to human beings and seeks encounter with
them"alloquitur, conversatur." Human beings are understood as the
dialogical beings, who can be described as hearers of the word, and
who, through the word, receive communion with God.
The doctrinal narrowing of the concept of revelation is finally
overcome in favor of a comprehensive conception, in that the
historical dimension is included in which revelation is not
characterized as a timeless compilation of doctrines and decrees, but
is seen in the horizon of an "oeconomia salutis" (economy of
salvation) and an "historia salutis" (history of salvation). This
economy and history is expressly oriented to and connected with the
history of humankind.
The revelation event takes place in deed and word which are internally
connected with each other: The Works . . . reveal and reinforce the
doctrine and the realities described by the words; the words proclaim the
works and bring to light the mystery they contain. The depth of the truth
disclosed by this revelation about God and about the salvation of human
beings is illuminated for us in Christ, who is both the mediator and the
fullness of all revelation" (no. 2).

Revelation is thus a series of events in which event, work, deed, and

word interpenetrate each other: "The words proclaim the works and
bring to light the mystery they contain." There is discussion here

Page 378
about signs and wonders as well. But this is done much more
reservedly than in Vatican I and remains subordinate to a holistic
consideration of the person and life of Jesus. The effect of this holistic
view of revelation as word and history is that human beings are
addressed and dealt with in their totality.
A further decisive aspect which was actually present in Vatican I with
reference to Heb 1:1 is now explicitly drawn out: this is the
Christocentricity of revelation. Jesus Christ, says the Constitution, is
the "mediator and the fullness of all revelation."
Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, sent as "human being to human beings,"
"speaks the words of God" (John 3:34) and fulfills the work of salvation
whose accomplishment the Father had entrusted to him (cf. John 5:36;
17:4). Whoever sees Him sees also the Father (cf. John 14:9). He it is who
through His whole being and His whole appearance, through words and
works, through signs and miracles, but above all through His death and His
glorious resurrection from the dead, finally through the sending of the
Spirit of Truth, fulfills and completes revelation and through divine
witness confirms that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin
and death and raise us to eternal life." (no. 4)

This brings out that Jesus Christ not only speaks to us about God, He
is the very speaking of God (God speaking to us in person). Thus He
is God's final word, because in Him, God has definitively spoken. He
is in His person the final word and event of revelation.
The final goal of revelation is, accordingly, not information and
instruction, but communion, union, and the transformation of human
beings. Thus, in the midst and fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ
there takes place a revelation about human beings; in Jesus, the human
being who is God, is revealed what human beings are all about. On
the basis of these statements, the revelation fulfilled in Jesus Christ is
unsurpassable; "No new public revelation is to be expected before the
appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory (cf. 1 Tim 6:14 and Tit
2:13)" (no. 4).
Along with this fulfillment dimension of the revelation that has taken
place in Jesus Christ, and along with the definitiveness claimed for it
which constantly binds and orients faith to this origin, emphasis is
given to the future horizon which was not articulated in Vatican I: The
one who has come is the one who is to come. What has taken place in
Jesus Christ is a constantly ongoing opening. As end it is also a
beginning, a beginning and origin for all human beings in every
moment of history. If Christ is the very speaking of God, this means
that He is the constant "God with us," that in Him begins to open up
the whole breadth of God's word which is to take place in history and
through human beings.
3. This brings into view the conceptual definition of faith
(Bestimmung des Glaubens) which is found in the Constitution on
Revelation, Dei verbum. Here the council consciously takes over

Page 379
Vatican I's basic idea of faith as obedience which comes from hearing
and hearkening and lays claim on human beings in their entirety. But
while Vatican I developed from this definition of wholeness a
narrowing of the concept of faith in favor of a doctrinal formulation in
the sense of "revelata vera esse credimus" (what is revealed we
believe to be true), in which precisely this characteristic, without its
comprehensive grounding, became normative and effective, Vatican II
expands the formulation of faith as obedience into a much more
comprehensive definition when it says:
The "obedience of faith" is to be given to God revealing. In doing this
human beings totally and in freedom hand themselves over to God in that
they "fully subject themselves with understanding and will to God
revealing" and willingly consent to God's revelation. (no. 5)

The narrowing conceptions of faith as intellectual belief in dogmas or

as fiducial faith are absorbed in the larger definition of faith as the
total Yes of persons who, in the realization of their existence, give
themselves over totally to God who is, in Jesus Christ, the way and
truth of human beings. This total aspect of faith is brought to
completion in the sense that faith is also described as hope, as promise
grounded in the fulfillment in which is mirrored the already and the
not-yet, the definitiveness and the ephemerality of faith. The risk of
faith thus consists as much in its "nevertheless" over-against
everything that can presently be seen and proven, as in a trust which
sets out on a road whose end is not in sight.
4. The second chapter of the constitution treats of the handing on of
divine revelation through Scripture, Tradition, and Church. We will
meet this theme a bit later. Here we need say only that this chapter is
not wholly successful. The relationship of Scripture, Tradition, and
Church is indeed describedthe question of a possible completion of
the contents of Scripture remains open, but insufficiently clear
expression is given to the fact that priority and normativity belong to
Scripture to the extent that Tradition claims to be the authentic and
binding interpretation of Scripture; the tradition-critical function of
Scripture is not even mentioned.17 Karl Barth, on this point, spoke of
the council's "fainting spell."18 Even so, one does find the important
statement: "The teaching authority" [magisterium]as organ of the
tradition
17Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. H. Vorgrimler,
3.18586: "The Second Vatican Council, for all practical purposes,
completely passed over the tradition-critical moment. In doing so it failed
to take advantage of an important opportunity for ecumenical dialogue; in
fact, the working out of a positive possibility and necessity of an inner-
Church critique of tradition would have been ecumenically more fruitful
than thequite fictitiousargument over the quantitative completeness of
Scripture."
18 K. Barth, Ad limina Apostolorum 52; similarly O. Cullmann, in: J. Ch.
Hampe, Die Autorität der Freiheit, 1.18997.

Page 380
is not above the word of God, but serves it in that it teaches nothing but
what is handed on because, from its divine mission and with the assistance
of the Holy Spirit, it hears the word of God full of reverence, preserves it
in holiness, and interprets it faithfully, and because it draws from this one
treasure of faith everything which it presents for belief as revealed by God.
(no. 10)
The following chapters of the constitution are devoted to the Holy
Scripture, thus giving factual expression to the priority of Scripture:
Everything that the Church proclaims must be "nourished by the Holy
Scripture and be oriented to it" (no. 21). "The Holy Scriptures contain
the Word of God, and because they are inspired, they are truly God's
word; thus the study of the Holy Book is, so to speak, the soul of
sacred theology" (no. 24).
The way from Vatican I to Vatican II certainly has the marks of a trail,
and thus a certain continuity. But this way sought to preserve
continuity above all in a "forward." This "forward" was not only
movement along the road but also and precisely progress in the reality
signified by revelation and faith. It was progress inasmuch as the
unquestionably good beginnings of Vatican I, which theologically had
no great effect, were given better expression in Vatican II. To be
mentioned here above all is the comprehensive definition of that
which revelation and faith are. Analysis of the formulations found in
the constitution Dei verbum, show that the results of theological
reflection have been taken up and worked into it.19 In its focus and
openness, the conception of Vatican II is in position to make room for
new aspects that have been subsequently articulated: the dimensions
of the public, the social, and the political. This conception can also
protect these dimensions from one-sidedness or exclusivity and thus
help them to make their own rightful contribution.
In contrast with those of Vatican I, the statements of Vatican II are
pastoral, that is, related to human beings. Further, they are biblically
oriented. Never before had a council spoken so intensively, so openly,
and in such detail about Holy Scripture as did Vatican II. In the
constitution Dei verbum, four of the six chapters are taken up with this
theme. They are ecumenically sensitive in that they take into account
the whole theological effort on revelation and faith; they do not dig
ditches or raise walls, but build bridges. They interpret revelation and
faith not so much with the categories of law and doctrine but with the
concept of the joyful, truth-making, and free-making Good News.
This constitution thus makes one again the oppositions that had also
broken out in the understanding of the faith between the confessions:
faith as holding to be truefaith as self-giving and trust.
It has been objected that the statements of the last council express too
great an optimism in view of human beings and the present situa-
19 On this see H. Waldenfels, Offenbarung.

Page 381
tion. If this impression is given, then it was and is a long overdue
obligation, since the road from the First to the Second Vatican Council
was marked by pessimism, accusation, and condemnation.
Talk about the crisis of faith is in everyone's mouth today, and there
are not a few who blame the last council for that. But nothing could be
more false. If this crisis of faith that so many appeal to, and thereby
perhaps also escalate, is to lead to life and not to death, it won't
happen by looking back, by re-establishing the time, the world, the
perspectives, and the methods of a hundred years ago. It will rather
come about by the appropriation, realization and continuation of the
orientation built into the foundations of Vatican II and its statements
not as an end but as a beginning which stands under the sign of hope,
of courage, and of life.

Page 383

BOOK THREE
THE CHURCH

Page 385
§ 39
The Church as Theme of Fundamental Theology
To what extent is the Church1 one of the themes of fundamental
theology? The answer is that Church is an object of fundamental
theology because it belongs to the presuppositions, and to the
conditions
1 The literature on the theme of ''Church" is limitless. One should consult
the theological lexicons and handbooks, and textbooks on dogmatics and
fundamental theology. In addition: J. Brinktrine, Offenbarung und Kirche,
2d ed. (Paderborn, 1949); J. Salaverri, De Ecclesia Christi (Madrid, 1950);
Emil Brunner, Das Mißverständnis der Kirche (Stuttgart, 1951); L. Köster,
Die Kirche Unseres Glaubens, 4th ed. (Freiburg, 1952); O. Semmelroth,
Die Kirche als Ursakrament (Frankfurt, 1953); also Ich Glaube an die
Kirche (Düsseldorf, 1959); St. Jacki, Les tendences nouvelles de
l'ecclésiologie (Rome, 1957); M. Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik III/1:
Die Lehre von der Kirche (Munich, 1958); also Dogma V/1 (Westminster,
1984); Heinrich Fries, Kirche als Ereignis (Düsseldorf, 1958); also,
Aspekte der Kirche (Stuttgart, 1963); M. A. Fahey, "Church" in: Sytematic
Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, ed. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza,
John Galvin, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991) 2.474; E. Hill,
"Church," NDT 185201; E. Kinder, Der Evangelische Glaube und die
Kirche (Berlin, 1958); Rudolf Schnackenburg, trans. W. J. O'Hara, The
Church in the New Testament (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965); F.
HolböckTh. Sartory, Mysterium der Kirche in der Sicht der Theologischen
Disziplinen, vols. 1 and 2, (Salzburg, 1962); A. Lang, Der Auftrag der
Kirche, 3d. ed. (Munich, 1962); Commentary on the Documents of Vatican
II, ed. H. Vorgrimler, 1.105297 (Lumen gentium), 5.1370 (Gaudium et
spes):
In addition: G. Baraúna, ed., De Ecclesia Christi. Beiträge zur Konstitution
"über die Kirche" des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils, vols. 1 and 2
(FreiburgBaselViennaFrankfurt, 1966); G. BaraúnaV. Schnurr, Die Kirche in
der Welt von Heute (Salzburg, 1967); Hans Küng, The Church, trans. Edward
Quinn (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967); Walter Kasper, Die Heilssendung
der Kirche in der Gegenwart (Mainz, 1970); Handbuch der
Dogmengeschichte, vol. 3, fasc. a, b, c, d (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1970/71); L.
Boff, Die Kirche als Sakrament im Horizont der Welterfahrung (Paderborn,
1972); H. Schlier, "Die Ekklesiologie des Neuen Testaments" in: MySal
IV/1.101221; J. Finkenzeller, Von der Botschaft Jesu zur Kirche Jesu Christi
(Munich, 1974); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Thesen zur Theologie der Kirche, 2d
ed. (Munich, 1974); Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit:
A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York:
Harper & Row, 1977); U. Kühn, Kirche (Gütersloh, 1980); A. Kolping,
Fundamentaltheologie III. Die Katholische Kirche als Sachwalterin der
Offenbarung. 1. Teil: Die geschichtlichen Anfänge der Kirche Jesu Christi
(Münster, 1981); also "GemeindeKircheKonfessionenÖkumene" in:
Christliche Glaube in Moderner Gesellschaft 29 (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1982); G. AlberigY. CongarH. J. Pottmeyer, Kirche im Wandel. Eine
Kritische Bilanz nach dem Zweiten Vatikanum (Düsseldorf, 1982); Gerhard
Lohfink, Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith,
trans. John P. Galvin (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); J. Auer, Die Kirche
(Kleine Katholische Dogmatik VIII), (Regensburg, 1983).

Page 386
of the possibility of faith, specifically of the Christian faith. It has this
function because it is constitutive for the faith as communion of belief
and of the believers, of communion in the faith that is related to Jesus
Christ.2
This relationship between faith and Church can be made clear from
the act of initiation within the Christian life, within Christian being,
from the dialogue that takes place in baptism. The one to be baptized
is asked: "What do you want of the Church?" The answer is not, as
one would expect, "Baptism," but "Faith." Now this means that faith,
as Christian faith, is primarily and originally not achieved, but sought
for, asked for, received, bestowed. It is bestowed as gift of God and
God's Spirit through the Church as a community which lives from this
faith and is specified by it, and which thus can mediate it.
This becomes intelligible when, also in this context, one proceeds
from the self-understanding of Christian faith and from that standpoint
asks about the conditions of its possibility. We have already discussed
this, but this new context requires us to take it up again.
The fundamental law, or better, the fundamental structure in the
process of Christian faith, is formulated in Romans 10:1315 as
follows: Paul is quoting the prophet Joel: "Every one who calls upon
the name of the Lord will be saved." Then follows his own reflection:
But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And
how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how
are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they
are sent? (Rom 10:1415)
This does not mean a structure from ancient, primitive times when one
could neither read nor write and when one was dependent on others
through hearing and announcing, and in that way dependent for faith;
nor does it mean a structure from a society that is passé or in the
process of passing away, in which only the ruling class spoke and
were allowed to speak while the underlings had to hear, to hearken,
and to believe. This means rather a structure that is constitutive for
faith and is thus abiding; this structure can therefore be replaced by no
fundamentally different structure.3
Faith comes from hearing, not, like philosophy, from reflection. That
must not be falsely understood as if faith had nothing to do with
reflection and philosophy nothing to do with hearing. We are
addressing here the question of origin and the question of priority.
Faith is, as Joseph Ratzinger formulates it, not the thinking out of
what can be
2 Cf. H. Fries, "Die Kirche als Träger und Vermittler der Offenbarung" in:
Mysterium Kirche (F. HolböckTh. Sartory) 1.136.
3 For what follows, see: Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San
Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1990) 1549.

Page 387
thought out, and which, in the end, is at my disposition as the result of
my thinking.4
Thinking within faith is fundamentally a reflection on what has been
heard and received, to which also belongs reflection about its
presuppositions and conditions of possibility. Thus there is in faith a
preeminence, a priority of word over thought. This distinguishes faith
structurally from the kind of structure found in philosophy.
There is a second element connected with this structure of faith: the
communitarian, social relationship of faith; I mean the primacy of
communion. That constitutes another difference from philosophy. Of
course philosophy also takes place as philosophy within the sphere of
a community-related school or academyand yet philosophy is
originally and primarily the thought of the individual who knows as
an individual, and in that seeks and finds truth, which then in word
and speech becomes communicable and forms communion.
In contrast to this, there is in faith a primacy of community before the
individual. If faith comes from hearing and proclaiming, the
individual is lead by this process out of him/herself and into
relationship with a community.
Whoever believes comes de facto out of the communion of belief and
believers, and also belongs to it. These who want to come to faith
must attach themselves to a community; they are taken up into it and
become part of it: part of a community constituted by the word
proclaimed and heard. Faith means to become a member of a
community (Acts 2:41). And precisely this, the community defined
this way, is called Church; it is alike congregatio fidelium and creation
of the Word, creatura Verbi. The Greek word ekklesia (Latin ecclesia)
says precisely this: Church is the communion of those who are called
and assembled by the Word and who, in order to be and to be able to
be this Word, are called and gathered ever anew. In this its
constitution, the Church is the condition of the possibility of Christian
faith for the individual.
This same fundamental structurethe primacy of the given before the
given up, the primacy of receiving before doingis expressed in
sacrament, the other way in which the Church is represented and
expressed in its activity: in the form of visibility, in the form of sign.
In sacrament, word and sign, hearing and seeing, are connected. The
word signifies the sign; at the same time the word within the
sacramental event is an effective, a reality-creating, a performative
word. That reality comes to be which is indicated in the sign.
In this perspective, along with the primacy of the given and the
received, the primacy of community also comes into view. People
don't confer sacraments on themselves, they receive them from others
who, for their part, represent the community and are commissioned to
do
4 Ibid. 5661.

Page 388
this. As Church of sacrament the Church is also the condition of the
possibility of Christian faith, if faith is a description of all Christian
being, if faith is also represented in sacrament which, for its part, is a
sign of faith. The communion constituted by word and sacrament, and
called Church, exists before the individual. It is at the same time the
space in which individuals realize, make perfect, and live their own
faith; it is the space which they, as the reality vivified by it, bring into
and for the communion of believers.
These considerations on how it is that the Church belongs to the
presuppositions, to the conditions of the possibility of Christian faith,
are grounded in the uniqueness of this faith: primacy of word, primacy
of communion. It was precisely this which was, in contrast to faith,
formulated into a philosophy.
Furthermore, one can also describe and ground the community of
faith, i.e., the Church, as condition of the possibility of faith if one
emphasizes not only the difference between Christian faith and
philosophy but also their inner connection and what they have in
common. For this will also emphasize once again the anthropological
involvement of faith.
Human beings are created in such a way that, in their existence and in
its realization, in their activity, and also in the act of their thinking and
philosophizing, they cannot prescind from the circumstances that have
been described in a special way as characteristic of faiththus from the
circumstances that are determined by receiving and bestowing word
and communion. Human existence is always coexistence, being is
being withthe I recognizes itself in encounter with the You; and the
You becomes known in giving itself to be known. Dialogue is the way
to the Logos.
Language, education, culture, art, technology are built on the same
circumstances: individuals being taken up into a context of
community without which they would atrophy and fail to become
themselves. Left to itself and purely isolated, human existence would
not be possible in the sphere of thinking and philosophizing either.
Thus it is that the communion which is there before the individual,
and before the human in generaland in this sense institution as wellis
not a hindrance to human beings but becomes the condition of the
possibility of their becoming themselves.
In a time when the societal and communitarian dimension and the
significance of institution in its function for the individual is
becoming recognized, there is also a developing sense for the function
of community and institution as condition of the possibility of faith
for the individual.
To sum up: it is both from the special nature of Christian faith and
from the fundamental structure of human beings in their being and ac-

Page 389
tivity that can one approach the Church from the fundamental
theological point of view, namely as condition of the possibility of
faith. The uniqueness of Christian faith is determined not only by
pointing out how it contrasts with philosophy, but also by observing
how the phenomenon of being given in advance, of receiving, of
hearing, of community is a fundamental quality of human existence,
and thus also of thinking and philosophy. This does not eliminate the
differences between faith and philosophizing that still remain, but it
does set up connections and analogies.

Page 391

Part One
The Origin of the Church from the Origin of Faith:
Church in the Horizon of Revelation

Page 392
§ 40
Israel as Community of Belief and Believers
Vatican II's conciliar constitution Lumen gentium described this theme
as follows: Those who believe in Christ are called together in the
Church. This Church was something that was beginning to take shape
even from the beginning of the world: ecclesia ab origine mundi
praefigurata; it was prepared for in marvelous ways in the history of
the people of Israel and in the Old covenant: ecclesia in historia
populi Israel ac foedere antiquo mirabiliter praeparata (no. 2).
Church from the Beginning
As for the prefiguration of the Church from the beginning of the
world, one should note that even as early as the so-called "prehistory"
(Genesis 111), which is placed before the history of Israel, the theme
"Church as community of believers and of those united with God in
faith" turns up.
It is not there thematically, of course, and in these precise words. But
later theology has reflected on this beginning also under the theme
"Church." If one can understand with one word the Church of Vatican
II as sacrament, as visible and effective sign of the unity and
unification of human beings with God and thereby also among
themselves (no. 1), then it is not beside the point to talk about it
already in view of the beginning of humanity in the way that it is
presupposed in the Bible.
The so-called protology, what is said about the first beginnings as they
are presented in Genesis 12, first describes human beings as work and
creation of God, and even more, as God's image and likeness; thus,
human beings in their original communion with God. From this idea
the theology of the Church Fathers proposed the model of an "ecclesia
ab Adam," a Church founded with Adam.

Page 393
Somewhat more known is the idea of an "ecclesia ab Abel"1
developed by Augustine. What Augustine meant was the community
of the devout and the just still possible after the Fall, which had its
ancient biblical model in Abel.
Of course it is not possible to establish this "Church from the
beginning," this ecclesia ab Adam or Ab Abel historically or
geographically; but neither can one dismiss this conception as a vain
imagining with no basis in reality.
One must first of all make clear that the statements in the so-called
primitive history are "protology and etiology." The first is accordingly
not only a temporal beginning but a reality being represented in
history and effective in it. It is the reality of creation and salvation, of
guilt and Fall; it is the reality that human beings are related to and
dependent on God and remain so even after the Fall. These realities
areaccording to the Biblefactors at work in history and in the present.
For this reason a significance in reality accrues also to a Church of
Humanity, an "ecclesia ab Adam" or "ab Abel," inasmuch as one can
say that human beings who live in orientation towards God, who are
people of justice, love, and, reconciliation, the peacemakers, are
connected with and related to that which Church will and should be:
sign of unity of human beings with God and/or human beings among
themselves. This statement is valid for today.
Augustine expressed this idea with a breadth and directness one
doesn't expect to find in him:
All the just from the beginning of the world had Christ as their head. They
believed in his future coming just as we have believed that he has already
come; and in faith in him they have been redeemed just as we have
been. . . . The times have changed, not the faith. Words are changed
according to the specifics of the time according to which they are
conjugated. . . . There is one sound for "He will come" and another for "He
has come." The sound is different, but faith connects both, both those who
believe that He will come and those who believe that He has come. In
different times, but through the one doorChristwe see human beings
entering in. . . . We are all members of Christ and the same time are His
body. Not only those who live in this place, but everyone all over the earth.
Not only those who live in this time but, yes, what shall I say? From Abel
the just until the end of time all human beings, who consistently go
through life justly, form the one, whole body of Christ.2

Vatican II quoted the following text of Augustine, but only half of it:
"Thus the Church strides between the persecutions of the world and
the consolations of God on their pilgrimage towards God" (no. 8).
Augustine continues: "And that has always been the case in this
world,
1 Cf. Y. Congar, "Ecclesia ab Abel" in: Abhandlungen über Theologie und
Kirche. Festschrift for Karl Adam, ed. M. Reding (Düsseldorf, 1952)
79108; F. Hofmann, Der Kirchenbegriff des heiligen Augustinus in seinen
Grundlagen und in seiner Entwicklung (Munich, 1933); M. Schmaus,
Katholische Dogmatik III/1.6471.
2 In M. Schmaus III/1, 6466.

Page 394
right from Abel on, whom, as the first just man, his brother slew, and
so will it remain until the end of the world."
Use of the term "anonymous Christian" as a possible description to
categorize people outside the visible Church also has its connection
and foundation in the conception of a Church of Humanity.
Church in Israel
The Second Vatican Council says that the Church was prepared for in
marvelous ways in the history of Israel and in the Old Covenant. We
have already spoken at length about Israel's history of faith (see pp.
28293). Therein lies the coordination of Israel and the Church. Both,
i.e. the two together are a community of faith.
Israel is, as a people, a community of faith. If the contents of the credo
of Israel is the history of this people brought about by Yahweh, then
individuals can believe only as those who belong by way of
generation to this people and who are inserted into the concrete
history of this people. The community of the people is the living
bearer and mediator of faith. Only those who belong to the community
of this people belong to the community of faith; and those who want
to join it can do so only if they are members of this people.
But that does mean that one can talk about an Old Testament
collectivism in the sense that the individual is completely absorbed in
the community. Individuals do not get lost, but find themselves in the
midst of this community. The individual, not just Israel as community,
is thus called Yahweh's Chosen One, son, and servant. Between
individuals and community exists the relationship such that
individuals are supported by the community and in their turn also
support it because they are responsible for it. Their activity goes
beyond the merely individual sphere and has its effect, for good and
for ill, on the community.
In the course of the history of Israel, however, the idea grew stronger
and stronger that belonging to the faith of Israel was determined not
just by genetic belonging, but was possible and could be effective
beyond the borders of the people of Israel. That meant that the horizon
of the communion of faith can go beyond the actual community of the
people. Thus there are just people also outside of Israel. And within
Israel itself arose, ever more clearly, the distinction: belonging to the
people is, as such, no guarantee for the integrity of faith in Israel as a
community of faith. It was pointed out again and again, that not the
people as a whole but its kernel, or remnant, was the bearer of the
Yahweh-faith. At the time of the prophet Elijah, it was the seven
thousand who did not bow their knee before Baal. The same was true
for the prophets and the often-small group of their friends against
which the majority of the people rose up. The situation was similar

Page 395
with the group of Maccabbees, while the greatest part of the people
were no longer a faith community.
More important than belonging to Israel in a bodily way and having
Abraham for one's father is, consequently, being a child of Abraham,
which consists in the living out of the faith of Abraham (cf. Matthew
3:9). But the function of this kernel, this "remnant of Israel," was not
that of closing itself off in a sectarian manner, but of being the power
of the renewal and continuity of faith for all.
Israel as a faith community is and also should be a community of
justice. Now that does not mean a formal-juridical kind of
organization, but a community in which right rules in the form of
righteousness, which is an image of the righteousness of Yahweh. The
basis of this community of right are the Ten Words, the Decalogue, as
Israel's constitution. The constant temptation of human beings to
portray their own interests as a matter of righteousness and clothe it
with the halo of right was also known and practiced in Israel, above
all by those in power, the kings and priests.
It is not just our own critically-minded contemporaries who discover
the misuse of justice. The prophets of the Old Covenant also pointed
emphatically to it. From the counterimage of unrighteousness, they
pointed out the meaning of right and righteousness.
And what unrighteousness means they labeled by name: It is not the
failure to observe a paragraph of the law, but the wounding of human
rights, the repression and exploitation of the poor, the helpless, the
unprotected, the widows and orphans, the underprivileged.
Righteousness is the renunciation of violence, and practical
commitment to peace is praised as the fruit of righteousness.
Let us take a few examples of this passionate plea from the words of
the prophets: Amos (about 760 B.C.) speaks in the name of Yahweh:
I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn
assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal
offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted
beasts I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to
the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like
waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:2124)

The prophet Isaiah, about the year 740, complains about Jerusalem
where the cult is strong but righteousness weak:
When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even
though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of
blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your
doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek
justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isa
1:15-17)

Page 396
Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah, declares: the sign of conversion is
not the number of cultic sacrifices but the fulfillment of the
requirement:
He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require
of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with
your God? (Mic 6:8)

According to Alfons Deißler, these words are not only an adequate

summing up of the fundamental message of the Old Testament, but an
abiding commission also for that community of believers which is the
Church of Jesus Christ.3
In Israel there is found also the phenomenon of the community of
worship and community of ritual, the community which in ritual gives
voice and expression to its faith in word and sign, above all in
sacrifice. In the word, the acts of God are contemplated during
worship: remembering, thanking, praising, making present, and
petitioning for the future. In liturgical sign, above all in an extensive
sacrificial rite, there is represented symbolically what moves and
determines the faith of Israel from which it lives.
In sacrifice, acknowledgment and homage are expressed in the form
of a gift and its offering. The fundamental idea here is that the
sacrificial gift stands vicariously for those offering the sacrifice and
for what moves them: thanksgiving, acknowledgment/recognition,
self-giving, but also petition or atonement for guilt.
Against the sacrificial ideas of the Israelites one hears the objection, a
common one among the philosophers of antiquity, that God has no
need of giftsGod is Himself the giver of all gifts. It is not God but
human beings who have need of sacrifice as symbolic expression of
what can be said in word.
In sacrifice, a communion between God and human beings is
symbolized and regarded as effective in a special way. The sacrificial
gift is changed or transformed by its new definition of purpose; it is
given over to God as an expression of self-giving. God's acceptance of
the sacrifice creates a bond with those making the offering. This is
represented by burning the gifts, or a part of them. A quite essential
form of communion with God is represented by the table fellowship
which comes from the sacrifice and the sacrificial gift, the sacrificial
meal. Through it, communion among human beings is also
established, vivified, and renewed. The sacred meal is a fundamental
element in all religions.
3 A. Deißler, Die Grundbotschaft des Alten Testaments, 7th ed.
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1979) 122, 156.

Page 397
The prophets' criticism is directed not at sacrifice and ritual as such,
but at their abuse: when life and ethos did not correspond to what the
rite expressed, when one tried to use the ritual to buy out of the
obligations of righteousness, or when one tried by way of the ritual,
particularly by way of sacrifice, to exercise control over God,
according to the measure ''do ut des" (I give that you may give).
In the "prohibition of images" "Thou shalt make no image," it was
expressly required of Old Testament ritual and worship that it worship
without images. Expressly forbidden were human sacrifice, idolatry,
charms and spells, magic, foretelling the future, ritual castration, and
religious prostitution. In these practices, which were customary in the
rituals of that time, Israel was not to be like the other nations. There
were in addition the many ritual "purity requirements," which likewise
served to define liturgical activity as well as to set it apart from other
groups.
The place of divine worship in Israel varied considerably according to
where one was in the course of the history of the people. The nomadic
people of the early period used as their place of worship and liturgical
assembly the tent, called the tent of meeting, holy tent, tent of the
covenant. When the tent was taken down and carried away, Yahweh
was thought of as accompanying and wandering with them.
In the sedentary period, more precisely in the time of the kingdom, in
place of the tent came the solid house, the constant, abiding sanctuary
of the people. This development found its high point in the shape of
King Solomon's Temple built in Jerusalem (cf. 1 Kings 68). The
Temple now seemed the form of liturgical assembly appropriate to the
status of Israel, especially the kingdom, the fulfillment of what began
in the Sinai event. Because of the Temple, Jerusalem becomes the
holy city. The feasts of Israel are celebrated in the Temple; they are
Temple feasts of the entire people.
The connection between Temple-building and faith-motivation is
expressed in Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the Temple:
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest
heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built!
Yet have regard to the prayer of thy servant and to his supplication, O Lord
my God, hearkening to the cry and to the prayer which thy servant prays
before thee this day; that thy eyes may be open night and day toward this
house, the place of which thou hast said, "My name shall be there." (1
Kings 8:2729)

For the sake of completeness one still has to remember that after the
destruction of the Solomonic Temple (586) came the Temple rebuilt
after the exile, and finally the Temple built by King Herod which was
the Temple at the time of the New Testament.
In exile a new form of liturgical place and space took shape: the
synagogue. This was originally the community gathering, then the

Page 398
space in which the liturgical assembly met, the house of prayer. When,
after the return, the Temple was rebuilt as the central place of worship
and cult, and the service of the Temple was resumed, the form or
institution of the synagogue survived, above all as the local
community's place of assembly. The connection with Jerusalem, with
the Temple, and with that of the whole nation as liturgical community
took expression in the annual pilgrimage to the Temple, obligatory for
all Israelites, to celebrate the great feasts of the nation.
The Hebrew expression for the liturgical assembly of the people of
Israel is kahal; it is translated in the Greek translation of the Old
Testament, the Septuagint, with the word ekklesia. This word ekklesia
was already a quite well-known word in the hellenistic world; it meant
"gathering of the people." It is enlightening to observe what structural
elements are connected respectively with the Greek and Hebrew
understanding of ekklesia, and how the same word means something
different in a different context.
In the Greek understanding, the word ekklesia signifies a gathering of
members with voting rights, the adult men in a polis who exercised
lawgiving power in this polis. There ekklesia is the regularly meeting
highest decision-making authority of the city or people; ekklesia is a
political concept which has its home especially in democracy.
The meaning of ekklesia in the Hebrew understanding, as the word
which translates qahal, is the assembled Israelite national community.
But the difference from the Greek concept is considerable. The first
difference consists in the fact that in the Greek popular assembly in
which politics is discussed and carried out, only men are allowed,
while in Israel the whole people is gathered, men, women, and
children. The model of this assembly is the gathering of the whole
people at Sinai. The day of the Sinai event is called the "Day of
Assembly" (Deut 9:10; 18:26).
The assembly of the people in Israel did not come together for the
purpose of political discussion or to make political decisions. Israel
assembles with the intention of hearing the the Word of God, and of
asking what directions and action would come from this, which
indeed could have great political relevance. The Israelite ekklesia, the
qahal, is primarily a liturgical assembly gathered to hear the Word of
God and the law with the same readiness with which their fathers at
Sinai did. But the hearing of the Word of God in the ekklesia becomes
actualized for what is to be done here and now in Israel.
In Israel's situation during and after the Exile, in the time of the
refoundation of the people of Israel, there is the new fact of the
dispersion of the peoplethe Diaspora. It brings about the distinction
between Diaspora Jews and Palestinian Jews. This difference also got
stamped on the structure of their faith: in the greater openness of

Page 399
Diaspora Judaism for the other: for Hellenism, and the more closed
mentality of the Israelites in Palestine. In the liturgical assembly,
along with the remembrance of the gathering of the people that once
took place on Sinai, was also the articulation of the hope of a future
gathering and assembly of the people of God from all the ends of the
earth.
Israel as a cult community is determined not just by place as the
location of ritual and worship, but also by time: as time for the
liturgical assembly, for the praising and thanking remembrance of the
great deeds of Yahweh. This specially set aside time is the Sabbath,
the day of rest of the Creator, the day of rest of human beings, the day
that is to be made holy, the day that is to be free for the remembering,
for joy and thanksgiving, for one's obligations to other human beings,
to establish a sign of freedom and social responsibility: "The Sabbath
was made for man" (Mark 2:27). The times set aside are the festivals:
the Passover feast (Easter) in memory of the Exodus, the feast of
Pentecost in memory of the Sinai event, the feast of Tabernacles as
thanksgiving for the journey through the desert, also as harvest feast,
and the atonement festival (Yom Kippur), the great day of penance for
the whole people. In these feasts of Israel, natural moments in the
course of the year like sowing, harvest, equinox (Canaan) and
historical moments are intertwined.
The meaning of the Sabbath and the feasts has already been
mentioned as days of joy, memory, prayer, freedom, and of being free
for service to Yahweh and other human beings. The special time is to
be a sign of this and to remind the people that all time is God's time,
that every day can and should be a day of the Lordin the same way in
which the time set aside for ritual and divine worship is to be a
reminder that not only the Temple but the "whole earth is the Lord's."

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§ 41
The Organs of the Community of the People of Israel as Community of
Faith
When one has a community of faith, a community of justice, a
community of worship and of ritual, one also has, necessarily,
structure. Structure, in turn, requires organs, i.e. the functions, roles
and tasks of these organs in the service of the community. Such was
the case also in Israel, and that indeed is a remarkable development
which corresponds to the development of the people.1
The Patriarchs
In the beginning stands the father of the family, the head of the clan.
He assumes the function of leadership, of establishing the
arrangements for the community of the family and for the clan. In this
position of authority, the father, as father of the house, as patriarch
also assumes the religious functions: he prays, he offers sacrifice, he
performs the religious practices.
Moses and the Priesthood
In the expansion to the still quite small nation of twelve tribes, Moses
takes over the functions needed for the larger community. In his
person he is the political speaker and leader of the people in the
Exodus through the desert up to the borders of Canaan; he is the
mediator of justice, of the law, and with that also the judge; he is
finally the priest who represents his people before God: praying,
interceding, sacrificing, and who turns to this people under Yahweh's
mandate. In this Israelite community his is a threefold function of
faith, justice, and
1 L. Rost, Die Vorstufen von Kirche und Synagoge im Alten Testament
(Stuttgart, 1938); H. W. Hertzberg, Werdende Kirche im Alten Testament
(Munich, 1950); N. Füglister, "Strukturen der Alttestamentlichen
Ekklesiologie" in: MySal IV/1.2399.

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worship. But soon a differentiation of this structure in the course of
Israel's history becomes noticeable, at least to the extent that the
different functions are divided up among different persons.
According to the so-called priestly document, one of the four sources
of the Pentateuch, Moses himself had appointed his brother Aaron and
his sons as priests and ordained them in extensive ceremonies
(Leviticus 8). The later priesthood in Jerusalem, which claimed a
central position in its service of the central sanctuary, for which the
high priesthood was established, claimed to be of the line of Aaron
and his sons.
On the other hand, we hear from another tradition that at the time of
Moses the tribe of Levi, which had proven itself in faith, had already
been entrusted with priestly functions. These functions were
connected with the development of ritual and worship in the tent, the
Temple, and the synagogue, and were also quite varied in content.
The distinction between high priest, priest, and Levite comes from
later, post-exilic times. The liturgical functions included prayer and
sacrificial worship, but above alland this in increasing measure in the
Exile and Diasporainstruction in the Law: the interpretation of the
Law and its application to individual cases. Along with the figure of
the priest appeared that of the scribe, i.e. the doctor of the Law,
theologian, and, in a still later time, teacher of wisdom who taught not
abstract theory but the wisdom of life.
The Judges
After Moses and Joshua the so-called Judges, also called saviors and
leaders, took over the political functions. They are tribal heroes
(Gideon, Sampson, Jephthah, Samuel). They are not institutions; they
arise in times of special need and danger at the head of one tribe, of
individual tribes, or of the people.
Their calling was seen in a special way as a free act of choice by
Yahweh. The action of the judges served as proof of divine power,
above all in the face of the often-depicted relationship of the
overwhelming power of the enemies against the minimal strength of
the tribes of Israel. The Book of Judges provides information about
these events, but not in the sense of historical biographies or as an
account of consecutive events, but in the framework of a theological
schema (Jud [Link]): as a summing up of many individual traditions.
The time of the judges, as the time before the establishment of the
monarchy, is described through the later, idealistically colored
historical writing as an epoch in which immediacy with God, the
freedom of the reign of God over his twelve-tribed people, was given
spontaneous and charismatic expression.

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The Kings
The last judge, Samuel, represents the transition to a broader
stabilization, the establishment of the Monarchy. At first, the people's
longing for a king (1 Sam 8) was interpreted as a rejection of Yahweh,
as an expression of the wish that Yahweh should no longer be king
over them (1 Sam 8:7). But the will of the people won out: "That we
also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and
go out before us and fight our battles" (1 Sam 8:20). Samuel chooses
and anoints Saul and later David as king, as king by God's grace.
David succeeds in turning the twelve tribes into a political unity and
in subjugating the Canaanite city states. This process was connected
with the loss of the independence of the twelve tribes. What once
were free nomads then became subjects of the king.
The kingdom is accepted ifbiblically speakingit is a kingdom after the
"Heart of Yahweh," in such a way that it doesn't reject the lordship of
Yahweh but makes it visible in the faith and obedience of the king
towards Yahweh. When the monarchy was introduced in Israel, it was
already an established institution in the Near East. The king was not
only a political leader but a religious figure who for the most part was
revered as a divinity. This was given expression in the court
ceremonial, in the forms of ascending the throne, in the forms of
homage. Although Israel's king as chosen one is also a religious
figure, we nevertheless find no trace of a divinizing or divine
veneration of the king. This was prevented by the way king and
monarchy were part of the faith history of Israel, which was
dominated by the theme: Yahweh is the king of his people. The king
of Israel is the one who expressly acknowledges this.
The king acknowledged this fact as the reality of the faith of Israel
and, with that, of his own faith. From this basis arose also the
possibility of examination and criticism of the behavior of the king.
Energetic use was made of the right of criticism; Saul was rejected as
king and replaced by David.
This position of the king and of the kingdom in Israel grounded in
faith was nevertheless unable to prevent a secularization from taking
place, a turning of the monarchy towards worldliness. In the place of
the election of the king, as was the case with Saul and David, was put
inheritance; in the place of faith came political interests and
calculation. Furthermore, political unification of the Israelite tribes
with the inhabitants of Canaan became more important than unity and
strengthening in faith.
The flowering of the monarchy did not last long. With Saul, David,
and Solomon, it was finished. After the death of Solomon (about 930),
the kingdom of David broke up, by popular decision, into the
Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom.

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In the Northern Kingdom, with its later capital, Samaria, ten tribes
were gathered. The Southern Kingdom with the city of Jerusalem
consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Jerusalem, as city of
David, as the city of the Temple, had a special significance
encompassing all the tribes.
There was a relationship of tension and rivalry between the Northern
Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom and their kings. In order to
affirm their independence, the kings of the Northern Kingdom,
beginning with Jeroboam, tried to break loose from Jerusalem and the
Temple; he made connections with the earlier sanctuaries of Canaan;
along with the veneration of Yahweh, the kings also allowed the
worship of Baal. Thus there was division, schism among the people of
God. This explains the pluralism of the traditions of faith which found
their way into the writing of the various sources and streams of
tradition of the Old Testament.
Along with and despite the division of the people into two kingdoms,
there existed between both a common bond: their faith in Yahweh, the
God of the whole people, who guides the fate and history of both
parts. With this lived on the hope that both parts would be united
again. This unificationit is the idea above all of the great prophets
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekielwill be possible only by way of the
renewal and the purification of both. The unification becomes then not
just the restoration of an earlier condition, but a new creation.
Is not the division of the two parts of the one people of Godso might
one asklike the preview of the separation of the New Testament
People of God? Attempts have even been made to divide the Northern
Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom confessionally, so to speak; to
see the Reformation churches modeled in the Northern Kingdom, and
in the Southern Kingdom, with its developed cult, the Catholic
Church. But something else is more important. It is already pointed
out in the Old Testament how the road to unity looks: it is unity
through unionand this leads over the road of renewal: through renewal
to unionecclesia semper reformanda. Also applicable here is the
saying: "Ecclesia praeparata in historia populi Israel" (The Church is
prepared for in the history of the People of Israel).
The Prophets
A further instance of authority in Israel as faith, justice, and liturgical
community, and perhaps the most important, is the prophet. There has
already been discussion of this in our presentation of revelation (see
above pp. 29092).
Prophets and prophetism have a long and differentiated history in
Israel, and a function determined by that history. Prophets are found in

Page 404
Israel's history especially at important turning points. Thus Moses is
called a prophet, the one who was called and chosen, the one who,
under God's direction and as the seer speaks, acts, and judges. He also
sets the norm for the quality of the later prophets. At the beginning of
the monarchy, Samuel plays a major role; he is called judge and
prophet. His is the normative voice on the question of the introduction
of the monarchy to Israel; he anoints Saul and David as kings. At the
time of King David, around the year 1000, Nathan appears. In a
memorable scene he charges the king with his great sin: his guilt in
the death of Uriah (2 Sam 12:13). A constantly recurring motif in the
history of Israel is the prophet before the kingand often against him, in
contrast to the court prophets. It illustrates the fact that Israel is not to
be like the other nations.
After the division of the kingdom, there arose in the North the most
powerful of the prophets after Moses: Elijah. His very name is a
program; it means: My God is Yahweh. He acts like a second Moses,
turns against the priests of Baal, against King Ahab, and against the
indifferent people, and calls them to decision.
In the Southern Kingdom and its capital, Jerusalem is the stage for the
activity of Isaiah and King Ahab, where again a great decision is
made. Isaiah warns the king against a disastrous policy of alliance. He
appeals to the covenant of Yahweh and to the obligations of the faith
in the classical words: "If you will not believe, surely you shall not be
established" (Isa 7:9). A hundred years later the prophet Jeremiah
appeared in the palace of the king and before the people. He is the
prophet of doom who, in his Temple speech, warns against all false
security, who sees the end coming without being able to stop it.
During the Captivity the prophets Ezekiel (580) and Daniel (540)
appear. Many of these prophets are called the written prophets,
because their proclamation is handed on in their writings.
Alongside the king and monarchy are the priests and priesthood, over-
against whom stands the prophet. Conflict arises in view of the
dangers of a cult stylized to serve its own purposes. After his Temple
speech the prophet Jeremiah is struck by the high priest in Jerusalem,
put in the stocks, and subjected to public mockery and ridicule Jer.
20).
Jeremiah gives impressive witness about prophets, the fate of the
prophets, and about true and false prophets:
O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived; thou art stronger than
I, and thou hast prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day;
every one mocks me. For whenever I cry out, I shout "Violence and
destruction!" for the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and
derision all day long. If I say, "I will not mention him, or speak any more
in his name," there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my
bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. For I hear many
whispering. Terror is on every side! ''Denounce him! Let us denounce
him!" say all my familiar friends, watching for my fall. "Perhaps he will be

Page 405
deceived, then we can overcome him, and take our revenge on him." But
the Lord is with me as a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will
stumble, they will not overcome me. They will be greatly shamed, for they
will not succeed. Their eternal dishonor will never be forgotten. (Jer
20:711)
But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: they commit
adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no
one turns from his wickedness. (Jer 23:14)
Thus says the Lord of hosts: "Do not listen to the words of the prophets
who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes; they speak of visions of
their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to
those who despise the word of the Lord, 'It shall be well with you'; and to
everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, 'No evil shall
come upon you."' (Jer 23:1617)

The Elders
There is an additional instance or organ in Israel's community of faith,
law, and worship: the institution of the elders, the presbyters. First
among these are the heads of the tribes and clans. The name "elder"
signifies less a degree of age than an authority and dignity stemming
from wisdom and experience of life.
The elders are already mentioned as a group along with Moses; they
are the representatives of the people at the making of the Sinai
covenant. After coming into the Land, the elders were the leading men
in the communities and cities; they were a governing body authorized
to carry out the tasks of administration, make decisions and passing
legal judgments. In the time of the monarchy, for the sake of a unified
and consistent organization, a centralized bureaucracy with a
hierarchy of officials arose. It attempted to supplant as much as
possible the elders as representatives of the people. But the institution
of the elders survived.
In the time of the Exile this institution took on a new importance.
They were the surviving instances of self-administration. They were
in fact the leaders of the communities and of the synagogue worship,
together with the rabbi, the Jewish teacher whose job was the
interpretation and application of the Law. The organ and instance of
the elders in Jewish synagogues as the representation of the laity
exists to this day.
A council of the elders as a clearly defined highest Jewish governing
body with its seat in Jerusalem arose only in later times. Together with
the representatives of the priesthood, from whom the high priest was
chosen, and together with the scribes, the official theologians, they
constituted the supreme council, the Sanhedrin, in Jerusalem.
Thus one can say that Israel, as a community of people, as a
community of faith, law, and worship, both on the whole and in
particular is made up of specific structures, organs, and functions.
They stand as much

Page 406
in coordination as in tension with each other, especially the prophetic
in relation to the institutional. In all this is a praeparatio ecclesiae
(preparation for the Church) as community of faith, law, and worship
which, for the sake of the community, is dependent on organs and
functions. These are represented in the Church as office which is
connected with the performance of certain functions and tasks and
attached to specific persons. In thisat least in the office of the
presbytercan still be recognized obvious traces of what once was.

Page 407
§ 42
Israel and the Church
The direction of what we are saying goes something like this: In Israel
and in the Old covenant, the Church of Jesus Christ was prepared. The
Second Vatican council says: Israel is "praeparatio ecclesiae" (the
preparation of/for the Church). This definition is to be carefully
distinguished from other conceptions, some of which are defended
even to this day.
Different Definitions of the Relationship
One conception claims: If the New Testament represents the
fulfillment and goal of all previous ways and all preceding times, if it
is the new, and at the same time the definitive, what further need has
one for the old, the earlier? Is it not just ballast? This conception
reaches its peak in the demand already made by the Gnostic, Marcion,
and repeated by A. von Harnack, to do away with the Old Testament
and concentrate just on the New.
In response it must be pointed out that the New Testament is also a
Jewish book, that Jesus was a Jew, and so were all the apostles. If the
claim is made that whoever has the fulfillment and goal of all paths as
orientation has no further need of the Old Testament, that claim is
missing the whole point that the category "fulfillment" cannot be
understood when one is unable to explain what it is that constitutes
fulfillment, and of whose expectation it is the fulfillment. The goal
can be recognized only by someone who knows the way to it. The
fundamental Christian affirmation is not understood without the Old
Testament. For that is where one encounters this figure.
The proclamation of Jesus is determined by the ideas and contents of
the Old Testament. The world in which Jesus lives is the world of the
Old Testament and its people. The Scriptures Jesus knows, which he
quotes and interprets, are the Old Testament books, the Law and the
Prophets.

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There is another approach too with relevance for assessing the
ecclesiological significance of Israel. It is based on the argument just
mentioned, which says that one cannot do without the Old Testament.
This approach claims that Israel and the Church are to be considered
equal. Israel and Church are to be considered as people of God; both
are people of election, are ecclesia formed by Word and community;
both are people on the way, both have the mandate not to be like other
people, and at the same time to be there for all, and thus to understand
their existence as "existence for." Both have as goal the coming of the
kingdom of God.
Correct as these assertions may seem to be in view of what we have
just mentioned, they do not do justice to what is special in the new
and eschatological covenant, for they do not take account of the
differences. They do not make sufficiently clear what fulfillment is,
what it means that to say that Jesus is more than the prophet and the
king of the Old Testament. They also do not make it sufficiently clear
just how it is that the present, the today, that is witnessed in the New
Testament, is the decisive moment in time.
There is also an approach that goes even further: it speaks not only of
the equality of Israel and Church, but also of the idea that Israel and
its history become the decisive criterion of what the Christian Church
is, what it is to be and to do. The New Testament is thus seen as an
appendix, a final book of the Old Testament; its value is measured by
the extent to which it is brought into harmony with it. That is the
favored theme in the present-day Jewish-Christian dialogue.1 Martin
Buber had already declared: What is valuable in the New Testament
1 Basic treatments: Franz Mußner, Tractate on the Jews: The Significance
of Judaism for Christian Faith, trans. Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1984); Clemens Thoma, A Christian Theology of Judaism,
trans. Helga Croner (New York: Paulist Press, 1980); H. GoldschmidtH. J.
Kraus, Der Ungekündigte Bund, 2d ed. (StuttgartBerlin, 1963); K. H.
RengstorfK. Kortzfleisch, Kirche und Synagoge, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1968-
1970); P. Lapide, Ökumene aus Christen und Juden (NeukirchenVluyn,
1972); F. Hammerstein, Christian-Jewish Relations in Ecumenical
Perspective (Geneva, 1978); H. H. HenrixM. Stöhr, Exodus und Kreuz im
ökumenischen Dialog Zwischen Juden und Christen (Aachen, 1978); J.
MaierJ. J. PetuchowskiC. Thoma, "Judentum und Christentum" in:
Christlicher Glaube in Moderner Gesellschaft 26 (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1980) 12868; C. Thoma, Die Theologischen Beziehungen Zwischen
Christentum und Judentum (Darmstadt, 1982); P. LapideK. Rahner, Heil
von den Juden? Ein Gespräch (Mainz, 1983).
For recent work in English, cf.: J. H. Charlesworth, ed., Jews and Christians:
Exploring the Past, Present and Future (New York: Crossroad, 1990);
Overcoming Fear between Jews and Christians (New York: Crossroad,
1993); D. P. EffroymsonE. J. FisherL. Klenicki, eds., Within Context: Essays
on Jews and Judaism in the New Testament (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical
Press, 1993); C. A. EvansD. A. Hagnet, eds., AntiSemitism and Early
Christianity: Issues of Polemic and Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1993); New Theology Review: An American Catholic Journal for Ministry:
vol. 7, no. 2 is devoted mostly to this theme.

Page 409
takes its lineage from the Old Testament; what does not take its
lineage from there is not good.2
It follows from this that Jesus is acknowledged insofar as he is
prophet, brother of us all in faith,3 insofar as he is a critic of the
existing conditions and institutions of the establishment, a friend of
tax collectors and sinners, for whom the idea of a Church was
completely foreign.
In response, one must observe that all this does not do justice to the
witness of the New Testament. The New Testament made it quite clear
that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, that the messianic expectations are
fulfilled in him, that we need to look for no one else as the One who is
to come (Matthew 11:715). The New Testament makes a point of
saying that the Jesus who is proclaiming becomes the one who is
proclaimed, the one who believes becomes the one who is believed.
Karl Barth represents another contrasting concept of Israel and
Church.4 He says that the common element between Israel and the
Church consists in the fact that both are the people of election, the
election of the electing God. This people has a twofold figure: Israel
and the Church, the Church as a people composed of Jews and
Gentiles. Abraham, the father of Israel, is father of the Church
because he is the father of faith; Jesus, the Lord of the Church, is,
taking his lineage from Israel, the Messiah of this people. Both Israel
and the Church have the common mandate to give witness to what
God has done in them. Without Israel there would be no Church. The
Church came to Israel, not Israel to the Church. It was grafted on as a
branch (Rom. 911). The unity of the two is inseparable; it is often
revealed in their common fate.
The difference between Israel and the Church consists, according to
Barth, in the fact that Israel is the representation and reflection of the
divine judgment, the representation also of human unwillingness and
unworthiness over-against God's mercy. This is not Israel's past
contribution, but its ongoing contribution to the Church, which needs
precisely this mirror in order to be able to be and to do what it has
been mandated. According to Barth, the Church is the representation
of the
2 On this see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Martin Buber and Christianity: A
Dialogue between Israel and the Church, trans. Alexander Dru (New
York: Macmillan Press, 1961).
3 J. Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching trans. Herbert
Danby (New York: Menorah Pub. Co., 1979); F. Flusser, Jesus (rowohlts
monographien), (Reinbeck, 1968); Schalom Ben Chorim, Der Nazarener in
jüdischer Sicht (Munich, 1969); Jesus im Judentum (Wuppertal, 1970); P.
Lapide, Israelis, Jews, and Jesus, trans. Peter Heinegg (Garden City, N. Y.:
Doubleday, 1979); Heirich Fries, "Jesus in jüdischer Sicht" in: Kirche und
Religionen, ed. H. FriesF. KösterF. Wolfinger, vol. 1: Jesus in den
Weltreligionen, (St. Ottilien, 1981) 1549.
4 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 und 2, ed., G. W. BromileyT. F.
Torrence (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 195675); on this cf. H. Fries, "Die
Kirche als Ereignis. Zu Karl Barths Lehre von der Kirche" in: Kirche als
Ereignis (Düsseldorf, 1958) 68118, esp. 7781.

Page 410
divine mercy, that in which judgment is passed and overcome. To that
extent the Church is the more perfect form of the community, of the
people of God.
Furthermore, the special service of the Church is faith, while the
service of Israel is hearing, the hearing of the words and the promises
made to this people. According to Barth, this service too flows into
the Church, for faith comes from hearing, faith is the actualized step
of hearing. But it is precisely this step from hearing to faith which,
according to Barth, Israel, as such and as a whole, does not take, and
indeed at that point at which the promise is fulfilled: in Jesus Christ.
Thus Israel, which in hearing becomes disobedient, gives the example
of a beginning without continuation, of a present without future, in
brief, the example of an opportunity missed. Here the ministry of the
Church begins, the ministry of faith; to that extent the Church is the
more perfect form of God's community. But even here Israel lives on
in the Church, because its hearing lives on in faith and because faith
even in the sphere of the Church can become small and weak; it can
fail and be failed.
And finally: If God in Jesus Christ is preparing an end for human
beings lost to death and judgment, and is giving them a new beginning
in peace, safety, and life, then the one community of God exists in a
twofold form: in a form that is passing away and in a form that is
abiding and at the same time coming. These explanations represent in
an original way the commonality and difference between Israel and
the Church as well as its indissoluble bond, when this is seen in the
history of faith.
To be sure, the differences are overemphasized here. For Israel is not
just the representation of human disobedience, of sin and divine
judgment. Israel is also not just the representation of a community that
has not taken the step from hearing to believing. If this latter point is
relevant with respect to the Messiah who has come in Jesus, it
certainly isn't for the other contents of faith. For Israel also traveled
the path from hearing to believing, to believing in God's actions,
words, and promises. The difference lies in the difference that has
come with the course of history which cannot be overlooked or
leveled away.
In this at first astonishing comparison and contrast, Barth seems to
yield to the tendencyas has already been indicatedto replace the
schema of time and history with the schema of space. This comes out
in the pregnant expression: the prophet and the apostle see the same
thing: the prophet looking forward to what is coming, the apostle
looking back to what has come. And precisely here lies the decisive
difference conditioned by time and history. It is this: prophet and
apostle do not see the same thing; they do not see the same in what
they see. Time and history are also the coming of the new.

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Therefore, in the matter of the relationship between Israel and the
Church, we conclude that what is expressed by the category
praeparatio ecclesiae in the history of Israel and in the Old Testament
does more justice to the mutual relationships and connections between
Israel and the Church.
The Historical Path
Paul, above all in chapters 911 of the Epistle to the Romans,5
reflected on the relationship between Israel and the Church, and spoke
expressly of the mystery of Israel. "They are Israelites, and to them
belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the
worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their
race, according to the flesh, is the Christ" (Rom 9:45). Also, after
Christ, God did not terminate his covenant with Israel, or withdraw
his election. God did not reject his people. Israel remains beloved for
the sake of the patriarchs; the gifts of grace and the callings of God
remain irrevocable. In the image of the olive tree and its roots and
branches, Paul says to the Romans: "It is not you that support the root,
but the root that supports you" (Rom 11:18). Finally, Paul declares
that God's salvific plan will be fulfilled only when all Israel, in the
fulfillment of its faith and of the promises made to it, will have
recognized the "Deliverer from Zion" (Rom 12:26).
In the interim, the Apostle recommends to Christians that they should
set a convincing example by their witness in word and deed. As a
result, Israel and the Church are to this day signs and witnesses to the
fact that God has spoken and acted in history for the salvation of
human beings. Israel and the Church live from the promise and
fidelity of God. Belief in God's word and obedience to God's will are
the ground of their existence. The Jews are thus to be characterized
not as infideles (unbelievers) but as fideles (believers). Israel and the
Church have the mandate not to be like other peoples; at the same
time they are to be a sign raised up for all the world. Israel and the
Church represent the fact, the fate, and the hope of the pilgrimaging
people of God. This connection has often been forgotten in the course
of the history of the Church.6
5 F. W. Maier, Israel in der Heilsgeschichte nach Rom 911 (Munich,
1929); E. Peterson, "Die Kirche aus Juden und Heiden" in: Theologische
Traktate (Munich, 1952) 24192; John Oesterreicher, The Israel of God: On
the Old Testament Roots of the Church's Faith (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall, 1963). In addition, the commentaries on Romans by K.
Barth, J. Fitzmyer, O. Kuß, E. Käsemann, H. Schlier und U. Wilckens; D.
Zeller, Juden und Heiden in der Mission des Paulus (Stuttgart, 1973); F.
Mußner, Tractate on the Jews 5274.
6 Material on the following to be found in: W. P. EckertE. L. Ehrlich,
JudenhaßSchuld der Christen? (Essen, 1964); H. Fries, "Überlegungen zum
christlichjüdischen Gespräch" in: Wir und die andern (Stuttgart, 1966) 20839.

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The Church understood itself as the New Israel and thus had no
theological reason to bear enmity against Israel as such, even against
post-Christian Israel. In addition, the Old Testament was present in the
prayer and liturgy of the Church in numerous concrete ways. Despite
this background, after the end of its own time of persecution and in
the context of the Christian empire, Christianity made it almost its
unique obligation to convert the supposedly obdurate and God-for-
saken Jews, the progeny of those who cried out: "Let him be
crucified! . . . His blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew
27:23, 25).
That, however, is a thesis which, used as a collective sentence, is
utterly false. It doesn't even do justice to the simple fact that the
condemnation of Jesus, on the face of it, was staged and carried out by
Jewish officials of the time in consort with the Roman judiciary and
military power: Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilatocrucified under Pontius
Pilate.
But the theory of rejection remains. It grew out of an extensive
Adversus-Judaeos literature. The Jews who refused to become
Christians were accused of obstinacy and blindness. On the other
hand, one finds in the Middle Ages, about the time from 800 to 1000,
the conceptgrounded in the concordantia novi et veteris testamenti,
and getting expressed in older representations of Church and
Synagogue under the crossthat Synagogue and Church symbolized the
ecclesia universalis.7 It is among the most astonishing facts that, in
that particular time, not only were the Jews not subject to
discrimination and persecution, but there existed an inner and outer
harmony between Christian and Jews that was connected with legal
equality. But soon the earlier conception of the Adversus Judaeos
mentality gained the upper hand. Its new symbol was the
representation of the Synagogue with blind-folded eyes and broken
staffin contrast to the radiant and victorious figure of the Church. In
addition to that, there was the idea that, by the crucifixion of Jesus, the
Jews had incurred the status of abiding servitude in the sense of
slavery.
The Crusades opened wide the doors to open and brutal enmity
towards the Jewswho were looked on simply as Christ-murdererswith
the strange reasoning that it was necessary, when going to the Holy
Land in order to win back the holy places for Christianity, first to kill
the Jews in one's own homeland and take revenge on them. It was
completely forgotten that the very blood of Christ does not cry out for
vengeance by human hand. If one can also say that many popes,
emperors, and bishops interceded for the rights of the Jews, they were
still unable to prevent the atrocities against the Jews. The choice:
baptism or death, was at that time nothing singular; baptism was often
7 Wolfgang Seiferth, Synagogue and Church in the Middle Ages, trans.
Lee Chadeayne and Paul Gottwald (New York: Ungar, 1970).

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accepted in order to escape death. But it was not unusual that the
baptized Jews later fell into the hands of the Inquisition for suspicion
of heresy. The words of the crusade-preacher Bernard of Clairvaux to
the crusaders: "Go to Zion, defend the tomb of Christ your Lord, but
lay no hand on the Sons of Israel, and speak with them only in a
friendly manner, for they are the flesh and the bones of the Messiah,
and if you harm them, you run the risk of harming the Lord in the
apple of his eye," fell on deaf ears. Abelard, (1079-1142) otherwise
the great opponent of Bernard, but in this matter in full agreement,
depicted the situation of the Jews in these words:
No nation has suffered the like for God. Dispersed among all nations,
without king or secular princes, the Jews are oppressed with heavy taxes as
if they were supposed to ransom their life anew each day. To mistreat Jews
is considered a work pleasing to God. For such a captivity, such as the
Jews suffer, the Christians were able to explain only from the extreme
hatred of God. The life of the Jews is handed over to their most furious
enemies. Even in sleep they are not left in peace by nightmares. Outside of
heaven they have no secure place of refuge. When they want to travel to a
neighboring locale, they must buy at great price the protection of those
Christian princes who in truth wish them dead so as to confiscate their
inheritance. The Jews cannot own fields and vineyards because there is no
one there to guarantee their possession. Thus, the only occupation left to
them was the business of money-lending, and this made them further hated
among the Christians.
Expressed in these sentences is the agony, the incalculable
entanglement of Jewish fate in the Christian realm. The Fourth
Lateran Council, under Innocent III (1215), ordained that Jews had to
wear a visible sign of recognition, and on Good Friday remain in their
homes. Holy Week was for the Jews the worst time of the year. In the
later Middle Ages, supposed atrocities like ritual murder, desecration
of hosts, orin the time of the great plague in the fourteenth
centurypoisoning of wells, lead to the condemnation and killing of
Jews.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century brought about no change
but, in some instances, a worsening of the situation. Of great
importance and consequence on this score is the position of Martin
Luther.8 First to be mentioned is his work from the year 1523: That
Jesus Christ was born a Jew. In writing this, Luther was attending to
the suspicion raised against him that he was denying the truth of
"Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary."
Luther's presentations also had the intention of winning Jews for
Christ by friendly treatment. In doing so, Luther was consciously
distancing himself from the treatment being inflicted on the Jews of
his time: "They have treated the Jews as if they were dogs and not
human beings."
His later works, above all his treatise against the Jews and their lies
(1543) was addressed not to Jews but to Christians. In order to
8 A basic study: J. Brosseder, Luthers Stellung zu den Juden im Spiegel
seiner Interpreten (Munich, 1972).

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strengthen their faith, Luther drew a contrasting picture in view of the
Jews. They were depicted as human beings whom Jesus always and
purposely rejected and reviled. God preached to the Jews for 1500
years, so they should know that. They who hear God's word for so
long and say, I do not want to know, their ignorance becomes not an
excuse but sevenfold guilt. One is dealing with ill-will, perversity, and
stubbornnessthose symptoms which, in the views of the time, were
characteristic of heretics. Any hope that the Jews would convert was
without prospect. The question was, what concrete consequences were
to be drawn according to the law of the time.
In his earlier writing, Luther was concerned to integrate the Jews into
the society of the time in order to convert them. As Luther came more
and more to the conviction that the conversion of the Jews to the
Christian faith would not succeed, he drew other consequences. He
then held the opinion that a tolerance of the Jews in Christian society
wasfor the sake of the Christiansno longer justifiable; the toleration of
their religious practice, their worship in the synagogues, represented
blasphemy and a denial of the Christian faith. Christians, if they did
nothing, made themselves guilty of the sins of others.
Consequently Luther pleaded for what he called ''harsh mercy." He
compared it with what physicians do who, in order to heal, have to
cause pain. Luther's proposal was: The synagogues and houses of the
Jews should be destroyed, for these are places where idolatry is
practiced. The Jews should be gathered and put into ghettos so that
they would know that they are not the masters in our land. Their
Talmud and "Little Prayer Book" should be taken away, since they
were all stolen anyway. And finally, the Jews should emigrate to
Palestine.
Should one say that Luther took over these counsels of "harsh mercy"
from the praxis of his time, that is correct; but it remains small solace
in view of the renewal from the Gospel for which the reformers
strove. Should one say that what Luther was doing in these arguments
was not anti-Semitism or a pamphlet against the Jews, or even
persecution of the Jews, but a presentation of the Christian faith as he
understood it in the sense of the doctrine of justification, in the sense
of the "through Christ alone," there remains the question: What
follows from this for an interpretation of the faith which leads to such
consequences?
The effect of Luther's statements was that, later, the praxis
recommended by him was adopted without attention to its theological
background. We cannot in this context pursue this troubling historical
development any further; but we must admit: Christian anti-Semitism
was one of the roots of present-day anti-Semitism, which certainly
also had other roots. The decisive impulses for the recognition of the
Jews as

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fellow human beings and fellow citizens came from Humanism and
the Enlightenment. Lessing's Nathan the Wise is a moving witness to
this.
It is only to be hoped that the experiences of our time, especially of
the most recent German past, has opened or will definitively open the
eyes of all human beings and Christians to the outrageous injustice of
anti-Semitism. Christians must never again forget that anti-Semitism
is a form of anti-Christianity. In the Time of National Socialism
(Nazism), many did not understand, or did not want to understand,
this connection. Otherwise, the solidarity would have been greater and
more comprehensive; otherwise the confession and witness of the
churches would have been more courageous, as the synagogues
burned, and Jews were branded, persecuted, and deported, and finally
so gruesomely annihilated. The horrible symbol of this is Auschwitz.
The relationship of Jews and Christians can no longer, asserts J. B.
Metz, be formulated and set down as if Auschwitz did not take place.
"We Christians can never possibly put Auschwitz behind us; and we
cannot possibly ever get over Auschwitz alone, but only along with
the victims of Auschwitz. This is, in my eyes, the root of the Jewish-
Christian ecumenical situation."
From this comes also the transition from missionizing to dialogue.9
"We will come together with each other as Christians only when we,
together, gain a new relationship to the Jewish people and their
religion, not by turning our backs on Auschwitz but, by facing it give
shape to the only form of Christianity that can be expected of us or
allowed us after Auschwitz."10
The Statements of Vatican II
The relationship of Israel and the Church was also a theme of Vatican
II. In the Declaration Nostra aetate (Declaration on the Relationship
of the Church to Non-Christian Religions), it was given totally new
fundamental expression.11 The Declaration reads (no. 4):
As this sacred Synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it recalls the
spiritual bond linking the people of the New Covenant with Abraham's
stock.
For the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to the mystery of
God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are
already found
9 Johannes Baptist Metz, "Ökumene nach Auschwitz. Zum Verhältnis von
Christen und Juden in Deutschland" in: Gott in Auschwitz. Dimensionen
des Massenmords am jüdischen Volk (FreiburgBaselWien, 1979) 124. This
discussion of the impact of the Holocaust on Christian theology has been a
recurrent theme in the writing of Metz over the past two decades.
10 Ibid. 144
11Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to the NonChristian
Religions. This context, the result of a difficult compromise, doesn't do
justice to the matter. The theme itself is also found in the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church in: Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II,
ed. H. Vorgrimler, 1.105305.

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among the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets. She professes that all who
believe in Christ, Abraham's sons according to faith (cf. Gal 3:7), are
included in the same patriarch's call, and likewise that the salvation of the
Church was mystically foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from
the land of bondage.
The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the
Old Testament through the people with whom God in his inexpressible
mercy deigned to establish the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that
she draws sustenance from the root of that good olive tree onto which have
been grafted the wild olive branches of the Gentiles (cf. Rom.11:1724).
Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, our Peace, reconciled
Jew and Gentile, making them both one in Himself (cf. Eph 2:1416).
Also, the Church ever keeps in mind the words of the Apostle about his
kinsmen, "who have the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenant
and the legislation and the worship and the promises; who have the fathers,
and from whom is Christ according to the flesh" (Rom 9:45), the son of the
Virgin Mary. The Church recalls too that from the Jewish people sprang
the apostles, her foundation stones and pillars, as well as most of the early
disciples who proclaimed Christ to the world.
As holy Scripture testifies, Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her
visitation (cf. Luke 19:44), nor did the Jews in large number accept the
Gospel; indeed not a few opposed the spreading of it (cf Rom. 11;28).
Nevertheless, according to the apostle, the Jews still remain most dear to
God because of their fathers, for he does not repent of the gifts he makes
nor of the calls He issues (cf. Rom 11:2829). In company with the prophets
and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on
which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and "serve him
with one accord" (Zeph 3:9, cf. Isa 66:23; Ps 65:4; Rom 11:11-32).
Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is so great,
this sacred Synod wishes to foster and recommend that mutual
understanding and respect which is the fruit above all of biblical and
theological studies, and of brotherly dialogues.
True, authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead pressed for
the death of Christ (cf. Jn. 19:6), still, what happened in his passion cannot
be blamed on all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the
Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews
should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views
followed from the holy Scriptures. All should take pains, then, lest in
catechetical instruction and in the preaching of God's word they teach
anything out of harmony with the truth of the gospel and the spirit of
Christ.
The Church repudiates all persecutions against any man. Moreover,
mindful of her common patrimony with the Jews, and motivated by the
gospel's spiritual love and by no political considerations, she deplores the
hatred, persecutions, and displays of anit-Semitism directed against the
Jews at any time and from any source.
Besides, as the Church has always held and continues to hold, Christ in his
boundless love freely underwent his passion and death because of the sins
of all men, so that all might attain salvation. It is, therefore, the duty of the
Church's preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's all-
embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.

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Part Two
Jesus and the Church

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§ 43
Jesus' Proclamation of God's Rule and Kingdom
What does Jesus' proclamation of God's Rule and Kingdom have to do
with the theme "Jesus and the Church?" The question becomes acute
when one takes into account that in the proclamation of Jesus, as far
as it can be understood in the Synoptic Gospels, God's Rule and
Kingdom stands in the center. The concept basileia (kingdom) occurs
more than a hundred times, the word Church (ekklesia) only twice,
and that from the same evangelist in exegetically strongly
controverted places (Matthew 16:18 and 18:18). This is a remarkable
state of affairs. It is easy to recognize in what direction will run the
questions we have to ask. They are: Is the Church connected with
Jesus' proclamation of God's Rule and Kingdom? Did it really happen
the way the Constitution on the Church of Vatican II has it: "Jesus
established the beginning of his Church by proclaiming the Good
News, namely the arrival of the Kingdom of God that had been
promised of old in the Scriptures" (no. 5)? Or is the Church the
substitution, the embarrassment-avoiding solution for what was
proclaimed but did not come aboutnamely, God's Rule? In other
words, did it happen the way it is expressed in the classical statement
of Alfred Loisy in his book The Gospel and the Church: ''Jesus
proclaimed the Kingdom of God, and what came was the church"? To
get an orientation on these questions, it is important to speak first of
God's Rule and Kingdom.
The Gospel of Mark, the oldest Gospel, depicts the beginning of the
public activity of Jesus in Galilee with the words: "Now after John
was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of God,
and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand;
repent, and believe in the Gospel"'(Mark 1:1415).
Matthew 4:17 is similar: Jesus proclaimed: "Repent, for the Kingdom
of Heaven is at hand." When the Gospel of Matthewhew says
"Kingdom of Heaven" instead of kingdom of God, it is following a
Jewish custom of that time not to speak the name of God but to use
circumlocutions, e.g., by using the word heaven. In Matthew this
account of

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the proclamation of Jesus is preceded by the account of the preaching
of the Baptist: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand"
(Matthew 3:1).
What Is the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven?1
It is not the kingdom that is or will be in heaven, but the rule and the
kingdom of the One who is in heaven. The kingdom of God is no
territory, no spatially clear, circumscribable region, but a condition, a
situation, a mode of existence: that existence in which God, the
lordship, and the divinity of God, is recognized as the all-decisive
reality and gets actualized and comes to completion in the life of
human beings, individually and in community.
The word used for God's Rule and Kingdom, basileia, is not an
original creation of Jesus. With it he connects with statements and
realities already found in the Old Testament, namely in the message,
which is simultaneously promise and obligation, Yahweh is the Lord,
the King of Israel. Yahweh's word and will are to be the foundation
and basic order in Israel, Yahweh's people.
Let us ask more precisely what conceptions were connected with the
idea of God's Rule and Kingdom within the Old Testament. They are
the following:
1. The presential conception: Yahweh is Lord and king as the savior,
helper, leader, and guide of the People of Israel. This is much more of
a dynamic than a merely static conception: Yahweh rules in the
history of his people, whose ways he effects and guides.
Yahwehanother presential conceptrules; Yahweh is King as Lord of
heaven and earth. This being-Lord of Yahweh is grounded in the fact
that Yahweh is the Creator of the world. This is not an act done just
once, but an ongoing activity. For creation is, by its nature, dependent
on the Creator as its ongoing ground of being. The identification of
Yahweh with the Creator and Lord all is the special message of later
Judaism and hence also the message of the prophets.
2. Next to the presential is the futuristic conception: Yahweh will
come and establish His rule. It is the word of the coming, the
eschatological kingdom. This becomes especially vital as hope in the
midst of Israel's misery, in its situation of defeat, captivity, and exile.
1 On "Kingdom of God," consult the commentaries and theologies of the
New Testament as well as the standard theological reference works. In
addition: Martin Buber, Kingship of God (New York: Harper & Row,
1967); Rudolf Schnackenburg, God's Rule and Kingdom, trans. John
Murray (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963); G. Gloege, Reich Gottes
und Kirche im Neuen Testament (Darmstadt, 1961); Wolfhart Pannenberg,
Theologie und Reich Gottes (Gütersloh, 1971); H. Merklein, Jesu
Botschaft von der Gottesherrschaft (Stuttgart, 1983).

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There is no contradiction between these two conceptions. The
expectation of the coming does not signify the suspension of the rule
of God in the present. The fact that God is coming takes on certainty
from the fact that God has already proven Himself as present and
active.
3. Connected with the conception of the coming rule, the coming
kingdom, are various motifs and concepts about the manner in which
God will establish his rule in the world. Yahweh comes as the victor
over His enemies and exercises judgment over them. They are
likewise the enemies of the People of Israel. The success and victory-
theology from Israel's early years also acts as a leitmotif in the future
and for it.
Along with this comes another conception of Yahweh's Rule and
Kingdom: Yahweh will bring an end to all injustice and all
oppression:
The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast. He will destroy. . . . the
covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all
nations. He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe
away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away
from all the earth. (Isa 25:68)

In the description of the new exodus of Israel from exile and captivity,
Yahweh is described as Savior, but not under the sign of power and
glory. Yahweh is hoped for as Bringer of Peace, the kingdom of peace
is to be the homeland of the nations (Isaiah 4042). No earthly king
will ever again be the representative of Yahweh.
After the Exile, the idea of Yahweh's Rule and Kingdom, of Yahweh's
Kingship, again took on national, restorational traits. The memory of
former national greatness, of the House of David, was awakened.
Yahweh's Rule and Kingdom meant freedom from need and foreign
rule, freedom for the Law and the worship of God.
Apocalypticas in the Book of Danielconnected universal and cosmic
traits with the future Kingdom of Yahweh. Yahweh comes in great
power and glory, Yahweh comes in the clouds of heaven. The sign of
this coming are cosmic disasters: earthquakes, darkness, famine, war,
persecutions, being delivered up to evil hands. All this was described
in the apocalyptic literature, and indeed according the conception
favored at that time, when the measure of evil is full, when the power
of evil has risen up worldwide, Yahweh will intervene and bring in the
new time of salvation with the community of the elect. The mediator
and bringer of this new and eternal Kingdom will be the Son of Man.
The standard figure for apocalyptic expectation is taken from the
Book of Daniel, where the following vision is described:
I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there
came one like a Son of Man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was
presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and
kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his
dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his
kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. (Dan 7:1314)

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The Rabbinic Schools developed the idea of a present but hidden Rule
of God. Connected with this was the belief that one could bring in the
Rule and Kingdom of Yahweh by obedience and fidelity to the Law.
Among the group of Essenes and the pious ones of Qumran, the
kingdom of God is the Kingdom of the Elect, of the righteous, of the
so-called Sons of Light, who can be this only if there is the kingdom
of darkness and the sons of darkness, who are in battle against the
light, but who will be annihilated in this battle.
In this rich stream of tradition, with its wealth of motifs relative to
what is supposed to be the content of God's Rule and Kingdom, stands
the proclamation of Jesus. It stands there both in connection and in
contradiction.
Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God
The first statement in the proclamation of Jesus reads: The Kingdom
of God, the Kingdom of Heaven is near at hand. This simple statement
can be interpreted, and indeed it has been so interpreted, the Kingdom
of God has come nearhas indeed already come. Or, The Kingdom of
God is in the vicinity, but is not yet here in full form.
Jesus does not mean, with the Rule of God proclaimed by him, that
form of divine lordship that comes with the creation of the world and
with divine governance, but a form different from that; he means the
coming of a new form. Still less does the preaching of Jesus mean a
condition brought about by human beings, which would then be called
the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God will not be created,
established, built, or brought about by human beings. It comes; it is
the activity and work of God; it is the seed sown by him. Human
beings can make themselves open for the coming of this kingdom,
make and hold themselves ready for it. They can pray for the coming
of the kingdom; they can seek it, the way one seeks for a precious
pearl, for a treasure in the field.
God's Rule and Kingdom is the proclamation of a good news, it is the
declaration of peace, joy, and salvation. This special quality of the
message of Jesus becomes recognizable in comparison with the
Kingdom-of-God preaching of the forerunner, John the Baptist
(Matthew 3:112), which was a fire-and-brimstone preaching:
You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves,
"We have Abraham as our father"; for I tell you, God is able from these
stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root
of the trees; every tree therefore that does 'not bear good fruit is cut down
and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he
who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy
to carry: he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His
winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his

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threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will
burn with unquenchable fire. (Matthew 3:712).
Quite different is the sound of the proclamation of God's Rule and
Kingdom by Jesus. It is the declaration of a rule of God in the form of
joy, of hope, of consolation, of affirmation, and of the forgivenes of
guiltparticularly for those on the darker side. In the language of the
time, it was for tax collectors and sinners, for those plagued with
suffering and sickness. The most beautiful and most moving parables
in the preaching of Jesus have to do with pain over the lost and joy
over the found. This motif varies in images from the lost and found
coin, to the lost and confused sheep in the wilderness, but most
strikingly in the inexhaustible depth of the parable of the lost son
(Luke 15).
The word-proclamation becomes a sign-action and deed-action: Jesus
practices table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners. In the
community of the meal he assures them of community with himself
and with his message, to the chagrin and anger of the pious and just.
In order to recognize what is so special about this orientation of Jesus,
one must keep in mind the kind of thing found in the rule of the
monks from Qumran at the time of Jesus: "Fools, the insane, the
simple-minded, the lame, the deformed, the deaf and the
underagenone of these are permitted to be accepted into the
community."
The so-called first sermon of Jesus in his home city of Nazareth is a
fine example of Jesus' message and program (Luke 4:18):
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to
the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to
read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened
the book and found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering sight to
the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord." And he closed the book and gave it back to
the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were
fixed on him. And he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been
fulfilled in your hearing." And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the
gracious words which proceeded from his mouth. (Luke 14:1622)

The words of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 57), words about
God's Rule and Kingdom, speak to those whom one normally thinks
are excluded: those who are poor before God, the grieving, those who
use no force, who hunger and thirst for justice, the merciful, the clean
of heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for the sake of justice.
God's Rule and Kingdom as invitation from God is the salvation of
human beings. This invitation will establish that situation and mode of
existence in which human beings reach perfect fulfillment, that
situation and mode of existence in which they are open for God,
hearers of God's word, and receivers of God's favors. Constituent of
this situation and mode of existence are poverty, suffering,
persecution, readiness to

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forgive, and peacemaking, the very realities on which the beatitudes
are grounded.
In Jesus' message of the Kingdom of God, the idea of judgment is not
lacking. But judgment is not the first word, but a word spoken as
answer to the conscious refusal or rejection of God's invitation.
It is clear that in the proclamation of Jesus there are various motifs of
the traditional contents of God's Rule and Kingdom. But one thing is
especially clear: Jesus' proclamation contradicts the conception of a
kingdom of Yahweh understood in terms of the politics of national
power, and manifesting itself in war, victory and success.
The sign of this contradiction is the refusal of Jesus to let himself be
elevated to a political Messiahaccording to the account of the Gospel
of Johnafter the sign of the multiplication of the loaves (John 6:15).
Add to this also Jesus' refusal to let himself be played out against the
Roman emperor, with the familiar saying: "Give to Caesar what is
Caesar's," a saying that at the same time contains a criticism, for he
adds: "Give to God what is God's" (Matthew 22:21). Caesar cannot be
given what is to be given to God, what is God's. A sign of this attitude
of Jesus is the admonishment of Peter, who wanted to rescue Jesus
with force when he was being taken captive (Matthew 26:51).
Especially filled with meaning is the sign-action with which Jesus
surrounds his entry into Jerusalem: He is the fulfillment of the word
(Zech 9:9): "Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to
you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass"
(Matthew 21:5).
All these words and deeds of Jesus are unpolitical, if by "political"
one understands power politics. But they are political, and indeed to
the highest degree, inasmuch as they are applied not only to the
isolated individuals but also to the public, to society and the nation,
and also because they intend to be effective in the nation and for the
nation and its activity and behavior. Included in their goal is the
transformation of unjust conditions.
When Jesus rejects the limitation of God's Rule and Kingdom to the
nation, to the People of Israel alone, to the descendants of Abraham,
this is what it means: God's Rule and Kingdom is an invitation
extended to all. The sign of this universality is Jesus' explicit
invitation to the many who "will come from east and west and sit at
table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven"
(Matthew 8:11).
Jesus' proclamation of God's Rule and Kingdom which takes place as
offer, invitation, and Gospel, calls forth an answer on the part of
human beings in the form of a challenge and a decision. The first
demand is: Reform! The earlier or otherwise customary word: Do
Penance! contains, over-against that of Reform, a narrowing,
connected with a negative aspect. Reform means, literally, strike out
in another direc-

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tion, on another course; do not remain where one is, but take care to
become what one should be.
That means, in the sense of Jesus' preaching: Let God be God;
recognize God as the all-determining reality. Put another way, it
means: Break out of the self-centered aspect of being human;
dismantle self-pride; see and make truly real their finite, creaturely,
owed, and broken existence, i.e., their existence before God.
The second demand is, in the words of Mark: "Believe the Gospel"
(Mark 1:15). Faith/belief is the positive side of reform. Faith is
opening oneself up for the hearing and receiving of the message of
salvation. It is the readiness to be drawn into that message, and to
exist in and from that ground.
The third demand connected with the proclamation of Jesus reads:
"Follow me!" From the literally understood "follow along behind
him" there comes the greater meaning of the following or imitation of
Christ. Following does not mean a slavish imitating, but signifies
taking over the mind and the mode of existence of Jesus. It means to
understand and make one's life real as Jesus did: as existence from
God and for God and for human beings in the attitude of self-giving
and freedom. To follow Jesus means to verify, in existence for others,
existence for God; and in existence for others to open up the
dimension of God.
This is expressed in the connection Jesus insisted on between love of
God and love of neighbor, which is a basic theme of the New
Testament. Love for God, its verification in love for human beings, for
one's neighbor, for people in situations such as depicted in Jesus'
judgment sermons: love for the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the
naked, the sick, those in prison (Matthew 25:337)that is not a past but
an ever-present situation. Jesus pushes the demand for love of one's
neighbor right up to love for one's enemy (Matthew 5:4348). Love for
human beings, however, especially in this extreme and radical form, is
made possible by God's love for us and by our love as the readiness to
be the completion of this divine gift to us. Schillebeeckx expresses
this in the strikingly concentrated formulation: "God's rule is the
power of God's love turned towards humankind."2
All these moments, above all the last-mentioned one of
imitation/following, point to the fact that Jesus is the one who, like the
prophets, proclaims and declares the message of God's Rule and
Kingdom, and also that the nearness and the achieved presence of the
kingdom is connected with him in a special way.
2 Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus, An Experiment in Christology, trans.
Herbert Hoskins (New York: Seabury Press, 1979) 14054.

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§ 44
"Imminent Expectation" and the Problem of the Church
Many of the parables of God's Rule and Kingdom point to the fact that
Jesus expected in an unqualified way the coming of this kingdom in
the near future. The constantly recurring warnings to be watchful, to
be ready for the imminent and surprising coming"Like a thief in the
night"are expressions of this imminent expectation.1 True enough,
Jesus explicitly rejects any precise determination or calculation of the
time. But there are some texts, which, because they indicate a time
within Jesus' own generation, actually seem to point to the time of the
end-event expected by Jesus. These are the so-called texts of
imminent expectation.
Some read Jesus not only as speaking of the presence and the future of
God's Rule and Kingdom, but also as reckoning with the immediate
breaking in of God's rule in power and glory. If that is an accurate
reading, then the idea of a Church as institution is excluded from the
outset. Whoever is figuring on the immediately proximate end has no
concern for a future which will already come to an end on the next
day. And vice versa: Any appeal of the Church back to an institution
by Jesus is impossible and inadmissible, because under the
presupposition of an imminent expectation, there is no place for a
phenomenon like Church to which, of course, institutions belong.
The Texts of Imminent Expectation
When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly, I say
to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before
the Son of man comes. (Matthew 10:23)
1 E. Grasser, Das Problem der Parusieverzögerung in den synoptischen
Evangelien und in der Apostelgeschichte (Berlin, 1957); Rudolf
Schnackenburg, God's Rule and Kingdom (New York, 1963) 195214;
ibid., "Naherwartung" in: LThK 7.77779; A. Strobel, Untersuchungen zum
eschatologischen Verzögerungsproblem (Leiden, 1961).

Page 426
And he said to them, "Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who
will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power."
(Mark 9:1)
There are two variations of the following passage:
But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death
before they see the kingdom of God. (Luke 9:27)
Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death
before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. (Matthew 16:28)

Rudolf Schnackenburg and Heinz Schürmann,2 among others, explain

that the interpretation of these texts is among the stickiest and most
difficult tasks that New Testament exegetes have. On the one hand,
nothing can be solved by sleight-of-hand, and on the other hand, a
careful consideration of all the texts forbids them from being satisfied
with the obvious explanation that Jesus was simply mistaken and that
the primitive Church reinterpreted his imminent expectation. That
would mean the confirmation of Loisy's statement: "What was
proclaimed was the kingdom of God, what has come is the church" as
a contradiction between the proclamation of Jesus and the factual
reality of the Church.
Attempts at Interpretation
A certain aid to the interpretation of these texts comes from the fact,
as we have already mentioned, that, in contrast to apocalyptic, setting
a date for the imminent expectation is strictly rejected. And even
more: in Mark 13:32 stands the likewise not easily explainable
statement of Jesus: "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not
even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father"a saying
whose difficulty attests to its authority.
A second orientation is found in the fact that Jesus as prophet, as
"more than a prophet," makes use of prophetic discourse and its style
of speaking. Statements about a temporal proximityin the prophets it
takes the form of the declaration of the proximity of the Day of
Yahwehare not made in order to set down a length of time. Instead
they serve the purpose of depicting the seriousness of the situation in
order to lend emphasis to the appeal to reform, to being prepared, to
watchfulness, and to the urgency of the decision.
The thesis that, in what he said about imminent expectation Jesus had
succumbed to the apocalyptic trend and was deceived on this point,
does not take into account those texts in which he is talking about the
already-realized presence of the kingdom of God, as well as about its
fate as an historical course of events. Such a thesis also gives too little
weight to the many words that speak about perseverance and patience;
2 "Zur Traditions- und Redaktionsgeschichte von Mt 10, 23" in: BZ 3
(1959) 8288.

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it misses the point of the parables of the kingdom of God, which
presuppose long durations of time (Matthew 25:19).
In other words, the real question is about the meaning to be given to
the statements of imminent expectation in the whole context of the
preaching of Jesus. This also raises the question of the (situation-in
life/situation-in-the-gospel) context in which these statements of
imminent expectation are found.
Matthew 10:23 stands in connection with the sermon commissioning
the Twelve, the so-called small mission instruction. Jesus is sending
out the Twelve. They are, like Jesus himself, to proclaim the message
of the nearness of God's Rule and Kingdom; they are, like Jesus, to
heal the sick and drive out demons.
Jesus gives the Twelve precise instructions and leaves them in no
doubt about their fate. It stands under the motto: "I send you out as
sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as
doves" (Matthew 10:16). At the same time, Jesus wants to encourage
and console them. He does this with the words: "You will not have
gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of Man comes"
(Matthew 10:23).
The exegetes, above all, as we have mentioned, R. Schnackenburg and
H. Schürmann, ask whether these words from the commissioning
speech originally stood in this context. To ask such a question is by no
means an artificial procedure, but quite to the point. For Matthew does
not make primarily biographical-historical references; he composes
and shapes theologically, and arranges different layers of the tradition
under an overall theme. That can be seen in the cycle of sayings of
Matthew 57, or in the cycle of the parables (Matthew 13) or in the so-
called miracle cycle.
From observations like these, and from a text and word comparison, it
turns out that what Matthew presents as a text from a commissioning
speech about the persecution of the disciples and their flight from city
to city originally belonged to the judgment sermons. Explaining it this
way falls back on the fact that the sentence which introduces and
grounds the situation of persecution and flight ("You will be hated by
all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved"
[Matthew 10:22]) stands word for word in the judgment sermon of
Mark 13:13, and the same is true of Luke 21:17. Matthew takes over
these words of Jesus from the tradition of the judgment sermons and
the situation of persecution described there, in order to describe
thereby the fate of the disciples being sent out by Jesus. Words from
the eschatological judgment sermon are used to characterize the fate
of the disciples: hate, persecution, and flight. For this reason, those
words about the persecution of the disciples from city to city belong
not in the mission sermon but in the judgment sermon. Matthew
connects two originally different

Page 428
traditions of series of sayings from a Markan and non-Markan
tradition, namely the sayings source (Q), and out of this shapes a
sermon of consolation to the disciples in view of their difficult
mission of being ''sent like sheep among wolves."
Another interpretation of the same passage is give by Julius
Schniewind.3 This interpretation says that in Matthew 10:23 we have
in fact a sermon about the mission of the disciples and the situation of
persecution and flight connected with it. But what is really meant is
the disciple of Jesus as such, the Christian missionary as such, who is
represented by the disciple Matthew and who also, like the disciples
of Jesus is not exempt from the fate of disciplestribulation, flight, and
persecutionwith nothing left out.
The mission of the disciples of Jesus has its first and immediate
partner in Israel, in the cities of Israel. Accordingly, what Matthew
10:23 says is: The mission in Israel will in fact not come to an end
until the Son of Man comes at the end of time. This interpretation is
not impossible in the New Testament when we keep in mind that the
cities of Israel in their official representation rejected Jesus and his
disciples, that the mission in the cities of Israel came to a standstill,
and that finally the unification and the reconciliation of Israel with the
message of Jesus was a living ecumenical hope of the Apostle Paul,
which he expressed in the Epistle to the Romans 911.
As a result of these attempts at interpretation, one can conclude that
even these passages, which are regarded as the classical expressions
of Jesus' imminent expectation must not necessarily be interpreted as
temporally limited in a narrow way and restricted to the expectation in
the time of the Twelve of God's Rule and Kingdom in the form of
power and fulfillment.
In conclusion, we adduce the judgment of Josef Schmid:4 These
words must keep their value as genuine words of Jesus because of
their factual difficulty. Matthew took up these words in his universally
intended Gospel, even though, as he wrote, the gospel had long since
pressed out beyond Israel and thus contradicted the wording of this
passage which, when kept in the context of the mission sermon, still
said that the end of the world would come before the gospel had
extended beyond Israel to the Gentiles. It is no longer possible for us
to interpret these words in such a way as to do full justice to text,
context, and wording, and still leave us with no other factual
problems.
The text of Mark 9:1"And he said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, there
are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that
the kingdom of God has come with power"has already been
3 "Das Evangelium nach Matthäus" in: Das Neue Testament Deutsch
(Göttingen, 1937) 12528.
4Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, 3d ed. (Regensburg, 1956) 17981.

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changed in Matthew 16:28 into the version "before they see the Son of
Man coming in his kingdom," and in Luke 9:27 to "before they see the
kingdom of God." This modification within the synoptic tradition is
noteworthy. It shows that the text of Mark caused difficulties because
it spoke of an imminent expectation that did not come about, or came
about in a way different than one expected. But even the changes in
Matthew and Luke leave open a broad range of interpretations. The
version "before they see the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:27), thus
without the addition ''kingdom of God with power," without the verb
"come," could be interpreted in such a way that Luke, who has been
called the evangelist and theologian of salvation history, wanted to
point out the "middle time" (Mitte der Zeit) which he emphasized in a
special way. What he wanted to say was: In the person, life, word, and
activity of Jesus is to be seen what the kingdom of God is.5
The passage itself of Mark 9:1 and the change in Matthew 16:28 to
the version "Before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom"
are interpreted by W. Pannenberg in the following way: The words
about the coming of the Son of Man in his kingdom as words of Jesus'
imminent expectation did not come about as an expectation of
temporal proxim ity, but they did not remain unfulfilled. "It is fulfilled
in the only way in which fulfillment can be spoken of anyway,
namely, in such a way that the original meaning of the promise is
changed by an event that corresponds to it and yet is different from
what the prediction said." The resurrection of Jesus from the dead can
be seen as the coming of the Son of Man, as the coming of his
kingdom in power, and thus as fulfillment of the imminent
expectation. For what happened in the resurrection of Jesus from the
dead brought about something unheard of and uniquely new: the
overcoming of death as the universal power over human beings.
What remains to come, what is not yet fulfilled, is the universal,
cosmic dimension of this expectation: the general resurrection from
the dead as the hope of human beings. "Nevertheless, the resurrection
of Jesus justifies the imminent expectation which had moved him, and
grounds anew for the rest of humanity the eschatological expectation
already fulfilled in him."6
The final text needs a bit of attention: Mark 13:30 = Matthew 24:34 =
Luke [Link] "Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away
before all these things take place." What "all these things" means is
found in the whole of Mark 13. There one reads of the end and of the
end of time, of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, of great
tribula-
5 Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, trans. Geoffrey Buswell
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982).
6 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and
Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977) 226.

Page 430
tion, of persecutions, of cosmic disasters, of the temptations, hence, of
the signs that will precede the end as the coming of the Son of Man.
The interpretation of "This generation will not pass away before all
these things take place" would be possible in view of those being
immediately addressed, if only the destruction of Jerusalem were
meant, but the end of all history is meant.
The interpretation of the text "This race, this generation will not pass
away" would be quite simple, if it were talking not about the
immediately addressed contemporary generation, but about the whole
People of Israel. Then the meaning of the message would be: Israel
will not pass away, Israel will last until all these things, the events at
the end of history, take place. "The existence of the Jewish people
through all periods of history is the great sign of the truth of Jesus'
words."7
Another interpretation is given by the exegete M. Meinertz.8 He says
that the expression "this generation" is a technical term found
frequently in the Old and New Testaments. It is an expression with an
accusatory sense; it means not the contemporary generation, but
human beings who refuse the call to reform and to faith, turn away,
and close themselves off. These human beings will always be, even at
the end as well. Those immediately addressed are, so to speak, the
representatives of the human beings of this attitude.
A concluding remark: Jesus made use of contemporary conceptions
for the preaching of his message. The matter of the message itself, the
Gospel of God's Rule and Kingdom, however, in no way stands and
falls with these apocalyptic conceptions, but can be separated from
them. It retains its full meaning even in a changed horizon of
expectation.
The Result
These interpretations are not only signs of careful exegesis, they are
also, and even more so, signs of a consciousness of a problem, signs
of difficulty that arise out of Christology as a whole, out of the
Christology of the New Testament, and out of the Christology of
ecclesiastical dogmas. Above all they arise from the problem: Was
Jesus deceived, or was he mistaken? If Jesus had been mistaken, what
would be the consequences? For systematic Christology these are very
serious questions. They have massive implications for affirmations
about Jesus as definitive revealer/revelation, as someone identical
with His message.
How, on this point, is the tension between exegesis and dogmatics to
be viewed; between an exegesis on the one hand which may not and
cannot be forgotten, i.e., that there is a Christology that has come
about
7 F. Mußner, Was lehrt Jesus vom Ende der Welt? (Munich, 1958) 64, ET:
What Did Jesus Teach about the End of the World? (Ann Arbor, Mich.:
Word of Life, 1974).
8 "Dieses Geschlecht im NT" in: BZ 3 (1959) 283.

Page 431
historically, and which was understood as interpretation of Scripture;
and a dogmatics on the other hand which today cannot act as if there
were no exegesis or as if it could operate according to the motto:
dogma commands history?
In his book On Being a Christian Hans Küng also treated this
question.9 He said, Jesus expected the Kingdom of God to come
imminentlythat is what the oldest texts say. But in the New Testament
there is already recognizable a process of defusing and transition. The
end of this development is found in the Second Letter of Peter, where
it is asked: "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the
fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the
beginning of creation" (2 Pet 3:4). And then the answer comes: "Do
not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Pet 3:8).
Examining Jesus, Küng asks the question: Was he not ultimately an
apocalyptic enthusiast? Was he not caught in an illusion? In
briefwasn't he simply mistaken? "One doesn't necessarily have to have
dogmatic reservations in order to concede this if necessary. To err is
human. And if Jesus was truly human, he too could be mistaken."
After this somewhat imprecise way of putting it, which would allow
one to draw any conclusion whateveranything and everything that is
human must thus also be found in Jesus, otherwise he wouldn't be
truly humancomes a revision: "In the sense of cosmic wisdom, it was
a mistakebut the question remains whether the concept error is the
right one in this context."
Küng asks a counter question: The narrator of Genesis, the narrarator
of the six working days, and of the creation of human beings, was he
in error because he was disavowed by the later scientific description
of the coming to be of the world and of human beingswhich for many
Christians of the modern age signified no small disappointment and
temptation, but which for most people today is taken for granted? But
do we not find in this process of factual "demythologization" the very
thing about which the author was most concernedGod as origin of
everything, and not in competition with an evil counter-principle, the
goodness of everything created and the greatness of the human being?
Is not all this preserved, and indeed made even more clear by the
stripping off of ideological wrappings? In this context of the
beginning of the world, the concept of error comes across as
undifferentiated and out of place. The same holds for the words about
the end of the world.
Jesus spoke as a matter of course in the apocalyptic frame of reference and
in the conceptual forms of his time. And even if he expressly rejected
precise calculations of the eschatological fulfillment and severely limited
the imaginative elabo-
9 Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1976) 21623.

Page 432
ration of the Kingdom of God in comparison with early Jewish
apocalyptic, he still remained fundamentally in the framework of
understanding of imminent expectation, in the horizon of apocalyptic that
is so foreign to us today. This framework of understanding has been
superseded by historical development, the apocalyptic horizon has faded
awaythis must clearly be seen. From our present-day perspective, we have
to say: In the matter of imminent expectation, one is dealing less with an
error than with a time-conditioned, time-bound way of looking at the
world, which Jesus shared with his contemporaries. It cannot be revived
artificially. And indeed it shouldn't, since, in so-called apocalyptic times,
the temptation arises again and again to have it revived for our so different
horizon of experience. The apocalyptic framework of image and concept
of that time, which has become so strange to us, would today only conceal
and misrepresent the intended meaning.10

Today, it all comes down to the question whether the fundamental idea
of Jesus, whether the agenda which Jesus had with his proclamation of
the coming of the Kingdom of God, still has any meaning, i.e., in the
completely changed horizon of experience of a humanity that has
basically become used to the fact that the course of world history, at
least for the time being, is going to continue. Or one can put the
question positively: Just how is it that Jesus' message has remained so
moving beyond his death and beyond the end that did not come about,
and indeed only after that "end" got correctly formulated?
If everything rose and fell with the temporally fixed imminent
expectation of the New Testament, such an outcome would be totally
inexplicable. The whole process from which the Church grew would
necessarily have ended after a short time. How the assertion of
imminent expectation can be "translated" for our situation is explained
by W. Pannenberg:11 The imminent expectation of God's rule, which
characterized the appearance and life of Jesus, is for us no longer
realizable. The two thousand years that have intervened make this
impossible. The mere progress of historical time makes any attitude
that can be appropriated today into something somewhat different
from the imminent expectation of Jesus. We can no longer take part in
the imminent expectation of Jesus; we can, however, live and think in
continuity with it and also with the appearance of Jesus, if we
recognize the imminent expectation of Jesus as fulfilled in a
preliminary way in Jesus' own resurrection, and as long as its still-
awaited universal effect, the general resurrection from the dead as
entrance into the Kingdom of God, also remains our expectation and
hope. In contrast with the imminent expectation of the time of Jesus,
this expectation is not related to a specific point in time, and it is
therefore not superseded by the process of historical time; rather, as
with all traditional ideas, it is seen in a new light. The continuation of
Christian hope in the fu-
10 Ibid. 21920 [translation ours].
11 W. Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man, 242.

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ture was the object of controversies which ended with its being held
with unshakable firmness, but without further temporal specification.
According to Pannenberg, imminent expectation understood this way
has set free an understanding of human beings that remains to this day
the most profound revelation of the human situation in the world.
The message of Jesus about the nearness of God's rule has called human
beings out of the assurances of their everyday forms of life and thereby
exposed the ephemerality of every this-worldly form of life and fulfillment
of life. In the light of the message of the nearness of God's rule it became
clear, even independently of the term of its breaking in, what the destiny of
human beings is: Human beings as human beings are always something
more than the present situation; their meaning is not fulfilled in any
already existing sphere of their life. It is through their orientation of
openness to the future, and also to the world, that human beings realize the
opening up of their existence for the future of God; but this opening up is
independent of all more precise specifications of time.12

Summing up, we can say: If imminent expectation were the central

and all-decisive element in the preaching of Jesus, then it would be
understandable how the nonarrival of the parousia understood in this
way would not have been without rather severe disturbances of faith.
Consequently, the ground and content of belief in the message of the
kingdom of God are not dissolved and lessened by the nonarrival of
the parousia. Belief in an imminent Second Coming was
understandable for many reasonsthrough that which already was:
above all through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as act of the
power of God over death. What took place in Jesus is an
understandable ground of imminent expectation. But isn't it true that
the failure of imminent expectation was what first brought forth the
idea of the fulfillment and presence of the Kingdom of God in Jesus
and the Jesus-event? It is exactly the other way around.
Certainty of the future, i.e., that Jesus is coming as the Son of Man
and judge of the world, lies in the fact that he has already come; the
certainty of the future lies in the present. In the New Testament,
"eschatology is the affirmation of the present as revealed towards a
genuine future; eschatology is not the affirmation of an anticipated
future back into the present." On the other hand, the question of when
does play a psychologically understandable important role; but
psychological intensity is not identical with theological significance.
The eschatological statements are basically "statements of Christology
and anthropology oriented towards fulfillment."13
From these considerations, Heinz Schürmann explains that the
meaning and intention of the texts of imminent expectation could be
ex-
12 Ibid. 226; cf. also Karl Rahner, "The Hermeneutics of Eschatological
Assertions," Theological Investigations 4 (New York, 1966) 32346.
13 Ibid. 346.

Page 434
pressed with the concept "continual expectation."14 Karl Rahner says
that for him, imminent expectation is the true way in which he in his
situation has to make real the nearness of God calling him to
unconditioned decision. On the other hand, it is of the nature of
human consciousness to have an unknown future before it.15 More
cannot be said, but nothing more needs to be said.
14 H. Schürmann, "Zur Traditions- und Redaktionsgeschichte von Mt 10,
23."
15 K. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith 250.

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§ 45
Kingdom of God and Church
The leitmotif of the theme "Kingdom of God and Church" can be
expressed: "The Kingdom of God was proclaimed, the Church came."
This statement is capable of very different interpretations.
Interpretations
The Church came because the fullness of the arrival of the Kingdom
of God in power and glory, which was expected as imminent, was not
accepted and taken up, and to that extent did not come. Church is the
result not of an illusion but of an invitation rejected, a message
refused, a faith refused; the result, in other words, of a failure.
The idea was represented by Romano Guardini. He asks: What would
have happened if the People of Israel had accepted the message of the
kingdom? He answers: Then
the glory of God would indeed have come in glory. As Jesus preached the
Sermon on the Mountand not that only, but quite a few others in the same
powerful and self-assured mannera great possibility stood behind that.
Everything was related to "the Kingdom of God being near" (Matthew
3:2). Jesus even expressly said that it is near. This word cannot have meant
only an enthusiastic formula or an expression of urgent exhortation; near
means, in so many words, near. Thus, as far as God was concerned, it was
possible that what the prophecies of Isaiah had proclaimed, the
breakthrough of a new existence, would really come about. . . . This
kingdom would have come if the message had been met with faith. . . . But
that did not happen. Jesus was rejected by his people and put on the road to
death.1

Two outlooks, according to Guardini, result from this situation: the

texts along with the whole mood of imminent expectation take on an
artless intelligibility. They mean what they say: the fulfillment of the
Kingdom of God in the immediately proximate future. But precisely
1 Romano Guardini, The Lord, trans. Elinor Castendyk (London:
Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1956) 9596. Taken up in his later book:
The Church of the Lord: On the Nature and Mission of the Church
(Chicago, 1967), these ideas are no longer accepted.

Page 436
this was prevented by Israel's refusal. The Church, however, is not
made impossible by this, but precisely by this made necessary.
The Churchthis is a second consequencetakes on a marked form by
this situation. Jesus maintains His demand for reform and faith, but
creates a new ground and space for it: the Church. In Guardini's view,
the Church was instituted on the last journey of Jesus to Jerusalem,
after the decision of his death had been made. This thesis is connected
with earlier conceptions which distinguish two phases in the life and
activity of Jesus: first, there was the successful beginning, the so-
called Galilean Spring; then came the increasing rejection and refusal,
ending in the crucifixion in Jerusalem, which deprived that Spring of
its fulfillment. The turning point is visible in Luke 9:51. "When the
days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to
Jerusalem."
However, such a conception presupposes that we have on the basis of
the Gospels a historically recoverable life of Jesus known down to
individual details. Its interest was focused totally on the witness and
the proclamation of what really was; but this witness does not have to
proceed according to chronological sequence. Consequently,
as a result of the special character of the Gospel tradition it is not permitted
to fix the individual logions according to time and situation. One can
hardly recognize two stages of the preaching of Jesus, a first in which he,
under the presupposition of the acceptance of his message and in view of
his path to death, predicts the coming of the kingdom of glory for the near
future, and a second in which, because of the unbelief of the people or its
leaders, the fate of his death becomes a certainty and he announces a
different divine plan of salvation which, despite the present rejection of the
Messiah, indeed precisely on the basis of his death, foresees and promises
the future glory.
Jesus nowhere expressed himself on what would have happened if the
Jewish people had believed his message. A hypothetical theology is
not to be found in the Gospels.
The revelation of divine sovereignty is governed wholly without any "if"
and "when," and makes no provision for a twofold divine plan to be read
from it. But it is connected to the law of promise and fulfillment
recognizable in the whole Bible. The promise is absolute and still
undifferentiated; only the fulfillment uncovers such and such new
particulars. Thus, the proclamation of divine sovereignty through Jesus,
which is at the same time a part of its realization, takes on new contours
from the resonance and reaction it encounters in its hearers; and Jesus'
answer to this brings us in turn new revelation of God's plan, how he will
in the end, and completely, establish His lordship.2
2 Rudolf Schnackenburg, God's Rule and Kingdom, trans. John Murray
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1963) 18183.

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Related to this thesis, but not identical with it, is the conception of
Erik Peterson, which he presented in a very concentrated contribution
under the title "The Church."3 He offers three theses:
a. The messianic kingdom which Jesus proclaimed did not come. Why
did it not come? Because the Jews as a people did not believe in the
Son of Man. Thus, there is Church only under the presupposition that
the people chosen by God did not believe in Jesus the Christ. It
belongs to the concept of Church that it is Church of the Gentiles.
b. Church exists only under the presupposition that the coming of the
Lord is not imminent. This is supported by the rejecting attitude of
Israel against Jesus. This prevents the coming of the Kingdom and at
the same time establishes the possibility of the continuance of the
Church. Imminent eschatology is transposed into the "doctrine on the
last things." That is not a falling away from the preaching of Jesus, but
its transposition into a new situation. One consequence of this is that
there are not Jews but Gentiles, that there is at the moment only
Church, but not Kingdom of God. The new situation means that Jews
are no longer called to the Kingdom of God, but Gentiles to the
Church.
c. Church exists only under the presupposition that the Twelve
Apostles were called by the Holy Spirit and consequently made the
decision to go to the Gentiles.
This thesis of Peterson is also a possible interpretation of the
proposition "What was preached was the Kingdom of God, what came
was the Church," but not, to be sure, as the result of an illusion, but a
necessary transposition (conditioned by Israel's attitude) which not
only distinguishes Church and Kingdom of God, which is correct, but
also almost separates themwhich is problematic. For, it must be asked:
How is it possible, according to these presuppositions, that in the
Church to this day the message of God's Kingdom is proclaimed and
that this message becomes the impulse and motive of its own praxis as
well as of its activity in the world? Peterson's concept also overlooks
the fact that the Church is essentially and originally Church of Jews
and Gentiles (cf. Eph 2:14-22).
In addition, Gerhard Lohfink has pointed out that according to the
Lukan tradition, Jesus does not want "to ground any new Church, but
to gather together all Israel, and this for the reason that at the moment
when the Church exists apparently as new community of faith, it does
not stand next to or in Israel, but is identical with the true Israel."
Luke
3 E. Peterson, "Die Kirche" in: Theologische Traktate (Munich, 1952)
41129; Cf. on Peterson: Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the
Spirit, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Herder and Herder, 1977) 14142.

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conceives the Church as the true and authentic Israel, "which is the
same as the old Israelin its final salvation-historical phase."4
The Relationship between Kingdom of God and Church
The Church is not the Kingdom of GodKingdom of God and Church
are not identical. The Church of Jesus Christ, understood as the
community of those who believe, whose faith is oriented to Jesus, the
Christ, which lives from his word and from the word about him, who
strive to imitate him, is a sign that the Kingdom of God is already
present and near. It is present in the Church in the form of beginning,
of provisionality, of hiddenness, and in part even of brokenness.
This comes from the fact that it calls itself Church of Jesus Christ; that
it is related to Jesus as its source and origin; but in Jesus was given the
proximity, even the presence of the Kingdom of God. The Church
lives from Jesus' message, which it proclaims; it mediates Jesus' work
in the service of healing in all kinds of ways, in the service of
overcoming evil, of forgiveness and reconciliation. The Church lives
from that new life that took its beginning in the resurrection of Jesus
from the dead and appears both as indestructible hope and as
comprehensive making sense of human existence. The Church is
related to the message of God's Rule and Kingdom, to the Jesus
proclaiming as well as the Jesus proclaimed, in whom imminent
expectation becomes eventuated reality. This is the Church, the sign of
God's dominion.
The Church is also not the Kingdom of God on earth, such that the
promises and obligations of God's Rule and Kingdom as power of
justice and love, which calls to reform, to faith, to confessing action in
justice and love, were limited to the boundaries of the Church. God's
Rule and Kingdom is in the world actively wherever there comes
about factually what God's promises and demands contain. And even
this is not limited to the Church, for it is possible in the world, among
human beings. It becomes recognizable in acts of selflessness, of
commitment to justice, reconciliation, freedom and peace. This is the
application of the saying "Whoever is not against you is for you"
(Luke 9:50). To say this does not reduce the significance of the
Church, but acknowledges in it the power of affirmation to bring to
bear its orientation to the world.
But even so it must be said that the Church of Jesus Christ in its
history in no way always was, or even is, the place where the message
of God's Rule and Kingdom became the standard orientation and
obligation. How often, in place of this, has come complicity with the
powers of the world, and in place of faith and witness, adaptation,
diplomacy,
4 Gerhard Lohfink, "Hat Jesus eine Kirche gestiftet?" in ThQ 161 (1981)
8197, at 9192; ibid., Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of
Christian Faith, trans. John P. Galvin (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).

Page 439
politics, success, evil and lazy compromise, yielding to the powerful,
making do with the realities, and in the place of the Gospel, sermons
about hell and the tortured conscience.
The Church is also not the Kingdom of God which we build, e.g., by
any and all human efforts, no matter how extensive or brilliant. In
spite of the many and great works, which fulfill the promises and
demands of the message of the Kingdom of God, the fact remains:
The Kingdom of God remains primarily gift which is supposed to
become task, but which is not replaced by human activities, which
cannot be equated with human works. All forms of human, Christian,
churchly effort stand under the eschatological proviso. They are not
the Kingdom of God; they point to it and are motivated by the idea of
the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God isput positivelythe goal, towards which the
Church, in hope, is moving. Kingdom of God is the future of the
Church and of the world. ''Thy Kingdom come!" is understandable
only as petition; likewise the exhortations to watchfulness, readiness,
openness, patience, if the Church is not the Kingdom of God but
awaits it, seeks it, is on the lookout for it.
It comes about from this tension of beginning and end of the Kingdom
of God, of way and goal, of already and not yet, that the Church
stands in the service of the Kingdom of God, that it is essentially a
pilgrim Church, Church under way, wandering people of God,
towards a goal, constantly striving to let the power that comes from
the goal and the future become reality in the present. It is very
characteristic, and of considerable importance precisely for the
present-day understanding of Church, that the Second Vatican Council
took over the dynamic concept "People of God" as the determining
characteristic of Church over-against the otherwise customary static
concepts like House of God, Temple of God, God's plant or flock, or
Body of Christ.
The Kingdom of God in the form of beginning and presence, but also
as goal and future, is the ever constant over-against of the Church; it is
the motivating, mobilizing orientation, but also the critical instance of
its activity and behavior. This has a number of consequences.
The Church cannot anachronistically anticipate the fact of its way and
the fact of its hope for fulfillment. For this would mean that the
Church is waiting for nothing more, that it already had everything,
that it could take its ease, that it declares holy everything that is there,
as it is, and everything that it does, that it considers every change an
offense. It is on the basis of such false anticipations of the definitive,
that is grounded that misplaced ecclesiastical triumphalism, that
embarrassing pathos that can be connected with the well-known and
popular hymn: "A house full of glory shines far across every landbuilt
of eternal stone by the master-hand of God." Here the

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heavenly Jerusalem is brought down, so to speak, to this worldperhaps
to that city which calls itself Eternal Rome, a title which, of course,
does not come from the Gospel but from pre-Christian antiquity.
From the fact that the Church is under way, a wandering people of
God, that it has history and with that a future which transcends and
vivifies it, that the Kingdom of God is also its goal, there comes this
consequence: The Church is an "ecclesia semper reformanda," a
Church in need of renewal, which is a sign of its finitude, its failure,
and its guilt; but it is also a Church capable of renewal, which is a sign
of its life and its future. From this has come one of the fundamental
statements of Vatican II about the Churchin contrast to the earlier
situation when such ideas were anathema to Catholic ears.
When it is asked where lie the points of orientation for renewal as the
Church's task, the answer is: They are to be found in its orientation to
the Kingdom of God, in its origin, and in its gift to be the presence of
the Kingdom of God given in Jesus Christ; and they lie in its future,
the goal and the fulfillment towards which it is moving.
From this orientation it is possible to understand and ground the
orientation that the renewal must be true to origins, goal-oriented, and
situation-related. From this program comes the necessity for the
Church to take its leave from forms, structures, and models that were
once historically adapted and justified in their time, perhaps even
necessary. These may not be held onto at any price when a new time
of the Church and for them has dawned. The Church must be ready
for Exodus when what has come to be turns into hindrance and
captivity.
The idea of the Church being under way, which means historicity, was
formulated by Vatican II in some remarkable sentences: "The pilgrim
Church bears in its sacraments and institutions, which still belong to
this world, the form of this world which is passing away; and thus it
belongs itself to that creation which still lies in groans and sighs and is
awaiting the revelation of the children of God (cf. Rom 8:19-22)."5
"The Church 'strides between the persecutions of the world and the
consolations of God on its way of pilgrimage' (Civ. Dei 18.51)."6 No
trace of triumphalism or of anticipated glory is to be found here.
When the Kingdom of God is the goal of the Church's striving, then it
cannot be there just for itself and its own institutional concerns, and
thus fall into the practice ecclesiological narcissism. It becomes
believable only when it passes on its directions, its explanations, its
encouragements, not as the voice of its own ecclesiastical interests,
but as the voice of the message of the Kingdom of God, which it is her
task to make real in the realm of the Church, a message which at the
same time signifies and brings about the full humanity of human
beings. The
5Lumen Gentium no. 48.
6 Ibid. no. 8.

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Kingdom of God as the goal and destiny of the Church means that the
existence of the Church must be an existence forexistence for others, a
transparency of Jesus Christ whose whole life was an existence for
others. Church is Church as it should be only when it is Church for the
world. And that is precisely its most recent statement about itself: It is
the sacrament, the effective sign of the unity of God and human
beings and of human beings among each other.
If the Kingdom of God is also not identical with world and Church,
they are still not without relationship to each other. Neither the world
nor even the Church should become a caricature of the Kingdom of
God. They should be signs of God's presence, and also set up such
signs as hope for the world. The words, the promises as well as the
obligations that proceed from God's Rule and Kingdom as present and
future should bring forth fruit on the field of history, above all on the
field of the Church which is connected with the Kingdom of God in
this intensive wayin the already and the not-yet.
The Church which is not the Kingdom of God, not even the Kingdom
of God on earth, which cannot build this Kingdom because it is God's
gift, which when translated into mandate still remains gift, which
nevertheless is related in such a comprehensive way to the already and
the not-yet of the Kingdom, this Church is the community of those
who pray for the coming of the Kingdom, who wait for its fulfillment,
towards which they are on the way.
This community of the way is preserved on the way and kept directed
towards the goal of its fulfillment by the fact that this community lives
from the word, from the promises, from the powers and the ministries
of what is the content of God's Rule and Kingdom. Church understood
in this way is first and foremost a community of hope which is
conscious of its provisionality, not only theoretically but also
practically; at the same time it must mediate the power of this hope as
consolation, as giving meaning to life, as liberation, and as
provocation to men and women of the whole world. It must do this
because it can do this.
This aspect of the Church as community comes above all from the fact
that no one can hope only for oneself aloneand that holds for faith and
love as well.
To dare to hope for God's Kingdomthat always means to hope for it with
an eye for others, and therein to hope for ourselves. Only when our hope is
a co-hope for others, when it takes on without fuss the shape and the
movement of love and communion, only then does it cease being small
and fearful, and cease pandering to our hapless egoism.7
7 "Unsere Hoffnung. Ein Bekenntnis zum Glauben in Dieser Zeit" in:
Gemeinsame Synode der Bistümer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
(Offizielle Gesamtausgabe, 1976) 99.

Page 442
§ 46
Church and Kingdom of God in the Horizon of the "Theology of
Hope"
These considerations afford us the opportunity to take up the
theological outline of the Church found in the theology of Jürgen
Moltmann, a theology marked in a central way by the idea of God's
Kingdom, of the future, and thus of hope.1
Moltmann makes not only faith but also hope the central object of
theology. The old motif of theology "Credo ut intelligamI believe that
I may understand" he changes into "Spero ut intelligam."
The Basic Theses
Moltmann explains: For Christian theology today it could be of
decisive significance "to follow the fundamental principle: spero ut
intelligam. If it is hope that draws believers into the life of love, then
it will also be hope that mobilizes and drives forward the thinking of
faith, its recognition and consideration of human existence, of history,
and of society. Human beings hope in order to know what they
believe" (28).
Theology of hope has of course the essentially necessary orientation
to faith. Hope is unfolded faith.
Faith binds human beings to Christ. Hope opens this faith for the all-
encompassing future of Christ. Thus, in Christian life, faith is (temporally)
prior, but hope has the (factual) primacy. Without faith's knowledge of
Christ, hope turns into utopia reaching out into the empty air. But without
hope, faith erodes, it becomes fainthearted and finally dead faith. By faith
human beings step into the footsteps of true life, but only hope keeps them
on this track. Faith in Christ turns hope into assurance. Hope broadens
faith in Christ and leads it to life (16).
Such a theology of hope obviously involves some implications and
consequences. When hope and its presupposition, promise, are made
1 Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. James W. Leitch (New York:
Harper & Row, 1965). The numbers that follow refer to this edition.

Page 443
the principle of theology, then the revelation event cannot be
understood as epiphany, as the unveiling of doxa, or as an uncovering
of the hidden God. According to Moltmann that would introduce
categories in which Greek religion is made the criterion of biblical
proclamation. The incontestably dominant theme of Old Testament
witness, that God's self-revelation was done by way of promise,
becomes for Moltmann the decisive horizon for biblical revelation in
general and for its normative and guiding understanding: the
salvation-event of the Old Testament can and should become the
guide for our understanding of Christ (134).
This theological conception has a corollary and its suitable expression
in theological language. The Logos corresponds to the epiphany of
God, which announces, points out, and expresses in words what is,
what is shown from the thing itself, which "experiences in the Logos
the epiphany of the eternal presence of being and finds truth therein"
(34), which can arrange them in the form of propositions, doctrine,
and system. Theological speech proper is, however, to be done in such
a way that "in the medium of hope theological concepts are not to
become judgments which fixate reality on what it is, but to become
anticipations which uncover for reality its prospects and future
possibilities. Theological concepts do not fixate reality, they become
rather expanded by hope and anticipate future being" (30).
The difference between Greek and Israelite-Christian thinking,
between Logos and promise, between epiphany and apocalypse of
truth, which was a basic phenomenon in the Old and New Testaments
in its struggle with Greek thinking, is an ongoing task which,
especially today, must be thought through and worked out anew. "The
language of promise becomes an essential key for the liberation of
Christian thought."
The Understanding of Church
The Church has to be placed in the framework and horizon of hope. It
is, "as community of Christ, hope lived in community" (51). Its
connection with Christ is its memory of him, in which the enthusiasm
of fulfillment is not to be celebrated; in which, instead, the ground and
the goal of all hope is given and the future of every promise has
begun.
The Church is Exodus-Community, wandering People of God, whose
way is a path through the desert. Its symbol is not the house but the
tent. It takes part in the movement of the history of God with the
world and is to be understood as a moment in this movement.
For this reason the Church is neither a force for order nor an
institution of salvation which celebrates the epiphany of God in
sacramental and cultic re-presentation. The Church is brotherhood.
"She is the ve-

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hicle of the Gospel of freedom, not schoolmistress of the nations. It is
not the Church which has the Gospel, but the Gospel makes for itself
an Exodus people" (103). The important thing here is "not the spread
of the Christian religion or the establishment of the Church, but the
liberation of the people for Exodus in the name of the coming
Kingdom" (103). The community of the Church serves the spread of
the call of freedom in the world and is supposed to be, as itself a new
community, the social form of hope. Church is Church for the world;
without the world it is not Church.
The existence of the Church moved by this impulse will develop an
especially active and creative power. It will not passively make do
with realities or let things run their course; it will rather attempt to be
active for and in the world, for and in society through its efforts for
the reform of human beings and the renewal of circumstances,
conditions, and structures. It will try anything in order to prepare itself
and the world for the future which is called the Kingdom of God. It
will acknowledge its responsibility for human beings and for the
world and be active in all kinds of ways; it will be especially engaged
for peace and justice. It will recognize in sickness, poverty, hunger,
war, and death not divine arrangements butin good biblical
fashionenemies of God, manifestations of the power of evil, which are
there to be battled and overcome. It will no longer be concerned about
healing wounds, but will work so that wounds will be prevented.
The Church therefore cannot stand in the place of hope, it must keep
alive the fire of hope. This is where its present-day task and mission
lie, this is where it recognizes the signs of the time. The mission of the
Church consists in this, that in the widely dominant contemporary
situation of failure, lack of courage, resignation, and despair, it fills
human beings with the impulses and contents of Christian hope and
spreads these abroad. The task of the Church today, says Moltmann, is
the injection of humankind with hope.
Thus as Moltmann understands it, the Church is Church under the
cross (116). There is where it will learn where Christians take up their
crossin common battle against inhumanity, in the common suffering
of oppression and persecution. In this participation in the passion of
Christ and in the passion of the people, the body of Christ and his
freedom will become visible. Christian community is proven in
opposition and resistance. Community with the crucified becomes
further visible in Christians entering with solidarity into the
brotherhoods of humankind which in their society live visibly in the
shadow of the cross: the poor, the disabled, the rejected, the
imprisoned. Community with the crucified is nothing other than to
live in community with the least of the brothers and sisters of the Son
of Man (Matthewhew 25). The Church as community of the cross, as
Church under the cross, will come

Page 445
to know, especially by and in that (cross) that the word and act of
forgiveness comes to reality within itself.
This consciousness is supported by the fact that in Christ, especially in
his resurrection from the dead, as the overcoming of death, the most
striking manifestation of the power of evil, is laid the ground and
beginning of all hope. Through Easter, the lordship of Christ has
become an actual event. However, without new life, without the
power of love, without the courage of living hope coming from faith
in the resurrection of Jesus,
resurrection faith would break down into a merely factual faith without
consequences. But on the other hand, it is true that without resurrection
faith, the new life in the lordship of Christ would lose its radical alternative
to the dominant systems of humanity and wouldadapted in various
wayslose its world-conquering power. Where there is certainty that death
has lost its power, there is a genuine alternative to those systems of
dominance which are built upon alliance with death. Depriving Death of
its power brings to light a life which overcomes the system of dominance
and oppression and demonstrates freedom in community (117).

This is also the reason why the Church, which is so understood and so
understands itself, has every right and reason to celebrate the feast
beginning with Easter as the celebration of freedom. With Easter,
explains Moltmann, begins the laughing of the redeemed (129). Even
before it becomes the content of faith, Easter is the content of a hymn
of joy and jubilation: Death, where is your sting, hell, where is your
victory? (1 Corinthians 15:55). When this freedom which is being
grounded in the victory of Christ over death is celebrated as festival, it
is lifted out of the manifold constrictions and compulsions of the
everyday, for which it becomes effective at the same time.
According to Moltmann, the feast of freedom works in two ways: It
effects the preservation of resistance against suffering, and it effects
the preservation of consolation in suffering. "Without resistance,
consolation in suffering can degenerate into false consolation. But
without consolation in suffering, resistance against suffering can lead
to the suppression, transference, and multiplication of suffering"
(132).
"The liberating festival and life as festival without end mutually
complement each other. Basically, everyday and festival day merge
more into joy in freedom."
Evaluation
The advantages of this theology are obvious.2 Hope can, in fact, be an
embodiment of what Christian being, faith, and life mean. Hope is
2 The following considerations are connected with my work: "Spero ut
intelligam. Bemerkungen zu einer Theologie der Hoffnung" in: Wahrheit
und Verkündigung. Michael Schmaus zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. L.
ScheffczykW. DettloffR. Heinzmann (Munich
(footnote continued on next page)

Page 446
an unfolding of faith; it describes the face of faith turned towards the
future. In addition, hope brings to expression the status of the
Christian and the Church in a very impressive way: the state of being
under way, of pilgrimage; the situation of the wandering People of
God which knows about the goal of this way, but also does not forget
that the goal is not yet reached.
In addition to this is the radical anchoring of this theology of hope in
Jesus Christ. The awaited and hoped-for future is the future of Jesus
Christ. Put more clearly, it is the future opened up for all human
beings by the event of the resurrection from the dead, the future of life
as victory over death, as the coming of the royal lordship of God no
longer held back by anything.
The theology of hope also has special significance in that the theme
"hope" has been until now a stepchild, so to speak, of theological
reflection, which was devoted disproportionately to the themes "faith"
(this above all) and "love." the treatise on hope was one among others.
It was treated principally as one of the three ''theological virtues," and
there more or less cursorily. But there was hardly any attempt to make
hope the principle of theology. In addition to that, the theology of
hope presented here is able to raise hope out of the private and
privatized sphere and, without loss of the personal, into the dimension
of community, Church, and humanity. It is with this that hope gains its
special, universal status. At the same time, it brings about the
possibility to be an answer to the question of today's human beings,
who are not moved by anything quite as strongly as the question of
the future.
The theology of hope also facilitates in a special way an entering into
conversation with the most clearly defined ideology of our day,
Marxism, and especially with the "Prinzip Hoffnung" of Ernst Bloch.
Further inquiries: It is only under the express presupposition of the
assessment and recognition we have just given that the following
critical observations are to be viewed. These questions relate not so
much to what Moltmann has said as to what was not said or to the
rejected alternative.
In Moltmann's theology of hope, the promise is distinguished both
from the statement of the Logos and from the announcement of the
kerygma, because it is opposed to the promise of the epiphany as a
category of Christian revelation. In reply, it must be said that it is not
right to think alternatively in this context, because such thinking
easily leads to one-sidedness. Also, the matter of hope in no way
requires such alternatives.
(footnote continued from previous page)
PaderbornVienna, 1967) 353-75; likewise in: Diskussion über die
Theologie der Hoffnung, ed. W. D. Marsch (Munich, 1967) 81-105.

Page 447
In contrast to Moltmann, one will, in accord with the New Testament,
also speak of a fulfillment that has taken place in Jesus Christ, in his
person and in his fate, and thus of an epiphany granted in Jesus Christ,
a manner of presence which corresponds not only to anticipation but
also to comprehension, which is ordered not only to hearing but also
to seeing: "We have seen his glory" (John 1:14). This mode of
revelation cannot be described satisfactorily in its entirety with the
category of promise.
Moltmann questions whether New Testament revelation, which
culminates in Jesus Christ and in the Christ-event, can be understood
as a kind of epiphany. The incontestable New Testament statements
supporting such an understanding Moltmann traces back to the
influence of Greek religions characterized by logos and epiphany,
especially to the mystery religions, which do not correspond to the
real thrust of the New Testament witness.
In response, one has to ask the basic question whether an
interpretation of the Christ-revelation in the categories of epiphany
and logos is legitimate or not. Can the definitiveness, the last Word,
"that became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14), the fullness and
the fulfillment by such an interpretation be legitimately expressed? Is
such an interpretation necessary? This has nothing to do with
"fulfillment enthusiasm" or with fixation on the "but still"; it has
rather to do with the recognition that the New Testament represents
another phase and dimension than the Old Testament, that the
promised has come, that "we need wait for no other," that in Jesus
Christ God has fulfilled and made true all promises, that God is thus
the great and unlimited and irrevocable ''Yes" (cf. 2 Corinthians 1:20).
These facts are not denied in principle by the theology of hope; it is
simply a question of the right accents and emphases. For this reason,
neither affirmation as corollary to epiphany nor address and kerygma
as corollary to the here and now can be dispensed withand of course,
neither can promise as correlative to the future of Jesus Christ, for
only together do they correspond to the totality of that to which the
New Testament gives witness.
To the objection against the influence of Greek thinking as foreign to
biblical categories, it must be pointed out that such clarity and linear
singularity of biblical thinking or biblical language simply does not
exist. Greek thought is in fact, and legitimately, found within the New
Testament and the theology presented therein, and has its rightful
place there. Only thus can the revelation event fulfilled in Jesus Christ
become epiphany and promise for all; expressed in biblical terms, for
"Jew and Gentile." If, for the bearers of the truth of the Gospel and of
the preaching of Jesus the Christ and Lord, it is their task to be all to
all, to the Jews a Jew and to the Greeks a Greek (Cf. 1 Corinthians
9:20),

Page 448
then Greek thinking, which is oriented to logos, epiphany, and
presence, is not excluded, but admitted, even required, in order to
articulate that of which the New Testament gives witness. What looks
at first like an external influence iswhen really looked atthe realization
of universality, expansion in all dimensions.
The task is thus not to contest the category of promise in the New
Testament and the reality of hope preordained to it; the task is to
contest the need for exclusive alternatives in order to represent this
principle. The task is to emphasize that the theology of hope can
develop its true position and foundation and the power of its
effectiveness not by exclusion but by its relationship to the whole: to
the truth of the Logos, to epiphany, to announcement, to statement, to
address, and to promise.
If it can be said in a thoroughly correct way that hope is unfolded
faith, then this specification must be completed by saying that hope
unfolds faith in a specific dimension, in the dimension of the future.
But this dimension is not the whole of faith itself. Faith also has its
unfolding back into the past and into its source and above all into the
present, in which it realizes itself and the present it has. But because
that is so, that is why faith is the comprehensive, all-encompassing
principle of theology. One canby all meansunfold hope from faith, but
one cannot describe faith only in the horizon of hope. One cannot
spell out and conjugate the Credo and its contents simply with the
future. Faith is related to the whole, and thus also to hope.
The "Spero ut intelligam" is certainly in position to describe the
situation, the inner and unitary thrust of salvation history and the
connection between Old and New Testament. But at the same time, in
the single category of hope and promise lies the danger of not
sufficiently spelling out in their difference the distinctions between
Old and New Testaments which, despite everything, are to be
characterized by promise and fulfillment. What has taken place in
Jesus is not just an event of promise, but is in fact, what Moltmann
has doubts about (142), an event of fulfillment, to be specified in the
indicative.
It must likewise be said: Important as it is to hold, along with
Moltmann, that the Old Testament event can be a leitmotif for the
Christ-event (134), it is just as important not to make an exclusive
principle of it. It is just as important not to overlook the decisive
point, that it is first of all from the overwhelmingly New and totally
Other of the Christ-event that the Old Testament revelation-event gets
its salvation-historical status and takes on its own unique value. In any
case, this is the way the New Testament itself thought, wrote, and
acted. The anticipatory certainly gives a preunderstanding of the
definitive; but it is the definitive which brings the definitive
understanding; and this canas newmost certainly be a corrective of the
anticipatory and of the preunderstanding. Thus, some questions have
to be raised

Page 449
about this kind of a theology of hope. Can it adequately explain the
definitiveness, the eschaton of the revelation granted in Christ? Is
enough consideration given to the past and present, the here and now
in its unique significance bestowed in Word and Sacrament?for they
would seem to be wholly taken up in being the occasion and ground
of hope, and thus not seem to give sufficient expression to the
salvation which is promised for and is effective in the here and now.
As for the phenomenon of Church in the horizon of the theology of
hope, it is noteworthy that a whole series of Moltmann's characteristic
affirmations about the Church are found, precisely in the form in
which he expressed them, in the texts of Vatican II: Church as hope
lived in community, as community of hope, as Church of Exodus, as
wandering People of God journeying towards the Kingdom of God,
Church as moment in the movement of the history of God with the
world which itself expresses its provisional status, the Church as
ecclesia reformanda, as sign of hope for the world, Church as
advocate for human beings, especially for human beings who have no
others to care for them, the Church as Church "under the cross," the
Church as Church of the Risen One, the Church to whose definition
the celebration of festival belongs.
The problem is the alternatives, which we have already mentioned.
We repeat them here:
When Moltmann says that the Church is not an institution of salvation
which is to celebrate the epiphany in cultic re-presentation, but is,
instead, a brotherhoodit is hard to see how this alternative is
legitimate. The problem is not with the word "institution of salvation,"
for one can instead say: The Church is sacrament, i.e., an effective
sign of salvation, sign of unity between God and human beings, and
thus sign of unity of human beings among themselves. If the Church
is this sacrament, then it follows that this sacramental reality is
subdivided into the sacraments, especially baptism and Eucharist. In
sacrament an epiphany is celebrated in the form of memoria, of
remembrance, of representation, but nowhere is it written that this
cultic or sacramental re-presentation blocks off the horizon of future
and promise; instead it makes it manifest: "We proclaim your death,
we praise your resurrection, until you come in glory" [eucharistic
acclamation of the Roman Catholic Mass in German]. This mode of
being Church is not an anti pode to the Church of brotherhood but the
most profound ground of its possibility.
Important for the existence of the Church, according to Moltmann, is
not the spread of the Christian religion, or its planting, but the
liberation of the people for Exodus in the name of the Kingdom of
God. Is that an antithesis? How can the Church lift up this cry of
freedom if it

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is not made present as Church? And it really doesn't matter whether or
not this is called a "planting of the Church."
Moltmann says: The Church is the vehicle of the gospel of freedom,
not schoolmistress of the nations. It is not the Church that has the
gospel but the gospel makes for itself its people of Exodus. What does
this mean concretely: The gospel makes a people for itself? The
gospel is not some freely swinging reality. Isn't the mediation of the
gospel needed by human beings, by messengers, by preachers, by
witnesses, by intersubjectivity? Can one say, as Moltmann does, the
Church is the vehicle of the gospel, thus bearer and instrument, and on
the other hand decree, it is not the Church that has the gospel? If that
were so, how can it be the vehicle of the gospel? Moltmann's
ecclesiology contains an impressive program. But it describes in an
unequally more intensive manner what the Church is and should do,
than what it concretely is and how it should concretely act.
The "should be" is certainly indispensable if the "is" position is not to
be allowed to lead to ossification or indolence. On the other hand,
however, if the mediation of is (reality) and should (program) is too
distant, it could turn out that the situation, chance, and possibility
coming from the here and now of the Church will receive too little
attention. It could turn out that the fulfillment-enthusiasm rejected by
Moltmann will be replaced by a future-enthusiasmand this would be
no less one-sided.
The function and task of the Church in its comprehensive liberating
ministry to human beings is indispensable. This is true today more
than ever. Nevertheless, the question has to be asked: is the freedom
and liberation so understood, i.e., as social freedom and liberation,
identical with the freedom and liberation of which the New Testament
speaks, i.e., with the gospel of freedom? Or with Luther's program of
the freedom of the Christian? Freedom there is understood essentially
as freedom from the past, freedom from guilt, from the powers of fate,
from fear, from being given up to the world; it is the freedom of
reconciliation with God. Its primary purpose was not the overthrow of
conditions and structural reform, but the renewal of human beings, of
sentiment, of the spirit, which thenas with the slavery questioncaused
social consequences.
Further, it can and must be asked: Beside the socially liberating
diakonia (ministry) as mission of the Church, should one not mention
the equally indispensable task of martyria as proclamation, which can
be not just proclamation of hope and future, which must also be
interested in the Logos, in the truth, and likewise the function of the
leiturgiaas designation of ritual, of sacramental action? These tasks
cannot be allowed to fade into the background, especially since
contemporary sociologists like Max Horkheimer and Peter L. Berger
are looking for

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precisely this service from the Church; for this service cannot be
provided by anyone else.
My critical remarks and further inquiries had no other purpose than to
affirm, and indeed to support, the theology of hope. I believe they can
do this by freeing its affirmations from the unnecessary alternatives
and possible points of one-sidedness which could perhaps stand in the
way of agreement with the theology of hope.3
3 In his The Church in the Power of the Spirit, J. Moltmann has taken up,
furthered, and thematically unfolded the ecclesiology developed in his
theology of hope. In doing this he also preserves the fundamental ideas of
the theology of hope.

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§ 47
The Historical (Earthly) Jesus and the Possibility of the Church
What will now be presented has been prepared for in numerous ways:
by what has been said about Jesus' proclamation of God's Rule and
Kingdom, by our treatment of the problem of imminent expectation,
by the theses on Kingdom of God and Church, and by our
consideration of Church in the framework of the theology of hope.
Founding of the Church?
When we speak of the Church in connection with the earthly Jesus,
we are not dealing with Church in its form laid down once and for all
and preserved for us in every detail, but with the beginnings and
foundation of Church, of Church as community of believers, whose
faith is directed to Jesus Christ and whose life is oriented towards
him. Thus, the controversy over the question: Did Jesus Christ found
or not found the Church? can be a quarrel of words, because different
meanings are at times connected with the same word: "Church" or
"founding."
In the so-called Oath against Modernism, which Pope Pius X
prescribed in defense against Modernism, there is the statement:
I believe with firm faith that the Church, the protector and teacher of the
revealed Word, was immediately founded by Christ himself, and
specifically by the historical Christ when he lived among us, and that it is
built upon Peter, the first of the apostolic hierarchy, and his successors.1
A second position of the magisterium in this question is much more
reserved and differentiated. It is found in the Dogmatic Constitution
on the Church of Vatican II:
The mystery of the holy Church is manifest in her very foundation, for the
Lord Jesus inaugurated her by preaching the good news, that is, the
coming of God's Kingdom, which, for centuries, had been promised in the
Scriptures: "The time is
1 DS 3540.

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fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15; cf. Matt 4:17).
In Christ's word, in His works, and in His presence this kingdom reveals
itself to men. The word of the Lord is like a seed sown in a field (Mark
4:14). Those who hear the word with faith and become part of the little
flock of Christ (Luke 12:32) have received the kingdom itself. Then, by its
own power the seed sprouts and ripens until harvest time (cf. Mark 4:26-
29). The miracles of Jesus also confirm that the kingdom has already
arrived on earth: "If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then
the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:21, cf. Matt 12:28).
Before all things, however, the kingdom is clearly visible in the very
person of Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, who came "to serve, and to
give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). When Jesus rose up again
after suffering death on the cross for mankind, He manifested that He had
been appointed Lord, Messiah, and Priest forever (cf. Acts 2:36; Heb 5:6;
7:1721), and He poured out on His disciples the Spirit promised by the
Father (cf. Acts 2:33). The Church, consequently, equipped with the gifts
of her Founder and faithfully guarding His precepts of charity, humility,
and self-sacrifice, receives the mission to proclaim and to establish among
all peoples the kingdom of Christ and of God. She becomes on earth the
initial budding forth of that kingdom. While she slowly grows, the Church
strains toward the consummation of the kingdom and, with all her strength,
hopes and desires to be united in glory with her King. (Lumen gentium no.
5)
In amplification it was said (nos. 2 and 3) that the Church will be
revealed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and made perfect at the
end of the world. "Then, as one can read in the holy fathers, will all
the just from Adam. . . . up to the last elect be gathered together with
the Father in the all-embracing Church." Thus the universal Church in
the beginning is connected with the Church at the end. Accordingly,
the Church appears as "the people united by the unity of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (no. 4).2
The council does not speak of the Church as a ready-made reality, nor
of its immediate grounding by the historical Jesus, nor of its hierarchy,
but of its beginning. In addition, the Church is arranged into a rather
large context, that of salvation history and the Kingdom of God. From
this perspective, the question: Did Jesus found the Church or not? can
also be brought to a solution. We can give an actual example of this.
In On Being a Christian, Hans Küng writes: "Not founded by Jesus,
but after his death in reference to him as the crucified and yet risen
Living One: the community of those who have committed themselves
to the affair of Jesus and witness it as hope for all human beings."3
Karl Rahner says in response:
I'm not really sure if I should say that this statement contradicts the faith-
conviction of all Christian churches, or whether I should only lament with
all directness that Küng made this statement without any attempt to
reconcile it in an under-
2 Cf. Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. H. Vorgrimler,
1.105306; H. Ch. Hampe, ed., Die Autorität der Freiheit. Gegenwart des
Konzils und Zukunft der Kirche im ökumenischen Disput I (Munich, 1967)
243498.
3 Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City, N.
Y.: Double-day, 1976) 478 [translation ours].

Page 454
standable way with this faith-conviction. . . . Of course origin and
foundation mean for us today a more complex reality, which also includes
the resurrection itself, than could be attributed to a few instituting words of
a juristic kind. The statement: Jesus founded the Church can and must be
understood in a more differentiated way than it was in fundamental-
theological ecclesiology up to and including Vatican II.4
Küng's answer to this, formulated as a question, is not to the point:
"How can one explain this riddling theologizing which,
fundamentally, and in a pseudo-dialectic way, can always say both:
that Jesus founded the Church and yet didn't found it? How can one
explain this double-grounded way of speaking?" Is this, as Küng calls
it, an "accommodation by reinterpretation of church teaching"?5 This
misunderstands Karl Rahner; this is not pseudo-dialectic, but rather
the effort to talk about a complex situation in a differentiated way.
But one point does become quite clear from all this: In the life of the
earthly Jesus there is no recognizable single act of grounding, no
founding document of the Church. There is a series of facts and
events, from which it can be read that the earthly Jesus thought about
a Church in the sense of a community connected with him, and he
intended that.
Decisive Facts
Jesus' Proclamation of God's Rule and Kingdom is not directed to an
individual but to a community, to a people, to the People of Israel. A
community is the addressee of this proclamation; it is in a community
that the beatitudes, the promises, and the obligations of God's Rule
and Kingdom are to be accepted and made real. What is special in the
community addressed is found in the fact that Jesus' word and
invitation goes out to everyone; no one is excluded from community
with Jesus. What Jesus speaks to with his offer of salvation through
the Kingdom of God is thus no special group, no order like the
Essenes, no secret religious organization, but Israel,6 the People of
God, which, to be sure, in the proclamation of the Kingdom of God by
Jesus already points beyond the national boundaries of Israel: to men
and women of a readiness and a faith which Jesus, as he says, did not
find in Israel (Matthew 8:10).
With the claim of Jesus, as expressed in the titles Messiah, Son of
Man, Servant of God, is included a community. Is the statement
"Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ," a creation of the primitive
community about Jesus who did not understand himself as Messiah?
In response: Jesus did not call himself Messiah, but he is called
Messiah by others, by the
4 In: Diskussion über Hans Küngs "Christ sein" (Mainz, 1976) 106.
5 In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 July 1976.
6 The basic thesis of Gerhard Lohfink's book: Jesus and Community: The
Social Dimension of Christian Faith, trans. John P. Galvin (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1984).

Page 455
Twelve, especially by Peter (Mark 8:29). Jesus does not reject this
title, although he did explicitly add: "Tell this to no one!"
But it is equally correct that Jesus makes a messianic claim in his
activity, for example, in his answer to the Baptist's: "Are you the one
who is to come (i.e., the awaited Messiah, the anointed one), or are we
to wait for another?" Jesus answered with reference to his deeds,
which are "deeds of fulfillment" and thus messianic deeds (Matthew
11:2). A further indication can be taken from the trial of Jesus, in
which the high priest asks Jesus: "Are you the Christ, the son of the
Blessed?" And Jesus said, "I am."' This answer is emphasized and
surpassed by what follows: ''And you will see the Son of Man seated
at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven"
(Mark 14:6162).
The inscription on the cross: "King of the Jews" (Mark 15:26) is an
indication and an indirect confirmation of the fact that Jesus was led
before Pilate as Messiah.
In balance: The post-Easter confession "Jesus is the Christ" is
certainly the confession of a belief in the Christ of faith, but this is of
a faith which appeals to and knows that faith in Christ is connected
with the earthly Jesus. For the fact that Jesus is the Christ is the
mystery and paradox of this faith. But that means that the "Messiah,"
the "Christ," can be the content of faith only because this faith is
already grounded in the mystery of the Messiah of the earthly Jesus.
Without this, the confessionsuch as made by the primitive community,
that Jesus is the Christwould be inexplicable.
The Messiah, the Christan important factis no private person. To
Messiah/Christ belongs, in the nature of things, community: the
community of the Messiah. To Christ belongs, accordingly, an
ekklesiaas a flock belongs to a shepherd.
As Josef Schmid says:
The answer to the question whether Jesus wanted and established a Church
comes from his messianic consciousness. If one recognizes this as
historicaland the texts suggest and justify thisthen Jesus must have also
gathered around himself a messianic community as the People of God of
the end-time, which had begun with him.7
7 "Church," SM 1.31337; More on this theme: J. Betz, "Die Gründung der
Kirche Durch den Historischen Jesus," ThQ 138 (1958) 15283; A. Vögtle,
"Jesus und die Kirche" in: M. RoesleO. Cullmann, Begegnung der
Christen, Festschrift O. Karrer (StuttgartFrankfurt, 1959) 5481; O. Kuss,
"Jesus und die Kirche im Neuen Testament" in: Auslegung und
Verkündigung I (Regensburg, 1963) 2577; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The
Church in the New Testament, trans. W. J. O'Hara (New York: Herder and
Herder, 1965); H. Schlier, "Ekklesiologie des Neuen Testaments" in:
MySal IV/1 (1972) 101221. An important overview has been provided by
G. Hainz, Das problem der Kirchenentstehung in der deutschen
protestantischen Theologie des 20. Jahrhunderts (Mainz, 1974).

Page 456
Not quite so clear as the relevance of the Messiah and his community
is the ecclesiological implication of the titles "Son of Man" and
"Servant of God." These are titles Jesus used of himself.
Jesus often and consciously called himself "Son of Man." He did this
in view of his present activity: "The Son of Man is Lord over the
Sabbath" (Mark 2:28); he does it especially in connection with His
passion and judgment statements. The title "Son of Man" is, as it
were, a protective title, which on the one hand is to express the
messianic claim in Jesus' sense, but at the same time avoids that
contemporary political misunderstanding connected with the
messianic title at that time. The designation "Son of Man" is taken
from the apocalyptic Book of Daniel (Dan 7:13). Described there is
the figure to whom "was given dominion and glory and kingdom.'' In
these designations, relationship to a community of human beings is
included and expressed. In the Book of Daniel itself it is described as
"the saints of the Most High" (7:18).
If Jesus claims the title "Son of Man" for himself, thisimplies, as
many exegetes think, a community and people, a "corporate
personality." This becomes even more clear in the further formation of
the Son-of-Man concept in the apocalyptic literature of the time of
Jesus: there, the Son of Man is called the Chosen One, the one around
whom the chosen ones gather (Ethiopian Henoch).8
Similarly, to the concept of the Suffering Servant (Isa 49:6; 53:12),
which Jesus used in order to specify his messianic task, belong
community and following in the form of the many. Of the Servant of
God in Isaiah it is said that the "many [are] his portion." This idea
recurs in the words of Jesus when he explains the content of the image
of the Son of Man: "The Son of Man came not to be served but to
serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). This
word is also found in Jesus' Last Supper in the formula over the cup:
"This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many"
(Mark 14:24).
To conclude from all this: Connected with the titles "Son of Man" and
"Servant of God" is the idea of a community in the form of the "elect,"
of the "many." The Son of Man coming as judge, which Jesus claims
for and identifies with himself, gathers together his elect. These are
they who have acknowledged him by the confession and witness of
their life. The gathering at the end of time uncovers what is already
there: the community of those who belong to the Son of Man.
Thus, the designations Messiah, Son of Man, Servant of God, and the
claim connected these titles already contain the idea and the reality of
a community belonging to Jesus, of a communion, of an ekklesia,
understood as a community of those "called out" by him.
8 Representative of this idea: Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New
Testament, trans. Shirely C. Guthrie and Charles A. M. Hall (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1959) 13792.

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The Call of the Disciples
The call of the disciples by Jesus (Mark 1:1620; Matthew 4:1822;
Luke 4:111) has a number of special characteristics.9
Entry into the discipleship of Jesus does not come about primarily by
the will of the disciples themselves, but as answer to the word of the
one calling in the stereotypical phrase: "Follow me!" This word is
above all a word of calling or vocation, of being appointed for a task,
similar to the way the calling of the prophets is witnessed. The calling
includes the granting of the ability, the ability to follow the call and its
task. This is expressed, for example, in the words: "I will make you
fishers of men" (Mark 1:17). In this image is expressed the mission of
those who are called for human beings, for human beings who, called
in turn, are to be called out. The Greek word used for this has an inner
relationship to ekklesia, the word for Church.
The call to follow is connected with the call to mission. Following
does not mean mechanical imitation, but entering into the life
conditions of him who calls to discipleship; it means sharing in his
task, in his mission.
The discipleship to which Jesus calls and chooses is not a calling to a
specific school, school orientation, or tradition, as with the rabbis, or
with the schools of philosophers, but is a calling to be connected with
and bound to his personand this indeed in the sense of a decision that
bears with it the sign of the unconditioned and the exclusive. There is
also no possibility to choose someone else as master or teacher. The
discipleship of Jesus does not alllow for, as the Scripture says,
reservations or "looking back." The discipleship of Jesus means what
Peter says: "Lord, we have left everything and followed you"
(Matthew 19:27).
Discipleship means "to follow Jesus," "to be with Jesus," to have
communion with him, to share his life, to take on his fate.
Discipleship means, as it is repeatedly summed up in the Gospels:
"deny himself and take up his cross" (Mark 8:34). And if "cross" in
word and image also includes death, then following means to be ready
to venture and to give up one's life.
The Appointing of the Twelve
We are accustomed to connect the "Twelve" with the "Twelve
Apostles." But one must keep in mind that the concept of apostle in
the New Testament10 is not at all univocal. The evidence is
differentiated.
9 A. Schulz, Nachfolgen und Nachahmen (Munich, 1962); E. Neuhäusler,
Anspruch und Antwort Gottes (Düsseldorf, 1962); H. Kahlfeld, Der Jünger
(Frankfurt, 1962); K. H. Schelkle, Discipleship and Priesthood (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1965).
10 Cf. the theological reference works and handbooks, esp. TDNT 1.40747;
H. von Campenhausen, Der urchristliche Apostelbegriff (Lund, 1948); W.
Schmitthals, The Office of Apostle in the Early Church (Nashville, 1969); G.
Klein, Die Zölf Apostel (Göttingen, 1964).

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Mark 3:14 says: "Jesus appointed twelve"; Matthew [Link] "He called
to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean
spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.
The names of the twelve apostles are . . ."; Luke [Link] "He called his
disciples, and chose from them twelve, whom he called apostles."
For Luke, the twelve are identical with the apostles, and this
identification, is from Jesus himself. Matthew leaves it open whether
the twelve were called apostles by Jesus himself, or only later. For
Paul, who knows the concept "twelve" (1 Corinthians 15) and
connects it with the resurrection witnesses, the concept "apostle" is
not restricted to the twelve. Paul himself claims to be an apostle of
Jesus. He labels (1 Thes 2:7) Timothy and Silvanus apostles,
occasionally also Barnabas.
Even if one questions whether Jesus himself called the twelve
"apostles" (Luke), even if the conditions for being an apostle in the
New Testament changed (witness to the earthly life of Jesuswitness of
the resurrection), it is certain that Jesus commissioned the twelve in
the mode of "apostle," which went together with sending and mission.
The mission given by Jesus to the twelve has its preunderstanding not
in the Greek use, where apostolos has a totally other meaning, and
signifies bill of lading, passport, fleet expedition; it has its
preunderstanding in Old Testament usage. In the Old Testament, to
send means not simply to ship, but to send someone with a special
assignment. Of importance in this is the fact of the sending in the
connection with the person of the sender. The person of the one sent
recedes behind that of the sender. In this process, the one
commissioned receives specific powers and rights. These reside not in
his own person but in the person of the one who commissions and
sends. But to commissionand that is something furthercan be done
only by someone with the competence, authority, and power to do so.
The commissioned is the representative of the one who gives the
commission. It is from this context that the word and rule is to be
understood: The one sent by someone is like that person: personally,
factually, juridically.
It is clear from this that someone sent by Jesus stands in the series of
sendings that come from God. It also becomes clear that Jesus himself
can be called the one sent, the messenger of God, and the apostolos
(Heb 3:1) andfinallythat the service of the one called by Jesus stands
in the service of the great sending and commissioning which is
revealed by God in Jesus.
Thus if Jesus called and sent part of his disciples in this way, if he
perhaps himself called the twelve "apostles," he didn't make them
either into simple messengers or into missionaries in the sense of early
rabbinic Judaism, or into wandering preachers in the sense of the Stoa;
he made them rather into his factual and personal "representatives."
They were by word and deed to re-present [make present] Jesus where
he

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himself was not present, but where he wanted his word and work, his
"business," to be present.
In the calling and sending of the Twelve, it becomes clear what it is all
about: Jesus makes himself represented and mediated: by others, by
those commissioned and sent by him. But if this happens, that means
that the idea of representation and mediation belongs to the original
intention of Jesus. It is shown further that representation and
mediation really make sense if Jesus thought about the continuation of
his "business," of his mission in the future.
If, considering the Church fundamental-theologically, our goal is to
describe it as that reality in which a function or service for the faith is
taken into consideration for the following of Jesus, then the beginning
of that is in the appointment of the Twelve and in their assignment
that they are "to be with him and that he send them."
Now a word or two about the number twelve. The Twelve are the
representatives of Israel as the twelve-tribed-people. This applies in a
twofold direction: The Twelve make recognizable the continuity with
Israel and represent it; at the same time, the Twelve are the
progenitors going forth from this Israel to the new Israel, to which
they are sent and for which they are commissioned.
According to the Synoptics, the sending of the Twelve is limited to
Israel with the explicit addition: "Do not go to the Gentiles!" That is,
however, not an exclusive prescription for all times. But it does
correspond to the situation of the beginning and corresponds to the
way of Jesus himself, who knows himself as son of David and son of
Abraham, as sent to Israel, and who will gather it as the true Israel.
For this reason it is also understandable that the Twelve can claim no
absolute value, and that this is all the more so when, in the further
course of history, attention was directed less to the past than to the
future, and the path of the disciples of Jesus after Easter leads from
Jerusalem into the world and its political center, Rome.
From the history of the calling and appointment of the Twelve there
are still some fundamental consequences to be drawn. The
fundamental structure that Jesus gives to those called and appointed
by him, the Twelve, the Apostles, the sending and the commissioning
by one who has the power to give the commission, and the thus-
specified qualification of those called, is not a structure dissoluble
with time. This structure corresponds to the primacy of the word,
which has the dominant position in faith, as well as to the primacy of
community; it must therefore remain as constant.
In this sense, the apostolic, the being commissioned and sent, belongs
to the fundamental structure of a community which is oriented to it.
The apostolic in this sense is an identifying mark of itself. The
concrete form in which this structure can be realized as an abiding
constant

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is variable. But it has a criterion in the normative New Testament
origin which was talked about in the description of the appointment of
the Twelve by Jesus and in the details of the sending and being sent.
This origin exercises of itself a critical function for what comes later.
Consequently, among the successors of the Twelve and the Apostles,
apostolic structures whose transparency, in terms of the
commissioning, mediation, and representation of the ministry required
in the biblical origin, is overshadowed or misplaced, are as wrong as
they are ruinous for the matter of the faith and the faith community.
This applies where gospel commissioning and sending is mixed up
with power and might, or where one equates the Kingdom of God
with a territory.
Correspondence to the biblical origin would be just as lacking if, in
the community related to Jesus and oriented to him, there were no
structure whatsoever in which the fact of the sending and
commissioning could be represented. The consequence of such a
structureless, memberless community would be its dissolution, its
melting down into any and every form, structure and community.
The Call of Simon Peter11
From the New Testament number of the disciples, the Twelve, and the
Apostles, there is no one about whom we are given so much
information detail as Simon, Peter, Cephas, who is called rock.
a. The Call: The Gospels tell of the call of Simon Peter the way they
do of the other disciples and the Twelve. His name comes up again in
connection with the listing of the others, in the framework of the
"Catalogue of the Twelve." Simon Peter is always mentioned first or
is called "the first." The decisive reason for this cannot be that he was
the first in time to be called by Jesusthat cannot be determined with
certaintybut that he is the first. This state of affairs is given special
emphasis by the fact that Peter, according to unambiguous tradition, is
the first witness of the resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15).
The function of the first, which is given to Peter, is demonstrated
according to the Gospels by the fact that on many occasions and
questions, he is the one who speaks, the spokesmanas in the situation
of
11 Still quite important: O. Cullmann, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, Martyr: A
Historical and Theological Study, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1962); J. Ringer, "Petrus der Fels. Das Felsenwort" in: M. RoesleO.
Cullmann, Begegnung der Christen, Festschrift O. Karrer
(StuttgartFrankfurt, 1959) 271347; J. Betz, "ChristuspetraPetrus" in: J.
BetzH. Fries, Kirche und Überlieferung (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1960) 121;
F. A. Sullivan, "Binding and Loosing," NCE 2.55960; J. J. Castelot, "Peter,
Apostle, St.," NCE 11.2005; P. Hoffmann, ''Der Petrusprimat im
Matthäusevangelium" in: J. Gnilka, ed., Neues Testament und Kirche
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974) 94114; E. BrownK. DonfriedJ. Reumann,
Der Petrus der Bibel. Eine ökumenische Untersuchung (Stuttgart, 1976); J.
Blank, "Petrus und Petrusamt im Neuen Testament" in: Das Papsttum als
ökumenische Frage, ed. der Arbeitsgemeinschaft ökumenischer
Universitätsinstitute, (MunichMainz, 1979) 59103.

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the confession of the Messiah (Matthew 16). To the question: "Who
do men say that the Son of Man is?" Simon Peter answers: "You are
the Christ, the son of the living God" (Matthew 16:13, 16). A similar
scene is found in John 6. To the question of Jesus to the Twelve, "Do
you also wish to go away?" Simon Peter answers, ''To whom shall we
go; you have the words of eternal life" (John 6:6768). In the same
way, Peter steps forward as the one to speak on the Mount of
Transfiguration (Mark 9:5). Peter makes objections against the
announcement of Jesus' passion (Mark 8:32) and is corrected by Jesus
in the sharpest of words.
According to Acts, Peter is the authoritative spokesman at Pentecost.
He is the leader of the community in Jerusalem. According to Luke,
he is the one who accepted the first non-Jews the Roman centurion
Cornelius, into the Church, and thus the one who initiated the mission
to the Gentiles (Acts 10). Peter, along with James, is the leading figure
of the Assembly in Jerusalem which dealt with the problem of the
Church composed of Jews and Gentiles, especially with the question
of whether the non-Jews had to be accepted into the Church by way of
Judaism or not (Acts 15). The question was decided in favor of
freedom.
b. The Name: Noteworthy is the fact that "Peter" is the new name of
him who was originally called Simon. All the Gospels record that
Jesus himself gave Simon the name Cephas, although there is no
clarity about the occasion on which this name was conferred. "Peter"
is the translation of the Aramaic word "Cephas," Stone, Rock. This
was not a common given Jewish name; it is a noun, and thus a
symbolic name. To help understand and assess the correct significance
of the name "CephasPeter," we have an instructive parallel in the New
Testament.
In Mark we read: "He appointed twelve to be with him, . . . Simon
whom he surnamed Peter; James the son of Zeb'edee and John the
brother of James, whom he surnamed Boaner'gees, that is, sons of
thunder" (Mark 3:14, 1617). Then follow the other names of the
Twelve.
Important for our question now is the quite different history of these
two surnames in the primitive Church. That of the Sons of Zeb'edee
did not last because no special significance was seen in it. Quite
different with Cephas-Petros! This one not only lasted but even
pushed aside the original name of its bearer. Paul calls Peter regularly
with the Aramaic name Cephas, which he obviously took over from
the primitive community. Equally important is the witness that comes
to us from Paul and especially from the Gospels, that the name
Cephas was translated into the Greek "Petros." Because proper names
are not usually translated (but transcribed), the Greek form "Petros"
shows that this name was at first understood as a surname, an object-
designation. It then became a proper name. These facts show what
significance the new name "Cephas-Petros" had taken on for the
primitive Church.

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There is agreement today that Peter did not get this name from Jesus
because of his character. For in his character he was not exactly a
rock, but something much less stable. His enthusiastic love for his
master, which he repeatedly proclaimed, was also possessed by the
other disciples; it was thus no uniquely characterizing trait of his
nature. He cannot, on that account, be explained as the most reliable
of the Twelve. The reason Jesus himself gave this man the distinctive
surname "Rock" lies in the special task for which he was destined.12
c. Position and Task of Simon Peter: These can be seen at first in the
scene narrated in Luke 22:2432. The text deals with the Twelve
quarreling over their rank, over which of them was to be considered
the greatest. Jesus' answer was: "The kings of the Gentiles exercise
lordship over them; and those in authority over them are called
benefactors. But not so with you; rather, let the greatest among you
become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves."
Benefactor: that was the title by which the lords of antiquity, and not
just of antiquity, liked to be addressed. After these words, Jesus turns
immediately to Peter: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to
have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you
that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again,
strengthen your brethren" (Luke 22:31-32).
One can recognize in these words that the special position of Peter is
being emphasized, but without letting that become an isolation from
the rest of the Twelve. Rather, Peter is there for the sake of the others.
The greatness and leadership talked about here consist in service and
self-giving; they are a primacy of service.
The ministry of Peter to the faith of the others is to be done with a
view to the temptation and danger that lie ahead. This situation faces
all the disciplesit becomes immediately actual in view of the passion
of Jesus. It is in view of this situation that Jesus intercedes for the
disciples. He does this by praying for Simon Peter, that his faith will
not fail. Peter, held up in the faith of Jesus, is to be strength and
support for his brothers. The strength and support of the brothers is to
be preserved in that Peter, in spite of his weakness, does not fall. But
even this does not lie in the power and endurance of his faith, but in
the fact that Jesus prays for him.
This text takes on special significance with the phrase: "When you
have turned again." It alludes to the temptation of the faith of Peter, to
his betrayal and denial"I do not know the man" (Matthew 26:6975)but
at the same time to the conversion he is to experience. The
12 J. Schmidt, "Petrus "der Fels" und die Petrusgestalt der Urgemeinde"
in: M. RoesleO. Cullmann, Begegnung der Christen 34759.

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words of Jesus are directed to the future: to the future position of Peter
in the community of Jesus Christ.
This function of Peter is impressively depicted in Luke's Acts of the
Apostles. Peter is the strength of his brothers as leader of the
community in Jerusalem, as witness before the Sanhedrin, as first
missionary to the Gentiles, as the decisive figure of authority at the
apostolic assembly, and finally as martyr. Peter is to be the first by the
fact that he exercises a special ministry to the faith of the community
of believers.
This is what makes intelligible our customary present-day language
about the ministry of Peter or Petrine function. But it is just as
important to point out that the ministry of supporting the brethren in
faith cannot be restricted to the historical Peter. This ministry is an
abiding function in an abiding Church, and should above all be carried
on by whoever succeeds Peter.

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§ 48
The Text on the Building of the Church
The sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew describes the situation
of the confessing of Jesus as the Messiah. It is a confession that Simon
Peter makes in the name of the Twelve. The place is Caesarea Philippi
in Northern Galilee. Jesus asks:
"Who do men say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John
the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
He said to them, ''But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied,
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him,
"Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed
this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not
prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and
whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:1319).

The Problematic of Matthew 16:1719

A comparison of this passage with its parallels shows the following:
In Mark and Luke are found almost exactly the same question of
Jesus: Who do people say that I am? The answer of Peter is also
almost exactly the same: You are the Messiah; Luke adds: the Messiah
of God. The addition of Matthew "Son of the living God," however, is
lacking. In Mark and Luke one reads immediately: "He strictly
forbade them to tell this to anyone."
The saying about the building of the Church on Simon as on a rock is
found only in Matthew, not in Mark and Luke, who do indeed have
the confession of the Messiah, but not the words about the Church.
This creates a problem: If one assumes, as used to be the case, that the
Gospel of Matthew is the earliest Gospel, it is hard to explain why
Mark and Luke left out the words of Jesus to Peter about the building
of the Church.

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The situation becomes considerably different when one, as is
customary today, proceeds from the fact that Mark was the first of the
Gospels to be written and was a source along with the sayings source
("Q") for the Gospel of Matthew. One must further consider that
Matthew doesn't give historical references, but composes
theologically. In his effort to systematize, Matthew placed a saying of
Jesus, a logion about the community ordered to him, about his
"qahal," in the context of the messianic confession of Peter. He did
this with good reason and with high theological understanding.
Factually, he fits it in superbly. For if the messianic community
belongs to the Messiah, then the declaration of a community related to
the Messiah fits in with the confession of the Messiah. The Messiah-
proclamation of Peter corresponds to the answer of Jesus to the
community belonging to the Messiah, and thus to him. It also follows
from this that, over-against this factual relationship, the historical or
geographical situation of this passage is not decisive.
From the theological composition of the Gospel of Matthew, from the
fact that all the Gospels were composed or put together after the death
of Jesus and in the light of faith in the Risen One, one can and indeed
must reckon with the possibility and with the fact that post Easter
situations and words were projected back into the time of the earthly
Jesus. For the question about Peter, this means: Some of his traits
found in the Synoptic Gospels reflect his later leading role. And the
words: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" is a reflection
of post-Easter faith.
The matter itself, the question of the ekklesia, is not thereby
dismissed, but only brought into a larger context. For one can and
must say: The leading position of Peter can be made intelligible in the
primitive community, and become acceptable, only because and if the
reason for this goes back to Jesus himself. That remains established
even if all its details and elements cannot be chronologically
established with clarity. What came later demonstrates the power of
an effective history that proceeds from this basis.
It is said, and this is a further problem, that the word ekklesia is found
statistically within the Gospels only here and once more in Matthew
18:18. There it means assembly of the community for whom specific
rules are laid down. For this reason, the saying about the building of
the Church is suspected of being a later insertion. Such a suspicion of
inauthenticity or later insertion would make sense if the matter which
is spoken about with ekklesia never came up elsewhere; but that is not
the case. It occurs in the Gospels in other images: in the image of the
flock which belongs to the shepherd, in the image of the vineyard, in
the image of the building and the cornerstone, in the image of the vine
and the branches (John). Moreover, it is no objection that from a

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piece of so-called special material, as here in Matthew, a suspicion of
inauthenticity is dredged up. In other cases, the special material is
looked at as a sign of authenticity.
On the Interpretation of Matthew 16:1719
The text of Matthew 16:1719 is authentic. It is found in all the
manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew and in all translations. It
corresponds to the style and the conception of this Gospel, which was
originally written in Aramaic and directed to a Jewish audience. Even
Matthew 16:1719 has Semitic traits and contains typically Jewish
conceptions. For instance the words: Bar-Jona, flesh and blood,
powers of death, keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, binding and
loosing; all these come not from the Greco-Roman circle of culture
but from the Palestinian world.
Above all, the word play on "rock" and "man of rock" can only be
conceived Aramaically; only there does it exactly fit; the word
"cephas" can be used for both. In the translation into Greek, the play
on words is only incompletely realized; there is a change from Petra to
Petros.
For the interpretation of this so controverted and at the same time so
important text, certain things need to be said. The interpretation is
decided not just historically and by critical exegesis, but also by a
previous understanding of faith, as well as by the question of what one
thinks of the institution that claims to represent the office and ministry
of Peter today, i.e., of the papacy and the pope.
How these particular a priori considerations can have an effect on the
interpretation of the text is shown, e.g., in the interpretation of Martin
Luther: The words "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my
community" are, according to him, in no way to be related to the
person of Peter, whose successor the pope claims to be by appealing
precisely to this text. Matthew 16:1719 is, according to Luther, rather
to be understood thus: that with the words "On this rock I will build
my church" Jesus meant not Peter but himself, who is the rock and the
cornerstone. With the words "on this rock" Jesus referred to himself;
He did not mean Simon Peter.
The other interpretation of Luther, which is also found in Augustine,
goes: The words "on this rock" do not apply to the person of Peter, but
refer to the faith and the confession of Peter. Peter is meant only to the
extent that Jesus recognized his faith as the rock. This faith in Jesus,
the rock, was not limited to Peter; he only represented it.
In the interpretation of the words over Peter and the Church (Matthew
16:1719), Roman Catholic and Reformational theology have, for some
time, been coming closer to each other. They have done

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so in this way: The rock is neither Christ nor the faith of Peter, but
Peter himself in his person, as the first.1
The controverted question concerns the historical situation of the text,
which is not easy to unravel. Is it pre-Easter or post-Easter? But
theologically, this is not terribly important. The controversy also
concerns the further question of the succession of Peter and, finally,
the question of the extent to which Matthew is talking about a
constituted Church.
On this final point, we can say that it would contradict the situation of
the beginning under way if one were already talking about a
constituted ekklesia. Accordingly, one cannot say that there is no talk
about Church, simply because one cannot speak about organization.
Built up forms of organization are not elements of a beginning; they
arise only when there is in a more comprehensive fashion that for
which forms of organization are destined.
The Results
In the messianic confession of Peter, the ekklesia is singled out, too, as
the community of this Messiah. Jesus says he will build it on Simon as
the rock, the foundation.2
Jesus speaks of his "qahal," of his ekklesia, which he will build or
intends to build. This "my ekklesia" is intended as an expression of
emphasisperhaps analogous to the "but I say to you" found in
Matthew 5and intends to say something new: the building of a
community, which is not intended to be a special community within
the old People of God, but which continues the old and at the same
time takes its place.
When Jesus speaks of building his ekklesia, he is presenting it under
the image of a building, a house. This has its parallels in the way Jesus
otherwise speaks. He speaks of the House of Israel (Matthew 10:5;
15:24), he speaks of the city on a mountain (Matthew 5:14). The self-
description of the primitive Christian community as Temple of God (1
Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 6:16) and as house of God (Heb 3:6; 1
Pet 4:17) has its origin or basis in this manner of speaking.
This interpretation is illuminated by its relationship to the conceptions
of the Old Testament where Yahweh is spoken of as the rock on which
the People of Israel and its faith is grounded, and as the stone which
the builders have rejected. There is also talk about the holy rock as the
place of the presence of God, ultimately symbolized by the Temple on
Mount Zion. These descriptions ascribed to Yahweh are
1 Oscar Cullmann, W. Kümmel, and Günther Bornkamm agree on this.
2 Cf. J. Betz, "Die Gründung der Kirche Durch den Historischen Jesus," ThQ
138 (1958) 15283.

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claimed by Jesus. Thus one can speak of a "Stone Christology." Jesus
himself is the stone which the builders have rejected and which has
become the cornerstone: Mark 12:10; Matthew 21:42; Luke 20:17; the
stone which has become the stone of salvation: Acts 4:11; Rom 9:33.
Related to this are the words of 1 Corinthians [Link] "For no other
foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus
Christ."
But now, according to the witness of Matthew 16:1719, something
further happens: Jesus establishes Simon in the function of a
foundation for the building of his ekklesia and makes him share in his
own function of foundation, ground, and rock. Jesus, the rock, has
himself be represented by Simon, the rock; Simon, as Cephas-Peter, is
to make present, mediate, and represent the rock-function of Jesus. He
is not to upstage or replace the foundation which Christ himself is, but
to point to it; he is to be its transparency. In Peter is to be represented
the foundation, which Christ himself is: "Christus est petra, Petrus est
vicarius petrae (Christ is the rock, Peter is the vicar of the rock)."
The words of Matthew 16:18 "On this rock I will build my church"
are often understood as the laying of the Church's foundation stone;
this action is unique and unrepeatable, for the foundation stone is laid
once and for all. This image and function exclude from the outset any
possibility of "succession."
Our response to this relies on what Anton Vögtle3 has established in
numerous writings. Matthew 16:18 does not mean "I will lay the
foundation stone for the building of the Church" but "I will build the
ekklesia upon a rock." Thus, accurately examined, one isn't talking
about the laying of a foundation but about the building of the Church
upon its rock foundationor about the function of such a foundation for
the building of the ekklesia. When one adds that the building of the
ekklesia is neither a unique nor a past, completed action, but a
continuing and abiding, living event, then it is not illegitimate to say:
For this event, for the building of the ekklesia, we have its related
function of the foundation not as a past but as a living, abiding, being-
built ekklesia. It is a function that will remain as long as ekklesia
remains. To be sure, the wording does not force one to draw this
consequence, but it does allow for it and in no way excludes it from
the outset.
It can be concluded from this: A foundation-function of the Petrine
ministry in the Church of Jesus Christ that is both present and
encounterable in history does not stand in contradiction to the
normative origin which is found in the New Testament. What has
taken place, therefore, is not historical decline but the completion and
unfolding of something that has been grounded.
3 "Der Petrus der Verheißung und Erfüllung. Zum Petrusbuch von Oscar
Cullmann," MThZ 7 (1954) 147; "Messiasbekenntnis und
Petrusverheißung," BZ N. F. 1 (1957) 25272; 2 (1958) 85103.

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When one finally moves from image to language, and when one asks
what is meant to be said with the rock as foundation of a community
of human beings, or with the Petrine office, Petrine function, or
Petrine ministry, then it is this: It is supposed to be talking about the
cohesion, the viability, the power of coordination, the
constancyfunctions connected with the leadership function, which are
to be seen not as lordship and power but as service to the faith and to
the community of the faith and the faithful.
The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven
What is said in Matthew 16 about the foundation-function, about the
so-called Petrine function, is expanded and illustrated by the words
directed to Peter in Matthew [Link] "I will give you the keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven."
With the image of the keys and the power of the keys, Peter is not, as
is often represented in pictures, being appointed the guardian of the
gate or porter of heaven. The power of the keys means much more
than that; as an ancient and common image, it signifies authority and
disposition over a house. Power of the keys means to have the power
to allow or to prohibit entry to the house.
The image of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven has still another
meaning. We get an understanding of it from Matthew. 23:13, where
Jesus reproaches the Pharisees and scribes: "You shut the Kingdom of
Heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those
who would enter to go in." The scribes claimed to possess the power
of keys for God's rule. This consisted, in their view, in their
proclaiming, interpreting, "unlocking" the will of God laid down in
the Scripture of the Old Testament, in the Law and the Prophets, and
thus opened up to human beings access to the God's rule.
But they did this in such a way that they took the will of God, the
Law, intended and praised as guidance, and developed it into 613
commands and prohibitions and made it an unfulfillable burden. Thus
access to God's Rule and Kingdom was practically closed. In this
view, whoever did not know the Law was subject to curse and
contempt.
When Jesus gave over the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to Simon
Peter, what is meant is that Jesus himself lays claim to the
authorization signified in the image of the keys to proclaim and
interpret the will, the Law of God in the word of God's Rule, and that
he has the authorization to hand on this authorization.
At the same time, another antithesis is contained in this passage: the
function of proclamation and interpretation of the will of God
expressed in the image of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven is
claimed by Jesus in sovereign fashion in this way: "It has been said to
the men of

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old, but I say to you" as new orientation of the messianic community
gathered about Jesus. In Matthew 16:1719, Jesus hands on this
function to Simon Peter. Concretely, this signifies the task,
commissioned by Jesus, thus authentically, to proclaim the message of
the basileia as embodiment of the Law and the Prophets in the form of
the Gospel.
With the words of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, ekklesia is
equated not with royal lordship, with God's Rule, but an inner
ordering is expressed: the ekklesia of Jesus is the community of those
who know about the mystery of God's Rule and Kingdom, about the
presence of the lordship of God in Jesus, and at the same time are
moving towards its definitive coming, and who in addition seek to
make real the promises and obligations that come from it. Those
commissioned and sent by Jesus, especially Simon Peter, to whom the
keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are given, are introduced into this
ministry of proclamation and interpretation.
Binding and Loosing
In the promise to Simon Peter, the words about the handing on of the
keys of the Kingdom of Heaven say: "Whatever you bind on earth
will be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be
loosed also in heaven." These words too were common at that time,4
especially in the language used by the rabbis. Binding and loosing
meant to set down and determine something authentically, and in a
binding and obligatory way; it also meant: to oblige something or to
free from an obligation; and in extreme cases: to have control over
exclusion to a community or admission to it.
The highest form of representation and realization of binding and
loosing is found in the fact of forgiving sins, as this was claimed by
Jesus and handed on to the disciples by the Risen One: "If you forgive
the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are
retained" (John 20:23). This passage makes particularly clear the
message and presence of Jesus: The forgiveness of sins is the sign of
the Kingdom of God which has arrived in Jesus.
When the power reserved to God and claimed by Jesus, to forgive the
sins of human beings, is handed on with the power to bind and loose
as a re-presentation of the power of the love of Jesus, what is getting
expressed here is that the power of God's Rule is abiding and effective
and has come to its realization in the messianic community. The
words "Shall be bound/loosed also in heaven" mean: The forgiveness
of sins, or its refusal, is effective; it is valid before God, authorized
and thus accepted by God.
4 F. A. Sullivan, "Binding and Loosing," NCE 2.55960.

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Still to be expressly mentioned about binding and loosing is that the
function and commissioning that goes with it is, according to Matthew
18:18, addressed in the so-called community rule of the community:
"Whatever you bind on earth . . ." This passage too is controversial,
and not just because of its exegetical aspects, but because of the
significance ascribed to community in this or that understanding of
Church. The Catholic conception leans towards saying that the heads
of the community are addressed here. The Protestant conception
relates the words to the community as such. The Gospel of Matthew
itself saw no contradiction in the proximity of chapters 16 and 18.
If one can speak of a foundation-function as an abiding function that
does not end with Peter but has its place in representation by living
human beings in a Church that is abiding and constantly being built,
then this also holds and is even more clearly recognizable from the
other words: from the key of God's rule as commissioning to
responsibility for authentic proclamation and teaching, and from the
words of binding and loosing. Both words are related to a community
which, as a faith community, is oriented by faith in Jesus.
Peter the Shepherd
In connection with our reflection on the building of the Church on
Simon Peter, there is another important text, found in the Gospel of
John, which, like Matthew 16 and Luke 22, is counted among the
classical Peter-texts and adorns the gallery of St. Peter in Rome. This
is in the so-called appendix chapter: John 21:1519.
John 21 deals with the appearances, the self-manifestation of the
Risen One and his words of commission,5 one of which applies to
Simon Peter in a special way. The passage reads:
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son
of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him," Yes, Lord; you
know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he
said to him, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, ''Yes,
Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep." He
said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter
was grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And
he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you
were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when
you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and
carry you where you do not wish to go." (This he said to show by what
death he was to glorify God.) And after this he said to him, "Follow me."

These words express the calling of Peter to be the shepherd of the

community of disciples. The image of the shepherd is a royal image,
5 A. Vögtle, "Ekklesiologische Auftragsworte des Auferstandenen" in:
Sacra pagina II (ParisGembloux, 1959) 28094.

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and image of leadership and going ahead, and at the same time an
image of care, of readiness to give up his life for his own. The image
of the shepherd is filled out by Jesus himself in his Good Shepherd
sermon (John 10): I am the good shepherd. His characteristic consists
in the fact that he knows his own, that he doesn't abandon them in the
situation of danger, that he is ready to give his life for them. The
presupposition of the call of Peter as shepherd of the community is
found in the question of Jesus to Peter: "Do you love me, do you love
me more than these?" The greater self-dedication to Jesus is made the
background of this primacy.
The threefold question of Jesus to Peter has to be seen in the context
of his threefold denial. Remembering that was to introduce a salutary
sobering; but at the same time, Peter is to be rehabilitated in his
position and function after the experience of the denial. And also the
overall general situation now created by Easter is also describednot
least of all in the person of Peter who, with this confession, has given
up all self-certitude and all self-praise.
By this commissioning of the Risen One, Peter is himself taken up
into the mission of Jesus: in his care for the men and women who
remained the flock of Christ. Thus, one can say: Also in the situation
described in the Gospel of John there is not merely a Peter tradition,
but a kind of primacy of Peter under the image of the "shepherd" in
the pastoral office conferred on him.
The scene is concluded with its prophecy of the violent death Peter is
to expect, which is part of the consequence of the following of the
Shepherd who gave up his life. This is expressed in the image in
which the earlier Peter "girded himself," i.e., hitched up his clothing
to go wherever he himself wanted. But what will happen with the later
Peter is that he will put out his hands for someone else to gird, i.e., tie
or chain himand the new, i.e., the older Peter will give himself over to
his fate; he will let himself be led where he does not want to go. Thus,
a prophecy of death is spoken as the final mode of the "Follow me!"
said to Peter.
The Tension Present in Peter and His Ministry
In the New Testament and in the passages relating to Peter we find a
remarkable antithesis. Along with the words of blessing and promise
stand diametrically opposed words. Following the promise to Peter in
Matthew 16:1719, in connection with the prophecy of Jesus' passion,
come the absolutely shocking words: "Get behind me, Satan! You are
a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men"
(Matthew 16:23). In Luke 22:32 are the words: "Strengthen your
brethren" in connection with the immediately following prophecy: ''I

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tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you three times
deny that you know me" (Luke 22:34). The conferral of the pastoral
office in John 21 explicitly follows the remembrance of the triple
denial of Peter. Whoever talks about Peter, the Petrine office, and the
Petrine ministry, especially when doing so in the sense of an abiding
re-presentation, should not overlook or be silent about this massive
dialectic of petra and skandalon, of rock and stumbling stone.
Josef Ratzinger has called our attention to the fact6 that in the figure
of Peter we are confronted with an unmistakable paradox: his calling,
his mandate in the service of Jesus and to the disciples, to the Twelve,
to the community, and along with this the weakness that comes to
light in him, the failure, the misunderstanding, that brings on him
Jesus' harshest words.
Petra and skandalonboth are found in Peter according to the New
Testament. Now one cannot, says Ratzinger, divide up the two
characteristics in such a way that the Peter before Easter is the denyer,
and the Peter after Easter the rock.
According to the indications of the New Testament, it is rather that
Peter is both in both periods. According to the witness of the
Synoptics, the pre-Easter Peter speaks the messianic confession and
proclaims his readiness to follow Jesus in everything right up to death.
But also the Peter after Easter and Pentecost, already appointed the
shepherd, is still the one who, in fear, denies Christian freedom and
offends against Christian loveas in Antioch when he cancelled table
fellowship with the Gentile Christians and, as Paul says in Galatians
2:14, was "not straightforward about the truth of the Gospel," so that
Paul "opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned" (Gal
2:11).
Ratzinger adds the remark:
Has it not remained this way throughout all church history, that the pope,
the successor of Peter, has been petra and skandalon, rock of God and
stumbling stone all in one? In fact it will be up to the faithful to endure this
paradox of divine action, which continually shames its pride anewthis
tension from rock to Satan, in which the most extreme opposites lay
mysteriously side by side. Luther recognized the moment of Satan with
compelling clarity, and was not wholly wrong in so doing; his mistake was
not to have endured the biblical tension of kepha (petra) and Satan, which
belongs to the fundamental tension of a faith that lives not from merit but
from grace. Basically, no one should have understood this tension more
than the man who put his mark on the formula of simul iustus et peccator,
of human beings who are both just and sinners in one.

"If," Ratzinger continues,

it all depended on Peter, if flesh and blood are speaking from him, then he
can be Satan and stumbling stone. But if he lets himself be taken
completely into service by God, then, as God's instrument, he can really be
a cosmic stone. But that is no expression of his achievement and his
character but the name of an election and a
6 "Freimut und Gehorsam" in: Das Neue Volk Gottes (Düsseldorf, 1969)
24966.

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sending to which no one is competent by nature, least of all this Simon
who in his natural character is anything but a rock. That he is the one who
is declared to be the rock, that is the fundamental paradox of divine grace
which works in weakness. It is always the promise of divine power into
human weakness, so that God remains the savior and it doesn't become the
human being. It is always the "nevertheless" of grace which is not
disarmed by the incapacity of human beings, but precisely therein fulfills
the victory of God's love, which doesn't let itself be overcome by the sins
of human beings.7

However right and helpful are such reflections on the paradox of the
Petrine office, they should not be used as a general pardon for all
shortcomings and every failure. There could quite possibly arise the
necessity and the obligation, which in turn already has a biblical
paradigm, not only to endure this tension in faith, but from the power
of faith to withstand Peter to his face as Paul did in Antioch, if his
behavior does not correspond to the Gospel and thus to justice. Such
an opposition is an expression of respect for the reality of this office,
of this function represented in Peter. Such a protest can be a service to
this office and above all to the reality for which this office exists.
Current Perspectives
As shown right from the beginning, the Church is not to be decided on
by Peter, but Peter by the Church. But it would be insincere to say
nothing about this ministry, this task of Peter in the ekklesia, just
because the Petrine office has always been, as it is today, the subject
of controversy.
The current position in view of the Petrine office can be described as
followsonce again dialectically: There are people and groups that
practically identify the Church with the Petrine office. In other words,
they follow the motto: "Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesiawhere Peter, there the
Church," or even: "Papa, quod est ecclesiathe Pope, which is the
Church," and declare all critical questions as a falling away from the
faith and from the Church. They also include in this condemnation
those questions which do not contest the justification and significance
of this office but only the mode and manner of its representation,
exercise, and realization, and offer as answer to the questions only an
escalation of this claim itself, as for example in the program: For Pope
and Church.
There is a second group which even upon hearing the expressions
"Rome," "Pope," and "Papacy," automatically reacts allergically and
negatively. This group takes the occasion of criticism of the methods,
procedures, and practices of Rome to reject and contest outright the
justification and the sense of an institution like that of the Petrine
office.
7 Ibid. 25859.

Page 475
Thus the biblical and historical context for the significance, the
function, and the task of this office for the faith and for unity is
overlooked. A criticism of the praxis of this ministry is possible only
under the recognition of its reality and justification. The biblical
foundations on which an office like the Petrine office is based give at
the same time the best orientation whether the safeguarding and
realization of this function and taskthe ministry to unity, to
strengthening faith, to the solving of conflictscorresponds to the
normativity of origin so decisive for function and task, and to the
mission enunciated there.
Of course, the biblical foundations must be brought into a real
relationship with the present possibilities and conditions for the
realization of this office and with the present forms of social and
political conditions: to a situation that has changed in many ways in
comparison to what it once was. But one cannot take this one
necessary and indispensable point of relationship, namely the present,
and make it the one and only point of relationship, and merge together
and dispense with the point of relationship from the origin in the past
so that there is not more difference left.
Otherwise, one would be making formally the same mistake with
which one charges the medieval or renaissance papacy. For it was
precisely these popes who, without much consideration for its biblical
origin, adapted their office to their time and to its conditions and
models, so as to become contemporary. A fair criticism of this practice
does not simply measure that age against our own, but notes the
factual distance of those temporal-historical manifestations from those
normative foundations encountered in the Scripture precisely for this
office, the Petrine office. This contrast rightly qualifies the
renaissance papacy as a betrayal of its origins, a betrayal which rightly
called forth the protest of the Reformers and which explains the
massive resonance which this protest elicited. For it is a resonance
grounded not only in a mood of protest but also in a longing for a
convincing nearness to the origin, thus for a genuine renewal.
The foundation words to Peter are thus freed of their isolation and
brought to a new actuality today because they are now seen and read
in the context of the building of the ekklesia, and hence understood
from what is the major element in the ekklesia,. In addition, the New
Testament talks not only about the promise to Simon Peter as
foundation of the Church, but also about a foundation of apostles and
prophets, although in a different context. This is articulated in the
Letter to the Ephesians, where there is already a remarkable reflection
about the Church as Church of Jews and Gentiles whose former
enmity is to be overcome in the Church:
So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow
citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon
the foundation of

Page 476
the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in
whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy Temple
in the Lord, in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God
in the Spirit. (Eph 2:1922)8.
Here too we find talk about the building of the Church. The Church
appears as a building; its members are the stones of this building; they
are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.
The prophets of the New Testament have, like those of the Old
Covenant, the gifts and the tasks of seeing and saying, of
rememberance, renewal, and criticism. These are oriented to the origin
and to the respective concrete situation of the community of believers,
of the People of God. With the doublet apostles and prophets, the
matter of office and charism is brought into play. Then, in the fourth
chapter of Ephesians, the gifts of the exalted Christ are mentioned:
"His gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some
evangelists, some pastors and teachers" (Eph 4:11), to the end that the
Body of Christ would thus be built up and that this body, by the
reconciliation of the separated, as represented in Jews and Gentiles,
would become "at home" in one house.
This makes it clear that the Church of Jesus Christ, built up of living
stones, occupies a position which in the Old Testament was occupied
by the Temple. For Jesus Christ is the place at which God has become
accessible to human beings and through whom human beings have
access to God. In this sense, then, wherever there is community in
Jesus Christ, there is the house and Temple of God.
Consequently, the Christian places of worship that arose in the course
of time were not called "house of God," and churches as church
buildings have less significance than the Temple in the Old Testament
or the holy places and sanctuaries in the other religions. The church
building has the function of being a representation of the community
which comes together in it; it is the community which is and remains
the actual house, the actual Temple of God.
If, in dealing with the question of building and of the building of the
Church, this passage from its different context in the Epistle to the
Ephesians is brought into the discussion, the purpose is not to do away
with Matthew 16:18 and its statement about the foundation on Peter.
The purpose is to expand upon it in order to make clear that the
foundation stone we have in Christ can be present and realized in all
kinds of ways. So, too, if the passage from Ephesians does not talk
about the Petrine foundation, that does not argue against it any more
than the
8 On this passage see the commentaries of H. Schlier, Der Brief an die
Epheser (Düsseldorf, 1937); R. Schnackenburg, Der Brief and die Epheser
(EinsiedelnCologneNeukirchenVluyn, 1982), Excursus: "Die Kirche in der
Sicht des Epheserbriefes" 299319.

Page 477
lack of any mention of the foundation upon apostles and prophets
argues against that foundation.
It is incontestable that, in the course of history, the full witness of
Scripture about the foundation of the ekklesia has not always
remained alive; choices were made, accents set, and preferences
followed. That resulted in one-sidednesses, constrictions, and
suppressions. There was, for example, a long time in the Western
Church when the foundation in Peter was practically the only thing
talked about. The foundation of the apostles and prophets was, to be
sure, not theoretically denied, but it was not effective, or it was kept
from becoming effective. One foundation claimed to contain the
others in itself. Government is easier without prophets.
As I see it, our present-day situation is characterized by the fact thatin
its difficulty, in its crisis, but also in its hopea great deal reduces to the
proper coordination and cooperation of the different forms of
foundation: Peterapostlesprophets. That this variety still brings
numerous difficulties and tensions with it is understandable. For at
present something is being tested and put into practice which is
biblically grounded and was also a reality in the early history of the
Church, but in the last centuries has fallen into forgetfulness or has
been pushed aside in favor of the one and only foundation in the
Petrine office.
But there is one question that comes up again and again: How could it
come about that the Petrine office, whose being and purpose is for the
unity of the ekklesia and for the strengthening of faith, has today
become the most difficult obstacle to unityeven according to the
admission of the pope himself? This can't be due to the office as such,
nor simply to the resistance of those for whom it makes no sense. For
it really should be something accessible. Historically viewed, it is due
to the fact that time-conditioned historical, imperial, and feudal
models of this office were looked upon as theological data. It is also
due to the way this office was conceived, how it was organizationally
structured, and how it worked. All this is still far too indebted to a
model of earlier times. We see this in the way controversial questions
of faith and theology are decided by directives or disciplinary
measures, the way initiatives from individual churches and local
churches, or from synods, are blocked on the basis that all this had to
be regulated in a churchwide manner. But how can something be
regulated when there is lacking precisely what there would be to
regulate: life, experiences, initiatives?
The criticisms made today of the papacy, in its organization,
measures, and methods reveal again and again that the most profound
basis for such behavior and proceeding on the part of "Rome" lies in
the fact that some believe that its indispensable ministry to the unity
of the

Page 478
Church can be carried out only by striving for and realizing unity as
comprehensive standardization. The more this concept of unity
changes in favor of a unity in plurality, so much the more could the
function of the Petrine ministry become effective and find agreement.
This would be happening in a world that is an eminently plural world
but at the same time conscious of its unity as never before, a world
that is creating forms, institutions, and representations for this unity
and its ministry.9
9 H. Urs. von Balthasar, Der antirömische Affekt. Wie läßt sich das
Papsttum in der Gesamtkirche integrieren? (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974);
G. Denzler, Das Papsttum in der Diskussion (Regensburg, 1974); A.
BrandenburgH. J. Urban, ed., Petrus und Papst. EvangeliumEinheit der
KirchePapstdienst, 2 vols., (Münster, 1977/78); J. Ratzinger, ed., Dienst an
der Einheit. Zum Wesen und Auftrag des Petrusamtes (Düsseldorf, 1978);
"Das Papsttum als ökumenische Frage," ed. Arbeitsgemeinschaft
ökumenischer Universitätsinstitute, (MunichMainz, 1979); M. Hardt,
Papsttum und Ökumene. Ansätze eines Neuverständnisses für einen
Papstprimat in der protestantischen Theologie des 20. Jahrhunderts
(PaderbornMunichViennaZurich, 1981).

Page 479
§ 49
The Last Supper of Jesus and the Church
Origin of the Last Supper
There are many problems connected with this theme. They begin with
and are concentrated on the question of the origin of the Last Supper.
There is already a whole library of writings on this, whose multiplicity
is anything but an expression of a living unity.1 This fullness can be
very confusing and could easily make one lose heart. In any case, it
clearly warns us against quick, harmonizing solutions. But we are still
left with the task of searching for some orientations and guidelines.
In recent times, an idea has been catching on which, in contrast to
earlier views, sees the Lord's Supper of Jesus not in isolation, but
points out that the meal as such, as primitive phenomenon of human
action and behavior, has a community dimension. The meal is an
expression of a community of life and at the same time a means of
founding, preserving, and vivifying community, perhaps even raising
up again a broken one. In addition, it is a fact of the history of
religions that the meal has a religious and cultic significance, as a sign
of the community of human beings with the divinity and, precisely
thereby, as grounding of a community of human beings amongst
themselves.2
It is an incontestable fact that the earthly Jesus practiced table
fellowship with His disciples, but he also did the samethis was what
was new and experienced at the time as shockingwith tax collectors
and sinners. These table fellowships are not mere happenstance; they
indicate something fundamental and at the same time subversive.
They bring a corrective to the concept of God customary at the time
and its related praxis of keeping non-Jews and public sinners from
taking part in Jewish meals. Which in the case of the Passover meal,
was totally excluded.
1 Cf. H. Feld, Das Verständnis des Abendmahls. Erträge der Forschung
(Darmstadt, 1976).
2 F. Bammel, Das Heilige Mahl im Glauben der Völker (Gütersloh, 1950).

Page 480
That Jesus invites tax collectors and sinners to table with Him and
allows Himself to be invited to table by them, this expresses the
universality of His message and His invitation which is concentrated
in the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. The table fellowships of
Jesus climb to a high point and are at the same time a preparation for
that which the Eucharist of Jesus means in an emphatic and
differentiated sense. The Last Supper of Jesus thus has an inner
connection with the Church, with the community of Jesus Christ, so
much so that the Last Supper, a stage on the way to the becoming of
the Church is in the view of many theologians, the very source of the
idea of Church (Kattenbusch),3 indeed, the actual founding action of
the Church (Pannenberg).4
The texts of the Last Supper5 are, like much of what we have in the
New Testament, not historical protocols of the Last Supper of Jesus,
but the statements, witnesses, and documentation of a living tradition
taking shape in the Christian community after Jesus' death,
resurrection, and exaltation, and of a praxis going back to this original
time of tradition formation.
This means that there is a twofold illumination at work. The Eucharist
of the community is explained and described in the light of the Last
Supper of Jesus; the Last Supper of Jesus is depicted in the light of
community liturgy. This is to be attended to in the interpretation of the
Last Supper of Jesus. While this does not deny but explicity affirms
the relationship to the earthly Jesus, it does put it into certain
perspectives.
We have four accounts of the Last Supper: Matthew 26:2629 and
Mark 14:2224, which agree almost word for word; likewise Luke
22:1520 and Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:2325 are very similar to each
other. This latter is the oldest text, from about A.D. 54; it understands
itself as tradition that Paul has "received from the Lord."
3 "Der Quellort der Kirchenidee" in: Festgabe für Adolf von Harnack
(Tübingen, 1921) 14372.
4Thesen zur Theologie der Kirche (Munich, 1970) 3476.
5 "Eucharist" in the theological reference works and in the theologies of the
New Testament. In addition: Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of
Jesus, trans. Norman Perrin (New York: Scribner, 1966); H. Schürmann, Der
Passahmahlbericht Lk 22(714) 1518; ibid., Die Einsetzungsberichte Lk 22,
1920 (Münster, 1953); Der Abendmahlsbericht Lk 22, 738, 3d ed. (Leipzig,
1960); P. Neuenzeit, Das Herrenmahl. Studien zur paulinischen
Eucharistieauffassung (Munich, 1960); "Eucharist," SM 2.25767; R.
Maloney, S.J., "Eucharist," NDT, 34255; D. N. Power, "Eucharist,"
Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, ed. Francis Schüssler
Fiorenza and John P. Galvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991) 2.25988; W.
Marxsen, The Beginnings of Christology, Together with the Lord's Supper as
a Christological Problem, trans. Paul J. Achtemeier and Lorenz Nieting
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979); R. Feneberg, Christliche Passahfeier
und Abendmahl. Eine biblischhermeneutische Untersuchung der
neutestamentlichen Einsetzungsworte (Munich, 1971); H. Kahlefeld, Das
Abendmahl Jesu und die Eucharistie der Gemeinde (Frankfurt, 1980).

Page 481
The four texts contain two streams of tradition: the tradition of the
Palestinian community in Mark and Matthew, and in Paul the practice
of the Hellenistic community of Corinth.
The text of 1 Corinthians 11:2326 reads:
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord
Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had
given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do
this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper,
saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as
you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and
drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Many questions have to be asked about these and the other Eucharistic
texts.
What does "I received from the Lord" mean? Is it, as Ernst Käsemann
says,6 that this is a "statement of holy law": that here, by the solemn
appeal to the Lord's name, his authority is mentioned by name, the
action of the Eucharist is grounded by the community, and the formula
being handed on is sanctioned? Or is this a special revelation of the
Risen Lord to Paul? Or is it claiming that the chain of tradition goes
back without interruption to the very words of Jesus?
Other questions are: Is the Last Supper of Jesus the last in a series of
table fellowships with the disciples, perhaps clothed with a special
solemnity; is it a festive meal, a farewell meal?7 This could be the
meaning of the words: "I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine
until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God (Mark
14:25; cf. Luke 22:1618).
Or is the Last Supper of Jesus, because of the temporal proximity to
the Jewish feast of Easter, to be interpreted from the Jewish Passover
meal, the cultic celebration of the Exodus from Egypt? Was the Last
Supper of Jesus actually embedded within that feast? Does its
understanding derive from that, especially the important words about
the new covenant?
Further: What is being said by the indicatory (this is . . .) words that
are spoken in the celebration of the Last Supper? It is notable that the
indicatory words over the bread are always the same: "This is my
body" (Matthew and Luke); 1 Corinthians adds: "for you"; Luke:
"which is given for you." The cup formula in Mark reads: "This is my
blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many"; Matthew adds:
"for the forgiveness of sins''; 1 Corinthians [Link] "This cup is the
new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in
remembrance
6 E. Käsemann, Sätze heiligen Rechtes im Neuen Testament in:
Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, 2d ed. (Gottingen, 1965) 6982.
Portions of this book have been translated into English as: Essays on New
Testament Themes, trans. W. J. Montague (Naperville, Ill.: Alec R.
Allenson, 1964).
7 On this see esp. H. Kahlefeld, Das Abendmahl Jesu.

Page 482
of me!" Luke: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is
poured out for you."
Is There a History and a Development of the Eucharist? Are There
Different Forms of the Eucharist?
These questions are to be taken up in relation to the well-known
conception of Willi Marxsen: Das Abendmahl als christologisches
ProblemThe Eucharist as Christological Problem. The title asserts:
The form and meaning of the Eucharist are connected with the
development of Christology. Marxsen sees the matter in this way: In
the Eucharist of the Christian community there is a development in
two stages; likewise there are different forms of the Eucharist.
The first stage: In Paul, the oldest account, we find the Eucharistic
words and the Eucharistic event embedded in an ordinary meal
celebration which is described in 1 Corinthians 11:1734. This is
indicated by the words: "In the same way also the cup, after supper."
The principal weight of this celebration, which connects Eucharist and
meal celebration, and makes them one, lies in the fact that through this
whole action the community recognizes, represents, and realizes itself.
According to Marxsen, in 1 Corinthians 11 it is not the elements of
bread and wine that are interpreted, rather it is the community
celebrating the meal which is described. Thus the whole thing is not
about the meal, it is not about the Eucharist. The celebration is
interpreted in the following way: the community celebrating the meal
is, by virtue of their faith in Christ, by virtue of the Christ-relationship
of this faith, the Body of Christ, the New Covenant. By its faith the
community understands itself as Body of Christ and finds in the
overall celebration of the meal a representation and realization of this
existence of theirs as Body of Christ. According to this interpretation
of Marxsen, Christ himself remains in 1 Corinthians 11 without
relationship to the gifts of the meal itself, i.e., the bread and wine.
The second stage, according to Marxsen, is recognizable in that
already in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the connection between a meal
of nourishment and the Eucharist, which led to abuses in Corinth, is
no longer there. Mark 14:1728 recounts the meal, as does Matthew
26:2029, as the Eucharist of Jesus with the Twelve. The interpretation
there is not about a community celebrating a meal, but about the gifts
of bread and wine which are understood as Jesus' body and blood.
It is about Jesus and his re-presentation under the modes of bread and
wine and in the form of taking, eating, drinking. In this way the
community of the Twelve is united with Jesus in the form of this sign.
Body and blood is to be understood not as parts of a human being, but
as an indication of the concrete bodily person. The disciples become
united with

Page 483
Jesus under the mode of this sign and in the form of this meal, and
have a unique community with him. This is a new mode in addition to
the word. But the faith is related to both: to the word and the Lord's
Supper/Eucharist of Jesus. This, according to Marxsen, was the form
that prevailed in the time that followed. The conception of the
Eucharist concentrated on the gifts corresponds, according to this, to
the developed post-Easter Christology with its titles of sovereignty.
The interpretation of the meal as description of the community
understanding itself as Body of Christ, still recognizable in the first
stage in 1 Corinthians, moves into the background in favor of the gifts
given by Jesus the Christ, and of the community with him which they
give, and which brings about that the community becomes Body of
Christ. Marxsen admits this development as legitimate, even if one-
sided.
There is also a third thesis: This form of the Eucharist which relates
the Eucharist to the person of Jesus himself, was not instituted by
Jesus himself. The reason is that the earthly Jesus neither demanded
faith in his person, nor took over the traditional titles of sovereignty,
nor wanted a Church. This raises the question of "The Last Supper of
Jesus and the Church." For if Jesus had not wanted a Church, the
Eucharist could have no relation to it.
Further Inquiries
Of especial concern is the third thesis. One has to ask about the
meaning of the already-discussed words of the Synoptic Gospels
about the unconditioned following and discipleship related to the
person of Jesus; in addition the fact of the messianic actions of Jesus
as well as the claim expressed in the words: "Whoever confesses me
before human beings, him will I (him will the Son of Man) confess
before his Father." Isn't this a confession? Doesn't it include a faith in
the person of Jesus, especially when one considers how the message
and the fact of the Kingdom of God are connected with the person,
behavior, and activity of Jesus?
Marxsen puts too little value on the fact that, in the Eucharistic
account of Paul, in spite of its being embedded in a meal of
nourishment by which abuses arise, the Eucharist is emphasized and
discerned. First by the express relationship to the action of Jesus "on
the night when he was betrayed": "I received from the Lord what I
also delivered to you. The Lord Jesus on the night when he was
betrayed, took bread, gave thanks and said: This is my body for you."
It is likewise to be said that Paul speaks in this passage of the
unworthy eating of the bread and unworthy drinking of the cup of the
Lord, that he explicitly demands that all are to examine themselves,
and indeed with the words that force towards discernment: "For
anyone

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who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks
judgment upon himself." These statements point beyond the fact of a
community celebrating a meal which, as Marxsen thinks, understands
itself as Body of Christ without relationship to the Eucharist.
But most of all, in Marxsen's interpretation, the core of the passage 1
Corinthians 11:2426 carries too little weight: "This is my body for
youThis cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you
drink of it, in remembrance of me! For as often as you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."
These words cannot simply be said of an ordinary meal. They are, as
intensively as they are extensively, related to Jesus, more exactly, to
his death. These words also express the fact that through the eating of
the bread and the drinking of the cup, the new covenant, i.e., the new
community with God in Jesus, is established. Something new thereby
happens in the community and for it; a reality is established which,
without this meal, would not be.
Through its celebration of the Eucharist, the community is to
constitute and represent itself, not just as interpretation of itself which,
without relation to the Eucharist finds its symbolic expression as Body
of Christ; but the community constitutes and discerns itself by the fact
that in this action, in the eating of the bread broken and by the
drinking from the cup, it proclaims in memory the death of the Lord
until he comes. The community is thus Body of Christ and becomes
this above all by participation in the body and blood of the Lord, by
the Lord's Supper, in which anamnesis of Jesus is made and his death
proclaimed until he comes. All this cannot be said just about a meal
and about table fellowship as such.
The relationship suggested here of the Body of Christ as image of the
community to the Body of Christ as content of the Eucharist and the
Eucharistic event, is expressed once again in the same First Letter to
the Corinthians with these words. "The cup of blessing which we
bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which
we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there
is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the
one bread" (1 Corinthians 10:1617).
Marxsen interprets this passage too as an interpretation of the
community which is represented in image and in the parabolic power
of the meal; the passage doesn't tell him anything about the Eucharist,
but only about the community.
In response: Bread can only create a body if it has a special quality as
mode of the re-presentation and presence of Christ. This is expressed
in the words: the bread is (creates) participation in the Body of Christ.
The unity of the celebrating community can be grounded by the unity
of

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the bread only if the bread, as verse 16 says, is the Body of Christ,
thus has a new meaning.
In these wordsin the witness of 1 Corinthians, the witness about a
community and its meal celebrations and Eucharistic celebrations, the
witness about the abuses and misunderstandings arising there, and a
witness of the interpretation of this eventthe relationship of Eucharist
and Church (understood as community) is represented.
This relationship can be summed up as follows: the Church, the
community, understands itself as the Body of Christ. It becomes Body
of Christ as an expression of itself by means of its participation in the
Body of Christ as embodiment of the Eucharistic event. It becomes
this in its recognition of the discernment of the Lord's Supper, in its
remembering of the death of Jesus, in its proclamationin the sign of
the broken bread and poured-out wineof the death of the Lord until He
comes, in its receiving a sharewhich extends beyond earthly deathin
the fruit of and salvific significance of this death, death for the many.
At the same time the Church recognizes here its existence as the
community of the New Covenant. Through its participation in the
event entrusted to it, it attains its own community. The Body of Christ
(the Church) lives from the Body of Christ understood as the Lord's
Supper. The community as Body of Christ fails in its calling if
quarrels, egoism, and lack of love reign in it. Such behavior is the real
obstacle to participation in the Eucharist; there is in additionas
obstaclethe "nondiscerning of the Body of the Lord."
Let us go back from here once again to the question with which we
started: Is the Eucharist an institution of Jesus; can it be brought into
relationship with the Church? Is the Lord's Supper witnessed and
described by Paul with its relationship to the community with Jesus, in
its relationship to the death of Jesus for the many, and with its
ecclesiological implication, something quite different from what Jesus
himself did and intended in the last meal witnessed in the Gospels?
Connected with this is the question: Did Jesus bring the event of His
last meal into relationship with His death as given for the many?
The first thing to be said is that the text of 1 Corinthians 11 from
about the year A.D. 54 is not put forward as a Pauline conception, new
creation, or interpretation, but as a tradition received by him and being
handed on. Paul takes pains to give witness that the celebration of the
Eucharist of the community in Corinth is based on the action of Jesus,
his action on the night in which he was betrayed and handed over; that
the celebration of the community re-presents in remembering the
death of Jesus; that it proclaims it by its action; that it takes part in it
by participation in bread and cup, which are characterized as Body of
Christ and as cup of the covenant through the Blood of Christ. The

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community views the celebration of the Eucharist as fulfillment of the
commission of Jesus and can recognize no other reason for its action
than this, to do what Jesus did and what he commanded to be done.
The community fulfills the command, the testament of Jesus. This is
illustrated by the addition found in Paul (1 Cor 11:25): "Do this in
memory of me!"
Therefore in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul has no intention of offering any
practice of his own and no theory of this practice, in contrast, for
example, to the practice of other communities, for example, of the
Jerusalem community. His only apparent intention, which he takes
pains to emphasize, is to hand on only that which in the tradition of all
the communities lives on as Jesus' testament.
Over-against the thesis of Marxsen that no especially emphasized final
meal, called Eucharist, can be witnessed about the historical Jesus, a
number of other exegetes (J. Jeremias, P. Neuenzeit, J. Schmid, H.
Schürmann) have explicitly emphasized precisely this. They have
pointed to the fact that the Eucharist does not stand simply in the
series of other celebrations of table fellowship of Jesus with his
disciples and with tax collectors and sinners, but that it is
distinguished from them as a special meal, and indeed, according to
the opinion of Joachim Jeremias based on the Synoptics, by the fact
that Jesus in the night before his death celebrated this last meal as a
solemn Passover meal with readings, stories, prayers, and hymns, in
which was celebrated the solemn remembrance of the departure and
rescue from Egypt and the establishment of the covenant. The Lukan
text talks explicitly about this: "I have earnestly desired to eat this
Passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 2:15).
It is from within the Passover framework and context that the words
and actions of Jesus take their meaning. They explain above all the
words about the covenant and about the new covenant. They explain
the words of self-giving in the sign of the broken bread and poured
out wine as giving oneself up unto death.
But this death is interpreted as death for the many, or "for you," i.e.,
for Israel and the peoples of the world. This "for" has a twofold
function: First, it has the function of representation: Jesus' death is a
death in place of others. Further, it is a death whose fruit benefits
others, thus a death that brings salvation, redemption, atonement,
communion with God, a death that is the ground of the new covenant.
The community of the meal in the form of taking, eating, and
drinking, confers community with this event and community with the
one who did, or does, this.
But even if the connection with the Passover meal were not provable,
there is something else about the final meal of Jesus before his death
that comes through loud and clear from all the witnesses as well as

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from the absolutely unique indicatory words over the bread and the
cup. Jesus' death is not just foretold, it is also interpreted by the way
in which he assumes the mission and fate of the Servant of God from
Isaiah 42, by the way in which Jesus interprets his life and fate and
recognizes the path he is to follow. The death of Jesus is an act of self-
giving which founds something new. It founds a new order and
existence, a new covenant into which they who belong to him are
drawn by participation in this meal. In this way, and only in this way,
is it possible that the celebration of the Lord's Supper be a
proclamation of the Lord's death until he comes.
The Last Supper/Eucharist of Jesus is a sign of the fact that Jesus
thought about a community of those connected with him, of those
drawn into the fruit of his death, and about the people of a new
covenant, and that he intendedbeyond his existence and beyond his
deathprecisely what is meant by Church.
Result
The result of all this is that the different accounts of the Last Supper,
which represent two traditions, leave the question of the Last Supper
and the problem of its interpretation by no means completely
unexplained. There is not only a formal convergence, but also a
convergence in content in the following pointsa convergence that
remains verifiable in particulars despite all the differences.
All the accounts appeal to Jesus and his action "on the night he was
betrayed." In all the accounts the Last Supper is a meal connected
with the table fellowships held by Jesus, and at the same time a meal
that is different, set apart. This is shown clearly as early as 1
Corinthians 11; and it is quite thoroughly shown in the other accounts
of the Last Supper. This distinction is highlighted by the interpretative
words over bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ; it is
highlighted by the exhortation to self-examination before the
reception, by the exhortation to the discernment of the Body and
blood of the Lord from the other gifts of the meal, and
finallyconnected with thisby the warning against unworthy
consumption. Thus, the theory of a development in two stages doesn't
hold.
Additional support comes from the fact that this meal is connected
with the death of Jesus understood as self-giving for the many. This is
independent of the question: Last SupperPassover meal? There are
also the themes of sharing and participation in the person and fate of
Jesus, and with that in the new life grounded therein which is
conferred by Jesus through this meal and its gifts.
The convergence of the accounts of the Last Supper consists further in
the fact that through this event something new is created and estab-

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lished: the eschatological New Covenant, being founded in the death
of Jesus, whose bearer is the community of Jesus. The ekklesia exists
and lives by its sharing and participation in this event in which the
memoria of the death of Jesus is celebrated and through the
celebration proclaimed, in which communion with Jesus, in the form
of the gifts and signs, in the form of the meal, is conferred. The
community of the disciples of Jesus has therewith an obligation to the
attitude, the behavior, and the action of Jesus: to Jesus' existence for
others. Where this dimension is lacking, or even seriously diminished,
the Eucharist has not fulfilled its function.
In view of these dimensions, the Last Supper means that Jesus did
think of a communitythat is, of the community that was connected
with himand that this is what he intended. The community was to
remain connected with him precisely through this celebration. But this
understanding is possible and makes sense only if this memorial
celebration is not for someone dead, not for someone who was
definitively torn from his loved ones by death and whose irreplaceable
loss can only be lamented. Such a lamentation for the dead must one
day end, and indeed not all that long after death. If in the accounts of
Last Supper we find words about proclaiming the death of Jesus until
he comes, this implies that he can come only if he is alive, and has not
remained in death.
Only so can it be understood that the celebration of the Lord's Supper
was celebrated by the community with joy and jubilation, and that it
was articulated as thanksgiving, as Eucharist. This would all be out of
place as a memorial celebration of the dead. The celebration of the
Lord's Supper is possible and makes sense only in the consciousness
that the one whose memorial and self-giving death is being celebrated
is not dead. And this is precisely the message of the resurrection of
Jesus from the dead. Without the message of the raising of Jesus from
the dead, there would be no Eucharist and no Church as community of
those who ground their existence radically in Christ as someone
present and living.
The situation of the Christian churches today is still represented as a
broken church community. This is manifest in the broken eucharistic
communion. There is a conclusion from this too: As long as there is
no eucharistic community, there is no church community, and vice
versa. The connection between eucharistic community and church
community is indissoluble. It is of the utmost importance to recognize
this and to act accordingly.
The question of the eucharistic community of the Church, which
cannot be taken up in detail here, is among the most burning questions
in present-day ecumenical dialogue. There is some astonishing
documentation on this subject; for example, Das Herrenmahl (1979),
a work of the

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Common Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran Commission, and
the Convergence Declarations of the Commission for Faith and Order
of the Ecumenical Council of Churches (1982) on Baptism, Eucharist,
and Ministry.8
The developing dialectic on this theme can be expressed in the
formula which still awaits full reception: The Eucharist demands and
supports the community of faith; it is an expression of unity in faith,
and at the same time a way of achieving this goal.
A good overview on the contemporary situation is mediated by the
document of the Common Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran
Commission Wege zur Gemeinschaft (1980):
We are depressed by the fact that the state of the relationships of our
churches with each other still does not allow for the opening of full
eucharistic community. But we confess anew our longing for the goal of
visible unity in the one faith and the one eucharistic community. The
credibility of our witness before the world and of our celebration of the
Eucharist itself is threatened by our separation in these celebrations. The
great push towards eucharistic community which we presently experience
suggests to us that this is not happening without the working of the Holy
Spirit. We are not giving up the search for possibilities to grant even now a
mutual admission to communion in special cases. (81)
8Das Herrenmahl, Gemeinsame röm-kath./ev.-luth. Kommission
(PaderbornFrankfurt, 1978); Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (BEM),
Faith and Order Paper No. 111 (Geneva: WCC, 1982); cf. Michael A.
Fahey, ed., Catholic Perspectives on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry
(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986).

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Part Three
The Church of Christ
After Jesus' death there was a new beginning. It is the beginning that
is described with the word "resurrection/raising of Jesus from the
dead," with the word "Easter" and with the new name "Christ" or
"Kyrios, Lord," which is a title of sovereignty and is applied to Jesus:
Jesus is the Christ and the Kyrios.
It would have been possible and reasonable to approach the theme
"Church" with the new situation established with the raising of Jesus
from the dead and to say something about the earthly Jesus, about his
message and his action in the light of the risen Christ.
On the other hand, it is also possible and legitimate to take the path
from the earthly Jesus to the Christ who was raised from the deadthis
is Christology "from below." This is the way the Gospels did it, but
incorporating it into their post-Easter perspective. It is both
characteristic and significant that the New Testament, in the form in
which we have it, begins with the Gospels of Jesus, or, that the
Gospels were taken up into the canon, i.e., into the normative witness
of the Church about Jesus the Christ. The community of believers was
not satisfied simply with the message or the kerygma that Jesus, the
Crucified, has been raised from the dead; not satisfied that this
message alone was important. Instead, all importance was laid on
giving witness to the Jesus who, through the pathway of his life,
through death and resurrection, became the Christ and the Kyrios.
If the raising of Jesus from the dead represents something new in this
sense, that Jesus is the Christ, this leads logically to the theme of this
section: The Church of Christ.

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§ 50
The Raising (Resurrection) of Jesus and the Church
The Significance of the Raising of Jesus
The message, the event, and the word about the raising of Jesus from
the dead1 signify that God has explicitly confirmed the pre-Easter
activity of Jesus. The raising is thus also a new mode and new
confirmation of God's rule, which has become effective in Jesus and
which is realized in the resurrection in the sense that here, the
overcoming of death has become reality and a new beginning, a new
future for the world, and new hope has been established: the ground
which determines history in a new way and gives it a new goal. It
becomes clear that the divinity (the being God) of God consists in the
fact that God makes the dead live. The Kingdom of God now bears
the face of Jesus Christ (Schillebeeckx). By his raising from the dead,
the proclaiming Jesus becomes the proclaimed Christ.
If the Church is the community of believers, of those who ground
their faith in Jesus, then this faith is not just related to Jesus insofar as
Jesus by his radical, God-grounded existence is, as the Epistle to the
Hebrews says, ''the pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (Heb 12:2)the
relatedness of faith is grounded in Jesus insofar as he, as the Christ
and the Lord, is also the content of faith. In this way faith, in its
comprehensive meaning, becomes Christian faith. The community of
believers, who ground their faith in Jesus the Christ, is thus possible
only and wholly because of Easter. For only there is the hope of faith
directed to Jesus fulfilled. Easter thus has a completely special
relationship to the community of believers which is called the Church.
We have already given considerable attention to the kind of change
and conversion brought about in the Twelve and in the disciples by the
raising of Jesus.
What it meant to be an apostle was also given a new dimension by
Easter. An apostle is now the one who is the witness of the
resurrection.
1 Cf. The expositions in our presentation of revelation above in Book Two.

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A witness of the resurrection is whoever is a witness of the Risen One,
and indeed not just an eye- and ear-witness, but a word- and deed-
witness. That is why Paul can call himself an apostle. Whoever is a
witness of the resurrection and the Risen One gives witness to the
Lordship of Jesus unlimited by any power, even death. This opens up
the ground and the right to mediate the message of life and salvation
as message for all, for Jews and Gentiles. From the messenger
commissioned for the twelve-tribed people, the apostle of Jesus Christ
becomes the messenger and witness for the whole world. The apostles
are taken up in the mission of Jesus: "As the Father has sent me, so I
send you" (John 20:21). The words of the Risen One: "All authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations" (Matt 28:18-19) correspond completely to the
way of Jesus himself.
The Baptismal Commission
In the commissioning words of the Risen Lord in Mark and Matthew
is found the word "baptism": "He who believes and is baptized" (Mark
16:16); "Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit'' (Matt 28:19).2
Apart from these passages, nowhere in the Gospels is baptism looked
upon as a condition for being a disciple of Jesus and for communion
with him. The earthly Jesus speaks of conversion, faith, and following
him. Jesus himself did not baptize; He was baptized. He received the
baptism of John, which was a sign of conversion and repentance.
Jesus' intention in doing this is to enter into the community of human
beings and put Himself in solidarity with them. Baptism in the
commissioning words of the risen One has another meaning.
The requirement of faith and conversion in no way gets lost in this
change. It lives on in the statement: "He who believes" and "Make
disciples of all nations!" On the other hand, it is clear that the practice
of baptism existed from the beginning, that there are no unbaptized
Christians. This is depicted in an exemplary way in the so-called
Pentecost Sermon of Peter. When the hearers ask, "What shall we
do?"
2 Cf. "Baptism" in the theological reference works, in the presentations of
the theology of the New Testament, and in the textbooks on dogma and the
history of dogma. In addition: Oscar Cullmann, Baptism in the New
Testament, trans. J. K. S. Reid (London: S. C. M. Press, 1951); Rudolf
Schnackenburg, Baptism in the Thought of St. Paul: A Study in Pauline
Theology, trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray (New York: Herder and Herder,
1964); H. Schneider, Die Taufe im Neuen Testament (Stuttgart, 1952); B.
Neunheuser, "Taufe und Firmung" in: Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte
IV/2 (Freiburg, 1956); O. Kuss, Der Römerbrief (Regensburg, 19571959)
307381; likewise the commentaries on Romans by J. Fitzmyer, E.
Käsemann, H. Schlier, and U. Wilckens; G. Delling, Die Taufe im Neuen
Testament (Berlin, 1963); Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/4: Die Taufe
als Begründung des christlichen Lebens (Zurich, 1967); E. Schlink, The
Doctrine of Baptism, trans. Herbert J. A. Bouman (St. Louis: Concordia
Publishing House, 1972).

Page 495
he answers, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of
Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38). The
summation reads: "So those who received his word were baptized, and
there were added that day about three thousand souls" (Acts 2:41).
The practice of baptism present from the beginning can only be
explained by the fact that one saw in this the fulfillment of the will
and the commission of Jesus, even if, historically, it cannot be
precisely determined when this took place. The passage in Matthew
"Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit" repeats not the precise words of Jesus but the liturgical
form of the baptismal formula either in the community of Matthew or
as reflection within a certain development. Along with this formula
there is, above all in Paul and in the Acts of the Apostles, baptism in
the name of Jesus.
That the New Testament talks about baptism only after Easter is
grounded in the fact that in the baptismal event a relationship to the
death and resurrection of Jesus is represented. The one who receives
baptism is given the gift of communion with the Crucified and Risen
One and the life opened up by him. Whoever is baptized now belongs
to Jesus Christ.
In addition, it was especially Paul who reflected profoundly in relation
to the submerging ritual of the baptismal bath:
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in
newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we
shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom 6:45)
The being in Christ, the determining factor for the community of
believers, which takes place in the act of faith, is realized on the level
of visibility and symbol. That is, it comes about in baptism as the act
of being grounded in Christ, similar to the way in which it comes
about in the Lord's Supper, as life from the Body of Christ.
Baptism is, more preciselythis comes from biblical reflection on the
matterthe sign of the new life, the "rebirth," the birth to being a new
human being. Baptism is to be understood not at all in the sense of a
naturalistic deification, but very much as the communication to human
beings of the life opened up by Jesus Christ. The rejection of all
magical ideas is assured by the fact that faith is the presupposition for
the reception of baptism, and also by the fact that the gift bestowed in
the sign of baptism does not work automatically but turns into an
ongoing task, an imperative: the baptized must lead a new life, must
"walk in the Spirit."
"Baptism," says Luther in the Small Catechism," is not simply water,
but it is the water taken hold of in God's Word and united with

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God."3 Without God's Word, the water is only water and not baptism,
but with the Word of God it is a baptism, a water of life and a bath of
regeneration. Baptism with water means that the old human being is
supposed to die in us by daily repentance, and, everyday, to rise again
a new human being who lives in righteousness for God.4
Baptism in this view thus leads, as rite of initiation, into the
community of those whose faith is defined by Jesus Christ. As
initiation, baptism can be bestowed only once. This community is
connected with Jesus Christ by baptism in a very special way, and it
comes to be as unity in Christ by means of baptism. Paul expresses
this in Galatians 3:27 in a somewhat strange, daring image: "For as
many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither
male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:2728). To
put on Christ like a garment means entering into a new situation and
form, that of being Christ. It signifies the beginning of participation in
the being of Christ himself, which is realized in the mode of the
"Christ in me." There comes from this a new relationship to
community and a new form of community. In the formulation of Paul,
You are all "one" in Christ, and thus Body of Christ.
From this connection comes a new understanding of the baptism of
Jesus. The passages belonging to this (Matthew 3:1317; Luke 3:21;
John 1:3234) are, according to their literary genre, not biographical
accounts of experience about, for example, the awakening of the
messianic consciousness of Jesus or the description of a heavenly
vision, but a piece of baptismal catechesis intended to give insight into
the meaning of baptism. But factually it does give some connection
between the baptism of John taken over by Jesus and the baptismal
practice that was there from the [Christian] beginning.
In baptism and its interpretation as new birth, as connection with
Jesus, as participation in his death and resurrection, is expressed in a
very special way the fact that being a Christian is being in reception,
that receiving comes before doing, that gift is the presupposition for
every form of mandate. (It is in considerations like this that the
possibility and justification of infant baptism is grounded.)
3 Martin Luther, The Small Cathechism of Dr. Martin Luther (St. Louis,
1940) 170.
4 Ibid. 177.

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§ 51
The Church as Work of the Spirit
Jesus and the Spirit
Easter is the existential ground of the Church because here is brought
to completion that to which faith is related: the person, the way, and
the work of Jesus. To this completion, which is constitutive for the
Church, belongs the coming of the Spirit. The Spirit as Spirit of God
is the principle of creating life since the making of the world.1
According to the witness of the New Testament, the Spirit of God as
power and life of God was active in Jesus in a special way: beginning
with the Incarnation, manifest with the baptism of Jesus. Jesus' words
and deeds are manifestations of the Spirit of God; by this Spirit He
banishes the power of the evil one. In doing so Jesus is not seized as
by an outside principle; He is Himself the bearer of the Spirit of God.
That is why He can also mediate and share the Spirit. The Gospel of
John talks about this explicitly: I will send you the helper, the
Paraclete, "The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will
bear witness to me" (John 15:26).
The realization of this promise takes place after Jesus' raising from the
dead with the words "Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). The
Spirit of God as life-giving, creating Spirit was active above all in the
raising of Jesus from the dead. This is what the beginning of the Letter
to the Romans says:
1 Basic works: Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David
Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1983); in addition: Johann Adam
Möhler, Unity in the Church or the Principle of Catholicism: Presented in
the Spirit of the Church Fathers of the First Three Centuries, ed. and trans.
Peter C. Erb (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1996); E. Schweizer, Geist und Gemeinde im Neuen Testament
(Munich, 1952); H. Mühlen, Una mystica persona. Die Kirche als das
Mysterium der Heilsgeschichtlichen Identität des Heiligen Geistes in
Christus und den Christen (Munich-PaderbornVienna, 1964); Hans Küng,
The Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967) 150202; Jürgen
Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit (New York: Harper &
Row, 1977); Walter KasperG. Sauter, KircheOrt des Geistes
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1976).

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Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the
gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the
Holy Scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from
David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power
according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus
Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship
[apostolic office]. . . . " (Rom 1:15)

The Pentecost narrative (Acts 2) contains some problems in individual

aspects. But on the whole, what it intends to say is that the Spirit of
God, the gift of the definitive time of salvation as expressed by the
prophets (Joel), was conferred upon the apostles and those gathered
with them: "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to
speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:4).
The effect of this conferral of the Spirit is experienced and becomes
recognizable above all in the word and witness of Peter and the other
apostles:
"Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and
wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you
yourselves knowthis Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and
foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless
men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it
was not possible for him to be held by it." (Acts 2:2224)
"Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received
from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this
which you see and hear." (Acts 2:33)
"Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made him both
Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." (Acts 2:36)

The coordination of Christ and the Spirit is according to Paul so

intensively visible that one can say: "The Lord is the Spirit. The
Kyrios is the Pneuma" (2 Cor 3:17).2 Through the Spirit of God, the
Raised and Risen One will experience Himself as living presence and
powerful reality beyond the distance of time and beyond the limits of
space. Through the Spirit, then, a new belonging of Christians to
Christ is effected. What significance the Spirit of Jesus has for the
disciples is disclosed in the Gospel of John, in the so-called Paraclete
sermons (John 14).3 The Spirit, through whom Christ will remain as
support (Paraclete) with His chosen ones, will remind them of Jesus,
He will give witness of Him, He will lead to the truth, He will
overcome the world. The Spirit is the guarantee that "his own" remain
in the truth.
2 J. Hermann, Kyrios und Pneuma (Munich, 1961).
3 H. Schlier, The Relevance of the New Testament (New York: Herder and
Herder, 1968) 23948; Rudolf Schnackenburg, "Der Paraklet und die
Parakletsprüche" in: The Gospel According to St. John (New York, 1990) 4
vols., 3.13854.

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The truth4 which is connected with the Spirit as the Spirit of truth is to
be understood not as propositional truth, but a sign of the fidelity of
God which is fulfilled in the Jesus-eventaccording to John 14:6, "I am
the truth." The reality of God and human beings is thereby disclosed
and spoken in words. At the same time, the Johannine concept of truth
includes not only that truth be taken cognizance of, but also that it be
done. There is, consequently onenot the onlycriterion for the presence
and activity of this Spirit, a criterion for the discernment of spirits.
This is foundand so closes the circlein the statement related to Jesus,
the Christ: "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which
confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every
spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God" (1 John 4:23; cf. 1
Cor 12:2). The confession of Jesus, the Christ, is the criterion for the
discernment of the Spirit and the spirits. This Spirit, the Spirit of
Jesus, the Spirit whom Jesus sends, along with the Spirit's gifts and
activity, are to be with them, are to determine, vivify, and characterize
their existence whom the Johannine Christ calls "his own": as
community of those who belong to him, which is a new name for the
community of believers, for Church.
The Effects of the Spirit
Paul, especially, speaks of them as the fruits of the Spirit in the life of
Christians (Gal 5:22). He calls them peace, joy, love, patience,
friendliness, fidelity, and above all freedom. Freedom is for him the
embodiment of Christian existence: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). For Paul, freedom is liberation from
the manifold enslavements in the world and in all that is powerful in
the world. Freedom is also empowerment to a life in Christ and from
the Spirit.5
Paul also speaks of the fact that the Spirit of Christ lives in the
Christian: "All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For
you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you
have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is
the spirit himself bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children
of God (Rom 8:1416). "God's love has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us" (Rom 5:5). The
Christian is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). Christians are
sealed with the Spirit of promise (cf. Eph 4:30). "God has sent the
Spirit of His Son into our hearts" (Gal 4:6). Hence the admonition:
''Do
4 Rudolf Schnackenburg, "Der Johanneische Wahrheitsbegriff" in: The
Gospel According to St. John 2.22537.
5 Ernst Käsemann, Jesus Means Freedom: A Polemical Survey of the New
Testament, trans. Frank Clarke (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970).

Page 500
not grieve the Holy Spirit of God" (Eph 4:30). And on the other hand
we also hear: Have no fear when you are led before kings and
magistrates. "For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father
speaking through you" (Matt 10:20). The Spirit thus means the inner
definition of the Christianwith inner definition understood as source
and origin for the actualization of faith and life.
The effects of the Spirit for the life of a community have been
described by Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians. This
community was in no way an "ideal community." Instead, it was torn
by strife and divisions. The Apostle lays before their eyes the image
of a unity alive through the gifts of the Spirit, the charisms:
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties
of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is
the same God who inspires them all in every one. To each is given the
manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through
the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of
knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same
Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working
of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish
between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the
interpretation of tongues. All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit,
who apportions to each one individually as He wills. (1 Cor 12:411)
This description is not a representation of the community at Corinth as
it actually is, but as it should be and should become. Paul says
something in the Epistle to the Romans, as he views the community:
For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do
not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in
Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that
differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy,
in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in
his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes,
in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy,
with cheerfulness. (Rom 12:48)
From all this comes a further criterion for the discernment of spirits:
Readiness for the building up of the community by service to its
members, by the recognition of the gifts of the Spirit, by the
knowledge of the interdependence of one upon the other. Like Christ,
the Spirit, too, is a foundation of the unity of those who believe in
Christ:
Be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is
one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that
belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of us all, who is above all and through all and in all (Eph 4:36).

In the situation constituted by the raising of Jesus, by the

commissioning words of the Risen One, and by the sending of the
Spirit, everything has come to fulfillment that belongs to revelation in
the form of fulfillment, in the sense of the here and now. Also fulfilled
is that

Page 501
which belongs to the community of those whose faith is defined by
this revelation as fulfillment, i.e., the Church. It is therefore an apt
definition when Hans Küng arranges his book on the Church under
the three aspects: The Church as the New People of GodThe Church
as Body of ChristThe Church as Creation of the Spirit.
Through all of this, however, it is also being said that the Church is
not identical with that to which it is related and on which it is
grounded, that it does not have free power of disposition over it, but
that God in Christ and in the Holy Spirit is the constant over-against
of the orientation, the critique, the conversion, and the renewal of the
Church. And so it is that the existence and task of the Church consists
in constantly keeping open its transparency to its ground and its over-
against.
As can be seen, it is theologically well grounded that the connection
between Church and Holy Spirit is clearly expressed in the Apostles'
Creed. I believe in the Church as work of the Holy Spirit in whom I
believe. There are major theological systems which pneumatologically
ground their representation of the Church as a whole, and understand
it as work of the Holy Spirit. The works of Möhler, Mühlen, and
Moltmann deserve special mention (see above, n. 1). Vatican II, in its
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, expressed the relationship of
Church and Holy Spirit in this way:
When the work which the Father had given the Son to do on earth (cf. Jn.
17:4) was accomplished, the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost
in order that He might forever sanctify the Church, and thus all believers
would have access to the Father through Christ in the one Spirit (cf. Eph.
2:18). He is the Spirit of life, a fountain of water springing up to life
eternal (cf. Jn. 4:14; 7:3839). Through Him the Father gives life to men
who are dead from sin, till at last He revives in Christ even their mortal
bodies (cf. Rom. 8:1011).
The Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a
temple (cf. 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19). In them He prays and bears witness to the
fact that they are adopted sons (cf. Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:1516 and 26). The
Spirit guides the Church into the fullness of truth (cf. Jn. 16:13) and gives
her a unity of fellowship and service. He furnishes and directs her with
various gifts, both hierarchical and charismatic, and adorns her with the
fruits of His grace (cf. Eph. 4:1112; 1 Cor. 12:4; Gal. 5:22). By the power
of the gospel He makes the Church grow, perpetually renews her, and leads
her to perfect union with her Spouse. The Spirit and the Bride both say to
the Lord Jesus, "Come!" (cf. Apoc. 22:17).
Thus the Church shines forth as "a people made one with the unity of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."6
6Lumen gentium no. 4.

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Signs of the Spirit Today
To believe in and understand the Church as work of the Spirit means
to be mindful of its life and vitality, means to protect it from
narrowness and inflexibility, and from fear and faintheartedness as
well as from dissolution and lack of orientation. It means in addition
that its own renewal is the Church's constant task, a task that is
accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit as the soul of the
community of believers.
To believe in and understand the Church as work of the Spirit means
to make a place in it for the new, the unexpected, the future, according
to the injunction, "Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thes 5:19); it means,
further, to acknowledge that the Spirit of God blows when and where
and how it wills, that it cannot be preordained, or chained, or
manipulated and regimented. Amongs the signs of the activity of the
Spirit in the Church are the prophets in the Church, the charismatics,
often too the uncomfortable critics who understand criticism as
faithful engagement, the ones who push towards new turning points
and leave their mark on history. Signs of the activity of the Spirit are
also the saints of every century and their heroic life of faith, their
dedication, their love, and their following of Christ.
The working of the Holy Spirit is also recognizable today in a
remarkable and unexpected manner in the midst of a wave of
secularization, of departure from the Church, or resignation within the
Church.7 One can mention Taizé as a place of spiritual awakening,
especially of a Christian awakening of youth, which is a special sign
of hope. It is precisely the genuinely religious, the specifically
Christian and "spiritual," that makes for the fascination of Taizé: its
worship, the Eucharist, the silence, the contemplation, singing hymns
in many languages and with one melody, the community, the mutual
acceptance that grows of itself like the grain of wheat in the parable of
Jesus. That all this is not just an ephemeral experience is shown by the
fact that the young people there make the spirit of Taizé the form of
their life, and that they seek to bring others to the same committment.
The religious and the spiritual in Taizé by no means serve an
individual self-edification. Taizé unites, as part of a work by Roger
Schutz says, "meditation and commitment," meditation and battle, a
battle against all forms of evil so that "human beings will be no more
the sacrifice of human beings,'' as the program of the Council of
Youth says.
The other inspiration is the ecumenical commitment of the Brothers of
Taizé, and through them, also of those who come there. It is contained
in this sentence of the rule: "Never be satisfied with the scandal of the
separation of Christians. Have a passion for the unity of the
7 Cf. Heinrich Fries, "Aufbruch des religiösen Geistes" in: Glaube und
Kirche im ausgehenden 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1979) 3045.

Page 503
Body of Christ!" The idea that ecumenical commitment is a sign of
the working of the Holy Spirit was explicitly affirmed by Vatican II.
Something similar is seen in the movement of the Focolarini which,
as a lay movement, has spread throughout the whole world. Here too
is manifest an outbreak of the true Christian Spirit, above all in its
readiness, in the Spirit of Jesus, to accept one's neighbor
unconditionally and to carry the "revolution of love" to all countries.
This movement perhaps does not have as much publicity as Taizé. But
the living commitment in its many cells speaks for itself and is also a
sign of great hope: In many places of the world shines the spark, the
fire-place of the Focolarini. To be mentioned in this contextas a
further signis the community of the Little Brothers and Sisters who, in
the Spirit of Charles de Foucauld and through a life of poverty and
simplicity, of selfless presence, of existence for others, give witness to
the unconquerable Spirit of Jesus.
This brings up, as if automatically, a further remarkable sign. It is the
charismatic movement in the Christian churches, which has dedicated
itself to renewal.8 Although it is not very easy to get an overall picture
of the various groups and developments that make up this movement,
it can still be said that in them lives a primitive Christian element, an
experience of the Spirit manifested in the gifts and fruits of the Spirit:
in the gifts of joy, spontaneity, prayer, spirituality, but also of healing
and speaking in tongues.
Cardinal Suenens9 became a special promoter of these charismatic
movements and saw in them one of the great hopes for the future of
the Church. With him on this are many theologians who hope to find
through these movements solutions for the tasks of the Church and its
ecumenical challenges, especially in those areas where efforts until
now have gone nowhere. Pope Paul VI described the charismatic
renewal as a chance for the Church, and then named the tasks
connected with it: not to extinguish the Spirit andon the other handto
practice the discernment of spirits.
Joy over this movement should be greater than skepticism over some
of its manifestations, such as ecstasy and speaking in tongues. If one
is to recognize the quality of a tree from its fruit, then the fruits of this
movement speak for it. They are the signs of breaking out and of
confidence over against the many voices of concern, sorrow,
lamentation, resignation, and pessimism, voices that are not helpful
and certainly don't lead forward.
8 Cf. H. Mühlen, Die Erneuerung des Christlichen Glaubens.
CharismaGeistBefreiung (Mainz, 1974); Einübung in die Christliche
Grunderfahrung, 4th ed. (Mainz, 1978).
9 Joseph L. Cardinal Suenens, A New Pentecost?, trans. Frances Martin (New
York: Seabury Press, 1975); Ecumenism and Charismatic Renewal:
Theological and Pastoral Orientations (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Books,
1978).

Page 504
In these signs and phenomena as expressions of an outbreak of the
religious, of the Christian Spirit, it has become clear that the location
of this outbreak can be anywhere. "The Spirit blows where it will."
That means: The place of this religious outbreak can lie with the
bearer of an ecclesiastical officefor example, with a figure like Pope
John XXIII. But it cannot be so understood that office and Spirit are
co-extensive, that the Spirit of God has no possibility of being present
outside of office and institution. These phenomena show that the
outbreak of the religious Spirit takes place especially from below:
with individuals, in groups, in communities, at the "base." This
outbreak awakens spontaneously, with vitality, often perhaps over-
enthusiastically, disorganizedly. But this belongs to the first moments
of all outbreaks and movements.
Of course we have here the constant danger of "enthusiasm." That was
already true in the community of Corinth. But one shouldn't be too
ready with the qualification "enthusiast," so as not to suppress all
sparks even of the smallest fire, and be mindful only of order and
regimentation. God is no God of disorder, says Paul, butnot as one
would expect, a God of order, either, but"a God of peace" (1 Cor
14:33).
If we are accustomed to thinking about the situation of the Church
primarily in terms of Europe and North America, it would be well to
cast a glance at the World Church, as in Africa and South America.
Walbert Bühlmann who, in his book Where Faith Lives (Wo der
Glaube lebt), attempts to give insight into the situation of the World
Church, and who brings with it a lifelong and world-encompassing
experience, is full of confidence. He ends his book with the words: "I
like to hope that in providential synchronization with the events of the
world a new storm of Pentecost is blowing through the Church, and
that the Church has never been more challenged, never had a greater
chance to become Church of the world, than today."10
10Wo der Glaube lebt: Einblicke in die Lage der Weltkirche
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974) 313. See also his The Church of the Future:
A Model for the Year 2001 (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1986).

Page 505

Part Four
The Church as Mediation and Re-Presentation of
Revelation

Page 506
§ 52
The Theological Place of the Question of the Structure of the Church
The word "structure" brings up a problem that is hotly discussed
today, and we mean both a problem of the Church as well as in the
Church.1
This problem is correctly approached only when one specifies it in
terms of its reality and function. For our theme this means in terms of
the reality and function of the Church, in terms of its tasks and
ministries. The function of the Church consists in mediating the
revelation event in word, event, deed, and action as its gift and task in
history and for human beings. The structures of the Church have this
as their purpose.
The Church is thus not the ex post factum collection of those who,
each for themselves, have come to the faith, live from this faith, and
then are given a corresponding structure. Faith, understood as
Christian faith, comes from hearing and thus includes the primacy of
the word. Thus, the presupposition of this faith is the Church as
community of believers, as an intersubjectivity and the ministry or
preaching which occurs therein and which comes from its mission.
This indicates a basic structure in the service of the mediation of the
faith. It includes differentiation and division into member parts:
hearing, proclaiming, sending, and legitimation.
It is similar for the way in which especially the Christ-event is
supposed to be mediated: (1) in the form of that effective
remembering of what Jesus didcalled sacramentof a sign that effects
what it signifies; (2) as communion with the person, the way and the
fate of Jesus Christ, most significantly in baptism and Eucharist.
Sacrament as gift presupposes the basic structure of giving and taking,
of administering and receiving. The sacrament implies the one who
administers it; this
1 Cf. H. Rombach, Substanz, System, Struktur. Die Ontologie des
Funktionalismus und der philosophische Hintergrund der Modern
Wissenschaft (FreiburgMunich, 1965).

Page 507
person has a ministry of mediation which, in its turn, comes about
because of a sending or commissioning, because of a legitimation.
The task of the Church as diakonia, as manifold ministry to human
beings, as completing the intention and the action of Jesus, seems as
such to require no structure; it is just as universal as it is situation and
society-related. But it is just as clear that this ministry towards all
needs those who will make people aware of them, who see and make
others see, who initiate and who make known the appropriate
possibilities. It needs, above all, those who not only verbally assert
this, but complete it in act, existence, and life, not for others to be free
of the ministry of service, but that living signs be established again
and again for this ministry which is obligatory for all. And it needs
definite forms, structures, and organizations so that the service
provided can be comprehensively effective and helpful.
With these preliminary considerations, something fundamental has
been said for and about the structure of the Church. Structure is a
secondary phenomenon; it is not the primary reality, but is determined
by the primary reality. To be sure, precisely in its service to the
primary reality, structure takes on great significance. It is supposed to
mediate the primary reality, make it become real. Put negatively: it
must not overshadow or obstruct the primary reality.
This also clarifies by what factors and criteria this structure is
determined. First by the task of the Church to be the historical, social,
and societal mediator of the revelation-event culminating in Jesus
Christ. The further specifications for the structure of the Church come
from examining the human beings and the society for which this
ministry is to be performed.
Consequently the principle "true to origins and adapted to the
situation" applies also to the question of structure. Hence it follows
that a look at the beginning is also indispensable for the question of
the structure of the Church, both because this beginning and origin is
supposed to be mediated to a living present and because this
beginning is not only a temporal but also a normative, authoritative
beginning. This beginning has at the same time a critical power and
function over-against the further-developing history and the respective
present. But also, the respective present is important for the question
of structure, because the reality in whose service the structure exists,
is supposed to become living and effective for the present, and for the
human beings living therein, who, for their part, live in specific
societal structures.
In addition to this general historical point, the present has an acute
awareness of the problem of the significance of structure. It
recognizes how much can depend on structure for any reality and its
effects,

Page 508
but above all, how much structure and structures influence the
individual, the person, in a helpful or hindering way.2
This fact cannot be and remain without effect on our consideration of
the structures of the Church, because the mediation being done by the
Church is supposed to take place in and for the present, and thus
cannot overlook conditions which affect it. If the question of
structures has become a hotly discussed theme in the framework of
social criticism, it should come as no surprise that the intensity of the
question does not spare the structures of the Church. This questioning
is not satisfied with the factual as a taken-for-granted or definitive
fact, but raises serious questions about whether it makes sense in
terms of the reality in question and of the way it workds for the men
and women of this time. In other words, there is an inescapable
polarity between the origin, which is to be mediated and as such is to
remain identical, and the present and human beings in the present, for
whom this mediation is to be done. This makes clear how difficult and
acute the problem is.
But there is also this consequence: The desire to decide the question
of the structure of the Church theologically only according to the
models and circumstances of the present, or, in brief, according to
democratic pattern in contrast with earlier monarchical models can
easily lead to what we blame on the past: to have committed ourselves
to a falsely understood aggiornamento,3 a falsely understood
adaptation, to have kept and practiced too little distance, discernment,
and criticism.
Along with the possible and justified criticism of structures when they
make themselves the end, when they burden, confine, alienate, or
oppress human beings, or when they distort what they are there for, it
cannot be forgotten that structures also have an extremely positive
significance. They can, when they are not coercive ordinances, be a
great help to human beings. They can protect them from arbitrariness
and confinements, they can help them to their rights and their
freedom. Structures as legal structures have to a certain extent a
protective function, which assures to human beings what is theirs.
Further, structures have a burden-easing function. They save human
beings from having to do everything alone from having to make and
decide everything anew every day. Structures offer human beings a
catalogue of rules in which experiences, customs, directions,
behavioral
2 So-called structuralism, developed above all in France (C. Levi-Strauss),
is related in analysis and idea to the phenomenon of structure. It attempts
"to proceed from substance to structure." Cf. G. Schiwy, Der franzözische
Strukturalismus (Reinbeck, 1965); Structuralism and Christianity
(Pittsburgh, 1971); "Structuralism," SM 5.18283; O. Genest, "Exegesis and
Structural Analysis," DFT 298306.
3Aggiornamento = Italian, for "bringing up-to-date." In English the word
refers to the work of renewal in the Roman Catholic Church during and after
the Second Vatican Council (The New Shortened Oxford English Dictionary
[Oxford, 1993] 40).

Page 509
guidelines are summed up and laid down. Not to attend to these is
foolish and injurious.
Structures have a protecting function. Metaphorically speaking, they
keep the water of the source from drying up, getting aimlessly wasted,
or becoming a dangerously raging wild stream; instead they insure
that it is gathered and preserved. A system of regulation and drainage
certainly takes away from the source its often fierce, sometimes
foaming-over force. But at the same time structures and regulations
see to it that the power and the life of the source do not get lost.
Channels and regulations make sense only when there is something to
regulate: i.e., water, life. The regulation as such can never become its
own end or replace the water of life. But on the other hand, if the
source, the water, is to be guided to its functions, it needs such a
regulatory system.
This basic knowledge and experience can be derived from many
examples of history. The spontaneous new beginning that came with
Francis of Assisi and was called forth by him could be preserved only
in a rule serving this origin, even if falling short of its spontaneity.
This holds for all religious orders.
As indicated, structures have to do with justice. The concepts "justice
and order," in connection with the concepts "law and order," have for
a long time had a negative sound. Right and order have often been
seen as in opposition to freedom, to spontaneity or, above all in the
sphere of the Church, as in opposition to Spirit, charism, and love. It
is not to be contested that there are, can be, or will be laws and
regulations where these oppositions apply. But the real opposition to
justice is not love and Spirit; the opposite of justice is injustice, dis
order, chaos, arbitrariness. Justice is the answer and counterposition to
injustice, to oppression.
To help human beings get what is rightfully theirs, to bring them to
the enjoyment of justice is the horizon and context into which the
matter of justice is to be ordered and which the individual laws should
serve as the application of right and justice to the concrete situation in
history and society. This also means that all individual ordinances and
items of law that one encounters must be oriented to this foundation:
to serve justice, to make space for the right of human beings as the
space of their very selves and of their freedom. It thus follows that all
ordinances and laws can and should be measured by this. All this is
also the horizon in which the question of structure in the Church and
of the Church is to be considered.
If the structures of the Church are to be true to their origin and suited
to the situation, as is the life and faith of the Church in general, then a
look at this origin is necessary.

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§ 53
Structures of the Church at the Beginning of the Church
Misunderstanding of the Church?
On the question of the structure of the Church at its beginning, the
first thing to be attended to is the well-known and fascinating thesis
that goes back to the work of Rudolf Sohm. We take it up as
formulated by Emil Brunner in his book Das mißverständnis der
Kirche (The Misunderstanding of the Church).1 The title affirms that
the Church, as we know it today, is a misunderstanding from the
beginning. In this theory, the Church at its beginning was a
community specified and constituted by nothing but Christ
experienced alive in faith, by the Spirit, and by the gifts of the Spirit.
It was a community of love, of agape, and of freedom. The Church at
its beginning was free of every organization and institution.
What then developed from this beginning, the first traces of which are
already recognizable in the late writings of the New Testament, is a
falling away from this height. In the place of faith-decision as
personal encounter with Christ came dogma; in the place of love, law;
in the place of the Spirit, office. The subsequent history of the Church
is thus to be qualified as a history of falling away. And the more
dogma, law, and office mark a church, the more we have a
misunderstanding of and fall from its origin. For Brunner, this applies
above all to the Roman Catholic Church. The opposition was
formulated by R. Sohm in this way: The essence of the Church and
the essence of law and regulation are in opposition to each other. The
essence of the Church is spiritual, the essence of law and regulation,
on the other hand, secular. The Church is dependent on the factual
(substance) truth; law and regulation, however, on its external form.
1 Emil Brunner, Das Mißverständnis der Kirche (Stuttgart, 1951); idem.,
Die Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben und von der Vollendung.
Dogmatik III (ZurichStuttgart, 1960).

Page 511
The Primitive Community
The Acts of the Apostles gives an account of the beginnings of the
Christian community in Jerusalem. In response to the witness and
preaching of the Apostles, above all, of the preaching of Peter, three
thousand people were "added" on one day, the day of Easter. This was
an addition to the already existing group and community of the
disciples and apostles. They were "added" by faith, repentance, and
baptism. Thus arose what is called the primitive Christian community
in Jerusalem, the community of those "called out," the ekklesia.2
The Acts of the Apostles gives the following well-known description
of this first community, the primitive community in Jerusalem:
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the
breaking of bread and the prayers. . . . And all who believed were together
and had all things in common. . . . And day by day, attending the Temple
together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad
and generous hearts. (Acts 2:4246)
The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no
one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they
had everything in common. (Acts 4:32)

It should be noted that this text sketches out not an historical account
but an illuminating and ideal picture of the community. It is more of
an "ought" than an "is." The reality, as one discovers from further
reading in Acts, is not so ideal. For quarrels and tensions broke out in
Jerusalem between the groups of the Hellenists and the Hebrews, i.e.,
between Jews from the Palestinian motherland and the Greek-
speaking Jews from the cities of the Roman Empire, who had come
back from there to Jerusalem.
The members of the primitive community in Jerusalem lived
predominantly within the sphere of their Jewish origin. It was in the
horizon of their Jewish faith and based on its practices of worship in
the Temple and in the home that they attempted to represent what was
new and particular in their ekklesia oriented to Jesus. In other words,
the first Christians are Jews. Their Christian faith is understood not as
a new religion which leads them away from Israel's faith, but as the
confirmation of the promises to Israel. Precisely as Christians they are
the true Jews.
Thus it is that in the addresses of the Acts of the Apostles, the theme
"promise and fulfillment" is constantly addressed as an element of the
faith of Israel, and that the first addressees of this preaching are Jews.
On the behavior of the Jews relative to the crucifixion of Jesus,
2 K. Kertelge, Gemeinde und Amt im Neuen Testament (Munich, 1972); J.
Hainz, ed., Studien zum Thema Amt und Gemeinde im Neuen Testament
(MunichPaderbornVienna, 1976).

Page 512
the judgment was quite circumspect. Peter declares: ''Now, brethren, I
know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers" (Acts 3:17).
But even here we see the beginning of distance and the separation that
becomes manifest in the trial of the apostles Peter and John by the
elders and the scribes and led to the prohibition against preaching in
the name of Jesus Christ. It is intensified in the persecution of the
Christian community by the Sanhedrin and reaches its first high point
in the stoning of Stephen. These events resulted in the dispersal of the
community; after the imprisonment of Peter, the apostles are generally
no longer found as a group in Jersualem. The conflict was in fact
sparked not so much by the fact that Jesus was proclaimed as Christ
and Messiah, but by the confession that Jesus of Nazareth, handed
over to death by the leaders of the people in the name of the Law, thus
a crucified man, was to be the origin and founder of a new covenant.
A conflict within the community itself was sparked by the new
attitude towards the Law as the former path to salvation, and by the
question of the path which non-Jews, addressees like the Jews of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, are to follow in coming to the community of
the Church.
Structure of the Primitive Community
The structure of the community at Jerusalem had the apostles, with
Peter as the first, standing at the head of the community as leaders,
speakers, and representatives. They guide the community with an
unchallenged authority which they derive from their sending and
calling by Christ the Risen One. This is the source of their apostolate.
But their authority also come from the witness and confession of their
preaching and of their faith in Jesus the Christ before all the world,
and finally from the gifts of the Spirit bestowed on them: the gifts of
steadiness, sincerity, knowledge, and healing. In these leadership
functions the apostles decide the concrete questions that come up in
the community of Jerusalem.3
There followed, for example, the appointment of a group, the so-
called Seven (Acts 6), who, in view of their later activity, were called
deacons. Among the Seven, Stephen and Philip stood out. They were
assigned to the ministry of the proclamation of the word, and above
all to the ministry to the poor. The Seven were chosen by the
community. After their election they were introduced into their
ministry by the apostles by prayer and the laying on of hands, an old
gesture of the handing on of functions and authority.
3 E. Schweizer, Gemeinde und Gemeindeordnung im Neuen Testament, 2d
ed. (Zurich, 1962).

Page 513
A third group found in the community of Jerusalem were the
presbyteroi, the elders.4 They are mentioned together with the apostles
in the context: apostles and elders. The apostles and the elders are the
decisive instances before whom and by whom the one important,
basic question is clarified and decided, namely that acceptance into
the community of the Church and to the way to salvation takes place
not by way of the Law and circumcision, but by way of repentance,
faith, and baptism.
The apostles and the elders pick out Paul and Barnabas to send them
to Antioch, and to Syria and Cilicia. These two, we are told, went to
Antioch, called the community together, and handed over to it the
letter of recommendation of the apostles and the elders (Acts 15:30).
The elders of the Christian community are taken over from the Jewish
institution of the presbyteroi, in the organization of the synagogue.
What was originally an age designation has become a function
designation for leading and guiding. The elders stand as a college at
the head of the Jewish community. Their guiding function concerns
the worship in the Temple, and the interpretation of the Torah with the
primary task of its preservation. They have, besides this, judicial and
administrative power (binding-loosing). The unity and order of the
community is entrusted to them in a special way.
This structure of the Jewish local community was an accepted reality
also for the community of those who believed in Jesus as the fulfiller
of all promises and who found themselves in and with this faith and
its consequences within the Jewish community, and who moved
therein and were convinced that the existing forms and structures of
community were quite suited to correspond to the new situation of
faith oriented to Jesus and to the community living therefrom, the new
qahal, the new People of God. For the new was to be considered as
fulfillment and completion of the old.
In spite of this close connection of the Christian community with all
that went before it, the emphasis on the new, and with that the
difference, was unavoidable. The difference, which became clearer
and clearer, was not so much found in the structure as in the way the
content of the structure was filled out.
The elders of the Christian community were, despite formal and
structural similarity, defined by what was new and different in their
faith. The Jewish elders were bound to law and tradition and took
their task from these. The Christian community, however, lives
decidedly not from the Law and from the past, but from the
experienced presence of the new, and from its hope in the return of
their Lord. Prophecy,
4 W. Michaelis, Das Ältestenamt der christlichen Gemeinde im Lichte der
Heiligen Schrift (Bern, 1953).

Page 514
grown quiet within the synagogue, is awakened anew in the primitive
community.
Consequently, the elders could not, simply by their knowledge and
interpretation of the Scripture, be the authoritative teachers the way
they used to be. The elders receive a new definition and task in the
Christian community. This can be seen in the way the writings of the
Old Testament, Law, and Prophets continue to be read and honored as
Holy Scripture; they receive a new interpretation, however, as it were
a new hermeneutical principle, by the message of Jesus crucified and
risen.
The connection with the Old Covenant is preserved by the category of
promise and fulfillment, but this now receives the dimension of
preparation for the new and definitive. The community has a new
connection of its own and a new tradition of its own which comes
from Jesus Christ and is normatively bound to him, and which is to be
kept alive and preserved in the community. From the witness of Acts,
these three elementsthe apostles with Peter at their head, the elders,
and the Sevenconstitute the structure of the primitive community of
Jerusalem.
In general, the institution of the elders is protrayed in The Acts of the
Apostles as the normal structure of the Christian communities. Where
communities are foundedby apostleselders and presbyters are
subsequently appointed.
In a moving scene, Acts 20:28 relates that Paul, on his final journey to
Jerusalem, no longer has time to go to Ephesus. He has the elders of
the community come to Miletus in order to say goodbye to them. This
speech is shaped by Luke as a kind of last will. It culminates in
requiring of the elders: "Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock,
in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the
church of God" (Acts 20:28).
Mention of the elders is made towards the end of the first century in
the Letter of James (5:14)a description of the every-day life of a
Christian community. It says there, in case of sickness, the elders of
the community are to be called, that they might set the sick on their
feet again by prayer in the name of the Lord and by anointing with oil.
In the First Letter of Peter, in which the authority of Peter is claimed
in order to lend authority to this writing to the communities in Asia
Minor, one finds a community structure in which the author describes
himself as a "fellow and witness of the sufferings of Christ" (1 Pet 5:
1). "Tend to the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but
willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over
those in your charge but being examples to the flock" (1 Pet 5: 23).
On this basis one has to say that the institution of the elders is a
structural element found along with and under the authoritative apos-

Page 515
tolic office at the beginning of the Church. In addition, the
appointment of the elders in the form of a liturgical action was carried
out with prayer and the laying on of hands. This practice, which was
taken over from Judaism, continues to this dayand not just in
Judaismas the sign of "ordination."
The Pauline Communities
In discussion of the Pauline communities,5 the reference point is not
the Acts of the Apostles which, in its second part, deals with the
missionary activity of Paul and with the fact that he appointed elders
in the communities he founded, thus taking over the structure of the
Jerusalem community. The reference point is rather the communities
about which Paul himself gives us an acccount and, in which he is
concretely active. It is above all the community of Corinth, but also
those of Thessalonica, Philippi, and Rome.
It is said that the picture of the communities as described by Paul is
different from the one so far described. It is above all from the picture
of the primitive Jerusalem community with its already described
structure of "apostles and elders." In addition, the account of Luke
(Acts) seems to be considerably different from what, for example, the
First Letter to the Corinthians tells us about the life, behavior, buildup
and structure of a very early Christian community.
Hans von Campenhausen gives this description of the community of
Corinth: The Spirit is the organizational principle of the Christian
community. Thus it needs no specific kind of order with its
prescription, commands, and prohibitions. The Spirit who rules does
not get actively involved in the framework of a specific church order
or church constitution. In the community, freedom rules in principle
because of immediacy to Christ, because of being filled with the
Spirit. The community is not like any ordinarily constituted
organization, but a living cosmos of free spiritual gifts, a community
in which every coercion and every lasting power to command is
clearly excluded.6
The community lives by the Spirit; its various members have many
kinds of gifts. Where Spirit and love reign, no further order is needed;
all regulations are really the working of the Spirit and the gifts of the
Spirit. The most striking trait of the Pauline view of community is
"the
5 K. Holl, "Der Kirchenbegriff des Paulus in seinem Verhältnis zu dem der
Urgemeinde" in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte II
(Tübingen, 1928) 4467; J. Hainz, Ekklesia. Strukturen paulinischer
Gemeindetheologie und Gemeindeordnung (Regensburg, 1972).
6 H. von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the
Church of the First Three Centuries, trans. J. A. Baker (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1969) 58.

Page 516
complete lack of a juridical order, the fundamental exclusion of every
formal authority within the individual community."7
With this conception Campenhausen has taken over the thought of
Emil Brunner, not, to be sure, for the New Testament Church in
general, but for its Pauline form. He explicitly establishes that the
Pauline personal-pneumatic, office-less form of church can claim a
priority neither in time nor in idea over against the ekklesia of
Jerusalem organized in members according to office and order. He
further notes that the Pauline conception of Church manifests, along
with the trait of the enthusiastic, also the trait of the utopian, and that
it ultimately could neither hold nor survive; it led rather to tensions
and conflicts. But the questions remain: Is the Church of the New
Testament found in two differentiated if not contradictory forms: the
Jewish-Christian and the Gentile-Christian; Is the Church in the
Gentile-Christian sphere so constituted as Campenhausen says?8
Contradictory Structures?
Are the Jerusalem community, and the Corinthian community as type
of the Pauline community, fundamentally different and contradictory
in structure from the communities in the non-Jewish sphere?9
The problem of the constitutional and the juridical is not the problem
of the beginning, of the first hour so to speak, but a matter of the
second generation, whose concern was to keep the origin alive. The
essential issue was continuity. Paul, as it seems, is by nature not
primarily a man of constitutionally juridical "order" or of
"organization," he is essentially a man of the ''Spirit," of unusual
charismatic gifts, a perfect witness of that earliest time overflowing
with the fullness of the Spirit, if also with an alert sense for the
necessities of sober, everyday reality. Paul is in addition mostly the
"founder" of the communities to which he writes, and he possesses
therein the authority of a "father," which does not need to be
constituted "juridically," but which does contain a strong juridical
element. He is essentially a "missionary" and thinks as a missionary;
he wants to win people over and must avoid all harshness. He is a
pastor of souls, accustomed to persuade, and to work things out with
opposition and opponents in pastoral conversation. And finally, he
expects the parousia to come soon and isn't at all reckoningat least not
at firstwith the necessity of having to create a lasting order for the
communities. What takes place in matters of constitu-
7 Ibid. 70.
8 O. Karrer, "Probleme der paulinischen Kirchenordnung nach H. von
Campenhausen" in: Um die Einheit der Christen (Frankfurt, 1953) 6986; O.
Kuss, "Kirchliches Amt und geistliche Vollmacht" in: Auslegung und
Verkündigung I (27180).
9 The following material is dependent on O. Kuss, "Jesus und die Kirche im
Neuen Testament" in: Auslegung und Verkündigung 1.2577, esp. 4955.

Page 517
tion seems more like stopgap measures; nothing else is or should be
needed, for the Lord is coming soon anyway.
But finally, one would not do justice to the real Paul if one tried to
maintain that he knew nothing at all of "organization," of
constitutional-juridical order, of an "office" or at least of elements of
an "office." Even in the First Letter to the Thessalonians there is talk
about those who ''stand before" the faithful in the Lord. The same
concept comes up in the Epistle to the Romans. The First Letter to the
Corinthians speaks, instead of "piloting abilities," gifts for
community-leading. At the beginning of the Letter to the Philippians
episkopoi and diakonoi are mentioned, and although here too the
community is mentioned first, it remains noteworthy that the
community leaders are mentioned individually; they are apparently
"officials." The matter becomes even clearer when we attend to how
Paul's relationship to Jerusalem was established, i.e., to Peter, James,
and John, who were "the pillars" (Gal 2:2).
Paul insisted with great emphasis that he received his calling not from
human beings, also not by a human being, but by Jesus Christ and
God, the Father, "who raised him from the dead." Nevertheless,
however much he emphasized the immediacy of his apostolate, he
didn't think much about developing a kind of independent special
church. Rather he placed decisive importance on gaining the
agreement/approval of the Jerusalem community, above all of "those
in authority." When he is visiting Jerusalem for the second time after
his conversion, he is undertaking the journey on the basis of a
revelation. Thus he is not being summoned there, so to speak, but he
is nevertheless going there in the consciousness that its yes or no
would have the utmost broad-ranging consequences. It is a question of
life and death; his purpose is nothing less than to learn from those in
authority whether he is or has been running "in vain" with his gospel
which he is preaching among the Gentiles. In his (monetary)
collection Paul recognizes the position of Jerusalem as origin.
Although it may be noteworthy that when he speaks of the collection
its caritative aspect is prominent, it nevertheless cannot be denied that
even in his version it is Jerusalem which took the initiative, and the
character of the collection as a levy is quite clear. There can be no
doubt that Paul depicts his meeting with those in Jerusalem with a
certain between-the-lines reserve; he obviously wishes under all
circumstances to avoid even the least limitation on his independence,
on the revelation given him. But there can be just as little doubt that
he lays decisive importance on receiving the fundamental approval of
his gospel and his activity as apostle by those in authority in
Jerusalem: Peter, James, and John. Thus it is not very likely that the
structure of a community founded by him and later cared for by him
would be totally different from that in Jerusalem.

Page 518
When Paul later "opposed" Peter "to his face" (Gal 2:11) in Antioch,
this argument was not over matters of principle. Paul is not opposing a
Peter who is teaching something different, he is not pushing through
"his gospel," or even ''rebelling" instead, he is calling to order a Peter
whoone with Paul in principleis putting tactical considerations in the
foreground at a time when, in Paul's view, an open confession for the
single correct way of acting is necessary.
Purely Charismatic Communities?
In some recent Catholic presentations on the Church, above all by
Hans Küng and Gotthold Hasenhüttl,10 it is said that the community
of Corinth was factually a purely charismatic community, because it
was borne and marked uniquely by faith, love, Spirit, and the gifts of
the Spirit. This community is then made into the exemplary picture
and dominant model of Church in general. This forgets that the factual
condition and the concrete life of this community were quite different.
The community of Corinth offers the picture of a very difficult,
divided community, a community with struggling parties: "It has been
reported to me," says Paul (1 Cor 1:1113), "that there is quarreling
among you, my brethren. What I mean is that each one of you says, 'I
belong to Paul, ' or 'I belong to Apollos, ' or 'I belong to Cephas, ' or 'I
belong to Christ.' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or
were you baptized in the name of Paul?" Besides, there is in the
community of Corinth the case of incest, which the community is
tolerating in its midst (chap. 5); there is the scandal of legal
controversies before pagan courts (chap. 6); there is the practice of
falsely understood or arbitrarily misused freedom (chap. 6); there are
the abuses at the Eucharist (chap. 11), and the disorder in the liturgical
assemblies (chap. 14). This is the reality of the community which the
First Letter to the Corinthians has in mind and with which it sees itself
confronted.
It is to this that the answer of the apostle is directed. It takes place in
various stages: Paul claims that he can, indeed must, intervene,
establish order, and decidefor he is the father of the community, which
he, in his own words, begat by the gospel (1 Cor 4:15). This position
of his contains a dominative authority, to which he also lays claim:
authority grounded in being founder, in fatherhood.
In the questions that arise, Paul asserts his authority. He encourages,
he wills, he commands. Paul makes clear regulations and gives
concrete directions. Problems are definitely not left to the decision of
a
10 Hans Küng, The Church, trans. Ray and Rosaleen Ockenden (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1967) 17991; idem, "Die charismatische Struktur
der Kirche" in: Concilium 1 (1965) 282-90; G. Hasenhüttl, Charisma.
Ordnungsprinzip der Kirche (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1969).

Page 519
free charismatic regime in which matters as it were regulate
themselves. Paul knows and realizes what is contained in power and
authority.
In addition, Paul proposes as answer, possibility, and obligation his
own picture of the way the community should be and the direction in
which it must be led. Against the antagonism in Corinth which is
leading to party loyalties and the building of fronts, he places the
totally other picture of plurality in unity, of the plurality of the gifts of
the Spirit and the unity of origin, of the principle of unity, and of the
goal that encompasses them (1 Cor 12).
This connection and interplay are illustrated in the same chapter with
the well-known image: the body with its many members together with
their manifold functions. They are all dependent upon each other; the
individual member must make good on its own specific gift and
function without looking down on the other, which in its function and
gift is irreplaceable mad contributes to the building up of the whole.
Thus: "If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is
honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and
individually members of it" (1 Cor 12:2627).
Then comes the concrete application to the community:
And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third
teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators,
speakers in various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets?
Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do
all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? (1 Cor 12:28-30)
It follows from this text that charisms in the sense of 1 Corinthians 12
are gifts in the service of the building up of the community. Charisms
include not only spectacular phenomena like ecstasies or talking in
strange tonguesthese are ranked in the lowest positionbut the gifts of
the every-day life of the community as well.
To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another
the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith
by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another
the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to
distinguish between Spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another
the interpretation of tongues. All these are inspired by one and the same
Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as He wills. (1 Cor 12:811)

Chapter 14 of the same letter again takes up the subject of charisms,

especially of prophetic and ecstatic speech. "He who prophesies is
greater than he who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so
that the church may be edified" (1 Cor 14:5).
There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is
without meaning; but if I do not know the meaning of a language, I shall
be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. So with
yourselves; since you are

Page 520
eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the
church . . . In church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in
order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue." (1 Cor
14:1012, 19)
At the end of this chapter Paul promulgates concrete directives for the
community assembly. He justifies them with these words: "God is not
a God of confusion but of peace" (1 Cor 14:33). Now peace is not
identical with any possible order, but it is surely incompatible with
disorder; peace requires community, concord, and love. Ordinances
that are understood as service are not opposed to this, but are intended
to help secure peace.
Is the community of Corinth a charismatic community? This cannot
be affirmed if one understands the charismatic in the sense of the
extraordinary gifts, in the sense of ecstatic enthusiasm. Nor is it such
if one understands the charismatic in such a way that every element of
structure, arrangement, order, authority, and law is excluded because it
would be in contradiction to charism. But one can understand the
community at Corinth as charismatic community, and specify the
Church in general as such, if by charism one understands the gift
given to each and the call of that gift to a specific service in the
community, which call empowers to this service. This comprehensive
definition of charism sets it apart both from arbitrariness and disorder
and against mere legality and uniformity.

Page 521
§ 54
The Pluriform Development of Christian Origins
Hans Conzelmann calls our attention to the fact that the nonarrival of
the parousia did not cause any terribly great disturbances in the
communities, that there were indeed questions about it, but no
earthshaking crisis.1 It was relatively easy to integrate successfully the
problems that arose from this in terms of the faith, to consolidate and
stabilize the community and the communities, to give them form and
structure, not to quench the fire of the origin but to preserve it and
hand it on. We will now mention some of the moments in this process.
The Witness of the Acts of the Apostles
From the original situation in which the Jewish Christian and Gentile
Christian communities existed side by side, there developed an ever
more clear interrelationship. This can be seen from the way the Acts
of the Apostles describes it as taken for granted that the communities
founded by Paul and his companion Barnabas would have structure,
and indeed a presbyteral structure. Presbyters, elders, form as a
college the direction and leadership of the community. Their ministry
is described as "pasturing the flock," with everything that goes with
this according to the model of the Shepherd: "existence for it," care
for its life as community of Jesus Christ, leadership, going ahead,
protection, readiness to give up oneself.
Especially important is the already-mentioned passage of Acts 20:28,
the so-called testament of Paul. Paul has the elders of Ephesus come
to Miletus and he sums up their task with the words: "Take heed to
yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you
overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with the
blood of his own Son." The elders addressed here are called
episkopoi/overseers. This joins together two concepts and structures:
the
1 Hans Conzelmann, History of Primitive Christianity, trans. John E.
Steely (New York: Abingdon Press, 1973) 100.

Page 522
presbyter coming from the synagogue, and the episkopos coming from
Greek law.
The task of the presbyters and elders is described with the category of
episkopos.2 Behind this is not the image of the slave overseer, but in
general the function of the one who sees, who has the overview, who
is aware of the whole picture and bears responsibility for it. In the
Greek sphere, episkopos became a designation of office: a supervisory
and administrative official. This formal structure is taken over for the
Christian community and filled with a new content in view of the fact
that the functions and tasks were those needed in a Christian
community. The word episkopos comes close to the meaning of
shepherd. In 1 Peter 2:25 Christ Himself is called "Shepherd and
Episkopos."
Remarkable too is the great participation of the community in the
responsibility for the ministries and tasks of the Church. According to
the Acts of the Apostles, the community of Jerusalem collaborated in
the election of Matthias as successor to Judas and in the election of
the so-called "Seven." The account of the sending out of Paul and
Barnabas on the first missionary journey is instructive. The mission is
taken up in the community of Antioch: "In the church at Antioch there
were prophets and teachers." They are obviously the leaders of the
community; among them, Saul and Barnabas are also mentioned.
"While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit
said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have
called them' Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on
them and sent them off'' (Acts 13:13).
Here we have an incontestable form of an active collaboration of the
community, even for the official tasks of Paul and Barnabas. The
authority of the apostle was neither contested nor even lessened by
this, any more than was the function of the elders as episkopoi, and of
the episkopoi as elders. But these functions were incorporated into an
extraordinarily remarkable activity of the community. To recall this is
not only historically interesting but also of factual significance in our
present-day discussion about structure and office, or in the question of
a so-called "democratization of the Church," when what is to be meant
by that is cooperation and co-responsibility.
The picture that comes from the beginning about community,
structure, and community activity is certainly not univocal, closed, or
in agreement in every point. That is in no way only a sign of the
insecurity or lack of clarity in the beginning, which "ascends" from
that unclarity to greater clarity, but an expression of how the necessary
tasks and ministries in the Church were dealt with in different
structures. This plurality is a sign of different possibilities to the
communities and to the Church being realized by them.
2 Beyer, TDNT 2.599622.

Page 523
If the beginning is normative for all traditions, this also creates
possibilities for history and the present. What in the beginning was a
legitimate form and structure cannot later, even today, be simply
declared impossible or illegitimate.
A third point is still to be considered: the function of Peter in the
sphere of these communities. It consists, in a special way, in service to
unity. According to the Acts of the Apostles, we find Peter in
Jerusalem and Antioch, thus in Jewish-Christian and in Gentile-
Christian space. According to the accounts of the Acts of the
Apostles, it is Peter who accepts the Roman centurion Cornelius into
the Church, and thereby gives the impulse to mission (Acts 10); it is
Peter who, along with James, speaks the decisive word in the great
assembly in Jerusalem (Acts 15). This was the specifically decisive
word for the beginnings of the Church and for the Church in the
beginningfor the way of the Gentiles to the Christian faith and to the
community of believers. Joseph Ratzinger interprets the position of
Peter in this way: Peter is the one who, by his presence and by his
being there, represents the connection with the totality of Church at
the time.3
Nothing essential changed in the position of Peter when, after his
departure, James became the leader of the Jerusalem community.
After its enthusiastic beginning and after the persecution (Acts 12),
the primitive community seems to fall into an increasing narrowness
and lose the importance which first and foremost fell to it as
headquarters of all the churches.
One can say that the function of Peter travels with him. It is there
where he is active, while the primacy function of James is tied to the
community in Jerusalem. The departure of Peter from Jerusalem is
also a sign that the issue was not just to preserve the old, but that as a
consequence of the great missionary command, the path to venture
leads into the universal world. But as new center for the universal
Church, the obvious choice was the capital of the world at that time,
Rome.
The Witness of the Pastoral Letters
The Pastoral Letters are documents from a later time. They are the
letters to Timothy and Titus, which have Paul named as their author.4
These are not letters to the communities, like the oldest and certainly
genuine letters of Paul, but letters to individual persons who have a
leading function in a community or in a group of communities. What
is said in these letters is covered by claiming the authority of Paul as
their authoras continuation of his activity in a differently devel-
3Das Neue Volk Gottes (Düsseldorf, 1969) 115, 13031.
4 H. Schlier, "Die Ordnung der Kirche nach den Pastoralbriefen" in: Die Zeit
der Kirche (Freiburg, 1956) 12947.

Page 524
oped situation, in which the concern is, by using Pauline contents and
motifs, to preserve and strengthen the foundation laid by his apostolic
preaching.
There is practically unanimous agreement today that these are not
authentic letters of Paul. The author could perhaps be a disciple of
Paul or a missionary from post-Pauline time. The Pastoral Letters are
Paul-anamnesis (N. Brox).5 The personally stylized, concrete details
belong to the stylistic means of pseudepigraphy; Paul is imitated as
authentically as possible. Nevertheless the presumed concrete details
are basically types of a constantly present situation for a post-
apostolic community, for which Paul is to be actualized. The Gospel is
not directly proclaimed in these letters, but presupposed as already
known. For their factual and theological significance, the question of
the author of the Pastoral Letters is not of great importance.
On the characterization of the situation presupposed in the Pastoral
Letters, a few points are to be noted: The expectation of the parousia
as immediately imminent event has, as in the authentic Pauline letters,
not indeed been extinguished, but has noticeably receded. Regardless
of this, the life of the community remains a life of hope: "Awaiting
our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and
Savior Jesus Christ" (Tit 2:13). But the time factor has become
secondary. They had taken their place in the world and looked to
stabilize themselves therein.
The picture of the ekklesia addressed in the Pastoral Letters as local
church is a picture with stable elements. The Church is encountered in
the image of a house in which there has to be an ordering, still more
exactly as support columns and foundation of truth. As expressed in 1
Timothy [Link] "If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to
behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living
God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
The apostolic ministry and task includes the functions of the preacher,
herald, missionary, and above all teacher. The message itself, the
gospel, is found in the Pastorals in the form of teaching/doctrine, as
the teaching of Jesus Christ. The conception of the gospel as teaching
seems to have become necessary over against a confusion or lack of
certainty coming from false teachers. Doctrinally speaking, the
message is capable of better articulation, comprehension, and
precision. But in this there is above all the duty of the protection of
the entrusted good, the deposit, the "estate," connected with vigilance
against false doctrine.
In the service of this task stand the duties which are claimed from the
Apostle in the Pastorals and presented as apostolic responsibility.
5 Norbert Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe; uebersetzt und erklaert, Regensburger
Neues Testament VII/2 (Regensburg, 1969).

Page 525
In their formulation they assume the possession of decisive authority.
One mark of this is the fullness of the vocabulary used to express it: "I
exhort," "I charge you" (1 Tim 5:21); "I will," ''I command" (2 Tim
4:1), or "must be" (1 Tim 3:2). According to the Pastoral Letters,
Timothy and Titus are presented as disciples of Paul, as "my true child
in a common faith" (Tit 1:4). There is also something special that
characterizes Timothy and Titus, the expression "Rekindle the gift of
God that is within you through the laying on of my hands" (2 Tim
1:6).
These disciples of the Apostle have thus been endowed with the grace
of God by the laying on of hands. At the same time they are initiated
into special duties and functions by the same laying on of hands.
These are described in the Pastoral Letters as follows: They are the
representatives of the apostles; they are the leaders of a group of
individual communities; they have the right to appoint elders as
leaders in the communities: "This is why I left you in Crete, that you
might amend what was defective, and appoint elders in every town as
I directed you" (Tit 1:5). In this function, Timothy and Titus are an
instance of appeal in cases of complaints and disagreements that arise
in the individual communities.
In addition, Timothy and Titus, under the mandate of the Apostle who
is here presupposed as authority, give concrete directives for the
communities, for the individual states in life: for men, women, and
children, for slaves and for widows. There are further directions for
their behavior in the face of dangers to come, especially with
reference to persecution and false teaching. The most important task
for Timothy and Titus, the disciples of the Apostle, is seen as
preaching: "Preach the word!" The preaching takes primarily the form
of doctrine, sound doctrine, the truth, as we see in the well-known
words:
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the
living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the
word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort,
be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when
people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will
accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn
away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. (2 Tim 4:14)

The structure of the Church, according to the Pastoral Letters,

includes the following offices: apostles, disciples of the apostles,
presbyters, episkopoi, deacons. These letters have the following
designations for the office in the community: episkopos, presbyter,
deacon. It is striking that the concept episkopos occurs mostly in the
singular, the concepts of presbyter and deacon mostly in the plural.
The duality of offices, from the Gentile-Christian sphere, episkopoi
and deacons, and presbyter from the Jewish-Christian sphere have
merged into a triad: episkopospresbyterdeacon. The factual

Page 526
distinction between episkopos and presbyter is not yet complete, but it
is under way.
Of the episkopos, the leader of the community, the following is
required as presupposition:
If anyone aspires to the office of bishop, he desires a noble task. Now a
bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate,
sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, no drunkard, not violent but
gentle, not quarrelsome, and no lover of money. He must manage his own
household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every
way; for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how
can he care for God's church? (1 Tim 3:15)

Practically the same thing is said in the same words of the qualities of
a presbyter and an elder: "He must hold firm to the sure word as
taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine
and also to confute those who contradict it" (Tit 1:9). Similar qualities
are required of the deacon: "Deacons likewise must be serious, not
double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for gain; they
must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let
them also be tested first; then if they prove themselves blameless let
them serve as deacons" (1 Tim 3:810).
We are doubtless dealing here with a schema being used in the
framework of a current doctrine on duties. The qualities for various
officials, for episkopos, presbyter, and deacon, are given in the form
of a customary catalogue of virtues. They don't go beyond the average
and leave out certain specific presuppositions for a specific office. It is
a catalogue of the Christianly and humanly normal, of the everyday
and the self-evident. It is important to note that in these developments,
the activity of the episkopos or presbyter is not described; we are
given instead the presuppositions for these activities. Norbert Brox
explains the content of this catalogue as follows: The average level of
the demands can perhaps be partly explained by the fact that the
official is in an especially public position in the community and
before the world and that certain types have to be excluded from the
outset as candidates for the offices; thus, defining a lower limit (of
qualifications) seems appropriate.6
All this points towards an old insight which, once again, is enjoying
recognition: What has proven to be indispensable in neighborly,
interhuman, and social relationships cannot be underestimated or
neglected when it comes to order in God's house. Human inadequacy,
deficient ethical quality, lack of testing in life, deficient leadership
quality, lack of public reputation are no recommendation for the
Christian life. This holds above all for those Christians who have an
office or leading function in the community.
6 Ibid. 140.

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The sobriety encountered herethe foregoing of the extraordinaryis not
a deficiency but reveals a sense of everyday reality. We should note
that this biblical description of community leadership, of presbyters,
bishops, and deacons, obviously contains more possibilities than were
thought possible. In our contemporary discussion about office in the
Church, which is not a theoretical but an existential question, a
reflection on this origin is helpful. It also seems to be quite
suggestively significantlet this be said in conclusionthat the concept
"priest," the sacrificing priest of the ancient religions, is nowhere used
as a designation of those who take on leading functions and
tasksincluding worship, baptism, and Eucharistin the community of
Jesus Christ.
Gerhard Lohfink, in an article on the normativity of the concept of
office in the Pastoral Letters, has refuted the conception of Heinrich
Schlier that the principle of office dominates in the Pastoral Letters:
The highest principle is the unfalsified handing on of the Gospel entrusted
by God to the Church. Because the Pastoral Letters know that this handing
on is not possible without an orderly situation of office in the local
churches, they speak a great deal of office, not in order to lay down
specific structures of office, but to assure the unfalsified handing on of the
paratheke (what has been received). They presuppose as self-evident a
firm web of relationship between office and gospel, but the prerogative
clearly goes to the gospel. If we could ask the author of the Pastoral
Letters, prescinding from all times and all language barriers and
difficulties of understanding: Would you really want a very specific
structure of office as norm for the Church, he would answer us: No, I
would not want a specific office but the gospel as norm for the Church.
Create for yourselves whatever office is the best guarantee for the
unfalsified handing on and realization of the gospel!7
The First Letter of Clement
This is a letter of the community of Rome to the community in
Corinth about the years 9698. In the letter itself the author is not
mentioned by name; however the letter is ascribed to the Roman
bishop Clement.8
The occasion of the letter was a conflict in the community of Corinth.
It arose because in Corinth "old and proven presbyters" were
"unjustly" deposed from their office. This resulted in a division in the
community. The bishop of Rome as such, not their bishop, turned to
the community in Corinth with the request to end the quarrel. The
letter is not a directive, but a letter of appeal. As a guideline for order
and structure in the community, the Letter of Clement in chapters
4244 makes some noteworthy statements.
7 "Die Normativität der Amtsvorstellungen in den Pastoralbriefen,"ThQ
157 (1977) 93106.
8 Text edition: Die Apostolischen Väter, ed. J. A. Fischer (Darmstadt, 1956)
1107.

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The apostles received the Good News for us from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus, the Christ, was sent by God. Christ comes from God, the apostles
come from Christ. They were filled with certainty by the resurrection of
our Lord and confirmed in fidelity by the Word of God. They preached in
city and country and appointed their first fruits, after undergoing testing in
the Spirit, as bishops and deacons for the future faithful." (1 Clem 42)
The apostles also knew that there would be conflict over the office of
bishop; thus they gave exact instruction that when a bishop dies, other
proven men would take over his office. That they who, with the agreement
of the whole community, were appointed as bishops and blamelessly
served the flock of Christ and receive good witness from all should now be
deposed, that we hold to be unjust." (1 Clem 44)

Notice the way reference is made to the self-evidently described (and

constitutive for office) chain of commission:
GodChristapostlesepiskopoideacons; note also the juridical, not
sacramental, mode of argument. Injustice has been committed, it must
be rectified. Equally noteworthy is the strong institution of the office
of presbyter in the community of Corinth as well as in Rome in the
decade of the nineties.
The Letters of Ignatius of Antioch
These letters9 document the fact that the communities over which
Ignatius himself has charge and the communities to which he
writesEphesus, Magnesia, Rome, Philadelphia, Smyrnahave the
following structure: At their head stands a bishop, and around him a
college of presbyters and the deacons. Hence the terminology of a
"monarchical episcopate" recognizable since Ignatius. This is not a
felicitous expression; its meaning, however, is that the leadership of
the community lies in one hand, that of the bishop. The interplay of
bishop, presbyter, and deacons is illustrated by Ignatius with the
musical images of the cithara and chords.
The Letters of Ignatius contain a highly developed theology of the
episcopal office, which is grounded in concern for the unity of the
Church. The original image of this unity is, said Ignatius, the one
Christ in unity with the Father. This unity becomes visible in the one
bishop. The bishop represents Christ in the community. The bishop is
accordingly the center of the community; he is at the same time its
constant alter ego. As he himself is borne by Christ, so shall he bear
the community. Thus Ignatius can say: Where the bishop is, there is
the community, the Church.
From this flows the concrete principle: "Do nothing without the
bishop!" He alone is authorized to lead worship, above all to celebrate
the Eucharist, and to administer the sacraments. If someone else
wishes
9 Ibid. 111225.

Page 529
to do this, it can take place only with the approval of the bishop. "The
Church is a people united in the bishop." In Ignatius the Spiritual, the
pneumatic and the juridical moments of the episcopal office are united
in a unique way. They work not in the attitude of an absolutist,
authoritarian ruler, but in the manner of a man filled with Spirit, love,
self-dedication, and responsibility. His life and his martyrdom are
their existential confirmation and "verification."
His concern, his compulsion for unity in the form of a visible unity in
the real community, in the form of a bishop, is to be understood
against the background of Gnosticism, which wanted on the one hand
to curse the Christian faith and on the other hand to melt it into a great
syncretism and thus deprive it of what it really was. "It is one and the
same passion which rejects gnostic docetism and affirms the real
Church, which seeks for the Spiritual life and demands office" (H. von
Campenhausen).
The Letters of Ignatius are an almost extravagantly exuberant witness
and a spiritual confession from early Christianity. The Tübingen
theologian Johann Adam Möhler wrote his first theological work Die
Einheit in der Kirche under the strong impression he had received
especially from the Letters of Ignatius, from their style, their pathos,
and their enthusiasm.
With the theme "Unity in the Church," Möhler took up the theme of
Ignatius and carried it through in his spirit. Möhler's division into the
unity of the Spirit of the Church and the unity of the Body of the
Church allows him to describe and acknowledge the connection
between the inner life and the external structure of the Church. Möhler
describes Church as the external, visible form of a holy, living power,
the love which the Holy Spirit bestows. The Church is the Body of the
Spirit of the faithful being formed from within. Möhler sees in
doctrine the conceptual expression of the Christian Spirit. When he
speaks of plurality without unity, he labels such people "ecclesiastical
egoists." His theme is unity in plurality. "Even though all the faithful
form one unity, they all maintain their individuality. All have the same
faith, but possess the same thing in different forms.'' Accordingly
there is diversity and freedom as well as legality (no contradiction) as
an expression of the tension of life.
As did Ignatius seventeen centuries before him, Möhler sees the unity
of the body of the Church primarily in the bishop. But he also sees it
in the unity of the bishops, and so in the metropolitans, and in the
bishop of Rome. Following Ignatius, Möhler says of Rome: "The
bishop is thus the union of the faithful become visible in one place,
their love for each other become a person, the manifestation and the
living central point of the mind of Christ striving for unity, the love of
the Christians themselves come to consciousness, and the means to
hold

Page 530
on to it."10 Certainly this is no "is" description, but a "should''
prescription; but when this "should" becomes the orienting image, it is
important and can also be effective. Möhler continues: "Whoever is
eager for the episcopal honor is not capable of it, and whoever is
capable of it is not eager for it."11
A final quotation from Möhler's writings: "There are clerics and
laypersons; this means nothing other than that different gifts of grace
are distributed, and they must [all] have points of connection to the
community."12
Falling Away or Progress?
How are we to judge this path from the open structures of the
beginning up to the ordered structures as they are found, soberly in the
Pastoral Letters, and highly pneumatically and enthusiastically in the
Letters of Ignatius? The question cannot be avoided: Is this a history
of falling away from the living, Spirit-filled beginning, and thus a
great misunderstanding (E. Brunner); or do we have here genuine
progress to a continually more clarifying structure whose elements,
episkopos, presbyter, deacon, we still have today, even if they are
somewhat modified in content when we consider that the position of
the bishop Ignatius roughly corresponded to that of a pastor of a
community today?
It would be overly simplistic to think of falling away or progress as
the applicable categories here, What happened was that the Church, in
one historical epoch, created something that was representative of it
and for it; and the organizational forms and structures available at the
time, called "presbyter" and "episkopos" seemed possible and
necessary. Grounded in the often-mentioned tension between "true to
origins" and "adapted to the situation" is the principle that other
situations can open up and require other possibilities, as long as the
reality and the origin are preserved.
Some years ago (1969) the German bishops published a "Biblical-
Dogmatic Guide" on the subject of the priestly office. In it are the
following propositions which, for our theme, could not be formulated
in a more pointed and focused fashion:
The New Testament is for the Church the document of its normative early
history. Thus the Church must listen to these documents in order to show
forth the essential characteristics which remain applicable for it until the
Second Coming of Christ. This holds also for the offices that had their first
form and shaping in the New Testament, and demonstrating a variability
even then; nevertheless they
10Unity in the Church or The Principle of Catholicism, ed Peter C. Erb
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1966) 218.
11 Ibid. 220.
12 Ibid. 209, 225.

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stand in a factual continuity which allows questions to be asked about the
essence of the priestly office and its significance for the structure of the
Church. But since the Church is not beginning this conversation with the
New Testament today for the first time, since it is a conversation which
began quite early, a conversation to which it responded with an
understanding of priesthood appropriate to the times, when it now
continues with that always constantly necessary listening to and reflecting
on the Scripture, it will also have to carry on the conversation with itself,
that is, with its history and its tradition.
The inner reason we must include the historical development in our
understanding of everything ecclesiastical, including ecclesiastical office,
lies in the fact that the Church, in its founding by Jesus Christ, was
historically grounded and dependent on historical development. The
Church must always and inevitably realize its essence under different
conditions, in the course of which time-conditioned elements become part
of its reality. Hence, even within the New Testament, changes in the form
of office are observable. Thus we too cannot avoid the historically
conditioned and variable development of form in the Church and in church
office. However careful may be our efforts with regard to the Church, and
however profound our reforms, they never get to the point that what we are
realizing is only its unchanged essence. It would thus be a
misunderstanding to want to judge such changes, which do not involve its
abiding nature, as always illegitimate or even as a falling away from the
will and the mission of Christ.
But this variability requires precisely that we are constantly reflecting on
the New Testament foundations, so that the connection with the original
beginning of the Church and with Jesus Christ does not become obscured
or even lost. For not every time-conditioned or every possible change is
justified, and not every development means a step forward towards the full
form of the Body of Christ (cf. Eph 4:1213). In the [our] historically
variable form in which we know the Church, we are constantly called upon
to make this [full form of the Body] again visible by reflection on its
origin.13
13Biblischdogmatische Handreichung [über das priesterliche Amt] (Trier,
1969) 78.

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§ 55
Tradition and Succession
Tradition, (paradosis, traditio) is a basic word of theology and
ecclesiology. It is already found in the New Testament, and indeed in
its oldest writings, in 1 Corinthians [Link] "I received from the Lord
what I also delivered to you." What is received and delivered in this
passage is the account of the Last Supper of Jesus with the testament:
"Do this in memory of me. As often as you do it you proclaim the
death of the Lord." Similarly in 1 Corinthians [Link] "For I delivered
to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for
our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he
was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that
he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.'' Here we are dealing with
the heart of Christian proclamation, the message of Jesus crucified
and risen.
In the tradition, in this "handing on," the purpose is not to let the
Christ-event which has come to be in historical event, word, and
action remain just as it is as a unique happening, but to carry it
forward, to mediate it. The purpose is to pass it on from one person to
another, from community to community, from generation to
generation. For the Christevent is not to remain something of the past;
it is promise, directive, orientation, life, and salvation for all people
and times; it is to be contemporaneous, as it were, with all times. The
reality of this revelation-event is that it happened once, and at the
same time happened once and for all.
The form of the tradition is also very appropriate because the Christ-
event is given as gift which thus can be mediated only in the form of
the handing on of the gift of tradition. In the Pastoral Letters the
received and handed-on tradition is the constantly present gift and task
to be preserved and protected, above all the tradition of the word, of
doctrine, of the "truth."

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Tradition of the Origin
The tradition presupposes an origin from which it comes and which is
its constant source. The tradition is the tradition of the origin; the
origin itself is thus the source of the tradition.1 This origin is the
revelation, which does not indeed begin with Jesus, but is fulfilled
with Jesus, the Christ, and has received in him its definitiveness and
unsurpassibility. Thus the revelation culminating in Jesus is the source
of the tradition; the tradition is the tradition of this revelation.
One can see this tradition also in other perspectives and call it the
tradition residing in the apostles, the apostolic origin. For the apostles
are the called, authentic, and legitimated witnesses of the Christ event.
Everything else that follows is, as postapostolic reality connected with
the apostolic, related to this Christ event. They belong to the original
event itself. Thus, one can say that the apostles are the origin of the
tradition, but the tradition itself is the tradition of the apostolic origin.
From this comprehensive definitionrevelation, Christ-event, witness
of the apostlesit becomes quite clear that tradition has to do certainly
with tradition in the form of the word, the message, the teaching, the
faith, but not only with these but also with the tradition of the whole
reality that is named and is there with the origin/Christ-event: thus
with martyria, leitourgia, and diakonia, with life, behavior, customs,
structure, thus with being Christian, being Church as a whole. The
whole Church is apostolic: Credo ecclesiam apostolicam.
From the relationship of origin and tradition flows the following
consequence, when we designate the origin as source and the tradition
as river and stream (the image is from Newman): The river cannot
climb higher than its source. The tradition following revelation as its
source cannot go beyond it in significance and effect.
1 G. Söhngen, "Überlieferung und apostolische Verkündigung" in: Die
Einheit in der Theologie 31523. On this theme: Oscar Cullmann, Die
Tradition als exegetisches, historisches und theologisches Problem
(Zurich, 1954); M. Schmaus, ed., Die mündliche Überlieferung. Beiträge
zum Begriff der Tradition von H. Bacht, H. Fries, J. R. Geiselmann
(Munich, 1957); J. Pieper, Über den Begriff der Tradition
(CologneOpladen, 1958); H. Bacht, "Die Rolle der Tradition in der
Kanonbildung," Cath 12 (1958) 1637; J. BetzH. Fries, ed., Kirche und
Überlieferung (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1960); P. Lengsfeld, Überlieferung.
Tradition und Schrift in der protestantischen und katholischen Theologie
der Gegenwart (Paderborn, 1960); Joseph R. Geiselmann, "Tradition" in :
Fragen der Theologie heute, eds., Johannes FeinerJosef TrutschFranz
Böckle (Madrid, 1962); H. Weger, "Tradition," SM 6.26974; Gerhard
Ebeling, The Word of God and Tradition: Historical Studies Interpreting
the Divisions of Christianity, trans. S. H. Hooke (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1968); Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and a
Theological Essay (New York: MacMillan, 1967); Walter Kasper, Dogma
Unter dem Wort Gottes (Mainz, 1965); P. Lengsfeld, ''Tradition innerhalb
der konstitutiven Zeit der Offenbarung" in: MySal 1.23988; J. A. Fichter,
"Tradition," (in theology) NCE 14.22528; J. Jensen, "Tradition," (in the
Bible) NCE 14.22325; J. Pieper, Überlieferung. Begriff und Anspruch
(Munich, 1970).

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Consequently, tradition as stream or river serves the preservation and
further delivery of the water of the source. Speaking
nonmetaphorically, it can turn out that the origin will be, in tradition,
more and more understood, appropriated, disclosed, and unfolded in
its richnessnamely, in connection with the people and cultures through
which the living origin is received. It is recognizable in the stream
what wealth is contained in the source.2
Thus there can be progress, not of course in the revelation itself, but a
growth in the grasping of the source, a growth in faith and
understanding. The Constitution on Divine Revelation of Vatican II
says:
This tradition which comes from the apostles develops in the Church with
the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of
the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens
through the contemplation and study made by the believers . . . through the
intimate understanding of spiritual things they experience, and through the
preaching of those who have received through episcopal succession the
sure gift of truth. For, as the centuries succeed one another, the Church
constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth. . . . Through
the same tradition the Church's full canon of the sacred books is known,
and the sacred writings themselves are more profoundly understood and
unceasingly made active in her. (Dei verbum no. 8)
Thus one can go on to say with the Council: "Scripture and tradition
arise from the same divine source, are closely related to each other,
and tend toward the same goal."
This all-too-harmonious picture needs to be enlarged. For it can turn
out that the tradition does not always preserve and direct onwards the
water of the source in full openness; that the tradition isn't always
completely faithful to the tradition; that in the tradition some contents
of the origin are not, of course, denied, but still covered over or not
made sufficiently effective; that some contents of the origin are
favored and others neglected, or, metaphorically speaking, diverted.
This happens, for example when charism as gift of the Spirit to the
Church is restricted to the charism of office; when the charism of the
prophetic is seen as troublesome. This happens when, with the
foundation of the Church, one thinks only of Peter and not of the
foundation of the Church, which consists of apostles and prophets and
above all of Christ himself; or when one prefers the Pastoral Letters
and what they say about office and keeps silent about the open
possibilities on this question in the early letters of Paul, or writes them
off as an undeveloped stage.
2 Basic ideas from John Henry Newman's treatment of the development of
Christian doctrine; An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
(Westminster, Md: Christian Classics, 1968); Cf. H. Fries, "J. H.
Newman's Contribution to the Understanding of Tradition" in: M.
Schmaus, ed., Die mündliche Überlieferung, 63122; G. Biemer, Newman
on Tradition, trans. Kevin Smyth (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967); J.
Stern, Bible et tradition chez Newman (Paris: Aubier, 1967).

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It can also happen that some things are carried along in the stream of
the tradition, metaphorically speaking swept along with it, which do
not come from the pure origin but are cultural and historical
accretions. This apparently cannot be avoided, but it becomes a source
of concern when these historical realizations and inculturations are
clothed with the halo of the origin and thus with the quality of the
normative and indispensable, such as certain models of ecclesiastical
office, concretions of the office of the pope and the bishops in the
course of history.
There is an important consequence from all this in the relationship of
origin, i.e., source and tradition: The origin, the Christ-event, the
apostolic has a liberating and critical power over-against the forms
and articulations of the tradition. The origin has a normative power, it
is the norma normans when the tradition has to mediate the origin.
This is the source of the Church's continual capacity for renewal, and
also of the ongoing impulse for its need of renewal: Ecclesia semper
reformanda. This means, concretely: Scripture exercises a traditional-
critical function. For it is the witness of the origin, of the Christ-event,
of the apostolic witness and faith. This holds even when the Scripture,
for its part, is the result of a process of tradition, in which the
preaching, the sending of the apostles, and the witness of the first
believers are active. Nevertheless, Scripture remains the norming
(normans) tradition; it is "canonical." It belongs in the Spirit-filled
original event of the Church.3
In distinction from this, ecclesiastical tradition is primarily a history
of the interpretation of Scripture, a process of dealing with Scripture;
but again not only interpretation in the sense of an exegesis, a theory,
but interpretation that interprets the reality dealt with in the Scripture
as a comprehensive completion of life, thus also as praxistrue to origin
and adapted to the situation.
Thus things like creeds, rites, dogmas, confessional writings, and also
liturgies, devotional forms, juridical determinations, are understood as
concrete interpretation of Scripture in the context of a particular
historical situation. These traditions, too, are attributed a normativity,
but a normativity that, for its part, is normed by the origin. These
traditions are the norma normata as distinct from the norma normans.
It is clear then that tradition is a comprehensive process and that, with
tradition, two things are meant: First, the objective taking down of a
process of tradition in the form of dogmas, creeds, liturgy, structure,
legal specifications, customs. These determine stations on the road of
faith and on the road of life lived from faith. Hence the term of
traditio passiva (passive tradition).
3 Karl Rahner, Über die Schriftinterpretation (Freiburg, 1958).

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Along with this is tradition as living event, as completion, as act of the
Church in its various concrete situations and in its attention to its
ongoing tasks. The Tübingen School4 puts it this way: Living faith as
sanctified tradition. J. S. Drey speaks of the self-tradition of the origin
to living presence. According to J. A. Möhler, tradition is "the living
gospel proclaimed in the Church, the identity of the Christian
consciousness with the consciousness of the whole Church." Tradition
is thus, seen in terms of theological knowledge, at the same time the
condition of the possibility of a faith which is oriented to Jesus
Christ.5 Tradition orients to the norma normans of the Scripture and
frees from the curse of ideological dependence and from the hectic of
the day and its actuality. Tradition can become the embodiment of a
liberating and dangerous memory of Jesus Christ.
Contents and Form
Since the tradition in all stages does not take place by itself, it has
need of organs and bearers through which it can take place. This
connection is expressed in the category of succession, succession by
human beings, succession in the apostolic faith and witness and in the
carrying out of the apostolic mandate. This results in an inner
coordination of tradition and succession. They define each other, so to
speak, mutually. Joseph Ratzinger has given this dependence a well-
known formulation: Succession is the form of the tradition. The
tradition is the content of the succession.6
This can be made even more clear: If tradition can be described or
paraphrased as content, as definition of the goal of succession, as
apostolic tradition, then succession too can be described as form and
structure of the tradition, as apostolic succession.
To clarify the concept: The apostles can have no successors in their
being witnesses to the life of Jesus and to his words and deeds,
especially his resurrection from the dead. Nor can they have
successors in their being immediately sent and commissioned by
Jesus. But the apostles can and must have a succession for their
witness, preaching, faith, ministry. In other words, the apostolic
ministry goes on and is further
4 J. R. Geiselmann, Lebendiger Glaube aus geheiligter Überlieferung. Der
Grundgedanke der Theologie Johann Adam Möhlers und der katholischen
Tübinger Schule (Mainz, 1942); Die lebendige Überlieferung als Norm
des christlichen Glaubens, dargestellt im Geiste der Traditionslehre
Johannes Ev. Kuhns (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1958); Die katholische
Tübinger Schule. Ihre theologische Eigenart (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1964);
M. B. Schepers, "Tübingen School," NCE 14, 339.
5 W. Kasper, "Tradition als Erkenntnisprinzip," ThQ 155 (1975) 198215; Die
Lehre von der Tradition in der Römischen Schule (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1962).
6 Joseph Ratzinger, Revelation and Tradition, trans. W. J. O'Hara (London:
Burns & Oates, 1966).

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mediated in the community of the faithful. This takes place by
apostolic succession and by successors to the apostles.
Not just individuals but the whole Church stands in the succession of
the apostles. We believe and confess the apostolic Church. The whole
Church is the People of God gathered by the apostles by the preaching
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The whole Church is the Spirit-temple
built on the foundation of the apostles, the Christ-body held together
by the ministry of the apostles. The whole Church is apostolic
inasmuch as it stands in the succession of the apostolic faith.
For this apostolic succession ascribed to the Church as a whole to
remain effective, it needs an even further concretion of succession as
form and structure of the tradition. There is succession in the specific
sense of succession in office, by which people are commissioned with
the apostolic ministry in a special, official, and public way, and are
initiated into it. The process is already found in the New Testament,
where the apostlesthe founders of the communitiesappointed elders,
presbyters, or episkopoi as leaders of the community. They did this
with prayer and the laying on of hands, giving them the duty of a
shepherd with the duties of special responsibility and care for the faith
and life of a community.
This process is even more obvious in the (later) Pastoral Letters,
where Timothy and Titus, the disciples of the Apostle, are entrusted
with the specific tasks of leadership, preaching, and the preservation
in the communities of the good news entrusted to them. As much as
they are connected with the communities by the execution of special
public tasks and as leader of the community, they still also stand over-
against the community. Thus there is the special apostolic succession
in the succession "in office" represented by persons. Specific persons,
as successors of the apostles, take over the apostolic task in the post-
apostolic age. In the New Testament they are called presbyters,
episkopoi, directors, shepherds as respective leaders of the
communities in which the gift of direction is counted among the
charisms. This was done so that the Church as a whole would remain
in the apostolic tradition. The appointment and commissioning of
these persons, the bearers of an office for the performance of specific
services and functions, is carried out according to biblical witness by
prayer and the laying on of hands, in other words, by the act of
ordination.7 According to the New Testament (Acts of the Apostles),
this is performed either by the apostles themselves or by disciples of
the apostles like Titus and Timothy (Pastoral Letters).
This subsequently led, in the increasing distinction between presbyters
and episkopoi, to the ordination by episkopoi, i.e., bishops, which in
the early Church did not exclude ordination by presbyters. It
7 E. Lohse, Die Ordination im Spätjudentum und im Neuen Testament
(Berlin, 1951).

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is the rule today in most of the Christian churches that already-
ordained office holders do the ordaining. In the Roman Catholic and
in the Orthodox Church, ordination is carried out by bishops. It
follows that, that which is apostolic, apostolic succession, cannot be
limited to succession in office. This is something, rather, that is
encompassed by the whole Church; it has to serve the whole Church,
and thus has its place there.
But it also remains true that specific succession in office and in public
ministry to word and sacrament as special ministry to unity cannot be
left out or be lacking. Thus succession in office is both a sign and a
means to ensure the apostolic succession for the whole Church.
Described more exactly: Succession in the form of ordination and in
the form of the continuity contained therein is an essential sign and
means for the continuity and identity of the apostolic faith.8 This is
why the question of office, which, of itself and qualitatively speaking,
belongs among the secondary questions, is so vital in ecumenical
discussion and so important ecclesiologically.
The Historical Development
In the course of time proof of succession in office, above all in the
office of the bishop, became the predominant and characteristic
guarantee of the true and authentic apostolic tradition. This took place
above all in the second and third centuries in the struggle against
Gnosticism, which threatened to supersede the apostolic faith with a
knowledge and wisdom superior to it, and attempted to permeate it
with elements from Greek philosophy and religion. The gnostics
appealed to a secret tradition which they had received from the
apostles. In response, it was especially Irenaeus ( 202), the leader, the
bishop of the community of Lyon, who in his writing Adversus
haereses established the following principle: For the correct apostolic
tradition of faith in the Church, one doesn't look to uncontrolled and
uncontrollable secret traditions, but predominantly to the traditions in
the churches grounded by the apostles. The uninterrupted succession
of the bishops in these churches from the apostles, the bishops as
successors of the apostles, vouches for the truth of their teaching.
Succession in the bishop guarantees the continuity and identity of the
tradition.
Then follows the oft-quoted remark by Irenaus: "Because it would be
too much to count up the succession in office of all these bishops," it
seems to him sufficient "to produce proof from the greatest, very old
Church known to all, the Church founded by the apostles Peter and
8 W. Kasper, "Ökumenischer Fortschritt im Amtsverständnis?" in: Amt in
Widerstreit, ed. K. Schuh (Berlin, 1975) 5458, here 57. Cf. Yves Congar,
ed., BischofsamtAmt der Einheit (Munich, 1983).

Page 539
Paul in Rome, that the line of its bishops goes back to the apostles,
and thus its teaching is also apostolic. Therefore all must agree with
this Church" (AdvHaer 3.3.1-2). It is understandable that this passage
is seen and claimed by the Catholic viewpoint as an important, indeed
classic witness for succession in the office of the bishop, above all for
a correspondence between tradition and succession: Succession in the
office of the bishop is the form of the apostolic tradition which, in
turn, is the substance of the succession.
There should be no objection to using the passage this way as long as
one keeps in mind the place that such an emphatically emphasized
succession in the office of bishop has in the apostolic tradition, and as
long as one remembers that the emphasis on this visible, concrete, and
thus also provable office corresponds to a specific context in historical
time: the need to mount a defense against Gnosticism by means of a
clear and recognizable counterposition: the successio apostolica of the
bishops. Apostolicity as such and on the whole is not restricted to
succession in office, even though there were, in times to follow,
repeated tendencies to do this.
Nor was it thought that, in the coordination of episcopal succession
and apostolic tradition, there was an automatic factor in the sense of
an infallibly working guarantee. Were that the case, there would be no
explanation for the fact thateven thenbishops were unfaithful to their
mission and did not truly preserve the apostolic tradition. J. H.
Newman, in a treatise that caused some excitement in his time,
showed that during the Nicene controversies, the apostolic tradition
relative to the person of Jesus Christ and his divine Sonship was
preserved not by the majority of the bishops but by the sense of the
faith of the Christian people (Jerome: "The world had become
Arian").9
One will also not do justice to the meaning and intention of this text of
Irenaeus if, to illustrate a generally valid situation with one obvious
example, one makes it into a proof text for the primacy of the bishop
of Rome in early times. This was done in the documents of Vatican I
and, in its wake, in many textbooks of apologetics and dogmatics.
Irenaeus does not speak thematically or directly about the bishop of
Rome, but he speaks about the Roman community, which, because of
its founding by Peter and Paul, had a special meaning and worth. The
necessary agreement with the Church of Rome mentioned in this
passage is accordingly to be understood in this sense, as agreement
with apostolic tradition and succession, not in the sense of a special
declaration of primacy with reference to the bishop of Rome, but as an
example.
9 See Newman's discussion of the witness of the laity in questions of
doctrine (quotation taken from: J. H. Newman, Polemische Schriften (Bd.
IV der Ausgewählten Werke, ed. M. Laros and W. Becker), (Mainz, 1959)
25592.

Page 540
This tendency also resulted in a narrowing of the concept "apostolic."
After Pope Gregory the Great ( 604), the word apostolicus turned
more and more into a designation applied to the occupants of the seat
of the Roman bishop. In the wake of this development, the word
"apostolic" took on the meaning ''papal." Thus Gregory the Great
himself calls the pope "apostolicus pontifex. " That the meaning
"apostolic" in the sense of "papal" has survived essentially to this day
can be seen in many designations: apostolic see, apostolic legates and
delegates, apostolic nuncios, apostolic vicars and prefects, apostolic
blessing, apostolic indult, apostolic constitution, apostolic process.
The emperor of Austria and Hungary was called "apostolic majesty."
The same development is found in an analogous way in the related
expression sedes apostolica. The Sedes apostolicae are those sees
where, at one time, the apostles were active, or which were the
recipients of apostolic letters. This means, in the first instance, that not
every episcopal see is a sedes apostolica, but only a certain number,
which stand in a special relationship to the apostles. Among the sedes
apostolicae, along with Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, and Jerusalem,
the sedes romana takes a preferred position. The remaining episcopal
sees are indirectly apostolic, inasmuch as they have community with a
sedes apostolica in the proper and direct sense. In this understanding,
all bishops are in the apostolic succession and can thus be witnesses of
the apostolic tradition.
The concept of "apostle" and all that goes with it became more and
more restricted in the course of history, since this designation, at the
end of a development reaching up to the time before Vatican II, was
applied only to certain persons and institutions, above all to the pope,
the curia, the Church of Rome, and in a certain sense to the bishops
who see their appointment in "the mercy of God and the grace of the
Apostolic See." The viri apostolici become the vir apostolicus; the
sedes apostolicae become the sedes apostolica; the apostolic work of
Christians in Church and world becomes the apostolic activity of the
hierarchy, the hierarchical apostolate with the assistance of
laypersons.
The Layperson
Originally, lay signified the full membership to the totality of the
people, also of the people of God. Its Christian specification and
calling is expressed in an exemplary way in the First Letter of Peter:
"You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own
people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called
you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Pet 2:9). In the course
of history in general, and especially in the course of the history of the
Church, the

Page 541
layperson received more the predicate of the not qualified, or
nonspecialist.
Yves Congar, who in many writings has mediated the comprehensive
sense of apostolic tradition and succession for Catholic theology and
Church, has also brought the theological position of the layperson in
the Church to an impressive new dignity.10 It is especially due to him
that the Second Vatican Council brought to life a completely new
picture (fundamentally, a rediscovered old picture) of the layperson in
the Church.
In its Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, the Council designates
as laypersons
all the faithful except those in holy orders and those in a religious state
sanctioned by the Church. These faithful are by baptism made one body
with Christ and are established among the People of God. They are in their
own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly functions of
Christ. They carry out their own part in the mission of the whole Christian
people with respect to the Church and the world. (no. 31)
Further:
The chosen People of God is one: "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph.
4:5). As members, they share a common dignity from their rebirth in
Christ. They have the same filial grace and the same vocation to
perfection. They possess in common one salvation, one hope, and one
undivided charity. (no. 32).
The activity of the laity in the Church is no longer called, as it was
before, a "sharing in the hierarchical apostolate," so that they would
be basically only the extended arm of the clergy or of those who
receive the orders of the hierarchy. The mission of the laity is "a
participation in the saving mission of the Church itself" (no 33) in and
for the world, in its proper functioning, shaping, and ordering.
It is the business of the laity in virtue of their own calling to seek the
kingdom of God in the administration and holy regulation of temporal
things.
They live in the world, that is, in each and all of the secular professions
and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and
social life from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are
called there by God so that by exercising thier proper function and being
led by the spirit of the gospel they can work for the sanctification of the
world from within, in the manner of leaven. In this way they can make
Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in
faith, hope, and love. (no. 31)

The laity have a special calling in the state of married and family life:
"The Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of the
kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come. Thus by its
example and its witness, it accuses the world of sin and enlightens
those
10 Y. Congar, Lay People in the Church, trans. Donald Attwater
(Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1957).

Page 542
who seek the truth" (no. 35). It is explicitly said that there are places
and conditions where the Church as salt of the earth can be made
present only by the laity (no. 33).
The relationship between clergy and laity is described this way: "The
shepherds of the Church, following the example of the Lord, should
serve each other and the rest of the faithful; but the faithful should
work together closely, full of zeal, with the shepherds and teachers"
(no. 32). Thus it is said that "the bishops should recognize and support
the freedom, the dignity, and the responsibility of the laity in the
Church" (no. 37). The laity have the right to receive in abundance of
the Spiritual goods of the Church, above all the help of the Word of
God and of the sacraments, from the ordained shepherds'' (no. 37).
The chapter on the laity closes with the moving words: "Every
layperson must, before the world, be a witness to the resurrection and
life of Jesus, our Lord, and a sign of the living God" (no. 38).
A great deal of these great and liberating words on the laity has been
realized in the post-conciliar period: above all in the participation and
engagement of the laity in the "councils" and boards on various levels,
most concretely in their participation in the parish council. Especially
impressive were the representation and engagement of the laity at the
Catholic Synod in Würzburg.
The directives of the New Code of Canon Law on the laity (can.
224231) take up some important motifs and ideas of Vatican II, and go
far beyond the statements contained in the earlier Code of Canon Law
(can. 682 and 683), as well as beyond the information in earlier
theological reference works where, under the entry "Lay," one was
referred to "Clergy."
In this time of decline in priestly vocations, more and more laypersons
are called on for service to the Church and in it, most impressively in
the vocation of pastoral assistants or pastoral consultants. Without this
service of the laity, the life of the Catholic Church could no longer be
maintained.
On the other hand, one cannot be silent about certain questions and
concerns. There are efforts at present, to reduce as far as possible the
influence of the laity in the Church, to leave their theological position
as undefined as possible, and to limit their functions, e.g., in
preaching. In all cases they want to put the ministry of the laity at the
greatest possible distance from the office of the ordained leader of the
community.
Obviously, there are and must be conditions and presuppositions for
the taking on of a ministry in the Church. For example, in the
guidelines issued in 1978 by the German Bishops' Conference for
deacons and laypersons in pastoral office, one reads, with reference to
marriage and family: "Whoever stands and lives in open contradiction
to principles

Page 543
of the Catholic faith is not suitable for church ministry." With a view
to marriage and family, these are some of the things said: "Any living
together as if in marriage, i.e., a living together without a valid church
marriage, and any remarrying of a divorced person without a valid
church marriage, stands in contradiction to principles of the Catholic
Church" Those living in such situations are not suitable for church
ministrythey cannot do their job credibly.
But along with these very just impediments, a few others were also
mentioned: interconfessional marriage, or the fact of a civil divorce, in
which it is implied that the marriage in question is valid before the
Church. If the divorced person avoids remarriage during the lifetime
of the earlier partner, there is no opposition to Catholic principles, but
an explicit respect for them. The interconfessional marriage as a
general impediment for church service is difficult to reconcile with the
proposition that was approved by the Würzburg Synod, that an
interconfessional marriage can also be a chance and a fructification of
the faith and thus a convincing realization of the ecumenical
Church.11
One can only hope that, also on this point and in the face of this
obvious step backwards, the opportunity and the obligation of ecclesia
semper reformanda will be taken seriously.
11 Pastorale Zusammenarbeit der Kirchen im Dienst an der christlichen
Einheit 7.1.2. Offizielle Gesamtausgabe (1978) 792.

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§ 56
The Question of Office in Contemporary Ecumenical Discussion
The question of church office is presently one of the most active
themes in ecumenical dialogue. Of course, measured against the
hierarchy of truths, this theme is not the most important. But, in the
performance of the apostolic mission to be mediated in the present, it
does take on a kind of key function, both as instance and instrument of
the mediation of the Christian faith and as structural element of the
Church.
On the Method of Ecumenical Dialogue
One method is that of convergence. It makes each confessional
position understandable and perhaps acceptable to the ecumenical
partner by a comprehensive and open interpretation of one's own
position. Without any loss of one's own church identity, what is
"other" in the other confessions is integrated into one's own as
legitimate plurality. Thus what is one's own remains, but comes into
possession of a greater reality, breadth and thus catholicity, without
having to give up one's self in favor of a "third" entity without
contours, a feared third confession.
This method is usually called a method of convergence. Its starting
point is an open and well-intentioned view of the other from one's
own position. Then, by means of a synoptic perspective, it seeks to
focus on the lines of convergence and thus, as has already been
explained, seeks to transform the problems, difficulties, and earlier
contradictions into fruitful controversies.
There is an objection against this process: If one should ask only
about what for example, is Evangelical in the Catholic Church and
Catholic in the Evangelical Church, the horizon of the confessions is
indeed being expanded. That is very nice and also by no means
unimportant. But it runs the risk of simply taking up a position and
refusing to

Page 545
move from it, despite the fact that the foundation beneath it is being
broadened? Then the further question would be: In doing this, are not
the churches again making themselves too much their own end and
practicing a kind of ecclesiological narcissism as self-reflection and
self-confirmation?
The other method tries to be a method of totality. It does not move
from the present status as something definitively fixed, which can be
enriched by convergence and integration; it seeks rather to integrate
the present into a greater total horizon, and from there to ask further
questions and take up new possibilities.
This can take place primarily by means of a reflection on the common
normative origin. The New Testament is for the Christian Church the
unique and founding document of its authoritative early history. Here,
as the norma normans, is where we find the binding foundations of
Christian faith and Christian reality. We move towards the further
definition of horizon which is important for this method by reflecting
on the history of faith and of Christian faith understanding as the
history of something coming to be. This is as concrete as it is
historical. It is, in other words, finite, perspectival, and situation-
related; i.e., according to language, intellectual-historical status, and
socio-cultural context. This history is a history of realization, but also
a history of accentuation, possibly connected with one-sidedness,
forgetfulness, and silence.
History also offers a fullness of realities that today can again come
into their own. This happens according to the unassailable principle,
That which, historically, was once legitimately real is in principle
always possible again, possible today and possible tomorrow.
Reflection on history opens new and liberating perspectives. It
liberates from the one-sided fixation on the immediately present as
supposedly irreversible, and creates liberation from many dead ends,
to say nothing of the courage and confidence that is given to the
contemplator of history. Historical reflection also forces us not simply
to repeat the historical, but to mediate, translate, re-present it. This
brings a new moment into play: the kairos, the spcecial moment filled
with grace and opportunity, the chance and the challenge to mediate
the faith in such a way that it not only remains true to itself but is also
experienced by people of a particular time and place as decisively
liberating and illuminating.
By this method it becomes possible that long-established fronts are
loosened and broken up, that new things in common are found, that
the churches gain the power of a properly understood self-
transcendence, and that the often suspiciously regarded "third
confession" then means nothing more than the concrete form of the
unity and unification of Christians, which represents a more
comprehensive and fuller form of

Page 546
catholicity than is real and possible and even could be possible in the
still-separated confessionseven in those which call themselves
catholic. What church could or would be willing to do without that?
The fact of separated Christianity signifies a lessening of catholicity
even for the Catholic Church.
The Importance of the Question
After these preliminary remarks on method, we come to the matter
itself: to the question of office in ecumenical dialogue today.
This question has been the theme of many discussions among the
confessions in recent years. What is the reason for this? After
achieving a rapprochement in many issues of content, at least in the
sense that, although differences remain, they are no longer necessarily
issues that separate the churches, there still remains one question
about which it is not yet clear how it could lead to a rapprochement
that would eventually lead to recognition. This is the question of
ecclesiastical office. It is commonly recognized that church office in
the Orthodox churches is assured by a chain of juridically sound
ordinations. In the churches of the Reformation, however, this chain
seems to have been lost and broken, and thus no longer exists. In the
churches that have come from the Reformation, the pastor or the
elders have taken the place of the bishops. And even if there is once
again the office of bishop in the Evangelical churches, one has to say
that such a bishop is basically a regional pastor, apart from the fact
that the highest instance of authority in the Reformation churches was
for a long time the respective ruler as the foremost layperson; he held
a kind of "supreme episcopacy."
The question of office has consequences for the question of a possible
eucharistic communion as sign and crown of the communion of
churches. In the traditional Catholic view, the Eucharist can be
celebrated validly only by an ordained priest. Since there is, in the
words of the Council, a defectus ordinis, a lack of or defect in the
Reformation churches, it is said of the Eucharist in these churches that
they have not preserved the "original and complete reality" (genuina
et integra substantia) of the eucharistic mystery.1 This is why the
question of office is of such paramount importance. Because this
problem has not yet been solved, it seems to be a great obstacle on the
ecumenical path. But if the call of the hour is not for the maintenance
of separation but for efforts to overcome it or, positively, efforts for
unity, then it was logical to give special attention to the theme
"Eucharist and Office."
1 Decree on Ecumenism, no 22. On this, cf Commentary on the
Documents of Vatican II, ed. H. Vorgrimler, 2.15255.

Page 547
The Council said explicitly that this theme should become the subject
of theological dialogue.
This leads to the following consequences: Dialogue makes sense only
when there is still lack of significant agreement in the matter under
discussion. On the other hand, dialogue also makes sense only if one
hopes that progress can be made on this issue: to a rapprochement,
perhaps to a consensus leading to the possibility of recognition. This
possible result can be all the more hoped for since agreement has been
reached in other formerly controversial central questions, such as the
doctrine of justification, not by way of silence but by exhaustively
working through the problems.
Thus the theme of office was in the air, so to speak, and has since
been taken up in many conferences and memoranda. A comprehensive
overview is supplied by the work of Heinz Schütte: Ordination and
Succession in the Understanding of Evangelical and Catholic
Exegetes and Theologians and in the Documents of Ecumenical
Dialogue2
The result of this study: Over the past three decades, documents of
ecumenical discussion on various levels and in many countries
between theologians of the World Council of Lutheran Churches
(Lutherischen Weltbundes) and the Roman Catholic Church,
beginning with the socalled Malta Paper on the Gospel and the
Church (1971), have "produced a consensus in essential points
regarding office, ordination, and succession, and convergence in other
points. Apart from the doctrine of the Petrine Office, the dialogue
partners agree that in their understanding of office (including
ordination and succession), churchseparating differences no longer
exist.3
The Document "Spiritual Office in the Church"
A working group officially entitled "Common Roman-Catholic
Evangelical-Lutheran Commission" produced in 1981 an extensive
study of Spiritual Office in the Church.4 It weighs the balance of
previous efforts. These can be summed up in the theses: "In the
doctrine of the common priesthood of all the faithful and of the
ministerial character of office in the Church and for the Church, there
exists today for Lutherans and Catholics a common starting point for
the clarification of the still-open questions in the understanding of the
spiritual office in the Church" (15).
2Ordination und Sukzession im Verständnis evangelischer und
katholischer Exegeten und Dogmatiker sowie in den Dokumenten
ökumenischer Gespräche (Düsseldorf, 1974).
3 Ibid. 428.
4Das Geistliche amt in der Kirche (PaderbornFrankfurt, 1981). Text also to
be found in: Dokumente wachsender Übereinstimmung. Sämtliche Berichte
und Konsenstexte interkonfessioneller Gespräche auf Weltebene 1931-1982,
ed. H. MeyerH. J. UrbanL. Vischer, (PaderbornFrankfurt, 1983) 32957.

Page 548
Regarding special office in the Church as a carrying out of the
apostolic task and ministry in the Church, as "succession from the
apostles sent by Christ" (17), it is said that it is not just "purpose-
related," nor is it delegation "from below," i.e., from the community,
but is the establishment of Jesus Christ (20). This office stands both in
the community as well as over against it: ''To the extent that office is
exercised under the mandate of and as re-presentation of Jesus Christ,
it has full authority over against the community" (23). "Thus our
churches can today say in unison that the essential and specific
function of officeholder consists in gathering and building up the
Christian community through the proclamation of the Word of God
and the celebration of the sacraments, and of guiding the life of the
community in its liturgical, missionary and diaconal spheres" (31). As
constitutive as the existence of spiritual office is for the Church, it
must, in its development, be open for every new form of actualization
(18).
The open questions concern the point whether ordination, by which an
office is conferred as it is in the Catholic ordination of priests, is a
sacrament. This is the question of a strict or broad concept of
sacrament, which makes it a question of theological rules of grammar.
The document declares:
Where it is taught that by the act of ordination the Holy Spirit forever
empowers the ordained with its gift of grace for service to word and
sacrament, it must be asked whether formerly church-separating
differences on this question have not been superseded. For Catholics as
well as Lutherans, it is irreconcilable with this understanding of ordination
to understand ordination only as a way of making church appointments
and of installing into church office." (33)
The doctrine of the character indelebilis, of the indelible mark, which
is conferred by ordination and which is characteristic of the Catholic
conception, has no conceptual counterpart in Evangelical Lutheran
thought, but it does have a factual convergence there. For "what is
meant is that the call and the commissioning by God places the
ordained person forever under the promise and the claim of God"
(37). Consequently, ordination is never repeated. "Where this once-
and-for-all understanding of ordination exists, and where the one-
sidednesses and false developments have been overcome, one can
speak of a factual convergence" (39).
The document then speaks of "office in its different manifestations"
and presents Catholic doctrine in its tripartite division of office into
episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate, in which the episcopate is the
basic office; according to Vatican II, it has the fullness of office. The
Lutheran tradition, which originally wanted to maintain the episcopal
constitution of the Church, was faced with an emergency situation
when the Catholic bishops of that time refused to ordain those who
confessed the Reformational faith. This resulted in the appointment of

Page 549
officials by nonepiscopal officials, ordinarily according to the
principle: the ordained confer ordination. It was emphasized in this
situation "that in the history of the Catholic Church there have been
cases of ordination of priests by priests" (76). Recalling the New
Testament coordination of presbyter and episkopos, it turned out that
the Lutheran pastoral office took over practically the spiritual function
of the episcopal office. Nevertheless, there was also the office of a
supra regional leadership and supervision, the episcopate. "The
Lutheran tradition recognizes, in view of the one apostolic office, the
difference between bishop and pastor. It characterizes it as a
distinction of human law" (47). Hence the conclusion: ''When both
churches recognize that this historical unfolding of the one apostolic
office into a more local and a more regional office has happened for
the faith with the help of the Holy Spirit, and that thereby something
essential for the Church has arisen, then a high degree of consensus
has been reached" (49).
Added to this are some reflections regarding the responsibility of the
bishops for the preservation of faith and doctrine. Vatican II
characterized the preaching of the gospel as one of the most important
tasks of the bishops. "The bishops are both messengers of the faith as
well as authentic teachers of the faith." "The bishops can fulfill this
task only in community with the whole Church." The "carrying out of
the episcopal teaching office takes place in the manifold exchange of
the faith with the faithful, the priests, and the theologians" (51). "In
controversies in which the unity of faith in the Church is in danger,
the bishops have the right and the obligation to make binding
decisions" (52).
In the Evangelical Lutheran Church, too, there is, according to the
Confessio Augustana (art. 28), a responsibility of the bishops as
supracommunity officeholders to watch over the purity of the gospel.
Today this responsibility is carried out in various boards and panels,
particularly in synods, where teachers of theology are represented
along with holders of church office (55). There is no denying that
from the traditional Roman Catholic point of view there are serious
problems connected with this situation and that "there is insufficient
clarity on the doctrinal competence of existing organs." It is added
that this question has to be thought through in a new way. But the
statement of the Confessio Augustana remains authoritative that the
exercise of this teaching office "should take place not with human
power but solely by God's word."
Thus, there is in both churches a supracommunitary doctrinal
responsibility which is, to be sure, carried out in different ways, which
still allows a certain parallelism between the two churches to be
recognized. In both churches, doctrinal responsibility is tied up with
the faith witness of the whole Church. Both churches know that they
stand under the norm of the Gospel (57).

Page 550
The Problem of Apostolic Succession
For a long time the Catholic understanding of apostolic succession
was that of uninterrupted succession in the office of the bishops.
When, as in the time of the Reformation, this chain was broken,
apostolic succession was seen to have ceased. This is one of the
precise points where there seemed to be a church-separating
difference. Recently, the idea has more and more taken hold in all the
churches that "apostolic" and apostolic succession belong to the
essence of the Church as such, and that apostolic succession primarily
means something with regard to content. It signifies "the succession of
the whole Church in the apostolic faith" (61). It is in this overarching
aspect that succession in the sense of succession in episcopal office is
to be seen. The "witness of the gospel is bound to the witnesses of the
gospel." Thus it can be said: Catholic doctrine understands apostolic
succession in episcopal office as sign and as service to the apostolicity
of the Church. The bishops, for their part, are ''bound to the canon of
Scripture and to the tradition of the apostolic faith, and must give
living witness to it."
Because of the unanimous emphasis on the fact that "the content-
understanding of apostolicity is primary," the road lies open for "a far-
reaching agreement" (60). This is supported by the fact that for the
Lutheran tradition as well, "apostolic succession [is] necessary and
constitutive for the Church as well as for its office" (63). In the time
of the Reformation, the preservation of historical succession in the
office of bishop was interrupted. "Thus, for apostolic succession, all
was concentrated on the right preaching of the gospel, which also
always included office, faith, and the witness of life." Based on this,
the ordination to office (or investment) of officeholder to officeholder
has continued to be carried out in the Lutheran Church.
In view of this, some today hold the thesis not only that there is along
with episcopal succession the so-called presbyteral succession, but
that presbyteral succession is a legitimate form of episcopal
succession, so that, strictly speaking, actual succession in office was
not interrupted. This idea can be further strengthened by the concept
represented by Walter Kasper that the Council of Trent did not take an
explicit position on the question of the validity of office in the
Evangelical Lutheran community. "The rejection of the validity of
Lutheran offices is a widespread, practically common post-Tridentine
doctrinal opinion which is based on the Council of Trent but by no
means necessarily follows from it. We are not dealing with a binding
Catholic doctrine, but rather with dominant praxis."5 The question of
validity is
5 Walter Kasper, "Zur Frage der Anerkennung der Ämter in der
lutherischen Kirchen," ThQ 151 (1971) 97109, at 103; H. FriesK. Rahner,
Unity of ChurchesAn Actual Possibility, trans. Ruth C. L. Gritsche and
Eric W. Gritsche (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985) 93106.

Page 551
to be separated from the question of orthodoxy and is by no means
decided with that question. This is shown in the validity of baptism
accepted by all the churches when itno matter in what churchis
correctly administered.
The document "Spiritual Office in the Church" draws the following
consequences from reflections such as this: "The fact that, according
to Catholic persuasion, standing in the apostolic succession belongs to
the full status of the episcopal. office, does not exclude the
understanding that office in the Lutheran Church, even according to
Catholic persuasion, carries out essential functions of the office that
Jesus Christ instituted for his Church" (77).
This statement also casts light on the question as to how the often
discussed statement from the Decree on Ecumenism (no. 22) on
defectus ordinis (defect of orders) is to be understood. The official
translation "because of the lack of the sacrament of orders," which
threatened to block ecumenical dialogue in the question of office and
ordination, has made room for a possible new interpretation. Defectus
does not necessarily mean complete lack; it can also mean a
deficiency in something existing. In our document, this formulation is
proposed: "lack of the full form of ecclesiastical office." This is
clearly a step forward, but the text, on the basis of all that has been
said, could have taken a further stepnamely, towards the possibility of
a recognition of ecclesiastical offices. This possibility was expressed
as a wish (81).
The document also reflects on the manner in which a mutual
recognition of offices would be thinkable. A one-sided, isolated act, as
has been variously proposed (additional ordination, acts of
jurisdiction, reciprocal laying on of hands) is not considered suitable
and satisfactory. The recognition of offices is seen rather as an overall
church process in which the churches mutually accept each other. "In
this view, the acceptance of full church communion would mean the
recognition of offices." Against this rises the question: Is not full
church community impossible to the extent that and as long as, there
is no recognition of offices? And when it is said that a mutual
recognition "must stand, in the context of the unity of the Church, in
the confession of the one faith and in the celebration of the Lord's
Supper," one has to agree. But it must still be askedand that is the
problem that is not solved here either: How can there be a unity of the
Church in the celebration of the Lord's Supper as long as the question
of the recognition of offices is not settled? For the celebration of the
Lord's Supper requires official liturgical ministers, the ordained
presider over the Eucharistic celebration. Or does the document intend
to say that the Lord's supper as sacrament of unity is not only the
expression of full church communion, but also a sign to prepare the
way for full church communiona function that in the possible
Eucharistic communion with the Orthodox churches is factually

Page 552
recognized? Eucharistic community is possible there although full
union in faith is not there (primacy of the pope, infallibility of his
extraordinary magisterium).
Judging from the total content of this document, especially its
theological assessment of its documentation of the ordination liturgies
(57101), it would have been quite appropriate in its conclusion to have
spoken of somewhat more than of those steps of "mutual respect of
offices about practical cooperation towards mutual recognition of the
offices of the other church, which is identical with the acceptance of
Eucharistic fellowship" (83). But in any case, the goal has been
named, and the first steps taken towards it. And that is no small
achievement. Apparently it is not possible at the moment to say more,
if the theme "Office in the Church" is to be received on a churchwide
basis. For not a few, what has been said here will go too farto the
extent that any attention at all is paid to the document.
The question of an office as service to the universal unity of the
Church, the office of the bishop of Rome, the pope as successor in the
office and ministry of Peter, is not treated extensively, but only
indicated as a problembut indicated with a noteworthy consciousness
of the problem.
The extent to which a genuinely revolutionary reversal has been
achieved in this questionremember Luther's statement about the pope
as antiChristis also indicated in this document when it states:
In various dialogues the possibility has been established that even the
Petrine Office of the bishop of Rome as visible sign of the unity of the
whole Church does not need to be excluded by the Lutherans, as long as it
is subordinated to the primacy of the gospel by theological reinterpretation
and practical restructuring (73).

Convergence Declarations of the World Council of Churches

The convergence declarations of the Commission for Faith and Order
of the World Council of Churches on baptism, Eucharist, and ministry,
the so-called "Lima Document," the culmination of studies that began
in Lucerne in 1927, rests on a broader ecumenical foundation. Roman
Catholic theologians also worked on the Lima text. From this
important document6 we shall give special attention to the following
texts on the theme of "office."
In order to fulfill its mission, the Church needs persons who are publicly
and continually responsible for pointing to its fundamental dependence on
Jesus Christ and who thereby provide, within a multiplicity of gifts, a
focus of its unity. The ministry of such persons, who since very early times
have been ordained, is constitutive for the life and witness of the Church.
(BEM [Ministry] no. 8)
6Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111
(Geneva: WCC, 1982).

Page 553
Office is traced back to the will and testament of Jesus Christ:
As Christ chose and sent the apostles, Christ continues through the Holy
Spirit to choose and call persons into the ordained ministry. As heralds and
ambassadors, ordained ministers are representatives of Jesus Christ to the
community, and they proclaim his message of reconciliation. As leaders
and teachers they call the community to submit to the authority of Jesus
Christ, the teacher and prophet, in whom Law and Prophets were fulfilled.
As pastors, under Jesus Christ the chief shepherd, they assemble and guide
the dispersed people of God, in anticipation of the coming Kingdorn.
(BEM [Ministry] no. 11)

The responsibility of this office is described as the task "to assemble

and build up the body of Christ by proclaiming and teaching the Word
of God, by celebrating the sacraments, and by guiding the life of the
community in its worship, its mission and its caring ministry" (BEM
[Ministry] no. 13).
It is expressly stated that in the Eucharistic celebration the ordained
office is the visible focal point of the communion between Christ and
the members of his body. It is Christ who invites to the meal and
presides over it. It is in accordance with this that the celebration of the
Eucharist is led and represented by an ordained official (no. 14). The
presence of officials is mindful "of the divine initiative and the
dependence of the Church on Jesus Christ" (no. 12).
A special authority is attributed to the ordained office. This is to be
understood not as the possession of the ordained person, but as a gift
for the ongoing building up of the body in which and for which the
official has been ordained. Authority has the character of
responsibility before God and is exercised in cooperation with the
whole community. Accordingly, ordained officials must be neither
autocrats nor impersonal functionaries. "Only when they seek the
response and recognition of the community can their authority be
protected from distortions due to isolation and dominance" (nos. 15
and 16).
The Lima Document takes up the question of office (ministry) and
priesthood. It points out that the expressions "priesthood" or "priest"
are used nowhere in the New Testament to signify the ordained office
or the ordained official. This expression remains restricted, either to
the unique priesthood of Jesus Christ or to the royal and prophetic
priesthood of all the faithful.
In the early Church the terms "priesthood" and "priest" came to be used to
designate the ordained ministry and minister as presiding at the Eucharist.
They underline the fact that the ordained ministry is related to the priestly
reality of Jesus Christ and the whole community. When the terms are used
in connection with the ordained ministry, their meaning differs in
appropriate ways from the sacrificial priesthood of Christ and from the
corporate priesthood of the people of God. (Commentary to BEM
[Ministry] no. 17)

At the same time, this is where the possibility and the right that
ordained ministers be called priests is grounded.

Page 554
On the office (ministry) of men and women in the Church, it says:
Where Christ is present, human barriers are being broken. The Church is
called to convey to the world the image of a new community. There is in
Christ no male or female (Gal. 3:28). Both women and men must discover
together their contributions to the service of Christ in the Church. The
Church must discover the ministry that can be provided by women as well
as that which can be provided by men. . . . Though they agree on this need,
the churches draw different conclusions as to the admission of women to
the ordained ministry. An increasing number of churches have decided that
there is no biblical or theological reason against ordaining women, and
many of them have subsequently proceeded to do so. (BEM [Ministry] no.
18)

Those churches which do not ordain women hold that the force of a
1900-year tradition cannot simply be put in brackets. Discussion of
these practical and theological questions was to be expanded in the
different churches by common studies and reflections in ecumenical
community of all churches.
On the question of the forms of ordained office, the document says:
The New Testament does not describe a single pattern of ministry which
might serve as a blueprint or continuing norm for all future ministry in the
Church. In the New Testament there appears rather a variety of forms
which existed at different places and times. As the Holy Spirit continued to
lead the Church in life, worship, and mission, certain elements from this
early variety were further developed and became settled into a more
universal pattern of ministry. During the second and third centuries, a
threefold pattern of bishop, presbyter, and deacon became established as
the pattern of ordained ministry throughout the Church. In succeeding
centuries, the ministry by bishop, presbyter, and deacon underwent
considerable changes in its practical exercise. (BEM [Ministry] no. 19)

It is expressly stated that, among these gifts and ministries, a ministry

of episkopé is necessary in order to preserve the unity of the love of
Christ. The office of the episkopos, the bishop, is ordered to this
ministry. Under him, in the course of time, was gathered the episkopé
(oversight) over more and more local communities. The presbyters
become leaders of the local Eucharistic communities. The threefold
office of bishop, priest, and deacon could be seen as an expression of
the sought-for unity as well as the means to achieve it (no. 22).
The ecumenical relevance of this question is formulated in this way:
The threefold traditional pattern thus raises questions for all the churches.
Churches maintaining the threefold pattern will need to ask how its
potential can be fully developed for the most effective witness of the
Church in this world. In this task, churches not having the threefold pattern
should also participate. They will further need to ask themselves whether
the threefold pattern as developed does not have a powerful claim to be
accepted by them. (BEM [Ministry] no. 25)

The question of the apostolic tradition is described in the Lima

Document in a way similar to the document on spiritual office:

Page 555
Apostolic tradition in the Church means continuity in the permanent
characteristics of the Church of the apostles: witness to the apostolic faith,
proclamation and fresh interpretation of the gospel, celebration of baptism
and the Eucharist, the transmission of ministerial responsibilities,
communion in prayer, love, joy and suffering, service to the sick and the
needy, unity among the local churches, and sharing the gifts the Lord has
given to each. (BEM [Ministry] no. 34)

It is from this standpoint that the question of succession in apostolic

office is also viewed:
Within the Church the ordained ministry has a particular task of preserving
and actualizing the apostolic faith. The orderly transmission of the
ordained ministry is therefore a powerful expression of the continuity of
the Church throughout history; it also underlines the calling of the
ordained minister as guardian of the faith. Where churches see little
importance in orderly transmission, they should ask themselves whether
they have not to change their conception of continuity in the apostolic
tradition. On the other hand, where the ordained ministry does not
adequately serve the proclamation of the apostolic faith, churches must ask
themselves whether their ministerial structures are not in need of reform.
(BEM [Ministry] no. 35)

And in this context the office of bishop and of episcopal succession is

again taken up:
Under the particular historical circumstances of the growing Church in the
early centuries, the succession of bishops became one of the ways,
together with the transmission of the gospel and the life of the community,
in which the apostolic tradition of the Church was expressed. This
succession was understood as serving, symbolizing, and guarding the
continuity of the apostolic faith and communion. (BEM [Ministry] no. 36)
The recognition of this fact is, to be sure, connected with an indication
that a continuity in apostolic faith is also preserved in churches
"which have not retained the form of historic episcopate." In many of
these churches the reality and functions of the office of bishop are
preserved "with or without the title 'bishop'" (no. 37).
But all this should not lessen the ecumenical significance of the
question of the office of bishop. The Lima text explicitly says:
These considerations do not diminish the importance of the episcopal
ministry. On the contrary, they enable churches which have not retained
the episcopate to appreciate the episcopal succession as a sign, though not
a guarantee, of the continuity and unity of the Church. Today churches,
including those engaged in union negotiations, are expressing willingness
to accept episcopal succession as a sign of the apostolicity of the life of the
whole Church. Yet, at the same time, they cannot accept any suggestion
that the ministry exercised in their own tradition should be invalid until the
moment that it enters into an existing line of episcopal succession. Their
acceptance of the episcopal succession will best further the unity of the
whole Church if it is part of a wider process by which the episcopal
churches themselves also regain their lost unity. (BEM [Ministry] no. 38)

Ordination is described as an action of God and of the community

"through which ordained persons are strengthened by the Spirit for

Page 556
their task and supported by the recognition and prayer of the
community" (no. 40). The act of ordination by laying on of hands "is,
for the person so designatedsimultaneouslythe calling down of the
Holy Spirit (epiclesis), sacramental sign, recognition of gifts, and
obligation" (no. 41).
A comprehensive process of reception in the churches was to be
introduced by the Lima Document. This marked a significant
transition in the process of ecumenism, a shift from focusing on
bilateral dialogue and discussion to focusing also on multilateral
discussion. Consequently, the common Lima text was put before all
the churches for their examination, and for them to decide about the
extent to which they can find therein the faith of their own church, and
to reflect on what concrete conclusions they would be prepared to
draw from it.7
The Meaning of "Recognition"
Recognition has become a key concept in contemporary ecumenical
discussion. It is, for the most part, not given its own precise exposition
and definition, but introduced as if already well known.8 Recognition
7 Expositions on the Lima Document: J. Dantine, "Zur
Konvergenzerklärung über Taufe, Eucharistie und Amt" in: Ökumenische
Rundschau 32 (1983) 1227; Konfessionskundliches Institut, ed.,
Kommentar zu den LimaErklärungen über Taufe, Eucharistie und Amt
(Bensheimer Hefte 59), (Göttingen, 1983); W. Kasper, "Taufe, Eucharistie
und Amt in der gegenwärtigen ökumenischen Diskussion" in: Präsentia
Christi, Studien Johannes Betz zu Ehren ed. L. Lies, (Düsseldorf, 1984)
293308.; M. A. Fahey, ed., Catholic Perspectives on Baptism, Eucharist
and Ministry (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986). The
theme of office is found also in the document of the bilateral working
group of the German Bishops' Conference and of the leadership of the
United Evangelical Lutheran Churches of Germany: Kirchengemeinschaft
in Wort und Sakrament (PaderbornHannover, 1984) 6290. There is
mention of a high degree of agreement and mutual confirmation in the
document Das Geistliche Amt in der Kirche, 102, note 25. Because of the
work of E. Schillebeeckx, Das kirchliche Amt (Düsseldorf, 1981), the
theme "office" again became the object of a lively discussion. Cf. W.
Kasper, ThQ 163 (1983) 4653.
Even before that, Joseph Ratzinger"s 1982 Principles of Catholic Theology,
trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987)
299311. We cannot here, and need not in the context of this ecumenical
question, take up its specifically innerCatholic aspects.
The concluding sentence of Ratzinger's book deserves to be quoted.
"Theologians cannot and should not put themselves in the place of the
pastoral leadership of the Church. They do have, precisely by reason of their
responsibility as theologians, in critical service to the Church, the often-
painful obligation to ask ecclesiastical authority whether, in its guidance, it is
actually taking into account all the aspects of what is in reality a very
complex problem. Although theologians too stand under the pastoral
oversight of the church leadership, that should not make them cowardly and
swallow the penultimate word. They must speak even if they are convinced
that this church leadership will in all likelihood make different decisions.
Each and all have here a special, inalienable responsibility to act honestly and
conscientiously, while conscious of the possible ecclesiastical consequences,
even for themselves" (203).
8 H. Fries, "Was heißt Anerkennung der kirchlichen Ämter?" StdZ 191 (1973)
50515; Idem, in: Amt und Widerstreit, 110121. These article relate to the
criticism of the then highly controversial book: Reform und Anerkennung
kirchlicher Ämter. ein Memorandum der Arbeitsgemeinschaft ökumenischer
Universitätsinstitute (MunichMainz, 1973). The

(footnote continued on next page)

Page 557
does not mean a disrespect, denial, betrayal, or giving up of what is
one's own. Thus recognition also does not mean turning into
something else and letting oneself be absorbed by it. Recognition,
rather, is something much more positive, It presupposes the fact of the
one and the other, and thus the difference between them. Positively
speaking, recognition means being related to others or the other: the
other is seen and known (recognized) as reality. But much depends on
how it is seen and known. Recognition means that what is known is,
as recognized, not seen primarily as negative and of little value, and
thus rejected; one does not also simply make do with it as something
one can't get around; rather, the other is valued positively.
Recognition presupposes that, along with what is different, there is
something common to which the acknowledgment and the recognition
that possibly comes from it is related, something common whose
affirmation is not contested. Recognition presupposes unity in
legitimate plurality, and the de facto openness and possibility of
affirmation contained therein. But this is possible only if the plurality
is transparent to the unity of what is common, if the unity shines
through in the many. Otherwise the multiplicity turns into an
unconnected, atomized pluralism that is of no use to anything
common or unity-building. These formal and general characteristics
of recognition have the following consequences for our theme.
The possibility of a recognition of church office does not require a
denial, loss, or dissolution of the concrete form of office found in
one's own church, or of the manner and mode in which it is mediated.
However, something quite significant can come about from reflection
on the meaning and function of office, both from the openness and
multiplicity found in the New Testament as well as from the plurality
encountered in the history of the Church vis-à-vis the concrete
shaping, mediating, and handing on of office. It can come about that
this background not only offers a problem-free confirmation of the
existing and of one's own, but also opens up a broader horizon of what
is possible, and in which the other appears in a new light.
Recognition contributes in a special way to the possibility of what
currently is repeatedly spoken of and striven for: special emphasis on
what is particular to one's self, to one's own particular church tradition
(earlier ecumenical efforts tended to focus on what was common). But
this special emphasis, along with the already-mentioned fidelity to
one's own tradition, raises the question of whether and how what is so
emphasized will see the other: whether it will be seen that there isto
speak concretelyan office, an ordination, and a mode of apostolic
(footnote continued from previous page)
ecumenical development which has taken place in the interim has not
contradicted but confirmed the intention and content of this memorandum.

Page 558
succession in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The next question
concerns assessment of what is seen there. Will it be judged as the
pure negation of, or as the complete contrary to what is constitutive in
the Roman Catholic Church? Should this be the case, then from it
would follow the right and even duty to ecclesiastical separation. Will
it be judged as an overwhelmingly defective form of realization, or as
a reality which, along with all the difference, is to be judged
positively. The positivity will have to be judged according to whether
the why and wherefore of office, of the special public ministry to
word and sacrament as mediation of the manifold presence of Christ,
is seen and recognized as present; and whether one can say yes to the
presented and mediated reality of faith and Church.
If so, this also sheds light on the possible positivity and on the
recognition of a form or office in which this continuity and identity,
i.e., the content of the apostolic tradition, has been preserved. All this
of course presupposes and requires that office and ordination in the
Evangelical [German Lutheran] Church are not emptied of content
and replaced by mere acts of administration, but that office preserves
the rank and value which the New Testament and the confessional
documents accord it.
Recognition includes that Christians are and remain at home in their
concrete church, and live from their own concrete historical situation,
which they intend neither to deny nor do away with; but recognition
also means that they value, above all in their positivity, those others
who are likewise part of a living history.
Thus recognition makes it appear quite possible that, from the
Catholic side, for example, in the context of a common and more
comprehensive understanding of the apostolicity of the Church, "one
[would] accord special significance to episcopal succession, and
deplore its absence in one's dialogue partner, but without denying an
apostolic succession to the Evangelical [German Lutheran] tradition,
since it has preserved other elements of this succession, and at times
more faithfully than has the Catholic tradition." It would on the other
hand be possible, from the Evangelical side, to emphasize their own
conviction about the one office, "but without seeing a church-
separating opposition in the historically developed three-level order of
the Roman, Orthodox and Anglican Churches" (G. Gassmann).
To repeat: A recognition does not require but indeed excludes the
elimination of all differences, the abrogation and leveling of profile.
Rather, recognition means that this, which formerly signified an
insuperable obstacle for the unity of the churches, is seen in a new
light and with other eyes. This has become possible because the
history of the churches has not stood still for four hundred years,
because the situa-

Page 559
tion from that time has changed. That is not to be regretted, but to be
welcomed.
To mention an example no one could suspect, the offices of the
Orthodox Church are recognized from the Catholic side. If, despite
differences in the question of the Petrine office, even Eucharistic
communion is possible, it does not follow from such recognition that
the one who does the recognizing becomes an Orthodox Christian in
the specific confessional sense. What really does follow is that this
goal is seen and striven for in a new way. The confessions, formerly
supporters of the division of Christendom, have been working out the
problems that still remain and rediscovering their common cause in
the face of the secular challenge and its opposition to everything
Christian. The confessions are thus becoming subjects of a legitimate
multiplicity, which is not a contradiction to but an expression of the
unity that was there at the time of the New Testament; for in the New
Testament Church we find a picture not of the established present but
rather of what was to be striven for and become possible in the future.
Achieved ecumenism is not to take the place of the confessions;
confessions are to be the expression and form of achieved
ecumenism.9
It has recently been proposed to replace the concept "recognition"
with the concept of reconciliation and to speak of "reconciled
difference," because recognition can easily be understood in the sense
of "an after-the-fact justification of the status quo"in other words, to
connect recognition and reconciliation. There is no objection against
this; the concept "reconciliation" contains elements of the dynamic
and the future perhaps more than does the concept ''recognition." But,
as we can see from the connection of reform with recognition and
from our attempt to describe recognition, this does not mean only the
justification of what is already established: recognition is possible
only through dynamic and movement.
9 H. Fries, Ökumene statt Konfessionen? (Frankfurt, 1977); H. FriesK.
Rahner, Unity of ChurchesAn Actual Possibility.

Page 560
§ 57
The Papacy as Ecumenical Question
The question of office in the Church cannot pass over the question of
a highest office. The Roman Catholic Church, of course, sees this
office in the institution of the papacy. It has been describing it in
recent years with the concepts "Petrine office" or "Petrine ministry,"
as a Petrine function.
The State of the Question
In the impressive array of documents presented up to this point, the
question of the papacy has been excluded from consideration. This
has repeatedly led to the objection that one cannot talk about office in
the Church as theme of an ecumenical discussion without making
clear statements about the papacy. That is all the less possible since
the Roman Catholic Church specifies that by "Roman" is meant the
office of the pope who is regarded as the successor of Peter, and who
is the one who takes over and embodies the Petrine office, and Petrine
ministry. This ministry is understood by Catholics, in connection with
the well-known Petrine passages in the New Testament, as a rock-and-
foundation function, a safeguarding of the power of the keys, a
strengthening of the brethren in faithas leadership in the sense of its
pastoral commission.1
1 Cf. "Pope" and "Papacy" in the theological reference works, its
treatments in church and papal history, in canon law, fundamental
theology, and dogmatics. In addition: F. Heiler, Altkirchlicher Autonomie
und päpstlicher Zentralismus (Munich, 1941); O. Karrer, Peter and the
Church: An Examination of Cullman's Thesis, trans. Ronald Walls (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1963); Karl RahnerJoseph Ratzinger, The
Episcopate and the Primacy, trans. Kenneth Barker and others (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1962); Hans Küng, Structures of the Church, trans.
Ray and Rosaleen Ockenden (New York: Crossroad, 1982) 201351; The
Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967) 44481; G. DenzlerF. ChristW.
TrillingP. StockmeierW. de VriesP. Lippert, Zum Thema Petrusamt und
Papsttum (Stuttgart, 1970); G. Schwaiger, Hundert Jahre nach dem Ersten
Vatikanum (Regensburg, 1970); Hans Urs von Balthasar, Der antirömische
Affekt. Wie läßt sich das Papsttum in der Gesamtkirche integrieren?
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1974); G. Denzler, Das Papsttum in der Diskussion
(Regensburg, 1974); H. StirnimannL. Vischer, Papsttum und

(footnote continued on next page)

Page 561
However gratifying it is that there seems to be a growing consensus
these days over the position of Peter in the New Testamentalthough
even there quite a few difficulties still remainthe real difficulty
consists in and begins with the understanding of and grounding of the
papacy as successor of a Petrine office or Petrine ministry, as is
current in Catholic thought. It is said that these functions could not
cease with the person who first exercised them. A succession in the
functions handed over to Simon Peter can thus make sense in the same
way as does the succession of the apostolic task and mission through
the successors of the apostles. An existing, contemporary Petrine
office thus cannot be regarded as unbiblical.
We do not have the space to give here a comprehensive treatment of
this many-sided problem. It is difficult to come to consensus on
exegetical grounds. The reasons for the manifold differences lie, to be
sure, not just in the textual material, but also in the factual and
theological presuppositions, and also in the "interests," connected with
the question of the papacy.
On the other handand this demonstrates the place of this question in
the horizon of what we have now become conscious of as "hierarchy
of truths"the irresolution of precisely this problem, or the difference in
this matter, is not an obstacle to a possible communion in the
Eucharist. This is, by broad agreement, an expression of faith-
community and Church-community, its seal so to speak. Eucharistic
communion with the Orthodox churches and recently with the Old
Catholics is considered, according to Vatican II, as possible under
certain presuppositions, even though the question of the papacy is
today no longer regarded as a matter of discipline, i.e., schism, but as
a matter of faith.
A Look at History
In the beginnings of the history of the Church, we come across the
fact that the community of Rome takes on a special significance
among the other Christian communities. This significance does not
consist first of all in the fact that the bishop of this community appeals
to his posi-
(footnote continued from previous page)
Petrusdienst (Frankfurt, 1975); H. J. Mund, ed., Das Petrusamt in der
gegenwärtigen theologischen Diskussion (Paderborn, 1976); Paul Misner,
Papacy and Development. Newman and the Primacy of the Pope (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1976); A. BrandenburgH. J. Urban, ed., Petrus und Papst.
EvangeliumEinheit der KirchePapstdienst, 2 vols. (Münster, 1977/78); G.
Schwaiger, Päpstlicher Primat und Autorität der Allgemeinen Konzilien
im Spiegel der Geschichte (MunichPaderbornVienna, 1977); J. Ratzinger,
ed., Dienst an der Einheit. Zum Wesen und Auftrag des Petrusamtes
(Düsseldorf, 1978); Das Papsttum als ökumenische Frage, hrsg. von der
Arbeitsgemeinschaft ökumenischer Universitätsinstitute (MunichMainz,
1979); M. Hardt, Papsttum und Ökumene. Ansätze eines
Neuverständnisses für einen Papstprimat in der protestantischen
Theologie des 20. Jahrhunderts (PaderbornMunichZürich, 1981); H.
FriesK. Rahner, Einigung und Wandel (Münster, 1984).

Page 562
tion as successor of Peter and stands on Matthew 16:1719; it consists
rather in the fact that the Roman community was founded by the
apostles Peter and Paul, and that both apostles worked in Rome and
died there. This community can thus lay special claim to be an
"apostolic see" and thus bearer of the apostolic tradition.
Each in their own way, the First Letter of Clement, the Letter of
Ignatius of Antioch to the Romans, and above all Irenaeus of Lyon,
have highlighted this idea. In the battle against the secret teaching of
Gnosticism, the community of Rome becomes for Irenaeus exemplary
for the apostolic tradition of all churchesthe locale of the normative
tradition. In addition, even as early as the First Letter of Clement,
decisions in this community were made regarding other communities.
There developed in Rome a special charism of community leadership
and charitable activity. The Apostles' Creed originated there and
gained broad acceptance. The collection of the New Testament
writings in preparation for a later canon took place in Rome. It was no
wonder, then, that Rome took over first place among the churches,
that it functioned in many cases as instance of orientation, arbitration,
and appeal. In some well-known as well as obviously criticized
decisions (as in the Easter date controversy and later in the
controversy over heretical baptism) the bishop of Rome demanded
obedience for his decision and recognition by the other churches.
That the bishop of Rome is successor of the apostle Peter, that the
words of Jesus to Peter (Matt 16:18) thus also apply to the bishop of
Rome, this was first expressed by Pope Callistus I (217222) thus
formulating the primacy of the bishop of Rome. This was recognized
by the other bishops not in the juridical but in the symbolic sense: The
holder of the see of Peter guarantees and embodies the unity of the
bishops and thus of the whole Church.
For Cyprian, bishop of Carthage ( 258) the totality of the bishops
forms the foundation of the Church and its unity. The Roman Church
is for this theologian the mother and root of the Catholic Church. He
bases this on the view that the bishop of Rome possesses the chair of
Peter and thus the primacy of Peter and is heir of the promise of
Christ. To be sure, Cyprian understood this primacy in a
representative and episcopal fashion. According to Cyprian, the
founding of the Church on Peter is to be connected to the other idea
that the Risen One gave all the apostles the same power as Peter. That
is why Cyprian expressly opposed Pope Stephen who, appealing to
Petrine succession, had demanded obedience of the other churches,
especially of North Africa, for hisauthoritativedecision by appealing
to Petrine succession in the controversy over heretic baptism. In doing
this Pope Stephen appealed to the primacy of the apostle Peter, now
transferred to the bishop of Rome. But Cyprian, who rejected the
decision of the pope in

Page 563
this particular question, had nevertheless in fact given expression to
an idea which, in the course of further history, took on its own
impressive legal reality: The bishop of Rome possesses a primacy
over the whole Church.
The development beginning to take shape here was strengthened by a
political motif: The local church of Rome in the capital of the empire
occupies a special position. In the church-historical epoch ushered in
by emperor Constantine, this was highlighted even further by the fact
that the Christian religion became a permitted religion, and later even
the state religion, and that the patrimony of Roman religion passed
over to the Christian Church. This also touched upon matters of
structure and sacred law. Because of the transference of the imperial
capital from Rome to Byzantium-Constantinople, the political position
of the bishop of Rome gained in influence and reputation, and all the
more so as the downfall of the Western Roman Empire came closer
and closer. In the time of the migrations and the fall of the capital city
of Rome, which was a great shock for many Christians, the bishop of
Rome took on an authority "which not only was characterized by
spiritual categories but, in its assimilation to worldly power structures,
also embodied secular power."2 The figure and form of the empire got
stamped on the shape of the Church. The imitatio imperii was set
before the Church as problem and task.
In this situation the fate of towering personalities became associated
with the chair of the bishop of Rome. Leo I ( 461) was politically
successful in his encounter with Attila and Genseric and thus made
himself the advocate not only of the Christians but of all the citizens
of Rome. At the same time he theologically intensified the previous
[arguments for the] grounding of the Petrine office by transferring the
special position of Peter as first among the other apostles also to his
successor on the Roman chair, and by connecting its foundation
function with the power of the keys and with the power to bind and
loose. Leo's Christological doctrinal letter to the Council of
Chalcedon (450) won the approval of the bishops assembled there
with the well-known words: "Peter has spoken through Leo."
In the meantime, difficulties were also arising because of the political
situation. At the same Council of Chalcedon, the same rights were
granted to the bishop of New Rome, Byzantium, that the bishop of
Old Rome in the West was exercising (canon 28). Thus was
confirmed, or extended, what had already been expressed at the
Council of Nicaea (325): that the sedes apostolicae in Rome,
Alexandria, and Antioch all possessed patriarchal rights. The
delegates of the pope did not accept
2 P. Stockmeier, "Das Petrusamt in der frühen Kirche," in: Zum Thema
Petrusamt und Papsttum, 76; W. de Vries, "Die Entwicklung des Primats
in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten," in: Das Papsttum als ökumenische
Frage 11458.

Page 564
this decision quietly, but vigorously protested against it. It can be
concluded from this turn of events that, "in Rome, the old apostolic
responsibility, the core of the universal primacy, had by now become
so tightly connected with the new patriarchal responsibilities that one
could hardly distinguish them anymore. Consequently, one began to
see in the formation of new, independent patriarchates, a danger for
the primacy of Rome."3 On the other hand, confusing the meaning of
the apostolic chair with the idea of the patriarchate responsible for
predominantly administrative tasks (stemming from later post-
Constantinian times) had contributed to the difficulty of the situation
and to misunderstanding even in the theological view of things. The
foundation for differences, which led more and more to contradictions
and alienations, was laid.
The later history of East and West, which we cannot go into here, only
sharpened these tendencies, each in its own way. Let me but make this
observation: Gregory the Great ( 607), with Leo I the most convincing
and most significant holder of the chair of Peter, saw in a special way
the Petrine office as diakonia, as "care for all the communities," as
care for the whole Church.4 Into this care, as inaugurator of an
extended mission, he drew the German-Roman people and the young
churches developing in them. With the title servus servorum Dei he
eloquently and consciously distanced himself from the designation
"Ecumenical Patriarch" claimed by the bishop of Byzantium, which
contained a claim to the direction of the whole Church. Historical
hindsight illuminates how far-sighted this policy was. Had the papacy
followed in the footsteps of this pope in ages to follow, a great deal of
damage would have been prevented. But the difference between East
and West, conditioned by many circumstances and events, led to ever-
greater tensions and alienations in the course of the centuries, and
ended finally with mutual excommunications in the anathemas of the
year 1054. In this way, the churches in West and East werealthough
one, without being uniform, in practically all questions of faith,
liturgy, and structure under a primacy of honorin schism. In order to
emphasize and justify the separation, differences in the understanding
of the faith (e.g., The filioque controversy) and differences in custom
and practice were turned into fundamental and dividing differences.
Further differences were added on later. The schism, however, as
expressed in the words of Y. Congar, is "not so much this alienation,
but rather its acceptance.''5
3 G. Schwaiger, "Der päpstliche Primat in der Geschichte der Kirche,"
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 82 (1971) 5.
4 Cf. J. Richards, Gregor der Große. Sein Lebenseine Zeit
(GrazViennaCologne, 1983).
5 Y. Congar, Zerrissene Christenheit. Wo trennten sich Ost und West?
(ViennaMunich, 1969) 10.

Page 565
And we have to add that the acceptance of the schism has lasted
practically to the present day. Various attempts to eliminate the
separation have not been successful. This situation was made even
worse in the last century when the schism was given dogmatic
relevance by the dogmas of Vatican I. For precisely that was
dogmatically defined which was perceived by the churches of the East
as obstacle and strongest reason for the schism: the universal,
jurisdictional primacy, over all the churches, of the bishop of Rome
who was explicitly not satisfied with a primatus honoris et
inspectionis conceded by the Orthodox, but insisted on defining an
explicit juridical primacy as "supreme power" and "full power."
The Reformation
Before we take up the situation in the present, we must say a word or
two about the position of the churches of the Reformation on pope and
papacy. In doing this it is not always easy to decide whether the
statements are directed against the then-reigning occupier of the
papacy or against the papacy as institution. In any case, the popes of
that time were "renaissance popes" who, as they themselves put it,
sought to "enjoy the papacy" and saw the image of their succession
more in the emperor of Rome than in Peter the fisherman.
For our needs it may be enough to say how Luther reacted to the
papacy.6 But that is by no means all as clear as one might suppose, if
one is talking about a denial or rejection of the papacy from the outset.
With Luther, one can and must distinguish between different stages.
Even in his early writings Luther did indeed criticize the popes; but
this did not distinguish him from many theologians before and during
his own time. The criticism was of abuses: the worldliness and
worldly power of the popes. This did not prevent Luther from
recognizing the Roman Church and the papacy. He says, e.g.: All the
works and merits of Christ and the Church are in the hand of the pope.
He describes the Roman Church as protector of truth, a church that
would never hold anything that was against the Holy Scripture. To be
sure, the difference between Luther and the papacy becomes more
clear and the criticism sharper and more fundamental in his
indulgence theses. But even in the year 1519, Luther speaks out
against the Bohemians who are rejecting the primacy of the Roman
Church.
In the Resolutions on the Indulgence Theses are found, in the opinion
of R. Bäumer, statements that are quite papalistic. They peak in the
high-flown words: "Thus, most Holy Father, I prostrate myself at the
6 Documentation in: R. Bäumer, Martin Luther und der Papst (Münster,
1970); G. Müller, "Martin Luther und das Papsttum in lutherischer Sicht"
in H. StirnimannL. Vischer, Papsttum und Petrusdienst 7390.

Page 566
foot of Your Holiness and dedicate myself to you with all that I am
and all that I have. Let me live or let me die, approve my work or
reject it as you please! I will recognize your voice as the voice of
Christ, who rules and speaks in you. If I have merited death, I will not
shrink from death." In a protestatio Luther solemnly testifies that he
wishes to say and maintain nothing except only that which is
contained in Holy Scripture, in the church fathers recognized by the
Roman Church, and in papal canon law, and in what can be derived
from them.7
The Luther of the year 1519 has been described, relative to the
question of the papacy, as "Luther wrestling" with himself. He appeals
from "the poorly informed to the better informed pope." The pope
stands not over but under the Word of God. But under these
presuppositions, Luther had no hesitation to speak of the pope as the
mouth of Christ. In Luther's 1518 appeal to a general council he
explicitly expressedin common to be sure with many theologians of
his timethe superiority of the council over the pope, and he thus
brought up a new point of controversy. His fundamental criticism of
the papacy becomes clear in the Leipzig disputation (1519), where
Luther declares that he does not wish to be prisoner of just any
authority. He will recognize only that which he has recognized as true,
whether it be maintained by a Catholic or by a heretic, whether it be
approved or rejected by a council; even councils can make mistakes.
In the writings "On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church" and "To
the Christian Nobility of the German Nation," one finds the concept of
the papacy as the kingdom of Babylon, or as an anti-Christian
institution. After the publication of the bull threatening
excommunication, Luther, in his ''Against the Bull of the Antichrist,"
summons the faithful, for the sake of the faith, to consider the pope to
be the Antichrist. If the threatened bull is not recalled (meaning, if the
pope would not recognize the gospel of justification by faith), no one
should have any doubt that the "pope is the enemy of God, persecutor
of Christ, destroyer of Christianity, and the genuine Antichrist."8 For
the rest of his life Luther never moved away from this idea, that the
pope is the Antichrist because he denied the gospel.
We don't have time to pursue the further course of this development,
except to highlight that the "Smalkaldic Articles," which come from
Luther and are numbered among the confessional writings of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church, deal extensively with the papacy in the
fourth article. According to this article, the pope possesses his power
as head of all Christianity not iure divino or according to God's word.
He is instead the bishop or pastor of the church of Rome and of those
who, voluntarily or under the direction of worldly power, have joined
up
7 In R. Bäumer, Martin Luther und der Papst 21.
8 Ibid. 56.

Page 567
with him. But they do not stand under him as under a lord, but beside
him as brothers and comrades. That is the way it was at the ancient
councils; that is the way it was at the time of Cyprian. Now, however,
no bishop dares call the pope brother; they talk about him as if about
the all-gracious Lord. Everything that the pope has done and
attempted on the basis of his assumed power has been a work of the
devil for the purpose of ruining all Christian churches and destroying
the first principal article of the redemption of Jesus Christ. History
proves that the Church, for five hundred years, was without a pope. To
this very day the churches of the East are not subject to him. Luther
mentions the papal depositions at the Council of Constance, which
deposed three popes and chose a fourth. The Church could never be
better governed and protected than if we all lived under the one head
of Christ and the bishops were all alike in office. But the pope has
raised himself above the other bishops. That shows that he is the
authentic Antichrist, who has placed himself above Christ and who
will not allow Christians to be happy and blessed apart from his
power.9
Melancthon, along with many other theologians, subscribed to the
Smalkaldic Articles but added the following noteworthy addition: "I
hold the articles to be correct and Christian; but of the pope I hold, as
long as he is willing to accept the gospel, that for the sake of the peace
and of the common unity of those Christians who are and in the future
would like to be under him, that the superiority over the bishops
which he has iure divino also be admitted by us."10 In his treatise De
potestate papae he described this in greater detail and tried to support
it with biblical and historical indications, not without rejecting the
claims that were, in his opinion, false: that the pope is the head over
all Christianity, and has "by divine right" power over the two
swords.11 This not only points out that there remained, even then,
some possibility of understanding, it is also being brought back into
the discussion once again, and not just by Lutheran theologians. The
important point is the distinction between ius divinum and ius
humanum and the problem of the diverting of the functions which in
the course of history have been added to this office: bishop of Rome,
patriarch of the West, head over the Universal Catholic Church.
In conclusion, it should be mentioned that the [later] works of
Luther"On the Councils and Churches," "Against Hans Worst," and
most of all, "Against the Papacy in Rome, Founded by the
Devil''make this polemic even sharper. The last-mentioned of these, in
particular, transcends all measure of polemic, defamation, and hate
and was subjected to sharp criticism even by Luther's friends. Shortly
before
9Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche 42733.
10 Ibid. 464.
11 Ibid. 471-96.

Page 568
his death, Luther is said to have written on the wall the words: "A
plague was I to you in life, O Pope; in death will I be your death."
The criticism of Luther and the Reformation was not directed
primarily against the papacy as institution as such, nor even primarily
the bad moral image projected by the papacy of the time; the criticism
that impelled to the judgment that the pope is the Antichrist was the
fact that the pope refused to be a servant of the word of God and of
the true gospel, as manifested, according to Luther, in his
unwillingness to recognize the gospel of justification recently
emphasized by Luther.
The Catholic Response
In consequence of the criticism and partial rejection of the papacy by
the Reformation, there arose in the Roman Catholic Church a
similarly colored polemic against Luther, above all by Cochlaeus.12 In
addition, the papacy itself was now emphasized in a special way and
raised up as a specific mark of the Catholic Church. What was
criticized and controverted took on a new relevance and value. At the
same time, the reformers' criticism of the worldliness and
secularization of the papacy was not without effect. It began in
various ways in the Counter Reformation and the Catholic Renewal
whichclearly recognizable in the art of the baroquewas adorned with
triumphalism. An example of the newfound concept of Church is the
classical and quite influential description of the Church by Robert
Bellarmine in his work: Disputationes de controversiis Christianae
fidei: "The Church is the community of human beings who, by
confessing the same faith and by participation in the same sacraments
are united under the leadership of the rightful shepherds, especially of
the one representative of Christ on earth, the Roman Pope."
The Jesuit order, which arose in the course of the Counter
Reformation and Catholic Renewal, took on the special task of being
the militia Christi and made obedience to the pope its special mission
and obligation. The more and more pronounced picture of the Roman
Church as the papal church was by no means just the derogatory and
one-sided view of others, but the self-articulation developed and
consciously affirmed by the Catholic Church itself. In Catholic
apologetics, Romanitas became a mark of the Church which included
the others.13 These tendencies were even further intensified under the
pressures of difficult external circumstanceswe can't go into
detailswhich beset the popes in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, above all in the French Revolution and under Napoleon I.
12 A. Herte, Die Lutherkommentare des Johannes Cochläus (Münster,
1935).
13 On this cf. M. A. Fahey, "Church," Sytematic Theology: Roman Catholic
Perspectives 2.474; E. Hill, "Church," NDT 185201.

Page 569
At the end of the nineteenth century, which brought the end of the
imperial church, a pronounced papalism arose under the flag of
restoration. Its most significant literary representative was Joseph de
Maistre in his work Du Pape (On the Pope). Indeed, a substantial
papal cult blossomed, and it not infrequently reached the borders of
tastelessness and the blasphemous. These tendencies, through the
entire nineteenth century, were part of an explicit defensive posture of
the Catholic Church against the antifaith spirit of the time as the
culmination of modernity. The roots of the antifaith modernity were,
along with other factors, seen also and above all as stemming from the
Reformation. This was qualified and thus disqualified as "so-called"
Reformation, and regarded as one of the sources of modern corrosive
subjectivism and confusing relativism. Against all this there seemed to
be but one answer from the side of the Roman Catholic Church: an
encompassing strengthening of the unity of the Church along with a
comprehensive qualification of the highest office in the Church, the
supreme pontificacy of the Roman bishop, the pope. The supreme and
full jurisdiction over the whole Church united in him was to be the
surety that was to guarantee unity by means of orientation to the
Church's center and by means of the highest possible standardization
in all spheres of church life. The First Vatican Council's (1869-1870)
dogmatic definition of the pope's primacy as universal primacy of
jurisdiction, and its related definition of the infallibility of his ex
cathedra magisterium, had as its purpose to articulate what the highest
office in the Church as center of unity is supposed to mean and bring
about.14
The First Vatican Council
In the Constitutio Dogmatica I "Pastor aeternus" de Ecclesia
Christi15 it is said that Christ, the "eternal shepherd and bishop of our
souls," installed Peter as the abiding bishop and priest-unifying
principle and visible foundation, that the Petrine primacy was founded
by Christ and that Peter received primacy of jurisdiction directly and
immediately from Christ. As proof were cited John 1:42; Matthew
16:16ff.; John 21:15, but not Luke 22:32.
Then comes mention of perpetuitas, the abiding continuation of the
Petrine primacy in the Roman popes. This reference is supported by
three chosen historical witnesses: Leo I, Irenaeus, and Ambrose.
Hence these particular documents require an in-depth discussion. For
these
14 Cf. C. ButlerH. Lang, The Vatican Council: The Story from Inside in
Bishop Ullathorne's Letters (New York: Longmans, Green, 1930); R.
Aubert, Vatikanum I (Mainz, 1965); idem, "Die Ekklesiologie beim
Vatikankonzil" in: Das Konzil und die Konzile (Stuttgart, 1962) 285330; Y.
Congar, Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte III/3 d (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1971) 1007.
15 DS 30503079.

Page 570
witnesses, apart from their relatively late dating, are in their historical
contexts by no means so obvious as the conciliar statement claims.
The content and nature of papal primacy are characterized by the
bishop of Rome having preeminence over the whole world, that he is
the "true representative of Christ, head of the whole Church and father
and teacher of all Christians," that full power is given him to "pastor,
rule and administer" the whole "Church." The Roman bishop
"possesses the primacy of ordinary power over all other churches.
This power of the legal jurisdiction of the Roman bishop, which has
real episcopal character, is immediate." The pope is universal bishop.
"The bishop of Rome is also the supreme judge of all the faithful.''
Since there is no higher official power, it is not permitted for anyone
to pass judgment over this judgment.16
The concluding canon sums up the essence of the primacy in the
following proposition:
Thus whoever says that the bishop of Rome has only the office of
oversight and leadership and not the full and supreme power of legal
jurisdiction over the entire Churchand not just in matters of faith and
morals but also in whatever pertains to the order and governance of the
Church spread over the whole world; or whoever says that he has only a
larger share but not the whole fullness of this supreme power, or that this
power of his is not ordinary and immediate power over the entire Church
and the individual churches as well as over all and each and every
shepherd and member of the faithful, let him be anathema.17

The definition of Vatican I on the primacy of the pope as ius divinum

took place at the same hour in which the end of the church state (and
with that the end of the political power of the pope) had come about.
Before that there had been no lack of voices wanting to elevate to the
level of dogma the necessity of the church state for the realization and
exercise of the papacy. Theologians who warned against this, like I.
Döllinger and J. H. Newman, were accused of a lack of loyalty to the
Church. When the church state could no longer be maintained, it
became all the more important for the pope's moral authority and
innerchurch position of primacy to be emphasized and raised to an
obligatory proposition of faith.
Bismarck's comparison of the Roman Church with an absolute
monarchy, "more than any form of government in the world," was, to
be sure, explicitly rejected, above all by a remarkable declaration
(welcomed by Pius IX) of the German bishops in 1875,18 but the
compari-
16 DS 30593063.
17 DS 3064.
18 DS 31123117. cf. NeunerRoos 388a. This letter refers to a statement of
Vatican I which reads: "So far is this power of the Supreme Pontiff from
being any prejudice to the ordinary and immediate power of the episcopal
jurisdiction, by which bishops who have been set by the Holy Spirit to
succeed and hold the place of the Apostles, feed and govern, each his own
flock, as true pastors, that this their episcopal authority is really asserted,
strengthened and protected by the supreme and universal pastor" (DS 3061;
NeunerRoos 380).

Page 571
son remained an unforgettable concept. All the more so since
monarchy was considered the best form of constitution. Why should it
not be for the Church, the perfect society?
The situation between the Christian confessions was saddled with a
new burden by the dogmatic decisions of Vatican I. Men like J. H.
Newmanbut not just hecould see this coming and described the
dogmatizing of the doctrine on the papacy as inopportune and
superfluous. For in this case, in contrast to previous dogmatizing, a
difficulty in the Church was not being met but being created. "What
have we done to deserve to be treated as the faithful have never before
been treated?"19 Newman has never been wholly forgiven for this
statement.
The Second Vatican Council
There has been considerable agreement throughout Christianity on
many of the texts and intentions of Vatican II with regard to the
Church. This "council of the Church about the Church" managed to
achieve a great deal of defusing. It did this by giving prominence to a
meditation on the Church as sacrament and mystery of unity and as
people of God. It did this by emphasizing collegiality as a structural
principle of the Church, which bound the pope with the bishops and
them with him "with and under the pope." It did this by placing higher
value on synodal elements, by explicitly affirming the priesthood of
all the faithful, by stating that special spiritual office (distinct from the
universal priesthood "in essence and not only in degree") is to be
understood as ministry and as gift, and by its unmistakable emphasis
on the Holy Spirit as normative source of judgment. Despite all this,
the trajectory begun by Vatican I vis-à-vis the jurisdictional primacy
of the pope remains in force. All the more so since the formulations of
Vatican I, along with their openness to misunderstanding, were
repeated in Vatican II. It has already been frequently pointed out that
in the different texts of Vatican II that were supposed to complete [the
work of] Vatican Iabove all in regard to the bishops, the college of
bishops, and the people of Godone finds more talk of the pope than in
Vatican I. The Nota praevia, which in connection with the
Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, was communicated to the
council fathers from a "higher authority" by the general secretary, not
only modified the concept of the council of bishops, but also
formulated the following proposition which has a sharpness and
ambiguity found not even in Vatican I: "The pope, as supreme
shepherd of the
19 Letter of 18 January 1870 to Bishop Ullathorne, in: J. H. Newman,
Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen aus der katholischen Zeit seines
Lebens, 543 (cf. The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, 31 vols.
[LondonNew York: T. Nelson, Oxford: Clarendon, 1961-1984]).

Page 572
Church, can exercise his supreme power at any time at his discretion,
as is required by his office" (no. 4).20
The New Code of Canon Law took up this statement in its full
amplitude and sharpest pointedness and, looking to the Latin Church,
declared: "The bishop of the Church of Rome, in whom resides the
office given in a special way by the Lord to Peter, first of the Apostles
and to be transmitted to his successors, is head of the college of
bishops, the Vicar of Christ and Pastor of the universal Church on
earth; therefore, in virtue of his office he enjoys supreme, full,
immediate and universal ordinary power in the Church which he can
always freely exercise" (canon 331).
So the situation remains that the question of the papacy is a still-
unsolved ecumenical problem. It stands between the Roman Catholic
and the Orthodox, Anglican, and Reformed churches, to say nothing
of the so-called Free churches. The rejection of the papacy in the
matter of his spiritual lordship as expressed in Vatican I and in the
Church's book of laws seems to be a connecting bond which brings
the otherwise so different forms of Christian churches and confessions
into a certain unanimity and in a certain sense makes them one with
each other. One must, of course, challenge that the "No" to Rome is in
principle the only effective ecumenical basis.21 This basis should be
seen rather in the "Yes" to the central contents of the Christian faith.
But the problematic connected with the theme "pope and papacy" still
remains, even though one looks to the popes of todayin contrast to
those of the sixteenth centurywith respect, a respect that is never so
great and so general as it was with regard to the compomise and
transition pope, John XXIII. Under his pontificate and during the
Second Vatican Council there was no anti-Roman feeling, either
inside or outside the Catholic Churchand that was not so long ago.
The Dialogue with the Orthodox Churches
Now we must ask what, despite everything, has happened or perhaps
can happen, in order not simply to repeat the, as always, a carefully
nuanced No, Non possumus. We must take note of the following:
A great step forward with the Orthodox churches, in the question of
the papacy, was taken when, on December 7, 1965, the 1054 bull of
excommunication issued against the then-patriarch of Constantinople,
Michael Caerularius, was solemnly revoked. It was, as stated in the
20 See especially: Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. H.
Vorgrimler, 1.297306.
21 H. U. von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church,
trans. Andree Emery (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986).

Page 573
apostolic letter read by Cardinal Bea, "washed from memory and
removed from the midst of the Church."
In St. Peter's, a common declaration of the Roman Catholic Church
and the Orthodox Church of Constantinople was read. As a result,
from now on, nothing more was to hinder fraternal reconciliation
between the two churches. To be sure, both churches are conscious
that old and new contradictions were not thereby overcome, but they
could be wholly set aside by further examination of conscience and
good will. The dialogue that is to lead to this goal was to be
established on a new basis of trust, for hearts were to be purified by
these events.
Patriarch Athenagoras caught up the meaning of this event in these
words: "The Seventh of December signifies a light which dispels the
darkness which cast gloom over a now-finished period of church
history. This light illuminates the present and the future path of the
Church."22
The result of this event, according to Joseph Ratzinger (who, ten years
later, attempted to describe and interpret the situation), is to be
characterized as follows: The situation of love grown cold, of the
contradictions, the mistrust, and the antagonisms, is replaced by the
relationship of love and fraternal affection. The symbol of division is
replaced by the symbol of love. Now that the dialogue of love has
reached its first goal, says Ratzinger, theological dialogue is needed,
although this was never absent. But above all: the forgetting of the
past must bring a new remembering which works on the healing of
memory and which leads from the agape of ecclesiastical reality to the
eucharistic agape.23 This is even now possible and desired under
certain circumstances; it is made explicit in the offer expressed in the
Decree on Ecumenism.
Ten years after the revocation of the mutual excommunication, Pope
Paul VI, during a liturgy in the Sistine Chapel devoted to this event,
gave an impressive signal which caught the attention of the whole of
Christianity. He dropped to his knees before Metropolitan Melito, the
delegate of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and kissed his
feet. What this means, when you really think about it, is that
"proskynesis" has long been a papal claim. If, as this gesture was
interpreted, the pope demands this "subjection of himself, it means
that he is stepping to the limits of self-denial and demonstrating in
extreme form how important to him reunion with the Orthodox
Church is, how passionately he longs for the overcoming of the
division of 1054." In his
22 H. Fries, "Sind die Christen einander nähergekommen?" in: K.
RahnerO. CullmannH. Fries, Sind die Erwartungen erfüllt? (Munich,
1966) 67192, at 6970.
23 J. Ratzinger, "Das Ende der Bannflüche von 1054. Folgen für Rom und
die Ostkirchen," Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift 4 (1971) 280303;
Principles of Catholic Theology, trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987) 20318.

Page 574
address the pope said: "We are entering into a new phase of our
reconciliation with the mutual will that it be the concluding phase."24
There is no doubt that in the current situation the Roman Catholic
Church, through the special initiative of Pope John Paul II, is turning
its ecumenical initiative towards the Orthodox churches and is
attaching the greatest expectations to it. The pope spoke of a
unification with the Church of the East at the beginning of the third
millennium. There is not much time left before that, and one should
not labor under any illusions about how difficult the discussions will
be, especially on the question of the jurisdictional primacy of the
pope. This has come out of the previous meetings of the International
OrthodoxCatholic Commission, most recently in Munich in 1982:
"We are just at the beginning." The Orthodox will not accept a
primacy of the pope in the sense of an explicit taking over of the
formulation of Vatican I and the new Codex of Canon Law. One can
think of only one solution, as Joseph Ratzinger proposed it:
Those who stand on the ground of Catholic theology can certainly not
simply declare the doctrine of primacy as null and void, even if they are
attempting to understand the objections and are judging with open eyes the
changing weight of what history can tell us. On the other hand, however,
they cannot possibly regard the nineteenth and twentieth century form of
primacy as the only possible one and as necessary for all Christians. The
symbolic gestures of Paul VI, especially his prostration before the
representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch, intended to express precisely
this point and, by means of such signs, to lead us out of the bottleneck of
past events. Although it is not in our power to do away with history, to
take back the actions of centuries, one can still say: what was possible for
a whole thousand years cannot be thought of as impossible for Christians
today. After all, even in 1054, Humberto de Silva Candida, in the same
bull in which he excommunicated Patriarch Caerularius and thus began the
schism between East and West, also described the emperor and the citizens
of Constantinople as "very Christian and orthodox," although their concept
of Roman primacy was far less different from that of Caerularius than, for
example, from that of Vatican I. In other words: Rome must not demand of
the East this kind of a doctrine of primacy as if it were formulated and
actually lived in the first millennium. When Patriarch Athenagoras in his
July 25, 1967, visit with the pope in Phanar called him the successor of
Peter, the first in honor among us, the presider in love, what was coming
from the mouth of this great church leader was the essential content of the
doctrine of primacy of the first millennium, and more must not be
demanded by Rome. Unification could take place here on the basis that, on
one side, the East gives up attacking the development of the second
millennium as heretical, and accepts the Catholic Church as legal and
orthodox in the shape it has taken in this development; the West, in turn,
recognizes as orthodox and legal the shape that the Church of the East has
preserved.25
24Her Korr 30 (1976) 67.
25 "The Ecumenical SituationOrthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism" in:
Principles of Catholic Theology 193202, esp. 19899.

Page 575
The Dialogue with the Churches of the Reformation
The question of the papacy as ecumenical problem, in view of what
was briefly described in our historical sketch, looks even more
difficult when it becomes the theme of a dialogue between the Roman
Catholic Church and the churches of the Reformation.
But even here, the question of the papacy has been decisively moved
forward by the fact that, in our ecumenical efforts to work out the
great questions of controversial theologyjustification, the relationship
of Scripture and tradition, the doctrine of the Eucharist and office,
discussion about the proper understanding of "alone" and "and"the
doctrine of the papacy was always already there. It stands in an
overarching relationship and context. That became manifest in the
time of the Reformation and its criticism of the papacy. Hence, if
those fundamental reformational objections, which constitute the real core
of the reformational antipapal polemic, are overcome or rendered moot by
new agreements or convergences, this means that a decisive, if not indeed
the decisive, step on the road to a solution of the papal problematic has
been taken. Only now does it make sense to turn the question with any
hope towards that of a church-wide office which can bring into serious
consideration as one of the concrete possibilities the acceptance of the
papacy even by the non-Catholic churches.26
Making this all the more feasible to think and move in this direction is
the fact that the basic thought and praxis of the reformation churches
on the concrete form of church offices is characterized by remarkable
freedom and openness. The beginning of such an effort has by now
taken place in some remarkable attempts.
Some important documents need to be mentioned: In the so-called
Malta Document (1972), which the delegates appointed by the
Lutheran World Union and the Roman Secretariat for Christian Unity
composed under the title "The Gospel and the Church," the question
of the papacy was briefly raised. It was said that jurisdictional
primacy must "be understood" primarily "as service to the community
and as bond of the unity of the Church." The office of the pope
includes the responsibility of caring for the legitimate differences of
the local churches. The concrete shape of this office can,
corresponding to the respective historical conditions, be quite
variable. From the Lutheran side it was recognized that no local
church, because it is a manifestation of the universal Church, can
isolate itself. It is in this sense that Lutherans see the importance of a
ministry to the community of churches. The document also alludes to
the problem this is for the
26 H. Meyer in: Papsttum und Petrusdienst 84.

Page 576
Lutherans because of the lack of such an effective service to unity.
The office of the pope as visible sign of the unity of the churches was
thus not excluded, as long as it is made subordinate to the primacy of
the gospel by theological reinterpretation and practical restructuring.
But disagreement remains between Catholics and Lutherans on the
question whether the primacy of the pope is necessary for the Church
or whether it represents only an in-priniciple possible function.
However, it can indeed be said: If the primatial function of the pope is
recognized as possible and this possibility is actually realized, then no
explicit confession of the dogmatic necessity of the primacy of the
pope need be required from the Evangelical sections of the one
Church.27
The LutheranRoman Catholic Dialogue Group for the United States,
an official dialogue group with theologians and bishops (1974), dealt
much more extensively with the question of the papacy in its
document: Ministry and Church Universal. Differing Attitudes
Towards Papal Primacy.28 The document carefully addresses the
exegetical and historical problems connected with this question and
rightly calls attention to the fact that the conditions and facts it brings
to light are assessed in different ways from the Evangelical Lutheran
and Catholic perspectives because of their different a priori
presuppositions. The most important statements of the document
concern its look into the future. They stand under the subtitle:
"Outlook for the renewal of the structures of the papacy."
If the papacy present and future is taking on an ecumenical
significance, if it is to serve the Church as a whole better and more
effectively, then it is said that a renewal of its structure or structures is
necessary. These must be oriented according to the principles of
legitimate plurality, collegiality, and subsidiarity. It can be seen that
these principles relate to the understanding and realization of the
papacy "within" the Church. There is the correction conviction that a
supreme office of unity can make good on its possibilities, and fulfill
its duties only if it abandons the centralistic, isolated form that tries to
do everything all by itself, and if it affirms that reality not only
theoretically but also practically. It must, in other words, support the
development of what fits the shape of the Church: a unity which finds
in plurality not a hindrance to, but a living expression of, unity; a
unity which can know the meaning of "first" only if there is statement
and recognition of that for which the pope is to be first. What this
means is collegiality in the various ranks and levels of the Church and
in the Church. It also means the legitimate plurality of the Church
whose unity the pope is supposed to protect.
27 Texts of the Malta Document in: Dokumente wachsender
Übereinstimmung, 248-271, at 266.
28 Text in: H. StirnimannL. Vischer, Papsttum und Petrusdienst 91140.

Page 577
The principal of subsidiarity is the result of legitimate plurality and
collegiality. It relieves the burden of the "top" and makes manifest the
vitality and the wealth of the different parts. This is precisely what can
contribute to the vitality and building up of the Church.
It is on the basis of these principles that a renewal in the structures of
the papacy is to be striven for. The distinction between supreme
authority and claiming supreme authority makes it possible for the
pope to limit voluntarily the exercise of his jurisdiction. That would
bring about a differentiation relative to the functions of the papacy,
and would make a greater ecumenical reality thinkable. For the same
reason, the primacy of the pope would be more a precedence in
pastoral care than a juridical primacy with its typical questions of
rights, powers, and competencies. One of the much needed effects of
this would be that the abidingly juridical would be made more
understandable in its necessity and (inner) limitation precisely from
the pastoral responsibility of the pope.
Should these principles be recognized and put into practice, there
would then exist, according to the views of the Lutheran members
who helped produce this document, no reason to reject a supreme
office of unity in the Church. The appropriateness, significance, and
"blessing" of such an office is, precisely in today's Christianity in its
striving for unity, more and more acknowledged and explicitly
affirmed. The one necessary requirement is the demand by the
Protestant participants that papal primacy be so conceived,
understood, and put into practicethat this office unmistakably serve
the gospel and the unity of Christiansand that the exercise of its power
not be a hindrance to Christian freedom.29 As one can see, this is the
intention of the Reformation that is being expressed.
This consensus statement explicitly added that, over against this
fundamental question, the issue of divine or human right in relation to
the papacy is secondary. On the basis of a so-defined and so-limited
statement of the question, no ecumenical progress is possible but only
an endless discussion.
Then the authors of the document appeal to their churches to
undertake concrete steps towards reconciliation:
Thus we ask the Lutheran churches if they are ready to confirm that papal
primacy, renewed in the light of the gospel, need be no obstacle to
reconciliation. We ask further whether they are in the position not only to
recognize the legality of the papal office in the service of the Roman
Catholic Church, but also the possibility and desirability of the papal
office, renewed under the gospel in a more encompassing community
which would also include the Lutheran churches.

But the Catholics Church is also asked whether it is willing to discuss

possible structures for a reconciliation which would protect the le-
29 Ibid. 108.

Page 578
gitimate traditions of the Lutheran churches and respect their spiritual
heritage; and further, whether, in anticipation of an expected
reconciliation, it is ready to recognize the Lutheran churches
represented in our dialogue as sister churches which already possess
the right to a certain degree of ecclesiastical commonness (no. 32 and
33).
The document concludes:
We believe that our common declaration reflects a convergence in the
theological understanding of the papacy which makes a fruitful approach
to these questions possible. Our churches should not let slip by this
opportunity to answer to the will of Christ for the unity of His disciples.
None of the churches should let stand a situation in which the members of
one community consider another community as foreign. Our trust in the
Lord who makes us into one body in Christ will help us to enter upon the
still unknown paths to which His Holy Spirit is leading His Church. (no.
34)

To be sure, this astonishing document has still not received any

official confirmation. That does not keep the dialogue group from
remaining on the path and devoting itself to the theme of the
infallibility of the pope and declaring "This apparently unsolved
problem does not need to be an obstacle against reconciliation
between the Lutheran and the Catholic Church." The document
"Spiritual Office in the Church" speaks in similar fashion about the
papacy under the title "Episcopal Office and Universal Unity of the
Church" (6773). The convergence statements from Lima do not take a
position on the question.
In the Evangelical Catechism for Adults, which was published under
the commission of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany, one
reads on our question:
All apostles have, according to the New Testament, fundamental
significance for the Church. Peter is their representative. Even if the
foundation was laid but once, one can still ask whether or not the ministry
of a representative and spokesperson of all Christianity makes sense later
as well. . . . To be sure, the non-Roman churches have until now come up
with no convincing model as to how the unity of the church could take
visible shape. . . . The position of the other church communities vis-à-vis
the papacy will largely depend on how Rome succeeds in convincingly
presenting the papacy as such a service to unity and as sign of unity.30

Wolfhart Pannenberg writes in the same vein: He proposes, with

regard to the claim of the pope to serve the faith and to be the center
of unity, shepherd, and teacher of all the faithful, to take him at his
word and to call attention to a consequence which he thus formulates:
If a specially appropriate instance for the unity of all Christianity already
exists in the form of the bishop of Rome, must not the unification of the
separated churches be the first and most pressing business of the pope?
Must he not, in all his decisions and statements, also take into
consideration the needs and problems, but also the possible positive
contribution of the Christians still separated from Rome today, instead of
caring only for the preservation in the apostolic faith of
30Evangelischer Erwachsenenkatechismus (Gütersloh, 1977) 916.

Page 579
the church which presently calls itself Catholic and of its members? There
would be a great deal, perhaps even something decisive, gained for the
cause of Christian unity if, at every opportunity and in all openness, it
became clear that the pope made his own the cause of all Christians, even
the Christians still separated from Rome today, and made visible in his
behavior the communion in Christ that binds all Christians together. To the
degree in which the Roman bishop takes up in his thinking and decisions
the present-day problems and mentalities, and the possible contribution of
the other churches to the life of Christianity today, and also brings that to
expression, to that same degree could his claim to be the representative of
all Christianity gain in credibility even outside the present-day Roman
Catholic Church. The example of John XXIII shows what possibilities
really are open in this direction.31

The Dialogue with the Anglican Church

Without doubt, the final report of the official Commission for
AnglicanRoman Catholic Dialogue, the Windsor Statement, the result
of nine years of work, represents the most extensive rapprochement
and understanding yet achieved by different churches on the question
of the papacy.32 The commission speaks of a "substantial agreement."
The starting point and horizon of this statement is the idea of the
Church as koinonia, as communio, which, for its part, is a fundamental
characteristic of the ecclesiololgy of Vatican II.
In this context the Windsor Statement says: "All servants of the gospel
must stand in communion with each other, for the one Church is a
community of local churches. They must also be one in apostolic
faith. Primacy as a burning point within the koinonia is a guarantee
that what they teach and do is in harmony with the faith of the
apostles." "Unity is the essence of the Church, and since the Church is
visible, the unity must be visible. Fully visible unity between our
churches cannot be achieved without mutual recognition of
sacraments and office, together with the common acceptance of a
universal primacy which, connected with the college of bishops,
stands in the service of unity" (no. 9). "We are in agreement that a
universal primacy in a reunited Church will be necessary, and
appropriately should be the primacy of the bishop of Rome. In a
reunited Church an office molded after the role of Peter will be a sign
and guarantee of such a unity."
With regard to the thesis of Vatican I, which has become the thesis of
the Catholic Church, that the primacy of the pope is based on divine
law because it is founded by Jesus Christ, the text says:
31 "Einheit der Kirche als Glaubenswirklichkeit und als ökumenisches
Ziel," Una Sancta 30 (1975) 22021.
32 Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, The Final Report,
Windsor, 1981. German text in: Dokumente wachsender Übereinstimmung
17798. Cf. H. Fries, "Das Petrusamt im anglikanisch-katholischen Dialog,"
StdZ 107 (1982) 72338.

Page 580
He is the sign of the visible koinonia which God wills for His Church,
[and] which will be realized through unity in multiplicity. The
qualification iure divino can be applied to a universal primacy, conceived
in this way, within the collegiality of the bishops and the collegiality of the
whole church (no. 11). . . . In the past, Anglicans have considered as
unacceptable the Roman Catholic doctrine that the bishop of Rome is the
universal primate by divine right. Nevertheless we believe that the primacy
of the Bishop of Rome can be understood as part of God's plan for the
universal koinoniain a way that can be harmonized with both our
traditions. In view of this consensus, the language of divine right used by
the First Vatican Council must no longer be considered a basis for a
difference of opinion among us. (no. 15)

This proposition is then explained in the following way: ''According

to Christian doctrine, the unity of the Christian community demands
visible expression. We agree that such a visible expression is the will
of God and that the maintaining of visible unity on the universal level
includes the episcopacy of a universal primate. This is a doctrinal
statement."
The jurisdiction spoken of in the declaration of primacy is described
as "fullness of power which is required for the exercise of an office."
Connected with this are certain orientations that can go along with the
exercise of the primacy. Hence the text demands:
The universal primate should carry out his officeand indeed recognizably
to allnot in isolation but in collegial union with the bishops. This in no way
lessens his own responsibility to speak and act upon occasion for the
whole Church. The care for the universal jurisdiction of the universal
primate is supported with every episcopal office. Yet the universal primate
is not the source from which the diocesan bishops derive their authority,
nor does his authority undermine that of the metropolitans or diocesan
bishops. The primate is not an autocratic power over the Church, but a
ministry within the Church and for the Church, which understands itself as
a community of local churches in faith and love. (no. 19)
From this come also the moral limits in the exercise of the universal
primacy:
The jurisdiction of the universal primacy has its sense in this authorization
to further the catholicity as well as the unity and to care for and bring
together the riches of the different traditions of the churches. The collegial
and primatial responsibility for the preservation of the particular life of the
local churches requires the appropriate reverence for their customs and
traditions, as long as they do not contradict the faith or destroy the
community. The striving for unity and the care for catholicity should not
be separated from each other. (no. 21)

It is also required that the freedom of conscience not be endangered.

If, as is done here, primacy is derived from the essence of the Church,
and if this essence is seen as grounded in the will of God and by the
cross and resurrection, one can see therein an origin of the primacy
grounded in Jesus Christ; and one can call this origin divine, divine
right, even if

Page 581
this divine right is not based on an explicit, juridically formulated,
founding work of Jesus.
Whether one looks at the biblical and historical situation or at the state
of current ecumenical theology, not a great deal more need be said in
the dialogue of the churches regarding the grounding of papal
primacy. What the Anglicans say about the meaning, right, and
grounding of the primacy is not less but more than the churches of the
East say. And if, as Joseph Ratzinger stated, the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century form of the primacy is not seen as the only possible
one and necessary for all Christians, then it is inadmissible (as
happened in the first response of the Roman Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith) to measure and judge the statements of the
AnglicanRoman Catholic report only against the statements of Vatican
I, and to ask whether they agree with its wording and requirements. To
do this means elevating Vatican I to an absolute, ahistorical reality.
The Western maximum demand from the East would be, says
Ratzinger, to demand a recognition of the primacy of the Roman
bishop in the full range in which it was defined in 1870, and thereby
to apply a practice of the primacy as it was accepted by the Uniates.
He says, speaking of this and of other maximal demands, "None of the
maximal solutions contain a real hope for unity." Should not what is
right for the Orthodox also be approved for the Anglicans; and should
we not especially refuse to impose as truth "what is in reality just an
historically developed form which stands in a more or less close
connection with the truth?"33
33 J. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology 198.

Page 582
§ 58
The Problem of Infallibility
The First Vatican Council
The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Jesus Christ, Chapter 4,
from the First Vatican Council (1869-70) reads:
When the bishop of Rome speaks in virtue of his supreme teaching power
(ex cathedra), that is, when in the exercise of his office as shepherd and
teacher of all Christians, he definitively decides (definit) in virtue of his
supreme apostolic authority that a doctrine on faith or morals is to be held
by the whole Church, he possesses, on the basis of the divine assistance
promised to him in Saint Peter, that infallibility with which the Divine
Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed when making definitive
decisions in matters of faith and morals. Consequently, these definitive
decisions of the Bishop of Rome are, in themselves and not on the basis of
the Church's consent, unchangeable (Romani Pontificis definitiones ex
sese, non autem ex consensu ecclesiae irreformabiles esse).1
1 DS 3074 (NeunerRoos 388); Heinrich Fries, "Ex sese, non ex consensu
ecclesiae" in: R. BäumerH. Dolch, Volk Gottes. Zum Kirchenverständnis
der katholischen, evangelischen und anglikanischen Theologie
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1967) 480500; H. FriesJ. Finsterhölzl,
"Infallibility," SM 3.13238; Hans Küng, Infallibile? An Unresolved
Enquiry (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1994); Karl Rahner, ed., Zum
Problem der Unfehlbarkeit. Antworten auf die Anfragen von Hans Küng
(FreiburgBaselVienna, 1971); H. Küng, ed., Fehlbar? Eine Bilanz
(ZurichEinsidelnCologne, 1973); M. Seybold, "Unfehlbarkeit des
PapstesUnfehlbarkeit der Kirche" in G. Denzler, ed., Das Papsttum in der
Diskussion (Regensburg, 1974) 10222; K. Schatz, Kirchenbild und
päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit bei den deutschsprachigen Minoritätsbischofen
auf den 1. Vatikanum (Rome, 1975); H. J. Pottmeyer, Unfehlbarkeit und
Souveränität. Die päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit im System der Ultramontanen
Ekklesiologie des 19. Jahrhunderts (Mainz, 1975); August B. Hasler, Pius
IX (18461878). Päpstliche Unfehlbarkeit und 1. Vatikanisches Konzil.
Dogmatisierung und Durchsetzung einer Ideologie (Stuttgart, 1977); also,
How the Pope Became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion,
trans. Peter Heinegg (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1981); M. Weitlauff,
"Pius IX. und die Dogmatisierung der päpstlichen Unfehlbarkeit,'' ZKG 91
(1980) 94105; W. Bienert, "Die Exzentrizität des Papstes. Über die
Unfehlbarkeit des römischen Bischofs in der Kirche" in: A.
BrandenburgH. J. Urban, eds., Petrus und Papst. EvangeliumEinheit der
KirchePapstdienst 2.5686; O. H. PeschH. Ott, "Bilanz der diskussion um
die vatikanische Primats- und Unfehlbarkeitsdiskussion," in: Das
Papsttum als ökumensiche Frage 159233; U. Horst, Unfehlbarkeit und
Geschichte. Studien zur Unfehlbarkeitsdiskussion von Melchior Cano bis
zum I. Vatikanischen Konzil (Mainz, 1982).

Page 583
From the Protestant point of view, this declaration expresses not only
the high point of the theological intention of the First Vatican
Council's teaching on the Church, but also the clearest possible
opposition to the Protestant faith and its understanding of the Church.
Particularly because of this definitive formulation, Vatican I set off a
very strong reaction. The difference from the faith of the Reformation
expressed at the Council of Trent (15451563) was given a new accent
by Vatican I, an accent which increased the contradictions by a
further, decisive point and made the divisions between the confessions
even deeper than they already were. In other words, the depth of the
division was finally made clear by the declarations of the Roman
Catholic Church at Vatican I. The necessity of the Reformation was
confirmed anew, indeed was justified even more than ever.
In his Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth spoke of a "Vatican crime"
against which one had to protest constantly.2 He believed he could see
this in the fact that, in this councilnot to be sure as anything new, but
as the end of a development that had already begun with Irenaeus of
Lyon ( ca. 202) and had steadily become stronger and strongerthe
Church was declared to be that instance which determined and
determines what the Scripture is and what belongs to it; even more
critical, it makes itself the one and only authentic and legitimate
interpreter of Scripture. But the decisive reason for protesting is that
the remaining questions hitherto left open with regard to the Church
and the critically important functions, responsibilities, and rights
regarding the Scripture already long-acknowledged and attributed to
her, are now precisely declared and concentrated by the definition of
the primacy and by turning papal infallibility into dogma. This has
brought about a "pantheistic identification of the Church with
revelation." Thus, as Barth saw it, scriptural authority was changed
into church authorityin a grandiose fulfillment of Augustine's words:
"I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic
Church did not move me to do so." And indeed, the identification of
revelation and Church gets even stronger and becomes an elevation of
the Church over Scripture. For whoever makes himself a judge over
and has decision-making power over something, is setting himself
over it, for he can do what he wants with it as its master. It is no
wonder, then, that Barth speaks of anti-Christian and blasphemous
declarations against which there is only one protection and defense: an
Evangelical Church whose authority is not over but under the Word,
whose existence means service and obedience, whose authority is
validated because over her stands the authority of God with which it
does not and could not ever become identical.
2 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1956) 538660.

Page 584
This protest and what it protested against could not possibly be
expressed more sharply. Apparently we would be deceiving ourselves
to think that this "No" has by now become merely a matter of history,
even if every "No" doesn't make use of Barth's sharp language.
It is important to point out that the successor of Karl Barth at the
University of Basel, Heinrich Ott, has written an astonishing
"Evangelical Commentary" on the teaching of Vatican I, in which he
comes to an essentially different interpretation of the same
developments and the same text; he does not see in them an
unbridgeable opposition between the confessions, but rather he sees in
them a starting point for ecumenical discussion.3 H. Ott finds it most
remarkable that this text of the Council speaks about the infallibility
of the Church, and that this constituted the comprehensive theme of
the Council's declarations:
It is the will of Christ that the infallibility of the Church as such should be
actualized in the ex cathedra decisions of the pope. There is a connecting
point here: for, as Evangelical Christians, we can and must speak of the
infallibility of the Church as such. The Spirit of God will indeed direct the
community in all truth in accordance with the promise of Jesus Christ (ohn
16:13). It is impossible that the truth of the Gospel in the People of God on
earth should ever be lost or be essentially changed. If this could happen,
the People of God would cease to be the People of God. . . . If we really do
count on the revelation of God unto our salvation, we must also count on
the infallibility of the Church as a whole. The question is only (and this is
where controversy begins): In what way does this infallibility get put into
practice? From the Protestant point of view, the situation looks like this:
through God's free activity in the Holy Spirit, the errors and aberrations in
the history of the Church are corrected again and again; heresyeven if
widespread for a long timewill always be overcome. The Catholic point of
view, in contrast, sees the infallibility of the Church institutionally
anchored in the Petrine office; it is visibly and bindingly actualized in the
ex cathedra decisions of the papal magisterium.4
Here, as in all his writings, H. Ott pursues a factual interpretation of
the Council and its intention. He also makes good use of the
distinction between positive inspiration and negative assistance: "The
magisterium is not given any new revelations; it stands under the Holy
Scripture and only interprets it. But through the assistance of the Holy
Spirit it is guaranteed that it will interpret it authentically, i.e., without
error."
There is a different tone and a different atmosphere here than in the
burning words and angry protest of Karl Barth. But that doesn't keep
Ott from noting the Evangelical-Catholic differences and from
formulating the objection and the fear "that by an infallibly deciding
magisterium the conscience of the faithful will be violated, that its
direct connection to God will be interrupted, and that it will be cut off
3 H. Ott, Die Lehre des I. Vatikanischen Konzils (Basel, 1963).
4 Ibid. 16263.

Page 585
from an ultimate, legitimate recourse from the representative of Christ
to Christ himself."
There is no doubt, however, that we have here a welcome and
laudable attempt to dismantle the frontal positions and enter on a new
path. Ott's theological program of "unity through interpretation"
merits most careful consideration.
The Meaning of the Text of the Council
Since the days of Vatican I there has not exactly been great
enthusiasm, even within the Catholic Church, for the formulation that
the definitive decisions of the pope are irreformable "in themselves,
and not on the basis of their agreement with the Church." One of the
major reasons for this was that this formulation has lead to
misunderstandings. And these misunderstandings cannot be attributed
merely to bad will and an intent to interpret tendentiously.
If one subjects to a broad analysis the theological and especially the
ecumenical aspects of this "in themselves but not on the basis of their
agreement with the Church," one has to take the following points into
consideration: Even at Vatican I, this formulation was capable of a
better interpretation than the one which it actually received and which
later remained in effect. This is especially true when the formulation
is turned into an isolated, self-explanatory formula without
consideration for its textual context and its historical and church-
historical background. The statements on the infallibility of the pope
are in no sense a triumph of the so-called papalists and maximalists at
the Council, but a recognizable corrective of them. That this is the
case is clear from what happened at the Council itself, specifically in
the following developments: The proposal to give chapter 4 of the
dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus the title "On the Infallibility of
the Bishop of Rome" was rejected in favor of a considerably more
factual formulation: "On the Infallible Magisterium of the Bishop of
Rome." This was intended to bring out that it is not the person of the
pope that is infallible, but that the unique, precisely described acts of
his magisterium are infallible, free from error. As for the assistance of
the Holy Spirit that is in force here, it is, as Cardinal Guidi, the
archbishop of Bologna, explained, a matter of "assistance at a given
moment," a ''transitory illumination."5 A specific act of the pope thus
becomes infallible, but not his person; that is not changed. In addition,
the compass of this infallible magisterium was given further precision
by its restriction to "faith and morals." The pope cannot proclaim any
new doctrine, but only that which has been accepted by the Church as
a truth of faith.
5 Walter Kasper, "Primat und Episkopat nach dem Vatikanum I," ThQ 142
(1962) 69.

Page 586
The mode of expressing an ex cathedra decision was given further
precision. Infallibility comes into play when the pope, not as local
bishop of Rome or as patriarch of the West, but "when he, exercising
his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his
supreme apostolic power of office, definitively decides that a teaching
in faith or morals is to be firmly held by the whole Church." This
describes an act which has been circumscribed as to its reality and
goal in an extraordinarily clear way: it is a matter of an "extraordinary
magisterium." This binds the pope to act in this way only for very
serious reasons.
And finally: the infallibility of the papal magisterium is circumscribed
by an encompassing perspective: It is the infallibility with which
Christ endowed his Church, that it be in the truth and remain in it.
This also means, and precisely according to Vatican I, that the pope
and his office are described as deriving from the Church, and not the
Church as deriving from the pope.
J. Pottmeyer, in his comprehensive study Infallibility and Sovereignty,
has called attention to another, sometimes forgotten, perspective. He
says: "The formulations of papal infallibility came about in the
framework of a politically conscious ecclesiology which, after the
breakup of the Christian universe, was struggling for an affirmation
and strengthening of ecclesial-societal structures and their
legitimation; external independence and internal integration were its
concrete goals."6
The political intention and function of the definition was seen as
follows: "It had a political function in three ways: First, it was to
legitimate the principle of authority as the basis for the restoration of
the societal system orwith the liberal Ultramontaniststhe struggle of
the people for freedom. Second, in the infallible authority of the pope
was located the claim of the Church to be independent of the state.
Finally, it stands in a necessary relationship with the primacy of
jurisdiction, whose centralistic-autocratic praxis of leadership it
legitimated."7
The dogmatic declaration on papal infallibility is not questioned by
these historical perspectives; they only emphasize the relational
framework, so to speak, of every affirmation of truth. If the external
situation in which a doctrine is formulated, and thus its accompanying
presuppositions, are changed, then the matter itself has to be given a
"rereading" and a new form of appropriation as well as of factual
interpretation. In this way the right and limits of every affirmation of
truth can be recognized; this holds also, and specifically, for the
definitions of Vatican I.
6 H. J. Pottmeyer, Unfehlbarkeit und Souveränität 18.
7 Ibid. 410.

Page 587
Points of Orientation
There is a critical perspective that is vitally important for a proper
understanding of infallibility. The inerrancy of ex cathedra papal
decisions does not reside in those matters of faith and morals "in
themselves" and alone. It has to be seen from the point of view of the
Church as a wholei.e. from the point of view of the "remaining in the
truth" promised to the whole Church. Unfortunately, this has been far
too neglected by theologians, whether Catholic or Protestant.
From the understanding of this broad view of the whole Church, it is
theologically illuminating to point out that the "charism of truth"
given to the extraordinary magisterium of the pope has a
correspondence to the overall structure of revelation and represents an
instance of the so-called analogia fidei. Throughout the phenomenon
of revelation is found the structure of the "general in the particular"
(universale concretum). In other words, the revelation that is applied
to all and has become a reality for all always takes place concretely: in
a historical event, to individual human beings, through a particular
word, through a special act. The culmination and fulfillment of
revelation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and in the Christ-event is
also the unsurpassable realization of the "general in the particular."
The application of this for our question is obvious: The promise given
to the whole Church that it would be in the truth and remain in the
truth does not require that all individual members of the Church have
the "charism of truth" in the same way, but it does require that this
charism is in the Church for the whole Church. Its specific
concretization in a council or in an act of the extraordinary
magisterium of the pope does not exclude this, but rather makes itas a
case of the "general in the particular"possible and real. It also follows,
according to the same law, that the infallibility given to the Church
could be called into question if it weren't also concretized in a
possible final word who is the first, the supreme shepherd, the rock, to
whose ministry it belongs to strengthen his brethren in faith (cf. Luke
22:32).
The "in themselves" of Vatican I is thus taken up in the promise given
to the whole Church to be the presence and place of the truth of Jesus
Christ and thereby to enjoy the assistance of Christ and His Spirit.
This definition thus remains protected from isolation.
The "in themselves" is also taken up under a properly understood
agreement of the Church, even though the specific wording seems at
first to signify the opposite of "not on the basis of the agreement of
the Church." For the Council consciously wishes to express the
agreement of the pope's ex cathedra decisions with the Church. A
position was taken expressly against an isolated infallibility because
with that, as

Page 588
was properly emphasized, the head of the Church would seem
separated from the members, and it would no longer be clear to what
extent the pope could be the head of the Church. This brings upand
this was clear at the Councilthe relationship of the pope to the
bishops. To mention this clearly was the concern of the minority at the
council.
A long time was spent struggling over the formula: "The pope, who
makes use of the counsel of the whole church and its assistance,
cannot fall into error." Had it been accepted, the minority at the
Council would have been fully satisfied.
Bishop Hefele of Rottenburg proposed to formulate the infallibility of
the pope in such way that the Church would always remain included
in it; to say in effect that "the pope is . . . infallible, supported by the
ecclesiastical tradition or by the counsel and the help of the whole
magisterium." He gave explanations of this which said that the second
clause referred to the ordinary cases in which infallibility is
exercisedfor it is exercised by the antecedent or simultaneous
consensus of the bishops. The first clause: "supported by the
ecclesiastical tradition," referred to cases in which the tradition is so
clear that the pope considers it to be justified to omit asking the rest of
the magisterium.8
This position was supported by a sensational address of Cardinal
Guidi, who explained that in the decree it should be made clear that it
is not the pope alone who pronounces a definition, but the pope in
agreement with the bishops. Thus he wanted to have included in the
definition: "After he has carried out investigations relative to the
tradition of the rest of the churches and has sought the counsel of a
larger or smaller number of bishops, according to the nature of the
case, and also after he has examined the matter himself and called on
the assistance of the Holy Spirit," he cannot fall into error. The
cardinal also proposed a canon: "If anyone holds that the pope of
Rome, when he promulgates dogmatic decrees or constitutions, is
acting from his own will and from a plenitude of power independently
of the Church, i.e., apart from her and not on the basis of the counsel
of the bishops who proclaim the tradition to their church, let him be
anathema."9
There was always the hope that, within the different groups and
tendencies of the Council, an agreement could be reached which
would describe the special position of an ex cathedra decision of the
pope and at the same time avert the misunderstanding of an isolated
infallibility. In any case the following is noteworthy: The formulation
proposed on the agreement of the Church was rejected by the majority
on the grounds that this concept was ambiguous, for it could signify
both factual agreement with the Church as well as the act of
agreement of the
8 Edward Cuthbert ButlerH. Lang, The Vatican Council: The Story from
Inside in Bishop Ullathorne's Letter, vol. 1 (New York: Longmans, Green
& Co., 1930) 145.
9 Ibid. 9697.

Page 589
bishops to the decrees. Precisely this ambiguous concept was
ultimately, especially (due to the efforts of Cardinal Manning at
literally the last minute and in a not entirely unobjectionable
procedural way) taken up into the final text, but in the formulation,
equally ambiguous and even more difficult in interpretation, "but not
on the basis of the agreement of the Church." The proposal of Bishop
Dupanloup to delete these words and replace them with the formula
"based on the witness of the churches,"10 did not get approved.
Equally unsuccessful was also the quite different proposal of a group
of maximalists: "that the definitions are of themselves irrevocable
without need of any further agreement on the part of the bishops,
neither antecedent, nor simultaneous, nor subsequent."11
Why the various qualifying proposals of the minority on this point
were not accepted is not easy to say. It was surely not to separate the
pope from the Church, for the Council was of one mind in rejecting an
isolated infallibility. But it was claimed that this kind of qualification
would be hard to understand and apply (as if the rejection non ex
consensu ecclesiae were more certain and more clear!). It was claimed
that it didn't sufficiently emphasize the special position of the pope,
and because it would be taken for granted that the pope, in a dogmatic
decision, would do everything and make use of every means to
realized his decision as a decision of the whole Church. These were
understood to be moral obligations containing an elevated moral
stringency which, as such, could not be juridically and dogmatically
laid down.
That this is no mere surmise can be drawn from the fact that in the
official text of the Council explicit reference was made to these facts:
"The bishop of Rome, in accordance with the needs of the time and
the circumstances, by calling general assemblies of churches or
investigation of the view of the churches spread around the world, by
partial synods or by other means such as Divine Providence made
available, have set down as firm doctrine that which they, with God's
help, have recognized to be in agreement with the Holy Scriptures and
the apostolic traditions. For even to the successors of Peter the Holy
Spirit is not promised in such a way that they, of their own authority,
could publish a new teaching. Rather, they are, with the Spirit's
assistance, to protect as holy and interpret faithfully the tradition
handed on from the apostles, i.e., the deposit of faith they left
behind."12
For this reason one has to reject the position of Hans Küng: "This is
not the teaching of Vatican I: If he wants to, the pope can do anything,
even without the Church.""An arbitrary, authoritarian, single-handed
action of the pope against the Church is a legitimate conse-
10 R. Aubert, Vatikanum I (Mainz, 1965) 274.
11 Ibid. 273.
12 DS 3069 (NR 385).

Page 590
quence of the dogma of 1870." "For full validity, no antecedent,
simultaneous or consequent agreement of the Church, no consultation,
cooperation, or ratification of the episcopacy is necessary." Equally
indefensible is Küng's thesis that it is the meaning of Vatican I that
infallible propositions "not only are de facto not in error, but in
principle it is not even possible for them to be in error." Kung's claim
is that we are dealing with a priori infallible propositions. However,
faith propositions are always a posteriori propositions.13
Küng's propositions are not to be found in what comes from the First
Vatican Council but in the survival of the maximalists and papalists,
who did not get what they wanted in the Council, were disappointed,
and attempted to remedy this "defect" by a special program of
subsequent interpretation and application. Consequently it must be
said that such a manipulated post-Vatican program of interpretation
and application is in no sense a mere legitimate consequence of the
dogma of 1870; it is rather to be blamed on failures, on not attending
to and not bringing to reality what really was the intention of Vatican
I: to emphasize the relationship of pope and Church. This relationship
was expressly emphasized in the collective declaration of the German
bishops in 1875 in answer to the claim of Bismarck regarding the
concept of the primacy of the pope as a sovereign, "who, because of
his infallibility, is a totally absolute sovereign, more than any other
absolute monarch in the world." This was characterized by the
German bishops as a contradiction to the dogma of 1870, and Pius IX
agreed.14 Unfortunately, this letter of the German episcopacy
remained quite unknown and had little practical effect. In the
outcome, the point which was not denied but rather taken for granted
and not so sharply accentuated, namely the relationship of pope and
Church, was upstaged by the prerogatives of the papacy.
The Historical Background
If the words "not on the basis of the agreement of the Church" were
added to the final formulation, then what preceded them cannot be
adduced in contradiction. On the other hand, this formula cannot stand
in contradiction to the textual context. As must be pointed out, this
addition has an historical address: Gallicanism. It was believed,
whether rightly or wrongly, that a barrier had to be set up against the
fourth Gallican article, which says that the judgment of the pope is not
definitive unless the Church has given its agreement. It follows that
the "non ex consensu ecclesiae" means the so-called consensus
subsequens, i.e., the subsequent agreement as additional and
subsequent act of the
13 H. Küng, Infallibile? An Unresolved Enquiry 85, 83, 124.
14 DS 3112-3116 (NR 388a).

Page 591
bishops. In other words, the "of themselves but not on the basis of the
agreement of the Church" cannot mean that in his doctrinal decisions
the pope is absolved from agreement with the Church; it can and does
say only that a proclamation of a dogma by the pope as the supreme
shepherd and teacher of the whole Church, which has come to pass
under these presuppositions and conditions, is not subject in a formal-
juridical way to any further act of agreement.
The formulation "of themselves, but not on the basis of the agreement
of the Church" is explainable from its historical background. Because,
however, by the time of Vatican I this background was no longer very
present, and because it has by our own time quite faded away, the
formula is easily misunderstandable. But when the textual context of
the Council is taken account of and the perspectives we have been
expounding are kept in mind, i.e., that the infallibility of the papal ex
cathedra decisions derive from the promise given to the whole Church
that she would be in the truth and the truth in her, it then becomes
clear that it was a concern, even at Vatican I, to understand the office
of the pope as deriving from the Church (and not vice versa) and thus
to make his ex cathedra decisions into the voice of faith and
acknowledgment of faith of the whole Church. This is impossible if he
does not stand in constant contact with the faith-understanding of the
Church (sensus ecclesiae), if he thus does not have the antecedent and
simultaneous agreement of the Church (consensus ecclesiae) and, in
whatever way, makes sure of that.
The comprehensive explanations that Bishop Gasser gave in the name
of the Deputation for Faith, which was concerned above all with the
explanation of the concepts involved and took into consideration the
objections being raised, confirm this thesis in many details. Bishop
Basser's report on the addition "but not on the basis of the agreement
of the Church" reads: The intent here is to say something about the
legal basis from which the binding power of a definition of the pope
comes, but not about the basis of knowledge from which the pope
draws. This "of themselves" is thus a "statement about the dogmatic
definitions, not about the pope and about his obligation to draw his
definitions from revelation and from the faith of the Church."15
The Second Vatican Council
In view of the questions and problems that stem from the dogma of
the "infallible magisterium of the bishop of Rome" proclaimed at the
First Vatican Council, the obvious next question is how this dogma is
to be understood today, after the Second Vatican Council. The formula
of Vatican I, that the solemn doctrinal decisions of the bishop of Rome
are
15 K. Rahner, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. H.
Vorgrimler, 1.20816.

Page 592
irrevocable "of themselves, but not on the basis of the agreement of
the Church" comes up again in Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on
the Church. In the long third chapter "On the Hierarchical Structure of
the Church, in Particular on the Office of Bishop," the decisive
propositions from the constitution Pastor aeternus of 1869 are
repeated. The statements on the bishops and the college of bishops are
constantly brought face-to-face with the fact of the primacy of the
pope and the infallibility of his ex cathedra decisions. In addition, the
already-existing formulation that the definitive doctrinal decisions of
the pope are irrevocable "of themselves and not on the basis of the
agreement of the Church" is taken over word-for-word. They are
moderated only to the extent that the "but not" is changed to an ''and
not." They are also expanded by the addition "They thus require no
confirmation by others and are subject to no appeal to another
judgment" (Lumen gentium no. 25).
Context is important for an understanding of this text. This third
chapter on the hierarchical structure of the Church is placed after the
great themes "On the Mystery of the Church" and "On the People of
God" (chaps. 1 and 2). This can and should express in what context, in
what function, and in whose service stand the hierarchical structure,
the college of bishops and its head the pope, together with all their
duties: they stand in the service of a mystery, a truth, and a reality of
faith; they stand in the service of and in function of the people of God.
Infallibility is given to the Church as a defense provided by its divine
Redeemer for the definitive grounding and support of doctrine on faith
and morals (no. 25). The application and extent of this doctrine and its
role in the service of the truth of revelationas the previously made
distinctions make clearis specified: "It extends as far as does the
treasure of divine revelation, which is to be protected intact and
interpreted with fidelity." (This formulation is taken word-for-word
from the first draft prepared at Vatican I for the Constitution on the
Church of Christ.)16 With the formulation "protect intact" are
included also truths connected with the protection of the contents of
revelation, even if they are themselves not formally revealed. The
words "interpret with fidelity" refer to the development of a truth of
faith which takes place in the course of history.
The infallibility of the Church thus described and limited is present in
the bishop of Rome, "he enjoys it," in virtue of his being head of the
college of bishops; it becomes effective "when the teacher of all the
Christian faithful proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals in a
definitive act." This gives clear expression to the real character of
infallibility, which becomes actual only now and then; In specific
moments and
16 F. van de Horst, Das Schema über die Kirche auf dem 1. Vatikanischen
Konzil (Paderborn, 1963).

Page 593
actions, the promise of the assistance of the Holy Spirit connected
with the Petrine office becomes effective. In this case "the bishop of
Rome makes his decision not as a private person, but, as supreme
teacher of the whole Church, he interprets and protects Catholic
doctrine." Take note, at this precise point, of the idea of the "general
in the particular" mentioned abovenot indeed in the language of power
and official authority, but in that of charism: the grace "of the
infallibility of the Church itself is then, in this decisive function of the
bishop of Rome, present in a unique way" (no. 25).
The same relationship is clarified from still another perspective and
starting point in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. It is said
that the Holy People of God shares in the prophetic office of Christ. It
is indeed affirmed that "the totality of the faithful who have the
anointing of the Spirit (1 John 2:20 and 27) cannot err in faith. This
special quality of theirs is made known through their supernatural
sense of faith when they, from the bishops down to the last believing
lay person, express their general agreement in matters of faith and
morals" (no. 12). Here is express mention of the general agreement of
the People of Godi.e. the Church.
The constitution Lumen gentium says something that wasn't as clearly
expressed in Vatican I: "The infallibility promised to the Church is
also given to the body of the bishops" (no. 25). Now it is always said
of the college of bishops that it is a special college because of the
position in it of the successor of Peter, that without him the function
of the college cannot be fulfilled, because without its head the college
is not full and present: "The college. . . . of bishops has authority only
when understood to be in communion with the bishop of Rome, the
successor of Peter, as its head and without encroachment on his
primatial power over all shepherds and faithful" (no. 22).
The statements about the "full, supreme, and universal power" of the
bishop of Rome are repeated in Vatican II, which also adds that the
pope can always freely exercise this power. The new Code of Canon
Law repeats this same statement (can. 331).
One must nevertheless keep in mind that in the context of our text (no.
25), the relationship of the college of bishops to the pope as the head
of the college is not formulated as "under the Roman pope" but as
"together with the successor of Peter." Another formulation in the
same place speaks of the "bond of communion among themselves and
with the successor of Peter." A further precision and clarification of
Vatican I by the Second Vatican Council takes place when it is said
that the bishop of Rome and the college of bishops, in their search for
truth in the exercise of this office, have an obligation to revelation, "to
accept which and to agree with which all are bound.'' "To investigate it
[revelation] correctly and represent it properly, the bishop of Rome
and

Page 594
the bishops take great pains with the appropriate means, as befits their
obligation and the weight of the matter. However, they do not receive
any new revelation pertaining to the divine content of faith." The
phrase "take great pains" is, according to the commentary of Karl
Rahner, "to be understood as a directive of the language of law: Their
taking great pains must be directed to that." The "appropriate means"
(apta media) are available today in theology and in the life of the
Church to an incomparably greater degree than before, and they are to
be made use of in an incomparably more comprehensive way in this
common effort.17
A significant number of clarifications and emphases in Lumen
gentium have the cumulative effect of considerably lessening the
possibility of misunderstanding the formula of 1869. Among these
are: (a) the location of the "ex sese, non ex consensu ecclesiae" in the
overall understanding of the Church and of the infallibility promised
to her; (b) the precision provided by the reference to infallibility as a
grace granted for a particular, passing occasion; (c) the express
mention of the infallibility of the body of the bishops; (d) the mention
of the obligation to the word of truth of revelation and to the
responsibility for the faith; (e) the repeatedly mentioned reference to
the community which is made up of the whole Church, the People of
God. It can also be said that the question of the bearers of the charism
of infallibility can, after Vatican II, be answered even more clearly
than before: the subject of infallibility is the "college of bishops,"
whose head is the pope and which, without this head, is not complete.
On the other hand the pope, in definitive ex cathedra decisions, acts as
head of the college of bishops.
If the pope defines at one time acting alone, at another time acting
together with the council, we don't have two acts of two different
subjects, but two modes of procedure of one and the same subject,
which differ from each other only in the circumstance that in one case
the one moral subject is spread over the face of the earth, and in the
other case, is gathered in one place so that the cooperation and
agreeing participation of the members of the college with its head are
more obviously visible.18
In the book Einigung der KircheReale Möglichkeit (Unification of the
ChurchReal Possibility) the attempt is made in one thesis (IV b) to
mediate the ex cathedra teaching authority of the pope in such a way
as to make sense of it today ecumenically. This proposal would
17 K. Rahner, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, edited by H.
Vorgrimler, 1.20816.
18 K. Rahner, "The ius divinum of the Individual Bishop" in: K. RahnerJ.
Ratzinger, The Episcopate and the Primacy, trans. Kenneth Barker and others
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1962) 109; L. Scheffczyk, "Träger der
Unfehlbarkeit in Ekklesiologischer Sicht," ThQ 142 (1962) 31028.

Page 595
have the pope "declare (iure humano), that he will make use of his
supreme (ex cathedra) teaching authority given him according to
Catholic principles by Vatican I only in a way that, juridically or
factually, corresponds to a general council of the whole Church, just
as his previous ex cathedra decisions came about in agreement with
and getting the sense of the whole Catholic episcopacy."
The Authentic Magisterium
For clarification, the magisterium ordinarium is also called the
authentic magisterium of the pope ("cum non ex cathedra loquitur").
To it and to its statements is due a "religious obedience of the will and
understanding," as well as a respectful acknowledgment and
adherence, "according to the content and intention of the particular
teaching." This can be recognized primarily "from the nature of the
documents, the frequency of the occurrence of one and the same
doctrine, and the manner of speaking" (no. 25). But one of the great
problems with this is the frequent tendency also to attribute to these
statements the additional quality of infallibility.
To this must also be added that this same magisterium has also made
mistakes. The most spectacular case, the one with the worst
consequences, is probably the condemnation of Galileo, which has
since (but only quite recently) been reversed. The proposition of
Martin Luther, that burning heretics contradicts the will of the Spirit
(of God), was condemned by Pope Leo X. Pope Gregory XVI rejected
in the sharpest possible terms the demand for religious freedom and
freedom of conscience,19 now explicitly professed and solemnly
proclaimed at Vatican II. The ecumenical movement was dismissed by
Pius XI in the encyclical Mortalium animos of 1928 as
Panchristianism while Vatican II speaks of the same ecumenical
movement as a work of the Holy Spirit. The modern theory of
evolution was seen as a contradiction to the doctrine of creation, but
today, their mutual correlation is acknowledged. The proposition
"Extra ecclesiam nulla salus" is interpreted differently today than at
the time of its formulationor in the terrifying language of the Council
of Florence.20
An example from most recent times is the continuing and still
unresolved discussion about the encyclical of Paul VI Humanae vitae
on the question of birth control, teachings that are being explicitly
repeated by Pope John Paul II,21 without even faithful Catholics fully
agreeing with them.
19 DS.2731.
20 DS 1351.
21 F. BöckleC. Holenstein, ed., Die Enzyklika in der Diskussion (Zürich,
1968); B. Häring, "Krise um Humanae Vitae," ThQ 149 (1969) 7585; H.
Fries, "Nach Humanae Vitae" in: Ärgernis und Widerspruch, 2d ed.
(Würzburg, 1968) 17590; K. Rahner, "On the

(footnote continued on next page)

Page 596
One statement valid to this day was given by J. H. Newman in his
comment on Vatican I.
But a pope is not infallible in his laws, nor in his commands, nor in his acts
of state, nor in his administration, nor in his public policy. Let it be
observed that the Vatican Council has left him just as it found him
here. . . . Was St. Peter infallible on that occasion at Antioch when St. Paul
withstood him? was St. Victor infallible when he separated from his
communion the Asiatic Churches? or Liberius when in like manner he
excommunicated Athanasius? And, to come to later times, was Gregory
XIII, when he had a medal struck in honour of the Bartholomew massacre?
or Paul IV. in his conduct towards Elizabeth? or Sixtus V. when he blessed
the Armada? or Urban VII. when he persecuted Galileo? No Catholic ever
pretends that these Popes were infallible in these acts. Since then
infallibility alone could block the exercize of conscience, and the Pope is
not infallible in that subjectmatter in which conscience is of supreme
authority, no dead-lock, such as is implied in the objections which I am
answering, can take place between conscience and the Pope.22

Critical Questions
As we look back on the First and Second Vatican councils, we can ask
whether it made sense to take over a formulation that was burdened
with many factual misunderstandings and that even now needs a great
deal of interpretation. This applies both to the "in themselves" and to
the "and not on the basis of the agreement of the Church"for precisely
this addition was and remains a cause of misunderstanding. It is not
clear why, precisely in the spirit of Vatican II, one shouldn't have gone
ahead to remove misunderstandings as far as possible. Now that
doesn't mean concealing or denying the difference between the
confessions which, precisely in the question of the Petrine office and
its function, is given for the faith of the Church. What it is about is not
burdening this difference with formulations or, perhaps, pushing them
in a direction not at all intended by the truth and the meaning of the
Petrine office.
The statement of the explanatory prenote: "The pope as supreme
shepherd of the Church can exercise his power at any time as he sees
fit, as is required by his office," is anything but a felicitous
formulation, even if it can also be said that the maximalist-sounding
"as he sees fit" is given some precision and limitation by the addition:
"as is
(footnote continued from previous page)
Encyclical Humanae Vitae," Theological Investigations 11 (New York,
1974) 26387. Recent discussion of this and related themes may be found
in: J. T. Noonan, "Development in Moral Doctrine," Theological Studies
54 (1993) 66277; G. Grisez and F. A. Sullivan, "Quaestio Disputata: The
Ordinary Magisterium's Infallibility," Theological Studies 55 (1994)
72038; J. E. Thiel, "Tradition and Authoratative Reasoning," Theological
Studies 56 (1995) 62751; R. F. Castigan, "Bossuet and the Consensus of
the Church," Theological Studies 56 (1995) 65272.
22 J. H. Newman, Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk
(London: B. M. Pickering, 1875) 6263.

Page 597
required by his office." What this in fact intends to say, and is indeed
emphasized, is that "the activity of the pope stands under no external
tribunal that can be brought up against him, but that he is also bound
to the internal claim of his office: revelation and the Church. But this
inner claim of his office also includes without doubt a moral bond to
the voice of the whole Church."23
The question arises whether, in accordance with the intention of the
Council, one should not have tried to express the ancient and
irreformable truth, which goes with confession to the fact and function
of the Petrine office, in a new language and formulation in order to
protect this truth from misinterpretations and false associations.
There is, for the same reason, the question whether the certainly
ancient and firmly established word infallibilitas, infallibility, is a
good word which says what it intends, and which under all
circumstances must be retained.24 Whether we like it or not, the word
infallibility contains, in the connotations of our contemporary
language, a fullness of maximalist meanings extending from moral
integrity to a faith-expressing and theological ne plus ultra. Precisely
this is what is not meant by infallibility, but is denied by it.
The same Council explicitly says: Never will reason illuminated by
faith become
capable of apprehending mysteries as it does those truths which constitute
its proper object. For the divine mysteries by their own nature so far
transcend the created intelligence that, even when delivered by revelation
and received by faith, they remain coveredwith the veil of faith itself, and
shrouded in a certain degree of darkness, so long as we are pilgrims in this
mortal life, not yet with God; "for we walk by faith and not by sight" (2
Cor 5:7).25
But if this is the case and the word "infallibility" today calls forth the
inappropriate associations we have mentioned, should one then not
call to mind the law that one must sometimes seek new formulas and
concepts to express what is intended in the old formulations? Must we
not remind ourselves that mere repetitions of the formulations of the
past can lead to misunderstanding of the matter in hand? Perhaps the
concept "inerrancy," (or Möhler's "Unverirrlichkeit") might be more
suitableor simply the concept "true" and "truth'' in connection with the
concept "binding," which in the case of supreme engagement can
become ultimately binding. Binding then means not an arbitrary but
an authentic statement grounded in the reality of faith
23 J. Ratzinger, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. H.
Vorgrimler, 1.3034.
24 H. Fries, "Das mißverständliche Wort" in: K. Rahner, ed., Zum Problem
der Unfehlbarkeit. Antworten auf den Anfragen von Hans Küng 21632; also,
"Die nicht ausgehaltene Spannung. Überlegungen zur Auseinandersetzung
um Hans Küng" in: Dienst am Glauben (Munich, 1981) 94108.
25 DS 3016 (NR 43); also, H. Fries, "Das Problem der Vollständigkeit im
Bereich von Glaube und Lehre" in: Dienst am Glauben 5973.

Page 598
and, for that reason, normative for the community of believers. Add to
this that "binding" also has to do with connection in the sense of
unification and grammatical rule.
"Infallible" means, therefore that what is said and decided in certain
statements of the magisteriumstatements that are precisely
circumscribed as to their presuppositions, content, and formis not
false, is not erroneous and, to that extent, is true. But, within the
context of truth as a possibility in human statement, what is thus said
and decided still stands under the laws of the inadequate, finite,
perspectival, analogous, and misunderstandable; for this is the law of
faith and of all functions in the service of the faith as well as of all its
articulations, to which doctrine and definition or definability belong.
But all these just-named qualifications are not the same as
"erroneous." It is precisely this distinction that is not found with
sufficient clarity in Hans Küng. The lack of this distinction thus forms
a new source of misunderstandings.
The quality of the not-false, and, to that extent, of infallibility, is
found in such articulations of faith in the way which Küng himself
explains under the basic thesis: The faith of the Church relies on
propositions, because in its content it is a specific faith, because it is a
faith that has to be able to communicate itself, has to be able to say
and articulate what it means and whereof it speaks. The community of
faith and of believers depends on there being a community of
language, of understanding of language, and of grammar.26
It is a basic concern of Hans Küng to emphasize that the Church,
despite all errors, abides in the truth. But if so, Küng asks, how can
the Church abide in the truth, despite all errors, if, in its service to the
faith there are not alsocertainly not onlyinfallible
propositionsinfallible in the sense of binding, true propositions? To be
fair, one must admit that Küng does explicitly say this. But because of
his previous misunderstanding of infallibility as a "superadditum," as
"infallible propositions guaranteed from the outset [a priori]," he
comes to his dialectical formulation: The Church abides in the truth
despite all errors. One must further ask: How is this abiding of the
Church in the truth, despite all errors, to be recognized and realized if
not also in true propositions? The same holds for abiding in the truth
in the sense of the promise that God remains faithful to his work and
Word in Jesus of Nazareth.
What the First Vatican Council defined and what was subsequently
taken up in the second Vatican Council is the fact that, to the instances
and acts through which a bindingly true statement can come about,
thus to the dogmatic decisions of the councils, belongs also the
magisterium of the bishop of Rome. It belongs there in a precisely cir-
26 H. Küng, Infallible? An Unresolved Enquiry, 11823.

Page 599
cumscribed way according to form and content as well as according to
presuppositions and conditions. This represents the opposite of an a
priori and is possible only a posteriori.
In the "Final Report" of the Anglican-Catholic dialogue one reads:
The preservation of the Church in the truth makes it necessary "that
the Church, in specific moments, be able to make a definitive decision
on essential questions of doctrine, which then become a part of its
abiding witness" (24). On the universal level, the Church can make
such decisions at general ecumenical councils, but the universal
primate can also speak in a binding way in the name of the whole
Church (26). "If the responsibility to protect the Church from
fundamental errors is a responsibility of the whole Church, it can still
be carried out in its place [i.e. of the whole church] by a universal
primate" (28).
These considerations are to be applied to a still-wider concept: the
concept "irreformabilis," irreformable, which is contained in the
formula under discussion. In its apodictic version it will not properly
fit into the program of a council which conceives its goal to be
reformatio and which it so impressively realized in its proclamations;
a council which repeatedly mentioned and set as its task the
distinction between unchangeable truth and historical form of
expression.27 But the concept "irreformabilis" is also in extreme need
of interpretation. So the question again arises whether a better-fitting
formulation could not have, if not totally eliminated, at least alleviated
this concern. For "irreformabilis" does indeed intend to exclude errors
of faith from the definition, but it does not intend to say downright
and absolute unchangeability. It includes the possibility of another,
more suitable, or more comprehensive, or more complete version,
which to be sure does not fall short of the truth already expressed in a
definition, or which allows it to fall back into a state of unclarity, but
which can open up an even deeper understanding of something
formulated in a definition, and from that deeper understanding make a
new formulation attainable. But will not this fact and possibility be
more distorted than opened up by the word "irreformabilis''?
Magisterium and the Word of God
Ecumenically speaking, what is perhaps the most important
accentuation and at the same time the strongest protection against a
possible misunderstanding of the "ex sese" was provided by Vatican
II's Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation, above all by the statement it
27 "Die Erklärung der römischen Glaubenskongregation 'Mysterium
ecclesiae."' German Text in HerKorr 27 (1973), 41621; also K. Rahner,
"Mysterium Ecclesiae," Theological Investigations, vol. 17, trans.
Margaret Kohl (New York: Crossroad, 1981) 13955; M. Seckler, in ThQ
153 (1973) 38082.

Page 600
made about the magisterium of the Church and in the Church: "The
magisterium does not stand above the Word of God, but serves it, in
that it teaches nothing but what has been handed on, because it
reverently accepts the Word of God in divine commission and with the
assistance of the Holy Spirit, protects it in holiness, and interprets it in
fidelity" (Dei verbum, no. 10).
"Holy tradition" is so understood that it too is a way in which the
Word of God is present, even if also not in the manner of the inspired
Scripture. "Holy tradition and the Sacred Scripture form the one
treasure of the Word of God given to the Church. Devoted to it, the
whole People, united with its shepherd, perseveres with constancy in
the teaching of the apostles and in community with them, in the
breaking of the bread and in prayer, so that in this holding fast to the
faith of the tradition, in its realization and in its confession, a unique
unity reigns between the heads and the faithful." Thus ''holy tradition,
Sacred Scripture, and the magisterium of the Church are so connected
and united with each other that no one of them exists without the other
and that each together, each in its own way, under the influence of the
one Holy Spirit, effectively serves the salvation of souls."
According to these wordswhich do not by any means clarify all
questions regarding Scripture and Tradition, but do provide space for
further theological reflection on themit is established that there can be
no doubt about the primacy and the incomparability of the Word of
God in the Church. The Church knows and publicly proclaims that it
is placed under the authority of the Word of God. It clearly
understands its activity expressly as service to this Word, not as being
in charge over it.28
Here is an unambiguous answer to Karl Barth's characterization of the
Roman Catholic Church and its magisterium quoted at the beginning
of this chapter, namely, his idea of the Church claiming to be identical
with revelation and thus having control over the Word of God. The
alternatives he set up at that timeChurch of self-governance or Church
of obedience, Church of claim or Church of humilityhave now turned
out to be quite impossible. It is worthy of note that Karl Barth himself
finally recognized this. His repeated remarks on Vatican II support
this assessment.29
It is of course important to place the correct interpretation of the "in
themselves, not on the basis of the agreement of the Church" in the
framework of the context and the whole text of the Council. But it is
much more important to place it in the framework of the Council's
fundamental structure and fundamental intention. And most important
of
28 W. Kasper, Dogma unter dem Wort Gottes (Mainz, 1965).
29 K. Barth, Ad limina Apostolorum: An Appraisal of Vatican II, trans Keith
R. Crim (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1968).

Page 601
all for the credibility of the Church is the practical exercise of this
magisterium as a ministry, a ministry in which it isn't the powerful
formulation and choice of words that gets expressed with all
solemnity, power and energy, but rather the humility of service to the
faith, the responsibility and modesty which even in true statements
remains conscious of itself, and which is part and parcel of our
knowledge, a looking in mirrors and enigmas and not a knowledge as
we ourselves are known (cf. 1 Cor 13:12). As Thomas Aquinas taught
even and especially in matters of faith, all modes of the "expressible"
fall short of the "reality."
In his answer to the declaration of the German Bishops' Conference,
Hans Küng notes that in the declaration of the bishops, his question
about the possibility of not only true but also of guaranteed infallible
propositions was avoided. The word "infallible," significantly, does
not even occur in the whole declaration. I see in this, in contrast to
Küng, not as an avoidance of the reality under discussion, but a most
welcome attempt, by leaving out and avoiding the easily
misunderstood concept "infallible," to offer a new articulation of the
matter, and thus, by getting away from what concretizes, narrows, and
defends, to say something about the matter itself. What is meant by
"infallible," and what this includes as gift and responsibility of the
Church, also in view of infallible propositions, is thus formulated by
the German bishops:
The binding quality proper to the revelational Word of God finds its
concrete expression in the Credo of the Church with which, by way of
answer, it takes up the revelation witnessed in the Bible. Although the faith
of the Church must be constantly thought out anew, and hence remains
unclosed until the end of history, it includes an unmistakeable Yes and an
unmistakeable No which are both nonegotiable. Without this, an abiding of
the Church in the truth of Jesus Christ is not possible. It is the right and
obligation of the Church, in view of the new questions that arise in various
historical situations, on the one hand to give room for a fundamental
thinking out of the faith, but on the other hand, where necessary, to express
anew in a binding way its nonegotiable Yes and No to these questions.30
30 As quoted in K. Rahner, ed., Zum Problem der Unfehlbarkeit 373.

Page 602
§ 59
The Ecclesiastical Magisterium and Holy Scripture
In the Catholic Church, the ecclesiastical magisterium is represented
by the college of bishops, to which belongs the bishop of Rome as
head of the college. It is in the bishops that we find the realizations of
the mandate and mission of the apostles for the particular current
situation of the Church. The apostolic witness, the apostolic teaching,
and the binding orientation towards the whole Church which calls
itself apostolic, are entrusted to the bishops in a special, "official"
way, to be protected, preserved, and made present. Vatican II says:
The bishops are heralds of the faith who lead new disciples to Christ; they
are authentic teachers, i.e., endowed with the authority of Christ. To the
people entrusted to them they proclaim the message of faith and apply it to
the moral life and expound it in the light of the Holy Spirit by bringing
forth new and old from the treasure of revelation (cf. Matt 13:52). They
thus make the faith become fruitful and they vigilantly keep their flock
away from threatening errors (cf. 2 Tim 4:1-4Lumen gentium 25).1

The liturgy of the ordination of bishops describes the obligations of

the bishop. The first question addresses the most important task: "Will
you make every effort to penetrate with all your wisdom into the
understanding of Holy Scripture?" The second question is: "Will you
in word and example teach what you have read in the study of Holy
Scripture to the people for whom you are consecrated?"2
This duty is then expressed in an impressive symbol: the book of the
Gospels is laid on the neck of the bishop being consecratedan
eloquent sign of who is the master and who the servant; then follows
the laying on of hands. In doing so, the consecrators say: "Receive the
Holy Spirit!" Towards the end of the ordination ceremony, the book of
the Gospels is handed over with the words: "Take the Gospel! Go and
1Lumen gentium, no. 25.
2 Cf. H. Fries,"Die Bedeutung der Heiligen Schrift für die Kirche nach
katholischem Verständnis" in: Zur Auferbauung des Leibes Christi, Festgabe
für Peter Brunner (Kassel, 1965) 2840, at 28.

Page 603
preach it to the people entrusted to you! God is powerful to give you
His grace. He lives and reigns for ever."
At the councils and at conciliar meetings, the Bible is solemnly
enthroned and placed in the middle of the council hall. This ceremony
is doubtless intended to express the will and intention that all the
considerations and decisions of a council are intended to stand in the
service of Holy Scripture and, ultimately, of its interpretation.
All this constitutes a powerful expression of the extent to which
bishops, in carrying out their office and their responsibility as
witnesses of faith and of the teaching of the Holy Scripture, are
obligated to its proclamation, communication, and interpretation.
Dogma and Holy Scripture
The ecclesiastical magisterium refers to sacred Scripture when it
exercises its function in important matters: in its decisions in faith and
doctrine as they are made, for example, in general councils, in the
formulation of propositions of faith, and of dogmas, which claim to be
the contents of the revelation of God and thus also the contents of
faith.
Dogmas are statements of faith with the claim to be true and to be
binding. If that is so, then dogmas must have a basis in the basic
document of faith, Sacred Scripture. Accordingly, dogmas are also a
consequence of the Church's connection with Scripture; they are an
interpretation of Scripture in view of a concrete situation that requires
a decision and needs clarity. Thus dogmas are an interpretation of
Scripture in the language and in the concepts of a particular epoch.
In faith and doctrinal decisions, in dogmatic formulations of the
ecclesiastical magisterium, one constantly finds references to Sacred
Scripture and quotations from it. This is understandable and necessary
if these decisions are to express that what is said in dogmaexpressed
often in unbiblical language and philosophical conceptsis related to
the origin of faith and its basic document.
First of all, the texts from Holy Scripture found in the dogmas are
only quoted; they are not presented by the magisterium in a kind of
exegesis. They serve as factual evidence, as "dicta probantia," i.e. as
passages that confirm what is said by the magisterium. In other words,
doctrinal decisions do not result from some kind of magisterial
exegesis. Doctrinal decisions are statements about some aspect of the
faith which has to be decided, or perhaps limited, here and now. These
decisions concern some aspect of the content of faith that is now alive
in the faith of the Church as a whole, i.e., present in the Church's
confession of faith, in its preaching, in the liturgy, and also, primarily,
in the witness of Scripture.

Page 604
Several points must be underlined: There are very few bible texts
whose meaning the magisterium has declared to be binding. There are
twelve New Testament, passages about which it can be said that a
doctrinal decision follows de textu citato, i.e. by appealing to the
quoted biblical text. These passages are related (as, e.g., at the Council
of Trent) to original sin, baptism, Eucharist, and confession. In
Vatican I, Scripture is explicitly appealed to in support of so-called
"natural revelation," as well as for the position of Peter, for his
primacy and power of the keys. But even for these doctrines, no
individual exegesis is given in the conciliar texts; it is said only that
some specific content of doctrine and faith has its factual support and
its "ultimate basis" in the scriptural text(s) referred to. Thuson the part
of Catholicismno particular exegesis is either prescribed or forbidden.
One must also be aware of one of Catholic theology's valid principles
of interpretation. This states that the claim to the binding quality, the
claim to the truth, and, ultimately, to the "infallibility" of an aspect of
faith present in a dogma is related to and limited to only that specific
aspect of faith. This means that the grounding reasons of a biblical,
historical, or even philosophical nature which are claimed as evidence
and support for these statements of faith, do not, in their function as
grounding reasons, share in the infallibility of the dogma itself. This
means that the claiming of a specific biblical text as evidence and
proof of a dogma does not say that we have here an infallible
application of Scripture in the sense of a scriptural interpretation of
the magisterium. This is, among other things, a demonstration of the
primacy and superiority of praxis, of the lived faith, of faith existence,
over its theoretical groundingapart from the fact that the biblical texts
on baptism and Eucharist describe a praxis. In this rule of
interpretation, exegesis as scholarly interpretation of Scripture is left
to, and confirmed in, its proper sphere of activity.
But this leads to another problem.
The Magisterium and the Interpretation of Scripture
The Councils of Trent as well as of Vatican I and II have made the
following statements on the interpretation of Scripture. Trent decreed:
In order to keep irresponsible spirits in check: no one should presume, in
matters of faith and morals which belong to the building up of Christian
doctrine, trusting in his own cleverness, either to twist the Scripture to his
own purpose against the meaning which Holy Mother the Church held and
holdsshe is the one to pass judgment on the true meaning and explanation
of Sacred Scriptureor to interpret Sacred Scripture contrary to the
unanimous opinion of the Fathers.3
3 DS 1507 (cf. NR 86).

Page 605
This text had in mind specific abuses of the time; its purpose is to
bring about a genuine renewal. The abuses of that time related to
"irresponsible spirits": they also had in mind the poor theological and,
above all, poor exegetical education of priests. This text is intended to
counter such things as the proclamations of preachers who, relying on
abstruse accounts of miracles and private revelations, were arbitrarily
interpreting (twisting) the Scripture as they saw fit, and thus falsifying
the gospel.
Against these people, attention was called to that rule of
interpretation: The Scripture is to be interpreted in the sense to which
the Church has held and still holds. That means, to be concreteand this
was specifically mentionedin the sense of the "doctores and magistri"
of Sacred Scripture whom the Church recognizes. This means not just
the bishops but also theologians and lay people too. As the Council
protocol shows, the idea of keeping the interpretation of Scripture
solely a matter of the magisterium was explicitly rejected.4 The sense
which the Church has held, and holds means, further: It is the
interpretation which is to be found in the authentic tradition, thus the
decisions of the councils and also the unanimous witness of the
Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Here unanimity is importantone
single statement of one single theologian, however wise and
important, clearly does not fulfill these conditions.5
A further precision is given to the proposition that the competency in
interpretation claimed by the magisterium is related to the sphere of
faith and morals: to "fides et mores." In the meaning of the Council of
Trent, under mores are to be understood not so much ethical
requirements but "customs and usages," i.e., rites and ordinances
having to do with worship and the devotional life.
The proposition of the Council would thus have this meaning: As far
as dogmatic formulations and ordinances for the Church's worship are
concerned, and to the extent that these are affected by interpretation,
no one may interpret Scripture against the meaning that is firmly held
in the Church. This sets up a negative rule.
These directives were repeated at Vatican I. The Council specifically
made its own the decision of Trent:
The blessed doctrinal decision of the assembly of the Church at Trent on
the interpretation of Scripture, which was intended to keep irresponsible
spirits in check, has been at times badly interpreted. But we renew this
decision and declare its meaning to be, that in matters of faith and morals
which belong to the building up of Christian doctrine, what is to be taken
as the true meaning of Scripture is that
4 Cf. H. Kümmeringer, "Es ist Sache der Kirche, 'iudicare de vero sensu et
interpretatione scripturarum sanctarum,"' ThQ 149 (1969) 28296.
5 Ibid. 287

Page 606
which (Holy Mother) the Church has held and still holds. The Church is
the one to pass judgment on the true meaning and explanation of Sacred
Scripture.6
In this text, too, the magisterium does not take charge of exegetical
work, thus making it superfluous, or turn it into a mere helping hand
for the magisterium. Not one single statement about exegesis is made,
nor is any specific exegesis offered; it is instead a programmatic
statement about the writings of the Biblethe whole of it.
Authority over Scripture?
Doesn't this still turn the ecclesiastical magisterium into a norm and
instance above Scripture, giving it power over Scripture?
What must first be said is that the authority singled out by the
ecclesiastical magisterium is not an authority over the Scripture but an
authority over the individual and his/her subjectivity, and against
possible arbitrariness. Trent explicitly mentioned the enthusiasts. In
general terms, what it intends to say is that for the interpretation of
Scripture, the community of the Church, its traditions, its
interpretation of Scripture in the form of confessional formulas and
liturgies, constitute a negative rule. One may not offend against this
context and horizon; they must be respected.
In interpreting Scripture in this sense, the Church, in the form of the
ecclesiastical magisterium, does not set itself over Scripture but is
bound to it. In principle, whoever interpretsand precisely whoever
does this authenticallyis setting him/herself not over but under the text
being interpreted, under the Word, under Scripture. A binding
interpretation does not express control over what is being interpreted
but expresses the most responsible service and dedication to and
concern for it. Thus it can also be said: The Church, precisely as the
Scripture-reading and Scripture-interpreting Church, remains
subordinated to the witness of Scripture as witness of the Word of
God. Its intention is to make effective the authority and saving power
of the Word of God, not to assert itself.
In passing judgment on this, we must do so from the background of
this basic intention, and not from the human failures, abuses, and
mistakes that occur in carrying out this task. The originality and
legitimacy of this mandate are not canceled by such failings.
The authority of the Church is thus an authority of interpretation, with
a normative function and meaning for the individual. But the primary
intention of the Church is not thereby to bind its members to itself or
to "put them on a chain,"7 but rather to "draw them into its own
6 DS 3007 (cf. NR 89).
7 H. Graß, Die katholische lehre von der Heiligen Schrift und von der
Tradition (Lüneburg, 1954); K. G. Steck, Das römische Lehramt und die
Heilige Schrift (Munich, 1963).

Page 607
subordinate position under the Word of God in Scripture."8 The
authority of the Church is and remains subordinate to the witness of
Scripture. The interpretive word of the Church is guided by the Word
of Scripture and makes it present.
This means that the ecclesiastical magisterium is not the norm of
Scripture but is itself the normed norm (norma normata) with regard
to the understanding of Scripture of the individual Christian.
Holy Scripture is itself both the expression of and the witness of the
faith and confession of the Church at its origins. Further, the process
by which different writings become part of the canon of Holy
Scripture, the process of separation from the apocryphal writings, was
a process of development and testing. This culminated in the Church's
making decisions ultimately on the basis of the faith alive in it, and on
the basis of its orientation in its "rule of faith," in its confessing, and
in its worship. Logically then, the interpretation of Scripture cannot be
separated out from this inner context. There is nothing here that is
inappropriate or forced, but a perfectly natural connection.
There is a further fact to be considered: The description of the road
from the Council of Trent to Vatican I must include, among other
things, the fact that in the living tradition of the Church the element of
authority became stronger and stronger. In addition, the magisterium
represented in the college of bishops became concentrated more and
more in the magisterium of the Bishop of Rome. There was also the
tendency to limit more and more the independence of scholarly
theology. The task of the theologians, above all of the exegetes, was
described as simply to provide the proof from Scripture and Tradition
for the decisions of the ecclesiastical magisterium. Since Pius IX, it
was seen as the most important task of theology to show how a
doctrine, in the sense in which it is defined, is contained in the sources
of revelation.9 This came about for the fantastic [by hindsight] reason
that it would be methodologically false if theology were to appeal to
the sources against the magisterium. For one cannot explain what is
clear (the current official teaching) from what is unclear (the sources
of revelation); one must proceed inversely. It has been rightly said that
this threatened to bring about a "disenfranchisement of the sources
which would have finally eliminated the servant-aspect of the
magisterium if one were to continue to move in this direction."10
8 P. Lengsfeld, Überlieferung, Tradition und Schrift in der evangelischen
und katholischen Theologie der Gegenwart (Paderborn 1960) 196; also
Tradition und Heilige Schrift in MySal 1.46396; K. Rahner, "Scripture and
Tradition," SM 6.5457; W. Kasper, Dogma under dem Wort Gottes (Mainz,
1965).
9 M. Seckler, "Theologie als kirchliche Wissenschaftein römisches Modell"
in: Im Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft und Kirche (FreiburgBaselVienna,
1980) 62, 84, at 79.
10 J. Ratzinger, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. H.
Vorgimler, 3.19697.

Page 608
The institution and the early activity of the so-called Biblical
Commission has to be seen from the background of this mentality and
this conception of theology. It is an establishment of the ecclesiastical
magisterium, founded by Pope Leo XIII. This papal commission was
to be a board consisting of "eminent scholars." Its task was to assure,
by any means, that Catholics everywhere give to Holy Scripture the
careful treatment required by the conditions of the time, and that
Scripture be kept free not only from every "breath of error" but also
from any excessively free opinion. The opening word of the papal
writing "Vigilantiae" declares its program. Under Pius IX, further
precision in the direction of this "watchfulness" was given to the tasks
of the Biblical Commission: the commission took to answering
questions on biblical problems. It did this above all in its decrees
called "responsa,'' which treated the questions put to it mostly with
only a negative or positive answer: "negative" or "affirmative." The
series of responsa given between 1905 and 1915 dealt with the
following questions: the theory of only apparently historical
narratives; Moses as author of the Pentateuch; the author and
historical reliability of the Gospel of John; Isaiah; the historicity of
Genesis 13; the author and time of composition of the Psalms; the
temporal priority of the Gospel of Matthew; the synoptic question; the
Acts of the Apostles; Paul as author of the Pastoral letters and the
Letter to the Hebrews; the so-called Johannine comma (1 John 5: 7-8)
as authentic text.11
All the decisions made by the Biblical Commission on these questions
have proven to be untenable. To be fair, one must add that the
decisions of the Biblical commission referred primarily to the
question of whether the historical arguments brought to bear up to that
time were sufficient to reject traditional conceptions. The answer was,
each time, No. The only decision to be revoked was that of 1897 on
the Johannine comma. In 1927 the Biblical Commission wrote: "This
decree was once promulgated in order to reign in the audacity of
private scholars who presumed either to overthrow entirely the
authenticity of the Johannine comma (1 John 5: 7-8)or, on the basis of
their own ultimately valid judgment, to cast doubt upon it. But it did
not intend in any way to keep Catholic exegetes from investigating the
matter itself more comprehensively."12
Certainly, it can be said that the decisions of the Biblical Commission
were more of a pastoral than of a doctrinal nature; they
11 The decisions of the Biblical Commission are contained in the
Enchiridion biblicum (Rome, 1954). Among the errors of the Modernists,
their ideas on magisterium and Bible, on inspiration, and on a series of
other exegetical questions were condemned. Cf. also DS 34013419, (NR
1047; 38990; 10818), 35053528. Cf. H. Fries,"Das Kirchliche Lehramt
und die exegetische Arbeit" in H. Kahlefeld, ed., Schriftauslegung dient
dem Glauben (Frankfurt, 1979) 5690.
12 DS 3682.

Page 609
were never at any time seen as "infallible." In addition, the time in
which this commission workedespecially under Pius Xwas one of
excitement, uncertainty, worry, and fear. It was believed that the
situation could be controlled only with clear statements and with the
decisiveness of prohibitions. It was, after all, the time of Modernism,
the time when the historical critical method was struggling to find its
rightful place in Catholic theology. Its first representative however
was a Catholic theologian, the Oratorian Richard Simon, whose
writings, at the insistence of Bishop J. B. Bossuet, were put on the
Index of Forbidden Books.13
The decisions of the Biblical Commission and the consequent
indexing of the works of Catholic exegetes turned out to be a severe
blow to Catholic exegesis. They crippled energies and deprived
exegetes of the courage to publish findings based on historical-critical
exegesis. As Joseph A. Fitzmyer described the situation: "As a result
of these decrees, a dark cloud of reactionary conservatism
overshadowed almost all of biblical science for the first half of our
century."14
The New Situation
A change from this crippling, oppressive, and frustrating situation was
brought aboutastonishinglyby the ecclesiastical magisterium itself, by
Pope Pius XII. His 1943 encyclical Divino afflante spiritu15 on the
up-to-date promotion of biblical studies stands as the Magna Charta of
Catholic exegesis. It opened up and specified the exegetical task and
liberated it from the pressures, curtailments, and investigations under
which exegetes stood. It meant the emancipation of exegesis from the
status of an auxiliary science relegated to supporting theological
systems or legitimating ecclesiastical practices.
Here are some of the points made in this important document: The
most important task of exegetes, using text criticism and their
knowledge of ancient languages, is to discover and explain the true
meaning of the sacred books. In doing so, those who expound
Scripture should keep in mind that their primary concern must be to
find out what is the literal sense of the biblical word. Above all they
must point out the theological-doctrinal content of the individual
books and texts in questions of faith and morals. Their explanation of
Scripture is to be not just of use to theologians in their presentation
and proof of the doctrines of faith, but also to be of assistance to
priests in their preaching of Christian doctrine to the people, and
finally to help all the faithful to lead holy
13 Cf. H. Graf Reventlow, "Richard Simon (1638-1760)" in: Klassiker der
Theologie, ed. H. FriesG. Kretschmar, (Munich, 1983) 2.921.
14 J. Fitzmyer, Die Wahrheit der Evangelien (Stuttgart, 1965).
15 Text in: Enchiridion biblicum 20127; excerpts in DS 382531 (cf. NR
126ac).

Page 610
lives worthy of Christians. If Catholic exegetes provide that kind of an
interpretation of Scripture, which is above all of a theological nature,
they will effectively reduce to silence those who keep insisting that
they can find in biblical commentaries hardly anything that raises the
spirit to God, nourishes souls, and promotes the interior lifethus
giving support to their claim that they must take refuge in a spiritual
and, as they say, mystical explanation.
The text points out that in ancient Oriental authors the literal sense of
a passage is often not as clear as it is with contemporary authors.
What the ancient Orientals intend to say cannot be determined merely
by the rules of grammar or philology, or just from the context. The
exegete must travel back in spirit, so to speak, to those distant
centuries of the Orient, and with the help of history, archaeology,
ethnology, and other sciences, figure out precisely what literary forms
the authors of that ancient age intended to use and in reality did use.
What these modes of speech were cannot be determined a priori by
the exegete, but only from a careful study of Oriental literature.
The Catholic exegete is expected to put all knowledge coming from
archaeology, history, and literary studies at the service of a better
explanation and interpretation of Scripture. Exegetes are also
explicitly encouraged to use the secular sciences in their attempts to
solve problems. The faithful for their part are urged to judge all these
attempts not only as proper but also with great love. There is an
explicit warning not to oppose or suspect the new just because it is
new. This guiding document closes with the words: "The theological
disciplines must be constantly rejuvenated and renewed from the
study of the Bible as a sacred source."
Vatican II was also a council of renewal in this area. Renewal as
program always also means renewal from the origin, from the
normative witness of faith, concretely, from Holy Scripture. Its
biblical orientation and perspective belongs, along with its pastoral
and ecumenical dimension, to the characteristics of this council. More
than in other councils, the Bible stands in the forefrontbut again not as
magisterial exegesis of individual passages, but as orientation to the
reality to which Scripture gives witness.
The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church illustrates this. Not every
passage it quotes fulfills, exegetically, an irrefutably probative
function for what it teaches. But how very effective is its fundamental
orientation to its origin in the New Testament is already visible in its
description of the Church. It doesn't simply repeat and polish up the
traditional, certainly biblical, image of the Church as Body of Christ;
it is expanded by the now-fundamental biblical concept of Church as
the People of God. And what still needs to be said about the Church is
not done with socio-political models, e.g. of a societas perfecta, but

Page 611
clarified in theto be sure, only briefly presenteduse of many biblical
images. Nor are these images replaced by a concept of the Church.
The images remain there as images, each of them shedding light on
some dimension of the Church. The purpose of the many images is to
describe a differentiated reality: Church.
The Constitution on the Liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium) speaks
about the presence of Christ in the Word: "He is present in his Word,
since it is he himself who is speaking, when Sacred Scripture is read
in the Church" (no. 7). It says further that, for the benefit of the
faithful, the table of the Word should be spread more richly and the
treasury of the Bible opened further (no. 51). In the comparatives
found here: "better, richer, deeper," is certainly also the admission
that, in this matter, not enough was being done in the past.
Even more important than this is the fact that Vatican II, in its own
constitution Dei verbum, On Divine Revelation, also took up the
question of Scripture and the theme we have been discussing. It
especially addresses the connections between Scripture, tradition,
Church, and magisterium, and declares:
Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form the one sacred treasure of the
Word of God given to the Church. In full devotion to this Word, the whole
holy people, united with its shepherds, persevere constantly in the teaching
and communion of the apostles, in the breaking of the bread and prayer
(cf. Acts 2:42), so that in holding fast to the faith handed on to them, in
living it out and confessing it, a unique harmony reigns between leaders
and faithful. (no. 10)

The understanding of the definition of the content and the

interrelationship of Scripture and tradition had been for some time a
subject of lively discussion in Catholic theology. The Council of Trent
had declared that the gospel which was promised by the prophets,
proclaimed by Jesus Christ, and preached by the apostles as the source
of all saving truth and moral order "is contained in written books and
unwritten traditions which the apostles have received from the mouth
of Christ, or which was handed on from hand to hand, so to speak,
from the apostles themselves under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
and thus come down to us."16
The question is: How is the "and" to be understood in "written books
and unwritten traditions"? An indication of the importance of the
question comes from the fact that the Latin "etand" has taken the place
of the originally proposed "partimpartim/partlypartly."
The interpretation offered by J. R. Geiselmann and developed by him
in numerous investigations17 which have met with widespread
16 DS 1501 (cf. NR 8081).
17 Finally: Die Heilige Schrift und die Tradition. Zu den neueren
Controversen über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift zu den
nichtgeschriebenen Traditionen (FreiburgBaselVienna, 1962).

Page 612
agreement in today's Catholic theology says that this change is not
accidental but intentional. The intention is that the relationship
between Scripture and tradition is not to be so determined that one
part of the gospel is contained in Scripture and another part in
tradition, which would mean that one would get the whole of the
revealed Word by adding up the content of Scripture and tradition.
The true description of the relationship between Scripture and
tradition is to be understood in such a way that Scripture and tradition
are two modes and means of communication, in each of which the
whole gospel, the whole message of salvation, comes to us, even if in
its own different mode of existence.
Vatican II left this question, and the possibility of a Catholic
understanding of the sola scriptura principle, open. "But the task of
explaining the written or handed-on Word of God in a binding manner
is entrusted only to the living magisterium of the Church, whose
authority is exercised in the name of Christ" (no. 10).
A correct understanding of what is said here can be gained by
comparing it with a text of the Pius XII's 1950 encyclical Humani
generis. One reads there that the divine Redeemer has entrusted his
Word "neither to the individual faithful nor to the theologians as such
for authentic interpretation, but only to the magisterium."18 This "soli
magisterio" is also taken up in Vatican II's constitution on revelation,
but the context there makes it clear "that the function of authentic
interpretation restricted to the magisterium is a specific service, which
does not encompass all of the ways in which the Word is present; for
among these is an irreplaceable function belonging also to the whole
Church, bishops and laypeople together."19
But there is one question which we must raise. It is quite striking that
in the documents of the magisterium the presumably Protestant
"particula exclusiva" in the sense of the "alone" [faith alone, Scripture
alone, etc.] are used repeatedly: e.g. "only to the magisterium."
Wouldn't it have made good sense and also been quite appropriate in
this context, to have also use the Catholic "and"? Are not, after all, the
factual presuppositions for it already present?20
The Doctrine of Inspiration
Vatican I expressed the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture in the
following words: The Sacred Scriptures are "holy and canonical
because, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have
God as their author and as such have been handed on to the
Church."21 Leo
18 DS 3886 (NR 398).
19 J. Ratzinger, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. H.
Vorgimler, 3.19697.
20 Cf. M. Seckler, ThQ 153 (1973) 182.
21 DS 3006 (NR 8788).

Page 613
XIII's encyclical Providentissimus Deus, describes inspiration further
by noting that the Holy Spirit "inspires [the hagiographers] with
supernatural power to write so that they would correctly understand
all that and only that which the Spirit willed, and write it down
faithfully, suitably expressing it in infallible truth. Otherwise he [Holy
Spirit] would not be the author of all of Sacred Scripture."22
The divine authorship does not exclude but includes the real
authorship of the human hagiographers. This has customarily been
explained by the conceptitself very much in need of explanationof
God as the principal cause and humans as the instrumental cause, in
which the uniqueness, creativity, individuality, and freedom of the
human authors, who are more than just "secretaries," is preserved.
In its Constitution on Revelation, Vatican II took over and developed
further the earlier teaching of the magisterium:
In composing the sacred books, God chose men who while employed by
Him made use of their powers and abilities so that with Him acting in them
and through them, they as true authors consigned to writing everything and
only those things which he wanted. Therefore, since everything asserted by
the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the
Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged
as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God
wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation (no. 11).

The formula "for the sake of our salvation" is the decisive, new
statement; in view of the distinction between saving truths and
"secular truths," it admits the specification: "Everything in Sacred
Scripture shares in the truth which God, for the sake of our salvation,
wanted to have written down. It shares in this truth either
immediately, in its contents, or mediately because of its service to the
saving message."23
The council's text goes on:
Since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through human beings in human
fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what
God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what
meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to
manifest by means of their words. Those who search out the intention of
the sacred writers must among other things, have regard for the "literary
forms." For truth is proposed and expressed in a variety of ways,
depending on whether a text is history of one kind or another, or whether
its form is that of prophecy, poetry, or some other type of speech. (no. 12)
The most illuminating interpretation of inspiration seems to me to be
found in the considerations of Karl Rahner.24 His starting point is that
with Jesus Christ, as he is proclaimed and made present in the
22 DS 3293 (NR 100).
23 A. Grillmeier, in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. by H.
Vorgrimler, 20025.
24 K. Rahner, Inspiration in the Bible, trans. Charles H. Henkey (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1961); "Inspiration," in HThG 1. 71725.

Page 614
apostolic preaching, the absolute and definitive self-revelation of God
has taken place. In this sense, revelation is closed off with the death of
the apostles, i.e., with the end of the apostolic ageor, as one can also
say, with the primitive Church. Christian revelation is designated for
all times and all peoples and must always remain present. To make
this possible, God so established the primitive Church, in its faith
consciousness as source and norm of the faith of later times, in such a
way that it can really exercise this function.
To this endowment of the primitive Church belongs also Scripture, as
a record both of the apostolic kerygma constitutive of the primitive
Church and of the faith consciousness grounded therein.
Since the Church concretizes in writing its paradosis, its faith, and its self-
realization, thus forming Scripture in itself (per se), it orients itself as the
normative primitive Church towards its own future. And conversely, since
it is constituted for this future as its normative law, according to which the
whole future of the Church has come about, it forms Scripture. Precisely in
the formation of the Scripture it confirms that unique, distinguishing self-
understanding that must belong to it in a special degree so that it can be the
canon of the later Church.25
Scripture does not simply happen to come about in the course of the
establishment of the primitive Church; rather, the active, inspiring,
authorship of God is an inner moment of the church-building of the
primitive Church, and it draws its distinguishing characteristics from the
fact that this is what it is. God wills the Scripture and himself as its author,
and established both of them because and to the extent that he wills to be
active and effective as the originator of the Church. The inspiration of
Scripture is really only God's founding of the Church at least in the sense
that this divine founding is related as such to that constitutive element of
the Church, which the Scripture actually is.26

It is from this point that Karl Rahner attempts also to explain the
inspiration of the writings of the Old Testament:
Because and also to the extent that the Old Testament belongs from the
outset to the formation of the Church (and not just of the Synagogue) as a
part of its prehistory, and, to be sure, of that part which remains actual
forever, what is true of the writings of the New Testament is true also of
the Old Testament: as a moment in the formal, predefining Church, these
writings are inspired by God.27

Of course, this principle by no means provides the answer to all

particular problems. But it does set up a fundamental-theological
framework within which concrete solutions can be sought.
25 K. Rahner, Inspiration in the Bible 4849.
26 Ibid. 5051.
27 Ibid. 54.

Page 615
§ 60
Church and Churches
The problem of "Church and Churches" occupies a different place in
the fundamental theology of today than it did in earlier presentations
of apologetics or fundamental theology.
The "Demonstratio Catholica"
In earlier times, the so-called demonstratio catholica went as follows:
The Church of Jesus Christ exists only in the singular. There is, in
other words, one and only one true Church. Reference was made to
the numerous biblical references that speak of the Church in the
singular, above all to Matthew 16:1719, where Jesus speaks explicitly
of "My Church." Consideration was given, in addition, to other
biblical images for Church, such as flock, plant, building, temple,
bride, body whose head is Christ; they all refer to the Church in the
singular, to one Church. This impression is strengthened by the
statements of the Captivity Epistles about the Church as the Body of
Christ, as well as by recalling the urgent exhortations to unity, (above
all from the mouth of Paul) connected with the struggle against
division, dissension, and disturbances of unity (cf. 1 Cor 1:1213; Eph
4:113).
But along with this we also have the sad and undeniable historical fact
and experience that even very early, and precisely in reference to the
idea of the one Church, there arose, divisions, mutual rejections, and
excommunications. As a result, there were also, and almost from the
very outset, churches in the plural. But this plural, as opposed to the
plural of the local churches, was seen as illegitimate, something that
shouldn't be. This held for both sides of the equation: the community
from which the separation took place, but which was so to speak "in
possessione" and saw itself as the old Church, as Church of the
authentic tradition, knew itself at the same time as the one true Church
of Jesus Christ from which the "newer" ones had separated and
therefore had no right to call themselves Church of Jesus Christ. And
from their

Page 616
side, the newer churches objected that the old church had not
remained true to its origin, had lost continuity and identity, had
withdrawn itself from the call to repentance and renewal, and had thus
made separation from itself unavoidable; accordingly, only the new
community can be the one true Church of Jesus Christ. But in any
case, in terms of the legitimacy claimed by either side, there is only
one Church, in the singular.
The growing distance from the old Church, and consequent division
into parts, was accompanied by tensions right from the onset. On can
see these tensions in the dogmatic controversies in Christological and
Trinitarian questions, in the variety of church discipline and practice
(controversy about the date of Easter, controversy about the baptism
of heretics), and in the different theologies in the Western and Eastern
Church. This kind of tension-producing separation, especially in the
Middle Ages, in the now Christian West, in the Imperium Christianum
as successor to the Imperium Romanum, also became a political issue.
For despite the tensions between imperium and sacerdotium, between
emperor and pope, it was important that this unity, which drew
support and solidity above all from its unity of faith, its ecclesiastical
unity, not be endangered. That there be one Church lay in the interest
of both Church and state. Deviations from faith, dividing off into one's
own group against the one Churchas happened after the Council of
Chalcedon (450)which in the meantime had become the great Church,
the popular Church, these were not only of theological but also of
political concern. They were therefore to be investigated, rejected, and
fought againstand this with no less rigor than against an enemy from
without.
Still, all this was not enough to prevent the 1054 division of the
Church into the Church of the West and the Church of the East. After
a long process of alienation, each side mutually condemned and
excommunicated the other; each maintained for itself the claim to be
the one, true, "orthodox" Church. Despite the schism, neither Church
went so far as to dispute the other's claim to the predicate "Church."
Unity in faith, sacrament, and hierarchical structure (with the
exception of the recognition of the papacy as jurisdictional instance
over the whole Church) remained intact. The differences between East
and West, which did not justify any separation in faith, did in fact
create that kind of a separation. The mutual excommunication and the
schism connected with it did have, in fact, the same consequences as
separation in faith: nonrecognition, alienation, hostility. The union
councils of the Middle Ages did nothing to change this condition;
their agreements were not met with reception.

Page 617
So, there did arise church in the plural: Church of the West and
Church of the East. No one felt this was satisfactory. It was seen as a
misfortune, but possible.
This was changed by the divisions of Western Christendom in the
sixteenth-century Reformation and its attendant movements. The
Reformation originally intended no division into Church and
churches; its concern was for the renewal of the existing Church with
pope and bishops, for a renewal based on the normative source of
Holy Scripture. The failure of these reform efforts led to the division
of Christianity into different confessions: into the old Church sand the
Churches of the Reformation. In contrast to the separation of the
Eastern and Western Church, there was now, here, a separation in
faith; it was obviously deeper and more serious that the schism
between the Eastern and Western Churches.
The old Church maintained its claim to be the one Church of Jesus
Christ and to have preserved its unity in continuity, that unity from
which the "newer" churches fell away. But these, for their part,
maintained that the continuity of the original and still-existing Church
is found in their own community, while the Roman Catholic Church is
the one that fell away from its origin and distorted the form of the one
true Church by "additions," and corrupted it even to the point of
unrecognizability.
We have here churches in the plural which, in view of the will of Jesus
and of his plea "that all who believe in him should be one" (John
17:21), and which, measured against the incessant exhortation of the
Apostle Paul to the unity of the Body whose head is Christ, is
certainly illegitimateit should and must not be; it is wrong. But we
also have here the respective claim of each of these churches to be the
one Church of Jesus Christ, and thus to possess that singular of
Church which belongs to the Church of Christ and is denied of the
other churches. The fact of churches in the plural becomes a
Christianity-wide scandal, a worldwide scandal. But the confessions
declare, from their side, that the division is necessary for the sake of
the truth, for the "sake of the salvation of souls," and must thus be
maintained, if necessary even by force and by war.
The Signs of the Church
In this time of altercation caused by the Reformation, the question
arose of the signs of the one, true Church of Jesus Christ, the question
of the notae ecclesiae. It became a basic theme of theology.
According to the Reformers, the true Church of Jesus Christ is found
where the gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are
administered according to the gospel (Confessio Augustana, art. 7). To

Page 618
be added to this, according to the Reformational point of view is that,
for the public ministry to gospel and sacrament, the ''office of
preaching" has been instituted by God (art. 5)., to which office one
must be duly called ("rite vocatus," art. 14). The other Reformers,
especially Calvin, but also the Anglicans, have specified the signs of
the Church in similar ways.
The same question was approached within the Catholic Church, but in
a different way, in the context of the so-called "demonstratio
catholica." The characteristics (proprietates) of the Church expressed
in the Apostles' Creedunity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicitywere
thus turned into notae, to marks of the Church. To be sure, as the
explanation went, not every characteristic of the Church is a mark in
the sense of a nota; but every nota is also a characteristic of the
Church.
A characteristic of the Church can serve as a mark if it is easily
recognizable, accessible to all, belongs exclusively to the Church, and
belongs to the Church not intermittently but constantly and essentially.
In the demonstratio catholica, the faith statements, "I believe in the
one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" become also signs
accessible not only to faith but also to rational and historical reason.
Now there are all kinds of difficulties and problems connected with
this claim. For it is not clear how the same thing, the characteristics of
the Church, are both to be believed by the faithful and at the same
time to serve as marks accessible to everyone.
According to the demonstratio catholica, the argument goes as
follows: The premise is: The Church of Jesus Christ was originally
instituted with the four marks both as abiding characteristics and as
signs of recognition. They are both the contents of faith and its signs
of recognition. This thesis is understood as being drawn from the
biblical sources and historically proven in such a way that everyone
can understand it.
After the premise comes the minor proposition: These four signs of
recognition are found, exclusively, in the Catholic Churcha
proposition to be empirically established and proven. One has to
admit, however, that it is not easy to prove this in a way totally
convincing to everyone, so that an argument of credibility can be built
on it. Such a proof presupposes extensive experience, and it has to
face up to all kinds of opposite experiences, if one is not simply to be
selectively comparing a luminous ideal from one's own side with quite
different manifestations of reality from the other side.
The strengthening of the probative thrust of the demonstratio
catholica did not content itself with claiming positively that these
signs are found in the Catholic Church; it attempted also to prove
negatively that these signs are not found in any of the other other
churches,

Page 619
or at least not in the same pronounced way in which they are found in
the Catholic Church.
As a result of the great difficulty of actually proving this, the
argument of the demonstratio catholica was oversimplified,
concentrated, and reduced to the so-called via primatus or nota
romanitatis. Thus simplified, the argument unqualifiedly asserts that
the true Church is where the pope is; the presence of the pope is what
makes the Catholic Church Roman Catholic. Whichever church can
claim this one, easily recognizable sign also, automatically so to
speak, has the other signs. For, it was claimed (not argued, it must be
noted): The Roman Church with the pope at its head possesses the
four marksone, holy, catholic, and apostoliccausatively; i.e., it is a
causative source of these marks for the other churches, who possess
them only participatively. The primacy, Romanitas, thus became an
easily usable nota characteristica et sufficiens. But "since the process
of proving this always drew back into territory unreachable by
external argument, it became logically more and more cogent, and
theologically more and more questionable."1
Briefly put, this results in the following argument: Only the Catholic
Church possesses the marks which are at the same time the
characteristics of the Church of Christ: unity, holiness, catholicity,
apostolicity. It, therefore, is the one and only Church of Jesus Christ.2
The other churches have no claim to the predicate "church," because
the marks and characteristics are not found in them, or only partially,
or in a fragmented way.
In this perspective the Catholic Church is
the broad stream which has borne through the centuries, and still bears, the
movement that begins with Christ. The other churches are rivulets which
have branched off from this stream and, to the extent that they have not
petered out and dried up, or flowed back again into the great streambed,
cannot compete with it in either external fullness or inner dynamic.3

The following consequences flow from this: The plural of churches is

illegitimate; it contradicts the will of Jesus and the essence of the
Church. Christian communities outside the one, true Church, the
Roman Catholic Church, cannot be given the name "church," even if
they claim it for themselves. With the exception of the Eastern
Church, they are "sectae acatholicae," heretical communities,
"religious communities" (not churches) with ''religious servants" (not
ordained ministers).
1 M. Seckler, "Katholisch als Kofessionsbezeichnung" ThQ 145 (1965)
404. Cf. G. Thils, Les notes de l'église dans l'apologétique catholique
depuis la Reforme (Gembloux, 1937).
2 Johanes Brunsman, A Handbook of Fundamental Theology (St. Louis: B.
Herder Co., 1928); J. Brinktrine, Offenbarung und Kirche II (Paderborn,
1949) 23284.
3 A. Lang, Fundamentaltheologie II. Der Auftrag der Kirche (Munich, 1958)
82022.

Page 620
Rightly seen, therefore, in this traditional Catholic view, one cannot
say that the Church is separated and divided. The one, real Church is
by no means divided, for it continually strengthens itself in that unity
which, especially since Vatican I, is pushed to the point of unicity.
From this viewpoint, one can say only that the others have broken
away, have left the house of their father, like the prodigal son in the
gospel parable of Luke 15.
The Church and the Question of Salvation
Since earliest times, the question of the true Church has been
connected with the question of salvation. This was expressed in the
proposition (since Cyprian no longer silent): "Extra ecclesiam nulla
salusOutside the Church there is no salvation." Cyprian applied this
proposition to those who had broken off from the Church, or were in
danger of doing so. He didn't quite turn it into a general principle. In
addition, he understood under salus the means of salvation. But
Cyprian's proposition subsequently took on an unrestricted meaning in
the Dictatus papae of Gregory VII (1073-85), in the bull Unam
sanctam of Boniface VIII in 1302, and in the 1442 Decree for the
Jacobites. The bull Unam sanctam states: The
one and only Church does not have two heads like a monstrous birth, but
only one body and one head, namely Christ and His representative, Peter
and his successors. For the Lord said to Peter personally: "Feed my sheep"
(John 21:17). "My" is what He said, and he meant it quite generally, not
just an individual this one or that. It follows that He entrusts all of them to
Peter. Thus, if Greeks or others say that they are not entrusted to Peter and
his successors, they must then also necessarily admit that they are not
among the sheep of Christ, since the Lord says in John: "There is only one
sheepfold and only one shepherd" (John 10:16).4

"To subject oneself to the pope of Rome is for all human beings
absolutely necessary for salvation: this we declare, maintain, define,
and proclaim."5 In its doctrinal decision for the Jacobites, the Council
of Florence (1438-1443) pushed this axiom to the limit when it
declared that "no one outside the Catholic Church, neither pagan, nor
Jew, nor unbeliever, or anyone separated from the unity, will share in
eternal life unless they join the Church before death." Even this
proposition was essentially sharpened with a quotation from
Fulgentius of Ruspe: "However much alms people may give, or even
shed their blood for the name of Christ, they still cannot be saved
unless they remain in the womb and in the unity of the Catholic
Church."6
4 DS 872 (NR 341).
5 DS 875 (NR 342).
6 DS 1351.

Page 621
However much the extraordinary and heroic missionary zeal of the
Church may have been motivated by it, the consequences, for the
salvation of those who were not members of this Church, of the axiom
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus seemed unsupportable. For those who did
not belong to this Church, as it seemed, would not be saved. But how
can this be brought into line with God's universal salvific will that all
human beings be saved (1 Tim 2:4)? And just as fraught with
unsupportable misunderstanding is the opposite consequence, i.e., that
belonging to the Roman Catholic Church is a sure guarantee, almost
an infallible guarantee, of eternal salvation. But this proposition,
certainly, was never expressed by any serious-minded Catholic
theology.
Furthermore, it is practically impossible to bring the proposition
"Outside the Church is no salvation" into line with the fundamentally
contradictory, explicit condemnation of the proposition of Paschase
Quesnel: "Outside the Church there is no grace.7
The dilemma of the proposition "Outside the Church is no salvation"
called out for a solution. Pope Pius IX's formulation of it read:
We must hold in faith that outside of the Apostolic Roman Catholic
Church no one can be saved. It is the sole ark of salvation, and everyone
who does not enter into it must drown in the flood. But we must also
firmly hold that in the eyes of the Lord, no one will be held guilty of this
who lives in invincible ignorance of the true religion.8
This explanation, that because of guiltless, invincible ignorance,
salvation can still be attained despite nonadherence to the Catholic
Church, did not seem in the long run to be a satisfactory and adequate
answer. That the basis of salvation should be only something negative
and defective, an "error," was utterly inappropriate to the reality of
salvation as grace and responsibility.
An attempt to deal with this was made by way of a concept presented
in Pius XII's 1943 encyclical Mystici corporis, which opened up new
paths in the theology of the Church. But even here we meet the
crystal-clear declaration that the Mystical Body of Christthe
preeminent specification of the essence of the Churchis identical with
the concrete Roman Catholic Church.
The relationship of non-Catholic Christians to the Church was
described in this encyclical with the categories of the desiderium
inscium and the votum, the unconscious desire and will/wishthus
positively, and not just on the basis of an error. In a clarifying
explanation of the Holy Office to Archbishop Cushing of Boston
[seeking clarification regarding Leonard Feeney's radical
interpretation of the extra ecclesiam
7 DS 2429.
8 Neuner-Roos 367.

Page 622
axiom] this votum was quite broadly extended to the point of being a
"votum implicitumimplicit wish."9
In the interpretation of contemporary theology, the axiom Extra
ecclesiam nulla salus is understood not as a personal principle but as
an instrumental or reality principle. It does not declare which persons
will be saved or not savedno one can make such a judgmentbut it
intends to declare that through which salvation comes to human
beings when it does come. It is a description of the way in which all
are saved who will be saved: through Jesus Christ and through the
Church in which he himself and his work are concretely present.10
There is accordingly no obstacle, suggests Henri de Lubac, to
expressing the formula Extra ecclesiam nulla salus positively, and not
to say to those of good will: Outside the Church you are damned, but
through the Church and only through it are you saved. Salvation
comes through the Church, through it salvation is already on the way
to humanity. "Only the Christ who is at work in the Church brings
about salvation. But his salvation-producing work is not restricted to
the Church."11
Nevertheless, until Vatican II the question "Church and churches" was
answered predominantly in the sense that comes from this brief
historical sketch: The Church of Jesus Christ is exclusively identical
with the Roman Catholic Church. Church exists only in the singular; a
plural of churches is illegitimate. When "church" is spoken of in non-
Catholic usage, it is an inexact manner of speaking. The other
churches are not "instrumenta salutisinstruments of salvation"; only
the Church of Christ is this, and this is identical with the Roman
Catholic Church.
The New Situation from the Statements of Vatican II
The Second Vatican Council did not by any means elevate the Church
to the center of the Christian faith. But in its comprehensive
description of the Church, it did lay out its meaning and function and
thus come to express that the Church is not the principal reality, but
stands in the service of that reality.
Vatican II, which intended to be and was in fact a council for the
renewal of the Church, and thus had a specifically ecumenical tone,
had to take a new position with regard to the problem of Church and
churches. The existing magisterial definitions turned out to be no
longer useful. They had understood the unification of separated
Christianity
9 DS 38663873 (NR 398g).
10 M. Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik III/1: Die Lehre von der Kirche
(Munich, 1958) 82021.
11Katholizismus als Gemeinschaft (EinsiedelnCologne, 1943) 207; cf. W.
Kern, Außerhalb der Kirche kein Heil? (FreiburgBaselVienna) 1979.

Page 623
only as a return to the Roman Catholic Church, and thus as
unconditional capitulation. The other churches were not prepared to
do that.
In the question of "Church and churches," Vatican II found an
approach to this problem that tried to find the preservation of identity
and continuity not predominantly in negation and separation from
everything not itself, but in a way of looking at things that connected
fidelity to what is one's own with openness to the other.
The constitution Lumen gentium (no. 8) does indeed show its
connection to the statements of the encyclical Mystici corporis of Pius
XII. But it does this with differentiating nuances:
The society (societas) endowed with hierarchical organs and the Mystical
Body of Christ, the visible assembly and the spiritual community, the
earthly Church and the Church endowed with heavenly gifts, are not to be
considered as two different realities; they form rather one, single, complex
reality, which grows together from human and divine elements.

The basic idea is the analogy of the mystery of the Incarnation of God
and of the Church as visible and spiritual community, as earthly
Church endowed with heavenly gifts.
The text then continues:
This is the one and only Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed
as one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. After His resurrection, our Redeemer
gave it to Peter to feed; to him and to the rest of the apostles. He entrusted
its expansion and direction; He established them forever as "pillars and
bulwarks of the truth" (1 Tim 3:5). This Church, constituted and set in the
world as a society, has its concrete form of existence in the Catholic
Church, which is led by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in
communion with him. This does not exclude that outside of its structure
various elements of sanctification and of truth are to be found which, as
their own gifts of the Church of Christ, are pushing towards catholic unity.
In language and intention, these sentences reject any extreme
understanding of exclusivity and identity, and at the same time make
room for positivity and recognition. This is clearly indicated by an
important textual variant. The original text read: "Haec igitur
ecclesia . . . est ecclesia Catholica, a romano Pontifice et Episcopis in
eius communione gubernata" (no. 8). In the final, official text, the est
has been replaced by subsistit. The est is exclusive; the subsistit is
positive and open.12
This subsistit has the function of "avoiding an uncontrolled
identification of the Church of Christ with the Roman Catholic
Church, and to remain open for the ecclesial reality in the other
Christian confessions." The tenor of the statement is maintained in
such a way, as an Evangelical (German Lutheran) commentary points
out, "that not even
12 The original text read: "This Church . . . is the Catholic Church . . .";
the official final text reads "This Church . . . subsists in the Catholic
Church . . ." See A. Grillmeier, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican
II, 3. 20025.

Page 624
a trace of presumptuousness and self-satisfaction can be found in
it."13 Something further is to be noted in this text. It no longer talks
about the Roman Catholic Church. In place of the local "Roman" and
of the concept "Romanus Pontifex" is put the spiritual content of the
Petrine office, and its unity with the community of bishops is
explicitly added.
The question of the identification of the Church was taken up in
another place in the Council and represented in the statements about
the Church in the Decree on Ecumenism. Its reflections on the unity
and uniqueness of the Church culminate in the statement: "The
highest exemplar and source of this mystery is the unity, [of the
Church] in the Trinity of Persons, of one God, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit" (no. 2). The earthly and historical real presence of
thisliving and multiformunity of the Church is the Holy Spirit, who is
the one who effects the communion of the faithful in Christ and with
Christ, and who is the giver of manifold gifts. This unity is articulated
in the confession of the one faith, in the common celebration of the
liturgy, and in the brotherly and sisterly unity of the family of God.
All this results in a clear expression that the unity of the Church and in
the Church cannot consist in uniformity, but that it is living, rich, and
pluriform. But there does exist a limit, where the unity necessary in
essentials is threatened, where pluriformity leads to contradiction,
opposition, and division.
The Question of Membership
In the light of what has been said on the question of identification, the
relationship between Church and Churches also becomes
approachable in a new way. If, according to the encyclical Mystici
corporis, the relationship between Church of Christ and Roman
Catholic Church is one of outright identity, the consequence is
unavoidable that, in the strict sense, there really is no such thing as a
division in the Church. For whoever doesn't belong to the Roman
Catholic Church doesn't belong to the Church at all. The unity of the
Church consists in the unity of the Roman Catholic Church itself. As
long as this exists, it is not possible, theologically speaking, to talk
about a division in the Church.
The question of what qualification is to be given to the incontestable
Christian being of others, and of what one is to hold regarding the
ecclesial dignity of those communities in which Christians outside the
Roman Catholic Church are found, communities in which people
realize their Christian faith and Christian lifethere was an at-
13 W. Dietzfelbinger, "Die Grenzen der Kirche nach der dogmatischen
Konstitution De ecclesia" in: Kerygma und Dogma (1965) 169.

Page 625
tempt to bring these questions closer to an answer by asking the
question of membership of the Church.
Before Vatican II, this question had two strands of tradition. The
conception associated especially with canon law is based on canon 87
of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. This states that through baptism the
human being becomes a "persona" in the Church of Christ with all the
rights and obligations of a Christian as long as, in reference to the
rights, no obstacle (obex) or penalty imposed by the Church stands in
the way of the bond of ecclesial communion. The assertion of
personhood, in the sense of a legal personality, also includes one's
being in the Church, one's membership in it. It is through baptism then
that membership is gained in the Church of Jesus Christ. "The being-
person in the Church brought about by baptism is salvifically
efficacious church membership."14
The question then arises: How is this general membership of all the
baptized to be distinguished from the specific membership of the
Catholic Christian? The Code of Canon Law does not devote much
time to this, but it does suggest that there is a distinction between
levels of membership: a constitutional membership of all Christians
which is grounded in baptism and which distinguishes the Christian
from the non-Christian, and an active membership whichas evercan be
hindered. In contrast to this strand of tradition, the encyclical Mystici
corporis, in taking up an old dogmatic-apologetic position, proposes
the thesis that only those belong to the Church "reapse," i.e., in the
proper sense, who have received baptism, confess the true faith, and
have not separated themselves or been separated from the community
of the Church.15
Thus three marks of membership are set up through which, all
together, church membership is established: baptismCatholic
faithbeing in one's proper place under the ecclesiastical hierarchy with
the pope at its head. Accordingly, not belonging to the Church are
those who live in schism (Eastern Church), those who live in heresy
(Reformational Christianity), and those who live in apostasy. It is said
that these three states of being, by their nature [i.e., "automatically"]
separate human beings from the body of the Church. These
determinations were concluded with the extraordinarily severe
statement: "Those who are separated from each other in faith or in
governance cannot live in this one body or from its divine Spirit." The
status of non-Catholic Christians and non-Catholic communities is
only indirectly approached by the encyclical Mystici corporis. It is
said that these people are in a situation in which they cannot be sure of
14 Cf. K. Mörsdorf, Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts, 11th ed.
(MunichPaderbornVienna, 1964) 17584.
15 DS 3802 (NR 3986).

Page 626
their eternal salvation; they are accordingly invited to free themselves
from this situation.16
To this negative statement is added one that sounds a bit more
positive, stating that non-Catholic Christians are related to the Church
by means of an "unconscious longing and wish," and that when they
return they do not come as strangers but as family members coming
home to the house of their father.
The criticism due this well-intentioned but unsatisfactory conception
is formulated by Joseph Ratzinger:
In projecting into the separated brethren a wish which they consciously
and explicitly reject, this Theory of an unconscious longing involves a
fictitious psychology. In the matter of church membership, such a theory
actually results in putting non-Catholic Christians on the same footing with
heathens, to whom a "wishful" membership in the Church can also be
attributed. The starting point of this whole attempted solution remains
frozen on the subjective level; the salvation of non-Catholics is for all
practical purposes reduced exclusively to the subjective factor of a wish
which, furthermore, cannot even be consciously recognized.17

Vatican II attempted to solve these problems and the absurdities

arising from them with a new approach. The principal way in which it
did this was by not taking up again the image of member and
membership as a description of the relationship of Catholic Church
and non-Catholic confessions, communities and churches, not even in
the form of distinguishing between levels of membership and
nonmembership. Similarly absent was the Mystici corporis idea of
votum or desiderium inscium. The Council placed the concept of the
votum back where it made some theological sense, i.e., related to the
situation of the catechumens. There it means that catechumens,
because of the conscious votum of their express will to be accepted
into the Church, are connected with the Church (Lumen gentium no.
14).
The key concepts that became all-important in the Council's reflection
on the situation of Catholic and non-Catholic Christians were
incorporatio and coniunctio. Incorporari or being incorporated
corresponds to the ecclesial state of the Catholic faithful; coniunctum
esse specifies, in an open concept, the relationship of non-Catholics to
the Catholic Church.
Full membership, plene incorporari, consists in and is attributed to
those whothis is what is mentioned first and signifies an
extraordinarily important ecclesiological [new] beginning"have the
Spirit of
16 DS 3821.
17 "Der Kirchenbegriff und die Frage nach der Gliedschaft der Kirche" in:
Das neue Volk Gottes (Düsseldorf, 1972) 101; cf. H. Fries, "Der
ekklesiologische Status der evangelischen Kirche in katholischer Sicht" in:
Aspekte der Kirche (Stuttgart, 1963) 12352; W. Kasper,"Der ekklesiologische
Charakter der nicht-katholicshen Kirchen," ThQ 145 (1965) 4262.

Page 627
Christ." Only after this is there mention of the other elements of
membership in the Church:
They are fully incorporated into membership in the Church who, in the
possession of the Spirit of Christ, accept the Church's entire discipline and
all the means of salvation established in it, and are united in its visible
bond with Christ who directs it through the pope and the bishops, and this
by means of the bonds of the confession of faith, the sacraments, and the
eccelsiastical leadership and community. (no. 14)

Belonging to the Church thus comes about in two ways: the internal,
spiritual way, and the way of the visible level.
With this mentionalong with its additional emphasis because of its
prominent position in the textof the spiritual criterion for belonging to
the Church"they who have the Spirit of Christ"a quantum leap was
made in the development of the understanding of the Church.
Hitherto, one oriented the idea of Church only to what could be
juridically established, and then sought to apply the decisive criteria
only from that point of view. Through this decision, made in the sense
of a hierarchia veritatum, hierarchy of truths, thinking on this
question took on a new breadth and openness. This to be seen not as a
betrayal but as a realization of what is truly Catholic. Just how
important the idea of the criterion of the Spirit is can be seen from
another point of view.
Sin does not take away one's membership in the Church. That sinners
belong to the Church is an ancient theological propositionbut the
membership affected by sin not only becomes ineffective, it also turns
to the condemnation of the individual: "They will not be saved who,
although incorporated into the Church, do not persevere in love and
remain in the Church only with their bodies (corpore) but not with
their hearts (corde)." The former, insufficiently clearly differentiated
distinction between the question of salvation and that of membership
in the Church, is now clarified: plene incorporari provides no grounds
for presumption or false security.
Relationship to the other Christian communities is described with the
words coniunctum esse and, within that reality, of ordinaribeing
ordered to the Catholic Church. The nature of this connectedness is
described by the reference not to subjective conditions, but to
Christian and ecclesial realities.
The history of this text is exciting. It reveals an intensive struggle for
some progress beyond what was already established, and makes an
attempt, right down to work done on individual words and concepts,
to do justice to the ecumenical and pastoral intentions of the Council.
Christian reality, which is constituted by baptism and its implications,
is taken as the fundamental starting point. The important text reads:

Page 628
With those who by baptism share in the honor of the Christian name, but
do not confess the full faith or preserve unity of communion under the
successor of Peter, the Church acknowledges itself to be connected in
several ways. For many of them honor Scripture as the form of faith and of
life, demonstrate genuine religious zeal, believe in the love of God, the
Father Almighty, and in Christ the Son of God and Redeemer, receive the
sign of baptism by which they are connected with Christ; indeed they
recognize and receive other sacraments too in their own churches or
ecclesial communities. . . . There is, in addition, community in prayer and
in other spiritual goods; indeed even a true connection with the Holy
Spirit, who in gifts and graces is active in them too with his sanctifying
power and who has strengthened many of them even to the shedding of
their blood. The Spirit arouses in all disciples of Christ such longing and
activity that they would all like to be united in peace in the one flock under
the one shepherd established by Christ. To achieve this, Holy Mother
Church prays, hopes, and works unceasingly, and encourages her children
to purification and renewal so that the sign of Christ might shine more
clearly on the face of the Church. (Lumen Gentium no. 15)
From this new view of non-Catholic believers and their
connectioneven with all the still remaining separation and
differenceswith the Catholic Church, one is but a step away from a
positive assessment of those communities in which individual
Christians have received their Christian being and in which they live
and make it real. If so many elements that represent a connection with
the Catholic Church are attributed to the individual Christian, then the
phenomenon of being connected also to their communities has to be
admitted, and that in the sense that they be characterized by the name
of Church.
The step to the explicit recognition of this consequence was taken at
the Council in the Decree on Ecumenism (no. 3). It says, speaking of
Christians living outside the Roman Catholic Churches:
All those justified by faith through baptism are incorporated into Christ.
They therefore have a right to be honored by the title of Christian, and are
properly regarded as brothers and sisters in the Lord by the sons and
daughters of the Catholic Church. Moreover, some, indeed very many of
the most significant elements or endowments which together, bo to build
up and give life to the Church herself can exist outside the visible
boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written word of God; the life of
grace; faith, hope, and charity, along with other interior gifts of the Holy
Spirit and visible elements. All of these, which come from Christ and lead
back to Him, belong by right to the one Church of Christ. The brethren
divided from us also carry out many of the sacred actions of the Christian
religion. Undoubtedly, in that ways that vary, according to the different
constitution of each Church and Community, these actions can truly
engender a life of grace, and can be rightly described as capable of
providing access to the community of salvation. It follows that these
separated Churches and Communities, though we believe they suffer from
defect already mentioned, have by no means been deprived of significance
and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not
refrained from using them as means of salvation, which derive their
efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic
Church.

Page 629
This textgoing beyond Lumen gentiumdeclares: The Church is built up
of the gifts of Christ. These gifts are found in their fullness in the
Catholic Church. But they are found in varying degrees also in the
other Christian communities, where they function as a community-
building and community-preserving power. And the precise
statement''All this that proceeds from and leads back to Christ rightly
belongs to the one, single Church of Christ"doesn't just offer another
open answer to the question of identification, but highlights and
grounds the ecclesial character, the being-Church of the others. But
there is also express emphasis here that through the churches living
from these gifts of Christ, it is not division but the community of the
Church of Christ that is made real.
The differences are thereby neither denied nor ignored, but they are
ordered within a common unity that encompasses them. Thus it is that
the word and concept "Church" is to be used in full justice and in
truth, but at the same time, as the case may be, in an analogical sense.
It connects unity and difference, difference and unity. Such a view
does not require that the Catholic Church stop being the Church of
Christ. But it is just as true that this affirmation does not require any
denial of the ecclesial existence of the other churches for the sake of
one's own ecclesiality; it rather allows ecclesiality to be recognized
there as well, because the gifts from which the Church of Christ lives
and is built up and which belong to the one, single Church are also
alive there.
In the text we have quoted from the Decree on Ecumenism, there is
mention of "Churches" and "ecclesial Communities"no
differentiations or subdivisions are given at this point, and one
shouldn't force them after the fact. But it should still be noted that
some of these communities themselves refuse to be Church. That is
why the Decree on Ecumenism spoke of the "Oriental Churches" and
"the separated Churches and church Communities in the West."'
Finally, one should take note that the text gives a negative formulation
to its positive statement that the Spirit of Christ uses the separated
church communities as a means of salvation: "Spiritus Christi uti non
renuitthe Spirit of Christ has not refrained. . . ." For the encyclical
Mystici corporis "used this same manner of speaking when, with
regard to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for those fully separated
from the Mystical Body, it explicitly maintains that the Spirit of God
refuses to take up dwelling therein. In general, however, it is said
there that they who in faith or leadership are separated from each
other "cannot live in one Body and live from its one Divine Spirit."18
The new view gained and articulated at the Council is a genuine, huge
step forward; it is not just a development of medieval ecclesiology,
but a clear corrective of it. Here we have a new theological starting
point, which
18 DS 3808 (NR 398f).

Page 630
calls for concrete and manifold realizations in the faith and existence
of the Christian Churches.
Church and Churches in New Form
Taken together, these statements provide the possibility and create the
needed presuppositions to see and appreciate the problem "Church
and Churches" differently than in the past, i.e., in a positive, affirming
sense. Churches in the plural can no longer be illegitimate if the
Council explicitly talks of the other Christian communities and
confessions as churches and church communities.
This erects a decisive ecumenical sign. While in the past the
confessions, even in their essence, were mostly defined by that which
distinguishes and separates them from the others:"non-Catholic, non-
Protestant"today, conditioned by many external factors, we are
mindful (and the Council explicitly said this) that there exists between
the communities a binding common unity greater and more significant
than the differences. While formerly, because of the differences, the
greater common unity was almost lost sight of, today one is inclined
to see the differences in the horizon of the greater common unity. This
results in a viewpoint that not only does more justice to the reality, but
also has ecumenical significance.
The non-Roman Catholic churches categorized as churches and
church communities possess in that designation a decisive ecumenical
basis and thus the presupposition for a more intensive common unity
or union, now that the confessions, which clearly used to be the
bearers of separation, are becoming more and more the subjects of a
legitimate plurality in unity.19 As a result, the once-separating
contradictions are turning into a reconciling difference. In the
formulation of Joseph Ratzinger, churches should remain churches
and become one Church.
These statements invite us to submit biblical origins and history to a
new examination. The same intensity with which the New Testament
speaks of the unity of the Church, of the Church in the singular, is
found there also in the way it speaks of the churches in the plural, in
the sense of local churches, of liturgical assemblies in Corinth,
Jerusalem, Rome, etc. These churches are not subsidiaries or mere
substations of a central Church, they are Church in the full sense of
the word, they are Church as event, as Church coming-to-be. For in
them is done that which makes Church to be Church: the proclamation
of Jesus' message and of the message of Jesus the Christ, the holding
firm to the teaching of the apostles, the Breaking of the Bread as
celebration of the Eucharist, the ministry of service.
19 H. Fries, Ökumene statt Konfessionen? (Frankfurt, 1977).

Page 631
In doing these things, the communities thus mentioned manifest no
uniformity in form and composition and, to some extent, in their
organization as well. There were real differences between
predominantly Jewish-Christian predominantly Gentile-Christian
communities. The form of Church manifest in the New Testament was
that of Church in churches, that of a unity of Church in its plurality,
which was regarded not as a hindrance but as an expression of living
unity being grounded in Christ and His Spirit and being obligated to
the building up of that unity. In other words, the churches had their
place in the one Church; the Church attains its realization in the
churches.
Theoretically, this plurality has never been contested in the course of
history. But one must immediately add (let it be said as Joseph
Ratzinger put it): In the Catholic Church, this plurality has in fact
been constantly forced more and more into a back seat over against a
central system in which the local Church of Rome drew into itself, as
it were, all the other local churches, thus curtailing the aspect of unity
and making it uniform. In this fact lies on the one hand, some
essential starting points for the Catholic Church in view of the current
ecumenical movement. For the fact that the plurality of churches,
which has its legitimate place in the Church, was constantly taking a
back seat in the Catholic Church, was also caused by the fact that this
plurality, not given sufficient room in the Church, had now unfolded
outside of it in the independent development of the individual
churches. If the Council recognizes this kind of reality, and it does, it
is due to the insight that uniformity and unity are not identical, and
that above all things the plurality of churches must again be brought to
life in the unity of the Catholic Church.20
Here is a duty to be carried out, for which there is need of practical
training in the Roman Catholic Church. Until Vatican II, and in the
horizon of the aftereffects of Vatican I and its decision on the primacy
and infallible magisterium of the pope, impulses that were consciously
taken up and put into practice in a variety of ways by the so-called
Pius popes according to the motto "the more uniform the better and
more convincing for unity," the Catholic Church became practiced
especially in those forms of unity which pushed towards the greatest
possible uniformity, right up to a uniform liturgical language.
Catholics still have no real practice in the legitimate multiplicity of
the Churchaffected perhaps by the alarming multiplicity, of the
"denominations" which have arisen and still arise in the non-Roman
Catholic churches.
Catholics will recognize that their own Church is not at all equipped to
deal with the phenomenon of multiplicity in unity, and that it is the
Church's duty to orient itself towards this possibility and reality. They will
recognize that their own Church is faced with profound task of renewal,
something that will not be accom-
20 "Die Kirche und die Kirchen," Reformatio 2 (1964) 104.

Page 632
plished in a few days, but will require a process of patient self-opening, a
process in which they will have no right whatsoever simply to absorb the
others, because in the Church the place needed for the things to which they
themselves have a legitimate right has still to be made.21
In place of the idea of conversion, which still has its meaning for
individuals whose conscience so directs them, there is a fundamental
shift to the idea of the community and unity of the churches; the
churches remain and still become one Church. If Catholics dare to
hope for something, then it is something like this: There will come a
time in which the churches that exist outside the Church will finally
be able to enter into their unity in such a way that while still
remaining as churches they really take on only those modifications
which are absolutely necessary for such a unity.
These modifications can be illustrated from that demand repeatedly
encountered in inner-church and ecumenical discussion: The
unification and unity of the Church can be only on the basis of the
truthnot by circumventing it. Hence the validity of Ratzinger's words:
The claim of truth may not be eliminated where it is not pressing and
irreversible. One may not take as truth what in reality is a historically
developed form which stands in a more or less close connection with the
truth. Thus precisely when the weight of truth and its indispensability is
brought into play, it must also be accompanied by a manner of speaking
that guards against overly hasty truth claims and is ready to search with the
eyes of love after the inner breadth of what is true.22
Thus one can say: The form of Church and churches that one finds in
the New Testament is not the mirror image of the present situation of
the Church. To that extent, the well-known thesis of Ernst
Käsemannthat the New Testament canon grounds not the unity of the
Church but the plurality of confessions23is acceptable if one thereby
understands not the present status of separated, mutually
excommunicating confessions, but that hoped-for and striven-for
situation which is the goal of ecumenical unity: Confessions not as
bearers of separation but as subjects of legitimate and reconciled
multiplicity in unity.
As the importance of the local churches "in which and of which the
Church consists," is given more recognition within the Catholic
Church, the former mission churches become increasingly
independent in genuine form and character, for example the Church in
Africa, in Latin America, and in the Far East, so much the more will
the Catholic Church be equipped and ready for the task ahead:
namely, that churches should remain churches and become one
Church.
21 Ibid. 106.
22 J. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, trans. Sister Mary Frances
McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987) 198.
23 "Begründet der neutestamentliche Kanon die Einheit der Kirche?" in:
Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen I 214-223.

Page 633
It follows from all this that the ecumenical Church cannot take the
place of the confessions; rather the confessions, faithfully to the core
of what they are should become an expression and sign of the
ecumenical Church. That is when, by carrying out a process of
properly understood recognition as a realization of the responsibility
and the promise Ecclesia semper reformanda, the reality "Church and
Churches" will have come to fulfillment.24
24 Cf. H. FriesK. Rahner, Unity of ChurchAn Actual Possibility
(PhiladelphiaNew York, 1985) ; W. Bühlmann, The Church of the Future:
A Model for the Year 2001 (Maryknoll, N.Y.: 1986).

Page 634
§ 61
Epilogue:
The Challenge of Postmodernism and Fundamental Theology
The purpose of this epilogue1 is to provide the English-language
reader with an update of recent developments most directly affecting
fundamental theology since the German publication of Fundamental-
theologie in 1985. Therefore, the focus of this final chapter will be
threefold. First, it will give a general overview and explication of
what has been termed "postmodernism." Postmodernism, perhaps
more than any other movement in the past fifteen years, seeks to
undercut the "fundamental" or foundational aspect of theology that
Heinrich Fries puts forth. Due to the limited nature of this overview,
general characterizations of postmodernist thought will have to
suffice. Second, an example bearing some resemblance to this
philosophical approach will be given as it is developed in George
Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine,2 a study of religion and theology.
Lindbeck's work is not explicitly located in the postmodern
movementhe defines it as "postliberal," but certain anthropological
and methodological approaches he proposes for analyzing the nature
of religion do emerge from postmodernismespecially his cultural-
linguistic approach.3 These approaches should be identified as such.
Finally, a discussion of two critical points of disagreement will set
Fries's Fundamental
1 This epilogue was written under my direction and with the assistance of
several of my theological colleagues in the Boston area, by Thomas M.
Kelly, who was my primary assistant in this translation project over the
past two years.R. J. Daly, S.J.
2 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a
Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).
3 Lindbeck is post-liberal inasmuch as he avoids locating the methodological
starting point for theology in the "subject." He is post-modern inasmuch as he
confines truth claims and epistemological realism solely to concrete historical
contexts bound by culture and language; i.e. he avoids making transcendent
truth claims.

Page 635
Theology apart from Lindbeck's approach and much of the
postmodern movement.
Postmodernism:
A General Overview4
In his article "Between Foundations and Nihilism: Is Phronesis the
Via Media for Theology?"5 Thomas Guarino begins with the question
"What type of rationality is proper to theology as a discipline?" This
question today is greeted by a spectrum of answers ranging from
nihilism to fundamentalism. It is a question that has serious
consequences for any theological inquiry. While admitting that
rationality is not a univocal term, Guarino adds that "a particular
understanding of the way reason is used or a denial of reason's
capacities, will affect one's conception of revelation, how it is
received, and the type of truth or falsity predicated for it."6 It is here
that he introduces the first point of his article: The postmodernist
critique of ''foundationalism" is undercutting the traditional approach
to the human in general, and to human knowing in particular.
Traditional "foundationalist" thought, whether of the classical
metaphysical or modern transcendental variety, has come on hard times of
late. Its critics resist the foundationalist compulsion to establish some first
principle, Archmidean point, or
4 For background on postmodernism as well as its influence on theology
and philosophy see: Richard Bernstein, The New Constellation: The
Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge, Mass.
MIT, 1992); Jean Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report
on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 1984); Rodolphe Gasche, The Tain of the Mirro:
Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University, 1986); Mark Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984); Nots (Chicago: University of
Chicago, 1993); Gregory Bruce Smith, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the
Transition to Postmodernity (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995);
Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and
Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University, 1989); Jeffery Barash,
Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning (Dordrecht:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1988); Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity: Nihilism
and Hermeneutics, trans. Jon R. Snyder (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University, 1988); Paradigm Change in Theology, ed. Hans Kung and
David Tracy (New York, Crossroad, 1989); David Tracy, Plurality and
Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco: Harper and
Row, 1987); On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics,
and Church (Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis, 1994); Dialogue and
Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, ed. Diane P.
Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer (Albany: SUNY, 1989); HansGeorg
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d rev. ed., J. Weinsheimer and D. G.
Marshall, eds. (New York: Crossroad, 1991); Michel Foucault, The
Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984); Jacques
Derrida, Speech and Phenomena (Evanston: Northwestern University,
1973); Of Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University, 1979); New Essays on Religious Language, ed. D. M. High
(New York: Oxford University, 1969); Robert J. Fogelin, Wittgenstein
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980); Tilman Kuchler, Postmodern
Gaming: Heidegger, Duchamp, Derrida (New York: P. Lang, 1994); David
Ray Griffin et al., Founders of Constructive Postmodern Philosophy:
Peirce, James, Bergson, Whithead, and Hartshorne (Albany: SUNY,
1993); Varieties of Postmodern Theology (Albany: SUNY, 1989);
Postmodernism and the Social Sciences, ed. J. Doherty, E. Graham, and
M. Malek (New York: St. Martin's, 1992).
5 Thomas Guarino, Theological Studies 54 (1993) 3754.
6 Ibid. 37, n. 1.

Page 636
a historical matrix from which to begin the search for rigorous and
objective knowledge. The search for ultimate and determinate ontological
or epistemological grounds guides virtually the entire tradition of Western
thought, wholly enveloping the Platonic-Thomistic-Cartesian-Kantian-
Husserlian axis. It attempts, once and for all, to "stop the show" by means
of assorted foundational archai or principia such as esse, ousia, eidos, res
cogitans, Wille zur Macht, etc.7

According to Guarino, foundationalism and similar hermeneutical

trajectories have grounded much of traditional Catholic systematic
thought, especially as it relates to doctrinal statements and the
transmittal of "Truth" through history in tradition (Dei verbum 7-8).
Some well-known contemporary examples of "foundationalists" in the
Roman Catholic tradition include Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner, and
Walter Kasper. All of these theologians utilize "a foundationalist
ontology in order to undergird a theology which supports both the
referential nature of doctrinal statements as well as their integral and
continuous transmission."8
Opposed to this foundationalism, which has traditionally under-girded
Catholicisma foundationalism implicit in any universal claim
regarding human natureis the postmodern position. Guarino gives a
very general synopsis of postmodernism ranging from the thought of
Derrida and Foucault through Gadamer to Habermas. Within this
spectrum he makes a distinction between moderate and strong
postmodernism. "As I will use the terms, 'moderate postmodernism'
indicates nonfoundationalist thought which seeks a rationality
appropriate to our postmetaphysical, posttranscendental age; 'strong
postmodernism' is more radical inasmuch as it appears to involve an
outright rejection of rationality of any kind."9 These two degrees of
postmodernism define themselves over against "modernism," which
Guarino defines as any attempt "to construct some grand narrative or
over-arching theoretical system, one of the grand recits of history
such as the 'dialectics of the Spirit' or the 'emancipation of the
rational."' The strong postmodern trajectory is defined, in part, by
Jean-Francois Lyotard with the following assertions:
The postmodern rebels against all onto-theological metanarratives and
protological-eschatological schemas. It accentuates and celebrates the
heteromorphous nature of discourse and life.
Epistemic systematizations and totalizing visions are, at base,
ontotheological and isomorphic illusions which ultimately seek the
obliteration of heterogeneity and differ(a)nce. Metaphysics in particular
and foundationalism in general are unblinking attempts at congruency and
commensurability. . . .10
7 Ibid. 38.
8 Ibid. 39.
9 Ibid. 40.
10 Ibid. 4041 including n. 16.

Page 637
The very concept of "truth" itself is part of the (now discarded)
metaphysical baggage. . . . There exists only sheer heteronomy and the
emergence of random and unrelated subsystems of all kinds.11
Due to such extreme claims, it would seem that very little dialogue or
even consideration of dialogue for theological purposes can be
proposed with such an approach, for it undercuts itself. If there is no
meaning or rationality, how can one reasonably assert that there is no
meaning or rationality? The moderate postmodern position attempts to
utilize some form of rationality. Its critique is more specifically
concerned with the very real problem of history. The following
assertions generally characterize moderate postmodernism:
What is here termed the moderate postmodern position takes into serious
consideration fundamental postmodern concerns such as the radicalness of
historicity, the pervasiveness of ideology, the decentered subject, the
rejection of transcendentalism, the encompassing horizons of absence, and
the subsequent avoidance of Identitätsphilosophie.
The moderate postmodern position has its roots in Heidegger and
Wittgenstein.
Because all theories and forms of life are not equally true, criteria must be
developed so as to distinguish coherency from incoherency and rationality
from irrationality. Of course, it must be unceasingly stated that reason is
exercised in circumstances which are thoroughly finite, conditioned, and
historical. Nonetheless, it is truly reason which is exercised. The irrational
and deconstructionist tendencies of strong postmodernism, then, are as
ontologically inappropriate as are the naive and truncated forms of
foundationalism.12
It is quite clear from these assertions that even the less radical
moderate postmodernism presents serious difficulties for theology, for
it calls into question two integral parts of any theological enterprise.
The first pertains to basic affirmations about human nature. The
second pertains to the possibility and meaning of the transmittal of
doctrinal truth through history. Guarino concludes his article with a
call for a nuanced theological foundationalism which incorporates
"the broad horizons of historicity, facticity and paradigm-bound
rationality even while maintaining the metaphysical/transcendental
subject."13 The specifics of how that may be worked out cannot be
elaborated upon here, for there are many suggested approaches from
various "schools" of theology.
This call for taking history, and hence the post-modernist critique,
seriously is also a concern for David Tracy.
If theology is to continue to have a systematically apologetic task, and if
that task is to prove adequate to the contemporary postmodern situation,
then new criteria for the task are needed. Traditional modern fundamental
theologies relied too ex-
11 Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism (Durham: Duke University, 1990)
12, 342.
12 Guarino 4244.
13 Ibid. 54.

Page 638
clusively on transcendental inquiryand, too, often, models of that inquiry
not explicitly related to the questions of language (and thereby plurality
and historicity) and questions of history (and thereby ambiguity and
postmodern suspicion, not merely modern critique).14
The basis of Tracy's acceptance of parts of the postmodernist critique
is the need to attend to the specifics of history, historicity, and
language. It is only in this way that one can understand oneself "as a
subject active in history."15 Anything less than this fails to take into
account the human being as being human in history. Tracy also sees
much danger in what he views to be the faults of an all-encompassing
foundationalism which fails to take into account any differencei.e.,
fundamentalism. It is against this fundamentalism that he describes
postmodernity as an "ethics of resistanceresistance, above all, to more
of the same, the same unquestioned sameness of the modern turn to
the subject, the modern over-belief in the search for a perfect method,
the modern social evolutionary narrative whereby all is finally and
endlessly more of the self-same."16 What now determines all
intellectual categories is the post-modern turn to the other and the
different. This emphasis on the other and the different calls into
question the grand narrative of the dominant culturein our case the
"social evolutionary narrative of modernity." The postmodern critique,
for Tracy, is a much-needed wake-up call for theologians to respond
to the problem of history, in difference and otherness, and to utilize
contemporary intellectual movements for the benefit of theology.
God's shattering otherness, the neighbor's irreducible otheress, the othering
reality of "revelation," not the consoling modern communality of
"religion," all these expressions of otherness come now in new postmodern
and post-neoorthodox forms to demand the serious attention of all
thoughtful theologians.17
Tracy's embrace of aspects of the postmodernist critique of theology
ultimately benefits theology, for as he states, "Any transcendental
mode of inquiry (like Husserl's) will function well if, and only if, it
can account for its own linguistic and historical essence."18
14 David Tracy, "The Uneasy Alliance Reconceived: Catholic Theological
Method, Modernity, and Postmodernity," Theological Studies 50 (1989)
560. Tracy further suggests: Paul Ricoeur, "Hermeneutics and the Critique
of Ideology," in: Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge,
Harvard Univ. Press 1981).
15 David Tracy, "Theology and the Many Faces of Postmodernity," Theology
Today 51 (1995) 108.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid. Cf. Jack A. Bonsor, "History, Dogma, and Nature: Further
Reflections on Postmodernism and Theology," Theological Studies 55 (1994)
295313. Bonsor states that "foundationalist thinking legitimates the
hegemony of a particular perspective" (297). For this reason he suggests that
theologians withhold judgment on postmodernism until its benefits for
dealing with history and historicity become more evident.
18 Tracy, "The Uneasy Alliance," 560.

Page 639
With this very brief overview in mind, it is now possible to present an
example of a theological attempt to utilize some moderate postmodern
principles in constructing a methodological approach to religion and
theology. The following presentation of George Lindbeck's views on
the nature of religion and, therefore, of human nature, and his views
on the relation of language and experience will serve to highlight
some problems I have characterized as postmodern.
A Postmodern Theological Attempt
George Lindbeck proposes a new framework for conceiving religion
and religious doctrine in his book The Nature of Doctrine. It is evident
in the Foreword of this work that two main concerns underlie his
project. First, his ecumenical endeavors, both past and present, move
him to seek new concepts to remove anomalies present in the
doctrinal disputes among particular Christian denominations. These
anomalies of concern include the "interrelationship of doctrinal
permanence and change, conflict and compatibility, unity and
disunity, and variety and uniformity among, but especially within
religions."19 The second concern for Lindbeck is the academic status
of the study of religion. He seems particularly concerned that religion
and religious discourse is slowly removing itself from current
intellectual movements in the academy. He repeatedly stresses that
"other sciences" employ this kind of method in their approach to their
respective fields of studyand from this he infers that any other
approach to the nature of religion and doctrine will prove to be either
provincial or relativistic. Consequently, a theoretical framework for
religion is of primary concern for Lindbeck, and "theology" is defined
as a subset of this field (theory of religion) that includes ''scholarly
activity of second-order reflection on the data of religion (including
doctrinal data) and of formulating arguments for or against material
positions (including doctrinal ones)."20 He states clearly that his
inquiry intends to be both strictly theoretical and religiously neutral.
This assertion is much more than simply a starting point for his new
system. At issue in this approach are the presuppositions upon which
the cultural-linguistic framework stands.21
This epilogue will concentrate on Lindbeck's assertions concerning
the foundations of religion, especially as they relate to its experiential
19 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine 9.
20 Ibid. 10.
21 It is here where one must ask if there exists a strictly theoretical and
religiously neutral starting point for the study of religion. Is it possible to
remove confessional "baggage" from theoretical inquiry? Paradoxically,
Lindbeck points out that "the motivations for this book are ultimately more
substantively theological than purely theoretical" (18). The issue then
becomes whether a "religiously neutral" approach is possible for dealing with
theologically substantive problems as he would define them.

Page 640
foundation. This will obviously include mention of doctrine, for it is
closely related, but the focus will not be upon doctrine. First I will
summarize Lindbeck's understanding of current theological theories of
religion and doctrine. Second, I will present his analysis of religion
and experience followed by the cultural-linguistic framework that he
proposes as a solution to current doctrinal reconciliation efforts. This
will be followed by a discussion of what I view to be the two most
important points of disagreement between Lindbeck and Fries. The
first issue is the methodological difference between a theoretical
investigation of religion and a theological investigation. This
difference highlights the purpose of doing theology for each author.
The second issue is concerned with the function of language and its
relation to the anatomy of "experience."
Current Theological Theories of Religion and Doctrine
Lindbeck presents current theological theories of religion and doctrine
in three broad categories. The first of these theories "emphasizes the
cognitive aspects"22 of religion and is generally referred to as
"propositionalist." The second theory is termed "experiential-
expressive" and emphasizes the experiential aspect of religion. The
final theory is actually a combination of the first two. For Lindbeck,
all three approaches remain tied to a specific and unsatisfactory
formulation of doctrine which is unable to achieve "doctrinal
reconciliation without capitulation.''23
The propositional approach, according to Lindbeck, "stresses the ways
in which church doctrines function as informative propositions or
truth claims about objective realities."24 It is mainly concerned with
the meaningfulness of religious utterances and, as will subsequently
be discussed, possesses a particularly unsatisfactory understanding of
how language functions. Lindbeck clearly states that "doctrinal
reconciliation without capitulation" is impossible in this propositional
approach because, "if a doctrine is once true, it is always true, and if it
is once false, it is always false."25 This is an impossibility because the
meanings of doctrines remain inflexible and therefore cannot change
"while remaining the same."26
The experiential-expressive approach to religion "interprets doctrines
as noninformative and nondiscursive symbols of inner feelings,
attitudes, or existential orientations."27 Put differently, for an
experien-
22The Nature of Doctrine 16.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid. 17.
27 Ibid. 16.

Page 641
tial-expressive approach, doctrines express and are continually
evaluated against a prereflexive experience or existential orientation.
According to Lindbeck, this approach began with Schleiermacher and
is equally unsatisfactory for doctrinal reconciliation. The elasticity of
the meaning of doctrines is quite pronounced under some uses (i.e.,
Schleiermacher) of this starting pointand doctrinal constancy becomes
a very real problem.
The general principle is that insofar as doctrines function as nondiscursive
symbols, they are polyvalent in import and therefore subject to changes of
meaning or even to a total loss of meaningfulness, to what Tillich calls
their death. They are not crucial for religious agreement or disagreement,
because these are constituted by harmony or conflict in underlying
feelings, attitudes, existential orientations, or practices, rather than by what
happens on the level of symbolic (including doctrinal) objectifications.28

The third theoretical approach combines the cognitively-propositional

and experiential-expressive approaches. Karl Rahner and Bernard
Lonergan serve as representatives of this approach for Lindbeck. And
while this approach is better able to "account more fully. . . . for both
variable and invariable aspects of religious traditions,"29 the practical
application of such an approach continually falls short of his goals.
This is so for two reasons. First, they supposedly lack the criteria with
which to determine "when a given doctrinal development is consistent
with the sources of faith,"30 and therefore must rely on the
magisterium more than is desirable. Secondly, "their explanations of
how this reconciliation is possible tend to be too awkward and
complex to be easily intelligible or convincing." The point remains
that, for Lindbeck, the third (hybrid) theory is also unacceptable.31
With the previous three categories of theory determined to be either
too rigid in doctrinal meaning, too elastic in doctrinal meaning, or
simply too complex to be easily intelligible, Lindbeck has effectively
cleared the theological landscape of viable options for his project. It is
here that he proposes an alternate approach to address the anomalies
of doctrinal permanency and change.
It has become customary in a considerable body of anthropological,
sociological, and philosophical literature (about which more will be said
later) to emphasize neither the cognitive nor the experiential-expressive
aspects of religion; rather,
28 Ibid. 17.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Lindbeck does not give this third "hybrid" approach more than a passing
glance, and in fact states that "for our purposes it will generally be subsumed
under the earlier approaches" (16). This approach warrants a greater and
more exhaustive analysis, for it is quite different than pure experiential-
expressivism as defined by Lindbeck. For this epilogue, I will bracket this
"hybrid" approach or refer to it with the names of the theologians (i.e.,
Rahner or Lonergan, etc.). Henceforth the three approaches are referred to as
(1) cognitive-propositional, (2) experiential-expressive, (3) cultural-linguistic.

Page 642
emphasis is placed on those respects in which religions resemble
languages together with their correlative forms of life and are thus similar
to cultures (insofar as these are understood semiotically as reality and
value systemsthat is, as idioms for the construing of reality and the living
of life). The function of church doctrines that becomes most prominent in
this perspective is their use, not as expressive symbols or as truth claims,
but as communally authoritative rules of discourse, attitude and action.
This general way of conceptualizing religion will be called in what follows
a "cultural-linguistic" approach, and the implied view of church doctrine
will be referred to as a "regulative" or "rule" theory.32

This regulative approach, for Lindbeck, accomplishes his goal of

doctrinal reconciliation without capitulation because rules "retain an
invariant meaning under changing conditions of compatibility and
conflict."33 Opposition between rules can sometimes be solved by
specifying their contextual application.34
Lindbeck concludes this first chapter by defining some of the reasons
why the experiential-expressive approach is prevalent today. He
reduces many of the reasons for the prevalence of this approach to
psychological hypotheses concerned with fulfilling the modern
psyche. It is also interesting to note that while academic methods have
bypassed this approach in favor of a cultural-linguistic approach,
those "commending religion to society at large"35 have employed the
experiential-expressivist approach. Lindbeck surmises that the reason
for this unsatisfactory situation is that the experiential-expressive
approach sells better in the modern theological marketplace, "while
the cultural and linguistic approaches are better suited to the
nontheological study of religion."36 He obviously views with
disappointment the fact that religion is being commended to society in
a framework and manner that is not theoretically and academically
sound and will probably lead to doctrinal provincialism or
relativism.37 Two questions then surface. Is the religious community-
at-large quite out of touch with the academy, or is it the other way
around? Secondly, does the content of a subject determine, to any
degree, the method of studying it? It would seem that, unlike most
other disciplines in the academy, the discipline of "religious studies" is
concerned with the human experience to an "other" that is somehow
relational to us. That is certainly the case in terms of the study of
theology. A cultural-linguistic paradigm would appear insufficient to
provide meaningful categories for this
32 Ibid. 1718.
33 Ibid. 18.
34 The question should be introduced here as to whether context and a given
rule can be separated or whether context is, in fact, part of a rule, and vice
versa. To answer this question adequately would require an emphasis on the
doctrinal aspect of this work which is interesting enough, though not the
focus of this epilogue.
35 Ibid. 23.
36 Ibid. 25.
37 I assert this here, somewhat strongly, given Lindbeck's understanding of
the relationship between language and reality soon to be addressed.

Page 643
relationality. Lindbeck understands this problem and its importance,
for in chapter two he discusses the relationship between religion and
experience.
Religion and Experience
In chapter two of The Nature of Doctrine, Lindbeck proposes to
evaluate whether an experiential-expressive approach to religion
(which views itself as a product of experience) is better suited as a
framework for understanding religion than a cultural-linguistic
approach (which views itself as a producer of experience). He
brackets, for the time being, a theological inquiry and states that the
aim of the chapter "is to give a nontheological account of the relations
of religion and experience."38 In one sense he has already answered
the question he posed. By bracketing the theological question, he
avoids any discussion of an inner relation to an outer reality (a
"material" point) and is able to focus on the "theoretical" aspects of a
methodology that by its very name works from various cultural and
linguistic influences to the individual. Lindbeck then presents his
interpretation of what is characteristic of experiential-expressivism in
general.
Experiential-Expressivism
The one-page exposition of the experiential-expressive approach to
religion given by Lindbeck begins with five of the six theses
Lonergan puts forth in his theory of religion.39 They are as follows: 1)
Different religions are diverse expressions or objectifications of a
common core experience. 2) The experience, while conscious, may be
unknown on the level of self-conscious reflection. 3) This experience
is present in all human beings. 4) In most religions, the experience is
the source and norm of objectifications. 5) The primordial religious
experience is God's gift of love.40 It is important to note that problems
with this approach begin to surface for Lindbeck when the "term" of
this experience is mentioned in a confessional sense. Having
bracketed any "material" points from the discussion, Lindbeck avoids
any mention of God, except to criticize
38 Ibid. 30.
39 Lindbeck was subsequently criticized on this exposition by Charles C.
Hefling, "Turning Liberalism Inside-Out," Method: Journal of Lonergan
Studies 3 (1985) 5169, and by Dennis M. Doyle, "Lindbeck's Appropriation
of Lonergan," ibid., 4 (1986) 1828.
40 Lindbeck 31. He follows this last point with the comment that "in this
thesis, Lonergan is obviously speaking as a Christian theologian rather than
simply a theorist of religion. This is one of the real issues in this workis it
possible to divorce a theory of religion from any theological presuppositions?
Is there an objective corner from which one can evaluate theological
methods? For a very helpful dialogue between Lonergan and postmodernism
see Fred Lawrence, "The Fragility of Consciousness: Lonergan and the
Postmodern Concern for the Other," Theological Studies 54 (1993) 5594.

Page 644
Lonergan's approach which specifically names God as the author of
this primordial experience of love. In part it is unacceptable for
Lindbeck because "it is difficult or impossible to specify"41 the
distinctive features of this core experience. This of course is true,
since the term of this experience is not an object alongside other
objects and it also includes quite a few unknowns. But is this a
sufficient reason to dispense with a theology that begins from such an
experience? The characterizations of this experience seem to create
more problems for Lindbeck than it solves, and so he offers the
alternative of a cultural-linguistic approach.
A Cultural-Linguistic Alternative
According to Lindbeck, religions are "comprehensive interpretive
schemes," which structure human experience and understanding of
self and world. Religion is a kind of cultural framework "that shapes
the entirety of life and thought."42 It is not primarily (though it may
well be so secondarily secondarily) an array of beliefs concerning the
truth, or a symbolism of attitudes, feelings, or sentiments. "Rather, it
is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities,
the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes,
feelings, and sentiments."43 It is in this sense that religion "shapes the
subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a
manifestation of those subjectivities."44 And so, in effect, a cultural-
linguistic model reverses the traditional experiential-expressive
conception of the ''inner" and the "outer." "Instead of deriving external
features of a religion from inner experience, it is the inner experiences
which are viewed as derivative."45
It is clear from this very brief sketch of the cultural-linguistic
approach that experience qua experience still has a very important
role. The difference now is that experience is viewed as a product of
religion as opposed to its producer. As one progresses through
Lindbeck's comparison of the two models, it becomes evident that the
nature of experience on the one hand and its relation to expression are
construed differently from each other. For traditional experiential-
expressivists such as Schleiermacher, and for theologians such as
Rahner and Lonergan who combine approaches, experience qua
experience, and the subsequent
41 Lindbeck 32.
42 Ibid. 3233.
43 Ibid. 33.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid. 33.

Page 645
reflection upon it are two different realities.46 This does not seem to
be the case for Lindbeck.
When one pictures inner experiences as prior to expression and
communication, it is natural to think of them in their most basic and
elemental form as also prior to conceptualization or symbolization. If, in
contrast, expressive and communicative symbols, whether linguistic or
non-linguistic, are primarythen, while there are of course nonreflective
experiences, there are no uninterpreted or unschematized ones. On this
view, the means of communication and expression are a precondition, a
kind of quasi-transcendental (i.e., culturally formed) a priori for the
possibility of experience.47

Towards the end of his second chapter, Lindbeck uses various

illustrations as examples of the truth for this theory of experience.
From color interpretations among various tribal peoples to the reasons
why prophets discover new concepts, he attempts to construct a case
for this view of experience. Two definitions of great importance
should not be missed among these examples. The first of these
pertains to limitations on his definition of experience, the second
concerns the order of "mental activities." Both points are vital for
understanding his approach. First, experience separated from its
communication or symbolization is not possible for Lindbeck. That is,
experience and the ability to express or communicate it simply cannot
be separated. Practically applied, there are no private experiences
because "all symbol systems have their origin in interpersonal
relations and social interactions."48 Second, the order of mental
activities is important to note. The first intention "is the act whereby
we grasp objects.'' The second intention "is the reflex act of grasping
or reflecting on first formal intentions."49 The obvious result of this
assertion is that one cannot grasp anything without certain tools,
which are possessed only by being culturally communicated. This
applies to religious experience as well. "They can be construed as by-
products of linguistically or conceptually structured cognitive
activities of which we are not directly aware because they are first
intentional."50
With this understanding of experience, shaped by a particular view of
language and epistemology, Lindbeck asserts his thesis toward the end
of chapter two. "First come the objectivities of the religion, its
language, doctrines, liturgies, and modes of action, and it is through
these that passions are shaped into various kinds of what is called
religious experience."51 This has direct consequences for the
definition of
46 This is clear from Fries's remarks above in §24, Rahner's Introduction
to the Foundations of Christian Faith, and Lonergan's two sub-sections in
Method in Theology titled "Religious Experience" (1057) and
"Expressions of Religious Experience" (1089).
47 Lindbeck 36.
48 Ibid. 38.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid. 39.

Page 646
religion he proposes. Religion is no longer something universal
"arising from within the depths of individuals," but instead it is "a
variegated set of cultural-linguistic systems that, at least in some
cases, differentially shape and produce our most profound sentiments,
attitudes, and awareness."52 He is careful in concluding this chapter to
state that the "scientific study" of religion and the "theological study"
may be better served by different approaches. The cultural-linguistic
approach could best serve theorists of religion while the experiential-
expressive may best serve theology.
For our purpose here, the doctrine question will be bracketed and the
focus will be on the question of experience. It is evident that Fries
views experience, language, epistemology, and the purpose of
theology quite differently from Lindbeck.
Theory of Religion vs. Theology, and the Purpose of Theology
Thus far our method has been to discuss the nature of what it is to be
human which then serves as a basis for understanding doctrine as both
intelligible and formative. Even if, as in Lindbeck's case, one starts
methodologically in a cultural-linguistic system, a corresponding view
of human nature must be at least presupposed which is appropriate to
that approach. Fries would find that Lindbeck has a different starting
point for a theory of religion (cultural linguistic framework in general)
and for theology (biblical narrative in particular). These are not easily
reconcilable, for a different starting point negates either one or the
otherfor the term and goal of both is the sameGod. A twofold
approach to theory and theology is unacceptable because for Fries, the
universal theological and anthropological presuppositions for theology
are authoritative and take precedence over all other aspects or agendas
related to religion and doctrine. Put differently, Fries's starting point
allows him to engage those who do not share his particular religious
or cultural languagei.e., those who do not share his particular
approach to religion. As Fries states in his Foreword, "It is precisely
fundamental theology that has the duty of being both true to origins
and adapted to contemporary situations, or attending to the message of
faith as well as to the needs of concrete human beings."53 And,
because the theological anthropology that presupposes such a duty
contains universals, so does the starting point for such a project.
Theory and theology are not separate realities. This ability to engage
others outside one's reality system does not seem possible for
Lindbeck.
When Lindbeck chooses a cultural-linguistic starting point for his
theory of religion, the inevitable question arises as to which culture
52 Ibid. 40.
53 Above, page 1.

Page 647
and which language? The answer of course is as varied as the subject-
matter. The Arabic/Middle Eastern/Koranic paradigm is the structure
of reality for Muslims. The Pacific Rim/Oriental/Buddhist paradigm
offers a structure of reality for inhabitants of that area, culture, and
language. Understood at a theoretical level, every religion is simply a
different set of historically bound cultural and linguistic factors
structured in ways that produce very different reality systems and
experiences. Thus in Lindbeck's theory, characterized by his moderate
postmodern understanding of history, there is no right and wrong,
revealed or contrived religionjust different (quasi self-contained)
structures of reality stemming from various cultural and linguistic
factors. But is this kind of "neutrality" possible for a theological
investigation? The answer to this question is possible only when one
discerns what is authoritative for Lindbeck, and why. Before
addressing what is authoritative for Lindbeck, one further point needs
to be mentioned here. One cannot deny that Lindbeck would make
truth claims or that he would hold for an eptistemological realism. The
key point is to understand that these claims and this realism are
confined solely to the particular historical contexti.e., bound by space
and time. Absolute truth claims transcending cultures and history or a
transcendental epistemological realism would not be acceptable for
Lindbeck. Put differently, Lindbeck can make truth claims within a
particular cultural-linguistic construct, but not between them.54
Given his emphasis on language as capable of constructing reality, it
comes as no surprise that Lindbeck utilizes the Bible as the narrative
par excellence for Christianity. "A scriptural world is thus able to
absorb the universe. It supplies the interpretive framework within
which believers seek to live their lives and understand reality."55 For
the strictly theological enterprise, he does not rely on propositional
truth claims or an "undefinable" experience, but on Scripture. His
particular interpretation of Scripture fits neatly into a cultural-
linguistic paradigm.
It is important to note the direction of interpretation. Typology does not
make scriptural contents into metaphors for extra-scriptural realities, but
the other way around. It does not suggest, as is often said in our day, that
believers find their stories in the Bible, but rather that they make the story
of the Bible their story. The cross is not viewed as a figurative
representation of suffering nor the
54 This is basically the same conclusion reached by David H. Kelsey, The
Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975) esp.
5758. In other words, once one has identified one's fundamental discrimen
(Kelsey) or cultural-linguistic world view (Lindbeck), one can go no
further. In contrast, the approach of Fries (and foundational thinkers
generally) commits one, by a careful use of dialectic, as e.g. developed by
B. Lonergan, to try to distinguish between more or less authentic
discrimina/cultural-linguistic world views. Cf. Robert J. Daly, ed.,
Christian Biblical Ethics (New YorkRamsey: Paulist, 1984) 9497, 12530,
esp. at 130.
55 Lindbeck 117.

Page 648
messianic kingdom as a symbol for hope in the future; rather, suffering
should be cruciform, and hopes for the future messianic. More generally
stated, it is the religion instantiated in Scripture which defines being, truth,
goodness, and beauty, and the nonscriptural exemplifications of these
realities need to be transformed into figures (or types or antitypes) of the
scriptural ones. Intratextual theology redescribes reality within the
scriptural framework rather than translating Scripture into extrascriptural
categories. It is the text, so to speak, which absorbs the world, rather than
the world the text.56

This interpretive framework emphasizes how life is to be lived in light

of what the Bible says about God in stories concerning Israel and
ultimately Jesus. When extrascriptural categories are imported into
reading Scripture, that reality within it is corrupted.57 Says Lindbeck:
The believer, so an intratextual approach would maintain, is not told
primarily to be conformed to a reconstructed Jesus of history (as Hans
Küng maintains), nor to a metaphysical Christ of faith (as in much of the
propositionalist tradition), nor to an abba experience of God (as for
Schillebeeckx), nor to an agapeic way of being in the world (as for David
Tracy), but he or she is rather to be conformed to the Jesus Christ depicted
in the narrative. An intratextual reading tries to derive the interpretive
framework that designates the theologically controlling sense from the
literary structure of the text itself.58
There are numerous problems with this approach; in large part they
are subsumed under the hermeneutical question concerning whether
written words or recorded deeds in one culture and time can simply be
understood, in themselves, (i.e., unmediated) when transposed into
another culture and time. What conditions of possibility exist for one
to enter into a framework that is outside of our own horizon? This is
the problem of history. If these historical occurrences cannot be
understood in themselves (i.e., ahistorically, without context), and
disclosing the correct interpretation is in fact the job of the theologian,
whose interpretation, whose reality structure, would prevail in such a
task?
There is another problem which is also very important. If Scripture,
understood in Lindbeck's sense, is the authoritative point of reference
for Christians in general, it seems that those outside the Christian
cultural-linguistic reality system are simply cut off. John Thiel's
Imagination and Authority59 sums up this very point.
Lindbeck sees the crisis of Christian faith in the modern world as nothing
less than the threat of its extinction. His notion of constrained authorship
addresses
56 Lindbeck 118.
57 This seems to overlook the fact that Greek thought exists in the New
Testament (see above § 46). Does Lindbeck really mean extra-scriptural or
extra-cultural? That brings up another problem. Understood in a cultural-
linguistic framework, the message and truth of the Bible would be confined
to that period and time in which it is written. Yet Lindbeck seems to make the
biblical Word immune to problems of historical transmission.
58 Lindbeck 120.
59 John E. Thiel, Imagination and Authority: Theological Authorship in the
Modern Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991).

Page 649
that threat through the theologian's efforts to describe the meaning of the
biblical text not for the culture at large but for the community of faith and
in so doing to instruct the community in authentic speaking and acting.
One might say that Lindbeck's alternative to the "modern" theologian very
much resembles the ancient Christian catechist living in a pagan world.60
Fries would view any starting point that is unable to engage
contemporary society as detrimental to theology and the theory of
religion in general. This is especially detrimental to religion with
regard to its opponents today. For these opponents, the entire notion of
revelation, especially as embodied by the Bible, is part of the problem.
Jesus of Nazareth, as depicted in Scripture, is also part of the problem.
For others, even "religious" people, the word "God" is part of the
problem. The only common ground that theology shares with much of
"secular" culture is the question of what it means to be a human being.
This is where the dialogue must beginthis is where the theologian
engages culture. Thiel speaks of this approach, and its description
includes the fundamental theological approach of Fries.
Foundational theologies seek theoretical grounding in a nonscriptural
anthropology, epistemology, or method because they assume the need to
engage culture in and through theological reflection and they find the
possibility of rapprochement in an appropriate secular theory. For
Lindbeck the possibility of such rapprochement has evaporated.61
One final point regarding a theory of religion and doing theology
deserves to be mentioned. Lindbeck stresses at the beginning of his
book that his theory is strictly theoryone that can be religiously
neutral. But given the nature of human inquiry and the history from
which each individual emerges, a religiously neutral inquiry is simply
an illusion. There is no "neutral" (i.e., acontextual) corner from which
the religious landscape can be evaluated, for every human being has
been affected by opinions or lack thereof on the subject and has
internalized these to various degrees. That is not to say that a "Truth"
or set of truths does not exist, but it does mean that this "Truth" or set
of truths is mediated in history through human beings. It is no surprise
that Lindbeck's theory disregards any human authorship as normative
for theology when one takes into account Lindbeck's confessional
views on the authoritative nature of Scripture. John Thiel puts it well:
The antifoundationalist argument of The Nature of Doctrine may appear on
the surface as the use of relatively recent philosophical conclusions to
further the ends of a new theological proposal. But one need not look
much beneath the surface of Lindbeck's argument to consider whether his
confessional commitment to the Lutheran tradition makes its
antifoundationalist perspective theologically attractive. Of itself,
antifoundationalism is a philosophical stance reached through
sophisticated arguments against the integrity of naively inductive logic.
From the
60 Ibid. 161.
61 Ibid.

Page 650
perspective of classical Lutheran doctrine, however, it supports a
confessional judgment regarding the inability of the innate power of reason
to know God or to foster an understanding of things spiritual.62
Thiel's criticism, which connects Lindbeck's confessional
presuppositions regarding human nature to his project is not, to be
sure, an ad hominem argument; rather, it points quite convincingly to
the fact that no "strictly theoretical" approach to religion exists.
Perhaps Lindbeck is drawn to Wittgenstein's theory of language not
for what it says about language qua language, but for what it says
about human nature. And this is the real issue: the logic of
fundamental theology contradicts the faith claims of Lindbeck the
Lutheran. This statement about human nature is in agreement with the
core assertions of post-modernism.
Each stands, theologically or philosophically, against the assumption that
reason can fashion a truthful complex of knowledge based on inherent
abilities of the mind. Both render harsh judgments on reason's creative
capacity to function apart from traditions or communities of meaning,
whether ecclesial or philosophical.63

In one sense, a response by Fries to The Nature of Doctrine is doomed

before it even begins. For to give Fries or anyone who grounds the
conditions for the possibility of faith in human experience a fair
hearing would be to admit the possibility of human creativity usurping
Scripture for the structuring of Christian reality as opposed to
Scripture using human creativity to structure reality. The opposition to
Fries is most evident when taken against Fries's definition of
fundamental theology found in his Foreword. "The term 'fundamental
theology' is intended to express that the apologetic task can and
should be integrated in a comprehensive theological reflection in the
believing reason's self-examination of its foundations and
presuppositions." Thiel asserts that this is unacceptable for Lindbeck,
for "an exercise of theological authorship not constrained by the
cultural-linguistic approach will produce theological works that
bespeak a fallen nature's anthropocentricity rather than God's promise
of salvation revealed in scriptural tradition."64
Language and Experience
Perhaps one point to begin a discussion on the topic of language and
experience is to list a number of assertions held by traditional Catholic
theological anthropologies. For Lindbeck, these assertions would
belong to the third or hybrid method of theology. Representative of
this contemporary transcendental approach within fundamental
theology is
62 Ibid. 18384.
63 Ibid. 184.
64 Thiel, 187.

Page 651
Gerald O'Collins. The following is a general list of the characteristics
of human experience. Many, if not all, are found in Fries's work.
(a) The human subject displays an openness and tendency toward an
ultimate horizon of unconditioned being, that furthest limit which circles
and encloses all our experiences. Against such a horizon we experience
some particular being, grasp some specific meaning, know this particular
truth and desire some specific good thing [italics mine].
(b) The ultimate horizon is not one determined object among others.
Knowing it is not just one more instance of knowledge in general. It is
there as an unthematized and unreflective element. Even when through
subsequent reflection it becomes the object of explicit attention, it can
never be totally and adequately thought through and objectivized.
(c) The human subject enjoys a "transcendental" experience of his horizon,
in the sense that the experience goes beyond any particular acts of
knowing and willing.
(d) The ultimate horizon is always affirmed, even in the explicit act of
denying it.
(e) This ultimate horizon is the a priori condition for the possibility of any
human experience. When, for instance, some specific act of knowledge
occurs, that is because there already exists a knowing subject oriented
toward this horizon.
(f) As the absolute fullness of being, meaning, truth, and goodness, this
absolute horizon is to be identified with God.
(g) Hence we can speak of transcendental experience as transcendental
revelation.
(h) The divine self-communication involved in transcendental experience
is a gratuitous, supernatural gift from God.
(i) As the ultimate horizon needed to create the possibility for any
experience, God is known to every human person. Whether or not they
realize this consciously and accept it willingly, all human beings receive
the transcendental experience of God's primordial self-communication.
(j) Finally, transcendental experience/revelation establishes the
presupposition and condition for receiving divine revelation and salvation
in the specific forms of historical existenceabove all through the historical
experience of Israel and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.65
These points have set out the specific transcendental method most at
odds with Lindbeck's view of human nature. It is now possible to
understand the contrast that Lindbeck offers regarding the relationship
of language to experience.
A full and complete response to Lindbeck's use of language and its
consequences for "experience" would require an extended exposition
and response to his interpretation of the language theory of Ludwig
Wittgenstein. For the purpose of this epilogue, it will suffice to point
65 Gerald O'Collins, Fundamental Theology (New York: Crossroad 1981)
4849. I have highlighted the main points of the more extensive summaries
given by O'Collins. Many of these points are explicitly developed above in
§23, "The Human Being as Revelation."

Page 652
out some differences in Fries's and Lindbeck's views of language and
some of the underlying presuppositions that support those views.66
That creation is intelligible and that language is both descriptive and
formative are two presuppositions that Fries works with. One
experiences that creation at an original or primary level through
dependence and consequently transcendence. Language describes that
reality and allows for its communication and description. Says Fries:
Through the power and the powerlessness of word and language, language
possesses dimensions of revelation. It opens up in very special ways the
reality of human beings as creatures in power and helplessness, and keeps
awake and alive the question of the ground of created being. Thus its
revelational relationship is described as relationship to transcendence.67

This description discloses and, in this sense, shapes the reality of

human experience; it does not construct this reality. Reality and the
description of reality are two separate moments in human rationality.
And while it never completely recaptures the original experience
itself, it must be attempted by the theologian anyway. Once this
universal common denominator (experience) of human nature is
established, the specifics of faith and doctrine can then be articulated.
At issue here is not really the use of language as much as the human
nature's innate ability, as God's creation, to grasp creation as
intelligible. This does not seem to be the view of human nature held
by Lindbeck.
Lindbeck's use of language mainly stresses its constructive role in
actually creating a reality that is given as unintelligible. This seems to
be a statement more about human nature than about language, and,
given the previous illumination on Lindbeck's view of human nature,
the role of language could not really be any different. Armed with an
antifoundationalist (postmodern) position advocated by Wittgenstein,
Lindbeck can de-emphasize human agency and emphasize the biblical
Word as the main author of theology. His extremely brief explication
of mental activities attempts to support this position but fails due to
his presuppositions regarding human nature. Following a critique of
"some professed Thomists such as Lonergan and Rahner,"68 Lindbeck
asserts that Aristotelians, including Aquinas, would agree with his
rendering of mental activities.
66 Fries would agree with Rahner's remarks regarding language and the
distinction between an experience and subsequent reflection upon that
experience. This is evident in the introduction to Foundations of Christian
Faith under the subheading "Epistemological Problems." I also believe
Fries would concur with Lonergan's comments on Edward MacKinnon's
statement concerning language as affected by Wittgenstein. There is
specific agreement when Lonergan states, "The discovery of a new usage
is a mental act expressed by the new usage," Method in Theology, "The
Dialectic of Method: Part One," 255.
67 Above §24, p. 222.
68 Lindbeck 39.

Page 653
For the Aristotelians, affective experiences (in which would be included a
sense of the holy or of absolute dependence) always depend on prior
cognition of objects, and the objects available to us in this life are all in
some fashion constructed out of conceptually or linguistically structured
sense experience (italics mine).69
This could be correct only if Aquinas believed that language actually
structured what was otherwise unintelligible reality. In fact, however,
Aquinas viewed creation in itself as intelligible. Furthermore,
Lindbeck's analysis of mental activities is seriously underdeveloped.
What does it mean to "grasp" something? What level of knowing does
that correspond to in Aquinas? Does Aristotle presuppose sense
experience as "conceptually and linguistically structured?" While this
has not been the place for a full epistemological critique, some major
differences have been highlighted between the two authors.
Conclusion
One may disagree with Lindbeck's approach to theology and still
appreciate the problems he seeks to solve. The vacuous nature of
doctrine in many Christian denominations and the absolutely rigid
nature of doctrine in some others points to a major problem in
Christian ecumenical efforts. But regardless of how divided this house
may be, theological frameworks that fail to engage society-at-large
fail in their specifically Christian mission as well. In large part, the
debate regarding issues of belief and unbelief with "secular" culture
centers on the meaning of human existence. Nietzsche, for example,
may assert that humankind's primordial urge is the "will to power,"
while Freud may think it is narcissistic satisfaction. With Jesus Christ
as the Revelation from which we begin, theology must respond by
demonstrating convincingly that the human condition, in its very
constitution and in history, is oriented to the infinite in radical
dependence and drawn toward the infinite through the historical
experience of transcendence. The question is not: revelation or
experience? The question is: how is historical experience a revelation?
How is the human being a self-communication of God?
In an age when the nature of the human seems to be understood
solidly apart from the horizon of the infinite, the role of fundamental
theology as the explication of the presuppositions and conditions for
the possibility of faith becomes increasingly important. Heinrich Fries
and others with foundational starting points serve as constant
reminders that effective contemporary theology must first address the
existential, historical question: What is it to be human? The content of
faith can then be mediated "as answer to the question and the
questions
69 Ibid.

Page 654
of human beings, to the questions which human beings ask, to the
question which human beings themselves are."70
In spite of all the pressing contemporary ecumenical theological
issues, at the root of any experiential-expressivist dissatisfaction with
Lindbeck is a fundamentally opposite view of human nature. Fries's
Fundamental Theology is a thorough response to the kind of position
outlined by Lindbeck and to the presuppositions of the postmodern
critique. It provides a clear and accurate foundational starting point
for theology today with a nuanced understanding of the importance of
history and historicity. The inability of a cultural-linguistic model to
accept any foundation has little to do with theological frameworks and
ecumenical issues and even less to do with languageit has to do with
anthropology. The necessity of addressing contemporary movements
such as postmodernism is summed up for the theologian in the
conclusion to Fries's Introduction:
It is no longer enough merely to proclaim or solemnly assert the Christian
faith. One has to lay out its grounds in the face of the overwhelming power
of the contemporary experience of world and existence and of the
challenges which accompany this experience. It is a massive task, but also
a great opportunity.71
70 Above §11, p. 129.
71 Above, p. 5.

Page 655

INDEX OF NAMES
This index includes only the names of authors and persons mentioned
in the main text. Biblical names and places are listed in the Subject
Index.
A
Abelard 132, 143
Adler, A. 26
Adorno, Th. 246
Albertus Magnus 37
Alexander the Great 292
Althaus, B. 280
Ambrose 569
Amenophis IV 285
Anaximander 131
Anselm of Canterbury 37, 122
Antiochus IV 292, 293
Apollonius of Tyana 336
Aquinas 636, 652, 653
Aristotle 36, 121, 123, 124, 131, 143, 144, 190, 222, 653
Athanasius 596
Athenagoras 573, 574
Attila 563
B
Bacon, F. 145
Balthasar, H. U. von 85, 222, 318, 324
Barth, K. 129, 157, 159, 180, 204, 306, 371, 377, 380, 409, 410, 583,
584, 600
Bäumer, R. 565
Bea, A. 376, 573
Bellarmine, R. 568
Ben Chorin, Sch. 75
Berger, P. L. 450
Bernard of Clairvaux 323, 413
Bismarck, O. Graf von 570, 590
Bloch, E. 248, 263, 446
Blondel, M. 4651, 56, 263
Blumenberg, H. 213
Boethius 246
Bonaventure 134, 323
Bonhoeffer, D. 159, 162, 235
Boniface VIII 620
Borman, F. 193
Bornkamm, G. 309
Bossuet, J. B. 502
Bouillard, H. 46
Brecht, B. 195
Brox, N. 524
Brunner, E. 306, 311, 333, 335, 344, 346, 347, 516, 530
Buber, M. 18, 5556, 63, 75, 76, 289, 408
Buch, A. 2
Buddha 75, 259, 283, 310
Bühlmann, W. 504
Bultmann, R. 129, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 199, 307, 308, 334,
358
Buren, P. van 113
C
Callistus I 562
Calvin, J. 618
Campenhausen, H. von 515, 529
Camus, A. 29
Casper, B. 221
Cerularius, M. 572, 574
Chrisman, Ph. N. 106
Clement of Alexandria 121, 279
Clement of Rome 527
Cochlaeus 568
Comte, A. 145
Confucius 75
Congar, Y. 541, 564
Constantine 243, 563
Conzelmann, H. 521
Copernicus 35
Cullmann, O. 376

Page 656
Cusanus, see Nicholas of Cusa
Cushing, R. 621
Cyprian 562, 567, 620
Cyrus 292
D
Deißler, A. 295, 396
Delp, A. 235
Derrida, J. 636
Descartes, R. 636
Diem, H. 157
Dilthey, W. 146, 148, 149
Dionysius the Areopagite 132
Döllinger, I. 136, 570
Dostoyevski, F. M. 29
Drey, J. S. 126, 143, 179, 536
Duns Scotus 134
Dupanloup, F. A. Ph. 589
E
Ebeling, G. 54, 180, 220, 224
Ebner, F. 269
Eicher, P. 180
Einstein, A. 194
Eliade, M. 191, 192
Elizabeth I of England 596
Erasmus of Rotterdam 105
Eutyches of Constantinople 107
F
Feuerbach, L. 265
Fitzmeyer, J. A. 609
Foucauld, Charles de 503
Foucault, M. 636
Francis of Assisi 509
Frankl, V. 26, 31, 32
Freud, S. 26, 653
Frisch, M. 35
Fromm, E. 30, 23036
Fulgentius of Ruspe 620
G
Gadamer, H.-G. 15, 150, 636
Gagarin, J. 193
Galilei, Galileo 125, 194, 595
Gasser, V. 591
Gassmann, G. 558
Geiselmann, J. R. 611
Genseric 563
Gilbert of Poitiers (aka Gilbert Poretta) 132
Glockmann, P. 2, 193
Göbbels, J. 241
Gogarten, F. 208, 211
Graß, H. 357
Gregory the Great 540, 564
Gregory VII 620
Gregory XIII 596
Gregory XIV 595
Guardini, R. 269, 283, 435, 436
Guarino, T. 63537
Guidi, F. M. 585, 588
Günther, A. 126
Gutiérrez, G. 152
H
Habermas, J. 636
Haecker, Th. 27
Hammer, K. 240
Hammurabi 283
Harnack, A. von 61
Hartmann, N. 43
Hasenhüttl, G. 518
Hefele, K. J. von 588
Hegel, G. W. F. 126, 142, 156, 162, 163, 252, 253, 258, 323
Heidegger, M. 146, 147, 150, 190, 227, 335, 637
Heisenberg, W. 195, 350
Henry of Ghent 132
Heraclitus 131
Herbert of Cherbury 252
Hermes, G. 126
Herod 397
Hesiod 131
Hirsch, E. 357
Hirscher, J. B. von 126
Hitler, A. 230
Hobbes, Th. 145
Homer 131, 241, 243
Horkheimer, M. 450
Huber, K. 230
Hügel, F. von 235
Humbert of Silva Candida 574
Hume, D. 145
Husserl, E. 636, 638
I
Ignatius of Antioch 528, 529, 562
Innocent III 413
Irenaeus of Lyons 538, 539, 562, 569, 583
J
Jaspers, K. 23, 35, 4145, 55, 56, 57, 75, 146, 199, 25460
Jeremias, J. 486
Jerome 539

Page 657
John Paul II 175, 574, 595
John XXIII 170, 376, 504, 572, 579
Jung, C. G. 26
Jüngel, E. 16166, 223, 323
Justin 279
K
Kant, I. 3541, 43, 45, 55, 56, 125, 172, 227, 252, 25960, 636
Käsemann, E. 22930, 3089, 481, 632
Kasper, W. 2, 10910, 324, 550, 636
Kattenbusch, F. 125, 194
Kepler, J. 125, 194
Kern, W. 1
Kierkegaard, S. 256, 259
Kolbe, M. 235
Kuhn, J. E. von 126, 143, 339
Küng, H. 2, 43132, 453, 454, 501, 518, 590, 598, 601, 648
Künneth, W. 357
L
Leeuw, G. van der 191
Leibniz, G. W. 31
Leo I 56364, 569
Leo XIII 595, 608, 613
Lessing, G. E. 96, 125, 270, 333, 348, 349, 356, 415
Liberius, Pope 596
Liebermann, B. F. L. 143
Lindbeck, G. 634, 63954
Locke, J. 252
Lohfink, G. 437, 527
Loisy, A. 418, 426
Lonergan, B. 636, 64144, 652
Lubac, H. de 622
Luther, M. 124, 235, 32122, 323, 334, 413, 414, 450, 466, 473, 495,
552, 56568 595
Lyotard, J.-F. 636
M
Maier, H. 153
Maistre, J. de 569
Manning, H. E. 136, 589
Marcion 407
Martell, C. 243
Marx, K. 151
Marxsen, W. 357, 48286
Meinertz, M. 430
Melancthon, Ph. 567
Melito, Metropolitan 573
Metz, J. B. 112, 152, 154, 208, 248, 415
Möhler, J. A. 126, 140, 143, 501, 529, 530, 536, 597
Moltke, H. J. Graf von 235
Moltmann, J. 154, 248, 323, 360, 44251, 501
Mühlen, H. 501
N
Napoleon I 568
Nestorius 107
Neuenzeit, P. 486
Newman, J. H. 14, 19, 20, 106, 22728, 236, 262, 26364, 345, 347,
533, 539, 570, 571, 596
Nicholas of Cusa 59, 257, 279
Nietzsche, F. 32, 259, 653
O
O'Collins, G. 651
Origen 37, 121, 169, 279
Ott, H. 584, 585
Ottaviani, A. 376
P
Pannenberg, W. 32, 157, 158, 159, 429, 432, 433, 480, 57879
Pascal, B. 25, 344, 346, 371
Paul IV 596
Paul VI 246, 503, 504, 573, 574, 595
Perrone, G. 143
Peterson E. 436, 437
Peukert, H. 157
Pius IX 127, 208, 570, 590, 607, 608, 621
Pius X 452, 609
Pius XI 595
Pius XII 609, 612, 621, 623
Plato 36, 131, 190, 636
Popper, K. 155, 156
Pottmeyer, H. J. 1, 586
Q
Quesnel, P. 612
R
Rad, G. von 70
Rahner, K. 50, 57, 62, 87, 129, 147, 148, 173, 174, 208, 222, 261,
265, 266, 281, 324, 325, 354, 361, 376, 434, 453, 454, 594, 613, 614,
636, 641, 644, 652
Ramses II 66, 285
Ratzinger, J. 38687, 47374, 523, 536, 573, 574, 581, 626, 630
Renckens, H. 275
Robinson, J. A. T. 196, 197, 199
S
Sartre, J. P. 43

Page 658
Schadewalt, W. 189
Scheffczyk, L. 157
Scheler, M. 137, 228, 229
Schillebeeckx, E. 113, 248, 316, 338, 359, 360, 424, 493, 648
Schleiermacher, F. 126, 146, 641, 644
Schlier, H. 203, 311, 527
Schmid, J. 428, 455, 486
Schmidt, W. 280
Schnackenburg, R. 426, 427
Schniewind, J. 428
Scholl, brother and sister 230
Schürmann, H. 426, 427, 433, 486
Schütte, H. 547
Schutz, R. 502
Schweitzer, A. 305
Schweizer, E. 309
Seckler, M. 1, 137, 25354
Simon, R. 609
Sixtus V 596
Socrates 75, 235
Sohm, R. 510
Söhngen, G. 3637, 118, 345
Staudenmaier, F. A. 126, 143
Stephen, Pope 562
Stocker, G. 228
Strauß, D. F. 339
Suenens, L. J. 503
T
Teilhard de Chardin 199, 200, 320
Tertullian 120, 121, 124, 169, 279
Thiel, J. 649, 650
Thielicke, H. 346
Thomas More 235
Thomas of Aquinas 4, 17, 37, 123, 126, 13238, 143, 144, 167, 169,
601
Tillich, P. 129, 187, 188, 196, 197, 641
Toynbee, A. 239
Tracy, D. 638, 648
U
Urban VIII 596
V
Varro, M. 131
Victor, Pope 596
Vögtle, A. 468
Vorgrimler, H. 376
W
Weber, M. 208
Weiß, B. 305
Weißmahr, B. 350
Weizäcker, C. F. von 208, 209
Welte, B. 2, 2829, 130, 269, 270, 27173
Werner, M. 305
Wittgenstein, L. 234, 637, 65052
Z
Zahrnt, H. 55

Page 659

SUBJECT INDEX
This index includes the names of biblical personages, all place names
(Council cities, however, under the heading ''Council"), as well as
Latin and Greek word-concepts. The Latin expressions which occur in
the texte.g "ecclesia semper reformanda"; "credo ut intelligam"are
also listed. Frequent cross references to parallel or analogous concepts
are listed in individual detail in order to give, even in the index, an
indication of the specific fields of connotation and association. This
has the added advantage of somewhat lessening the number of times
frequently-occuring concepts must be listed. Although the concepts
"reality" and "New Testament" are not listed, the individual New
Testament authors are, as well as the concepts "Scripture: Holy
Scripture" and "Old Testament."
[In view of the needs of English readers, we have made this is a
somewhat edited translation of the subject index of
Fundamentaltheologie. It is an attempt to preserve the merits of the
original despite the occasionally unavoidable awkwardness of
concepts which cannot be translated exactly into [Link]]
A
Aaron 401
Abba 499
Abel 277
Abraham 6366, 7374, 28285, 289, 294, 306, 339, 34142, 395, 409,
41213, 421, 423, 459
Absolute monarchy 570, 590
Absolute, the absolute 38, 53, 218, 259
Absolutism: theological absolutism 213, 254
Abuses 565
Academy, academic study of religion 639, 642
Accident 91
Account/story of falling away 469, 510, 530
Action 46
Action, activity, see: deed, doing
Action/deed/act (see also: truth) 4648, 55, 79, 80, 91, 111, 112, 181,
182, 217, 22526, 237, 255, 270, 33839, 370, 378, 422, 642, 651
Actus purus, pure act 162
Adam 96, 321, 453
Adaptation, assimilation 28688, 439
Address to the Christian Nobility 566
Ad hominem 650
Adversus Haereses 538
Affirmation 270
Affirmational faith, see: Faith
Africa 504, 632
Against the Bull of the Antichrist (Luther) 566
Against Hans Worst (Luther) 567
Against the Roman Papacy, Founded by the Devil (Luther) 567
Agape (see also: Love) 509, 510
Agency, human 652
Aggiornamento 171, 508
Agnosticism 127
Agreement/consent/approval 1920, 29, 110111, 517, 58791, 596
Ahab 290, 404
Ahaz 68, 290
Alexander the Great 292
Alexandria, Alexandrian school 121, 165, 169, 203, 540
Alienation 22, 125, 183, 221
Alpha 329
Already 85, 305, 326, 441
Amenophis IV 285
Amos 92, 395

Page 660
Analogia entis/analogy of being 12728, 205, 222, 369
Analogia fidei/analogy of faith 128, 205, 22223, 369, 587
Analogy 12729, 183, 205, 22223, 358, 389, 623
Anamnesis, see: Eucharist: memorial
Anath 287
Anathema 170, 374
Anger 186
Anglican Church 572, 57981, 618
Anima naturaliter christiana 121, 165, 279
Anonymous Christians 101, 394
Answer 59, 94, 221, 226, 265, 341, 366, 423
Anthropocentric 207, 211, 650
Anthropology, anthropological 10, 17, 52, 92, 128, 14748, 16466,
17374, 183, 195, 276, 324, 433, 634, 641, 646, 649, 654
Anthropomorphism 296
Antichrist 566, 568
Anticipation 15859, 245
Anticipation [Vorgriff] 245
Antifoundationalist 649, 652
Antioch 47374, 513, 518, 52223, 540, 596
Antiochene School 169
Antiochus IV 29293
Antiquity 206, 462
Anti-Roman feeling 572
Antisemitism
Christian 41415
modern 41516
Anxiety, fear 73, 92, 153, 232
Aphorism/maxim [Sentenz] 122
Apocalypse 293
Apocalypse of Truth 443
Apocalyptic 292293, 420, 426, 432
Apocryphal writings 245, 607
Apollo 518
Apollonius of Tyana 336
Apologetic(s) 4, 120, 126, 539, 615, 637, 650
Aporia, difficulty 136
Apostasy, decline, falling away 142, 280, 288, 290, 295, 299, 51011,
625
Apostle (see also: Twelve: the Twelve) 103, 175, 300, 332, 355, 407,
410, 416, 437, 458, 46061, 463, 475, 477, 49394, 498, 51115, 519,
521, 525, 528, 53335, 53739, 547, 555, 57879, 602, 611, 614, 630
Apostle, concept of 458
Apostle, disciple of 525, 537
Apostles' Creed 510, 562, 618
Apostolic
office 119, 498
delegates/legates 540
constitution 540
Majesty 540
nuntios 540
prefects 540
process 540
blessing 540
see 540
indult 540
succession 459, 536540, 547, 550, 555556, 558, 562
vicars 540
Apostolicity of the Church (see also: Church) 558, 61819
Apriori 36, 51, 645, 651
Arab/Arabic 647
Arbitrariness 41, 44, 255, 508, 509, 518
Arbitrary God 295
Arcane discipline 319
Archai 636
Archimedean 635
Areopagus 165
Argument 175
Arianism 539
Aristotle/Aristotelianism/Aristotelians 126, 132, 135, 652, 653
Arithmetic 133
Ark of the Covenant 241, 288
Armada 596
Art 146, 190
Artes liberales/liberal arts 132
Articuli fidei, see: faith, article of faith
Asclepius, sanctuary of 336
Asia Minor 514, 596
Assassination attempt (on Hitler) (see also: Hitler's seizure of power)
243
Assertion/claim 15556, 15960, 164
Assimilation 287
Assurances/insurances 91, 92
Assyria 68
Atheism 37, 110, 127, 162, 164, 196, 208
Athens 121
Atomic age 238
Atomic war 240
Atonement, Day of 399
Atonement/penance [Sühne] 396
Atonement/reconciliation 112, 114, 244, 278, 302, 330, 438, 486, 559,
577, 578
Attitude(s) 640, 642, 646
Auschwitz 246, 415
Authenticity 147, 149, 309
Authoritative 64749
Authority 1517, 98, 109, 126, 175, 232, 234, 255, 264, 280, 312,
37273, 458, 481, 512, 51820, 525, 553, 563, 580, 583, 596, 606
Authority/power, fullness of 343, 458, 469, 470, 548, 562, 57980
Authorship 648
Autocratic force/power 581
Autonomy 12526, 207, 374
Awareness 646
Awe/wonder, to be in 340, 352
Axis of world history 258

Page 661

B
Baal 287, 394, 4034
Babylon, Babel 283, 292, 566
Babylonian Captivity 289
Babylonian Captivity, The (Luther) 124, 566
Banishment 290
Baptism (see also: universal priesthood, rebirth/born again) 86, 220,
242, 330, 386, 413, 49496, 500, 506, 511, 513, 527, 541, 551, 552,
555, 604, 625, 627
Baptism of heretics controversy 562, 616
Baptism of John (see also Baptism) 494
Baptismal catechesis 496
Barmen Declaration 100
Barnabas 458, 513, 521
Baroque 568
Bartholomew's Day Massacre, St. 596
Baruch 293
Base 504
Beatitudes/Sermon on the Mount 422, 472
Beauty 648
Beelzebub 338
Behavioral science 173
Being 30
unconditional 651
understanding of 150
Believability/credibility of 35, 1821, 53, 164, 33137, 579601, 618
grounds for believability of 4, 331, 334
Bible (see: Scripture) 64750
Biblical commission, papal 169, 6089
Biblical narrative 646
Binding force, lack of [Unverbindlichkeit] 98
Binding quality [Verbindlichkeit] 99107, 59798, 604
Binding, ultimately binding 597
Bindingloosing 466, 47071, 513
Biology 351
Birkenau 246
Birth 215
Birth control 595
Bishop 105, 52730, 53840, 54849, 55455, 592
Bishops 365, 537, 550, 579, 58889, 605, 612, 626
Bishops, college of, community of 59294, 607, 623
Bismarck, circular telegram of 570, 590
Blessedness/happiness 279, 292
Blessing 64
Blood (see also: Eucharist) 482, 486
Boanerges 462
Body of Christ, see: Eucharist, Church
Body, bodiliness 51, 182, 187, 259, 483
Bohemians 466
Bologna 585
Bolshevism 241
Book of Wisdom 203
Brahmans, Brahman ascetics 283
Bread (see also: Eucharist) 86, 315, 481, 482, 485, 487
Breaking Bread 630
Brief formula of faith 109
Bringer of salvation: personal bringer of salvation 273
Brotherhood 44344, 449
Brotherliness 101
Buddha/Buddhism/Buddhist 209, 259, 283, 647
Building up of the Church, see: church building: Church as building
(see also: Church) 46566
Burden-easing 508
Bureaucrats, bureaucracy 221, 405
Byzantium 563
C
Caesarea Philippi 464
Cain 277
Cana, wedding at 346
Canaan 64, 67, 387, 296, 400, 402
Canon 308, 494, 534, 550, 462, 614, 632
Canonistic/canon law 624
Capitulation 642
Captivity 242
Captivity Letters 307
Care/worry 74, 503
Catechism 1045
Catechism, the Roman 143
Catechist 649
Categoriality 217
Categorical 263
Categorical imperative 38, 55
Catharsis 190
Cathedra Petri, see of Peter 562
Catholic Day [Katholikentag] 100
Catholicity (see also: Church) 258, 544, 545, 580, 619
Causality 350
Century: 19th century 142, 278, 280
Certitude/certainty 20, 161
Change 151, 153, 224, 238, 244, 531, 639
Changeability 100
Character indelebilis 548
Charism, charisms 289, 476, 500501, 509, 516, 51920, 534, 594
Charismatic Movement 5024
Charismatics 502
Chemistry 35152
Childhood 133
Christ Event, see: Jesus Christ
Christ of faith 648
Christ relationship 482
Christian-Jewish dialogue (see also: Dialogue) 405, 415
Christianity, essence of Christianity 136
Christocentric 378

Page 662
Christology 76, 80, 110, 161, 173, 223, 308, 311, 316, 324, 43031,
433, 482, 491, 616
transcendental 32425
Church (see also: ecclesia; unity; ekklesia; community; communion)
9, 8687, 96, 100, 105, 109111, 115, 12021, 124, 12728, 14041, 144,
15152, 16768, 175, 208, 21011, 25657, 281, 32829, 354, 36465,
37477, 383633
building up the Church 46468, 471, 476
as creatura Verbi 387
characteristics/marks of the Church (see also: apostolicity; unity;
holiness; catholicity) 61719
universal unity of 578
community/ecclesial community 110, 55152, 62730
limits of 438
Church of Jews and Gentiles 409, 437, 461
division 546, 624
Church-State 571
Father 122, 165, 605
understanding of 471
as Body of Christ 393, 476, 48283, 495, 610
building 476
church faith 252
leadership 627
doctrines 642
Doctor of 605
order 51516
of humanity 393
local churches 480, 524, 527, 57980, 615, 63032
pilgrimage, pilgrimaging People of God 43940, 443
plural/multiplicity of churches 576, 61617, 619, 62932
plurality within the 631
special 517
founding document of 454
structure of 5079, 525
over Scripture? 583
triumphalism 439
infallibility of 584, 59194
universal 576
churchdividing differences 548
as Ursacrament (primitive/foundational sacrament) 86
as people of God 40810, 416, 439, 453, 54041, 554, 584, 592, 594,
610
for the world 441, 444
membership in 627
Church and churches 622, 624, 62930, 63233
Church day [Kirchentag] 100
Church law/canon law 542
Churches 111, 17172, 545, 615, 627, 62930, 63233
Cipher/code, ciphers 56, 255, 259
Circumcision 284, 292, 513
City on the mountain 467
Civilization 208210
Claims, theology of 164, 22930
Clement, First Letter of 527, 562
Cleric/clerics 530, 54142
Codex Iuris Canonici 1917 542, 624
Codex Iuris Canonici 1983 542, 572, 593
Coercive ordinances 508
Cognitive 640, 641, 645
Coherency 637
Cohumanity [Mitmenschlichkeit] 221
Collection for the Jerusalem community 517
Collective Declaration of the German Bishops of 1875 570, 590
College (see also: elders; college of bishops) 521, 59293
Collegiality 576, 580
Comfort/consolation 59, 293, 422, 445
Comfort/consolation, to give 500
Commensurability 636
Commission, mandate, task 211, 460, 473, 525, 602
Commissioning 45960
Common unity 630
Communication/message 269, 645
Communication: dialogic communication 1415, 4344, 92, 269, 271
Communication: incapacity for 256
Communio (see also: Eucharistic community; liturgical community;
koinonia; meal) 441, 579, 625
Communist Manifesto 220
Communities (see also: Church) 405, 46768, 48283, 504, 52122, 537,
54748
building up of 500, 519
charismatic 518
collaboration of 522
Community (see also: Eucharistic community; communio; koinonia)
of faith 97, 379, 38788, 459, 473, 511, 520
with God 255, 329
of the Church 513, 580, 62728
(human) 18, 118, 188, 238, 269, 389
Community of faith 649
Community of the Little Brothers and Sisters 503
Community of meaning, ecclesial, philosophical 650
Compatibility 639
Complaint, charge, indictment 204, 22829
Complaint/lament 71, 503
Complexio oppositorum 257
Compromise 108, 438

Page 663
Concentration camp 3132
Concept 1067
stretching of 135
Conceptualization 645
Conceptually 645
Conclusion theology 135
Concordantia discordantium 257
Concretion 51, 259, 26970, 296
Condemnation 104, 170
Conditioned; the conditioned 189
Confessing Church 100
Confessio Augustana 549, 617
Confession 77, 79, 9397, 98101, 108, 286, 300, 31213, 319, 326, 331,
438, 455, 464, 466, 472, 483, 499, 512, 6067, 623, 643, 649, 650
Confessional formula 77, 606
Confessional writings, documents 558
Confessions 9899, 111, 125, 381, 54445, 559, 596, 617, 630, 63233
Confessor 235
Conflict 639
Congregatiofidelium (see also: Church) 387
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 581
Congruency 636
Coniunctio 626
Conquered, vanquished 240
Conscience 28, 3839, 48, 22536, 239, 26264, 279, 344, 346, 584, 596,
632
mature 234
imperative of 235
pangs of 228, 438
decision 230, 235, 263
freedom of 595
Consensus 252, 547, 577, 580
Consensus ecclesiae 591
Conservatism 609
Constant/continual expectation 434
Constantinople 563, 57374
Consume/consumption 91
Contemplation 502
Content factor (of Faith) (see also: faith; confession) 98101
Context of meaning 158
Continuity 9798, 432, 615, 617
Contributions 506
Controversy 175
Controversy theology 575
Convention 235
Convergence 274, 34748, 544, 578
Convergence argument 1920
Convergence, argument from 1920, 347
Convergence, method of 544
Conversion 115, 359
Conversion 632
Conversion/reform (see also: penance, repentance) 79, 88, 224, 270,
299, 341, 360, 421, 423, 426, 43738, 444, 463, 493, 494, 501, 511,
513, 616
Cooperation 170, 209, 211
Cooperation 522
Copncretion, unconditioned 26974, 349
Cor incurvatum in se 372
Coram Deo (before God) 204
Coresponsibility 522
Corinth 119, 48182, 485, 500, 504, 516, 518, 52728, 630
Cornelius, Roman Centurion 165, 461, 523
Correction 160, 629
Correlation 52, 173
Cosmogony 202, 275, 296
Cosmos 195, 340
Council of Youth 502
Council(s), general councils 1078, 17072, 365, 595, 599, 603
Chalcedon 107, 563, 616
Florence 595, 620
Constance 567
Fourth Lateran 413
Nicaea 539, 563
Trent 106, 550, 583, 6047, 611
union councils (of Middle Ages) 616
First Vatican 1068, 12628, 169, 208, 332, 334, 365, 371, 37377,
37981, 539, 565, 57172, 57987, 58993, 59698, 6047, 619, 631
Second Vatican 108, 110, 144, 16971, 211, 280, 365, 37477, 38081,
39294, 41516, 418, 439, 449, 540, 542, 54849, 561, 571, 579,
59198, 602, 604, 61013, 62223, 631
Council: "Of the Councils and Churches" 567
Council: superiority of the council 566
Counsels 542
Counter Reformation 568
Courage 29, 274, 381, 444
Covenant (see also Noachian covenant) 62, 128, 241, 284, 29092,
297, 371, 392, 39495, 4078, 411, 416, 476, 48182, 48488, 512, 514
New Covenant 291, 297, 318
Covenant, establishment of 67, 297
Covenant, establishment of on Sinai 286
Creation 652
accounts 275
myth 276
out of nothing 77, 96, 123, 128, 164, 194, 2015, 20614, 224, 251,
261, 262, 264, 276, 277, 295, 320, 328, 350, 352, 358, 36771, 393,
421
new 301
revelation of (see also: revelation: natural revelation) 319
Creativity, human 650

Page 664
Creator 55, 92, 128, 194, 2035, 212, 214, 251, 264, 29596
Creature (see also: creation) 202
Creature 55, 28, 2036, 21415
Creatureliness (see also: creation) 2034
Creatureliness 21416, 221, 27677
Credere: in general (see also: Faith) 12
Deo 18, 69
Deum 18
in Deum 18, 69
Credo ecclesiam apostolicam 533
Credo, quia absurdum 120
Credo, ut intelligam 122, 442
Crete 525
Crisis 273, 477
Crisis of faith 381
Crisis, contemporary symptoms of 141
Criteria 334
Criteria of revelation, see: revelation
Critical rationalism 156
Critique/criticism 476, 5012, 508, 568
Cross 647
community of/Church under the 44445
see: Jesus Christ
Cruciform 648
Crusades 238, 412
Cult 170, 191, 259, 278, 287, 290, 318, 395, 401, 450
Cult/ritual community 396
Cultural-linguistic 634, 639, 640, 64244, 64648, 650, 654
Culture(s)/cultural 170, 189, 207, 375, 642, 646, 647, 649
secular 649, 653
Cup, chalice (see also: Eucharist) 485
Cup/chalice, see: Eucharist/Last Supper of Jesus
Curia 540
Custom/moral (see also: ethics, morality) 234, 582, 58586, 6056
Cyrus, see: Persia, king of 292
D
Damascus 68
Damnation/perdition 293
Daniel 298, 404, 420, 456
Darkness 82, 119, 317, 345
Daughter Zion 423
David 28889, 29798, 339, 4024, 459
Day 426
Day of penance (Yom Kippur) 399
De potestate Papae 567
Deacon, deacons, diaconate 422, 52526, 528, 530, 542, 548, 554
Death 26, 31, 32, 81, 82, 91, 153, 154, 214, 215, 243, 276, 309, 313,
32124, 328, 361, 378, 410, 413, 429, 437, 444, 445, 457, 495, 498
Deborah 288
Decalogue, tablets of the Law 288, 395
Decision, to decide (see also: conscience; faith) 19, 29, 79, 151, 220,
237, 263, 26671, 334, 423, 426
Deconstructionism/deconstructionist 637
Decree on Ecumenism 573, 624, 628
Decretum pro Jacobitis 620
Deeds/acts of power/mighty deeds 313, 336, 33940, 352
Defectus ordinis 546, 551
Definition, definitions 36566, 59899
Definitive: the definitive 307
Definitiveness 94, 360, 44849, 533
Dei Filius 332, 367
Dei Verbum 375, 37980, 534, 61112
Deism 142, 25152, 267
Democracy 398, 508
Democratization 522
Demons 313, 338, 427, 453
Demonstratio catholica 615, 618
Demythologizing 146, 153, 431
Denial 473
Denominations, Christian 653
Denzinger 143
Dependence 653
Depositum 524
Deprivatizing 151
Depth 197, 198, 247, 253
Depth psychology 13, 197
Desecration of hosts 413
Desecularizing 151
Desert 287
Desert, wandering in the 286, 399
Desiderium inscium 621, 626
Despair, desperation 33, 152, 444
Development 209
Development of doctrine/dogmas 135
Developmental assistance 116, 439
Diakonia (ministry of service) 450, 463, 507, 533, 548, 564, 630
Dialectic 129, 252, 256, 258
Dialectical theology, see: theology
Dialogue 160, 17071, 176, 211, 220, 377, 388, 415, 546, 573, 576,
637
Dialogue [Zwiegespräch] 220
Diaspora 399
Dictatorship 230
Dictatus Papae 620
Differences 630
Dignity/worth of the layperson in the Church 542
Diplomacy 438
Director/head/chief/principal 537
Dirge/lamentation 488
Disaster 92, 110, 290
Discernment of spirits 499, 503
Discernment of the Christian 101, 165, 322

Page 665
Disciple(s) 103, 300, 310, 338, 354, 428, 453, 45763, 473, 482, 488,
49495
Disciples, community of 472
Discipleship 457, 483
Disclosing 158
Discourse, religious 639
Discontinuity 98
Disobedience 295
Disorder 509, 520
Dispersion 286
Disponibility [Verfügtheit] 239
Disputatio 122
Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei 568
Disturbance 258
Disunity 639
Disvalue: moral disvalue [Unwert] 225
Divine, the Divine 191
Divino afflante spiritu 609
Divisions 527, 615, 624
Divorce 312, 543
Doctrinal
development 641
meaning 641
reconciliation 64042
statements 636
Doctrines(s) 634, 63941, 645, 646, 652
church 640
Dogma, dogmas 102, 1059, 111, 13536, 170, 259, 365, 43031, 510,
535, 6034
Dogmatics 430, 539
Doubt 65, 152, 288, 33235, 359
Doxa 80, 318, 329, 443
Doxology 106, 284
Drink, see: Eucharist
Dying 91, 163, 214, 321, 322
Dynamis 34041, 346
E
Eagle saying 286
Earthly life/temporal state 361
EastWest 439
Easter date controversy 562, 616
Easter vigil 24142
Easter, see: Jesus Christ: resurrection
Eastern Church, see: Orthodox Church
Eating, see: Eucharist
Ecce Homo 174
Ecclesia ab Abel (see also: ekklesia; Church) 393
Ecclesia ab Adam 393
Ecclesia semper reformanda (see also: ekklesia; Church) 171, 403,
440, 449, 535, 543, 633
Ecclesiology 450, 454, 579, 586
Economy (see also: salvation history) 143
Ecstasy 503, 519
Ecumenical church/reality 5024, 543, 544, 559, 577, 622, 62933, 653,
654
Ecumenical dialogue 544, 54647
Ecumenical Movement 595, 631
Ecumenical Patriarch 564
Ecumenism 171, 376
Effective history [Wirkungsgeschichte] 139
Egoism 441
Egypt, Egyptians 62, 70, 151, 203, 241, 28587, 289, 29597, 481, 486
Eidos 118, 636
Ekklesia (see also: Ecclesia; Church; Churches) 398, 457, 465, 467,
470, 474, 488, 511, 524
Elder, elders 405, 51215, 522, 52531, 537
Election/choice 95, 283, 286, 401, 408, 416, 474
Elements of sanctification/consecration and of truth 623
Elijah 290, 293, 311, 394, 404, 464
Emanation 209
Emotionality 142
Emotions 186
Emperor 616
Emperor, cult of 72
Empiricism 253
Emptiness/vacuum 259
Encounter 12, 15, 18, 21, 28, 44, 53, 77, 99, 118, 170, 221, 26770,
329, 356, 373, 377, 510
Encouragement [Zu-mut-ung] 247
End of the times, end of the world 305, 309, 453
End time 42930
End-expectation 429
Enlightenment 40, 125, 142, 253, 415
Enoch 277293
Enthusiasm 186
Enthusiasm 520
Enthusiast, fanatic 431, 504, 520
Ephemerality 163
Ephesus 514, 528, 540
Epidaurus 336
Epiphany 443, 44648
Epiphany stories 337
Episcopacy: monarchical episcopate 528
Episcopalism, episcopalists 108
Episkop (see also: bishop) 52122, 2530, 537
Epistemology/epistemological 636, 64547, 649, 653
optimism 332, 374
Epochal change 171
Error 156, 373, 432, 584, 598, 608, 613, 621
Eschatology, eschatological 307, 360
eschatological proviso 152, 154, 439
Esse 636
Essence, knowledge of, see: knowledge
Essenes 454
Eternity 239

Page 666
Ethics (see also: moral; morals: morality) 3841, 126, 204, 228
of resistance 638
Ethiopian Henoch 456
ethnology 610,
Ethos/moral behavior 295, 397
Etiology 276, 281, 393
Eucharist (Last Supper) of Jesus 456, 47983, 48687
Cup 48182
Institution 485
Eucharist (see also: cup, blood, bread, breaking of the bread,
significatory words, wine) 86, 87, 106, 113, 13435, 220, 317, 328,
47989, 495, 506, 518, 527, 529, 55153, 555, 575, 604, 630
Blood of Christ 487
Eating and drinking 48284
Body of Christ 48485, 487
Memoria 244, 48182, 484, 488
Eucharistic community (see also communio, koinonia, community,
community of worship, meal) 546, 55152, 559, 561
Eucharistic event 318
Evangelical Church, churches 100, 549, 583
Evangelist 476
Everyday 88, 445
Evil 29, 217, 225, 23032, 246, 276, 314, 341, 420, 438, 444
Evil 276
Ex cathedra 528, 586, 59192, 59495
Ex cathedra decisions 59495
Exclusivity (of revelation according to Karl Jaspers) 25657
Exclusivity 271, 623
Exegesis 43031
Exile 68, 71, 242, 29192, 297, 398, 420
Existence 42, 45, 56, 69, 8889, 91, 14851, 25859, 265, 361
(Dasein) 257, 27172, 356
historical 651
human 653, 654
Existential 8789, 128, 371, 653
supernatural 50, 265, 37172
interpretation 14849
orientations 640
philosophy 41, 146, 254
theology 14648,
Existentiell 8789, 128, 256, 371
Exodus (OT) 6667, 24142, 297, 399400, 420, 440, 443, 450, 481
Expectation 245, 256, 429
Experience 19, 25, 3031, 43, 47, 108, 14849, 15659, 174, 176, 179,
183, 191, 236, 253, 276, 33132, 356, 359, 361, 374, 477, 504, 639,
640, 64347, 650, 651, 654
historical 653
human 642, 644, 651, 652
prereflexive 641
religious
Experiential-expressive 64044, 646, 654
Experiment 253
Explain/explaining 144, 146
Exploitation 395
Expression 645
Extermination camp 246
Extra ecclesiam nulla gratia 621
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus 595, 62022
Extrinsicism 147
Eye witnesses 302, 349
Ezekiel 298, 4034
Ezra 292
F
Fables 337
Face, Countenance (of the Lord) 31718, 321
Facticity 637
Fail, to 47, 156, 215, 244, 435
Failure 473, 474
Faint-heartedness [Kleinmut] 73
Fairy tales 337
Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches 552
Faith, revelation faith, theological faith, (see also: credere, fides)
10176, 179, 18183, 20711, 247, 252, 254, 25657, 27072, 28385, 3001,
308, 321, 325, 32829, 331, 34147, 352, 355, 35961, 36465, 37475,
377, 37981, 38589, 4023, 410, 424, 435, 43738, 441, 442, 445, 446,
448, 45960, 46263, 466, 468, 482, 493, 94, 500, 502, 506, 511, 513,
53637, 579, 58283, 585, 587, 592, 594, 59697, 605, 616, 618, 652
articles of 106, 13334, 109
fundamental articles of 109
nonfundamental articles of 109
resurrection 78
affirmational/propositional 1617, 6970, 72, 77, 81, 109
confession of 7072, 77, 9598, 104, 106, 152, 627
that-faith 17
in dogmas 79
you-faith 17, 69, 81, 373
decision 510
decision, irrational 334
fiducial 16, 379
obedience of/obediential 69, 78
community/community of faith 104, 110, 141, 144, 153, 175, 375,
365, 386, 395, 452, 493
history 63, 6569, 75, 98, 135
in God 17, 255
fundamental structure of 16

Page 667
content of 109, 127, 182
Catholic 625
weak 338, 344, 442
power of 519
war of (religious war) 29293
teaching of 1034
faithlessness 96
personal, personal act of 21, 5354, 65, 77, 87, 109
philosophical 3545, 55, 227, 25460
rule of 607
religious 5859
sense of 593
language of 75
creed/creeds 95, 113, 535
dead 442
of reason 41
understanding of 97, 113, 12529, 14041
presuppositions of 15758
science of (see also: Theology) 12, 117, 13038, 142, 144, 167, 179
witness of 550
doubt of 333
and reason 12627, 151
and knowledge/beleiving/knowing 81
and action 15152
False doctrine, see: heresy
Falsification 157, 159
Falsifying 156
Falsity 635
Family 238, 541, 543
Fanaticism 256
Fantasy 142
Far East 632
Father image 235
Fathers (OT) 307, 370
Fathers in faith 175
Fear 73
Feast day 445
Feast, feasts 397, 445
Feeling(s) 142, 228, 374, 640
Feudalism 477
Fideism 127
Fidelity 29, 272, 302, 360, 499
Fides quae (see also: faith) 105
Fides quaerens intellectum 122
Figure(s) 648
Filioque controversy 564
Final meal, see: Last Supper of Jesus
Finitude/finiteness 31, 140, 201, 214, 239
Fisher of human beings 457
Flight 236
Flock (see also: Church) 465
Flood 277, 278, 280
Focolarini 503
Folly of the Cross (see also: Jesus Christ: Cross) 77, 84, 96, 119, 165,
18182, 243, 321, 326
Folly/foolishness 205, 323
Forgiveness, see: Sins: forgiveness of sins
Foundation(s) 46768, 47677, 635, 650
foundation function (see also: Petrine Office) 46768, 47175, 56162,
564
Foundational/foundationalism/foundatioalists 63538
Fratricide 277
Free 496
Free churches 572
Freedom 14, 18, 20, 2829, 40, 4345, 53, 91, 104, 11415, 137, 139,
147, 151, 18287, 209, 21822, 239, 24647, 255, 25859, 26670, 272,
330, 352, 36162, 44556, 450, 461, 473, 499, 509, 510, 518, 542, 577
French Revolution 220, 238, 568
Friendliness 499
Friendship 30, 112, 276
Fruits of the Spirit, see: Spirit
Fulfillment 24, 128, 3067, 313, 316, 319, 325, 338, 378, 4078, 428,
436, 44748, 511, 51314
Fullness of time 320
Functions (of the individual offices in the Church) 524
Fundamentalism 635, 638
Fundamental trust, see: trust
Future 141, 146, 15254, 170, 238, 247, 248, 284, 297, 305, 309, 327,
328, 356, 360, 379, 425, 433, 439, 441, 442, 446, 502
Future, plans for the 330
G
Galilee 356, 418, 436, 464
Gallicanism 590
Gaudium et spes 376
Gaze/look 328, 329
General Synod of Bishops in the Federal Republic of Germany 111,
152, 542
Gentile Christians, gentile church (see also: Church) 437, 473, 521,
523
Gentiles, missionary to 463
Gentiles/heathens/pagans 85, 229, 307, 322, 326, 428, 437, 459, 475,
494, 517, 523, 620
Genuflection 574
Geometry 133, 194
German Bishops Conference 542
Ghetto 174
Gideon 288, 401
Gift 643, 651
Give/giving 506
Glory 264, 420, 449
Glory of God, see: God
Glossolalia, see speaking in tongues

Page 668
Gnosticism/gnosis 72, 104, 113, 11822, 529, 53839, 562
God 2122, 33, 3740, 5659, 69, 8384, 8889, 99, 12223, 130, 13334,
14243, 16164, 167, 176, 17980, 188, 19697, 200, 2015, 209, 218,
22224, 22830, 23334, 23841, 248, 26566, 340, 34951, 360, 36768,
36970, 377, 431, 5001, 520, 528, 61314, 643
presence of 243
authority of 583
encounter with 286
concept of 248
proof of 37
image of 70, 84
qualities of 377
experience of 165
as eternal You 197
existence of 3940
darkness of 57
question of 18, 37
justice of 307
holiness of 39, 53, 295, 312
glory/doxa of 80, 204, 330
God's Rule and Kingdom (see: kingdom of God) 7374, 77, 80, 84,
112, 28889, 305, 31314, 32529, 340, 353, 360, 401, 41825, 427,
430, 43233, 438, 441, 454, 46970, 493
as supreme being 162
idea/concept of 248
Servant of/Suffering Servant (also: Jesus Christ) 292, 298, 45456,
487
power of 322
denial of 43, 162, 196, 205, 255
love of 112, 424
Godlessness 45, 204, 255
power/might of 202, 243
humanity of 161
name of 66, 285, 317
revealed 45, 255
personal 296
of philosophy 163
vision of 75
as Creator, see: Creator
silence of 265
self-disclosure of 51
self-communication of 148, 265, 270, 317, 377
the speaking of 222
death of 16263
Trinity 131, 164, 376, 616
as Father 79
of the Fathers 66, 72, 294
hidden, hiddenness of 4445, 84, 137, 202, 255, 26465, 328, 443
veneration of 70, 252
representation of 479
wisdom of 243
will of 469
reality of 159
Godhead/Divinity 340
Gods 94, 131, 2023, 209, 285, 290, 295
stories of 131
sagas of 131
battle of 275
Golgotha of our time 246
Good fortune/luck/happiness 24, 91, 262, 269
Good Friday 413
Good Friday, speculative 163, 323
Good, highest good 3940
Good: the good 2829, 226, 230, 247, 262, 341
Goodness 217, 276, 377, 648, 651
Gospel (see also: message) 73, 84, 111, 166, 170, 252, 281, 303, 411,
423, 428, 430, 438, 440, 443, 450, 461, 47374, 498, 501, 512, 518,
524, 527, 541, 54950, 555, 566, 568, 577, 58384, 602, 611, 617
primacy of 552, 576
Grace 86, 147, 265, 278, 281, 296, 302, 308, 317, 360, 474, 498
Grave of Jesus: empty grave 35758
Greater-than 311, 314
Greek/Greeks (see also: Hellenism) 85, 190, 322, 44748, 496
Academy 121
thought/philosophy 104, 121, 135, 239, 447
culture 292
Grieving/grief 276, 422, 504
Grounding 158
Guilt 203, 217, 22829, 27678, 291, 396, 422, 440, 617
Guilt, confession of 22829
Guilt, consciousness of 232
H
Hagiographer 613
Hammurabi 283
Hands, laying on of (see also: ordination) 188, 512, 525, 537
Happiness 56, 118
Harmony/concord [Eintracht] 605
Harvest festival 399
Hate 28, 112, 234, 246, 427
Having 30
Healing 317, 33638
Healing stories 74
Hearers 422, 436
of the Word 148, 26162, 26566, 274, 335, 373
Hearing 8392, 11819, 170, 204, 341, 346, 372, 377, 379, 38687, 389,
398, 410, 424, 447, 506
Heart 296
Heaven(s) 71, 19296, 199, 201, 277

Page 669
Hebrews 511
Hebrews, Letter to 307
Hell 445
Sermons on 438
Hellenism, Hellenists (see also: Greeks) 72, 102, 399, 511
Help/assistance 59
Henotheism 294
Here 310, 449
Heresy, heretic 76, 1034, 113, 16971, 208, 584, 625
Heresy, suspicion of 413
Hermeneutic(s)/hermeneutical 101, 124, 146, 14851, 366, 636, 648
circle 14851
Herod 397
Heteronomy 637
Hiddenness of God, see: God, hidden God
Hierarchia veritatum (hierarchy of truths) 10910, 128, 544, 51, 627
Hierarchy 453, 54041, 616
Hierarchy, arrangement under the ecclesiastical 625
Hierophany 83, 19296, 199, 201, 277
High priest 401, 405
Highest, the highest 58
Hinduism 209
Historical (event, etc.) 35859, 638
Historical truths: fortuitous historical truths 270
Historical-critical method 144, 333
Historicity 51, 97, 136, 140, 220, 259, 637, 638, 654
History 2930, 42, 54, 70, 75, 77, 83, 86, 9798, 109, 13546, 148, 150,
170, 176, 180, 207, 220, 23740, 24548, 253, 256, 25859, 262, 26768,
27476, 281, 28284, 3001, 3023, 3045, 25859, 316, 321, 361, 370,
41011, 545, 610, 636, 638, 649, 653, 654
problem of 637, 648
of humanity 281
Hitler's seizure of power (see also:assassination attempt on Hitler) 243
Holding as true 373
Holiness
holiness of God, see: God
holiness of the Church (also; Church: characteristics/marks) 619
holiness, human 232
Holy City, see: Jerusalem: New Jerusalem
Holy places 278
Holy Spirit, see: Spirit
Holy War 240
Holy war 240
Holy Week 413
Holy, the Holy 38, 61, 191
Homeland 64, 330
Hope 27, 31, 33, 54, 71, 98, 15254, 162, 247, 263, 293, 297, 3066,
328, 330, 356, 360, 377, 379, 381, 422, 429, 441, 44251, 477, 493,
513, 541
Hoplessness 290
Horizon 216, 218, 648, 651, 653
melting of 150
Hour 307, 426
House of God 476
Hubris 333, 335
Human being(s) 643, 649, 653
as image and likeness of God 165, 217
dependency of 221
as revelation 21418
as creator 88
Human
condition 653
dignity 20, 55, 172, 215
nature 639, 646, 650, 651
rights 172, 216, 395
Human service 116
Human(e)ness 269
Humanae generis 612
Humanae vitae 595
Humanism 415
Humanity 97, 238, 248, 329
Hunger 444
Hymn 242
Hypostatic union, see: Jesus Christ
Hypothesis 156, 15960
I
I-You 17, 114
I-am 31516
Idea 118, 143, 211, 308
of God 162
Idealism: German Idealism 14243, 25253
Ideas: eternal ideas 190
Identification 629
Identitätsphilosophie 637
Identity 227, 263, 616, 62324
Ideology, ideologies 96, 99, 173, 240, 245, 248, 637
Ideology, suspicion of 245
Idols 202
idolatry 397
idolatrous cult 203
Illumination 90, 360
Illusion 231, 23334, 236, 257
Image, images 197, 330
Images, prohibition of 84, 397
Imitatio imperii 563
Imitation/following/succession 79, 98, 31013, 330, 341, 359, 424,
438, 457, 459, 472, 483, 502, 53741, 547
Immanence 272
Immaturity 125
Immediacy 517
Imminent expectation 306, 42536
Immortality 40
Imperialism 477

Page 670
Imperium 563, 616
Impersonal: the impersonal 256
Impurity 295
Incarnation of God, see: Jesus Christ
Incertitude, relation of 350
Incoherency 637
Incorporatio 626
Indebtedness 297
Index librorum prohibitorum 609
Indicatory words (see also: Eucharist; Eucharist of Jesus) 481
Individual 643, 644, 646, 649
Individual churches (see also: Church; Churches) 477
Individuality 269
Individuum est ineffabile 137
Induction 155
Indulgence Theses, Resolutions on the 565
Indulgence, theses on indulgence 111, 465
Inerrancy, see: Pope: infallibility
Infallibility, see: Church; Pope
Infantile 233
Infidelity 290
Inhumanity 217, 438, 444
Initiatives 477
Injustice 28, 29, 112, 203, 246, 395
Inner 644
Inorganic 351
Inquisition 125, 413
Inspiration 61214
Institution 403
Instruction/direction 532
Instrumenta salutis 622
Insurpassibility 533
Intellect 28
Intellectual sciences/disciplines 14546, 14850
Intellectus fidei 167
Intelligible 653
Intelligibility 261
Intelligo, ut credam 122
Intentional 645
Interpersonality 269
Interpersonal relations 645
Interpretation 647, 648
Intersubjectivity 15, 21, 173, 238, 269, 450
Intolerance 101, 256
Irrational faith decision, see: faith
Irrationalism 127
Irrationality/irrational 120, 637
Isaac 6467, 73, 284, 294, 423
Isaiah 6869, 290, 39596, 4034, 422, 435, 456, 608
Second/Deutero Isaiah 298, 322
Islam 94, 99
Isolatedness 151
Israel 6272, 8384, 94, 102, 151, 24142, 248, 28299, 304, 314, 316,
340, 343, 389416, 41920, 423, 42830, 43637, 454, 459, 467, 511, 648
mystery of 411
as People of God 83, 39899, 408, 454
Israelites 39698
J
Joy 24, 30, 71, 91, 186, 226, 422, 445, 449, 503, 555
Jacob 6567, 73, 284, 306, 423
James 461, 517, 523
Jehoiakim 290
Jephthah 401
Jeremiah 29092, 297, 310, 4034, 464
Jericho 241
Jeroboam 403
Jerusalem 68, 121, 242, 288, 291, 301, 356, 358, 39598, 401, 4035,
416, 423, 429, 436, 45963, 486, 51118, 52223, 540, 630
Jerusalem: Heavenly Jerusalem 439
Jerusalem: New Jerusalem 329
Jesuit Order 568
Jesus Christ: general 7678, 8587, 9596, 98, 100, 136, 140, 147, 160,
161, 17374, 223, 307, 318, 328, 332, 37779, 410, 441, 44647, 476,
517, 524, 528, 535, 55253, 580, 648, 649, 653
Jesus of Nazareth 7477, 7980, 1023, 136, 162, 165, 172, 259, 302,
305, 309, 33839, 361, 407, 418, 42324, 429, 432, 45859, 46263,
46872, 48283, 514
Christ Event 53233, 587
proclaimed Christ/Christ of faith 7879, 128, 3001, 31516, 4089,
479, 49394
the proclaiming Jesus/earthly Jesus/Jesus of history, historical Jesus
78, 79, 128, 3001, 31516, 4089, 479, 49394, 648
raising/resurrection of 7778, 247, 3013, 307308, 337, 295, 35461,
378, 429, 43233, 438, 445, 449, 488, 49396, 500, 528, 536, 580
resurrection event/Easter event 303, 306, 35557
appearances of the resurrected 359
bodiliness of the risen 357
authority of 553
einer in Christus Jesus 496
uniqueness of Jesus 314
epiphany of God 318
presence of Christ 641
and faith 7476
as perfecter of faith 80
tomb of, empty tomb 358
Jesus Christ: titles of Sovereignty: general 483
Christus (see: Messiah) 8384, 118, 273, 300, 3023, 32526, 448,
491
Image of God 85, 320

Page 671
Cornerstone 465
Exalted Lord 3203, 359
Redeemer 359
Mediator of salvation/eschato logical mediator of salvation 319
God-Man 75, 259
Good Shepherd 298
Kyrios 7678, 8384, 100, 119, 325, 447, 491, 498
Teacher 102, 310, 553
Lithos (Stone), Lithos Christology 468
Logos, Logos Christology 317, 320
Maranatha, Maranatha Christology 305, 328
Son of Man 312, 327, 420, 42829, 433, 437, 453, 457, 461, 464
Messiah 7678, 84, 244, 298, 311, 319, 321, 339, 344, 346,
40910, 423, 436, 45457, 46465
messianic confession 461, 464, 46667
messianic mystery (see also: silence command) 31978
Mediator 319, 378, 420
Prophet 311, 314, 553
Priest 553
Judge 456
Son of God 75, 77, 84, 135, 258, 314, 342, 453, 539
Representative, Substitute 322, 486
Wisdom, wisdom Christology 320
Judge of the Worlds 433
hypostatic union 148
''I am" sayings of Jesus 342
servant-form of Jesus 85, 329
Cross of Jesus Christ (see also: folly of the cross) 78, 85, 98, 101,
119, 162, 16465, 18182, 243, 247, 268, 308, 313, 322, 328, 24445,
35758, 412, 416, 444, 453, 498, 580
crucifixion of Jesus 301, 511
suffering, passion 119, 302, 444, 461
Incarnation of God 163, 253, 258, 305, 623
Name of Jesus 317
business/affair of Jesus 356
baptism of Jesus 49697
death of Jesus 100, 119, 244, 302, 305, 32223, 35456, 432, 449,
481, 48485, 496
return of 307, 513, 530
Word, true Jesus-words 428
Jesus Christ: general 7678, 8587, 9596, 98, 100, 136, 140, 147, 160,
161, 17374, 223, 307, 318, 328, 332, 37779, 410, 441, 44647, 476,
517, 524, 528, 535, 55253, 580
Jesus of Nazareth 7477, 7980, 1023, 136, 162, 165, 172, 259, 302,
305, 309, 33839, 361, 407, 418, 42324, 429, 432, 45859, 46263,
46872, 48283, 514
Jewish Christians 521
Jewish People 430
Jews and Gentiles (see also: Church: Church of Jews and Gentiles)
447
Jews, persecution of 414
Job 69, 71
Joel 386, 498
Johannine Comma 608
John the Baptist 310, 313, 419, 421, 455, 464
John the Evangelist 76, 8082, 8485, 89, 131, 301, 310, 318, 357, 462,
47172, 512, 51718, 620
Joseph 284
Joshua 401
Juda, Jews (see also: Israel) 75, 85, 102, 307, 322, 325, 341, 344, 407,
41116, 43637, 371, 475, 494, 496, 51112, 620
Judaism 311, 419, 461, 515
Judge (OT) 288, 297, 401
Judgment 230
Judgment sermons 427
Judgment, final judgment, judgment of the world 7980, 27879, 293,
309, 312, 40910, 420, 423
of God on Israel 291
Justice [Gerechtigkeit] 29, 39, 71, 78, 92, 112114, 152, 244, 248, 298,
325, 330, 39596, 422, 438, 474,
Justification, doctrine of justification 78, 334, 575
K
Kairos 309, 545
Kenosis 79, 322
Kerygma 78, 104, 146, 284, 3089, 446
Kerygma, apostolic 614
Key 465, 46971
Keys of the kingdom of heaven 466
King 79, 298, 314, 404
Kingdom 28890, 312, 397, 4023, 405, 42023
Kingdom/rule of God (see: God's rule and kingdom) 128, 152, 198,
207, 252, 305, 313, 316, 330, 356, 361, 408, 41829, 43342, 450,
45253, 460, 470, 480, 483, 493
Knowledge/to know 37, 40, 125, 162, 225, 226, 252, 365, 650, 651
Knowing/knowledge/cognition 12, 1415, 18, 3537, 29, 4143, 8182,
108, 118121, 139, 21617, 226, 261, 283, 32930, 500, 519
Koinonia (see also: eucharistic community; communio, communion,
liturgical community, meal) 57980
Koran/koranic 647
Kyrios, see: Jesus Christ

Page 672

L
Land (OT) 64, 289
Land, the taking possession of 67, 241, 286, 405
Language(s) 63840, 642, 64547, 65054
descriptive 220, 224, 652
formative 220, 224, 652
theory of 650, 651
Last Judgment, see: judgment
Last Supper accounts/accounts of institution 480, 483, 487
Late Judaism 459
Late Scholasticism, see: Scholasticism
Latin America 632
Laugh(ing) 330
Law 381, 509
Old Testament law, see: Torah
tablets of the Law, see: decalogue
moral law 4041
Law and order 509
Lawfulness/legality 520
Lay people/laity 405, 530, 54042, 605, 612
Lazarus 337, 342, 344
Leader 243
Leader of the community, see: Office
Legend 3012, 332, 33637
Legitimation 507
Legitimation, theory of 152
Leipzig Disputation, the 566
Leiturgeia 450, 533
Leninism 99
Lepanto 243
Levi 401
Lex naturae 252
Lex rationis 252
Liberalism 208
Liberation 67, 15152, 241, 291, 450
Liberation/freedom movements 151, 220
Lie 29, 82, 230, 234
Life, community of/in 479
Life, lived life, lively 27, 2932, 54, 8082, 92, 14950, 153, 221, 130,
246, 309, 315, 342, 35152, 360, 365, 373, 381, 407, 442, 44546,
45657, 477, 493, 49798, 532, 554
eternal 81, 153, 302, 315, 378
Light 82, 84, 90, 92, 112, 119, 315, 317, 345
Lima document 55256, 578
Limit situation 92, 264
Limitlessness 265
Linguistic(s)/linguistically 173, 211, 352, 638, 645, 647
Literal sense/meaning 610
Literary science 610
Literature 146
Oriental 610
Lithos-Christology, see: Jesus Christ
Little faith, see: faith
Liturgy 106, 412, 480, 535, 548, 606, 624, 645
Local church, see: church
Logic: formal logic 13536, 266
Logion source (Q) 428
Logos 80, 131, 316, 388, 443, 446, 450
Logos spermatikos 165
LogosChristology, see: Jesus Christ
Longing 27, 9192
Lord's Supper, see: Eucharist
Lordship/mastery 297, 445, 469
Lost, being [Verlorenheit] 307
Love (see also: Love of enemies; God: love of God: love of neighbor)
19, 22, 2730, 53, 75, 87, 92, 112, 116, 119, 165, 182, 187, 217, 222,
231, 243, 266, 26970, 276, 296, 298, 32425, 352, 360, 416, 438, 441,
445, 474, 499, 503, 509, 514, 541, 555, 643, 644
Love of Enemies 424
Love, loss of 233, 235
Love, withdrawal of 231
Luke 357, 43738, 458, 46162, 464, 48182, 51415
Lumen gentium 376, 392, 45253, 501, 59293, 610, 623, 626, 628
Lutheran 649, 650
Churches 54852
World Conference 547
Lyons 538
M
Maccabees 395
Magisterium alone 612
Magisterium/teaching authority 380, 549, 58285, 587, 591, 595,
598608, 61112, 641
of leaders 175
of theologians 175
Magnesia 528
Maidanek 207
Mainz, faculty of 143
Malta Document 547, 575
Maranatha, Maranatha Christology, see: Jesus Christ
Mariology 110
Mark 418, 429, 464, 48182
Marriage ceremony 543
Martyr(s) 100, 231, 235, 463
Martyrdom 99, 156, 248
Martyria/witness 450, 533
Marxism 99, 156, 248
Mary 416
Mass media 219
Mass, see: Eucharist
Materialism 127, 208, 253
Mathematics 136, 145, 194, 196, 211, 266
Matrimony/marriage 543
mixed 543
Matter 199200, 349
Matthew 103, 418, 42729, 458, 46465, 48182, 495
Maturity [Reife] 121, 233

Page 673
Maturity/responsibility (see also: autonomy) 121
Maximalism, maximalists 585, 58990
Meal of satisfaction [Sättigungsmahl] 482
Meal, meal community (see also: Eucharist; Last Supper of Jesus)
188, 314, 330, 396, 422, 479
Jewish 479
Meaning 651
of history 245
meaningfulness
Means of Salvation 62829
Mediation 170, 268, 331, 348, 349, 450, 506, 507, 558, 603
Mediator figures 318
Mediator. See: Jesus Christ
Medicine 173
Meditation, 92, 161
Membership 62426
active 625
constitutional 625
Memoria/Memory, see: Eucharist
Mercy 112, 229, 298
Merit 473
Message of salvation, see: gospel
Message, good news (see also: gospel) 152, 338, 349, 381, 42122,
43638, 494, 52728, 630
Messengers (see also: proclaimer; proclamation; witness) 450
Messiah, see: Jesus Christ
Messianic secret, see: Jesus Christ; command to silence
Messianic kingdom 648
Metanarratives 636
Metanoia (see also: Conversion; repentance) 88, 91, 119, 360
Metaphor(s) 647
Metaphorical speech 315
Metaphysics/metaphysical 135, 162, 164, 636, 637, 648
Method/methodology/methodological 634, 643, 646, 649
transcendental (see also: transcendence) 651
Micha 195
Microcosm 350
Middle Ages 169, 206, 279, 412
Middle/center 187, 195, 274, 302, 305, 429, 633
Middle Eastern 647
Miletus 514
Milieu 232, 23435
Militia Christi 568
Mind 650
Ministry, service, to serve 45960, 46970, 47374, 500, 5067, 512, 520,
53738, 542, 548, 558, 575, 578, 580, 592, 606
Minority 58889
Miracle 74, 8485, 127, 33133, 33640, 34254, 378, 453, 498, 519
nature 337
penal 337
profit 337
show 337
stipend 337
Miracle accounts 33233
Miracle stories
Hellenistic 336, 337
rabbinic 336
Miracles, faith in 34647
Miriam 241
Misfortune/unhappiness 25, 244, 290
Mission 165, 415, 428, 444, 515, 523, 547, 564, 632, 653
Missionary 459, 524
Missionary journey, see: Paul; Barnabas
Misunderstandings 596
Modern age/modernity 35, 43, 109, 124, 135, 137, 145, 161, 164,
2069, 213, 251, 365
Modernism 144, 169, 452, 609, 636
Modernity 101, 638
Monarchy 570
Monophysitism 76
Monotheism 280, 294
Moral instinct 228
Moral/Morals (see also: ethics; morality) 232
Morality 3841, 56, 22526
moral feeling/instinct 228
moral imperative 226
More-than 31114, 338, 426
Mortalium animos 595
Moses 67, 74, 85, 103, 229, 241, 28586, 29293, 297, 31112, 31718,
332, 344, 401, 4045, 416, 608
Movement (and unrest of human beings through history) 259
Multiplicity (see also: plural/multiplicity of Churches, pluralism;
plurality) 576
Music 190
Music, science of 133
Muslim(s) 647
Mysterium, sacrament 86, 377, 592
Mystery
of faith 127
of God 59, 119, 16162, 191, 246, 317, 32021
of Jesus 75, 8081, 8586, 3045, 31316, 32425
of human beings 57, 14748, 166, 17374, 176, 21516
of the world 19394
Mystery cults 121
Mystery religions 120, 447
Mystici corporis 621, 62326, 629
Mysticism, mystic 137, 323

Page 674
Myth, Myths, mythical, mythology 78, 122, 131, 142, 19293, 202,
209, 276, 278, 287, 298, 302, 308, 332
N
Name 284, 321
Narcissism: ecclesiological narcissism 440, 545
Nathan 404
National Socialism/Nazism 100, 415
Natural causality 340
Natural laws/laws of nature 333, 34950
Natural science 3637, 40, 12526, 14546, 149, 155, 173, 19496, 21011,
253, 333, 349
Naturalism 197, 254
Nature 35, 190, 192, 19495, 202, 207, 209, 212, 237, 267, 340,
34951, 369, 372
Nature piety/devotion 212
Nature religions 93, 278
Nazareth (see also: Jesus Christ; Jesus of Nazareth) 303, 422
Near East 402
Necessity 245
Nehemiah 292
Neighbor, love of 112, 116, 424
Neoplatonism 122, 137
Neoscholasticism 126, 143, 168
Nestorianism 76
Neurosis 234
Neutrality/neutral 647, 649
Nevertheless (of grace) 474
Newer/more recent 615, 617
Nexus mysteriorum 128
Nihilism 45, 635
No of faith 375
No to the world 375
Noah 277
Noachian covenant (see also: covenant) 277
Nondiscursive 640
Nondisponibility/indisponibility 53, 215, 268, 269
Nonfoundationalist 636
Noninformative 640
Non-Jews 461, 479, 512
Nonlinguistic 645
Nonscriptural 649
Nonsense/meaninglessness 27, 33
Nontheological 642, 643
Nonviolence 115
Norm 549, 606
Norma normans, normativity of Scripture 168, 379, 535, 545, 6067
Norma normata 607
Normativity of origin 474
Normativity of the real [des Gewordenen] 141
Norms, system of 234
North Africa 562
North-South 439
Northern Kingdom 4023
Not yet 85, 305, 32729, 441
Nota romanitatis 619
Notae ecclesiae (see also: Church) 61719
Nothingness 2829, 356
Now: the now 304, 307, 449
Numinous: the numinous 212
O
Oath 290
Oath against Modernism 452
Obedience 65, 75, 259, 283, 37273, 379
Obex 625
Obligation 226
Obligation/duty 228
October Revolution 238
Office in the Church (see also bishop; deacon; service; priest; pope)
406, 47475, 504, 51011, 517, 52123, 52628, 53031, 534, 53739, 544,
54648, 55055, 55758, 57577, 591
Officials, hierarchy of 405
Old Testament 6263, 65, 6971, 94, 102, 118, 203, 24142, 245, 294,
297, 307, 31620, 325, 341, 403, 4078, 411, 413, 419, 447, 458, 467,
469, 476, 514, 614
Omega 329
Once 306, 532
Once-for-All 306, 532
Ontology/ontological 636
Onto-theological 636
Openness 216, 27071, 346, 351, 374, 433, 439, 651
Option 48, 56, 82, 104, 109, 174, 277, 334
Order/ordinance 123, 194, 508, 516, 520
natural order 48
Ordination 515, 537, 546, 548, 55658
of women 554
Ordo 123
Organic 351
Oriental 647
Orientation 100, 502, 532
Origin 533, 535
Original graces 276
Original sin 604
Original word 86
Original [Ur] trust, see: trust
Origins, fidelity/true to 507, 509, 530
Orthodox Churches 546, 559, 56465, 57274, 581, 61920, 629
Orthodoxy 1036, 10916
Orthopraxis 105, 11116
Otherness 638
Overthrow 244
Ousia 636
Outer 644

Page 675

P
Pacific Rim 647
Pagan 649
Pain 186, 226
Painting 190
Panchristianism 595
Pantheism 127, 143
Pantheon 93, 294
Papacy 466, 474, 477, 56081, 616
Papalism, papalists 108, 568, 585, 590
Parable/similitude 187
Parables/similitudes 301, 330
Paraclete (see also: Spirit, Spirit of God, Holy Spirit) 328, 497
Paradigm 647
Paradise 27880
Paradosis (see also: tradition) 532
Paradox 121, 243, 284, 321, 462, 47374
Paratheke 527
Parousia (see also: Jesus Christ: return of Jesus Christ) 103, 433, 521,
524
Partner, choice of 270
Passion, see: Jesus Christ
Passions 645
Passover feast 399, 479, 48687
Passover meal 479, 481, 48687
Pastor 530, 549
Pastor aeternuus 569, 585, 592
Pastoral 170, 252, 380
Pastoral assistant/consultant 542
Pastoral letters 103, 52324, 527
Patience 499
Patriarch 563, 586
Patriarchal rights 563
Patriarchate 564
Patriarchs 400, 416
Patriarchal histories 6364
Patriarchal history 282
Paul 6465, 7779, 84, 95, 115, 11920, 2014, 229, 302, 307, 32122, 344,
354, 359, 386, 411, 416, 428, 458, 462, 474, 48185, 495500, 51325,
539, 562, 596, 615
Paul-anamnesis 24
missionary journeys of 522
Peace 24, 30, 71, 91, 112114, 240, 257, 395, 420, 499500, 520
Peace bringer 420
Peace, Prince of 298
Peacemaker 422
Peacemaking 439
Pedagogues for Christ 121
Penance (see also: metanoia; conversion) 232, 311, 494, 604
Pentateuch 608
Pentecost 473, 495, 498
feast of 399
storm of 504
People of God, see: Israel: Israel as People of God; Church: Church as
People of God
People of Yahweh 286
People/community/nation 238
Peoples, migration of 238, 563
Perception, observation 36, 222
Perfection/completion 128, 309, 32730, 433, 441
Performative: performative word, see: Word
Persecution 104, 422, 427, 428, 444
Persecutor 359
Person, personal 1122, 23, 34, 109, 13637, 153, 18183, 191, 195, 209,
22628, 237, 247, 256, 262, 266, 270, 296, 315, 31718, 352, 356,
37071, 379
Personality 5153, 218
Perspectivity 140, 173
Pessimism 503
Peter 423, 452, 455, 457, 46068, 47174, 477, 495, 498, 511512, 514,
51718, 523, 539, 552, 56062, 565, 569, 57879, 593, 596, 604, 620,
623, 627
Simon 95, 46063, 46668, 47071, 475
Simon Barjona 464
the rock 46162, 464, 466, 469, 47374
Cephas, Petra 354, 46162, 466, 468, 473, 518, 532
Petrine office/ministry 463, 46869, 473, 475, 47778, 547, 559,
56061, 563, 584, 593, 596, 624
function of, Petrine function 463, 469, 523, 560
primacy of 472, 569, 604
representative 578
Petition/prayer 59, 396
Pharaoh 241, 286, 295
Pharisees 343, 469
Phenomenology of deed/action 263
Philadelphia 528
Philip 512
Philippi 515
Philistines 241
Philosophia perennis 126
Philosophy 3545, 51, 107, 121, 12426, 13233, 146, 150, 163, 173,
207, 211, 323, 38689, 538, 641, 649
Philosophy, schools of 457
Phronesis 635
Physical cause 350
Physics 35152
Pilgrimage to the Temple 398
Pilgriming church, see: Church
Place: holy place 285
Plato 190
Pleroma 309
Pluralism 403, 557
Plurality 544, 557, 638
Plurality/multiplicity in unity 519, 63032
Plurality/multiplicity of churches, see: Church

Page 676
Plurality/multiplicity of schools 169
Plurality/multiplicity of theologians 16872, 17476
Pneuma 498
Poetry 189, 301
Poisoning of wells 413
Poland 246
Political theology, see: theology
Politics, political 114, 126, 146, 288, 438
Polytheism 27980
Pontius Pilate 98, 412, 455
Pope 105, 466, 474, 540, 552, 56670, 58587, 59092, 59497, 61617,
619, 62526
Du Pape 569
primacy of jurisdiction 552, 565, 578, 58285, 58790, 597987, 601,
604
quod est ecclesia 474
patriarch of the West 567
Romanus Pontifex 62324
infallibility of 552, 569, 578, 58285, 58790, 59798, 601, 604
Positivism 33, 127, 14546, 155, 197, 253
Possession 338
Postapostolic 533
Postliberal/postliberalism 634
Postmetaphysical 636
Postmodernism/postmodern 63454
Post-neoorthodox 638
Posttranscendental 636
Potentia absoluta 254
Poverty, the poor 338, 395, 422, 444
Power of the key(s) 469, 560, 563, 604
Power/might 222, 276, 420
Praise 59, 71, 104
Praxis 4647, 102, 113114, 151, 221
Prayer 59, 61, 71, 75, 104, 19192, 259, 278, 332, 412, 503, 512, 537,
555
Pre-Christian Antiquity 440
Preaching office 617
Prejudgment 149
Presbyter(os), presbyteroi, see: elder, elders
Present/presence 304
of salvation 306
of the Reign of God 424, 425
Presupposition(s) 639, 646, 65054
Preunderstanding 128, 149, 150, 166, 272
Priest(s) 4647, 102, 113114, 151, 221
Old Testament 401
Priest, ordination of, see: ordination
Priesthood 106, 55354
Old Testament 28890, 318, 4001
Primacy, see: gospel [Evangelium]; Pope: primacy of jurisdiction;
Peter
Primitive
history 63, 275, 276, 281, 392
monotheism 279
[Ur] community, primitive Church, Primitive Christianity 359, 454,
51115, 614
[Ur] revelation (see also: revelation) 27881
Principia 636
Private revelation 605
Privatization 151
Privileged 152
Probability/likelihood/plausibility 34950
Proclaimer (see also: messengers; witnesses) 450
Proclamation, to proclaim 84, 87, 103, 104, 113, 116, 118, 135, 300,
301, 302, 303, 307, 308, 322, 328, 331, 385, 418, 419, 42123, 426,
435, 436, 470, 506, 511, 542, 548, 630
Proexistence/existence for 408, 441
Progress 141, 156, 2089, 246, 530, 534, 629
Prometheus 209
Promise 65, 71, 76, 128, 256, 383, 284, 290, 29799, 306, 316, 317,
319, 325, 379, 410, 416, 436, 442, 443, 446, 447, 448, 472, 475, 511,
513, 514, 532, 584
Proof (faith and proof as alternative) (see also: faith) 33334
Proofs, contexts of 158
Prophecies 203
Prophecy 276, 331, 513
prophetic speech 500
Prophet, Prophets 69, 79, 83, 112, 175, 188, 235, 29091, 293, 297,
3067, 31114, 317, 332, 344, 360, 370, 39597, 40310, 416, 419, 424,
426, 464, 469, 47677, 520, 514, 51922, 534, 611
false 29091, 404
true 29091, 4034
Jesus Christ as, see: Jesus Christ
Propositions/propositional 499, 640, 647, 648
Propositionalist 640
Proskynesis 573
Protection/security 59, 91
Protective function 509
Protest 47475, 58384
Protestantism 109
Protological-eschatological schemas 636
Protology 276, 39293
Providentissimus Deus 613
Provincialism 642
Psalms 608
Pseudepigraphy 524
Psyche (modern)/psychological 642
Psychology 173
Ptolemies 292
Public, in the 9698, 114, 151, 232
Punishment 252
Purity prescriptions/requirements 397
Q
Qahal 398, 465, 513
Quaestio 122, 132
Quantum physics 350

Page 677
Quarrel/fight 511, 527
Question(s) 21617, 226, 26162, 265, 325, 332, 335, 366
Questionability/questionableness 261
Qumran 292, 421
R
Rabbis 446
rabbis, schools of 297, 457
Race/tribe 238
Race/tribe, head of [Stammvater] 459
Raising of Jesus Christ, see: Jesus Christ
Raising, Resurrection 7779, 81, 119, 154, 293, 305, 328, 459
Ramses II 66, 285
Rationalism 127, 208
Rationality 331, 63537, 652
Rationes necessariae fidei 122
Realism 647
Reality 23334, 236, 259
reality principle 233
Reality, relation to 175
Reason 29, 36, 3942, 104, 122, 123, 162, 163, 202, 228, 252, 254,
256, 258, 368, 374, 618, 650
historical 136
practical 3740, 56
pure 251
theoretical 37, 40
Reason(able) belief, see: faith
Reason, truth of 333
Rebirth (see also: baptism) 227, 278, 495, 496
Receive/receiving 30, 9091, 38789, 424, 496, 506, 532
Receivers/recipients 422
Reception 175, 556
Receptivity 187, 351
Recognition 30, 118, 203, 396, 475, 547, 551, 55659
Red Sea, passage through the 541
Red/Reed Sea miracle 286
Referentiality/dependence 221, 227
Reflection 643
Reform Catholicism 169
Reformatio 599
Reformation 105, 161, 220, 238, 365, 413, 56569, 575, 577, 583, 617
Reformation churches 126, 546, 572, 575
Reformation, time of 550
Reformers 123, 124, 475, 567, 568, 617, 618
Reforms 438, 559
Regard, reputation 90
Rejection, theory of 412
Relativism 173, 208, 642
Relativizing 168
Religion 4142, 5961, 72, 85, 94, 96, 125, 131, 159, 181, 191200,
2067, 22829, 251, 264, 271, 27781, 321, 443, 511, 527, 634, 63846,
648
freedom of 595
history of 58, 61, 191201, 280
critique of 231
natural 264
science of 15960
theory of 643, 649
Religions 5861, 68, 8384, 93, 96, 121, 125, 131, 136, 159, 173, 181,
205, 209, 252, 264, 27181, 290, 29495, 322, 396, 447, 477, 639, 642
ethical 279
Religious
faith 252
orders 509
studies 642
Remarriage of the divorced 543
Remembrance: general 306
of Jesus Christ 536
of human beings 220, 238
in connection with the Eucharist, see: Eucharist
Remnant of Israel 395
Remorse/regret/sorrow 228, 229, 252, 496
Renaissance 238
popes/papacy 475, 565
Renewal (see also: Ecclesia semper reformanda; reforms) 171, 224,
375, 394, 403, 440, 444, 475, 502, 535, 577, 610, 616, 622
Representatives 459, 566
Repression/oppression 112, 114, 234, 296, 444, 445, 509
oppressor 152
oppressed 152
Res cogitans 636
Reserve (defensively closed off) 345, 424
Resignation 444, 502, 503
Resistance, the Scholls, White Rose (July 20, 1944) 230
Responsibility 28, 39, 170, 209, 212, 226, 227, 228, 239, 268, 542,
549
Restoration 568
Retribution 279
Return of Christ, see: Jesus Christ
Revelation 910, 14, 45, 5051, 56, 62, 80, 8586, 94, 95, 111, 123, 125,
130, 13337, 143, 144, 147, 158, 163, 177381, 416, 53334, 583,
59192, 594, 614, 635, 638, 651, 653
special 249361
criteria of 331, 334
natural (see also: creationrevelation) 36770, 498
supernatural 267, 36773
in its origin 27581
Revelation history 140
Revelation, faith in, see: faith
Revelational positivism 254

Page 678
Revolution 115, 161, 244
Reward/payment 252
Right 145, 226, 395, 5089, 51011, 520, 548
Right, community of 394
Ring, parable of the 96
Risk/hazard 157
Rite vocatus 61718
Rites 278
Ritual murder 413
Roman schools 143
Roman world empire 238, 511
Romanitas 568, 619
Romantic/Romanticism 143
Rome 459, 474, 477, 515, 523, 52728, 539, 552, 56267, 574, 57880,
586, 607, 631
eternal 440
Rottenburg 588
Rule(s)/regulative theory 155, 642
S
Sabbath 292, 312, 399, 422, 456
Sacerdotium 616
Sacra doctrina 123
Sacrament 86, 87, 106, 128, 220, 328, 277, 387, 388, 392, 441, 448,
506, 528, 538, 547, 548, 553, 558, 616, 61718
Sacramentals 111
Sacrifice/sacrificial 61, 278, 319, 39697, 400
gift 396
meal 396
priest 527
Sacrosanctum Concilium 611
Safety 334
Salvation 651
question of 620
history, economy of salvation (see also: economy) 62, 180, 258,
281, 378
means of 109
possibility of 281
truths of 109110
path of 512
Salvation 23, 33, 74, 78, 88, 91, 95, 99, 109, 115, 128, 137, 147, 194,
224, 228, 26263, 269, 27273, 274, 27879, 281, 291, 302, 317, 378,
393, 410, 42122, 454, 486, 494, 513, 532, 541, 584, 613, 62022, 627
Salvation religions 278
Salvation, signs of 354
Salvation/redemption 123, 128, 151, 27879, 302, 486
Salvific significance 358
Samaria 68, 403
Sampson 288
Samson 401
Samuel 288, 401, 404
Sanhedrin 405
Sapientia 134
Satan 462, 472, 473
Saul of Tarsus 522
Saul, king 289, 404
Saving event 84
Saving reality 354
Saving/salvation 96, 279, 302, 308
Scandal 232, 617
of separation/division 503
Scandal, stumbling block 84, 326, 328, 342, 344
Scepticism 348
Schism 403, 561
Schism: the Great Schisms 564, 572, 61617
Schmalkaldic Articles 566
Scholasticism, scholastic philosophy 12224, 132, 135, 16769
Science/knowledge 91, 125, 126, 13239, 14446, 221, 222, 234, 329,
352, 610
Science/knowledge, theory of 155, 157, 159, 173
Scientia 34
Scientific history 144
Scribe(s) 322, 401, 469, 512
Scripture and tradition, see: tradition; norma normans; norma normata
Scripture: normativity, see: norma normans, normativity 134, 376,
37980, 575
interpretation/exegesis of 379, 43031, 535, 583, 603, 60610
authority over interpretation of 606
Secondary cause 350
Sectae acatholicae 619
Secularism 206, 21113
Secularization 20613
Secularized world, see: world
Secularizing 20613, 502
Sedes apostolica, see: apostolic see
See (see also: gaze) 8392, 118, 34041, 35659, 387, 447
Seed/sperm nuclei of the Logos 279
Seeking 324
Seer 290
Seleucids 292
Self-communication/self-disclosure 53, 651, 653
Self-consciousness 226
Self-criticism 230
Self-emptying 322
Self-giving of life, see: martyrdom
Self-giving/dedication 59, 112, 415
Self-glorification/pride 424
Self-praise 65
Self-trust 65
Self-understanding 121
Send/sending 103, 311, 313, 378, 45761, 474, 500, 50752, 528, 535,
554, 602
Sense/meaning 2530, 3134, 54, 59, 72, 88, 92, 128, 139, 158, 24548,
361, 648
experience 653

Page 679
experience of 26, 27, 49, 247
fulfillment of 247
question 23, 25, 3034, 49, 54
giver of 3034
postulate of 28, 29
totality of 158, 159
negation or denial of 31
connection 159
Senselessness/meaninglessness 2528, 30, 247
Sensus ecclesiae 59
Sentiments/opinions/ways of thinking 186
Separation/division in the faith (see also: Church: church-dividing
differences) 617
Septuagint 398
Sermon on the Mount 103, 422
Service to unity, see: unity; pope: papacy: Peter
Servitude, servanthood 29, 286
Servus servorum Dei 564
Seven, the Seven 512, 514, 522
Shepherd (see also: office, Peter) 465, 47173, 476, 514, 521, 537
Shepherd, good, see: Jesus Christ
Sicily 513
Sick/sickness 91, 153, 313, 328, 444, 500, 519
Sign/symbol 74, 82, 332, 333, 336, 34148, 352, 354, 378, 387, 498
Silence, command to (see also: Jesus Christ: messianic mystery) 318,
343
Silence, quiet 89, 195, 502
Silvanus 458
simul iustus et peccator 473
Sin, sinning 74, 83, 146, 232, 277, 291, 311, 31314, 319, 322, 328,
335, 378, 474, 501, 532, 541, 628
of Adam/first sin 27879
forgiveness of 30, 74, 79, 112, 279, 318, 422, 513, 514, 614
sinners 314, 338, 422, 479, 480
sinfulness 232
Sinai (see also: covenant-making on Sinai) 67, 287, 39699, 405
Singular, the singular 136
Sister churches 578
Situationality [Situationsgemäßheit] 5079, 530
Skandalon 473
Slaves 115, 496, 499
guard/watcher/overseer of 522
slavery question 115
Smyrna 528
Social criticism 508
Societas perfecta 610
Society 11416, 151, 170, 232, 234, 444, 642, 649
Sociology/sociological 173, 641, 645
Sola scriptura 365, 612
Solidarizing 79
Solomon 68, 297, 311, 397, 402
Son of God, see: Jesus Christ
Son of Man, see: Jesus Christ
Song/hymn 502
Sons of Thunder 462
Soul 121, 195, 351
Sources of revelation 376
South America 380
Southern Kingdom 403
Sovereign/ruler 546
Space flight 193
Speaking: informative speaking 220, 224
Speaking: performative speaking (see also: word: performative word)
Speech/language 107, 151, 170, 182, 18990, 21922, 262, 352, 520,
598
event/word event 54
community 22021
lack of 221
philosophy of 21920, 352
rule, grammar 107, 548, 598
game 113
Spero ut intelligam 442, 448
Spirit, Spirit of God, Holy Spirit 86, 119, 377, 437, 453, 45504, 509,
51416, 52930, 534, 554, 578, 584, 593, 595, 602, 612, 613
Absolute Divine Spirit 252
human spirit 28, 140, 142, 182, 187, 209, 218, 222, 237, 252, 265,
269, 35152
dialectics of the 636
Spirits: unclean spirits 458
Spirituality 503
Spirituality/spiritual nature 187, 352
Spontaneity 5034, 509
State 114
Stephen 90, 512
Stoa/stoicism 72, 131, 459
Story/narrative 104, 301, 648
Structure 170, 38687, 400, 50618, 520, 52123, 535
Structures 405, 508, 509, 530
Stubbornness/hardness of heart 83
Sub contrario 220, 224
Subject, transcendental 637, 644
Subjectivism 41, 322
Subjectivity 91, 151, 153, 15759, 17273, 207, 212, 256
Subsidiarity 576
Subsistit 623
Success 436, 440
Successio apostolica, see: apostolic succession
Suffering, history of 70
Suffering/passion of Jesus Christ, see: Jesus Christ

Page 680
Suffering/passion, painful 2932, 75, 79, 112, 186, 210, 24246, 276,
32123, 328, 422, 444, 555, 648
Suicide 26
Summa theologiae 12223, 132, 136, 137
Sun god 285
Super-ego [Über-Ich] 23235
Superiority of councils, see: council, superiority of
Supernatural, the supernatural 48, 651
Supernature 51, 56, 265
Superstition 161, 264
Supreme Council (Sanhedrin) 405, 463, 512
Supreme episcopacy [Summepiskopat] 546, 569
Surpass/outdo [Überbieten] 306
Suspicion 105
Syllabus errorum 127, 208
Symbol(s)/symbolic 95, 18790, 195, 198, 640, 641, 642, 645
Symbolic action [Zeichenhandlung] 311, 422, 423
Symbolization 645
Synagogue 254, 397, 398, 401, 412, 414, 422, 513, 514, 614
Syncretism 529
Synods, synodal element 477, 571
Synoptics 7879, 80, 459
Syria 513
T
Tabernacles, feast of 399
Taizé 502
Take/taking 482, 506
Talk/conversation (see also: dialogue) 22021, 272
Taste 234
Tax collector 314, 422, 479
Tax collectors and sinners 422, 480
Teacher, to teach 80, 457, 476, 500, 513, 519, 522, 524
of Righteousness 292
Teaching authority, see: magisterium
Teaching narrative/story 336
Teaching/doctrine: binding teaching 101, 1034, 108, 111, 135, 301,
303, 30810, 374, 380, 524, 598
false teaching 525
Tears 186, 330, 420
Technology [Technik] 92, 173, 190, 194, 196, 210, 330, 333
limits of 92
Temperament [Gemüt] 142
Temple 79, 84, 288, 289, 311, 312, 329, 397, 401, 403, 404, 467, 476,
511
destruction of 71
building of 288890
sacrifice 292
Temptation 286
Tensions 511
Terror 234
Thanks, thanksgiving 59, 71, 396, 481, 488
That-faith, see: faith
Theism 161, 162, 165
Theocentric 211, 377
Theocracy: charismatic theocracy 288
Theodicy 31
Theogony 202, 275, 295
Theologia crucis, Theology of the cross 124, 154, 243, 246, 323
Theologia gloriae 124, 243
Theologia naturalis 123
Theologia perennis 168
Theologia semper reformanda 171
Theologian(s) 549, 605, 648, 652
Theological
anthropology 646, 650
investigation/inquiry/study 640, 643, 646
reflection 650
Theology, theologies 3, 113, 12225, 13038, 140, 141, 14348, 15758,
16166, 16775, 17983, 213, 254, 323, 634, 639, 640, 642, 649, 653
as science 159, 175
anthropological 147
of liberation 114, 152, 244
dialectical 333
God-is-dead 115
of hope 360, 452
mythical 131
post-Tridentine 106
narrative 154
physical 131
political 131, 15154
schools of 637
in the singular 16768, 170
Theonomy 207
Theophany/divine manifestation 67, 83, 19196, 199, 201, 285
Theophilus 302
Theory 221, 649
and praxis 112, 113
Theory of knowledge 41
Thessalonica 515
Thinking (see also: knowing; reason; understanding) 39, 51, 325, 331
modern 125
Third confession 54445
Third World 152
Thomists 652
Time 25, 28889, 304, 306, 399, 410, 429, 444
Timothy 103, 458, 523, 525, 537
Titanism 212
Titus, 103, 523, 525, 537
Today 304, 3067, 408
Tolerance 116

Page 681
Tongues, speaking in 119, 500, 503, 519
Torah, Law 69, 71, 83, 112, 229, 292, 293, 297, 307, 312, 314, 398,
400, 401, 407, 416, 420, 421, 469, 51214
Torture 234
Totalitarianism/dictatorship 230
Totality 273
Traditio passiva 536
Tradition: general 86, 99, 139, 142, 150, 151, 278, 280, 302, 348, 359,
364, 379, 403, 480, 485, 486, 513, 514, 53238, 541, 75, 600, 606, 611,
612, 635, 650
apostolic 53840, 554, 555
church 535
source of 53234
self- (of the origin, J. S. Drey) 536
Traditionalism 280
Transcendence 4146, 48, 50, 56, 59, 61, 143, 14748, 15960, 192, 195,
19699, 212, 217, 220, 222, 22930, 234, 239, 24748, 25455, 25960,
26163, 268, 652, 653
Transcendental theology 4, 182
Transcendental, transcendentality 36, 14748, 217, 26263, 635, 638,
650, 651
quasi- 645
Transcendentalism 637
Transparency 18889, 198200, 247, 365, 507
Transubstantiation 107, 134
Trinity, see: God
Triumphalism 98, 210, 440, 568
Trust 16, 18, 22, 31, 72, 73, 247, 272, 379
basic/fundamental 32
primordial/primeval/original fiduciary faith, see: faith 32, 33, 54
Truth 29, 7982, 98, 91, 97, 100, 102, 106, 108, 109, 112, 118, 13441,
170, 171, 181, 183, 189, 190, 201, 202, 221, 257, 24761, 266, 270,
301, 316, 349, 373, 379, 387, 443, 450, 498, 499, 501, 584, 587, 591,
593, 597, 598, 603, 604, 613, 632, 635, 645, 648, 651
absolute 256
charism of 587
claims 640, 642, 647
doctrinal 637
eternal 270
philosophical 108
system of 257
doing the (see also: do/doing) 112
question 157
understanding of 110
Tübingen School: Catholic Tübingen School 126, 14244
Twelve tribes, twelve-tribed-people 410, 402, 459, 494
Twelve: the Twelve (see also: apostles) 354, 42628, 437, 455, 45962,
464, 473, 482, 493, 532
Types/antitypes 648
U
Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia 474
Unam Sanctam 620
Unbelief/nonbelief 33, 65, 69, 73, 82, 162, 295, 342, 343, 345, 359,
436
Unbeliever(s) 411, 620
Unchangeability 235
Uncharacteristic quality/uniqueness [Uneigentlichkeit] 146, 149, 277
Unconditioned: the unconditioned 38, 39, 56, 189, 218
Unconscious: the unconscious 197
Underprivileged 395
Understand(ing), to (the) 14, 109, 11822, 139, 143, 146, 14851, 167,
221, 273
Understanding (faculty) 39, 40, 372
Unfreedom/lack of freedom 114
Uniates 381
Unification/standardization 478
Uniformity 429, 624, 631
Uniformity, unicity 167, 619, 631, 639
Union/unity negotiations 555
Unique, uniqueness 94, 267
Unitatis redintegratio, see: Decree on Ecumenism
Unity 105, 107, 167, 216, 329, 439, 500, 503, 519, 55557, 57781,
616, 619, 62324, 631326, 639
service to (see also: pope; Peter) 475, 47778, 523
in the faith 99, 111
Catholic 623
of the Church, unification 52829, 578, 594, 622, 624, 63032
in plurality 478, 529
Unity of activity (between Jesus and God) 342
Universal power, see: Pope
Universal Priesthood (see also: baptism, Church, Church as People of
God) 547, 553, 571
Universal salvific will 620
Universale concretum 349, 587
Universality 23, 96, 156, 157, 258, 296, 332, 480
Universe/cosmos 350
University 132, 174, 176
Universum 19396
Unjust/injustice 28, 29, 225, 509
Unmediated 648
Ur in Chaldea 64, 283
Uriah 280
Utopia, utopias 317, 442
V
Value 22526, 26263, 438
Variety 639
Vatican outrage/crime 583
Vedas 283
Vehicle 450