(VI.5.a, p. 228). In this subdivision, Rahner addresses a number of hermeneutical issues, issues about the interpretation of faith in Christ. First, he raises his question. He asks whether the divine self-communication, which he has described in transcendental terms, has actually taken place in the Jesus of history (A). He presupposes that the historical question about Jesus Christ is also a subjective one, for the meaning of Jesus can only be disclosed to faith (B). There is a circular structure of faith in which objective knowledge is combined with a subjective willingness to believe (C). To be sure, our knowledge of Jesus is “interpreted” knowledge. But it is not without objective grounds, for we have Jesus’ own testimony to himself, recorded in the Gospels (D). Although history can be verified only in a relative sense, nevertheless it can have absolute significance (E). It has that significance because we human beings do make absolute commitments. True, we are never absolutely certain about the final wisdom and rightness of what we do. That does not prevent us from making absolute commitments based on contingent knowledge (F).
A. On the Relationship of the Previous Transcendental Inquiry to Historical Events (VI.5.a.A, p. 228). Up to this point, Rahner has asked whether there can be a transcendental idea of God’s self-communication. The transcendental issue differs, however, from the historical. Now he asks the historical question. It is whether this divine self-communication has in fact taken place – and whether it has taken place in Jesus of Nazareth.
B. The Accountability of Our Faith in Jesus as the Christ (VI.5.a.B, p. 229). Rahner does not ask the objective question of Christian theology, “Is Jesus the Christ, and how does he show that he is?” His question is rather a subjective one. He asks, “How do I account for my faith in this Jesus as the Christ?” He asks the subjective question, he says, because he presupposes that his readers have a Western, Christian, and ecclesial faith. His thesis is an interesting one: he wants to show that what is “most objective” (i.e., the nature of Jesus Christ) is also “most subjective” (because it is disclosed to our act of faith).
C. The Circular Structure of Faith Knowledge (VI.5.a.C, p. 230). How does a person who does not believe in Jesus Christ come to faith? First, at a sociological level, says Rahner, that person has an experience. The non-believer experiences himself or herself within a “circle of knowledge,” a circle he or she did not construct alone. So the first stage of faith is a form of socialization: one finds oneself in a society, a “circle of knowledge” about Jesus Christ that is plausible and shared..
Faith in the form of socialization does not mean that one has just accepted faith as a "given," a faith merely presupposed by those within the circle. For the individual must still give an account of the faith and make moral decisions. Although one's knowledge of the faith is incomplete, unreflected, and naive, nevertheless the one who accepts the faith from another is still involved in that faith.
The next stage of faith combines a subjective willingness to believe with the actual ground of the faith. It is the ground of faith, says Rahner, that justifies the willingness to believe. If someone believes my account of Jesus Christ, I have not therefore "produced" the other's faith. I have merely expressed it in a comprehensible way. I have put it in concepts. To those concepts, however, the other has responded. He or she recognizes in the Jesus I preach the one whose grace is already at work.
D. The Historical Dimension of Christian Faith (VI.5.a.D, p. 232). In what sense, and with what right, does the believer assert that the events of Jesus’ life are “historical” (233)? Rahner asks this question because Christians in general (not to mention modern interpreters, such as Wolfhart Pannenberg) claim that faith has a quite definitive historical object. Still, our knowledge of the event of Jesus is not historical in a neutral sense. Rather, it is known through an authoritative interpretation, Jesus’ own interpretation. And it is grasped within the circle of faith.
E. The Problem of the Universal Significance of Particular Historical Events (VI.5.a.E, p. 233). In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, something absolute has happened for the history of the world. That is the Christian claim. But such a claim runs into a problem, the problem of history. Modern humanity believes that we cannot know the past as well as we know the present. Modern humanity believes that the events of the past are less important than how we respond to them.
There is an incongruity between the merely relative verifiability of historical knowledge and the absolute significance of history. There is "verification" in the study of history, but it is "merely relative." The 18th-century Enlightenment asked whether something historical can be "existientielly" significant. Rahner puts it this way: can salvation be dependent on a historical event, or must it depend on something more verifiable than history?
F. The Inevitable Incongruence Between Relative Historical Certainty and Absolute Commitment (VI.5.a.F, p. 234). Why can we claim that historical events have an “absolute” significance? Because they do have that significance in our real, lived-out existence. We are asked to make absolute commitments throughout our lives. We make them in married life, in the heroism of the battlefield, in religious communities. And we do so in the absence of theoretical certainty. We are never absolutely certain about the final wisdom and rightness of what we do. No matter how thoroughly one tries to weigh a decision, the decision is ultimately made on the basis of a provisional interpretation of reality. That interpretation is finite and historically contingent. Even a decision not to commit oneself can be an absolute decision.
(VI.5.b, p. 235). In this section, Rahner concedes that the NT sources vary in their historical verifiability and reliability. But he insists that an absolute historical verifiability is not only impossible to attain, but unnecessary for faith. True, Jesus understood himself before his death and resurrection in ways that differ from the understanding of the early Church. But these differences are not in contradiction (A). Indeed, one cannot “go behind” the testimony of the first Christian generation to find, in a supposed “historical Jesus,” something significant for theology that has nothing to do with faith (B). It is right and proper, however, to distinguish between an “object” of faith (a truth in which we believe) and a “ground” of faith (a truth for which there is more ample evidence) (C). Secular history may be grasped without faith, yes, but not salvation history (D). Even the earliest Christian witnesses interpreted what they saw with the eyes of faith, just as do Christians today (E). Salvific knowledge is only possible within the context of faith (F). And within faith, one is right to note that some objects of faith are grounds of faith, and some are not (G). Rahner’s goal is to ground Christology in two ways: first, by showing how Jesus himself understood his role: and second, by showing the central role of the resurrection (H).
A. Two Theses (VI.5.b.A, p. 235). There are some (e.g., the followers of Rudolf Bultmann) who will say, “It doesn’t really matter whether the stories of the NT are true; what matters is that, in Jesus Christ, God calls me to love and to obedience in faith.” Rahner rejects this view. He says that Christians must have an abiding interest in the history and self-understanding of Jesus. His life and his death have theological relevance distinct from the relevance of his call to love and obedience. That is the first thesis: the thesis of the relevance of Jesus’ history.
The second thesis is that the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith are one and the same. To be sure, the accounts of the post-resurrection Jesus are influenced by the faith of the early Christian community. But that does not mean that Jesus' self-understanding before the resurrection contradicts the understanding of him presented by the early Christian community. And our faith does not require that Jesus' self-understanding coincide precisely with the content of our faith today.
Rahner argues this in a clever way. He says that, if Jesus' life before the resurrection coincided unambiguously with the entire content of faith, then there would have been no need for the resurrection. The resurrection then would have been nothing other than God's seal of approval on a faith complete in itself.
B. Christian Faith Refers to the Concrete History of Jesus (VI.5.b.B, p. 236). Research into the historical Jesus can lead to the erroneous conclusion that it is possible, by means of a neutral study of history, to get beyond the testimony of the first witnesses of Jesus. Some researchers believe that they can find something important for faith and for theology wholly apart from what the first Christians believed. But Rahner says that the effort to go beyond the Christ of faith to a Jesus of history is fruitless. Faith alone can decide what, of all that was transmitted in the NT record, is essential to faith. Faith has nothing distinguishable from itself that can be its ground.
Having said that, however, Rahner is at pains to emphasize that transcendentality and existentiality alone cannot ground faith. We cannot possess (in the sense of manipulate) the transcendental and existential experience. We cannot transcend ourselves, nor can we make an existential decision for God, without a reference to real history. And for the Christians of the first century, the historical event of Jesus Christ was the ground of faith.
C. On the Relationship Between the Object and the Ground of Faith (VI.5.b.C, p. 238). Whoever says, “The historical event of Jesus Christ does not make Christian faith legitimate today,” no longer has a traditional Christian faith. In such a person, the relation between faith and its historical ground have been severed. Every ground of faith, says Rahner, is an object of faith. Every miracle, every mighty deed, every selfless sacrifice – everything, in short, that we call a ground of faith – cannot by itself produce faith. These “grounds” of faith are also “objects” of faith, for in them we believe. We believe in them, and hence they undergird our faith.
Not every object of faith, however, is also a ground of faith. Jesus interpreted himself as the absolute saviour, and his self-interpretation is an object of faith in which we believe. But this object of faith (Jesus' self-interpretation) is hard to transmit as a ground of faith. It is easier to proclaim the miracles of Jesus (and preeminently his resurrection) as objects of faith, because these objects also reveal their ground. Miracles ground faith, but not from the outside. It is not as if, once having seen a miracle, we automatically believe. No, the grounds of faith are not extrinsic to faith. It takes faith to see something as a ground of faith.
Historical knowledge grounds faith, but not from the outside. Rahner rejects the idea that the grounds of faith are extrinsic to faith itself. Why? Because faith is not possible without grace. Grace enables a real and effective grasp of the grounds of faith, such as miracles, mighty deeds, resurrection.
D. On the Different Meanings of "History" (VI.5.b.D, p. 240). The discussion of the necessity of faith for recognizing faith’s ground and object enables us to distinguish between two “types” of history. Salvation history is real and objective, but it is grasped only within the assent of faith. The merely historical record of Jesus’ life and death is accessible to knowledge, yes, but it may not be interested in faith.
E. The Faith of the First Witnesses and Our Faith (VI.5.b.E, p. 241). Like us, the first witnesses could only grasp the events of salvation history from within faith. We enter into the structure of the faith of the first witnesses when we, having been given courage by their faith, and believing their testimony, say “I believe.” Their faith, and that of subsequent generations from them to us, has become part of the grounds of our faith. But neither they nor we came to faith by means of experiences apart from faith. The grounds of faith are, from the very beginning, objects of faith.
F. Salvific Knowledge Is Possible Only Within the Commitment of Faith (VI.5.b.F, p. 242). Faith must necessarily be grounded by history. Why? Because salvation must take place in history. The historical object is an “object of faith”; and yet it “grounds” faith. So it must be recognized as what it is: namely, an object in which we believe. This recognition must take place if anything is to have significance.
An object remains insignificant without a faith. Faith recognizes an object in history as an object of faith, and without faith the object has no significance. The ability to recognize such an object for what it is (i.e., an object of faith) differs, however, from grace. We believers may be able to articulate the grounds of our faith. But when we do so, the articulation itself is an act of faith. No one will respond to it unless he or she first has had a transcendental experience of Jesus Christ. The transcendental experience allows one to see events of faith in the events of history.
G. On the Distinction Between Articulations of the Object of Faith and the Ground of Faith (VI.5.b.G, p. 243). We saw earlier (VI.5.b.C) that an object of faith (e.g., Jesus’ self-interpretation as saviour) is not always a ground of faith (like the miracles or the resurrection). Now Rahner goes further: some objects of faith, he says, like the virginal conception of Jesus, do not allow us to grasp the grounds of faith as much as do other objects of faith. Such objects, like Jesus’ miracles, are not just objects but also grounds of faith.
Even for someone with faith it is not always possible to differentiate, by means of history, between object and ground. Some texts offer only an object of faith, not a ground of faith. Historically speaking, we want to establish with certainty what we can about those objects of faith which are also grounds of faith. Texts significant for dogmatic theology (e.g., texts about the virginal conception) are sometimes different texts from those significant for fundamental theology. Yet both are seen from within faith.
The believer is justified in distinguishing between the "minimum" of secure knowledge about the history of Jesus and other, less secure items of knowledge. These less secure "objects of faith" are true but they go beyond the substance of the NT. The "minimum" items of knowledge, by contrast, are not only "objects" of faith but also "grounds." In the past, we have judged the "objects" which go beyond the substance of the NT (e.g., those which are not also "grounds," such as the virginal conception) too generously.
H. The Minimal Historical Presuppositions of an Orthodox Christology to Be Established by Fundamental Theology (VI.5.b.H, p. 245). Fundamental theology need only prove that two theses are credible in order to establish the grounds of faith for Christology. One thesis is that Jesus understood himself, not merely as one in a line of prophets, but as the eschatological prophet, i.e., the absolute saviour. The second thesis is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is credible and mediates the saviour in his total reality.
In fundamental theology, one does not have to prove that each and every detail of the NT record is reliable. Yes, it is "Catholic" to assert that the NT is inerrant. But the judgment about the historical value of the various NT sources is different from inerrancy. We need to make distinctions among the NT sources and their historically verifiable reliability.
(VI.5.c, p. 246). In this subdivision, Rahner acknowledges that his Foundations do not pretend to be a work of Scriptural exegesis (A). But the Foundations are built upon the results of exegesis, and Rahner presents the essential elements in the historical knowledge of Jesus (B).
A. The Nature of Our Procedure (VI.5.c.A., p. 246). In this subdivision, Rahner acknowledges that his Foundations do not pretend to be a work of Scriptural exegesis (A). But the Foundations are built upon the results of exegesis, and Rahner presents the essential elements in the historical knowledge of Jesus (B).
B. A Summary in Thesis Form (VI.5.c.B, p. 247). Rahner lists and describes six essential elements in the historical knowledge of Jesus. The first is that Jesus intended to be a religious reformer, not a revolutionary. He was a member of his community’s religious culture. The second is that Jesus was a radical reformer who broke the lordship of the law that had put itself in place of God. The third is that Jesus hoped at first for a victory in his religious mission. Gradually, however, he realized his mission was bringing him into mortal conflict with society. The fourth element is that Jesus accepted his death as the consequence of his fidelity to his mission and as imposed on him by God. The fifth element is that Jesus called for people to be converted due to the closeness of God’s kingdom, a conversion that had political consequences. Such conversion did not require, however, that the only way to live discipleship was to be involved with the underprivileged and outcasts. The sixth element and the one above all others, says Rahner, is that we cannot decide a number of historical questions about Jesus. For example, we cannot speak definitively about his consciousness of his divine Sonship, about the titles he used for himself, about the extent to which he believed that his death would have a saving consequence, and about whether he foresaw that his disciples would form a new community. . . .
Section 5.c.B continues in the printed version of The Foundations of Karl Rahner, now available from the Crossroad Publishing Company.
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