(VI.6, p. 264). This 20-page part is divided into seven subdivisions. In the first subdivision, Rahner lays out his main aims: to recover the original experience of Jesus Christ and its intellectual presuppositions. The second subdivision defines the resurrection as a validation of the "cause" of Jesus' life and a sacrament of God's will. In the third subdivision, Rahner states that the resurrection must be interpreted within the context of humanity's hope for a spiritual life (not the prolongation of earthly existence) after death. The fourth subdivision affirms that both we and the first Christian generation experienced the death and resurrection of Jesus as a confirmation of our own transcendental hopes. In the fifth subdivision, Rahner suggests that the resurrection of Jesus moved history into a new stage. It is the stage after which humanity could really believe that God would offer final confirmation and affirmation of human life. The sixth subdivision shows how the resurrection was not merely the confirmation of Jesus' life, but something new to our understanding of God's intention for human beings. In the seventh subdivision, Rahner argues that the death of Jesus should not be understood as propitiation of the Father, but rather as a sacrament of God's saving will for us, a sacrament which accomplished what it showed forth.
(VI.6.a, p. 264). In his brief preliminary remarks, Rahner states what he will not do in Part 6. He will not attempt to present either a NT theology or the “official” theology of the Church as reflected in the authoritative documents of Christian tradition. Why not? Because the difference between the NT Christologies and the Christology of the Church is no greater than the difference between the Christologies of the first witnesses and those of the NT authors. Rahner is primarily concerned with the experience of the disciples regarding Jesus. He wants to show the continuity between what the disciples believed and what the NT authors wrote.
In Part 6, he proposes to accomplish two main aims. First, he wants to establish the intellectual presuppositions of the original experience of Jesus Christ. Second, he wants to establish the original experience itself, an experience which he believes can be found "behind the explicit New Testament Christology" (265).
(VI.6.b, p. 266). This brief subdivision begins with a key thesis: namely, that the death and resurrection of Jesus belong together, for the resurrection is the validation of Jesus’ life after his death on the cross (A). Resurrection does not mean the resuscitation of Jesus’ body after death, but rather the affirmation by God of Jesus’ “cause” and person. Moreover, it is the sacrament of God’s will for all humanity, a sign of the kind of response to God’s Word affirmed in Jesus that God invites from all people (B).
A. The Unity of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus" (VI.6.b.A, p. 266). There is a unity between Jesus’ death and resurrection, Rahner says, even though the two are separated by three days. Although he does not deny a time interval between the two, but he claims that the interval is not important. He puts it this way: Jesus’ death is subsumed into his resurrection.
What, then, is resurrection? It is, Rahner says, the "permanent, redeemed, final, and definitive validity" of Jesus' life (266). His life had that validity on account of his death. It was achieved through his death in freedom and obedience.
B. The Meaning of "Resurrection" (VI.6.b.B, p. 266). In explaining the meaning of resurrection, Rahner begins by saying what resurrection is not. It is not, he says, the resuscitation of a physical body. Rather, it is the salvation of a person by God. By salvation he does not mean a rescue from physical death, but rather the full acceptance of the person by God. Rahner calls salvation and resurrection the “validation” of a person’s “cause,” i.e., of what the person was dedicated to.
The validation of Jesus' cause does not mean that he was committed merely to an idea which lived on after his death. Jesus' "cause" was not an idea separate from his person. His cause and his person were one. Resurrection is the validity of Jesus' claim to be the absolute saviour (see p. 193 and pp. 251-54).
True, it is right to say that "Jesus is risen into the faith of his disciples." But that does not mean that he lives on only in their memory, merely as an idea. Their faith, and our faith as well, is not just a concept but a liberation. Rahner puts it this way: faith "knows itself to be a divinely effected liberation from all the powers of finiteness, of guilty and of death, and knows itself to be empowered for this by the fact that this liberation has taken place in Jesus himself and has become manifest for us" (268).
(VI.6.c, p. 268). Under five articles, this subdivision lays out a doctrine of the resurrection that harmonizes with Rahner’s transcendental Christology. He begins by asserting that Jesus’ resurrection is the hope for every human being, a hope that, in Jesus, has already been fulfilled (A). Every human being knows that he or she will die, and this knowledge characterizes the human situation (B). Death is the final end of one’s material existence, but not the end of the love and fidelity, which belong to one’s spiritual self (C). After death come eternity and afterlife, in which the free actions of one’s life reach their fulfillment and become the final achievement of one’s whole existence (D). Eternal life belongs not to the soul alone, separated from the body, but to the whole human being, who longs for permanent validation and who finds in Jesus’ resurrection the hope for it (E).
A. Summary Thesis (VI.6.c.A, p. 268). Resurrection is not an assertion about the “physical” part of a human being. Resurrection does not mean that the body was resuscitated apart from the spirit. Instead, resurrection is an assertion about the whole of a human being. It affirms that the human being’s whole life – body, soul, and spirit – is “permanently valid and redeemable” (268).
Thus we can say that Rahner's view of resurrection is not, at least at this point, a positive statement about how a person will live in his or her final state. Rahner's intention is rather to exclude any treatment of the body apart from the rest of the person. . . .
Section 6.c.A continues in the printed version of The Foundations of Karl Rahner, now available from the Crossroad Publishing Company.
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