Chapter Seven: Christianity as Church

In this, the second longest chapter, Rahner shows that the Church belongs inextricably with Christianity itself. Part 1 explains that the Church is not the primary truth of Christianity, but still fundamental. Part 2 explains what it means to say that the Church was founded by Jesus Christ. Jesus did not personally authorize all the explicit features of later Christianity, but he gave them to the Church as possibilities. Part 3 shows the relation between the Church and the New Testament. Rahner synthesizes the various NT portraits of the Church, showing the church as a structure, as a unity of various local churches, and as united in Christ. In Part 4, Rahner outlines what he calls the "fundamentals of the ecclesial nature of Christianity." Christianity can be said to be autonomous and a divine law unto itself. For that reason, it belongs to the necessary historical and social mediation of salvation.

Photo by Adolf Waschel. Scanned from Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews, 1965-1982. Edited by Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons. Translation edited by Harvey D. Egan. New York: Crossroad: 1986. Photo appears between pages 186 and 187.

Part 5 offers, in 24 pages, an "indirect" method for showing the legitimacy of the Catholic Church. Rahner begins the method by offering three "norms" for authentic Christianity: it existed from the beginning until Reformation times, many find it in Catholic Christianity, and it operates in an authoritative way independent of the believer. These norms undergird Catholic Christianity. In Part 6, Rahner argues that the formation of the scripture is a "fundamental moment" in Christian tradition, not a separate source of truth alongside of tradition. Part 7 defines the Church's teaching office. It helps the Church to persevere in the truth because it confronts Christians with the challenging demand of Christ to believe, i.e., to enter into a living relationship with God. Part 8 suggests that Christian life is necessary but limited. Just as we are bound to our families, even in recognizing their limitations, says Rahner, so we are bound to the church.

Part 1: Introduction

(VII.1, p. 322). In this first part, Rahner claims that the ecclesial aspect of Christianity is not an adjunct to personal faith in Jesus Christ. No, faith concerns the whole human person, whose nature is interpersonal. The ecclesial nature of the Church corresponds to the interpersonal nature of human beings (A). The ecclesial dimension is not, however, the primary dimension of Christianity. There is a hierarchy of truths, and ecclesial consciousness is subordinate to higher truths (B). Rahner explains that he does not intend to offer a full justification for believing that Catholic Christianity is the one church intended by Christ. Instead, he wants to show why Catholic Christians may confidently trust in the church handed down to them.

A. The Necessary Institutional Mediation of Religion and Its Special Nature in Christianity (VII.1.A, p. 322). What is the church? Rahner calls it “The historical continuation of Christ in and through the community of those who believe in him, and who recognize him explicitly as the mediator of salvation in a profession of faith” (322). Then he makes three initial observations.

First, Rahner acknowledges that the period since Jesus can be called "the period of the church," because after Jesus our hope has acquired a new and eschatological character. But then he qualifies his observation, perhaps out of fear of sounding triumphalistic. He insists that even the period before Jesus was "encompassed by God's salvific will" (322).

Second, he remarks that the Christian understanding of religion is necessarily ecclesial. Human beings, he says, are "co-determined" by interpersonal communication. Such communication belongs to the church as well, for religion concerns the whole of human existence, even the interpersonal.

Finally, he notes that many thinkers in the nineteenth century lost sight of this "institutional" aspect of the church. They thought they could appropriate religion in a private kind of interiority. But today we acknowledge that an individual cannot discover personhood by looking for it as something contrary to his or her social nature.

B. The Doctrine of the Church is Not the Central Truth of Christianity (VII.1.B, p. 324). One could easily find in the Catholicism of recent centuries a kind of “militant ecclesiality” which expressed an extreme reaction against individualism. This extremism proclaimed that belonging to the church is “the most specific and central thing about Christianity” (324). Rahner rejects this view. He notes that many dimensions of Christianity – such as the Sermon on the Mount, love, and the freedom of the spirit – might be considered “suspect” in such a militantly ecclesial climate.

Against this militancy, Rahner (quoting Unitatis redintegratio, no. 11) reminds readers of the doctrine of the hierarchy of truths. There are many truths in Christianity, and not all of them are equally foundational. The doctrine of God, for example, is more fundamental than ecclesial consciousness.

C. The Difficult Question About the Church (VII.1.C, p. 324). The difficult question is, “Why [do] we believe that our concrete church is the church of Jesus Christ”? (324). It would be difficult to answer this question, says Rahner, so as to do full justice to the traditional assertions about the church in Catholic theology. To answer the question fully, one would have to (1) analyze the treatment in Matthew 16 of the apostolic office, and (2) show why an episcopacy with apostolic succession belongs to the church which Christ intended. Rahner says that such an answer is beyond the scope of the Foundations.

His intention is rather to reflect, as a Catholic Christian, upon his membership in the church. He wants to show that he and other Christians have no reason to cast doubt on the church handed down to them in their existentiell situation.

Part 2: The Church as Founded by Jesus Christ

(VII.2, p. 322). In this second part of Chapter VII, Rahner raises his fundamental, pastoral question: with what right can a Catholic Christian confidently assert that his or her church is the church intended by Jesus Christ? The issue is not whether Jesus intended a church, but rather what features he intended (A). In order to answer this question, Rahner lays out three minimal presuppositions: Jesus proclaimed a historical event (i.e., the kingdom of God), he drove a wedge between his followers and the Jews, and he foresaw his death (B). The major difficulty is proving that Jesus intended a church, because the church cannot establish a relation to Jesus on its own (C). In order to resolve the difficulty, Rahner lays out some basic principles, the first of which is that Jesus intended God’s Word to remain as a permanent presence in the world (D). Next, he applies his principles to the question of continuity. We do not have to show that Jesus authorized all the explicit features of later Christianity, but only that they were possibilities given by Jesus (E). Finally, Rahner lists the four concrete historical acts by which Jesus can be said to have founded the church, namely, his gathering of disciples, his teachings which they maintained, the power he bestowed on them to continue his work, and the position he granted Simon Peter (F).

A. The Question (VII.2.A, p. 326). “Is my church the church intended by Jesus Christ?” The question is fundamental, says Rahner, because it focuses on the connection between Jesus Christ and the church. Rahner rejects the 19th-century view that the church is merely a spiritual community without an institutional dimension. Anyone who advocates the unity of the churches, he says, must reject that view.

But Rahner is not opposed to at least entertaining the question of whether Jesus, with his imminent expectation of the kingdom in a temporal sense, intended to found a church. He allows the question but answers it by expressing what he takes to be a scholarly consensus. Most scholars recognize, he says, that "something like the constitution of the church is found soon after Easter" (327).

The fundamental debate is not whether a church was intended, but rather what features belong to it. Did Jesus intend the primacy of Peter, the role of the Twelve, and the apostolic succession. In addition, there is a still more essential question: was there, in New Testament times, one church among the many which could claim to be the church intended by Christ?

B. Presuppositions for the "Founding of the Church" by Jesus (VII.2.B, p. 327). In order to contend that Jesus founded the church, Rahner insists upon three presuppositions:

The first is that Jesus did not intend to teach universal religious ideas so much as he meant to proclaim that a historical event. The event was the breaking-in of God's kingdom, had been achieved in his person.

The second was that his teaching drove a wedge between his followers and the Jews. Why? Because he offered salvation to everyone, not just to his own ethnic group or to an ascetical sect like the Essenes.

The third was that Jesus foresaw his own death. He also foresaw that, through his death, the victorious closeness of God's kingdom would be fulfilled. Moreover, he foresaw that there would be a period of time between his death and the arrival of God's kingdom. During that period, faithful Christians would have to wait.

Unless one accepts these minimal presuppositions, one must believe that Jesus acted unreasonably up to and during his passion. He could teach universal ideas without dying, he did not have to proclaim salvation to all, and there was no need to promise the kingdom if he disbelieved in it.

C. The Thesis and Its Problem (VII.2.C, p. 328). The meaning of the thesis, “Jesus founded the church,” is that the church has its origins in Christ. The church does not establish a relation to Jesus “autonomously and by itself.” Rather, the establishment of the church is “an act of Jesus and not primarily an act of the church itself” (329).

Rahner concludes this short article with a series of questions: could Jesus have intended that his narrow circle of disciples "would ever continue with essentially the same function in what we see in the church later as bishops?" (329). Could Jesus foresee a juridical organization? Could he foresee the privileged position he bestowed upon Cephas as a permanent institution?

D. The Attempt to Respond: The Principles Involved (VII.2.D, p. 329). Rahner wants to clarify the sense in which one can say that Jesus “founded” the church. In order to do so, he lays out some basic principles, principles that lead to a minimal but affirmative assertion.

First, he says that Jesus, as absolute saviour and God's self-communication, intended God's Word to be a permanent presence in the world. Jesus would not have been who he is "if the offer of himself which God made in him did not continue to remain present in the world in an historically tangible profession of faith in Jesus" (329-330). Insofar as faith in God's self-communication has its origins in Jesus, the church has its origins in him.

Second, the faith of the church is a public profession. It is the faith of a community. Since faith is communal, and has its origin in Jesus, the church has its origin in him.

Third, the faith that forms community must have a history, and be part of salvation history. In this history, every later epoch continues to have its origin in an earlier epoch, even when it diverges from it. "In order that a historical decision in one epoch be binding for later epochs for the sake of preserving historical continuity, all that can be seriously required is that this decision lay within the genuine possibilities of the church's origins and does not contradict these origins" (331).

E. Application to the Problem of Continuity Between Jesus and the Church (VII.2.E, p. 331). Having accepted the principles articulated by Rahner in the previous article (namely, the principles of the believers’ faith, of their public profession, and of the nature of historical continuity), one can then draw important consequences.

First, we can assert that the church was founded by Christ if we can say that later decisions of the church, now termed "binding," were at least possibilities given through Jesus.

Second, we do not need (according to Rahner's method) to trace back to the sayings of Jesus concrete structures such as a permanent Petrine office or a monarchical church constitution.

If it is fair to grant these two consequences, then we can grant that the church developed freely "from out of her origins in her full essence" (332).

F. The Acts of Jesus Which Founded the Church (VII.2.F, p. 332). Can we point to definite acts of Jesus, acts which Biblical scholarship can show belonged to the historical Jesus, acts that did in fact “found” the church? Relying mainly upon the work of New Testament exegete Rudolf Schnackenburg, Rahner notes three such acts:

First, Jesus did gather around him disciples who in turn assembled a "people of God." The significance of the Twelve was to recall the 12 tribes, and so to indicate Jesus' claim upon all of Israel, an "eschatological Israel" (333).

Second, the Christian community stayed together after Jesus' death. The members believed themselves to be the Elect. They were introduced to "the mystery of his suffering." They were encouraged to endure persecution. The community was intended by Jesus to be a community that called all to metanoia and faith.

Third, there was an "ecclesiological mandate" in the sayings of Jesus, according to Anton Vögtle. The mandate bestowed Jesus' powers on his disciples in order to continue his work.

Fourth, the "Cephas-sayings" of Jesus founded the tradition by which Simon was called Cephas or Peter (Mt. 16:18f.). The meaning of these Cephas-sayings is that "Jesus wants to found his community of salvation on Simon and on his person as on a rock." The saying about the keys means that "Peter is given power to grant admission to the future kingdom" (334). Beyond these basic four provisions, says Rahner, all is left to the Spirit, to the Spirit-led history of the church, and to the history of the original church.

Part 3: The Church in the New Testament

(VII.3, p. 335). What were the characteristics of the original Christian community? It was distinct from Judaism from the start, says Rahner, possessing its own cult, reaching out to the gentiles, and viewing itself in eschatological terms (A). Then Rahner gives an overview of the portrait of the early church in various NT documents. First, he looks at the Lukan and Matthaean portraits. The Lukan is marked by its recasting of world history in Christological terms, and the Matthaean portrays Christianity in ecclesial terms (B). Paul’s letters regard the church in terms of its link to the traditions about Christ, to the Jerusalem community, and to aspects of the church echoed in the rest of the NT (C). In 1 Peter, Hebrews, the Johannine Letters, and the Apocalypse, we find a variety of ecclesial elements: the priesthood of believers, a community united in a common sacrifice, a sacramental and eschatological community (D). Finally, Rahner presents a synthesis of the NT ecclesial portraits, according to which the church is a structure, a college of various local churches, and a unity in Christ.

A. On the Self-Understanding of the Original Community (VII.3.A, 335). How did the earliest Christians understand themselves? Rahner asserts that they first called themselves “the saints” and perhaps the “community of God.” They did not see themselves as community within Israel, but rather as a community assembled by Jesus, assembled and called by him. It had its own cult (apart from Jewish worship) and eventually extended its mission to the pagan world. The Pentecost experience defined for the community its nature as “eschatological,” and showed itself to be a community “obligated” to holiness in life. . . .

Section 3.A continues in the printed version of The Foundations of Karl Rahner, now available from the Crossroad Publishing Company.