The Unique Place of the Foundations among the Writings of Karl Rahner

By Mark F. Fischer

 

            Every Master of Divinity student at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo -- the seminary of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles -- purchases a copy of Karl Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith. For several years it has been a required textbook for priesthood candidates. Its central role in the seminary curriculum testifies to the book's thoroughness and depth. At a time when fundamentalism pretends to speak for all of Christianity, and when the Catholic Church too often assumes a defensive posture, the book offers a powerful theological vision. It presents a Christianity deeply rooted in the Catholic tradition and confidently embracing the insights of world culture and the human sciences. It is nothing less than a "basic course in faith," the literal translation of the book's German title, Grundkurs des Glaubens.[1]

 

            This basic course, however, is anything but simple. To be honest, the book is so challenging that few students read it in its entirety. Indeed, one professor in the seminary's Systematic Theology Department even confessed to me that he had never finished the text. Seminarians wince at Rahner's specialized vocabulary. They weary of his complex syntax. They struggle with the subtlety of his thought. The Foundations is a basic course, but its topic, Christian faith, is as deep as divinity itself. It does not lend itself to speed reading.

 

            When students complain about textbooks, professors usually shrug their shoulders and recommend more strenuous study. That is what I did when I first heard seminarians grumble about Rahner's Foundations. No other book can take its place, I told them, and the English translation by William V. Dych is excellent. I advised them to apply themselves more vigorously. But student complaints persisted. Eventually I began to sympathize with them. Foundations of Christian Faith, for all its profundity, is a difficult book.

 

            So in the mid-1990s I began to write a paraphrase of it. My goal was not to create a substitute for Rahner's text, but to summarize it.[2] I wanted to give students an overview of the chapters and subsections. Students could then compare my overview with Rahner's own words. I put my paraphrase on the internet, and before long, many people were visiting the web site.

 

            The reader might well ask, however, why students should devote themselves to a book so notoriously difficult -- or even to a paraphrase of such a book. The answer has to do with Karl Rahner himself. Twenty years after his death in 1984, he still remains the object of intense theological study. His ecclesiology enhanced the Church's catholicity and openness to the world, his name is intimately linked with the legacy of Vatican II, and he was among the leading Catholic theologians of the twentieth century.[3] Within his scholarly publications, Foundations of Christian Faith holds a unique place. Rahner himself indicated this, and the following essay will explain what he meant.

 

Rahner's Claims about the Foundations

In the 1976 "Preface," Rahner made two claims about the uniqueness of the Foundations within his body of work. Although not a summary his earlier efforts, he wrote, the book "has a somewhat more comprehensive and more systematic character than one might be accustomed to in the other theological writings of the author."[4] More comprehensive -- this phrase is surprising, given the tremendous scope of Rahner's writings. What could be more comprehensive, for example, than Rahner's Encyclopedia of Theology (for which he served as General Editor) or the Theological Dictionary (which he co-authored with Herbert Vorgrimler)? To say that Foundations of Christian Faith is somewhat more comprehensive than these all-encompassing works raises a question: what does it comprise that they do not?

 

            Moreover, Rahner says the Foundations has a "more systematic character" than one might be accustomed to find in his other works. What could be more systematic, however, than the early works with which Rahner established his formidable reputation? Consider, for example, Rahner's 1939 doctoral thesis. Published as Spirit in the World, it analyzed a single question in St. Thomas' Summa Theologica. From this single question, Rahner drew the insight that no human thought can proceed without an image or representation. Even the most profound human thought -- the thought, for example, of God -- depends on mental imagery, on representations that St. Thomas called phantasms. Through these phantasms, Rahner concluded, spirit is present to the world. Rahner's thesis laid a systematic basis for his eventual doctrine of sacrament and symbol, through which God's Spirit becomes tangible. Yet Rahner claims that the Foundations of Christian Faith has a "more systematic character" than his other writings, presumably including Spirit in the World. [5] How can this be?

 

            Rahner sheds light on the more comprehensive and systematic character of the Foundations in the book's Introduction. Sketching the content of an introductory course in theology, he states that such a course must treat philosophy and theology as a unity. The traditional seminary curriculum, however, regards philosophy as a handmaid or prelude to theology. Before beginning theology, seminarians study philosophy, especially metaphysics and ontology. These disciplines help students to appreciate transcendent realities like truth and justice. Rahner, however, does not want to presume that his readers have completed a course in philosophy as a preparation for theology. He does not regard philosophy as merely the prelude to or foundation for theology, but as a reflection on the Christian's understanding of the whole of human life. Theology for its part is not exclusively the understanding that follows upon the acceptance of revelation, but encompasses every intellectual effort to understand Christianity. The Foundations of Christian Faith is more comprehensive because it comprises both disciplines as a "question and answer."[6]

 

            Rahner asserts that his foundational course in theology will show people that they can believe with intellectual honesty "from the very content of Christian dogma itself."[7] This, I believe, is the heart of Rahner's claim that Foundations is more systematic than his other works. The content to which he refers is the self-communication of God to human beings. They in turn can receive God's very life. This is the dogmatic mystery that inspires confidence in believers. Rahner states that it is more fundamental than any other. The other dogmas -- the unity of God, the two natures of Christ, and (as we shall see) even the Trinity -- presuppose God's fundamental offer. The other dogmas contain the self communication of God, to be sure, as well as an understanding of human beings as hearers of the divine Word. But they do so as presuppositions. Rahner aimed to make the presuppositions explicit. If the Foundations is more comprehensive because it contains both philosophy and theology, it is more systematic because it draws out the consequences of God's decision to share the divine life with human beings.

 

            These claims about the more comprehensive and systematic character of the Foundations of Christian Faith are not argued at any length in the book's Introduction. They are so fundamental to Rahner's intention, however, that they deserve closer scrutiny.

 

First Claim: The Comprehensiveness of the Foundations

To see how Foundations of Christian Faith comprises both philosophy and theology, Rahner invites us to regard the human being as a question, a question in the philosophical sense.[8] It is the question of the origin and destiny of humanity. Human beings are able to reflect on this question due to their history (i.e., the way the question has been framed in the past) and to their capacity for transcendence. The answers to this philosophical question from previous generations do not suffice and leave us dissatisfied. In every age human beings raise the question anew, moved by a desire to transcend the answers of the past and plumb reality more deeply. In searching for an answer, Rahner's procedure is eminently philosophical, and seems distinct (at first) from theology.

 

What is his answer to this question about origin and destiny, the question that human beings "have" and "are"? Rahner claims that it is Christianity itself. Christianity teaches that the human being has a basic orientation to the mystery of God. God is not eternally distant, says Rahner, but wants "to be the innermost center of our existence." God gives the divine self to human beings as a share in divinity (grace) and in the person of Jesus Christ (history). So the answer to the philosophical question about the origin and destiny of human beings is not only philosophical, but a Christian answer as well, and thus a theological one.

 

Rahner's procedure of uniting philosophy and theology challenges traditional assumptions. Indeed it challenges the very pedagogy of theological formation. Every Catholic seminary requires that aspirants to the priesthood complete a number of philosophy courses before they embark on theology proper. The study of being, ethics, logic, and philosophical anthropology -- these are typical courses from the pre-theology curriculum. Although official documents about seminary formation emphasize that the relation between philosophy and theology is complementary, nevertheless theology occupies the superior position. Philosophy is supposed to lead the seminarian from human to divine realities.[9]

 

Rahner's method, however, compresses the two by "philosophizing . . . within theology itself." In fact, Rahner criticizes the traditional pedagogy. It unfortunately begins with a philosophical approach, he says, an approach that treats the revelation of God as if it had to be "proven" or at least demonstrated to be possible. For the person who already believes, this approach can be unfruitful. It almost requires him or her to suspend belief, as it were, and pretend to be an Enlightenment-style philosopher, investigating the conditions for the possibility of faith. By contrast, Rahner's approach is directly Christian. "We are reflecting," he writes, "upon the concrete whole of the person's self-realization in Christ." His approach is not that of a systematic doubter but of a Christian who wants to know more clearly humanity's origin and destiny in God.

Critique of Rahner

Critics of Rahner fault him, however, for uniting philosophy and theology. Philosophy, they say, is the realm of human reason. Theology, by contrast, must begin with divine revelation. Rahner's attempt to unite the two, say the critics, blurs the distinction between the human and the divine. Ultimately it blurs the distinction between human nature and divine grace, they argue, even making God dependent on creation. In short, the "more comprehensive" character that Rahner claims for his Foundations, i.e., the book's unity of philosophy and theology, is the very thing that his critics condemn.

 

One of Rahner's most vociferous opponents is the American theologian, Paul D. Molnar. In two lengthy articles, Molnar has attacked Rahner for his doctrines of experience and revelation. Rahner's theology reduces God to a reflection on human experience, Molnar charges, thus making divine revelation unnecessary.[10] Although Molnar is a hostile critic, his careful analyses of the Foundations highlight many distinctive features of the work. Let us take a moment to review Molnar's critique in broad outline so as to show why Rahner calls the Foundations "more comprehensive" than his other works.

 

Molnar insists on clear distinctions. To understand God, he argues, the Christian must choose a theological method over a philosophical one. Rahner, he charges, conflates the two. The mysterious God revealed the divine self to the Israelites, Molnar reminds us, and not to the other nations. God is the first cause, radically different from all creatures, who only know their creator indirectly, from God's effects upon creation and from distinct acts of historical self-revelation.[11] Molnar accuses Rahner of forgetting this. His method of uniting philosophy and theology reduces God to a necessary part of human existence. Molnar puts it this way: "By assuming that knowledge of God is a universal experience of man as he is, Rahner has precluded any real transcendence or freedom for God independent of what human experience ascribes to him."[12] If God can be known from human experience, then God is not transcendent. If human experience is the measure of God, then God cannot reveal divinity in sovereign freedom.

 

Starting from this premise, Molnar levels further charges against Rahner. The first is that Rahner's theology has not consistently held "scriptural faith" as the norm of God's being. Another is that Rahner tried to "deduce" the meaning of grace and revelation from human experience. A third charge is that Rahner erased the difference between creator and creature. In short, Molnar argues that Rahner's unity of philosophy and theology has not preserved the transcendence of God. It has failed to see that God's specific self-revelations in history not only surpass, but may contradict, our "natural" knowledge of God.[13]

 

Molnar's critique casts the features of Rahner's "more comprehensive" approach into high relief. Rahner did indeed hold that we know God in our reflection on experience. "All knowledge of God," Rahner said,[14] "is an a posteriori knowledge which comes from and through encountering the world." Molnar is entirely correct to argue that knowledge of God, for Rahner, is inseparable from experience of the world. Nowhere, however, does Rahner claim that the world supplies "direct" knowledge of God. In fact, Rahner takes pains to insist that we cannot know God as if God were an object among other realities that are present to us. The fact that the human being is able to encounter the divine in reflecting on experience does not reduce God to a product of human reflection. It rather points to a fundamental aspect of human experience. Rahner calls this a "supernatural existential," an orientation or receptivity toward God as the ground of human being.[15]

 

The supernatural existential expresses a fundamental Rahnerian insight: "Really and radically every person must be understood as the event of a supernatural self-communication of God."[16] Because every person can receive this communication, the supernatural existential illustrates Rahner's unity of philosophy and theology. The doctrine of the supernatural existential is a philosophical statement about the capacity of every person, distinct from an explicitly theological revelation. At the same time, it is a theological affirmation. It affirms that God invites human beings to share in the divine life. Not all accept the invitation, and people can refuse it. But the capacity to hear God's Word and obey it belongs to everyone.

 

Molnar dislikes the supernatural existential. From his viewpoint, a capacity extended to everyone is not gracious and free, but rather a constituent of human nature. If it belongs to everyone, then God apparently owes it to us. With the supernatural existential, Molnar argues, Rahner has muddied the clear distinction between God and humanity. He has left us "unable to distinguish God from ourselves"[17] by confusing the realms of nature and of the supernatural. These, like the realms of philosophy and theology, should be rigorously distinguished.

 

Rahner's Method and God's Intention

It is fair to say, however, that the Foundations had anticipated these objections. Indeed, Rahner conceded that the human capacity for receiving God's Word cannot be readily distinguished from the basic openness of the human spirit. "God's self-communication in grace," Rahner confessed,[18] "cannot … be differentiated from those basic structures of human transcendence" described in Chapter II of the Foundations. Rahner admits that it is almost impossible to say where the human capacity to hear God's Word stops and where grace begins. But this concession does not obscure the difference between humanity and divinity, as Molnar charges. It is rather an admission that every human capacity or talent is ultimately a gift from God. Yes, the supernatural existential does claim that something supernatural -- namely, the capacity to hear God's message -- is given to everyone. But it obliges neither God to give the divine self nor humanity to receive it.

 

Molnar contends that the supernatural existential cancels the need for an explicit historical revelation. If the capacity to hear God's Word in daily experience were to belong to everyone, Molnar argues, then the revelation of God to Moses, and of the incarnate Word in Jesus, would be unnecessary. But Molnar's critique runs aground on Rahner's sharp distinction between these supreme examples of revelation and the human capacity to respond to them. The supernatural existential enables humanity to hear God's Word in specific events and people. "God self-communication as offer," Rahner wrote, "is also the necessary condition which makes its acceptance possible." Without something like a supernatural existential, people would not be able to recognize God in history. Critics may object that the human capacity for reflecting on experience lacks the clearly supernatural character of Biblical theophanies and miracles. Philosophers may even recognize this capacity by the light of reason. But were it not for this capacity, people might never understand theophanies and miracles for the divine realities they express.

The "More Comprehensive" Method and God's Intention

Let us take a moment to review our progress up to this point. We have identified Rahner's claim that the Foundations is more comprehensive with his intention to unite philosophy and theology. Rahner philosophizes within theology by defining a universal human capacity (a capacity upon which philosophic reason can reflect) for receiving God's Word (and theologizing about it). Without this capacity, no one could discover in Scripture and tradition, or even in theophanies and miracles, expressions of the transcendent God.

 

Critics have attacked the Rahnerian union of philosophy and theology as an improper confusion of the human and the divine. The proposed union appears to drag theological revelation to the same level as philosophical thought. It seems to shrink the divine to a human reflection on experience. And by fusing supernatural gift with a natural capacity, it seems to reduce divine grace to human nature. Rahner's union of philosophy and theology strikes some critics, not as "more comprehensive," but as an affront to Christian tradition.

 

Their critique, I have argued, is unpersuasive. It attributes to Rahner a claim that he never made, raises objections he had already anticipated, and misunderstands his intention. The critique appears to rigidly exclude philosophy from theology.[19] But it also enables us to see distinctive features of Rahner's "more comprehensive" approach. By focusing not just on the revelation bequeathed in Scripture and tradition, but additionally on the human capability to recognize and receive that revelation, Rahner helps us understand God's intention for humanity. It is nothing less than a desire for people to discern the divine Word in history and accept the invitation to obey it. Rahner's union of philosophy and theology enables people to receive, through human experience and a subsequent reflection on it, genuine knowledge of God. This knowledge, however a posteriori and indirect, comes to people in the divine invitation to transcend themselves by responding to God's appeal.

 

Second Claim: The Systematic Character of the Foundations

Let us turn now to Rahner's second claim about the Foundations, the claim that it has a more systematic character than his other books. He expounds this assertion indirectly (without explicitly arguing the book's systematic character) in the Introduction. There he distinguishes between the large number of propositional truths in dogmatic theology and the "really absolute mysteries" in the content of Christian faith. We find the absolute mysteries, he says, in

 

the self-communication of God in the depths of existence, called grace, and in history, called Jesus Christ, and this [self-communication] already includes the mystery of the Trinity in the economy of salvation and of the immanent Trinity.[20]

 

Grace and Christ, the "absolute" mysteries of God's self-communication (Rahner says in the same place), "constitute the basic content of faith." The theme of God's self-communication contains even the Trinity. Here, in a single sentence, Rahner brings us to the heart of his theological system. The sentence suggests why Foundations has a more systematic character than we are accustomed to find in Rahner's other writings. The book elaborates the insight that Christian faith is about God's gift of self.

 

This fundamental insight simplifies Christian faith, now concentrated into the mysteries of God's self-communication in grace and Christ. Readers will have to judge whether this simplification achieves Rahner's hope, namely, to help people believe with intellectual honesty from the very content of dogma.

 

Step One: Self-Communication in Grace

            Rahner's treatment of grace emphasizes its presence throughout world history and religion. It occupies the initial five chapters of the Foundations and marks the first step in Rahner's systematic account of God's self-communication. Corresponding to grace is the second step in the systematic account, the treatment of Jesus Christ. The historical specificity of Jesus Christ, who appeared at a single time and place, complements the universality of the human experience of grace throughout history. By presenting God's gift of self in two steps, Rahner poses a question: what is the relation between the two? As an answer, let us start with grace, and then move on to Jesus Christ, before we see Rahner's synthesis.

 

Rahner begins with the depths of existence, i.e., with an analysis of human beings. God has created them with a capacity for self-reflection, for acknowledging their limitations, and for transcending those limits by achieving the possibilities that life presents (Chapter I). Transcending limits and achieving possibilities are gifts, gifts of a personal God. God offers these gifts by granting to people a time on earth to exercise their freedom and accomplish their life's work. People encounter this God explicitly when they recognize that the mysterious ground of existence is present as a Holy Spirit who fills them and meets them in holy places, people, and things (Chapter II). At the same time, people concede that they do not always obey God's Spirit. This is the experience of guilt. Guilt threatens those who close themselves off from God's gifts. They refuse God's invitation to follow their conscience and thereby to transcend their former selves (Chapter III). When people ignore their consciences, they are not merely refusing to act as they should. They are refusing a relationship with the God who speaks through the conscience. This relation, however, can be repaired. God offers forgiveness by offering a renewed friendship, a share in the Trinitarian life (Chapter IV). The friendship between God and humanity has expressed itself throughout history, and especially in the history of Christianity. Christianity enables people to recognize God's initiative as Holy Spirit and as the grace of divinization. God's initiative also motivates a free response to that grace (Chapter V). In each of the first five chapters, Rahner expounds the absolute mystery of grace as a constant inspiration to human beings. It inspires people to receive divinity as the center of their lives.

 

This self-communication, Rahner emphasizes, is not granted exclusively to Christians. God offers the divine self "in the depths of existence," that is, to all people at all times. By creating human beings with a supernatural existential, with openness to divinity, God has enabled a divine-human communication throughout history. The peoples of the world have expressed their encounter with God in a variety of religious traditions. These traditions attest to God's ongoing initiative in sharing the divine life with humanity.

 

God's Initiative as Revelation

God's initiative throughout history can even be called revelation. God reveals divinity to human beings, Rahner says, not just in the miraculous events of Biblical history. The appeal to conscience, the recognition of guilt, and the experience of forgiveness are also revelations, manifesting the grace of God in the depths of existence. God's universal and transcendental revelation expresses itself in a variety of special and categorical ways. These ways are species of the universal, and concrete (i.e., "categorical") expressions of the transcendent. They are the many historical revelations to which human culture and the world's religions attest.

 

The religious experiences of non-Christians deserve to be called revelations in that they express the self-communication of God. Christians usually apply this term, revelation, to the Scriptures and the gospel as handed on in tradition. But the application of it to non-Christian experiences accords with a definite aspect of Christian usage. The application of the term corresponds to God's universal salvific will, to the Vatican II teaching that all can be saved, and to Christianity's preservation of primeval history (in the Hebrew Scriptures) as a preparation for Christ. In these ways Christians understand the Holy Spirit as the revelation of God to all.

 

What is the relationship between the many historical revelations and the Christian revelation? Rahner answers that, of all the historical revelations, Christianity is the most successful, the absolute, and the unsurpassed. At the same time, however, it too is a historical revelation. Like the other revelations, it manifests God's universal will to save all. In that sense it is, as Rahner says, "only a species, a segment of the universal." [21] There are more revelations of God than are to be found in historical Christianity.

 

God's transcendental gift of self both precedes every historical revelation (including Christianity) and gives rise to it. The gift precedes historical revelation because God first addresses the human being personally, in the person's heart. The gift gives rise to historical revelation because human beings want to share their experiences. As they interpret their encounter with God, they express it in words and symbols. Without God's gift of self, and without the human capacity to receive the gift, people would not recognize in the words of categorical history the transcendent Word of God.

 

Let us summarize the stages in our argument so far. Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith is more systematic than his other words, we have said, in that it elaborates a fundamental insight. It is the insight that people can believe in Jesus Christ with intellectual honesty from the very content of Christian faith. The basic content of faith is God's communication of the divine self in grace and history. Chapters I-V sketch God's gift of self, God's grace, offered by the Holy Spirit in the depths of human existence. The many historical religions, including Christianity, attest to that grace. It is ubiquitous and represents the first step of Rahner's presentation of the divine self-communication. Rahner's second step is Jesus Christ and the distinctiveness of Christianity. Let us turn our attention to Rahner's Christology in order to see how he justifies the claim that Jesus Christ is the self-communication of God in history.

 

Step Two: Self-Communication in Christ

Rahner contends that, of all the historical revelations, Christianity is the most successful, the absolute, and the unsurpassed. He explains his contention in Chapter VI of the Foundations of Christian Faith -- the longest chapter, comprising almost one-third of the book's pages. It presents the historical revelation of God in Jesus Christ as the highest manifestation of God's ongoing self-communication. Christianity is highest, Rahner says, because it enables us to recognize God's self-communication for what it is, namely, a share in divinity. To understand this answer, we will summarize the treatment of Jesus Christ in Chapter VI under the headings of Transcendence, Word, and Tradition.

 

Chapter VI proclaims Jesus Christ as a Word of transcendence. By responding to this Word, humanity transcends what it was and participates in God's own life. Through the incarnation, says Rahner, human nature "becomes the nature of God himself."[22] The unity of Jesus with the divine Word invites human beings to recognize God's intention. God intends the unity of human nature with God's own self. The union of Jesus and the Word gives people courage to hope for their own communion with God -- in short, for salvation. This hope is based on the perfect realization of that union already achieved by Jesus Christ. So the first 52 pages of Chapter VI present transcendence as:

 

• the evolution of the human being in response to God's Word (Part 1),
• participation in Jesus' relationship with his heavenly Father (Part 2),
• the continual surpassing of our "old self" prompted by the unsatisfied longing for the divine (Part 3), and
• the attainment of the goal of human nature, i.e., union with God (Part 4).

 

In short, transcendence is God's very intention for human beings. God wants humanity to speak the divine Word as Jesus did, to be "the utterance in which God could empty himself." Emptied into human nature, God enables that nature to transcend itself and become what God wants it to be.

 

            After this focus on transcendence, Chapter VI turns to the incarnate Word. The chapter argues that humanity encountered God's divine Word decisively and unsurpassably in Jesus of Nazareth. An historical analysis of the New Testament tradition, says Rahner, shows that Jesus understood himself as a prophet, indeed, as the final prophet or absolute saviour. His function, namely, to proclaim God's kingdom, was his very essence, his essence as divine Word. He accepted his death as the consequence of fidelity to the mission given him by his Father. Transcending every selfish motive, he made present in history the transcendent reality of God (Part 5). Jesus' death was not his end. In the resurrection, the Father gave the Son's life a "permanent, redeemed, final, and definitive validity." From the time of the first disciples until today, people find in Jesus' resurrection the courage to hope for eternal life (Part 6). In brief, Rahner's theology does not focus exclusively on the unique events of first-century Judea, in which Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for human salvation once and for all. Rahner adjusts this focus to avoid a mythological presentation of God as one who demands propitiation.[23] With this adjustment, Rahner emphasizes the hope of humanity. It is the transcendental hope for union with God's Word, a hope fully realized when the Word became flesh.

 

            Finally, Chapter VI reconciles traditional Christology with Rahner's transcendental Christology. According to classical Christology, the death of the divine Son made satisfaction for the sins of humanity. Rahner's transcendental Christology, on the other hand, emphasizes the human nature of Jesus. This second Christology complements the first by underlining the solidarity of Jesus with all humanity. We can hope to transcend death, in Rahner's Christology, because Jesus transcended it (Part 7). Classical and transcendental Christology may seem incompatible because the one starts from the descent of the divine Logos and the other with the ascent in understanding of Jesus. But the Logos abided in Jesus, says Rahner, and led him to an ever-deeper understanding of the mission he had had from the beginning (Part 8). This ascent reflects the personal relation of the Christian to Christ. Prompted by God's Word, we too ascend in understanding of and obedience to our vocation (Part 9). What is true for those with an explicit Christian faith may also be true for those of different faiths. The Spirit of God and of Christ inspires them to heed God's Word as they understand it within their own traditions (Part 10). Thus we can say that Christian dogma, which teaches that God's Word entered history only once in a hypostatic union with Jesus, does not exclude from salvation those of other faiths.[24] Rather, it reveals that God, through the Spirit, has communicated the divine self, even to those who do not know Christ in an explicit way. They too can hear God's Word, and thus stand (however indirectly) in the Christian tradition.

 

            Chapter VI, in short, marks the second step of Rahner's systematic argument. Recall that the two absolute mysteries -- the self-communication of God in grace and in Jesus Christ -- constitute the basic content of faith. Chapters I-V, with their focus on grace, took the first step. In the second step, Rahner explains how Jesus Christ is the self-communication of God in history. He defines this self-communication as nothing less than a relationship with God. In this relationship, God invites humanity to hear the divine Word and obey it, thereby transcending the merely human and participating in God's own life. Next, Rahner identifies God's Word with Jesus of Nazareth. Exploring the incarnation and Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, Rahner shows how the humanity of the Word genuinely expresses who God is. God "spoke" the Word of Jesus Christ, the sacrament and sign of God's will, thereby signifying and bringing about human salvation. Finally, Rahner shows how his transcendental Christology complements traditional Christology. The latter emphasizes the divinity of Son, the sender of the Spirit. The former emphasizes the humanity of Jesus, upon whom the Spirit descended. Both express the absolute mystery of Jesus Christ, through whom God communicates the divine self.

 

            So the self-communication of God, expressed generally throughout human existence as grace, finds its unsurpassable historical expression in Jesus Christ. Rahner does not so much justify the claim that Jesus Christ is the self-communication of God as he lends it precision. God communicates the divine self by inviting people into the union with the Word, Rahner says, the union that Jesus enjoyed. In him, people encounter both the gift of God and a free human response to it. Jesus Christ as both divine gift and human response reveals what it means to receive God's very life as a grace. Grace and Christ are the absolute mysteries of God's self-communication, said Rahner, which "already includes the mystery of the Trinity in the economy of salvation and of the immanent Trinity" (footnote 20). But what is the relation between grace and Christ, and how is the Trinity is included? To answer, let us turn to the Trinitarian structure of Rahner's system.

 

The Book's Trinitarian Structure

            Rahner already sketched his theology of the Trinity at the end of Chapter IV, in the context of a discussion about the self-communication of God. In that chapter, Rahner emphasized the oneness of God. In particular, he called attention to the threat to God's unity posed by the traditional language of three divine persons. The traditional language leads to psychological speculations about God's inner life. Rahner responded to the threat by asserting that the "immanent" Trinity (the inner life of the divine persons) is the "economic" Trinity (God acting in the history of salvation).[25] Human beings know God through the actions in history of the divine persons or, as Rahner would have it, as God's three modes of presence. The inner life of God is indeed the holy mystery of God's presence in history.

 

            Rahner's treatment of the Trinity, we might say, subordinates it to the doctrines of grace and Jesus Christ. These are the absolute mysteries of the basic content of faith, namely, the self-communication of God. The subordination is clear from Rahner's comment about the Trinity as "included" in God's self-communication, as well as from the brief discussion of the Trinity in Chapter IV and from other writings by Rahner.[26] In the systematic presentation of Rahner's theology, the primary focus is humanity's God-given orientation to God. Speculations about the inner life of the Trinity may distract Christians, Rahner implies, from this more fundamental topic.

 

            Yet it would be false to conclude that there is no substantial doctrine of the Trinity in the Foundations. Implicit in its treatments of grace and Christ, the Foundations presents the two "missions" of the Father, namely, the Spirit and the Word. The mission of the Word is treated so extensively, and the length and central place of Rahner's chapter on Jesus Christ are so striking, that the absence of a specific chapter on the Holy Spirit is conspicuous. However, I believe that Chapters I-V, in which Rahner presents the mystery of grace, indirectly constitute a treatise on the Holy Spirit. Already in Chapter II Rahner describes the human being as the finite spirit whom God fulfills with the gift of "his very own being." In other words, God is accomplishing the union of finite spirit and Holy Spirit as humanity's fulfillment. Then in Chapter IV Rahner uses the language of the First Letter to the Corinthians to describe the human being as a temple in which God's Spirit dwells as a gift. This divine life is truly Holy Spirit, Rahner continues, "Insofar as he has come as the salvation which divinizes us." These passages[27] show that Rahner's treatment of grace in the first five chapters of the Foundations is at the same time an indirect treatment of the Holy Spirit.

 

            This indirect treatment, recapitulated in the book's Epilogue, clarifies the Trinitarian structure of the Foundations. By systematically expounding grace and Jesus Christ, the book presents both the Holy Spirit and the incarnate Word, the two missions of the Father. Recognizing the existence of this Trinitarian structure, however, does not explain the relation between grace and Christ. In fact, Rahner himself acknowledges that the relationship is problematic. To see how he solves the problem, let us turn to the final step in his systematic argument.

 

Step Three: The Complementarity of Grace and Christ

            In Chapter V, Rahner acknowledges that his emphasis upon the ubiquity and constancy of grace throughout history poses a problem. He expresses it this way:

 

If God as he is in himself has already communicated himself in his Holy Spirit always and everywhere and to every person as the innermost center of his [the individual person's] existence, whether he wants it or not, whether he reflects upon it or not, whether he accepts it or not, and if the whole history of creation is already borne by God's self-communication in this very creation, then there does not seem to be anything else which can take place on God's part.[28]

 

If God has already shared the divine life with humanity, what need is there for incarnation? Rahner's sentence touches a number of characteristic themes. There is, first of all, the acknowledgement that God's self-communication in grace is what Christians call the Holy Spirit. The sentence also emphasizes that the Spirit communicates God to people as the center of human life, whether people know it or not. And finally, the sentence raises a fundamental question. If God extends the divine life as grace through the Spirit always and everywhere, then what more can an incarnation of the Word offer?

 

            Having raised the question about what more (if anything) God can do, Rahner proceeds to answer it. He begins with a concession that we have already seen. Rahner concedes that Christianity is only a part, a species, of the universal history of revelation. God has shared the Holy Spirit with people throughout history, and this universal history of revelation has manifested itself in the world's cultures and religions. To be sure, Jesus Christ is the criterion by which Christians distinguish the history of revelation in its fullness from misinterpretations of God's self-communication. But outside the circle of Christian faith, Jesus Christ cannot function as such a criterion. From the viewpoint of an historian of religion, Jesus Christ is merely one among other prophets.

 

            Rahner moves from this impasse, first of all, by postulating a "caesura," a turning-point in history. It is the point, he says, at which "mankind becomes conscious of itself."[29] Before this caesura, humanity was situated in nature and threatened by it. In a few brief millennia, however, humanity changed, making itself the object of its own planning in an environment that it helped to create. The millennia-long "moment" of humanity's consciousness of itself marks this caesura.

 

            Next, Rahner correlates the caesura and Jesus Christ. Just when humanity became conscious of itself, Christianity proclaimed the incarnation of the divine Word as the "God-Man." Rahner defines the term God-Man as "the absolute historical objectification of its [humanity's] transcendental understanding of God." In the God-Man, divinity and humanity unite. The Holy Mystery of God, and the human mode of God's self-expression, and the man, Jesus of Nazareth, have all become one. The God-Man corresponds to the turning-point of history in which humanity became conscious of itself. Jesus Christ is a sacrament, objectifying absolutely the God that human beings understand, the God who invites them to transcend themselves by union with the divine.

 

            Finally, Rahner links the question of human salvation with the two "moments" of salvation history. One moment is the event of God's self-communication. The second is the event of human freedom, the acceptance or rejection of God's offer.[30] This freedom, however, is not freedom from God, but rather the God-given freedom to respond to God, the response of faith. Rahner calls it "the obedient acceptance of man's supernaturally elevated self-transcendence." In regard to God, obedience is freedom. The human being who obediently accepts God's self-gift "actualizes himself in freedom," says Rahner. The actualization of oneself in God fulfills and saves the human being. Salvation is not a state produced by God on a person, but the free acceptance of God who wills to share divinity with all people.

 

            Jesus Christ, the self-communication of God in history, accomplished salvation in a perfect way by uniting in himself God's offer and humanity's response. When people accept God's self-communication, grace elevates them. It enables them to transcend themselves by placing their trust in God. They obey God by taking responsibility for themselves, freely responding to God's Word. This is the Word, Jesus Christ, in whom "the God who communicates himself and the man who accepts God's self-communication become irrevocably one, and the history of revelation and salvation of the whole human race reaches its goal."[31] Whenever people follow in his footsteps by accepting God's offer, they "make" salvation history.

 

            So after communicating the divine self in grace, what more can God do? Rahner's answer is that God can become incarnate. God can become the human nature that freely turns to God in love and loyalty. By becoming human, God makes human nature a dwelling place for divinity, allowing people to see in God their very own destiny and goal. Chapter V is the hinge in the Foundations between the chapters on grace and on Christ, and illuminates their complementary relation. Grace is the constant offer of God, the offer that inspires all human beings. Jesus Christ is the sacrament of God in history, the sacrament which reveals divinity and embodies the full acceptance of God's offer on the part of human nature.

 

Confidence to Believe from Dogma Itself

            With this insight, the systematic character of Rahner's Foundations finally emerges. God's self-communication, we see, is the very foundation of Christian faith. God has communicated the divine self through the Holy Spirit, pouring the love of God into human hearts in all times and places. But at one time and place humanity encountered Jesus of Nazareth. Through him, people glimpsed in the flesh what God wants them to be -- united in a kingdom of justice and peace, united with God unto death. And even the sting of death need not prove mortal. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which the Father gave the Son's human life an eternal validity, lends hope to all that death is not the end. In many and various ways God had spoken through the Holy Spirit, but in these last days God's Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ.

 

            These "last days" constitute the millennia-long turning point of human history. They mark the caesura in which humanity has become conscious of itself as a creation dependent upon a creator. This insight into human dependence did not dawn upon us on our own or as a product of reason. Rather, it is itself a gift of God, a gift that inspires us to respond in faith. Faith means taking responsibility for our lives in obedience to God. The sacrament of this faith is Jesus Christ. He united in himself the God who communicates and the human being who freely responds. Imitating him, we too can hope for communion with God.

 

            The confidence and intellectual honesty of the believer features prominently in the last three chapters of the Foundations. No one today can claim to have mastered all the theological disciplines, Rahner says, or can give an exhaustive and comprehensively scientific defense of Christianity. But Catholic Christians can confidently trust in their Church. There, in a community of believers, they can have confidence that their faith is not a species of individualistic self-delusion, but rather continues a mission that goes back to Jesus Christ (Chapter VII). Christian faith is not an escape from reality. Rather, it embraces it as a gift from God, the God whom Catholics celebrate in the seven sacraments (Chapter VIII). Projecting their understanding of reality into the future, Catholic Christians anticipate the destiny of creation as a whole. They express this destiny in eschatological statements. Far from being literal predictions of the end time, these statements express Christian hope, the hope that the future belongs to a providential God (Chapter IX). The last third of the Foundations echoes Rahner's message that God invites people to accept reality as a divine gift for which they are responsible.

 

            The central claim of the Foundations is that the self-communication of God is not merely one aspect of the Christian message, but its very heart, its content, its central truth. To be sure, that basic content expresses itself in mysteries, the absolute mysteries of grace and Christ. They are the Father's missions of Spirit and Word. But human being can understand these mysteries because God has revealed them. Indeed, God has given people a "positive affinity" to the mysteries which constitute the basic content of faith.[32] God has created humanity with the capacity to hear and respond to the divine self-communication.

 

            By focusing on God's gift of self, Rahner has undoubtedly simplified Christian Faith. It does not consist, he says, "in a rather large number of individual propositions which are unfortunately unintelligible." No, it consists rather in the relationship between humanity and God. The large number of individual propositions supports and explains this relationship, but is subordinate to it. Rahner subordinates the individual propositions on dogmatic grounds. The very content of Christian dogma, he implies, is this self-communication of God. This content, distinct from the various theological propositions, allows people to believe confidently and with intellectual honesty. And what do they believe? Rahner put it this way:

 

Hence there is really only one question, whether this God wanted to be merely the eternally distant one, or whether beyond that he wanted to be the innermost center of our existence in free grace and in self-communication. But our whole existence, borne by this question, calls for the affirmation of this second possibility as actually realized.

 

God wants to be, and is, the center of human life. God stands not just at the center of Christian life, but as the basis, the origin, and the destiny of all creation. Foundations of Christian Faith dedicates itself to that thesis. That is why Rahner viewed it as somewhat more comprehensive and more systematic than his other writings, and why theological students view it as worthy of study.