Chapter Five: The History of Salvation and Revelation

This chapter has six parts. In Part 1, Rahner explains how Christianity is both a "historical" religion, made concrete in history, and the "absolute" religion. It is historical in that it was founded upon the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It is absolute because, in the history of Jesus Christ, Christianity proclaims the transcendental experience of humanity with God. Part 2 shows that our experience of transcendence always takes place in history, that transcendental acts of freedom and conscience make history possible, and that the "supernatural existential" enables human beings to "make" salvation history with God. In Part 3, Rahner describes the relation between world history and salvation history. When human beings respond to God's call, world history becomes salvific. It is the history of revelation, because every individual expression of the encounter with God is a kind of revelation.

Scanned photo printed after Rahner's "Foreword" in William J. Kelly, Editor, Theology and Discovery: Essays in Honor of Karl Rahner, S.J. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 1980.

Part 4 explains the relationship between the transcendental revelation of God (available to all people at least as an offer) and the special revelation of God in history (for example, the history of Israel). In Part 5, Rahner describes the structure of the actual history of revelation. The Adam and Eve story, says Rahner, represents the transcendental encounter of humanity with God, as do all of the stories of Israelite history. Part 6 summarizes the notion of revelation. It notes that categorical and historical revelation mediates transcendental revelation.

Part 1: Preliminary Reflections on the Problem

(V.1, p. 138). The transcendental experience of human beings has a history. It does not just exist in a static manner, but takes place in a constant dynamism. Christianity proclaims this transcendental experience as the encounter with God in Jesus Christ. This encounter is not a reality that is always the same. It is an ongoing history, a history borne by the freedom of God and of us.

How can Christianity claim to be both the "absolute" religion and a "historical" religion? In other words, how can it be both unsurpassable and still in process? Further, what can it mean to say that revelation has a history? It cannot simply mean that, in history, some events have revealed God and others have not. Salvation history cannot be just another aspect of history, given the Christian claim that God has communicated the divine self as the "center of everything which can be history at all" (139). Nor can it be merely the expression in words and deeds of a revelatory experience which is ultimately transcendental, interior, and ineffable. It has to be more than "the process of limiting and mythologizing and reducing to a human level something which was already present . . . from the outset" (139).

Part 2:

The Historical Mediation of Transcendentality and Transcendence

(V.2, p. 140). In this brief section, Rahner wants to show (1) that our experience of transcendence always takes place in the arena of human belief and action, (2) that our transcendental acts of freedom and conscience are what makes history possible as an interpretation of reality, and (3) that the “supernatural existential” is a gift of God, given over time, which enables human beings to “make” salvation history with God.

A. History as the Event of Transcendence. (V.2.A, p. 140). The foundational principle is that the human being is “historical” as a “transcendental subject.” We experience transcendence as God’s call to us, a summons to freedom and responsibility, a summons that takes place in history. It takes place in our day-to-day struggle for self-knowledge and self-realization. But it remains transcendent. We cannot reduce transcendental experience to any one historical moment. It is not, for example, the moment when we first realized the call of conscience, first celebrated Holy Communion, or first fell in love. But each of those historical moments can be said to have “mediated” transcendental experience.

The problem is that we no longer understand that our transcendental experience makes history possible. Without our concrete choices, choices to act and not act, choices responsible and irresponsible, choices which express our yearnings for or refusal of transcendence--there would be no history. We human beings are the only creatures who acknowledge such a thing as history. We postulate it. And we are able to do so because we recall and interpret human events from a certain standpoint. It is the hypothetical standpoint of the completion of history (140). Although history is still underway, we hazard a belief about how things will all turn out. And from this hypothetical viewpoint, we interpret past and current events that are still in process.

The "supernatural existential" (see IV.3 above) itself has a history. This existential, defined as that which orients the human being toward God's self-communication, is a divine gift. It was given over time. It began in the obscurity of prehistory and has developed along with the development of human self-understanding and conscience. Thanks to that supernatural existential, human beings are able to hear and respond to God's call. That listening and response is the history of revelation. When we speak of the supernatural existential as a divine gift, we mean that God is free to give or not to give the divine self. We mean also that human beings are free to receive the divine self-communication or to mourn the absence of God's holy mystery. The salvific acts of God are mediated by history, and so are also the salvific acts of humanity (142).

Part 3:

The History of Salvation and Revelation as Coextensive with the Whole of World History

(V.3, p. 142). What is the difference between world history and salvation history? That is the question with which we begin. Rahner says that the two histories are “co-existent.” When the human being responds to God’s call, he or she “makes” salvation history (A). Indeed, we can say that the history of salvation is the history of revelation. Every individual expression in word and deed of the encounter with God is a kind of revelation (B). Although it is commonly said that revelation “ended” with the death of the last disciple and the close of the NT, nevertheless it is fair to say (given a slightly different meaning of revelation) that revelation continues as it comes to self-awareness (C). Revelation is not just the expression, in Scripture and tradition, of the “facts” of salvation, but the appropriation of them by the person in whom God enables the “facts” to become the word of God (D). And we experience the call of God, not just in the explicitly religious realm of worship and belief, but everywhere that God calls us to respond in freedom and responsibility (E).

A. History of Salvation and World History (V.3.A, p. 142). Human history is co-existent, but not identical, with salvation history. Why not identical? Because human history is not only the history of our salvation. It is also the history of our guilt and rejection of God. But God did not intend salvation merely for the few. Everyone finds salvation, says Rahner, “who does not close himself to God in an ultimate act of his life and his freedom” (143). God wills to save all.

All history is the history of salvation insofar as all history is "the concrete, historical actualization of the acceptance or rejection of God's self-communication" (143). Everything else is merely the "history of nature." There are two "moments" in salvation history. First, it is the event of God's self-communication. God communicates the divine self to us transcendentally, in the summons to transcend who we are and become what we are in potential. The second moment in salvation history is the moment of human response. When we respond to God's invitation, we "make" history. When the human being accepts or rejects God's offer, the offer can be seen in history. Thus the self-communication of God, originally transcendental, is historical as well. And it does not have to be explicitly religious. Every response of the human being to God's call belongs to the history of the divine-human communication and relationship.

B. The Universal History of Salvation Is Also the History of Revelation (V.3.B, p. 144). No matter how popular, it is “careless” to identify the Biblical history of revelation with the history of revelation in its entirety. There is more to the history of revelation, Rahner says, than what is in the Bible. Salvation history did not just begin with Abraham. The history of revelation takes place wherever human history takes place. Every individual’s history of faith is part of the history of revelation. This is not the “natural” revelation of God that St. Paul describes in the first chapter of Romans, but a transcendental encounter with God. One cannot even approach God in the Church or in the Bible without being already led by God’s grace – without an invitation from God which may be called a revelation. Whatever is due to grace is an aspect of revelation.

The history of religion includes the history of true and false religions. And even the false ones can be said to exist in the order of grace, to be made possible by God, and to be practiced by people who accept or reject God. Why? Because one cannot even begin to have anything to do with God without first being "borne" or led by God's grace. Revelation is doubtless "beyond" merely natural knowledge, even the knowledge of the learned. But it cannot be reduced to the Scripture and Tradition of Catholicism. It is accessible, Rahner says, in every human experience. To be sure, that experience must be "gratuitously elevated"; that is, it must be the inner experience of God's own call. The experience is not merely God speaking "from without."

C. The Foundation of the Thesis in the Data of Catholic Dogmatics (V.3.C, p. 146). Some would say that Rahner’s thesis – the thesis that revelation cannot be limited to the explicit and official revelation of the Church – is not “Catholic.” But that is an inadequate understanding of Christianity. Christianity really does understand itself as an ongoing process, not a once-and-for-all deposit of faith. It is “the process by which the history of revelation reaches a quite definite and successful level of historical reflection” (146). Christian faith has always understood itself as a process by which the history of revelation comes to self-awareness.

Contrary to the arguments of St. Augustine and Jean Calvin, Christians believe that salvation is promised to all. No one is "kept" from being lost. To be sure, one can forfeit salvation through personal guilt. But it is wrong to understand God as "producing" salvation in a person.

The history of salvation, the Church's official history, must be accepted in freedom. And it cannot be accepted unless it is known as a history of salvation. To be sure, the person's acceptance of salvation history need not be an acceptance of dogmatic propositions. Salvation may occur outside the Christian context when an encounter with God is accepted freely and as known, even if not known explicitly. But it must be an acceptance in faith, a faith in God's own Word, a word that reveals God.

D. Supplementary Theological and Speculative Foundation (V.3.D, p. 148). How does Rahner’s thesis harmonize with official revelation? How does his idea of a “universal but still supernatural revelation” harmonize with the NT and OT? Rahner’s answer is that our ability to hear God’s invitation and respond to it is given by God. “Man’s transcendence is ‘elevated’ by God’s self-communication as an offer to man’s freedom” (148-49). This is not just an “ontic” or theoretical possibility, not just a statement of facts beyond our personhood and conscience. Nor is it the thematic and worked-out expression of a philosopher of religion. It is rather an essential and living reality, an “ontological” reality. One can even say that explicitly Christian teaching, produced by God, may be reduced to a merely human word if it is not carried and led by God’s own self-communication.

Thomism would say that whenever our intentional acts are elevated by supernatural grace, their their object or goal is itself supernatural. So the intentionally pious acts of the Buddhist or Hindu are themselves supernatural. To be sure, they cannot reach their explicitly religious goal by a merely natural act. But the Buddhist or Hindu, moved by God, experiences "revelation."

E. On the Categorical Mediation of Supernaturally Elevated Transcendentality (V.3.E, p. 151). Can we only experience transcendence in an encounter with specifically religious themes? At first sight, one might say yes. People experience the supernatural horizon, one might say, only if they use the word “God,” only if they speak of God’s law, only if they want to do God’s will.

But no, that is false. "It is not the case," says Rahner, "that we have nothing to do with God until we make God conceptual and thematic to some extent" (151). On the contrary, there is an original experience of God which is not explicitly religious. It is not thematic, not even an object of reflection. We experience it whenever we become for ourselves a free subject, free to respond to the possibilities which God offers. This happens when we experience ourselves before the holy mystery which transcends us. This experience is our "supernatural transcendentality." As a consequence of it, we can be said to experience God not just in religion, but everywhere.

There is for Christians no sacred realm where alone God is found. Even when we act morally for purely natural reasons, that moral action is supernaturally elevated. The observance of the natural moral law is "supernaturally elevated and salvific in itself" (152).

The possibility of encountering God everywhere, not just in the traditionally sacred spaces, is implicit in the Vatican II teaching that all can be saved. To be sure, faith is necessary for salvation. But this faith cannot be defined narrowly as the explicit content of a tradition of revelation in the OT and the NT. The faith necessary for salvation is nothing other than "the obedient acceptance of man's supernaturally elevated self-transcendence" (152). Whenever one accepts one's own basic orientation toward God, one experiences a revelation of God.

Part 4:

On the Relationship Between the History of Universal Transcendental Revelation and the Special, Categorical Revelation.

(V.4, p. 153). If we can experience God anywhere, even in those realms that are not explicitly religious, then what does it mean to articulate that experience in an explicitly religious way? The answer has to do with history. History is the essential and necessary expression of the human encounter with God, the expression of revelation (A). The revelation spoken of here is primarily the transcendental revelation of God, the gift of God in call and in the empowerment of our response. Rahner calls it a “universal” and “transcendental” revelation to all people. This revelation expresses itself in “special” and “categorical” ways, e.g., ways that we can categorize as visions and prophecies. The highest and most successful of these is the revelation of Jesus Christ (B). That means, however, that there are other “revelations of God” apart from what Christians know as revelation. These other revelations are the expression of a transcendental experience, expressions willed by God (C). Jesus Christ is the criterion for distinguishing between true and false interpretations of transcendental experience, a criterion available only in faith (D). The “bearers of revelation,” such as prophets and disciples, bring to expression the experience of God’s self-communication and can be said to “constitute” us. They constitute us because, through them, we actually enter into the history of revelation and salvation (E). The universal history of revelation expresses itself in the particular; the particular enables us to know and recognize the voice of God (F).

A. The Essential and Necessary Historical Self-Interpretation of Supernatural, Transcendental Experience (V.4.A, p. 153). Rahner starts from the premise that transcendental experience has a history. It is not just a subjective encounter that some have and others do not. Nor is it merely a recurring phenomenon that never develops. On the contrary, transcendental experience has the objectivity of something that is universally known. Moreover, it develops, and reached an unsurpassable peak in Jesus Christ. Christian history is the history of the shared transcendental experience of Christians. It is their interpretation of their own transcendental experience. In comparison to the history of transcendental experience, historical revelation (e.g., the historical “events” of the patriarchy, exodus, and even of Jesus of Nazareth) is a “secondary moment” in the total history of humanity. For historical revelation to be revelation, faith-filled people must recognize in it the expression of their transcendental encounter with God.

Does that mean that Christianity, the "absolute religion," is also a secondary moment? In Rahner's view, the Early Church experienced Jesus Christ as Lord. Theirs was a historical interpretation, an interpretation which took place in freedom and hope. There was a risk that the interpretation was wrong. But early Christians took the risk. They were confident that they, in Jesus, had met God's own Word. Historical interpretations of people and events may be mistaken interpretations. This one was not. But it was an interpretation, a "secondary moment." The early Christians recognized Jesus as the Word due to the transcendental encounter with God that they had already had.

It seems as if Rahner relativizes the history of revelation. Objective history is subordinate to the primary encounter in transcendental experience. But Rahner is saying something more profound. He is saying that the history of the Church (the entire history, and not just the history of Jesus or of the saints) is the history of revelation. The history of the Church does not stand outside history. It is revelation precisely because it stands within history.

B. On the Notion of a Categorical and Special History of Revelation (V.4.B, p. 154). The history of Christianity is not merely one way among others of expressing the possibility of human self-transcendence. Christian history moves “in an irreversible direction towards a highest and comprehensive self-interpretation” (154). Christians know revelation as culminating in the incarnation. That is the special sense in which the word revelation is normally used.

At the same time, however, there is a broader sense of revelation than the explicitly Christian. Rahner calls it the “universal, categorical history of revelation.” It is not just “universal,” that is, available (at least as an offer) to all people at all times. It is also “categorical,” i.e., a statement indicating a fact, known by experience, which conforms to rules like any other fact (see II.3.A; II.5.A; III.3.A; IV.3.A). In other words, the universal revelation of God as a supernatural existential expresses itself throughout human history. Compared to it, revelation in the usual Christian sense is only a species of a wider genus.

Hence there is a history of revelation that does not coincide with the OT and the NT. This history of revelation is altogether real. It has taken place wherever God has addressed humanity through its conscience. But this revelation is “provisional and not yet completely successful,” Rahner says. Moreover, it is “permeated and made obscure . . . by man’s guilt” (155). By contrast, the usual and full sense of Christian revelation is found where faithful people know it as guided and directed by God. There revelation “discovers its true self” (155).

C. The Possibility of a Genuine History of Revelation Outside the Old and New Testaments (V.4.C, p. 156). Revelation in its purity is found in the NT and the OT. But it is not only found there. How is this possible? Rahner says no more than he said in the previous section, but he speculates that it is possible. It is possible, even if these other “histories of revelation” are brief and partial. He asserts that they are truly self-interpretations of a revelatory and transcendental experience of God. Such revelations are “positively willed and directed by God” because God wills to save all. They are “directed” by God in the sense that they stem from “the immanent powers of this [i.e., God’s own] divine self-communication” (156). Like the Christian history of revelation, other histories may not be deduced from an abstract principle or reduced to the consequences of a merely human logic. Like the Christian history, they are “experienced, suffered, and accepted in history.”

The Christian historian of religion can acknowledge these other histories of revelation. Inevitably the Christian will interpret them with regard to their ultimate intentions. He or she may well see in these other histories the presence of the God of the OT and the NT. The history of revelation can only be complete in Jesus Christ, says Rahner. But what, he asks, are the criteria by which one distinguishes between true and false revelations?

D. Jesus Christ as the Criterion (V.4.D, p. 157). Jesus Christ alone is the “criterion” for distinguishing between true and false revelations. In Jesus Christ we distinguish between merely human and mistaken interpretations of the transcendental experience of God and legitimate interpretations. In Jesus we also distinguish true interpretations of Christianity’s revelation from false interpretations of Christianity. To be sure, the criterion of Jesus Christ is not a merely neutral and impersonally scientific rule. It is not available, for example, to unbelieving historians of religion. It is available only in faith, and it is preeminent.

E. The Function of the Bearers of Revelation (V.4.E, p. 158). What is the function of “bearers of revelation,” such as the prophets? They bring to expression something that is present at a fundamental level everywhere and in everyone, namely, the ability to hear the call of God and respond to it. They express in an undoubtedly valid way the transcendental self-communication of God. When they do so, however, their expression is not merely human and natural. Truly prophetic speech differs from our own efforts to express the self-communication of God. How does it differ?

- It expresses a reality constituted by God.

- The expression can be said to be God's own.

- It is not an afterthought, but a part of God's self-communication, governed by God's will.

- The expression can be said to "constitute" us, for in hearing truly prophetic speech, we enter into the very history of salvation and revelation.

The light of faith and the light by which the prophets grasp God's message are the same. That "light" is the "divinized subjectivity" of the person (159). The prophet is the believer who expresses correctly the experience of God. In the prophet's word, we recognize our own experience. This does not relativize the prophet. It is rather a corollary of our human experience. In that experience, others--namely, the "bearers of revelation"--become models for us. They are the norm by which we are empowered.

F. The Orientation Towards Universality in the Particular and Successful History of Revelation (V.4.F, p. 161). The universal history of revelation and the particular history of revelation “condition” each other. The universal reaches its “essence” and “its full historical objectification” in the particular. Without the particular revelation of prophet and evangelist, we would not know or recognize the voice of God. The revelation we meet in the prophets and in the evangelists is not only official but also authoritative. Although they are “particular” expressions of revelation, they have a fundamental meaning for all. And in that sense, they can be said to be “universal.” By them we recognize the experience of God’s call to transcendence and can respond to it.

Part 5: On the Structure of the Actual History of Revelation

(V.5, p. 162). How are we to interpret the history of revelation as presented in the Old Testament? Rahner offers two answers. First, he says that the OT stories about Adam and Eve are inferences. The authors of Genesis inferred the existence of a transcendental encounter with God that must have happened to the very first human beings, and expressed it in the form of a story.

Second, Rahner offers an interpretation of the OT history of revelation. Israelite history is but a brief moment in the millennia of transcendental encounters between God and humanity. But it is a more complete expression of the history of revelation than that contained in other religions. This history looks toward Christ as its fulfillment. In Christ, the strands of OT history find their interpretive key.

A. "Primeval Revelation" (V.5.A, p. 162). Did Adam and Eve exist? One cannot use the Bible, of course, to answer questions about natural science. But one can say that the first human beings, whenever and wherever they were, experienced God’s transcendental and categorical revelation. Humanity has always been oriented toward God through God’s self-communication. And in that sense, the Biblical story of the first sin is a true one: it describes humanity’s first refusal of God’s self-communication. But even at that moment, God’s absolute will to communicate with us encompassed Adam’s guilt.

The revelation of God to Adam and Eve was kept alive, even in a situation conditioned by guilt. And we can say that God's universal revelation in transcendental experience (however depraved and expressed in polytheistic forms) is present in pre-Christian societies. The Genesis accounts of Adam and Eve make an inference. They infer from our present transcendental experience what must have been its historical ground. We know our origins by means of aetiological myths, such as that of Adam and Eve, stories which explain our origins. These are recognized as valid expressions of transcendental experience, hence as revelation.

Why do we resort to stories? Rahner explains this by means of the Thomistic doctrine of the "conversion to the phantasm," which was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Not only the Bible, but even the most abstract metaphysical language, works with "phantasms." This is St. Thomas' term for images, analogies, and representations--the expression of transcendental realities.

B. Is It Possible to Structure the Whole History of Revelation? (V.5.B, p. 164). The history of religion shows a variety of supernatural revelations. But this diversity has its own unity. All religions have a common direction, seen from God’s vantage point. From our vantage point, however, the common direction is “hardly discernible” (164). Scripture, for example, sheds little light on the structure of the universal history of revelation. OT stories of the Canaanites, Amalekites, and Jebusites tell us little about the transcendental history of freedom.

Rahner's thesis is that, if we could see the broad picture, we would see that the "biblical age" from Abraham to Christ is all part of the Christ event. Religious struggles are attempts to clarify our experience of God's communication with us. Only in recent millennia has the human race "taken hold of its existence in the clarity and freedom of history" (166). Before this, there was no language to express the encounter with God. And since there was no way of expressing the transcendental encounter, says Rahner, humanity (in a philosophical or theological sense) did not exist (166). There was no precise or theological "history of revelation." Our Christian history of revelation preserves, however, its connection with the immense universal history of salvation.

The entire Christian history of revelation, from Abraham to the last of the writing prophets, is but a brief preparation for Christ. Apart from Christ, there is no unified interpretation of the OT. Israelite history is the event of a dialogue with God. It offers a "prospective tendency towards an open future" (167). True, in comparison to the transcendental encounters with God in the millennia of prehistory, the OT history is but a brief moment. But that brief moment more complete expresses the transcendental relation we have with God than what we find in the history of other religions.

The history of Israel is also a history of guilt and alienation. It indicates that, even among those people who did not hear and respond to God correctly (e.g., the Canaanites, Amalekites, Jebusites, etc.), there was an experience of the transcendent. This experience pointed to Christ, the end-point of the fullness of salvation. So the OT history is a "decisive caesura" or turning point. It is the period in which human beings fundamentally changed. From being threatened by nature they were transformed, and began to create their own environment. They began to look toward the fulfillment of history. Unknown to them, they were looking toward Christ. The life of Christ is but one moment in history, but it is the decisive one. In that moment, God and the human being who accepts God's call became one.

Part 6: A Summary of the Notion of Revelation

(V.6, p. 170). Transcendental revelation differs, first of all, from natural revelation. Natural revelation does not tell us about the human relation to God (A). Transcendental revelation, by contrast, transforms the recipient. It divinizes him or her, giving the person a participation in God’s own reality (B). Categorical and historical revelation exists as a secondary moment in transcendental revelation. It “mediates” transcendental revelation (C). In the Incarnation, revelation reaches its highest point. In it, God’s own self is communicated (D).

A. "Natural" Revelation and God's Real Self-Revelation (V.6.A, p. 170). “Natural” revelation “leaves God still unknown.” Why? Because natural revelation suggests that we know God as an analogue to the mystery of nature. It asks the question of God, but leaves unanswered whether God wants us to be near or far. Real revelation is an event of dialogue. God speaks and we answer. Natural revelation does not tell us about the human relation to God. Only a transcendental encounter with God’s real self-revelation can tell us that.

B. The Transcendental Aspect of Revelation (V.6.B, p. 171). What do we mean when we say that God encounters the human being in revelation? We mean that God is “disclosed” to the person who “hears” God’s voice. God “causes” that person to hear, and so transforms him or her. We call it “divinization.” It means that the person is made capable of hearing God’s summons and accepting the possibilities which God offers as the person’s own possibilities.

This divinization is what tradition calls "sanctifying" or "justifying" grace. It is offered to all people at all times. It gives to humanity the very being of God as an object. In a word, it gives transcendence. That transcendence is a view to, and participation in, God's own reality.

The question of the human spirit is "answered" by God. God's answer is destined for all people in transcendental experience. It is not offered as something "alongside" everything else in a person's life. No, it is within and a part of the entirety of that life. It is the history of human transcendence.

C. The Categorical, Historical Aspect of Revelation (V.6.C, p. 172). God’s self-revelation is always mediated “categorically.” That means that it is mediated absolutely or unqualifiedly in a particular and concrete sense (see II.3.A; II.5.A; III.3.A; IV.3.A; V.4.B). When something is “categorically true,” we say that it corresponds to a form or idea that underlies all human experience. God’s self-revelation conforms to what humans can experience, namely, historical existence. Thus we can say that God’s self-revelation is always mediated in objective knowledge.

We humans try to interpret our experience of God's self-revelation by means of propositions. God thereby creates for us the possibility of salvation in and by means of those objects--e.g., institutions and artifacts--which express the experience of grace. These objects exist within a human context. That means that they are intermixed with error and even sin. But given those limitations, categorical and historical revelation can be said to be true revelation. Indeed, the Church's public, official, and ecclesially constituted revelation is the high point in the history of categorical revelation. Such revelation is:

- accomplished not for an individual but for a community;

- accomplished by those whom we call prophets; and

- accomplished by God in a way that is pure (however partial).

This pure revelation does not occur everywhere. It is but a moment in the universal history of salvation and revelation, where revelation can be misinterpreted and depraved. In the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, categorical revelation becomes absolute.

D. The Unsurpassable Climax of All Revelation (p. 174).

(V.6.D, p. 174). Why is the incarnation of the Logos unsurpassable? Rahner offers three answers. In the incarnation:

- what is communicated is God's own self;

- the mode of communication (namely, human reality) is made divine; and

- the recipient of the self-communication (i.e., Jesus' own self) has become one with God's self-communication.

The event of Christ is "the only really tangible caesura" or turning point in the history of salvation. In the light of Jesus Christ, the OT is seen as an official history of revelation.