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Act and Event in Rahner and von Balthasar: A Case Study in Catholic Systematics1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
In Benedict XVI's God is Love §1 humanity's relationship with God is described as an encounter with an ‘event’, the Christ‐event. I argue that this shift in Catholic theology towards language of act and event signalled a relationship to existentialism, which, taken broadly, entailed an emphasis upon subjectivity and freedom uncharacteristic of the focus upon objectivity common to neo‐Scholastic thought. As we shall see with Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, however, this newfound emphasis on subjectivity and freedom did not necessitate an abandonment of all the elements of the more ‘objective’ perspective. Rather, the task during the ascendancy of existentialist thought became the integration of human subjectivity with the objective and independent reality of the world and God. I suggest that Rahner and von Balthasar use notions such as act and event as a way of being mindful of the role of the subject's creativity and freedom in its encounter with the world, God, and other persons, without thereby undermining the freedom and creativity of that which is other than the subject.
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Footnotes
1
Versions of this paper were given as lectures at the Universities of Bonn and Oxford. Special thanks are owed to Revd. Prof. Paul Fiddes for critical comments and encouragement.
References
2 Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium are considered the clearest examples of this.
3 Benedict, Pope XVI, God is Love (London: CTS, 2006)Google Scholar, §1: ‘cum quis christianus fit, nulla est ethica voluntas neque magna quaedam opinio, verumtamen congressio datur cum eventu quodam, cum Persona quae novum vitae finem imponit eodemque tempore certam progressionem.’
4 Cf. Balthasar, H.U. von, The Glory of the Lord[=GL]: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. I: Seeing the Form, trans. Leiva‐Merikakis, Erasmo (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), pp. 217–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herrlichkeit[=H]: Eine Theologische Ästhetik, vol. I: Schau der Gestalt (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1988 [1961]), p. 210Google Scholar.
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13 Cf. ExT II, p. 78: Christ as ‘ontic bond’ already involves the Church, for he is no ‘private person, but rather the incarnate personality of God’.
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18 Cf. Benedict XVI, God is Love, §19; John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, §1.2.
19 Cf. GL VII, pp. 421–22, 428.
20 Benedict XVI, God is Love, §13.
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26 Foundations, p. 181; SW XXVI, p. 177. Cf. CL, pp. 257, 324–25, 352; TL III, pp. 161, 185–205.
27 DH 4201–35.
28 Cf. Adam, Two Essays, pp. 41, 45; Congar, Y.M.J., La Foi et la Théologie, Collection ‘Mystère Chrétien’, No. 381 [Suppl. I] (Paris: Desclée, 1962)Google Scholar.
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36 Cf. DH 4781.
37 Cf. Rahner, Karl, Hearer of the Word, 1st ed. [=HW I], trans. Donceel, Joseph (New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 5, 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; SW IV, pp. 16, 22; TI I, pp. 79–148, esp. 86f.; SW IV, pp. 352f.
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40 Cf. ExT II, p. 298.
41 Cf. Karl Rahner, s.v. ‘Grace’, in Rahner, Karl, et al. (eds.), Sacramentum Mundi, vol. 2 (London: Burns and Oates, 1968), pp. 415–22Google Scholar, esp. 415; SW XVII/2, pp. 1053–64, esp 1053.
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43 In ExT I, p. 123, von Balthasar calls the harmonization of opposites a particularly ‘Catholic’ method. He finds the notion of holding together ‘contrary realities within the world as a symphony and harmony of opposites’ as early as Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus Haereses II, 25, 2: cf. TD II, p. 142, n. 8; TL I, pp. 158–63; TL II, pp. 182–84, 187–218. Cf. CL, p. 91 for knowing as a ‘suspension between poles’. Rahner and von Balthasar owe much of their emphasis upon ‘polarity’ to the work of their mentor Erich Pryzwara. A very thorough examination of Pryzwara's work can be found in Betz, John R., ‘Beyond the Sublime: The Aesthetics of the Analogy of Being (Part One)’, Modern Theology 21 (2005), pp. 367–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Beyond the Sublime: The Aesthetics of the Analogy of Being (Part Two)’, Modern Theology 22 (2006), pp. 1–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Despite the influence of Pryzwara, the notion of ‘polarity’ has an ancient, usually ‘cosmic’ pedigree in Christian theology; we cannot limit its use in Rahner and von Balthasar to the influence of Pryzwara. See the critical discussion of polarity in Barnes, Michel R., The Power of God: Dunamis in Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001)Google Scholar, and the more positive appraisals in Engell, James, The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim, and Niebuhr, H. Richard, Theology, History, and Culture: Major Unpublished Writings, ed. Johnson, William Stacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.
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68 Cf. Foundations, pp. 75, 78; SW XXVI, pp. 76, 79; CL, p. 316; TD II, pp. 191, 200.
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74 TI IV, pp. 253–311, here 255–56; SW XVIII, pp. 596–626, here 598.
75 What one means by God's ‘acts’ in Scripture, i.e., if what is recorded can be considered in all cases as having literal‐historical bases, is a problem that such a view of Biblical theology would have to work out. A theology of event is perhaps more flexible in its ability to consider certain ‘events’ to be divine illuminations in a person, thus committing the theologian to a methodology less dependent upon a Rankean view of the past as ‘what actually happened’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen): Ranke, Leopold Von, The Secret of World History: Selected Writings on the Art and Science of History, ed. Wines, Roger (New York: Fordham University Press, 1981), p. 58Google Scholar.
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77 Cf. TI V, pp. 219–43, esp. 231; SW X, pp. 605–25, esp. 615.
78 Cf. ExT I, p. 146; GL I, p. 175; TD II, p. 89; TL II, p. 177, n. 9.
79 TI IV, p. 43; SW XII, p. 107.
80 HW I, p. 16 speaks of obediential potency as not necessarily implying ‘ontic elevation’.
81 ExT I, p. 146: love surpasses knowledge by going beyond thought into act, the act of God in us, which is faith.
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86 Barth, CD I/2, p. 171; it is unclear which theology is the dynamic and which the static.
87 TKB, p. 258.
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90 Schindler, David C., in The Dramatic Structure of Truth (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, provides an extensive exposition of the philosophical implications following from the event‐character of being in von Balthasar. ‘Unity‐in‐tension’ is a Przywaran expression of the analogia entis; for select examples of its many appearances in Rahner and von Balthasar, see Foundations, pp. 16–17, 19, 81, 176; ExT II, p. 83.
91 TKB, p. 266. Cf. TD II, pp. 270–71.
92 Cf. CL, p. 246; ExT I, p. 154; ExT II, p. 93; TD II, p. 122; TL II, pp. 311–16; Foundations, p. 277; SW XXVI, p. 264.
93 Cf. ExT I, pp. 169–73.
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96 Oberti, Elisa, s.v., ‘Art’, in Rahner, Karl et al., eds., Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, vol. 1 (London: Burns and Oates, 1968), pp. 102–09Google Scholar, here 109.
97 Cf. GL I, p. 619; Epilogue, p. 96.
98 Cf. TD II, p. 157.
99 Cf. TI XVII, p. 56; Foundations, pp. 310–11; SW XXVI, pp. 295–96.
100 Cf. GL VII, p. 394; H III/2.2, p. 368.
101 TKB, p. 384.
102 Cf. TL I, pp. 128–29.
103 TKB, p. 385.
104 GL II, p. 31; H II, p. 31.
105 GL II, pp. 85–86; H II, pp. 85–86.
106 Cf. Markus, R.A., ‘Pleroma and Fulfilment: The Significance of History in St. Irenaeus' Opposition to Gnosticism’, Vigiliae Chritianae 8 (1954), pp. 193–224Google Scholar.
107 CL, p. 87 offers a brief comment on Gnostic novelty.
108 Cf. Mongrain, The Systematic Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, passim. For a thorough listing of the occurrences of ‘gnosis’, ‘Gnostic’, and ‘Gnosticism’ in GL, see Mongrain, An Irenaean Retrieval, pp. 47–48, n. 32.
109 Cf. O'Regan, Cyril, ‘Balthasar and Gnostic Genealogy’, Modern Theology 22 (2006), pp. 609–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
110 Cf. O'Donovan, Oliver, The Problem of Self‐Love in St. Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 158–59Google Scholar.
111 Benedict XVI, God is Love§1.
112 Benedict XVI, God is Love§12.
113 Cf. TD IV, p. 486.
114 Karl‐Rahner‐Archiv, University of Innsbruck, I. B. 308; cited in Endean, Philip, Karl Rahner and Ignatian Spirituality (Oxford: OUP, 2001), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
115 Cf. ExT II, p. 121; GL I, pp. 242, 485; GL VII, pp. 24, 264, 293, 367, 459, 471–72, 478, 520; LAC, p. 123.
116 ExT II, pp. 106, 118; CL, pp. 329–30.
117 Cf. GL I, p. 172; H I, p. 165: the Gestalt Christi is the ‘Meisterstück göttlicher Phantasie’. See Lubac, Henri de, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 13Google Scholar: Christ is the ‘masterpiece of the Spirit of God’.