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Von Balthasar, Rahner, and The Commissar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Philip Endean
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Extract

Von Balthasar's attacks on Rahner are scattered over several works. Sometimes their expression is very technical, and complex personal factors also play a part. But von Balthasar expresses his concerns vividly and concisely in a bitterly satirical dialogue near the end of a polemical text which he published just after Vatican II: The Moment of Christian Witness.’ A ‘well-disposed commissar', a figure symbolising the culture of modernity both in its easy secularism and its nightmare terrors, arraigns a Rahnerian Christian. In less than three full pages, Raimer's theology is made to look ridiculous. For Rahner, God always transcends objects in space and time: we know God only in and through them, as their permanently mysterious, elusive ground.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 79 , Issue 923 , January 1998 , pp. 33 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, The Moment of Christian Witness, translated by Beckley, Richard (San Francisco: lgnatius Press, 1994), 76‐78Google Scholar; Cordula oder der Ernstfall (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1987). 110‐1 12. Both are re‐editions. The original was first published in 1966 and the translation in 1969. In what follows I tacitly amend published translations as appropriate.

2 Eg Williams, Rowan, ‘Balthasar and Rahner’, in The Analogy of Beauty, edited by Riches, John (Edinburgh T. and T. Clark, 1986 ), 11‐34Google Scholar. There is, to my knowledge, no good comparative study taking fully into account Balthasar's attack on Rahner's soteriology in the Theodrumatik.

3 Some examples: Conway, Eamonn, The Anonymous Christian: a relativised Christianity?: An Evaluation of Hans Urs von Balthasar's criticism of Karl Rahner's Theory of the Anonymous Christian (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993)Google Scholar; Schwerdtfeger, Nikolaus, Gnade und Welt: Zum Grundgefüge von Karl Rahners Theorie der ‘anonymen Christen’ (Freiburg: Herder, 1982)Google Scholar; Kunz, Erhard, ‘Glaubwürdigkeitserkenntnis und Glaube (analysis fidei)’, in Handbuch der Fuhentaltheologk, volume 4, edited by Kern, Walter, Pottmyer, Hermann J. and Secklerer, Max (Freiburg: Herder, 1988). 414‐449Google Scholar. esp 430‐440 my review of Stephen J.Duffy, The Graced Horizon, in Heythrop Journal, 35 (1994). 467‐468.

4 The Moment of Christian Witness, 73‐76.

5 See Rahner, Karl, Hearer of the Word: Laying the Foundation for a Philosophy of Religion, translated from the first edition by Donceel, Joseph and edited by Tallon, Andrew (New York Continuum, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. esp 1‐22, 55‐64; ‘Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace’, in Theological Investigations, vol 1, translated by Emst, Cornelius (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1961), 297‐318Google Scholar. A footnote on 311‐312 of the latter seems politely to imply that von Balthasaris intrinsicist!

6 The Moment of Christian Witness, 81.

7 Cordula, 124 (the appendix was not translated), referring to Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, 63 (1939), 371‐379.

8 'But (Rahner's talk of) how the mind (Geist) is bound up, listening, with the world perhaps may leave ways open for discovering, “on the basis of the imaginatio”, an objective (emph. PE) transcendence. If in the philosophy of religion the inteflectus agens has shown itself more and more to be intrinsically ‘potential’, then this itself provokes the question whether the esse that it points to should really be sought only in terms of a “fullness” (Fülle), with any particular essence (Wesenheit) amounting only to a restricted cutout from this “fullness”(davon alle Wesenheit nur Schrunke und Ausschnitt ist). Should we not rather, perhaps, see the formedness of a particular essence (die Gestalthaftigkeit des Wesens) as just as much an experience of reality (Sein) as the fullness which for us is always empty?' (378‐379)

9 E g. The Moment of Christian Witness, 65, on the heart of Christ; Cordula, 125, on how intersubjectivity, ‘the I‐thou encounter, personal love’ is decisive in any account of what makes Christian revelation possible.

10 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, translated by Dych, William V. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1978), 210Google Scholar. For fuller treatment see my ‘Rahner, Christology and Grace’, Heythrop Journal, 37 (1996), 284‐297Google Scholar.

11 Foundations of Christian Faith, 194– typography and second emphasis supplied PE.

12 ‘Geist und Feuer. Ein Gespräch mit Hans Urs von Balthasar’, Herder Korrespondenz, 30 (1976), 72‐82Google Scholar, here 76.

13 Eamonn Conway (The Anonymous Christian, 91 n.l), drawing on information given him by Herbert Vorgrimler, can give only a handful of perfunctory references in Rahner's published work.

14 Karl Rahner, Leben in Veränderungen–Perspektiven der Hoffnung für die Gesellschaft Jesu' (Karl‐Rahner‐Archiv I B 46), 8. Quoted by permission of the South German Province of the Society of Jesus.

15 On this figure see Alberg, Jeremiah L., ‘Alfred Delp: Jesuit’, The Month, 24 (1991), 289‐294Google Scholar; Endean, Philip, ‘Jesuit Presence and the Struggle for Justice in Nazi Germany’, The Month, 26 (1993), 240‐246Google Scholar. Though a translation exists of the earliest edition of his writings, it is rare, and needs to be replaced by something based on Delp, Alfred, Gesammelte Schriften, 5 volumes, edited by Bleistein, Roman (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1982‐8Google Scholar). On how there were negotiations for Delp to become involved in a Dogmatik that had originally been conceived as a joint enterprise of Rahner and von Balthasar (from which the table of contents in Theological Investigations 1.19‐37 derives), seeNeufeld, Karl H., Die Brüder Rahner: Eine Biographie (Freiburg: Herder, 1994), 178‐186Google Scholar.

16 Alfred Delp, Gesammelte Schriften, 4.93‐4. […] indicates passages omitted in the original for reasons of personal delicacy.

17 Alfred Delp, Gesammelte Schriften, 4.108.