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HeyJ X X X V I I (1996),pp . 284-297

RAHNER, CHRISTOLOGY AND GRACEPHILIP ENDEANHeythrop College

Bruno Brinkmans work draws on a wide and eclectic range of scholar-ship, both from within theology a nd beyond. It would not be an ea sy taskto list the figures who have influenced him, nor to assess their relativeweight. But surely K arl Rahner would feature large in the accou nt, andin particular Rahners lifelong concern for making connections, bothbetween the various aspects of theology, and betwee n Christian thoughtand other visions of the human condition. Introducing The HeythropJournals tribute to Karl Rahner in 1984, Brinkman wrote of howRahners greatest concern,

. was the inner unity of human experience, a structured unity. Out of it man couldin the same breath philosophize and theologize.While noting that Rahners tone was often introspective, Brinkmanstressed how Rahners exploration of the hum an person was always alsoan exploration of the other: both God an d other human selves. Rahnersvision of the human was,

. eccentric, even ek-static. The eccentricity was this: to draw near to man, evenfrom within, you must draw near to God. And the ultimate existentializing of thatphilosophy is the Incarnation.In the later Rahner, Brinkman saw this openness to Gods othernessleading to an ever sharper sense of perplexity and aporia.These themes also influence Brinkmans own work on Christology,much of which he brought together for the essay published as ChristRelevant. How can we respect particularity in Christology - the dis-tinctiveness of each believers relationship to C hrist, the specific ways inwhich a culture appropriates the gospel - without comp romising Christsuniversal significance? How should we reconceive Christ in a post-Freudian culture? Brinkman insists that there must be connectionsbetween Christs identity and ours: our experience here an d now d erivesnot from a principle which is purely imma nent but which is all of Christ.Our growth in grace cannot be reduced to any psychological schema.Moreover, Christology and the theology of grace are in correlation: faith

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RAHNER, CHRISTOLOGY AND GRACE 285in Christ and Gods grace .. are facets of one reality in the su bject whobelieves.I hope it is fitting, therefore, that this essay in Brunos honour ex-plores the links in Rahners work between Ch ristology and the doctrineof grace, between the identity of Jesus und er God an d the perplexities ofour ongoing experience. It will fall into two parts. The first will remindreaders of how Rahner sets his Christology within a vision of Godsgracious gift of self to the cosmos; it will also draw out some of thisapproachs more radical im plications. In the secon d part, I will explorehow, for Rahner, grace in us and the hypostatic union in Jesus Christ,though inseparable, remain distinct. Rahner was not a neo-adoptionist orneo-Nestorian; critics who level that cha rge miss im portant points in hiswork. However, Rahners linking of C hristology with a tenable accountof how God relates to the world did lead him to subvert conventionalapproache s to Chris ts distinctiveness, and to expres s this distinctivenessin unfamiliar, though m ore ad equate, ways.

I

Rahners contribution to Christology, as in so many other fields, camethrough provocative essays rather than systematic treatise^.^ The latetreatment in Foundations of Christian Faith is the nearest we have toan integrated presentation, although even here the sixth, Christologicalchapter (or Gang) consists to some extent of earlier essays repeatedverbatim, and on e senses that Rahners syn thesizing energy had begunto flag. Rahner opens this chapter with material from his 1962 essay,Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World (5.157-92), inwhich he explores how Christology might relate to modern science. Thequestion leads him to place Christology w ithin an overall vision of therelationship between G od and creation, a vision drawing both on philo-sophy and revelation. Towards the end of the section, he summ arizes hiscentral contention:. although the hyp ostatic union is also a once-and-for-all event in its own essence,and viewed in itself it is the highest conceivable event, it is nevertheless a momentwithin the whole, the whole which is the gracing of the self-conscious creation ingeneral (d er Begnadigung de r geistigen Kreatur iiberhaupt) . Grace in all of usand hypostatic union in the one Jesus Christ can only be considered together, and asone reality they signify the one free decision of God for the supernatural order ofsalvation, for his self-communication (F 201).

How do es Rahner g round this contention? Th ere is a brief referenceto tradition: the Nicene Creeds statement that the incarnation took placefor us and for our salvation is no redunda ncy (F 200). In the background,too, are familiar Rahnerian transcendental arguments: our profession of

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286 PHILIP ENDEANfaith in Jesus as divine presupposes that our faculties can ap prehend thedivine; only if Gods own reality informs our subjectivity can w e recog-nize God as God.4 But in context Rahners major stress lies on the divineunity and simplicity. All that God creates, spirit and matter, nature andgrace, Christ and ourselves, has, as such, an inner unity and finality.However chaotic and fragmentary our everyday experience, howeverpartial our viewp oint - and Rahners version of metaphysics m eets manypostmodern concerns - nevertheless.

.._f we presuppose that evolution has any ultimate and one-way direction at all,then this process by which the cosm os becom es consc ious of itself in humanity .must have a final result (F 191).

Any distinction between Jesus and ourselves must be contained within amore fund amental unity.Moreover, God is not a particular reality, but an all-sustaining creator,who is as such radically different from any creature, and who does notchange. Therefore, any understanding of the incarnation in terms of Go daltering plans, say in reaction to creaturely sinfulness, or of G od inter-vening as a creature within the chain of created causes, is impossible.If God intervenes, then wh at occurs is not con fined to o ne part of th ecosmos, but rather is all-pervasive:A special intervention of God ... can only be understood as the historical con-creteness of Go ds transcendental self-communication, which is alwa ys intrinsic tothe concrete world . (E)very operative intervention of God in his world, for all thatit is free and underivable, is always only the becom ing historical and be coming con-crete of that intervention in which God, as the transcendental ground of the world,has from the outset embedded himself in this world as its self-communicatingground (F 87).

If Christ represents som e action of God b eyond the gift of creation, thenthat extra gift is also present in the whole cosmos. One cannot have adoctrine of incarnation without a doctrine of graced creation. If there areparticular realities with special religious significance, this significanceconsists in their pointing beyond themselves to something present in allthings. Rahner reinforces the point by insisting that Go d can be histor-ically present only in one of two modes, both of which imply that anyparticular occurrence of grace is always to be superseded. God can bepresent historically,

. . . in the mode of promise - the promise of the ongoing transcendence of thecategorical which affirms absolutely hopes starting point and categorical goal, butonly as a mere stage in hope - an d in the mode of death - death as the m ost radicalevent of that negation w hich belongs to the very n ature of every historically medi-ated revelation, and which becomes absolute in death because nothing categoricalcan any longer be hoped for (F 210).

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RAHNER, CHRISTOLOGY AN D GRACE 287It is this sense of how a doctrine of the incarnation implies a doctrineof grace, rather than the need to find a solution to the extrincisism-intrinsicism dilem ma, that grou nds R ahners concept of the supernaturalexistentiaLS A similar concern accounts for the centrality of Christsheart in Rahners Christology, despite the understandable distance takenby Rahner from the pious excesses an d tasteless art which Sacred Heartdevotion has generated. Rahner, perhaps questionably, sees the primor-dial word heart as a universal shorthand for how human beings findtheir identity only in and through interaction with the external world,with the body, with other people:

. human be ings go out and away f rom themselves, they m ust realize themselves insomething other that they have done and suffered, and can only in this way, in thisother, looking away from themselves, become conscious of the well-spring andunity of their being. And such a well-spring, from which the alien other really flowsand which possesses itself only in the other, is called the heart (3.324).

Talk of Christs heart thus denotes how Christ finds his identity in andthrough his relationship to the w orld in which h e lives, and hence whatmakes the difference between Christianity and Jesuanity. It is thereforeimportant to distinguish the idea itself, which when rightly understoodis implicit in any adequate Christian theology, from its sentimental,romantic accretions.Three passages from Rahners writings illustrate how radically, atleast on occasion, he understood the interpenetration between Christsidentity and that of other human beings. In late 1936, he submitted atheological doctorate, following the failure of Spirit in the World inFreiburg, entitled E latere Christ i . In this work, he explores the traditionaccording to which the Churchs origin is the pierced side of C hrist onthe cross, and the birth of the Church fulfils typologically the creation ofEve from Adam s rib. He traces the history of these idea s, and dates themto the apostolic period. In his conclusion (pp. 113-5), he speculates onsome systematic implications. If it is legitimate to read the Gospelstypologically, then the events of Christs life work themselves into thelife of the Christian with a salvific power, over and above the moralexample they embody. They are not just signals of Christs time-transcending work, but rather an invitation, an address (Anrede) to uswho com e later in history. As such, then, what we m ake of these invita-tions constitutes an aspect of their identity as created by God: it must beintrinsically and from the outset simu ltaneous with the later person.Moreover, such an approach leads us to an enriched understanding ofGospel meditation: our respo nses to the narratives - or all their plural-it y and for all that their authenticity is limited - constitute under Godpart of the very meaning (Sinn) of the salvific events:

. meditation on the life of Jesus w ill never be able to avoid making applicationsof the events in Jesuss life which are being co ntemplated. Now, if one can read the

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288 PHILIP ENDEANNew Testament typologically, then this yields applications which really from theoutset belong to the meaning of the narrated events themselves, and thus count asGods thoughts - hey are not just pious meditations.

Rahner goes on to suggest that such an approach might help usunderstand better the theology of C hristian vocation, and why referenceto Christ is important for our decision-making. Nearly twenty yearslater, Rahner gave an Ignatian retreat to seminarians at the GermanCollege in Rom e, and used similar ideas to explain the link in the Spirit-ual Exercises between our life-choices and the story of Jesus. If theincarnation is the central event in the worlds history, it determines ourunderstanding of everyone elses identity:. the most central feature in the worlds constitution is that it forms the surroun d-ings, the life-space for the God who, in person, becomes world ... There istherefore no human person whose reason for being here is, in the end, anythingwhatever except to make this adventure of love for what lies outside himselfpossible for God - and to make this possible through a life and existence sharedwith the Word made human.

Rahner then goes further, suggesting that there is a sense in which ourgrowth here and now in the life of grace enriches Christs own hum anity:In the Incarnation, the Logos emptied himself into his human nature, which isessentially orientated to the thou of other human beings (wesentlich uufdus mit-menschliche Du angewiesen ist). If human persons are to find their own existence,they need those w ho are human with them genuinely to be other, to be differ ent, i.e.precisely not clones (Doppelgiinger). Human beings find their own perfection onlyin the otherness of those who are human with them, an otherness acknowledged,affirmed and sheerly loved. This applies also to Christ, indeed especially so. Of himtoo we must say: through the Word made human loving human beings as others andbecause they are others, he too attains the fullness of this nature. He becomes whathe is meant to be in his humanity, in a true historical presence, only - eally only -through his being our brother and affirming our validity as others.

It follows that Christianity is processive, permanently unfinished.We come to realize - n both senses of the word - what is at stake in theChristian gospel through a life-long process which is also the process ofour own self-discovery. Rahner takes up this aspect of the relationshipbetween Christology and grace in the penultimate, ninth section of theChristological chap ter, significantly entitled The Personal Relation ofa Christian to Jesus Christ. A person is always a Christian in order tobecome one (F 306); salvation does not mean a reified and objectivestate of affairs, but rather something made real personally and onto-logically (F 309).*Thus Christian belief, Christian commitment is notsomething which is simply either there or not there (F 306). On the onehand, Gods grace, mediated through Jesu s Christ, is always present inhuman existence; people may reject the offer, but cannot alter the fact

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RAHNER, CHRISTOLOGY AND GRACE 289that it has been ma de and continues to be m ade. On the other, the accept-ance of the offer is always a matte r of growth: it is alwa ys already givenas something which the hum an person,

... has still to make good and appropriate (einholen), and to bring it to radicalactualization in the commitment of their whole existence through the whole lengthand breadth and depth of their lives (F 306-7).Conversely,

... human experience is nothing else but a challenge to entrust oneself to thedevelopment of ones own Christian existence in patience, openness and fidelity,and to do this until slowly, and perhaps painfully and with failures, this life unfoldsand develops into the experience of a personal relationship to Jesus Christ (F 307).Because ongoing human experience is therefore constitutive of whoChrist is, dogmatic Christology should regard that experience, oftenmarginalized as mere spirituality, as part of its own subject-matter:

. Christianity in its full and explicit form is not merely an abstract theory and anobjective reality, ultimately thought of as thing-like after all, on which one sub-sequently and additionally takes a personal position. Christianity understands itselfas, in its most distinctive essence, really an existential (existentiellen) event: justwhat we call a personal relationship to Jesus Christ (F 305-6).Christology remains mysterious and open-ended. Christs identitycontinues to unfold throughout the process of history, and moreoverit centres on Jesus relationship of surrender to the one w hom he calledAbba. Thus the further course and outcome of the process remain

surrounded in m ystery:The clarity and ultimate definitiveness of Christian truth is the irrevocability ofhumanitys having been consigned into the mystery (di e unerbittliche Uberant-wortetheit des Menschen in das Geheimnis hinein), and not the clarity that comesfrom comprehending a partial element of humanity and its world (F 181).9

Faced by his research with a historical Jesus hopelessly alien fromcontemporary concerns, Albert Schweitzer could only resort to pulpitrhetoric to express his sense of the abiding power of Christ:He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, Hecame to those men w ho knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: Follow thoume! and set us the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And tothose who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in thetoils, the conflicts, the sufferin gs and the peace which they sha ll pass through in Hisfellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experienceWho He is . lo

In Schweitzer, these words conclude a devastatingly negative reviewof a whole approach to Christology, and come across as a rejection ofthe whole theological enterprise. Against Rahners philosophy of God,

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290 PHILIP ENDEANof history and of the human person, however, these sentences appearrather differently. They express a principle of theological epistemology:the identities of God, Christ and ourselves are interrelated, and can onlybe discovered through a cumulative experiential process, through theunpredictable contingencies that happen to us.

What, then, of the distinctiveness of Jesus, of the tradition wherebyJesus somehow stands in a relationship to God different from that ofhuman beings at large? Rahners approach openly relativizes this to theongoing process of graced history:The divineshuman being is the initial beginning of the finally definitive success,the beginning of the movement of the worlds self-transcendence into absolutecloseness to the mystery of Go d. On e may in the first instance regard this hypostaticunion not so much as something which distinguishes Jesus from us , but as some-thing which must happen once and only once when the world begins to enter uponits final phase ... in which it is to realize ... its radical closeness to the absolutemystery called God (F 18 ).

For Rahner, Jesus human experience is not different in kind from ourown:. the prerogatives which accrue intrinsically to the human reality of Jesus throughthe hypostatic union are of the same essential nature as those which are alsointended for other self-conscious subjects in grace (F 200).

On the other hand, Rahner also affirms a version of Jesus uniquenessand distinctiveness. Jesus is not just one among other prophets, reli-gious geniuses and reformers; rather, in Jesus G od has turned to us insuch a unique and unsurpassable way that in him he has given himselfabsolutely (F 289).How does Rahners own position accommodate this traditionalconcern?Jesus uniqueness co nsists in his being the guarantee of an all-pervasive process, the point where Go ds self-identification with th e crea-tion becomes irrevocable, and can be recognized as such, even thoughGod is not yet all in all. So Rahner describes the absolute saviour as:. that historical subjectivity in which, first, this process of Gods absolute self-communication to the self-conscious world as a whole is present irrevocably;second, that event where this divine self-communication can be unambiguouslyrecognised as irrevocable .

Yet, though Rahner a dds a third characteristic of this eve nt, that of repres-enting the divine self-gifts climax, he explicitly relativizes the claim: itis valid o nly,

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RAHNER, CHRISTOLOGY AND GRACE 291. to the extent that this climax must be thought of as a particular moment in thetotal history of humanity, and thus not simply identified with the whole of the self-conscious world within the divine self-communication (F 194).

Jesus distinctiveness is thus conceived not as some metaphysical orpsychological structure internal to Jesus the individual, but in terms ofthe promise he signifies for others:.. when God brings about humanitys self-transcendence into God throughabsolute self-communication in such a way that these two constitute the irrevocablepromise which has already reached fulfilment in one human being, then we haveprecisely what is meant by hypostatic union (F 201).

Rahner grounds Jesus uniqueness on the claim that his revelation iseschatological, unsurpassable and irreversible. As such it must involvethe self-gift of God. Gods self-manifestations to creatures - with thedoubtful exception of the beatific vision - occur through a mediatingcreated reality:

Bu t so long as this finite mediation of the divine self-expression is not a reality ofGods own self in the strict and most proper sense, it is fundamentally provisional,fundam entally prone to obso lescence. For in the end, its finitude makes it not simplyGods own reality, and thus it can be made obsolete through Gods own agencypositing a new finite reality. If, then, the reality which is Jesus, in which is presentfor us the self-communication of God in an absolute way to the whole of hum anity- f this is really definitive and not prone to obsolescence, then we have to say: itis not simply posited by God: it is Gods own self (F 202).

It is the quality of signification that makes th e difference between Jesusand ourselves. Th e hypostatic union,. is distinguished from our grace not by what has been offered in it, which in bothinstances, including that of Jesus, is grace. It is distinguished rather by the fact thatJesus is the pledge (Zusage) or us; we ourselv es are not the repetition o f the pledge(w i r nichr selber wieder die Zusage), but those who receive Gods pledge to us(F 202).

Because Rahner interprets Jesus specialness, the Chalcedonian consub-stantial with the Father as regards his divinity, in terms of a particularrelational function within the economy of grace, he is able to retrievemore Antiochene approaches to the consubstantial with us as regardshis humanity.For many of Rahners critics, his position on this issue is unaccept-ably reductionist, and fails to express a necessary theological distinctionbetween Jesus of Nazareth and the rest of the human race under God.I take two representative statements of this criticism: the discussions ofRahners C hristology in Walter Kaspers stand ard Christologicaltextbook and in a comparative study of Rahner and Barth by theAmerican scho lar, Bruce D. Marshall.

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292 PHILIP ENDEANKasper picks out a formula from a footnote in Rahners 1954 essay,Current Problems in Christology Christology as an anthropologytranscending itself, and anthropology as a deficient Christology. Kasperdescribes this phrase as the basic formula of the w hole of Karl Rahnerstheology. Rahner ap pears to Kasper as the chief expon ent of an anthro-pological approach to Christology, i.e. one which takes as its starting-point a claim that all human beings have an o penness to the infinite. ForKasper such an app roach, despite the good intentions of such proponentsas Rahner, inevitably reduces revelation to philosophy. By contrast:

Christology is something which determines the content of anthropology - anthro-pology which, in itself, remains open-ended. In line with the classical doctrine ofanalogy one must therefore say: however great the similarity between anthropologyand christology, there remains a still greater di~similarity.~For Kasper, Rahners account fails to accom modate the difference Jesusmakes, the newness and utter unexpectedness of Gods initiative inChrist. It also cannot allow that Jesus Christ is necessarily unique. If theidea of the absolute saviour is contained in the transcendental experi-ence of all human subjects, then, surely, there is no reason why the con-cept need be instantiated only once. Kasper makes Balthasars questionhis own: on this Christology, what is the difference between Jesus andMary? Further, alluding to David Friedrich Strauss, Kasper claims thatRahner is ultimately committed to the heresy whereby Jesus Christ ismerely one instance of a reality so rich that it in fact requires a ma nifoldvariety of mutually complementary manifestations.Marshall articulates similar criticisms, but with more explicit refer-ence to the liberal Protestant tradition and in a more logical idiom. ForMarshall, Rahners procedure is to establish the meaning fulness of tradi-tional belief about Christ on the basis of universal human experience,in particular the experience of what human beings might regard as sal-vific.I5 According to M arshall, the most such a strategy can show is thatJesus is, contingently, the only person in history who ha ppens t o satisfysome description couched in general terms. But it is always logicallypossible that another person qualitatively similar in all that matters forsalvation could appear. By con trast, an acceptable, orthodox Ch ristologymust make intrinsic reference to the particularity of Jesus Christ, to thefact that it is he and no other in whom we are saved:

. the Christian belief in an absolute saviour and in salvation is essentially andnecessarily tied to Jesus Christ. Because the Ch ristian belief in redemption is neces-sarily tied to Jesus Christ, it cannot be regarded as a paraphrase of som e more basicbelief, from which Jesus Christ is absent, that the world is redeemed. Jesus Christ,and hence the actions and events that make up his life, is not ... an optionalenrichment of the Christian belief in redemption.I6

Marshall, like Kasper, reads Rahn er as a mainstream believer, and henceas one committed to the uniqueness and distinctiveness of Christ. ButRahners lived and prayed actual Christology,

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RAHNER, CHRISTOLOGY AND GRACE 293... is inconsistent with some of his most basic christological assumptions andcommitments; Jesus Christ appears to be the absolute saviour for Rahner not in sofar as he is Jesus, but only in so fa r as he is ~omeone .~

Both critics claim an inconsistency between the credal commitmentRahner professes, as a theologian, to be interpreting, and the theologicalmethod he adopts.Against such criticisms, at least three points can be made in Rahnersdefence. Firstly, both Kasper and Marshall read Rahner as groundingChristological claims on a n understanding of the human person arrivedat independently of revelation. This is false. Rahner is not denying thesheer gratuity and otherness of revelation - a point on which he some-times insists with exhausting rigour, and where he can b e as Barthian asBarthI8- but rather stressing how whatever we say about Christ on thebasis of revelation has all-pervasive implications. As we have seen,Rahner certainly does see Ch ristology as something which determinesthe content of anthropology - but this content is located, not uniquelyin Christ, but also in all of us w ho are on e flesh with h im, in the wholecosmos that God creates in him. Similarly, though Marshall is correct toread Rahner as situating the incarnation within the sphere of credibilitywhich our basic human aims define, he m isses Rahners insistence thatour whole existence is moulded by Gods self-communication in thesupernatural existential, and hence that our basic human aims cannotthemselves adequately be understood without reference to Christ.Rahners concern is not to establish the truth of the New Testamentthrough philosophy, but rather to integrate Christology within theologyas a whole, to insist on the m utual depen dence between the incarnationand grace.Secondly, neither Kasper nor Marshall seem to acknowledge the roleof individuality and otherness in Rahners vision of the human. For bothcritics, it appears, Rahn er sees salvation as some kind of static propertywithin the self that can be possessed indifferently by any numberof individuals. Kasper describes Rahnerian Christology from below asstarting,

. from a seeking and anonymous Christology, which the human person lives outwhenever he or she involves themselves in their humanness and accepts this lattercompletely. Christology from below can thus appeal to the other and ask them ifwhat they most deeply seek in their lives does not find its fulfilment precisely inJesus.2

Jesus is what humanity is, only more so. Again, Marshall sees RahnersChristology as depende nt on:. . the methodological assumption that the ideas of redemption and a redeemerare only credible, meaningful and intelligible for us as, or on the basis of, generalcriteria or patterns.

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294 PHILIP ENDEANHowever, Rahners Christology in fact centres, as we have seen, onrelational categories, on the idea of self-transformation through o ngoingencounter with the distinctive otherness of Jesus, and in him with allcreation.Thirdly, one sho uld bear in mind that Rahners Christology ab stractsfrom soteriology. Rahn er holds the Scotist position whereby the incarna-tion would have taken place even in an unfallen world, and creationtakes place for the sake of inca rnation, not vice versa (F 123, 197).Thus,however heinous human sinfulness may be, it does not, in Rahnerstheology, disrupt the basic structure of divine-human relation s, nordetermine Christology. Nevertheless, in the real order, it remains thecase that Jesus is the unique, sinless saviour of a sinful human race.When Luther writes of how Christ must be preached and faith in himestablished so that he may not only be Christ, but be Christ for you andme, his idiom is shaped by a soteriology of exch ange:

Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and dam na-tion. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will beChrists, while grace, life and salvation will be the souls .. 2*Rahner would o bviously not deny that Christ is saviour, nor indeed that,in our sinful world, the relationship between Christ and ourselves takesthe form of an exchange of sin and grace. B ut this soteriological mutualityis grounded on a relationship given in the creation.By stressing what Christology implies for our understanding of huma n-ity at large, Rahne r does a ttenuate the conventional d octrine of Christsdistinctiveness. But that conventional doctrine had shortcomings. Givena relational understanding of the human person, given the unity and sim-plicity of Gods action, then within the order of grace, the dissimilaritybetween Christ and ourselves is contained within a more fundamentalunity. Any C hristology which implies division in G ods work, a changein the divine mind, or the disruption of Gods plans by human sin-fulness, reduces God to a creature.Rahner grounded his version of Christs distinctiveness by invokingthe historical structure of human know ledge. The all-pervasive truth ofGods self-gift to the world n evertheless requ ires a particular moment ofsymbolic significance, a moment when this self-gift is definitively andirrevocably realized:

If this total event of the bestowal of grace on all humanity finds its fulfillment, itmust have a concrete tangibility in history. It cannot be sudden and acosmic andpurely meta-historical, but rather this fulfillment must happ en in such a way that thehappening spreads out in space and time from one point (F 201).Why only one point? After all, people realize universal truths ofmathematics in indefinitely many situations, and indeed people realize -

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RAHNER, CHRISTOLOGY AN D GRACE 295in both senses of the word - Gods self-gift through any number ofparticular events. But there is nevertheless an important dissimilaritybetween the all-pervasive reality of Gods self-gift to humanity andthe universal truths of mathematics. The latter are abstractions fromeveryday experience, whereas the economy of grace is a gift to us whoare bodily, relational and temporal beings. All-pervasive though thiseconomy is, it can only be communicated to us if there is one guaranteedhistorical focus, with which all the other moments of grace stand incontinuum, and which itself is part of the reality of grace.23Christs life,death and resurrection offer a guaranteed framework within which wecan struggle to interpret our own experiences as experiences of grace.Just as any discourse presupposes various sorts of unquestioned axioms,the all-pervasive life of grace, always tentative and ambiguous, can onlybe recognized at all against an unquestionable, generative reference-point. The universal bestowal of grace just cannot be thought of as suchwithout the hypostatic union of one individual human being (F 199).

Bruno Brinkmans writing on Christ lays much stress on the Lutherantheology of the cross, and on its ecumenical significance. If, togetherwith those who share with us in Christs baptism,

... we desire that our faith in God shall be both the same and sincere, then onlyin the godforsakenness of the cross can we find where is that faith, and where isGod.24Growth in Christ is not identical with psychological maturation; thekingdom can never become a possession of ours, never our season, andlife in Christ depends on a gratuitous, permanently transformative initi-ative which follows its own logic. But to stress the distinctiveness andirreducibility of Christ is not to deny either the all-pervasiveness of thegrace he symbolizes, or the extent to which his identity is linked withours and indeed ours is linked with his. Though our possessiveness isalways prone to distort the christiformity of grace, though our pseudo-wisdom has to become folly, nevertheless the new life which Christinaugurates in his season is also our new wisdom, our righteousnessand sanctification and redemption.NotesReferences with F followed by a number refer by page to Karl Rahner, Foundations of ChristianFaith, translated by William V. Dych (London : Darton, Longman and Todd, 19 78). References withtwo numbers separated by a full stop refer by volume and page to the twenty-three volumes ofRahners Theological Investigations. When possible, I have checked quotations from publishedtranslations against the originals, and made appropriate alterations. Where these are minor, pagereferences are given for the translation; where a major issue is involved, I refer to the original.

I B. R. Brinkman, Theology Present to Itself A Tribute to Karl Rahner, HeyJ 25 (1984) .pp. 257-9.2 B . R . Brinkman, Christ Relevant in To the Lengths of Go d: Truth and the Ecumenical A ge(London: Sheed and Ward, 198 8). pp. 87-130. For information on the sourc es for this material, seepp. xi-xii. The direct quotations are taken from pp. 93, 91 .

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296 PHILIP ENDEAN3 Besides the sixth chap ter of Foundations, one f inds sketches towards an overview of Rahners

Christology in Jesus Christ, IV History of Dogma and Th eology in Sacramenrum Mund i, vol. 3(London : Burns and Oates, 1969), pp. 192-209, and in Grundlinien einer systematischen Ch risto-logie in Christologie - systematisch und exegetisch, by Karl Rahner and Wilhelm Thiising (Frei-burg: Herder, 1972 ), pp. 15-78. Amo ng recent seconda ry studies of Rahners Christology are thefollowing books: Joseph H. P. Wong, Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner (Rome:Librer ia Ateneo Sales iano, 1984); Edward G. Farrugia, Aussage und Zusage: Zur Indirekrheit derMethode K. Rahners, veranschaulicht an seiner Christologie (Rome: Gregorian University Press,1985); Ignacy Bok wa, Christologie als Anfang und Ende de r Anthropologie (Frankfurt: Peter Lang,1990); Evelyne Maurice, La Chrisrologie de Karl Rahner (Par is : Descl te, 1995) .4 The locus classicus for this aspect of Rahners theology is Some Implications of theScholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace (1.3 19-346).5 Se e Nikolaus Schwerdtfeger, Gnade und Welt: Zum Grundgefiige von Karl Rahners Theorieder anonymen Christen (Freiburg: Herder, 1982 ), pp. 164-9 for a refutation of what was till thenthe standard view that Rahner had developed the concept in the famous 1950 essay, Concerningthe Relationship between Nature and Grace (1.297-317). and for documentation of the position Ifol low here. Schwerdtfeger draws on an important 1970 study of the early Rahner by the Protestantscholar Tuomo Mannermaa - unfortunately published only in Finnish, although the Karl-Rahner-Archiv in Innsbruck has a rough typescript German translation.6 See Wong, Logos-Symbol; Annice Cal lahan, Karl Rah ners Spirituality of the Pierced Heart(Lanham : University Press of America, 1 985); Michae l J. Walsh, The Heart of Christ in the Writingsof Karl R ahner: An Investigation of its Christological Foundation as an Example of the Relation-ship between Theology and Spirituality (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1977). On traditionalSacred Hear t devot ion as an example of do cet ic Kitsch, see Brinkman, C hrist Relevant, pp. 10 2-4.7 This passage is both textually and translationally complex. I work f rom the publ ished Germanversion Eetruchtungen zu m ignatianischen Exerzitienbuch (Munich: Kosel , 1 965) , and quote f rompp. 117, 121-2; the wh ole of chap ter 13 (pp. 117-28) is of relevance for the present discussion .There is a published English translation: Spiritual Exercises, t ranslated by K enneth Baker (London:Burns and Oates, 1966).8 Dabei ist immer zu bedenken , daB Heil keine sachhaft objektive Zustandlichkeit, sonderneine personale ontologische Wirklichkeit besagt. For Rahners unusual, sub-Heideggerian use ofontological see F 302-3: ... alongside an ontic Christology, i .e. a Christology that makes itsstatements with the help of concepts such as nature and hypostasis which can be taken fromthing-realities, an ontological Christology could also perfectly possibly come on the scene, i .e. aChristology with concepts and heuristic models etc. that are orientated to onto-logical realities inthe strict sense, and to the ultimate identity between what make s such realities exist and what makessuch realities conscious (an streng ontologischen Wirklichkeiten und deren urspriinglicherSelbigkeit von Sein und B ewuatsein orientiert sind). Relational categories, in other words, are notseconda ry, merely m oral, but rather denote what is most specifically human .9 Compare the opening of Rahners 1954 programmatic essay, Current Problems inChristology, with its claim that a dogmatic definition is necessarily a beginning as well as an end( I . 149-154). I have explored how this approach to dogmatics interacts with the insights and theuncertainties arising from critical biblical study in a contribution to a series entitled History andFaith: Grace and the Unfolding of Revelation: The Approach of Karl Rahner, Epworth Review22.1 (January 1995). pp. 63-73.

10 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress fromReimurus to Wrede, translated by W. Montgomery (London: B lack, 1910) , p. 401.I 1 It would be interesting to explore the relationship between this 1960s account of the issuewith a distinction in scholastic idiom mad e in a passage added to the book version (1954) of SomeImplications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace (1.345). Here Rahner draws a distinc-tion between two ways in which the economy of grace involves formal causality: the hypostatic

union in Jesus alone, and uncreated grace in human beings at large, where a true ontologicalcommunicat ion of the hypostas is takes place, but to the end and only to the end that i t can become,in virtue of this quasi-formal causality, the object of immediate knowledge and love.12 Walter Kasper, Jesus der Christus (Mainz: Griinewald, 1974) , pp. 5 6 4 1 : ET Jesus the Christ,translated by V. Green (Lond on: Burns and Oates, 197 7), pp. 48-52; Bruce D. Marshall, Christo-l ~ g yn Conflicf:The Identity of a Saviour in Rahner an d Earth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). pp. 15-1 14.13 Kasper, Jesus the Christ, p. 49 , quoting 1.16411.14 Kasper, Jesus der Christus, p. 61 Die Christologie ist eine inhaltliche Determination der alssolche offen bleibenden Anthropologie. Compare Jesus the Christ, p. 5 1.

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RAHNER, CHRISTOLOGY AN D GRACE 29715 Marshall, Christology in Conflict, pp . 8-10.16 Ibid., p. 54.17 Ibid., p. 60.18 See for exam ple the intricate argumentation in Concerning the R elationship between Natureand Grace (1.297-317). especially pp. 303-10, and in Karl Rahner, Hearer of the W ord: Laying theFoundation fo r a Philosophy of Religion, translated from the first edition by Joseph Donceel andedited by Andrew Tallon (N ew York:Continuum, 1994),especially pp. 58-64. A passage from thebeginning of this work (more accurately titled in this newly published translation) is highlysignificant here: If the philosoph y of religion is to respec t the intrinsic autonom y and historicity oftheology, it cannot primarily consist in setting up a natural religion. It is not to lay down the greatlines that a theology wou ld only have to follow up and t o f i l l out. Of itself it has merely to refer usto a possible revelation of God, a revelation which, if occurring at all, will occur in history. It mustnot and cannot establish a religion of its own, to be completed or superseded later by a revealedreligion (p. 8).19 Marshall, Christoiogy in Conflicr, p. 39.20 Kasper, Jesus the Christ, p. 48.21 Marshall, Christology in Conflict, p. 105.22 Quotations from The Freedom of a Christian in Martin Luther: Selections from his W ritings(Garden City: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 66, 60 .23 I allude here to Rahners important dist inct ion between the Realsymbol and therepresentative sym bol (Vertretungssymbol), made, for exam ple, at the outset of The Theology ofthe Symbol (4.225).24 The Cro ss in Question in Brinkman, To the Lengths o God, p. 162.25 Brinkman, Christ Relevant, p. 95, citation from 1 C or 1:30.