HOME SOME THEMES IN ENGLISH THEOLOGICAL THEMES
FINGERS
POINTING TO THE MOON
FINGER1 FINGER2
FINGER3
FINGERS POINTING TO THE MOON
AN ANALYSIS OF THE
THEOLOGICAL METHOD
OF KARL RAHNER AND EDWARD SCHILLEBEECKX
IN THE CASE OF CHRIST AND AN EXPLANATION OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
Liem Pham, S.J.
Lời để chuyển ý, được ý hãy quên
lời.
If you get the meaning, forget the word.
(Trang Tử)
Bè để
qua sông, qua sông hãy bỏ bè. Đừng vác bè mà đi.
After the boat carries you across the river, leave it behind. Don’t
carry the boat on your shoulder.
(Trang Tử)
“This is like a man pointing a finger at the moon to show it to others
who should follow the direction of the finger to look at the moon. If they look
at the finger and mistake it for the moon, the lose (sight of) both the moon
and the finger.”
(The Surangama Sutra).
II. EXTRA MUNDUM NULLA SALUS (Ed. Schillebeeckx)
Section I. Schillebeeckx’s Early Theology
1. Incarnation as starting point of Christology
2. Church as constitutive element of salvation
Section II. Later Schillebeeckx’s Theology
1. God’s Salvation Experienced In The World
a. Salvation experienced in worldly reality
b. No revelation without experience
2. Religions- Concrete Context of Talk about God
a. Religions- sacraments of salvation
b. Pluralism- matter of principle
3. Jesus- God’s Universal Love to Human Beings
a. Jesus- God’s universal love for human beings
Theological hermeneutics of history
III. FINGERS POINTING TO THE MOON
In this second chapter I treat Schillebeeckx’s theology in which I
recognize two phases, early and late. In the first section I will describe
generally the Schillebeeckx’s early theology, and in the second section I will
treat the theology of Schillebeeckx’s later periode.
Edward Schillebeeckx in the early time of his life adopted the Christological
dogma of Chalcedon as the starting point of his theology, and thus showed the
Church to be a constitutive element of salvation.
Schillebeeckx’s theology presupposes the following fundamental ideas. He
writes, first, “We are able to reach God only by way of creatures, this desire
is by its nature powerless.”[1]
He also says: “Personal communion with God is possible only in and through
God’s own generous initiative in coming to meet us in grace.”[2]
Human beings can only have knowledge of God through creatures. By their
capacity human beings cannot attain God. The personal relation between God and
human beings is God’s grace.
Salvation possesses a sacramental character that requires religion as a
means. Religion is above all a saving dialogue between man and the living God.
It is therefore essentially a personal relationship between man and God, a
personal encounter or a personal communing with God.[3]
Grace never comes only interiorly. To separate religion from Church is
ultimately to destroy the life of religion. If one is to serve God, to be
religious, one must also live by Church and sacrament.[4]
Young Schillebeeckx’s Christology started with the dogmatic definition
of Chalcedon, “one person in two natures”.
The incarnation is the
whole life of Christ, from his conception in the womb, through all his further
life of action, completed finally in his death, resurrection and being
established as Lord and sender of the Paraclete; it is prolonged everlastingly
in his uninterrupted sending of the Holy Spirit.[5]
From this incarnational view, Schillebeeckx built his Christology. Jesus
is God incarnate, so acts of Jesus are acts of God. Jesus expresses the love of
God the Father to human beings.[6]
Jesus’ death became the means of redemption.[7]
Christ is the sacrament by which human beings encounter God. The Church,
established by Christ as His presence in the world, is the sacrament by which
human beings encounter God as well.
For young Schillebeeckx, the Church is constitutive of all human
salvation. Jesus Christ is one person in two natures. He is God in a human way,
and He is man in a divine way. Everything he does as man is an act of the Son
of God. His love for human beings is God’s love for humankind. Jesus Christ is
the sacrament by which God wants to save human beings.
The Church is the People of God. Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection, became the head of the People of God. The earthly Church is the visible realization of this saving reality in history. It is a visible communion in grace, and is the visible expression of Christ’s grace and redemption, realized in the form of a society that is a sign. Thus Schillebeeckx says that “The Church therefore is not merely a means of salvation. It is Christ’ salvation itself, this salvation as visibly realized in this word. Thus it is, by a kind of identity, the body of the Lord.”[8] He also emphasizes that “What Christ is doing invisibly in this world through his Spirit, he is at the same time doing visibly through the mission of his apostles and of the members of the Church community.”[9] So that, finally, he holds that “The earthly body of the Lord, the Church, is at the same time the Lord’s pleroma; being filled with Christ, it in turn fills the faithful.”[10] The Church realizes the redemptive work of Christ by celebrating the sevenfold ecclesial realization found in seven sacraments.
Therefore, nobody, even those outside of the Church, can be saved
without Jesus Christ who is the Son of God incarnate. Nobody can be saved
without belonging to the Church, which implies a personal relationship between
man and God.[11] “If one is
to serve God, to be religious, one must also live by Church and sacrament.”[12]
The Church is the constitutive means that God uses to save all human beings.
Religion and Church are the sacraments of salvation in the world. Thus,
in his early theology, Schillebeeckx wrote that the Church is “a visible
communion in grace;”[13]
it is Jesus’ redemptive community, established by God, and having Jesus Christ
as its head. The Church, assembled in his death, is “the visible expression of
Christ’s grace and redemption, realized in the form of a society which is a
sign (societas signum).”[14]
The Church, therefore, is not merely a means of salvation, but “Christ’s
salvation itself, this salvation as visibly realized in this world. Thus it is,
by a kind of identity, the body of the Lord.”[15]
For the early Schillebeeckx, the audience of his writings consists in
Christians. In this respect one can recognize a similarity between Rahner and
Schillebeeckx. His later theology appears more distinctive in contrast to his
early audience, method, and conclusions.
There is a shift of audience for
Schillebeeckx’s later writings. The audience of early Schillebeeckx is
Christians with a traditional mentality, while the audience of later
Schillebeeckx is Christians of a post-modern mentality or, in his own language,
“marginal” Christians of the Church. In his response to CDF, he said his
theology has “non-believers and marginal Catholics” as its audience.[16]
Moreover, in the foreword of Jesus Schillebeeckx wrote: “The book
has been written in such a way as one might suppose would put the contents
within reach of anybody interested. (Theological jargon has been avoided as
much as possible; but it seemed impossible at times to do without it. Therefore
definitions of certain technican terms have been provided at the back of the
book).”[17] In
Interim Report on the books Jesus &Christ Schillebeeckx
stated that theology is for people of the present time, so Schillebeeckx’s
theology is for people of this generation: “Finally, no one writes a
Christology for eternity, but for the good of people alive now, hoping that in
it he will make audible the echo of the apostolic faith.”[18] In
the book Church: The human Story of God he wrote: “So I hope that
the book will be useful to many people. As far as I am concerned, it is a
Christian confession of faith of a consistently rational theologian, who is
conscious of standing in the great Catholic tradition on the basis of which he
may be able to, indeed has to, say something- as an offer- to his fellow men
and women.”[19]
Thus, Schillebeeckx’s audience is people of mordern times. Non-believers,
marginal Catholics, and Christians of the modern world are living and thinking
in the way of modern science. They do not accept Christian belief simply on the
authority of others, but accept only what they see or experience in their daily
lives, what can be experimented on or proved. Therefore, Schillebeeckx took as
the starting point of his theology this secularized world with its experiences
as data for theological reflection.
In this second section,
I present Late Schillebeeckx’s theology, focusing on, first, God’s salvation
experienced in this world; second, religions as the concrete context of talk
about God; and third, Jesus as God’s universal love for human beings.
By quoting the Council of Florence-Ferrara in the fifteenth century and
the Second Vatican Council on the salvation of gentiles[20],
Schillebeeckx shows that he does not only use dogma but also human experience
in the world as the starting point of his theology. For him, human beings look
for salvation and God’s revelation through both positive and negative
experiences in the world.
Salvation is something
that human beings search for in this world. Salvation history consists in
events which liberate men and women.[21]
Human history is God’s saving history.[22]
God brings salvation to men and women is in this world, even though it is not
totally fulfilled in this world. If human beings do not get salvation in this world,
they will not get it after death.
Salvation starts in this world: extra mundum nulla salus. Human beings
experience salvation in their daily lives. Every human being experiences
salvation in this world, even if they are not incorporated in any religion.
The world and human history in which God wills to bring about salvation
are the basis of the whole reality of faith; it is there that salvation is
achieved in the first instance… or salvation is rejected and disaster is
brought about. In this sense it is true that extra mundum nulla salus,
there is no salvation outside the human world. The world of creation, our
history within the environment of nature, is the sphere of God’s saving action
in and through human mediation. The history of the religions is only one
segment of a broader history; the religions are the place where men and women
become explicitly aware of God’s saving actions in history.[23]
God creates human
beings to be master of their actions. Human beings shape the world and its
future, and carry out their plans in concrete and variable situations. Human
beings are unique and multifaceted, so their salvation must include all kinds
of human aspects and dimensions. The salvation that human beings look for is
not only for their souls but also for their bodies, not only for themselves as
individuals but also for their families and societies, not only for themselves
but for all humanity as well.
Christian salvation is salvation of and for human beings, not simply the
salvation of souls but the healings, making whole, wholeness, of the whole
person, the individual and society, in a natural world which is not abused.
Thus Christian salvation also comprises ecological, social and political
aspects, though it is not exhausted by these.[24]
In this world human
beings experience success and failure, energy and depression, joy and sadness,
hope and despair. They experience both evil and goodness, but evil strikes them
more powerfully. However, human beings try to liberate themselves from evil in
their daily lives. The “no” human beings say to evil is sometimes revealed
through a sigh of compassion when they see others suffer. Human beings
experience salvation not only in the future but also now in worldly reality.
Salvation is not merely intellectual, a matter of ideas, but is experienced in
concrete living. In certain sense, God is not only the ground of salvation but
also the very salvation for men and women.
Salvation from God comes about first of all in the worldly reality of
history, and not primarily in the consciousness of believers who are aware of
it. The cognitive sense of this is, of course, itself a separate gift, the
significance of which we may not underestimate. But where good is furthered and
evil is challenged in the human interest, then through this historical practice
the being of God- God as salvation for men and women, the ground for universal
hope- is also established and men and women also appropriate God’s salvation-
in and through acts of love. Human history, the social life of human beings, is
the place where the cause of salvation or disaster is decided on.[25]
Salvation does not
consist only in awareness, but in a person’s total lived experience. We cannot
separate these two dimensions.[26]
Salvation is not experienced only in religion, but also in the world of human
existence. The field where salvation is experienced is broader than religion.
It is the whole world, human and secular. Salvation depends upon God and has
its effects among human beings. It exists within human life.
We cannot reduce the active saving presence of God to our awareness or
our experience of this presence, which challenges us to make sense. Nor can we
reduce salvation from God to the particular places of salvation that we call
religions. Salvation history cannot be reduced to the history of religions or
to the history of Judaism and Christianity. For the whole of secular history is
itself already under the guidance of the liberating God of creation. Moreover
the first place where salvation or disaster comes about is our co-called
‘secular history’, of which God is the liberating creator, but also the verdict
on the history of disaster brought about by men and women.[27]
The world as it is, created by God, reflects God and becomes the locus
where human beings encounter God and perfect themselves. The finitude of human
beings does not come from any source but God. Creation is a symbol of God’s
presence in reality, because God is both transcendent and immanent in the
world. Therefore, in and through creatures, even in and through their finitude,
human beings recognize and depend upon God. Here Schillebeeckx uses the term
“authorities”, meaning, Scripture and Christian tradition. “Nature and history
are authorities in which and through which God discloses himself as creator, in
and through our fundamental experiences of finitude.”[28]
Experiences that everyone encounters must be used as theological data,
as the starting point of theology. Human experience in this world is an
important element in Schillebeeckx’s theology.
Salvation and revelation are experienced in the daily lives of human
beings. What was experience for primitive Christians is for us today revelation
or tradition. There can be no revelation without experience.[29]
By evil and good, negative and positive experiences in daily life, the people
of yesterday received revelation and the people of today understand the
traditions that people of yesterday experienced. Experience is authoritative
for people today.
The authority of
experiences therefore culminates in human stories of suffering: stories of
suffering over misfortune and failure, the suffering of pain, the suffering of
evil and injustice, the suffering of and in love, sorrow or guilt. Here lie the
great elements of the revelation of reality in and through finite human
experiences.[30]
Revelation pre-supposes experiences. These experiences, described in
first person language, come from witnesses. The experiences of witnesses become
testimonies for believers who hear and answer by faith. One can receive
revelation by hearing of the experiences of another, but the believer himself
has to live that experience. “Faith comes from hearing, but it is completed and
mediated only in a personal experience”[31].
Through revelation, human beings have faith in ultimate Reality.
Christian revelation includes the experiences of Abraham, Moses, God’s people
during the Exodus and throughout the history of Israel, and the apostles and
early disciples of Jesus. Therefore, Christianity is a religion of revelation
in history and based on experiences. Revelation is found in very important
experiences that help human beings to recognize God working in the world.
Experiences of men and women yesterday as revelation are tradition for us now.
These experiences constituting revelation and tradition are another important
element in Schillebeeckx’s theology.
Today, the negative experiences that culminate in human histories of
suffering cause us to revise previous insights, and create an opportunity to
accept and understand revelation.
The great moments of
the revelation of reality lie here in and through the finite experiences of
human beings… The deepest experiences that dislocate and bear along our lives
are thus also conversion experiences, cross-experiences that force us to a
change of meaning, action and being. Such experiences destroy and fragment us,
but only for the sake of leading to a new integration. [32]
Because the created world is the work of God from the first, the
secularized world includes positive phenomena through which human beings can
experience God. The laws of nature, for example of physics, of psychology etc.,
apply to human beings, but human beings are free and responsible. Today human
beings take reason as the most precious standard of truth. Consequently, for
some people, Christian beliefs are not of the same value as they were in former
times. Everything is created by God, and is therefore a vestige of God. Thus
Christians can talk about God to other human beings through the creatures of
the secularized world. The fact that human beings today live according to
reason is a sign of human beings’ development. We have to believe that human
beings of today are guided by God, even when they accept reason and personal
experience more than statements based on authority.
In searching for the
elements of secular experience which could point toward mystery, theological
analysis should begin with man’s basic pre-reflexive trust in life and his
self-commitment to the goodness and meaningfulness of human existence.[33]
By rightly interpreting the phenomenon of secularization, and believing that God always works in his creatures, Christians will be optimistic about the future of humanity.
Human beings cannot detach themselves from
God. Human beings perform good and evil actions in the world. God creates human
beings and assists them to liberate themselves from evil. The struggle human
beings engage in against injustice and evil is realized with God’s help.
Because this world is created by God, the work of human beings to liberate
humankind from evil is permanently inspired and directed by God. Therefore
human beings can recognize God and his action in and through worldly reality
and their own work against injustice and evil. According to Schillebeeckx, the
world and the people of today are the theological locus for reflection and
thought. The Church and its dogma are no longer the only standards of truth.[34]
People in the world today live in close communication with other people
and cultures. The multiplicity of religions is more than a historical fact. Pluralism is a mentality of present-day people.
According
to Schillebeeckx, religions are sacraments of salvation, the multiplicity of
religions is necessary, and the Christian Church is one among others.
Salvation from God
comes about in the first place in the worldly reality of history. Through
creatures and through human work in daily life God comes to human beings. Religions and churches are not themselves
salvation, but are of the order of signs; they are sacraments of salvation.[35]
Only God is salvation for and of men and women.
Religions, churches, are not themselves salvation but a ‘sacrament’ of
the salvation that God brings about in his created world through the mediation
of men and women in very particular contexts in which they live… Religions,
churches, are of the order of ‘signs’, sacraments of salvation. They are the
explicit identification and ultimate fulfilment of that salvation.[36]
Belief is a
constitutive element of all religions. Belief in God, as the ground and source
of our world and the history of human liberation in the midst of all kinds of
chance, determination, and indeterminacy, is not merely a belief in the
existence of God. The basic belief of religions is that God loves human beings
and wills to save them.
It is belief in God as salvation of and for human beings whom he brought
to life in this world. It is a belief in God’s absolute saving presence among
men and women in their history.[37]
The world of creation
is the sphere of God’s saving action in and through human mediation. God’s
saving acts are found in all of human history, and history is broader than
religions. Even if one does not belong to any religion, she can still receive
salvation through worldly reality. Religions are small fields where God acts to
save human beings.
The history of the religions is only one segment of a broader history;
the religions are the place where men and women become explicitly aware of
God’s saving actions in history.[38]
Because men and women
come to religion through experiences of their fellow human beings and the
world, this mediation through the world at the same time explains the
difference between the various religions. Moreover, the rise of a multiplicity
of religions can be explained from this same source from which religion as such
comes into being: the multiplicity of human experiences of human beings and the
world within particular divergent human traditions of experience. Talking about
God on the basis of human experiences is essential bound up with making it
possible to discuss worldly experiences in religious terms. And despite a
universal basic human pattern (one which can never be ‘abstracted’ but always
has specific content), human experiences always have a social and historical,
indeed also a geographical, colouring. All that also produces variations in the
universal human religious theme.[39]
According to Schillebeeckx’s view, pluralism help us to better
understand God. Religions are necessary for human beings and cannot be
eliminated. Pluralism is a matter of principle. One religion cannot describe
God as well as many religions.
People today, with
their understanding of human history, recognize the limitedness of every
religion. Pluralism is a part of people’s experience.
Pluralism is to be found within us as cognitive reality. That modern men
and women, including believers, as it were spontaneously reject the theory that
‘salvation is to be found only within the church’ points to a spontaneous,
pre-theoretical position as part of the structure of their own personality
structure. They themselves think in pluralistic terms and know that no one has
rights over the truth- although in that case there is then a threat of what is
called indifferentism: to each his or her truth.[40]
Human beings have
religious experiences, and then express them in languages and doctrine.
Religious experiences are translated into the language of faith, into
statements of faith, and now and then even into dogmas; they are ultimately
also thematized in well-ordered theological views- in a constantly diminishing
certainty of faith and inscreasing human risk.[41]
However, we need to
distinguish between a real referent and an ideal referent.[42] In
other words, God and ideas about God are two very different things. One is
being outside the human mind, and the other is being within human mind. God
exists independently of human consciousness or knowledge.
The fact that humanity has so many religions with all kinds of images of
God does not in itself tell us whether or not God exists … The reality of God
is independent of our human consciousness, independent of our expression of
God; on the other hand, our talk of God is also dependent on the historical
context in which we talk of God …Moreover, as reality God transcends all our
thought and reflections; nowhere do we hear his voice or see his face. As a
reality God cannot be verified; he is even a matter of controversy to human
beings.[43]
For Schillebeeckx,
there is more religious truth in all the religions taken together than in one
particular religion, and therefore other religions need to exist on principle:
“pluralism is a matter of principle.”
As a consequence of all this we can, may and must say that there is more
religious truth in all the religions together than in one particular religion,
and that this also applies to Christianity. There are therefore ‘true’, ‘good’,
and ‘beautiful’-surprising- aspects in the manifold forms of relationship with
God (present in humankind), forms which have not found any place in the
specific experience of Christianity and are not finding one now. There are
differences in people’s experience of their relationship to God, differences
which cannot be smoothed over, for all the inherent similarities to other experiences.
There are different authentically religious experiences which Christianity,
precisely because of its historical particularity, has never thematized or put
into practice.[44]
Therefore, religions
are in God’s plan, not only before but also after Jesus’ appearance in the
world. Religions continue to exist in human history because they express the
diversity of God’s ineffability.
That is why I said that the multiplicity of religions is not just a
historical fact that must be transcended, but a matter of principle. There are
authentic-religious experiences in other religions which are never realized or
thematized in Christianity and, I added, perhaps cannot be without robbing
Jesus’ identification of God of its distinctiveness.[45]
Truly, religions
express God in different languages, different cultures. “Religions are the
concrete context of talk about God.”[46]
The Church is not seen
as a superior way or the one true religion which excludes all other religions.
The Church is not superior to them at all. Nobody could destroy other religions
in the name of the Church as the only one true Church.[47]
Though recognizing the
claim of the uniqueness of Christianity, Schillebeeckx thinks that the
acceptance of the differences between religions is implicit in the nature of
Christianity. “The problem is, rather, how can Christianity maintain its own
identity and uniqueness and at the same time attach a positive value to the
difference of religions in a non-discriminatory sense?”[48]
Schillebeeckx’s answer is that the distinctive and unique feature of
Christianity is in Jesus of Nazareth.
The special, distinctive and unique feature of Christianity is that it
finds the life and being of God specifically in this historical and thus
limited particularity of ‘Jesus of Nazareth’- confessed as the personally human
manifestation of God. In it there is a confession that Jesus is indeed a
‘unique’, but nevertheless ‘contingent’, i.e. historical and thus limited,
manifestation of the gift of salvation from God for all men and women.[49]
Christianity consists
in the experiences of the apostles with Jesus. They recognize that Jesus is a
special man that God encounters and reveals himself as salvation for men and
women.
In this respect, the essential feature of the Christian revelation is
that on the basis of the experience of an encounter with Jesus his followers
claim that in this man, in his life and message, in his action and the way in
which he died, in his whole person as a human being, God’s purposes with men and
women and in them God’s ‘own character’ have become revelation, have been
brought to human consciousness in the highest degree: according to this
experience of faith Jesus is the place where in a decisive way God has revealed
himself as salvation of and for men and women. Christians experience Jesus as
the supreme density of divine revelation in a whole history of experiences of
revelation.[50]
In sum, Christianity,
Christians experience Jesus as the supreme density of divine revelation in a
whole history of experiences of revelation. Christians find God above all in
Jesus Christ.[51]
Schillebeeckx likes to explain why Jesus is the only way of life for
Christians, and other religions are ways for non-Christian believers. This
Christology prevents Christians from discriminatiing against other religions,
and help them to recognize what is distinct in Christianity.
We have to be able to
explain why Jesus, confessed as the Christ, is the only way of life for us,
though God leaves other ways open for others. We also have to explain why we
are and remain sincere Christians without regarding non-Christians as heretics
or discriminating against them.[52]
In this section on Jesus, we will describe Jesus as God’s universal love
for human beings, and Jesus as the redeemer of Christians.
Schillebeeckx agrees with Aloysius Pieris: “God has shown us his face in
the man Jesus”. In his own language, “Jesus is God’s universal love for men and
women.” Through Jesus, Christians recognize God’s eternal plan to save mankind.
God’s salvation is offered to everyone, to all human beings.
The God of all men and
women shows in Jesus of Nazareth who he is, namely, universal love for men and
women. Jesus Christ is the historical, culturally located expression of this
universal message of the gospel.[53]
Through Jesus, Christians know God deeply, and again in Schillebeeckx’s
terms, “Jesus is the definition of God”. Jesus’ person points to God, reveals
God, but at the same time conceals God because of Jesus’ own contingency, his
human finitude. Because Jesus is human, his reflecting of God is limited, and
thus other religions are necessary for talk about God. Therefore, the
multiplicity of religions is a matter of principle. This means Jesus and
Christianity do not take the place of other religions.
For Christians, Jesus
is the definition of God; otherwise their Christology makes no sense. At the
same time, for Christians too, this is a definition of God in non-divine terms,
namely in and through the historical contingent humanity of Jesus. The
definition of God which appears in Jesus finally points to an elusive,
invisible God who escapes all identifications; otherwise ‘mysticism’ makes no
sense. That is why I said that the multiplicity of religions is not just a
historical fact that must be transcended, but a matter of principle. There are
authentic-religious experiences in other religions which are never realized or
thematized in Christianity and, I added, perhaps cannot be without robbing
Jesus’ identification of God of its distinctiveness.[54]
God reveals himself through Jesus of Nazareth. In and through the career
of Jesus of Nazareth, God allows himself to be identified. Therefore we have
simply to decipher the image of God that is given to us.[55]
The revelation of God in Jesus, as the Christian gospel preaches this to
us, in no way means that God absolutizes a historical particularity (even Jesus
of Nazareth). We learn from the revelation of God in Jesus that no individual
historical particularity can be said to be absolute, and that therefore through
the relativity present in Jesus anyone can encounter God even outside Jesus,
especially in our worldly history and in the many religions which have arisen
in it. The risen Jesus of Nazareth also continues to point to God beyond
himself. One could say: God points via Jesus Christ in the Spirit to himself as
creator and redeemer, as a God of men and women, of all men and women.
God is absolute, but no single religion is absolute.[56]
Because Jesus is human
and therefore contingent, He reveals God, and at the same time, conceals God.
Jesus is not the only living way to God. Jesus is one among others.
Although we cannot reach Jesus in his fullness unless we also take into
account his unique and distinctive relationship to God, that does not mean that
Jesus is the only living way to God. Even Jesus does not just reveal God, but
also conceals him, where he appears in non-godly, creaturely humanity. And so
as a human being he is a historical, contingent or limited being who cannot in
any way represent the full riches of God, that is, unless we deny the reality
of his humanity (which runs counter to the consensus of the church, expressed
in the Council of Chalcedon). So there can be no talk of a Christian religious
imperialism on the basis of the gospel.[57]
Jesus is very special
to Christians, but Jesus is still contingent because He is truly human. Because
of that, he is not absolute, but one among others.
The role of Jesus Christ in the salvation of all humankind is a great
theological problem for pluralist theologians. For Schillebeeckx, salvation is
very concretely found in Jesus Christ as a promise for all, but it is made
concrete and spread throughout the world by Christians not only accepting the
idea about Jesus but also by practicing the kingdom of God.
The universality of
Christian salvation is an offer of salvation from God to all men and women….
The salvation that is founded in Christ as a promise for all becomes universal,
not through the mediation of an abstract, universal idea, but by the power of
its cognitive, critical and liberating character in and through a consistent
praxis of the kingdom of God. So this is not a purely speculative, theoretical
universality, but a universality which can be realized in the fragmentary forms
of our history only through the spreading of the story of Jesus confessed by
Christians as the Christ, and through Christian praxis.[58]
Jesus saves us, not Christ. That is, if we live according to Jesus’
life, we obtain salvation. We are obtaining salvation if we practice what Jesus
did: loving. Salvation is experienced in Christian life. Christians are saved
and liberated by the actions of their lives day by day. Again we recognize the
echo of “extra mundum nulla salus.”
’Jesus’ redeems us, not
‘Christ’…Moreover redemption through Jesus is unique and universal only in so
far as what happened in Jesus is continued in his disciples. Without any
relationship to a redeeming and liberating practice of Christians, redemption,
brought by Jesus, remains in a purely speculative, empty vacuum. It is not the
confession ‘Jesus is Lord’ (Rm.10, 9) which in itself brings redemption, but
‘he who does the will of my Father’ (Mt. 7, 2). One has to go the way of Jesus
himself; then Jesus’ career concretely takes on a universal significance
(Mt.25, 37-39. 44-46). In fact a fragmentary but real making whole of humankind
is the best indication of liberation.[59]
In the case of Jesus, too, we must first look for a human, historical
event which liberated men and women, which brought them to themselves and
opened them up to their fellow human beings. For precisely all this was the
medium through which believers began to recognize God’s face. Without Jesus’
human career the whole of Christology becomes an ideological superstructure.
Without ‘human meaning’ in the life of Jesus, all religious meaning in his life
becomes incredible. Only the human meaning of a historical process can become the
material of ‘supernatural’ or religious meaning, of revelation.[60]
If someone did not understand the historical Jesus, but tried to interpret Jesus’ life by a pre-existing framework, they would be wrong.[61]
For Christians, Jesus’
death is presupposed in belief about his resurrection, particularly his
physical resurrection. “For without this resurrection Jesus of Nazareth is one
of the many utopias.”[62]
Some modern theologians interpret Jesus’ resurrection spiritually and
figuratively, but Schillebeeckx’s view on Jesus’ resurrection is very
fundamental. Physical resurrection is very important to Schillebeeckx’s
theolgy.
Thus belief in the physical resurrection is openness to an event, an
event which is not identical with dying itself, but is rather the free event of
God’s own divinity which overcomes even death.[63]
Jesus’ resurrection
fulfils the salvation of human beings in the life beyond. If there is no
resurrection of Jesus, then what does salvation mean, when worldly life is so
hard. Jesus’ resurrection makes his human life meaningful and credible to
Christians. Resurrection is the distinct point of Christianity.
Understanding and trusting God on the basis of Jesus’ life and death,
that is, looking through Jesus to God, means coming to terms with our own
incompleteness, with the character of our existence which is not justified and
not reconciled. A Christian who believes in the resurrection is therefore freed
from the pressure to justify himself and from the demand that God should
publicly take under his protection and ratify all those who believe in him.[64]
Jesus is the only way of life for Christians, though other ways, which
are the other religions, are opened to others. Above, we saw Schillebeeckx’s
view on Jesus and his human career. His view helps Christians to be openminded
about other religions and to recognize what is distinct in Christianity.
Schillebeeckx does not think his Christological view diminishes Christianity’s
value or that of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, his Christological view helps
people today accept Christianity more easily.
Nobody writes a Christology for eternity.[65]
The way theologians talk about God depends on their audience. For example, talk
of God in developing countries is basically different from talk of God in
prosperous countries, because the partner in conversation for the Western
theologian is the secularized person, the agnostic, or the atheist. However,
the partner in conversation for the theologian in the Third World is the poor
and oppressed.[66]
Because of the shift in Schillebeeckx’s audience, there was a shift in
thelogy between early and later Schillebeeckx. I will describe Schillebeeckx’s
audience and then his theological method in the last phase of his career.
Later Schillebeeckx’s audience is present-day men and women who live in
the existential context of oppression and liberation. “It is not the only
possible context, but in my view without this context all other possible
contexts become detached from life and become incredible to many people.”[67]
In Church Schillebeeckx hoped that “the book will be useful to
many people.”[68]
Schillebeeckx wrote Jesus for anybody who was interested, so he
tried to avoid theological jargon as much as possibe.[69]
Schillebeeckx’s audience includes non-believers and marginal Christians,[70]
modern men and women who no longer believe in the authoritative teachings of
the Church as much as in their own reason and experiences; who think in
pluralistic terms and know that no one has exclusive rights over the truth;[71]
who live in different continents and in various cultures.[72]
In Interim Report, Schillebeeckx poses a question to readers: “in
your view, is Jesus still God? Yes or No? After all that has been said, I
really find this question superfluous, and only comprehensible if it is asked
as a result of lack of faith or misplaced concern for orthodoxy. However, let
us take even this concern seriously.”[73]
Schillebeeckx was writting to an audience of marginal Christians or Christians
lacking faith.
The new theology can be positively defined as a science which is based
on a rational, empirically deduced theory which can only be formulated after
the results of religious sociology and psychology have been fully assimilated
and worked out.[74]
Schillebeeckx ranges himself implicitly in the new theology. His theology is one of critical theory, of theological hermeneutics with its rational, empirical, and practical characteristics. Critical theory is founded in the critical movement of the enlightenment, and tries to make the church’s tradition understood by means of hermeneutics.[75] Schillebeeckx wants to build his theology as a science: the secularized world’s negative experiences of contrast as data; his theology as the proposed postulate; his theology being verified by praxis. “Theology is the critical self-consciousness of Christian praxis in the world and the church.”[76]
Schillebeeckx’s method
can be described as a critical correlation, a theological hermeneutics of
history, and a theocentric theology.
Schillebeeckx has as his audience people of today, including non-believers
and marginal Christians; therefore, the starting point of his theology is what
people today accept as valid, that is, the secular world with its negative and
positive experiences. In the scientific spirit of today, all religions are
equal; modern people do not believe in dogma and authority but in their own
experiences and intellects.
The Christian experiences of the primitive Christians expressed in
Scripture are a source of data for Schillebeeckx’s theology. Experiences of
present-day people are another source of data for Schillebeeckx’s theology.
Finding a critical correlation between them is Schillebeeckx’s theological
method.
The third hinge on
which the two Jesus books turn is connected with the critical correlation
between the two sources of theology which I discussed above: on the one hand
the tradition of Christian experience and on the other present-day experiences.[77]
Theology is talk about God for present-day people. It transmits
revelation to people today by language and present-day people’s experiences.
Theology is both old and new, because this revelation was recognized yesterday
by people with their experiences and is spoken to present-day people with their
experiences.
Theology interprets not only the Scripture but also the events,
inclinations, “joys and hopes” of people today. In other words, normative
experiences of people of yesterday are correctly interpreted by and through the
experiences of present-day people, and the experiences of people today are
illustrated by the normative experiences of people of yesterday.
What was experience for
others yesterday is tradition for us today; and what is experience for us today
will in turn be tradition for others tomorrow. However, what once was
experience can only be handed down in renewed experiences, at least as living
tradition.[78]
Critical theory as theological hermeneutics interprets experiences of
tradition and of present-day people, and then narrates Gospel messages
illustrated by the experiences of people of today. Revelation is truth that
everyone can experience.
Today, as yesterday, human beings are oppressed by injustice. Living the
Christian revelation entails practicing the Good News. Theological hermeneutics
of history, that is, interpreting present-day experiences to find out God’s
will for human beings, and creating a narrative is Schillebeeckx’s theological
method. Theology needs to interpret Scripture, Christian tradition, and
present-day contrast experiences, and narrate these experiences to present-day
people in their own language; otherwise, theology is unscientific ideology.
Insofar
as they are empirical data, religion, Christianity and the church all belong to
those social forms the structure and function of which merit specific analysis…
If theology is not conscious of this need and has not assimilated critical
theory into its own design, it may well become an unscientific ideology.[79]
Praxis is an important
characteristic of Schillebeeckx’s theology. Through praxis confronted by
negative experience, theology is verified as correct or not. Theology’s being
accepted by people is a proof that it is a valid theology. This view
incorporates the adage “vox populi vox Dei” which expresses the belief that God
always acts in and through people.
The relationship between theory and praxis as worked out by Habermas
especially is, of course, of great importance to us if we want to understand
correctly the hermeneutic process of this actualising theology… Critical
theory’s understanding of itself as the self-consciousness of a critical praxis
is also undoubtedly correct.[80]
Theology as
hermeneutics guides present-day people but is judged by their praxis. By praxis
theology is proven true or false.
Schillebeeckx’s theology is theocentric. Theocentric theology is
appropriate for incorporating religions in his theology. With a Christocentric
view of theology, it is very hard to treat the theological problems arising
from multiple religions. Moreover, theology is wider than Christology, “there
are questions and also religious problems which lie outside the Christological
field. That is very important for the ecumene of religions.” [81]
According to Schillebeeckx, being “theocentric” is not an option for
theology. Theology must not be Christocentric, because “while as Christians we
can and may make Jesus the Christ the centre of history for ourselves, we are
not at the same time in a position to argue that the historical revelation of
salvation from God in Jesus Christ exhausts the question of God, nor do we need
to.”[82]
If Jesus Christ did not exhaust the question of God, and religions can
contribute to doing that, then theology must not be Christocentric but
theocentric. A theocentric view of theology helps Christians to dialoque with
believers of other religions.
Young Schillebeeckx had used Nicaea’s dogma as a starting point for his
Christology.[83] He
developed his Christology using the traditional formula of the incarnation.
Later, however, Schillebeeckx would assert, “although institutions and dogmatic
positions are essential aspects of religion, they remain subordinate to
religious experience.”[84]
Later in his life Schillebeeckx wrote for “non-believers and marginal
Catholics.”[85] This
audience made Schillebeeckx change his methodology. Non-believers and marginal
Catholics, who are people in the modern world living and thinking in the way of
modern science, do not accept Christian beliefs simply on the authority of
others, but accept only what they see or experience in their daily lives, only
what can be experimented on or proved. Therefore, Schillebeeckx takes the
secular world as theological data that people today accept as valid.
Theological hermeneutics interprets not only experiences from tradition but
also those of present-day people. Christians are able to prove Schillebeeckx’s
theology by their praxis and by their negative contrast experiences. Theology
as science is rational and universally open to everyone, not only to Christians
but also to non-Christian believers. Therefore, according to Schillebeeckx, the
authority of the magisterium, human reason, and praxis are all standards by
which one judges the validity of theologies according to Schillebeeckx.
Schillebeeckx in his theology of the plurality of religions adapts
present-day views on religions. In this theological view, other religions have
the same generic role and priority as Christianity. Moreover, in this view, the
secular world is created and continually guided by God; because religions are
elements of this secular world, they have existed until now as part of God’s
plan. What God creates and wills, He does not destroy. The fact that religions
still exist today is proof of that. Moreover, Christologically, Jesus is
historically contingent, and therefore reveals God and at the same time conceals
God; because of that, multiple religions exist as matter of principle, that is,
many religions describe God better than one religion.
The view of present-day people on multiple religions, critically
reflected on by theological hermeneutics or critical theory, defines the
starting point of Schillebeeckx’s theology. His theology is theocentric. In it,
the Church is incorporated into the global view about religions, and Jesus is
subsequently treated as being of concern specifically to Christians.
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HOME SOME THEMES IN ENGLISH THEOLOGICAL THEMES
FINGERS
POINTING TO THE MOON
FINGER1 FINGER2
FINGER3
Chúc
bạn an vui hạnh phúc.
Giuse Phạm Thanh Liêm, S.J.
[1] E. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1971), 4.
[2] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 4.
[3] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 4.
[4] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 10.
[5] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 25.
[6] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 17.
[7] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 20.
[8] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 48.
[9] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 50.
[10] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 51.
[11] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 4.
[12] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 10.
[13] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 47.
[14] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 48.
[15] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 48.
[16] Edit. Ted Schoof, The Schillebeeckx Case: Official Exchange of Letter and Documents in the Investigation of Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1976-1980 (New York: Paulist Press, 1984) 119.
[17] Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Seabury Press, 1979) Foreword.
[18] Edward Schillebeeckx, Interim Report on the books Jesus & Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 103.
[19] Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God (New York: Crossroad, 1990), xvi.
[20] Schillebeeckx, Church, xvii.
[21] Schillebeeckx, Church, 7.
[22] Schillebeeckx, Church, 10.
[23] Schillebeeckx, Church, 12.
[24] Edward Schillebeeckx, God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 100.
[25] Schillebeeckx, Church, 12-13.
[26] Schillebeeckx, Church, 11-12.
[27] Schillebeeckx, Church, 11.
[28] Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 91.
[29] Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 45.
[30] Schillebeeckx, Church, 28.
[31] Edward Schillebeeckx, "Experience and Faith," Christlicher Glaube in Moderner Gesellschaft, XXIV, 3.
[32] Edward Schillebeeckx, "Experience and Faith," Christlicher Glaube in Moderner Gesellschaft, XXIV, 9.
[33] Edward Schillebeeckx, "Five Questions Facing the Church Today," The Crucial Questions: On Problems Facing the Church Today, ed. by Frank Fehmers (New York: Newman Press, 1969), 54.
[34] Schillebeeckx, Church, xvii.
[35] Schillebeeckx, Church, 13.
[36] Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus in our Western Culture (London: SCM Press, 1987), 32.
[37] Schillebeeckx, Church, 11.
[38] Schillebeeckx, Church, 12.
[39] Schillebeeckx, Church, 26.
[40] Schillebeeckx, Church, 51.
[41] Schillebeeckx, Church, 27.
[42] Schillebeeckx, Church, 72.
[43] Schillebeeckx, Church, 73-74.
[44] Schillebeeckx, Church,166-167.
[45] Schillebeeckx, Church, 179.
[46] Schillebeeckx, Church, 62.
[47] Schillebeeckx, Church, 102.
[48] Schillebeeckx, Church, 164-165.
[49] Schillebeeckx, Church, 165.
[50] Schillebeeckx, Church, 26-27.
[51] Schillebeeckx, Church, 102 ff.
[52] Schillebeeckx, Church, 43.
[53] Schillebeeckx, Church, 179.
[54] Schillebeeckx, Church, 179.
[55] Schillebeeckx, Church, 180.
[56] Schillebeeckx, Church, 165-166.
[57] Schillebeeckx, Church, 9.
[58] Schillebeeckx, Church, 176.
[59] Schillebeeckx, Church, 168.
[60] Schillebeeckx, Church, 8.
[61] Schillebeeckx, Church, 9.
[62] Edward Schillebeeckx, God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 134.
[63] Schillebeeckx, God Among Us, 135.
[64] Schillebeeckx, God Among Us,136.
[65] Schillebeeckx, Interim, 103.
[66] Schillebeeckx, Church, 53.
[67] Schillebeeckx, Church, 55.
[68] Schillebeeckx, Church, xvi.
[69] Schillebeeckx, Jesus, Foreword.
[70] Schoof, The Schillebeeckx Case, 119.
[71] Schillebeeckx, Church, 51.
[72] Schillebeeckx, Church, 81.
[73] Schillebeeckx, Interim, 140.
[74] Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 136.
[75] Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 102.
[76] Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 154.
[77] Schillebeeckx, Interim, 50.
[78] Schillebeeckx, Interim, 50.
[79] Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 140.
[80] Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 142.
[81] Schillebeeckx, Jesus in our Western Culture, 3.
[82] Schillebeeckx, Jesus in our Western Culture, 2.
[83] Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, 13ff.
[84] Schillebeeckx, Interim, 5.
[85] Edit. Ted Schoof, The Schillebeeckx Case, 119.