Lehrsätze on Christology by Karl Rahner

Lehrsätze on Christology by Karl Rahner
From Chapters I-V of Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch
By Karl Rahner and Wilhelm Thüsing
Correlated with Rahner’s Grundkurs des Glaubens
By Mark F. Fischer, St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo, [email protected]
In the winter semester of 1970-71, Karl Rahner was invited to give a lecture series
on Christology at the University of Münster. It was the first time in his life that he had
treated Christology as a lecture series within the normal curriculum of theology.1 He did
so in cooperation with Wilhelm Thüsing, Professor of New Testament in Münster. The
collaboration was published in 1972 as Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch.2
Later, as Rahner prepared for the 1976 publication of his Grundkurs des
Glaubens, he inserted the Christology texts he had created in cooperation with Thüsing.
The Grundkurs or Foundations of Christian Faith had begun more than a decade earlier
as a lecture series entitled “Introduction to the Idea of Christianity” at the University of
Munich (1964-66). The lectures were expanded and presented again at the University of
Münster (1968-69). In the middle 1970s, Rahner edited these lectures for publication.
He chose not simply to publish the Christological portions of the older lectures on the
topic “Introduction to the Idea of Christianity.” Instead he inserted the new Christology
based on Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch.
The five chapters of that work were divided into 35 Lehrsätze or propositions.
However, when Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch was published in the USA as
A New Christology (1980),3 Rahner’s five chapters were not translated. In their place
appeared three chapters by Rahner,4 but not from the Rahner- Thüsing Christologie. One
1
Nikolaus Schwerdtfeger and Albert Raffelt, “Editionsbericht” to Karl Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 26:
Grundkurs des Glaubens: Studien zum Begriff des Christentums (Zürich and Düsseldorf: Benziger Verlag,
1999; and Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Herder, 1999), p. xxii.
2
Karl Rahner and Wilhelm Thüsing, Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch. Arbeitsgrundlagen für
eine interdisciplinäre Vorlesung. Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 55 (Freiburg, Basel, and Vienna: Herder,
1972).
3
Karl Rahner and Wilhelm Thüsing, A New Christology, translated by David Smith and Verdant Green
(New York: Seabury Press, 1980).
4
The sources of the German originals for the three chapters by Rahner in A New Christology are not
identified. Using the Rahner Bibliograhy published by the University of Freiburg (but without having
consulted the originals), I have made the following conjectures: Chapter 1, “Christology Today,” was first
published as “Kleine Anmerkungen zur systematischen Christologie heute,” in Josef Blank and Gotthold
Hasenhüttl (editors), Glaube an Jesus Christus: Neue Beiträge zur Christologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos,
1980), pp. 134-144. Chapter 2, “The Provenance of the Church in the History of Salvation from the Death
and Resurrection of Jesus,” was originally published as “Heilsgeschichtliche Herkunft der Kirche von Tod
und Auferstehung Jesu,” in Johann Reikerstorfer (editor), Zeit des Geistes: Zur heilsgeschichtlichen
Herkunft der Kirche (Vienna: Dom-Verlag, 1977), pp. 11-26. Chapter 3, “The Death of Jesus and the
Finality of Revelation,” was originally published as “Tod Jesu und Abgeschlossenheit der Offenbarung,” in
Pluralisme et oecuménisme en recherches théologiques: Mélanges offerts au R. P. Dockx, O.P. (Gembloux
and Paris: Duculot, 1976 (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, vol. 43)), pp. 263-272.
1
may conjecture that the publisher did not want to publish the five chapters because their
content had already appeared in Foundations of Christian Faith.
All but two of the 35 Lehrsätze from Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch
appear in Foundations of Christian Faith. In that work, however, the 35 Lehrsätze are
not numbered or referred to as “propositions.” They are simply incorporated in the text.
Many of the Lehrsätze that appear in the Foundations have been altered in small ways,
but they are easily recognizable and are almost word-for-word quotations from
Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch.
In what follows, I have indicated the number of each Lehrsatz from Rahner’s five
chapters of Christologie – systematich und exegetisch, and then identified its place in
Foundations of Christian Faith, following William V. Dych’s translation. The Lehrsätze
are often lengthy, so I have typed the first sentence of the Lehrsatz and the last sentence,
indicating the missing sentences by ellipses. The ellipses do not mean that the text in the
Foundations has left out portions of the Lehrsatz from Christologie – systematisch und
exegetisch, but only that my typescript is incomplete. Two Lehrsätze (nos. 5 & 6)
indicate that a theme will be explored more fully in another section of the Christology.
These two are not found in the Foundations, so I have translated them myself.
Christologie, systematisch und exegetisch
I. Zur Phänomenologie unseres Verhältnisses zu Jesus Christus
Lehrsatz:
1. “To begin with the relationship which a believing Christian actually has to Jesus Christ is a human
starting point for Christology, and therefore it is also a legitimate starting point from the viewpoint of
fundamental theology” (VI.2.A, Foundations p. 203). “This relationship to Jesus Christ which we are
reflecting upon as something which actually exists is meant in the sense in which it is in fact
understood and lived in the Christian Churches. A certain amount of leeway in delineating the nature
of this relationship is of no consequence for our reflection upon it, presupposing only that it is
distinguished from a merely historical or a merely ‘human’ relationship to Jesus as can be had by
anyone who has heard tell of Jesus of Nazareth” (VI.2.A, Foundations p. 204).
2. “In describing this Christian relationship, in the first instance at least we do not have to distinguish
between what Jesus is in the faith of a Christian ‘in himself,’ and what he ‘means for us.’ For in their
unity these two aspects cannot be completely separated from each other” (VI.2.A, Foundations, p.
204).
3. “This relationship to Jesus Christ is present in and through the ‘faith’ that in the encounter with him in
the unity and totality of his word, his life and his victorious death the all-encompassing and allpervasive mystery of reality as a whole and of each individual life, the mystery which we call God, ‘is
present’ for our salvation” . . . The question has to take into account the salvific nature of all history
and of the activity for which all men are responsible in a common history of salvation which is still
going on” (VI.2.B, Foundations, p. 204-5).
4. “We are calling this relationship absolute because we are dealing with the definitive salvation of the
whole person and of the human race, and not with a particular situation of man . . . . Wherever this
relationship is not actualized in history and interpreted as absolute, real explicit Christianity ceases to
exist” (VI.2.B, Foundations, p. 205).
5. “There are already many Christologies in the New Testament. All, however, are one in the relatedness
of the faithful to Jesus as the absolute, eschatological mediator of salvation” (Christologie, p. 19;
Fischer translation).
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6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
“The grounds in human existence for the possibility of such a unique relationship to another human
being are to be explicitly to be said and articulated in a ‘transcendental Christology’” (Christologie, p.
19; Fischer translation).
“In this relationship to Jesus Christ a person grasps the absolute saviour in Jesus and makes him the
mediation of his immediacy to God in his own self, and when it is actualized and understood
adequately it contains in itself its own validation before the tribunal of man’s existence, his conscience
and his intellectual honesty . . . . man always exists within the hoped-for and actually present circle of
this relationship, whether this is known explicitly or not, whether it is accepted or rejected in freedom,
and whether the apologist and preacher of his relationship succeeds or not in making clear to another
that this relationship does exist” (VI.2.C, Foundations, p. 206).
Christologie, systematisch und exegetisch
II. Transzendentale Christologie
“The following objections do not invalidate the necessary role of a transcendental Christology . . . . It
[such a Christology] cannot appear clearly and explicitly until, on the one hand, man has found this
historical and self-validating relationship to Jesus Christ, and, on the other hand, until he has reached
the historical era of transcendental anthropology and of transcendental reflection upon his historical
nature, and may no longer forget it” (VI.3.A, Foundations, pp. 206-07).
“An explicit transcendental Christology is also necessary, a Christology which asks about the a priori
possibilities in man which make the coming of the message of Christ possible . . . . Its absence in the
traditional theology runs the risk that the assertions of traditional theology will be deemed simply a
mythological (in the pejorative sense) overlay on historical events, or that we shall have no criterion by
means of which we are able to distinguish in the traditional Christology between a genuine reality of
faith and an interpretation of it which is no longer capable of mediating the content of faith to us
today” (VI.3.B, Foundations, pp. 207-08).
“A ‘transcendental Christology’ presupposes an understanding of the relationship of mutual
conditioning and mediation in human existence between what is transcendentally necessary and what
is concretely and contingently historical . . . . Their relationship to each other [i.e., the transcendental
and the historical element in human existence] has itself an open history, and the historical element
signifies at the same time both what has come down historically and what lies ahead in the future”
(VI.3.C, Foundations, p. 208).
“A transcendental Christology does not necessarily have to go into the question whether the orientation
of man which it appeals to and interprets, an inescapable orientation in hope towards an absolute
saviour in history, is grounded only in his nature as elevated by the ‘grace’ of God’s selfcommunication, or is already grounded in his spiritual subjectivity by itself as a limit-idea. The latter
could be true insofar as this spiritual subjectivity grounds a dialogical relationship to God and hence
possibly allows the hope for God’s final and definitive offer of himself to arise” (VI.3.C, Foundations,
p. 208).
“Given this presupposition we can say: a transcendental Christology takes its starting point in the
experiences which man always and inescapably has . . . . From this starting point of transcendental
Christology there also follows one factor in solving the problem of verification in Christology”
(VI.3.D, Foundations, p. 209).
“The procedure of transcendental Christology consists more precisely in the following . . . . We must
also reflect later upon the fact that the ‘absolute’ saviour, as understood in this way in his quasisacramental causality as sign, actually has by this very fact the soteriological efficacy which church
doctrine asserts of the destiny of Jesus, presupposing that this redemption is not misunderstood in a
mythological way as causing some change of mind on God’s part” (VI.3.D, Foundations, pp. 209-11).
“A transcendental Christology as such cannot presume for itself the task and the possibility of saying
that the absolute saviour, whom radical hope in God himself as the absolute future searches for in
history, is to be found there, and that he has been found precisely in Jesus of Nazareth. . . .
Transcendental Christology allows one to search for, and in his search to understand, what he has
already found in Jesus of Nazareth” (VI.3.D, Foundations, pp. 211-12).
Christologie, systematisch und exegetisch
III. Zur (theologisch verstandenen) Geschichte des Lebens
und Todes des vorösterlichen Jesus
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15. “First, the faith which would grasp in Jesus the absolute saviour cannot be uninterested a priori in the
history of Jesus before the resurrection and in his self-understanding. . . . Later we shall treat separately
the specific nature of the historical knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus which by the nature of the
case is unique” (VI.5(b).1, Foundations, pp. 235-36).
16. “Secondly, taking into account the legitimate difference between that a subject is precisely as subject,
and not as a mere thing, and how and to what extent a subject is capable of verbal self-reflection . . .
we can say on the one hand that the self-understanding of the pre-resurrection Jesus may not contradict
in an historical sense the Christian understanding of his person and his salvific significance . . . . It is
not however prejudiced in favor of a negative or a minimalistic understanding of Jesus’ selfunderstanding before the resurrection” (VI.5(b).1, Foundations, pp. 236).
17. “What follows, then, can be presented without hesitation as elements in our historical knowledge of
Jesus . . . . From a historical point of view a great deal has to be left open in an inquiry about the preresurrection Jesus: . . . and whether and in what sense he intended this [the Church as a new Israel]
and institutionalized it” (VI.5(c).2, Foundations, pp. 247-49).
18. “Jesus had a human self-consciousness which may not be identified in a ‘monophysitic’ way with the
consciousness of the divine Logos . . . . Like every other human consciousness, the human selfconsciousness of Jesus stood at a created distance from God in freedom, in obedience and in worship”
(VI.5(d).1, Foundations, p. 249).
19. “Besides this, the difference between the human self-consciousness and God, which forbids us to
understand this self-consciousness as a double of the divine consciousness, is shown by the fact that . .
. . It [the self-consciousness of Jesus] is threatened by ultimate crises of self-identity, although once
again they remain encompassed by the consciousness that even they are hidden in the will of the
‘Father,’ but they are not for this reason any less acute” (VI.5(d).1, Foundations, p. 249).
20. “Jesus objectified and verbalized his unique relationship to God for himself and for his listeners by
means of what we usually call apocalyptic . . . . Only someone who thinks in a false and ahistorical
existentialism that he is able to decide for or against God beyond time and history can be surprised at
this objectification of the situation of a salvific decision, although he himself has to and may objectify
it in a somewhat different way corresponding to his own experience” (VI.5(d).2, Foundations, pp. 24950).
21. “Jesus, then, proclaimed the imminence of ‘God’s kingdom’ as the ‘now’ present situation of an
absolute decision for or against salvation . . . . In any case Jesus’ proclamation of that closeness of
God’s kingdom which is present for the first time with him as the situation of our decision is also true
for us (in spite of our uncertain calculation of a lengthy history of mankind still ahead) insofar as, . . .
this situation of salvation is always of very short duration for the individual person, who can never lose
himself in the crowd of all mankind” (VI.5(d).3, Foundations, pp. 250-51).
22. “The closeness of God’s kingdom, which did not always exist but does ‘now’ and in a new presence as
the victorious situation of man’s salvation, a situation of radical conversion or metanoia, is for the preresurrection Jesus already inseparably connected with his person . . . . At least in this sense the preresurrection Jesus already knew himself to be the absolute and unsurpassable saviour” (VI.5(d).4,
Foundations, pp. 251-54).
23. “The pre-resurrection Jesus went to meet his death freely and, on the level of his explicit
consciousness, deemed it at least the fate of a prophet . . . . Hence this presupposes, in other words, that
this ‘expiatory sacrifice’ itself is interpreted in a theologically correct way and is not misinterpreted as
‘changing the mind’ of an angry God” (VI.5(e), Foundations, pp. 254-55).
Christologie, systematisch und exegetisch
IV. Die Theologie des Todes und der Auferstehung Jesu
24. “The death and resurrection of Jesus can be understood only if the intrinsic relationship of the realities
and their unity are kept clearly in view . . . . From this perspective, if the fate of Jesus has any
soteriological significance at all, this significance can be situated neither in the death nor in the
resurrection taken separately, but can only be illuminated now from the one and now from the other
aspect of this single event” (VI.6(b).1, Foundations, p. 266).
25. “We miss the meaning of ‘resurrection’ in general and also of the resurrection of Jesus to begin with if
our original preconception is the notion of a resuscitation of a physical, material body . . . . This is the
point we shall take up next” (VI.6(b).2, Foundations, pp. 266-68).
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26. “An act of hope in one’s own resurrection is something which takes place in every person by
transcendental necessity either in the mode of free acceptance or of free rejection . . . . If this is the
only legitimate alternative [i.e., eschatological hope or fulfilled hope], and hence if what is appropriate
for man is either the promise which is still simply outstanding, or life within a hope which has already
experienced fulfillment, then he does not need to be skeptical and close himself to the witness of others
that Jesus lives, that he is risen” (VI.6(c).1, Foundations, p. 268-69).
27. “There is faith in the resurrection of Jesus, and this indeed is a unique fact . . . . Anyone who denies the
resurrection of Jesus (unless he has misunderstood it to begin with and then correctly rejects this
misunderstanding) would then have to ask himself this question – that is, he would have to answer the
question why the error he is asserting does not occur more frequently, even thought the causes it
presupposes are continually present” (VI.6(d).1, Foundations, p. 274).
28. “From the New Testament on, Christian doctrinal tradition says correctly that with regard to faith in
the resurrection of Jesus all of us are and remain dependent on the testimony of predetermined
witnesses who ‘saw’ the risen Lord, and that we could believe in the resurrection of Jesus only because
of this apostolic witness and in dependence on it. . . . It could be clarified still further if the original
unity and identity of structure between the process of revelation and the process of faith in the
revelation could be presented in more detail than is possible here” (VI.6(d).2, Foundations, pp. 274-6).
29. “Presupposing what was said up to this point, we must now analyze the apostolic witness itself to show
the credibility of this witness to the ‘resurrection’ of Jesus . . . . If this message is rejected in such a
way that this also denies in unacknowledged despair the transcendental hope in resurrection, whether
this is admitted or not, then this rejection of a contingent even, which cannot be deduced a priori and
therefore can easily be doubted, becomes a rejection which is an act against one’s very own existence,
whether one intends it to be or not, and whether one knows it reflexively or not” (VI.6(e).1,
Foundations, pp. 276-78).
30. “Bearing in mind once again the preliminary remarks we made at the beginning of this sixth section of
chapter six [i.e., Lehrsatz 24], we must now articulate the ‘original’ theology of the resurrection, that
is, we must answer the question: What is really experienced, witnessed and believed with the
resurrection of this Jesus? . . . . We may not proceed in this way here especially because according to
the New Testament the experienced resurrection contributed to the content of the interpretation of the
essence of the person and the work of Jesus, and was not merely the divine confirmation of a
knowledge already clearly expressed by Jesus before the resurrection” (VI.6(f), Foundations, p. 279).
30a. “This Jesus with his concrete claim and his history is experienced in the resurrection experience
as of permanent validity and as accepted by God . . . . He [Jesus] calls this closeness the coming and
the arrival of God’s kingdom, which forces a person to decide explicitly whether or not he accepts this
God who has come so close” (VI.6(f).1, Foundations, p. 279).
30b. “By the resurrection, then, Jesus is vindicated as the absolute saviour . . . . He is of eternal validity
and he is experienced in this eternal validity. In this sense in any case he is the ‘absolute saviour’”
(VI.6(f).1, Foundations, p. 280).
30c. “It is this about him that late New Testament theology and the Christology of the church want to
express . . . . This point of departure resolves from the outset the dilemma between a ‘functional’ and
an ‘essential’ Christology by showing it to be a pseudo-problem. It also opens our ears to a solution to
the problem of verification in Christology because it is in fact a unity, and one successfully
experienced as such, between a transcendental experience, that is, transcendental Christology and the
transcendental hope in resurrection, and the historical experience which corresponds to it” (VI.6(f).2,
Foundations, pp. 280-82).
31. (a) “At least in the ‘late’ New Testament soteriological Christology a redemptive significance is
acknowledged for the death of Jesus: it blots out our sinfulness before God and establishes a salvific
relationship between God and man . . . . Finally, going beyond the two points just mentioned [i.e., the
meaning of sacrifice and Jesus’ understanding of his death as an expiatory sacrifice], the question has
to be asked whether we can try to acquire from the resurrection of Jesus an adequate understanding of
the salvific significance of his death, an understanding which clarifies the meaning as well as the limits
of the soteriological statements about the death of Jesus which we find perhaps on the lips of Jesus,
and certainly in later New Testament soteriology” (VI.6(g).1, Foundations, pp. 282-83).
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31b. “It may perhaps be presupposed from the mentality of the Old and New Testament scriptures, as
well as from man’s self-understanding in general, that human history is a single history, and that the
destiny of one person has significance for other others, however, the unity of this history and the
solidarity of mankind might be explained further and in more detail . . . . This [the possibility of
different soteriological models] is true especially because its presuppositions (for example, the
essential unity of history and the solidarity of all mankind) are indeed realized unthematically in the
original experience of revelation, but they are not themselves made clearly thematic, and hence they
can be interpreted in a variety of ways” (VI.6(g).2, Foundations, pp. 283-85).
Christologie, systematisch und exegetisch
V. Inhalt, bleibende Gültigkeit, Grenzen
der klassischen Christologie und Soteriologie.
Neue orthodoxe Möglichkeiten einer soteriologischen Christologie
32. (a-g) “The official Christology of the church is a straightforward descending Christology which
develops the basic assertion: God in his Logos becomes man . . . . And conversely: because faith’s
experience of the unique presence of Jesus requires such an interchange of predicates, it justifies the
doctrine of the hypostatic union as its indispensable presupposition, and as a defense of the legitimacy
of the titles of majesty which are already applied to Jesus in the New Testament” (VI.7(a)2,
Foundations, pp. 286-88).
32h. “The classical soteriology is hardly developed beyond the statement of the New Testament, if
indeed it really even does justice to them at all . . . . It [the satisfaction theory] also appears on the
periphery of official church statements, but the extraordinary magisterium of the church did not take a
position on it in any detailed way” (VI.7(a)3, Foundations, p. 288).
33. “The legitimacy and the permanent validity of the classical Christology lies, first of al all negatively, in
the fact that when it is presupposed it prevents Jesus unambiguously from being reduced merely to
someone in a life of prophets, religious geniuses and reformers . . . . His recognition of this [that the
teaching of the Church is not absolute] does not banish him from the public discourse of the church
because the official teaching of the church must also be interpreted and brought into contact with
contemporary ways of thinking, and this cannot be done by merely repeating this official teaching”
(VI.7(b), Foundations, pp. 288-89).
34. “It does not contradict the character of an absolutely binding doctrine of the church to call attention to
the limits which accompany a particular dogmatic statement” (VI.7(c), Foundations, p. 289).
34a. “In earlier times which thought more ‘mythologically’ in their horizon of understanding, a merely
descending doctrine of the Incarnation might more easily have been sufficient by itself than it is today.
. . . What is still left and accepted of the humanity understood as the livery and body of God appears as
pure accommodation and condescension on God’s part for our benefit” (VI.7(c)1, Foundations, pp.
289-90).
34b. “When the orthodox descending Christology of the Incarnation says that this Jesus ‘is’ God, this
is an abiding truth of the faith if the statement is understood correctly. . . . We should admit this and in
pastoral matters take account of the fact that not everyone who has problems with the statement ‘Jesus
is God’ must for this reason be heterodox” (VI.7(c)2, Foundations, pp. 290-91).
34c. “Hence as presumed parallels to ‘is’ statements elsewhere in our everyday use of language, the
Christological ‘is’ formulas (for example, ‘the same’ person is God and man) are constantly in danger
of being interpreted falsely, a danger which flows from these parallels . . . . But it is an urgent necessity
that we broaden the horizons, the modes of expression and the different aspects for expressing the
ancient Christian dogmas” (VI.7(c)2, Foundations, p. 291).
34d. “One thing which remains very formal and indetermined in the traditional Christology is the point
of unity in the hypostatic union in the sense of the point which forms the unity between person and
natures, and which at the same time is the unity which is formed, namely, the ‘person’ of the Logos. . .
. Finally, there is the further point that it is only with great difficulty or at most only indirectly that
either ‘hypostasis’ or ‘person’ as the point of unity brings out in a clear and intelligible way the salvific
significance of this unity ‘for us’” (VI.7(c)3, Foundations, p. 292).
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34e. “In its explicit formulation the classical Christology of the Incarnation does not give expression in
a clear and immediate way to the soteriological significance of the Christ event. . . . Then the selected
formulations could help to avoid more easily a monophysitic and hence a mythological
misunderstanding” (VI.7(c), Foundations, pp. 292-93).
35. (a). “The approaches to Christology which are found in the Christological conceptions of the New
Testament and which are relevant for contemporary theology merit renewed attention” (VI.8,
Foundations, p. 293).
(35b). “We would have to aim for a closer unity between fundamental theology and dogmatic theology
in our Christology just as much as we do for fundamental theology and dogmatics in general. In doing
so we would have to bring in again and develop the reflections on ‘transcendental Christology’ which
were indicated only in a very abstract and formal way in the third section of this chapter, and therefore
they should be expanded somewhat at this point” (VI.8, Foundations, p. 293).
(35b cont.). “Salvation and faith as a total event of the single, whole person cannot be constructed
completely by mere reflection after the manner of an individual science . . . . It is faith, not reflection,
which responds to this claim with an absolute and exclusive ‘yes’” (VI.8(a)1, Foundations, pp. 294-5).
(35b cont.). “From what has been said it follows further that, besides what always and hence today too
has to be said by way of the traditional grounding of the faith, Christology in fundamental theology
today can in three ways turn in a kind of ‘appeal’ to this global understanding of existence which is
already ‘Christian’ because of antecedent grace . . . . With respect to this we would simply have to ask
where else this searching Christology could find what it is searching for, and what it affirms at least as
a hope for the future, and ask whether Jesus and the faith of his community does not justify an act of
faith that what is in any case being sought is found in him” (VI.8(a)2, Foundations, p. 295).
(35b.aa). “In this appeal what is said in Matt.25 would have to be taken seriously and interpreted
radically, and indeed from ‘below,’ from the concrete love of neighbor, and not merely from ‘above.’ .
. . . Consequently, in the single human race the God-Man makes possible the absoluteness of the love
for a concrete individual” (VI.8(a)3, Foundations, pp. 295-96.
(35b.bb). “However much radical significance the death of Jesus has for salvation, the average sermon
looks too much for a particular, categorical event which takes place on the world’s stage alongside
many other events . . . . But this [the acceptance of a hoped-for death] is the case only if this real
dialectic is ‘subsumed’ by the fact that it is the very reality of something which is the ultimate ground
of this dialectic [between our powerlessness before death and our desire to freely dispose of
ourselves]” (VI.8(a)4, Foundations, pp. 296-7).
(35b.cc). “Man hopes, and he goes to meet his future both making plans and at the same time opening
himself to the incalculable. . . . We can summarize the content of these three appeals of Christology
within fundamental theology by saying that man is searching for the absolute saviour, and he affirms at
least unthematically his past or future coming in every total act of his existence which is finalized by
grace towards the immediacy of God” (VI.8(a)5, Foundations, pp. 297-98).
(35c). “We have called attention frequently up to now to the necessity of an ascending Christology or
a Christology ‘from below.’ Contemporary Christology has to devote itself to this task more
intensively. Such a Christology could proceed approximately in the following steps” (VI.8(b),
Foundations, p. 298).
(35c.aa). “The insight can be developed in ‘transcendental Christology’ that man is a being with a
desiderium naturale in visionem beatificam, that is, a ‘natural’ desire for the beatific vision of God. . . .
Moreover, since God’s offer can be actualized only in and through a free acct of God, if it is to find its
irreversible actualization and validity, man must expect and look for this offer within this historical
dimension” (VI.8(b)1, Foundation, p. 298).
(35c.bb). “From this perspective we can come to the idea of an ‘absolute event of salvation’ and of an
‘absolute saviour,’ which are two aspects of one and the same event. . . . We are presupposition besides
that this self-understanding is not only witnessed to as being credible, but also that Jesus himself
reaches the final and definitive moment of his function as mediator of salvation, and hence reaches
fulfillment” (VI.8(b)2, Foundations, pp. 298-99).
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(35c.cc). “Now the absolute event of salvation and the absolute mediation of salvation by a man mean
exactly the same thing as church doctrine expresses as Incarnation and hypostatic union . . . . This
gives us an initial approach towards a Christology ‘from below’ which is objectively identical with the
church’s classical Christology ‘from above,’ and which at the same time can also clarify the unity
between incarnational, essential Christology and soteriological, functional Christology” (VI.8(b)3,
Foundations, pp. 299-301).
(35d). “In a new orthodox Christology we may without any qualms reckon with the possibility of a
‘consciousness Christology’ alongside the classical Christology. . . . This ontological Christology
would always be obliged in the light of ontic Christology to push its own statements to their ultimate
and radical meaning, but it could itself legitimately transpose the content of ontic Christology and lead
to a better understanding of these ontic statements” (VI.8(c)1, Foundations, pp. 302-04).
(35e). “The new Christology will have to treat the question of the pre-existence of Christ more
explicitly and more cautiously than has been the case up to now . . . . Nor does this lead to the
difficulties which the questioning and the doubts about the pre-existence today apparently want to
avoid” (VI.8(c)2, Foundations, pp. 304-05).
(35f). “The new orthodox Christology would have to throw light on the grain of truth which is found
in the heretical death-of-God theology . . . . The death of Jesus belongs to God’s self-expression”
(VI.8(c)3, Foundations, p. 305).
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