No Other Name?

Schillebeeckx Part II

mwstalnaker — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:06:02 +0000

Schillebeeckx inevitably began to wrestle with the radically historical character of human existence and hence the necessity of plural expressions of the one Christian faith, finally concluding that power struggles and manipulation are inevitable in the movement of any human tradition. He thus undertook an “historical method of correlation,” whereby the data of Christian doctrines are mediated through a concern for historical and social context of human existence. In his work Church: The Human Story of God, Schillebeeckx thus argued, “…as a social and cultural phenomenon and system of providing meaning, Christianity, too, is one religion alongside other religions.” As such, the movement of God in history must be correlated with Christianity as much as any other religion. “Revelation,” argued Schillebeeckx, as the disclosure of the mystery of God, occurs within human history but cannot be limited to or identified with historically conditioned human experience. Though God shows God-self through history, God is “transcendent infinity” and cannot be retained in any human category without remainder. Thus in this context, all of history must be mined for the presence of God and correlated with knowledge garnered from the Christian doctrines. This turn toward historicity ultimately lifted the negative veil of religious pluralism, laying the second stone upon which Schillebeeckx stood in his move toward theology of religions.

Looking to the absolute claims of Christianity, Schillebeeckx contested that “Over against such absoluteness stand hard historical facts.” The history of human kind shows a collection of ways of life, a “multi-colored offer of ways to salvation.” In order to disect this phenomenon, Schillebeeckx begins with the premise that all human experience has revelatory structure, and moves to claim that “In world history God brings about salvation through human mediation.” Ultimately, salvation for Schillebeeckx has nothing to do with belief, and everything to do with action and “human mediation.” Schillebeeckx understood the Christian claim to say that Jesus is universal savior, but not the absolute savior. That is, although God has been revealed definitively in Jesus, salvation remains a matter of enacting the grace of God revealed through Jesus in history as opposed to explicit belief in Jesus. Wherever good is done and evil resisted, God’s gracious presence is found. Therefore, God’s saving Spirit and mediation of grace may be encountered outside of the bounds of the Church and, by the same token, the Church may fail to live up to its mission to be the sacrament of salvation in the world. Thus, Schillebeeckx’s understanding of salvation may be understood as “anthropological” rather than “ecclesiological.” That is, God wills salvation for all of God’s creation and the presence and story of this salvation is narrated with human lives.

Ultimately for Schillebeeckx religions are limited and though human mediation of the grace of God is key, history operates in an eschatological direction. God, the ‘future of humanity’ transcends limited human efforts and can even redeem failures. While human communities may continue to make present in concrete ways the salvation of God (through justice and love, grace and liberation), final salvation lies beyond the bounds of human history and exceeds all expectations.

In Conclusion, for Schillebeeckx, the salvific character of non-Christian religions is not dependent on anonymously mediating the grace of God through Christ or “rays of truth.” Rather, salvation is dependent upon human action in the world – human action that reveals what Christianity has come to know as the grace of God. The God that Christians have come to understand as fully revealed through the history of Jesus Christ works toward “wholeness” in creation, moving creation toward eschatological fulfillment. In whatever historically, socially and linguistically conditioned manner non-Christian religions participate in the fulfillment of creation, they act salvifically.

Edward Schillebeeckx

mwstalnaker — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:08:44 +0000

Continuing the little series on Theology of Religion: enjoy some Schillebeeckx… your mom would approve. She told me.

Born a decade after Rahner, to a middle-class Flemish Catholic family in Antwerp, Edward Schillebeeckx began his theological formation as a Dominican in the late 1930s. Pursuing studies through World War II, Schillebeeckx completed his coursework with a year in Paris and continued his dissertation as he began his teaching career in Louvain in 1947.[22] Originally intending to write on nature and grace, he shifted focus after teaching a course on sacraments, ultimately competing a dissertation titled “The Sacramental Economy of Salvation” in 1951. Participating in Vatican Council II as a peritus, in 1965, at the closing of the council, Schillebeeckx was 51, nearly mid-career. His reaction to the council was nothing short of a complete transition – a re-imagining of himself as a theologian and ultimately the possibilities of religious dialogue.

In his early work as a dogmatic theologian, Schillebeeckx endeavored to express in contemporary terms the mystery of revelation that had been handed down in the Christian tradition. However, over a period of years in the later 1960s, Schillebeeckx developed a growing concern over the alienation of secularized society from Christian faith. Convinced that theologians had to address the fundamental skepticism regarding revelation, Schillebeeckx switched his method from dogmatics to theology and, rather than beginning with scripture or the doctrine of the church, began with concrete experience. Immersed in the study of secularization, the historicity of human consciousness, hermeneutics and critical theory, Schillebeeckx encountered Western culture’s emphasis on technology and progress toward the future – with its implicit claim that humans could manipulate nature and determine history – challenging that theologians had to find a new way to speak of God.[23]

Schillebeeckx thus moved to reject outright the “turn to the subject” of Karl Rahner and instead turned to history as the arena for God’s presence and activity. Finding solace with the political theology of the 1960’s, Schillebeeckx reworked basic convictions of nature and grace in terms of history and future, arguing that the same “living God” that empowered creation from the beginning and entrusted history to humankind remains the source of creative energy and future possibility for human history and all of creation.[24] This God is a God “toward humanity.” That is, the God who is the source of all, takes delight in the flourishing of creation, exists in solidarity with creation, and continues to hold open future possibilities in even the most dire historical situations, moving toward the ultimate eschatological fulfillment of creation. Ultimately for Schillebeeckx, God and salvation are concerned with human wholeness over/against brokenness and suffering. This doctrine of God began to lay the groundwork for Schillebeeckx’s emerging theology of religions.

Karl Rahner and the potential for salvation in non-Christian traditions Part II

mwstalnaker — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:29:24 +0000

Though Rahner participated in Vatican II, he was ultimately disappointed that the council shied away from the question of other religions as probable ways to salvation. Stating afterward that the “theological quality of non-Christain religions remains undefined.” In his subsequent essay, “Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions,” Rahner takes up the question, attempting to reconcile the two seemingly diametrically opposed Catholic doctrines: the necessity of Christian faith for salvation, and the Divine mandate that salvation is extended to all human beings.
Rahner maintains the argument that “Christianity understands itself as the absolute religion, intended for all men, which cannot recognize any other religion besides itself as of equal right.” However, as not all persons have heard of Christianity, there seemed to Rahner to be a limit to Christian claims about the universal scope of God’s saving will. Utilizing the concepts of Vorgriff and “supernatural existential” (graced nature), Rahner argued that grace must be embodied, asserting that God’s presence must take some sort of material shape. Among the many ‘bodies’ that God’s presence can assume in history, one of the foremost and effective, according to Rahner, will be the religions of the world. Just as Christians need grace embodied, so do Buddhists and Hindus, and they find this in their respective religions. Ultimately, Rahner concludes that any religion might bear traces of Divine grace. In the quest for truth, in the experience of the presence of God, in selfless acts of love, people of other faiths might turn out to be what Rahner terms “anonymous Christians” and, though not members of any church, might still receive Divine grace. Rahner argued that “until the moment when the gospel enters into the historical situation of an individual, a non-Christian religion… does not merely contain elements of a natural knowledge of God… it contains also supernatural elements arising out of the grace which is given to men as a gratuitous gift on account of Christ.” It is important to note, however, that though persons of other religious traditions can know God through the apprehension of infinite being in all human knowledge (Vorgriff) and their orientation toward grace as it is embodied in their tradition, Rahner still asserts that the Christian gospel is the normative understanding of grace in history. Grace as it is apprehended in other religions is only effective “until the moment when the gospel enters into the historical situation of an individual.”
Ultimately, Rahner makes huge advances in Catholic theology of religions, arguing that other religions are truly valid and useful means to attain knowledge of God. Rahner goes so far as to conclude that the non-Christian religions can be “a positive means of gaining the right relationship to God and thus for the attaining of salvation, a means which is therefore positively included in God’s plan of salvation.” Hearing a proclamation of the gospel does not simply turn someone “abandoned by God” into a Christian, but rather turns an “anonymous Christian,” or someone who participates in the truth of Christian understanding of grace through their particular faith, into someone “who now also knows about his Christian belief and the depths of faith which is given a social form in the Church.” However, in the midst of this declaration, Rahner also restates the exclusivist assumption that salvation is only possible with “Christ,” reaffirming the historical importance of the Christian Church. That is, the grace mediated through other religions is the grace of God in Christ, which permeates all of history and the understanding garnered through these religions is ultimately a dim understanding of Christ. Thus, the validity of non-Christian religion is based upon the non-option of the revelation of Jesus Christ. That is, once the option of Christianity is available, these religions lose their validity and persons are expected to recognize the superiority of the Christian faith in embodying the grace of God in history. For Rahner then, though non-Christain traditions may have some salvific value in their embodiment of the grace of God, the world’s religions do not enjoy theological autonomy.

Karl Rahner and the potential for salvation in non-Christian religions Part I

mwstalnaker — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:27:44 +0000

So I have been working through some material on Theology of Religions in preparation for my senior project, and thought I might post some here. Perhaps this could turn into a series on different views on Theology of Religion / Theology of Religious History / Comparative Theology – whatever. Enjoy some Karl Rahner

P.S. Is there any way to allow my footnotes to copy onto wordpress, or do I just have to cut and paste all of them?

Arguably the most widely read and influential Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Rahner was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1904 and schooled in philosophy and theology in the Jesuit institutions of Austria, Germany, and Holland in the 1930’s. Planning to teach philosophy, he enrolled at the University of Freiburg, where he undertook Thomist studies with the Catholic faculty as well as attended Martin Heidegger’s seminars. Rahner thus became a theologian who mediated theological inquiry through philosophical categories. His later method in theology of religion springs from two early, inter-related affirmations: the Vorgriff and the “supernatural existential.”

In his first work, Spirit in the World (1939), Rahner accepted the turn to he subject in twentieth century metaphysics. Pulling from the Kantian influenced philosophical work of Joseph Marechal and the existential ontology of Martin Heidegger, Rahner argued that the scope of human transcendence in knowledge is unbounded. Using the term “horizon,” Rahner showed that in human performance, “being itself” is revealed in dim, unreflexive knowledge of God (Vorgriff auf esse – literally “pre-apprehension of being”). That is, in every human act of knowing and willing there is a pre-apprehension of “infinite being,” or God. However, God is never the direct object of knowledge (as say, a table or chair), but rather remains concealed. Rahner argued that when the mind knows some particular object or wills a value it never merely knows or chooses that value, but rather sees beyond it to the whole of being and therefore, God. The important aspect here is that knowledge of God can be garnered in the human sphere and every person has the potential to know God.

In a Second step toward theology of religion, Rahner developed the closely related idea of “supernatural existential,” or humankind’s existential orientation toward grace. In contrast to the Catholic doctrine of “extrincism” which contests that grace comes completely unexpected from outside the human sphere (nature and grace are distinct), Rahner argues that grace is the dynamic, personal self-communication of God for which humans are created. This self-communication of God suggests nature’s open readiness for grace. Thus in nature there is a universal experience of grace – or at least of grace offered. Rahner goes so far as to conclude that nature itself is “graced.” Ultimately, Rahner posits the theological premise drawn from scripture that God communicates God’s self as Spirit, or light, or love, or grace to all humankind, every single person, for his or her salvation. Thus Rahner concludes:

Theology has been too long… bedeviled by the unavowed supposition that grace would no longer be grace if it were too generously distributed by the love of God! Our whole spiritual life is lived in the realm of the salvific will of God, of… prevenient grace,… an element within… consciousness… which remains anonymous as long as it is not interpreted from without by the message of faith. Even when [one] does “know” it,… [one] always lives consciously in the presence of the God of eternal life.

It is on the basis of these two early premises that Rahner attempts to tackle the post-Vatican II question of salvation in non-Christian religious traditions.

Paul Knitter on “State of Belief”

mwstalnaker — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:57:11 +0000

Hear Paul Knitter interviewed about his new book on the show “State of Belief”
He gets a little into engaged Buddhism.

http://stateofbelief.com/show-archive/205-october-24-25-2009

A Review of Rodney Stark’s “Discovering God”

mwstalnaker — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:56:12 +0000

Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief. Rodney Stark. New York: Harper Collins, 2007. 447p.
Rodney Stark’s work Discovering God emerges amidst a general upsurge of interest in a topic that has long provoked scholarly inquiry – namely, comparative religious study. However, Stark claims that the “entire body of recent work is remarkably inferior” (1). Indeed, he contends, “so few authors could retain their militant atheism,” that they have missed the crucial question of “why there is so much similarity between religions.” Citing Emile Durkheim and James Frazer as examples, Stark exclaims that these credentialed scholars have failed to address the possibility that similarities in religious developments “may testify that authentic revelations underlie many of the major faiths” (3). In contrast, Stark introduces the principle of Divine accommodation, which as he contends, “provides a truly remarkable key for completely reappraising the origins and history of religions.” Ultimately, Stark intends to provide for the option that “God was there all along,” revealing “himself” within the limited capacity of humans to understand. As such, Stark asserts that Discovering God is an “interpretive history” and may be “read either as a study of the evolution of human images of God, or as the evolution of the human capacity to comprehend God” (8). The integrity of such a pursuit relies on its ability to uphold these two disparate projects simultaneously. Though Stark’s project is admirable on many fronts, he falls short here, as it is apparent throughout that his commitment to monotheism has strongly influenced his handling of both religious history and theory, thus compromising his evaluation of “revelation” in history.
Stark’s introduction lays out a model of the “evolving conception of God” based on the paradigm of biological evolution. In this, Stark claims that humans adopt and retain conceptions of God that offer greater satisfactions, prefer Gods to divine essences, progress from those having smaller to those having greater scope, and prefer an image of God as rational and loving. Ultimately, Stark contests that humans will evolve a conception of God as loving, conscious, rational being of unlimited scope, who created and rules over the entire universe (11). Admitting outright that this presupposition colors his reading of religious history Stark states, “The chapters that follow are shaped by the assumption that, despite its many twistings, turning, and retracings, the path along which human cultures progressively discovered God led toward dualistic monotheism” (12).
Subsequently, Stark moves to examine religious history and theory, taking his leave from the “initial stages” in religious culture – “primitive religion.” In contrast to Durkheim and Tylor, Stark adopts a theory of the “evolution of human culture” in which humans will “adopt and retain those elements of culture that appear to produce ‘better’ results, while those that appear to be less rewarding will tend to be discarded”(9). Ultimately, religion – defined as “explanations of existence (or ultimate meaning) based on supernatural assumptions and including statements about the nature of the supernatural” – affords competitive advantages in response to what Stark deems the “universal human predicament” – existentialism (46). Eschewing theories that attribute religion to a primitive human fear of natural phenomenon, Stark contests that while “primitive people” may appeal to religion to overcome nature, this merely explains its function and not its origin. To address the latter, Stark turns to “religious innovators.” That is, “very gifted individuals who appear from time to time and introduce new religious culture” (44). While these religious innovators must to appeal to the aforementioned function of religion, Stark proposes that their personal reasons for delving into supernaturalism “typically seem to be far more “theological or philosophical” (45). That is, Stark sees primitive religious innovators as engaging “existential” questions – stating such motivations are supported by the fact that intellectual aspects of religion come to the fore whenever religious innovators gain sufficient authority to move the community’s religious life beyond practical advantages. (46). Thus, primitive religious communities make “rational choices” concerning their religious affiliation in the face of existential questions.
In keeping with his program, Stark asserts that while the universality of religion may be attributed to similarities in these existential questions, revelation, variously accommodated across cultures may be a suitable explanation. Here Stark sets up the argument traced through out the work. Though Stark defines revelation as “communication believed to come from a supernatural source, usually from a God, or to be divinely inspired knowledge,” he gives no criteria for critically assessing revelation (48). Ultimately relying on the work of Andrew Lang, Stark builds to the conclusion that “primitive peoples” addressed their existential questions through the “worship” of “High Gods.”
With the rise of civilization, the conception of High Gods “descended” into polytheism where subsequent “temple religions” offered an array of Gods, as this was “the easier course” (63). That is, Stark finds people are “far more comfortable” with the more human-like and less demanding Gods of poly-theism. Though Stark asserts that monotheism is more “attractive” intellectually and philosophically, the temple religions were “despotic” faiths, closed systems intertwined with political power and positioned to suppress challenges from religious innovators wishing to missionize for a more “demanding faith” (111). However, as Roman religion opened the “religious marketplace,” various forms of mono-theism were allowed to re-emerge.
Evaluating the plurality of Roman religion, Stark proposes a theory of religious economy – a “market of current and potential adherents, a set of one or more organizations seeking to attract or maintain adherents, and the religious culture offered by the organization(s)” (116). The plurality (array of religious suppliers) and lack of regulation in a religious economy affords sect movements the freedom to emerge and attract adherents who are increasingly committed. Stark contends that in this environment, religions that offer the competitive advantages of emotionalism, conscience, written scriptures, and personal commitment succeed to the disdain of government supported temple religions (128). Tracing these requirements through Zoroastrianism and Judaism, Stark ultimately concludes that it is monotheistic religion – most notably Christianity that fills these requirements.
The deficiency of Stark’s framework for an evaluation of religious history is most notable in his analysis of “Indian Inspirations” and “Chinese Gods and the Godless faiths.” Both Stark’s contention that the universality of religion based on existential questions which are more suitably addressed by “high,” “personal,” and “loving” Gods as well as his requirements for success in the religious marketplace establish a framework in which history’s movement toward monotheism is a foregone conclusion. Thus, in analyzing the traditions of Asia, neither Stark’s assessment of the development of religion socially, nor his analysis of “revelation” allow him to fully address the complexities of the religious traditions on their own terms. Stark’s focus on monotheism as the preeminent form of “god” leads him to claim that the “Godless” religions “offer neither hope nor meaning, and the popular form of such faiths always involves a restoration of conscious, active Gods” (230). Here Stark disregards concepts central to the religions themselves (i.e. emptiness, Nirvana, the Dao, etc.) and their significance to individuals acculturated outside of Western society. Moreover, his limitation of “revelation” to those who admit to receiving communication from an outside source leads Stark to denounce the religious innovators of India and China as not contributing to the “discovery of God.” Stark asserts, though each founder was elevated to Godhood, none legitimate their teachings on the basis of a revelation (280). Thus, in asking whether or not these traditions could participate in the discovery of God, Stark ultimately concludes no.
Stark’s commitment to monotheism as the preeminent conception of God not only contributes to a misreading of traditions, but also contributes to some suspect handling of religious history in favor of the dispersion of monotheistic ideals (i.e. Stark claims Hinduism was influenced by Zoroastrianism). Additionally, throughout the work Stark’s choice of scholarly support is somewhat suspect. For instance, Stark’s claim that “…all groups usually included as Hindu have ‘one sacred literature, accepted and revered by all adherents,’” may be attributed to Monier-Williams, the second occupant of the Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford (1833) who infamously claimed that the conversion of India to the Christian religion should be one of the aims of “oriental” scholarship (214, n.19).
Ultimately, Stark accomplishes neither of his projects. As the framework through which he reads religious history is flawed by his monotheistic presuppositions, his evaluation of revelation in the context of religious history is less than convincing. In suggesting criteria by which it is possible discern those faiths that could reflect actual divine inspiration (in that they increased our understanding of God) Stark assumes three criteria. Firstly, God reveals “himself,” for, without this the question would be moot. Furthermore, assuming the first criteria, Stark contends that these revelations should be “consistent.” That is, while allowing for variations in locale and culture, these revelations should be substantially compatible. Lastly, revelations should “progress in complexity;” or, as Stark contends, “later faiths will tell us more about God than earlier faiths” (393). It is unclear how one is to understand what constitutes “consistency” and “complexity” in this context. However, in Stark’s reading of religious history through the hegemonic lens of theism, it would seem that the definition of “more” or “better” which Stark is using is based on his commitment to monotheistic tradition. That is, Stark seems to have a preconceived notion of what “God” is. This allows Stark to dismiss outright those religions that do not admit to “revelations” or conceptualize personalized or anthropomorphic deities.
Additionally, many non-scholarly items hinder Stark’s work. Most notably, Stark’s tone of animosity throughout. Even after condemning “contempt” as “not a scholarly virtue,” Stark proceeds to deride all of those who would disagree with his analysis of religious history and theory – often even misrepresenting their positions.
It should be noted that Discovering God exhibits some laudable qualities. Stark is at his best in the sociological analysis of religious movements. His examination of religious economy and the evolution of religion through religious innovators are lucid, though his application lacks. Moreover, Stark should be commended on his concern for the category of revelation. While Stark is correct in his assertion that this is absent from much contemporary religious theory, his confusion of methodological atheism with “militant atheism” excludes much from his project which could be of use. Indeed, religious scholars and theologians alike should be concerned about the integration of the category of revelation with sociological analysis in the study of comparative religion. However, while these two projects may have much to offer one another, caution must be exercised in order to avoid errors of undue influence.

Theo-bloggers

mwstalnaker — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:32:21 +0000

I have signed up for the theo-blogger consortium and you should too.

Reads

mwstalnaker — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:46:05 +0000

Check the reads page for new posts on books. We’ll start with George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Post-Liberal Age. In this seminal work, Lindbeck looks to contemporary theories on religion to ground an analysis of doctrine as rule-theory within a cultural-linguistic system. This framework not only allows him to address the issues of doctrinal change, conflict, and disunity inherent contemporary ecumenical conversations, but also extend his analysis to such inter-religious topics of concern as unsurpassability, salvation, and the nature of dialogue and truth.
Further, Lindbeck’s work will allow us to analyze contemporary sociological, anthropological and philosophical theories of religion and their compatibility with a theological or confessional approach. In this vein, look for more to come on the dialectical system outlined in Peter Berger’s The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion.

New Blog

mwstalnaker — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:47:38 +0000

Welcome to the new blog

Yes, I stole the title from Paul Knitter, but it will do until I come up with something on my own.

I just want to leave a quick note and let you know what may be coming up here. I will update the “about” page and give a more complete post when I am not in between classes. For now I am looking forward to recording a podcast on religious violence with Dr. Lynn Neal, professor in the Wake Forest University Department of Religion. Additionally, we are planning to speak with Dr. Bill Leonard on Thomas Merton – initiating what hopefully will be the first in a series of historical portraits of inter-religious dialogue in the church.

Finally, I will be starting a series of reviews – currently in the works is one on Rodney Stark’s Discovering God.