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The body of Christ—An Intersubjective Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Joseph A. Bracken S.J.
Joseph A. Bracken S.J.
Affiliation:
Xavier University
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Abstract

In this essay the author rethinks the provocative remarks of Karl Rahner about the overall symbolic character of reality in his essay “The Theology of Symbol.” While conceding the inevitable differences in perspective between a Thomistic metaphysics of Being and process-relational philosophy, the author explains how Rahner's “theses” on symbolism likewise make good sense within the context of his own process-oriented metaphysics of intersubjectivity as developed in previous publications. Then he applies this Rahnerian/neo-Whiteheadian scheme to the analysis and explanation of Christian belief in the Incarnation of the Divine Word in the human nature of Jesus, the Real Presence of the risen Christ in the Eucharist, and the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , Spring 2004 , pp. 7 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2004

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References

1 Rahner, Karl, “The Theology of the Symbol,” Theological Investigations 4, trans. Smyth, Kevin (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966): 221–52.Google Scholar

2 Barbour, Ian G., Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), 119.Google Scholar

3 See Bracken, Joseph A. S.J., “Images of God within Systematic Theology,” Theological Studies 63 (2002): 362–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Bracken, Joseph A. S.J., The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).Google Scholar There have been, of course, multiple attempts at setting Rahner's thought within a more explicitly intersubjective context: e.g., Tallon, Andrew, Personal Becoming (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1982Google Scholar); Purcell, Michael, Mystery and Method: The Other in Rahner and Levinas (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; also Hogan, Kevin, “Entering into Otherness: The Postmodern Critique of the Subject and Karl Rahner's Theological Anthropology,” Horizons 25 (1998): 181–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See, e.g., Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. Dych, William V. (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 178–203Google Scholar; likewise by the same author The Trinity, trans. Donceel, Joseph (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 82–99Google Scholar; finally, my own brief commentary on the latter text, The One in the Many, 15–17.

6 See, e.g., Bracken, Joseph A., The Triune Symbol: Persons, Process and Community (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985)Google Scholar; likewise recent articles in Process Studies and the Journal of Religion: “Continuity Amid Discontinuity: A Neo-Whiteheadian Understanding of the Self,” Process Studies 31 (2002): 115–24; “Intersubjectivity and the Coming of God,” Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 381–400.

7 Rahner, , “Theology of the Symbol,” 224.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 228.

9 Ibid., 229.

10 Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin, David Ray and Sherburne, Donald W. (New York: Free Press, 1978), 18.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 29: “An actual entity is at once the subject experiencing and the superject of its experiences. It is subject-superject, and neither half of this description can for a moment be lost sight of.”

12 Ibid., 34.

13 Ibid., 29.

14 See, e.g., Bracken, Joseph A. S.J., Society and Spirit: A Trinitarian Cosmology (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1991), 39–73Google Scholar; and The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 146–55.

15 Rahner, , “Theology of the Symbol,” 247.Google Scholar

16 The deeper metaphysical issue here is whether one believes that in the end only individual entities exist and that communities and other social realities into which they aggregate are strictly secondary and contingent realities, or whether one believes that individual entities are made up of interacting parts or members and themselves contribute as parts or members to still other higher-order specifically social realities such as communities or natural environments. In terms of the latter alternative, belief that the Trinity is a community of persons does not imply tritheism but serves as the prime analogate for a social ontology.

17 See Bracken, , Society and Spirit, 123–60; likewise, The Divine Matrix: Creativity as Link between East and West (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 52–69.Google Scholar

18 For the sake of convenience, I use the traditional masculine names for the persons of the Trinity even though I (and presumably the reader as well) am fully aware of the strictly metaphorical character of these symbols.

19 Rahner, , “Theology of the Symbol,” 236.Google Scholar

20 Rahner, , “On the Theology of the Incarnation,” Theological Investigations 4: 117.Google Scholar

21 DS 302.

22 Paper presented by Bernard Prusak at the meeting of the College Theology Society in Milwaukee, 1 June 2003.

23 Clearly there are further implications here for Christian understanding both of the resurrection of the faithful departed and of the transformation of this world into the “new heaven” and “new earth” promised in the book of Revelation 21:1–4. Suffice it to say here that in terms of this scheme human beings will after death enjoy a transformed bodily condition and that the physical world, as St. Paul suggests in Romans 8:18–25, will share in the glory of the children of God.

24 Rahner, , “On the Duration of the Presence of Christ after Communion,” Theological Investigations 4: 319.Google Scholar

25 Rahner, , “The Theology of the Symbol,” 240.Google Scholar

26 Bracken, , The Triune Symbol, 18.Google Scholar

27 My thinking here is heavily influenced by the systems philosophy of Laszlo, Ervin in Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought (London: Gordon and Breach, 1972)Google Scholar; see also my comparison of Whitehead's, and Laszlo's, metaphysical schemes in The One in the Many, 132–37.Google Scholar

28 Rahner, , “The Word and the Eucharist,” Theological Investigations 4: 274.Google Scholar

29 Ibid.