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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
Karl Rahner and Thomas F. Torrance have made enormous contributions to 20th century theology. Torrance is quick to point out that Rahner's approach to Trinitarian theology which begins with God's saving revelation (the economic Trinity) and pivots ‘upon God's concrete and effective self-communication in the Incarnation’ does indeed have the effect that Rahner intended. First, it reunites the treatises On the One God and On the Triune God. This opens the door to rapprochement between systematic and biblical theology and binds the NT view of Jesus closer to the Church's worship and proclamation of the Triune God. Second, it opens the door to rapprochement between East and West by shifting from a more abstractive scholastic framework to one bound up with piety, worship and experience within the Church. Third, it opens the door to rapprochement between Roman Catholic theology and Evangelical theology ‘especially as represented by the teaching of Karl Barth in his emphasis upon the self-revelation and self-giving of God as the root of the doctrine of the Trinity …’
1 Torrance, Thomas F., Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994), 78.Google Scholar
2 Torrance, Thomas F., The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church, (hereafter: The Trinitarian Faith) (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), 72–73Google Scholar, 130–31 and 311. Cf. also Torrance, Thomas F., The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons, (hereafter: The Christian Doctrine of God) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 129Google Scholar. See also Seng, Kang Phee, “The Epistemological Significance of Homoousion in the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance,” Scottish Journal of Theology vol. 45, no. 3, 1992, 341–366, 344ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Torrance, T. F., Reality and Evangelical Theology, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982), 23.Google Scholar
4 Torrance, , The Trinitarian Faith, 51.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., 49 and The Christian Doctrine of God, 117.
6 Ibid., 51. See Torrance, Thomas F., Christian Theology and Scientific Culture, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 27Google Scholar, 29. Cf. also The Christian Doctrine of God, 206.
7 Cf. Torrance, , Christian Theology and Scientific Culture, 8Google Scholar and Reality and Evangelical Theology, 30–31.
8 Cf. Torrance, Thomas F., Space, Time and Resurrection, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1976), 77.Google Scholar
9 Torrance, , Reality and Evangelical Theology, 88Google Scholar. For Torrance, “it is specifically in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son, that God has communicated himself to us … Thus it is only in him who is both homoousios with the Father and homoousios with us, that we may really know God as he is in himself…” The Trinitarian Faith, 203.Google Scholar
10 Hilary cited in Torrance, , The Trinitarian Faith, 53.Google Scholar
11 Ibid.
12 Cf. ibid., 43.
13 Torrance, Thomas F., The Ground and Grammar of Theobgy, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980), 99Google Scholar. See also Torrance, Thomas F., God and Rationality, (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 186Google Scholar. Torrance gives an excellent account of how this openness is to be understood through the Holy Spirit in chap. 7.
14 Ibid. and 75ff., 79, 81, 86. Torrance regards Anselm's argument as a scientific one rather than a logical one. Within this method intelligibility and being are not separated butcreated intelligibility operates under the compulsion of God's uncreated intelligibility. Cf. also Reality and Evangelical Theology, 24.
15 Ibid., 100 and 107. While Colin Gunton agrees with Torrance that parallel rationalities may be found in the sciences of God and of created realities and that “created and uncreated intelligibility” may be viewed together, he prefers to maintain a distinction between natural theology and “a theology of nature” rather than speaking, with Torrance, of a transformed natural theology. See Gunton, Colin E., A Brief Theology of Revelation, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), 63.Google Scholar
16 Ibid., 67, The Christian Doctrine of God, 18ff.and 158 and The Trinitarian Faith, 49, 76 and 82.
17 Cf. e.g., Torrance, , The Trinitarian Faith, 52Google Scholar and 207, The Christian Doctrine of God, 11, 13ff., 22 and 74 and God and Rationality, 72, 176.
18 Cf. e.g., Torrance, , The Trinitarian Faith, 71Google Scholar, 130, The Christian Doctrine of God, 8, 92, 158, 237 and Torrance, T. F., Reality and Evangelical Theology, 14Google Scholar, 141. These are only a few of the many places where this insight is stressed.
19 Torrance, , The Trinitarian Faith, 52Google Scholar, 90–93, 105 and The Christian Doctrine of God, 207.
20 Ibid., 93 and Torrance, , The Ground and Grammar of Theology, 66.Google Scholar
21 Cf. Torrance, , The Trinitarian Faith, 138Google Scholar, 140f., 201, 215, 222 and 297, The Christian Doctrine of God, 63 and Theology in Reconciliation, (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975), 131Google Scholar ff. where Torrance stresses that Christ's real presence (selfcommunication) in the Eucharist is grounded in God's real presence to himself. Cf. also Torrance, Thomas F., Theology in Reconstruction, (London: SCM Press, Ltd), 1965, 182f.Google Scholar For Torrance's on torelational notion of persons (divine and human) see The Christian Doctrine of God, 102ff., 124, 133, 157 and 163 and Reality and Evangelical Theology, 42ff. The ontic relations of the three divine Persons in the one God “belong to what they esssentially are in themselves in their distinctive hypostases.”Thus relations among persons belong to what they are as persons.
22 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection, 1.Google Scholar
23 Ibid., 74.
24 Ibid, and 175ff.
25 Ibid., 17.
26 Ibid., 78.
27 Ibid., 175.
28 Ibid., 98.
29 Torrance, , Reality and Evangelical Theobgy, 37Google Scholar and Space, Time and Resurrection, 128ff.
30 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection, 28.Google Scholar
31 Ibid., 32–37.
32 Torrance, , God and Rationality, 170.Google Scholar
33 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection, 7.Google Scholar
34 Torrance, , Reality and Evangelical Theology, 80.Google Scholar
35 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection, 17–18Google Scholar, n. 25. Cf. also Reality and Evangelical Theology, 82. For an interesting analysis of Bultmann see God and Rationality, chap. 3, “Cheap and Costly Grace” where Torrance writes: “whenever we take our eyes off the centrality and uniqueness of Jesus Christ and His objective vicarious work, the Gospel disappears behind man's existentialized self-understanding, and even the Reality of God Himself is simply reduced to ‘what He means for me …,’” 60.
36 Ibid., 9f. See Torrance, , God and Rationality, 170ff.Google Scholar Torrance believes the Holy Spirit creates our capacity for God; is not mutually correlated with us; is essentially in God as is the Son and enables us to participate in the Father and Son without ceasing to be Lord: “As the Spirit of Truth He is the self-communication and the self-speaking of the divine Being dwelling within us who renews our minds, articulates God's Word within our understanding, leads us into all truth, so that through the Spirit we are converted from ourselves to thinking from a centre in God and not in ourselves, and to knowing God out of God and not out of ourselves,” 174.
37 Ibid., 94.
38 Ibid., 11.
39 Torrance, , Reality and Evangelical Theobgy, 85–88, 90.Google Scholar
40 Ibid., 17–18.
41 Ibid., 15.
42 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection, 13Google Scholar. For Torrance, following Athenagoras, “If there is no resurrection, human nature is no longer genuinely human,” 81–82. Without this, theology collapses into moralism, existentialism and subjectivism. Unless Jesus actually rose, then the power of sin and death and non-being remain unbroken. “Everything depends on the resurrection of the body, otherwise all we have is a Ghost for a Savior,” 87.
43 Ibid., 18. Cf. Torrance, , The Christian Doctrine of God, 46f.Google Scholar
44 Ibid., 42–55.
45 Ibid., 94. Thus both the ideas of the virgin birth and the empty tomb were not invented but forced themselves upon the early Church against its current beliefs, 56. Because the resurrection of our human nature is the goal of the atonement, Torrance can also say, in light of the concepts of “perichoresis” and “enhypostasis,” that “the resurrection also means that the steadfastness of the Son of Man is such that it held on its way in utter obedience to the Father in the spirit of holiness in the midst of judgment, death and hell, and in spite of them, so that he raised himself up from the dead in perfect Amen to the Father's Will, acquiescing in his verdict upon our sin but responding in complete trust and love to the Father. The resurrection is the goal of the steadfast obedience of the Son of Man in answer to the steadfast love of the Father … the resurrection is the complete Amen of the Son to the Father as of the Father to the Son … It is with the resurrection that the I am of God is fully actualized among us—the Ego eimi of God to man, of God in man, and so of man in Christ to God,” 67–8.
46 Ibid., 18–19.
47 See Torrance, , The Christian Doctrine of God, 83–111Google Scholar. David Fergusson presents a very helpful analysis of the relation between the resurrection and faith by showing how the traditional view which is grounded in scripture sees the resurrection as an event in the life of Jesus which gives meaning to faith rather than as an event which is created within or realized by the believer. Cf. “Interpreting the Resurrection,” in Sff vol. 38, no. 3 (1985), 287–305.Google Scholar
48 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection, 20.Google Scholar
49 Cf. Torrance, , Theology in Reconstruction, 163ff.Google Scholar Thus, “There is no authority for believing in Jesus outside of Jesus himself,” 121 and “Justification by grace alone tells us that verification of our faith or knowledge on any other ground, or out of any other source, than Jesus Christ, is to be set aside,” 163.
50 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection, 22–23.Google Scholar
51 Ibid., 25.
52 Ibid., 26.
53 Ibid., 38–9.
54 Ibid., 66. Cf. also Torrance, , Reality and Evangelical Theology, 37.Google Scholar
55 Ibid., 68–71.
56 Cf. Torrance, Thomas F., Space, Time and Incarnation, (London: Oxford University Press, 1978), 20f.Google Scholar
57 Cf. Torrance, , God and nationality, 170ff.Google Scholar, Space, Time and Resurrection, 131f.
58 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection, 123ff.Google Scholar
59 Rahner, Karl and Weger, Karl-Heinz, Our Christian Faith: Answers for the Future, trans, by McDonagh, Francis (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 113.Google Scholar
60 Ibid., 110–11.
61 McBrien, Richard P., Catholicism Completely Revised and Updated, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 1240.Google Scholar
62 Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction To The Idea of Christianity, (hereafter: Foundations), trans, by Dych, William V. (New York: Seabury, 1978), 11ff.Google Scholar
63 Ibid., 12.
64 Ibid. See Rahner, Karl, “Reflections on Methodology in Theology,” Theological Investigations (23 vols.) (hereafter: TI), Vol. II trans, by Bourke, David, (New York: Seabury, 1974), 101ff.Google Scholar and TI 4:36–73.
65 TI 11:102.
66 Galvin, John P., The Invitation of Grace, in A World of Grace: An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner's Theology, ed. by O'Donovan, Leo J., (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 72.Google Scholar
67 Ibid., 71–3.
68 Rahner, , Foundations, 12.Google Scholar
69 Ibid., 13.
70 Ibid., 79.
71 Rahner, TI 11:87.
72 TI 9:34.
73 TI 17:47.
74 TI 11:91–2.
75 Rahner, , Foundations, 273–274Google Scholar. Cf. also TI17:16ff. Thus for Rahner: “we might now formulate the proposition that the knowledge of man's resurrection given with his transcendentally necessary hope is a statement of philosophical anthropology even before any real revelation in the Word. But we should have to counter this by saying that, at least initially, the elucidation of man's basic hope as being the hope of resurrection was in actual fact made historically through the revelation of the Old and New Testaments,” 18. This last statement shows that even Rahner's understanding of the scriptural view of revelation is largely determined by what is experienced in transcendental experience. Thus, in order to experience the fact thatjesus is alive “He (the Christian) has only to accept believingly and trustingly his own transcendental hope of resurrection and, therefore, also be on the look out, implicitly or explicitly, for a specific event in his own history, on the basis of which his hope can be believed in, as something that has been realised in another person,” 19. Indeed, “the ‘facts’ of Jesus' resurrection must simply be determined in the light of what we have to understand by our own ‘resurrection,’” 20.
76 Ibid., 275.
77 Ibid., 86–87.
78 Rahner, Karl, The Trinity, trans, by Donceel, Joseph, (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 36Google Scholar. Cf. also Foundations, 120ff., TI 1:307, 329ff., 343ff. and TI 4:175ff.
79 Rahner, , Foundations, 121Google Scholar. Cf. also Foundations, 44. The same idea is frequently repeated. See for e.g. TI 4:50 where Rahner writes: “All conceptual expressions about God, necessary though they are, always stem from the unobjectivated experience of transcendence as such: the concept from the pre-conception, the name from the experience of the nameless.” See also TI 4:57 and TI 11:149 where Rahner writes: “The so-called proofs of God's existence … are possible … only as the outcome of an a posteriori process of reasoning as the conceptual objectification of what we call the experience of God, which provides the basis and origin of this process of reasoning.” Thus, for Rahner the task of theology is to “reflect upon an experience which is present in every man …,” TI 11:150–51. Since this is so theology means “we can only point to this experience, seek to draw another's attention to it in such a way that he discovers within himself that which we only find if, and to the extent that we already possess it,” TI 11:154. See also Foundations, 21 where Rahner writes: “The knowledge of God is always present unthematically and without name, and not just when we begin to speak of it. All talk about it, which necessarily goes on, always only points to this transcendental experience as such, an experience in which he whom we call ‘God’ encounters man … as the term of his transcendence…” For Rahner's explanation of his method see Foundations, 24–39.
80 Ibid., 116.
81 Ibid., 129.
82 Ibid., 139.
83 Ibid., 141.
84 Ibid., 142.
85 Ibid., 149.
86 Ibid., 172.
87 Rahner, Karl and Ratzinger, Joseph, Revelation and Tradition, trans. O'Hara, W. J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 16.Google Scholar
88 TI 4:61.
89 TI 4:169.
90 TI 11: 164. Some emphases mine.
91 Rahner, , Foundations, 272.Google Scholar
92 Ibid., 265.
93 Ibid., 267.
94 Ibid., 268.
95 Ibid., 269.
96 Ibid., 294, emphasis mine.
97 Ibid., 295. This is why, in addition to the traditional Christology, Rahner advocates what he calls “existentiell Christology” and concludes that an anonymous Christian has a real and existential relation to Christ “implicitly in obedience to his orientation in grace toward the God of absolute, historical presence and self-communication. He exercises this obedience by accepting his own existence without reservation …” 306.
98 Ibid., 294ff.
99 Ibid., 319.
100 Ibid., 277–78.
101 TI 6:233, 236–37, 239. Cf. Foundations, 295.
102 Rahner, , Foundations, 279.Google Scholar