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BY WAY OF CONCLUSION


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These pages comprise the Introduction to the course I gave at the Theology Faculty of the Gregorian University in Rome, in November of 1973, which will soon appear as a book in its entirety. Despite its brevity, I can offer nothing better to the great theologian, which Rahner is, than these introductory reflections, which I began to publish some thirty-nine years ago.

Madrid, 1974



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THE THEOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF MAN


The theme of these lectures is not just one more treatise about God, arbitrarily chosen among a thousand possible ones about Him. And this is because it is a theme, which not only concerns the content of our knowledge about God, but is “the” radical problem of God for the man of today. Present day man, in fact, is characterized not just by having this or that idea about God, or by adopting an {370} attitude ranging from agnostic, denial or belief, with respect to God. Present day man, whether atheist or believer, has a more radical attitude. For the atheist not only God does not exist, but even the problem of God does not exist. It is not a question of the non-existence of God, but of the non-existence of the problem of God itself as a problem; and in the atheist’s estimation the justification for the reality of God is something for which the believer must be held accountable. But the same happens with the theist. The theist believes in God, but does not live God as a problem. His life is oriented towards God with supreme firmness, but it obscures whatever in this belief may show up as a problem. At best he will try to demonstrate to the atheist the reality of the problem of God; but as a problem, it would be a matter reserved for the concern of the atheist. However, as a believer, he feels it is almost a contradiction to think that his own faith might be the solution to a problem. Present day man, therefore, whether atheist or theist, pretends he does not have in his lived reality a problem of God. He does not think that his atheism or theism may be a reply to a previous question, especially to a problem, which lies underneath his beliefs. Conversely, by virtue of being the solution to a problem, theism has to justify its own belief, and atheism is equally forced to it; atheism is no less a belief than theism. Neither theism nor atheism is in a situation of not having to fundament their attitude, because one thing is the firmness of a state of belief and another its intellectual justification. And the ultimate root of this intellectual justification of what God may or may not be is found necessarily in the discovery of the problem of God in man. The fact of this problem and not some theory is what must constitute our point of departure.

But it will be more than a mere point of departure, because {371} “problem of God” and what we call “God” are not two termini of which the first may be extrinsic to the second. Rather in my estimation the elaboration of the problem of God, insofar as a problem, is precisely the conceptiveness itself, agnostic, negative or positive of what may or may not be God. The discovery of the problem of God, as a problem, is “at one and the same time” a more or less precise encounter with the reality or with the unreality of God. This direction of thought is what the title “Theological Problem of Man” expresses.


What does this mean precisely?

The mere enunciation of the subject already indicates that it is a case of moving within an analysis of human reality as such, aiming towards the problem of God. But it is necessary to avoid a serious mistake at the outset. It is not our purpose, in fact, to make of human reality an object of theologic speculation, among other (more profound) reasons because this would already presuppose the reality of God. Any theologic speculation at this level would be purely and simply a theory, however important and truthful one might wish, but pure theory nonetheless. On the other hand, what we search for here is an analysis of facts, an analysis of human reality as such, taken in and by itself. If in this reality we discover some dimension, which de facto constitutively and formally entails an inexorable confrontation with the ultimateness of the real, i.e., with what we may in a merely nominal and provisional way call “God”, this dimension will be what we call the theological dimension of man. {372} The theological dimension is, thus, a constitutive moment of human reality, a structural moment of it. Here, therefore, at the beginning of this analysis, the expression “God” does not designate any concrete idea of God (whether Christian or any other), nor does it even mean divine “reality”. Given what we have said, God only means the ambit of the ultimateness of the real. Pure atheism inscribes itself within the theological dimension of man, because atheism is an attitude towards this confrontation, and by virtue of this it is only possible precisely and formally in what we call the “theological dimension”. Atheism is a confrontation with the ultimateness of the real, a confrontation certainly not theologic, but theological. The theological is, therefore, in this sense, a strictly human dimension, accessible to an immediate analysis. We shall be concerned with it. The elucidation of this dimension is the disclosure in actu exercito of the existence of the problem of God, as a problem. The problem of God, as such, is not like any other problem arbitrarily posed by human curiosity, but is human reality itself in its constitutive problematicism. It is from this dimension that we must start towards any further consideration of what God is. How should we approach the question?


I

We must start, as I have just pointed out, from an analysis of human reality. We shall accomplish this in three steps.

1) Man is not a reality made and finished, but a reality, which must continue to realize itself in a very precise sense. He is, actually, a reality {373} constituted not only by his proper notes (in this he resembles any other reality), but also by a peculiar characteristic of his reality. What occurs is that man not only has reality, but is a reality formally “his-own”, as reality. His characteristic of reality is “his-ownness”. This is what, in my estimation, constitutes the formal explanation of being a person. Man is not only real, but he is “his own” reality. Therefore, he is real “confronting” every other reality, but his own. In this sense, each person, so to speak, is a “sole” reality separate from any other reality: he is “ab-solute”.

But only relatively absolute, because this absolute characteristic is acquired. Indeed, each person has to be continually making himself, i.e., realizing himself in different forms or figures of reality. In each action that a man performs, a form of reality is configured. To realize oneself is to take on a figure of reality. And man realizes himself by living with things, with other men, and with himself. In every action, man is, therefore, “with” all the things with which he lives. But that “in” which he is, is in reality. That in which and from which man realizes himself is reality. Man needs everything he lives with, because what he needs is reality. Therefore, besides their real properties things have for men what I have called the power of the real as such. Only in it and by it is how man can realize himself as person. The forcefulness with which the power of the real dominates me and moves me inexorably to realize myself as person is what I call “seizing”. Man can only realize himself when seized by the power of the real. And this seizing is what I have called {374} religation. Man realizes himself as person thanks to his religation to the power of the real. Religation is a constitutive dimension of the human person. Religation is not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. Insofar as he is a person, therefore, man is constitutively confronted with the power of the real, i.e., with the ultimateness of the real.

But, How is he religated? When he realizes himself with things, with others and with himself (let us call everything “things”), man configures his form of reality not freely, but constrained by the power of the real and supported in it, because only in things is the power of the real given. However, the power of the real is not to be identified with things: things are nothing but “intrinsic vectors” of the power of “the” reality. And they are such by the mere fact of being real. From this it follows that there is always some inequality between what the things with which man lives are, and what man is forced to do with them. Indeed, here lies the question: man realizes himself in a form of reality, which things do not impose on him, but still he cannot do it except with and for things. Hence, in the power of reality, which they convey, things do nothing but open different possibilities to adopt one form or another. Therefore, man has to choose among them. To choose is not only “to choose” a particular action, but is “to ad-opt” a form of reality in the action, which has been chosen. In religation, therefore, man is confronted with the power of the real, but in an optative or choosing mode, i.e., problematically.

And not only that, because all those foregoing possibilities, as the forms of reality, which they are, ultimately rely upon what this power of reality is in things. But the lack of {375} identification of this power of the real with things themselves manifests that between them and that power there is a precise internal structure. This structure is what I call “fundament”. It is not a matter of being a cause or something similar, but of an intrinsic structural moment of real things themselves, regardless of whatever the structure may be. The mere reliance upon themselves factually would already constitute a fundament: real things themselves, in their pure facticity, would be “fundamental-facts”. Therefore, whatever their structure may be, the power of the real in things is nothing but the occurrence of the fundament in them. That is why the possibilities of the forms of realization as person rely upon the fundament. For this reason man always finds himself inexorably hurled in reality and by reality itself “towards” its fundament. The “towards”, actually, is a mode of presence of reality: it is “reality-as-towards” in contradistinction to “reality-in-front-of” me. By virtue of this, the hurling is always a strict stepping “march”. It is not a mere intellective process, but a real “motion”. Man finds himself hurled towards the fundament of the power of the real, in the inexorable “physical” forcefulness to choose for a form of reality. Therefore, the stepping march is not a march because it is intellective, but rather intellection is the moment of clarification of the real and physical stepping march in which man is marching by the power of the real. Hence, it is a real intellective steppping march. The problematic religation is thus eo ipso a real intellective stepping march from the power of the real “towards” its intrinsic fundament: this is accurately the problem of God viewed as a problem of ultimateness of the real qua real. Exactly what we were searching for initially.

2) Owing to the fact that it is problematic, the stepping march towards the fundament {376} of the power of the real in things is not univocal, precisely because the power of the real is only conveyed by real things qua real. To be sure, in this march man always accedes that fundament, because it is a matter of a real and physical march and not of just reasoning or anything of that nature. Hence, the terminus of this stepping march is always attained, but in a different mode depending on the roads taken; so what we (looking ahead) call “atheism”, “theism”, or even the “agnosis”¹ itself, are already a form of access to the fundament, a contact with it. But since we are dealing with an intellective diversity, the chosen way has to be intellectively justified. And this justification is simultaneously the fundament of the option itself. Every option is already an inchoate march at the very least. The seizing of the human person by the power of the real is accordingly a seizing of man by the fundament of this power. And in this seizing occurs the intellection of the fundament. Every personal realization is, therefore, precisely and formally the optative configuration of the human person with respect to the fundament of the power of the real in it.

Since the access to the fundament is problematic, man, as I said, has to justify his mode of access. For us, the intellective justification of the fundament of the power of the real is the one which hurls us upon a course, which leads from the human person (i.e., from a relatively absolute person) to an absolutely absolute person: this is what we understand as the reality of God. Man finds God when he realizes himself religatingly as a person. And finds Him throughout the whole ambit of the power of the real, and therefore in all real things and in his {377} own person (which also conveys in itself the power of the real). The power of the real consists, then, precisely in that real things, without being God or a moment of God, are nevertheless, real “in” God, i.e., their reality is God ad extra. For this reason, to say that God is transcendent does not mean that God is transcendent “to” things, but that God is transcendent “in” things. The seizing of the human person by the power of the real is then a seizing of man by God. In this seizing is where the intellection of God occurs. From this it follows that every personal human realization is precisely and formally the optative configuration of the human being with respect to “God in my person”.

Discovery of God in the intellective stepping march of religation is the second essential step in our question.

3) The stepping march “towards” the fundament of the power of the real is not only problematic, but the problem itself has a very precise character. The stepping march, in fact, is real and physical. And this establishes that problematism as a strict “probing”. The march proceeds by probing. Religation, therefore, acquires the concrete form of a probing. But it is a probing, which is in reference to the power of the real as such. It is, in each of its steps, an attempt at “testing”. Hence, “physical testing of reality” is exactly what in my estimation constitutes the essence itself of what we call “experience”. Thus, the problematic stepping march towards the fundament of the power of the real in religation is experience of that fundament, a real and physical experience, but still intellective. The seizing by the power of the real occurs in an experiential form. Religation is, therefore, an experiential march towards the {378} fundament of the power of the real. It is fundamental experience. And in this experience occurs the concrete intellection of this fundament. This character is essential to religation. Man, we said, always accedes religatingly to the fundament of the real. Hence, man always has in his personal realization that fundamental experience. Every act of his, even down to the most common and modest, is in all its dimensions and in an express or muted way, a problematic experience of the fundament of the power of the real. Atheism, theism, agnosis are modes of experience of the fundament of the real. They are not mere conceptual attitudes. This fundamental experience is individual, social, and historical. By virtue of this the experience of the fundament of the power of the real is an individual probing, but it is “at one and the same time” a social and historical probing. From this it follows that the fundament of the power of the real belongs, in one form or another, to the person itself: to be a person is to be a “figure” of this fundament, and to be such experientially.

Thus, the fundamental experience, i.e., the experience of the fundament of the power of the real by the path that intellectively leads to God, is eo ipso God experienced as fundament, experience of God. By virtue of the fundamental experience, the fundament of the power of the real, as we have just seen, belongs in one form or another to the person itself. Therefore, it is evident that God, by being the reality-fundament of this power discovered by the person and in the person when realizing itself as a person, is not something merely added to the personal reality of man or simply juxtaposed to it. It is not the case that there is a human person “and in addition” God. Precisely because God is not transcendent to things, {379} but transcendent in them, precisely because of this, things are not simpliciter a not-God, but rather in some way they are a configuration of God ad extra. Therefore, God is not the human person, but the human person is in some manner God: he is God “humanly”. Because of this, the “and” of “man and God” is not a copulative “and”. God does not include man, but man includes God. What is the concrete mode of this inclusion? It is precisely “experience”: to be a human person is to realize oneself experientially as something absolute. Man is formally and constitutively experience of God. And this experience of God is the radical and formal experience of human reality itself. The real and physical stepping march towards God is not only a true intellection, but an experiential realization of the human reality itself in God.

Experience of God is thus the third essential moment of the analysis of human reality.

In conclusion, religation, intellective march, and experience are the three essential moments of the human personal realization. They are not three successive moments; rather, each is founded upon the previous one. They constitute, therefore, an intrinsic and formal unity. In this unity is in what the ultimate structure of the theological dimension of man consists. The realization of man in it is what in a synthetic manner has to be called theological experience.


II

This dimension, precisely by being individual, social, and historic, necessarily assumes a concrete form; such is the {380} molding of religation. Here, “molding” means the concrete form in which individually, socially, and historically the power of the real seizes man. Molding is, therefore, a form of seizing. This molding is religion in the widest and strictest sense of the term: religion is the molding of religation, the concrete form of the seizing of the power of the real in religation. Religion is not an attitude with respect to the “sacred”, as repeated nowadays monotonously. Everything religious is certainly sacred; but it is sacred because it is religious, it is not religious because it is sacred.

As the molding of religation as such, religion always has a concrete vision of God, of man, and of the world. And because it is experiential, this vision necessarily has multiple forms: this is the history of religions. But the history of religions is not a catalog or museum of coexisting and successive forms of religion, because that experience is, in my estimation, experience by probing. Therefore, I consider that the history of religions is the theological experience of mankind, either as individual or as social and historical, about the ultimate truth of the power of the real, of God.


III

In this experience Christianity is inscribed. Christianity is a religion, and therefore, a molding of religation, one form of the power of the real. Because of this, God, as fundament of the power of the real, seizes man (in the individual, in society, and in history) experientially. The power of the real, I said, consists in that {381} things are real “in” God. And thus, for Christianity, this “to be real in God” consists in being dei-formed. Real things are, as I said, God ad extra; for Christianity, this ad extra is “to be like God”. This dei-formity admits of diverse modes and degrees, but they are always modes and degrees of a strict dei-formity. Therefore, the seizing in which religation consists is concretely a dei-formity. The form of being God in a human way is to be such dei-formably. Man is a formal projection of the divine reality itself; a finite manner of being God. The moment of finitude of this dei-formity is what, in my estimation, constitutes that which we call “human nature”. God is transcendent “in” the human person, whereas the human person is God dei-formably. The transcendence of God “in” the human person is then, I repeat, dei-formity. Therefore, to realize oneself as person is to realize oneself through the dei-forming seizing of the real. The seizing itself is the occurrence of dei-formation.

In my estimation, this is the essence of Christianity. Prior to being a religion of salvation (often repeated nowadays as if it were something evident), and precisely in order to be such, Christianity is a religion of dei-formity. That is why the experiential character of Christianity is the supreme theological experience, because there is no other possible greater form of being real in God than being such dei-formably. By virtue of this, Christianity is not only true religion in itself, but indeed is the “radical”, and also the “formal”, truth of all religions. This is, in my estimation, the transcendence, not only historical, but theological of Christianity. The theological experience of humanity is thus the experience of dei-formity in its triple dimension, individual, social, and historical: it is Christianity as probing.


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IV

And so, the theological problem of man unfolds into three parts: religation, religion, dei-formation, which constitute three problems: God, religion, Christianity.

At this point it is appropriate, before finishing, to return to something upon which I touched earlier, namely, the need to avoid a sad mistake, which has managed to transform itself into a kind of solemn thesis: that theology is essentially anthropology, or at least, anthropocentric. This appears to me as absolutely untenable. Since the preceding exposition might give the appearance that it is inscribed within this erroneous thesis, it is necessary to clarify the ideas somewhat.

Theology is essentially and constitutively theocentric. It is true that I have affirmed that theology is founded upon the theological dimension of man. But the fact is that the theological is not the theologic, and that, at least for two reasons:

a) The theological is only a foundation of theologic knowledge, but is not the theologic knowledge itself.

b) The theological is certainly a human dimension, but is precisely that dimension according to which man finds himself founded on the power of the real. Therefore man is human precisely by being something formally founded in reality. And this is something quite the opposite of anthropology; it is an immersion of man in reality as such. It is only by virtue of this, that one is a man.

If we reserve, as we should, the terms “theology” and “theologic” for what God, man, and the world are in all religions and specially in Christianity, then we shall have to say that knowledge about the {383} theological is not theology simpliciter. Knowledge about the theological is, as I said, a knowledge that occurs in the fundamental experience. Hence, knowledge about the theological is fundamental theology. The so-called “fundamental theology” thus acquires its own essential content. In the midst of numerous discussions about the concept and content of fundamental theology, I personally think that fundamental theology is not a study of the præambula fidei, or a kind of vague introductory study to theology properly so called. In my estimation, fundamental theology is precisely and formally the study of the theological as such.

The three parts of this subject were developed for my course given at Madrid, in the Society for Studies and Publications, during 1971. The first part dealt with Man and God; the second with Man and God in all Religions, and the third with Man, God, and the Christian Religion. The first of these three parts, somewhat more developed later, became the content of the course I gave at the Faculty of Theology of the Gregorian University in Rome, in November of 1973.

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¹ (Tr. note: Zubirian expression denoting not knowing, a-gnosis)