{614}


GENERAL CONCLUSION

In the end, Christianity does not appear to us as one more religion, but as the very structure of all religions, as the supreme truth of every religion. All religions are true inasmuch as they are, in one form or another, Christianity. This is what I have called the theological problem of man. Of course, I do not have the capacity to have solved it, only to have handled it modestly along these monotonous pages¹.


A) Above all, I have tried to show that man is a personal substantive reality whose personality, i.e., whose being, whose “I” has to be constituted and configured throughout life possibilitated by reality and supported ultimately on it; this is the religation to the real. In it a problem formally appears, the problem of the reality of God. This configuration, actually, is in good measure the work of freedom. And in this free configuration man finds himself inexorably facing, by reality itself, a radical option with respect to the ultimateness and possibilitating characteristic of reality; this option is what constitutes the faith. It is not only that freedom may lead us to face this problem, but that in the end human life “is” precisely and formally the optative configuration of the human being, of the personality, i.e., an option with respect to God. Human life is velis nolis the unfolding of this option. The option, this having to opt, {615} is found, therefore, inscribed in the very being of man. This is just what I have called the theological dimension of man. Because of this, human life in its fullness is ultimately and radically, theological experience of the person. Here experience means physical and manifestative proof of something real in our option, in our case, of God. The option not only opts, but also configures optatively, and therefore, manifests what God is for the person².


B) This option embraces the whole being of man, i.e., molds and configures its being in all its dimensions, individual and collective. This molding of the theological dimension of man in the totality of his dimensions is a molding of religation. It is religion in the widest and most precise sense of the term. Religion is the molding of religation. And in it is expressed a vision of God, of the world and of man. This vision has multiple forms throughout history. It is not the case of cataloging them, but of seeing how their own diversity is something essential to history. In it, actually, man has been giving a different figure to his theological experience. This means that the historical diversity of religions, i.e., the history of religions, is the theological experience of humanity about the truth of God. In the radical option in which religion consists, humanity has been molding its experience about the truth of God and the being of man. In this experience Christianity is inscribed in a radical and ultimate way. Because Christianity does not appear in front of us as one more religion, but as the very structure of every religion, and therefore, as the supreme truth of all of them. All religions {616} have “their” truth; but they are true inasmuch as, in one form or another more or less fragmentary, deformed and anonymous, they are Christianity. This is the transcendence not historical, but theological of Christianity. The theological experience of humanity is the theological experience of the transcendence of Christianity. This theological experience of humanity is the “way” from which intellection starts³.


C) This theological experience, personal and historical, expresses, since it belongs to man formally, the theological, and therefore, in a certain measure, the divine itself. It is, from my point of view, what is primary and radical in Christianity, the deiform man. Deiformity is not an attribute or property of man, but rather, to my way of thinking, is what formally constitutes man. Man is the projection ad extra of the very life of God. To be man is a finite manner of being God. It is to be God humanly. What we call “human nature” is nothing but this moment of finitude. Therefore, although transcendent to the world, God is incorporated to the universe and especially to man. Incorporated, above all, because of His life; every man is deiform. But in addition incorporated humanly, i.e., by reason of His very reality. This is the personal incorporation of God to man in the reality of Christ. By virtue of this, every deiformity is founded on Christ, every personal life is an option with respect to Christ, and the entire history is a process towards Christ and from Christ, this is Christianity. Christianity is nothing but the “Christic” characteristic of deiformity. Christianity is human life as theological experience of deiformity. This is the experience that teaches {617} how man can become God seeing how God has become man. Only because man freely separates himself from Christ, and therefore, from God, is Christianity a religion of salvation, in itself and formally it is a religion of deiformity. Christianity is deiformity as intrinsic and formal moment of the human being, as decisive and learning moment of his personal life, and as an intrinsically historical moment. The unity of these three moments is the very structure of deiformity. Therefore, in his free option with respect to religious truth, with respect to the truth of God, man has played the card of his own freedom and his own being. “The truth shall make you free” (Jn 8:32), Christ told us⁴.


These three moments constitute the unitary unfolding of one selfsame and unique movement in which each stage is founded on the previous one, and at the same time explains it; God, religion, and Christianity, inscribed in the theological dimension of man.

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¹ This first paragraph is taken from the end of the 1971 seminar. The rest of the “general conclusion” comes from the text on the “theological logos”, which has been used as the introduction to this book.
² Zubiri refers here to the theme he discussed in the first part of the 1971 seminar, which corresponds in its fundamental contents to what was published in Man and God (El hombre y Dios).
³ Zubiri refers in this paragraph to the second part of the 1971 seminar, which corresponds in its fundamental contents to what was published in The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones).
⁴ This third point is the one addressed by the writings collected in this volume of unpublished texts.