CHRISTIANITY

(Outside back cover)

With this volume the trilogy about The Theological Problem of Man (El problema teologal del hombre) comes to a close, after the first volume Man and God (El hombre y Dios) was published by Alianza Editorial in 1983, and the second, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones) in 1993. It encompasses one of the greatest efforts in our century to analyze the problem of God. On past ages the attempt was made to access God through ways we consider impractical today. One was proper to natural Theology, which considered possible to prove the existence of God starting from sensible experience, having recourse to the order of the universe or the principle of causality. Those were called the cosmological proofs, today hardly justifiable. As an alternative to them, modern rationalism designed Theodicy, based on the ontological argument. This way also does not seem viable at all. Apparently reason seems to have no capacity to access God directly, neither through analytical judgments nor synthetic ones. Man is unable to reach God unless He makes Himself present. From this follows that God will be found, not so much through reason, but by way of experience. This is the great topic of Xavier Zubiri (1898-1983), the experience of God. That experience is individual, social, and historical. All human experience is experience of God. The first volume of the trilogy deals with this. In the second, Zubiri analyzes the experience of God in the history of religions. And in this third one, Christianity (Cristianismo), he attempts to identify and define the Christian experience, which for him consists in the greatest manifestation of God possible: the Incarnation. In the Christian mystery God becomes man, and man becomes God: this is the experience of deiformity and deification. A most singular effort to deal with the problem of God at the level of XX century philosophy.

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Xavier Zubiri




The Theological Problem of Man:
Christianity


Translated by Joaquín A. Redondo, M.E., M.A. (Phil.)
and critically reviewed by Dr. Thomas B. Fowler, Jr., Sc.D.




(From the Spanish edition of El problema teologal del hombre: Cristianismo,
Alianza Editorial, Fundación Xavier Zubiri, Madrid, Spain, 1997)


(Numbers in braces “{ }” refer
to the pagination of the above Spanish edition, 1997)

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

In this third volume of his trilogy on God Zubiri applies his philosophical point of view to clarify how a Catholic can truly philosophize given the intellectual problem of Christ. It is a question of the reality of Christ within the reality of things in the widest meaning of the term. A fundamental outline could be constructed in the following manner.

About two thousand years ago a man appeared in Palestine, a Roman client State, that proclaimed he was the Son of God, the God of Abraham, the Patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets. He acted as an Incarnate God. He lived as a human-divine real person. How can we understand this divine-human reality? Simply by considering that every reality and particularly human reality has a transcendent fundamental dimension towards God. In Christ God has elevated this human dimension to an intimate union with the divinity. The human personeity has been united to the Person of the Son of God from his conception. This is more than an enigma it is a mystery. Christ is not just issuing human opinions like any other human, but living and issuing truths He knows as God and presenting them in the context of an actual human life progressing right in front of His Apostles and disciples. Christ is teaching His Apostles how to live in the presence of God just as He is doing. He is progressively molding the divine truths actually present in His reality into the structure of their personalities, just as He is doing with His own divine-human reality where his acting “I” is the “I” of the Word of God. The Apostles and disciples surrendered to Christ through a loving faith in Him, with obedience out of love that includes loving others “in” Christ.

Personeity is fundamented on the deiformation, which all creatures manifest as the result of a procession of the life of the Trinity ad extra, particularly the human. The procession of the life of the Trinity ad intra consists of the three divine Persons. What Christ did was to show His Apostles and disciples how to mold the human created personeity into a personality like His own that is a deification of His human deiformity that requires living like any other human but doing things extremely well.

What Christ lived and taught cannot be changed. The teaching of Christ was absolute; He acted as the divinity He is and said “my words will never pass away” (Lk 21:33). As history moves on these eternal teachings will be presented under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth that will teach the Magisterium how to preserve the deposit of faith intact and manifest it with greater light, as conditions require it. A light that will never be fully adequate to express the full reality of the teachings at one time, but will be rekindled to shine more fully when darknesses appear in history that attempt to diminish or remove that original human-divine light of Christ. Zubiri finishes with a masterful exposition of the non-transforming evolution of dogma making the truth of the deposit of faith in the Church an ever-growing manifestation of the same original manifestation of Christ as the mercy and love of God. The Church cannot allow any distortions or misinterpretations of the deposit of faith given by Christ to the Magisterium, which is an expression of the love and mercy of the Father through Christ as Son, in the Spirit of Truth.

As St. John of the Cross said in no. 59, of his Dichos de luz y amor (Sayings of light and love), “A la tarde te examinarán en el amor. Aprende a amar como Dios quiere ser amado y deja tu condición” (At sunset you will be examined on love. Learn to love God as He wishes to be loved, and never mind your present condition or the limitations you think you have).

The use of transliterations will continue as was indicated in the previous Introductions. My grateful thanks again to Dr. Thomas B. Fowler, Jr., Sc.D., President of The Zubiri Foundation of North America for his valuable suggestions.

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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

This new volume of unpublished texts will fill a void in the publication of the writings of Xavier Zubiri. For Zubiri, Christianity represents “the supreme theological experience”, and Christian theology constituted, according to the very testimony of the philosopher, “one of the most intimate strains” of his own personal reality. However, except for a study on Greek patristics, which appeared in Naturaleza, Historia, Dios (“Nature, History, God”, tr. by Thomas B. Fowler, Jr., 1984), and a 1981 article on the Eucharist (included as an appendix in this book), the greater part of Zubiri’s reflections about theological subjects were only accessible to a small group of his disciples. From this moment on it will be possible for all those interested to have direct access to the fundamental texts of Zubiri about theological subjects. However, a few words of caution may be useful in order to guide the reader.

In the first place, we must point out that we are facing the reflections of a philosopher. This is not the place to resolve the question, more complex than it may appear at first sight, of the philosophical or theological standing of these texts. However, it is obvious that a complete comprehension of this volume of unpublished texts presupposes a sufficient understanding of the philosophy of Zubiri. {10} Theologians will not be surprised about this. Great theological systems have also made extended use of philosophy. What is original to Zubiri, who undoubtedly considered himself a philosopher and not a theologian, is the fact that he carried out, at least initially, an application of his own philosophy to theological problems. For that reason, the reading of these unpublished texts will be particularly profitable for those theologians that may first be willing to familiarize themselves with the fundamental concepts of the philosophy of Zubiri.

The second warning ties in with the first. The philosophy of Zubiri was subject to a process of evolution and radicalization that only finished with the death of the philosopher. This means that the date of the texts we shall present here is relevant for their adequate comprehension. That is why we have made an effort to always inform the reader about the origin of each one of the texts. The fundamental issues of Christianity are not presented the same way in the seminar of 1967, and in the seminar of 1971. Important differences can also be detected between the conceptiveness of the Eucharist in the seminar of 1971, and the one that appears in the article of 1981 mentioned above.

With respect to the totality of his work, there is a general agreement among the interpreters of Zubiri in considering his trilogy Inteligencia Sentiente, 1981-1983 (“Sentient Intelligence”, tr. by Dr. Thomas B. Fowler, Jr., 1999), as the key for reading all his previous works. Similarly, the writings of Zubiri on Christianity should be interpreted not only from this trilogy, but also from his last reflections on theological problems contained in the 1981 article.

This brings us to a third warning about the selection and condition of the texts. Zubiri systematically approached several theological problems in the seminar of 1967, entitled {11} Reflexiones filosóficas sobre algunos problemas de teología (“Philosophical reflections about some theological problems”). He returned to the same subjects in the third part of the 1971 seminar, entitled El problema teologal del hombre: Dios, religión, Cristianismo (“The theological problem of man: God, religion, Christianity”). Both texts have a similar structure, which eliminated any doubts about preferring the most recent one. Because of this, the typed script for the conferences of 1971, slightly revised by Zubiri, constitutes the outline of the present volume of unpublished texts. As a prelude to these lessons we have chosen the last part of the 1968 seminar on El hombre y el problema de Dios (“Man and the problem of God”), which was duly revised more completely by the philosopher. The introduction to El logos teologal (“The theological logos”), the appendix on La evolución del dogma (“The evolution of dogma”), and the Conclusión general (“General conclusion”) are type-written texts by Zubiri himself. Finally, the appendix on the Eucharist was published while the philosopher was still alive. In order to accurately evaluate each of the texts it is important to take account not only of its date, but also the level of elaboration, which the author was able to provide in each case.

The fourth warning refers to the degree of intervention by the editor of this volume. Concerning the texts, which were type-written by Zubiri himself, the intervention has been practically nil, limited to the correction of some errata of Zubiri or to the insertion of some bibliographical notes. The transcription of the oral seminars needed a greater editorial elaboration in order to transfer from the oral to the written style. However, the oral style of Zubiri was, in general, enormously technical and precise, so that the labor of the editor is more limited than might be thought of at first, and it was never necessary to interpret the philosopher or alter his style or vocabulary. Similarly, the fundamental structure of the volume, since it is the one that belongs to the 1971 seminar, entirely proceeds from Zubiri. The editor only had to decide about the insertion of complementary texts. However, {12} this insertion has not presented too many difficulties, since it follows the general scheme, which Zubiri was using to explain the problema teologal del hombre (“theological problem of man”). For this reason we can say that we are faced with a volume, which proceeds entirely from Zubiri, and not from a mere editorial compilation.

In the fifth place, we should warn that the present volume presents the third and last part of what Zubiri called el problema teologal del hombre (“the theological problem of man”). The first part corresponds to what was published posthumously in El hombre y Dios (“Man and God”), where Zubiri faces the problem of the reality of God and the access of man to Him. The second part has been gathered in El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones (“The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions”), where Zubiri studies the unfolding of the problem of God in the religious experience of humanity. The third part, which now appears in this publication, concludes what we may call the trilogía teologal (“theological trilogy”) of Zubiri. Now that the three volumes have been published, we have chosen to recover what would have been for Zubiri the original title for them El problema teologal del hombre (“The Theological Problem of man”), not only for this volume, but also for future editions of the other two. Naturally, all this means that a correct interpretation of the present volume requires an assimilation of the two preceding ones.

Finally, some formal warnings. Frequently we have maintained the original graphic presentation of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek expressions, since this is the one Zubiri used when making hand notations on his seminars. However, in some of his type-written texts, and in his later publications, Zubiri used to transcribe. Because of this, we have chosen to accept both criteria. The textual quotations from the Bible are presented translated into Spanish, always using the translation {13} or the paraphrase by Zubiri whenever possible. We only offer in its original language the words that have some systematic value for the philosopher. In the case of Hebrew and Aramaic terms, we offer a simple transcription right after them in order to facilitate their reading. Some terms frequently used, like Yahweh, always appear transcribed. Biblical references have also been introduced for those texts where Zubiri had not indicated any. The quotations from the Magisterium of the Catholic Church have been presented with the initials “DS”, which refer, as is usual in theological texts, to the paragraphs of the compendium by H. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (Barcelona, 1975). Lastly, we should point out that the footnotes are the responsibility of the editor unless indicated otherwise.

My appreciation to all those who have contributed to the edition of this text, especially to Andrés Torre Queiruga and Xavier Pikaza, who revised the first draft in 1993. Also to Francisco José Ruiz, Gabino Uríbarri, and Roberto Valdés for their careful review of the final text we present here.

Antonio González
San Salvador, December, 1996