Rahner’s “New Christology” in “Foundations of Christian Faith”
Report to the Annual Meeting of the Karl Rahner Society
On Volume 26 of Rahner’s Sämtliche Werke
By Mark F. Fischer, St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo (fischer@stjohnsem.edu)
Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, Saturday, June 12, 2010

It gives me pleasure to speak to you today about Karl Rahner’s so-called “New Christology,” the Christology buried within the Foundations of Christian Faith. I would not have known that Rahner inserted the 35 Lehrsätze or propositions from his “new Christology” into Foundations of Christian Faith were it not for the Sämtliche Werke. The 39-page Editionsbericht or Editorial Report to volume 26 of Rahner’s Sämtliche Werke by Nikolaus Schwerdtfeger and Albert Raffelt provided a clue. My “Selective Summary” of the Editorial Report can be found on the salmon-colored sheets before you. Volume 26 of the Sämtliche Werke, which appeared in 1999, is dedicated to the Grundkurs des Glaubens or Foundations of Christian Faith. Thanks to the painstaking work of Schwerdtfeger and Raffelt, we can trace the history of the composition of the Foundations. That history has led me into a textual puzzle, and ultimately into the mystery of Jesus Christ, and that is what I want to share with you this morning.

Let me begin by acknowledging some of the members of the Karl Rahner Society who stimulated my research. The first is Ann Riggs. When in 2005 I published a paraphrase of Rahner’s Grundkurs entitled The Foundations of Karl Rahner, Ann said something that stuck with me. One of her professors, she remembered, claimed that Rahner’s Foundations (subtitled “Introduction to the Idea of Christianity”) was a simplified summary of Rahner’s earlier and more profound works. It is, the professor implied, a mere introduction. To be sure, Foundations incorporates earlier writings by Rahner, writings that were not as fully acknowledged in the Preface to the English edition as they were in the Vorwort to the German original. So I wondered if the suppositions of Ann’s professor were true, and whether the Foundations could be said to contribute anything new.

Two other members of the Society who motivated me were Andreas Batlogg and Melvin Michalski. Their work of 2006, Encounters with Karl Rahner, includes a lively interview with Albert Raffelt, one of the co-authors of the Editorial Report of Volume 26, who is now retired as Professor at the University of Freiburg. In the early 1970s, Raffelt was Rahner’s Assistant and, in the Preface to Foundations of Christian Faith, Rahner acknowledged him. Raffelt was the one who (along with Elisabeth von der Lieth) “took care of a large part of the final editing of the text” (p. xv). In the Batlogg-Michalski volume, Raffelt spoke about his editorial work on the Foundations. He compared his collaboration with Rahner to the earlier collaboration of Rahner with Karl Lehmann. “The way they worked was that Rahner would initially prepare the treatise and Lehmann would add the historical research,” said Raffelt. He continued: “Rahner, probably, thought that this would work for Foundations of Christian Faith as well.”[1] Raffelt’s memories enhance the impression that Foundations of Christian Faith is a compilation of earlier material, a compilation performed in large part by others.

The Editorial Report to volume 26 of the Sämtliche Werke – a report co-authored by Raffelt – creates a different (and more authoritative) impression. With its 83 footnotes, plus comments on the manuscripts of the Foundations, it exemplifies thorough scholarship. It includes a history of the composition of the Foundations. The Editorial Report states that Rahner began a series of lectures in Munich from 1964-66 entitled “Introduction to the Concept of Christianity.” The lectures were too detailed and not enthusiastically received. After three years, he moved to the University of Münster. There he gave another series of lectures on the same theme, “Introduction to the Concept of Christianity” (1968-69). In the course of these two lecture series, the section on Christology grew from 165 to 298 pages.

In 1964, Thomas O’Meara attended Rahner’s initial lectures in Munich on the “Introduction to the Concept of Christianity,” and even saved his hand-written notes from the time, which he shared with me. It seems that Rahner initially thought he would polish off his “system” in a quick two semesters. But he lectured four semesters in Munich (2 hours per week) and then an additional two semesters in Münster (4 hours per week). Even after that, it was seven years before the Foundations saw the light of day.

One of the delays proved serendipitous. In the Winter Semester 1970-71, Rahner was asked to lecture for the first time in his life – he was 64 years old – on Christology as part of the normal theological curriculum. Schwerdtfeger and Raffelt state that he did so “in cooperation with” a New Testament professor named Wilhelm Thüsing. Their work was published in 1972 as Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch. Rahner wrote the first five “systematic” chapters, totaling 61 pages. The chapters were divided into 35 Lehrsätze or propositions. You can read the 35 “Lehrsätze on Christology by Karl Rahner” on the buff-colored handout before you. Thüsing wrote the remaining 222 pages of the Christologie. They contain the “exegetical” part, affirming that the New Testament lends support to Rahner’s transcendental Christology.

Then, in the early seventies, as Rahner prepared his manuscript for Foundations of Christian Faith, he chose not to use the Christological section that he had elaborated at Munich and Münster. According to Schwerdtfeger and Raffelt, he instead inserted the five-chapter Christology that he had written in cooperation with Thüsing. The book by Rahner and Thüsing that grew out of the collaboration was published in the USA in 1980 as “A New Christology.” But surprisingly, Rahner’s part of the English edition is not a translation of Rahner’s five chapters from Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch. It contains three brief essays by Rahner, totaling 38 pages (not 61), and I can only conjecture about where the German originals were published.[2]

But I do have a hypothesis about why Rahner’s five chapters did not appear in “A New Christology.” They were unpublished because they had already appeared. Specifically, 33 of Rahner’s 35 Lehrsätze from Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch appeared in the Grundkurs (1976) and in “Foundations of Christian Faith” (1978). So my hypothesis is that Herder did not want to publish them in “A New Christology” (1980) because they were already in print, albeit under a different title.

Although the Lehrsätze or propositions indeed appear in the Foundations, they are not visible as numbered propositions. The reader of the Foundations would never know that a significant portion of Chapter VI, the chapter on Jesus Christ and the longest in the book, consists of quotations from Christologie – systematisch und exegetisch. The propositions from the 1972 Christologie constitute less than half of the chapter, and one can see where the propositions were inserted by consulting the blue-colored handout, entitled “Lehrsätze im Grundkurs.” This handout places the 35 propositions into an outline of Chapter VI, with its ten parts and 113 sub-sections. In many cases, the subsections consist entirely of the corresponding proposition.

How are we to interpret this late-in-life development of Rahner’s Christology? One way is to speculate about the influence that Wilhelm Thüsing had on Rahner. It is remarkable that, after his collaboration with Thüsing, Rahner completely revised Chapter VI of the Foundations. “Rahner decided to insert the Münster Christology lecture,” stated Schwerdtfeger and Raffelt, “in exchange for the corresponding parts of the lecture on ‘Introduction to the Concept of Christianity.’”[3] While it is true to say that the Foundations of 1976 quotes from the Christologie of 1972, that Christology was new and appeared in Rahner’s 68th year. At the time of his work with Thüsing, Rahner’s reflections on Jesus Christ were still developing. It would be unfair to say that all of Rahner’s creative work was accomplished early in his career and that, at the time of the Foundations, he was merely repeating himself.

What was the heart of Rahner’s new reflection on Jesus Christ? To answer this question, one would have to consult the lecture manuscripts from Munich and Münster, the lectures on Jesus Christ that Rahner abandoned in favor of the 1972 Christologie. A comparison of the Munich and Münster lecture-manuscripts with the 1972 Christologie would give us the most precise answer to the question of how Rahner’s thinking had changed. This would certainly be worth a semester in Germany!

But short of a trip to Germany, what can we say? My conjecture is that we can date the explicit emergence of Rahner’s transcendental Christology to 1969, as he was preparing the lectures with Thüsing. That year the phrase “transcendental Christology” first appeared in the Theological Investigations in an essay entitled “Reflections on Methodology in Theology.”[4] Transcendental Christology describes the capacity placed by God in the human being, a capacity which makes the coming of the message of Jesus Christ possible (Lehrsatz 9). It is the expression in history of God’s eternal will.[5] Rahner described our human capacity as “an inescapable orientation in hope towards an absolute saviour in history” (Lehrsatz 11). Jesus Christ saves us, but not by altering the supposed vindictive will of the Father (Lehrsatz 13). No, he saves us by showing us true faith and true union with God, a faith and union in which we can participate. “When God wants to be what is not God,” wrote Rahner, “man comes to be” (Foundations, p. 225). We come to be, and are saved, because God took the initiative to be with us, a divine initiative we recognize in Jesus Christ. That is the transcendental Christology that Rahner began to write about in his 65th year, the Christology whose genesis is documented in the Editorial Report to vol. 26 of the Sämtliche Werke.

Endnotes

[1] “Die Arbeitsweise war so: Es lagen Rahner-Aufsätze vor, und Lehmann hat dann den ganzen historischen Fundus drangehängt. Wahrscheinlich dachte Pater Rahner, beim ‘Grundkurs’ würde das auch so funktionieren.” Andreas R. Batlogg and Melvin E. Michalski, Editors, Begegnungen mit Karl Rahner: Weggefährten erinnern sich (Freiburg – Basel – Wien: Herder, 2006), pp. 52-53. Translation: Encounters with Karl Rahner: Remembrances by Those Who Knew Him, Marquette Studies in Theology, no. 63, translation edited by Barbara G. Turner (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009), p. 71.

[2] On the basis of the Rahner Bibliography published online by the University of Freiburg, but without consulting the original German texts, I conjecture the following sources for the three chapters in A New Christology. Chapter 1, “Christology Today,” was first published as “Kleine Anmerkungen zur systematischen Christologie heute,” in Josef Blank and Gotthold Hasenhüttl (editors), Glaube an Jesus Christus: Neue Beiträge zur Christologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1980), pp. 134-144. Chapter 2, “The Provenance of the Church in the History of Salvation from the Death and Resurrection of Jesus,” was originally published as “Heilsgeschichtliche Herkunft der Kirche von Tod und Auferstehung Jesu,” in Johann Reikerstorfer (editor), Zeit des Geistes: Zur heilsgeschichtlichen Herkunft der Kirche (Vienna: Dom-Verlag, 1977), pp. 11-26. Chapter 3, “The Death of Jesus and the Finality of Revelation,” was originally published as “Tod Jesu und Abgeschlossenheit der Offenbarung,” in Pluralisme et oecuménisme en recherches théologiques: Mélanges offerts au R. P. Dockx, O.P. (Gembloux and Paris: Duculot, 1976 (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, vol. 43)), pp. 263-272.

[3] „Im Prozeß dieser Bearbeitung entschied sich Rahner auch für die Übernahme der Münsteraner Christologie-Vorlesung und den Austausch der entsprechenden Abschnitte der Vorlesung ‚Einführung in den Begriff des Christentums.“ Schwerdtfeger and Raffelt, „Editionsbericht,” Sämtliche Werke, vol. 26, p. xxv.

[4] The essay was “prepared for a theological symposium which was held in Montreal in the summer of 1969.” Karl Rahner, “Reflections on Methodology in Theology,” Theological Investigations, vol. XI, Confrontations, trans. by David Bourke (New York: Seabury, 1974), pp. 68-114, footnote 1, p. 68. Rahner lectured on his “Introduction to the Concept of Christianity” during the winter and summer semesters of 1968-69. He had a sabbatical during the winter semester of 1969-70. He lectured on the Creation in the summer semester of 1970. The course with Thüsing took place during the winter semester of 1970-71.

[5] Leo J. O’Donovan recognized these historical and transcendent dimensions, and so included two essays on Rahner’s Christology in his work on Foundations of Christian Faith. See Leo J. O’Donovan, Editor, A World of Grace: An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner’s Theology (New York: The Seabury Press – A Crossroad Book, 1980). In the Preface, O’Donovan wrote, “Because of the length and importance of Rahner’s treatment of Jesus Christ, we have provided two essays on Christology (chapters 7 [by J. Peter Schineller] and 8 [by Otto H. Hentz]), the first emphasizing Rahner’s later, more historically accented approach, the second examining his now classic claims on how Jesus of Nazareth may in fact be recognized as the Christ of God” (p. xi). About his chapter, Schineller wrote, “This one will focus on the history of Jesus (examining Foundations, chapter 6, subsections 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9). The next chapter [by Hentz] will explore the philosophical, traditional, and doctrinal aspects of Rahner’s Christology (related to Foundations, chapter 6, subsections 1, 3, 4, and 7)” (p. 94). It is worth noting, however, that Peter Schineller did not confine himself to the sections of the Foundations that Rahner had taken over the 1971 Christology lectures. Nor did Hentz confine himself to the non-1971 material.