Rain and the Rhinoceros

Regardless of what you think of his interpretation of Barth or where you stand on the doctrine of the analogia entis, you have to admit that Hans Urs von Balthasar’s The Theology of Karl Barth is one of the greatest pieces of Catholic-Protestant ecumenical theology ever written. I realize that is kind of strong statement, but this book is just superb. I’m convinced that more of this type of careful and patient work needs to be done. Can anyone think of an ecumenical work that even compares to this masterpiece?

Karl Rahner’s theory of “Anonymous Christianity” is a thoroughly inadequate approach to the reality of religious pluralism. It is inadequate insofar as it is caught up in the standard modern myth of the ability to transcend particularity and difference for the sake of a new “universal” (inter-religious) global (capitalist?) community. In Rahner’s time and perhaps especially in our own, we are constantly being reminded of the fact that Christianity is merely one religion among many. As the recent upsurge in religious violence (i.e. Islamic terrorism) is commonly perceived to demonstrate, a claim to the absoluteness of any single religion almost invariably lends itself to violent conflict. Of course, the only reason why the Western “enlightened” mind can point a finger at so-called “Islamic fundamentalists” is precisely because it is more than conscious of its own shameful history of imperialism and colonialism in the name of religion.

Rahner’s “Anonymous Christianity,” like many other modern theological attempts to be “inclusive” of the “other” is driven by the distinctively modern impulse that particularity must and can somehow be transcended by a universal. To be fair, Rahner, quite unlike John Hick, wants to retain something of a traditional understanding of Christianity. That is, Rahner’s “inclusiveness” is always underscored by a sense of the uniqueness of Christianity and the church (which is, by the way, precisely the reason why the Hick camp concludes that his theory remains “lukewarm.”) Ironically, the attempt to transcend particularity effectively ignores the reality of difference altogether, only to reintroduce a new instantiation of enforced homogeneity—in short, a neo-imperialism.

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s seminal study The Theology of Karl Barth contains some rather harsh criticisms of the “early” Barth (The Epistle to the Romans, 1st and 2nd Editions) and some high praises for the “later” Barth (Church Dogmatics). Barth’s “conversion to analogy” becomes highly significant to von Balthasar’s overall account. In fact, it seems to me that any rapproachment between the two thinkers hinges on this thesis. He writes:

Just as Augustine underwent two conversions…so too in Barth we may find two decisive turning points. The first, his turn from liberalism to radical Christianity, occurred during the First World War and found expression in The Epistle to the Romans. The second was his final emancipation from the shackles of philosophy, enabling him finally to arrive at a genuine self-authenticating theology. This second conversion was a gradual process, indeed a struggle, that lasted nearly ten years, ending at about 1930 (93).

Von Balthasar quotes Barth’s own words about the significance of his 1931 Anselm book for his theology. He clearly states that the conversion process was a gradual one, and indeed, he never stops calling out traces of any residual dialectics in his theology. However, this thesis of Barth’s “conversion to analogy,” known now as the “von Balthasar thesis,” has recently come under fire, especially since the release of Bruce McCormack’s Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology. In this work McCormack argues that “the great weakness of the von Balthasarian formula is that it conceals from view the extent to which Karl Barth remained–even in the Church Dogmatics!–a dialectical theologian” (18). Indeed, McCormack identifies many key developments in Barth’s thought, but the “von Balthasar thesis,” in his mind, is mistaken on a number of fronts, not least in von Balthasar’s insistence that a decisive shift to analogy took place in Barth’s book on Anselm.

Now it is important to note that Barth’s conversion to analogy is never radical enough for von Balthasar’s tastes, as it remains too constricted and never fully allows for an adequate human response to God’s offer of grace in Jesus. However, it remains hugely important to him. If McCormack’s thesis is correct I must say that I am afraid that it could deliver a serious blow to any efforts of rapproachment between the two thinkers.

In 1932 Karl Barth offered a scathing critique of theological modernism. Although much of his attacks were directed at liberal Protestantism, Barth equally condemned the Roman Catholic church for its doctrine of the analogia entis (analogy of being). For Barth this doctrine was the invention of the anti-Christ. Barth thought that Catholic theology followed a formal analogy wherein an analysis of nature or being was taken up first only to later be read into faith. In Barth’s view, this led to a wrongful legitimation of the secular order, which bracketed political and economic life out of the realm of Christ. In Barth’s perspective, the analogia entis in Catholic thought was symptomatic of a deeply rooted Christological problem found especially in Thomas Aquinas and affecting all of Catholicism. According to Barth, beginning from nature rather than grace implicitly suggests a sort of dualism in Christ’s two natures, which pits Christ’s humanity against his divinity and unacceptably bifurcates the person of Christ so that one nature can exist self-sufficiently without the other. Although Barth correctly locates this position in much of post-Tridentine Catholic thought, he wrongly accuses Thomas Aquinas of

holding such a bastardized notion of the analogia entis. As Henri de Lubac rightly argued, Aquinas never conceived of “pure nature” independent of God’s supernatural grace and therefore did not pit nature against Christology.

Despite Barth’s critiques of the analogia entis and de Lubac’s reinterpretation of Thomas Aquinas’ construal of the relationship between nature and grace, much of contemporary Catholic theology continues to treat nature as an ontological and epistemological category independent of grace. This understanding of nature can be found in Catholic moral theologians as diverse as Jean Porter, Gerard Hughes, and Timothy O’Connell. Each of these theologians maintain an understanding of the relationship between nature and grace that requires one to choose between either nature or Christology. The common assumption is that if one begins with Christology, then one’s work is not sufficiently universal. The effect of this, according to these Catholic moralists, is that such an approach lacks the ability to transcend confessional particularities, rendering moral theologians useless in finding common moral ground with other traditions.

It seems evident that the persistence of such an approach to moral theology is not just the result of a mere misinterpretation of Aquinas, for since Henri de Lubac and the Second Vatican Council this view has been under attack. Rather, such an approach arises out of a deep concern for common moral ground in the context of a radically diverse and pluralistic world. It is, indeed, a world that Aquinas could not have imagined. It is typically assumed that if we cannot appeal to some form of natural knowledge of the good, then we cannot speak to others outside of our tradition, at least not on any rational ground. The argument for a self-contained natural knowledge, however, presumes the ability to transcend all particularity. The attempt to transcend particularity, in part, is a fear rooted in the belief that too much particularity causes conflict and violence. Thus, there is the underlying assumption that such approaches are more “inclusive” and “world-affirming” and avoid “sectarianism” or “exclusivism.” Of course, the “common” approach of which I speak is not monolithic, nor is it peculiar to Catholicism. Obviously, Karl Rahner’s “anonymous” Christianity is different from the pluralism of a John Hick or Paul Knitter. Still, all seem to share a common mode of discourse, which presumes that one must choose between either being more or less “exclusive” or more or less “inclusive.”

Of course, the assertion that Christology is the proper starting point of theological and moral reflection has profound ecclesiological implications and it does, indeed, effect how we speak to people of other traditions. Despite the assumptions of some neo-Thomism, however, basing morality on Christological convictions does not condemn Christian convictions to sectarianism. Indeed, such a position is surely suspicious of claims to transcend particularity and confessional traditions, especially when such claims are proposed to stand alone or seen as more fundamental than faith convictions. For, as John Howard Yoder noted, claims to natural moral knowledge tend to not consider that “dominant moral views of any known world are oppressive, provincial, or (to say it theologically) ‘fallen’” (The Priestly Kingdom 40). In his view, “There is no “public” that is not just another particular province” (The Priestly Kingdom 40). In other words, claims to universality are always rooted, in some degree or another, in a particular tradition. Such a view does not entail a position of moral relativism, but instead it attempts to take seriously the universally salvific character of God’s unique self-revelation in Christ.

As a non-Catholic studying theology at a Catholic university, I often think about the possiblity of intercommunion, that is, sharing the Eucharist with my Catholic sisters and brothers. Often you will hear Protestants speak against any exclusion when it comes to sharing the Eucharist, for all are welcome at the table. Yes, all are welcome at the Lord’s table – this must be affirmed. God calls his people to share communion together not apart. Does this mean, therefore, that protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, should now begin to share the Eucharist together? No! because the truth of the matter is that we are divided and not in communion. It is our hope that all will come into communion, but until that day we must be honest about where divisions exist. As Zizioulas notes, “In disagreeing with [intercommunion], we do not preach exclusiveness and exclusion of the other; we simply acknowledge that such an exclusion does exist, and until the causes of it are removed, communion with the other’ suffers” (Zizioulas,Communion & Otherness, 8).

The Words of Institution always remain consecratory for every Eucharist celebration regardless of whether they are recited or not. Therefore, even though it does not contain the Words of Institution, the Anaphora of Addai and Mari traditionally used in the Assyrian Church of the East is rightly considered a valid Eucharist celebration by the Roman Catholic Church. In his article “Mass without Consecration?” Robert F. Taft defends the Catholic Church’s recent declaration that this prayer, though absent of the Words of Institution, is still valid. He argues that the Latin West in the Late Middle Ages narrowly understood the Words of Institution as a sort of formula that, at the precise moment when recited by a priest, effected the consecration of the gifts of the Eucharist. The problem with this view is that it isolates the Words of Institution from the rest of the Eucharistic prayer.

Taft defends the Catholic Church’s validation of Addai and Mari on the basis that it is more faithful to the practices of the undivided early Church. Furthermore, there is much evidence to suggest that Addai and Mari is one of most ancient Anaphoras. In fact, some scholars have argued it is likely that Addai and Mari was not the only Anaphora without the Words of Institution in the early Church. All of this, however, does not deny or discount the Catholic insistence that the Words of Institution are both “constitutive” and “indispensable,” for as Taft rightly states, “they are words eternally efficacious in the mouth of Jesus.” Addai and Mari is valid precisely because, in the view of John Chrysostom, consecratory power is to be found not in its priestly recitation but in the historical moment of Jesus’ institution of the prayer.

The unity of the whole church of Christ depends, in no small part, on the Roman Catholic Church’s active engagement and involvement in the affairs of ecumenical theology. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council’s Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio rightly asserts that division “openly contradicts the will of Christ, provides a stumbling block to the world, and inflicts damage on the most holy cause of proclaiming the Good News to every creature.” The Decree exhorts all the Catholic faithful to “participate actively in the work of ecumenism.” Indeed, the hope for Christian unity was not only a fundamental element of the Second Vatican Council but it was once again reiterated in Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Ut Unum Sint in which he reminds Catholics that the task of ecumenism is not secondary to the mission of the church but “stands at the very heart of Christ’s mission.”

Roman Catholic engagement and involvement in ecumenical theology ought to be characterized by a posture of openness and humility. The Catholic Church’s commitment to unity must start with an openness to the Holy Spirit at work in non-Catholic communities. Openness coupled with a posture of humility creates a space for healthy dialogue with other Christian communities. Furthermore, if the hope for unity is grounded in the belief that Christ is the true head of the whole Church, reconciling all of humanity to himself, openness and humility will flow from the heart of Catholicism. Finally, we must hope with Pope John Paul II, “By God’s grace… neither what belongs to the structure of the Church of Christ nor that communion which still exists with the other Churches and Ecclesial Communities has been destroyed.”

The transcendence of the ontological necessity and exclusiveness entailed by the biological hypostatis constitutes an experience which is offered by the eucharist. When it is understood in its correct and primitive sense-and not how it has come to be regarded even in Orthodoxy under the influence of Western scholasticism-the eucharist is first of all an assembly (synaxis), a community, a network of relations, in which man “subsists” in a manner different from the biological as a member of a body which transcends every exclusiveness of a biological or social kind. The eucharist is the only historical context of human existence where the terms “father,” “brother,” etc., lose their biological exclusiveness and reveal, as we have seen, relationships of free and universal love.

John D. Zizioulas, Being As Communion (New York: St Vladimir’s Press, 1985), 60.

Bridgefolk is a movement that seeks ecumenical dialogue between Roman Catholicism and the Mennonite tradition. According to their website,

Bridgefolk is a movement of sacramentally-minded Mennonites and peace-minded Roman Catholics who come together to celebrate each other’s traditions, explore each other’s practices, and honor each other’s contribution to the mission of Christ’s Church. Together we seek better ways to embody a commitment to both traditions. We seek to make Anabaptist-Mennonite practices of discipleship, peaceableness, and lay participation more accessible to Roman Catholics, and to bring the spiritual, liturgical, and sacramental practices of the Catholic tradition to Anabaptists.

I first heard about Bridgefolk as an undergraduate from a theology professor of mine at the University of St. Thomas, Gerald W. Schlabach. Although I was attracted to Dr. Schlabach because I share his theological leanings, we actually met and began to talk when we realized that we shared something in common: we both smoke pipe tobacco. Schlabach and I had many conversations about theology and ethics while smoking a pipe between classes outside the theology wing at St. Thomas. Recently, I have become more interested in Mennonite – Catholic dialogue. Bridgefolk is the center for such dialogue and Schlabach has been quite involved in the movement; he is the Executive Director of the Board of Directors. Schlabach grew up in the Mennonite tradition and attended the University of Nortre Dame; after much prayer and consideration he recently converted to Roman Catholicism. He considers himself a Mennonite Catholic.

Dr. Schlabach is also a prolific theologian. He has written numerous books and articles. He recently edited a volume called Just Policing, Not War: An Alternative Response to World Violence which will be released next month.