Rahner makes a virtuoso attempt to outline a Catholic ecclesiology that has a place for the Reformation as a movement within Catholicism. Interestingly, he goes to the Reformation solas and tries to show how, in fact, these were and are true Catholic teachings.
About Sola Fide he says:
'...the act of response to God's grace which alone gives salvation is not a work, but rather, in Pauline terms, it is faith. The Catholic doctrine is that this faith is not merely a dogmatic theory, that this faith must be based interiorly on a hope in the pure grace of God, and that this faith must be interiorly illuminated and fulfilled by what Holy Scripture calls love, calls justifying and sanctifying love. Basically an Evangelical Christian cannot raise any objections against this...' p. 361
Well, wait a minute! Perhaps not an objection, more a quibble: I do think he has clarified helpfully that faith does not equal 'some knowledge believed' (which causes such great confusion). I just don't understand what love is doing there: what can he possibly mean by this love that justifies/sanctifies? What texts is he refering to? Isn't this just a way of sneaking works back in there (in a semi-Pelagian move)?
Of course the Catholic church may decide it agreed with the Reformation all along on this, but unless it becomes the 'article on which the church stands or falls' (Luther), there is still a large difference.
9 comments:
"if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing" (1 Cor 13:2).
Fred
PS. I'm enjoying these bits from Rahner - I haven't read him much, but have read some things by his brother, Hugo ...
I also immediately thought of 1 Cor 13:2, but also of Gal 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love. As I understand it, this is the usual text for this point.
Not to mention the following:
Eph 3:17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
1Th 5:8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. Here faith and love are juxtaposed quite closely, unlike hope, which gets a different image.
There are also a huge number of times Paul mentions faith and love side by side, often at the opening of his letters. This doesn't equate them, but indicates they were linked in his thoughts: 2Th 1:3; Eph 1.15; Eph 6.23; Col 1.4; 1 Thess 1.3; 2 Thess 1.3; 1 Tim 1.5, 14, 2.15, 4.12, 6.11, 2 Tim 1.13, 2.22, 3.10, Philemon 5.
is it love that justifies you? can we say 'justifying LOVE'?
Wouldn't love fall into "the good that I would, I do not do?" How does the cor curvum in se love another?
Yeah, missed the justifying love bit in the quote (I was reading a little too quickly).
Though what of Matt 25? John 14? James 2? 2 Cor 5? Is not judgement by works? At least in some sense?
Sorry, I am still basically an unreconstructed pre-NP Protestant... because I just don't understand what the heck NTW is talking about, or any of youse who like him.
Matt 25 is about receiving the message of the apostles, not about giving to world vision...
2 Cor 5:10 is interesting, you are right...
I guess: what stops 'justifying love' being a semi-pelagian conception? or are you new perspectivites hip to that? ;-)
I'm with you Michael. Faith alone justifies. But faith does not remain alone, it works through love.
Why does Rahner think that any self-respecting Evangelical Prot would agree with him? Does he think that we won't notice the traditional Catholic merging of justification and sanctification in his statement? Seems from a few of the other comments that some didn't.
Maybe you Moore lot aint so bad after all. ;-)
"what stops 'justifying love' being a semi-pelagian conception?"
The fact that in the Catholic conception, at least, it is a grace: something received from God that we are incapable of achieving on our own?
My apologies if I misunderstand the question
no, you have not misunderstood the question...
It just sounds like we are not finally justified on the basis of Christ's work for us but on the basis of the love it is given us to enact.
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