Rahner vs Balthasar: martyrdom in contemporary Roman Catholicism II

Balthasar’s small work specifically on martyrdom relates to grander themes in his entire oeuvre; however, it particularly reflects Balthasar’s dismay at Rahner’s famous ‘anonymous Christian’ idea. Balthasar points out that is precisely at the point of martyrdom that this notion becomes untenable. Rahner stands accused of switching the moment of decision for the Christian from the encounter with the crucified Christ which demands our faith to the moment when one is – as any human person is – met by the need of the neighbour for love. That is not to say that Balthasar is opposed to the works of love that might result in a bloody martyrdom: only that this is not the point of decision for the Christian, the Ernstfall which generates the life that follows. That belongs only to the cross and resurrection of Christ. It is only from these events that the Christian life truly springs:

What then should a Christian be? He should be one who offers up his life in the service of his fellow man because he owes his life to Christ crucified.

While Rahner and others might be right in urging a broadening of the concept of martyrdom, they do not sufficiently ties it back in the events that gave it birth. Witness-bearing, for Balthasar, may take a variety of forms, granted. What Balthasar wants to re-assert is that martyrdom is an ‘act’ of faith – and that faith as faith in the God of Jesus Christ:

Man becomes aware of the nature of his particular mission in life when he calmly puts his trust in God. But whatever particular Christian state the believer may live in, he lives as one who has died and been resurrected, because his while existence is an attempt to make a loving and thankful response to God ‘by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20).

Balthasar’s suggestion helps not to foreclose the possible range of consequences of a life of authentic Christian witness (which is the concern of Rahner and Boff); but also ties it inextricably to the work of Christ in the believer, such that it could never be said that martyrdom anything other than a divine act.

Rahner and Cavanaugh: martyrdom in Roman Catholicism

Karl Rahner has been among the most prominent voices urging for such a broadening of the notion of martyrdom. Traditionally, those who have died in active struggle have been excluded from consideration as martyrs, however righteous the cause. While he recognizes the important caveats that must be observed (in order to exclude, for example, the crusading knights of the Middle Ages), Rahner argues that this element of active struggle often springs directly from a pure inner conviction about Christ:

…the death Jesus ‘passively endured was the consequence of the struggle he waged against those in his day who wielded religious and political power. He died because he fought: his death must not be seen in isolation from his life. Putting this argument the other way around, someone who dies while fighting actively for the demands of his or her Christian convictions…can also be said patiently to endure his or her death.

He is joined in this plea by the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, who, hearkening back to Origen (over the head of Augustine) argues for the inclusion of ‘political martyrs’: by which he means to indicate those who witness to the truth of the kingdom in active struggle against oppression. The emphasis within this conception of martyrdom falls almost entirely on the activity performed by the martyr, and its (presumed) resemblance to the teaching and action of Christ himself. This has of course a particular application in the Latin American context in which liberation theology arose. However, the difficulty that Boff runs into (and Rahner risks) is that he makes abstract principles distilled from the life of Christ by whatever hermeneutical process fundamental to the recognition of a martyr aside from the actual narrative of that life. As William Cavanaugh puts it (speaking of Boff and fellow theologian Sobrino) they ‘assume that the content of Christ’s life, death and resurrection can be isolated apart from their form’. If martyrdom is reduced in this way to some principle – ‘love’ or ‘justice’ – apart from imitating the pattern of Christ’s life, then it is susceptible to becoming criteria-less. It loses its distinctly Christ-like characteristics that might mark it out from other sorts of acts. Cavanaugh continues:

The imitation of Christ is not reducible to some principle such as “love”, but is rather a highly skilled performance learned in a disciplined community of virtue by careful attention to the concrete contours of the Christian life and death as borne out by Jesus and the saints.

Perhaps one of the problems here is in the Roman Catholic need to identify exactly who is and who isn't a martyr/saint...

Rahner on sacraments

Rahner posits the Chuch as the basic sacrament. The other (seven) sacraments occur when the church 'addresses itself to and involves itself totally in existentielly [sic] decisive sitiations in human life'.

He says that, if institution by Jesus is a criteria, then NONE of the sacraments can be traced back to Jesus for certain (following modern Biblical scholarship). Instead, the sacraments flow from the institution of the church by Jesus. The sevenfold sacraments are an interpretation by the church of its sacramental existence.

Man must respond in faith, hope and love: the sacraments are not 'magical', though they have been misunderstood as such.

He goes on to adopt an almost Calvinist description - in all the sacraments is 'the efficacious word of God.' They are a 'tangible word of God'. But also: 'It is precisely in a sacramental word, where the chuch addresses God's word to an individual in his quite concrete salvific situation, that the individual precisely as individual is addressed by the word of God in a way which is not found in the general word of preaching even in a really existentiell sermon...'

Rahner on doctrinal boundaries

In the light of the Anglican Communion's drawing of a line in the doctrinal/ethical sand - well, kind of - I was interested to read this from our old friend Karl Rahner:

...a church cannot be a church if it would never have the courage to declare something anathema, if it could tolerate absolutely everything and anything as an equally justified opinion among Christians. (p. 382 Foundations of Christian Faith)

However: has there ever been such a church? Even the ultra-liberal revisionists have anathemas. They are forced to show where and who they would definitely exclude in order to meet precisely this criteria.

Immediately we have to ask about specifics. What are the core and basic truths? What are the negotiables? Rahner won't admit, as he goes on, that the dogmatic propositions of the faith are so easily detatchable from one another. They have a structure, which may be dislocated if even a small part is changed.

Rahner comments on verbal inspiration

I was intrigued to find sections in Rahner's book Foundations which support the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture as doctrines of the Catholic church.

Rahner makes a telling comment I think about Protestant doctrines of scripture:

...the old Reformation doctrine of scripture alone, which was necessarily and intrinsically connected with the notion of a verbal inspiration of scripture, is untenable from a historical point of view, nor is it taught any longer in contemporary Evangelical (ie Lutheran) theology...Only when scripture is understood as the one and only product which comes immediately from God independently of any historical and very differentiated process of becoming can I ascribe to scripure an authority which makes it completely independent of the living testimony of the church. But basically, one cannot abandon the principle of an absolute verbal inspiration of scripture, as in fact has happened, and still maintain the principle of scripture alone in the sense which it had in the time of the Reformation.... p. 362

I think this is quite perceptive. Verbal inspiration is quite a costly doctrine to jettison if you are trying to hold to a principle of scripture alone...

Rahner on Sola Fide

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.

Rahner on Church...

We are looking at Rahner as the counterpoint to Calvin on the church. Here's what he has to say:

If, then, there are very many Christians today who basically regard the different ecclesial communities as equally legitimate churches, this relativistic opinion in ecclesiology presupposes either that the church of Jesus Christ as he willed it does not exist at all, or that in spite of divisions among Christians it exists to such an extent that it does not really have to be brought about. Basically, then, all ecumenical efforts and endeavours for a single church would be superfluous to begin with, or ecumenical endeavours only strive for an additional unity which ultimatley would have nothing to do with the essential unity of the church which already exists. Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 353-4

To which I say, 'well, yes...!' If by unity, he means a kind of organisational or heirarchical unity, which is no unity at all unless there is a single mindedness of course...