Philosophy and Theology

Hegel and Nietzsche stood opposed to the monastic tradition which they saw as based upon a denial of the intrinsic value of this life. Both sought to install eternity in this life and not seek for it in an afterlife. Central to both, and contrary to common caricatures of Hegel, is the notion of the heart, the aspect of total subjective participation, which is the locus of a fully concrete reason understood in Hegel’s sense. It is also central to Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov where the heart of Fr. Zosima, while yet rooted in the encompassing eternality of God, overcomes the contempt for the earth of Fr. Ferapont and leads Alyosha to embrace his vocation in the world. Hegel developed the fundamental categories that allows us to comprehend the situation.

This article provides critical analysis of Aquinas’s designation of poverty as unqualifiedly evil. This paper provides an analysis of two different meanings of poverty: (a) in relation to things or to the external conditions in which people live and (b) in relation to an action in which people engage or are thwarted. Next, the paper discusses the sense in which poverty is an evil—and particularly, an unqualified evil—in relation to both of these meanings of poverty. Since Aquinas claims that poverty is an unqualified evil so far as it prevents people from attaining the ends of sustaining themselves and assisting others, the final section of the paper discusses possible interpretations of these ends, suggesting that each end can be taken in a narrow, minimalist or subsistence sense and a broader, more holistic or contextualized sense.

In recent studies it has been possible to apply new approaches in philosophy, especially of linguistic philosophy, to exegesis of the writings of the New Testament. Utilizing Wittgenstein’s model of language games, the following study of the meaning of the (apparently hidden) speech in the most difficult book of the NT, the “Book of Revelation,” reveals that the seer John does not speak of hidden events in the future but intends to point the addressee of his writing to a new Christian existence already in the present world. For baptized believers the symbols of his visions become signposts, on the basis of which they would understand and act in their present world. The final motif of Revelation, God’s gift of the “New Jerusalem,” is therefore not only a symbol of the fulfillment of the history of theworld, but in the first place a real description concerned with the present, perhaps even a prescription of conduct for the Christian communal life in a non-Christian world. This result is reached in consideration of (a) the pragmatic dimension of the language act that is emphasized in the language game, and (b) the rule-laden character of a game, in which is winning is intended. In this way, the author and content of Revelation is seen in a new, not previously considered way. In the end John does not only say what will happen, but also what has to happen, i.e., what Christians are to do—or not to do—in the world, in order to overcome it and to contribute to its transformation.

In the last five years the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has taken harsh steps against various theologians because of their interpretations of belief. Some theologians were censured; others, silenced; one, excommunicated. The question that emerges from that effort by Rome’s Holy Office to censure theology is whether theology can be universal, i.e., catholic, or whether it must reflect the interpretations of Rome’s Holy Office.

How is experience possible if the one who experiences is ‘forgotten’ and transcended? In his book Meister Eckhart: Mystic and Philosopher Reiner Schürmann explores two lines of thought in Eckhart’s philosophy of mind—Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic. The first of these, he observes, leads to the idea that being is revealed in the “birth of the Son”—that is, in God acting in place of the active intellect. The second leads to the idea that being is revealed in an unrepresentable Unity. These two lines of thought are, on their face, inconsistent. While the idea of the “birth of the Son” permits a division between ‘illuminator’ (universal) and ‘illuminated’ (particular), and so preserves the possibility of experience, the idea of an unrepresentable Unity does not. The resulting aporia, Schürmann argues, is resolved through Eckhart’s concept of detachment. But if, as Eckhart suggests, detachment is fundamentally atemporal, then it is not clear how, when one ‘lives in detachment,’ the process of becoming, through which an object appears to a subject, can be sustained. Hence, Schürmann’s resolution is problematic. In his Defense to charges of heresy, however, Eckhart takes positive steps towards explaining how something can simultaneously be a Unity and a multiplicity. In so doing, he offers us a window into both the nature of detachment and the nature of mind.

This paper suggests that Ricoeur’s language about God can be read as a “symbol that gives rise to thought,” or even specifically as a symbol for “hope.” It examines the tensions found in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics in four layers of such symbolic language: First, the language of faith, for Ricoeur, is essentially circular, is poetic language, a language of manifestation and not of adequation. Second, the biblical discourse is composed of several kinds of languages, a polyphony of discourses that provide different (though individually always incomplete) paths toward God. Third, these discourses are characterized by limit-expressions that introduce extravagance and excess into God-language and open paths to new possibilities. Finally, Ricoeur’s theological language emphasizes paradox, perplexity, enigmas; it stays open toward any thinking about God that gives rise to new thoughts.

Time flows. This oft-lamented fact of human existence seems plain enough, but is remarkably difficult to explain scientifically. Physical theory follows a greater goal—symmetry—and the directional nature of time is left adrift. The phenomenon must nevertheless be explained.Scientists since Isaac Newton have searched classical mechanics for answers, but precious little progress has been made on his mystical ideas. The discoveries of thermodynamics, though clearly relevant, have posed more problems than they have solved.Now a new solution presents itself through quantum mechanics. The intimate relation between thermodynamics and time is not in doubt, but now quantum theory is explaining how the laws of entropy arise from a stranger reality. The theory of decoherence begins to explain time as a holistic quantum concept.

The following article is both a reminder to those interested in the development of the doctrine of universal salvation that it has a long history, and an exercise in historiography of Karl Rahner’s relationship to a seventeenth century Spanish Jesuit theologian, Juan Martînez de Ripalda. Rahner’s thesis known as the “supernatural existential” has Jesuit antecedents in the thought of Ripalda and his magnum opus entitled De ente supernaturali. After some historical contextualization of Ripalda we will focus on Rahner and offer possible reasons why the “Molinist” thought of Ripalda with respect to the possibility of salvation for non-Christian persons was so important for his own work. The article will then provide a critical study of Rahner’s reading of Ripalda and point out some key areas of difference in theological approach between the two Jesuits who, almost four hundred years ago, asked similar questions and came to the same answers using very different methodologies.

This article pursues Rahner’s idea that the Holy Spirit has the role of “Spirit of Christ” even before the Incarnation, namely as “entelechy” directed to the Christ event. In the article, particular use is made of a biblical text hitherto not invoked in this connection, namely 1 Peter 1:11, from which a biblical base for this theology is developed. The article also investigates Teilhard de Chardin’s theory of evolution encompassing the world religions and Christianity, the absolute religion. The idea of the Spirit of Christ as entelechy is clarified and refined by application of the author’s construct of the “return” model of the Trinity, in which the Son does not just come forth from the Father, but returns to him in the power of the Spirit (see his newly published book, Deus Trinitas). Before, and in reparation for, the Son’s historical return to the Father, in Christ, the Spirit, precisely as entelechy, has to seek him in history, that is, through the creation and evolution of the cosmos, the arrival of humans, the consequent and new operation of the Spirit as grace, and the history of Israel culminating in the lives of Mary and, finally, Jesus, in whom this operation finds its final goal. Moreover, the role of the Spirit as entelechy complements and forms a unity with that of the same Spirit (again “Spirit of Christ”) as sent historically by the glorified Christ upon the Church, and continues even after the Incarnation, in leading to Christ (as “anonymous Christians”) men and women of goodwill, including those belonging to the world religions who have not yet had the gospel effectively preached to them. Finally, the paper notes that it covers some of the same ground as the Vatican Declaration Dominus Iesus, but in a different way, namely as instructed by the work of Teilhard and Rahner.

The church’s mission to the world in the new millennium will require a careful balance of global vision and local sensitivity. Karl Rahner’s ecclesiology supplies useful tools for this balance, in that it moves toward an appreciation of the inherent authority and dignity of the local church community, understood as an interpersonal network within the broader church. Rahner’s focus on the church as sacrament provides the key consideration: that the church necessarily accomplishes its mission in the midst of concrete historical contexts. Rahner also provides a way of understanding the presence of the whole church embodied in the local community, particularly as it gathers for Eucharist. This sharing in the essence of the church also manifests itself in the local community’s roles in nurturing and responding to official authority. Rahner’s trust in the work of the Spirit for the maintenance of unity allows him to revel in the church’s diversity. The local community shows most clearly the aspect of church as pilgrim in the world, which Rahner underscores. Because the local community embodies the universal church in a particular location, the study of the community and its contexts is essential for understanding the reality and the mission of the church in the world.

This short essay will attempt to show that although Karl Rahner would be in basic agreement with the concern of “Dominus Iesus” about “religious relativism” and in basic agreement with the claims of the Catholic Church (as expressed in Vatican II) about the role of Jesus as universal savior and about the unique role of the Roman Catholic church in God’s salvific plan for the world, he would not agree with the spirit or tone of this declaration from a Vatican Congregation. Rahner’s writings set a more positive tone framed by his classic retrieval of the concept of mystery in Roman Catholic theology that invites dialog with people of other religious traditions. Three characteristics of that invitational spirit of Rahner are highlighted in this essay: (1) the life-long process of becoming Christian; (2) the inadequacy of all human expressions in the face of mystery; (3) the need to be non-competitive in any ecumenical or inter-religious dialog.