A Teaching Source
Document Titled:
“Nine Karl Rahner Questions on
Interdependence”
A syllabus assistant to teach the Sacrament of Confirmation
Questions to help young adults understand the
Interdependence of Karl Rahner’s theology
by Hugh O’Donnell
Purpose
This “Syllabus of Questions” was prepared to fulfill the
requirements of Father James Bacik’s course on Karl Rahner’s “Foundations
of Christian Faith”[1]
presented at
Nine questions are proposed to help teach young adults the Sacrament of Confirmation using Karl Rahner’s “Theology of Interdependence.”
Young adults preparing for Confirmation can benefit from Karl Rahner’s Theology provided his writings are stripped of difficult technical language and focused to emphasize Rahner’s writings on theology of interdependence.”
The main purpose of this document is to suggest a syllabus of instruction that incorporates Rahner’s ideas about interdependence. The teaching objectives are derived from Rahner’s classic text “Foundations of Christian Faith.” The nine questions address relevant Confirmation preparation material found in Rahner’s theology book which is applicable for young adults preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation.
Answers to each of the nine questions are provided so as to further illustrate the teaching objectives. The questions and answers have been particularly tailored to fit into existing Confirmation preparation material.
Background
Information
In my 20 years of teaching Confirmation to Catholic students in my parish CCD program, I have found the concept of interdependence, particularly the understanding of human growth into interdependence following the growth stages of childhood dependence and adolescent independence, to be a particularly appropriate subject for students considering Confirmation. In my church, preparing young adults to become interdependent members of the Body of Christ is a key emphasis item for the third sacrament of initiation.
As a full time public high school science teacher, I use a lot of science in my part time CCD Confirmation classes. During the past three weeks, I have found Karl Rahner’s theology to be a particularly relevant addition to my Confirmation material because Rahner’s uses science to develop his theology and because his theology is filled with a deep understanding of what it means to be an interdependent Christian.
It is important to understand, a least for my particular parish, the Sacrament of Baptism is administered at birth marking the beginning of a child’s dependent developmental stage of life. The Sacrament of Eucharist is introduced seven years later when children reach a stage of development where a personal and independent relationship with Christ is possible. Finally, The Sacrament of Confirmation comes seven years after Eucharist marking the beginning of the developmental stage of Christian interdependence. At the age of fourteen, we consider our young adults now able to freely “confirm” the choice made by their parents and Godparents in the two previous sacraments of initiation.
The material presented here has been tailored to supplement Confirmation preparation material previously developed and described in detail on my web site http://www.nd.edu/~hodonne1/9presentation.htm titled “God Science and You.”
Method
of Defining The Rahner Teaching Objectives
This document uses the following sequence of presentation to describe the teaching objectives for Rahner’s theology proposed here:
1) One or more questions (Q#) for each chapter of Rahner’s classic work “Foundations of Christian Faith” are suggested.
2) Following each question, one or more “Quote(s)” from the Rahner text is offered to document the source material these questions address.
3) Following each question and quote is a suggested Answer offered to illustrate the level of understanding expected as student response.
4) Since each class should end with a prayer that frames the subject material covered, I have abstracted a “Prayer” from Rahner’s book “Prayers of a Lifetime”[2] to go along with each question.
5) The last section is titled “Film Clip.” I have always used movies to help illustrate my Confirmation material. The following three movies are referenced to supplement the teaching objectives presented here:
A. George Lucas’ second Star Wars movie, Episode V, “The Empire Strikes Back”
B. Franko Zeffirelli’s movie about
Saint Francis of
C. Mel Gibson’s latest movie “The Passion of Christ”
I have found that showing relevant movie clips brings the material “alive” for young adults living in today’s audio-visual world. The film clip section identifies relevant sections from these films that should be shown to help illustrate the content material.
The
Nine Questions from Rahner’s Book “Foundations of Christian Faith”
Chapter I - “The Hearer
of the Message”
Q#1: What is Karl Rahner’s understanding concerning the idea that humans must first becoming free individuals before becoming interdependent people? How does Rahner describe the method or process by which we come to know God? How does Rahner describe the importance of individual experience as the necessary starting point in the scientific process of developing a person’s innate awareness of God into a concrete knowledge of God? How does a both a universal and individual tendency toward God, a universal and individual intuition of holy mystery, and a universal and individual pre-grasp of incomprehensible reality draw humans toward a unity with God, in proportion to the degree individuals reflect on and verbalize these experiences both to themselves and in community with others?
Quote: Page 34… “A finite system as such can experience itself as finite only if in its origins it has its own experience by the fact that, as this conscious subject, it comes from something else which is not itself and which is not just an individual system, but in the original unity which anticipates and is the fullness of every conceivable system and of every individual and distinct subject…It is rather the a priori openness of the subject to being as such, which is present precisely when a person experiences himself as involved in the multiplicity of cares and concerns and fears and hopes of his everyday world.”
Answer: Rahner sees God more as a holy mystery, an incomprehensible entity, an indescribable reality, rather than as a person with concrete attributes humans can identify in themselves. He understands mystery as something which we are aware of intuitively but are lost for words to describe. If we are open to reflecting on this mysterious awareness, we can begin to verbalize our experiences to ourselves and most importantly to others having common experiences. If we freely open ourselves to penetration by this mystery and if we allow the mystery to unfold as concrete experience in both our lives and the interrelational lives of our neighbor, we will be brought to an ever evolving, collective understanding, that this God is the root of our common hopes, cares and concerns providing meaning to our lives as Confirmed Christians.
Prayer: Page 4… “What can I say to You, my God? …Shall I give You all the names of this world? Shall I call You God of my life, meaning of my existence. Shall I say: Creator, Sustainer, Pardoner, Near One, Distant One, Incomprehensible One, God of both flowers and stars, God of the gentle wind and terrible battles, Wisdom, Power, Loyalty, and Truthfulness, Eternity and Infinity?”
Film
Clip: Show the part of the movie “Brother Son Sister Moon” where Francis
awakens from his coma and becomes aware of God in a very intense way.
Chapter I - “The Hearer
of the Message”
Q#2: What is the central insight of Karl Rahner’s understanding about human freedom as it relates to an individuals choice to respond or not respond to God, this mysterious other? Using the terminology of Star Wars, what allows Luke Skywalker to “Trust the Force” rather than the computer?
Quote: Page 36 “But the real transcendental experience of freedom …these questions about “I” always experience myself as a subject who is given over to himself….not only in knowledge but also in action, is present as an a priori transcendental experience of my freedom. It is only through this that I know that I am free and responsible for myself, even if I have doubts about it, raise questions about it, and cannot discover it…”
Answer: Rahner says freedom is not about whether we can do something or be blocked from doing something by situations that seem beyond our direct control. He says freedom is about the power to choose and decide and act in a responsible and wholly free way within the constraints of a necessarily interdependent system of other people. We must trust our innate intuition of freedom and responsibility. We must trust that God surrounds the choices we are called to make including the free choice to affirm or deny the offer of God’s freely given grace, grace confirmed by our choice to be Confirmed; a choice that stems from an interdependent openness to other peoples experiences of God’s grace.
Prayer: Page 4…”Without You, I should flounder helplessly in my own dull and groping narrowness….Where should I flee before You, when all my yearning for the unbounded, even my bold trust in my littleness, is really a confession of You?”
Film
Clip: Show the part of Star Wars where
Luke Skywalker finally, in a moment of mysterious insight, turns off his aircraft computer
and uses the “Force” instead to guide his path to the target.
Chapter II – “Man in
the Presence of Absolute Mystery”
Q3. How does Rahner further define this conscious “pre- grasp” of God as God’s self gift of Himself to every human being? Why is this independent “pre-grasp” for Rahner the scientific starting point for our interdependent understanding of God?
Quotes: Page 45… “We can say, therefore, that what is most simple and most inescapable is the fact that the word “God” exists in his intellectual and spiritual existence.”
Page 53… “This unthematic and ever-present experience, this knowledge of God which we always have even when we are thinking of and concerned with anything but God, is the permanent ground from which from out of which that thematic knowledge of God emerges…”
Answer: Again, Rahner tells us that if we open ourselves to the depths of our impulses, the depths of our inner feelings, we are intuitively drawn to ask if God exists. If we allow to develop and share these God given feelings/experiences - the ones produced by the Holy Spirit of Confirmation - we arrive at an awareness of an incomprehensible, indescribable, infinite otherness or source-ness for our “being.” We begin collectively, to put into words, a concrete grasp that expresses a knowledge of the source of our being that must be more infinite choice than infinite chance, especially to the degree we historically study the science of evolution, the study of our own interconnectedness in time and space, that travels back spanning 15 billion years.
Prayer: Page 6… “I should like to speak with You, my God, and yet what else can I speak of but You? Indeed, could anything at all exist which had not been present with You from all eternity, which didn’t have its true home and most intimate expression in Your mind and heart? Isn’t everything I ever say really a statement about You?
Film Clip: Show the same clips as Q1 and Q2 above….particularly the “God” or “mystery” discovery scenes for Francis in “Brother Sun Sister Moon” following the coma produced by war.
Chapter III – “Man
as a Being Threatened Radically by Guilt”
Q4. Why does Rahner mean by “The possibility of a Decision against God”? How is this related to the concept of “Original sin?” What is the interdependence of an independent decision for God?
Quotes: Page 98… “Now it is decisive for our question that this freedom as “yes” or “no” implies a freedom vis-à-vis its own horizon. Freedom which is mediated in a human, historical and objective way and in concrete personhood is, of course always and also freedom with respect to a categorical object. Freedom takes place as mediated by the concrete world which encounters us, especially by the world of other persons…”
Page 111…” “Original sin” in the Christian sense in no way implies that the original, personal act of freedom of the first person is transmitted to us as our moral quality. In “original sin” the sin of Adam is not imputed to us.”
Answer: Kark Rahner very clearly tells us that “original sin” has nothing to do with violating our own individual freedom by making us responsible for the sins of our father, the sin of Adam. Rahner helps us understand the collective nature of our brokenness similar to the way we become aware of God. We have already talked about how Karl Rahner helps us collectively come to the knowledge of an incomprehensible God by an aware openness to our intuition of God, developed collectively through individual sharing of histories. In the same way, we can come to an understanding of our brokenesss; a brokenesss that stems back to the original fall.
Rahner tells us our individual free wills are not responsible for this original brokenness we feel. Rather, our brokeness is healed through an interdependent acceptance of collective unity; a unity of all humans in the person of Jesus Christ. Rahner helps us understand the history of human evolution as a process driven, or pulled, by our innate desire for incarnated wholeness. We understand this unity as instilled, or breathed, into us by the power of the Holy Spirit who proceeds from both the Father and the Son; the first and second persons of the Holy Trinity.
Prayer: Page 99… “ If we possess Your Son to Whom You have given everything, Your own substance, what could still be lacking in us? And he is truly ours. For he is the Son of Mary, who is our sister in Adam, he is a child of Adam’s family, of same race as we are, one in substance and origin with man.”
Film Clip: Show the part of Star Wars where Luke Skywalker, trapped in a cave, sees his own face in place of his father’s face for a ghost image of a dead Darth Vader.
Chapter IV – “Man as
the Event of God’s Free and Forgiving Self-Communication”
Q5. How do we understand Rahner’s theology of grace? How do we understand uncreated grace as grace freely conferred on us by God not only during Confirmation but during all moments of our lives? How do we understand this grace as freely accepted by our independent free wills? Why is this grace created in the act of our acceptance such that it is nothing other than God’s self giving of himself. Why is it nothing other than God’s self incarnation into humanity, a self incarnation that restores our interdependent wholeness with Christ?
Quotes: Page 116… “Man is the event of a free, unmerited and forgiving, and absolute self-communication of God.”
Page 118…”the doctrine of grace and the doctrine of the final vision of God must be understood within Christians dogmatics..”
Page 120… “It is decisive for an understanding of God’s self communication to man to grasp that the Giver in his own being is the gift, that in and through His own being the Giver gives Himself to creatures as their own fulfillment.”
Answer: God’s grace is the Giver’s self gift of Himself. In Star Wars terminology...”The Force” surrounds us, penetrates us (if we are receptive to it) and binds us together. Not only does God surround us, he supports us and grows our very being by drawing us toward unity and wholeness in Jesus. The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from both Jesus and from the Father in the form of the Holy Trinity, penetrates us through our free will “Confirmational” acceptance of God, binding us together as interdependent human trinity; a trinity of individual, neighbor, and Jesus.
Rahner helps us to understand the form of grace called uncreated grace. Uncreated grace is God’s self giving of Himself. We intuitively understand this form of grace as the source of our very being by our awareness of the incomprehensible mystery that surrounds us and supports us. We understand the need for this uncreated grace by our intuitive awareness of our brokenness. We understand the goal of this uncreated grace as the destiny of our evolution toward interdependent wholeness in the incarnated Jesus of Nazareth.
The second, less easily understood, form of God’s grace is created grace. We certainly understand the fact that as created human beings, we must be receptive toward God’s freely offered uncreated grace. However, our receptivity, paradoxically, is the result our free will decision of “yes” to God; a decision which is a created gift from God. Thus the gift of God’s otherness, which allows us to respond “yes” to God, is called created grace. The concept of created grace is indeed the most difficult concept in all of Rahner’s theology. We may never fully understand the ultimate mystery or ultimate paradox that says God is uncreated everything and yet we are the created gift of his otherness.
Prayer: Page 146… “Since Your Love is infinite, it can abide only in Your Infinity; and since You will to manifest Your infinite Love to me, You have hidden it in my finiteness, where You issue Your call to me. My faith in You is nothing but the dark path in the night between the abandoned shack of my poor, dim earthly life and the brilliance of Your Eternity.”
Film Clip: Show the part of Star Wars where Yoda tells Luke the Force is something which surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds us together.
Chapter V – “The
History of Salvation and Revelation”
Q6: What is the heart and soul of Rahner’s “Theology of Interdependence” as it relates to our salvation?
Quotes: Page 141… “This is true not only of the individual history of an individual person, but also of the history of social units, of peoples and of the human race, whereby we are presupposing that in the origin, unfolding and goal of its history mankind forms a unity…..In so far as this history is the history of God’s freedom and of man’s, and insofar as there exists a concrete dialectic in history, both individual and collective, between the presence of God as giving himself in absolute self-communication, and the absence of God as always remaining holy mystery, this expresses what history of salvation and revelation really means.”
Page 145… “But notice also where an individual salvation and human history is taking place. To be sure, as historical beings in community we are always related to other, related in their history and to their experience even in our salvation and in our individual existence.
Answer: For Rahner, salvation is never independent. Salvation is always interdependent. The two great salvific commandments of Jesus are “love God” and “love your neighbor.” Rahner portrays these commandants interdependently by saying we love Jesus to the degree we love our neighbor. We are a social people. Our own salvation depends on the salvation of our neighbor. When we strive to save our neighbor, even to the point of losing ourselves, as Jesus did, we are paradoxically found by God.
Rahner’s theology is filled with dialectics, apparent opposites, and paradoxes that are resolved, tensioned, when we make the two opposites, the two dialectics, interdependent. The great paradox of the Christian faith is that Jesus became absent (death on the cross) so he could become more present to us (Resurrection) as Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, who penetrates us and binds us together…provided we accept this interdependence by giving up our own independent freedom, our own desire to be wholly ourselves.
Rahner’s describes our experiential journey to God as first starting by looking closely at our own independent experience of God as mystery and then moving to interdependent dialog with our neighbor about their experience of God as mystery. We approach salvation using the same method. Our first step to salvation is to experience freedom as independent individuals. The next step is to freely sacrifice the independence to the greater good of a unified community. In this way, salvation is always collective, always interdependent, and always a paradox of losing ourselves in order to save ourselves.
If we study the recent history of people in our own family as they sought salvation, we find Christians, like our grandparents, highly dependent on a Church that did everything for them. Our parents experienced a move away from strict dependence on church to ideas of personal salvation through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Today, young adults are called to strive for salvation through interdependence in the Mystical Body of Christ.
Prayer: Page 95… “Lord Jesus Christ…You have poured out Your Spirit into our hearts. You enlarged the scope of our human nature into incomprehensible infinities of Your Father. We have become greater than we can ever imagine or understand.”
Film Clip: In the movie “Brother Son Sister Moon,” watch how Francis goes from a life totally concerned for his own welfare, his own wealth, to one in which he totally loses himself in love of neighbor as he grows simultaneously in a personal relationship with Jesus.
In the movie Star Wars, observe OB1 sacrifice his life to Darth Vader becoming more powerful than Darth could have ever imagined.
Chapter VI – “Jesus
Christ”
Q7: What does Rahner mean by salvation without Jesus? Can only Christians be saved?
Quote: Page 176… “According to Catholic understanding of faith, as it is clearly expressed in the Second Vatican Council, there can be no doubt that someone who has no concrete, historical contact with the explicit preaching of Christianity can nevertheless be a justified person who lives in the grace of Christ.”
Answer: One of the great and most unpredictable outcomes of the Second Vatican Council was the doctrine stated above by Karl Rahner that non Christians can be saved. In Rahner’s chapter on Jesus Christ, this doctrine leads the chapter. As we face a world where non Christian terrorists impose their requirements for salvation on the rest of the Christian world, Karl Rahner wants us always, in our drive for interdependence, to remember Jesus never preached exclusivity.
As we pursue openness and interconnectedness with our neighbor, remember Jesus never condemned the person rather he condemned the sin. Taking the life of another person to force your will on others in the exact opposite of what Jesus was about.
After Jesus was brutalized unmercifully by the people who crucified Him, killed because his teachings did not conform to their theology, Jesus’ response was to pray as Rahner describes below.
Prayer: Page 48...”You are hanging upon the cross. You nailed Yourself to it. You are not going to come down any more from this pole suspending You between heaven and earth. Your body aches from its many wounds. The crown of thorns is tormenting Your head. Blood is running down into Your eyes. The wounds in Your hands and feet burn with a white-hot iron. And Your soul is a sea of sorrow, anguish, and hopelessness….But You said: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Film Clip: Show parts the movie “The Passion of Christ” that are relevant while reminding your students of Saint Francis and the story that came after the story that ends “Brother Son Sister Moon” whereby Francis came to ask for and receive the stigmata, the wounds of Christ in his hands, side, and feet..
Chapter VI – “Jesus
Christ”
Q8: What is the end point or destiny of our evolutionary universe?
Quote: Page 181… “The permanent beginning and the absolute guarantee that this ultimate self-transcendence, which is fundamentally unsurpassable, will succeed and has already begun in what we call the “hypostatic union. The God-man is the initial beginning and the definitive triumph of the movement of a world’s self transcendence into absolute closeness to the mystery of God.”
Answer: Jesus is the beginning and the end. He is divine and human. He becomes absent so he could be totally present. Jesus died so we could live. Jesus is the light of a very dark world. Jesus’ defeat becomes our victory. It is better to give than receive. Jesus will be absolutely present in us when we absolutely lose ourselves in neighbor. Jesus was sent out so he could bring us back. There is great unity in diversity. Jesus emptied himself so we could be full.
All of these dialectics, all of these paradoxes, are understood when we move from the closed stage of independence to the interactive stage of interdependence.
Salvation is becoming whole again with God
after we walked out of the Garden of Eden. The
Prayer: Page 58… “Oh Jesus, utterly forsaken, tormented by suffering, You have come to the end….Your eyes, now grown dark in death, can still see the Father….and from your lips come the last words of your life; “Father, into Your hands I commend my Spirit.”
Film Clip: Watch the last part of Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of Christ,” as Jesus poured out the last drop of his blood for us. Watch as Jesus turned His will over to the Father so that we could learn to freely turn our wills over to our neighbor care. Watch Jesus open up the way for us to unite with his Mystical Body reversing the brokenness of the Fall.
Chapter VII –
“Christianity as Church”
Q9. How is church and interdependence the same for Rahner?
Quotes: Page 398…”When the Christian understands the church as the historical tangibility of the presence of God in his self-communication, he experiences the church as the place for the love of both God and neighbor. Both “loves” are experienced in human life when they are taken seriously as a given, as something which a person cannot simply produce himself. They are something in which and in which alone a person discovers himself and his true essence, but which nevertheless are always a gift from another.”
Answer: Karl Rahner says you become a Christian by being a Christian. You become church by being church. You become interdependent by being interdependent.
Interdependence is not disavowing your independence rather it is celebrating your individuality while celebrating and respecting the diversity of your neighbor. Belonging to a church is more about becoming church. Being church is not disavowing your own spiritual experiences rather it is celebrating them and the very different spiritual experiences of your neighbor.
Being church and being interdependence is unity in diversity. Unity does not mean giving up your diversity, it means celebrating it. Whenever a new member joins a church having a personality totally unique to all other members, the church instantly becomes more whole, more unity. In science, the only way to produce white light is to shine all the colors of the rainbow on one spot.
As we explore this closing chapter of Rahner’s theology of interdependence, let us begin a class experiment to demonstrate, in scientific way, how we become church, how we become interdependent and how we reach unity through diversity. Let us model the process of Karl Rahner’s theology.
For the next three weeks of class, let us form a trinity between you, your neighbor and Jesus. Let us begin the experiment by opening the Bible to a relevant passage from one of the Gospels. The “Word” will then be made flesh and Jesus will dwell among us.
Begin the experiment as follows:
1. With everyone sitting in a circle, have someone read the “Word” aloud with each individual following on a printed copy of the text.
2. After a few moments of individual reflection, have each person share the experience of how the Word spoke to them individually. Have each person share for an equal time of about two minutes. Allow no person to criticize other person’s sharing during their own expression of reflection.
3. As each person shares, direct the others to listen with full attention observing the awesome diversity with which the Word speaks in uniquely different ways.
4. At the end of the first round of sharing, direct each person to reflect again before starting a second round of sharing, a round of resolution sharing.
5. During the second sharing round, have each person express how they will resolve to live their life differently, in the week ahead, as a result of the first sharing experience. In verbalizing your resolutions let the Holy Spirit guide what you share. Base your resolutions not just on your own first sharing but on the collective ideas generated in group.
6. Repeat this exercise at the end of next week’s class and again the following week for a total of three weeks.
At the end of the experiment you will have a good idea of Rahner’s theological process method. You will better understand what interdependence means. You will better understand the dialectic of unity in diversity and you will experience how to become church.
Prayer: Page 164…” unity of churches is our task. Therefore we ask: may Your Spirit fill all our churches with a healing fear concerning that which all churches (different but without exception) have inflicted on the Body of Your Son, Who is the Church; inflicted through lust of power, arrogance, infatuation with one’s own opinion, lack of loving tolerance., narrowness of mind which will not allow Your One Truth to be proclaimed with many tongues, and through all ways in which we human beings are sinners and put ourselves in place of Your Truth.”
Film Clip: The movie “Brother Sun Sister Moon” superbly illustrates what church is and what it is not for Karl Rahner.
The church Francis found himself born into,
before his personal experience of God, represents what church is not. The church Francis knew before he became
independent, before Francis gave his clothes away, before he realized God was his real
Father, was not a church of unity in diversity. The
Francis then decided to become church.
As you watch the movie, take note of how Francis became church, stone by stone, day by day, with the building of San Domiano. Take note of the character of the new church that Francis became. Take note of how Francis became a Christian by being a Christian in community with his fellow workers. Take note of the interdependence and celebratory nature of the new church. Take note of how the Holy Spirit penetrated Francis and bound him together with his brothers in Christ. Take note of how uncreated grace moved Paulo from a lonely person of hate and jealousy, to a created person of interdependence. Take note of how Francis interacted in love with Paulo, absorbing Paulo’s anger, the same way Jesus loved his executioners.
Because Jesus was able to say “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” Francis was able to do the same. Now let us commend our Spirit to God so that we too can be drawn to follow both their experiences. Let us allow the Spirit of Confirmation to penetrate our hearts and bind us together as One with Christ.
The End