(VI.6, p. 264). This 20-page part is divided into seven subdivisions. In the first subdivision, Rahner lays out his main aims: to recover the original experience of Jesus Christ and its intellectual presuppositions. The second subdivision defines the resurrection as a validation of the "cause" of Jesus' life and a sacrament of God's will. In the third subdivision, Rahner states that the resurrection must be interpreted within the context of humanity's hope for a spiritual life (not the prolongation of earthly existence) after death. The fourth subdivision affirms that both we and the first Christian generation experienced the death and resurrection of Jesus as a confirmation of our own transcendental hopes. In the fifth subdivision, Rahner suggests that the resurrection of Jesus moved history into a new stage. It is the stage after which humanity could really believe that God would offer final confirmation and affirmation of human life. The sixth subdivision shows how the resurrection was not merely the confirmation of Jesus' life, but something new to our understanding of God's intention for human beings. In the seventh subdivision, Rahner argues that the death of Jesus should not be understood as propitiation of the Father, but rather as a sacrament of God's saving will for us, a sacrament which accomplished what it showed forth.
(VI.6.a, p. 264). In his brief preliminary remarks, Rahner states what he will not do in Part 6. He will not attempt to present either a NT theology or the “official” theology of the Church as reflected in the authoritative documents of Christian tradition. Why not? Because the difference between the NT Christologies and the Christology of the Church is no greater than the difference between the Christologies of the first witnesses and those of the NT authors. Rahner is primarily concerned with the experience of the disciples regarding Jesus. He wants to show the continuity between what the disciples believed and what the NT authors wrote.
In Part 6, he proposes to accomplish two main aims. First, he wants to establish the intellectual presuppositions of the original experience of Jesus Christ. Second, he wants to establish the original experience itself, an experience which he believes can be found "behind the explicit New Testament Christology" (265).
(VI.6.b, p. 266). This brief subdivision begins with a key thesis: namely, that the death and resurrection of Jesus belong together, for the resurrection is the validation of Jesus’ life after his death on the cross (A). Resurrection does not mean the resuscitation of Jesus’ body after death, but rather the affirmation by God of Jesus’ “cause” and person. Moreover, it is the sacrament of God’s will for all humanity, a sign of the kind of response to God’s Word affirmed in Jesus that God invites from all people (B).
A. The Unity of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus" (VI.6.b.A, p. 266). There is a unity between Jesus’ death and resurrection, Rahner says, even though the two are separated by three days. Although he does not deny a time interval between the two, but he claims that the interval is not important. He puts it this way: Jesus’ death is subsumed into his resurrection.
What, then, is resurrection? It is, Rahner says, the "permanent, redeemed, final, and definitive validity" of Jesus' life (266). His life had that validity on account of his death. It was achieved through his death in freedom and obedience.
B. The Meaning of "Resurrection" (VI.6.b.B, p. 266). In explaining the meaning of resurrection, Rahner begins by saying what resurrection is not. It is not, he says, the resuscitation of a physical body. Rather, it is the salvation of a person by God. By salvation he does not mean a rescue from physical death, but rather the full acceptance of the person by God. Rahner calls salvation and resurrection the “validation” of a person’s “cause,” i.e., of what the person was dedicated to.
The validation of Jesus' cause does not mean that he was committed merely to an idea which lived on after his death. Jesus' "cause" was not an idea separate from his person. His cause and his person were one. Resurrection is the validity of Jesus' claim to be the absolute saviour (see p. 193 and pp. 251-54).
True, it is right to say that "Jesus is risen into the faith of his disciples." But that does not mean that he lives on only in their memory, merely as an idea. Their faith, and our faith as well, is not just a concept but a liberation. Rahner puts it this way: faith "knows itself to be a divinely effected liberation from all the powers of finiteness, of guilty and of death, and knows itself to be empowered for this by the fact that this liberation has taken place in Jesus himself and has become manifest for us" (268).
(VI.6.c, p. 268). Under five articles, this subdivision lays out a doctrine of the resurrection that harmonizes with Rahner’s transcendental Christology. He begins by asserting that Jesus’ resurrection is the hope for every human being, a hope that, in Jesus, has already been fulfilled (A). Every human being knows that he or she will die, and this knowledge characterizes the human situation (B). Death is the final end of one’s material existence, but not the end of the love and fidelity, which belong to one’s spiritual self (C). After death come eternity and afterlife, in which the free actions of one’s life reach their fulfillment and become the final achievement of one’s whole existence (D). Eternal life belongs not to the soul alone, separated from the body, but to the whole human being, who longs for permanent validation and who finds in Jesus’ resurrection the hope for it (E).
A. Summary Thesis (VI.6.c.A, p. 268). Resurrection is not an assertion about the “physical” part of a human being. Resurrection does not mean that the body was resuscitated apart from the spirit. Instead, resurrection is an assertion about the whole of a human being. It affirms that the human being’s whole life – body, soul, and spirit – is “permanently valid and redeemable” (268).
Thus we can say that Rahner's view of resurrection is not, at least at this point, a positive statement about how a person will live in his or her final state. Rahner's intention is rather to exclude any treatment of the body apart from the rest of the person.
Resurrection poses a question. It asks whether the hope which every person has (i.e., the hope for transcendence) is merely a hope still looking for fulfillment. Or is it a hope which, in the person of Jesus Christ, has already been fulfilled? Rahner affirms the second as his summary thesis.
B. Knowledge of One's Own Death (VI.6.c.B, p. 269). Human beings, alone of all creatures, know that they will die. This knowledge is a “piece” of their dying. People are not only confronted with death, but with the finality brought about by death. Death is not just the cessation of life, says Rahner, but the culmination of it. Death presents us with the totality of human experience. It confronts us with the final meaning of our lives.
C. Anthropological Reflections on Death and the Finality of Existence (VI.6.c.C, p. 270). Some may say that to be preoccupied with death is unhealthy. Rahner disagrees. He says that, to ignore the question of one’s own death is to make a decision, however indirectly. It is the decision to look away from the reality of one’s life. It is a failure to engage the question of life’s meaning.
When one dies, then one's metabolism returns to dust. But are the other things which existed (such as our love, fidelity, responsibility and freedom), are these over as well? No, says Rahner, certainly not because we fail to notice them any longer.
It could well be, he says, that they continue to exist, not just for the living, but for the deceased person as well. Rahner poses a question: "When the deceased is gone, can his real self not continue to exist, transformed and transposed beyond physical time and space?" (271). Rahner's implicit answer is yes, the real self can continue. Why? Because love and fidelity do not reach fulfillment in time and space.
D. What Do "Afterlife" and "Eternity" Mean? (VI.6.c.D, p. 271). Rahner starts with an assertion: the existence that arises out of death is no mere “continuation.” It lacks the undetermined openness of life before death. Death does indeed mark an end. But both the person who thinks that death is “the end of everything” and the person who thinks that life after death is a “continuation” are mistaken.
After death, there is a new kind of existence. It is a final and definitive existence. The time which came to be temporarily is over. Rahner puts it this way: "eternity subsumes time." What was temporary, open, and undetermined is now final and definitive.
How can we imagine eternity without thinking of it as endless continuation? Through death, says Rahner, "there comes to be the final and definitive validity of man's existence which has been achieved and has come to maturity in freedom" (272). In comparison to eternal life, our brief life is the mere flash of a momentary spark. When it is over, we cease the process of becoming. Our earthly lives are "a process in which there comes to be in freedom and responsibility something which is, and definitively is, because it is of value to be what it is" (272).
Eternity, then, is no mere continuation. Eternity rather is the realm in which freedom and responsibility come to be. In time, the eternal and transcendent principles of freedom and responsibility are actualizing themselves towards fulfillment. What is the reward of the good life? Not its endless continuation in an afterlife. Eternal life is "the finality and definitiveness of . . . [the deceased person's] freedom." It is the achievement of the "free act of his whole existence" (272).
What about those people who claim that they have never had the experience of eternity in time? For Rahner, consciousness of the experience is less important than the experience itself. Those who claim they have never experienced eternity may still have made real choices in freedom and responsibility, choices which indeed are the experience of eternity, without having acknowledged them as such. Such people had the experience of eternity but did not recognize it. This is regrettable in itself. But the denial of some people that they are in fact free and responsibile is still more regrettable.
E. The Experience of Immortality: Nature or Grace? (VI.6.c.E, p. 273). Rahner does not try to distinguish what, in the experience of “eternity in time,” belongs to human nature and what belongs to grace. Instead, he assumes that the experience of eternity springs from grace. His concern is the relation between the experience of eternity in time and the resurrection of Jesus. We have the right and obligation, he says, to see whether this experience has become tangible in history. He calls this experience the “transcendental experience in grace of our eternal validity as moral persons” (273). In short, we are able to recognize our own permanent validity, a recognition that has the character of eternity.
This brings Rahner to the person of Jesus. He asks whether our own experience of eternity is illusory or whether it has ever been confirmed. The example of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, Rahner suggests, confirms our own individual experiences of eternity. In his resurrection, Jesus experienced a "final and definitive fulfillment" (273). His fulfillment hints that our own fulfillment is also possible.
Rahner rejects the idea, which he attributes to the "Greek and platonic tradition in church teaching" (273), that the body and the soul are split, and that only the soul has eternal life. The question about eternal life is not about the body or the soul, Rahner says, but the eternal life of the whole person--in a word, about resurrection. That is the "horizon" for any inquiry about Jesus' resurrection. The inquiry is shaped by our own expectation of death. What can happen to human beings, asks Rahner, who expect to find, at the moment of death, the summation of their final validity? The answer is shaped by the history of Jesus' resurrection.
(VI.6.d, p. 274). In the two articles of this sub-section, Rahner notes first that the resurrection of Jesus is unique, and second that there exists between Christians and the Apostolic witnesses to the resurrection a unity.
A. Faith in the Resurrection of Jesus as a Unique Fact (VI.6.d.A, p. 274). There are many people whom we wish were still alive. One thinks, for instance, of the great martyrs and prophets. Yet we do not believe in their resurrection. Only Jesus is believed to be resurrected. If the resurrection were untrue, asks Rahner, then why do we not encounter this so-called untruth more often? Why do we not tell resurrection stories about the martyrs and prophets? Why is it only Jesus whom we believe to be resurrected? The answer is that the resurrection of Jesus is unique.
B. The Unity of the Apostolic Experience of the Resurrection and Our Own (VI.6.d.B, p. 274). Our faith is tied to that of the resurrection witnesses. Christians do not accord to mystics, for instance, the character of being resurrection witnesses, despite the fact that the mystics claim to have seen the resurrected Jesus. They accord this character to the ordinary people about whom the New Testament speaks. But those who (in the period immediately after Jesus’ death) saw him in his resurrected state are not “witnesses” in a secular sense. If we judged their testimony according to the standards of a secular “witness account,” then their testimony would be judged incredible. But those standards do not apply, because we are not (as in the secular model) totally “outside” the experience of the apostolic witnesses.
Why not? Because "we hear this witness of the apostles with that transcendental hope in resurrection" (275). We hear with "grace" and with the "witness of the Holy Spirit." To hear the accounts of the resurrection with transcendental hope means that we have "the courage to stand beyond death . . . by gazing upon the risen Jesus" (275). In courage we believe that there is a correspondence between our transcendental hope and the real presence of Jesus' resurrection.
We "experience" Jesus' resurrection because we experience Jesus' "cause" as living and victorious. We implicitly assume the existence of transcendental hope. We are able to express this hope only by means of the apostolic witness to Jesus as the risen one. As St. Paul said, the Holy Spirit is poured out into our hearts (Rom. 5:5) precisely as faith in resurrection.
(VI.6.e, p. 276). In this brief sub-section, Rahner wants to clarify the extent of the credibility of the apostolic witness to the resurrection. He makes four points about the distinctiveness of the resurrection, based on an analysis of the gospel texts:
1. The experience was not a "visionary" experience in the typical sense (i.e., a self-induced vision), but rather was given from without.
2. It was not an experience "in general," but was about a concrete individual, Jesus of Nazareth, whose life and teachings were known.
3. The experience was given in faith, yes, but it is not just an "object" of faith. It is one of the "grounds" of faith.
4. It has not happened since and was not awaited or predicted.
To be sure, the gospel texts are secondary literature, and not eye-witness accounts. They are dramatic embellishments, not "scientific biography." But no one can pretend that he or she understands the experience of the apostolic witnesses better than they understood it themselves. The gospel accounts are the most reliable accounts available.
The resurrection is not "historical" in the sense that it belongs to the ordinary, repeatable realm of historical experiences. It is unique, and lies outside the normal realm of history. It is the event by which our ongoing history is assumed into its final and definitive state.
With a transcendental hope in the resurrection one may conceivably reject the apostolic accounts as unhistorical, says Rahner--at least in abstract, conceptual theory. But for the Christian in modern society, the rejection of the apostolic witness is more likely a rejection of transcendental hope in the resurrection. Jesus' resurrection differs from the resurrection we hope for ourselves. In his resurrection, he was made "Lord" and "Messiah," exalted and enthroned. To be sure, both Jesus and we ourselves were and are graced with God's self-communication. But only Jesus enjoyed what we call the hypostatic union.
The Pharisees taught the reality of the resurrection long before Jesus. Belief in the resurrection was not wholly new. But only after Jesus can we speak of our own transcendental hope in resurrection. Our own hope is linked to the historical experience of Jesus.
(VI.6.f, 279). Rahner returns to the starting point of Chapter VI, Section 6. He asks, “What is really experienced, witnessed and believed with the resurrection of Jesus?” (279). He does not want to start by assuming the metaphysical, divine sonship of Jesus. The resurrection is not merely a confirmation of the divine sonship that “we knew about all along.” Why does Rahner not start with the customary assumption of divine sonship? Because the resurrection taught us something new about Jesus. It taught us the unsurpassability of his claim that God has expressed the divine self in a human being (A). And it taught that this unity of God and humanity has not been achieved merely in transcendental hope, but in a man (B).
A. The Vindication and Acceptance of Jesus' Claim to Be the Absolute Saviour (VI.6.f.A, p. 279). In the resurrection, Jesus’ claim is seen to be of permanent validity. What was Jesus’ claim? It is the claim that, with Jesus, “a new and unsurpassable closeness to God . . . will prevail victoriously and is inseparable from him” (279). God’s kingdom has come – and we must decide whether or not to accept the God who has come so close.
Then Rahner raises a question about the relation between Jesus and prophets of old. Jesus can be called a prophet, says Rahner, because he confronts us with a "word of God" which cannot be reduced to an eternal truth and which calls us to decision. But he is more than a prophet, says Rahner. A prophet allows God's Word to be greater than the prophet himself. In Jesus, however, the final Word is himself present. "There is nothing to say beyond it, because God has really . . . offered himself in Jesus" (280).
Before Jesus, the religious categories about family, marriage, nation, law, temple and sabbath were seen to be the mediation and representation of God. After Jesus, they no longer have that same mediating function. There is "a new and real immediacy of God coming from God himself" (280). That is the sense in which Jesus is not just a prophet, but the absolute saviour.
B. The Point of Departure for "Late" New Testament Christology (VI.6.f.B, 280). Late NT Christology and that of the Church start with the assumption that Jesus is the Son and Word of God. By this, they mean something prior to the notion expressed in the Prologue by John of a pre-existent Logos. They mean that Jesus is Son and Word because Jesus’ human reality has been assumed by God as God’s own self-expression. Jesus was not “adopted” by God or made a mere “servant.” If he were, then Jesus would be merely a provisional expression of God, an expression that can be superseded. But Jesus is not provisional; he is the final expression of God.
There is more than one way to express the finality of Jesus Christ. In the NT, one sees a variety of rudimentary Christologies. There are, for example, the Son of Man Christology, the Kyrios Christology, and the Servant Christology. Classical Christology, which describes Jesus as one in being with the Father and as one person with two natures, is not the only way of expressing the reality of Jesus Christ.
Rahner's point of departure is "the unity between the historically tangible claim of Jesus and the experience of his resurrection" (281). Rahner calls it an "ascending" Christology. It begins with the humanity of Jesus, with the encounter between Jesus and other people as expressed in the NT and by the early witnesses in faith. Jesus is, first of all, a man. Ascending Christology regards him as a "redeemed man" who makes a claim on us. This type of Christology resolves the dilemma, Rahner says, between the so-called "functional" and "essential" Christologies. Functional Christologies describe how Jesus functions for human beings. They focus on his life as the confirmation of our transcendental hope. Essential Christologies describe the nature of Jesus. They define what he "really was" in history as the Word made flesh. Rahner says that functional and essential Christologies form a unity, just as there is a unity between our transcendental hope in resurrection and the historical experience of Jesus.
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