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version seven. http://demongin.org |
In Syndication (IV)
Excerpt: Rahner on Christ
Thursday, 2004-12-16 | Classic Gin, Literature, Philosophy, Syndication
There's been a lot of talk lately about the life.
As finals have worn my colleagues and I down to unstable, uncertain nubs--shadows of our formerly acute and confident selves--many of us have paused to wonder (aloud) 'why?' Why do we do it? After four years of finals twice a year, why did we decide to come back for more?
My assertion that each period of final exams that one makes himself endure shortens his life by one year has met with almost universal approval. There is a general agreement that the crunch of finals, while the urgency of it inspires the production of invaluable work, exerts a deleterious pressure that erodes the intellect and impoverishes one's subject of study by making it onerous, yet we persist.
As a certain colleague of mine pointed out, there is a reason that we call the world outside of academia 'the real world.' As I lament my allegedly dolorous state, I try to keep that in mind; outside of the confines of this institution that insists twice yearly on a fabricated urgency that is harmful to body and mind there are men who dig ditches, men who serve fast food, men who mend broken concrete.
In honor of that sentiment, tonight's re-run has been excerpted from a paper I wrote for Systematic Theology regarding what relationships, in the mind of famous 20th century theologian Karl Rahner, are consitutive of man's (not his identity, not his experience, not his essence but his) existence.
As with previous excerpts, this one will be bereft of footnotes and proper italics; I hope you're able to enjoy it all the same while considering how Rahner's 'existential account of the faith' sheds light on the above claims (namely that our fellows serve as a counterpoint to our own experience, yea yerily our very existence, at all times):
Rahner is clear in his assertion that human beings' relationship with God is constitutive. Rahner first demonstrates that man is a transcendent being who, when reduced to his origins is constituted by an 'a priori openness-to being as such.' As man's origins (as creature) are irrefutably transcendental in nature, Rahner argues that man's orientation towards God is part of his constitution. Rahner will not, however, assert that man's relationship with his fellows is constitutive. As man is shown to be a transcendent being, his 'everyday world' cannot be constitutive of his essence because it is merely a contingency and, as such, is not constitutive of his transcendental being.
Rahner says that 'A personal relationship to God-[implies] that man is what we say here: person and subject.' Man as 'person and subject' is Rahner's description of man at his most foundational, of his most basic constitution. It is only after we understand what it means for man to be 'person and subject' that we will be able to understand the 'determinations-by which his true personhood is constituted.'
As person and subject, man is shown to be transcendent. As the subject who 'is that being who is responsible for himself-he is affirming himself as the subject who is doing this.' Here Rahner seeks to demonstrate that man's ability to ponder and conceive of his own radical (i.e. resistant to objective or conclusive consideration) origins is evidence of his transcendence. For Rahner, man is 'in the presence of the infinity of being' when he ponders his origins. When he writes that '[t]he experience of radical questioning and man's ability to place himself in question are things which a finite system cannot accomplish,' he means to argue that man possesses an a priori transcendental faculty--what Rahner calls an 'openness to being as such.'
The transcendental experience known by all human beings is the one that orients them towards God via what Rahner calls the 'supernatural existential.' Man, Rahner argues, is composed of various existentials, most of which are natural. The supernatural existential is the one that orients man towards ineffable mystery and, as it does so, demonstrates the manner in which the relationship with God is constitutive of man. Man's transcendental experience is 'experienced as something which was established by and is at the disposal of another, and which is grounded in the abyss of ineffable mystery.' Man's origin as a transcendental being is at the disposal of another; that other who establishes man is none other than God. The transcendental experience of being (human) orients man towards this mystery, towards God.
Rahner writes that 'in our transcendental experience-we experience what creatureliness is and we experience it immediately.' Rahner means to say that human beings know a priori that they are created because they possess a transcendental nature totally alien to them; this is how they are inexorably linked to and oriented towards God. He goes on to add that when we 'reflect upon the real transcendental relationship between God and a creature, then it is clear that here genuine reality and radical dependence are just two sides of one and the same reality.' In these excerpts, he clarifies what it is to be a creature and how human beings qua created creatures are constituted by their orientation towards God; man can extrapolate that he is a transcendental being and that he was given this nature by God.
It follows then that since human beings are always 'in the presence of the infinity of being,' their relationship with their fellows (i.e. being 'in the presence' of their fellows) is not constitutive--such relationships are merely contingencies that exist alongside or in-addition-to man's original experience as a transcendental being. Rahner says, 'in spite of what Christianity says about the history of salvation, what it says about man always refers to him in the deepest origins and roots of his being, in his transcendental essence' and makes this point. The 'history of salvation' is the contingent history of human interaction and not what is essentially constitutive of man's being.
While it's true that Rahner believes man to be in possession of an 'historical existence,' this historical existence is merely the history of salvation or the history of man's transcendental experience (the one that constitutes him and orients him towards God). In man's historical experience, i.e. in his relationship with other human beings, man 'discovers and is conscious of transcendence.' Human beings' relationship with other human beings (i.e. existence in contingent history) is not constitutive, at best it allows them to understand themselves as they truly are, as transcendental beings, by providing a counterpoint to their transcendental experience.
