Rahner and His Critics: Lindbeck and Metz

RAHNER AND HIS CRITICS: LINDBECK AND METZ J. A. COLOMBO University of San Diego San Diego, California HE "TRANSCENDENTAL MOMENT" has been he hallmark of Rahner's theology as well as the focus of ontroversy and criticism. This essay treats the criticisms of Rahner's theology by George Lindbeck and Johann Metz. Though Lindbeck and Metz represent very different theological positions, their critiques share a common focus : the transcendental moment in Rahner's theology. For Lindbeck, this aspect of Rahner's theology is symptomatic of a theological reductionism: the specificity of Christian faith is reduced to a cultural expression of some universal, prethematic experience. For Metz, the transcendental moment immunizes the contents of Christian faith against the challenges, dangers, and threats of history and society. This essay is divided into two parts. The first part is an exposition of Rahner's understanding of the relation between nature and grace.1 Through this focus both the theological context of the notion of transcendental revelation and Rahner's under'standing of the essence of Christianity as " the religion of imme1 . References to Theological Investigations, 21 vols., various translators (New York: The Seabury Press, 1%1-88) are abbreviated by Tl, followed by the volume number. The major extended discussions of nature and grace can be found in "Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace," Tl, I, pp. 297-317; "Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace," TI, I, pp. 319-346; "Reflections on the Experience of Grace," TI, III, pp. 8690 ; "Nature and Grace,'' TI, IV, pp. 165-188; "Questions of Controversial Theology of Justification," TI, IV, pp. 189-218; Nature and Grace. trans. Diane Wharton (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961); and Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William Dych (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), pp. 116137 . 71 72 J. A. COLOMBO diacy to God in his self-communication." 2 may be seen most clearly. In the second part the criticisms of George Lindbeck and Johann Metz are examined. After summarizing their criticisms, I seek to argue two points : Lindbeck has ignored the specifically Christian theological context of the transcendental turn in Rahner's theology, and Metz has misdirected his criticism, for his basic dispute with Rahner lies not with the transcendental turn in theology per se but in their differing notions of the essence of Christianity. -ICharacteristic of Rahner's theology is the close correlation he posits between Christology and anthropology. This correlation has often evoked the criticism that Rabner simply accommodates Christology to the demands of an anthropology which has a foundation independent of Christian revelation.3 Yet from his earliest essays on Christology, Rabner has insisted upon the mutual conditioning and qualifying of each theme by the other.4 In the hermeneutical structure of " retrieval," which for Rabner constitutes the essence of historical knowledge,5 the nontheological preunderstanding (i.e., anthropology) which guides one's inquiry as an anticipation of meaning is corrected in the process of confronting and bringing to speech the theological subject matter (i.e., Chris2 Foundations, p. 125. As indicated at the close of the essay, I use the category " essence of Christianity" solely in Ernst Troeltsch's sense of the term: as a way of naming the necessary synthetic moment by which the systematic theologian heuristically construes the point or center of the Christian tradition:. While Rahner himself never used the language of the " essence of Christianity ," his reflections on the necessity of a contemporary Kurzformel in an age characterized by " gnoseological concupiscence " in fact converge with Troeltsch 's understanding of the function of the "essence of Christianity." See, "The Need for a 'Short Formula' of Christian Faith," TI, XI, pp. 230-46, and the "anthropological creed" in Foundations, pp. 456-7. a See, e.g., Walter Kaspar, Jesus The Christ, trans. V. Green (New York: Paulist Press, 1976), pp. 60£. 4" Current Problems in Christology," TI, I, pp. 158f. 5 Ibid., p. 150. The best description of the nature of "retrieval" as distinct from pure historical inquiry can be found in Spirit in the World, trans. William Dych (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), pp. xlix-lv. RABNER AND HIS CRITICS 73 tology}. Preunderstanding and subject matter condition one another and...