Religious Reflection and Man’s Transcendence

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017 VoL. XXXVII JANUARY, 1973 RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE No.1 CHRISTIANITY PRESUPPOSES in man a religious transcendence that is widely questioned or denied in our age. Christianity has traditionally held that God through Christ has offered man a gift that is not only salvation from the evils afflicting him but is a relationship to God and his fellow man that is a fulfillment and indeed more than a fulfillment of his possibilities. This supposes in man, in his actions as they are rooted in his being, an orientation toward such a relationship and value, not an orientation that man can bring to completion by himself but one in virtue of which God's gift is relevant. And it supposes that, while God's revelation through Christ is a mystery beyond man's power to discover , it is assimilable by him, and it can to some extent be understood and accepted without man having to deny his own valid insights; indeed, it fulfills the native orientation of man's mind. Christianity then supposes in man a directedness that 1 JOHN FARRilJLliY we call a transcendence because it is a movement or orientation (evident in man's actions and emerging from and manifesting his being as subject) that extends beyond the order of scientific knowledge and secular values, beyond man himself to God, not as identified with a power, value, or order in the world but rather as an order of being and perfection incomparably greater than man and the world. This transcendence can be called religious because by it man is directed to a relationship to God that is not simply one of knowledge or of moral integrity but is personal within the community of men. Historical religions generally suppose in man a transcendence, though not always as definitely as Christianity does. There has been in modern philosophies a widespread questioning and denial of this transcendence in man in one or other of its modalities. This questioning seems basically to reflect a pervasive modern experience. While many modern philosophers have questioned many aspects of religion-for example, the value of religion for man, the existence and meaning of God, specific beliefs and practices of Christianity-what seem most basic in their questionings are their views on this transcendence of man. Their other questions or denials are greatly influenced by their views on the limitations they find in man's knowledge and value orientation, or at least by their rejection of a modality of transcendence attributed to man by some earlier philosophies. Similarly, the ways that in our century both Christian theologians have interpreted Christianity and philosophers have interpreted religion have been largely influenced by the ways they have evaluated these philosophical difficulties against man's transcendence. It would seem that, as Rahner and Lonergan among others have emphasized, man's appropriation of his transcendence is one prerequisite for his free and intelligent acceptance of his religious relation to God and specifically of Christian revelation and salvation. To understand how we should present religion and specifically Christianity to men of our age in its meaning and foundations we must attempt to gain positively an understanding of whether and how modern man manifests a tran- RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 3 scendence to which Christianity has a meaning that is in continuity with a meaning it had for men of earlier ages. To do this we must try to understand and evaluate modem philosophical attacks upon or questioning of man's transcendence. This problem seems serious enough to merit an extended study of the major reasons philosophers have given for calling into question this transcendence. In this article we wish to make such a study and, in doing so, to give some indications of an approach to this question that is in honest and effective dialogue with the current state of the question. Through this study we find two basic ways in which this transcendence is denied or questioned by modem philosophers, each of which has its own grounds. One is a...