Schillebeeckx and the Ecclesial Function of Critical Negativity

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. XXXV APRIL, 1971 No.2 SCHILLEBEECKX AND THE ECCLESIAL FUNCTION OF CRITICAL NEGATIVITY 0 NE OF THE theological issues which Edward Schillebeeckx , 0. P., has treated most thoroughly in the past thirty years is that of the relationship between the Church and the world, an area in which he sees a primary task of the Church to be that of exercizing a function of " critical negativity " over against human society. By this term he means " a positive power which continues to exert constant pressure in order to bring about a better world, without humanity itself being sacrificed in the process." 1 It is the 1 Schillebeeckx, "Epilogue: The New Image of God, Secularization and Man's Future on Earth," God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), p. 191. It was in this epilogue that Schillebeeckx first used the term " critical negativity," but the reality to which this term refers was already treated not only in some of the lectures which he gave in this country in late 1967 and which appear as the first five chapters of God the Future of Man but also in essays spanning the whole of his theological activity. The most important of these are to be found in the third and fourth volumes of his collected writings, entitled respectively Wereld en kerk (World and Church) and De zending van de kerk (The mission of the Church) . 207 208 JAMES A. WISEMAN purpose of this article first to situate this function within the larger context of Schillebeeckx's ecclesiology, next to present his understanding of the genesis, content, stages, and bearers of this function within the Church, and finally to offer some critical reflections on his position. I. THE EccLESIOLOGICAL CoNTEXT OF ScHILLEBEECKX's NoTION OF CRITICAL NEGATIVITY The Church as Sacrament of the Risen Christ and Sacrament of the World Schillebeeckx has not given to the nature and mission of the Church as systematic an analysis as that found, for example, in his work on marriage/ so it is necessary to draw this overview of his ecclesiology from a number of his writings. The most basic concept is that the Church is a sacrament and that in a twofold sense-the sacrament of the risen Christ and the sacrament of the world. The former sense is developed at some length in Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God. In the first chapter of this work Schillebeeckx argues that" the man Jesus, as the personal visible realization of the divine grace of redemption, is the sacrament, the primordial sacrament , because this man, the Son of God himself, is intended by the Father to be in his humanity the only way to the actuality of redemption." 3 For Jesus' contemporaries, to be approached by him was to be invited to a personal encounter with the living God. Those of us living after Christ's glorification cannot, of course, encounter him in his own flesh, but he does become present for us by taking up earthly realities into his saving activity: "This is precisely what the sacraments are: the face 2 Het huwelijk: aardse werkelijkheid en heilsmysterie (Bilthoven: H. Nelissen, 1968). English trans. by N. D. Smith: Marriage: Human Reality and Saving Mystery (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965). 3 Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, trans. Paul Barrett, 0. P. et al. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), p. 15. This is a translation of Christus, sacrament van de Godsontmoeting (Bilthoven: H. Nelissen, 1960). SCHILLEBEECKX AND THE ECCLESIAL FUNCTION ~09 of redemption turned visibly towards us." 4 This is true above all of the Church herself, the theme to which Schillebeeckx devotes his second chapter, "The Church, Sacrament of the Risen Christ," where he says that "in his messianic sacrifice, which the Father accepts, Christ in his glorified body is himself the eschatological redemptive community of the Church. . . . The earthly Church is the visible realization of this saving reality in history. The Church is a visible communion...