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5. The Invitation of Grace
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5 The Invitation of Grace JOHN P. GALVIN Rahner's vision of the relationship between God and the world is centered in his theology of grace. He sees grace primarily as the offer of God's own life to humanity, an offer which promises fulfillment to what is mostfundamental in our experience. This conception is developed in ways that are important for our understanding of God as Trinity and for the relation between nature and grace. 1HE Christian message is in principle quite simple: It is the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ by a God of infinite mercy and love. 'Tor God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Yet, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed in a letter written from his cell in Berlin, fundamental Christian ideas like salvation and grace "are so difficult and so remote that we hardly venture any more to speak of them." While traditional explanations of these ideas seem strange and in many respects unsatisfactory , the hollow rhetoric of many attempts at modernization betrays the presence of trivialities devoid of substantial meaning and unworthy of serious attention. Discouraged by this state of affairs, we may understandably be inclined to resign ourselves to the conclusion that words such as grace should be consigned to the scrapheap of language as no longer serviceable in the contemporary world. It may seem that here, if anywhere, we would do well to heed Wittgenstein's advice and keep silent about that of which we cannot speak. Still, like Bonhoeffer, we continue to suspect that something new and even revolutionary may lie hidden under the standard words, something otherwise unavailable and desperately 64 T THE INVITATION OF GRACE 65 needed by a fragile and threatened humanity if we are not, as Michel Foucault put it, to "be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." And as long as this is so, we can hardly justify abandoning the search for a more adequate understanding of their meaning, however arduous a task this may promise to be. One possible source of assistance is Karl Rahner's vision of the relationship between God and the world: his theology of grace. I would not venture to suggest that the total answer to our perplexity can be found here. But Rahner's conception of grace, which constitutes the unifying thread pervading all his work and providing its distinctive character, is extraordinarily appealing. It invites the reader to join in examining Christianity anew, from a perspective which affords a comprehensive view in which the disparate elements of the Christian faith coalesce into an organically integrated whole. If we are to pursue this invitation, it will be necessary for us to study Rahner's theology of grace in some detail . Many who have not been deterred by the inevitable effort have found the investigation quite rewarding. Gods Offer of Self as Human Salvation "God himself as the abiding and holy mystery, as the incomprehensible ground of man's transcendent existence is not only the God of infinite distance, but also wants to be the God of absolute closeness in a true self-communication, and he is present in this way in the spiritual depths of our existence as well as in the concreteness of our corporeal history" (Foundations, p. 137). With these words Rahner expresses in his own terminology the central conviction of Christianity. Human life and human history are not doomed to meaninglessness. They do not develop and end in ultimate absurdity or Sisyphus-like frustration. Our longing for salvation, our search for wholeness, is destined to achieve fulfillment. In what, however, does this salvation consist? For Rahner, it is nothing other than God himself, present to us in unsurpassable nearness. Hans Kiing has recently asked, in his On Being a Christian, if any reasonable man today wants to become God, and commented that "our problem today is not the deification but the humanization of man" Kung's precise meaning is difficult to determine, for his remarks may simply be intended as valid criticisms of certain types of theology and spirituality. His implied question about the relationship of grace and humanization is certainly legitimate and important. Nonetheless, this [34.205.2.207] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:33 GMT) 66 A WORLD OF GRACE formulation of the issue seems to insinuate a false dichotomy between humanization and the enjoyment of unsurpassable closeness...