Karl Rahner’s Writings on Literature, Music and the Visual Arts 9780567700544, 9780567700568, 9780567700551

Table of contents :
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Foreword
Introduction: Karl Rahner, theology and the arts
Part I: Faith, culture, theology and the senses
Chapter 1: Faith and culture1
Chapter 2: On the theology of books
Chapter 3: God’s word and human books
Chapter 4: The theology of the symbol
Chapter 5: Seeing and hearing
Part II: On literature
Chapter 6: Priest and poet1
Chapter 7: Poetry and the Christian
Chapter 8: The task of the writer in relation to Christian living
Chapter 9: On the greatness and the plight of the Christian writer
Part III: On visual art and architecture
Chapter 10: Theology and the arts
Chapter 11: Art against the horizon of theology and piety
Chapter 12: The theology of the religious meaning of images
Chapter 13: Church building: On modern church architecture1
Part IV: On music
Chapter 14: Word and music in church: On the Innsbruck premiere of The Mass by Igor Stravinsky1 in the Jesuit Church, 18 May 1961
Chapter 15: What do the Beatles sing?1
Chapter 16: An ordinary song
Part V: Postlude
Chapter 17: Prayer for creative thinkers
Sources
Index

Citation preview

KARL RAHNER’S WRITINGS ON LITERATURE, MUSIC AND THE VISUAL ARTS

KARL RAHNER’S WRITINGS ON LITERATURE, MUSIC AND THE VISUAL ARTS Edited by Gesa E. Thiessen

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Gesa E. Thiessen, 2021 Gesa E. Thiessen has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. Cover image: Murnau with a church, Wassily Kandinsky 1910. Historic Images / Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rahner, Karl, 1904–1984, author. | Thiessen, Gesa Elsbeth, editor. Title: Karl Rahner’s writings on literature, music and the visual arts / edited by Gesa E. Thiessen. Description: London : T&T Clark, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021006703 (print) | LCCN 2021006704 (ebook) | ISBN 9780567700544 (hardback) | ISBN 9780567701848 (paperback) | ISBN 9780567700575 (epub) | ISBN 9780567700551 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Arts and religion. Classification: LCC NX180.R4 R34 2021 (print) | LCC NX180.R4 (ebook) | DDC 201/.67—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021006703 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021006704 ISBN: HB: 978-0-5677-0054-4   ePDF: 978-0-5677-0055-1 ePUB: 978-0-5677-0057-5 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

Foreword vii Introduction: Karl Rahner, theology and the arts

1

Faith, culture, theology and the senses 1 Faith and culture

13

2 On the theology of books

21

3 God’s word and human books

36

4 The theology of the symbol

40

5 Seeing and hearing

70

On literature 6 Priest and poet

79

7 Poetry and the Christian

101

8 The task of the writer in relation to Christian living

111

9 On the greatness and the plight of the Christian writer

128

On visual art and architecture 10 Theology and the arts

143

11 Art against the horizon of theology and piety

159

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CONTENTS

12 The theology of the religious meaning of images

166

13 Church building: On modern church architecture

178

On music 14 Word and music in church: On the Innsbruck premiere of The Mass by Igor Stravinsky in the Jesuit Church, 18 May 1961

185

15 What do the Beatles sing?

190

16 An ordinary song

193

Postlude 17 Prayer for creative thinkers

197

Sources 201 Index 207

FOREWORD

If theology is not identified a priori with verbal theology, but is understood as man’s total self-expression insofar as this is borne by God’s self-communication, then religious phenomena in the arts are themselves a moment within theology taken in its totality. – Karl Rahner Faith and the arts have become a significant field of engagement within the discipline of theology and in the study of religion since the 1980s. Numerous publications and the setting up of whole programmes on this theme in religion and in theology departments in Europe, the United States and elsewhere witness this development. The overall aim in these endeavours is to investigate how the arts are sources of, and play an active role in, religion and theology. The most eminent Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Rahner (1904–84), made a significant contribution to this field, even before the 1980s. This may come somewhat as a surprise to many, including possibly even those who are familiar with his work. Moreover, it certainly was not his express intention to do so; theology and the arts was not a major focus in his theology. Yet, in his own modest way, he wrote a considerable number of occasional articles of which some more broadly, and quite a few more specifically, are central to the multifaceted relationship between theology/ religion and the arts. It is for the first time thus that Rahner’s writings on this field are presented here in one volume. Most of these articles were already translated into English

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FOREWORD

some decades ago. These are reprinted without any changes. However, on rare occasions where spelling or other errors occur in the translations I have inserted ‘[sic]’. Six articles have not been hitherto rendered in English. They are translated here for the first time. As anyone familiar with Rahner’s writings will appreciate, translations of his work into English at times present a considerable challenge. Already in the 1990s, when I was working on my doctoral research on theology and modern Irish art, I came across and engaged with some of Rahner’s essays relevant to my theme. Later, when working on a reader on theological aesthetics, I included a central section from his article ‘Theology and the Arts’ in the volume (Theological Aesthetics – A Reader, 2004). In 2005, Declan Marmion and Mary Hines published the Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, and I was afforded the opportunity to contribute an article on Rahner’s theological aesthetics. In 2014 Paul Joseph Fritz’s monograph Karl Rahner’s Theological Aesthetics appeared in which he conceives Rahner’s whole oeuvre in terms of an aesthetic. Even though Fritz takes a very different approach to mine and does not specifically focus on Rahner’s writings on theology and the arts, it made me aware once again of Rahner’s significance on this subject. A further study by Denis Hétier was published in 2020, Éléments d'une théologie fondamentale de la création artistique: Les écrits théologiques sur l'art chez Karl Rahner (1954–83), Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses/Bibliotheca, 307. In another, still ongoing, project on sources and documents in the history of Christian art, in which I am involved, Rahner will feature once again. It is that project which finally prompted my idea to edit a volume that would comprise all (to the best of my knowledge) articles by Rahner on faith, theology and the arts, including the six newly translated texts. An issue that arose regarding translating Rahner is inclusive language. Rahner used exclusively male German nouns, pronouns and articles when writing about God, humans, poets, writers, theologians, artists, scientists, et al. – ‘der Gott’, ‘der Mensch’, ‘der Dichter’, ‘der Schriftsteller’, ‘der Künstler’, ‘der Komponist’, ‘der Architekt’, etc. Certainly it is far easier to write in an inclusive style when doing theology through English rather than German. – Yet, the long-overdue imperative of using inclusive language in theology and in all other spheres of life is an issue that became acute only after Rahner’s time. It would not have occurred to Rahner that his writing was exclusive in terms of gender, nor would he have in any way intended any such exclusion. On the contrary, he did address the question of the role of women in church and society in a quite open, progressive manner. Indeed, if he lived today, one would have no doubt that he would reflect this also in

FOREWORD

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his style of writing. I attempted to translate his articles in an inclusive style but soon realized that I would have had to change almost every sentence to ‘s/he’, ‘her/his’, etc. The translations would have sounded thoroughly cumbersome and contrived. It simply did not work. Above all, my priority naturally had to be that I would be faithful to the theologian whose articles I was translating and refrain from imposing a more contemporary style of writing. Thus, the reader will read Rahner here as he wrote; only on some rare occasions I took the liberty to attempt a more inclusive style. Another small issue is the word ‘Dichter’ – it can imply both lyricist/poet and novelist. Further, ‘Dichter’ is often used for writers who have attained a certain stature. Rahner often uses ‘Dichter’, but also ‘Schriftsteller’ [‘writer’]. It was occasionally difficult to decide whether to translate ‘Dichter’ as ‘poet’ or as ‘writer’; it is the respective context that ultimately helped me decide. Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Albert Raffelt in Freiburg whose help was invaluable in facilitating my work. He made available to me the Karl Rahner Bibliography in English and the articles from the Sämtliche Werke edition that I needed for translation. Without fail he answered my queries and requests at once, with courtesy and humour. Herzlichen Dank! I am grateful to David Brown, Linda Hogan, Robin Jensen, Karen Kilby and Richard Lennan for their support on this venture. I would also like to thank Darton, Longman and Todd concerning permissions for the reprint of several articles. My thanks further to Martin Schwer, Ruth Sheehy, Trinity College Library, as well as to my former colleagues at Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Jim Corkery SJ and Declan Marmion SM, for sharing their knowledge of Rahner, and the late Raymond Moloney SJ, who first taught me on Rahner many years ago. Beautiful, incisive and profound, Karl Rahner’s voice on faith and the arts has impressed, accompanied and moved me. I hope the reader will agree that it is timely hence to publish this volume as it will throw new light on Rahner’s theology as such and demonstrate, in particular, his importance in the field of theology and the arts.

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Introduction Karl Rahner, theology and the arts

Karl Rahner SJ was in many ways a prophetic voice in twentieth-century Christianity, especially within forward-looking Catholic circles, notably Vatican II. His idea that the Christian of the future would need to be a mystic is reflected in today’s interest in diverse forms of spirituality and the search for, and reflection on, religious experience in an age of pluralism. His leitmotif was the God who reveals Godself in all realms of life, in human experience, as holy mystery, the God who communicates Godself through grace, yet who remains always wholly Other. Rahner saw the whole of human existence and of history as embraced by God’s transforming love and presence. In his many essays and meditations, he brought across to the most diverse audiences – including those with serious doubts about church and faith – this mystery of God who is love. In this context, it does not surprise that he would engage with the question of the arts as sources of revelation, experience and meaning and their role in, and expressions of, theology. Rahner was fully aware of the pluralism that had become characteristic in modern culture and, more particularly, in theology itself. Although he lived his own faith firmly in adherence to the tradition of his church, Ignatian spirituality and prayer, his openness to people of other faiths and other denominations and to questions of modern science and culture are manifested throughout his work. It is this fundamental openness, his prophetic voice and mystical awareness and his engagement with an increasingly secular world, at least in Europe, which also are evident in his, at times deeply felt, reflections on the arts.

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KARL RAHNER’S WRITINGS ON LITERATURE, MUSIC AND THE VISUAL ARTS

As the chapters included in this volume show, his writing on the arts and their relationship with theology are, for the most part, on a broader level, as opposed to discussions of specific works of art, music or literature. In fact, he noted repeatedly that he had little to say on the arts. Certainly, reading any of the chapters, one is struck by his humility. Almost every chapter begins with an assertion that he has only an average, or little, knowledge of the specific art in question, that he can thus only speak about it from the perspective of the theologian and does not consider himself competent to make any judgements about the artistic merits of the works, be it literature, visual art or music. Much to the contrary, however, his writings are, in fact, astute, insightful and relevant as he addressed issues that would continue to be central in the field of theology and the arts.

BEYOND VERBAL THEOLOGY While Rahner devoted several articles to the verbal arts, that is, literature, including poetry, one of his key insights was that fundamentally theology must not and cannot be reduced to verbal theology. Given that only a small number of theologians have explicitly noted that our theological ideas and concepts must include the non-verbal, this simple statement deserves further scrutiny. Theology, as Rahner reiterates, is to be understood as the total and conscious self-expression of the human being, insofar as this self-expression arises out of God’s self-communication to us, through grace. In taking this idea also as his point of departure in the dialogue of theology and the arts, he maintains that theology therefore can only be regarded as complete if it includes the arts as an integral part in its own life. Indeed, the arts ought to be nothing less than an intrinsic moment of theology. This integration he considers essential since art is a deep, authentic expression of the human person and because theology and the arts both refer to the transcendental nature of the human being. This, Rahner holds, not only applies to verbal art, literature, but to all the arts. All arts are forms of human self-expression. ‘If theology is simply and arbitrarily defined as being identical with verbal theology . . . we would have to ask whether such a reduction of theology to verbal theology does justice to the value and uniqueness of these arts, and whether it does not unjustifiably limit the capacity of these arts to be used by God in his revelation.’1 Hence, for him the idea of art being a source of theology is ultimately based on his theology of revelation. It also hinges on his anthropology – his view of the human being as a creature of transcendence who is always directed to the experience of mystery and transformed by grace.

INTRODUCTION

3

Rahner emphasized that art, due to its revelatory dimension, is not to be understood merely as ancilla theologiae, as an aid or an illustration of a religious truth, but can in itself become a locus theologicus.2 Rahner thereby implicitly recognized the modern aesthetic criteria of originality and autonomy of works of art, while at the same valuing their theological relevance. This idea of the work of art as an important source of, rather than a mere illustrative help in, theology has become a foundational principle in contemporary dialogue between theology and the arts. Further, in his writings on the arts, Rahner notably examined the relationship between image and word. In the context of the interpretation of art, he opines that one ought to be always aware of and respect the fact that non-verbal art can never be fully captured in words. If one was to attempt such a translation, the uniqueness and autonomy of the nonverbal arts would lose their whole raison d’être. Yet, he observes that despite the autonomy and uniqueness of visual art, interpretations of works of art, including those with Christian subject matter, are necessary in order to bring out more clearly the message contained in the works.

ART AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE A work of art, Rahner asserts, in order to be experienced as spiritual, must not necessarily contain religious subject matter. Today this view no longer seems particularly remarkable; yet it was another fundamental insight, first voiced by the Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich, who contributed significantly to the dialogue between theology and modern visual art in numerous essays. Whether Rahner was aware of Tillich’s writings on art cannot be ascertained.3 Tillich was one of the first theologians who explicitly made this momentous observation in his analysis of expressionist and abstract art and thus recognized modern art without explicit Christian iconography as a relevant source of and for theology. Pie-Raymond Régamey and MarieAlain Couturier must also be mentioned in this context. Again, however, there is no evidence whether the writings of these two thinkers had an influence on Rahner. Rahner stressed that in both hearing and seeing we can have sensory experience of transcendence and that these experiences may become genuine religious experiences of divine self-communication. In emphasizing seeing as an irreducible and fundamental element in the totality of religious acts, he takes up a central issue, running through the whole of Christian theology, namely the search and the longing for the vision of God. In fact, given the diversity of writings on the vision of the divine, it constitutes one of the most prevalent themes in theological aesthetics through Christian

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KARL RAHNER’S WRITINGS ON LITERATURE, MUSIC AND THE VISUAL ARTS

history. Rahner himself wrote on numerous occasions on the beatific vision. Moreover, he pointed out that the Christian must learn to see, indeed, that it is an ‘elevated task’ and a ‘sacred, human and Christian art to learn to see’ with loving eyes if we confess Christ not only as the word, but also as the image, of God. Thus, it is the whole person who is involved in a religious experience; it always concerns body, mind, heart and soul. Rahner states that it would be theologically naïve to think that only explicitly religious acts will be conducive to a salutary relationship with the divine. A painting or a symphony, he argues, may be so ‘inspired and borne by divine revelation’ and by God’s gracious self-communication that they convey something about the human being in the light of the divine. When a work of art reaches, and is revelatory of, the depths of human existence, it reaches the realm where true religious experience takes place. While Rahner is aware of the possibilities of religious experience through art, he does, however, acknowledge that there are works of art that may not be quite conducive in evoking spiritual and religious depth – that is, well-intended but sentimental pious works of little artistic merit. As he notes: ‘When I paint the crib with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, using aureoles to show from the outset what is being presented, I have, objectively speaking, a religious picture. It may, in fact, not be very religious, because it is unable to evoke in those who see it a genuine and deep religious reaction. There exists what we call religious Kitsch.’4 On the other hand, a work by Rembrandt, for example, even without any specific religious theme, may still confront and affect the whole human being in such a way, that s/he is faced with the ultimate meaning of existence. He asserts that this is, in fact, in a most fundamental sense a religious image. Rahner’s analysis here is not only important concerning what constitutes genuine art, but it addresses one of the fundamental questions regarding a theology of art, namely how religious or spiritual experience happens through the work of art, with or without Christian iconography. However, he concedes that in Christianity and in our personal-spiritual life we also need specifically religious images that are easily understood by all. These help us to grasp the message of the Bible, and they remind us of the Gospel stories. Images therefore also have a didactic role. Essentially, he argues, word and image should be seen as complementary in our spiritual life and knowledge. Images have an aesthetic, epistemological, mediative and meditative function, not only in the more secular spheres of life but also with regard to the Christian message; thus, they are not to be undervalued. In this context, we are reminded once more of Rahner’s anthropology with its emphasis on the unity of sense knowledge and spiritual-conceptual knowledge. Sense, intuition and emotion always play

INTRODUCTION

5

their part in human understanding and knowledge. Rahner repeatedly insisted that real human knowledge, including religious knowledge, cannot be achieved merely through concepts and speculation. While books can help us on the way, knowledge is gained through experience, through joy and suffering in everyday life. It is in this way that humans find hope and wisdom and come to know God. God cannot be approached as an object to be ‘mastered’ by systematic argument; rather it is through the experience of the all-embracing love of God as mystery that we know something of the always greater hidden divine. It is in this way, too, that the work of art, with its concrete, experiential, intellectual and aesthetic dimension, reveals to us glimpses of the divine and can play a relevant role in the work of theology.

THEOLOGY AND ART: SUBJECTIVITY, PRAYER, TRANSCENDENCE Rahner insisted on many occasions that theology must be subjective in that it begins with subjective experience; it must be concerned with faith, hope and charity, with our personal relationship with God. However, subjectivity here does not mean subjectivism and relativism, but rather the human being as a free and responsible agent in the light of faith. Art, like faith, is also essentially subjective and offers the possibility of transcendence. ‘Whatever is expressed in art is a product of that transcendentality by which, as spiritual and free beings, we strive for the totality of reality. . . . [I]t is only because we are transcendental beings that art and theology can really exist.’5 Further he points out that art is always historical and is thus situated in particularity. True art is the result of a particular historical event of human trancendentality. Historicity, particularity and transcendence enjoy an essential mutual relationship. Rahner’s affirmation that theology must be subjective because it speaks of our personal and particular relationship with God thus parallels his views on subjectivity and historical particularity in art. Theology, like art, cannot simply be developed through abstract concepts but, Rahner maintains, must be mystagogical. Mystagogy implies that people must be encouraged not to learn the catechism by heart but rather to genuinely experience what underlies the more abstract concepts. Human beings through their life experience and faith can be led into the depths of self. This may happen when a person is wholly absorbed in hearing or seeing and, more specifically, in prayer. Prayer does not simply imply words of petition, but is, in a wider sense, being open to the presence of God in one’s life, both inside and outside the church. From Rahner’s whole conception of art as being integral to theology, one could possibly surmise that he might

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have been aware of, or would have resonated with, artists like Rouault and Kandinsky who perceived an artist’s life and work in terms of religious vocation. It is significant that Rahner discusses art not only in the ‘horizon of theology’ but also in the ‘horizon of piety’. Conscious of the spiritual in nonreligious subject matter in modern art, he remarks that, in a wider human context, we may speak of an ‘anonymous piety’ even in an Impressionist work of art. Rahner explicitly referred to piety outside the church, which, he held, has its primal ground in, and is sustained by, the experience of God.6 Piety does not simply arise in the specific sphere of the church but connotes the fundamental relatedness of the human being to God, and his/ her witness to sincerity, truth and love – all actions founded on and pointing to God’s universal grace. This witness includes authentic artistic creation and commitment. Rahner’s notion of an anonymous piety in art thus directly corresponds to his idea of piety outside the church and therefore to his idea of the ‘anonymous Christian’.

LITERATURE AND POETRY Among Rahner’s articles on the arts, those which concentrate on literature and poetry and the relationship between poetry and Christian life are written with profound empathy and insight. Rahner was deeply aware of Christianity’s intrinsic relationship with the word, the Bible, the book, and hence with the poetic, literary word. Given the vast range of his own writing in different genres – meditations, prayers, sermons, dictionary articles, essays, monographs – he seems to have felt a particular affinity with the possibilities of language, literature and poetry. Indeed, his considerable ability of self-expression through the spoken and written word was recognized when he was awarded the ‘Sigmund Freud Prize for Scientific Prose’ from the German Academy for Language and Poetry in 1973. His writing, at times, has a decidedly poetic, literary ring, such as the prose in articles like ‘Priest and Poet’. As Albert Raffelt has noted, ‘it does not surprise that even a church hymn was composed from a text by Rahner.’7 In ‘Poetry and the Christian’, an essay on the relationship between poetry, theology and Christian living, Rahner asks – in the context of the decline of Christian themes in literature (and in art) in modernity – whether on a more fundamental level this decline has actually taken place. Perhaps it is simply through new and renewed symbols, forms and images that something of the spiritual and/or religious is expressed. Poetry,

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he maintained, especially great poetry, is important, because it happens where the human being radically faces who s/he is.8 Facing oneself includes sin, guilt, even hatred, deep pain and failure. But in such authenticity, Rahner asserts, the ‘happy danger’ of meeting God is more likely than in the philistine avoidance of all the chasms in human existence. If one prefers to live at a superficial level, one is likely to meet neither doubts nor God. Great poetry, as also great visual art and music, and ‘great’, that is, authentic, Christian living have an ‘inner kinship’. In Christian existence, as in composing and listening to music or through writing and reading great poetry, the individual is led into heights and depths, into hope, doubts and moments of despair. Both the poetic word and the theological word can reach the human heart, which in turn may encourage and enable one to open up to the divine mystery. In this context, Rahner mentions four preconditions which need to be fulfilled in order to hear especially the word of the Christian message. Firstly, human beings must open their ears to hear that word, which speaks of ‘the silent mystery as the ground of our being’. Secondly, we must develop the ability to hear words which hit the centre, the human heart. The third, and especially important, precondition is the ability to hear the words that unite. Usually words are used to distinguish, to isolate. The ultimate words, however, Rahner emphasizes, are those that unite, reconcile and liberate. The ultimate words unite as they speak of the central Christian message, of love, which is not some kind of feeling, but the true substance of reality that desires to become manifest everywhere. The fourth and final precondition is to perceive in the individual word the unutterable mystery, the ability to hear the incarnational and incarnate incomprehensibility, indeed, to hear the word that became flesh. For this reason, Rahner concludes, we must become open to the word, to the word made flesh, since through and in this word the human word is filled with truth and grace. In this way, then, to perceive the poetic, the primordial, word becomes a precondition of hearing the word of God. The individual thereby does not necessarily have to be particularly gifted, musically, artistically or poetically. We need only to become receptive and learn to hear those words that are able to hint at what is deepest and unutterable, the words that convey something of the silent, eternal mystery of the divine. Thus, Rahner concludes, the question of how we as Christians deal with poetry, becomes a ‘very serious and truly Christian question’. Rahner refers approvingly to von Balthasar’s comment that today we lack a ‘kneeling theology’ (kniende Theologie), adding that we also need a ‘poetic theology’ (dichtende Theologie), understood as mystagogical theology, a

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theology based on, and leading to, the experience of the mystery of God. In ‘Priest and Poet’, a poetic and moving essay, he examines the relationship of the priest and the poet. The true poet, ‘driven forward by the transcendence of the Spirit’, speaks the primordial words. Poets speak of what is deepest within, of what springs from the heart, of longing, a longing that touches on the horizon of the incomprehensible mystery.9 As ministers of the word, priests speak the truth of God. They do so whether or not this truth has become a personal, existential truth to them or not. Rahner concludes that the future fulfilment, to which our pilgrim’s path is leading, assures us that the perfect priest and the perfect poet will be one and the same.10 Moments when the word of God and the word of poetry become one are moments of redemption. Literature and poetry for Rahner are therefore no optional extra; the words of the literary writer and the poet are ‘essential’. Written a few decades ago, his love and defence of poetry and literature is poignant and prophetic: In periods when humanism and poetry seem to be dying, buried under the achievements of technological skill and suffocated by the chatter of the masses, Christianity must defend human culture and the poetic word. . . . We Christians must love and fight for the poetic word, because we must defend what is human, since God himself has assumed it into his eternal reality.11 Here again his basic premise of art as an essential source of human selfexpression comes to the fore, coupled with an urgency to protect and foster poetry as a source of meaning and truth and as a path to holy mystery.

CONCLUSION ‘Has theology become more perfect because theologians have become prosaic?’, Rahner asked with some urgency, adding, ‘what has become of the times when the great theologians also wrote hymns?’12 He recalls Paul’s great hymn to love, the Psalms, the account of creation, Methodius of Olympus, Augustine, Bonaventure, Aquinas, John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, Dante, Brentano, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and ‘many, many other poets’. Perhaps their poetic word was ‘more original and comprehensive, more alive than that of those theologians who are proud of the fact of not being poets’. Prosaic, dull, pretentious language can be noticed at times in contemporary theology. But here and there we find a voice like Rahner’s. Rahner, in an

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age of secularism, was still able and not ashamed to address God as Thou, not in any sentimental or overly pious manner, but in a genuinely humble, sometimes poetic, fashion, and as someone who also happened to be one of the great theologians in history. His personal integration of life, spirituality and theology, of the systematic-conceptual and the meditative-poetic, is reflected in, and enabled, his profound empathy for the arts. Theologians through the ages have acknowledged that ultimately all theology is doxology. Rahner’s theology, with its emphasis on God as mystery and on the God who is love and encountered in freedom, his stress on the universality of revelation, his love of the early Christian writers and his openness to contemporary people and issues, may have contributed to his own poetic sensibility and his love and understanding of the arts. His insistence on dialogue within and beyond the church in a pluralist modern age, on the need for theologians to take risks and not simply regurgitate traditional formulae, may have further enhanced this intellectual-affective openness towards, and love of, the arts, not only in themselves but also as loci theologici. For Rahner, then, all the arts – literature, music, the visual arts, etc. – have the potential to speak, image or sound what concerns us profoundly in our human existence, of what brings great happiness and joy as well as deep suffering and sadness into our lives. The arts are therefore existential and part of what it means to become truly human. It is in this way that they point us towards ultimate meaning and reveal glimpses of the mystery of the unfathomable divine. The arts can provide us with moments of genuine seeing, hearing and feeling, and thus understanding. In so doing they further our knowledge, our spiritual life and faith through a unity of sense-spiritualintellectual perception. Human existence and transcendentality, God’s self-communication through the Cross and the hope for redemption, can be revealed and expressed in both the arts and theology. In Rahner’s own words: ‘[W]hen listening to a Bach oratorio, why should we not have the impression that, not only through its text but also through its music, we are in a very special way brought into a relationship with divine revelation about humanity. Why would we not believe that this too is theology?’13 I would like to express my gratitude to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Ireland, for a privileged time of work on the first version of this chapter, published as ‘Towards a Theological Aesthetics’ in Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 225–234.

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NOTES 1. Karl Rahner, ‘Theology and the Arts’, Thought. A Review of Culture and the Arts, LVII, 224 (1982), 25. 2. K. Rahner, ‘The Religious Meaning of Images’, Theological Investigations (henceforth TI), 23 (1992), 155-156. 3. See the first chapter in my book Theology and Modern Irish Art (Dublin: Columba, 1999) which deals extensively with Tillich’s theology of art. 4. K. Rahner, ‘Art against the Horizon of Theology and Piety’, TI, 23 (1992), 167. 5. K. Rahner, ‘Art against the Horizon of Theology and Piety’, TI, 23 (1992), 165. 6. K. Rahner, ‘Religious Feeling inside and outside the Church’, TI, 17 (1981), 233. 7. Albert Raffelt, ‘Die Rezeption des Werks von Karl Rahner’, Sonderdrucke aus der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau (2020), 14. DOI: 10.6094/UNIFR/167203. Accessed 4.11.2020. Barbara Kolberg, Gotteslob, Katholisches Gebet- und Gesangbuch, Diocese of Trier edition (Trier: Paulinus, 2013), Nr. 761, ‘Gott spricht zu uns sein schönstes Wort’. 8. K. Rahner, ‘Poetry and the Christian’, TI, 4 (1966), 365. See also K. Rahner, ‘The Spirituality of the Church of the Future’, TI, 20 (1981), 143-153. 9. K. Rahner, ‘Priest and Poet’, TI, 3 (1967), 316. 10. K. Rahner, ‘Priest and Poet’, TI, 3 (1967), 294. 11. K. Rahner, ‘Poetry and the Christian’, TI, 4 (1966), 364. 12. K. Rahner, ‘Priest and Poet’, TI, 3 (1967), 316. 13. K. Rahner, ‘Art against the Horizon of Theology and Piety’, TI, 23 (1992), 163.

Faith, culture, theology and the senses

12

Chapter 1

Faith and culture1

Without doubt, faith and religion today are often brought before the judge’s seat of a primitive and huge concern regarding their usefulness. If faith is to be recognized, then, one instinctively demands, it has to disclose itself as effective and of use in our tangible world of experience. It must show itself as actually improving the world; it must create peace, mitigate or eliminate social tensions, make life more bearable. Otherwise, one believes, it will lose its right to exist. This naive prejudice firstly needs to be countered by asking a hard and simple question: Why does faith have to do all that in order to be valued? Indeed, is not the human that being who is still looking for something else – for the true, even if it creates suffering; for the beautiful, which is useless; for the holy that is worshipped? Does the human not develop a right relationship with the goods of consumption and enjoyment when he actually distances himself from these, that is, when he knows another sphere – when he reveres the ‘useless’ and selflessly devotes himself to it?2 This proviso, only briefly outlined, has to be pointed out first if we want to speak about ‘faith and culture’. If the cultural sphere itself already partly belongs to the sphere of the true, the beautiful and sacred, which ultimately does not have to answer to utilitarian purposive thinking, then faith and what it means is itself above and greater than the tangible cultural assets, because faith means God and the salvation, that only is received by the fact that the first and last mystery of existence, God, is worshipped in a selflessly

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hoping and loving manner – whereby we submit to this final mystery, not it to us. With this proviso, however, we can now speak of a positive mutual relationship between faith and culture. From afar and without many citations, which are not possible here, we refer primarily to the second chapter of the second part of the Pastoral Constitution of the Second Vatican Council on the Church in the World today, because this chapter is indeed about ‘the right promotion of cultural progress’ (its heading) and about the role Christian faith can and should play in this. Here we cannot actually ask and answer the question what culture is. We can only point out what the individual in his existence already encounters as cultural heritage: Science; the arts with all their possibilities, customs and practices3 which go beyond actual norms; religion, which, regardless of its higher nature, is also a cultural phenomenon and participates in, shapes and is shaped by the overall culture of an epoch and a people. We can say in abstract fashion that culture is what has been handed down and, as such, is involved in shaping people’s lives and space; the human absorbs and continues what he has inherited and creates culture. He creates knowledgably and freely, in himself and in his environment in the process of his own action and in his work that which is specifically human. This creating is not a luxury that the human affords for himself as without it the human, even as a natural being, could not exist at all. Here we do not need to reflect on the distinction – which is almost only possible in German – between culture and civilization, even if in some way it does exist. Thereby4 one should be warned, in particular, against the snobbish, haughty prejudice that the natural sciences, that are of technical use, as well as technology and the socially planned structuring of a mass humanity has nothing to do with culture; that is, that culture is only something that is created solely by individual elites. Even if this is only a brief suggestion of what is meant by culture, two statements here need to be added: (a) One can and must differentiate between culture as it is and culture as it should be. One can apply a critical standard to a culture; indeed, this self-critical and therefore change-demanding behaviour is part of the inner moment of culture itself. (b) The culture that is supposed to be – the cultural ideal – is not a timeless quantity either but has itself a history in space and time, so that, following one another and alongside each other, there are many cultures that ought to be; there are not just factually many cultures. It is therefore legitimate to narrow down the subject and sharpen it towards the question what Christian faith can offer and should do for a culture that ought to exist today. On this, too, only a few, simple things can be said.5

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1.6 Faith demands responsibility before God as well as towards secular culture – culture that remains secular. This may be a sentence that, at first, always applies, or always appears to apply. But if one considers that it is only in our time that there exists a specifically secular culture, and that Christianity does not demand or wish to shape or manipulate this culture in a clear, positive and direct manner through its faith, or even through its ecclesial office, then there is a great danger and temptation in the believer to release this profane-secular culture, which can no longer be theologically or ecclesially shaped, from his Christian responsibility before God and to treat it as something that may interest him as a person, but as a Christian no longer concerns him. The Council (No. 43, etc.)7, too, sees the danger that Christians as such may only seek the ‘heavenly’, thinking that the earthly – because it has become secular and thus is the deed of humans – may not be a task for them as Christians as having a decisive responsibility concerning salvation. The Council simply states: ‘A Christian who neglects his earthly duties thereby neglects his duties towards the neighbour, indeed towards God, and hence puts his eternal salvation in danger.’8 However, what is said about earthly duties must be read against the background of the conciliar statements about the relative autonomy of secular culture (No. 59).9 Only in this way the cited sentence attains its sharpness and weight: indeed, that culture, which faith and church cannot materially supply as culture, is still an earthly duty that is concerned with eternal salvation. The Christian, in lone maturity, is bound to his profane cultural work, and this, as the expression of his Christian existence, is – although not solely – his Christian mission and responsibility. 2. Mass and unified world culture, which is often and wrongly referred to degradingly as mass- and world civilization, is a task for the Christian as such. The Council does not consider culture as a reality that is reserved also today only for a small ‘elite’ of a few individual people or peoples, or can only be created and supported by such an elite. It speaks freely about mass culture (No. 54)10; it wants the cultural development of every person, of all peoples. While it does want to keep most legitimate cultures, it nevertheless approves of a development towards a ‘more universal form of human culture that promotes the unity of people and brings it to expression’ (No. 54). And it advocates a legal and powerful organization of a community of nations, which, despite the UN, does not yet exist (No. 84). The Council wants that both sexes participate actively and responsibly in this culture; that people of all social occupations, rich and poor, have access to it; that, as far as possible, cultural assets – through schools,

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means of communication, tourism, etc. – are accessible to everyone; that, in any way possible, all are actively involved in the life of society and its production of culture. The Council knows that there certainly will always be differences of social function, dispositions and national idiosyncrasies, but it obviously far from believes that genuine and high culture will grow precisely because there are poor, socially powerless, exploited and so on human beings and peoples. An aristocratism in understanding the nature of culture is alien to the Council. It does not want culture-less people who enable culture for others. This, let us say in a somewhat imprecise manner, socialist trait in the cultural ideas of the Council is certainly conditioned first by our time, precisely because in the past such a cultural programme could hardly be realized. Yet this intention is ultimately determined by the Christian idea of the human being: Everyone is a creature and child of God, a bearer of an eternal destiny. And therefore everyone is also entitled to participate in the economic and higher cultural assets of humanity on a fundamentally equal basis. In the Council’s view, the poor have not been promised heaven so that others, that is, only some individual groups and peoples, can be and will remain rich on earth. Ultimately, mass culture is not a goal enthusiastically to be welcomed. Basically it means, if you want, a sober, ‘leveling’ programme that forces all into modesty. It will do without the attractions of a great variety of contrasts. But culture is a task for us today and a call on Christianity in our present time, whereby the question about the sociological justification of the, mostly derogatory, term ‘mass’ has not yet already been decided.11 3. Faith makes a decisive contribution to ensuring that the individual can cope with the burdens of the present and future cultural situation. The Council speaks freely of the fact that today, without higher forms of socialization, without an effective, powerful organization of the international community, without the structuring of the economy in individual states and in the whole of humanity with state intervention, it is no longer possible to guarantee sustenance and peace in this colossal, ever-faster-growing mass humanity. This higher socialization does not need to be considered happiness itself, as that which is desired in itself; it is simply a necessity. This necessity also brings about – certainly not only – new bonds, including the dangers of the external manipulations of humans that are actually happening, new constrictions and levelling, technical and rationally planned conformistmaking of humans, the greyness of the world of work with its increasingly planned and divided function of the individual, which is not compensated for in every respect by the growth of freedom. This freedom brings all this with it with that inevitability and also ‘necessity’ with which the human

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being shapes his life, which always also includes guilt – guilt that should not be. The so-called progress is therefore always also a growth or, at least, a change in the burden of existence. Faith can help to carry the burden imposed by the mass culture of today and tomorrow. Not that faith could be manipulated as such a life help. The moment in which faith is purposed as an ideological consolation of life, it avenges its dignity and ceases to be a life aid. Where there is unreserved faith in God, however, where responsibility is taken before him, where eternal life is hoped for, faith becomes a help to endure life in its constrictions and sobriety which are increasing today rather than decreasing. Faith lets us endure without that desperate and irascible attempt to break out into mass delusion of idolatry of superficial pleasure or other ways to escape the lacklustre and objectively sober confinement of today’s world. Objective clear-headedness and quiet modesty towards what is necessary certainly are virtues of the human being and his humanism today. But either these are not enough without a deeper reasoning in faith, or they are already – unreflected and namelessly – filled with what the Christian calls faith. Faith can contribute to helping us deal without grousing with the harshness of today’s mass culture. 4. The Council says that Christians have the task of imprinting their eschatological hope into the structures of secular life (Lumen Gentium No. 35 and Gaudium et Spes No. 38). That is an important statement about culture and Christians’ relationship with it as this ‘secular life’ is factually identical with what we call culture. Now, this statement certainly does not want to say that through their cultural work Christians themselves could cause, and historically bring about, their eschatological hope, the ‘kingdom of God’ which ultimately is God himself. The fulfilment of this hope that God in God’s freedom gives to human history is God’s free act and grace. But indeed, if not misunderstood, the statement above becomes ‘exhausting’. Despite the unavailability of the absolute future, our hope for it is explained precisely in the changing and shaping power of the cultural work of the human: the Christian hopes in that he creates culture, and vice versa: the Christian shapes inner-worldly future in hoping for the absolute future. More cautiously: he should hope and do cultural work as in one. This reminder contains a statement about an essential moment of hope itself. This hope for eternity happens concretely in the ongoing reorganization of the structures of secular life.12 If one leaves aside the fact that ‘revolution’ is an indefinite term with multiple meanings, one could say: Here Christian hope is declared as the reason for Christians to always take a revolutionary stance in the world. If one understands Christianity correctly, and if Christians understand themselves correctly, it is hence

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precisely the other way round from what one usually thinks inside and outside of Christianity: the hope for the absolute future of God, for eschatological salvation that the absolute divine is, is not the legitimation of a conservatism which sets everything in stone and fearfully prefers the safety of the present to an unknown future; it is not the ‘opium of the people’ calming the present, even when it is painful, but the empowerment and the command to a consistently resumed, trusting, exodus from the present into the future, including also the inner-worldly future. Indeed, the embodied historical human realizes even the ultimate transcendental structures of his self not in the abstract ‘inwardness’ of mere thought, but in dealing with the world, with fellow humans and the environment. And real ‘praxis’, in contrast and in radical difference to theory, is not mere execution of the planned and thus therefore only of the theoretical, but the opening up towards and the daring of the unplanned, so that only in praxis itself the real possibility of what is dared emerges. Especially so, when it is ensured that all planning that is necessary and justified – the manipulation of the environment (technology), the social environment (socialization) and the human himself – will not diminish the pressing unplanned and make it into a mere given, ‘not yet’ processed, remaining stock, but appears increasingly and more sharply as a result of praxis itself, whereby the human himself builds up in the dismantling of the predetermined recognizable (des vorgegebenen Unübersehenen) the recognizable he has produced. From these two moments it follows, however, that in the so-understood practical daring of the unforeseen, unavailable future, the human realizes and must realize his eschatological hope reaching out towards the absolute unavailable – that it is true thus that the Christian must imprint his hope into the structures of the world. That,13 of course, does not mean that certain, fixed structures of his secular world could be such that they, once and forever fixed, would be the permanent objectification of his eschatological hope. On the contrary. Every structure – the present and the coming – of secular life is put into question by hope as a reaching-out towards the unavailable; and in this questioning the historical and social act of hope is realized. Not only through that. For the Christian also accepts the incomplete, endured passing of the ‘Gestalt of the world’ in the individual destiny of his life, in death and in the renunciation that prepares him; and in that, too, he employs his hope,14 which is anything but wild revolutionary action. Because the latter would be either the absolutization of the next coming Gestalt of the world and hence the opposite of hope, namely a form of presumptuousness that only knows what is available, or posits the unavailable as the available, or it is despair which no longer hopes for anything and therefore simply negates everything

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because it is not the ultimate. But the constant criticism of secular structures is one of the concrete forms of Christian hope, which as the courage towards the unavailable does not have to cling to anything in our secular existence, as if without it the human would fall into an absolute void, and which commands the human – in the moment when he becomes, much more than hitherto, doer of his world – not only to let be what is snatched from him, but also to actively give up what he recognizes as provisional in view of the unlimited future of hope and that he thus can treat as something which he can already detach from in his time. It15 is strange that we Christians, who radically have to dare hope into the unavailable of the absolute future, have come under suspicion from others and even ourselves that for us the desire to preserve is the fundamental virtue of life. In reality, however, the tradition that Christianity, as the pilgrim people of God, has been tasked with on its way is to hope for the absolute promise and, in order that this will not remain some cheap ideology, time and again move out of the rigidity of old and empty social structures. In what way in such continually new exoduses this hope can be concretely realized, and what the Christian will hold on to (which indeed is also possible) – because his hope also strips the immanent future of the false manifestations of the Absolute – theoretical belief cannot simply deduct. This concrete imperative is not the result of the applied theory of faith; just as little as faith as such transforms the general promise into the special one that only takes up the indeductable, original hope. But this hope calls Christians and Christianity to dare these indeductable imperatives of ever new decisions between defending the established present and the exodus into an unpredictable future. And hope can do this. Because, indeed, it has always done the bigger thing. In it the human has released himself into the absolute and eternally unavailable.16 And by virtue of this greater hope, he also has the smaller hope, namely the courage for the transformation of ‘secular life structures’, as the Council says. And so, in the smaller hope the greater one becomes real, in the smaller act of ever new cultural creation the greater hope of eternal life is realized. Editorial note: Most of the endnotes here are irrelevant to the reader as they concern different versions of the article in German publications. The notes are included for the sake of completion as they are included in the edition of the article in Sämtliche Werke (vol. 21/2) which has been the source for the translation. The Bibliographie Karl Rahner, https://www​.ub​.uni​-freiburg​.de​/fileadmin​ /ub​/referate​/04​/rahner​/rahnersc​.pdf0, accessed 5.11.2020, notes that this

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article was a commentary on Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, published in 1965.

NOTES 1. Radio broadcast ‘Glaube für heute’ [‘Faith for Today’] in the series of the Südwestfunk Baden-Baden (Kirchenfunk) on 11.6.1967. As text published in: K. Rahner, Gnade als Freiheit. Kleine theologische Beiträge (Herder Bücherei 322). Freiburg i. Br., 1968, pp. 145–52 (version A); ‘Der Glaube und die heutige Wirklichkeit’ in: Universitas 24 (1974), pp. 367–72 (version B). 2. The following two paragraphs have been taken out in version B. 3. The adoption of version B ends here. 4. Here the text is again in version B. 5. This sentence is missing in version B. 6. Version B has no numbering. 7. References to articles in ‘Gaudium et Spes’ are generally missing in version B. 8. ‘Gaudium et Spes’ 43. 9. Here a new paragraph in version B. 10. Half sentence deleted in version B. 11. No new paragraph in version B. 12. The adoption of the text in version B ends here. 13. From here on the text in version B is taken up again. 14. From here until the end of the section, the text in version B has not been adopted. 15. The text in version B starts again. 16. Version B ends here.

Chapter 2

On the theology of books

If I am to say anything here to which one could (somewhat ambitiously) attach the title “On the pastoral theology of books” I must begin by emphasising the obvious: that there can be no question of so exalting the pastoral significance of books that by the end of it books would appear as about the most important means that can be used in pastoral work. It cannot be like that. This cannot be the object of a theological consideration of the work that you do. It always has to be stressed, in pastoral matters, that there is no one, single all-purpose means for the building up of God’s kingdom in the individual and in the Church. Everyone engaged in pastoral work is required to cultivate an attitude about this that is by no means easy to achieve: to carry out his own task and mission with as much devotion as though they were the only, or the most important ones in the Church, and at the same time to be so modest in his thinking about them that he ungrudgingly gives everything else in the Church and her pastoral work the place due to it. But with this reservation, much can be said from a theological point of view of the meaning and significance of books and of working with them for the salvation of men. When a theologian hears the word “book” and is expected to say something about it, he instinctively tries to take for his starting point the holy book, holy scripture. This does indeed provide us with an approach to the matter, though not the only theologically conceivable one. The Church has a holy book, of which she says that God is its originator; that, inspired

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by the Holy Spirit, it contains without error the revelation of God for the salvation of men. She sees this book, furthermore, as a book which cannot be followed by anything of the same kind, a final and irreplaceable book for all time to come. She sees this book as the book out of which she lives, on which she draws for her preaching, and which is and always will be the norm for the content of her teaching and the guide-line for her dogmatic decisions. Let us reflect a little on these dogmatic statements about the holy book. In the first instance, such a reflection should give us something like a shock: that a book should be so important that God himself makes himself its originator in a special and unique sense, and that it should be one of the essential, permanent, not-to-be-superseded constitutive elements of the Church. That such an origin and such significance for salvation should be attributed to a book! To something which did not even exist for the greater part of human history: yet mankind comes forth from God as its originator, and has in all ages been required to work out its supernatural salvation. For hundreds of thousands of years a history was going on which was not only human history but really salvation history, just as it is for us now; and there were no books. Now, suddenly, in the brief space of time (compared with the age of mankind) from Moses to our own day, a book is to be numbered amongst the things appointed by God as necessary for salvation, and to be placed alongside the sacrament on the Church’s table. Books have indeed made their entry into the innermost realm of the holy and the salvific. Should we say that in fact they came into existence within this religious sphere, with man, as homo religiosus, beginning to write and to put his writings into permanent, time-defying form basically because of his desire to embody the one abidingly valid word of revelation and the demands of tradition, so that the secular book is an offspring of the sacred book? Or should we say that books, secular in origin, have been consecrated and have entered into the realm of the holy? However that may be, books are something belonging to the most intimate sphere of man’s being, the point where the encounter takes place between God and man, through which comes salvation and God’s self-revelation. But this is something which has become the case only “recently”, only since God, in the course of the immeasurably long history of his saving activity from paradise onwards, shed his anonymity and began a public and to some extent official salvation history with the Sinaitic covenant. But fundamentally this beginning is only a final preparation, the shadow cast before it of that real, personal entry of God into history, by which God becomes present in person within space and time, revealed in his most intimate life, finally established in the decision of his mercy, and communicated to man in his innermost glory.

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Within this one saving event of the incarnation of the Word of God himself, books too make their appearance within salvation history. The consecration of books is an element in the incarnation of the Word of God. Because and insofar as God assumed human reality, making it his own reality by which he is revealed and communicated, to that extent books too are assumed and consecrated as an element in the existence of man as God wills him to be so as to be able to make a real encounter with the incarnate Word of God. As those hundreds of thousands of years of human history show, it is possible to be human without books. But it is possible to encounter the incarnate Word of God, in the way in which God willed, only in a community amongst whose constitutive elements in the holy book, as a medium in which that community possesses the abiding presence of Christ. There is no sense in considering at length whether it would have been possible, in itself, for this drawing together of mankind and God to that point of convergence which we call Christ to have happened without the emergence, in and with the Church, of a holy book as something by which the Church is constituted, and as a means willed by God for making that eschatological point of convergence permanently present as long as this age of the world continues. Whatever may have been possible in the abstract, God did as a matter of concrete reality will that his absolute and abiding presence with mankind should be bound up with the emergence of a holy book. Now, the whole of world history has been willed and directed by God, without prejudice to its natural character, indeed precisely in its natural character, because and insofar as it was his will to give himself utterly, to give the intimate reality of himself, by the grace of the hypostatic union, to that which is not divine. Since, then, natural realities are truly Christocentric, and their natural character is not thereby encroached upon but in fact established, we must say that God willed that human history should come to the point of producing books because and insofar as he willed the holy book as a concrete element in the incarnation of his own Word. And hence, ultimately, springs all the dignity and significance of books. When we say, for instance, that the Church cannot cease to exist, so long as the doings and sufferings of history continue in this world; when we make this historical prognosis of faith, despite our experience of the transitoriness of all earthly things and of the endlessness of change, then we are also saying that books, that odd invention of recent times, are always going to remain, will never cease to be, will be part of mankind’s existential reality until the last day. Thus books have entered into the sphere of the incarnate Word of God, of sacramentally mediated salvation and of eschatological finality; they are amongst the Church’s necessary means for self-understanding.

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The handing on of this holy book, the reading of it, the dissemination of it, the explanation and defence [sic] of it are thus really, iure divino, part of the essence of the Church and of Christian salvation. Thus in the dimension of the Church and her pastoral work, activity in respect of one book, at least, is something as indispensable, essential, irreplaceable and irremovable as, for instance, the primacy of the Pope, the decisions of the teaching authority, preaching, and the administration of the sacraments. We have no need to make comparisons of the relative value of these individual essential constituents of salvation, of the Church and of her pastoral activity. They may differ in value, just as the individual sacraments, without prejudice to their sacramentality, do not have the same value and ontological and existential density and power. This makes no difference to the fact that, along with all these other things, the holy book is, by the will of God, an irreducible constituent of the incarnational presence of the Word of God in the Church for our salvation. Even though there may be a greater or lesser degree of directness and vitality in the relationship of the individual Christian to this book, if only because there are, and it is right that there should be illiterates in the Church, yet the Church as a whole has an essential and absolutely necessary relationship to this book. This is the ground of the dignity and significance in the Church of books in general and the service of books. In our Christocentric theology of history, we see books, as a secular phenomenon, as having arisen in order to make possible and to lead up to the holy book. And if this is true, unrealistic as it may sound, then all the more is it true that other books post Christum natum et post sacram scripturam scriptam, at least insofar as they come into existence within the sphere of the Church, are a sequel, an echo, an interpretation and an explanation of that book. All “religious writing” is essentially a service of that book, and hence participates in its way and to its degree in the dignity, the indispensability and the permanent validity of Sacred Scripture in the Church. This other writing is not inspired and does not need to be; it can be left by God to the incalculable and never wholly assessable processes of history, to a degree that is essentially not possible in the case of those writings which are part of what constitutes the primitive Church as a permanent initial stage determining the Church’s entire future; and which are therefore required to have an absolute “purity”, so that they can be norma non normata to be [sic] applied to all later preaching and writing by the Church’s teaching and pastoral office, exercising its gift of discernment under the guidance of the Spirit. But in a Catholic understanding of Scripture there will be a greater and perhaps more down-to-earth stress than in a Protestant one on the necessity of interpretation and continual

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fresh actualisation of the Scriptures in the Church. Whatever may be the truth about the sufficiency of Scripture, however much one may agree that tradition, while always necessary as the interpreter of Scripture, being the Church’s here-and-now proclamation of the faith, does not actually supply any material content independent of and additional to Scripture, nevertheless for a Catholic understanding this here-and-now interpretation, this dogmatic unfolding of Scripture is in any case so necessary to it, and to its permanent significance in the Church that, for instance, such interpretation is not only “theologising” about the written word of God, but can be a definitely valid utterance making an absolute claim on faith. But if in the concrete life of the Church of the holy book there is this essential and necessary interpretation of that book, then there must necessarily also be written interpretation in books. Hence it is not surprising that in the concrete the concept of tradition as a criterion of true belief always implies in practice having recourse to the books of the Fathers and theologians: recourse to books as interpretations of the holy book. The continual fresh production of new books thus belongs to the essence of the Church’s history, precisely because it is her task to serve the continual here-and-now reality of the one book; precisely because all these many books have got to lead back to that one book. This very return to the sources is only possible through the continual fresh production of new books. If truth has a history, and above all that truth which has been revealed in salvation history in an historical process and is to be transmitted as such in time, then this history, ever since there has been a holy book, must necessarily also be a history of books. The sigh of the Preacher (Eccles. 12, 12) may indeed ring true today, that of making many books there is no end; there may be far too much poor and mediocre stuff being written in the Church; it may be necessary, in the sense of a necessity of salvation history, to say of the writing of books in the Church what has to be said of this servant-image of the Church and her sinfulness and wretchedness in general; but it still remains true that to the life of the Church, to her essential self-fulfilment in the concrete, to her history, to the carrying out of her task and mission for the salvation of the world, belong not only the one holy book but also all the books which somehow, though perhaps in a remote and indirect way, serve that book. And the work of your Borromeo Society is essentially part of the service of that book. This work with books for the book, which is of the essence of the Church, can of course be carried out in many different forms and ways: including other ways, obviously, than those done by you. But it is as with the preaching of the word; in any particular concrete sermon a particular

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preacher chooses particular words, and the preacher, the sermon, and the words could all be different; yet when all this happens, it is really the word of God which is spoken. In the same way, though your work and service obviously do not, as concrete facts, belong necessarily to the realisation of the Church’s nature, yet when they are done, they are truly a realisation of that aspect of her essential nature which, through the service of books, makes God’s book permanently present to every age. Hence all the value and necessity of your work. If it is true that God’s word in God’s book has, by his will, made itself the permanent prerequisite for his sheer presence in the Church, then this can also be said analogically of books in the Church. This means that preaching, as the proclamation of the word of God in the concrete here-and-now of the Church and of the individual human being, can and must also be given concrete shape in the books that are written in the Church. From the theological point of view, books have essentially the same function for the Church and the Christian as the oral proclamation of the word. This is why the Church’s law requires a book to have, if we may so express it, a missio canonica and a sort of apostolic succession. The Church’s imprimatur for a book is not so much a sort of police supervision of public opinion in the Church as a positive authorisation (though an extremely nuanced one) of this word, for the Church. It may well be true, and indeed of great importance for a sound theology of preaching, that the spoken word precisely as spoken, has an irreplaceable function, similar to the spoken word in the sacraments, for which written communication will not do. But this indisputable “plus” of the spoken word comes from its interpersonal function in the Church as a holy community; it arises, if we may put it this way, from the essentially liturgical function of the word which is immediately addressed, in the first instance, to the community as a whole, so that the community is given its here-and-now corporeal reality by the common hearing of the word. You, who do not publish or distribute liturgical books for public worship, are in the service of books intended for the individual, solitary reader, not immediately for reading aloud to the community, not part of that proclamation which constitutes the community, not having the liturgical character of the spoken word in the Church. But this does not mean that they are incapable of being a hereand-now communication of the word of God and hence of participating in the dignity of the spoken word of God as it is preached. For, while the individual human being is indeed a member of the Church as the community, established in salvation history and founded in the Holy Spirit, of those who are redeemed in faith and love, yet the individual human being is not wholly absorbed into his strictly community function as a member. Not even in the

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Church. The saving word of God is also addressed to him as an individual: who never indeed ceases to be a member of the Church, but does not only stand before God, encountering the word of God, at those times when he is actually operating his membership of the Church within the structure of the community. The word of God wills to encounter the individual in the unique and irreplaceable singularity and solitariness of his own heart and conscience. It does not thereby cease to be that word of God whose mediating tangibility and historicity are to be found in Sacred Scripture. And hence books of explanation and meditation read privately can indeed also be the event of the hearing of the word of God, so that these books too, like preaching, participate in the dignity of the corporeal character of the word of God. Hence service of these books is essentially service of the word of God, and participates in the necessity, the saving significance, the dignity, the divine and apostolic mission of this “service of the word” (Acts 6, 8). There is another angle altogether from which it is possible to approach the theological meaning of books and of your work: that of a theological anthropology. Man is placed in an ineradicable dualism of two basic lines of self-fulfilment: he is a being who is thrust out of himself into the world and the human community, and he is a being who turns back upon himself. This double bent, to take possession of himself and what is not himself, in knowledge and love, constitutes his essential nature. The going out of himself and entering into himself condition each other. If he did not go out into the world, to the Other as “thou” and (so far as one can still call this a going out) to God, he would find nothing on entering into himself but the hellish emptiness and empty isolation of the damned. And if he only went out of himself, then he would indeed be alienated from himself, lost, scattered piecemeal. Gathering and scattering, entry into oneself and going out of oneself belong to each other essentially. And what constitutes a true human being and Christian is that he entrusts himself freely to both these basic movements, as both under the direction of one same God, and, serene in this creaturely confidence, refrains from making either of them an absolute. But this ineradicable dualism of entry into oneself and going out of oneself must necessarily, in a creature which belongs to time, without prejudice to the essential ordering of these two movements towards each other, work itself out in a temporal rhythm. While it is true that we have each of them only in the other, we must yet strive by turns now for one of them and now for the other, steering towards one of them without forgetting the other, tranquilly ready for the other one even while we are striving after this one. To have the courage and freedom to live in time as a creature of time – to be a pilgrim passing through a series of different realisations of what he is meant to be – is

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part of the very nature of a Christian and of his confidence in the rightness of the plural order of being, in which each moment and element makes its demands and imposes its obligations and at the same time sends one on to the next thing, leaving one free for it. So there is a turning inwards and a turning outwards in human life, basic themes of man’s existence the realisation of which must necessarily be successive. There are solitude and society, silence and speech, gathering and scattering, inhaling and exhaling, listening and talking, sitting still and moving about. It is hence of crucial importance for man and his salvation that he should not make an absolute of either of these basic themes of his existence; that he should be genuinely and concretely convinced that he can never entirely eliminate even their temporary alternation from his temporal life; that in fact he can never have everything at once and all in one. But in the present context this means that man has got to have a time for leisure, for silence, for turning back on himself, for gathering himself together and entering into himself, and that nothing else will do instead. The style of this turning inwards, the way it is done in the concrete, may change very much in the course of the different ages of man’s history. There will always be the danger that people, including Christians, will produce reactionary criticisms of new, emergent styles in the fulfilment of elements in human existence, failing to realise that even the most important and non-expandable of basic human realities can be preserved and put into practice in different ways from those followed hitherto. For instance, the fact that authority, reverence for parents, differentiation between generations, etc., are permanent structures in any genuine healthy humanity does not by any means imply, nor does the legitimate defence [sic] of them require, that they should have to be embodied in the historically-conditioned forms of the eighteenth century. The same certainly holds true of human leisure and withdrawal into oneself. It may in many cases have to be achieved and cultivated today in different ways from those of former times. Seldom will a man of today be found sitting in his “arbour”. But the real thing involved in this can only be lost if man himself is lost; it has got to be constantly re-acquired and given whatever concrete form is being offered to us for it today; it has got to be constantly defended by a genuine, responsible ascesis against the dangers which constantly threaten it. If man is thus to withdraw into himself without being frightened of silence and solitude, without giving way to the panic of a gregarious animal separated from the herd, then this movement of return cannot simply mean the production of a state of absolute emptiness. It may be that something of that sort exists as well. The experience of overpowering, limitless emptiness,

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the disappearance of all formulas and outlines so as to make room for the forbidding presence of the nameless mystery, may be one of man’s indispensable experiences, without which he can never become so aware of God as he is called upon and required to be. But this is not in the majority of cases the meaning of solitary leisure. In a mysterious way, the return into oneself, while representing a particular phase in the rhythm of existence, takes along with it the world towards which one was turned outwards before. If a man did not do this he would not be able to arrive at that self-discovery which is the goal of his turning in upon himself. Even in this solitude, he needs to place himself over against something other than himself if he is to come to himself; he needs a point of leverage outside himself in order to be able to move his own subjective world. But he needs to be able to set this world of his over against himself; it has got to be not too overpowering for him, but to be present in a muted form, so to speak; it needs to be reduced and condensed to its essentials so that it will not overwhelm him but that he, in mastering it, will be able to find himself and discover what is his own as distinct from all else. What provides this concentrated, muted, manageable presence of the world in the solitude in which man enters into himself, is books. Primarily, of course, books which are an imaginative presentation of human reality and man’s world. When we speak here of books and the significance they have for man’s withdrawal into solitude, we do not of course mean books whose perusal is simply a handling of the so-called “real” external world: technical books in the widest sense, which are basically just an extended treatment of directions for using the external world. What we mean is the kind of book by which the real content of man’s world is concentrated and made transparent, and which thus addresses itself to that in man which is genuinely humane. We mean books which can be called humane (and thus of course truly Christian). We mean the kind of book which makes it possible or easier for a man who has entered into his own solitude to remember and interiorise that world in which, for the rest of the time, he is exposed to action and suffering, which present man’s world to him with precisely that degree of nearness and detachment needed to enable him to discover himself and his true relationship to the world. These are the books for which you work; the books on the shelves under your care belong not to technology but to the humanities. To get a still better grasp of the dignity and urgency of this work, two things should be considered. The world which these books are meant to make available and manageable to man in his musings is clearly in the first instance simply man’s world: that is, a world which is indeed humane, spiritual, with mysterious

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depths, perhaps even numinous, but not primarily the religious world strictly as such, but the secular world; the world of the mind, of human destiny, of joy and death, love and solitude, work and merry meetings, of heroes and of disaster, of nature and history insofar as these are essentially powers of man’s existence. The religious and Christian and ecclesiastical elements are not excluded from all this and are not to be denied, because these too are or can be genuine forces in life as it is lived and suffered. But books for leisure, books which are a means to a man’s self-recollection and entry into himself through imaginatively bringing the world to him and setting it apart from him, these are primarily secular books in the sense indicated, not religious books in the strictest sense. A religious entry into oneself in the strictest sense of the word does indeed exist too, when man, summoned by the word of God reaching him through history, consciously and explicitly addresses himself to the question of his salvation, putting himself in the presence of the mystery of his existence and explicitly calling that mystery by the name of God. But that turning inwards of which we have been speaking here, as a basic act of human existence finding its expression in rhythmic alternation in time, is to be understood in a wider sense, though it is true that all such turning inwards is in some fashion a prelude and beginning to that ultimate self-discovery which can only be made in the presence of God. Thus it holds good that the means to this entry into oneself is primarily the book that is humane rather than explicitly religious. But yet it has to be seen and explicitly grasped that this very entry into oneself, and precisely this kind of book, do, in their very secularity, have a religious significance. In Catholic teaching and theology there is an essential distinction between nature and grace, culture and Church, secular history and salvation history. But what this distinction does not imply is that what is natural and secular has no significance for what is religious. Not that the significance of the secular and humane can be or ought to be reckoned simply in terms of its being an instrumental means, of being something useful to the religious sphere. Whenever the secular, the “merely” human, is seen narrowly and clericalistically [sic] only in terms of its usefulness to religion in the narrower sense or, more narrowly still, to the ecclesiastical sphere, it withers away and loses, in the long run, the very significance that it does have for religion in the narrower sense. But the genuinely secular, the humane in its uninhibited, immediate manifestation, has fundamental religious significance. If a man wanted to be only a homo religiosus, living exclusively and directly on his explicitly Christian impulses, he would become humanly impoverished and cease, as a spiritual subject, to have within himself the resources needed for a complete development of his very Christianity. There is indeed,

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depending on the particular calling made to each individual, the possibility of an ascetical renunciation of fulfilment within this world as an act of faith in the reality of grace, which cannot be controlled from this world; and this attitude needs to exist in some measure in the Church and in some way in each individual Christian life. But if anyone thinks that absolute flight from the world, so far as is physically possible, is the one true way in which his religious life can grow in its complete realisation, then it is not a Christian ideal that he is proclaiming; possibly a Buddhist one. A going out into the non-religious world, a direct relationship with the world not primarily directed and mediated by Christianity, is, however paradoxical it may sound, amongst the necessary bases of a sound religious life in general and, to a heightened degree, of the life of the lay Christian in particular. A Christian must work out his Christianity in the material of the world. But he can do this only if he has familiarised himself with this material. And such familiarity is possible only if he really throws himself into the world, wholeheartedly and without reservations, trusting in the one God of heaven and earth. The secular world, as secular, has an inner mysterious depth, in all its earthly mysteries from birth to death, through which, by the grace of God, it is open to God and his infinitely incomprehensible love even when it is not, before receiving the explicit message of the gospel, aware of it. Not only are there many anonymous Christians; there is also an anonymously Christian world. For whenever its demands and its reality are really met and endured in the whole breadth and depth of natural human existence and in the totality of a human life, then, according to Christian teaching, the grace of Christ is already at work and this response and endurance are already something Christian, though they may be explicitly only secular and natural. Hence, anything that mediates to men a genuinely humane understanding of life and the world is mediating the indispensable pre-requisites of Christianity. In such a situation, grace is fashioning its own natural foundations. Indeed, what is inexplicitly present is often more than mere nature: it is the healing action of the God of grace and eternal life, protecting and saving this natural value. Hence it is not the case that working for secular and humane books cannot be a religious task, part of the mission of the Church. It is not the case that such work would take on Christian and missionary significance only when explicitly and intentionally linked with religion, in a means-to-end relationship, like a Western in the parish hall for altar-boys only. A directly appreciable synthesis of the humane and the religious, in that kind of interpenetration which was possible in the middle ages and still, to a large extent, in the baroque period, is today largely impossible.

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Not because the world has become evil and godless but simply because – ultimately by God’s will and his guidance of history – the natural world, which is also God’s world and his creation, has attained to such a degree of explicitness, articulateness, and development of its potentialities that an ubiquitous presence of directly explicit and perceptible Christianity is simply not possible any more, nor even desirable. There never has been a time when every single thing really was explicitly Christian, still less ecclesiastical, in its form and structure. What was explicitly merely secular has always existed. And if today it exists more explicitly, in a more developed form, in almost overwhelming variety and magnificence, and not only in the realm of technology, economics, and politics but also that of science, art, literature, and cultural values in general; if today aesthetic values, artistic production, and the humanities in general no longer find the material for their fulfilment merely in the religious sphere, but independently of religion as well; then this is not, fundamentally and as a whole, something which Christians should grieve over, mourning for a medieval ideal, still less try to put into reverse, but something which was meant to happen by the will of God and will go on happening. This secularity in the cultural dimension, willed by God, does of course bring with it the danger of an un-Christian secularisation of the whole of human existence; and it may in a certain sense make it harder for people to avoid forgetting God amidst the splendour of the world. But a real Christian has the duty and the right to accept his situation in the modern world uninhibitedly as one in which it is basically as possible to be a good Christian as it was when writers and scientists were under clerical direction, literature was almost coterminous with religious literature, and if a painter wanted to paint a human act [nude] he had to represent St. Laurence. What all this means is that we can and must uninhibitedly take acount [sic] of the fact that there is and ought to be a humane literature which is neither explicitly religious nor a pedagogical means to a religious end but which does have religious significance. And to be in the service of such literature, which is a protection and development of man precisely as man, is of real Christian and religious significance in an age when the greatest threat to religion is perhaps precisely in its human dimension. Perhaps this literature cannot be called “Christian” in the explicit sense; but that does not by any means make it anti-Christian or even a-Christian. There are paintings which, while not suitable for hanging in a church, because they do not have explicitly Christian themes or could not count on being received with general understanding by the congregation, are nevertheless much more “Christian” in their human substance (given its concrete expression, perhaps, simply in still-life objects or a human face) than some painting

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lacking in human substance but supposed to represent St. Joseph. Similarly, a literature whose immediate themes are pre-religious may, in what its [sic] says and the way it says it, be so truly a praeparation Evangelii that is better deserving of the name of “Christian” literature than one that takes religion for its theme in a way which fails to achieve full human realisation. So to work for books of this sort is not merely a necessary concession to a public with little interest in religion, nor the harmless pedagogical trick of supplying three secular books so as to be able to include one religious one; it is in itself a thoroughly Christian mission and task, and does not cease to be so because other people, non-Christians, are seriously carrying out the same service. The days will certainly not come again when, as was still the case in the eighteenth century, 90% of books published were theological, whereas in West Germany in 1955 the proportion was 6.2 %. If those days did come again, all it would mean would be that the majority of people were illiterate and reading nothing at all, so that religious books as such would not really have grown to any greater importance than they have today. For books of the kind you deal with are really a product of the nineteenth century. Books in the sense of a fairly long, connected treatment of some matter in writing, aimed in principle at a wide audience, had existed for long before that: books multiplied by copying for some thousands of years, printed books since Gutenberg, that is, the middle of the fifteenth century. But the books to which you devote your efforts represent something essentially more than a mere quantitative intensification of the circulation increase brought in by printing. For up to the nineteenth century, books were a privilege of a particular cultural and social stratum, the “educated”; they served the intellectual needs of a small, comprehensible [sic] group. Today everyone can read; modern techniques make possible the production of really large editions; books are aimed at the unknown reader, at everyman: they are no longer one of the distinguishing characteristics of particular social groups but are part of everybody’s life, even if it remains a fact that in West Germany today 35% of the population do not possess a book. Books have become a mass product of the masses. The dangers in this phenomenon may well be pointed out: books have become subject to the laws of the market like any other product; they have become dependent on an irrelevant principle, the incalculable whims and caprice of an anonymous public, an amorphous entity which determines what shall and shall not be printed. We may speak, with truth, of the book industry, and all the damage and dangers implied in the word. But unless we are in favour of illiteracy, we cannot be against the facts bound up with the nature of the modern book; there is nothing for it but to see the dangers inherent in these facts, avoid them and combat them,

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and for the rest humbly and confidently recognize the chance God is offering in these facts. And the modern book does also offer this holy opportunity for good: many can be addressed both by the humane and the divine word; to many the true depth and splendour of the human and the divine world can be mediated and made present by the printed word – many who otherwise, in the speechless desert of dreary everyday life, would experience little of true reality, despite all their so-called “experience of life”. For what is genuine and holy, eternal and valid, whether of man or of God, can only be found in everyday life when our eyes and our hearts have been opened to it in hours that lie outside everyday life. The accessibility of the masses through books implies, too, an accessibility through books of numerous individuals in their true personal uniqueness. In Germany in 1956 at least 13,000 different books were published (taking a minimum of forty-nine pages as constituting a “book”), of which (these are the 1955 figures) 20% were “belles lettres”, [6.9% literature for young readers]1, 6.2 religion and theology, 6.3% history (and only, for instance, 5% science and mathematics, 4% technology). In face of this it is not possible to say that books have no future in the age of radio, television, films and picture-papers [magazines]. Of course the size of the edition of any book may well seem minute beside the millions-a-week mass circulation of the picture papers. But all that has happened here is that technology has given expression to something that was there in any case: the fact that in the course of their lives people say a great many superficial, commonplace, quicklyforgotten words, and very few with any eternal content. It was formerly the case (approximately, of course) that men could only afford to print such words as had some divine and human weight; today it is economically possible to print cheap talk as well as speak it. But this does not make much real difference. It will still be the few words with eternity in them that go on being real in face of the many words of commonplace talk; the books that belong to our hours of silence will remain, though the picture papers may lie all over the place, the radio blare at us from every side, and the cinemas be filled to overflowing. Why should we abandon the struggle and the hope of making the civilization of the masses the means of achieving a culture for many? If a person gives up this struggle, with its hope-againsthope, all he proves is that he himself is only capable of being an atom in the mass. Your work is a share in this struggle. You work with books that, being humane, carry out a religious task, even when they are only humane, and with religious books as such. You try to convey them to the largest possible number of individuals, so that they will be able to take something of the genuine and humane world, and some word of God’s message, with them

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into that quiet solitude in which an individual first begins to become a true human being: one who has come to himself, who freely accepts himself and his whole life, and who really becomes responsible to himself by speaking that word of love which is his response to God and to all things. Editorial note: Karl Rahner presented this talk on 16 March 1959 at the annual diocesan conference of parish libraries and of the Borromäus organization in the ‘Haus der Begegnung’ in Cologne (English translation 1966).

NOTE 1. Editorial note: The translator omitted the translation of what has been added in brackets.

Chapter 3

God’s word and human books

Now, before I finish, allow me to add a few words. We spoke, firstly, of the profane-human book. I very briefly want to explain again what is meant by this. Just as there is a natural moral law and next to it the law of the Gospel, and just as this natural moral law has genuine religious meaning and yet has a genuine and lasting natural role vis-à-vis the grace of the church, vis-à-vis the word of God, etc., so there exists the genuinely profane and yet genuinely human dimension in and with books that does not necessarily have to be religious and yet has an absolutely necessary meaning for the religious sphere in the narrower sense. You want to know more precisely perhaps – in accordance with what was said earlier – how church libraries should be distinguished from communal libraries, those libraries that are not explicit church libraries and have their own raison d'être. I would answer, first of all, that it cannot be that a church library is solely a religious library. That would mean that the church retreats into the sacristy. From a theological point of view that would mean that the church would no longer consider herself responsible as God’s guardian in the natural realms of existence; she would no longer be responsible regarding the natural moral law of the genuinely profane in the human: that would fundamentally be a heresy. Church libraries and secular communal libraries cannot be so delimited that all poetry, everything that is not expressly

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religious, is located in communal libraries, and basically only catechisms, theological literature in the narrower sense and prayer books are placed in parish libraries. In so doing the church would deny its innermost being. It does not claim thus that there should be no profane realm. Indeed, the church is not God’s guardian of the profane world in the sense that she would lay claim to control and manage everything secular in a potestas directa, that is, concretely and exclusively wishing to direct everything. The church releases the genuinely secular world; she is not the state above the state. There exists a real dualism between world and church, and there exists therefore a real dualism between profane culture and the ecclesial sphere. And it is clear that this profane culture, as I have already said, has in a true sense become much more mature than was the case in earlier times of the church. The church and the clergy can and should admit this in an absolutely open manner. With their ideals they also do not need to demand that every book by a literary writer, a person who expresses himself and his humanity through the poetic word, must be channelled through ecclesiastical censorship. The church does not claim that she could simply recognize in a totalitarian manner the secular, the state and culture as a particular function of herself. This culture has a real, relative independence, and that is why there can, of course, be other libraries that are not directly founded, administered, managed and controlled by the church. But this again does not mean, however, that the church is the church of Sunday, of church buildings, of the sacristy and, as it were, of the purely heavenly theological sphere, that she is only allowed to speak of heaven and not of earth. Because, therefore, there also exists, and must exist, in the world the concrete cultural, secular, profane and natural tangibility of the religious and of the ecclesial sphere – and because the church would deny its own being if it did not realize this – cultural work by the church is not only allowed; indeed, there also must be concrete cultural work directed and looked after by the church – and therefore also parish libraries in which a profane-human literature definitely has its place. What is more is that in our society, divided by ideology and religion – a society which we de facto now have – a truly unified world shaped by the ultimate can actually no longer be presented by the profane library to people today. Undoubtedly, there are short-circuits also among us, in our ecclesial and religious cultural work. It is undoubtedly true that we often lack the strength and courage to integrate worldly reality. It is true, without doubt, that we often lack energy and courage to integrate secular reality. It is true, that we often think of what constitutes the truly religious and Catholic in a ghetto-like, too short-circuited, way. But that is why it remains true that the church, and therefore we priests and laypeople, have the task, the mission and the sacred obligation to convey to people a world view and an attitude

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in the world, which ultimately remain encompassed by the truly divine, the Christian – also with regard to the profane cultural spheres. Basically, this cannot be provided for by a non-Christian and non-ecclesiastical library that fundamentally must be ideologically neutral. For these two reasons, therefore, church parish libraries are, in fact, necessary – even where they partially coincide, and despite the fact that they partially coincide, in what they offer and strive for, with the thoroughly laudable and commendable efforts of non-specifically Christian libraries. Thus, we cannot just leave all the work on the book to secular authorities. It is also not the case that we are simply, as it were, interlocutors in a dispute that remains eternally open. We do not only have to discuss things with others; we have to convey God’s message and a unified, correct, true, integral and divine world view. And that is, if you want, an imperative process: we therefore cannot only meet people, as it were, on the platform of a conversation that takes place in the secular sphere with differing world views, but we announce and proclaim the Catholic Weltanschauung and interpretation of existence. And that is why there must be organizations of such an absolute, promoting, authoritative-proclaiming mediation of the right understanding of existence in the world, that is, of that what God gives and offers as salvation to all. With this, I think, something is being said, finally, also about the meaning of your service. What you do is not a hobby, not a pastime. It is a genuine religious task; I would say both a task in service of the church and thus a true apostolate, a genuine Catholic action in cooperation with the official, hierarchical apostolate of the church, and a true personal act of humanChristian love, mission and responsibility towards the neighbour, both in one. Official apostolate, truly authoritative mission of the church, the execution of the church’s mission, on the one hand, and personal calling with regard to the specific neighbour are, of course, not things that are mutually exclusive, but rather they permeate each other in the concrete work with, and the task towards, our neighbour. So, if one were to ask, is it a matter of personal calling or is what you do, as it were, an official mission and commission on the part of the church, I would say that it should be both. It is truly a service on behalf and of the mission of the church. And yet it has a very personal meaning precisely as the communication of an individual book to an individual – in contrast to the general proclamation of God’s truth in the church, in the community. It has a personal meaning and uniqueness, which ultimately one can only properly perceive in a very personal manner, where something really happens between one person and the next. This human aspect is part of the concrete process of that supernatural charity, in which everyone is and must be responsible – into one’s own eternal salvation – for

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everyone else. And at the same time, it is a genuine fulfilment of a commission the church necessarily has. I already said earlier that the concrete manner of such a fulfilment can be perceived in most diverse ways. But because the priest does not necessarily have to preach the Gospel standing on a pulpit, and one can imagine other ways of proclaiming the Gospel, the sermon from the pulpit still does not cease to be true proclamation of the word of God, the fulfilment of an essential mission. And the same is certainly also true, mutatis mutandis, concerning your work. If you give someone a book on behalf of the church that will make him, if no longer into a Christian, at least more into a human being, you really have engaged in pastoral care, and therefore you have done something that belongs to what we call Christian love of neighbour in the most holy and truest sense, something that belongs to the mandate and mission of the church. And thus, I would hold, that what you do is diakonia on the word of God, directly or indirectly; and often the indirect, the more anonymous, is at least as important as the direct service on the specifically religious book. Editorial note: ‘Gottes Wort und der Menschen Bücher’ was the final part of Rahner’s talk and article ‘Zur Theologie des Buches’ and was published separately in Sämtliche Werke. While ‘Zur Theologie des Buches’ was translated into English and published in Christian in the Market Place (1966), pp. 98–126, ‘Gottes Wort und der Menschen Bücher’ has been translated by the editor.

Chapter 4

The theology of the symbol

From its beginnings to the present day,1 the theology of devotion to the heart of Jesus, as understood by the simple faithful, by the theologians in their discussions and by the magisterium in its pronouncements, teaches that the heart of the Lord is a symbol2 of the love of Christ. Whatever answer is to be given to the question as to what is the proper object of this devotion, what is the relationship of the physical heart of the Lord, as object of devotion and as symbol of the object of devotion, to the love of Christ, which is certainly implicated in the object of this devotion; the word symbol cannot be avoided in the theology of the devotion. It indicates a component without which the nature and meaning of devotion to the heart of Jesus cannot be properly understood. But this calls for a more precise statement about what a symbol is in general. For it is not true, as is often thought, that the word ‘symbol’ has in general a clear and definite meaning in every instance and that therefore if there is any difficulty in understanding the assertion; the heart of Jesus is the symbol of the love of Christ, the difficulty does not come from the word symbol at least. An enquiry into the general sense of the word ‘symbol’ will show however that the concept is much more obscure, difficult and ambiguous than is usually thought, so that one of the tasks of these considerations must be to show that it is wrong to take the concept

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as an obvious one. This will in turn allow us to state clearly what it really means or can mean to speak of the symbol in the theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Such investigations, at least in this context are almost entirely lacking. If then the effort raises many problematical and unsolved points, the fair-minded reader will not be surprised.

I. THE ONTOLOGY OF SYMBOLIC REALITY IN GENERAL3 In the short space at our disposition, we must renounce the attempt to approach the question proper from the point of view of history of philosophy and the human understanding of existence in general. There would be many points to be considered: the usage and history of the word symbol and kindred words; how its changing meanings are related to the original radical meaning which made such changes possible; the meaning and history of concepts which point linguistically and objectively in the same direction: εἶδος μορψή, sign, figure, expression, image, aspect, appearance, etc. We must omit all such historical preparatives which lead up to the actual question, though we thereby risk overlooking many relevant questions on which light could be thrown by the history of the problem. We take up the matter in hand therefore without preparing the ground beforehand. 1. Our first statement, which we put forward as the basic principle of an ontology of symbolism, is as follows: all beings are by their nature symbolic, because they necessarily ‘express’ themselves in order to attain their own nature. We should already be dealing with merely derivative modes of being if we started with the fact that two realities, each of which is supposed to be already constituted in its essence and intelligible of itself, ‘agreed’ with one another on a certain point, and stated that this ‘agreement’ made it possible for each of them (more particularly the better known and more accessible of the two, of course) to refer to the other and call attention to it, and hence be used by us as a symbol for the other, precisely by reason of the ‘agreement.’ Symbols would then only vary, and be distinguishable from one another, by the degree and precise mode, of this subsequent similarity between the two realities. Since in the long run everything agrees in some way or another with everything else, to start the analysis of symbols this way would make it impossible to distinguish really genuine symbols (‘symbolic realities’) from merely arbitrary ‘signs’, ‘signals’ and ‘codes’ (‘symbolic representations’). Anything could be the symbol of

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anything else, the orientation from the symbol to the thing symbolized could run the other way round or be determined merely accidentally, from a view point extrinsic to the matter itself, by the human observer, who finds one aspect more telling than another. Such derivative, secondary cases of symbolism do of course exist, so that it is not easy to say where the function of being merely a sign and indicator so predominates over the ‘function of expressiveness’ that a symbol loses its ‘overplus of meaning’ (Fr. Th. Vischer) and sinks to the level of a sign with little symbolism. The margins are fluid. One need only recall that our numbers once had a religious and sacral character. Indeed it often happens that in a vocabulary more attentive to history of art and aesthetics ‘symbol’ represents a very derivative case of the symbolic. It is a feature of such terminology that the symbol (an anchor, a fish and so on) indicates a lower degree of the symbolic than for instance a religious image. We shall not discuss these matters further now. Our task will be to look for the highest and most primordial manner in which one reality can represent another – considering the matter primarily from the formal ontological point of view. And we call this supreme and primal representation, in which one reality renders another present (primarily ‘for itself ’ and only secondarily for others), a symbol: the representation which allows the other ‘to be there’. To reach the primary concept of symbol, we must start from the fact that all beings (each of them, in fact) are multiple,4 and are or can be essentially the expression of another in this unity of the multiple and one5 in this plurality, by reason of its plural unity.6 The first part of this assertion is axiomatic in an ontology of the finite. Each finite being as such bears the stigma of the finite by the very fact that it is not absolutely ‘simple’. Within the permanent inclusive unity of its reality (as essence and existence) it is not simply and homogeneously the same in a deathlike collapse into identity. It has of itself a real multiplicity, which is not merely a mental distinction and division extrinsic to the reality and only due to the limited intelligence of the external and finite observer, who only explicitates [sic] for himself the absolutely simple fullness of the being in question by using several terms (presuming that it would be thinkable at all under these circumstances). In saying this, however, we do not mean to assert that an intrinsic plurality and distinction must always be merely the stigma of the finiteness of a being. We know, on the contrary, from the mystery of the Trinity – we are doing theological ontology, which need not be afraid of adducing revealed data: that there is a true and real – even though ‘only’ relative – distinction of ‘persons’ in the supreme simplicity of God, and hence a plurality, at least in this sense. Let us now further consider – in keeping with a theology7 of the ‘traces’ and

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‘reflexions’ of the inner-trinitarian plurality – that it is quite thinkable that the pluralism of the finite creature is not merely a consequence and indicator of its finiteness, as a merely negative qualification, but also a consequence – even though not naturally recognizable as such – of that divine plurality which does not imply imperfection and weakness and limitation of being, but the supreme fullness of unity and concentrated force: then we may say candidly, though also cautiously, that being is plural in itself, and formulate this as a general principle without restrictions. On this supposition, we do not need to take it as merely part of the ontology of the finite as such. Even where it is applied to a plurality of the finite as such, we can take it as an assertion which understands even the plurality of the finite as an allusion – disclosed only in revelation – to a plurality which is more than an indistinguishable identity and simplicity. We should of course have to think of it so, if even our sublimest ontological ideals were not further directed by the self-revelation of the God who is still loftier than these ideals, and who by thus surpassing our always approximate metaphysical ideals comes once more, suddenly and strangely, that is, miraculously and mysteriously, close to us. It is therefore true: a being is, of itself, independently of any comparison with anything else, plural in its unity. But these plural moments in the unity of a being must have an inner agreement among themselves on account of the unity of the being, even though the plurality of moments in a being must be constituted by the reciprocal diversity of these moments. And they cannot have this agreement as the simple juxtaposition, so to speak, of moments which are there as such originally. This would imply a denial of the unity of the being in question: unity would be the subsequent conjunction of separate elements which once stood only on their own. This would be to betray the profound principle of St Thomas: non enim plura secundum se uniuntur: there can be no union of things which are of themselves multiple. A plurality in an original and an originally superior unity can only be understood as follows: the ‘one’ develops, the plural stems from an original ‘one’, in a relationship of origin and consequence; the original unity, which also forms the unity which unites the plural, maintains itself while resolving itself and ‘dis-closing’ itself into a plurality in order to find itself precisely there. A consideration of the Trinity shows that the ‘one’ of unity and plurality, thus understood, is an ontological ultimate, which may not be reduced to an abstract and merely apparently ‘higher’ unity and simplicity: it cannot be a hollow, lifeless identity. It would be theologically a heresy, and therefore ontologically an absurdity, to think that God would be really ‘simpler’ and hence more perfect, if there were no real distinction of persons in God. There exists therefore a

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differentiation which is in itself a ‘perfectio pura’ and which must be taken into consideration from the very start of a theological understanding of being. It is not provisional, but something absolutely final, an ultimate of the self-communicating unity itself as such, which constitutes this unity itself: it does not half destroy, so to speak, this unity. Being as such, and hence as one (ens as unum), for the fulfilment8 of its being and its unity, emerges into a plurality – of which the supreme mode is the Trinity. The distinct moments deriving from the ‘one’ which make for the perfection of its unity stem essentially, i.e. by their origin in and from another, from this most primary unity: they have therefore a more primary and basic ‘agreement’ with it than anything produced by efficient causality. But this means that each being, as a unity, possesses a plurality – implying perfection – formed by the special derivativeness of the plural from the original unity: the plural is in agreement with its source in a way which corresponds to its origin, and hence is ‘expression’ of its origin by an agreement which it owes to its origin. Since this holds good for being in general, we may say that each being forms, in its own way, more or less perfectly according to its degree of being, something distinct from itself and yet one with itself, ‘for’ its own fulfilment. (Here unity and distinction are correlatives which increase in like proportions, not in inverse proportions which would reduce each to be contradictory and exclusive of the other.) And this differentiated being, which is still originally one, is in agreement because derivative, and because derivatively in agreement is expressive. That that which is derivatively in agreement, and hence one with the origin while still distinct from it, must he considered as the ‘expression’ of the origin and of the primordial unity needs some further explanation. The agreement with its origin (by reason of its derivation) of that which is constituted as different within the unity is at once, in a certain sense, the constitution of the derivative as an expression. For there is an agreement which is explained by the relation of being originated. We may therefore prescind from the question as to whether we must always consider such a derivation as the formal constitution of the agreement as such and hence whether we must always think of it formally as expression. Whether and when and why this is so in certain cases may he left without misgivings to a special ontology concerned with certain spheres. We shall meet such cases in the (second) theological consideration of the matter. But prescinding from this question, we may already affirm: every being as such possesses a plurality as intrinsic element of its significant unity; this plurality constitutes itself, by virtue of its origin from an original unity, as the way to fulfil the unity (or on account of the unity already perfect), in such a way that that

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which is originated and different is in agreement with its origin and hence has (at least in a ‘specificative’, if not always in a ‘reduplicative’ sense) the character of expression or ‘symbol’ with regard to its origin. But this brings us to the full statement of our first affirmation: being is of itself symbolic, because it necessarily ‘expresses’ itself. This affirmation needs some further explanation in the light of what has been said, and then its applicability to some well-known themes must be demonstrated. Being expresses itself, because it must realize itself through a plurality in unity. This plurality is often, and in many respects, an indication of finiteness and deficiency, but it can also be something positive, of which at least a ‘trace’ remains even in the plurality which is given formally with the finiteness of a being. The self-constitutive act whereby a being constitutes itself as a plurality which leads to its fulfilment or rather (in certain circumstances) which is a reality given with the perfection of the being, is however the condition of possibility of possession of self in knowledge and love. In tantum est ens cognoscens et cognitum, in quantum est ens actu. This statement also holds good of course if inverted: the degree of ‘reditio completa in seipsum’ is the indication of its degree of being. ‘Being present to itself ’ is only another way of describing the actuality, that is, the intrinsic self-realization of the being. But then it follows that a being ‘comes to itself ’ in its expression, in the derivative agreement of the differentiated which is preserved as the perfection of the unity. For realization as plurality and as possession of self cannot be disparate elements simply juxtaposed in a being, since possession of self (in knowledge and love) is not just an element, but the content of that which we call being (and hence self-realization). And it comes to itself in the measure in which it realizes itself by constituting a plurality.9 But this means that each being – in as much as it has and realizes being – is itself primarily ‘symbolic’. It expresses itself and possesses itself by doing so. It gives itself away from itself into the ‘other’, and there finds itself in knowledge and love, because it is by constituting the inward ‘other’ that it comes to (or: from) its self-fulfilment, which is the presupposition or the act of being present to itself in knowledge and love. A symbol is therefore not to be primarily considered as a secondary relationship between two different beings, which are given the function of indicating one another by a third, or by an observer who notes a certain agreement between them. The symbolic is not merely an intrinsic propriety of beings in so far as a being, to attain fulfilment, constitutes the differentiation which is retained in the unity, and which is in agreement with the original originating unity and so is its expression. A being is also ‘symbolic’ in itself because the harmonious expression, which it retains while constituting it as

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the ‘other’, is the way in which it communicates itself to itself in knowledge and love. A being comes to itself by means of ‘expression’, in so far as it comes to itself at all. The expression, that is, the ‘symbol’ – as the word is now to be understood in the light of the foregoing considerations – is the way of knowledge of self, possession of self, in general. This is the only starting-point from which one can arrive at a correct theory of the symbol in general, where the symbol is the reality in which another attains knowledge of a being. On strictly scholastic terms, knowledge of a being by another is not the process which only takes place in the knower, and hence depends only on his potency and actuality, being related to an ‘object’ which persists completely unaffected in its own proper reality. On the contrary, the knowability and the actual knowledge of a being (as object of knowledge) depend on the degree of actuality in the thing to be known itself: ens est cognitum et cognoscibile, in quantum ipsum est actu. But then it follows: if beings are of themselves symbolic, in so far as they realize themselves in a plurality, and possess themselves in this derivative agreement of the ‘other’ with its primordial origin, the same holds good for the knowledge of these beings by others. A being can be and is known, insofar as it is itself ontically (in itself) symbolic because it is ontologically (for itself) symbolic. What then is the primordial meaning of symbol and symbolic, according to which each being is in itself and for itself symbolic, and hence (and to this extent) symbolic for another? It is this: as a being realizes itself in its own intrinsic ‘otherness’ (which is constitutive of its being), retentive of its intrinsic plurality (which is contained in its self-realization) as its derivative and hence congruous expression, it makes itself known. This derivative and congruous expression, constitutive of each being, is the symbol which comes in addition from the object of knowledge to the knower – in addition only, because already initially present in the depths of the grounds of each one’s being. The being is known in this symbol, without which it cannot be known at all: thus it is symbol in the original (transcendental) sense of the word. We must now confront the notion of symbol thus arrived at, with some well-known data of scholastic philosophy, so that it may be still more easily understood. It would call for too wide a sweep through the history of philosophy, if one were to try to illustrate what has been said by showing the whole extension of the concepts of eidos and morphe (in the philosophia perennis from the time of the Greeks to the classic age of scholastic philosophy). If we could follow these lines, it could be shown that the two extremes of this extension, the manifest, visible ‘figure’ on the one hand (eidos and morphe together), and the ‘essence’ which gives rise to the figure on the other hand, make up together the full sense of one concept.

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For how does the figure-forming essence of a being (material, to start with) constitute and perfect itself? It does so by really projecting its visible figure outside itself as its – symbol, its appearance, which allows it to be there, which brings it out to existence in the world: and in doing so, it retains it – ‘possessing itself in the other’. The essence is there for itself and for others precisely through its appearance – in the ‘analogous’ measure, of course, in which a being is there for itself and for others according to its own measure of being. A deeper understanding of Thomist ontology is then possible. For it is clear that St Thomas10 recognizes the most diverse forms of the ‘selfrealization’ of a being, which cannot be subsumed under the denomination of transitive efficient causality. The notion of causa formalis must be mentioned at once in this context. The ‘form’ gives itself away from itself by imparting itself to the material cause. It does not work on it subsequently and ‘from outside’, by bringing about in it something different from itself and alien to its essence. The ‘effect’ is the ‘cause’ itself, in so far as the cause itself is the reality, the ‘act’ of the material cause, which is becoming its own ‘potency’. But when the formal cause is such, it is not simply such as it must be considered to be previous to its actual formal causality. For there are, according to St Thomas, ‘forms’ which are not exhausted in their formal causality, because they are not completely ‘poured out’ on their matter; their primordiality is still ‘reserved’. Hence not every form realizes its being by emptying itself fully and giving itself as act away to the other that consumes it (the ‘materia prima’). The difference between form and its actual formal causality need not be merely mental, even though this difference cannot be thought of in the same way as that between a substance conceived of as static (having already come to be from its formal causes) and its accidental ‘second’ act. The giving of the form by the formal cause, the ‘formatio actualis’ of the potency by the (substantial) form, ‘brings about’ that which is formed, the actual thing (where it does not matter to us here what forms this process takes, once we distinguish between the dimension of substance and the formally quantitative being in time and space). This external manifestation of the substantial form or cause is indeed, according to the basic doctrines of scholasticism just alluded to, different from the form as such. But it still manifests this basic form in this very difference: it is a symbol which is created by that which is symbolized as its own self-realization. In this differentiated ‘symbol’ that which is symbolized is present, the form itself (creating the ‘ontological-symbolic’ difference between symbolic reality and symbolic representation), since it beings [sic] about the ‘other’ which it forms, in as much as it imparts to it the reality which the form itself has.

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But apart from the concept of formal causality, there are other concepts of Thomist ontology which belong to the sphere of the self-realization which is a self-proclamation and hence – in the broadest but original sense – constitutive of a symbol. Here the concept of ‘resultance’ should be noted. St Thomas does not merely think of a finite being as a reality simply complete, constituted by God in its essence and faculties. He does not merely see it as a passive and static reality, which then sets a number of accidental acts, of an immanent or transitive nature, which emanate indeed from the substance by efficient causality and to this extent ‘determine’ it, but leave it untouched in its inner nature. He also recognizes an inner selfrealization of the total essence itself (dependent of course on the creative activity of God), prior to its accidental ‘second’ acts: a self-realization which objectively and conceptually, according to St Thomas, cannot be simply reduced to formal and material causality, as this is usually understood in the traditional philosophy of the schools – and can still less be subsumed under the categories of the ordinary (second) ‘activity’. Thus St Thomas recognizes, for instance, a ‘resultance’, an ‘out-flowing’ of the faculties from the substance. Thus for him the essence as a whole builds itself up – for the faculties belong to the totality of the essence, in spite of their being accidents; the substantial kernel emanates into its faculties and only thus attains its own possibilities; it finds itself – since it must be spiritual etc. by projecting from itself the ‘otherness’ of its faculties, which according to St Thomas is really distinct from the substance. It does not follow at once from the fact that the ‘other’ results within the unity of the same being, for the achievement of the essence, that we have in it an intrinsic and connatural symbol as a moment of the self-realization of the being in question, or at any rate, we shall not pursue the thought further now. It is enough to have proved, from the theory of the emanation and ‘resultance’ of a faculty, a power, an accident, that the starting-point for our proffered theory of the symbol is perfectly Thomist. We shall only pursue this line of thought in one direction. According to St Thomas, we must also suppose the process of ‘resultance’ in the formation of a given quantity as such (with spatially limited dimensions) and as vehicle of other qualitative proprieties in a material being. When the substantial ‘form’ – ‘pouring itself out’ – gives itself to materia prima (which is the ontological basis of spatiality, though itself without any determinate dimensions), the determinate quantity is brought about in this communication, really distinct from the substance (composed of forma substantialis and materia prima) and from the reality which comes from it. This quantity, which today we would call the given, concrete spatio-temporality, or spatio-temporal figure, with its further given qualitative determinations (which are however based

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on this spatio-temporality), is, according to St Thomas, to be definitely taken as the ‘species’,11 the outward form, aspect and figure, which the basic substance provides for itself, to fulfil itself, to ‘express’ itself and to manifest itself thus. The ‘species’ of the material thing is undoubtedly the symbol – brought about by the essence, retained with the efficient cause in a differentiated unity, constituting the necessary ‘communication’ of the selfrealization – in which the material being possesses itself and presents itself to view, in the varying forms proper to its being. In the case of the species of material things, we have in St Thomas – on this definite level of being and with the presuppositions which it entails – all the elements which we have worked out for the original concept of symbol in a more general ontology of multiple beings; the formation of the symbol as a self-realization of the thing symbolized itself; the fact that the symbol belongs intrinsically to what is expressed; self-realization by means of the constitution of this expression springing from the essence. There is another doctrine in scholasticism which can also be adduced to confirm the concept of symbol given above, of which we shall speak more fully in another context: it is the doctrine which holds that the soul is the ‘form’ of the body, the body being the expression of the basic spiritual reality of man. To sum up and propound once more the results arrived at up to this, we may invert the first assertion which we put forward as the fundamental principle of an ontology of the symbol, by affirming as a second assertion: 2. The symbol strictly speaking (symbolic reality) is the self-realization of a being in the other, which is constitutive of its essence. Where there is such a self-realization in the other – as the necessary mode of the fulfilment of its own essence – we have a symbol of the being in question. One might ask for whom does this self-realization in the other express the being and make it present, and who possesses the being in such a symbol – the being in question itself or another; one might ask in what (essentially different) degrees and in what ways this self-realization in the symbol and this presence are realized, in a self-discovery which is really knowledge and love or in a way relatively deficient compared to this. But these are secondary questions which, in comparison with these two first principles, enquire into distinctions which are secondary in relation to this general ontology of the symbol. They arise because the concept of a being is ‘analogous’, that it [sic], it displays the various types of self-realization of each being, and being in itself, and hence also the concept and reality of the symbol are flexible. But because these are necessarily given with the general concept of beings and being – as the ‘unveiled’ figure of the most primordial ‘truth’ of being – the symbol shares this ‘analogia entis’ with being which it symbolizes.

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II. ON THE THEOLOGY OF SYMBOLIC REALITY If what has been said up to this is correct, it is only to be expected that no theology can be complete without also being a theology of the symbol, of the appearance and the expression, of self-presence in that which has been constituted as the other. And in fact the whole of theology is incomprehensible if it is not essentially a theology of symbols, although in general very little attention is paid, systematically and expressly, to this basic characteristic. And again: since a simple listing of dogmatic assertions throughout the whole field of theology shows how much need it has of the concept of symbol and how much it uses it (no doubt in the most diverse acceptations and applications), the necessity of our general ontological considerations is confirmed once more from another direction. We shall of course have to be content with a few indications. The attentive reader, especially if trained in theology, will not have failed to remark that the thought of the mystery of the Trinity was the constant background of the ontological considerations. The freedom of our method has already allowed us to appeal expressly to this mystery. We used it to show that a plurality in a being is not necessarily to be considered as a pointer to finiteness and imperfection, and that therefore a general ontology – which only speaks of beings strictly as such – may very properly start from the fact that each being bears within itself an intrinsic plurality, without detriment to its unity and perfection – which may eventually be supreme – precisely as the perfection of its unity. Hence an ontology confined to a particular field and likewise a theology may well ask what this means with regard to the symbolic nature of individual beings. When we were working out the ontology of the symbol, we took no great pains to formulate it so that it would be immediately applicable to the theology of the Trinity in blameless orthodoxy. Even now we shall not try to establish expressly the convergence of this ontology and the theology of the Trinity (especially the theology of the Logos). It is enough for our purpose to point out very simply that the theology of the Logos is strictly a theology of the symbol, and indeed the supreme form of it, if we keep to the meaning of the word which we have already worked out, and do not give the term quite derivative meanings, such as the ordinary language of popular speech attributes to it. The Logos is the ‘word’ of the Father, his perfect ‘image’, his ‘imprint’, his radiance, his self-expression. Whatever answer is to be given to the question of how binding the psychological theory of the Trinity, as put forward by St Augustine, may be – whether the Father utters the eternal Word because he knows himself or in order to know himself, two items at any rate must be retained. One, the Word – as reality of the immanent divine

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life – is ‘generated’ by the Father as the image and expression of the Father. Two, this process is necessarily given with the divine act of self-knowledge, and without it the absolute act of divine self-possession in knowledge cannot exist. But if we retain these two elements, which are traditional in theology – not to give them a higher qualification – then we may and must say without misgivings: the Father is himself by the very fact that he opposes to himself the image which is of the same essence as himself, as the person who is other than himself; and so he possesses himself. But this means that the Logos is the ‘symbol’ of the Father, in the very sense which we have given the word: the inward symbol which remains distinct from what is symbolized, which is constituted by what is symbolized, where what is symbolized expresses itself and possesses itself. We omit the question of what this means – prior to a theology of the Incarnation – for the understanding of the Father and his relation to the world. If, following a theological tradition which began only since St Augustine, one simply takes it for granted that each of the divine persons could set up, each for himself, his own hypostatic relationship to a given reality in the world and so could ‘appear’, then the fact that within the divinity the Logos is the image of the Father would give the Logos no special character of symbol for the world, which would be due to him alone on account of his relationship of origin to the Father. The Father could also reveal himself and ‘appear’ without reference, so to speak, to the Son. But if one does not make this pre-supposition with St Augustine, which has no clear roots in the earlier tradition12 and still less in Scripture, one need have no difficulty in thinking that the Word’s being symbol of the Father has significance for God’s action ad extra, in spite of such action being common to all three persons. It is because God ‘must’ ‘express’ himself inwardly that he can also utter himself outwardly; the finite, created utterance ad extra is a continuation of the immanent constitution of ‘image and likeness’ – a free continuation, because its object is finite – and takes place in fact ‘through’ the Logos (Jn 1: 3), in a sense which cannot be determined more closely here. But it is not our intention to go into this difficult subject here. But it has to be mentioned, even if only in passing, because we could hardly omit this link between a symbolic reality within and without the divine, since it has also been noted to some extent in tradition. If a theology of symbolic realities is to be written, Christology, the doctrine of the incarnation of the Word, will obviously form the central chapter. And this chapter need almost be no more than an exegesis of the saying: ‘He that sees me, sees the Father’ (Jn 14: 9). There is no need to dwell here on the fact that the Logos is image, likeness, reflexion, representation, and presence – filled with all the fullness of the Godhead.

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But if this is true, we can understand the statement: the incarnate word is the absolute symbol of God in the world, filled as nothing else can be with what is symbolized. He is not merely the presence and revelation of what God is in himself. He is also the expressive presence of what – or rather who – God wished to be, in free grace, to the world, in such a way that this divine attitude, once so expressed, can never be reversed, but is and remains final and unsurpassable. But there are some comments to be made on the generally accepted dogmatic teaching which is here presupposed. They have not the same degree of certainty in theology, but they seem necessary if we are to have a proper understanding of the Incarnation in a theology of the symbol. If we simply say: the Logos took on a human nature, considering this defined doctrine of faith as the adequate expression of what is meant by the dogma of the incarnation (though such a description of the hypostatic union makes no such claim), the full sense of the symbolic reality, which the humanity of the Logos represents with regard to the Logos, is given no clear expression. For if the humanity which is assumed is considered only as that well-known reality which we know in ourselves, and which is only very generally ‘image and likeness’ of God; and if this humanity is supposed only to subsist in a static, ontic sense, that is, as ‘borne’ and ‘taken on’ by the Logos: then the humanity has no doubt the function of a signal or a uniform with regard to the Logos, but not in full truth the function of such a symbol as we have developed above. The Logos would make himself audible and perceptible through a reality which was of itself alien to him, had intrinsically and essentially nothing to do with him, and could have been chosen at random from a whole series of such realities. No matter how close we consider the union between the speaker and his means of communication – the union is in fact hypostatic – it would not change the fact that the sign and that which is signified are really disparate, and that the sign could therefore only be an arbitrary one. Or we could put it more exactly: the assumed humanity would be an organ of speech substantially united to him who is to be made audible: but it would not be this speech itself. It itself would only tell something about – itself; it could only tell about the Word in so far as the Word used it to form words and direct actions which would divulge something about the word by their meaning and their marvellous quality. It is not surprising that a theology with these unavowed, unconscious but effective presuppositions should in the concrete make Jesus the revelation of the Father and his inward life only through his doctrine but not through what he is in his human nature. In such a position, the most that could come in question would be a revelation by means of his (virtuous) actions.

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To continue on these lines, and to give greater clarity to the inexhaustible content of the truth of faith which expresses the incarnation, one could take up here the Thomistic doctrine, that the humanity of Christ exists by the existence of the Logos. But when putting forward this thesis, one should be clear that this existence of the Word is again not to be thought of as the reality which – merely because of its being infinite – could bestow existence on any thinkable ‘essence’, as if it could offer any essence a ground of existence which in itself was indifferent to this essence rather than that or to which manner of existent being arose thereby. The being of the Logos – considered of course as that which is received by procession from the Father – must be thought of as exteriorizing itself, so that without detriment to its immutability in itself and of itself, it becomes itself in truth the existence of a created reality – which must in all truth and reality be predicated of the being of the Logos, because it is so. But then, starting from these Thomistic principles, we arrive at considerations and insights which show how truly and radically the humanity of Christ is really the ‘appearance’ of the Logos itself, its symbolic reality in the pre-eminent sense, not something in itself alien to the Logos and its reality, which is only taken up from outside like an instrument to make its own music but not strictly speaking to reveal anything of him who uses it. However, these considerations have already been put forward in an earlier chapter on the mystery of the incarnation. We showed there that the humanity of Christ is not to be considered as something in which God dresses up and masquerades – a mere signal of which he makes use, so that something audible can be uttered about the Logos by means of this signal. The humanity is the self-disclosure of the Logos itself, so that when God, expressing himself, exteriorizes himself, that very thing appears which we call the humanity of the Logos. Thus anthropology itself is finally based on something more than the doctrine of the possibilities open to an infinite Creator – who would not however really betray himself when he created. Its ultimate source is the doctrine about God himself, in so far as it depicts that which ‘appears’ when in his self-exteriorization he goes out of himself into that which is other than he. However, we must refer to the earlier chapter for these considerations. It follows from what has been said that the Logos, as Son of the Father, is truly, in his humanity as such, the revelatory symbol in which the Father enunciates himself, in this Son, to the world – revelatory, because the symbol renders present what is revealed. But in saying this, we are really only at the beginning of a theology of the symbol, in the light of the incarnation, not at, the end. For in view of this truth, we should have to consider that the natural depth of the symbolic reality of all things – which is of itself

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restricted to the world or has a merely natural transcendence towards God – has now in ontological reality received an infinite extension by the fact that this reality has become also a determination of the Logos himself or of his milieu. Every God-given reality, where it has not been degraded to a purely human tool and to merely utilitarian purposes, states much more than itself: each in its own way is an echo and indication of all reality. If the individual reality, by making the all present, also speaks of God – ultimately by its transcendental reference to him as the efficient, exemplary and final cause – this transcendence is made radical, even though only in a way accessible to faith, by the fact that in Christ this reality no longer refers to God merely as its cause: it points to God as to him to whom this reality belongs as his substantial determination or as his own proper environment. All things are held together by the incarnate Word in whom they exist (Col 1.17), and hence all things possess, even in their quality of symbol, an unfathomable depth, which faith alone can sound. It would be well to explain all these abstract statements in detail, by applying them to individual realities – water, bread, hand, eye, sleep, hunger and countless other affairs of man and of the world which surrounds him, bears him up and is referred to him – if one wished to know exactly what theology of symbolic reality is based on the truth that the Logos, as Word of the Father, expresses the Father in the ‘abbreviation’ of his human nature and constitutes the symbol which communicates him to the world. When we say that the Church is the persisting presence of the incarnate Word in space and time, we imply at once that it continues the symbolic function of the Logos in the world. To understand this statement correctly, we must consider two points. One, where a reality which is to be proclaimed in symbol, is a completely human one, and so has its social and existential (freely-chosen) aspect, the fact that the symbol is of a social and hence juridically determined nature is no proof that the symbol is merely in the nature of arbitrary sign and representation, and not a reality symbolic in itself. Where a free decision is to be proclaimed by the symbol and to be made in it, the juridical composition and the free establishment is precisely what is demanded by the very nature of a symbolic reality in this case and what is to be expected. A non-existential reality cannot express itself in this free and juridically constituted way, where the symbol is likewise a symbolic reality which contains the reality of the thing symbolized itself, because it has realized itself by passing over into the ‘otherness’ of the symbol. This would be contrary to the nature of the non-existential reality. But exactly the opposite is true when it is a matter of something which has been freely constituted by God himself and which has a social structure. When such a

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reality renders itself present in a freely constituted symbolism formed on social and juridical lines, the process is merely what its essence demands and is no objection to the presence of a symbolic reality.13 But the Church, even as a reality tributary to the Spirit, is a free creation of the redemptive act of Christ and is a social entity. When therefore it is constituted along juridically established lines, the result does not contradict the fact that it is the symbolic reality of the presence of Christ, of his definitive work of salvation in the world and so of the redemption. Secondly, according to the Church’s own teaching, especially as voiced by Leo XIII and Pius XII, the Church is not merely a social and juridical entity. The grace of salvation, the Holy Spirit himself, is of its essence. But this is to affirm that this symbol of the grace of God really contains what it signifies; that it is the primary sacrament14 of the grace of God, which does not merely designate but really possesses what was brought definitively into the world by Christ: the irrevocable, eschatological grace of God which conquers triumphantly the guilt of man. The Church as indefectible, as Church of infallible truth and as Church of the sacraments, as opus operatum and as indestructibly holy as a whole, even in the subjective grace of men – by which it is not merely object but even motive of faith – really constitutes the full symbol of the fact that Christ has remained there as triumphant mercy. The teaching on the sacraments is the classic place in which a theology of the symbol is put forward in general in Catholic theology. The sacraments make concrete and actual, for the life of the individual, the symbolic reality of the Church as the primary sacrament and therefore constitute at once, in keeping with the nature of this Church a symbolic reality. Thus the sacraments are expressly described in theology as ‘sacred signs’ of God’s grace that is as, ‘symbols’, an expression which occurs expressly in this context.15 The basic axioms of sacramental theology are well known: Sacramenta efficiunt quod significant et significant quod efficiunt. If these axioms are taken seriously, they point to that mutually supporting relationship which in our notion of the symbol intervenes between it and what is symbolized. Hence too in recent times theological efforts have been multiplied16 which try to explain the causality of the sacraments in terms of the symbol. Theologians try to show that the function of cause and the function of sign in the sacraments are not linked merely de facto by an extrinsic decree of God, but that they have an intrinsic connexion by virtue of the nature of things – here, their symbolic character, rightly understood. As God’s work of grace on man is accomplished (incarnates itself), it enters the spatio-temporal historicity of man as sacrament, and as it does so, it becomes active with regard to man, it constitutes itself. For as soon as one sees the sacraments as the action of God

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on man – even though it takes place through someone who acts as ‘minister’ by divine mandate and gives body to the action done to man and so renders it concretely present and active – then the question no longer arises as to how the sacramental sign ‘works on’17 God, and it is no longer possible to ask whether this sign produces grace by ‘physical’ or ‘moral’ causality. For at no stage can the sign be seen apart from what is signified, since it in [sic] understood a priori as a symbolic reality, which the signified itself brings about in order to be really present itself. But we can on the other hand see that the sacrament is precisely ‘cause’ of grace, in so far as it is its ‘sign’ and that the grace – seen as coming from God – is the cause of the sign, bringing it about and so alone making itself present. So the old axioms receive their very pregnant sense; sacramenta gratiam efficiunt, quatenus eam significant – where this significatio is always to be understood in the strict sense as a symbolic reality. So too: sacramenta significant gratiam, quia eam efficiunt. In a word, the grace of God constitutes itself actively present in the sacraments by creating their expression, their historical tangibility in space and time, which is its own symbol. That the juridically established structure of the sacraments does not run counter to this view of the sacraments as symbolic realities has already been explained equivalently, when the same objection was eliminated in the question of the Church as symbolic reality of the grace of God. Further indications of the prevalent structure of Christian reality as a unity of reality and its symbolic reality must be omitted here. They can only be presented adequately when the bodily reality of man, and so his acts in the dimensions of space and time, history and society, are conceived of as symbolic realities embodying his person and its primordial decisions. This would be the real starting-point for reaching an understanding of the historically attainable life of the Church as symbolic embodiment of the Spirit of God and of the inner history of the dialogue between God’s free love and human freedom. The result of this would be to show that no adequate treatise can be written ‘De Gratia’, unless it contributes to the theology of the symbol in the Christian history of salvation. We call attention only in passing to the theology of the sacred image in Christianity.18 An exact investigation into the history of this theology would no doubt have to call attention to a two-fold concept of image which is presented by tradition. One is more Aristotelian, and treats the image as an outward sign of a reality distinct from the image, a merely pedagogical indication provided for man as a being who knows through the senses. The other is more Platonic, and in this concept the image participates in the reality of the exemplar – brings about the real presence of the exemplar

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which dwells in the image. The ultimate reason why theological explanation of the image can vary so widely is the principle which we have already adduced; that there are in fact ‘symbols’, images, which are of the nature which is ascribed to sacred images in a more strongly Platonist theology. The only question is whether sacred images in the strict sense – statues and pictures – may be explained without more ado in terms of the symbol of the primordial type which we have discussed; or whether such images belong to the class of derivative and secondary symbols, which of course exist, as a result of relatively arbitrary arrangements and conventions. The question is further complicated by the fact that the images which portray the incarnate Logos and his saints – in contrast to God the Father, the ‘invisible’, and to some extent the angels – depict the human body, of which we shall have to say later that it is the natural symbol of man. It is not surprising therefore that ancient theology and that of the Byzantine Church should also have made this distinction between God the Father or the Trinity and the incarnate Logos when justifying the use of images, and did not consider everything as equally capable of being portrayed. However, we cannot go into this here. This set of questions was recalled only to indicate that a theology of symbols could find in the Greek theology of images support and confirmation for its more general considerations. It might be thought that eschatology would be the part of theology which treated of the final disappearance of the sign and hence of the symbol, in favour of a naked immediacy of God with regard to the creature – ‘face to face’. But this would once more be a position – this time with regard to eschatology – in which the symbol is considered as an extrinsic and accidental intermediary, something really outside the reality transmitted through it, so that strictly speaking the thing could be attained even without the symbol. But this presupposition is false, and it is still false with regard to eschatology. For the true and proper symbol, being an intrinsic moment of the thing itself has a function of mediation which is not at all opposed in reality to the immediacy of what is meant by it, but is a mediation to immediacy, if one may so formulate the actual facts of the matter. In the end, of course, many signs and symbols will cease to be; the institutional Church, the sacraments in the usual sense, the whole historical succession of manifestations through which God continually imparts himself to man, while he still travels far from the immediacy of God’s face, among images and likenesses. But the humanity of Christ will have eternal significance for the immediacy of the visio beata.19 The incarnation of the Logos may well be considered as the indispensable presupposition for strictly supernatural grace and glory,20 so that the gracious freedom of God with regard to these two realities does indeed remain,

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but remains a freedom. And the dependence of the self-communication of God to the created spirit in glory with regard to the incarnation does not indicate a merely moral relationship, arising from the fact that the incarnate Logos once ‘merited’ this glory for us in time. The relationship is a real and permanent ontological one. If we accept this proposition (which cannot be propounded more fully now), it implies that what has been affirmed of the symbolic function of the incarnate Logos as Logos and man, also holds good for the perfected existence of man, for his eschata. Eschatology also teaches us about the symbolic reality which conveys to us the immediacy of God at the end; the Word which became flesh. We sum up the result of this second stage of our considerations in some affirmations: 3. The principle that the concept of symbol – in the sense defined in nos. 1 and 2 – is an essential key-concept in all theological treatises, without which it is impossible to have a correct understanding of the subject matter of the various treatises in themselves and in relation to other treatises. 4. The principle that God’s salvific action on man, from its first foundations to its completion, always takes place in such a way that God himself is the reality of salvation,21 because it is given to man and grasped by him22 in the symbol, which does not represent an absent and merely promised reality but exhibits this reality as something present, by means of the symbol formed by it.

III. THE BODY AS SYMBOL OF MAN23 This preliminary draft and outline sketch of a possible theology of the symbol in general is still to be completed by some considerations on the body as the symbolic reality of man, in keeping with the general theme of which the theology of the symbol forms part. It is not the intention of this essay to investigate the relationship between the heart of the God-man and his love. This question concerns directly the meaning of the word ‘heart’ in devotion to the Sacred Heart, and the dogmatic enquiry into the object of this devotion. Hence it lies outside the scope of this essay. But in a general theology of the symbol which is meant to be a preparation for a theology of devotion to the heart of Jesus, we may be allowed to say something more explicit about the theology of the body as symbol of man. These considerations will bring us automatically to the threshold of the real theology of devotion to the heart of Jesus. This third part of our considerations takes up a subject which is a relatively minor part of the subject matter already treated, and which has been touched on already, at least implicitly. But the attention given to this

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special subject is demanded or at least justified by the general theme of the book. That the body can and may be considered as the symbol, that is, as the symbolic reality of man, follows at once from the Thomist doctrine that the soul is the substantial form of the body. When we do not take just any scholastic doctrine on the relationship of soul and body – all scholastics affirm, along with the Council of Vienna, that the soul is ‘form’ – but the strictly Thomist one, then the above affirmation is clear. For if we ascribe to the body an actual being, a positive content, which is prior to the reality of the soul, it would be impossible to see why this bodily entity should be still the expression and so the symbol of the soul. At best, we could call ‘expression’ what the soul, by means of its ‘in-formation’, makes of this prior entity which perseveres in its previous reality. At the very most, something in the body could be symbol of the soul, but not the body as such and as a whole. But man, strictly speaking, according to the clear doctrine of Thomism, is not composed of a soul and a body, but of a soul and materia prima. And this matter is of itself the strictly potential substratum of the substantial self-realization of the ‘anima’ (which is its ‘in-formation’ in the metaphysical sense), which by imparting itself thus gives its reality to the passive possibility of materia prima, so that anything that is act (and reality) in this potentiality is precisely the soul. It follows at once that what we call body is nothing else than the actuality of the soul itself in the ‘other’ of materia prima, the ‘otherness’ produced by the soul itself, and hence its expression and symbol in the very sense which we have given to the term symbolic reality. This is not the place to defend this Thomist concept, which alone can guarantee the strict unity of man and the real humanness of his body, against the empirical objections which seem to prove that the material reality of the body has a greater degree of independence and a proper reality less tributary to the soul. But the ‘forma corporis’ is polyvalent with regard to the accidential determinations of the body. Hence which precise possibilities of its own the soul realizes may well depend on the prior determinations of the concrete matter, precisely when all the determinations of the actual body are constituted by the soul. Once this is understood, one will see no insuperable objection in the ordinary difficulties brought up against the doctrine of the ‘anima unica forma corporis’. Hence we may formulate in our theory of symbols: 5. The principle that the body is the symbol of the soul, in as much as it is formed as the self-realization of the soul, though it is not adequately this, and the soul renders itself present and makes its ‘appearance’ in the body which is distinct from it.

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A genuinely Thomist natural philosophy would however have to complete this strictly axiomatic statement by adding an essential complement, which is important in our particular context. We could formulate this addition as the sixth principle of our set of themes: in this unity of symbol and thing symbolized, constituted by soul and body, the individual parts of the body are more than mere pieces put together quantitatively to form the whole body; they are rather parts in so special a way that they also comprise in themselves the whole, though this is not true in the same strict way of each of the individual parts. This supplementary statement must be explained to some extent. To make its understanding easier, there are several points which may be made. It is well known that in every human expression, mimetic, phonetic etc. in nature, the whole man is somehow present and expressing himself, though the expressive form is confined to start with to one portion of the body. Medical science which is concerned with the whole man, even when it does not try precisely to be ‘psychosomatic’, knows that it is never merely a particular organ that is sick, but always the whole man, so that the condition of the whole man is manifested in an organically localized illness, just as it is also to some extent determined by the illness. This is so true, that in psychogenic illnesses of the body, the most diverse illnesses of different organs can substitute vicariously for one another. It has always been more or less clearly known that the axiom: the part is only understandable in the whole, and the whole is in each part, was true above all of the human body. The axiom is represented even in Scripture, 1 Cor 12.12-26. In the light of this immediate experience, the scholastic doctrine, that the soul is fully present in each part of the body, being simple, comes to have a fuller and deeper meaning. It is not just that the simple substantial principle of a quantitatively extended entity must inevitably be as a whole in every part of this entity. The assertion also means that this substantial ‘presence’ of the soul implies that it determines and informs each part as part of the whole. And this once more cannot merely mean that the part is ordained, as regards its physiological function, to the service of the whole. It also implies that in a mysterious concentration of the symbolic function of the body, each part bears once more within itself the symbolic force and function of the whole, by contributing its part to the whole of the symbol. But this propriety of each part of the body must be placed squarely in the perspective of its ontological origin: it must be seen as coming from the originating principle of the body and its parts in their unity and arrangement, that is, from the soul. And this ‘soul’ once more must not be understood – quite unscholastically – as a fragmentary portion of the whole man. It is the

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one originating source of the whole man, which explicitates itself in what we know as ‘powers’, faculties and acts of the soul (understood now empirically in the concrete), and which expresses itself in what we call the body of man (understood as animated by the soul). And this prior ontological unity of the whole man also appears in each part of the body; as the unity unfolds, it projects its proper manifestation, its symbol, into the part in question and thus possesses itself there as a whole, though not totally. This symbolic relationship of the part of the body to the original whole, from which the part derives, may vary in intensity in different parts of the body, but it can never be entirely absent wherever a given part is substantially informed by the soul. No doubt a material reality is either informed by the spiritual soul or it is not: from the purely abstract viewpoint, the actuation is ‘in indivisibili’. Yet differences clearly exist in the various ‘parts’ (organs, etc.) of the body with regard to their power of expression, their degree of belonging to the soul, their openness to the soul. We may therefore say that the organs privileged in this respect are those which according to the data of empirical observation are of irreplaceable value for the survival and perfection of the whole. It is a moot point whether biological and physiological necessity corresponds to symbolic function in like degree in the various parts, and the question is probably to be answered in the negative. But a proper answer would call for very difficult researches and considerations, involving questions of historical evolutionary descent, which cannot be undertaken here. But if we are right in what we said about the presence of the whole in the part and therefore about the symbolic function of the part, then we are also justified in saying that a word used to designate part of the human body (head, heart, breast, hand) in a symbolic sense, does not signify only the part as such, that is, as a quantitative, material piece of the whole body: it always signifies the one whole, composed of the symbol-generating origin and the material piece of reality which, as portion of the whole, single and symbolic body, bears within it under a certain aspect the symbolic function of the whole body.24 All discussion of the object and meaning of devotion to the heart of Jesus should take place in the perspective of a theology of symbolic reality. Such a theology has not yet been written, and the foregoing considerations do not replace it. Their only aim was to show – and this has perhaps been achieved in spite of their brevity and other defects – that such a theology of Christian symbolism could and should be written, because reality in general and above all, Christian reality is essentially and from its origin a reality to whose self-constitution the ‘symbol’ necessarily belongs. There may be still a long way to go from such an insight to the full understanding of the devotion

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to the heart of Jesus. But it would be a way which would lead to a deeper understanding of this devotion. We refer in conclusion to one more point, which may help to show how directly the ideas here put forward are connected with a theology of devotion to the heart of Jesus, no matter how much is still to be done in detail for the exploitation of the general theology of the symbol. A large number of present-day theologians determine the object of devotion to the heart of Jesus as follows. They presuppose ‘a broader but proper sense of the word heart’ in general, and then take it that the word designates ‘the whole subject of the inner life’ (including in fact the bodily heart), the ‘cor ethicum’, the ‘principium fontale et subjectivum vitae interioris moralis’ (so Lempl, Noldin, Donat, Lercher, Solano, etc.). Hence these theologians often reject the idea that the bodily heart of Christ is revered in so far as it is the ‘symbol’ of the love of Christ (as Nilles, Franzelin, Billot, Pesch, Galtier, Pohle-Gierens, Scheeben, etc., put it, in contrast to the other concept of heart). This older view – whether it means that the bodily heart is revered because it is the symbol of the love of Christ, or that the love of Christ is adored ‘under’ the symbol of the heart of Christ – involves, according to Solano, etc., a division of the single object of the devotion to the heart of Jesus, as it is found in fact in the practice of piety and as it is expressed in the teachings of the magisterium. The unity of the object is said to be saved only by over-subtle explanations. Hence the first-named group of theologians reject more or less definitely the expression, that the heart is the symbol of the love of Christ. So for instance Solano, who does so most clearly.25 But then this view is confronted with a difficulty; even the most recent pronouncements of the magisterium have no difficulty in speaking of the heart as the ‘symbol’ (so ‘Haurietis aquas’). Hence Solano is forced to explain; ‘Encyclica “Haurietis aquas” terminologiam “Symboli” quidem conservat, nec tamen putamus hoc magisterii documentum subtiliorem hanc questionem voluisse tangere, quae et solum modum concipiendi spectat et a recentissimis auctoribus diversimode iudicatur’ (‘The Encyclical retains the term “symbol”, but we do not think this document of the magisterium wished to deal with the more subtle question involved here, which has to do only with the manner in which it is understood and which is solved in different ways by modern authors’). There is no great objection, from the point of view of the formal principles of interpreting documents of the magisterium, to this way of solving the difficulty in Solano’s position, which is supported by serious arguments, by the texts of the ecclesiastical devotion to the heart of Jesus, and by recent authors. But it is a pity that one should feel bound to come into conflict, apparently at least, with the terminology of the Encyclical, for the sake of

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this good position. In reality, the apparent contradiction arises only from the fact that Lercher, Solano etc. consider only the concept of symbol where the symbol and the thing symbolized are only extrinsically ordained to one another. But if one presupposes the concept of symbol as it has been developed in these pages, and applies it to the (bodily) heart of Jesus, it follows at once that one can accept the position of Lercher, Solano, etc., and still have no difficulty in speaking of the ‘heart’ as a symbol, as the Encyclical does. In a real theology of the symbol, based on the fundamental truths of Christianity, a symbol is not something separate from the symbolized (or different, but really or mentally united with the symbolized by a mere process of addition), which indicates the object but does not contain it. On the contrary, the symbol is the reality, constituted by the thing symbolized as an inner moment of moment of itself, which reveals and proclaims the thing symbolized, and is itself full of the thing symbolized, being its concrete form of existence. If this concept of symbol is presupposed, then ‘heart’ means exactly what the authors in question mean by their broader but still proper concept; the inner centre of the person, which realizes itself and expresses itself in the bodily existence. And one can still describe the bodily heart as symbol of the whole (since it is an inner element: of this whole) and hence retain the terminology of the Encyclical. When understood in a sense which it does not impose but still leaves free, it is quite adequate to the matter it deals with. We note on the other hand that in medieval tradition and in St Margaret Mary, ‘heart’ is used spontaneously in the broad sense; it does not designate simply the ‘bodily heart’, nor does it designate simply the ‘inwardness’ of Christ in the metaphorical sense. It is used as a ‘primordial word’ of religious speech, and signifies from the start the unity of both – a unity which has not to be created subsequently, as when an object is linked to a sign exterior to it as its symbolic representation. The unity is more original than the distinction, because the symbol is a distinct and yet intrinsic moment of the reality as it manifests itself. But then this older terminology is perfectly justified by the ontological and theological considerations which we have put forward. And this is the only way by which devotion to the heart of Jesus can escape the otherwise fatal question, as to why one cannot revere the love of Christ, to which one has after all immediate access, without making a special effort to think expressly of the ‘bodily heart’. Reality and its appearance in the flesh are forever one in Christianity, inconfused [sic] and inseparable. The reality of the divine self-communication creates for itself its immediacy by constituting itself present in the symbol, which does not divide as it mediates but unites immediately, because the true symbol is united with the thing symbolized, since the latter constitutes the former as its

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own self-realization. This basic structure of all Christianity, which a theology of the symbol should investigate, is found once more in the devotion to the heart of Jesus, and is its perpetual justification.

NOTES 1. Here too there has been a certain change. An equally ancient tradition, which is now falling into the background (it is not mentioned for instance in ‘Haurietis aquas’) takes the heart also to be the ‘seat’ and ‘organ’ of love or of the life of the soul in general. Thus the translator of Origen, Hieronymus, speaks of the principale (τò ήγεμονικόν) cordis Jesu, because according to Stoic doctrine, followed by Origen, the ήγεμονικόν has its seat in the heart. Cf. K. Rahner, RAM 14 (1934) 171-174. On ‫בל‬, καρδία, as seat of physical life and of the life of the soul in general in the Old Testament, among the Greeks, and in the New Testament, see Kittel, TWNT III, 609-616; see also Etudes Carmélitaines, Le Coeur (Paris 1950). But even here we should ask how far this description of the heart as the seat and organ of the inner life of the soul is already to a great extent to be understood ‘symbolically’ (even though it is prompted by physical feelings in the heart during strongly emotional experiences), and hence means ultimately the same thing as we express by speaking of the heart as a ‘symbol’. 2. So for instance (if we prescind from the middle ages) in the more recent forms of devotion to the heart of Jesus: in G. I. Languet (Hamon IV, 83); in J. Croiset (1895 edition, Montreuil-sur-Mer, p. 5): ‘… il a donc fallu trouver un symbole; et quel symbole plus propre et plus naturel de l’amour que le coeur?’, before this, however, we read (p. 4) that the heart is ‘en quelque manière et la source et le siège de l’amour’, as L. Galliffet and P. Froment (Hamon III, 389; IV, 44) took it to be, about the same time; this was contradicted by Benedict XIV (De servorum Dei beatificatione IV, §2, c. 31 and 25); in Pius VI (Epist. ad Scip. Ricci Episc., 29th June, 1781); in Leo XIII (Encycl. ‘Annum Sacrum’, 25th May, 1899: ‘inest Sacro Cordi symbolum atque expressa imago infinitae Jesu Christi caritatis’ AAS 31 [1898-99] 649); Pius XII (‘Haurietis Aquas’ AAS 48 [1956] 316, 317, 320, 327, 344: ‘naturalis index seu symbolus caritatis; signum et index divini amoris; naturalis symbolus’ are the expressions used); among theologians, as for instance Franzelin (Tractatus de Verbo incarnato5 [Rome 1902] 469–473), Lercher (Inst. Theol. Dogmat. III3 [Innsbruck 1942] 247-255) and in other classical works on devotion to the heart of Jesus, which we need not indicate here. We should note, however, as regards the use of the word ‘symbol’ in this doctrine: a. on the whole, the general sense of the word symbol is hardly clarified in this context. When, for instance, ‘Haurietis Aquas’ speaks of a ‘naturalis symbolus’, we need to understand no more than a symbol which comes to mind spontaneously and as it were, of itself. The expression gives no grounds for an exact and positive determination of the concept, such as we shall give here. There will of course be no contradiction between the two concepts. They will be related to each other as any other current concept in everyday language is to an attempt at a metaphysical explanation of it. b.

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Similarly, as regards how the heart is symbol of the love of Christ, and how these two elements are related to each other with regard to the object of devotion to the heart of Jesus, theologians are not unanimous. We shall not discuss the point here. At the end of our considerations, we shall take up the theory of Solano and others who do their best in fact to exclude the notion of ‘symbol’ from the theology of devotion to the heart of Jesus. 3. We cannot attempt to give here even an approximately exhaustive bibliography on the philosophy and to some extent on the theology of the symbol. We shall merely list some works, very arbitrarily chosen indeed, which may give the uninitiated reader some idea of the variety of philosophical effort with regard to the concept of the symbol. J. Volkelt, Der Symbolbegriff in der neuesten Aesthetik (Jena 1876). Fr. Th. Vischert, Altes und Neues (Stuttgart 1889), from which the essay ‘Das Symbol’ is re-printed in Deutscher Geist, ein Lesebuch aus zwei Jahrhunderten, 2 vols., S. Fischer Verlag (Berlin 1940) 726ff. R. Hamann, Das Symbol (Diss. Berlin 1902). M. Schlesinger, Grundlagen und Geschichte des Symbols (Berlin 1912). E. Brunner, Das Symbolische in der religiösen Erkenntnis (Tübingen 1914). R. Gätschenberger, Symbola. Anfangsgründe einer Erkenntnistheorie (Karlsruhe 1920). F. Ebner, Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten (Regensburg 1921). R. Otto, Das Heilige (Breslau 6 1921). E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, 3 vols. (Berlin 1923-31; Freiburg 21954). H. Schreiner, Geist und Gestalt (Schwerin 1926). R. Guardini, Von heiligen Zeichen (Mainz 1927). O. Casel, ‘Kath. Kultprobleme’, Jb. für Liturgiewissensch. 7 (1927) 105–124, O. Casel, The Mystery of Christian Worship (London & Westminster, Md. 1962). Blätter f. d. Philos. 1 (1928): No. 4 as a whole treats of the symbol. E. Unger, Wirklichkeit, Mythos, Erkenntnis (Munich–Berlin 1930). P. Tillich, Religiöse Verwirklichung. Aufsätze (Berlin 21930) 88f., ‘Das religiöse Symbol’. R. Winkler, ‘Die Frage nach dem symbolischen Charakter der religiösen Erkenntnis’, Christentum und Wissenschaft (1929) 252 ff. W. Müri, Symbolon. Wort- und sachgeschichtliche Studie (Bern 1931). F. Weinhandl, Über das aufschliessende Symbol (Berlin 1931); reviewed by M. Radacovic, ‘Zur Wiedergeburt des symbolischen Denkens’, Hochland 29 (1931–1932) 494-505. K. Plachte, Symbol und Idol. Über die Bedeutung der symbolischen Formen im Sinnvollzug der religiöse [sic] Erfahrung (Berlin 1931). C. G. Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (London & New York 1959). C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (London & New York 1923). R. Scherer, ‘Das Symbolische. Eine philosophishe Analyse’, Phil. Jahrb. d. Görresges. 48 (1935) 210-257. K. Bühler, Ausdruckstheorie (Jena 1936). H. Noack, Symbol und Existenz der Wissenschaft. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung einer philosophischen Wissenschaftslehre Halle 1936). G. Söhngen, Symbol und Wirklichkeit im Kultmysterium (Bonn 1937, 21940). G. Söhngen, Der Wesensaufbau des Mysteriums (Bonn 1938). J. Maritain, ‘Sign and Symbol’, Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1937). W. M. Urban, Language and Reality (London 1939), ch. 12, ‘Religious Symbols and the Problem of Religious Knowledge. W. M. Urban, ‘Symbolism as a Theological Principle’, Journal of Religion 19 (1939) No. I. G. Thomas, ‘Myth and Symbol in Religion’, Journal of Bible and Religion 7 (1939) 163-171. O. Doering–M. Hartig, Christliche

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Symbole (Freiburg 21940). E. Bevan, Symbolism and Belief (London 1938). M. D. Koster, ‘Symbol und Sakrament’, Die neue Ordnung 5 (1947) 385 ff. T. T. Segerstedt, Die Macht des Wortes. Eine Sprachsoziologie (from the Swedish) (Zurich 1947). K. Jaspers, Von der Wahrheit (Munich 1947). K. Jaspers, Philosophie (Heidelberg 1948). St. V. Szmanski, Das Symbol (Diss. Innsbruck 1947). E. Gombrich, ‘Icones Symbolicae. The Visual Image in NeoPlatonic Thought’, J. Warburg and Courtauld Institute 11 (1948) 163 ff. H. Friedmann, Wissenschaft und Symbol (Munich 1949); the same, Epilegomena (Munich 1954)130–155 ‘Die symbolnahen Begriffe’. J. S. Bayne, Secret and Symbol (Edinburgh 1949). H. Schmalenbach, Phénomenologie du signe: Signe et Symbole (op. coll.) (Neuchâtel 1949). H. Ording ‘Symbol und Wirklichkeit’, Theol. Lit. Z. 3 (1948) 129ff. M. Heideggar [sic], Holzwege (Frankfurt a. M. 1950). E. Biser, Das Christusgeheimnis der Sakramente (Heidelberg 1950); ‘Das religiöse Symbol in Aufbau des Geisteslebens’, Münch. Theol. Z. 5 (1954) 114-140. J. Münzhuber, ‘Sinnbild und Symbol’, Z. Phil. Forsch. 5 (1950) 62–74. J. Daniélou, ‘The Problem of Symbolism’, Thought 25 (1950) 423–440. Th. Bogler, ‘Zur Theologie der Kunst’, Liturgie und Mönchtum 7 (1950) 46–63. A. Brunner, Glaube und Erkenntnis (Munich 1951); the same, Die Religion (Freiburg 1956). M. Eliade, Images and Symbols (Paris 1952). M. Thiel, ‘Die Symbolik als philosophisches Problem und philosophische Aufgabe’, Stud. Gen. 6 (1953) 235–256. H. Looff, ‘Symbol und Tranzendenz’ Stud. Gen. 6 (1953) 324–332; the same, Der Symbolbegriff in der neueren Religionsphilosophie und Theologie (Kantstudien, Cologne 1955). H. Meyer, ‘Symbolgebilde der Sprache’, Stud. Gen. 6 (1953) 195–206. J. Pieper, Weistum, Dichtung, Sakrament (Munich 1954). F. Kaulbach, Philosophische Grundlegung zu einer wissenschafilichen Symbolik (Meisenheim 1954). R. Boyle, ‘The Nature of Metaphor’, The Modern Schoolman 31 (1954) 257–280. L. Fremgen, Offenbarung und Symbol (Gütersloh 1954). G. Mensching, ‘Religiöse Ursymbole der Menschheit’, Stud. Gen. 8 (1955) 362–370. A. Rosenberg, Die christliche Bildmeditation (Munich 1955). E. Przywara, ‘Bild, Gleichnis, Symbol, Mythos, Mysterium, Logos’, Archivio di Filosofia 2–3 (Rome 1956) 7–38. K. Kerenyi, ‘Symbolismus in der [sic] antiken Religionen’, ibid., 119-129. A. Grillmeier, Der Logos am Kreuz (Munich 1956). F. König, Religionswissenschaftliches Wörterbuch (Freiburg 1956) 849–851. G. van der Leeuw, Phänomenologie der Religion (Tübingen 21956). K. Rahner, Theological Investigations III (London & Baltimore Md. 1967): ‘Priest and Poet’, ‘Behold this heart’, ‘Some Theses …’; the same, ‘Der theologische Sinn der Verehrung des Herzens-Jesu’ In Festschrift zur Hundertjahrfeier des Theol. Konvikts Innsbruck 1858–1958 (Innsbruck 1958) 102–109. M. Vereno, Vom Mythos zum Christos (Salzburg 1958). B. Liebrucks, ‘Sprache und Mythos: Konkrete Vernunft’, Festschrift E. Rothacker (Bonn 1958) 253–280. G. Kittel, TWNT, eidos, II, 371–373; eikon, II, 378–396; morphe, IV, 750–760. Enciclopedia Filosofica, IV, 625–627. 4. We choose here a method which will bring us to our goal as easily and quickly as possible, even though it simplifies matters by presupposing ontological and theological principles which would have to be demonstrated, not supposed, in a properly worked out ontology of the symbol. However, in view of the reader

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who is primarily envisaged here, these presuppositions may be made without misgiving. 5. We say very vaguely ‘one’. This ‘unity’ of a moment in a being can of course again only be envisaged analogically, in comparison with the unity and totality which is predicated of the Being which is totally one and yet plural in itself. 6. We do not wish to anticipate here the question as to whether the one moment, in relation to the other within the one plural being must necessarily have a formally expressive function (for instance, to use the theological formula of the Trinity, must proceed from the other moment ‘in similitudinem naturae’, or is only de facto ‘expression’ and displays a ‘likeness’. Even in the second case, the important point remains, that the likeness is originally constituted as an inner self-realization, and qua distinct, is an inner moment of the abiding unity itself. 7. We may mention a modern effort in this direction, inspired by present-day philosophy, the book of C. Kaliba, Die Welt als Gleichnis des dreieinigen Gottes. Entwurf zu einer trinitarischen Ontologie (Salzburg 1952), which, in spite of the misgivings it arouses on particular points, takes up a theme which is unduly neglected today. 8. ‘For fulfilment’ can and must be in some cases (e.g. the Trinity) understood also as ‘on account of its being perfect’. What is common to both cases is that the other which is constituted in an act of self-realization (actus, resultatio, processio) necessarily belongs to the perfection of the agent. 9. These considerations are not open to the objection that, if correct, they could deduce the Trinity from purely rational philosophical considerations. For their starting-point (which is not capable of proof by purely philosophical arguments) is that there is a plurality even in the supreme Being, without detriment to his unity. Hence our considerations presuppose the Trinity. They do not prove it, but use the knowledge of it given in revelation as the starting-point of ontological theological considerations. This is a perfectly legitimate method. 10. For the following, see K. Rahner, Geist in Welt2 (Munich 1957). 11. The theologian is most familiar with the word from its use in the theology of the Eucharist, where this terminology has also become part of the vocabulary of the magisterium (Denz. 626, 676, 698, 876, 884, etc.). 12. Here the opposite opinion was practically unanimously held. Cf. e.g. M. Schmaus, Die psychologische Trinitätslehre des hl. Augustin (Münster 1927) 20 ff. 13. A profane example: when two spouses say their Yes before the legitimate authority (ecclesiastical or civil), this external, freely spoken word, which is to be uttered with certain formalities, is the symbolic reality. It is not a subsequent and extrinsic sign, which merely refers from outside to the ‘thing’ (the inward consent). The consent is given in the audible expression, so much so, that the intended effect (the permanent marriage bond) cannot be realized without this audible expression. The expression and the thing expressed really are related here like body and soul. They form an inner unity, where both elements are interdependent, though each in its own way. Still, this symbol, under which the thing symbolized is realized and made present, is something freely and

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juridically constituted. Hence whether a ‘signum’ (arbitraruim) [sic] is a symbolic reality or the merely extrinsic representational symbol of a reality, cannot be decided by the mere fact that it is ‘arbitrary’. This characteristic can actually be demanded by the nature of the thing symbolized, without detriment to the reality of the symbolism. 14. Cf. O. Semmelroth, Die Kirche als Ursakrament (Frankfurt 1953). The Church is of course the ‘primary’ sacrament in relation to the single sacraments, not to Christ. Cf. K. Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments. Quaestiones Disputatae 9 (London & New York 1963). 15. Cf. e.g. CIC Decret. Gratiani III de consecratione II, c. Sacrificium 32 (ed. Friedberg I, 1324). 16. Cf. esp. H. Schillebeeckx, De sacramentale Heilseconomie (Antwerp 1952); ‘Sakramente als Organe der Gottbegegnung’, in Fragen der Theologie heute (Einsiedeln 1957) 379–401. L. Monden, ‘Symbooloorzakelijkheid als eigen Causaliteit van het Sacrament’, Bijdr. 13 (1952) 277–285. 17. Where, for reasons that are good in themselves, one rejects a ‘physical causality’ (of instrumental type), one soon finds oneself embarrassed. In the ordinary notion of the relationship between sign and grace, the sign almost necessarily becomes a ‘titulus juris’ to grace with regard to God: it becomes a sort of ‘causality’ of the sacramental action directed towards God. 18. For the literature on the distinction which is only outlined here, cf. A. Grillmeier, Der Logos am Kreuz (Munich 1956) and LTK II2, 458–460, 461–467and note 3 above. 19. Cf. K. Rahner, ‘The eternal significance of the humanity of Jesus for our relationship with God’ in Theological Investigations III (London & Baltimore, 1967); J. Alfaro, ‘Cristo Revelador del Padre’, Greg. 39 (1958) 222–270. 20. This statement cannot of course be demonstrated here. We ask the reader simply to accept it as at least a possible theological proposition. 21. Here we need not dwell on the fact that all mysteries of salvation in the really strict sense, and hence salvation itself, always consist of a self-communication of God by a type of quasi-formal causality, in contrast to the efficient causality whereby God creates ex nihilo sui et subjecti something distinct from himself. So in the hypostatic union, in uncreated grace (which in alone grace attains its true being, though sanctifying grace also implies in its concept a ‘created’ grace: cf. K. Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie I3 [Einsiedeln 1958] 347–375: ‘Zur scholastischen Begrifflichkeit der ungeschaffenen Gnade’. English translation, ‘Some Implications of the scholastic concept of Uncreated Grace’ in Theological Investigations I (London & Baltimore, Md. 1961) 319–346), and in the quasi-formal causality which the divine essence exerts in the visio beata on the spirit of man (as quasi-species impressa). 22. The free acceptance by the spirit of man is also a totally human act, which is therefore also a bodily one and hence also takes place in the symbol; and so the act is also historical and social and hence also ‘ecclesial’. 23. Some bibliographical references from the most recent literature on the subject: L. Klages, Grundlegung der Wissenschaft vom Ausdruck (Leipzig 51936). Ph.

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Lersch, Gesicht und Seele (Munich 1932). A Gehlen, Der Mensch. Seine Natur u.s. Stellung in d. Welt (Bonn 41950). H. Plessner, Lachen und Weinen. Eine Untersuchung nach den Grenzen menschlichen Verhaltens (Sammlung Dalp 54, Berne 21950). A. Wenzl, Das Leib-Seele-Problem im Lichte der neueren Theorien der physischen und seelischen Wirklichkeit (Munich 1933). M. Picard, Das Menschengesicht (Munich 31929); Grenzen der menschlichen Physionomie (Zurich-Leipzig 1937). V. Poucel, Mystique de la terre, vol. 1, Plaidoyer pour le corps (Le Puy 1937). J. Bernhart, J. Schröteler, H. Muckermann, J. Ternus, Vom Wert des Leibes in Antike, Christentum und Anthropologie (Salzburg 1936) . K. Rahner, Hörer des Wortes (Munich 1941) 175–189; the same, Geist in Welt (Munich 2 1957); the same, Theological Investigations II (London & Baltimore, Md. 1963) 265–281, and III (London & Baltimore, Md. 1967) ‘Priest and Prophet’ sections 1 & 2, and ‘“Behold this heart”: Preliminaries’. B. Welte, Die Leiblichkeit des Menschen als Hinweis auf das christliche Heil: Beuroner Hochschulwoche 1948 (Freiburg 1949) 77–109. M. Reding, ‘Person, Individuum und Leiblichkeit’, Tüb. Th. Quartalschrift 129 (1949) 195–203. W. Brugger, ‘Die Verleiblichung des Wollens’, Schol. 25 (1950) 248–253. G. Trapp, ‘Humanae animae competit uniri corpori (S. Th. I, q. 51, a lc). Uberlegungen [sic] zu einer Philosophie des menschlichen Ausdrucks’ Schol. 27 (1952) 382–399. L. Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenntnis des menschlichen Daseins (Zurich 21952). G. Siewerth, Der Mensch und sein Leib (Einsiedeln 1953). W. Stählin, Vom Sinn des Leibes (Stuttgart 31953). Anima 9 (1954) 97–142, special number on the body. C. Tresmontant, Biblisches Denken und hellenische Überlieferung (Düsseldorf 1956) 62–77. J. B. Metz, ‘Zur Metaphysik der menschlichen Leiblichkeit’, Arzt und Christ 4 (1958) 78–84. 24. That is why we have tried to define the whole matter in hand in an analysis of the nature of the ‘primary word’. Cf. K. Rahner, Theological Investigations III (London & Baltimore, Md. 1967); Mission and Grace III (London & New York 1966) 193–210. 25. Cf. Patres S. J.... in Hispania Professores, Sacrae Theologiae Summa III (Madrid 3 1956) 224f. (n. 542f.); 237 (n. 566).

Chapter 5

Seeing and hearing

Seeing and hearing are clearly the fundamental modes of human experience. To be able to say this we do not need to raise the old question of how many senses man actually possesses. Touch can perhaps be understood as a rudimentary form of seeing and it is clearly only in the domain of seeing and hearing that it becomes human experience, i.e., that it presents another person or another thing as objectively perceived. And what eater and smoker has not noticed that taste in the darkness is not fully itself? But even those who doubt this may take what we are going to say as meaning that hearing and seeing can be regarded as the particularly clear and exemplary kinds of spontaneous human experience generally. They need not therefore reject what follows as mistaken from the start. Now a banal commonsense “philosophy” will regard hearing and seeing simply as two gates through which our human world and our environment enter into the domain of our subjectivity, as two bridges by which we cross the gap between “subject” and “object”. Such everyday philosophy (that of Greco-Roman and Western provenance at any rate) will simply accept those two gates and bridges as factual data, with the subconscious feeling that “in themselves” they could be quite different from what they are and would then convey quite different experiences. It will point out that other biological organisms clearly have quite a different sensory world, that because of our particular senses very much escapes us which in itself is just as directly present around us, that the actual senses we possess are a very arbitrary

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a priori filter (though biologically useful) which selects a priori, shuts out much, opens no access to many things. We do not see infra-red, we do not hear the acoustic waves which a bat uses with its “radar”, we have no direct receptive organ for radio waves etc. Consequently we only approach a wider range of material reality with the help of interposed apparatus. In short, we regard our powers of hearing and seeing more or less as an old wireless set which is unfortunately incapable of receiving short waves. Then at most we console ourselves for this primitive quality of our receptive mechanisms by saying that they are sufficient after all for the immediate indispensable purposes of life and in that respect are not badly constructed. Clearly, however, this “commonsense philosophy” of seeing and hearing is too primitive. In the first place a genuine metaphysics of man cannot (though we cannot indicate the reasons for this here) regard our sense organs on the model of a microscope which is added to our will to see and which allows as much to be seen as its structure permits, this structure being independent of the person seeing. We do not merely have sense organs, we are sensibility. Our corporeality and therefore our sensibility is built from within, from the personal-intellectual subject himself. It is the permanent mode in which mind (i.e., the free subject open from the start to the totality of all possible reality) has of itself entered into the world. It cannot therefore be the case at all (if this view, which can only be indicated here, is correct) that the apparatus for hearing and seeing represented by our sense organs was fitted on to us from outside and could just as well be different. Their biological adaptation to their purpose is only intelligible as an expression of the fact that they are appropriate to us precisely as intellectual, personal beings who stand in real relation to the world generally, not just to our particular environment. (The dog as a nasal animal is, of course, from the biological point of view just as adapted by his sensibility to his life. So the question could be raised, for what purpose we have furnished ourselves with our apparatus precisely in this way.) We must therefore say, however bold the thesis may be, that if a receptive spiritual nature as such (not ours, which is already retro-determined by its sensibility) “proceeds” and constitutes its “receptive apparatus” on the basis of its own purposefulness, it will hear and see just as we do. Seeing and hearing are precisely the ways in which the mind opening itself to the whole of reality as such admits this reality in direct encounter. (And this meeting which one goes out to and admits – by hearing and seeing – is ultimately meant as loving communication of corporeal spiritual persons in such a way that in it the promise of the absolute mystery of God is found. Seeing and hearing on the one hand and intercommunication on the other imply in their unity and difference the problem of the relation between the aesthetic and the moral and religious, which cannot of course be gone into here.) Naturally it

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is impossible here to give grounds for this thesis of the origin of sensibility in mind itself, which thereby shows itself to be sensitive by its very nature. This may be considered laughable, and as a warning it may be pointed out that someday on a distant star intelligent corporeal beings may be discovered who communicate with their environment by senses quite different from sight and hearing. It may be objected, too, that the present state of our scientific knowledge of the world proves that on the one hand the human mind aims at the whole of the world’s reality but that hearing and seeing directly offer only a tiny section of that reality. On this basis the mind has to find its way indirectly into the totality. Consequently, as a corporeal mind it could certainly be conceived as having wider gates to the world from the start. Nevertheless let this thesis stand, and the question raised what it involves if it is properly understood. In the first place it is not ultimately the case that hearing and seeing only furnish slight initial material which is elaborated by the scientific mind until this achieves its own self-constructed world of knowledge. On this view only the latter is the mind’s own, and at the same time nearest to the real world “in itself ”, as a conscious image of the objective world. And so the sensory material would only be a strange and ultimately amorphous intermediary between the objective world and the world of the mind. Because the mind makes the sensibility proceed from itself as its own faculty (as Aquinas says) and retains it within itself (anima est forma corporis), the mind itself is perfectly in act when, in accordance with its nature as mind (i.e., on its own basis with its limitless horizon and with all that it is), it actually hears and sees, accomplishes that “turning” (one might almost use the term “conversion”) to the image, without which there is no true knowledge, as Thomas knew, in his doctrine of the “conversio ad phantasma”, and Kant also, for whom a concept without a perception remains empty. The concrete form in its “light”, given to it through the medium of colours, the articulate word with the intelligible perspective it implies, both with the infinity in which they stand, bring fully into act the mind itself. What is also given by or in addition to this visible and audible form, is of two kinds, which must not be confused. An amalgam of the two must not falsely take on the appearance of being what the mind in truth is seeking. First there is the clear horizon of the mind’s limitless range; only in this is the concrete form what it is, standing out in relief but causing that horizon to be experienced when the form is seen or heard: the infinity of the enveloping mystery of holy silence. When we have forms heard or seen whose source is there, which lose themselves in that, cause that invisible and unutterable to be experienced, we have “primordial forms” (of nature or art) as, for example, the Apollo which Rilke contemplates in his poem, or “primordial words”. “Behind” these primordial forms there is nothing, for with them

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everything is present, the infinite mystery which in them is there. “How did St Benedict see the world in a coal? – In all things everything is hidden and concealed”, we read in Angelus Silesius (Cherubinischer Wandersmann IV, 159). Only if we see or hear in this way can we really see and hear. That we for the most part do not see and hear like that, but in a technical and utilitarian way see things as possible objects of active manipulation in the service of our biological self-affirmation whether everyday or scientific, is no argument against it, but only against us in our inauthenticity and mediocre anonymity. We have laboriously to re-learn such hearing and seeing today. What is called “composition of place” in religious meditation has its basis here. Similarly the doctrine of the “spiritual senses” in a long Christian tradition and the practice of the “application of the senses” in mystical contemplation in Ignatius Loyola. And a Christian would have to reflect here on what the First Letter of John says, “What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life...”. He would have to realize that the meaning of the incarnation of God’s Logos and the fundamental experience evoked here by John would be destroyed if we were to suppose that seeing and hearing are merely the springboard which we leave behind in order to attain true knowledge of an abstract, non-sensory and wordless kind. Secondly there is abstract, conceptual science. No one must despise it. It belongs to man, he must dare to undertake it, not only for his biological self-affirmation but because he is a mind in the world. It also belongs to the practical activity by which, not content with a purely contemplative relation to the world, he must fulfil himself. But where philological and historical learning, all that belongs to the moral sciences of man, does not return to sight and hearing of concrete forms, they become empty talk. Where philosophy and theology are no longer in possession of fundamental words, they cease to be true philosophy and theology, language which subjects us to mystery. And the natural sciences? They have certainly enormously extended knowledge and power over things. But if their mathematically formulated statements about functional relationships in the physical world are not to become pure mathematics and webs of formal logic, they cannot lose the connection of reference to what is directly given in sense experience. What they mean physically and not merely mathematically can always ultimately only be made intelligible on the model of objects of direct sight and hearing. They imply an intention to exercise power, directed ultimately at what we corporeally experience. This widening of the biological vital space and theoretical knowledge of a scientific kind ultimately stands at the service of that mind which becomes open to absolute mystery in simple spontaneous sight and hearing of the world around it or in loving interpersonal

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relationships. And so all sciences lead back to that fundamental seeing and hearing of the primordial forms through which the holy and enveloping mystery becomes known to man – especially when the primordial form is man himself, the human face, the ever unique word of his love. Is there not a conflict between seeing and hearing? Almost the whole Greek and Western tradition of philosophy has surely regarded man as contemplating the “phenomenon” of being, whereas Christian tradition from the Old Testament down to Luther’s assertion that the ears alone are the organ of the Christian man, has surely understood the word addressed to us with power, which brings what it utters, “passive” hearing as opposed to “active” gazing, to be the fundamental mode of authentic human existence? Isn’t the complaint made that people nowadays will not read (i.e., hear) any more, but only want to look at pictures? It would be a foolish undertaking to attempt to settle the dispute between eyes and ears and decide which of them derives more directly and more radically from the one source of authentic human life. Those who read in the Bible the saying of Jesus that the ears and eyes of his disciples were blessed (Mt 13: 16) will perhaps not seek to settle the dispute at all because it is not a genuine one. For both are ways of possessing the world and both are modes of personal relationship and derive from the same ground. Together they form a single contact with the world and the one domain of the presence of the sacred mystery. We might simply say with Angelus Silesius (Cherubinischer Wandersmann V, 351): “The senses are in the spirit all one sense and act; – He who sees God tastes, feels, smells and hears him too.” But is it true that people today are changing from a humanity of the ear and the word into one of eye and sight? Of course it is quite conceivable for there to be epoch-making changes in the way the ultimate confronts man (as for example men of the Old Testament had a book of God but were not allowed to make any image of God). But the change in question which is so much lamented at the present time might be explained much more simply, to the extent that it really exists. One might say that through modern sciences in their almost limitless differentiation, through the enormous number of books, through the unimaginable character of the statements of modern natural sciences, through the “demythologizing” of theology (which always also involves the removal of pictures and images from it, however fatefully necessary this process may be), the amount of talk (and vocabulary) in contrast to earlier times, has increased so monstrously in comparison with what is visible, that the appetite for the pictorial is now at bottom merely a legitimate attempt to preserve a balance between seeing and hearing. That empty talk is, as a consequence, parallelled [sic] by an equally futile and

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insatiable appetite for things to look at, is deplorable and threatening but not surprising. But man is “born to see and appointed to gaze”. He can and must always re-learn how to see. With the concentrated gaze which makes forms blossom out before him, in their purity and as they emerge from their roots in mystery. They may be forms in perfect simplicity and beauty, or forms which (like the Crucified) inescapably represent what is incomprehensible from the dark depth of our destiny, forms which God has shaped or which we have composed for him. And because seeing is really man’s act (more than the passivity of hearing) man himself is manifested in seeing, steps before us, reveals himself in the way he sees and what he makes to be the object of his gaze. According to scripture, in man’s eyes we read his fear, his nostalgia, his pride, compassion, kindness, wickedness, ill will, scorn, envy and falsity. We make ourselves by seeing and form ourselves by gazing. But we have to learn how to see. It is not only the “effort of understanding” (Hegel) that is demanded of man, but also the effort of “contemplation”, because man has been given the grace of sight. The sublimest of discourse is the last moment before silence falls, the silence which expresses the ultimate. Man perhaps most easily learns to be silent when he is gazing. We Christians long for the “vision of God”, and confess Christ to be the image of God (2 Cor 4: 4) as well as his Word; it is therefore an important task and a holy, human and Christian art to learn to see. We only think we have always been able to, and that nothing is easier. May we say, adapting a saying of scripture, He who has eyes to see, let him see? May we say that only those who have learnt to see (with the eyes of love) will be blessed? Those who have learnt to see with an eye which is “sound” (Mt 6: 22) have the true “view of the world”.

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Chapter 6

Priest and poet1

The highest possibilities are as yet but promises. Otherwise that fulfilment for which we long in faith and hope would already be here. But because the end of all things is, according to the words of Scripture, already come upon us, our highest possibilities are not merely empty postulates and abstract ideals. They have already begun to exist. At least they are as it were making shy and not yet fully successful attempts to introduce themselves. But in the fact that this imperfect exists is contained the sure promise of a proximate fulfilment. One of these highest possibilities is that one and the same person should be both priest and poet. Can these two vocations become one and the same? In this life of mere beginnings and vain efforts we scarcely dare to hope that the union of priest and poet should perfectly succeed. Certainly someone may be a priest and in addition also be a poet. But this is very far from saying that he is the one in the other and that both are in him the same. However, the fulfilment of the future towards which our pilgrims' way is leading assures us in advance that the perfect priest and the perfect poet are one and the same. Is there any better way of paying tribute to the verses which a priest has written on the priesthood, than by attempting to explain this?

I To the poet is entrusted the word. Alas, that there should still be no theology of the word! Why has no one yet set about gathering together, like

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Ezekiel, the scattered members on the fields of philosophy and theology and spoken over them the word of the Spirit, so that they rise up a living body! Even in philosophy there should be a discussion of the word. Our word is more than a thought: it is thought become incarnate. If it is true that body and soul exist in a substantial unity, as Scholasticism teaches, then the word is more than a mere externalization in sound, a signalling of a thought which could equally well exist without the accompaniment of this animal noise. As if the thought were a mere conventional signal in the brute spiritlessness of the animal and material world which we – spirits – are constrained to frequent! No, the word is rather the corporeal state in which what we now experience and think first begins to exist by fashioning itself into this its word-body. To be more precise: the word is the embodied thought, not the embodiment of the thought. It is more than the thought and more original than the thought, just as the entire man is more than, and more original than, his body and his soul considered separately. For this reason no language can substitute for another. In the same way one cannot give another body to a spiritual soul; not only would it express itself differently, but it would itself become other or else transform the body into which it was forced into its body. Men speaking different languages can understand one another and one language can be translated into another, just as the most diverse men can live together and even be born from one another. But this does not make languages into a row of external façades, behind all of which dwells simply one and the same thought. The noche of a John of the Cross and the Nacht of a Novalis or a Nietzsche are not the same; the agape of the hymn in the thirteenth chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians and the ‘love’ of European peoples differ not merely in their ‘application’ … There are words which divide and words which unite: words which can be artificially manufactured and arbitrarily determined and words which have always existed or are newly born as by a miracle; words which unravel the whole in order to explain the part, and words which by a kind of enchantment produce in the person who listens to them what they are expressing; words which illuminate something small, picking out with their light only a part of reality, and words which make us wise by allowing the manifold to harmonize in unity. There are words which delimit and isolate, but there are also words which render a single thing translucent to the infinity of all reality. They are like sea shells, in which can be heard the sound of the ocean of infinity, no matter how small they are in themselves. They bring light to us, not we to them. They have power over us, because they are gifts of God, not creations of men, even though perhaps they came

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to us through men. Some words are clear because they are shallow and without mystery; they suffice for the mind; by means of them one acquires mastery over things. Other words are perhaps obscure because they evoke the blinding mystery of things. They pour out of the heart and sound forth in hymns. They open the doors to great works and they decide over eternities. Such words, which spring up out of the heart, which hold us in their power, which enchant us, the glorifying, heaven-sent words, I should like to call primordial words (Urworte). The remainder could be named fabricated, technical, utility words. It is true of course that we cannot divide words once and for all into these two categories. This division refers much more to the destiny of words, which elevates them and dashes them to the ground, which ennobles them and degrades them, which blesses them and damns them – just as in the case of man. We are not speaking here of worn-out words which are preserved, impaled like dead butterflies, in the showcases of dictionaries. We mean living words in their living being and movement, just as we utter them in propositions, speeches and songs. Words have their history too. And as in the case of the history of man himself, there is only one true Master of this history: God. In fact, he himself became the subject of this history when he spoke such words in the flesh of this earth and when he had them written as his own words. Innumerable words, according to the use man makes of them, are raised up to the ranks of the one type, the primordial words, or – which is unfortunately mostly the case – slide down to the level of the other types, the utility words. When the poet or the poor man of Assisi exclaims ‘water’, what is meant is greater, wider and deeper than when the chemist, debasing the word, says ‘water’ for his H2O. According to Goethe, water is like the soul of man ... you cannot substitute H2O for that. The water which is seen by man, which is praised by the poet, and which is used by the Christian in baptism – this water is not a poetic glorification of the chemist’s water, as if he were the true realist. On the contrary, the ‘water’ of the chemist is much rather a narrowed-down, technified derivation of a secondary kind from the water of man. In the word as used by the chemist, a primordial word has been fated to sink down to the level of a technical word of utility, and in its fall it has forfeited more than half its being. In its fate is reflected the lot of humanity through thousands of years. Let no one think with foolish superficiality that it does not matter whether a word has more or less content; that as long as one clearly knows what content a word and the concept it expresses have, everything is in order and one word is as good as another. No, the primordial words are precisely the words which cannot be defined. They can only be taken apart by being killed. Or does someone think that

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everything can be defined? It cannot. All definitions have constant recourse to new words, and this process must come to a stop with the ultimate words, whether these are absolutely the last possible words or merely those which constitute in fact the final point of man’s reflexive self-interpretation. And yet these ultimate words possess only that ‘simplicity’ which conceals within itself all mysteries. These are the primordial words which form the basis of man’s spiritual existence! They are given him. He does not arbitrarily construct them, nor can he cut them up into convenient pieces, which is what is meant by ‘defining’. This is all very obscure, someone will say. Granted, thinking which divides and recomposes the pieces like a mosaic is clearer and more easily grasped. But is it more true, more faithful to reality? Is ‘being’ clear? But of course, says the shallow mind, that is being which is not nothing. But what is ‘is’ and what is ‘nothing’? Whole books have been written, and from this ocean of words there has been obtained only a little jug of stagnant water. The primordial words always remain like the brightly lit house which one must leave behind, ‘even when it is night’. They are always as though filled with the soft music of infinity. No matter what it is they speak of, they always whisper something about everything. If one tries to pace out their boundary, one always becomes lost in the infinite. They are the children of God, who possess something of the luminous darkness of their Father. There is a knowledge which stands before the mystery of unity in multiplicity, of essence in appearance, of the whole in the part and the part in the whole. This knowledge makes use of primordial words, which evoke the mystery. It is always indistinct and obscure, like the reality itself which by means of such words of knowledge obtains possession of us and draws us into its unsounded depths. In the primordial words spirit and flesh, the signified and its symbol, concept and word, things and image, are still freshly and originally one – which does not mean, simply the same. ‘O Stern und Blume, Geist und Kleid, Lieb', Leid und Zeit und Ewigkeit!’ (‘O star and flower, spirit and garment, love, sorrow and time and eternity!’) exclaims Brentano, the Catholic poet. What does this mean? Can one say what it means? Or is it not precisely an uttering of primordial words, which one must understand without having to explain them by means of 'clearer' and cheaper words? And even if one had explained them with the most scholarly profundity, would one not have to return to these words of the poet, to these primordial words, in order to understand, in order intimately and truly to grasp, what it was that the long commentary ‘really’ wanted to say? Blossom, night, star and day, root and source, wind and laughter, rose, blood and earth, boy, smoke, word, kiss, lightning, breath, stillness: these

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and thousands of other words of genuine thinkers and poets are primordial words. They are deeper and truer than the worn-down verbal coins of daily intellectual intercourse, which one often likes to call ‘clear ideas’ because habit dispenses one from thinking anything at all in their use. In every primordial word there is signified a piece of reality in which a door is mysteriously opened for us into the unfathomable depths of true reality in general. The transition from the individual to the infinite in infinite movement, which is called by thinkers the transcendence of the spirit, itself belongs to the content of the primordial word. That is why it is more than a mere word: it is the soft music of the infinite movement of the spirit and of love for God, which begins with some small thing of this earth, which is seemingly the only thing meant by this word. Primordial words (as one might explain it to the theologian) have always a literal meaning and an intellectual-spiritual meaning, and without the latter the verbal sense itself is no longer what is really meant. They are words of an endless crossing of borders, therefore words on which in some way our very salvation depends. ... Sind wir vielleicht hier, um zu sagen: Haus, Brücke, Brunnen, Tor, Krug, Obstbaum, Fenster, Höchstens: Säule, Turm ... aber zu sagen, versteh’s o zu sagen so, wie selber die Dinge niemals innig meinten zu sein … (... Are we perhaps here, in order to say, house, Bridge, fountain, gate, urn, fruit tree, window, At the most: pillar, tower ... but to say, please understand, Oh to say, what the things themselves never Intimately thought to be ...) (Rilke, Ninth Elegy) Only someone who understands these lines of the poet has grasped what we mean by primordial words and why they have every right to be, indeed must be, obscure. This does not of course mean that one may drape one’s own confused superficiality with primordial words of this kind to pass them off as profound, or that one should speak in an obscure way where one could speak clearly. It means only that the primordial words reflect man in his indissoluble unity of spirit and flesh, transcendence and perception, metaphysics and history. It means that there are primordial words, because all things are interwoven with all reality and therefore every genuine and living word has roots which penetrate endlessly into the depths.

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There is one aspect of these primordial words which we must consider more explicitly than we have done so far: the primordial word is in the proper sense the presentation of the thing itself. It is not merely the sign of something whose relationship to the hearer is in no way altered by it; it does not speak merely ‘about’ a relationship of the object in question to the hearer: it brings the reality it signifies to us, makes it ‘present’, realizes it and places it before us. Naturally the mariner of this presentation will be of the most diverse kinds, depending upon the kind of reality evoked and the power of the evoking word. But whenever a primordial word of this kind is pronounced, something happens: the advent of the thing itself to the listener. Something happens not merely for the reason that man, as a spiritual person, obtains possession of reality only by knowing it. It is not only the knower who obtains possession of the reality known by means of the word. The reality known itself takes possession of the knower – and lover – through the word. Through the word the object known is transferred into man’s sphere of existence, and its entry is a fulfilment of the reality of the object known itself. Many a person will be tempted to think that being known is for the object a matter of indifference, which is attributed to it only externally. He will take this opinion to be a corollary of his unequivocal objectivism. To be sure he will grant that the world is real because it is known by God and his love: in this one case reality is constituted by the very fact of standing within the sphere of God’s light. Leaving aside the fact that even this truth can be considered too superficially, our ‘objectivist’ will deny that the case of the knowledge of reality by other knowers is in any way similar. It is of course true that the realities of this earth do not cease to exist, if no one apart from God knows them and recognizes them in his knowledge. And yet they are more fully themselves and arrive at the complete fulfilment of their being only when they are known and spoken by men. They themselves acquire, to use the expression of Rilke, an intimacy of being when they are known. Why? Let us reflect upon this: does not everything have its being in the whole? Does not even Sirius in the gloom of the subspiritual already faintly tremble whenever a child throws its doll out of the cradle? Is not each person completely himself, entirely brought to that fulfilment which he should have and which God has eternally planned for him, only when all persons are made perfect in the Kingdom of God? Must not all individuals wait for their ultimate fulfilment upon the complete fulfilment of all things? Now, in the realm of the spirit is not the completion of the individual precisely the

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completion of his knowledge and his love? Therefore it is through them that the other is completed. The fact that I am known, recognized and loved, that is my completion. And this completion in knowledge and in love, in being known and being loved, is not merely a completion on the ‘plane’ of the ‘intentional’ but a fulfilment of the reality, of the being itself. For reality itself is, in the measure of its being, knowing and being known in unity. All realities sigh for their own unveiling. They want themselves to enter, if not as knowers at least as objects of knowledge, into the light of knowledge and of love. They all have a dynamic drive to fulfil themselves by being known. They, too, want to ‘put in their word’. The word is their own fulfilment, in which they arrive at the point where all reality, because it draws its origin from eternal spirit, finds its ultimate home: in light. If these realities are persons, then this fulfilment will be realized in the exchange of the word of love which is mutually bestowed. If they are subspiritual realities, then they attain their salvation in the fact that they are lovingly spoken by all beings who are capable of knowing and loving – not by God alone. Everything is redeemed by the word. It is the perfection of things. The word is their spiritual body in which they themselves first reach their own fulfilment. Hungering for knowledge and love, things pluck in their spiritual word-body at the hearts of those who can know and love them. Invariably the word is the sacrament by means of which realities communicate themselves to man, in order to achieve their own destiny. What we have said about the redeeming mission of the word is true in some way of every word. But it is especially true of the primordial words. We do not mean by this, of course, only single words, but all that is said by a man to bring things in a powerful and compact way out of that darkness where they cannot remain, into the light of man. It is to the poet (Dichter) that the word has been entrusted. He is a man capable of speaking the primordial words in powerful concentration (verdichtet). Everyone pronounces primordial words, as long as he is not sunk completely into spiritual death. Everyone calls things by their names and so continues the action of his father Adam. But the poet has the calling and the gift of speaking such words in powerful concentration. He has the power to speak them in such a way that, by means of his word, things move as though set free into the light of others who hear the words of the poet. The poet is not a man who in a superfluous, more pleasing form, in ‘rhymes’, in a sentimental torrent of words, says in a more complicated way what others – philosophers and scientists – have said more clearly, more soberly, and more intelligibly. To be sure, there are ‘poets’ of this kind too, who are no poets at all, but mere rhymers and versifiers. That is not to say

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that versifying is a craft to be despised; many a one who has succeeded in being a true poet has also used it extensively in his work. In the same way, there are second-rate philosophers and scientists who speak more extensively of what those, who are poets, philosophers and scientists all in one, originally brought to word for the first time. But that is something which must always be done anew. On the other hand, wherever a primordial word is really pronounced, wherever a thing appears in word in its positive freshness there a poet is at work. It is a poet working there, even though his word may not be mentioned in the history of literature and even though he may consider himself to be merely a philosopher or theologian. Poets are men who speak primordial words in powerful concentration. If they utter these words, then they are beautiful. For real beauty is the pure appearance of reality as brought about principally in the word. Principally in the word: we have no desire to say anything here against music. It is too full of mystery. Nevertheless, perhaps lovers of music who are at the same time theologians might give a thought to the fact that God revealed himself in word and not in purely tonal music. But in heaven, they will reply, there reigns the sound of songs of praise and not merely the recounting of the glory of God ... Be that as it may, the other arts can represent in the first place only what is apprehended and circumscribed. They can set out the image and the gestures. In saying this we recognize that it is precisely the infinity of God which the limited and formed, measured and enclosed, proclaims simply by its own good finite character. For this infinity is not simply the negation of the good finitude of the creature; otherwise it would be itself a bad infinite. It would be something endlessly flowing, unstable, vague and empty, the infinity of mere matter; not the radiant, intimate clarity of the absolute fullness of God, which appears to us precisely in the apprehended and formed reality of the creature. But among all the modes of expressing himself that man uses in all the arts, the word alone possesses something which is not shared by any other creation of man: it lives in transcendence. Were it not to sound exclusively negative, and therefore destructive, one could say that negation alone lives in it. The word alone is the gesture which transcends everything that can be represented and imagined, to refer us to infinity. It alone can redeem that which constitutes the ultimate imprisonment of all realities which are not expressed in word: the dumbness of their reference to God. For this reason the primordial word, before all other expressions, is the primordial sacrament of all realities. And the poet is the minister of this sacrament. To him is entrusted this word, in which realities come out of their dark hiding place into the protective light of man to his own blessing and fulfilment.

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II What is a priest? The names applied to the priesthood by the New Testament are concerned mainly with its external structure. The ‘apostle’ is the envoy, ‘bishop’ means supervisor, ‘presbyter’ elder. It is remarkable that Scripture characterizes the content of the priestly office only in this one respect: as ministry of the word (Ac 6: 4). Even where the administration of baptism is particularly named as the commission given to the Apostles, it appears as the means to becoming ‘disciples’ of the new teaching of Christ (Mt 28: 19). And St Paul puts his mission of proclaiming the Good News before the command to baptize (1 Co 1: 17). Moreover, baptism itself takes place ‘in the word of truth’ (Ep 5: 26), in calling upon the ‘name’ of Christ (Ac 2: 38 sqq.), in the ‘name’ of the blessed Trinity (Mt 28: 19). May we not then describe the priest as the man to whom the word has been entrusted? Is he not quite simply the minister of the word? But of course we must state more clearly what word is here in question. The word which is entrusted to the priest as gift and mission is the efficacious word of God himself. It is the word of God. The priest is not speaking of himself. His way does not lead man, his world and the experience of this world in which man encounters himself, into the light of man’s consciousness of himself (Beisichsein). His word does not redeem, in the sense indicated above, the things of the world from their gloomy and blind darkness by orientating them towards man. The word of the priest is the word of God. It is spoken by God in the infinite katabasis of his self-revelation, and brings the inner and most intimate light of God into the darkness of man. It enlightens the man who comes into the world and admits God himself into man through the faith which it awakens. The word of God is the eternal Logos of God who was made flesh, and therefore could also and in fact did become the word of man. All the words of God previously spoken are only the advance echoes of this word of God in the world. So much therefore is the word possessed of divine nobility, that we can call the Son, the eternal self-comprehension of the Father, nothing else but the Word. It was precisely this person who is the Word, not another person of the most holy Trinity, who became in the flesh the word of God directed to us. If God wills to make himself known to the world in that which he is in his most proper, most free Self, beyond the realm of his creative power, he can do this in only two ways: either he seizes us and the world immediately into the dazzling brilliance of his divine light, by bestowing upon his creatures the direct vision of God, or he comes in word. He cannot come to us in any way other than in the word, without already taking us away from the world

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to himself which simply as the Creator of realities outside himself he cannot reveal. That is possible only because there is present something in the world, one thing alone, which belongs to God’s own reality: the word, which sets the creature free from its muteness by pointing beyond the whole created order. In it alone lives in a conscious way that transcendence which both negates and liberates. It alone is capable of making God present as the God of mysteries to the man who does not yet see him, in such a way that this presence not only is in us by grace, but is there for us to perceive. Thus the word, as the primordial sacrament of transcendence, is capable of becoming the primordial sacrament of the conscious presence in the world of the God who is superior to the world. This word has been spoken by God. He has come in grace and in the word. Both belong together: without grace, without the communication of God himself to the creature, the word would be empty: without the word, grace would not be present to us as spiritual and free persons in a conscious way. The word is the bodiliness of his grace. This does not apply only, and in the perspective of our present life not primarily, to the sacramental word in the strictest theological sense. It already applies to the word of faith in general. This word is one of the constitutive elements of the presence of God in the world, which is not yet transfigured, and therefore dwells as yet in faith and not in vision. This word is necessary, if God is to mean more to us than the ultimate ground of extra-divine reality, if God is to be for us the God of grace who communicates to man his own intra-divine glory. This word, which makes God present in the world as God, and not merely as ultimate cause of the world, is a free word. It is a free act of love. Therefore it cannot be discovered at all times and in all places in the world. It cannot be gained from the world. It is an event. It must be spoken: through Christ and – through those whom he sends. For the presence-to-us of the reality of the divine self-revelation as expressed in this word always remains dependent upon this word being spoken and repeated. If it cannot be spoken by Christ himself until the end of time, then it must be carried on by others. The others cannot take hold of this word by their own power, in the way in which one ‘takes up’ a theory which one has once heard and propagates on one’s own account and at one’s own risk. If it were so, how could they know that it has remained the word of God and not been transformed into a human theory, which suffocates the original divine word under a chaotic mass of human interpretation? How could one prevent the message, which is an event in history, from becoming mere theology about it? The word of God must ‘run on’, but it must be borne by those who are sent. We call the messenger and the herald of the word of God the priest. Therefore what he

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says is proclamation, a kerygma, not primarily nor ultimately a doctrine. He is handing on a message. His word, in so far as it is his word, is a signpost pointing to the word spoken by another. He must be submerged and unseen behind the message he delivers. As priest he is not primarily a theologian, but a preacher. And because there is preaching for that reason there is theology: not vice versa. For the same reason it is the preaching Church with her demand for faith which is the norm of theology: it is not the ‘science’ of theology which is the norm of an haute vulgarisation which could be called preaching. The word whose proclamation Christ has entrusted to the priest is an efficacious word. It produces an effect. This is not primarily because it influences the salvation of him who hears and believes it. That comes in the second place. No, this word is efficacious because it is not merely discourse about something that would remain equally real and effective if it were not talked about. It can be said of the weather and of the moon that they would exist in any case even if poets did not speak of them and meteorologists did not publish weather reports (although even this is not entirely true). Here the case is quite different. For the salvation of God is love. But all love achieves its own fulfilment only if it is accepted and answered. It can be answered only in freedom. And freedom exists only where there is consciousness of spirit and wakefulness of heart. Because this is so, God’s grace itself only reaches its own fulfilment when it is spoken. Then it is really present. It is present in virtue of being proclaimed. The word first translates the love of God into man’s sphere of existence as love, to which man can respond. The word is consequently the efficacy of love. It is an efficacious word. The efficacy of the word of God can naturally have very different grades and degrees. This depends on what kind of word of God is in question, how and by whom it is spoken. But wherever it is really a case of the word of God itself as a delivered message, there we are in the presence of the efficacious word: wherever, that is to say, it is not merely theology in an exclusively human sense which is practised, as a merely human reflection about the word of God. (We leave out of account for the moment the question whether theology does not cease to be theology, if it no longer speaks the word of God itself, aided by supernatural powers of grace and of the light of faith.) But the effective power of the divine word itself, which allowed God in expressing himself to ‘pitch his tent’ among us (Jn 1:14), is different. He has ‘told us all’ that he has received from the Father, namely himself with Godhead and manhood, flesh and blood, with his life and death, with his short span of time on earth and the eternity which he acquired. But we have to speak him in many different ways. We cannot with all our words say him

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completely, although he has confided to us a multitude of words. Of his one glory we can say sometimes more, sometimes less. We have to speak him into the undelimited dimensions of human existence, into all the heights and depths of our life. The one white light from him must be refracted in all the prisms of the world. There are many efficacious words spoken at the command of Christ. These words are of varying efficacy in themselves and in the men who hear them. When is the most concentrated, the most effective word spoken? When is everything said at once, so that nothing more has to be said, because with this word everything is really there? Which is the word of the priest, of which all others are mere explanations and variations? It is the word which the priest speaks when, quietly, completely absorbed into the person of the incarnate Word of the Father, he says: ‘This is my Body … this is the chalice of my Blood …’ Here only the word of God is spoken. Here is pronounced the efficacious word. Words can be spoken about higher realities, about the eternal mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity. But these words themselves are only there 'for us', meaningful and of existential import, because the Son of the Father knows no other divine glory than that into which he has brought his and our human existence; because he has become man; because he has a body which was delivered up, and because he has taken on our blood which he shed for us. The greatest mysteries thus only exist for us because the mystery of the humanity and death of the Lord exists. The most effective way of speaking about these mysteries, too, is by speaking effectively about the Body and Blood of the Lord. But it is the word of Consecration that speaks of this. It speaks in such a way, that what was spoken of is now present. Everything is then present: heaven and earth, Godhead and manhood, body and blood, soul and spirit, life and death, Church and individual, past and eternal future; everything is gathered together into this word. And everything that is evoked in this word really takes place: mysterium fidei, sacrum convivium, communion. In it God already becomes in reality, even if only under the veil of faith, all in all. Here there is not a discourse ‘about’ death and life. Death and life are proclaimed until he comes, and in coming bring us what is already here and already celebrated in mystery: the handing over of the Son and with him of the world to the Father. This efficacious word has been entrusted to the priest. To him has been given the word of God. That makes him a priest. For that reason it can be said that the priest is he to whom has been entrusted the word. Every other word that he speaks, that he reflects upon, that he theologizes over, that he proclaims, for which he demands faith, for which he is prepared to pour out

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his blood – every other word is only explanation and echo of this one word. In it the priest, his person wholly absorbed into Christ, says only that which Christ has said. And in it Christ has said only one thing: himself as our gift. Though the priest may make known mysteries as distant as the stars, in the depths of the divine being – he can do this because he can show under the forms of this earth him who came to us from those eternal distances as the Son of the Father and brought with him everything that the Father gives him from all eternity and ever continues to give; and he is present under the forms of this earth because over these humble signs there remains constantly poised the word: ‘This is my body …’ If the priest preaches Jesus, his life and death, then what he says is not mere talk, because by his word he is present among us who lived this life and died this death for our salvation. If he preaches sin, judgement and damnation, he can only do this because he lifts the chalice of the blood which was shed for our sins, and because he preaches the death which was the judgement on our sins and our salvation. If he speaks of the earth, then he cannot forget that he lifts up the fruit of our poor fields and vineyards as a sacrament into the eternity of heaven. If he speaks of man, of his dignity and his depth, he alone can tell the real truth about man – ‘Ecce homo!’ – and truly show the flesh of sin, which is laid on the altars of God in sacrifice. It is with true consolation that we are able to maintain: the priest is he to whom the efficacious word of God has been entrusted. One might also say: the priest is he to whom the primordial word of God in the world is entrusted, in such a way that he can speak this word in its absolute concentrated power (Dichte).

III Is the priest then simply the poet tout court? This cannot be answered with a simple ‘yes’. For he is so much more than a poet. We would be saying too little about him were we to call him simply the poet of the word of God. Too little, because he possesses his own proper name which is irreducible and cannot be replaced by any other word. His name is: priest. He may communicate his message with unconcern. Perhaps it is on his lips without having proceeded from his heart. Perhaps his life does not make a reality of what his word is saying. Nevertheless, he remains a priest, herald of the word of God in virtue of a holy mission. But one could not then call him poet any more. For one can be a poet only if the word of the mouth springs up from the centre of the heart. The poet says what he bears within him. He expresses himself in truth. And this expression itself is a part of what

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he is. On the other hand, one can say the words of God without expressing oneself. Not only the Donatism of the sacramental word in the strict sense, but every Donatism of the kerygma is false. That is a comfort. For now we, the hearers, can never become the slaves of the man preaching to us. It is God’s word that is said by the priest. For that reason not every priest is a poet by the mere fact of speaking God’s own primordial words. He says what is true; he speaks God’s own truth. But this can happen without God’s truth having become his own truth, the revelation in word of the very constitution of his own being. With a word of that kind poetic existence is not achieved. One has said less, less of the human, because more has been said, more of the divine. The word of the priest is therefore never in danger, to the same degree as the words of other men and poets, of sinking from the level of a primordial word to the level of a merely technical word of utility, to the shallow talk and chatter of daily life ... Verbum Domini autem manet in aeternum. Many a time from tinkling cymbal and sounding brass have rung out words which have penetrated like a double-edged sword into the hearts – of others. A proof that God remains God and victorious even in the powerlessness of the human word! To be sure, this is not to deny, but rather to make quite clear, that the word of God in the mouth of a priest empty of faith or love is a judgement more terrible than all versification and all poetic chatter in the mouth of a poet who is not really one. It is already a lie and a judgement upon a man, if he speaks what is not in him; how much more, if he speaks of God while he is godless. What he says remains the word of God. But to him is applicable: Ex ore tuo te judico, serve nequam. Not only does one eat judgement to oneself, if one receives the body of the Lord unworthily; one speaks judgement to oneself, if one offers to others unworthily the word-body of God in which he has also become incarnate. To the true poet, according to Goethe, ‘a God has given the power to say what he is experiencing’, while others remain silent in their agony and in their bliss. The poet experiences the blissful, but also perilous, extremely perilous, pleasure of an aesthetic kind of identity between his being and his consciousness. He attains that coming-to-himself and being-with-himself which St Thomas calls the reditio completa in se ipsum, not merely in the abstract concept in which the unpoetic, profane man knows about himself. He experiences it in that concreteness full of images which is in fact a poetic and concentrated expression where everything is given in one; spirit and body, what is far and what is near, what is infinitely profound and what is childishly clear. Oh what a sublime blessedness it is to be so reconciled with

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oneself, so near to oneself, so close to one’s immeasurable remoteness; to be able to understand oneself, by uttering oneself, even while one appears to speak of something quite different! That is the grace of the poet. The priest does not have it. Even if he speaks out of the innermost centre of his believing, loving heart filled with the Spirit, he is speaking the words of God. They come from an immeasurable remoteness: not that of the man himself, but the remoteness of God. And the God now in question is not he who is the archetype and first cause of the things of the world, the ultimate ground of the world and its mysterious radiance of infinity; it is the God who inexpressibly transcends everything that is or can be thought outside himself; it is the uncharted, terrifying remoteness of the God whose transcendence it is that cannot be expressed by what is created as such. Such are the words spoken by the priest. They do not reconcile him with himself, unless it be in the death of faith and then indeed in an eternal, not a merely aesthetic reconciliation. These words humble the priest. They demand too much of him. They are ever the judgement upon his sinfulness which is never completely done away with as long as we have to speak with human words about this thrice holy God. They pierce his heart like a sword, especially when he puts his heart into these words which his mouth is uttering. They unmask him. Not with that perhaps sublime, perhaps sometimes also masochistic self-unmasking of the poets, who yet attain in it, at bottom, a pleasurable unity with themselves: ‘Look, there go I!’ The words of the priest produce that unmasking which God alone can bring about. It truly humbles us. It gives us, if we accept it in true self-denial, sober spiritual health. We could go on at great length. Always and from every point of view it would be clear that the priest is not already a poet because he is a priest. He is always more and mostly less than a poet. But having said this much, we may and indeed must acknowledge that it would be a realization of that which as yet we glimpse from afar, if a priest were also to be a poet, if a poet were allowed to be a priest, if the life of a priest and that of a poet were to intermingle and be woven one into another. With that we mean of course something more than a symbiosis between priest and poet; a priest could, for example, also be a – philatelist. There are scientists who in the morning celebrate Mass, and men like Richelieu who at midnight ‘discharge’ their Breviary obligation – for two days at a time. What we mean is that two modes of existence appeal to each other and mutually condition each other. The priesthood releases poetic existence and sets it free to attain its ultimate purpose. At the same time it discovers in the grace of poetic power a charism for its own perfection. Why the marriage of priest

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and poet would be a meaningful and happy one, we must now attempt to explain still more accurately.

IV The priest calls upon the poet. It is true that the priest does not proclaim himself and man in a merely human word; he proclaims God and the Godman in the word of God. The priest does not point to his own heart, but to the pierced heart of the Son. He says ‘Ecce homo!’ and indicates thereby not himself and his own figure, but him who alone can say who man is. But in pronouncing such divine primordial words the priest ought not to be tinkling cymbal or sounding brass (blaring loudspeaker, St Paul would perhaps say today). He should place the light of God, God himself on the altars of men’s hearts. But this light burns with the oil of our hearts, until it has consumed them … We Catholics can never be Donatists. But we are sometimes in danger, out of sheer anti-Donatism, out of sheer Objectivism, of forgetting an important Catholic truth: in spite of everything institutional, in spite of every opus operatum, in spite of every objective word, it is the Saints who sustain the Church. To say this does not mean to attempt to overthrow God and his indestructible power and might. For it is he who gives this holiness to the Saints. He has said that his Church will always be the holy Church, the Church of Saints. And this holiness, the glowing heart, selfless dedication, the heroic throwing away of life, the divine impatience, the dark night of mystical suffering, the smiling love for a poor brother – all these glories of the Church are no less important, no less constitutive of her reality than the infallible truth of the divine word and the objective holiness of the sacraments. In fact, all these ‘objective’ realities are in the last analysis only there for the purpose of bringing into and maintaining in being the subjectivity of happily loving hearts. On the last day, out of all this objective reality, only that will be gathered into the eternal barns of God which entered into living hearts: truth and love, and both of these in the way that they are realized, appropriated, lived. Not love as a demand and a law: love only as happiness. Not the truth in propositions and dogmas, in umbris et imaginibus; the most intimate truth of deified hearts. God has promised to this Church of the latter days not only that error will never overcome it. He has given the same promise to the Church of Jesus Christ also as regards that love which preserves the ultimate truths. The consequence of the thoughts we have indicated, and which would have to be accurately developed, is this: the priestly word demands of the

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priest – however much it is God’s and not his – that he should speak it through his existence. It would be too little if one were to evaluate this statement in a merely moralizing way as a ‘suitable’ obligation of the priest. Certainly, one can fix one’s attention exclusively upon the abstract essence of a ‘truth revealed by God’ and of a sacrament as a sign of grace effective ex opere operato. One could then think: the existential realization of what is proclaimed and of what is accomplished in the sacrament could after all be absent in the priest; it constitutes only one obligation, though a clear one, from God; the truth, however, still remains true, and the sacrament is still effective in its recipient. This anti-Donatist reference to the validity of the sacraments and of the truth in the priest who is unworthy as an individual is in itself correct. But it overlooks the fact that the individual, perhaps sinful, priest always speaks and acts in the name of the Church. He always has the Church as a whole behind him. He always lives and acts within her sphere of existence. What then: would it also be a matter of indifference for preaching and the sacraments if the Church as a whole were to fail in love and holiness? An Augustine would never have agreed with that. It can of course be objected that a proposition does not become false because it is stated by someone who does not believe it and who does not realize it in his own existence. But would it in all cases also remain a witness to the truth with a claim to credence, if the real bearer of this truth, who is always much greater than the individual priest, has existentially abandoned it? That is not possible. Moreover, it is not a matter of just any kind of truth here. It is a matter of ultimate, eschatological truth: the truth of an ultimate self-revelation of God. In it God lavishes himself. How can he risk manifesting this truth without damage to his ultimate glory? In the omnipotence of his grace God has pre-destined the freedom of men and of the Church as a whole really to accept his truth, God’s love itself, in an equally loving way. (To be theologically exact, one would have to speak of praedestinatio formalis.) No, one can no longer say it is ‘in itself ’ a matter of indifference to the truth of the word, whether it is proclaimed in this way or in that: by one who has himself accepted it, or by another. It is after all the truth of God’s love as proffered that this word is proclaiming, and really nothing else! What follows? The real bearer of the proclamation of the word is the Church. She is always the holy Church. Because of her holiness she is placed in the infallibility of God’s grace, which yet leaves human freedom untouched, which indeed first allows it to be itself. The word of the Church, however, is the offer of love; it is the truth of the love of God as free and utterly self-giving. For this reason one is entitled to say that this word must

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be spoken in love, in a loving existential acceptance. This word can be entrusted to God only to the loving and holy bride of his Christ. But this necessity is not simply transferable to the individual who in the Church and on her behalf, speaks the word which tears open the heart of God like a spear. This remains undoubtedly the case. The individual is not, by the mere fact of being the priestly herald of this word, predestined to the salvation of love. He can pass on the amply filled word, the vessel of divine love, with an empty heart. But here we discover the deeper, inner reason for the duty of the priest to accomplish in faith and love the word of God that he speaks, and to proclaim it in this way. He is not expressing his own existence when he preaches the word of God. But he must express the word of God with his Christian existence. More precisely, the priest ought to do this, because the Church must do it. The priest ought to bear witness to the word of God by showing that he is himself possessed by the Spirit of God, and that the dynamism of this Spirit – as St Paul says – effectively operates in his own life. The word of God in the mouth of the priest wants therefore, if it is to be spoken rightly, to absorb and subject to itself the life of the priestly individual. It wants to be made manifest in him. But then it calls upon the whole man and lays claim to him with everything that is his. Then the herald of the word ‘gesticulates’ (a word of Kierkegaard’s) with his whole existence. He strives only to communicate God’s word like a faithful messenger. But if he really does this, then this will fill and consume his whole humanity which, in so far as it is redeemed, represents all that he preaches. The priest necessarily speaks about man from the standpoint of a man. This is not his first and last, not his proper word. But he must say this word as well, if he is to proclaim the word of God, which became flesh, as it wants to be and must be proclaimed. But what man is there who can utter himself? Who from a man’s standpoint can speak about man in a correct and appropriate way? Who has at his command in concentrated form (verdichtet) the full, primordial words of mankind? Who is capable of calling upon another man in such a way that he is roused in his inmost being, which he often does not know himself? Who can get through to the centre of a heart that may be lost and sinful – and yet must be reached if it is to attain redemption? Who can tell man his ambiguity in such a way that he perceives it? Who can do this, if not the poet? How too could God’s answer be heard to the question which man himself is, if this question itself is only half or not at all experienced and suffered and lifted up to the light of the poetic word? Only a Protestant and a theologian of the most extreme dialectical obscurity could maintain that the divine, grace, redemption, and our new freedom, light and the love of

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God remain so much in the beyond that one can experience nothing at all of them in this world; that on the contrary all human discourse witnesses to the word and to the reality of God only by its character of absolute paradox. But grace is here. It is present wherever we are. It can always indeed be seen by the eye of faith and be expressed by the word of the message. But it must also be really said, it cannot be simply shrouded in silence. That is why grace appears unfailingly in the fact that it lays claim to man and his powers, his thinking and loving. That is why too the light of grace shines also by burning the oil of this world. Everything in man should enter into the service of the divine life of grace. Must not he also, who is capable of uttering man and by his utterance of calling up man and his powers and of leading him to himself in knowledge and action, must not the poet render his service to grace and its revelation in the word of God? In fact, was not the herald of revelation, who touched the heart of man with his message, in the proper sense a poet? We must not maintain that all texts of sacred Scripture are poetry. That would not be true, if the word poetry is to be allowed to retain its usual sense. The word of God in its descent to the level of the human word has entered also those spheres where the laboured, humble, daily word dwells. One could adapt an old adage of the Fathers, and say that it had to assume everything which needed redemption. But daily life also forms a part of man, in which he effaces himself in all humility. The weariness of the small hours, in which man is banished from himself without being fully aware of his pitiable forlornness, is part of him. Therefore the word which he speaks in this his situation also forms a part of man as needing and meriting redemption. And for that reason the word of God has assumed this human word also. For all its truth and dignity, it can enter into the kenosis of the human word, into its baseness and banality. The word of God too can take on the form of a slave and be found as a human word of the street; simple, without pretension, almost worldly wise. In the Old Testament it can speak of the insoluble question and of the suffering of a man who has no answer. It can formulate counsels with the aged shrewdness of a very earthly experience of life. It can speak in the laboriously erudite language of theology. No, thank God, not every word of Scripture is poetry. Thank God, we say, because we are not all, and not all the time poets. Yet the word of God should be able to find us always and be able to find each one of us. The word of God has no need to confine itself to calling into its kingdom only noble words. One could apply also to Scripture the words of St Paul, and say to human words what St Paul says to the Corinthians who had become Christians: ‘Consider your calling, words of men! Not many of you are

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wise in the worldly sense, not many powerful, not many well born. No, what among you in the world is considered foolish, God has chosen so as to shame wise words; weak words, tired and old words, faded and worn out in everyday use. The words which are nothing, these God has chosen – in order to confound poetry. For no earthly word is to have any ground for boasting before God …’ Yet on the other hand what is poor has no special privilege before God either. The words of daily life are not worthy of the Kingdom of God's word merely because they are poor and tired and have, as it were, run far away from their first origin. God has also called what is lofty and good, what is noble and splendid. Everything has been called to its salvation in Christ. The ability of speaking primordial words in poetic form, of saying words as glorious as on the first day, the word of the poet too is called into the glory and light of the divine word. In truth, is the hymn to charity which St Paul sings, not a poem? Must it not be ranked, even from a purely human point of view, with the most splendid words ever spoken by man? Anyone who does not feel the Parable of the Prodigal Son to be wonderful poetry understands nothing about poetry. At the most he can plead in excuse – with justification – that the tears he shed in hearing this read caused him to forget that the words which so touched his heart were also poetry. So humble was the grace of repentance that it made use of human poetry in discreet silence, in order to be effective. Is not the historical account of the first beginnings of the world and of humanity, and of the blessed state of innocence and the origin of sin also sheer poetry? Would this account not have been understood much better if men’s hearts had preserved a little more sensitivity for the lofty poetry of it? Can this account not express the historical truth incomparably better than if a newspaper reporter had recounted the first beginnings? Is it necessary, in this connection, to praise the psalms? Is it necessary to call upon passages in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament or upon the highpriestly prayer of the Lord to demonstrate that poetry is found wherever the word of God itself utters its most profound words? Has it not remained so? Perhaps it has not always been completely fulfilled, because everything on earth, even in the Church, remains partial until what is perfect appears. Yet it has been so. Are the verses of Thomas Aquinas at their most successful merely the putting into verses of something he says more clearly and more accurately in the articles of the Summa? Or do they not say, if not ‘more’ at least more originally, more pregnantly, and in this sense more truly, what those articles say? Is St Augustine in his ‘Confessions’, are John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Newman in his sermons and verses, Thomas of Celano in his Dies Irae, Angelus Silesius, Dante, Brentano,

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Annette von Droste in many of her strophes, Luίs de Leόn and many, many others, poets or are they not? Are they merely poets as well? Have they just put incidentally and retrospectively into verse or some other artificial form of so-called poetry what can equally well – if one is not so poetically sentimental – and even more clearly and accurately be said in ‘prose’? Or is their poetic word more original and comprehensive, more alive than that of those theologians who are proud of the fact of not being poets? Yes, is it not time that we asked: what has become of the times when the great theologians also wrote hymns? When they could write like Ignatius of Antioch, compose poems like Methodius of Olympus, be carried away in hymnody like Adam of St Victor, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas? What has become of those times? Has theology become more perfect because theologians have become prosaic? This remains true: wherever the word of God utters the sublime and pours it into the depths of the human heart, there too a human poetic word is to be found. And the priest calls upon the poet, that the poet’s primordial words may become consecrated vessels of the divine word, in which the priest effectively proclaims the word of God.

V The poet calls upon the priest. The primordial words which the poet speaks are words of longing. They say something in images, intuitive, concrete. But it is the concrete individual which points beyond itself, the near which suggests the distant. The words of the poet are like gates, good and strong, clear and sure. But they are gates into infinity, gates into the incomprehensible. They call upon that which has no name. They stretch out towards what cannot be grasped. They are acts of faith in the spirit and in eternity; acts of hope for a fulfilment which they can never give themselves; acts of love for unknown goods. Art, real art, is always more than just that. If ever art is pursued exclusively for the sake of the aesthetic, it ceases to be art. It sinks down to the level of a poisonous narcotic banishing the fear of existence But that something more which belongs to it and from which it lives cannot come to art from itself. The openness to infinity which constitutes art does not itself give the infinite, it does not bring and contain the infinite. The poet is driven forward by the transcendence of the spirit. He has already been overpowered secretly and quite unknown to himself by the longing which the grace of the Holy Spirit has implanted in the human heart. So he speaks words of longing even when he speaks of the flowers and of the love of two human hearts. His words of nostalgia are stretched out in longing for an

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unsurpassable fulfilment, for perfect love, for the definitive transfiguration of all reality. His word therefore calls up another word: the word which makes a response to this his word. It calls up the efficacious word which satisfies that longing; the word of God. Only where the intimate faith in the possibility of such an answer has been suffocated in the hellish agony of desperate disbelief, would the human poetic word also be dead. Only there, but there absolutely: idols are dumb, as Scripture says. And theology, on the other hand, means hymn-like discourse about God. Hence the poetic word calls upon the word of God, that is the poet calls upon the priest. At first sight it might be thought that poet and priest can make contact by one of them uttering the (poetic) question, and the other the (divine) answer. Question and answer, poet and priest, would thus live from each other. But now, supposing that the priest proclaiming, the theologian in the full sense, himself becomes a poet, in order to communicate perfectly his message from above? Supposing that the poet, happily satisfied by the answer he has perceived to his question, himself tells what he hears? (How could he in any case ask the question since the birth of Christ as though he had never received an answer! Even the post-Christian unbelievers still compose poetry in such a way that one can convince them of having heard the answer.) Supposing that this happens: then – and what a blessed though rare occurrence – the priest becomes a poet and the poet becomes a priest. Such fortune is rare. If it happened often, there would be too much radiant beauty for our hearts. Even the Scriptures, the very words of God, only seldom speak in poetry. But occasionally it may happen. Then it is a grace. It proclaims that everything is redeemed. The primordial words of man, transmuted by the Spirit of God, are allowed to become words of God, because a poet has become a priest.

NOTE 1. The following pages were first written as Foreword to the poems on the priesthood which Jorge Blajot, S.J., was to publish under the title La hora sin tiempo. This occasional origin of the article, here reproduced in its original form, may perhaps excuse the fact that the author makes a direct quotation from another essay of his own which is also reprinted below (pp. 321 sqq.) and that he has left this quotation unaltered here.

Chapter 7

Poetry and the Christian

One would have to be a poet to say anything significant on the subject of ‘Poetry and the Christian’. For the poet, one may think, is certainly the first commissioned to speak on poetry. But one can console and encourage oneself when one begins to speak of this subject without being a poet, with the thought that the poet speaks to others, and hence to the non-poets, and hence that they too come of themselves into relationship to poetry and poets, and must know what poetry is about. And one can be consoled and encouraged by the truth that the believer, who is led by the Spirit of God, may judge all things, as the Apostle says. Theology as reflective faith cannot be completely alien to what fills the lofty hours of man and so must be gathered home to God as a whole, since the one seed sown by the one God must ripen in all the diverse fields of the world. We should like however to bear in mind in the course of these considerations that the starting-point is a theological one. And we should also wish to remain conscious of our limitations as a layman in the field of poetry. Hence we do not start from where one should really begin, with poetry itself, but from theological reflection on man as he should be if he wishes to be a Christian. We simply ask therefore whether such a man – unwittingly or not – looks out for something which is afterwards seen to be poetry, and is there a preparation which he must undergo to be or become a Christian, which turns out to be a receptive capacity for the poetic word.

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Before we begin, we must also note that we are not speaking of art in general, but only of the poetry of words, first of all because even this narrower field presents obscurities enough, and then because Christianity, as the religion of the word proclaimed, of faith which hears and of a sacred scripture, has a special intrinsic relationship to the word and hence cannot be without such a special relationship to the poetic word. What does Christianity demand of a man, if it is to become a reality in him? When we try to answer this question, we do not mean that Christianity, that is, the grace of God, has just to wait for the presence of these requisites in man, can only investigate whether they are there or not. Certainly not. The grace of God creates these requisites for itself, it is the cause of their being accepted; it is the gift which is God himself, and it is the gift of accepting the gift which bestows itself. But the grace of God does not only start to work for the first time, when the word of the gospel reaches man through the official preaching. It precedes this word, it prepares the heart for this word by every experience of existence which takes place in the life of man. It is, in diverse ways of course, secretly and powerfully active in what we call human culture, because humanism itself, wherever it exists, wherever it still exists, revives, proves itself true and displays itself radiantly, would not exist at all, if the secret grace of God did not anticipate its own manifestation in the word of the gospel. And hence when we enquire into the humanist presuppositions of Christianity and its preaching, the question is again praise of the grace of Christ and is not to the prejudice of its might and guardian force. The first requisite for man’s hearing the word of the gospel without misunderstanding it is that his ears should be open for the word through which the silent mystery is present. More indeed is expressed in the word of the gospel than we grasp wordlessly, than we can also master without words. For in this word comes what is incomprehensible, the nameless, silent power that rules all but is itself unruled, the immense, the abyss in which we are rooted, the overbright darkness, by which all the brightness of each day is encompassed, in a word: the abiding mystery which we call God, the beginning who is still there when we end. Now, strictly speaking, every word that is really a word, and strictly speaking, only the word has the power of naming the nameless. No doubt, the word expresses, designates and distinguishes, demarcates, defines, compares, determines and arranges. But as it does this, he who has ears, he who can see (here all the senses of the spirit are at one) experiences something totally different: the silent, mystic presence of the nameless. For that which is named is conjured up by the word. And so it advances from the encompassing, quiet and silent source from which it arises and where it remains secure; that which is described

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and distinguished by the word, by the distinctive name, combines with the other as it is distinguished from it, in the unity which comprises the comparable and akin, and so points silently back to the one origin, loftier than both, which can indeed preserve both unity and distinction in one. The word puts individual things in order, and so always points to a fundamental background order which cannot itself be ordered but remains the perpetual a priori antecedent to all order. One can miss all this when one hears words. One can be deaf to the fact that the clear spiritual sound can only be heard when one has first listened to the silence beyond each distinct sound, the silence in which all possible sounds are still gathered up and at one with each other. One can disregard one’s own comprehensive hearing, by allowing oneself to be enslaved by the individual things one hears. One can forget that the small, limited region of the determinative word lies within the vast, silent desert of the godhead. But it is this nameless being that words try to name when they speak of things that have a name; they try to conjure up the mystery when they indicate the intelligible, they try to summon up infinity when they describe and circumscribe the finite; they try to force man to allow himself to be gripped, as they grip and grasp. But man can be deaf to this eternal meaning of temporal words, and still grow proud of his stupid unreceptive hardness of heart. Hence words must be spoken to him, which are such that he recognizes that they are uttered by those whom he must take seriously, and that he sees that these words call upon him to decide whether he dismisses them as meaningless or strives to listen to them long enough in truth and love – till he understands that their whole meaning is to utter the unutterable to make the nameless mystery touch his heart gently, to make the unfathomable abyss the foundation of all that the foreground supports. Christianity needs such words; it needs practice in learning to hear such words. For all its words would be misunderstood, if they were not heard as words of the mystery, as the coming of the blessed, gripping, incomprehensibility of the holy. For they speak of God. And if God’s incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word, if it does not draw us on into his superluminous darkness, if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely, close-hugged truths into the strangeness of the night that is our real home, we have misunderstood or failed to understand the words of Christianity. For they all speak of the unknown God, who only reveals himself to give himself as the abiding mystery, and to gather home to himself all that is outside himself and clear – home to him who is the incomprehensibility of silent love. Yes, he who would hear the message of Christianity must have ears for the word where the silent mystery makes itself unmistakably heard as the foundation of existence.

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The second requisite for the hearing of the Christian message is the power to hear words which reach the heart, the centre of man. If God as the mystery wishes to enunciate himself in the words of Christian revelation, the word will aim at the whole man, because this God wishes to be the salvation of the whole man. The word seeks him out at his original unity, out of which the multiplicity of his existence grows and in which it remains comprised: the word seeks the heart of man. And hence the words of the gospel message are necessarily words of the heart: not sentimental, because that would not be heart to heart; not purely rational words of the intellect, since this can be understood merely as the faculty which grasps and masters the comprehensible, and not as the primordial faculty which allows itself to be gripped and overwhelmed by the incomprehensible mystery and is therefore called the heart for preference, if one is thinking of this primordial faculty of the inmost spirit of man. Thus, to be a Christian, one must be capable of hearing and understanding the primary words of the heart. And these are not merely concerned with man’s scientific rationality and his dispassionate pseudo-objectivity. They are not just signposts for the biological will to live and the direction of the herd-instinct. They are so to speak sacral, even sacramental: they help to effect what they signify and penetrate creatively into the primordial centre of man. This capacity and readiness must be developed by practice, so that the primary words do not glance off the shell of preoccupations, are not choked in the indifference and cynical nihilism of man, are not drowned in chatter, but like a lance piercing mortally a crucified man and opening up the sources of the spirit, may strike the inmost depths of man, killing and bringing to life, transforming, judging and graciously favouring. We must learn how to listen under the severe discipline of the spirit and with a reverent heart which longs for the ‘striking’ word, the word that really strikes us and pierces the heart, so that mortally stricken and blissfully surprised, the heart may pour the libation of the muted mystery which it concealed, into the abyss of God’s eternal mystery and so, being freed, find blessedness. The third requisite for the proper hearing of the message of the gospel, which we choose to mention here out of many others, is the power of hearing the word which unites. Words distinguish. But the ultimate words which call to the all-pervading mystery and reach the heart, are words that unite. They call to the origin and gather all into the unifying centre of the heart. Hence they reconcile, they free the individual from the isolation of his loneliness, they make the whole present in each one; they speak of one death and we taste the death of all; they voice one joy and joy itself penetrates our heart; they tell of one man and we have learned to know all men. Even when

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they speak of the dire loneliness of a man uniquely isolated, they notify the hearer of his own isolating loneliness and point to the one sorrow of all and their one task, which is that they still have to seek the true unity of many divided hearts. Thus the authentic words unite. But one must be able to hear them, otherwise one cannot understand the message of Christianity either. For it speaks only of one thing, the mystery of love, which wishes to strike home to the heart of man as judgment and salvation: a love which is not a feeling but the true substance of all reality as it strives to manifest itself in all things. Only when one can hear the secret sound of unifying love in sundering words, has one ears to perceive truly the message of Christianity. Otherwise Christianity too is only a distraction beating on the ear with a thousand words that tire and stupefy the spirit, because it is asked to accept too much that fits in nowhere, which means death to the heart, because it ultimately loves only one thing, it can hear only one thing, the word of union which is God himself, who unites without dissociating. The fourth and last requisite for the hearing of the message of the gospel which we shall mention here, is the capacity of recognizing the inexpressible mystery in the word which speaks of its bodily form, inseparable from the word but not confused with it: the power of becoming aware of the incarnational and incarnate incomprehensibility, of hearing the Word become flesh. And in fact, if we are Christians, and not just metaphysicians delving into the obscure grounds of being, we must remember that the eternal Word, where the obscure but personal un-originated origin indicated by us as ‘Father’ in the godhead expresses himself absolutely and knows himself eternally, has become flesh and dwelt among us. The Word, where the unoriginated mystery is in possession of itself, the infinite Word which has none other beside it because it alone of itself says all things that can be said: this has become flesh, and without ceasing to be all has become this particular thing, without ceasing to be always and everywhere expresses itself ‘here and now’. And therefore and since then and in this Word made flesh the word of man has become full of grace and truth. It is not just a sort of silently signaling finger, pointing away from what it delimits and illuminates into the infinite distance, where the incomprehensible dwells, silent and unapproachable: the incomprehensible itself, as grace and mercy, has entered the human word. In the region encompassed by the human word, infinity has built itself a tent, infinity itself is there in the finite. The word names and truly contains what it apparently only hints at by a silent signal, it brings on what it proclaims, it is the word which really only attains the full realization of its being in the sacramental word, where it really becomes what God’s grace made it as he uttered his eternal Word itself in the flesh of the Lord.

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And therefore the Christian must be open to the grace bestowed on the word in the Logos who became man. He must be schooled in the mystery of the Word which through the Word made flesh is the embodiment of the infinite mystery and no longer just a pointer pointing away from itself to the mystery. Deep down within the narrow earthly well of the human word the spring that flows forever gushes forth, the flames of eternal love leap out of the burning bush of the human word. This propriety of the word, in its true and full reality, is already grace in the word, and the power of hearing such a word in its true sense is already grace of faith. But ever since the human word has existed as the embodiment of the Word of God which abides forever, and ever since this Word has been heard in its permanent embodiment, there is a brightness and a secret promise in every word. In every word, the gracious incarnation of God’s own abiding Word and so of God himself can take place, and all true hearers of the word are really listening to the inmost depths of every word, to know if it becomes suddenly the word of eternal love by the very fact that it expresses man and his world. If one is to grow ever more profoundly Christian, one must never cease to practise [sic] listening for this incarnational possibility in the human word. One must have the readiness and the capacity to find permanently the whole in the individual, one must have courage for what is clear and definite, in order to become aware of the inexpressible, one must bear and love the candour of what is close at hand, to be able to reach what is far away, but still not vague and without binding force. What then is the word which the Christian must have the power, the practice and the grace to hear, if he is to be able to hear the Christian word of God’s message? He must be able to hear the word through which the silent mystery is present, he must be able to perceive the word which touches the heart in its inmost depths, he must be initiated into the human grace of hearing the word which gathers and unites and the word which in the midst of its own finite clarity is the embodiment of the eternal mystery. But what do we call such a word? It is the word of poetry; this power to hear means that one has heard the poetic word and abandoned oneself to it in humble readiness, till the ears of the spirit were opened for it and it penetrated his heart. It may be that the poetic word, if it is to be – itself, must do more than fulfil the conditions which we have described as the proprieties of the word we sought. This may be so simply because we are perhaps obliged to ascribe our four characteristics to every word of Scripture – even though in very different degrees – and not every word of Scripture can he called a poetic word in the strict sense. However that may be, it can hardly be denied that these four characteristics belong essentially to the word which claims to be

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of poetic rank and dignity. And more we need not be able to say here. And so it is true that the capacity and the practice of perceiving the poetic word is a presupposition of hearing the word of God. No doubt grace also creates this presupposition for itself, and no doubt there are many men whose ear and heart are open for the seminal poetry of eternal existence only in the Christian message itself. But this does not alter the basic truth we have arrived at, that the poetic word and the poetic ear are so much part of man that if this essential power were really lost to the heart, man could no longer hear the word of God in the word of man. In its inmost essence, the poetic is a prerequisite for Christianity. It cannot be objected that there are enough true Christians who have no truck with the Muses. The artistic endowments of Christians can vary: not every Christian who can find the four aforesaid characteristics in large measure in the Christian word, is thereby a great poet. He need not even have much understanding of poetry. All this is possible, because he may lack other faculties which the poet and those open to poetry possess. But if the poetic word evokes and presents the eternal mystery which is behind expressible reality and in its deepest depths, if it speaks of individual things in such a way that all is gathered and condensed in it, if it is a word which goes to the heart, or if, without being a poetic word, it conjures up the inexpressible in its utterance, if it fascinates and sets free, if it does not speak about something but creates in its utterance what it calls: can a man be fundamentally unreceptive to this word and still be a Christian? He is perhaps almost incapable of experiencing this poetic word except where it is more than mere human poetry, in which man speaks from his own heart of what he is, and in which as he speaks he hearkens to the murmur of the world. He can perhaps only hear the poetry of existence in the word in which it is uttered by God himself in his own words. But even then man hears and utters words in which the most secret essence of the poetic word still lives and works or is surpassed. In any case, poetry is one way of training oneself to hear the word of life, and again, when a man learns to hear truly the word of the gospel in the depths of his heart, as the word which God himself bestows, he begins to be a man who can no longer be totally unreceptive to every poetic word. What does this mean for us today? (a) Poetry is necessary. All that can be said of humanism in general holds good for poetry, as a work creatively produced and creatively received. In periods when humanism and poetry seem to be dying, buried under the achievements of technological skill and suffocated by the chatter of the masses, Christianity must defend human culture and the poetic word. They live and die together for the simple reason that humanism, which is also

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poetic, can never be separated from Christianity, though they are not the same thing. Humanism too lives by the grace of Christ, and the Christian thing contains the human as an essential element within its own being, though only part of it. If it is true that the message of the gospel will not perish till the end of time, then our faith is also true, that there will always be men whose hearts will be open to the inexpressible mystery which is love, become flesh in the word of man, which gathers and unites all. If such a word is promised perpetual struggle, amid dangers unrelenting in their terrors, but likewise abiding victory in victorious abiding to the end, then the poetic word is also promised ever new victories in endless struggle. The poetic word will never fail, because it grows out of the divine word which bears within it the inmost essence of the poetic word. We Christians must love and fight for the poetic word, because we must defend what is human, since God himself has assumed it into his eternal reality. There is no way of deducing a formula from this essential propriety of Christianity, which will tell us exactly what the poetic element, which we can never renounce, must look like. Man undergoes the changes of history and so does his poetry. And no one need fear history less than the Christian, who must take history more seriously than anyone else, since it bears his eternity in its bosom. And hence the Christian, when he acclaims the perpetuity of human culture and so of poetry, can never make his homage go only to the poetry of yesterday and the day before. He will wish the poet to say frankly what he finds in us, and to divine what the future brings, so that he may be the poet of his own new age, of its pain, of its happiness, of its tasks, its death and of eternal life. Here too there is only one way for us to be conservative if we are Christians. We must go to the Mass of life as we go to the Mass of the altar, and count the solemn memory of our origin and our past among the essential components of our existence – but in such a way, that we go therein to meet the unique future that calls us, knowing that God’s future is our origin. (b) One can of course be a good fellow and a good Christian in the commonplace sense of the term and still be a miserable poet. But really great Christianity and really great poetry have an inner kinship. They are certainly not the same thing. Man’s question and God’s answer are not the same thing. But great poetry only exists where man radically faces what he is. In doing so, he may be entangled in guilt, perversity, hatred of self and diabolical pride, he may see himself as a sinner and identify himself with his sin. But even so, he is more exposed to the happy danger of meeting God, than the narrow-minded Philistine who always skirts cautiously the chasms of existence, to stay on the superficial level where one is never faced with doubts – nor with God. And hence the question of what is the proper

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educational reading for the immature is again an important matter to be discussed on its own merits. But the mature Christian will welcome all really great poetry openly and without embarrassment, reverently and with a love that is perhaps grieved and compassionate: because its subject is man, man redeemed or in need of redemption and capable of redemption, and so in any case it takes us beyond the two-legged creature which pre-occupies us only too often and too long in our everyday life, a creature somewhat cleverer than the beasts and therefore less certain of himself. The more deeply great poetry leads man into the abysses which are the foundation of his being, the more surely it forces him to face those dark and mysterious acts of human self-realization, which are shrouded in the fundamental ambiguity in which man cannot certainly say if he saved [sic] or lost. It is no accident, but in the nature of things, that great human poetry is obscure, and mostly dismisses us with our question unanswered, as to whether it was the mystery of grace or of perdition that was played out and described in it. And how else could it be? Poetry must speak of the concrete, it cannot take abstract principles and make them dance like puppets. But the individual and the concrete is a mystery which will only be unveiled by the judgment, which is God’s and God’s alone, but which the poet presents as mystery. Hence his poetry cannot be so simply and clearly edifying as some bad pedagogues would have it be, for the sake of their sheltered pupils. If we are not Manicheans, we know as Christians that really great guilt is terrible, because it is great and because it is guilt, but that it can only be great because some very great human qualities have found themselves and come to light in it – because evil as such is nothing. We recognize that God suffers sin to exist and be great and powerful in this world, and hence that it is not so easy to confine the great types of humanity to the saints. We Christians, as the Apostle says, cannot go out of the world, but must have fellowship with unbelievers and lechers (1 Cor 5.1-15), though not of course such as we have with our brothers in the faith. When then we come upon real poetry, and not the sort that parades empty unbelief and immorality under the pretext of writing poetry, it is not only not forbidden it is even imperative that we should take it seriously and carefully, even though it does not conform to the moral standards of Christianity, and we have not to pass judgment on ‘those that are outside’. There is such a thing as anonymous Christianity. There are men who merely think that they are not Christians, but who are in the grace of God. And hence there is an anonymous humanism inspired by grace, which thinks that it is no more than human. We Christians can understand it, better than it does itself. When we affirm as a doctrine of faith that human morality even in the natural sphere needs the grace of God to be steadfast in its great

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task, we recognize as Christians that such humanism, wherever it displays its true visage and wherever it exists, even outside professed Christianity, is a gift of the grace of God and a tribute to the redemption, even though as yet it knows nothing of this. Why then should we not love it? To pass it by indifferently would be to despise the grace of God. (c) At one time writing and printing were laborious, time-consuming and costly. Writing and printing were confined to what was to some extent important. Today the book and the printed sheet are comparatively cheap compared to the rest of the cost of living. A thing unknown as late as the eighteenth century, there exists today not merely a copious literature to satisfy the needs of technology, science and society but a printed record of all the foolish and empty chatter which inevitably fills the daily round. We have a literature which is no more than talk at the street corners of everyday life, just printed gossip, mostly with illustrations. Our reactions to these productions should be just the proper behaviour of Christians with regard to the talk and chatter of everyday life. The Christian will distinguish the banalities of everyday life from the lofty and sacred utterance of poetry, and preserve this distinction of rank sensitively and strictly and try to educate others to this discernment of spirits. He will keep everyday life in its place, even when it is put down in print, and tolerate it within its proper bounds, because the Christian knows that ordinary life can and must go on. And he will fully recognize that the serenely gay, the redeemed, the frankly joyful, has its place in great poetry. He will not think that it only begins when guilt and distress, tragedy and dire torments come upon men. For the Christian can be resolved to recognize that an ultimate seriousness can be simple, relaxed, sweet and joyful, in the joyous seriousness of the children of God. He knows that the blessed freedom of heaven is really the only serious thing, much more serious than hell. Poetry and the Christian. We have really said very little about this lofty theme. But if what we have said has achieved only one thing: if it has aroused or strengthened, in the Christian and especially in the Christian educator, a sense of responsibility for poetry and its meaning, we have done enough. How far the grace of God has gained mastery over us we cannot tell directly, because it is in itself invisible and intangible. Apart from having confident faith, there is practically only one thing that we can do here: it is to ask ourselves how far we have become men. One way, though not the only way, of knowing this is to see whether our ears are opened, to hear with love the word of poetry. And hence the question of how we stand with regard to poetry is a very serious and strictly Christian question, and one which merges in the question of man’s salvation.

Chapter 8

The task of the writer in relation to Christian living

The essay which follows is concerned with the role of the creative writer or author. It is permissible to include a discussion of this subject in the present volume only to the extent that we are treating of it strictly from the standpoint of the theologian as such, for certainly, apart from a specialised knowledge of theology, we have no other qualifications to make judgments in this field. If therefore the theologian is asked for his special views on the subject of creative writers and authors then what he has to say will naturally fall under the heading ‘“Authorship” and Christian Living’.

I The basic thesis which we have initially to state and to develop here is expressed in the following simple proposition: the author as such stands under the summons of Christ in grace, and his Christianity must be conditioned by this fact. Authorship as a human activity has a special Christian relevance of its own.

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Such a proposition may seem abrupt and enigmatic in the extreme, and for this reason certain introductory remarks may be permitted, though admittedly these are incapable of solving all the problems raised in this thesis.1 Thus we are in a position to set out our thesis in this manner because and to the extent that every man is in a true and decisive sense (even though it may be not in a full and adequate one) ‘Christian’. In other words he has been summoned by Christ and has already taken up a permanent attitude in response to this summons. Of course, there must be differences in the way a statement of this sort is applied to particular cases. But the statement that every author is ‘Christian’ and is so precisely as such is not necessarily or immediately proved false by the assertion that many men are not Christians at all in any sense, and could not therefore become so merely by the fact of being authors. What is being asserted here is not that every man intends to be a Christian, or that every man knows explicitly or in a way that could be formulated propositionally that he is such, still less that every man is a member of the visible Church. But it has to be recognised that human existence as such is inevitably and inescapably subject to certain transcendent conditions or ‘existentials’, such that, while they may indeed be denied, they do not thereby cease to be so, but simply remain in force even though they are denied and rejected, and continue to be in force whether we recognise them consciously or not, whether we accept them or protest against them. And once this is realised then Christianity itself will, in a radical sense be numbered among these ‘existentials’, and will not be assigned to the category of those ordinary conditions of life (as for instance one’s calling as a citizen, the fact that one is or is not staying at some particular place, etc.) which can be accepted or refused according to the individual concerned wishes. When, therefore, we have to draw a general distinction between the chance circumstances which affect human living on the one hand and the enduring existentials which condition it on the other, then the state of being summoned by the grace of Christ belongs to the enduring existentials which apply absolutely to every man. He can, in fact, be baptised or unbaptised. He can belong in a visible and sociological sense to the Catholic Church or not. Only in this sense and to this extent does Christianity also belong to the chance circumstances of human life, and these factors in Christian existence, freely ordained by God and either accepted or effectively denied by man, must not be underestimated as though they were insignificant or inessential (though at this point we are in no position to treat of their significance for salvation). But all this makes no difference to one essential fact: no man can prevent the fact that he is loved by God with the absolute and unreserved self-offering of the innermost depths of God’s own triune life. No man can

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prevent the fact that he is redeemed, that God has willed the incarnation of the eternal Logos to take effect in his existence. No man can escape the fact – even when his whole life is one great protest against and denial of it – that the grace of God is applied to him permanently and enduringly, and that thereby his existence in all its dimensions is constantly open to the infinite. He cannot escape from the fact that grace is present to him at least as something that appeals to, empowers and invites him, and that, in virtue of this, everything in his life is included in a self-transcendence in which his own free decision is already forseen [sic] and provided for. He cannot escape from the fact that the whole of human existence rests upon a single unique basis, namely the immeasurable depths of that mystery which is absolute love. This reality may be received into man’s conscious awareness, may be believed in and loved, or it may not. It remains a reality, and its purpose is, even when it is denied, to support the life of man from within. It wells up from the depths of man’s heart in a thousand secret ways, penetrating into all spheres of his life. It makes him restless; makes him doubt whether existence is really finite and restricted to this present world, fills him with a sense of the immeasurability of that claim which can only be fulfilled by the infinity of God. It renders all the experiences which he makes of himself lead on to a further dimension beyond themselves. It reveals further and deeper levels of significance in them and makes them open to the ineffable and the incomprehensible. Man cannot rest. He can no longer be content to take his own finitude as something that is obvious. In the very moment that he becomes conscious of it the movement which carries him on to the incomprehensible, the fall into the infinite depths, is already taking place. Man may protest against this, may seek to suppress it, may employ the most subtle devices in order to hush it up. Even then he is still involved with it, even then it is still there. It (considered as that which he experiences in the very act of fleeing from it) is the ineffable mystery of which we Christians say without embarrassment and almost facilely, as of something that is obvious, that it is not something that repels us but something that is near, protecting, forgiving, ‘giving’ of itself and forgiving of us. In one word: no man can escape the fact that he is ‘Christian’ in this all important sense of being summoned by God, and in the sense that however secret his acceptance of the claims made upon his existence may be, in accepting them he accepts this claim, which permeates his whole existence: the claim that in accepting them he is, in a true sense, a Christian – an anonymous Christian, perhaps, a Christian who denies his own Christianity, a Christian who has not the least suspicion of the significance of what has

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been achieved in him, a Christian who is constantly running away from himself, one who betrays the fact that he is a Christian in spite of himself, but still precisely a Christian. And even in cases in which an individual becomes a Christian in the usual sense of the term all that is achieved in this (though admittedly this in itself is a miracle of blessing) is that someone accepts in faith what and who he in any case is, and that this loving acceptance is ‘manifested’ at the historical and social level in the sacramental sign and in the fact that he belongs to the community of those who can say in a definitive sense what they both are and will to be, and what all others too are, even though they may outwardly deny it. It is in the light of this, then, that we say that the author as such is called by Christ, and has to be a Christian. First it must be recognised that this proposition is not simply a self-evident one. There are indeed realities pertaining to the life of man, without which he cannot exist at all, yet which as such have nothing specifically Christian in them, not even in that sense which we have already adverted to of a Christianity that is still concealed and anonymous. The laws of physics and biology, for instance, of their very nature point to such realities, which in themselves are still at the preChristian level and ‘neutral’. But the first thing to be recognised is that every human act of writing, just as every human act of speaking, is a free act on man’s part, and as such has a moral relevance which is prior to, and independent of the actual content of what is being said. For in such an act, man is exercising control over himself, his spirit, his freedom, and directing himself towards a specific object; he addresses his fellow man indisputably as human even in those cases – indeed precisely in those cases – in which he requires the other to concentrate his attention exclusively upon a limited and no longer fully human subject matter. But in the very act of saying or writing something, or alternatively of listening to or reading something, our specifically human qualities are engaged at least in virtue of the formal quality of the process, and so the process in itself acquires a moral relevance. There are several different levels in the responsibility which a speaker assumes for the content of what he says. He is responsible for ensuring that what he says agrees with his own convictions as the speaker (truthfulness). He is responsible for making sincere efforts to ensure that his actual statement corresponds to the reality which it is intended to designate (truth). He is responsible for the effect which he foresees that his statement will make upon those who hear it, those to whom it is addressed. He is responsible for ensuring that his statement is conveyed in the appropriate manner and measure having regard to the general intellectual environment of speaker

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and hearer alike. He is responsible for doing his utmost to make sure that what he says can be understood and assimilated (this is a duty of love which he owes to the individual, and of respect which he owes to the community in its intellectual and social aspects). He is responsible as a matter of duty for saying what needs to be said because it is urgently relevant and should be said in the here and now. This responsibility is laid upon those who put themselves forward to speak in public life, and who therefore must speak (each according to his particular opportunities and abilities and according to the position he occupies) in order to make their contribution to the general debate considered as a whole, and in the manner appropriate to this kind of situation (even though in this context it is clearly quite impossible to calculate or to foresee what the effect of the word will be, and so the free exercise of the mind leads ultimately to an outcome over which there is no control and the deed returns at last upon the doer’s head as that which he has to endure). The mere fact that his statements have this kind of moral relevance of itself means that the author as such is already drawn into the sphere of the Christian, and there are two basic reasons for this. First it must be remembered that every act, even one which is in the first instance made to conform merely to the norms of natural morality and the natural law, and which is judged by Christendom to be so conformed, is preserved and protected in its essential ‘rightness’ (its conformity to natural norms), and this in itself gives it a salvific import (at least in a negative sense). It means that the doing of it has an effect upon human existence as a whole, and in this context of the totality of human existence it can only be done aright with the help of God. This help in turn can safely be regarded as a grace bestowed by Christ. The second basic reason is that in the order of salvation as it actually exists in practice and in the concrete every human act which is morally relevant possesses (for reasons which cannot be gone into in greater detail here), a certain intrinsic salvific power within itself such that through it the doer either becomes one with God and filled with his grace, or else guilty in his sight. In other words every such act constitutes a response, either affirmative or negative, to Christianity as such, even though the Christianity involved here may be of the unacknowledged and unexplicit kind with which every human being is inescapably confronted. The moment the author makes man the subject of his assertions he ipso facto passes beyond the limits of the purely natural sciences and the conclusions which they are capable of yielding, and becomes a philosopher, a poet, a visionary, a sage, a committed believer or a prophet. When he takes man as his subject and formulates propositions about him, makes

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him the theme of his argument as a whole, produces definitions of him or preliminary statements about him, then the very content of what he is asserting as an author necessarily means that he is answering either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to Christianity itself. For a factor which must always be borne in mind is that human nature is realised in a complex multitude of created individuals, and it belongs precisely and by definition to the Catholic attitude towards humanity as a whole that it maintains unreservedly, and accords full value to this complexity and multiplicity in mankind. And it is precisely this multiplicity that makes it possible in speaking about man to assert something which applies only to a part of humanity and not to the whole. In themselves, therefore, statements of this kind are still neutral in content, and, from the ideological aspect, it makes no difference whether they are accepted or denied. But if a part of a given reality really is a part, and if there is indeed a unity in human existence whether actual or, in a true sense, potential, such that this unity constitutes either a fact to be recognised or a goal to be striven for, and if this single all-embracing unity is truly a Christian unity, then it follows that the part of the reality as such (i.e. as a single ‘subdivision’ of it, for this is an essential specification of what it means to be a part, even if it is not one which is necessarily adverted to) has an objective bearing upon the Christianity inherent in the whole. For this reason such a statement about a part of reality is constantly open to further supplementation when the vision of the whole is arrived at. In that sense the partial statement is already Christian at least in an ‘adventist’ sense, in the sense namely that it is capable of bringing the one who makes it to the Christianity of the whole. Alternatively, a rejection of this openness is a denial of that Christianity which is already present at least in an implicit and anonymous sense in the whole, and is already making its impact through the partial statement about humanity. This inescapably Christian dimension in the statements which a human author makes, only really achieves its full force when he forms the intention of isolating and throwing into relief the essential totality of human existence by pointing to the causes which constitute it as one and whole. It can be the case that in pursuing this aim he never arrives at this essential wholeness of humanity at all, and that through no fault of his own, but where and to the extent that he intends to make or actually makes the all-embracing statement about existence, he speaks as a Christian, and either appeals to or denies the Christian message. The Christianity in his statement can be an anonymous Christianity, but it is Christian for all that. He may not understand the full significance of what he is saying. He may be saying more than he intended (as, for instance, if his message is one of love of neighbour

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and so of fulfilment of the law. This message may be Christian in an Old Testament sense, an expression of adoration for the unknown God. He may perhaps in some dumb and inarticulate way be proclaiming that anguished atheism which is, in reality, a sharing in the desolation of the Cross). But what is quite impossible is that this message should be of a kind that is really irrelevant to Christ. This would only be possible if he were not real. Even in cases in which Christianity is explicitly or implicitly denied, or seems to be so in the course of pursuing this aim to express existence as a totality, caution is required in coming to a judgment on this. A statement such as this, which sounds like a denial and perhaps actually is one, can nevertheless be the expression of a new situation for the Christian and for Christendom as a whole which is unfamiliar and which has not yet been brought under control. Such a statement can be the false or inadequate explanation and interpretation of a quest for the fulness of life which is, nevertheless, under God’s blessing, which is Christian. It can be the statement of a man who only supposes that he does not believe in God, but does in fact accept with a sort of ultimate inarticulate obedience that absolute mystery which is called God, and that mystery of his own life which is Christ. Indeed we can go further than this and add the following: in a human statement of this kind it is not mere words that are uttered, but the human reality itself which is expressed and put forward (put forward as something that is representative of the totality of being to which it belongs). For this reason it is necessarily ambiguous, since it is, in the nature of things, impossible to achieve absolute clarity or to eliminate all ambiguity in any objectifying statement of what human freedom means. Otherwise the abiding mystery of how man can exercise a free decision would finally and totally be unveiled, and this is not possible. But there are two sides to this truth. If in explaining what is meant we must still confine our attention more or less to what is actually stated in the writing, then we shall be compelled to say: this writing contains an explicit denial of Christianity, which as such is explicitly false, and constitutes a temptation and a danger. There is no need to discuss any further at this point the practical norms that should be deduced from this with regard to how far such writings and such creative work should be tolerated, disseminated or read. In this connection the following factors have to be borne in mind: It is a general principle that everything capable of producing false and evil effects depends for its survival on the existence of good. It would not be Christian at all, but rather Manichaean, to forget this in its concrete application to the conduct and attitude of Christians (though this does in fact happen all too often). For this reason, it is true to say, those theories in which Christianity is attacked,

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and which represent a real danger to it, depend for their very existence upon the fact that there are certain genuine questions which the Christians themselves have not yet sufficiently coped with, and that existential rejection of Christianity which represents a real danger to it can only derive its strength from a genuine love for a genuine reality which the Christians have not yet made their own as warmly and uncompromisingly as they should. From this it is clear and obvious that in the concrete anyone can be a ‘fine fellow’ and, in the social sense, a good Christian, while still being a wretchedly bad writer. And yet there is an intrinsic connection between a really great Christianity and really great writing. Certainly they are not to be identified one with another. Great writing is achieved only in those cases in which man achieves a radical self-confrontation, in which he realises what he himself is. But even when he does this he can indeed become ensnared in guilt, perversity, self-hatred and even demonic pride. He can confront himself as a sinner, and identify himself with this, yet even in this case he would still stand to a greater degree in that blessed peril which consists in encountering God than the narrow-minded and superficial bourgeois, who right from the first anxiously evades the imponderable factors in existence, fleeing from them into that attitude of superficiality in which there is admittedly no encounter with doubt, but no encounter with God either. Therefore for those who are still only approaching maturity the question of what sort of reading matter is suitable for their education can be a serious problem in itself. But the mature Christian must be fully and unreservedly free to explore all writings that are truly great, bringing to them an attitude of reverence and sympathetic love, even when this may entail pain for him. He will do this because such writings contain a message about man either as redeemed or else in need of redemption and capable of receiving it. And in any case such writing will give us a deeper insight into the truth than if we simply adopt that attitude of superficiality which has only too often and for too long been regarded as appropriate for so-called good Christians, an attitude namely in which man is regarded as the two-legged animal which has become somewhat craftier than the other animals and therefore less predictable than they. The further man is led by the message of great writing into the immeasurable depths upon which his existence is founded, the more he is compelled by such writing to face up to the hidden depths which a man can find within himself, depths which are dark and obscure, and which are buried in that twilight of ambiguity in which man can no longer say with any ultimate certainty whether he is in a state of grace or one of radical desolation. It is no accident, but rather inherent in the nature of the case,

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that the great creative writings of mankind are obscure, and for the most part leave us with the unanswered question of whether it is the mystery of grace or that of perdition which takes place and which is described in their pages. How indeed could it be otherwise? Creative or imaginative writing must be concerned with the concrete, and not try to manipulate abstract principles like puppets in a dance. But that which is individual and concrete is a mystery which will only be unveiled by that unique judgment which belongs to God alone, yet which the creative writer makes present in his writing as a mystery. It is not in the least necessary, therefore, that his writing should have that simplicity and clarity of structure which many bad teachers would so much like it to have in their anxiety to protect the minds of their pupils from any harm. If we are not Manichees then as Christians we recognise that a sin that is truly great is terrible indeed because it is a sin and because it is so great, but that the only possible way in which it can come to be so great is that in it much of the greatness of humanity itself is realised and revealed. For evil as such is nothing. Moreover we know that God allows sin to exist in this world, and to be great and powerful, and yet that for this very reason it is not so easy to confine ourselves to the saints when we seek to find examples in the concrete of the greatness of humanity. Moreover we recall Paul’s instruction that we Christians must not withdraw ourselves from the world, but actually can and must, in a certain sense, have fellowship (though admittedly a different kind of fellowship from that which we have with our brethren in the faith) with unbelievers and the unchaste (1 Cor 5: 9-13). And in view of all this we Christians are not only not forbidden, but positively commanded to take seriously into consideration and to familiarise ourselves with that creative writing which genuinely is such, even if it is not in conformity with the moral standards of Christianity, though admittedly here we have to distinguish this genuine creative writing from that which conveys a message of sheer unbelief and immorality under the pretence [sic] of being creative writing. And in all this we must not judge those who do not share our Christian belief. There is such a thing as a Christianity that is anonymous. There are men who merely think that they are not Christians when in reality they are so in God’s sight and under his grace. Thus it is possible for the individual to be raised to a level of human living which is already imbued with grace even though he does not realise it, and even though he supposes that he is still at the purely human level. We Christians are in a better position to understand this than one who is actually in the state to which we refer. We lay down as part of the teaching of our faith that even human morality at

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the ‘this-worldly’ level has need of the grace of God in order to be able to maintain itself in its fulness or for any length of time. It is our belief, therefore, precisely as Christians that to achieve this supreme level of human living, wherever it manifests itself in its genuine form, and even where it is found outside the limits of professed and acknowledged Christianity, is a gift of God’s grace and a fruit of the redemption itself even though the individual who has attained to this level is not himself yet aware of it. Why should we not love this exalted level of human living when we find it in such an individual? For we would actually be despising the grace of God itself if we were to remain indifferent to it.

II The second thesis, which I would present as the development and application of the first, may be stated as follows: an author can justifiably be Christian in various ways. In order to explain this thesis and to establish it I would like to attempt to enumerate the most important of these ways. In doing this I shall be using a nomenclature that is unfamiliar, and for this I apologise. Despite every effort to the contrary, I have not succeeded in avoiding this use of strange and unfamiliar designations. 1. An author can be Christian in that he is and remains one who frankly restricts himself to a limited field. By way of preliminary it should be noticed that every author is free to choose what he wishes to speak and write about. Of course this choice is, in itself, subject to moral, and therefore to Christian considerations too (since we have to render account for every idle word if it really is such). But even allowing for this, it is justifiable to write about anything which is a subject for human discussion, about the weather, therefore, the advantages of the Volkswagen, the absurdities of everyday life – everything, in short, which is an object of investigation for one or other of the particular sciences. Now when a writer takes this course his work can be genuinely human and – precisely because of this – genuinely Christian too, precisely in the modesty of its aims, in that it is restricted in this way to that which is in the immediate foreground, that which has no directly ideological relevance. The reason for this is that this very modesty implies a tacit acknowledgment of the pluralism of creaturehood, and of the fact that the ultimate unity of it remains hidden in ineffable and impenetrable mystery in God and is reserved to him alone to comprehend. It is here that a truer and more Christian ‘positivism’ than that which is now in vogue might be in place. The ‘positive’ element in such a positivism would have to be evaluated from this standpoint. For a positivism of this

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sort, which restricts itself to the apprehensible in human life, does not thereby erect itself into an absolute ideology (this would in fact be antipositivist) by claiming to be either in theory or in the concrete existing situation the only possible right and rational attitude to adopt. And provided it does not make any such claim then it is something for which the modern Christian can have full understanding. For he will understand the attitude of silence, reserve and modesty, of being slow and cautious with regard to all ‘ideological’ assertions as a sign that the statements reflecting these attitudes are genuine and of real value. He too does not like to hear God spoken of as though the speaker imagined that he had actually resolved the mystery of the divine. A Christian of this sort, therefore, does not for one moment expect that the honest positivist, the one who, in all honesty, restricts his field of discourse in this way, will always attain to God in everything that he says. Such a Christian recognises that there really is a pluralism of beings, and that these are precisely not identical with God. Taken in their formal aspect as so many particular things they have no direct reference to God at all. The most genuinely Christian way of speaking of such things, therefore, is the one in which the speaker simply and honestly remains within the limited field of discourse he has set himself, and shows himself fully and sincerely aware that it is restricted, even though he does not explicitly refer to that fact in what he says. 2. The man who is overwhelmed by questions, whose statement of his experiences takes the form of an open question. At this point attention must be drawn once more to certain factors which we have already mentioned. Wherever creative writers seek to present word-pictures of man as he is there will always be some whose presentation of him is based upon his radical insufficiency and utter insecurity, who represent man as a question to which there is no answer. A writer of this kind will do this without giving the positive answer to this question which Christianity supplies. For him man constitutes a problem which is insoluble. He will say that it has not been given to him to achieve anything more, that as a creative writer he can put into words only what he experiences, and that he is no preacher or theologian. Can an author write in this vein? Can he take this approach and actually in doing so be a Christian? For our present purpose we are abstracting from the special question (which must, however, be taken seriously) of how far statements of this kind can be out of place for specific circles of readers for whom they might be regarded as morally perverted and therefore unChristian. This might be argued on the grounds that these particular readers will predictably be drawn into the false opinion that the particular problem which this author has left unsolved in the here and now

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is insoluble in itself, that there is no solution to it which the reader could in his own right supply in response to the question put to him. Here we are rather considering the question that has been raised in itself, in the absolute. If the creative writer or thinker who raises this question and leaves it unanswered believes, or intends to assert, that there is no answer, that man constitutes the absurdity of a question launched into the void of nothingness, then he is in error, and an answer of this kind (whether taken in this sense by him or by others) is false or unChristian. Admittedly there is a further question which may be raised in such a case, that namely of whether the very fact of posing the question and of calling man himself in question in this radical sense cannot have a salutary effect upon the complacent and the superficial (a type which is extremely common even among ‘believing’ Christians) by shaking them out of their complacency in such a way that they can no longer be soothed and quietened by the specious solutions offered by well-meaning ‘average’ Christians. And then in such a case we could go on to ask a second question, namely whether what is ostensibly a denial that there is any solution to the problem of man, a denial which is more or less expressed as a theory, does not in fact proceed from a deeper, although unexpressed acceptance of the solution constituted by the mystery of the forgiving God, a solution which would be present in the creative writer himself and in his basic attitude – the more so since, in cases of genuine creative inspiration, this basic attitude and impulse often go far beyond the writer’s own conscious intuitions. At all events it is often the case that the Christian reader can take the question, with all the radical despair which it involves, in a way that conduces to his own salvation. He can take it as a summons to him to call up the ultimate resources of faith within him, which he would otherwise never have brought to bear. But there are cases in which the question is genuinely left open, and then it should not be rejected on the grounds that such questions should never be asked unless the answer to them is supplied. Every piece of creative writing and every philosophical position is in fact only one element in a continuous and incessant discussion carried on among men. And it is impossible for the whole discussion to stand revealed in any one such element taken in isolation. What is true of human life as a whole applies in this instance too: the experience of each particular moment must remain open to the greater breadth and fulness of life as a whole. No one moment can be the measure of its own value, nor have we any right to expect of it that it should contain the whole of life within itself. It is a necessary fact of creaturely existence, and one which Christians have to accept, that the moment of fear is not the moment of love, that of desolation is not ipso facto

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that of consolation, that of death is not also and in itself that of resurrection. He who, whether in life or in creative writing, is unwilling to endure this fact and to bear with it constantly experiences a ‘watering down’ of life’s due fulness. For such a one seizes life before it is ready for him, so that for him it is always flat and insipid. Nothing in it has come to the full ripeness and maturity of its being. This is true alike of the questions which life puts to him and of the answers which it can supply. But where he is humble enough and obedient enough to bear with the question and to allow it to be completely open the answer is already present even though only in a hidden manner, even though it is still buried in silence just as even before Easter, while Christ was still on the Cross or in the grave on Good Friday, the victory of life had already been won. There is a real need for writers of the type which we are considering here, who are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the questions life puts to them; writers who state what they experience in the form of an open question. There should be such, and even as such they are Christian. 3. The writer who is a full, though anonymous Christian. We have already said that according to Catholic teaching there is a type of man who has been wholly justified in faith, hope and love, and endowed with the grace of the triune life of God, even though, so far as those ideas are concerned which well up from the innermost dynamism of his being to become the expressions of his real self, he is not a Christian and a Catholic in any explicit sense, or as incorporated into the visible society of the Church and governed by her laws. This situation is not only something that was possible in former ages, or is possible in pagan lands. It is also possible among us and in our own time. And in view of the doctrine of God’s will to save all men and of the victory of Christ over sin we have every right to assume that the case envisaged is of frequent occurrence among us. But if this is true then it is also perfectly possible to imagine that a man who has received and been touched by the ultimate reality of redemption and been endowed with the Spirit of faith and love in this way may go on to use his powers as an author to express this and to embody it in his words. And let it not be imagined that in cases in which a man does intend to express a reality of this kind about himself he is inescapably confronted by the following dilemma: either to profess himself as a fully committed member of the official Church, and to do this in some sense by a formula already prescribed by the Church as a society, or else to refrain from defining his position in any way at all. No such dilemma need necessarily apply to a man who finds himself in this situation. Of course the ideal case, both from the personal and social point of view, for such a declaration would be one in which an individual who was explicitly and consciously a Catholic and member of the Church expressed his belief

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in such a way that it was not merely theologically correct but living, actual, able to be understood and proceeding from his own personal experience and from the innermost grace with which he was endowed. But while this is true, it does not render the other case impossible, namely that precisely this Christian reality can be expressed in ways in which the individual making the statement about himself is totally unconscious in any explicit sense of the Christian significance of what he is saying. And yet in the case supposed a professed Christian can recognise in this statement the same Christianity which he himself professes, and, it may be, expressed in a more cogent and more comprehensible form than it is in merely traditional formulae which, while they may be dogmatically correct, are not really understood or able to make their full impact in the concrete existential situation. Of course statements of an anonymous Christianity of this kind can meet with indifference on our part. We can fail to recognise them as Christian at all (though in fact they are so). We can be deaf to them. Nevertheless we are in contact with authors who are Christian in this sense, and we should train our ears to be ready for statements of this kind from them. For all other considerations apart we could take over the modes of expression and style present in such statements and develop them further so as to make them express a more explicit kind of Christianity for our own salvation and that of many others. And this would fulfil an urgent need. 4. The professedly non-Catholic writer who fails to realise that his position is in fact a Catholic one. What kind of author this description is intended to designate can be deduced from what has just been said. Just as there are authors who profess themselves to be non-Christians but only suppose themselves to be such, so too there are non-Catholic authors who only suppose that their actual position is not a Catholic one. The outcome of four hundred years of division in the Christendom of the West is that we have drawn so far apart in our modes of thought and expression, in the tenour of our ideas and in our attitude and outlook that in addition to the real differences in doctrine and life which do exist between us there is also much else which we believe to be opposed to the teaching of our Church, but which in reality either does belong fully and unreservedly to Catholicism in all its breadth and fulness, or else which ought to be introduced into it. Several factors have to be borne in mind here. First let us take the case of the non-Catholic Christian whom I believe to be in good faith and justified by God’s grace. With regard to the basic tenets of the Christian faith he holds these in common with me. But what of the points in which he deviates from Catholic teaching? To the extent that he is in fact in good faith he is actually quite incapable of maintaining these with the faith that comes from the Holy

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Spirit, or with the absolute and basic decision of faith which he personally has made in his concrete existential situation. With regard to those tenets which we both have in common he does indeed do this in real fact, but with regard to the points which are in dispute between us he only seems to do so. Moreover this difference, which cannot be otherwise than real and objective, is one to which we ourselves must pay due heed. A further point for consideration is that often there is not even a real disagreement as to the actual object of belief, but rather differences in mode of expression, of perspective or outlook, or at least the difference is about something which has not been perceived, but which if it were perceived would not be denied. The implications of this cannot be developed any further at this point. But at any rate this type of Catholic author too, does exist. 5. The author who is a professed Catholic. It might seem that there is not much to be said about this type. There is, however, a great deal that might be pointed out and yet that is very difficult to express. First we should consider the explicitly Catholic author who does not pretend to be stating the revealed fulness of the divine and human reality in the name of the Church in the manner of a teacher laying down what is her official doctrine or for her members at large. He is not in any sense preaching the Church’s official message, or seeking to bring it home to men. Rather he speaks as a ‘private’ individual, as a layman. As such he is the creative writer, and at the same time always the professed believer too, who expresses the Christian reality as he himself experiences it and lives it, the gospel message as brought home and made actual in his life. The first point to be made is that there both can and must be authors who are Catholics in this explicit and professed sense too. Why indeed should there not be? Should the creative writer and author be ashamed of the gospel merely on the grounds that he does not feel himself called to preach, and because he seeks to express concrete reality and not merely abstract theory? Or is there no such thing as a Christianity that is made actual in the concrete? Or does this process of actualisation take place only in a hidden manner and at so deep a level that even the most exalted of creative writing or poetry could not conjure it up or give it expression? And if this were the case how could it continue to be preached at all? How could it be that God-given reality which is intended to permeate all dimensions of human life with forgiveness and new creation? Certainly every creative writer must say only what he really has touched upon and understood. But it must be remembered that we have been redeemed. God, and not the devil, has had the last word. And in view of this no-one [sic] should be the sort of creative writer who regards only the interior hell within man as a suitable subject for the genuine poet or author.

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Or do we, in the last analysis, still have to rely on the message of that current of creative writing that comes from the East to teach us that a man can still be a creative writer even when he is bold enough to aim at ‘edifying’ (using this term in the best biblical sense)? If we are considering statements about the specific achievements of Christianity, about forgiveness and redemption, grace and consolation, eternity and the living God, who is in no sense a figment of man’s mind, then of course these have a quality of their own that is unique. The very nature of the subject matter of such statements sets them apart from all others. For this subject matter is present only in that faith which comes as a pure grace of God. And this faith ever-present within us is hidden in the ineffable mystery of God. To this extent, therefore, every explicitly Christian statement shares in the same absolute and unique quality, as also in the same obscurity, indirectness, difficulty and sense of mystery that constantly challenges us anew, for this is unmistakably a quality of the word of faith. It is in no sense to be regretted, therefore, but rather something that is inherent in the very nature of the case, that a message of faith of this kind should come from the lips or from the pen only with the greatest hesitation and reserve, and that it should be expressed in few and modest words. In this connection one might almost say: if the theologians were more cautious and more careful in formulating their theories, and if the laity were bolder in their faith, more open and more trustful in letting the light of the creed they profess shine out, then the message explicitly pertaining to Christianity, that which emanates from God and his Church, and from the event of salvation and new life as actually achieved – that message would be more comprehensible, more penetrating and more convincing. The point which we have now reached in our considerations would be the appropriate place to speak of the author who is explicitly Christian and Catholic and is so more or less ex professo. In other words his writings are directly theological or religious in character. This, however, would constitute a new and quite distinct subject, and in order to deal with it we would have to return to the fundamentals and begin all over again. Instead of taking this course, let us put forward a third thesis, though one which, admittedly, we cannot spend any further time in establishing here. It is this: the author is wholly – and even, in the last analysis, always – susceptible of being judged and criticised by Christian standards. Such standards are not extrinsic to the special character of the author and his work, but are inherently present in them from the first. If we were explicitly to point out the implications which follow from this statement, then it would be made apparent what we meant

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by the assertion with which this study opened: the author as such stands under the grace of Christ and has to be a Christian in this sense.

NOTE 1. The concept of ‘anonymous Christianity’ is one that is very often used in contemporary theological parlance (and also in the actual conclusions arrived at in contemporary theology) in a manner in which the present author would not wish it to be taken. For a right understanding of this concept we may refer to the essay ‘Anonymous Christians’ in Theological Investigations VI, pp. 390–398.

Chapter 9

On the greatness and the plight of the Christian writer

The reader will not expect an evaluation from a theologian of Luise Rinser’s work according to the standard with which it needs to be assessed first of all: the literary one. The theologian is not competent to do so. He must say other things. And even if he stays within his own craft, he can often only say something quite general, in the hope that the reader will make their own connection with Luise Rinser’s work. So let us go right into the question! Doubtlessly, Luise Rinser’s work wants to serve humans, wants to help them to become whole [heil] and to be Christians – for her this is one and the same thing. I am not saying: this is the writer’s intention when she is at work. She has already expressly disputed such intentions, and it actually goes without saying when one considers the rank of her works. Such works do not emerge by way of an edifying or pedagogical intention. The poet creates living characters, not puppets, who recite or perform theories. But the writer’s intentionlessness does not cancel out the inherent dynamism of what is being said in the work. This statement, however, is a Christian one. And in this sense I speak about a Christian intention of the work itself. This ‘intention’ of the work itself may become

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progressively more obvious in her works and thus also more dangerous for her work as a literary statement. But right from the beginning it is basically present in her creative work, even if initially this intention is still in the process of searching for itself – that is, the knowledge of how a whole human being should be and could be becomes more clear and comprehensive only slowly; or, to be more precise, a human being who is at least determined to set off on the path towards wholeness. What an intention! If for many a ‘committed literature’ is already an abomination and betrayal of the writer’s task (even although fidelity to the writer’s own task, in whatever way it may be determined, is still a commitment, and therefore only a stupid person does not realize that s/he must inevitably commit, must engage, is condemned to this freedom), how provocative, then, must it seem to many if someone is not only committed to, or against, something, something specific – for example, against the Vietnam War, the emergency laws, the neo-Nazis, the plebeians or clerical power claims (strange that one can usually only state with clarity what one is against) – but, in fact, considers the human being as a whole and wants to say to them what they are and shall become. How tantalizingly incomprehensible for many today must be those words which are included in this intention and are in its service: order, love, hope, prayer, divine vocation [Berufung], trust, acceptance of life, God! Order that gently and firmly locates the human being; love that is more than demythologized sexuality which cynically or sceptically de-masks itself; hope that does not fade away in the face of the absurdity of life; prayer that serenely knows an addressee; God who is there – even though in the marketplace today, and even in this or that ‘Christian’ theology, one shouts that he is dead. Even more so when some critics of Rinser’s works opine they are under the impression that the one who writes such words has never gone through the Inferno of the human, because (this is the implicit, but questionable, premise of such an impression) this person is no longer in the Inferno, hence was never in it, since no one who has fallen into this abyss ever comes out again. Indeed, another, also conceivable, possibility, namely that one is both inside and outside1 the Inferno – simul iustus et peccator – is even less imaginable for them. And still less the possibility: that one could have, and is allowed to have, the right and the serene courage to live out of an imparted, not used-up, tried and tested substance of human ‘health’ (new shock!), and to unselfconsciously say that. Hence, one will grimly object: this is not for us, we are not like that; these securities are not ours. Only someone who does not know anything, who has not experienced and suffered anything can say something like that! – Has he not? How do you know? Did Luise Rinser not resist right from

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the beginning the atrocious spirit [Ungeist] of the brown [Nazi] time with much greater instinctual clarity – and to the brink of death – than many of her colleagues and critics? Is there anything that remained foreign to her of all that which belongs to the life of humans, hunger and sickness, tragic love, loneliness, distance to ecclesial-institutional Christianity, familiarity with the great thinkers/spirits [Geistern] of humanity, and the many, ‘all too many’ (who, however, she never perceives in that way), and all that which therein and beyond affects the human being? Of course, all this (as the works testify) has always been lived and suffered on a ‘level’ with differentiations. It was never simply swallowed up in the chaos of an immediate indifference which simply flows through the human being formlessly, equally substantial and insubstantial, registered but not measured and weighed. It has always already been received with a secret claim of hope that also measures despair and helplessness, experiences these, and is thus aware that they are only provisional. This preliminary decision, which can never be justified in a neutral manner but rather posits itself as one’s own ‘option fondamentale’ and as a question towards the decision of the other, and only in this way has its inner evidence, is the actual annoyance, the folly, which today embitters and irritates many. Trust arouses mistrust, and wisdom appears as childish stupidity and hope as naivety. But is that not again a prejudgement about which the critic should be critical, that is, critical towards himself? Be it so, it will be said, we are not interested in the person, we criticize the work, namely its Christianity. This Christianity is too ‘positive’ for us. We do not want a work that tells us that we should hope and that hope is not absurd. At most we tolerate a ‘hope’ that in itself is nothing more than defiance in despair and in no way may be asked about its implications (about the hidden light, the incomprehensible promise), as the Christians (and others who do not call themselves thus) do. Here, certainly, a new question can be posed, which at the same time includes the greatness and plight of the Christian writer. Again let it be said: the theologian only feels called (if at all) to use theological standards, not literary ones. Nor should the question be asked and answered as to whether a work can be good from a Christian perspective and bad from a literary one, or whether (because the higher standard includes the lower) that is not possible, even though an anti-Christian evil work of hatred and despair, of terrible cynicism, can be a great literary statement, even if not simply because it is evil.2 As far as the (ultimately literary) comparison of Luise Rinser’s work with other (especially contemporary) writers is concerned, only two things shall be noted. First, a little anecdote: I had a good, older friend who also wrote

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in the field of theology. When my first theological book appeared, he said, ‘What is that good for? I would rather read Pascal!’ I said: ‘I also. But what does that prove!?’ The friend expected, of course, that one would not only read Pascal, but also his writings. Rightly so. Who ‘is somebody’, who has something distinctive to say – that may be compared and ranked in a ‘literary history’. But for the reader himself such relative ranks are actually quite unimportant. He reads those who have something to say. If a Gabriel Marcel finds something distinctive in Luise Rinser,3 if she is translated and read in France – the classic land of modern Christian literature – and recognized as important, then she is obviously not someone who has nothing distinctive to say, that is, someone who merely copies established templates. Then there are obviously people who understand her message better than that of others. Thus: is not perhaps that contemporary literature, which is pretty much everywhere recognized as having a high literary rank, often (not always!) more easily protected against the suspicion of being cheaply ‘Christian’ than the work of Rinser, and thus protected from the reproach of lacking in rank in that it depicts Christians in extraordinary situations that are not those of our own everyday life? Is perhaps the triumph of grace in a mysticism of sin – which we ordinary humans realistically cannot afford – more easily represented as ‘convincingly’ Christian than that ‘Christianity’ that we have to live ourselves, as we (and including all critics) are, of course, late Western European ‘bourgeois’ and actually basically quite like being such (if we are honest). Hence, the only question that arises is whether in this situation a Christian existence – which calls upon as well as doubts the ultimate [das Letzte] – is still a serious possibility or whether that is not possible. Anyway, what is ‘positive’-oriented literature that, right from the outset, does not tolerate any artistic standards? Certainly, such a literature is not already given merely through the intention we already discussed, whereby it must be clearly stated once more that such an ‘intention’ of the work is forgotten in the act of creative writing itself. It reaches the reader as an appeal from the reality that is shaped in the work, but not as an ingredient which is added by the writer to that reality from the outside, and hence must, of course, appear unliterary. Such ‘positive’ motivated and dubious literature without artistic rank exists when abstract ideas, which are there first, are ‘clothed’, when one talks rather than lives in this way, when the theoretical ‘solution’ of formal dialectic is presented (even though ‘clothed’) instead of the uniqueness that contains in itself the insoluble of the unfathomable depths of life, which the writer can only humbly entrust to the abyss of the mystery we call God, but is not allowed to ‘solve’ it. Of course, it also has to be said, and this makes everything theoretically even more complex, that a reflection, a good and

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bad, profound and naive, ‘theory’, also belongs to the authentic reality of human beings, if one does not want to wrongfully reduce them. Concrete humans, who think, who are affected by fundamental issues, who live in peace or in conflict with a higher order, who know and deal with this, are therefore far from being virtual spectres of a ‘positive’-oriented literature. A literature that only registers the indifferent, unmitigated stream of sensations and vital impulses in a human being, a literature in which everything in the human being dissolves into a mere, structure-less shove of physiologicalpsychological-social determinants, is indeed no genuine ‘realism’; because that is not what the human being really is. He has, he is, a structure with an above and below [einem Oben und Unten], with realities that are worth talking about and those that one passes over in silence. He is not merely a mix of genital, anal and similar sensations. To whom these may be important may, of course, speak about them, provided that he does not reduce the human being to these in an unrealistic ideology – and then imagines that he perceives reality without ideology and without bias. Anyone who bypasses this because they have more weighty, real things to say about the human being is not therefore a utopian or someone who glosses over things. A reliable criterion whether a character in Christian literature is genuine reality or an ‘allegorical’ apparel of abstract Christian doctrines is probably established when one asks whether a character represents more or less the whole, fully unfolded ‘system’ of Christianity (in attitude and life) or whether he is represented as an embarking, incomplete, searching Christian (up to and including the ‘anonymous’ Christian, who does not yet reflectively know himself as a Christian). The true human being is usually only a Christian in fragment, just starting out, mysteriously led (perhaps only vaguely conscious) – only that – but that actually always because the mystery which we call God and his omnipotent grace can nowhere be radically eradicated and even in contradiction to himself still exists. An unliterary, but fundamentally also religiously inauthentic literature overlooks or denies that the Christian is a homo viator, incomplete, self-contradicting, who only grasps in some small way at most what Christianity means. Where then such literature lets the human being fight or stumble, this only happens to make him victoriously and gloriously triumph; even in the dawning sunrise, he already walks in the light; he never truly falls completely, helplessly, into the silent abyss in which alone we are grounded. This ‘Christianity’ is the solution to all problems, not its prevailing in hope against all hope in solutions manipulated by humans (which are the very essence of ideology). It is not that prevailing which constitutes the true essence of Christianity that knows the Crucified, and in hope believes him as the risen one.

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Now, for the one who so allows himself fall into the abyss – without possessing the ‘enlightenment’ of the inscrutable mystery of being [Daseinsunheimlichkeit] which he himself has the power to manipulate – there certainly can be a serene cheerfulness, the one who has overcome, ‘perfect joy’, ‘harmony’. This can happen if there is grace. It does not have to show itself as such, but can do so; but, of course, it can yet still descend into the dark underworld of despair that experiences itself as having no way out. But this calm cheerfulness of the one who hopes against all hope is something entirely different from the pseudo-Christianity of that literature which pretends that the Christian is the one who is able to come to terms with everything, is complete, knows and sees through everything, while in truth he is the one who holds on to the yet unfathomable in hope, and who again and again destroys that illusion which seeks to hide death in life (but thereby does not again make disillusionment into an idol, and is even prepared thus to put aside for a while a piece of the veil that mercifully covers the terrible). There are a good number of characters in Luise Rinser’s work who do not represent anything explicitly Christian. They are people who are willing to learn how to fit into an order [Ordnung], who love, who suffer hardship, who are brave, who dare to enter incomprehensible life with hope. Her most recent character, Tobias,4 at the end has just arrived at the beginning: Tobias dares to accept life in the outwardly petty-bourgeois character of his actual father. If such characters act in the milieu that has remnants of traditional Christianity, a Christianity that is not understood, this is actually still the way today. Those who believe in Marie-Catherine in Die vollkommene Freude5 and do not consider her an entirely convincing character of a ‘saint’s legend’ need to take a closer look: indeed, she was not able to convince Clemens of her genuine love – rather than pity – and hence is unable to redeem him. More precisely, she, in fact, fails in her tasks. She finds that ‘perfect joy’ in silently accepting the fate that also asked too much of her. It is always only Christianity in fragments, preliminary, an embarking towards an unknown land of freedom and peace. Christians who are theologically ‘exemplary’ thank God do not appear. And in that way, they are exemplary. Not all has yet been said, however. We still have to consider the ‘plight’ of the Christian writer, ‘plight’ in Pascal’s sense.6 First of all, it is the task of the theologian, not the writer, to recognize the ‘seemingly’ purely ‘humane’ – which is carried out in freedom and brave responsibility – as Christian. The writer expresses the humane and has to do no more. In his anonymous Christianity, he leaves it at that (as, for example, in the Nina novels7 or Die Gläsernen Ringe8). The Christian, to whom it is presented, knows that this,

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too, is grace, and the non-Christian will accept it as something humane – it hence means more, even if not stated. Because it is a part of that humanity and that humaneness that God has made his own in his WORD and declared as eternally valid. But even this humaneness, that is the beginning (and the end) of the explicitly Christian, is difficult to express and shape so that it will convince everybody. The writer, too, does not create the beginning of the humane that is accepted per se by all without doubt. That is not possible because there are countless such beginnings; every human being has their own beginning, their own self-understanding and given reality that shapes them and which to others may seem highly questionable and alarming. In every existence, even in the most sceptical and destroyed, something whole [Heiles] is still given because not even the most abysmal malice or breakdown can eradicate God’s grace out of a human being’s life. But even this still whole [heile] beginning, bestowed by God’s free grace – which the writer can only call upon, but cannot create himself – is different in every human being. The holy beginning is assigned to everyone so that he is, and will become, a Christian through grace. That is the unique mystery in every human being. What such a literature addresses as a beginning, as something that is self-understood, can thus appear inauthentic. What is unquestionable in one person may be the most questionable thing in another. That can even still be the case with literature that is not Christian at all. Indeed, when real characters are represented, and not theories, they live out of a selfconcealing purpose, always and everywhere; and this is for the character him/herself the unquestioned given and can be for others the annoyingly incomprehensible. Except if there is indeed an elective relationship between the writer and the reader and a loving sympathy. The Christian writer takes the ‘beginning’ (the whole [das Heile] that can be called upon) too early or too late; he shocks one person by questioning the given, and he disappoints another as this person no longer shares the writer’s presupposition and thus regards him as old-fashioned and naïve. The writer cannot just write for the most radical questioner. Because the radical questioner is not the only one. But (and more importantly): the one point, which would be the absolute zero point, and thus the only point for an absolute new beginning, does not exist. Those who are truly dead (to vary the word of a church father) only God can awaken; the writer can only invoke salvation [das Heil] – the always already (hidden) mystery bestowed through God’s power; this, however, is manifold and not exactly the same with everyone. Thus, the Christian writer often comes under suspicion that he is naïve, that he does not know what really is in the human being and makes assumptions that ‘no one’ (read: the critic) shares. This, one suggests, is especially the

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case today: those in the world of literature who want to say what they suffer, and therefore also the majority of critics, are not the representatives of the human of today, but a certain, and certainly also an authentic, group of these people. There are, of course, those who are wildly desperate, those who are truly chaotic (besides those who merely pretend to be thus to make their books cynically conform to the market). But there are also those humans who are shaped by that modest, clear-headed objectivity that originates from the natural sciences and the technology of today, when both are carried out in a genuine manner, and who are therefore (yes, therefore) characterized by a serene, disciplined and willing humanity. And this type of person, who hardly appears in the whole of contemporary Western literature, probably has – strange as it may seem – a greater existential affinity, on the one hand, with the still genuine ‘bourgeois’ of the past and, on the other hand, with the ‘constructive realism’ which – even if often contestable and primitive – makes itself heard in official Marxism. It is therefore not clear yet to which literature belongs the future and which critics speak in the name of the people of today and tomorrow, especially as those critics seem to have fallen attached rather uncritically to their own standards. So perhaps the sense of measure and order – which annoys and makes a good number of critics distrust Luise Rinser – is more ‘modern’, and its ‘presentation’ in literature is closer to the wider future than some critics think. One ought not to misinterpret the ‘bourgeois’ in Luise Rinser’s works. Her characters remain in the ‘bourgeois’ sphere; they do not break out (just as little as the actual worker in the GDR does) because for us such a ‘breaking out’ basically would be a highly unrealistic paroxysm, and is not practised by Luise Rinser’s critics either. But her characters break into the depths of this temperate, the normal existence, the depths of love, the responsibility before God and the serene acceptance of our incomprehensible destiny. And this breakthrough (instead of a theatrical outburst) transforms the ‘citizens’ into humans. The Christian writer, even where he does not paint allegorical spectres of his orthodox Christianity, has a hard time: he cannot set a beginning that would simply be the beginning for all. He cannot become ‘all things to all people’. Paul (1 Cor 9.22) once took his mouth full and said that he had become all things to all people (of course, he added: ‘that I might by all means save some’). But the Christian writer will know that, right from the outset, he cannot do so. It is enough for him when that what is whole [heil] in him is able to reach that wholeness in others and thus brings it to itself and hence to growth. But this impossibility of trying to fix within the specifically and naturally self-understood humane the beginning of becoming a Christian is also only

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the beginning of the plight of the Christian writer. He has it even harder. He is supposed to speak also of actual and explicitly Christian things. Or not? Why not? Who may forbid this a priori if the writer is convinced that this – the Christian dimension – is to him the truly real and the abyss, the ground, of his existence? So if he can, why indeed should he not write about God, prayer, death in hope, vocation through God who does not let go, perfect joy, obedience that sets free, Jesus who is the Christ, if he is truly serious about it? Of course, as befits the writer, he will talk – not lecture – shaping his characters, but, indeed, characters who are Christians not only in the anonymity of the decent and humane, but who with simple, undaunted clarity are commonly called Christian. Why should he not? Someone who is convinced a priori that such Christians actually do not really exist, that they are necessarily damaged, ideologically inauthentic, tortured, corrupted, unfree humans, and can regard such a literary venture only as a catastrophe. But is he right? Is his experience the always and only valid one? Certainly, Wittgenstein said: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’,9 and today this seems the truest, self-evident sentence. And for the writer, most of all. But the same Wittgenstein has proven in a rigorously rational manner the existence of the ‘irrational’. And so it does need to be spoken about, although it cannot be spoken about. And whereof should the writers speak if not about the unsayable [das Unsagbare]? Whereof one can speak, others speak better and more clearly. No writers are needed for that. But since the abyss of God and the abyss of our death have become one in the Crucified and in the abyss of our hope, Christians must speak whereof one cannot speak. For this speech is the actual speech and the origin of all language – which is more than the signals of resourceful animals who remain hidden to themselves – the language that conjures up the unsayable and only creates that silence of which Wittgenstein finally does say that it has to be. But that is the greatness and the plight of the Christian writer (like that of the theologian, but with him one does not resent it so much, because, and agreed by all, such speech obviously constitutes his craft). The Christian in the writer must speak of which one cannot speak. More precisely, is one only allowed to speak of the human because what is explicitly Christian is more difficult to say? May one only report: ‘Master, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery’ (Jn 8.4), or may one also say that this woman seized the word of the Master: ‘Go and from now on sin no more’?10 Can only guilt, not forgiveness, be credible? For us hopeless and tragic guilt is more comprehensible and credible; the good always appears to us as the impotent and naïve. But that again is easy to understand. How to us sinners should it seem any other? If you do not

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regard yourself such, that is, a sinner, it must seem even more so. More precisely, there is no religious experience of an original kind that would not also already be word-like [worthaft]. But that experience does not happen alone there where the word is, the word that can be said and written, where it is itself (and even the word of the unsayable is still a word that at best points to the unsayable, but that itself cannot originally unfold the unsayable). Wherever thus this original religious experience reaches into the Word, must go out-and-into it, it is no longer in the place of its first birth alone – the grace of God unfolding in silence. But where this experience occurs, it becomes ambiguous. Not only because the word can be spurious talk. That is still the most harmless ambiguity. But because, even where it is authentic, in its appearance it can still be ambiguous. There is nothing religious that – insofar as it spatiotemporally, ‘categorically’ objectifies itself, and becomes only sayable in this way – is not ambiguous, that is, can also be deduced from a cause other than the original religious experience: from repression, frustration, sex, fear, social conditions and anything else that the human knows and uses today to dishonestly dispute genuine religious experience, which indeed does exist, as well as to honestly expose fake religious experience, which also exists. This irremovable ambiguity necessarily inherent in religious objectifications ought to be clearly considered and acknowledged before, in a concrete instance, a critic propounds the problem – that exists beyond the literary as such – concerning the authenticity of a religious statement. I am saying: there is a further problem regarding authenticity of a religious statement, which is different from the permanent, irrefutable ambiguity of a religious statement about a Christian character (Gestalt). For it is also possible that a piety, that in its ultimate origin is certainly authentic and based on a most authentic religious experience, expresses itself in-authentically in clichés. Why should one deny the painters of the Nazarene school genuine, most radical, religious experience (after all, they also suffered the incomprehensibility of being and of death like us)? Just because we have the – quite justified – impression that they often only painted religious kitsch? But before the question of an inauthentic objectification of genuine religious experience is posed, and can be posed, one has to see the impossibility of making any religious objectification at all in a character (Gestalt) and their statement that is not inevitably ambiguous. The WORD of God appears like a mere human being (omnis homo mendax: Rom 3.4) and in the form of the forsaken one on the cross, the slave of the powers and forces of this world: therein lies the inescapable plight of the Christian writer, in particular when he creates and does not talk in an abstract manner. He is actually unable to

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present anything that is not ambiguous; he cannot present characters who are living an unambiguously convincing Christian existence. Someone who does not approach such a representation with an openness resulting from, and enabled by, their own religious experience (ears to hear, eyes to see) would only interpret such presentations as annoying, incredible ideological concoctions or, in the case of indisputable ‘realities’, as something that depth-psychologically, sociologically, etc. could not be traced back to their ‘true’ causes. Does one not even have to add also that the inauthentic, too, belongs to an authentic human being, that we are always also gossip (even where we tell the truth and are truth), that the paroxysm of unconditional radical authenticity is in itself – instead of a calm, unselfconscious patience with our mix of the authentic and inauthentic – a highly inauthentic cramp and thus indeed produces literary cramps? Vis-à-vis of all this, the Christian writer is inescapably defenceless. His characters remain a folly to the gentiles and a scandal to the Jews (1 Cor 1.17-25); his characters must remain human beings, who ultimately can only be judged by God alone (κρίνειν), the only final ‘critic’. While this consideration may be exploited as an excuse behind which a writer can hide his actual artistic inadequacy and the inauthenticity of his characters (in the differentiated sense explained earlier), the consideration is nonetheless true. When a writer allows his characters move into the desert of the unsayable God, they necessarily end up in the plight, in the original meaning of this word, and the writer with them. It is easier for him to let his characters exist where the human is unquestionably at home, in the sayable. The critic of the Christian writer should always keep this in mind. But the human being is the being of unsayable darkness and unsayable light. And that is why there should be writers who say the unsayable. Even if they thus wander through the plight – which is their ultimate greatness. If then they even say the unsayable, without the prophet’s cloak and gesticulation, without furiously tearing open the chasms of the hell of the human being, when they speak almost cheerfully of the unsayable – like another speaks of the flowers of the field and the bliss of love between two people, as well as of the other familiar things of life – then such a speech is even more incomprehensible to many, but therefore by no means inappropriate in relation to what they are saying. On the contrary. ‘How, indeed, everyone represents an indivisible whole; how something appears as a deficiency only to someone who has constructed an image of something, of someone, instead of accepting reality as it is, and recognizing that what appears to the beholder as a deficiency is actually not such in the peculiar whole of the beheld, but helps to make it a whole, into something

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that only exists in a singular unique form,’ Luise Rinser once wrote. She herself is such an ‘indivisible whole’. I do not know who is meant by the ‘per te’, which Luise Rinser quotes from Dante in a dedication she wrote. But she is allowed to write: per te poeta fui, per te cristiano.11 Editorial note: Karl Rahner wrote this chapter for a Festschrift on the occasion of Luise Rinser’s sixtieth birthday: ‘Von der Größe und dem Elend des christlichen Schriftstellers’, Luise Rinser, Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag, Frankfurt, S. Fischer, 1971, pp. 35–46; published in Sämtliche Werke, vol 23, pp. 160–170, which has been the source for the translation. The first two endnotes here are irrelevant for the reader. All endnotes are translated and included as they are part of the text in Sämtliche Werke.

NOTES 1. A added: also. 2. A: . . . as today some seem to think. 3. Cf. here Luise Rinser’s letter to Karl Rahner, 29 January 1967, in Luise Rinser, Gratwanderung, Munich, 1994, 404. 4. Cf. L. Rinser, Ich bin Tobias, Frankfurt/Main, 1966. 5. Cf. L. Rinser, Die vollkommene Freude, Novel, Frankfurt/Main, 1962. 6. Cf. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, ed. Louis Lafuma, No. 53ff. Misère. 7. Cf. L. Rinser, Nina, Frankfurt, 1961. This volume contains the following novels: Mitte des Lebens, 1950; Abenteuer der Tugend, 1957. 8. L. Rinser, Die gläsernen Ringe, Eine Erzählung, Berlin, 1941. 9. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 7: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen. Ibid.: Schriften, vol. 1, Frankfurt, 1969, 83. 10. John 8, 11. 11. This is the dedication in L. Rinser, Septembertag, Frankfurt, 1964. It reads: ‘L.D. / Per te poeta fui / per te cristiano / Dante, La Divina Commedia. / Purgatorio XXII.’ The text can be found there V.73f. and refers, as the statement of the Latin epic writer Statius (c. 40–96 AD), to Vergil.

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Chapter 10

Theology and the arts

Before addressing our specific question about theology and the arts, I should like to begin with some preliminary observations, first about the process of knowledge in general, and secondly about our knowledge of God.

CONCEPTUAL AND EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE In our knowledge there is always present both a unity and a difference between the original level of our cognitive self-possession and our reflection upon it. This is denied in different ways by theological rationalism on the one hand, and on the other by what is called classical “modernism.” For essentially every rationalism is based on the conviction that a reality is present for a person in his free and personal self-possession only by means of a concept which objectifies it, and this process becomes fully and really complete in scientific knowledge. Conversely, what is called “modernism” in the classical sense is based on the conviction that concepts and reflection are absolutely secondary and subsequent to the original level of lived existence in self-awareness and freedom. Hence this reflection could be dispensed with.

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But in knowledge there is not only the purely objective “thing in itself ” of a reality on the one hand, and the “clear and distinct idea” of it on the other. There is also a more original unity, not indeed in everything and anything, but certainly in the living out of our human existence. It is the unity of reality and its own self-presence and self-awareness, a unity which is more and is more original than the unity of this reality and the concept which objectifies it. When I love, when I am tormented by questions, when I am sad, when I am faithful, when I feel longing, this human, existential reality is a unity, an original unity of reality and its own self-presence and self-awareness which is not completely mediated by the concept which objectifies it in scientific knowledge. This unity of reality and the original self-presence and self-awareness of this reality in a human person is already present in the living out of human existence in freedom. That is one side of the question. It must be said, nevertheless, that an element or reflection and hence of universality and the capacity for personal communication exists even at this original level of knowledge. This element of reflection, however, does not capture this unity and transpose it completely into objectifying concepts. That sought-after, original unity of reality and its own self-knowledge exists in a person only with and in and through what we can call language, and hence also reflection and the capacity of communication. At that moment when this element of reflection would be completely absent, the original self-presence and awareness would also cease to exist. Both of these elements, our original knowledge and our concept of it, belong together but are not identical, and the tension between them is not a static thing. It has a history whose course runs in two directions. First, the original self-presence of a knowing and free subject in the actual living out of existence strives to transpose itself more and more into concepts, into objectifications, into language and into communication with others. Everyone tries to express what they are suffering to another, especially to someone they love. Hence in this tension between original knowledge and the concept which accompanies it there is a movement toward greater conceptualization, toward language, toward communication, and also toward a theoretical knowledge of itself. Secondly, this tension also includes a movement in the opposite direction. Only very slowly, perhaps, does a person experience clearly what he or she has been talking about for a long time, and was able to because they were shaped by a common language and instructed and indoctrinated from without. It is precisely we theologians who are always in danger of talking

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about heaven and earth, about God and man with an arsenal of religious and theological concepts that is almost unlimited in its size and scope. We can acquire for ourselves in theology an extraordinarily great skill in this kind of talk, and perhaps not have really understood from the depths of our own existence what we are actually talking about. To this extent reflection, concepts and language must necessarily be oriented towards this original knowledge, this original experience, where what is meant and the experience of what is meant are still one. Insofar as religious knowledge also manifests this tension between our original self-knowledge acquired from what we do and what we suffer, and our conceptualization of it, there is also within theology this double movement in its irreducible unity and difference, and the tension between them is not a static, but a fluid relationship. Although the movement toward conceptualization reaches its goal only asymptotically, we should always be striving for a better conceptual knowledge of what we have already experienced and lived through prior to such conceptualization, although not entirely without it. Conversely, we should show again and again that all of our theological concepts do not make the reality itself present to people from without, but rather they are the expression of what has already been experienced and lived through more originally in the depths of existence. We can and must do both: try to reach greater levels of conceptual clarity, and try again and again to trace our theological concepts back to their original experience.1

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD We come now to the second of our preliminary considerations, the more specific question of the knowledge of God.2 When we say that we know God or that we find in Him meaning in an absolute sense, we automatically tend to understand “meaning” as we usually understand it: to have gotten an insight into something to have comprehended something and brought it under our control, to have made sense out of it in our own eyes and to have placed it in our hands and at our disposal, thereby putting an end to the agonizing frustration of an unsolved problem. This, indeed, is the modern ideal of knowledge: the process of knowledge does not reach its goal and become real knowledge until it grasps and masters the object; until it renders the object clear and self-evident; until it has arrived at clear and distinct ideas and has clarified every last condition of its own possibility; until as an autonomous power it has established the limits of what concerns it and what does not; until whatever cannot be spoken of in clear and distinct ideas will

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not be spoken of at all; until its valid concerns exclude anything beyond the functional relationships between the individual data within the world of experience. This is the ideal of knowledge that prevails in the modern world and is taken for granted without any need of further justification. If, on the other hand, God in Christian tradition is incomprehensible not only in Himself, but also in His free decisions and dealings with us, then obviously knowledge of God is ruled out a priori by this modern ideal of knowledge. But if with our tradition we are to continue to speak of a knowledge of God, then we have to question this ideal. We have to ask, first, how are we to understand the essential nature of human knowledge so that a knowledge of God is not ruled out a priori? And secondly, how more exactly are we to understand the nature of the human act in which a person can accept the incomprehensibility of God without this latter sounding the death-knell to our search for meaning? These two questions are related, but not identical. For it is the second question which underscores the fact that knowledge as such must transcend itself, must be subsumed into the totality of human existence when it confronts incomprehensibility of God. How must we understand knowledge itself to begin with if we are to speak of knowing an incomprehensible God? If in the first instance reason were the capacity to know individual realities within our consciousness and their mutual functional relationships, then God’s incomprehensibility could not even come up either as a question or as an assertion. At most it would have to be rejected as a contradiction in terms like the notion of a square circle, and dismissed as a term which only apparently has any real meaning. The human spirit and its knowledge cannot be understood in such a way that it merely stumbles upon the reality we call God in the course of its activities, and then ascribes to this chance object the predicate “incomprehensible” as a property which belongs to this accidently discovered and particular object of knowledge along with other properties. If human reason is understood in such a modern, a posteriori, positivistic and functional way, however one develops a theory of knowledge to account for the laws which govern the functioning of reason so understood, then human reason can never include the capacity to know an incomprehensible God. If for no other reason, this is true because God Himself cannot be understood as one of the particular, individual objects among the other data of our consciousness. It is also true because a human reason which has to do first and foremost with what can be defined by functional relationships cannot then afterwards have to do with something which absolutely contradicts what has been understood a priori as a possible datum of consciousness.

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The human reason or intellect must be understood more fundamentally precisely as the capacity for the incomprehensible, as the capacity to be grasped by something which ever eludes our grasp. It must not be understood in the first instance as the capacity for the kind of comprehension which masters the object and subjects it to us. As Thomas Aquinas puts it, the human intellect must be understood as the faculty of the excessus, as a movement toward what is inaccessible. If the intellect is not understood right from the start as the capacity to encounter the incomprehensible, the unfathomable mystery, as that by which the ineffable becomes interior to us, then all subsequent talk about the incomprehensibility of God comes too late and falls on deaf ears. Such talk could only be understood as referring to a temporary remainder which has not yet been completely objectified, a remainder which all-consuming reason has not yet completely mastered, but sooner or later it will. Now as a matter of fact, however, the nature of the intellect is as we have described it, even though it likes to stop with what it has clearly understood and comprehended and linger there, even though it constantly forgets where the clarity and brilliance of its individual pieces of knowledge comes from. For every time reason comprehends and understands an object, it has already transcended it into an infinity beyond. That infinity is always present as something immeasurable, precisely so and never otherwise. Whenever reason comprehends an individual object, it always silently knows that the object always is and remains more than what it has understood about it. It situates the individual object within a system of relationships which themselves are not exactly fixed and defined, and in which the individual object is indeed situated, but is not defined in any final or absolute sense. Reason always thinks with a bad conscience because it knows that it has never completely understood and grounded its own presuppositions, and the only way to a good conscience is to grant and accept this fact. But to be able to ground one’s own presuppositions is the very presupposition for relying unconditionally on individual pieces of knowledge. When reason knows, all of its knowledge which gives expression to an individual reality accompanied by a strange sense of just how tentative the knowledge is. It is only because we do not know that we can strive to know something; it is only because we inquire into what is unanswered and what is ultimately ineffable that we are able to hear answers, and the better the answers are, the more new questions they raise. The rational subject with its constant demand for an accounting, its desire to understand and its all-encompassing question is itself thrown into question with every answer it discovers. Hence our experience of

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the unknown becomes an experience of the unknowable, and our endless questioning becomes the one place where the question itself becomes the answer, becomes the dwelling-place where the incomprehensible reality we call God dwells and offers us salvation. If one chooses to experience as darkness this transcendence beyond the individual objects of knowledge, the transcendence which is the condition which makes knowledge possible because it can never come to rest, then we can say by way of consolation that this darkness is the very condition of the light which illumines an individual object, then we can say that it is only by letting ourselves fall into this unfathomable abyss that we grasp the individual object on which we think we can stand firm. In brief: the simple fact which we inevitably reaffirm in every act of knowledge, namely, that every individual act of knowledge is possible only within an infinite process which will never be ended from our side, this simple fact tells us again and again that what we know lives by what lies beyond our knowledge, that our comprehension lives by the power of what is incomprehensible. (From a theological point of view, this process can only be ended by the goal towards which we strive but can never reach should it offer itself, but offer itself, of course, as the utterly incomprehensible One now fully revealed.) This can all be dismissed, if one so chooses, as idle dialectic and cheap paradox, and one can demand that we speak only of what is clear and comprehensible. One can do so, however, only in his rationalistic theory. In real life with its bitter and shattering moments one confronts again and again this limit-experience whether one wants to or not. Hence at that point one can at most ask oneself whether beyond the realm of our clear knowledge and the things we can plan and execute by ourselves there lies a plunge into a meaningless abyss, or whether we are caught up by the saving arms of the incomprehensible One who is our deliverance from ourselves and our questioning. This brings us to our second question which, of course, is immediately connected with the first. So far we have asked about the nature of reason and its knowledge and have defined them as the capacity for encountering the incomprehensible, and we said that this is prior to the function of conceptualizing and defining. Since this is the original definition of reason and knowledge, and not just the end-result encountered unexpectedly at the end of the knowledge process, this is not any kind of irrationalism. For this original encounter with mystery is understood precisely as the condition which makes possible the knowledge by which we conceptualize, distinguish and define. But if we describe reason this way we have already moved beyond it. In the very process of defining the essential nature of reason we have

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moved beyond it to something greater and more comprehensive because – anybody who believes in God can hardly doubt this – to grasp the essence of something is ultimately possible only by going beyond that essence. Hence we must now pose the second question that we asked earlier: How must we understand more exactly that human act in which a person can accept the incomprehensibility of God without being shattered by it or dismissing it as something of no interest? Before we try to answer this question more precisely, let me make several preliminary remarks to avoid from the outset certain objections and misunderstandings. I agree entirely with the position of Thomas Aquinas that knowledge on the one hand, and will (as freedom and love) on the other can be distinguished as faculties which emanate as different faculties from an ultimate substantial unity of the human person. They are maintained in this unity by a kind of perichoresis, to use in an analogous way a concept from the theology of the trinity, and it means that they mutually interpenetrate each other. But at the same time I am convinced that Thomas did not express his deepest insights about the difference of these two faculties where he distinguishes them from each other and then draws conclusions from this distinction, for example, that the beatific vision of God consists properly and essentially in an act of the intellect as such. These insights are found, I think, where he takes up the question of the unity of the transcendentals verum (the true) and bonum (the good) and the fact that they mutually condition each other (he does include an order between them, analogous to the order in the processions of the Trinity). If we consider the metaphysics of these transcendentals in their unity and in their difference as well as in the fact that they mutually condition each other, and if we take it seriously, then we can be good Thomists in answering our question by saying: The act in which a person can face and accept the mystery of God (and therein the comprehensive meaning of his own existence) without being shattered by it and without fleeing from it into all the banality of his clear and distinct ideas, the banality of looking for meaning that is based only on such knowledge and what it can master and control, this act, I say, is the act of love in which a person surrenders and entrusts himself to this very mystery. In this love knowledge, transcending itself to reach its own deepest nature, truly becomes knowledge only by becoming love. We have yet to explain this, but at first glance it might strike one as paradoxical. It is simply expressing, however, the paradox rooted in the ultimate unity of all our faculties, a unity in which each faculty ultimately becomes itself only when it is subsumed into the other. It is a unity in which

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the whole is justifiably named after the final moment in this ordered series of moments. The situation is exactly the same as when we say: God is Spirit, and then call Him after the name of this third mode of His subsistence. We can clarify our answer to the second question by coming at the question from the opposite direction and asking: How must that act be constituted in which a person precisely as a rational being can accept and live with God’s incomprehensibility? How can this incomprehensibility not be experienced as an infinite barrier which hems in the narrow confines of our happiness on all sides, so that we are able to be happy within these narrow confines only by anxiously lowering our eyes in order to have nothing to do with this barrier which towers over everything? If there should be such an act at all, what must we call the act in which this encounter with incomprehensible mystery in all its inexorable clarity and finality means eternal happiness rather than being the very boundary which puts an end to all our happiness? We can only answer: If such an act exists at all, if there is such an act since we certainly cannot do without it, and if we look for a name for it within the realm of our ultimate experiences, then we can only say: love. Of course we must then define precisely what we are calling love not just from any kind of experience, but from that experience which we have in the presence of incomprehensible mystery. Ultimately love is precisely the acceptance of the mystery we call God both in His own being and in His freedom, accepting this mystery as what accepts and saves us, and affirming it as mystery forever. But the essential nature of this act of loving God, which discloses itself to be ultimately the acceptance of His incomprehensibility as something which constitutes our happiness and not our annihilation, this is really familiar to us from the lesser experiences we have elsewhere in the realm of interpersonal love. When a person encounters another in really personal love, does there not occur an acceptance of something we have not “seen through,” an acceptance of that in the person of the beloved which one has not made subject to oneself by a knowledge which comprehends and thereby masters? Is not interpersonal love a trusting surrender to the other person without guarantees, and this precisely insofar as love always is and remains free and uncalculating? I do not mean to say that the absolutely unique act of loving God in its proper and univocal sense can be subsumed under the notion of interpersonal love as we experience it elsewhere. The two realities are only analogously related, hence in such a way that in the midst of the similarity between them there appears an even greater dissimilarity. This is simply a variation on a statement of the Fourth Lateran Council about the relationship between God and creatures.

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But interpersonal love really does give us some idea of our relationship to God. It justifies us in saying that the act in which a person lets go of himself and his self-centered claims and surrenders to the incomprehensible mystery which remains forever incomprehensible can best be called love. This is so because in the realm of our everyday experience knowledge purely as such has the characteristic of appropriating the known to ourselves and gaining mastery over it, although this is not the essential and ultimate nature of knowledge. This is not the case, however, in genuine interpersonal love even in the empirical realm of life. It remains true, nevertheless, that the essential and deepest nature of love first becomes really manifest in the act by which a person lets go of himself and surrenders to God’s incomprehensibility, which then is no longer the limit, but the very content of our relationship to God. Interpersonal love is only a created reflection of the former. To be sure this does not yet really and adequately define the relationship between knowledge and knowledge-transcending, free love in that basic act of a person vis-à-vis God’s incomprehensibility. But as I have already pointed out, the ultimate definition of their relationship is to be found not in the context of Thomas’ teaching about the various faculties, but through a study of the transcendentals “true” and “good” and their mutual relationship. For only then can it become clear that love (and maybe today we would also say freedom and praxis) can also be and must also be the condition which makes possible our knowledge of the true (of theory). Hence this very relationship of perichoresis between the two transcendentals reaches its most essential and most radical actualization in our relationship to God’s incomprehensibility.

THEOLOGY AND THE ARTS With these presuppositions about the nature of human knowledge and especially the knowledge of God, we come now to the question of theology and the arts. I shall begin by asking just what art really is, for it is a difficult question whether the individual arts – sculpture, painting, music, poetry and so on – can really be subsumed under a single concept of “art.” Let us leave aside for the moment the literary arts like poetry or drama whose medium is the human word. For by the very nature of the case these “verbal arts” are very closely related to theology, which also comes to expression in word. Focusing for the moment just on those arts which do not employ words, like architecture, sculpture, painting and music, we can say that all of these arts too are meant to be expressions, human self-expressions which embody in

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one way or another the process of human self-discovery. Looking at it this way, our question then is whether these human self-expressions in the various non-verbal arts have the same value and significance as the verbal arts. A musician will certainly say that his music is not just a lesser form of human self-expression, but is a unique and irreplaceable mode of expression which cannot be substituted for by words or by some form of verbal art. We could say the same for painting and sculpture. When one stands before a painting of Rembrandt’s, one can try to say in words what the painting is expressing. But however much one art can be translated into another art, ultimately, sculpture, painting and music (prescinding here from architecture, since it is far more functional than the others) have their own independent validity as forms of human self-expression which cannot be completely translated into verbal statements. Presupposing that all the arts cannot ultimately be reduced to verbal art, then our question is: How is theology related more precisely to these nonverbal arts? Insofar as man expresses himself in all of these arts as well as in theology, each in its own unique way, all these different arts and theology are mutually inter-connected and related. But the situation is more difficult than we tend to imagine. If and insofar as theology is man’s reflexive selfexpression about himself in the light of divine revelation, we could propose the thesis that theology cannot be complete until it appropriates these arts as an integral moment of itself and its own life, until the arts become an intrinsic moment of theology itself. One could take the position that what comes to expression in a Rembrandt painting or a Bruckner symphony is so inspired and borne by divine revelation, by grace and by God’s selfcommunication, that they communicate something about what the human really is in the eyes of God which cannot be completely translated into verbal theology. If theology is not identified a priori with verbal theology, but is understood as man’s total self-expression insofar as this is borne by God’s self-communication, then religious phenomena in the arts are themselves a moment within theology taken in its totality. In practice, theology is rarely understood in this total way. But why should a person not think that when he hears a Bach oratorio, he comes into contact in a very unique way with God’s revelation about the human not only by the words it employs, but by the music itself? Why should he not think that what is going on there is theology? If theology is simply and arbitrarily defined as being identical with verbal theology, then of course we cannot say that. But then we would have to ask whether such a reduction of theology to verbal theology does justice to the value and uniqueness of these arts, and whether it does not unjustifiably limit the capacity of the arts to be used by God in his revelation.

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THEOLOGY, ART AND EXPERIENCE Presupposing this distinction between the verbal and non-verbal arts, and focusing now on the verbal or literary arts like poetry, drama and the novel which share with theology the medium of the human word, we could perhaps characterize these arts from a theological point of view by saying that they succeed, each in its own unique way, in putting a person in touch with those depths of human existence wherein religious experience takes place. When I say, for example, that a person should love God, I have said something very deep in this simple statement. But uttered amidst all the superficial routine of daily life, it does not generate much understanding or appreciation of what the statement really means. But if I read some of the lyric lines of a John of the Cross or perhaps a novel by someone like Graham Greene, which, to be sure, cannot simply “contain” an immediate and genuine religious experience, for that is quite impossible, but which perhaps evokes in me my own experience of the religious, then this literature has accomplished something which reflexive, purely conceptual and rational theology is not able to accomplish. There are, of course, theologians in the narrower, stricter sense like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas in some of his Eucharistic poems where religious experience and reflexive, conceptual theology are closely joined. But these are exceptions and they represent something which is rarely found in the theology of modern times. Maybe something like this can be found in some of Newman’s sermons. But in general it is a rare occurrence any more. Hans Urs von Balthasar once said that what we lack in modern times is a “theology on its knees.” We could perhaps add to that that we also lack a “poetic theology,” and I see that as a defect in our theology. But, of course, we have to be reasonable and balanced about this. There is also a kind of theology which is perfectly justified in taking a deep breath and proceeding patiently through the long and arduous reflections of conceptual theology which cannot be expected to lead immediately to some kind of religious or mystical experience. It is, nevertheless, perfectly justified. But however much it must be left to the individual theologian to what extent he evokes or does not evoke religious experience in his theology, nevertheless it is perhaps fair to admit that one of the consequences and deficiencies of a rationalistic theology working exclusively with “scientific” methods is that theology has lost so much of its poetry. Moreover, theology faces a task especially today which is not new, but has been greatly neglected in recent centuries, namely, that it be in some way a “mystagogical” theology. By this I mean it must not only speak in abstract concepts about theological questions, but must also introduce

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people to a real and original experience of the reality being talked about in these concepts. To this extent what I have called “poetic theology” could be understood as one of the ways, although not the only way, of doing this kind of mystagogical theology. In this sense and understanding the following statement correctly, we can say that all Christian theology has to be “subjective.” It cannot speak about objects which lie outside the realm of the personal, spiritual and free reality of human existence itself. There is no such thing as a theological statement about a beetle. Hence all the objects of the natural sciences considered just in themselves lie outside the realm of theology. We could say, then, that theology does not begin until it really begins to be subjective. But subjective in this sense does not mean arbitrary or maintaining that black is white. Christian theology must be subjective insofar as it has to speak of faith, hope and love and about our personal relationship with God. It must be subjective insofar as ultimately, whether directly or indirectly, it must describe, evoke and introduce one mystagogically to this personal and spiritual relationship between man and God. In other words, theology as revelation theology is the mediation of God’s call precisely to human subjectivity. When theology can no longer accomplish this, when it becomes “objective” in a false sense, this is not good theology, but bad theology.

THE UNITY OF SENSIBILITY If indeed, as we have said, the arts play a role in this mediation, what do we mean when we speak of “seeing” or “hearing” God in a work of art? The difficulty, of course, is that the eye as an optical organ and the ear as an acoustical organ as such cannot perceive God. It would be nonsense to maintain that. In the Middle Ages, for example, the question was raised whether human sense faculties play a role in the beatific vision in heaven, and the answer was negative. But it is a very different question to ask whether in a situation where something is seen or heard with special intensity the whole person in and through all his faculties cannot have a very radical religious experience. To put it another way, is it not possible that when the whole person is involved in the process of seeing or hearing, a religious experience can very well take place? There is, for example, a German song called, “Good Moon, You Glide So Silently,” a very trivial song that has absolutely nothing to do with religion. But it has the same melody, I hear, as the melody we use in singing the religious hymn we call the “Tantum Ergo.” It follows from this that an acoustical phenomenon can be religious or non-religious depending on the

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total human context in which it is heard. If it is not the ears alone which hear, but the whole person, then something is religious or not religious depending on what kind of a person the hearer is and on the total concrete situation in which he is doing the hearing. Whether this melody is religious or not depends quite simply on whether you base your judgment on the melody taken exclusively in a purely acoustical context, or whether you situate it in a total human context. For then the acoustical phenomenon becomes something different, not in view of itself, but in view of the situation. But the relationship between the artistic realm and the religious realm is not easy to define. God is, indeed, everywhere with His grace, as we would want to maintain in theology, but this does not mean that every reality has the same relationship to me or to God. God is not present in a chemical change in my stomach in the same way that He is when I act with trust or love or responsibility towards my neighbor. Hence the question about the possible religious significance of non-religious art is a difficult question. For example, can I say that impressionistic painting has no religious significance because in principle it intends to represent nothing but the visual impressions and colors of our immediate environment? If and insofar as that is all it intends and that is all it accomplishes, presumably we have to say that it has no religious significance. And, of course, there is no problem in granting that there can be real art which is not religious. It need not for that reason be anti-religious, but it is involved with dimensions of human life where our relationship to God is not yet present. It is a very different question to ask whether I can situate an impressionistic painting from the beginning of the twentieth century into a larger context, into a larger human context so that the religious question does arise. That is quite possible, and to that extent we could speak of the “anonymous reverence” of an impressionistic painting. This is especially true, of course, because religious painting is not simply identical with painting which represents some explicitly religious content. If someone paints a Nativity scene with Jesus, Mary and Joseph and explains by means of halos and the like what the painting is supposed to mean, then this is a religious painting in the objective sense. Maybe it is not an especially religious painting at all because it cannot evoke a genuine and radical religious response in the viewer. There is, after all, religious “kitsch,” as we say in German. Some “religious art” is well intended and painted by pious people, but it is not genuine religious art because it does not touch those depths of existence where genuine religious experience takes place. Conversely, it could be that a painting of Rembrandt’s, even if it is not religious in its thematic, objective content, nevertheless confronts a person in his total self in such a way as

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to awaken in him the whole question of existence. Then it is a religious painting in the strict sense. It can be religious in this sense even if it does not have an explicit, thematic religious content.

BEING HOLY AND BEING HUMAN This touches on another difficult question. One could conceivably maintain that the truly holy person is identical with the person who has developed fully all the dimensions of his human existence. To put it another way, I could say that when a person’s sensibility, his capacity to see and hear are fully developed, his experiences are identical with his religious sense. In other words, I could take the viewpoint that the fully developed human being and the real saint are identical, and only when a person is fully developed in all the dimensions of his human existence can he be a saint in the fullest sense. One could hold this because apparently in heaven one is not only going to be very pious, but also fully human in the complete development of all human capacities. That is one side of the question. But if we proceed empirically, we could easily reach the opposite conclusion. Are there not persons who are really and genuinely holy, who selflessly love God and their neighbor in a radical way, but, nevertheless, their artistic sensibility is hardly developed at all? They would be considered boors in the realm of art because they can respond to artistic things only in a very rudimentary way. And vice-versa, there are people whose artistic sensibility is developed to an extraordinary degree, but are, nevertheless, not holy. I suppose we have to make a distinction here between the offer of an opportunity for a religious response and one freely accepted. Then one could take the position that a Goethe has developed his human capacities to such a height and depth and breadth that if he should begin to love God and does so with all the fullness and intensity of his human capacities, perhaps he loves in a greater, broader, more nuanced and freer way than an ordinary pious and holy person loves God. But it would also be possible, of course, that in spite of his fully developed humanity Goethe did not in fact do it at all, that is, that he did not make adequate use of the possibilities he had to actualize and direct his human existence towards God. Conversely, it is possible that the more limited and modest capacities of an ordinary holy person were put to better use. This question is closely related to the old problem about the extent to which holiness also means psychological health, and this is a difficult problem. Did not Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque also have a very neurotic personality, as many a Catholic therapist today would say? Was not Saint Alphonsus

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Liguori in his later years a saint, to be sure, but also a neurotic saint? To what extent is this possible or not? All these questions can be transposed into our question about the relationship between artistic sensibility and sanctity, but we cannot pursue it any further here.

THE ETERNAL IN HISTORICAL PARTICULARITY Instead I would like to conclude with some final remarks on our central topic. A poet, as we say, speaks in images and likenesses. The possibility of this kind of poetic language is rooted ultimately in the analogy of being, insofar as all realities are intrinsically interrelated, are somehow interconnected and related to one another, and therefore can ultimately be conceived only by moving beyond them as individual realities to the whole of reality. This analogy of being makes it possible for the poet to speak in images and likenesses, and enables him to understand particular human experiences as mysteriously pointing beyond themselves to God. For example, he can represent love between human beings in its hidden depths as pointing analogously to the love of God. Even when such human realities as fidelity, responsibility and acceptance of the mystery of life are not expressed in any explicitly religious way, they point ultimately to the reality about which theology does speak explicitly. It seems questionable to me whether today there really is so much less Christian and religious literature in poetic and artistic form. It would be quite possible that the analogous symbols in which a real poet expresses himself today have changed so much that they are no longer intelligible to people brought up in the traditional piety. But it is nevertheless possible that the poet is basically giving expression to religious statements in this different set of analogous symbols. Such a situation calls for careful scrutiny of the language of the poet. In any case, analogy makes possible the understanding of one reality as the mysterious disclosure of another, higher and more comprehensive reality. Everything which comes to expression in art is a particular actualization of that human transcendence through which a person, as a spiritual and free being, is oriented to the fullness of all reality. Only because the human person is a being who by his very nature pushes beyond every given boundary, a being for whom every end is a new beginning, a being who encounters the unfathomable mystery of things, only because and insofar as the human person is a transcendent being can there be both art and theology in their real senses. Both art and theology are rooted in man’s transcendent nature.

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But it is important to see why and how this human transcendence is always represented in art in a quite definite, particular and historical way. True art always embodies a very definite, particular and historical instance of human transcendence. To this extent, art can and must be thoroughly historical. There is a real history of art, artists do not always say the same thing. The artist by his very nature is necessarily the discoverer of a concrete situation in which man concretely actualizes his transcendent being in a new and different way. But what follows from this is not that there is an opposition between man’s historical and transcendent nature, but rather that there is a mutual and necessary inter-relationship of dependence between the two. The true artist, to be sure, proclaims what is eternal in truth, in love, in man’s endless quest and boundless desire. But he is an artist and not just a conceptualist and rationalist only when he creates this proclamation of the eternal in a new and unique way. In real art the absolutely historical particularity of the artist and the eternal in his proclamation are one. It is precisely this which constitutes the essence of a work of art. I can understand Dürer’s “The Hare” as a concretissimum as an utterly concrete and definite given in an innocuous human experience. But if I really look at it with the eyes of an artist, there looks out at me, if I can put it this way, the very infinity and incomprehensibility of God. Editorial note: The present chapter largely incorporates Chapter 11. Yet, despite the overlap and for the sake of completion, it seemed proper to include in this volume ‘Art against the Horizon of Theology and Piety’ as a separate chapter. It also evidences some differences in translation.

NOTES 1. For a fuller treatment of these epistemological principles, see the author’s Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. 14ff. 2. See also the author’s “Die menschliche Sinnfrage vor dem absoluten Geheimnis Gottes” in Geist und Leben (June, 1977), pp. 437–450.

Chapter 11

Art against the horizon of theology and piety

We must perhaps first inquire precisely what art is. It is already difficult to decide whether the different arts – sculpture, painting, music, poetry – may really be subsumed under the one concept “art.” In connection with our discussion, I would like to defer consideration of the arts that operate with human words. For such Wortkunst (“word-art”), as we say in German, is, of its very nature, quite similar to theology, which expresses itself also by means of words. If we consider only those arts that do not use words – architecture, sculpture, painting, music – we may start by saying that all these arts are also ways in which people express themselves, in some way return to themselves. And thus the question arises again whether self-expression in the arts that do not use words is of the same level and importance as in the arts that do use words. Musicians will certainly claim that their music is not a lower kind of human self-expression, but a special and irreplaceable one, which cannot be replaced even by words and by the arts that use words. The same might be said about painting and sculpture. Standing before a Rembrandt painting, we may, of course, try to translate by means of words what this painting expresses. But even though it is possible to translate from one art into another one, we will eventually conclude that sculpture, painting, and

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music (let us not speak of architecture, because it is more utilitarian) may be considered autonomous ways of human self-expression that cannot be adequately translated into words.

ART – ACTIVE ELEMENT OF THEOLOGY If we admit that it is impossible to reduce all the arts to the art of words, the question comes up: what is the precise relation between theology and these arts? Insofar as in all the arts, and in theology as well, persons express themselves, although in different ways, these different arts and theology are mutually related. But the situation is more complicated than it would appear to be. If theology is the conscious self-expression of persons about themselves from the point of view of divine revelation, we might submit the thesis that the most perfect kind of theology would be the one that appropriates these arts as an integral part of itself. We might then argue that the self-expression contained in a Rembrandt painting or in a Bruckner symphony is so strongly inspired and borne by divine revelation, by grace, and by the self-communication of God that it tells us, in a way that cannot be translated adequately in a verbal theology, what persons really are in the sight of God. If, from the start, we do not identify theology with a theology that uses words, but understand it as the total human self-expression, insofar as it is backed up by God’s self-communication, religious phenomena in the arts themselves would be constituent elements of an adequate theology. Practically speaking, this is rarely being done. Yet, when listening to a Bach oratorio, why would we not have the impression that, not only through its text but also through its music, we are in a very special way brought into a relationship with divine revelation about humanity? Why would we not believe that this too is theology? Of course, if we arbitrarily define theology as being identical with the theology that uses words, we cannot say this. But the question comes up then whether, by thus reducing all theology to a theology that uses words, we do not unfairly degrade the dignity and the special nature of these other arts as well as the fact that God uses them for divine purposes.

A ROAD TO THE ORIGINAL EXPERIENCE If we come back to the distinction made above, and separate art that uses words from the other arts and think only of lyric, dramatic, and epic art, this kind of art should presumably be characterized, from the theological standpoint, by the fact that in different ways and by what is peculiar to it,

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it succeeds in making people aware of their original religious experience. When I say for instance, “We must love God,” I have said something very profound in a simple statement, but in the shallow dullness of life I have not really brought it home. However, when I read a lyrical poem in the style of John of the Cross or a novel by Julian Green, through which, to be sure, the immediate genuine religious experience cannot be conveyed (because that is quite impossible), but my own religious experience may be evoked, then this religious work of literature has a function which an explicit, purely conceptual and rational theology cannot perform. There are theologians in the stricter sense – I am thinking of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas with his eucharistic hymns – in whom religious experience and explicit conceptualization are closely connected. But this is rather exceptional and something that is hard to find in modern theology, at the most perhaps in a sermon by Newman. Hans Urs von Balthasar said once that our modern times lack a kniende Theologie (a theology on its knees). We might also say that our times also lack a poetic theology. That is a real lack. But we must be prudent. There is also a theology that, holding its breath, as it were, patiently and rightly undertakes long conceptual explorations from which we cannot expect immediate religious or mystical experiences. We have to leave it to individual theologians to decide to what extent they appeal or do not appeal to religious experience in their theology. But we must admit that it is a consequence as well as a defect of a theology that is rationalistic and proceeds only “scientifically” that the poetic touch is lacking. Nowadays we demand from theology something which, although not new, has been neglected during the last few centuries: theology must somehow be “mystagogical,” that is, it should not merely speak about objects in abstract concepts, but it must encourage people really to experience that which is expressed in such concepts. To that extent we might understand poetic theology as one method of a mystagogical theology.

DIFFICULTY OF A NEW SYMBOLIZATION We say generally that a poet speaks in images and metaphors. The possibility of such religious language is ultimately based on the analogy of being, meaning that all realities have an inner connection, refer to each other, are in some way related, and can in the final analysis be understood only when we transcend them, as individual things, in the direction of the whole of reality. This analogia entis enables poets to understand a certain human experience as mysteriously pointing to God. They can present human love in its mysteriousness as an analogous reference to God’s love. Faithfulness,

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responsibility, resignation to the mystery of life, et cetera are, even when they are mentioned in a context that is not explicitly religious, references to that of which theology expressly speaks. I am not certain that there is today so much less Christian religious literature of a poetic or artistic kind. It is possible that the symbols used today by real poets have changed and can therefore not be correctly understood by traditionally pious people, although their authors are basically treating religious topics by means of unfamiliar symbols. This question should be carefully examined. The whole of Christian theology should, in the right sense of the word, be “subjective.” It cannot speak of objects that are situated beyond the spiritual, personal, free human reality. We cannot make a theological statement about a ladybug. That is why, a priori, no object studied by the positive sciences falls within the domain of theology. So we might say that theology starts only where it becomes really subjective. This does not mean that theology can say anything at all, that it can swear that black is white. Christian theology must be subjective because it speaks of faith, hope, and love, of our personal relationship to God. It must be subjective because, in the final analysis, it describes and evokes directly or indirectly these personal spiritual relationships of persons with God because it introduces them mystagogically into those relationships. In other words: theology, even as theology of revelation, is precisely that which transmits God’s invitation to human subjectivity. Where theology no longer manages to do that, where, in the wrong sense of the word, theology becomes objective, it is no longer a good theology, but a bad one.

THE ETERNAL IN HISTORICAL PARTICULARITY Analogy makes it possible to understand a given reality as a secret revelation of a higher, different, more comprehensive reality. Whatever is expressed in art is a product of that human transcendentality by which, as spiritual and free beings, we strive for the totality of all reality. It is only because from the start we are beings that transcend every limit, that can never stop, that are always reaching for the incomprehensible mystery; it is only because we are transcendental beings that art and theology can really exist. Another question is why and how this human transcendence in art is expressed in a certain historical way. Genuine art is the result of a well determined historical event of human transcendentality. That is why art can and must always be historical. There exists a real history of art. Artists do not always say the same thing.

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Of their very nature artists are discoverers of a concrete situation in which persons concretely realize their transcendental being in a new way, one that differs from former ways. This does not entail an opposition between historicity and transcendence, but their necessary mutual relationship. Real artists undoubtedly announce what is eternal in truth, love, and eternal yearning. But they are artists and not concept-mongering rationalists. They announce what is eternal in a unique manner, in which their historical peculiarity and their longing for eternity are combined in a unity that constitutes the essence of the work of art. I may understand Dürer’s hare as the most concrete aspect of a well-determined insignificant human experience, but when I look at it with the eyes of an artist, I am beholding, if I may say so the infinity and incomprehensibility of God.

THE WHOLE PERSON LISTENS The difficulty is that the eye as an optical instrument or the ear as an acoustical instrument cannot, as such, perceive God. To claim the opposite would be nonsense. In the Middle Ages the question was raised whether the human senses are used in heaven in the contemplation of God, and the answer was negative. But when something exceptionally intense is seen or heard, is it not possible for the whole person, with all one’s powers, to have a very powerful religious experience? In other words, might it happen that, when the whole person is absorbed in seeing or hearing, a religious experience takes place? Let us, for instance, take the German song, “Dear moon, how quietly you glide,” a trite song that has nothing to do with religion. They say that the melody of that song is the same as one we used for the Tantum Ergo Sacramentum. It follows that an acoustical phenomenon – depending on the human context in which it takes place – may be religious or not. If hearing is not the work of the ears alone, but of the whole person, an acoustical phenomenon is religious or not depending on the disposition and the concrete situation of the person listening. The religious quality of this melody depends simply on this: is the melody evaluated only in an acoustical context, or is the overall human situation also taken into account? In the latter case even acoustics are different – not in themselves, but because of the situation. The statement “God is everywhere with his grace” does not mean that every reality has the same relation to me or to God. God is not present in the same way in a physico-chemical reaction occurring in my stomach as when I practice faithfulness, love, or responsibility on behalf of others. Likewise, the problem of art with regard to religion is a difficult one. I

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may say, for instance, that the paintings of Impressionism are not religious because basically they try only to reproduce the color impressions of one’s immediate surroundings. If this is their only purpose and result, we will probably have to say that they are not religious art. And we must, without hesitation, say that there may exist art that is not religious. It does not have to be anti-religious. But it moves in a dimension of humanity where the relationship to God is not yet present. But it is quite another question when I put the painting of an Impressionist of the early twentieth century in a wider context, a more human one, which would also bring up the question of its religiosity. This might allow us to speak of the anonymous piety even of an Impressionistic picture. Especially since a religious painting is not simply identical with one that represents an explicitly religious object. When I paint the crib with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, using aureoles to show from the outset what is being represented, I have, objectively speaking, a religious picture. It may, in fact, not be very religious, because it is unable to evoke in those who see it a genuine and deep religious reaction. There exists what we call religious Kitsch. We might perhaps say that basically the pictures in the nineteenth century of the Holy Family were painted with the best intentions by pious people, but nevertheless, they were not truly religious paintings, because they do not affect us deeply enough to elicit religious feelings. On the other hand, it is quite possible that a Rembrandt painting, which is not intended as religious, moves people so deeply, bringing up the question of life’s ultimate meaning, that it is, strictly speaking, a religious painting.

BEING HOLY AND HUMAN We are touching here a real problem. We might defend the thesis that real saints are those who have developed all their human potentialities. When people are fully attuned to life, have wholly developed their power of seeing and hearing, their experience is at once identical with their religious attitude. One of the reasons why we may say this is that in heaven one is obviously not only very pious but also absolutely human, enjoying the full development of all one’s human capabilities. That is one side. However, if we proceed empirically, we may easily reach an opposite opinion. Are there not people who are really genuine saints, who love God and their neighbor in a radically unselfish way, and who, nevertheless, have hardly developed any artistic capabilities, who in matters of art are real lowbrows, capable only of rudimentary reactions? On the other hand, there

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are those who have developed an extraordinary artistic sensibility without being saints. We probably have once more to distinguish here between innate and freely accepted religious possibilities. Thus a case might be made for asserting that Goethe had developed his humanity to such a breadth and depth that, if he had started to love God, he would have done it with the whole fullness and intensity of his humanity, therefore in a much greater, wider, freer, more differentiated way than a nice pious saint. Nonetheless, possibly Goethe might, in fact, not have done this, might not have used these possibilities sufficiently to actualize his developed humanity in the service of God, whereas the lesser, more modest possibilities of a nice humble saint may have been better utilized. Here we touch upon the old problem: to what extent does holiness mean psychic health? This too is a difficult question. Wasn’t St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, as many Catholic psychotherapists say today, a very neurotic person? Wasn’t St. Alphonsus Liguori, the founder of the Redemptorists, in his old age both a real saint and a neurotic one? All these questions might be transposed into the following one: what is the relation between artistic talent and holiness?

Chapter 12

The theology of the religious meaning of images

As I try to write a few things about this topic, I must start by saying that I do not claim to possess the competence that belongs to an expert in the philosophy or history of art, whether sacred or secular. I understand little about these things. I do not even believe that I belong among those who have more than an average background in these fields. In my theological and “philosophical” considerations (if they can be called such) statements will be blended somewhat. I feel entitled to do this because I believe that the “philosophical” statements are either sufficiently supported by the theological assertions or they meaningfully complement them.

CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY I would like first to present a few considerations about the insuperable pluralism in empirical human experience. First, for a Christian anthropology persons are beings of an a posteriori, historical, and sensory experience. This holds also for that dimension of their existence in which they face God in their religion. Until recent years repeated efforts were made to devise

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a metaphysical anthropology that postulated for human beings a specific source of religious knowledge, which would not depend at all on sensory or historical experience. These efforts derived generally from the conviction that only through such a source of knowledge could religion be possible as a relationship to the absolute and personal God. We do not have to consider in more detail how this source of knowledge was explained, whether as a mystical experience that is within one’s reach, or in the sense of ontologism, or as the operation of a religious organ that is more or less independent of other cognitive powers. Ordinary Christian anthropology is convinced that in human knowledge two levels must be distinguished: sense knowledge, that is, one having a strictly material component, and spiritual conceptual knowledge, that is, one reaching out to being as such. However, against all kinds of ontologism, against all attempts to safeguard religious knowledge by detaching it from other kinds of knowledge, traditional Christian anthropology has always clearly insisted that sense knowledge and spiritual knowledge constitute a unity, that all spiritual knowledge, however sublime it may be, is initiated and filled with content by sense experience. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, emphasizes expressly in his metaphysics of knowledge that even the most spiritual, most “transcendental,” most sublime concept can be reached by human beings on this earth only through a “conversio ad phantasmata,” that is (in Kantian language) that every concept without sense intuition is empty, that is, nonexistent. This statement applies also to religious knowledge. That knowledge too is necessarily reached by an intuition that depends on sensory, and therefore also historical experience.

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE – SENSE INTUITION It is, of course, not our task here to show, against a large segment of modern philosophy, why, even when we admit that metaphysical knowledge depends on sense experience, a real knowledge of God is possible, although this God is infinitely exalted above all that can be grasped with the senses. Although this task may be very difficult, we must presuppose that it can be carried out. The only thing that concerns us here is that every religious experience has its origin in sense experience and exists only by referring – ever so implicitly – to some sense intuition. There exist in religious language very concrete concepts, representations, and images, and beside them a language that, as we say, sounds abstract, imageless, purely conceptual. But, in the final analysis, even in the religious domain, concepts and words can only be understood if and insofar as they contain a sensory moment. Once more it is not possible to show here in detail, by means of examples, how such a sensory element

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is present in all religious operations that contain a conscious component or are simply states of consciousness. The livelier these religious operations are, the clearer is the sensory component. This is evident especially in Catholic piety. Central to it is the preaching of the Word, whose concepts also are always carried by representations that enter into consciousness through sense experience and that are present in the concepts even when, to ordinary people, the latter seem to be wholly abstract and devoid of imagery. Moreover in this piety there are also sacramental signs, bodily attitudes for prayer, pilgrimages, songs, vestments, incense, and a thousand other things, through which human sensory corporality is involved in religious activity.

RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES INVOLVE THE BODY, REFER TO THE NAMELESS GOD Meanwhile there will always exist a certain antagonism between this corporality of religious activities and their transcendental reference to the nameless God, whom, as we are told in John 1:18 nobody has ever seen. Catholic doctrine and devotion too speak of a mystical ascent to contemplation, which is experienced as being without images, without object, as being engulfed in the incomprehensibility of God. They emphasize that we will one day contemplate God directly, without the help of any created concepts or images. Nevertheless, by emphasizing the resurrection of the flesh, the lasting incarnation of the eternal Logos, Christianity remains the religion that can conceive of human fulfillment only as the consummation of the whole human being, in which that being, although transformed in a way that we do not understand, reaches its consummation with all the dimensions of its reality in their unity, hence not by shedding some dimensions that would belong to it only in this life. For Christianity, human beings take with them, in their consummation, albeit in a way that we can neither conceive nor imagine, their whole reality, hence also their body, their senses, their history. We must reject the idea stemming from the Enlightenment, according to which the “immortal soul” would already be such that, without a radical transformation but simply by shedding the body as a merely provisional instrument, it might enter the realm of final fulfillment.

SENSE POWERS – A COMPLEX REALITY All of this, although indicated very roughly, is here presupposed. What concerns us here, as we continue to reflect on it, is that what Christian philosophical and theological anthropology generally calls corporality, more exactly the human sense level, is a very complex reality. Despite

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the unity of the human subject it consists truly of many and ultimately incommensurable powers. Let me mention now that it is only when we understand this clearly that we will be able really to understand the meaning of images in religion. What do we mean when we speak of the plurality of sense experience as ultimately incommensurable? Let us start very simply. Everyone has heard of the five senses. We do not have to examine here whether there really are five senses or more, whether sense perception as a whole should be subdivided and arranged in another and better way, how the plurality of sense powers has slowly developed during the evolution of animal life. In any case, there is a plurality of sense experiences. We hear, we see, we touch, we feel the movements of our body from within; we smell, we taste, we feel pain and we experience bodily well-being. We cannot suppress this plurality of sense experiences; we cannot, as we experience them in space and time through our bodily nature, reduce this plurality to a unity. True, we may combine them under the concept and word sensorium as the a posteriori power of experiencing things in space and time. We may even abstractly, through concepts, think that there might still exist other such powers, for instance, the power of seeing ultra violet light or others that are supposed to exist in bats, and so on. Biochemistry can certainly discover and describe common features in all these different senses and thus also explain the possibility of a differentiation that happened during evolution.

INCOMMENSURABLE PLURALITY OF SENSE EXPERIENCES It is undeniable that there exists a plurality of sense experiences that cannot be reduced to each other. Seeing and hearing are not the same. It is true that we can, through our power of abstract concepts, through words and ideas, describe seeing and hearing together in their diversity as well as in their abstract similarity. But from such a description a person who has never seen would understand about seeing about as much as an individual born blind to whom we try to explain what seeing is. The same is true for the other sense experiences. They are in themselves incommensurable with each other; they remain such in the unity of the experiencing subject, even if, as spiritual, that subject can reflect on these experiences with concepts. By mentioning this incommensurability of sense experiences we are not denying the unity of the experiencing subject, through which these sense experiences communicate with each other and thus bring about a unity of this plurality. Nor do we claim that every one of these sense powers and dimensions occupies the same rank and is equally important for the subject.

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What is implied in the thesis of an incommensurable plurality of the sense powers and experiences is that, where one is totally (insofar as this is possible at all) self-aware and self-present, all these various sense faculties must enter into action together. In other words, to be completely human, persons must produce a work of art for which all their powers collaborate. This may be beyond their reach. Because of their immersion in time it is possible that they can fully realize themselves, even on the sense level, only partially and in successive attempts. At any rate, every human sense power has an essential importance and cannot be replaced or repressed by another one. We are and we should be persons in whom the many incommensurable dimensions of our sensorium enter into activity.

THE EYES OF FAITH – THE ETERNAL LOGOS AS GOD’S ETERNAL IMAGE What we have said applies also to human sense powers insofar as they are an essential element of the human capacity for religion. For Christianity, as one of the principal religions, this is evident with regard to the word, to hearing. In a positive (but, as we intend to explain it here, not exclusive) sense Luther is right when he says: the ears are the organ of the Christian. Paul is right when he says: faith comes from hearing. But if persons are fully themselves only when all their sense powers work together, if these powers are incommensurable, if the complete person and complete Christian are identical, then Christianity can be present in persons fully and completely only if it has entered them through all the gates of their senses, and not merely through their ears, through the word. It is not true that the divine reality which must penetrate into human beings can enter their existence fully and completely through the single gate of the ears, of hearing. This statement does not imply that all these sensory gates are equally wide and important for God’s self-communication to humanity. So we are not rejecting what Luther said or, more importantly, what a lengthy Christian tradition holds, namely, that revelation and God’s gracious self-communication happen fundamentally through the word and through the hearing of the message conveyed by words. However, Christian language speaks also of the eyes of faith, the eternal Logos is conceived not only as God’s self-utterance but also as God’s eternal image. Eternal happiness is presented primarily as a seeing of the triune God face to face, not as a hearing. So, in principle, we may not deny that sight is a power that cannot be replaced by other sources of experience within human sense faculties, that sight also belongs to the sensory foundation of religious knowledge.

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We cannot here, in a philosophical and theological epistemology, explain in more detail how reality perceived by the senses is a starting point and a moment of religious experience and knowledge. That would lead us too far. Therefore what we said above about the function of sight, which can be replaced by no other sensory power, not even by hearing, is at first still a very vague and obscure formal statement, which does not bring us much light. But it might perhaps serve as a basis for a few considerations about religious images, which we will presently submit.

WHY RELIGIOUS IMAGES ARE IMPORTANT IN CHRISTIANITY Religious images have always had a great importance in Christianity. The production, the appreciation, even the veneration of religious images is one of the features that distinguish Christianity and its piety from the piety of the Old Testament, with its prohibition of images, and from Islam, hence from the two other great monotheistic world religions. The fact that these two other monotheistic religions reject religious images, at least in principle, is also time and again a new incentive for rejecting religious images in Christianity as well. Well known are the rejection of images in the East, between 730 and 843; a similar Carolingian opposition to images at the end of the eighth century; the rejection of images by Karlstadt, Zwingli and Calvin; and the iconoclasm in Zurich, France, and the Low Countries in the second half of the sixteenth century. Upon closer examination, the Orthodox and the Roman-Catholic defense [sic] of images derives from very different mentalities and arguments. In the East (if we may put it briefly and simplistically) the veneration of images is supported by the mystical feeling of an “incarnational” identity between the image and its object (Christ, the saints, God). In the West a more rational feeling prevails; images are legitimate in the religious domain. Compared with the importance of the word they are a kind of biblia pauperum (poor people’s Bible), which makes the story and the doctrine that have been explained more vivid for those who cannot read.

OUR OWN STARTING POINT These two basic ways of understanding religious images are of course generally combined in practice and in the theory that tries to interpret it. They led to the complicated theories (from John Damascene to Thomas Aquinas to Bellarmine) that justified in more detail the veneration and cult of images

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and that, within the domain of piety too, are still today, even in the Catholic Church, very different in different countries and popular mentalities. I do not have to insist here on these questions, which are generally treated in the theology of the veneration of the saints. I will rather try, by using my own starting point, to submit a few considerations about religious images. At first, no attention will be paid to the distinction between properly religious icons that enjoy a cultic veneration (in places of pilgrimage, etc.) and religious images in general.

THEOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS SEEING Our starting point leads us to say that because they can be seen religious images have a religious significance that cannot be replaced by the word. Religious images are in principle more than simply a poor people’s Bible, a way of illustrating, for pedagogical reasons, the religious realities that can be conveyed wholly to people only through the word. Even though, within a religion based on a historical and social revelation, we must attribute to the word an irreplaceable and fundamental importance, the viewing of images is not a mere illustration of the spoken word, but it has its own religious significance. We may naturally speak of this significance, interpret it, and thus once more explain the image by means of words. Yet these words are no substitute for the viewing in itself and as a religious activity. The fact that theology speaks of this specific and irreplaceable significance of religious viewing not at all or very rarely, and practically only in passing, is not an argument against this assertion. Theology does not say more about religious dance either. In the doctrine of the sacraments, after having spoken abstractly of the sacramental matter, it speaks only of the “form,” the word, of the sacrament. And one has the impression that the “matter” of the sacraments (washing, anointing, imposition of hands) is only a more or less arbitrarily prescribed ceremony, which could just as well have been replaced by another.

REACHING GOD WITH THE EARTH In connection with this basic thesis, if we ask how this irreplaceable function of viewing images is to be conceived in the total religious act, we should first emphasize again that we are speaking here of a fundamental and irreducible moment of the total religious act. Now this moment can be rendered intelligible only by performing it, not by talking about it. Here analogically we may apply the old adage: use images, artists, no words! If

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this basic thesis is correct, the modern attempts to meditate with images may be recommended, even though, as mentioned above, it remains a difficult question to reconcile contemplation without any object with the significance of meditating with images. This question is connected with a question that refers to Christianity as a whole, which, in its efforts to arrive at the absolute God, intends to take along the earth as a whole, the glorified earth. It is only if we accept this basic thesis that it is possible ultimately to understand the Ignatian method of meditation, for example, in which contemplation has an important role, one which requires frequent practice and in which the “application of the senses” is to be considered not the lowest but a most sublime level of meditation.

EVENTS OF SALVATION HISTORY MUST ALSO BE CONTEMPLATED But once more: how shall we more precisely conceive of the function of seeing, as compared with that of hearing, as an irreplaceable moment in the total religious act? We might start by saying: insofar as religious images represent events of salvation history that may be grasped by the senses, this question presents no special problem. Such images provide the experience of visible historical events. In this way the problem is moved further, transformed into the question how the first historical and visible experience of salvation history could have a religious significance. This is a question that we cannot examine any further. But we can say: one irreplaceable way of getting to know a person is to see and not just to hear that person; a portrait cannot be totally replaced by a biography. The same is true of salvationhistorical events. They must also be seen, and seen in an image, if we are not actually present to see them.

VIEWING A PROPERLY RELIGIOUS PHENOMENON But still we have not totally grasped the proper nature of images and of seeing as a properly religious phenomenon. A religious reality is truly such only when it helps us to refer directly to the absolute God. It stands to reason that such a direct reference of an innerworldly reality to the true and sovereign God is conceivable only in connection with what we Christians call grace, whether or not we are aware of this grace when referring to God. We do not have to spend more time on this problem, nor on other presuppositions of an innerworldly reality’s mediating function with regard to God.

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RELIGIOUS IMAGE – ITS MEDIATING FUNCTION TO THE ABSOLUTE GOD An important point for us here is the following: if religious images may exist, it must be possible for them to have such a mediating function with regard to the absolute God. Such a function should not belong exclusively to the word. This assumption is implicitly present in our basic thesis, which holds that all peak experiences of every sense domain, and not only those of the sense of hearing, may be the basis and element of a religious act. We must grant, of course, that such a function is more immediately and easily understandable in the case of words than in that of images, insofar as words contain essentially a moment of negation, enabling them at once to transcend beyond the finite object toward the absolute God. At first it may seem as though viewing stops at the finite object which is immediately seen, making it thus impossible to transcend it toward the absolute God. But we may reject this and say: every experience of an object, even though the object is always a single and finite one, is carried by an a priori pre-apprehension of the whole breadth of the formal object of the sense power. It is more than the grasping of the concrete single object that is being known. This is not true for hearing alone. It is not true only for the spirit as such with its unlimited transcendentality. It is true that the senses and the spirit differ from each other by the fact that the latter has an unlimited formal object, an unlimited a priori pre-apprehension, whereas this is not true for the senses. Yet, even so, every act of the sense powers as such implies some experience of transcendence. Thus every time we hear a certain sound we also hear the stillness that surrounds it and constitutes the space in which a single sound may be heard.

SEEING TOO IMPLIES A SENSORY EXPERIENCE OF TRANSCENDENCE Such an experience of transcendence, although a limited one, is also necessarily given in the act of seeing. Every time we see an object, we look, as it were, beyond it, into the expanse of all that may be seen. We see something as well determined because, in this seeing, we are also aware of the unseen fullness of what may be seen. We can experience the limits and the proper nature of what we directly see only because our glance goes beyond this limit into the expanse of what might be seen, without being seen. Hence in seeing too, and not only in hearing, there is a kind of sensory experience of transcendence, that serves as foundation and mediation in referring the sense-endowed spiritual subject to God.

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RELIGIOUS IMAGES WITH IMMEDIATE RELIGIOUS THEMES If this is so it follows, rather surprisingly, that even an image that does not have a specifically religious theme can be a religious image, when viewing it helps to bring about, through a sensory experience of transcendence (if we may call it so), that properly religious experience of transcendence. This consequence, which chooses sides in a strongly disputed question from an angle that is perhaps otherwise not explicitly mentioned, should not surprise the theologian too much. A naive theology will spontaneously think or silently presuppose that only explicitly religious acts (of prayer, of expressed love of God, of explicit observation of a moral norm as a command of God) will bring about a salutary relation to God. But, theologically speaking, that is false. Moral acts may be conducive to salvation; by God’s grace they may be finalized toward God’s immediacy, without any objectively represented or verbalized reference to God. Salutary acts do not always and necessarily have to be accompanied by a “good intention.” The totality of a free subject’s way of life is always and undeniably a yes or a no to God, even when this subject is not aware of it or does not put it into words. Hence the statement that viewing an image that has no explicitly religious object may be the experience of a freely accepted transcendence toward God, may be a religious act, and that, in this sense, the image may have a religious significance, is not as surprising for the theologian as it may seem at first.

IMAGES THAT POINT TO SALVATION HISTORY This does not deny the necessity of specifically religious images for Christians. In their piety, Christians have always to keep in mind their faith in a special salvation history, which can be narrated and visualized, as part of the whole of secular history. So they cannot express and visualize their religiosity only by means of abstract paintings without using, for instance, the crucifix and other explicitly religious images. This is especially true for the Church as a community that is constituted by professing the same faith in words used and understood by all its members. It needs images that are basically understood by all and that refer explicitly to the history of salvation that all believe in and confess. On the other hand, as we have said, this does not exclude the possibility of images that may be religious, although their object is not directly and clearly such.

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IMAGE AND WORD HAVE COMPLEMENTARY FUNCTIONS So when we affirm the special and irreplaceable religious significance of images, we do not deny (to say it once again and more explicitly) that images need a verbal explanation, both to be recognized as expressly Christian by those who see them, and in order that, as the religious images of a Christian community, they may perform a social function in the Church. There exists naturally no visible reality from which alone its Christian significance might be gathered. That this image of the crucified Jesus Christ refers to the historical savior cannot be gathered just from seeing it, although the religious significance of this image of the crucified Lord is not totally explained by the words used to interpret it. That is why images that serve as Christian images for a community particularly require a verbal explanation. Such an explanation is given also when it is presented with conventional signs and symbols. In this way word and image have complementary functions and work together in constituting the religious act. It is, of course, not possible to expatiate here on this statement by pointing to other sense experiences that could be added to this word-image unity in the religious act. Such are spatial features provided by architecture; experiences of movement provided by liturgical gestures, walking in pilgrimages, or religious dance; olfactory experiences deriving from incense; experiences of touching or of tasting in sacramental activities. All the sense powers may, in their mutually irreducible experiences, and in countless different ways and combinations, enter into the religious act.

THE COLLECTIVE FUNCTION OF THE CULTIC IMAGE One more remark based on what has been said above must still be added about the properly cultic image, the icon, insofar as it is more than an ordinary religious image with a content taken from salvation history. As a rule, the proper character of a cultic image, in the strict sense, is gathered from the fact that it is actually an object of veneration, and it enjoys some kind of official approbation. Hence the main question for the theological interpretation of the cultic image is how veneration of such a cultic image may be justified and how this veneration should more precisely be interpreted. Is it being paid in some way to the image itself, or does the veneration, as it were, through and beyond the image, aim only at the person who is represented? And is it possible to show that the different interpretations of this veneration of an image do not cancel each other out?

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Our previous considerations allow us to say: an image is cultic if the image is always considered religious in the experience of a great number of Christians, and if this collective meaning is known and acknowledged. The cultic image is “venerated” because it has for many people a lasting religious meaning. From this point of view, it is an additional and secondary question whether, and in what sense, this image is “venerated.” In whatever way this veneration may be described more precisely, it is based on the image’s collective function as a religious image, the viewing of which has become an essential element of the religious act. On account of this function such an image may be highly esteemed and put above other religious images. In that sense it may itself be “venerated.” We do not have to insist on the fact that the veneration belongs only to the reality represented by the image.

Chapter 13

Church building On modern church architecture1

What shall I say about church building? This question is not meant to be rhetorical. I am not an architect, not an art historian, not an artist. I do not even dare to think of myself as having much understanding of art, taste and similar qualities that one would need to have to engage with some competence in the question of church architecture. On such a question the theologian, who is not even a parish priest, can only say that his theological science is very incompetent in answering the question how a church should look like today. From a theological point of view, of course, he could try to develop some principles for church architecture. But if he did, he would have to emphasize just as loudly and clearly that these principles do not give clear instructions how a church should concretely look. For if the theologian (or the church official) said that a church should correspond to its tasks, should be ‘worthy’, should instil devotion, should appear ‘sacral’, should express the unity of the community, its relation to God, its unity and its openness to the world, should express their salvation and liberation, etc., should be in tune with contemporary life without uncritically arranging itself with everything contemporary – if such and many other principles were formulated, then perhaps much would be said that is correct but also much that is very impractical. For all questions would

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return: what does ‘worthy’ mean, when is something ‘sacral’, how should all the theological realities of a congregation that congregates in the church be reflected in the church building itself? There are, of course, many people and Christians who are shaped by a tradition and customs, who believe they know exactly what ‘sacral’, ‘worthy’, ‘pious’, ‘devotion-instilling’, etc. mean, and that this or that building does not have these features. But such decided judgements (of agreement, of indignation, of alienation) are not, then, the result of an intelligent application of such formal principles, but of unreflected, and largely unreflectable, depths of sentiment, a sentiment which, of course, is subject to historical change, and does not arrive at clear judgements because these would be the only correct ones, but because, and when, such a sentiment has become commonplace in a society. Besides raising some principles whose importance, despite their formality, shall not be disputed here, the theologian thus can only draw attention to the fact that he and his principles do not bring about a concrete church construction, that no one, hence, should make – in the name of such abstract principles – too fast judgements concerning a concrete church, judgements that are not unequivocal applications of such, very correct, theological and aesthetic principles, but stem from a sentiment that ought not derive its authority from these principles, but from its own historical force and power, with which it is able to win the spirits and minds of contemporaries. The architect is not the servant of abstract principles that are put forward by theologians or theoreticians who have a Christian and ecclesial aesthetics. If these are correct, the architect must, of course, pay attention to them. But he himself creates the underivable, the unique that must be intrinsic in every genuinely concrete entity. If he would only execute abstract norms or traditional models of ideas (which are still universal even though they are called historical styles), his work would be dead, a pile of stones, a mere functional building, not a church. The main task of theology in such matters is the courageous release of the artist into his own responsibility, which no one can take from him, in which the theologian, too, is not allowed to patronize him. One must look at a church, live in it, experience community in it, worship God in it. Then one can say, whether it is a good church. However, there is one principle to which, indeed, the theologian might perhaps call attention. Indeed because it is also a principle of freedom, a principle of the authority of freedom,2 which protects3 the architect. Because it is a principle which, it seems to me, in church practice is not infrequently contradicted in an unreflected manner. One could almost say that it is a New Testament principle that must be defended in its purity and

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power against an Old Testament principle. It could perhaps be formulated in this way so that its provocative nature comes out clearly: in the New Testament among Christians there are no longer sacred buildings in the actual and strict sense. What is meant by this principle? First of all, of course, there should still be churches today and in the future, wherever they are not opposed in their existence by physical violence (in which case, of course, Christians will make a little hidden chamber into the community church). Of course, these churches should be such that they correspond to their ‘purpose’, a multifaceted purpose, the diversity of which must not be reduced to a unity that can be seized by the human himself, but that can be upheld at ease by human beings in their plurality. If one wants to call this ‘purpose’, this raison d’être of churches, ‘sacral’, then, of course, church buildings may and must also be called ‘sacral’. But where the church building wanted to claim (through itself, through its design, etc.) that only inside it the sacred can happen, only inside it can God turn to the human with his glory and grace, if it wanted to say that outside its walls is the profane, the merely secular, in which God thus does not enter the life of the human being, this would be at most an Old Testament, but not at all a Christian, conception of church architecture. The building is not the enclosure of the sacral, grace-filled event that can only take place inside it, but it is the space in which normally (and that only!) a specific individual act of grace takes place: the gathering of the congregation to celebrate the holy communion of Jesus, the usual administering of the sacraments, the official ecclesial proclamation of God’s word, the discussion of the tasks that are the responsibility of the Christian community as such, and so on. But all this is not the whole of the ‘sacrum’ that happens in the life of the individual and of society. Everywhere, in the whole of the profane life of the human, grace happens. God sanctifies the life of the human being and, in its whole length and breadth, makes it sacred, ‘sacral’. Indeed, the most decisive events, in which the human being completely and definitively surrenders himself to God, to his mercy and eternal life, most often happen in the plain profane everydayness of life – there, where the miracle of truly selfless love and faithfulness occurs, where unrewarded responsibility is carried out against all of one’s own egotism, where people die in serene hope. The ‘church’ in which God hence becomes present in the life of the human, usually indeed is not the church [building] but the tent that God has built for himself through his whole wide world and, through history, has continually refashioned in new ways and in a thousand unexpected styles.

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And even for the special part-event of the holy that takes place in the community church, the church is not the space that enables this holy event from the root by itself, but it is the purpose-built construction, the space that humans need for such sacral actions. In the New Testament, one no longer builds a church over a ‘sacred place’ that already exists in order to shield it and protect it from profanation. Insofar as a church may be called sacred, it is sacred because inside it people do sacred things. And for this, corresponding to their being community, they need a space in which they gather for this action. (From this it would follow, for example, that the convening of a ‘profane’ community meeting – which is, of course, something humanly respectable to do – would not make this church space ‘profane’, so that an architect might certainly anticipate this additional purpose, and in itself humanly worthy, when building the church.) The space of the church does not sanctify but is sanctified by that segment of action of Christians, which by its nature must be carried out in the church community. Stated in a straightforward manner: looking at a church one ought to see its sacred purpose, but one does not need to note sacredness radiating out of herself, so to speak. Earlier times perhaps were allowed to seek to realize such a concept of the church. We do not need to do such today at all, and we are allowed – with a different attitude towards church architecture arising from our understanding of being Christian – to include everything that is not sin but permeated by the grace of God, everything that is opened up towards eternal life, and therefore holy. For the kind of sentiment we were talking about, a church, however, therefore does not need to look like a ‘soul silo’, a ‘Paternoster Works Public Cooperation’, etc. Indeed, we can say: If the purpose of the meeting place of a Christian community serves, serves well, all those tasks that it has to engage in as a Christian community, a community of today, in pretty much all aspects, then it is a good, yes even ‘beautiful’, church. Because even beauty cannot be anything other than the splendour of the true and the good, that is, the pure manifestation of its task. It cannot be my task here to draw specific conclusions concerning a church building or its assessment. A concrete, individual reality is based on a great number of norms and can and must be paid tribute to taking in a great number of aspects. And, of course, not only those which we have just mentioned in passing. Most of those aspects under which a church must be honoured, have not even been mentioned here; a theologian also would be completely incompetent in relation to most of these. Here, therefore, only one conclusion shall be explicitly drawn: the obligation, first of all, to be humble towards the concrete work of a builder,

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to let the work speak before one speaks oneself, to live with the work in order to get to know it as it really is, to try to fill it with the spiritual life, the life of God’s love and the love of neighbour (the church must also serve the love of neighbour!), to give the church sacrality, rather than to receive it from her. Even though the architect must do his part in a church building, in the end the church is what those who worship in it make of it – to worship God, to celebrate the death of the Lord and accept it as the grace of one’s own death, and to gift the neighbour the love that God testifies.

NOTES 1. The text was written for the Festschrift of the consecration of the Church of the Holy Family in Kirchhellen-Grafenwald on 14.11.1971, today BottropGrafenwald (http://www​.heilige​-familiegrafenwald​.de/ accessed 11/2010). The previous church had to be demolished because of mountain damage. The self-presentation in the publication ‘50 Jahre Pfarrgemeinde Heilige Familie Kirchhellen-Grafenwald’ [no place given, 1969] explains the design as follows: ‘One enters the hexagonal church through two entrances of equal size. The room presents itself in a regular shape, with a tent roof and a changing wall painting. There is a closed eaves wall and an open gable wall opposite. This rule is broken on the south side. Here the weekday church and the sacristy have been added and connected to the building. The light-emitting gable is closed in the lower zone. The altar has been moved to the supporting central triangle so that the benches can be placed around on three sides. The altar island offers space for altar, ambo, tabernacle and the seat of the priest. The baptismal font will be placed at the back of the chorus. The organ with the places for singers is located on the north side. Acoustically this is its most favourable place.’ The church in Kirchhellen-Grafenwald is a building that tries to accommodate the conciliar development of the liturgy, which at that time had to lead to solutions that were new compared to traditional church building. This explains some of the remarks in the text. The history of building the church is presented in the publication ‘25 Jahre Heilige Familie Grafenwald. 1971-1996’ [no place given, 1996]. The design is from the architecture bureau Bernd Kösters and Herbert Balke from Münster. The liturgical concept was assessed by the Münster pastoral theologian Professor Theodor Filthaut (1907–67). The church was inaugurated by the Münster diocesan bishop Heinrich Tenhumberg (1915–79). 2. A reference to the conciliar interpretations of Johann Christoph Hampe (ed.), Die Autorität der Freiheit. Gegenwart des Konzils und Zukunft der Kirche im ökumenischen Disput, 3 vols., Munich, 1967. 3. B: im.

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Chapter 14

Word and music in church On the Innsbruck premiere of The Mass by Igor Stravinsky1 in the Jesuit Church, 18 May 1961

The few words spoken before the performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Latin Mass are not intended to endorse Stravinsky as a composer, nor to interpret this Mass under musical or general aesthetic aspects, or to classify it within Stravinsky’s entire oeuvre. Their purpose is much more modest. They only want to ask the listener of this Mass, who is not yet acquainted with it, for that inner sympathy and that open heart with which one has to approach a work of art, if one wants to understand a new and unfamiliar work by a great human being and master. These words are only to request this willingness to allow one’s inner being to be told something, by presenting some very humble ideas from a thoroughly pre-musical point of view about word and music in the space of the church. Christianity is a religion of the word, of doctrine, of Scripture, in such a specific sense that among the religions of the earth and the history of humankind we find at most, if any, a comparable phenomenon in Islam. This, however, is not surprising either since Islam has a pre-history in Judaism and Christianity and indeed acknowledges this: Why now is

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Christianity so much the religion of the word? The answer is simple: Christianity confesses that absolute mystery as that what it means, that is, God, and as the salvation of the finite human; the mystery that is above all immediately experienceable and worldly realities, but that in its own incommensurable reality wants to communicate itself to the human being; the mystery that calls the human being beyond the world, beyond death, into its own inaccessible light. This God of Christianity, therefore, is not another name for a secret numinous glory of a world reality; it is not a magic formula, with which the human being might ultimately mean himself; it is nothing that would be open to the covetous autonomous experience of the human being elicited by himself and to which he would be consigned. God, as the one he wants to be in Christianity out of sheer grace, is not an entity that in itself is present in the realm of human experience. As such, he is the nameless one, the incomprehensible, the inaccessible, who, with his countenance hidden, is worshipped, the one who is always greater than our heart and our spirit and our experience. If he shall be named, however, if he shall be known, if he himself shall come forward into the realm of human experience before he calls the human from all finite experience into his own life, the beatific vision face to face, this can only happen in the word. Otherwise he cannot be there for us in the actual realm of our human consciousness – before eternal life – as the one who he is for us in grace. But why in the word, why not in other ways: in the image, in sound, in gesture, in dance? Because the word alone carries that moment as its inner essence with and in itself, that makes it possible to name the one who is ineffably above all the world, above all that exists and can be imagined outside of him: the transcendent reference to the infinite, the No that does not kill, but liberates and sets out and makes the tangible into the representation of a reality, that it is not itself. Everything inner-worldly as such in its positivity – and this includes colour, sound, body, gesture, in short all material of all the arts – through itself can only show itself, that is, world – great, wonderful, magnificent, tragic, heartmoving world. But, indeed, only world; God only insofar as he is the inner splendour of the world itself; but not God who is more than the world and in this more wants to give himself to the creature. One cannot paint the God of mercy; religious paintings cannot express through their positive statement what is really meant, but only through the written word, the added cipher. What paintings can express directly is always only the splendour of glory of the human being and their own dark depth. Only the word can do more – whereby, of course, word does not necessarily mean a phonetic pronouncement but everything, and only that, which gives the human being’s representingnegating transcendence (verweisend-verneinenden Transzendenz) body and

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presence through which the infinite – that which is world-transcending – can become present as such before the beatific vision. Thus, there can be no pure music, which in itself already would be the pronouncement of the God, who in his very own divinity, stepping out of his own world-transcending inner being, wants to be the salvation of humans. There is no music which, as pure music, can be already a clear statement of the supernatural faith of the Christian as such. Music, as pure music, can be pious, if one understands piety as that blissful sincerity, that unwound retreat into oneself freed from the drudge of physical need and daily concerns; pure music can conjure up and break open the highest heights and lowest depths of the human being, but in itself it cannot express the mystery of grace, the hidden life of the triune God. Music is a piece of the world, perhaps the most wondrous besides the creations of painting and sculpture, and besides dance. Music is indeed the art of the human being in which the human expresses himself, comes to himself and, purified and concentrated, experiences himself: but in music as such, and pure, humans cannot make present the God of grace. That is only possible in the word that God has spoken and which the human repeats, confessing and praying. So does sacred Christian music not exist? Oh yes, it does. It exists with the word. If the human being confesses, prays, hears the Christian word of revelation, then, of course, he must be the one who has gathered his whole humanity in readiness and receptivity in order to sacrificially offer it to the God of grace. He must therefore be human to be a Christian. He thus becomes the collected human, the human who is opening up, the human who is ready and relaxed, the human who can be moved by God’s grace if he becomes a human in the full sense, hence the musical human who expresses and gathers himself in music. And further: as the human being who confesses and prays the word from above, that originally is not his own, the human needs his whole humanity in order to confess and to pray the infinity of God communicating itself from above in the word. Human expression of the Christian word again requires the whole human being and thus the musical, the musical human. Both together, however, imply: the human sings the word that God imparted to him, and through the word he confesses in prayer what no inner-worldly reality as such can represent. Yet this implies negatively: Christian music as such cannot be pure music, however sacred and meaningful pure music can be for the adventist preparation of the human as such for Christianity. And positively: the Christian word, in which the event of divine self-communication becomes present, reaches its own climax in the sung word, in the word that comes to sound in music because in it the human being – hearing, confessing and praying – is present with the whole reality of their existence. Thereby,

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however, a decisive factor in understanding actual Christian music has been reached. Authentic cultic religious music is not simply a sentimental accompaniment of the spoken word, not just an enhancement of a vague mood of feeling that melodramatically accompanies the strict word of supernatural Christian revelation from beyond the world. Yet, it also cannot be understood as a kind of conscious or unconscious programmatic music that claims to express the intended, the revealed, divine reality directly as such. Music, as such, cannot do so. It is not the statement of religious reality but the statement of the human being who expresses himself in the faith. It does not originate directly from the believed reality but rather from the process of faith within the person. Wherever religious music itself would want to testify directly to the glory of the known reality, it would – destroying itself in the process – overstrain itself or falsify the reality it aims to express. But music can do one thing: it can express the human being who says the word that comes from above. This, too, it cannot do directly by making audible the graceful unfolding of this statement, this word of confession and prayer. But it can and shall unfold and express in music the human dimension of this confession and prayer associated with this process of faith and internal to it: the sincerity, devotion, emotion, the believing objectivity of hearing, and the strictness of the statement, the unity of the community emerging from its roots of being human – in short, the whole unspeakable expanse and depth of the human, which must also take place in the statement of the word from above, and does so in a rather unique way. Theologically, it must also be remembered that the purity and refined goodness [Geläutertheit] of the human that is expressed in genuine church music is in itself (whether one knows it or not) a work of preserving, purifying and redeeming grace from above. Thus, whoever communicates and expresses in music in a pure manner what is human has already expressed more than the human – even if only that person knows it, who in the word hears and confesses the message of supernatural grace. And another thing must be remembered: the believing and confessing human, too, is a human, therefore a human being of history, a human with the burden and the greatness of his time and the inescapability of his situation which he must be prepared to carry and that never is a situation of another time. It is precisely the believing, confessing human being – the one who in his confession expresses himself musically as the one who confesses and prays – who ought not to express the abstract, merely time-transcending human being: classical music that merely wants to articulate the so-called eternal (which would be the rationalistic spectre [das Schemen] of the human) and nothing else, indeed would be wrong in church music, since it is precisely in the music that the human being must be

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articulated, whose time, inescapable historicity and reality of death shall be redeemed through his confession of faith. If you consider these reflections, presented in a rather primitive manner and without nuance, perhaps you may yet be able (insofar as it is difficult anyway and not easy and self-understood) to approach the music you are about to hear. It does not want to melodramatically, or, in the nature of an (ever so sublime) programmatic music, perform and make apparent that what is being expressed for its own sake. It is simply the singing of the words of the Christian creed and prayer. In all sincerity, in all truthfulness, in all humble simplicity. The chant of the ancient words of faith by a human being of today. And thus by a human who does not exclude feeling but shies away from loudly presenting to all the world, a human who finds faith rather through the sorrow of the burden of existence and of death than from inflating the bliss of existence into the infinite, a human who indeed finds the cold more true, and therefore more burning, than the exuberance of immediate feeling. If someone like Stravinsky composed this Mass without commission, thus entirely from his own inner self, then we know from the outset that it is a sincere statement of a human being; it really wants to say what is being said: One must always listen with reverence and openness to a genuine, original expression of a person’s inner self, allowing oneself to hear the unfamiliar and the unusual, the new – and appropriated thus only through pain. We shall hear, we shall accept, we shall let ourselves be questioned. We do not need to judge. We hear the words that are our salvation and our judgement.2 We hear them sung in a singing that sings these words in faith. (Wir hören sie gesungen in einem Gesang, der diese Worte glaubend singt.)

NOTES 1. Igor Stravinsky, Mass for mixed chorus and double wind quintet, London 1948. In the original publication it says ‘Strawinskij’. 2. In the original publication: ‘face’.

Chapter 15

What do the Beatles sing?1

The human being never learns beyond himself. In explicit articulated reflection, he always knows less about himself than he knows about himself in the unreflected process of daily existence. What he knows about himself in his reflected understanding of existence can even be wrong, ideology, or a larva, behind which he hides not only from others but also, and primarily, from himself. No one person can say what the human being is because everyone is only one human being. Even the all-decisive Word that God’s revelation says about us can only be heard and arrive as the definitive answer, if we approach it without any concealment and thereby know who we are by unconditionally asking who we should be. But even for that we have to allow many questionable things about ourselves emerge, and those things – supposedly taken for granted – need to be destroyed which do not allow us to approach that question that only God himself can answer. Certainly also the posing of the question itself is already the secret work of God’s answer which is called grace. But this work always already precedes the explicit sermon of faith and is the condition for the possibility that the sermon can actually be heard. For this very reason, however, the question itself, namely the human being, must be asked by the preacher and by the listener, ‘before’ the answer can be said or heard. The person preaching the gospel is always in danger of giving the answer

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before he himself has heard the question, and thus he might turn the answer into an ideological alienation of the human being, even God’s answer to the question that the human being is [. . . die Frage, die der Mensch ist]. The preacher has to allow himself to emerge. But, of course, he only knows ‘what is in a human being’ when he meets others, lets them emerge, lets them talk, before he tells them what they ‘actually’ are. The preacher also does not have it simply at his own discretion to decide where and how he wants to meet others, in order to listen to them as the question, to which he wants to give God’s liberating answer. He must meet people where they are, or where they think they are, because even a misjudgement regarding their true situation belongs to them. He must therefore not only turn to those human self-statements that happen ‘at the – perhaps only alleged – heights of humanity’. These are already very reflective and may also be thus the most sublime works of art of misinterpretation. Not that one should eliminate such misinterpretations from the start as they indeed also belong to the human being as he really is. But they, if at all possible, should be unintended misinterpretations, unintended reductions or incomplete reflections. Thus, they are particularly important to the preacher where they do not appear ‘doctrinaire’, where they do not want to declare a sentence as being right and another as being wrong, but rather where the human behaves in a playful, unselfconscious and unreflective manner, where he laughs, cries, makes noise, entertains others and himself. Where in such an – perhaps ingenious (of course, one needs to expect that!) – unselfconscious ‘self-presentation’ by some individuals countless contemporaries recognize themselves today, not by giving ‘doctrinal’ approval, but by playfully entering into this presentation for themselves and others, there certainly is a ‘topos’ that is important for the preacher if he wants to know what today’s people are ‘actually’ like. Should a preacher of God’s Word thus not also get to know the fans of the Beatles2 if he does not just want to preach to himself and his kind? Are not these records3 perhaps a good way of finding a way to those fans who obviously seem to feel that what is being played there as their own life? Perhaps the preacher first might feel this world to be infinitely distant4 to his own life. Perhaps he might notice that Paul almost took a bit too much of a mouthful when he said that he had become all things to all,5 and he, the preacher himself, has the impression that he would hardly succeed in becoming all things to the Beatles fans. But should there not also be preachers who actually can do such, or who are trying to do so (even though not everyone has this ‘gift’)? If the paths from such an understanding to the ‘Kairos’, in which the Word of God can be explicitly stated by the human, are still very distant, is that a reason not to try to walk those paths? Perhaps

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they are not so distant at all. Because are not indeed also – thanks to the grace of God which is everywhere – love, loneliness and everything that these records testify to closer to what we mean when we say ‘God’ than we initially think, provided that we do not want to force God to come to people solely by way of our own paths? Here a minister6 tries to enrich his knowledge of humans by listening sympathetically with great empathy to the Beatles songs. May many learn from him and with him to understand the human of today – above all the young person – as he is, and to whom belongs today, as always, the promise of God’s love. Editorial note: Georg Geppert, Songs der Beatles. Texte und Interpretationen, Schriften zur Katechetik 11, Munich, Kösel, 1968. Karl Rahner’s Foreword, pp. 7–9.

NOTES 1. Editorial introduction in version B: ‘In November 1966 we published a contribution in “Unsere Seelsorge” [“Our Pastoral Care”] by the student chaplain Georg Geppert, Münster, in which he analyzed the lyrics of some songs by the English singers and asked what information about the self-understanding of a significant part of today’s youth could be gleaned from it. A few weeks ago, Geppert presented the results of further studies on this topic in a paperback, “Songs of the Beatles” (see review in the literature references of this issue). From this we publish the foreword that Prof. Dr. Karl Rahner wrote.’ 2. The Beatles were a British pop group in the late 1950s and 1960s. From 1968 it dissolved. See Richard Middleton: Beatles. In: MGG2 Personelle2, col. 568–573. 3. records. 4. ‘far’ added after A. 5. 1 Cor 9, 22. 6. Georg Geppert, then student minister in Münster i.W.

Chapter 16

An ordinary song

A lot of people nowadays hear a lot of music. One can get it from a wireless set like water from the tap; you only need to switch on. Very few people make music for themselves. Few sing, and even fewer can sing themselves a new song spontaneously. And yet presumably songs of that kind, like playing and dancing, are difficult to do without if we are to be human. A new song of that kind, someone’s own, bringing a human being into conscious identity with himself, need not be great music. As well as the works of great minds in literature, painting, philosophy and theology, there are the wise, kind and sincere words of everyday life. Everyone can express himself in these and so come to know himself, and God himself does not forget them. As well as great music then, there are the ordinary songs. They are just as important, because in them the ordinary man expresses himself, and he too has an eternal life in front of him and therefore is infinitely great. There have to be these ordinary songs which, once they hear them, people hum or quietly whistle to themselves in everyday life as their own, as if they rang like an echo of their own hearts through mind and sense. They help people to express their own nature to themselves in all its facets and depths and also to express it to the mystery of their existence, which we call God. And so they do not suffocate in silence for lack of expression. There also have to be songs of that kind where man is most man and aware of himself: where God meets him and he God. That is why even the ancient Church songs in the hymn books do not replace the songs that

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flow spontaneously from the heart. Those Church hymns are the necessary “tradition” of man singing in the presence of God. He must proclaim even in song that he has spiritual ancestors who have transmitted to him the eternal youth of God. But people also have to sing themselves, express the new and ever unique human being which each one in his own way is. What a deadly danger is revealed then, by the fact that nowadays only serious original religious music is created (or music that aims at being such). It is so solemn and official that it can be sung even in Church in full congregation at high mass and – is it not almost a dreadful irony? – is only sung there. Is it not alarming that there are very few new religious compositions which anyone can feel to be the music of his own private piety (by which he has to work out his eternal salvation in everyday life)? But oughtn’t such music to exist? It ought to be possible to whistle it. It need not have any greater depth of meaning or feeling than everyday life can have. That is quite sufficient. It still contains plenty. Or does religion only belong to the sublime hours of life? Or did the Word who was made flesh not have the courage to endure the narrow limits of our routine? A new song of the ordinary kind we are talking about would come to people’s lips when they were setting off thankfully in good humour for their holidays. Who thinks nowadays of humming to himself “All praise be to God” at such a moment? We just don’t sing like that now, although let us hope we have the same things in mind. We ought to be able to give spontaneous expression to our sadness in a song and find relief. But who sings “O Sacred Head, surrounded” nowadays as they do the washing up? The rhythm of a long distance lorry might inspire a new religious song one day. Why not? Or does genuine religion only belong to Sunday feelings and to the higher consumer goods of civilization, for which the State must pay because otherwise it would cost too much? One must have thought about these and such like things if one hears the French Jesuit Aimé Duval, in case one does not feel sure one can listen and join in straight away without embarrassment, cheerfully, humbly and artlessly. It is very easy to run something down out of hand as sentimental, spoiling it for oneself and others. But one ought not to be frightened of feeling. Only people with little intelligence will do that. The others can quietly have the courage to be “sentimental”, that is, to trust to the spontaneous emotion of their heart. Editorial note: Aimé Duval (1918–84) was a French Jesuit priest, singersongwriter and guitarist. Karl Rahner honoured him with this article. It was first published in Orientierung 23 (1959), 93–4 and reprinted as an afterword in Aimé Duval SJ, Chansons, Salzburg, Otto Müller Verlag, 1959, 45–6.

Postlude

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Chapter 17

Prayer for creative thinkers

Eternal God, Creator of all men and of all things, invisible and visible alike, God of all history, you who are the Lord and the goal, the power and the light of all the activities of the human spirit, today we bring before you our prayer of intercession for all those who have a creative contribution to make in this field. Lord, who else offers prayers on their behalf? And yet we know that the goal they set themselves, their creative power, their work and their achievements are willed by you. For your will is extended unreservedly to those men who are engaged in constantly producing new expressions of their own nature and spirit, men who are the architects of themselves. You love the sort of man who realises his own being in what he achieves and produces, who discovers and expresses that nature which is an image and likeness of your own glory. That which your will intends them to be, that they can only become with the help of your grace, O Father of poets, eternal source of all light, Spirit of all true inspiration! It is for this, then, that we entreat you and invoke your Holy Spirit upon them. Raise up among us men endowed with creative powers, thinkers, poets, artists. We have need of them! Remember that saying that man cannot live by the bread of the body alone, that unless the word that proceeds from your mouth becomes his nourishment he will go hungry. That saying applies

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to them too. Give to these young men the courage to respond to their inner call, to bear the burden and the pain which such a call involves, not to be led into betraying their task in the quest for money and the cheap applause of the superficial, who wish merely to be diverted. In words and in images, in their whole attitude and presentation they express what is in man because they proclaim what they themselves experience. And in expressing this let them express everything! Grant them the experience that man is not merely the frustrated hell of his own nothingness, but also the fair and blessed land over which stretches the heaven of your own infinitude and freedom. They do not need to be constantly bringing you into everything they say. They must make mention of you by name only when they are filled with the spirit of the purest happiness or the deepest pain. For the rest let them honour you with their silence. For the rest let them praise the earth and humanity. But in doing this they must always bear you silently in their hearts, for it is here that their creative work has its source. Then even the slightest song becomes an echo of the rejoicing that takes place in your heaven, and even when they have to tell of the most sombre depths to which man can sink, still their record of this is encompassed by your compassion and permeated by a longing for light, virtue and the eternal love. Then even an attempt to entertain is still a reflection of the gentleness and patience with which you love us in our daily lives. Give them the courage to attain to the light and to the joy in the darkness of this age and in all the hunger and poverty of our hearts. Such courage is a grace that comes from you. But give it to them, for we have need of such high courage. Give them the courage to distinguish and to decide. They do not need to be so very subtle, but their work must manifest the fact that an undivided heart has wrought them, one which, while it is open to everything, still in everything seeks you and seeks everything in you, recognising no craven compromise of peace between the good and the evil, the light and the darkness. Give them the courage constantly to begin anew, because only so do they find their source in that which is true from all eternity. Let them say what your Spirit has given into their hearts, rather than that which would make pleasant hearing to those who represent the forces of all that is average. When they make experience of the fact that all their work is in vain, of the frustration of their creativity and the insensitivity of their age, let them believe even then that in your sight what seems to be so futile is not futile, that you have regarded their work with delight, and have gently taken their heart when it was breaking into your own. Your eternal Word, the effulgence of your nature and the image of your glory has himself come in our flesh. He has taken upon himself all that is human as his own reality. With a power that is greater and more ultimate,

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and a love that is deeper than that of any other creative worker for the work of his own hands he has set his own heart in the very centre of the image his hands have wrought. He has done this in order that man himself may be the expression and the image of your glory. And therefore, whether we realise it or not, every creative activity of the human spirit has become an element in the personal history of your Word, because everything has come to belong to his own world, the world into which he came in order to share with it in its living experiences, to suffer with it and to glorify it with himself. It is the world from which this Word of yours will never more be separated for all eternity. Let those for whom we pray understand this truth. What they create is inevitably either a part of the Cross to which they nail your Son in guilt, and therefore a condemnation of themselves, or else a factor contributing to the coming of the eternal kingdom of this same Son, and therefore a grace for them. For this kingdom does not only come from without as the end and the final judgment of this present world. It emerges as the hidden grace which has been present in the midst of this earthly reality ever since your own Word descended into his own creation and became the heart of all things. Therefore everything which they create can and must be a promise that your eternal kingdom is already on the way, the kingdom of truth and of love, the kingdom of the glorification of man in his undivided nature, in body and soul, earth and heaven. Therefore grant to them too, that they may be proclaimers and promoters of this kingdom. For everything which man himself has fashioned as sharer in your creative power will be redeemed and taken into this kingdom for all eternity, transferred and glorified. May the Spirit of your Son come upon them in order that your name may be praised now in this time and throughout all eternity, Amen.

200

SOURCES

FAITH AND CULTURE ‘Glaube und Kultur’, in Karl Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, eds., Karl Kardinal Lehmann, Johann Baptist Metz, Albert Raffelt, Herbert Vorgrimler, Andreas R. Batlogg SJ, vol. 21/2, Das zweite Vatikanum, Freiburg, Herder, 2013, 1015–21, 1122. ‘Faith and culture’, transl., Gesa E. Thiessen.

ON THE THEOLOGY OF BOOKS ‘Zur Theologie des Buches’, Kölner Pastoralblatt – Aachener Pastoralblatt – Essener Pastoralblatt 60 (1959), 144–8, 205–11, 229–31. ‘On the Theology of Books’, in Karl Rahner, Christian in the Market Place: Mission and Grace, vol. 3, London and Sydney, Sheed and Ward, 1966/1970, 98–126.

GOD’S WORD AND HUMAN BOOKS ‘Gottes Wort und der Menschen Bücher’, in Karl Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, eds., Karl Kardinal Lehmann, Johann Baptist Metz, Albert Raffelt, Herbert

202

SOURCES

Vorgrimler, Andreas R. Batlogg SJ, vol. 16, Kirchliche Erneuerung, Studien zur Pastoraltheologie und Struktur der Kirche, Freiburg, Herder, 2005, 177–80, 550. ‘God’s word and human books’, transl., Gesa E. Thiessen.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE SYMBOL ‘Zur Theologie des Symbols’, in Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 4, Neuere Schriften, Einsiedeln, Benziger, 1960, 275–311. ‘The Theology of the Symbol’, in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 4, More Recent Writings, transl., Kevin Smyth, Baltimore, MD, Helicon; London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966, 221–52.

SEEING AND HEARING ‘Vom Hören und Sehen’, in Karl Rahner, Glaube, der die Erde liebt. Christliche Besinnung im Alltag der Welt, Freiburg, Herder-Bücherei 266, 1966, 159–65. ‘Seeing and Hearing’, in Karl Rahner, Everyday Faith, New York, Herder and Herder, 1968, 196–204.

PRIEST AND POET ‘Priester und Dichter’, in Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 3, Zur Theologie des geistlichen Lebens, Einsiedeln, Benziger, 1956, 349–75. ‘Priest and Poet’, in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 3, The Theology of the Spiritual Life, transl., Karl H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger, Baltimore, MD, Helicon; London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967, 294– 317.

POETRY AND THE CHRISTIAN ‘Das Wort der Dichtung und der Christ’, in Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 4, Neuere Schriften, Einsiedeln, Benziger, 1960, 441–54. ‘Poetry and the Christian’, in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 4, More Recent Writings, transl., Kevin Smyth, Baltimore, MD, Helicon; London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966, 357–67.

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THE TASK OF THE WRITER IN RELATION TO CHRISTIAN LIVING ‘Der Auftrag des Schriftstellers und das christliche Dasein’, in Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 7, Zur Theologie des geistlichen Lebens, Einsiedeln, Benziger, 1966, 386–400. ‘The Task of the Writer in Relation to Christian Living’, in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 8, Further Theology of the Spiritual Life, 2, transl., David Bourke, New York, Seabury; London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971, 112–29.

ON THE GREATNESS AND THE PLIGHT OF THE CHRISTIAN WRITER ‘Von der Größe und dem Elend des christlichen Schriftstellers’, in Karl Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, eds., Karl Kardinal Lehmann, Johann Baptist Metz, Albert Raffelt, Herbert Vorgrimler, Andreas R. Batlogg SJ, vol. 23, Glaube im Alltag: Schriften zur Spiritualität und zum christlichen Lebensvollzug, Freiburg, Herder, 2006, 160–70, 645. ‘On the greatness and the plight of the Christian writer’, transl., Gesa E. Thiessen.

THEOLOGY AND THE ARTS ‘Zur Theologie der Kunst’, Karl Rahner, in Entschluß 37, no. 1, (1982), 4–7; and: ‘Die Kunst im Horizont von Theologie und Frömmigkeit’, in Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 16, Humane Gesellschaft und Kirche von Morgen, Einsiedeln, Benziger, 1984, 364–72. ‘Theology and the Arts’, Karl Rahner, in Thought, vol. 57/1, 224 (March 1982), 17–29.

ART AGAINST THE HORIZON OF THEOLOGY AND PIETY ‘Die Kunst im Horizont von Theologie und Frömmigkeit’, in Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 16, Humane Gesellschaft und Kirche von Morgen, Einsiedeln, Benziger, 1984, 364–72.

204

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‘Art against the Horizon of Theology and Piety’, in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 23, Final Writings, transl., Hugh M. Riley and Joseph Donceel, New York, Crossroad; London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1992, 162–8.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE RELIGIOUS MEANING OF IMAGES ‘Zur Theologie der religiösen Bedeutung des Bildes’, in Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 16, Humane Gesellschaft und Kirche von Morgen, Einsiedeln, Benziger, 1984, 348–63. ‘The Theology of the Religious Meaning of Images’, in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 23, Final Writings, transl., Hugh M. Riley and Joseph Donceel, New York, Crossroad; London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1992, 149–61.

CHURCH BUILDING: ON MODERN CHURCH ARCHITECTURE ‘Kirche bauen: Zum modernen Kirchenbau’, in Karl Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, eds., Karl Kardinal Lehmann, Johann Baptist Metz, Albert Raffelt, Herbert Vorgrimler, Andreas R. Batlogg SJ, vol. 24/2, Das Konzil in der Ortskirche, Schriften zu Struktur und gesellschaftlichem Auftrag der Kirche, Freiburg, Herder, 2011, 893–6, 1022–3. ‘Church building: On modern church architecture’, transl., Gesa E. Thiessen.

WORD AND MUSIC IN CHURCH: ON THE INNSBRUCK PREMIERE OF THE MASS BY IGOR STRAVINSKY IN THE JESUIT CHURCH, 18 MAY 1961 ‘Wort und Musik im Raum der Kirche – Zur Innsbrucker Erstaufführung der “Messe” von Igor Stravinsky in der Jesuitenkirche am 18. Mai 1961’, in Karl Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, eds., Karl Kardinal Lehmann, Johann Baptist Metz, Albert Raffelt, Herbert Vorgrimler, Andreas R. Batlogg SJ, vol. 16, Kirchliche Erneuerung, Studien zur Pastoraltheologie und Struktur der Kirche, Freiburg, Herder, 2005, 226–30, 553.

SOURCES

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‘Word and music in church – On the Innsbruck premiere of The Mass by Igor Stravinsky in the Jesuit Church, 18 May 1961’, transl., Gesa E. Thiessen.

WHAT DO THE BEATLES SING? ‘Wovon singen die Beatles?’, in Karl Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, eds., Karl Kardinal Lehmann, Johann Baptist Metz, Albert Raffelt, Herbert Vorgrimler, Andreas R. Batlogg SJ, vol. 24/2, Das Konzil in der Ortskirche, Schriften zu Struktur und gesellschaftlichem Auftrag der Kirche, Freiburg, Herder, 2011, 875–6, 1018. ‘What do the Beatles sing?’, transl., Gesa E. Thiessen.

AN ORDINARY SONG ‘Ein kleines Lied’, in K. Rahner, Glaube, der die Erde liebt, Freiburg, HerderBücherei 266, 1966, 157–8. ‘An Ordinary Song’, in Karl Rahner, Everyday Faith, New York, Herder and Herder, 1968, 193–5.

PRAYER FOR CREATIVE THINKERS ‘Gebet für geistig Schaffende’, in Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, vol. 7, Zur Theologie des geistlichen Lebens, Einsiedeln, Benziger, 1966, 401–3. ‘Prayer for Creative Thinkers’, in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 8/2, Further Theology of the Spiritual Life, transl., David Bourke, New York, Seabury; London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971, 130–2. Sincere thanks to the publishers who generously granted copyrights. If, inadvertently, there are any errors or omissions, this will be corrected in a future edition.

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INDEX

Adam of St Victor, St  99 aesthetics/aesthetic  3–5, 32, 42, 71, 92–3, 99, 179, 185 Alacoque, St Margaret Mary  156, 165 apostolic succession  26–7 Aquinas, St Thomas  8, 43, 47–9, 72, 92, 98–9, 147, 149, 153, 161, 167, 171 architecture  151–2, 159–60, 176 modern church  178–82 art/arts  1–8, 42, 99, 102, 143, 151–64, 178, 187, 191, see also Christianity; image/images; literature; music; poetry/poetic; symbol/symbolic/symbolism; theology/theological abstract  3, 175 active element in theology  160 ancilla theologiae  3 Christian  3–4, 75 eternal in historical particularity  157–8, 162–3 genuine  162 interpretation of  3 non-verbal arts  3, 152–3 original experience  160–1 real  99, 155, 158 and religious experience  3–5

and theology  5–6, 9, 143–65 and theology and piety  159–65 verbal arts  2–3, 151–3 works of art  2–6, 154, 158, 163, 170, 185, 191 artists/artistic  2–8, 32, 107, 131, 138, 155–8, 162–5, 172, 178–9, 197 Augustine, St  8, 50–1, 95, 98, 153, 161 authors/authorship  62–3, 111–27, 162 Bach, Johann Sebastian  9, 152, 160 Balthasar, Hans Urs von  7, 153, 161 baptism  81, 87 Beatles, The  190–2 Benedict, St  73 Bible, the  4, 6, 74 holy book, the  21–5 body  49, 57–61, 81, 89 symbol of man  58–64 Bonaventure  8, 99 books  82, 135 God’s word and human books  36–9 on the theology of  21–35 Brentano, Clemens von  8, 82, 98 Bruckner, Anton  152, 160 Byzantine Church  57 Calvin, Jean  171 catechism  5, 37

208

Catholicism/catholic  37–8, 82, 94, 156, 165 church  112, 172 defence of images  171–2 teaching  30, 55, 123–4, 168 writer  124–6 causality  44, 47–8, 55–6, 68 Christianity  4, 6, 8, 15–19, 30–2, 56, 63–4, 102–10, 112–27, 130–3, 135, 168–73, 185–7 Christians/Christian anthropology  166–7 faith  14, 124 hope  17, 19 living  6–7, 111–27 positivism  120 symbolism  61 theology  3, 129, 154, 162 writer  111–39 Christology  51, see also Jesus Christ Christocentric theology  23–4 church  6, 21, 23–7, 36–9, 55, 94–5, 123, 178–82 architecture  178–82 building  37, 178–82 ecclesiastical censorship  37 libraries  36–8 pastoral care  39 pastoral work  21, 24 word and music in  185–9 commonsense  70 philosophy  70–1 composer  185 consciousness  87, 89, 92, 146, 168, 186 Council of Vienna  59 Couturier, Marie-Alain  3 culture/cultural  1, 8, 30, 34, 37, 102, 107–8 and faith  13–20 work  15, 17, 37 Dante  8, 98, 139 devotion  21, 40–1, 58, 61–4, 168, 188, see also piety Donatism  92, 94–5 Droste, Annette von  9, 99 Dürer, Albrecht  158, 163

INDEX

Duval, Jesuit Aimé  194 ecclesiology  15, 30–2, 37–8, 62, 130, 179–80 emotion  4, 188, 194 eschatology  17–8, 23, 55–8, 95 faith  1, 5, 9, 14, 16–17, 23–6, 31, 53– 5, 79, 87–93, 96–100, 102, 106, 108–10, 119, 122–6, 175, 187–9, see also art/arts; Christianity; Christians/Christian; God; Jesus Christ; religion/religious; theology/ theological and culture  13–20 doctrine of  52, 109 eyes of  97, 170–1 hope and love  154, 162 theory of  19 finiteness  42, 43, 45, 50 Fourth Lateran Council  150 God  1–10, 13–39, 42–3, 48, 51–8, 71–5, 87–138, 143–75, 178–82, 186–7, 190–7, see also faith; grace; Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ; mystery divine plurality  43 divine self-possession  51 of grace  31, 55–6, 88, 95, 102, 109–10, 113, 120, 126, 137, 181, 187, 192 incomprehensibility  7–8, 31, 99, 102–5, 113, 130, 135, 137, 146, 150–8, 162–3, 168, 186 kingdom of  17, 21, 84, 97–8, 199 self-communication  2–4, 9, 58, 63, 152, 160, 170, 187 self-revelation  1–4, 9, 22, 25, 43, 52–3, 87–8, 92–7, 104, 152–4, 160, 162, 170, 172, 187–8, 190 word of God  7–8, 23–7, 30, 34, 36–9, 87–100, 106–7, 137, 180, 191 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von  81, 92, 156 gospel  4, 31, 36, 39, 102, 104–8, 125, 190

INDEX

grace  31, 55–6, 102, 109–10, 113, 120, 181, 192, see also faith; God Green, Julian  161 Greene, Graham  153 Gutenberg, Johannes  33 hearing  3–9, 26–7, 70–5, 98, 102–7, 154, 163–4, 169–74, 187–8 heart  62–9, 91–100, 103–8, 113, 185–6, 194, 198–9 Sacred Heart  41, 58 Hines, Mary  9 holiness  94–5, 156, 165 holy, the  13, 22, 103, 181 Holy Spirit  22, 26, 55–6, 96, 99–101, 125, 150, 197 humanity/human  9, 14, 16, 28, 37, 52–3, 57, 74, 81, 90, 96, 98, 109, 116–9, 130, 134–5, 156, 160, 164–5, 170, 187, 191, 198 existence  1, 116, 144, 146, 153–6 homo religiosus  22, 30 humane  29–34, 36, 133–6 humanism 8, 17, 102, 107, 108, 110 reality  29, 117, 125, 162 self-expression  2, 8, 151–2, 159–60 spirit  146, 197, 199 transcendence  157–8, 162 iconography  3–4 icons  171–2, 176 Ignatius of Antioch  99 Ignatius of Loyola  73 Ignatian spirituality  1, 173 image/images  4, 6, 57–8, 157, 161, 175–7, 198, see also aesthetics/ aesthetic; art/arts poor people’s Bible  171–2 religious  4, 42, 171–7 religious meaning of  166–77 sacred  56–7 Impressionism  6, 155, 164 incarnation  7, 23–4, 51–3, 57–8, 73, 105–6, 113, 168, 171, see also Jesus Christ infinity  72, 79–80, 82, 86, 93, 99, 103, 105, 147, 158, 163

209

of God  113, 187 intuition  4, 122, 167 Jesus Christ  4, 23, 31, 40, 52–8, 61–5, 74–5, 87–91, 94, 100, 102, 111–2, 114, 117, 123, 136, 155, 164, 176, 180, see also God; Holy Spirit; Trinity John Damascene  73, 171 John of the Cross  8, 80, 98, 153, 161 Joseph  4, 33, 155, 164 Kandinsky, Wassily  6 Kant, Immanuel  72, 167 Karlstadt, Andreas von Bodenstein  171 Kitsch  4, 137, 155, 164 knowledge  2, 4–5, 46, 72–3, 82–5, 143–9, 151, 167–71, 192 conceptual and experiential  143–5 of God  143, 145–51 and love  27, 45, 46, 49, 85 original  144–5 self-knowledge  51, 144–5 sense knowledge  4, 167 spiritual-conceptual  4 Leόn, Luίs de  99 libraries  36–8 Liguori, St Alphonsus  156–7, 165 literature  2, 4, 6–8, 14, 16, 18, 22, 32–4, 37, 86, 98, 110, 129–35, 157, 161–2, 193 Logos  50–4, 57–8, 73, 87, 106, 113, 168, 170–1 love  1, 5–9, 38, 40, 45–6, 62, 74–5, 80, 85–6, 89, 92, 94–100, 103, 105–10, 112–3, 115, 118, 120–3, 129–30, 133, 135, 138, 144, 149–51, 154, 156–8, 161–5, 175, 180, 192, 199 of Christ  40, 58, 62–3 of God  9, 26–7, 30–1, 35, 56, 83–4, 89, 95–6, 105–8, 112–3, 153, 156–8, 161, 164, 165, 182, 192, 197–9 interpersonal  150–1 of neighbour  116–7, 155, 164, 182

210

Luther, Martin  4, 74, 170 Marcel, Gabriel  131 Marmion, Declan  9 Mary  4, 63, 155, 164 Meister Eckhart  8, 98 Methodius of Olympus  8, 99 modernism  143 morality/moral  36, 56, 58, 62, 71, 73, 95, 109, 114–5, 119–21, 175 music  2, 4, 6–9, 14, 16, 53, 82–3, 86, 151–2, 159–60, 185–9, 193–4 and church  185–9 mystagogy/mystagogical  5, 55 theology  7, 153–4, 161–2 mystery  1–9, 13–14, 29–30, 42, 50, 53, 71–5, 81–2, 86, 90, 102–9, 113, 117, 119–22, 126, 131–4, 147–51, 157, 162, 186–7, 193, see also God; Holy Spirit; incarnation; Jesus Christ; Trinity Nazarenes  137 Nazis  129–30 Newman, John Henry  98, 153, 161 New Testament  87, 179–81 Nietzsche, Friedrich  80 Novalis  80 Old Testament  74, 97–8, 117, 171, 180 ontology  41–9 Pascal, Blaise  131, 133 Paul, St  8, 87, 94, 96–8, 119, 135, 170, 191 piety  62, 137, 157, 168, 171–2, 175, 187, 194, see also devotion; faith and theology and art  159–65 pluralism age of  1 of creaturehood  43, 120–1 of experience  166 plurality and being(s)  42–6, 50, 180 of sense experience  169–70 poetry/poetic  2, 6–8, 36, 97–110, 125, 151–3, 159 and the Christian  6, 101–10

INDEX

and literature  6–8 priest and poet  6, 8, 79–100 and theology  7, 153–4, 161 word  7–8, 37, 96, 99–102, 106–8, 110 poets  8, 79–101, 107–9, 125, 128, 157, 161, see also authors/authorship; writer prayer  1, 5–6, 37, 98, 129, 136, 168, 175, 187–9 for creative thinkers  197–9 Raffelt, Albert  6 Régamey, Pie-Raymond  3 relativism  5 religion/religious  13–14, 30–4, 37, 102, 154, 163, 166–72, 185–6, 194, see also art/arts; Christianity; Christians/Christian; literature; music; theology/theological activities  168, 172 acts  3–4, 175 and art  3–5, 155, 164 experience  1, 3–4, 137–8, 153–5, 161, 163, 167–8, 171, 175 knowledge  5, 145, 167, 170 life  31 literature  32, 157, 162 music  188, 194 painting  155–6, 164, 186 seeing  172 statement  137, 157 truth  3 writing  24 Rembrandt  4, 152, 155, 159, 160, 164 Rilke, Rainer Maria  72, 83–4 Rinser, Luise  128–31, 133, 135, 139 Rouault, Georges  6 sacraments  22–6, 55–7, 85–8, 91–5, 104–5, 114, 163, 168, 172, 176, 180 salvation  13, 15, 18, 20–6, 28, 30, 38, 55, 58, 83, 85, 89, 91, 96, 98, 104–5, 110, 112, 115, 122, 124, 126, 134, 148, 178, 186–7, 189, 194 history  2–3, 23–6, 30, 56, 173–6

INDEX

scholasticism/scholastic  46–7, 49, 59–60, 80 sciences  1, 14, 27, 32, 34, 60, 73–4, 89, 110, 115, 120, 135, 154, 162, 178 scripture  21, 24–5, 27, 51, 60, 75, 79, 87, 97, 100, 102, 106, 185 sculpture  151–2, 159, 187 Second Vatican Council  1, 14–15 secularism/secular  9, 24, 30–2, 37–8, 166, 175, 180 book  22, 30, 33, 37 culture  15, 37 life  17–19 world  1, 4, 18, 30, 37–8 seeing  3, 5, 9, 70–5, 154, 169–76 selfaffirmation  73 awareness  144 discovery  29–30, 49, 152 expression  2, 6, 50, 151–2, 159–60 interpretation  82 knowledge  51, 144–5 presence  50, 144 proclamation  47–9 realization  45–9, 59, 64, 109 sense/senses, the  4, 102, 157, 163, 167–74 experience  73, 167–70, 176 intuition  167–8 powers  168–70, 174, 176 sensibility  9, 71–2, 154–7, 165 sermons  6, 26, 39, 98, 153, 161, 190 sexuality  129 silence  28, 34, 72, 75, 98, 103, 121, 123, 132, 136–7, 193, 198 Silesius, Angelus  8, 73–4, 98 Solano, Hernán Alvarado  62–3 solitude  28–30, 35 song  81, 86, 154, 163, 168, 192–4, 198 Stravinsky, Igor  185, 189 subjectivity  5–6, 70, 94, 154, 162 symbol/symbolic/symbolism  6, 40–69, 82, 157, 161–2, 176 analogous  157 function  54, 58, 60, 61 ontology of  41–9 reality  41–61 theology of  40–69

211

theology/theological  1–9, 40–69, 88–9, 97, 99, 101, 131, 143, 151–4, 160–2, 172, 179, 193, see also art/arts; Christianity; Christians/ Christian; God; Jesus Christ; literature; music; poetry/poetic; religion/religious aesthetics  3 and the arts  1–9, 143–58 of books  21–35 Christian  3, 129, 154, 162 Christian anthropology  166–7 demythologizing  74 and devotion  40–1, 58, 62 fundamental  4 kneeling  7, 161 locus theologicus  3 and philosophy  73 and piety  159–65 Platonist  56–7 poetic  7, 97–100, 153–4, 161 of religious meaning of images  166– 77 of religious seeing  171 of symbol  40–69 verbal  2–3, 151–3, 160, 175–6 of the word  79–80 Thomas of Celano  98 Thomism/Thomist  47–8, 53, 59–60, 149, see also Aquinas Tillich, Paul  3 transcendence  2, 3, 5, 8, 54, 83, 86, 88, 93, 99, 148, 174–5, 186 human  2, 158, 162 sensory experience of  3, 174–5 Trinity, the  42–4, 50, 57, 87, 90, 149 truth  3, 6–8, 25, 38, 49, 52–5, 63, 84, 87, 91–8, 101–7, 114, 117–8, 138, 158, 163, 189, 199 unity, original  43–4, 104, 144 veneration  171–2, 176–7 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  136 word/words of God (see God) primary words  104

212

primordial words  8, 63, 72, 81–6, 91–100 symbol  40–1 ultimate words  7, 82, 104 utility words  81 world  1, 13–19, 23, 25–38, 47, 51–5, 70–5, 80, 84, 87–8, 90–3, 97–8, 106–7, 109, 113, 119–20, 137, 146, 173, 178, 180, 186–9, 191, 199

INDEX

worship  26, 179, 182 writer  8–9, 37, 111–39, see also literature; poetry/poetic; poets creative  111, 119–26, 131 greatness and plight of  128–39 literary  8, 37 Zwingli, Huldrych  171

213

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