Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: Christus_ gestern - heute; Bultmann, Chadwick; das Neue in d. Theologie: Geschichte als Wort Gottes

Kurzinhalt: ... instead of moving forward from the word of Paul about Jesus, could we go back to the reality of Jesus himself of whom Paul spoke,

Textausschnitt: 104a With the events described in chapter five we are coming to a major turning point in the theology of the word, comparable in its fundamental significance to the step taken when Saint Paul, or some unknown bearer of the early Christian message, came to realize and boldly declare that message to be the very word of God at work in the believer. This last step, however, is being taken in our own time, so we are working under the disadvantage of trying to write history while we are contemporary with it. Still, fairly clear lines are emerging from this giant stirring; it is possible to see them as continuing the trajectory of previous movements and having their own anticipations far back in history, so we can hope to delineate the new phase at least in some rough manner. The viewpoint remains that of an observer of history, doing theology in oratione obliqua, even though, in trying to clarify the obscure beginnings of a new moment, I may seem to take a more personal stand toward particular doctrines. (Fs)
104b The situation, then, is as follows: After a long, tranquil, but uncritical period of simple possession of the truth, and a rather long period of reaching back to the word that was the source of the truth, there followed a short period of diverse programs and activities aimed at bringing those ancient sources forward into our own day, as truth relevant for me and a word to me putting a claim on my response. This can be seen as a twofold aim, with one aspect that is cognitional and one that is affective. Correspondingly, the deficiencies in the programs and activities so far studied are twofold: They leave the word an ancient word that does not speak to my situation, and the word becomes objectified in such a way as not to challenge my response. Is the forward movement of history that will remedy these deficiencies also going to be twofold? It is facile to demand a unity on the ground that the history of theology is also part of the divine salvific plan and God's plan must be one and single. But even God judged it wise and good to proceed in two steps: "When the term was completed, God sent his own Son [...] that we might attain the status of sons. To prove that you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son" (Gal. 4:4-6). And so I see the present stirring in the theology of the word to have two distinct though closely interrelated aspects, to be studied separately in chapters six and seven. (Fs) (notabene)

105a Cognitionally, then, the efforts examined in chapter five are inadequate. Early efforts to stretch the meaning of a word given in the past, to make it mean what we need it to mean today, have either been discredited or allowed to die a natural death; they did not provide for that control of meaning which scientific exegesis requires. Newman's idea of development may be valid up to a point, but it does not account for all the data. There are surely linear developments; but there is also a dialectical factor, there seem to be quite disconcerting reversals, and there are apparently independent new beginnings, and all these call for a deeper explanation. Even where Newman's idea is valid, we still have to meet the objection with which Chadwick ends his volume on development. (Fs)
The question then for those who think Newman's theology is Catholic, is this: these new doctrines, of which the Church had a feeling or inkling but of which she was not conscious-in what meaningful sense may it be asserted that these new doctrines are not "new revelation"? (Fs) (notabene)

105b Modernists might be more open to the dialectic of history, but they did not have an acceptable answer for Chadwick and, worse, did not seem concerned about such a question to the extent demanded by a church that insisted on continuity with the sources. (Fs) (notabene)

105c Efforts on the Protestant side presented their own difficulties. We may be sympathetic to the two conditions Bultmann posits for hearing the ancient word: a common preunderstanding and the work of the Holy Spirit. But the first is made to bear too great a weight: There is the factor of history, which is set aside, and there is the factor of what some call the "strangeness" of the ancient word; both need attention. As for the second condition, theologians cannot admit the action of the Holy Spirit but then simply set him aside as a factor that is incomprehensible; they have to try to see his role in some intelligible relationship to the whole of God's salvific plan. When we turn to the theology of the language-event, we find it too much involved in the obscurities of the remythologizing of the word, too much so for it to satisfy the rigorous demand of the human mind for such understanding as is possible of the divine mysteries - especially when it would neglect the mind of the author of a work in order to invoke some message that is independent of his intention. (Fs) (notabene)

106a Is any clear line of progress in sight? The previous chapter found an opening by reversing the direction of thought: Instead of moving back from the present, as in chapter four, we studied the forward movement from the origins of the word into the present. Can this be invoked in a new way? That is, instead of moving forward from the word of Paul about Jesus, could we go back to the reality of Jesus himself of whom Paul spoke, and then come forward from that new starting point with a new wealth of meaning to be exploited through the centuries? Such approximately is the approach of the new thematization of the Christian word. We go back beyond the Easter word of the apostles to the human reality of Jesus himself, his appearance on earth, his life, death, and glorification in the Easter event, and take that reality as God's most fundamental word, a primary word, an inexhaustible word, one that the church and her spokesmen from Peter and Paul to John tried, more or less adequately, to interpret. Indeed the process of interpretation could go back behind Peter to Jesus himself; and surely it goes forward beyond John to the present day. (Fs) (notabene)

106b A few clarifications may help. The first: I repeat that I am not settling the question of the "historical" Jesus, but simply recording the thought of the early church and of certain theologians on his role. The second: Although I refer to the human reality of Jesus, this reality is not circumscribed by some thirty-three years in Palestine. He is God's first creative idea: "In him everything in heaven and on earth was created" (Col. 1:16). We might refer to him as the cosmic word, but not just in the Greek sense of cosmos; that sense must be expanded in two ways: to take in the whole space-time universe in its four-dimensional reality, and, much more significantly, to take in the realities studied by the human sciences. Then maybe Teilhard de Char-din's view of the place of Christ in the genesis of the universe could serve as a symbol round which to collect our ideas, but it seems better to use the terminology of recent thought and take history as the word of God, history understood with an absolutely comprehensive sweep that embraces the visible universe. A third clarification: This history is not the history that is written, of which we spoke in our Introduction; it is the history that happens. It is therefore much wider than the history of the theology of the word, the history to which this book would contribute; for, as utterly comprehensive, it includes the history of ideas and doctrines as a small part of the whole. Finally, the reader might keep in mind that, as the missions of Son and Spirit are closely linked in trinitarian theology, so we expect to find a link in their respective roles in regard to the word of God; this chapter should therefore be read with some corrective influence from anticipation of the chapter that follows it. (Fs)