Table Of ContentKarl RahJnoesre Rpaht zinger
KARL RAHNER
JOSEPH RATZINGER
REVELATION
AND
TRADITION
HERDER AND HERDER
ABOUTT HE BOOK
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QUAESTIONEDSI SPUTATAE
1966
HERDEARND HERDENRE W YORK
23M2a diAsvoenn NueewY, o rNk.,Y1 .0 016
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CONTENTS
Prefa-ce- - - - - - - - 7
IO BSEVRATIONOSN T HEC ONCEPOFT
REVELATION
byK arRla hne-r - - - - - -
9
II REVELATAINODNT RADITION
byJ oseRpaht zin-ger- - - - -
26
Stateomfte hpnert o bl-em- - - -
1.
26
Thesoenst hree labteitownre eevne lanadtion
2.
tradi-ti-on - - - - - -
35
a)Revelaantsdic orni pt-ure- - -
35
b)Thed ifferent ssicgrniiipfinttc huaoernl ecd e of
- - - - -
annde cwo venants 37
c)Chrtihsrete veloafGt oido- n - - - 40
d)Thnea touftr rea di-ti-on- - - 41
e)Thfeu ncotfei xoeng es-is --- - 46
CONTENTS
IIOIN T HEI NTERPRETAOTFTI HOEN
TRIDENTDIENCER EOEN TRADITION
'
- - - -
byJ osReapthz inger - - 50
Thep neu1natvoelrosogifito chncae ol n coefpt
I.
tradiinCta irodnCi cnravilbn ais'disrca f-t - 50
a)Conten-ts- - - - - - 50
b)Thei nfluoefnt chede r aofnvt a riCoouusn cil
decr-ee-s - - - - - - 55
Thceo nnebcettwieotenrn a dainttdih loeifn oe fth e
2.
Churicnvha ricoounst ritbotu htTeir oindse ntine
deba-te-s - - - -- -
57
3.TraditioCnh uardncodhg 'mtsah -e - - 61
4T.hmee anoiftn hgTe r idednetcinr-ee e- - 62
APPENDSIuXt.n moaftr hyCe o mposoiftth ieo n
TrideDnetciornneTe er adi-tio-n - -
67
NOTES - - - - - - - -
9
6
PREFACE
The first· chapter of this short study, contributed by Karl
Rahner, is the text of a lecture delivered by him at the
University of Miinster in Westphalia in May 196on 4th e
occasion of the conferment on him of the honorary degree of
•
Doctor of Theology. The author has left the text of his lecture
unchanged, as it did not seem appropriate to him to develop
it further or to provide it with a bibliography.
A rough outline of Chapter IIan d the text of Chapter III
were delivered byJo seph Ratzinger at the meeting of the
J.
A. Mohler Institute (for ecu1nenical studies) in Paderborn
on 28Ma rch 196Th3e s.ug gestions made during the meeting,
especially those byH ubert Jedin and Heinrich Schlier,
encouraged the author to pursue his reflections. He subse
quently rewrote his original draft of Chapter II and the
revised version, reproduced here, was used byhim on 28Jun e
196as 3an inaugural lecture on taking up the Chair of
Dogmatic Theology and History of Dogma at the University
of Munster. Because of the repeated call of more urgent duties
the author had to abandon his original intention of expanding
the two chapters. He hopes nevertheless that even in their
present form his essays will contribute one or two ideas to
the great debate on the. theme of revelation. No attempt was,
therefore, made at anything like bibliographical compre
hensiveness in the notes; onlthye t ools directly employed in
the work have been mentioned there.
7
I
OBSERVATOINOT NHSEC ONCEOPFT
REVELATION
by
KARRLA HNER
The correctness, the justification in a particular situation of
the Church's history, and the historical import of the Church's
condemnation of a heresy, do not necessarily always depend
on whether the judgment passed on the heretical thesis also
takes into account, and answers, the question which the
fundamental tendency of that heresy raises for the Church.
A positive solution of the question, which an age may in fact
propound in the form of a heresy, may follow only much later.
lt need not be inquired whether such delay in finding a
solution represents tragic guilt, error, incapacity, or is simply
the tribute which the Church itself has to pay to its own
it
historical nature. At any rate would not be right to assume
that a condemnation by the Church always falls solely on
opinions and tendencies which contain nothing but an empty,
dead negation of a truth long since clearly grasped and plainly
proclaimed by the Church.
9
REVELATION AND TRADITION
A half-century and more ago the heresy of Modernism
threatened the. Church. Among its fundamental theses and
errors was its concept of revelation. For Mod_ernism, at least
if we are to judge by the systematic summary presented in
the Church's condemnations, revelation was another word for
the inevitable development, immanent in human history, of
man's religious needs, in the course of which these needs find
objective expression in the manifold forms taken by the history
of religion, and slowly grow to greater purity and compre-.
hensiveness, until they attain their objective correlate in
Christianity and the Church. Such a concept was formed in
. antithesis to what was taken to be a view of revelation
traditional in the Church, according to which revelation is the
occurrence of an intervention of God ''purely from outside'',
speaking to men and conveying to them, through the prophets,
truths in human statements which they could not attain by
themselves and giving commands which they must follow.
The necessity of interior divine grace for the salutary accept
ance by faith of that revelation was, of course, affirmed and
expressly taught by the ecclesiastical orthodoxy opposed to
Modernism. But the intrinsic connection between the grace of
faith and historical revelation was not seen. The Church
accused Modernism of immanentism, but today we are surely
in a position to recognize in the average theology of that ti 1ne,
which is what Modernism opposed, an extrinsicism in the
concept of revelation which was not the official doctrine, but
was tacitly assumed by average theology. Quietly and almost
unnoticed, an answer is being given at the present time to the
question of a correct and full understanding of the concept
of revelation, the question to which the Church at that time
IO
\CONCEPT OF REVELATION
presumably had no clear answer and to which Modernism
gave a false or overhastily decided and heretical answer. It is
obvious that the question, and an adequate answer to it, are
still of fundamental importance in the present confrontation
and involvement of Christianity with modern intellectual life,
even if the topic does not emerge very clearly and explicitly.
To those who hold the anticlerical humanism of the present
day, or a troubled atheism, or who think that God is an
eternally indecipherable cipher, or maintain a materialism for
which the hoped-£ or future of the mind is the real force that
drives the world, it is not really the Deuasb sconof ditus
Christianity, dwelling in inaccessible light, that is the stumb
ling�block and scandal, but the doctrine that there is a history
of revelation in which God himself prepared a single path
beside the many others in the history of religion, and then
himself appeared in the flesh and followed that path. The
scandal is, if the expression be permitted, the categorical
history of revelation within the empirical world, not the
transcendental relation to God by which, man has his ground
in the abyss of inexpressible mystery.
What is revelation, and whyde,spi te its immediate divine
origin, is it the innermost core of human history as such?
How can it be identical with the universal history of mankind,
without ceasing to be the unique, special grace of God? How
can revelation be present always and everywhere so that
salvation can be present always and everywhere, without its
ceasing on that account to be here and now, in the flesh of
Christ, in the words of the prophet actually speaking in a
particular place, in the letter of scripture ?C an it be the
innermost ''motive'', the real driving force of history every-
II
