From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Fri Jul 11 2003 - 07:56:26 EDT
Robert Schneider wrote:
>
> George, you write,
>
> > RC views, OTOH, come not just from Vatican II but Vatican I & its
> insistence
> > that a natural knowledge of God is possible independently of revelation.
>
> That a natural knowledge of God is possible independently of revelation is
> not the point that either Dupuis or I were making. My allusion to Vatican
> II is to certain passages, which I won't include here, from the
> constitutions and documents "Lumen gentium" and "Nostra Aetate," on the
> possibility of the action of grace outside of the Church. Their
> implications are spelled out in later documents. To summarize, the
> recognition of authentic religious truth and practice in other religions is
> understandable in the light of the fact that the Logos (the Christ)
> enlightens every human being coming into the world (here contemporary
> theologians are picking up on a theme in Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria,
> and other early patristic writers), and that the action of the Holy Spirit
> is not limited to Christians, for "the wind blows where it will" (John 3:8).
> This quotation from John Paul II's encyclical on the Holy Spirit (1986),
> "Dominum et Vivificantem" [The Lord and Giver of Life], though it focuses
> upon the theme of universal salvation, gets to my point:
>
> "The Second Vatican Council, centered primarily on the theme of the
> Church, reminds us of the Holy Spirit's activity also "outside the visible
> Body of the Church." The council speak precisely of "all people of good will
> in whose hearts grace is active invisible" [LG 16]. For, since Christ died
> for all [cf. Rom. 8:32], and since all human beings are in fact called to
> one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit
> offers to all the possibility of being associated, in a way known to God,
> with the Paschal Mystery" [GS 22].
>
> His later encyclical "Redemptoris Missio" (1991) speaks even more of the
> action of the Holy Spirit not only within individuals but even in religious
> traditions:
>
> "The Spirit manifests himself in a special way in the Church and her
> members. Nevertheless, his presence and activity are universal, limited
> neither by space nor time.... The Spirit...is at the very source of the
> human person's existential and religious questioning which is occasioned not
> only by contingent situations but by the very structure of its being. The
> Spirit's presence and activity affect not only individuals but also society
> and history, peoples, cultures and religions" [RM 28].
>
> The point I was trying to make is not that the non-Christian draws
> his/her knowledge and understanding of God from nature, but that through the
> Logos, and as these passages emphasize, the Spirit, the light of revelation
> falls upon all human persons, even if they are unaware that the source of
> revelation is the action of the Holy Spirit. Thus, in interreligious
> dialogue, the Christian may gain from the non-Christian authentic insight
> into the Sacred because he/she too is enlightened by the Word and Spirit.
> Revelation is not confined to the Word that speaks from the Bible.
>
> I guess Luther and I find different values in the Moses story. Your
> point does raise the question whether out of an evolving creation we can
> discern authentically the presence of the Sacred outside of biblical
> revelation, and whether this leads to authentic knowledge of God. I refuse
> to rule that out.
Bob -
I didn't mean to suggest that the statement you cited wasn't to be understood
primarily in the context of Vatican II, but just that there seems to me to be some
continuity between these ideas and the decree of Vatican I.
I think that the earliest patristic statement of the type you mention is that of
Justin Martyr, in response to the charge that Christians believed all persons before
Christ to be irresponsible. "We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God,
and we have declared above that he is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers;
and those who lived reasonably [meta logou] are Christians, even though they have been
thought atheists."
I was intrigued by this very early, having come across it in my father's copy of
Bettenson when I was in high school, and in fact quoted it in the first sermon I ever
preached in chapel at Westminster College. I still find it intriguing but have also
come to see some problems with it.
My own answer to the question you pose in your last paragraph is one for which
I've argued a number of times here so I'll be brief this time. We do not know the true
God "outside of biblical revelation" - i.e., outside of God's action in the history
which culminates in Christ. What we can have outside of Christ is a detailed
understanding of the world, including human history. It is when we place that
understanding in the context of revelation that we can discern God's presence and
activity in the world.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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