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THE OF AMERICA

The Threefold Contribution of Gerald O’Collins’s Fundamental : Its Outlook, Its Focus on the And Its Groundwork for

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the of the

School of Theology and

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Doctor of

©

Copyright

All Rights Reserved

By

David B. Glasow

Washington D.C.

2015

The Threefold Contribution of Gerald O’Collins’s Fundamental Theology: Its Christocentric Outlook, Its Focus on the Resurrection And Its Groundwork for Ecumenism

David B. Glasow, Ph.D.

Director: William Loewe, Ph.D.

This dissertation examines the contributions of Gerald O’Collins S. J. to fundamental theology over the past fifty years, focusing on three interconnected areas of insight: the relationship of to , the centrality of , and ecumenism and inter- religious , noting their development over in his theology. It provides a critical examination of O’Collins’s contributions to the field of fundamental theology— especially his insights into revelation and history, his focused Christocentrism, and his of the relationship between and non-Christian . These interconnected themes form the core of his thought in fundamental theology and draw together important insights from various fields of , such as , ecumenism, and Christian . This dissertation show how O’Collins’s view of revelation and history informs his Christocentric perspective. Within his Christocentric perspective the resurrection plays a decisive role and opens several possibilities for the ongoing of Christ both in time and to all peoples, thus setting the groundwork for O’Collins’s ideas concerning and inter-religious dialogue and understanding.

This dissertation by David B. Glasow fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in approved by William Loewe, Ph.D., as Director, and by Root, Pd.D., and John Galvin, Dr. Theol. as Readers.

______William Loewe, Ph.D., Director

______Michael Root, Ph.D., Reader

______John Galvin, Dr. Theol., Reader

ii CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 History and of Fundamental Theology ……………………………….1 1.2 Origins and Pre- Characteristics of Fundamental Theology …………………………………………………………...…….5 1.3 Fundamental Theology following the Second Vatican Council ……..……...12 1.4 The Fundamental Theology of Van Noort and Latourelle …………..………17 1.5 Gerald O’Collins and His Understanding of Fundamental Theology …..…..30 1.6 Method and Purpose of this Study …………………………..……...35

Chapter 2: The Relationship of Revelation to History 2.0 Introduction ……………………………….………...……………..………...38 2.1 O’Collins’s Personalist Understanding of Revelation ……………..………..45 2.2 Stages of Revelation ………………………………………….……………..54 2.3 The Historical Nature of Revelation …..……………………….…...... 57 2.4 History ……………………………………………………………64 2.5 The Relationship between Faith and History …………………..……………74 2.6 Factors that Mediate Faith ………….……………………….………………83 2.7 Summary ……………………………………………………..…...... 94 2.8 Preliminary ……..…………………………………….……………..98

Chapter 3: Christocentrism and the Resurrection 3.0 Introduction ……………………………………...……………...... ……….106 3.1 Christocentric Nature of Faith and Revelation …...……………...... 109 3.2 The Centrality of the Resurrection for …...……………...... 115 3.3 Resurrection and History …………………………...……………..……….119 3.4 Christ’s Ongoing Risen Presence …………...……….….……………….. ..129 3.5 The Experiential Correlate …………………………...…………...... 139 3.6 Summary.………………...………………………...……………...... 145 3.7 Preliminary Critique ………………………………………………..………149

Chapter 4: Inter-Religious Dialogue 4.0 Introduction …….…………………………...……….…...…...... 152 4.1 Christocentric and Universal Salvation through the Risen Christ ...... 157 4.2 Experiencing Christ in General History………………………………….....160 4.3 Seeds of the Word …………………..……………………….…...... 164 4.4 The Unique Role of the Jewish People…. ………………….…...... 173 iii 4.5 The Role of Tradition in Ecumenism ……...………………...... 178 4.6 Summary …..……………………...……………...... 184 4.7 Preliminary Critique ..……………………………………………………....186

Chapter 5 Critical Evaluation 5.0 Introduction …………………………………………….…………………..189 5.1 Comparison of van Noort, Latourelle and O’Collins ………….…...... 189 5.2 General Critique………………………….…………………………………192 5.3 Critical Evaluation..………………..……………………………………….199 5.4 Areas of Development ……………………………………………...207

Appendix A: Brief Identifications of Significant Thinkers Referred to in the Text ……………………………………………………..…..208

Selected Bibliography ….……………………………………………..………………..212

iv Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 History and Nature of Fundamental Theology

Fundamental theology is a specialized branch of theology that studies foundational issues surrounding the sources of theology, such as revelation and the conditions that open to ’s self-communication.1 This definition of the field generally holds true for many theologians in the field, though there exists a diversity of approaches as well as a “real uncertainty” regarding its purpose and method.2 Regardless of the current variety of approaches, it is clear that fundamental theology following the Second Vatican Council can be contrasted with its earlier apologetic roots in the nineteenth century. Originally, the basic task of apologetic theology, also known as “,” was to find for judging the authenticity of what claims to be God’s word.3 René Latourelle notes in his Dictionary of Fundamental Theology that today the field of fundamental theology retains some aspects of its roots in apologetic theology, but also manifests significant discontinuity. These differences between post-Second Vatican

Council fundamental theology and earlier apologetic theology are so significant that Latourelle characterizes fundamental theology as having “a new status, a new identity [and] a new of papers” in comparison with its apologetic roots.4

The genesis of fundamental theology was triggered by a growing awareness of the inadequacies in nineteenth-century apologetics. While the term “apologetics” or “apologetic theology” may bear some negative connotations today, its original aim—to explain and defend

1 Gerald O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Dictionary of Theology (: Paulist Press, 1991), 82. 2 Jean-Pierre Torrell, “New Trends in Fundamental Theology,” Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology, eds. René Latourelle and Gerald O’Collins (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 14. 3 , “The of Apologetics,” , May 2004, http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/08/the-rebirth-of-apologetics [accessed November 12, 2013]. 4 Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, eds. René Latourelle and Rino Fisichella (New York: Crossroads, 1994), xiii. 1

2 the faith—was an important one.5 The apologetic endeavor has been part of the fabric of theology since the earliest days of the , in such as Justin and , and has continued throughout the Church’s history.6 But in the nineteenth century, theology as a whole was faced with new challenges and perspectives posed by Enlightenment thought. This gave rise to a specific form of apologetic theology which served as a prologue to . The response taken by apologetic theology to these challenges unfortunately led to certain imbalances in its and methods, which in used the very rationalistic assumptions it sought to counter. The field of fundamental theology grew out of various attempts to correct the imbalances found in apologetic theology. Initially fundamental theology included the difficulties found in apologetic theology as it originally strove to establish with rationalistic certainty the and sources of the Christian faith7 in much the same way as apologetics had done. Following this initial stage of development fundamental theology became more self-aware of these problems and has since distanced itself from such proofs and instead has widened its scope beyond the limited concerns and methods of apologetics.

As mentioned above, fundamental theology, in broadening the scope of its investigations beyond that of its apologetic predecessor, defies a precise definition today though the field can be contrasted with apologetics as a distinct discipline. Certain common themes in all its varieties can also be identified. Fundamental theology today, unlike its predecessor, grapples with issues such as in contemporary society, the growing indifference towards Christianity in the

5 Avery Dulles, A History of Apologetics (: Ignatius Press, 1999), xix. 6 Ibid., 27-89. 7 See René Latourelle, “Fundamental Theology” in Latourelle and Fisichella, Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, 324–332. 3 larger culture, and the impact of science on contemporary thinking. In addition the tone of fundamental theology has turned from confrontation to dialogue with non-adherents.8

While today’s fundamental theologians share a common concern with avoiding the imbalances of the past and engaging in a theology that includes an openness to pluralism, ecumenism, and other disciplines, these theologians differ widely on their use of method and on the governing concern that informs their contributions to fundamental theology. Gerald

O’Collins, S.J., offers several overarching categories that reflect the diversity in approaches to contemporary fundamental theology (and theology in general) based upon divergent views or emphasis on different aspects of human life. He labels these varieties of fundamental theology as homo dolens (the human who suffers), homo interrogans (the human who questions and seeks), homo historicus (adopted from W. Pannenberg (1928- 2014), the human situated in history), homo symbolicus (the human as symbolic) and finally homo experiens (the human who experiences).9 While this list is not exhaustive, it does provide a sense of the divergence of approaches to be found in fundamental theology today.

In light of this shift from apologetics to fundamental theology and the diversity that has sprung into during its more recent development, this dissertation will examine

O’Collins’s contributions to the field of fundamental theology. He has developed a homo experiens approach to the field, borrowing heavily from ’s transcendental theology and from a host of other theologians both in and outside of his own Catholic perspective. This dissertation will focus on three interconnected themes found in his fundamental theology: the nature and role of history in the coming to faith, the Christocentric focus on faith and salvation,

8 Ibid., xiii–xiv. 9 Gerald O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology (: , 2011), 37–42. 4 and the nature and role of ecumenism in fundamental theology. An analysis of these themes will show how O’Collins has both developed a fundamental theology that avoids the errors of earlier apologetic theology and has brought the field into engagement with a wide variety of contemporary thinkers on these topics, both in and outside the Catholic theological sphere. This dissertation will evaluate his contributions and illustrate that his contributions to this field are a valid development of fundamental theology in light of the field’s development from earlier rationalistic imbalances.

The following two sections of this dissertation (1.2 and 1.3) examine the history of fundamental theology by dividing its development and identity into two distinct periods: a period of initial formation prior to the Second Vatican Council and a period of continued development following the Council. In both periods fundamental theologians examined the foundations, reception, and sources of theology, but each period was also marked by a distinct purpose and method. The early period was prone to mirror the difficulties found in its apologetic precursor.

While some attempts were made to develop new approaches to understand revelation, it was not until the Second Vatican Council that fundamental theology thoroughly broke with the difficulties of the past. In the latter period theologians developed a wide variety of approaches and goals in order to reflect a growing diversity in theology while also attempting to correct certain imbalances found in the previous period. In order to illustrate the shift from the earlier, more rationalistic approach in fundamental theology to its current status section 1.4 will examine the work of two representative theologians who have contributed to the field: Gerardus Van

Noort, representing the pre-Second Vatican Council perspective, and René Latourelle, whose work illustrates the transitional stage just before and after Second Vatican Council. Their 5 approaches to the basic themes of fundamental theology will be later compared and contrasted with the theological contributions of O’Collins (5.1). The chapter will conclude with a brief introduction to the life and education of Gerald O’Collins and the method and purpose of our present study (1.5).10

1.2 Origins and Pre-Second Vatican Council Characteristics of Fundamental Theology

Originally, the field of fundamental theology had little to distinguish it from apologetics.

Over time fundamental theology changed as the weaknesses in its apologetic roots became more readily apparent. Because of the changes in fundamental theology one can mark a distinction between the rationalistic-apologetic stance that preceded the Second Vatican Council and the later post-Conciliar stance that turned away from this earlier perspective through its of a broader understanding of the nature of revelation and its role in faith development. This section will examine fundamental theology in the pre-Conciliar period and various influences that began to impact the field, leading to its shift in emphasis following the Second Vatican Council. The shift of focus after the Second Vatican Council will be examined in the next section.

The development of fundamental theology from apologetics has been documented and analyzed by a host of theologians in the field.11 Avery Dulles (1918–2008) explains that fundamental theology emerged in the mid-twentieth century as a result of the growing lack of

10 Appendix A provides brief biographical notes for significant theologians mentioned in the dissertation. 11 See René Latourelle, “A New Image of Fundamental Theology” in Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology, eds. René Latourelle and Gerald O’Collins, (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 37–59. Also see Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Foundational Theology: and the Church (New York: Crossroads, 1985), 5–17; Johannes B. Metz, ed., Fundamental Theology: The Development of Fundamental Theology, vol. 46 of Concilium: Theology in the Age of Renewal (New York: Paulist Press, 1969); Randy L. Maddox, Towards an Ecumenical Fundamental Theology (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), 13–38; Hansjürgen Verweyen, Einführung in die Fundamentaltheologie (Darmstadt, : Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008), 73–89; and Dulles, A History of Apologetics, 325–345. O’Collins offers a simple but informative overview in his Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 1–17. 6 in the field of apologetics. He attributes four principal reasons for the growing unpopularity of apologetics. Apologetics attempted to prove too much, which in some cases led theologians to attempt to demonstrate with certainty the of Christian revelation.

Apologists tended to revise Christian so that the modern, secular would accept it.

Another imbalance that discredited apologetics was an emphasis on human activity over and above that of God’s activity. Dulles notes: “they sometimes write as though we could ourselves into believing.”12And last, apologetics became unpopular due to a common sociological emphasis on pluralism which found apologetics divisive. Fundamental theology developed in order to address these deficiencies. In contrast to apologetics, fundamental theology, “did not try to speak to unbelievers but contented itself with analyzing for the sake of believers how God brings human beings to assent to His word.”13

This raises the question of how apologetics originally became so permeated with difficulties. Faced by an ever increasing influence of religious thought heavily impacted by

Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant (1724–1804) and Hegel (1770–1831), apologetic theologians in the nineteenth century recognized that inherited , both in its methods and emphasis, had become obsolete. Kant’s dualistic perspective of speculative and practical reason, for instance, reduced faith to the voice of and moral obligation while also forcing theologians to deal with a growing regarding the historical character of revelation.14 Hegel, for his part, introduced an evolutionary aspect into the theological discussion through his own philosophical outlook which Dulles calls a “system of dialectically evolving

12 Avery Dulles, “The Rebirth of Apologetics.” 13 Ibid. 14 Dulles, A History of Apologetics, 210. 7 .”15 In the view of many theologians both in and outside the , the new ideas permeating discussions throughout had eroded the need for and significance of theology in that age. In this new intellectual environment Catholic theology found itself unable to explain faith cogently in light of modern views and modes of thought. Issues such as the credibility of historical , the role of the community in passing on faith, and the relationship between the natural and the had brought traditional models of understanding, inherited from the Scholastic period, into question both inside and outside the

Catholic Church.16 In formulating a response, nineteenth-century theology developed in an apologetic vein—the aim of the field to justify and understand the sources of theology as well as to explain the faith in dialogue with and in response to attacks by Enlightenment . Unfortunately, the response found in apologetics fed the very difficulties it sought to undermine. The field itself became infected with rationalistic tendencies, such as a to prove with certainty the of the Scriptures and the authenticity of the teaching authority of the Church.17

15 Ibid., 215. 16 See Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method (New York: Crossroad, 1977), 17–36. 17 Dulles, “The Rebirth of Apologetics.” According to René Latourelle (1918– ), the rationalistic assumptions and goals found in traditional apologetics were reflected in three characteristic steps: the first step sought to prove the ; the second step proved that Christ was God’s divine legate, as demonstrated through his and ; the third step proved from Christ’s authority that the Catholic Church was the which alone speaks with God’s authority. Each step was the basis for the next (René Latourelle, Problems and Perspectives, 38). Latourelle negatively this approach by noting several insufficiencies. Classical apologetics sought to prove the credibility of revelation but did not first examine the of revelation. This attempt at such a proof created difficulties because revelation is not of “a philosophical kind.” Rather revelation is given through history and the . Latourelle notes that this approach failed to take into account the fact that only revelation can tell one what revelation is. The truths of faith and the fact of revelation cannot be comprehensively shown from exterior data. The proofs come from within the content of revelation, and thus philosophical proofs beg the question of revelation’s authority and veracity. Latourelle explained that the traditional approach almost completely ignored the human conditions for of revelation. Refuting non-Catholic interpretations of the nature of revelation does not necessarily lead to faith and conversion (ibid., 40–42). 8

Fundamental theologians, however, did not immediately correct the rationalistic tendencies found in apologetics. The first significant work in the field of fundamental theology was the 1859 two-volume work Fundamentaltheologie by Austrian theologian Johann Nepomuk

Ehrlich (1810–1864).18 Fundamentaltheologie, while providing a new for the field, did not break with the difficulties found in apologetics. In this work Ehrlich sought to defend dogmatic theology against rationalistic and historicist views by providing it with a complete foundation for

Christianity that relied upon historical demonstration and an extrinsicist that based its conclusions on external authority.19 Because the Enlightenment was to create

“objective” knowledge free from any subjective influence, Ehrlich sought a definitiveness that mirrored the objective certainty believed to be held in science in order to defend the truths taught by the Church.

Other practitioners of Catholic theology were not unaware of the difficulties in fundamental theology as formulated in this rationalistic framework. Attempts to shift the focus of the field to answer such challenges to the Catholic understanding of faith were found in the

Tübingen School in the early part of the nineteenth century, and later in the works of Maurice

Blondel, Alfred Loisy, and George Tyrrell. The Tübingen School, as exemplified by the writings of Johann Sebastian von Drey (1777–1853), Johann Möhler (1796–1838), and Johann

Baptist Hirscher (1788–1865), reveals a shift in emphasis away from the difficulties found in apologetic theology during the first half of the nineteenth century. The theologians of this school, many of whom had philosophical roots in German , sought to engage the difficulties inherited by both Baroque and the rationalistic Enlightenment thought in light of

18 Maddox, Towards an Ecumenical Theology, 21. He is referring to Johann Nepomuk Erhlich, Fundamentaltheologie, 2 vols. (Prague, 1859–1862). 19 Schüssler Fiorenza, Foundational Theology, 6–7. 9 the culture of their time.20 They stressed the relationship between God and humanity as relational and not antagonistic while shifting emphasis in Catholic thought away from ahistorical, timeless truths towards a historically rooted view of the Church that had implications for the social and civic life of its members.21 The theology of this school sought to use philosophy to help build a bridge between faith and modern culture.22

Another theologian who began to develop theology to counter the rationalistic tendencies found in Catholic theology was Maurice Blondel (1861–1949). In his writings, such as The

Letter on Apologetics,23 Blondel criticized earlier attempts at proving the certainty of faith and emphasized the fact that the is unable to verify the supernatural. Though not denying the role of reason in coming to faith, he emphasized that it is through practical action that gives one the insight that “it is and reasonable to believe.”24 Responding to the imbalances he saw in apologetics, he disliked the extrinsic arguments from miracles, preferring to see miracles as symbols of God’s and goodness that extend “His offer of friendship to man.”25 Similar to the Tübingen School, Blondel sought to understand the foundations of theology in a modern context that resisted the urge to base faith upon rationalistic and certain and proofs.

The theology of French exegete Alfred Loisy (1857–1940) and Irish Jesuit George

Tyrrell (1861–1909) also attempted to move beyond the rationalistic influence found in Catholic theology. Their contributions to theology produced controversy with Church because

20 Donald J. Dietrich and Michael J. Himes, The Legacy of the Tübingen School (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 11. 21 Ibid., 18–19. 22 Dulles, The of Things Hoped For (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 83–84. See Johann Adam Möhler, Symbolism (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1997), 121. 23 Maurice Blondel, The Letter on Apologetics and History and (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994). 24 Dulles, History of Apologetics, 275. 25 Ibid., 276. 10 their correctives to rationalism were seen as overly subjective and lacking a perceived objective necessity.26 Loisy sought to respond to Adolf Harnack and Auguste Sabatier’s negative critique of dogma and the historic development of theological systematization.27 Loisy did not reject magisterial teaching and dogma, but rather saw as expressions of faith that must constantly be recast throughout history. Loisy embraced a distinction between faith and dogma that, in Dulles’s opinion, placed him closer to the liberal Protestant position than to that of his fellow Catholics.28 Tyrrell held that faith is the result of personal . This experience of God provides the true content and normative required for the assent of faith.

This placed Tyrrell in agreement with both Sabatier and , two prominent liberal Protestant thinkers. While the Church’s dogmas in Tyrrell’s view play an important role by protecting the faith of the Church, he denied the theological significance of dogma for the believer.29

The Church did not react kindly to these attempts to rethink theology along modern lines.

Such prominent figures as Kleutgen, S.J., and later Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., opposed such trends and helped formulate Church pronouncements opposing them. Kleutgen had a major voice in the writing of both the First Vatican Council’s Dei Filius and Leo

XIII’s . The later document encouraged a renewal of emphasis on Thomistic thought which blossomed into the Neo-Scholastic movement and in turn temporarily negated the innovative trends found in the Tübingen School and Blondel’s work. Both these documents, Dei

Filius and Aeterni Patris, had an enormous impact on the development of Catholic theology for

26 Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For, 100–101. 27 Ibid., 96–104. 28 Ibid., 101. 29 Ibid., 101–102. 11 over a century.30 Later, the negative reaction against “subjective” fundamental theology, especially as found in the work of Loisy and Tyrrell, led the Vatican to publish several strongly worded documents that sought to counter modernist tendencies, such as the ’s

Lamentabili sane exitu in 1907.31 The reaction against these new trends in thought made such a profound impact on Catholic theology that fundamental theology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was “built upon the outline of the first Vatican Council and the anti-

Modernist documents.”32

Unfortunately the Neo-Scholastic school of theology fell prey to the same rationalistic tendencies that it sought to counter. By the end of War II, and lasting into the 1950s, fundamental theology fell into disrepute, since many had begun to question the validity of a theology that relied heavily on Enlightenment-type claims to universal validity and rational certainty.33 The field continued, however, and this apologetic-styled fundamental theology can be found both before and just after the Second Vatican Council in such writers as Albert Lang

(1890–1973) and Gerardus van Noort (1861–1946).

30 McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1. 31 Ibid., 103. DS 3401-3474. 32 René Latourelle, Theology of Revelation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009). Originally published as Théologie de la Révélation (Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963), 207. 33 As points out in Twentieth Century Catholic Theologians (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 2–16, both the Enlightenment ideal and Neo-Scholastic theology sought to find timeless, universal, and objective conclusions and neglected the importance of experience, tradition, and an awareness of historical situatedness for knowledge. According to John P. Galvin, “Jesus Christ,”eds. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin Systematic Theology, 2nd ed., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 256–257, Neo-Scholastic theology divided doctrinal questions into fundamental theology and dogmatic theology. Fundamental theology presupposed the results of Scholastic philosophy and appealed to reason and undeniable historical facts. It examined of divine revelation, Christ as divine messenger, inspiration, and the foundation of the Church. The were seen as reliable historical sources. Dogmatic theology built on fundamental theology. Christ was examined under two aspects—first in theology of the Incarnation, and second in , especially the of his on the cross. The result, according to Galvin, was “fragmented, and many topics were divorced from their appropriate contexts” (257). 12

1.3 Fundamental Theology following the Second Vatican Council

The teachings of the Second Vatican Council had a significant impact on the formation of modern fundamental theology and marked a definitive shift away from the earlier, more rationalistic approaches to the field. The shift in theological perspective prompted and enabled by the Council also allowed fundamental theology to expand beyond its former role of merely establishing a complete foundation for dogmatic theology. Jean-Pierre Torrell notes how H.

Bouillard was able to distinguish three distinct types of fundamental theology by the 1970s, all of which shared a common desire to distance themselves from fundamental theology in its earlier, pre-Vatican II form. First, there was a strand of fundamental theology with a dogmatic focus that made divine revelation the central focus and point. In this group Bouillard includes Latourelle (in his book Theology of Revelation), Rahner (1904–1984), and (1905–

1988). In this strand revelation began to be understood not only as a set of propositions to be affirmed but also as God’s living Word and self-communication. Second, there were those fundamental theologians who emphasized the apologetic function of the field. This apologetics, however, was not built upon aggression or confrontation, but rather on ecumenical openness and discussion. Bouillard sees himself in this category. A third group saw fundamental theology as an investigation, akin to the physical sciences, that examines the fundamental categories of theology using and linguistic study. Earlier fundamental theology had not branched into such disciplines to develop its arguments. Bouillard places German theologians Gottlieb

Söhngen (1892-1971) and Heinrich Stirnimann (1920-2005) in this category.34 This three-fold

34 Jean-Pierre Torrell, “New Trends in Fundamental Theology in the Postconciliar Period,” in Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology, eds. Latourelle and O’Collins, 13–14. Torrell credits H. Bouillard, “La tâche actuelle de la théologie fondamentale,” in Recherches Actuelle II (Le pont théologique 2 ; Paris, 1972), 7-49. 13 has certain difficulties, one of which is the fact that many aspects of the above- mentioned theologians’ ideas do not neatly fit into a particular type. But it does illuminate the point that a diversity of approaches was immediately seen in the field of fundamental theology following the Council and that a certain freedom to pursue diverse approaches was embraced within the Catholic theological fold.

The Council teachings that led to this shift were shaped by a number of theological movements that sought to engage the modern world while simultaneously deepening the

Church’s self-understanding. Theologians embraced a growing historical awareness expressed both in the aggiornamento movement, which sought to modernize the Church, and in the ressourcement movement, which looked back to find the authentic sources of Church teaching and belief. John W. O’Malley notes also a development perspective, which sought to update and prepare the Church for its future role. All three perspectives signaled an end to a classicist prevalent in Catholic neo-Scholastic theology.35

Influenced by these movements, the Council did much to encourage and clear away obstacles to a renewal of the fundamental theology.36 The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic

Constitution on Revelation Dei Verbum in particular had an important impact on the field of fundamental theology. The Constitution marked a notable expansion of the field, including a

35 John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2008), 36–43. Complaints about the limitations and nature of pre-Conciliar theology were manifold. Latourelle notes that the theology practiced before the Council deprived revelation of “its temporal aspect and its view towards Incarnation” and was not “sufficiently concerned with its historical character,” nor with the psychological dimensions of how revelation was accomplished (Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 213). Theologians such as H. de Lubac (1896–1991), J. Daniélou (1905–1974), G. Fessard (1897–1978), H. Bouillard (1908–1981), and H. von Balthasar (1905–1988) objected to theology’s intellectualism, which narrowed revelation to a series of ideas rather than a personal communication of God as person. Those involved in kerygmatic theology, such as J. Jungmann (1889–1975) and H. Rahner (1900–1968), felt that the then current understanding of revelation did not match the “biblical mentality” (Ibid.). 36 William van der Marck, “Fundamental Theology: A Bibliographical and Critical Survey,” Religious Studies Review, 8.3 (July 1982): 244–253. See also Latourelle’s treatment of the twentieth-century theological development leading up to the Council in Theology of Revelation, 207–240. 14 broadening of the field’s role, the inclusion of new themes, and the beginning of dialogue with new interlocutors.37 Dei Verbum offered official approval to the shift in theological method from a rationalistic attempt to prove revelation’s credibility to a critical examination of revelation.

The Second Vatican Council marked a pronounced shift not only in the expressions used in its documents, but in the methods these same documents encouraged in proclaiming the truth of the faith. Dulles notes that the Council showed little interest in the role of grace-less reason and was completely silent concerning the role of prophecies and miracles in attaining faith, both of which are notable changes from previous apologetic-styled fundamental theological approaches.38 He notes that “the preferred method of Vatican II seems to have been a confident, appealing, and irenic presentation of Catholic doctrine rather than an attempt to prove its truth.”39

For instance, several types of post-Vatican II fundamental theology moved away from apologetics to embrace the anthropocentric dimension of faith.40 Examples of this include K.

Rahner, B. Lonergan and as I shall examine, G. O’Collins.

The Second Vatican Council was not the only important influence on the changes in the discipline. Several other factors were involved in the changing emphases of fundamental theology at the time, including then-current historical events such as the , a growing openness in theology towards non-theological disciplines, and the insights of various theologians over the prior forty years in reaction to what was seen as an insufficient theological understanding of the nature and scope of theology. Another change was the growing awareness of history in theological writings, which challenged theologians to reconsider Church teachings

37 Latourelle and O’Collins, eds., Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology, 42. 38 Dulles, History of Apologetics, 324. 39 Ibid. 40 Claude Geffré, “Recent Developments in Fundamental Theology: An Interpretation,” in Fundamental Theology, ed. Johannes B. Metz, 15. 15 in light of questions concerning what had previously been considered timeless truths in light of the historically conditioned nature of those teachings. Theologians sought to confront history as an essential condition of humanity and began to recognize an anthropocentric and personalist perspective.

This anthropocentric forced theologians to recognize people as subjects who receive revelation and not merely as objects for whom only a logical is required. In this light, faith is not concerned merely with understanding the word in Scripture and preaching, but it also seeks to discover the meaning that God has for persons. Theologians also began to consider the social, political, and global dimensions of humankind. Understanding these dimensions helps illuminate how faith is understood by various individuals, groups, and cultures.

Catholic theology began to develop a stronger ecumenical sensitivity, which embraces a of dialogue that recognizes the truth content of other .41

In short, theology in the post-Vatican II period embraced numerous new perspectives that encouraged a deepening and broadening of the scope of fundamental theology beyond its earlier apologetic incarnation, as well as a drive that has sought to develop perspectives that would address the earlier faults of classical apologetics. As a result of these new influences upon the field, fundamental theology changed in regards to the nature, content, method, and scope of inquiry of the field.42 Further, this expansion led theologians to refer consistently to the field as

“fundamental theology,” and not as “apologetics,” and to begin a process of reflection on the identity and hierarchization of its tasks.43

41 Ibid. 42 René Latourelle, “Fundamental Theology,” in Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, eds. Latourelle and Fisichella, 324. 43 Ibid. 16

This broadening of the field of fundamental theology has not resulted, however, in a unified approach to the field. As I noted above (1.1), O’Collins identifies several general yet distinct trends that emphasize a particular view of mankind’s situation.44 His own approach to fundamental theology—for example, embracing the category of homo experiens—can be explained as the human experience of God, as mediated by faith, seeking understanding. Others have categorized the shifts in emphasis in other ways.45 However the field is viewed, it is clear that the changes following the Council led to a diversification in terms of how theologians viewed the goals and identity of fundamental theology.46

In summary, while there was a shared general broadening of perspectives following the

Second Vatican Council, the field of fundamental theology contains several distinctive directions concerning its scope and role today. Today fundamental theology, having distanced itself from earlier apologetics, reflects modern concerns such as historicity, , and the anthropological aspects of the receiver of revelation. Despite the plethora of /formulations fundamental theology has taken, there is now, in general, a pervading concern for hermeneutics in fundamental theology, for the intelligibility of revelation as to the modern world, for the anthropological conditions for faith, as well as for historical and the situatedness of the person in a particular place and time. The apologetic

44 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 37–42. 45 See Torrell, “New Trends in Fundamental Theology,” ”in Latourelle and O’Collins, eds., Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology,” 13–14. One prominent example of a distinct approach to the field is the work of H. U. von Balthasar, who saw the fundamental problem for theology as perception of the form wherein the perceiving person beholds the self-emptying of Christ on the cross and thus the image of divine love on earth. While Balthasar did not develop a clearly delineated fundamental theology per se, he did develop an approach centered on the perception of the form of love as shown through Christ, i.e. an aesthetic approach. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004). 46 J.-P. Torrell (1927–) holds that this diversity reflects both a broadness and a concerning the nature and object of fundamental theology. (Latourelle and O’Collins, eds., Problems and Perspectives in Fundamental Theology, 14–15.) 17 function, cleansed of its earlier tendency towards rationalistic certainty, has not been and continues to play a significant part in fundamental theology, especially in light of the growing of and the growth of popular atheistic influences.

Further, theologians have been less fearful of including non-theological sciences in their considerations since Vatican II. In fact, the varieties in emphasis concerning fundamental theology have arisen in a large part due to the impact of some non-theological sciences such as , , religious studies, anthropology, , linguistics, hermeneutics, and cultural studies.

1.4 The Fundamental Theology of Van Noort and Latourelle

In the previous sections the development of fundamental theology and the influences upon this development were examined. In this section a basic summary of the fundamental theology of Gerardus Van Noort and René Latourelle will be provided as case studies illustrating the shift that happened in the field. Later, in my concluding analysis (5.3), O’Collins’s contributions, having been examined in depth in the major portion of this dissertation, will be compared and contrasted with their work.

Gerardus van Noort

Gerardus van Noort (1861–1946) was a Dutch Neo-Scholastic theologian who exemplifies the pre-Vatican II approach to fundamental theology, as seen most clearly in his 18 propositional model of revelation and his approach to fundamental theology as a whole. From

1892 to 1908 he was of dogmatic theology at the of Warmond,47 where he completed a ten-volume manual of theology.48 The first four volumes of these books deal with fundamental theology and serve as a prologue for his treatment of dogmatic theology. His work on fundamental theology and dogmatic theology was used widely in both in the

Netherlands and abroad.

For Van Noort the formal object of fundamental theology is “the natural knowability or the historic-philosophical knowability” of revelation.49 Hence the field deals with the existence of revelation, how revelation is channeled to individuals, and the means by which each receives revelation.50 Van Noort defines revelation as “making known some truth” by God. The content of revelation consists of facts about God and the ultimate human destiny in God, both of which are mysteries beyond the grasp of human knowledge. Since obliges man to practice , people must investigate the claims of any plausibly presented religion.51 Against the arguments of those who have a purely horizontal understanding of reality, such as rationalists, naturalists, and modernists, van Noort attempts to prove that revelation and mysteries are possible52 and necessary for one to attain salvation since people, using human reason, cannot know about their supernatural destiny.53 Tradition is a body of distinct from the

47 J. J. Castlelot, “Van Noort, Gerard,” New , 2003, available at: www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3407711443/van-noort-gerard.html [accessed August 15, 2012]. 48 Van Noort’s English translators, John J. Castelot, S.S., and William R. Murphy, S.S., not only translated The True Religion, Christ’s Church, and The Sources of Revelation and the Divine Faith, but also revised it, adding sections in keeping with “recent pronouncements of the Church.” Gerard Van Noort, The True Religion, trans. John J. Castelot and William R. Murphy (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1955), xxi. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 34. 52 Ibid., 38–46. 53 Ibid., 49–55. 19

Scriptures—both being part of the deposit of faith. Both Scripture and Tradition are deposits of information given through revelation. Van Noort’s understanding of revelation sits comfortably in what Dulles terms the doctrinal or prepositional model of revelation.54

Faith to Van Noort is the means by which people receive revelation. Van Noort holds that faith is the personal and subjective act by which a person accepts the truths given by Jesus, as transmitted through the Church. He rejects what he considers purely subjective or utilitarian approaches to defining faith. These understandings of faith, often based upon appeals to the heart, he lead to skepticism. Faith instead involves the mind yielding its assent because of an argument that is extrinsic to the fact that is believed. Faith consists in “a firm assent of the intellect given because of someone’s .”55 People give assent to a revealed truth, on the basis of an extrinsic proof, such as authority. The intellect must have some truth upon which it attaches; the act of faith involves the acceptance of some authority and an act of it.56 In the case of faith in God, faith rests upon the authority of God, and the human will assents to this authority and the truths it teaches.57 Given this authority, faith enjoys certitude.

The material object of faith consists in the truths disclosed by that authoritative source

(revelation), which, in van Noort’s theology, is God. Certitude concerning God’s authority is the motive for faith.58

Faith then is “elicited by the intellect, at the command of the will, and under the help of .”59 The intellect is the faculty that elicits the act of faith, the will commands faith,

54 Dulles, Models of Revelation (New York: Orbis Books, 1983), 36-52. 55 Gerardus van Noort, The Sources of Revelation: Divine Faith (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1963), 186. 56 Ibid., 187. 57 Ibid., 188. 58 Ibid., 336. 59 Ibid., 296. 20 and grace elevates and supernaturalizes that act of faith.60 The certitude of faith is attained by the intellect through the help of God’s grace. Miracles prove the facts of revelation. Because the effects of miracles lie within the perception of human senses, they are rationally knowable.

Miracles, such as the resurrection, help prove the divine origin of religion.61 God alone can be the efficient cause of and prophecies.62 The ability to perform miracles authenticates

Jesus’ divine authority and therefore proves the divine origin of the Catholic Church which

Christ clearly established. Miracles are then proofs to aid in coming to belief.63

Jesus’ role in van Noort’s fundamental theology is one of proving the “sublimity” of the

Catholic faith. There is no humanly invented source that can account for who Jesus is and what

Jesus did. Christ’s nobility of character and the miracles he performed cannot be accounted for by modern by comparative historians.64 Christ far transcended the preconceived notions of a in Christ’s own time.65 Christ was extraordinarily holy; he fulfilled prophecies given far ahead of his time and performed miracles. All of this, in van Noort’s theology, gives credence to Christ’s supernatural origin.66

The resurrection proves the credibility of Christ’s divine mission.67 Van Noort cites 1

Corinthians 15 as an example of the use of the resurrection as a proof. This claim was the basis for faith since it was a “brilliant miracle” that was “intimately related by its very nature with the truth of the mission of Christ the .”68 It was Christ’s miracle par excellence that

60 Ibid., quoting from Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution concerning the Catholic Faith, ch. 3, “Faith.” 61 van Noort, The True Religion, 65. 62 Ibid., 66. 63 Ibid., 191. 64 Ibid., 129. 65 Ibid., 131. 66 Ibid., 137–164. 67 Ibid., 166. 68 Ibid. 21 provided the “ seal of all His preaching.”69 The resurrection then serves as a proof regarding the truth of what Jesus did and the truth of his claims regarding his mission. Volumes

1–4 of van Noort’s dogmatic writings, which comprise his fundamental theology, contain no discussion concerning the meaning of the resurrection beyond the truth claims it proves. Rather van Noort, in his one explicit treatment of the resurrection in The True Religion, concludes that the resurrection proves that Christ was God’s legate, that his mission was proven to be true, and that the religion Christ preached, the Catholic religion, is in fact the true religion.70

In order to argue this point Van Noort defends the historicity of the resurrection against rationalist claims to the contrary. He sets out to prove the actually happened by showing first how clearly it was foretold and then by examining the facts and revealing the weaknesses of the rationalist arguments and theories. The most important fact was the empty tomb on the third day. This fact, supported by , women, and nonbelievers, undermines merely naturalistic explanations.71 This is further supported by the appearances, which happened often and to many people. Jesus was seen and spoken to and even ate. The rationalist theories, van Noort argues, are weak because none of them explains how Christ’s body disappeared from the tomb.

Psychological explanations do not even begin to deal with this issue.72 Van Noort then proceeds to examine various counter-explanations of the resurrection and discards them as either unbelievable or question-begging.73 The resurrection proves that Christ was God’s divine messenger. It follows that the religion founded by Christ is validated as the one true religion, as

69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., 182. 71 Ibid., 172. 72 Ibid., 173. 73 Ibid., 173–181. 22 the of van Noort’s first volume, The True Religion, affirms. The resurrection then serves as a proof, validating the authority of the Church and the truth of its dogmas.

Ecumenism is not on van Noort’s list of priorities. He is concerned with asserting the fullness of truth in the foundations of Catholic dogma and proving the validity of these foundations. Some aspects of his thought stand out, though, as possible openings for ecumenical openness. In his discussion on the Church’s teaching as the usual means of faith he notes, “For even though it is morally impossible to know the entire Christian revelation without the help of the Church, it does not follow that is it impossible to know this or that individual truth without her assistance.”74 Outside of the Catholic Church and its teachings it is impossible to know everything revealed, though individual truths may be known.75 Van Noort holds an ecclesiocentric perspective that does little to open areas of agreement with those outside of the

Catholic .

René Latourelle

René Latourelle’s work in the field of fundamental theology exemplifies the shift in approach leading up to and following the Second Vatican Council. His work engages a broader historical approach to the nature and role of revelation which aids him in avoiding the propositional and often rationalistic understanding of revelation found in such authors as van

Noort. René Latourelle was born in 1918 in Montreal, , and entered the in 1938. He gained a in Canadian history from the University of Montreal in 1950 and a doctorate in theology from the Gregorian University in 1957. He taught at the Gregorian from

74 van Noort, The Sources of Revelation, 201. 75 For instance, see van Noort, The True Religion, 182, concerning how various other Christian denominations are inadequate splinter from the one true faith. 23

1959 and became an emeritus professor there in 1989, preceding O’Collins as its dean, and he is the author of several volumes that investigate issues surrounding fundamental theology. His most notable theological works include Theology of Revelation (1966), Christ and His Church (1972),

Finding Jesus through the Gospels (1979), Man and His Problems in the Light of Jesus Christ

(1983), and The and the Theology of Miracles (1988).

Latourelle sees fundamental theology as a specific discipline whose object is the self- manifestation of God in Christ. The object of the field of fundamental theology is the study of revelation itself: “As a specific discipline, it has its own proper material and formal object, namely, the self-manifestation and self-giving of God in Jesus Christ.”76 This field also deals with the “intrinsic” credibility of Christ in the world.77 The intrinsic quality of credibility bears particular interest, since God is both revealer and revealed and “bears witness to himself as such.”78 Fundamental theology “is a in which theology reflects on God’s free intervention in Jesus Christ, or, in other words, on the self-manifestation and self-giving of God that are the utterly unique and original core of Christianity.”79 Because God’s-becoming- carries with it the of its own authenticity,80 it is the task of fundamental theology to discover and identify Christ, as the most significant of these signs, as God, and to allow something of God’s to be seen. The decision for faith must be shown in fundamental theology to be a truly human decision that is reasonable and meaningful.

76 René Latourelle, “Fundamental Theology,” in Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, 328. Italics his. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 329. 79 René Latourelle, “A New Image of Fundamental Theology,” in Problems and Perspectives in Fundamental Theology, 52. 80 Latourelle, “Fundamental Theology,” 328–329. 24

In regards to fundamental theology, Latourelle is concerned with the credibility of revelation as a whole.81 He discusses his approach to revelation in Theology of Revelation, which was originally published in French in 1963.82 His approach differs greatly from van Noort’s approach. Instead of seeing revelation and the as proofs for the teaching of the Church, Latourelle focuses on the nature of revelation as God expressing himself through the

Son. As opposed to proving the certainty of Christ’s authority, Latourelle holds that fundamental theology should seek to show that revelation is credible and faith is reasonable. By this he means that fundamental theology’s unique task is showing that “revelation and its acceptance by faith are meaningful for human beings.”83 This understanding of fundamental theology informs

Latourelle’s rich treatment of the nature of revelation and Christ as God’s revealed word. This treatment marks a clear departure from the approach in van Noort’s theology and underscores a shift in understanding the role of revelation in theology.

Latourelle explains that revelation is the living God addressing man in an interpersonal and living relationship that seeks to create communication and sharing.84 Revelation should be understood as God’s word calling man to the obedience of faith that in turn leads to sharing in

God’s life. In revelation God condescends to sinful man, who has rejected God’s love and friendship, to the point of “meeting man on his own level.”85 The incarnation is a unique instance of this divine condescension. The incarnation is an expression of God himself and his plan for our salvation. “Christ declares the mystery of His Person and His mission in human discourse,

81 Latourelle, “A New Image of Fundamental Theology,” 55. 82 René Latourelle, Theology of Revelation. 83 Latourelle, “A New Image of Fundamental Theology,” 53. 84 Ibid., 318. 85 Ibid., 319. 25 which the ear can hear and the can assimilate.” What God communicates in revelation is religious truths and the “secrets of the divine life itself.”86

Looking more specifically at the role of Christ in revelation, Latourelle explains that

Christ, as the Word of God, expresses the for humanity. In Christ as Word one finds

God revealing to each person the “depths of the divine mystery.”87 In the Incarnation God sends his Word, intimately uniting Himself to humanity. In so doing, God utilizes “all the resources” available in .88 Revelation in Christ happens through a double manifestation of words and gestures. The words explain the gestures while the gestures, as actions, make the words incarnate. Through Christ God communicates God’s plan to the human mind. This communication fully becomes revelation when the events in history are explained through the human words of Christ. Latourelle explains that the events of the Incarnation must be explained

“by the revelation-word which is its necessary .”89 The gestures of the , for instance, are seen to have redemptive value through the words used by Jesus.

Latourelle identifies several elements in revelation. The formal element of revelation is the actions and testimony, given by way of word/communication by God to man, that deserve the full homage of faith.90 Revelation is a of communication between a personal and transcendent God and mankind. The Christian religion and the Hebrew religion preceding it are the result of this communication. The objective elements of revelation, the material elements, may be considered either in themselves or in view of the human capacity to know and comprehend. The objective elements of revelation also include “truths of religion,” which one

86 Ibid. 87 Ibid., 363. 88 Ibid., 264. 89 Ibid., 364. 90 Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 304. 26 can know rationally and are revealed by God to reassure one of “God Himself and His plan of love for humanity” as seen in and through Christ. There are some truths accessible only through revelation and not accessible to human reason. These truths, once revealed, can be understood by way of , but can never be understood in the same depths as truths derived from objects known through natural reason.91

Latourelle finds in revelation a multifaceted reality. Revelation is interpersonal because it is through revelation that God—not just as an object of knowledge, but as subject-to-subject— works to create a spiritual and personal relationship. Revelation in turn demands a response on our part. Revelation is gratuitous on God’s part, as well as social. It is addressed to who are individual, yet belong to a social whole. “Still there is a : revelation is not addressed to all immediately, but through the medium of those whom God has chosen to be His witnesses: and Apostles.”92 Revelation is historical. It enters into our material conditions. It developed in “quality and quantity” over time. It was completed in Christ and was presented as an planned and executed by God over many centuries. Revelation is doctrinal. It not only offers contact with God but also offers a “complex of truths,” which are unified by Christ, the prophets, and the Apostles.93 These propositional truths do not exhaust God’s mystery but leads one to a greater truth and the mystery of God himself. Revelation is also salvific in that it provides a knowledge that can change a way of life. It contains not human but divine wisdom that is aimed towards the transformation of our lives in God.

Latourelle does not consider the facts of revelation as self-interpreting. Rather God must provide an authentic interpretation of his own actions. This interpretation is mediated through the

91 Ibid., 305. 92 Ibid., 307. 93 Ibid. 27

Church. The Apostles acted as necessary intermediaries through their testimony and the

Kerygma. The Church was given this testimony, and in turn proclaims doctrine, which is comprised of a “complex of notions and judgments which enumerate and designate the mystery.”94 The documents of the Church—when properly conformed to certain criteria, such as when they speak of Apostolic doctrine—provide a doctrinal testimony in accord with the original

Apostolic testimony.95 This is why Dulles remarks that “Latourelle makes much of the role of doctrine as complementary to historical event in the process of revelation. . . . [R]edemptive history does not exhibit its revelatory significance except in the light of a divinely communicated interpretation, which is at least seminally doctrine.”96 Dulles considers Latourelle’s understanding of revelation to be predominantly dogmatic and historical, thus being a blend of the first two models of Dulles’s five-fold distinction concerning approaches to revelation.

Latourelle’s understanding, “admirably summarizes the official Catholic teaching on revelation up to Vatican Council II (1962-65).”97

Latourelle, drawing on the concept of and word as communication, appropriates

Karl Bühler’s three-fold distinction of the word having content, interpretation, and personal unveiling, and applies it to God’s revelatory word. God’s revelation then becomes a personal unveiling to another person.98 God’s revelatory word becomes the means through which two interiorities “unveil themselves to each other” and develop friendship.99 When God addresses

94 Ibid., 373. 95 Ibid. 96 Avery Dulles, “Theology of Revelation,” Theological Studies 25, no. 1 (2001): 53. 97 Dulles, Models of Revelation, xvii. 98 Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 316-317. 99 Ibid., 317. 28 mankind, they are invited to participate in the communion of God’s life through the obedience of faith.100

Latourelle understands faith as a response to the salvific message found in revelation.101

Faith is the mind consenting to the truth. The believer does not believe because of intrinsic evidence, but due to the authority of God. When someone adheres to the teachings of the Church, it is in the mystery of God in whom they have freely chosen to believe. Essentially, faith is a gift of God and is brought about through grace.102

Faith is a human act that is reasonable and meaningful. Faith is a freely given total surrender to God based upon knowledge. This knowledge is required before faith occurs and in order for faith to occur. Latourelle recognizes that faith requires understanding that must be based upon valid reasons. One should not confuse faith with . Fundamental theology serves faith by helping the person see revelation as credible and reasonable.103

Regarding the role of Christ in general, Latourelle holds that the “unifying center” of fundamental theology is the assertion that God is among mankind in Jesus Christ.104 God revealed Himself concretely in the person of Christ.105 Christ and the knowledge of God are inseparable. Christ realized the love and salvation of God. This salvation is achieved through the knowledge of God and Jesus (2 Pt 1:2). The Incarnation is the foundation and means that God chose to reveal himself. One cannot reduce revelation to the Incarnation, however. While the

Incarnation makes possible the , the Incarnation was not the “complete

100 Ibid., 318. 101 Ibid., 308. 102 Ibid. 103 Latourelle, “A New Image of Fundamental Theology,” 53. 104 Ibid., 54. 105 Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 362. 29 accomplishment” that can be reduced to an “object of faith.” Rather, the Incarnation is the foundation and condition for revelation that makes it humanly possible to gain a knowledge of

God and salvation.106 Latourelle is concerned with the credibility of revelation as a whole.107 The

Incarnation was the chosen means that makes revelation possible.108 It is through the words of

Christ as human expression to and for humans that the event and meaning of the Incarnation are

“unveiled” for us. “The event of Incarnation, which we call a revelation ‘in the first degree,’ must always be completed by the revelation-word that is its necessary commentary.”109 Events require words for them to be truly “revelational.” Latourelle thus places the emphasis, when speaking of revelation, on the Incarnation as being revelation “in the first degree,” as opposed to the resurrection. 110 As opposed to the resurrection serving as the manifestation of Christ’s authority given by God, Latourelle instead emphasizes the Incarnational aspects of Christ’s life as being the motive of credibility: “He is in person the motive of credibility par excellence.”111

In speaking of miracles, Latourelle finds in Christ’s miracles a variety of meanings.

Interestingly, he does not turn to the resurrection as the miracle par excellence. Instead he develops a multifaceted understanding of the role of miracles. Miracles validate Christ’s claims and authenticate the divine mission. Miracles manifest God’s love in the world in the face of human . Miracles fulfill prophetic themes and help announce the coming of the

106 Ibid., 363. 107 Latourelle, “A New Image of Fundamental Theology,” 55. 108 Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 363. 109 Ibid., 364. 110 Latourelle, in discussing the relationship between revelation and the Incarnation, focuses on Christ as Incarnate who acts as revealer via his human nature: “His whole human existence will be completely utilized to reveal the depths of the divine mystery.” Theology of Revelation, 363. 111 Ibid., 369. 30

Kingdom. In the context of the entire biblical tradition, miracles serve the function of guaranteeing Christ’s mission as divine. Miracles then authenticate the ’s mission, providing credentials for “God’s envoy.”112 While they serve as signs for the receiver of revelation, miracles are properly acknowledged as works of Christ. This divine activity in Christ functions

“to guarantee His mission as God’s envoy, not, however, in the capacity of simple or human messiah, but in the capacity of Son of the Father, equal to the Father, sharing knowledge with the Father . . . sharing with the Father.”113

While open to ecumenism, Latourelle does not develop this line of thought in his fundamental theological writings. He recognizes that the decisions made by fundamental theologians have implications for ecumenism, yet his fundamental theology does not develop these implications. One can find some ecumenical development in that Latourelle’s fundamental theology is not polemical, as seen in van Noort’s presentation, but more positive, often taking as its starting point the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

1.5 Gerald O’Collins and His Understanding of Fundamental Theology

Gerald Glynn O’Collins, S.J., former dean of the theology faculty at ’s Pontifical

Gregorian University, has been a regular contributor in the ongoing development of fundamental theology. He was born in 1931 in Melbourne, , and having been taught by the Jesuits at

Xavier , decided to join the order in 1950. He studied at Canisius College, a seminary outside of Sydney, Australia, and was ordained a in 1963. Soon after his he went to Germany, where he encountered and dialogued with what he deemed the most advanced

112 Ibid., 393. 113 Ibid., 394. 31 theology in the world, attending the lectures of theologians such as Hans Küng (1928–),

Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014), and Jürgen Moltmann (1926–). O’Collins earned a licentiate in theology at Heythrop College in London in 1967, while often returning to the continent to attend lectures at Tübingen and other theological . He earned a doctorate at Cambridge

University in 1968, while holding a research fellowship at Pembroke College. From 1968 to

1973, before accepting a teaching position at the Gregorian University, he taught simultaneously at the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Jesuit Theological

College in Melbourne, traveling back and forth between these schools. After a long tenure at the

Gregorian University, a position originally offered to him by René Latourelle, O’Collins assumed the role of the dean of faculty, a position he held for six years. After retiring from the

Gregorian in 2006 he assumed a research professorship at St. Mary’s University College at

Twickenham in London, taught at Marquette University, and then returned to Australia in 2009.

Most recently, he has served as an adjunct professor at Australian Catholic University and adjunct professor at the Gregorian University in Rome.114

Among his many accomplishments and academic achievements, O’Collins has co-chaired international symposia on the resurrection, the , the Incarnation, the , and the legacy of John Paul II, and has coedited the proceedings of each symposium. He has delivered the Fisher Lecture and the Margaret Beaufort Lecture at Cambridge and the Cardinal Hume

Lecture at Heythrop College. He has received the Malipiero Prize awarded by the Malipiero

114 See The Humble Approach Initiative: “Is God Incarnate in All That Is? / Participants,” available at: http://humbleapproach.templeton.org/incarnate/GeraldOCollins.html [accessed April 26, 2013]; Catholic of Bathurst, Australia, http://www.bathurst.catholic.org.au/liturgycom/INDEX-PDF/Biographies.pdf [accessed April 26, 2013]. For other biographical details about O’Collins’s life see his A Midlife Journey (Ballan, Australia: Australia Connor Court Publishing, 2012) and Living Vatican II: The 21st Council for the 21st Century (New York: Paulist Press, 2006). 32

Foundation in Bologna, the Stefano Borgia European Prize, and the Johannes Quasten Medal from the Catholic University of America. He is a research fellow of Pembroke College in

Cambridge and received the Leeper Gold Medal in classics from the University of Melbourne. In

2006 he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. He holds honorary degrees from the

University of San Francisco, the University of Surrey, Heart University (Bridgeport,

Connecticut), John Carroll University (Cleveland, Ohio), and Melbourne College of .

His publications include hundreds of articles in various journals, including Heythrop

Journal, Irish Theological Quarterly, and Theological Studies. He has written over sixty theological books, most focused on the topics of Christology, the resurrection, and fundamental theology. Concerning the last of these three themes, O’Collins began writing on the topic of fundamental theology soon after the Second Vatican Council and has continued to do so in his retirement. The books that deal explicitly with fundamental theology include Theology and

Revelation (1968), Foundations of Theology (1970), Fundamental Theology (1981), Retrieving

Fundamental Theology (1993), The for Theology (1997), and Rethinking Fundamental

Theology (2011). Other important aspects of his thought on fundamental theology can be found in his Christological writings, including The Christ (1973), Jesus Risen

(1987), and Christology (1995). His articles on fundamental theology are numerous.115

Receiving his theological formation before, during, and after the Second Vatican Council,

O’Collins was strongly influenced by the same theological influences that impacted the Council.

He has deliberately built his theology upon the themes and teachings of the Council and engaged in dialogue with a wide variety of figures such as Rahner, Pannenberg, Bultmann, John Paul II,

115 See Daniel Kendall, S.J., and Steven T. Davis, eds., The Convergence of Theology: A Festschrift Honoring Gerald O’Collins, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), 370–398, for a comprehensive list of O’Collins’s writings up until 2000. 33 and others. O’Collins specifically recognizes Rahner’s overall influence on his theological views. In addition, he credits , especially those on the Pauline letters and the

Gospel of John, for playing an important formative role in the development of his theology.

Though mentioned in passing within his writing, from the year 1981 onward, O’Collins credits

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s influence on his understanding with regard to the nature of experience.

Lastly, in relation to theology involving Vatican II and the field of fundamental theology,

O’Collins attributes a prominent role in the development of his thought to ongoing dialogue with

Jared Wicks, S.J.116

In his contributions to fundamental theology, O’Collins does not attempt to build a comprehensive system but rather suggests ways to advance several specific concerns within the discipline. O’Collins is particularly interested in the impact and interaction of revelation, tradition, and on human experience. His analysis of the issues surrounding these themes has yielded a series of interconnected insights into fundamental theology with regard to the relation of revelation and history, Christocentrism, and the relation of Christianity to other .

O’Collins holds fundamental theology to be study of God’s self-communication gained through a reflection on human experience.117 Fundamental theology and theology in general are not practiced by setting aside faith in search of a hypothetical, objective starting point. Rather, theology is practiced from within a faith perspective:118 “theology needs to be ‘faithful’ as well

116 Jared Wicks, S.J., a theologian and professor of teaches on the topics of Luther and the . Since 2011 he has taught at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. On his influence on O’Collins, G. O’Collins, personal communication, August 26, 2013. 117 Gerald O’Collins, Fundamental Theounicalogy (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1981), 1. 118 Ibid., 6–7. 34 as rational.”119 He notes that fundamental theology differs from the in this regard. Whereas the latter engages in a study of religion that is informed about faith, it does not

“share the ” that faith provides.120 In light of his transcendental anthropology, O’Collins maintains that theology is “faith seeking understanding” from within the preconditioned and already existing unthematized awareness in all persons of the Triune God and of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. O’Collins holds a theological perspective that focuses on the experience of God’s self-communication through the lens of transcendental anthropology. His fundamental theology focuses on the various means and aspects of an encounter with God in human experience, such as God’s revelation in history, the anthropological conditions for an encounter with God’s revelation, the ongoing testimony and transmission of the experience of revelation, the founding of the Church, the methods and questions that rise in interpreting texts, and finally the relationship of world religions to Christ and the .121 O’Collins’s approach contrasts with various other endeavors to formulate a fundamental theology. Johann

Baptist Metz’s focus on the political aspects within fundamental theology,122 David Tracy’s

(1939–) emphasis on hermeneutics within the same field,123 and Avery Dulles’s (1918–2008) development of a symbolic fundamental theology124 all advanced the field through their specific perspective. O’Collins, through his development of a transcendental and experiential approach to

119 Ibid., 6. 120 Gerald Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 8. 121 Ibid., 15. 122 , Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans..David Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1980). 123 David Tracy, Blessed for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975). 124 Avery Dulles, Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1992).

35 fundamental theology, focuses his work on human experience as a key factor in God’s communication and interaction with each person.

1.6 Method and Purpose of This Present Study

This dissertation will first examine O’Collins’s contributions to fundamental theology, focusing on three interconnected areas of insight: the relationship of history to revelation, the centrality of Christ, and ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, noting their development over time in his theology. This dissertation will then critically examine O’Collins’s contributions to the field of fundamental theology— especially his insights into revelation and history, his focused Christocentrism, and his understanding of the relationship between Christianity and non-

Christian religions. These themes were chosen because, in my opinion, they form the core of his thought and draw together important insights from various fields of interest, such as Christology, ecumenism, and . The three themes also are interconnected. O’Collins’s view of revelation and history informs his Christocentric perspective. Within his Christocentric perspective the resurrection plays a decisive role. It is the resurrection that opens several possibilities for the ongoing presence of Christ both in time and to all peoples, thus setting the groundwork for O’Collins’s ideas concerning faith and inter-religious dialogue and understanding.

This dissertation seeks to fill a gap in the concerning O’Collins’s fundamental theology. While his books on fundamental theology have been widely reviewed in journals, more scholarly attention has been paid to his Christology and theology of the resurrection than to his 36 fundamental theology.125 The one extended survey of O’Collins’s fundamental theology was

Rev. Joseph Egan’s unpublished 1989 dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University, The

Nature of Fundamental Theology: A Critical Study of the Works of Avery Dulles, Francis

Schüssler Fiorenza, Gerald O’Collins and David Tracy.126 Egan broadly surveyed O’Collins’s work up until 1989 to determine what O’Collins considered the nature of fundamental theology to be. This dissertation will focus more specifically on and develop a critique of O’Collins’s view of the relationship between revelation and history, the centrality of Christ, and ecumenism and interreligious dialogue.

The method in this dissertation is two-fold: following a brief introduction to O’Collins’s theology, his various writings will be examined thematically. The dissertation will consist of five chapters. Following this introduction, chapters two through four will engage in textual analysis of the three interconnected themes of O’Collins’s fundamental theology. The subsections of each chapter will examine O’Collins’s ideas diachronically—that is, by theme. Each theme will be examined chronologically so that the development of O’Collins’s ideas may be clarified. The final chapter will engage O’Collins’s thought both comparatively and critically. O’Collins’s three themes will be examined as a developed whole, both for coherence and for their contribution to the development of the field. This will be accomplished through a comparison of

125 For some notable references to O’Collins’s Christology see N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 4, 7, 18, 318, 607, 627, 691, and 701, and John McIntyre, The Shape of Christology (Edinburg: T & T Clark, 1966), 283–306. McIntyre offers a Scottish Presbyterian perspective on O’Collins’s Chalcedonian-influenced Christology (283–306). Also see a dissertation by José George Palakuzha, “Understanding Tradition: Jesus Christ in the Writings of Gerald O’Collins” (Catholic University of Leuven, 2008). O’Collins draws attention to the use of his terminology of “the experiential correlate” in The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993, 69–73), which was used by William Thompson in The Jesus Debate (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), and Peter Carnley in The Structure of Resurrection Belief (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). 126 Fr. Egan was kind enough to provide me with the section pertaining to O’Collins since this text is not published, nor digitally available. See pages 87–209. His treatment of O’Collins focused on the experience of the divine revelation. 37

O’Collins’s work to two representative writers: first to Gerardus van Noort, who represents the older Neo-Thomist approach, and then to Latourelle, who represents the period leading up to, during, and just following the Second Vatican Council. Each theologian exemplifies a stage in the development of fundamental theology before, during, and after the Council. O’Collins’s contributions will then be critiqued in light of Joseph Komonchak’s (1939– ) insights into the nature and needs of fundamental theology in the present; finally, several important insights to be gained from O’Collins’s approach to these issues will be proposed to illustrate that O’Collins has made contributions in the field. O’Collins’s fundamental theology draws together many insights from the post-Vatican II period, progressing beyond the Neo-Scholastic by drawing on non-theological disciplines including sociology, hermeneutics, psychology, and historical-critical examination of biblical texts. This leads him to a balanced, clarifying stance that helps navigate the complicated issues in which fundamental theology is interested, which importantly include a concern for a deeper understanding of the role of ecumenism in theology.

Chapter 2 The Relationship of Revelation to History

2.0 Introduction

The second chapter of this dissertation will examine O’Collins’s understanding of revelation, paying particular attention to the relationship between received revelation and history.

“History” here denotes the actual events of the past in contrast to the science that studies and categorizes these events. After a brief examination in this section of the contexts in which

O’Collins writes, several themes pertaining to this issue will be examined in turn.

A central concern in dealing with the understanding of revelation is how historical events impact faith. Christianity is a faith based upon the historic manifestation of God in space and time. The bible includes claims of actual events that happened in history, claims that have been challenged by historical studies. Several tendencies have emerged in reaction to these studies— one being to distance faith from the findings of history, another being to reconstruct the very meaning of the based upon current historical research. A third tendency, found in

Fundamentalism, has been to reject the findings of critical-historical research and claim the certainty of testimony in light of traditional formulas and teachings.

O’Collins is fully aware of the rationalistic extremes of the past and the impact of historical research on theology. Historical events are important to O’Collins, but he holds that knowledge of the events of history is not the only influence when people freely open themselves to faith. He rejects the rationalistic criteria and methods used to study history in the past, recognizing that while some credibility is important, absolute certainty is not available for belief in past events. O’Collins thus nuances the role of history in faith. He also examines what he

38

39 labels historical minimizers, such as (1884-1976) and (1886–1968), who in an effort to protect faith, attempted to downplay the importance of historical data in the process of coming to faith. In order to navigate these various positions and arrive at a balanced and nuanced view of revelation and its role in faith, O’Collins embraces a personalistic understanding of revelation, delineates his understanding of history and its proper role in approaching revelation, and, based on this relationship between revelation and history, clarifies several ways that one can understand God’s self-communication through the events of history.

Last, O’Collins articulates how past events, which disclose God to man in relationship, are understood as present today, and how these events impact faith. The remainder of this introductory section will examine the context and issues facing fundamental theology and its approach to revelation in more depth, thus providing a context in which O’Collins develops his understanding of the subject.

From the later decades of the nineteenth century until the decade following the Second

Vatican Council, Catholic theology was heavily indebted to Neo-Scholastic thought. This emphasis on was the result, according to McCool, of the First Vatican Council’s

Apostolic Constitution Dei Filius (1870) and Pope Leo XIII’s 1879 Aeterni Patris.127

McCool notes that both of these documents had been influenced heavily by Joseph Kleutgen, S.J.

(1811–1883), who in his own development of Thomistic thought rejected modern as insufficient.128 As a result, according to Fergus Kerr (1931–), Catholic theologians tended to ignore difficult questions concerning history, experience, and tradition.129 Catholic fundamental theologians were not engaged with the historical-critical critique of the Scriptures, though this

127 McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century, 1 and 167. 128 Ibid., see chapters 8 and 9. 129 Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians, 2. 40 approach to examining the Scriptures came to be used in other, non-Catholic theological circles.

Conservative theologians, in reaction to rationalistic approaches to biblical studies collectively termed “,” insisted on “the integral inspiration and total inerrancy of the Bible, and on the binding character of traditional Catholic interpretations.”130 Dulles explains that revelation was often understood as a number of revealed truths given to mankind by God which must be believed.131

This attitude towards modern techniques began to change with the pontificate of Pope

Pius XII and his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943),132 which encouraged an openness that led theologians to engage historical issues, such as apparent contradictions found in the bible, and to employ various new interpretive tools developed during and in reaction to the

Enlightenment.133 Theologians began to examine the scriptures and tradition in light of the historical “situatedness” of all present understanding, a perspective developed by Martin

Heidegger (1889–1976) and the developing postmodern philosophical schools of hermeneutics.134

This shift from an Enlightenment a-historical perspective to a more intentional approach to history was triggered by various thinkers, many outside Catholic theological circles. One important Enlightenment theorist of history whose insights would play an important role in impacting twentieth-century thinkers was (1729–1781). Lessing

130 Avery Dulles, Revelation Theology (Herder and Herder: New York, 1969), 154. 131 Ibid., 139. 132 Divino afflante Spiritu, AAS 35 (1943), 297-325. 133 See Thomas A. Collins and Raymond E. Brown, “Church Pronouncements,” The Biblical Commentary, eds. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland O. Murphy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1990), 1169–1171. 134 See Alexander S. Jensen, Theological Hermeneutics (London: SCM Press, 2007), 115-134 and 171-178 for an overview of the development of hermeneutics post First . 41 embraced a rationalist understanding of knowledge, utilizing Leibnitz’s distinction between the necessary truths of reason, which are a priori and certain, in contradistinction to the contingent truths of sensory experience. Lessing held that truths of reason are certain and cannot contain within them room for . In contrast, contingent truths used by historians contained room for doubt and therefore were not certain. Lessing held that one cannot claim to possess certain knowledge based upon evidence that is merely contingent and dubitable. He designated these less-than-certain contingent historical accounts “accidental.” In Lessing’s view, faith must rest upon stronger proof than that provided by accidental truths, such as the miracles and prophecies that were traditionally used by the Church as proofs for faith:135 “the accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.”136 For Lessing, the uncertainty in the evidence could not lead him to certainty in his conclusions. He famously described the inability to derive the certitude of history as a “broad ugly ditch.”137

Lessing’s views continued to have an impact on theology’s retrieval and use of history after his death. His distinction between accidental truths and necessary truths challenged

Christianity’s claim to historical validity.138 Put differently, he challenged theologians to explain

“how the contingent events of history can serve as the basis for claims of absolute and eternal significance.”139 His concerns and perspectives were influential on other religious thinkers, most notably Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), (1865–1923), and

(1822–1889), all of whom sought to find a distinctive essence of Christianity that transcended

135 James C. Livingston, Modern Christian Thought: The Enlightenment and the Nineteenth Century (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 31–34. 136 Ibid, 33. Cf. Henry Chadwick, ed., Lessing’s Theological Writings (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1957), 53. 137 Ibid., 127. 138 Livingston and F. S. Fiorenza, Modern Christian Thought: The Twentieth Century, 9. 139 Ibid. 42 the particularities of history.140 Lessing’s line of thought also evoked attempts to protect the validity of Christian faith claims by immunizing faith from the influence of historical research as seen in the work of Bultmann and Barth. Counter-attempts to prove the historical foundations of faith were advanced by such thinkers as Pannenberg.

Lessing was not alone in influencing the understanding of history. Friedrich

Schleiermacher’s (1768–1834) work encouraged scholars to pay attention to the context in which a text was composed, thus challenging the Enlightenment assumption that knowledge was a- historical. His insights into the historical situatedness of texts helped trigger the historicist approach to history. The historicist examined texts and sources from the past within their original context and not in light of universal and timeless truths. 141 Troeltsch, a leading figure in this school of thought,142 disagreed with what he called the dogmatic approach to theology, which appealed to as a set of saving facts, since these facts were knowable only to the believer. He attempted to apply consistently the science of historical investigation to the bible and . This science, as understood by Troeltsch, included three principles: the of critical appraisal, which holds that all events and traditions can be critically examined and are contingent; the principle of analogy, which holds that all events in the past can be examined in light of current-day experiences; and the principle of correlation, which holds that all events in history can be explained as part of a larger historical context.143

This school of thought represented by Troeltsch also included (1833–1911),

140 Livingston and F.S. Fiorenza, Modern Christian Thought: The Enlightenment and the Nineteenth Century, 281. 141 Alexander S. Jensen, Theological Hermeneutics (London: SCM Press, 2007), 105. 142 Livingston and Fiorenza, Modern Christian Thought: The Twentieth Century, 17. 143 Ibid., 19. See Ernst Troeltsch, Religion in History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 13–15. 43

Leopold von Ranke (1793–1886), and Johann Gustav Droyson (1808–1884).144 The historical situatedness of knowledge was further developed by other significant thinkers in this field, including Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), who was a student of Heidegger,145 and Ludwig

Wittgenstein (1889–1951), both of whom re-evaluated the role and importance of history and tradition in present-day knowledge.146

The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei

Verbum, marked an important shift in the Catholic Church’s approach to revelation.147 In several distinctive ways, it differed from The First Vatican Council’s Dei Filius, which approached revelation through the lens of what Avery Dulles calls a doctrinal model, where revelation is seen as consisting primarily of propositions containing information from God that was needed to inform faith.148 From this perspective, tradition and the scriptures were viewed as distinct sources of information. Though Dei Verbum did not explicitly reject such a view, it did explain the relationship between the scriptures and tradition from within the larger understanding of revelation as God’s self-communication. Where Dei Filius spoke of revelation in a more objective sense, as a divine activity by God who makes Himself known to humanity,149 Dei

Verbum explained revelation as God revealing Himself to mankind in history.150 Dei Verbum was deeply rooted in a biblical perspective that contrasted with the more theological perspective of Dei Filius.

144 See Alexander S. Jensen, Theological Hermeneutics. 145 See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum Press, 2004). 146 See , Philosophical Investigations (Englewood Hall, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1958). 147 Dei Verbum, AAS 58 (1966), 817-836. 148 Dulles, Models of Revelation, 42-43. 149 Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 266. 150 Dei Verbum, 6. 44

As a result of these and other developments, theologians began to broaden their understanding of history by including particular cultures, experiences, and historical periods as important factors in understanding and interpreting texts. The influx of ideas regarding the nature of history and historical retrieval forced theologians to reconsider whether one can have faith in a historical person. These currents of thought have and continue to pose some difficult questions for theology, especially in light of the historical basis for the Christian claim. Questions arising since the Second Vatican Council include the role and importance of history in faith and the level of that can be placed on historical data in light of modern thought.151

The remainder of this chapter will thematically systematize O’Collins’s ideas on the relationship between history and revelation by organizing his contributions under six general topics. While O’Collins does not divide his thoughts in such a manner, doing so will assist this analysis by pulling together his various insights over many years. The first topic (2.1) is his reformulation of revelation in personalistic terms. In this anthropological understanding of revelation, O’Collins advances a correlational view of revelation that moves beyond earlier positivistic definitions while also holding a concept of revelation that weds revelation to salvation. This section provides an explanation of O’Collins’s view of the nature of experience as well as his understanding of the salvific nature of revelation. Considered second (2.2) will be

O’Collins’s distinction of the types of revelation. Using his understanding of experience,

O’Collins recognizes two distinctive types of experience pertaining to revelation, which impact the normativity of the expressions used to convey these experiences to later generations. These two-fold categories of foundational and dependent play an important role in his fundamental

151 See A. Dulles’s treatment of “Contemporary Difficulties Against Revelation,” Models of Revelation, 6-8. 45 theology. Examined third (2.3) will be O’Collins’s understanding of the historical nature of revelation. This point includes the issues of the nature of history and whether or not one can trust revelation as history. From this understanding of history and revelation this dissertation will fourthly (2.4) examine O’Collins’s view of salvation history, a term he borrows from (among others) (with certain qualifications). The next section (2.5) deals with the formation of faith. Here O’Collins offers a nuanced view of faith and its relationship to history.

A sixth section (2.6) identifies the various factors that, alongside history, play an important role in the formation of faith. Taken together these six topics provide an overview of how O’Collins attempts to understand the question of the relationship of revelation to history and in turn how this relationship impacts our understanding of faith formation. This chapter concludes with a summary and brief preliminary analysis and critique.

2.1 O’Collins’s Personalist Understanding of Revelation

Until the mid-twentieth century Catholic theology tended to regard revelation as a set of propositional truths that should be accepted and believed. Revelation, most explicitly found in the bible, consisted of a set of propositions concerning God. In contrast, O’Collins embraced a personalist understanding of revelation early in his theological writings. O’Collins’s first book on fundamental theology, Theology and Revelation (1968), includes many of the themes that would preoccupy him over the course of his academic career and briefly explains that revelation should not be seen as only a set of propositions, but rather as an encounter of persons.152 Unlike the earlier, rationalistic understanding of revelation as a set of facts to be accepted, O’Collins

152 Gerald O’Collins, Theology and Revelation (Butler, Wisconsin: Book Service, 1968), 8, 74. 46 understands revelation as God’s self-disclosure of himself. God personally shares himself in revelation and should be understood as the subject of his revelation, not merely an object.153

When God reveals, it is His very self that is the content of this revelation.

This understanding of revelation as an encounter of persons, human and divine, continued to inform O’Collins’s views on revelation. In Foundations of Theology (1970) he adds an anthropological dimension to his considerations of revelation. He explains that “revelation is mediated through human thinking, speaking, hoping, loving and acting” and is therefore conditioned by man.154 This anthropological understanding sees revelation as an encounter that can be understood only by including “the one who encounters,” that is the human, who as human, encounters God.155 Humans are complex beings, which in turn means that revelation and the means of encounter between God and man through which revelation occurs should be understood broadly and not encapsulated in a simplistic manner. This is why, in O’Collins’s view, Latourelle incorrectly falls into ecclesiocentrism when he stresses the unique and exclusive role of the Church in handing on the apostolic witness.156 Such a view is over-simplistic and does not account for the complexity of the human who encounters God. Revelation and its impact on a person’s faith often include a complex array of facts and influences. Revelation is not found only

153 Ibid., 32–33. 154 Gerald O’Collins, Foundations of Theology (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), 54. 155 Ibid. 156 Ibid., 57. O’Collins is referring to Latourelle, The Theology of Revelation, 374. In the passage quoted by O’Collins, Latourelle is attempting to explain the difference between Protestant theology, which resists a positivistic interpretation of revelation in favor of an emphasis almost solely on revelation as divine act and event, and Catholic theology, which understands revelation as an activity and event which requires the interpretation of the apostolic witness handed down by the Church and “consigned to Scripture.” (Ibid.) The issue at hand here is not ecclesiocentrism, but rather the relationship in revelation between event and interpretive word. Latourelle explains in a later work that both Lumen Gentium and recognize the authentic spiritual riches found in other Christian communities, in which Christ and His Spirit live in different degrees. See Latourelle, Christ and the Church: Signs of Salvation, trans. Sr. Dominic Parker (New York: Alba House, 1972), 37. 47 in the proclamation as written in the Scriptures as interpreted by the Catholic Church.157 Nor can revelation be simply defined as confined to the Kerygma, as is the case for Bultmann.

O’Collins nuances his view by explaining that revelation is limited in that it “does not enjoy compelling force.”158 It is only when accompanied by freely chosen faith that divine manifestation is apparent. God’s self-manifestation, as personal encounter, allows a free response. O’Collins does not, however, retreat into the other extreme of fideism, a view of faith that does not require reasonable evidence. While revelation is not fully demonstrable, “it does not suppress the question of evidence for truth.”159 The acceptance of revelation is partially dependent on the recognition that the grounds for faith are true.

Where O’Collins’s earlier writings provided only brief outlines of his view of the human experience of the divine in revelation, he attempts a thorough examination of this personal aspect in Fundamental Theology (1981). In this book he develops a transcendental model of experience, borrowing heavily from Rahner, and uses it as a lens through which to examine Scripture,

Tradition, and the .160 O’Collins argues that history must be seen as something encountered in the realm of experience. This stems from his conviction that revelation is experienced. It is not enough that God speaks. In order for revelation to actually be revelation, the human participant of the encounter, which is human experience, must be taken into account.

Revelation is an actual transformative encounter between two persons and is thus termed

“personal.” His second conviction is that the possibility for this encounter already exists in the person. The propositional model, which defines revelation in terms of cognitive truths to be

157 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 57. 158 Ibid., 59. 159 Ibid., 60. 160 O’Collins later recapitulates this material in Retrieving Fundamental Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), ch. 3. 48 believed, does not fully account for this possibility.161 The relationship between experience and revelation in O’Collins’s viewpoint is even better understood through an examination of his understanding of transcendental experience and anthropology.

O’Collins’s treatment of the nature of experience in Fundamental Theology is multifaceted. He explains that experience defies any simple explanation or definition but can be better understood by delineating its various aspects. He categorizes these aspects under three organizing principles: the subject, the experience itself, and the consequences. These groupings serve to assist him in presenting the various facets of experience and do not necessarily prioritize or sequentialize them. Concerning the subject of experience, O’Collins identifies five traits or factors of the subject: first, insofar as it involves the subject, experience entails direct encounter with reality. Second, following from the first, experience must be immediate. Third, a rational examination of past experiences should not be confused with the experience itself. While ideas and events may be reconstructed in our imagination drawing on stories and accounts, this secondary formulation of data is not the same as an actual experience. Fourth, life reveals itself through experiences. “We are and will be what we experience.”162 In other words a genuine experience impacts the entire existence of a person as it impacts the multilayered structure of human life, including the cognitive and spiritual levels of human existence. Furthermore, there may be a experience, wherein the community acts as the subject of experience through its memories, writings, and .

O’Collins employs a second category to organize the facets of experience which he calls

“the experience itself.” Under this category he explains that experience has meaning, bears a

161 See O’Collins, Theology and Revelation, 3 and 30–32; Foundations of Theology, 34–37; Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 63–78; and Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 66–68 and 202–203. 162 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 35. 49 purpose and finality, is concrete and particular, tends to be something new to the one who experiences it, and can be described as positive, negative, or ambiguous.

O’Collins’s third category of experience is “the consequences.” Since experience places a person in direct contact with a reality, this experience can be examined for authenticity by the individual or the group. Discernment then is the process wherein a person identifies authentic experiences that are trustworthy and reliable and is the first stage of processing the consequences of an experience. An interpretation of experience follows discernment and involves the application of presuppositions and preconditioned ideas that assists one in receiving and deciphering experience: “we meet the new reality [through experience] within a ‘horizon’ of questions, expectations, and prior experiences.”163 Thus the objectification of experience through conceptualization and the externalization of expression both help complete the experience, though it may never fully exhaust the experience, especially in the case of a deeply meaningful one. True experience, once interpreted, can be expressed through verbal or written media.

“Expression” of the experience is key to the realization of its consequence. Finally, to realize fully the consequence of an experience, it must leave an enduring memory. Life consists of more than “discrete episodes.”164 Rather, life is impacted by the cumulated memories of various experiences, which continue to shape a person as one reinterprets and ponders them both personally and collectively.

From this explanation of the multifaceted character of experience O’Collins adds a religious dimension in which he weds all of these above aspects with the transcendental thought of Rahner. His understanding broadly follows Rahner’s, adopting his language and optimistic

163 Ibid., 43. 164 Ibid., 47. 50 anthropology. O’Collins explains that religious experience, an encounter with some aspect of

God’s self-communication, is possible because of the “boundless dynamism of the human spirit,” which creates the possibility of an encounter with God. This possibility of religious experience is available in every human experience. Religious experience occurs when one moves beyond one’s own horizons through an experience that moves from the particular to a realization of the already-present ultimate dimension.165 This ultimate dimension, which he calls the unlimited horizon of being, is God, who underlies all specific experience of willing, knowing or acting.166

In other words, religious experience happens when a dim and implicit aspect of experience is illuminated and made explicit.167 Since all human experience is “primordially” religious by being open to the infinite, in all experience one (at least minimally) experiences oneself and God. Religious experiences allow one to touch on and experience what transcends each person, albeit in an indirect manner. One can experience God as holy and as the ultimate mystery that “infinitely transcends us” and leads one to and while also bringing one towards and fulfillment.168 These experiences also reveal each person to himself or herself and allow each to experience radical dependency and . Thus in religious experience we encounter our “profound need” for something beyond ourselves. We must be personally involved in this encounter. It is through this encounter that we know ourselves most perfectly as what we actually are. “Explicitly religious experience means, then, co-experiencing God and

165 Ibid., 48. 166 Ibid. 167 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 54. O’Collins’s understanding of religious experience is deeply indebted to the work of Karl Rahner. Here he references Rahner’s Foundations of the Christian Faith (New York: Crossroads, 2006, 19–23, 31–35, and 51–71), and notes that W. Pannenberg agrees with this transcendental view in and the Idea of God, trans. Philip Clayton (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 25 and 29. 168 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 51. 51 ourselves.”169 Revelation then happens at the primordial level, where God underlies all transcendental experience, and at the historical level, where the transcendental conditions allow for the actual reception of God’s self-communication: “Transcendental experience/revelation establishes the and condition for receiving divine revelation and salvation in the specific form of historical existence – above all through the historical experience of and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”170

O’Collins adds another important aspect to his understanding of revelation as an experienced reality in that revelation is salvific, not just an intellectual exercise.171 When revelation was understood propositionally as a set of truths to be believed, salvation and revelation could be regarded separately. O’Collins understands revelation as personal encounter and dialogue and as that through which God saves us.172 Revelation communicates God himself and creates communion that in effect saves us.173

O’Collins notes magisterial sources that concur with this understanding of revelation.

Reading the texts of the Second Vatican Council, he notes a change in previous approaches to revelation in that the terms “salvation” and “revelation” are used “almost interchangeably.”174 He explains, “the Second Vatican Council did not choose between ‘revelation’ and ‘salvation’ but employed the terms almost interchangeably.”175 He notes how Dei Verbum moves back and forth

169 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 53. 170 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 50. 171 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 57. O’Collins explains, “Almost inevitably the [propositional] terminology of revelation fails to cover the full human condition and the scope of what God does for us. It narrows things down to our quest for meaning and the answer to our mental bewilderment—in brief, salvation for our intellect and reason.” 172 Ibid. See also O’Collins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 19. 173 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 55 and 59. O’Collins writes, “If it signifies and communicates something, it also effects what it signifies and brings about a saving communion between God and human beings.” Emphasis mine. 174 Ibid., 59. 175 Ibid., 58–59. 52 between the two terms in articles 2, 3, and 4. “As far as the council was concerned, history of revelation is the history of salvation, and -versa.”176 God’s self-communication in history brings both revelation and salvation. O’Collins reformulates this by explaining, “Salvation and revelation constitute the history of the divine self-revelation.”177

While O’Collins is correct in noting that the two terms, salvation and revelation, are used frequently together in Dei Verbum, they are not synonymous.178 He may be correct in stating that the presence of authentic revelation brings Christ’s salvific presence, but Dei Verbum does not use the terms interchangeably. This being said, the dual use of the terms and their connection lead O’Collins to hold that revelation can no longer be seen as merely cognitive information, but rather should be seen as something impacting the entire person. This holistic sense of revelation as involving the whole person dominates O’Collins’s understanding of the encounter with revelation.179 Instead of a merely cognitive and propositional understanding of revelation

O’Collins emphasizes God’s saving and interpersonal self-communication that involves a whole life decision.

Bringing his view of history, experience, and transcendental anthropology together,

O’Collins explains, “As all human experience entails an ultimate, religious element, it bears a primordial, transcendental revelation and can become a consciously religious experience to constitute an historical self-communication of God.”180 Because all experience has within it the ability to convey God’s self-communication, all experience also has the potential to convey

176 Ibid., 59. 177 Ibid. 178 The relationship between revelation and salvation and the implications of this relationship for understanding Christ’s saving relationship with non-Christian religions will be discussed further in chapter 4. 179 Ibid. O’Collins explains, “Hence I propose to speak of revelation as part of the total process of experiencing the divine communication” (59). Italics his. 180 O’Collins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 62. 53 salvation. O’Collins’s personalistic understanding of revelation opens the possibility of God’s salvation being mediated in ways not previously enunciated in the propositional understanding of revelation.

By way of an initial observation concerning O’Collins’s perspective on the relationship between revelation and experience, O’Collins clearly finds in Dei Verbum a document sympathetic to his own approach to revelation. In his own theology, O’Collins attempts to develop a model of experience that will allow him to articulate each person’s free response to

God’s self-communication. The model of experience he utilizes is self-admittedly of his own making, again borrowing elements of the religious dimensions of experience from Rahner’s transcendental theology. In comparison with Latourelle, who develops his own model of revelation as communication around Karl Bühler’s model,181 O’Collins does not draw on any particular model of communication with which to build his understanding of revelation-as- communication. Instead, he crafts his own understanding of experience by grouping the various aspects of experience under the three-fold heading of the subject, the experience, and the consequences. He does not prioritize the various facets of his model, perhaps leaving one to assume they all bear the same level of importance; nor does he develop a process or explanation of how experience works. His understanding of experience remains on the level of general features and characteristics that distinguish what may validly be called an experience.

O’Collins’s view of revelation, while sharing many features with Dei Verbum, includes theological aspects distinct from the Council’s teaching. The following sections examine how

O’Collins makes several important distinctions, such as the difference between foundational and

181 See Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 316-7. 54 dependent revelation. His approach, while providing several helpful criteria for discerning authentic experience, runs into difficulties because his model, best described as revelation-as- communication, fails to provide the reader a nuanced understanding of what experience actually is and how it works. O’Collins’s explanation remains on the level of general characteristics. He does not adopt a particular model of communication as set forth by other thinkers, nor does he create his own. He is forthright in this regard as he sets out his understanding of experience, naming various famous writers who have developed models of understanding experience. He eschews these writers and their “elaborate technical accounts” of experience in search of a “tidy” answer to the question of what happens when a person experiences something.182 Through his examination, one gains insight into some factors surrounding experience and this in turn allows him to make certain important distinctions regarding the types and role of revelation, but no actual model of experience is given. Thus, while providing some important insights that shed light on the personal impact and interpersonal relationship formed through experience, his model fails to coordinate a unifying framework that would merge the various characteristics of experience.

2.2 Stages of Revelation

O’Collins’s view of the nature of revelation as interpersonal encounter in the realms of experience allows him to distinguish several stages in the unfolding of revelation in history. He first makes these distinctions in Theology and Revelation (1968), where he notes that the

Apostles and their ministry participate in Christ’s revelation in a unique and unrepeatable

182 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 33. 55 manner.183 Since the historic Christ event was unique, the Apostles and their witness are the bridge from Christ to later humanity. Through the Apostles and their witness, the Holy Spirit preserves and continually makes accessible the saving revelation given with Christ.184 The related experiences of those who encountered and interacted with Jesus are what O’Collins terms

“foundational revelation.”185 These experiences are normative for the Apostles.186 The source of this normativity ends with the removal of the visible Christ from their presence.187

Later accounts were derived from these foundational experiences and are guided by the

Holy Spirit, who helps the Church recall and develop a deeper understanding of what the

Apostles received but did not wholly grasp. Since revelation is most properly understood as the direct encounter with God through Jesus Christ, the original foundational revelation ended with the “withdrawal of Christ’s visible presence.”188 O’Collins terms later formulations of faith experiences “dependent revelation.” Dependent revelation is true revelation in that it has the ability, when received after the normative events, to be present now in faith.189 O’Collins also distinguishes between foundational revelation and the subsequent founding of the Church: The

Church is not fully constituted until later in the apostolic era. The significance of this distinction rests in the fact that the authority of the Church, and the decisions that it makes, are distinct from foundational revelation which ends when Jesus’ visible presence ends. One should not confuse

183 O’Collins, Theology and Revelation, 45. 184 Ibid., 44. 185 Ibid. 186 Ibid., 46. 187 Ibid., 61–62. See also O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 97; and Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 94. 188 Ibid., 47. 189 Ibid., 50. O’Collins returns to this distinction between foundational and dependent revelation many . See O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 99 and 101–102; O’Collins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 91–97; Gerald O’Collins with Daniel Kendall, S.J. The Bible for Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 9; O’Collins, Recovering Fundamental Theology, 132–135; and O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 132–135. 56 the irreversible decisions of the early Church leaders with the normative of those who interacted with Christ.190

As will become clear in chapter 3, the most important determining aspect of O’Collins’s

Christocentric focus is that Christ is the criterion for measuring normativity. Those Apostles who directly experienced Christ in turn provide normative accounts of revelation due to the unparalleled closeness and intimacy of their personal encounters with Christ as the full revelation of God. Those outside of this circle of events and encounters have a less direct historical encounter with God’s self-communication and must experience Christ in a different manner.

This Christocentrism based in experience is O’Collins’s ordering factor in determining the value and centrality of various forms of communicating the message of revelation.

In summary, O’Collins has developed a perspective regarding the relationship between the originating events and their later expression by distinguishing between foundational and dependent revelation. Dependent revelation is true ongoing revelation: it can lead to faith in the present. He does not speak of revelation being completed with the death of the last apostle, a terminology based upon a propositional understanding of revelation and avoided by the Second

Vatican Council.191 Rather, he distinguishes between foundational and dependent revelation by examining the immediacy of the Apostles’ experience of God’s self-communication through

Christ. Dei Verbum did not distinguish the normative accounts found in Scripture based upon immediacy of the apostle’s experience of Christ. Rather the document explains that while the

Church awaits no further public revelation, the Holy Spirit guides the faithful in adhering to the mystery of the . In this sense, revelation continues in the lives of each generation through

190 O’Collins, Theology and Revelation, 46-47. 191 Dulles, “Faith and Revelation” in Systematic Theology: Perspectives eds. Francis Fiorenza Schüssler and John P. Galvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 87. 57 the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit. In his discussion of the issue of ongoing revelation and its treatment in the Second Vatican Council, Dulles quotes Dei Verbum 8, “God, who spoke of old, uninterruptedly converses with the Bride of His beloved Son.”192 Thus, while not explaining the presence of ongoing revelation today in the same manner as Dei Verbum, O’Collins’s distinction upholds the Church’s understanding of Christ as the fullness of revelation while also leaving room for the ongoing interpretation and personal encounter with God as self-communicating.

2.3 The Historical Nature of Revelation

Having examined O’Collins’s views on the nature of revelation as personal encounter in the realm of experience, as well as his understanding of the various stages of revelation, this section will examine O’Collins’s views on the relationship between revelation and history.

O’Collins initially explains his basic thoughts on history in Foundations of Theology (1970).

Christianity is a historical religion, meaning that certain actual events shape the content of faith.193 today believe that events and their meaning in our current lives are dependent upon the authoritative witness of certain persons to God’s saving actions in history. This grounding means that one must avoid two dangers that ignore the historical aspects of

Christianity. The first danger is a Kierkegaardian abstraction that trivializes the ; such a view of Jesus was advanced by Bultmann. A second danger is to take Jesus’s message and ignore the true person. Jesus was not a who merely left behind wisdom.194 O’Collins posits a rule in dealing with Jesus and history: the concrete person in history must remain

192 Emphasis mine. 193 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 66. 194 Ibid., 66–67. 58 attached to the universal significance of his message and person.195 This means that the universal

Christ needs to remain attached to and informed by our understanding of the real Jesus, who existed in centuries ago. While such an endeavor is difficult, O’Collins holds that the link between faith and history is important and that the message (universal significance) is bound to its origins (the historical person of Jesus).196

O’Collins notes that the theoretical distinction between Historie and Geschichte has served as a means of separating the causality and the content of faith.197 Historie an sich

(“history in itself”) is the mere “factuality” of something happening objectively. These events are open to historical investigation by means of the methods of critical history. Geschichte für mich

(“history for me”) is history as “encountered existentially for the meaning it conveys.”198 The past (Historie), challenges us in its “presentness and subjective meaning for me,” (Geschichte).

O’Collins opposes a radical separation of the two views. This distinction theologically neutralizes Historie and removes faith from the “objectively controlled area of historical events.”199 Faith becomes immune to the claims of history. Instead, O’Collins stresses that faith

“recognizes” that the content of faith and its preached message is bound to its historical origins.

The cause and content of faith are interrelated.

O’Collins returned to the relationship between history and revelation in more depth in

Fundamental Theology (1981), where he explains that Christianity, a religion based on historical events, holds that God’s self-communication happened normatively though specific events and

195 Ibid., 68. 196 This relationship between concrete history and the universal Christ who is believed today will be examined in more depth below (2.5). 197 Ibid., 70. 198 Ibid. 199 Ibid. 59 certain people.200 These revelatory events are mediated today through the sacramental life, the

Scriptures, the preached word, and other channels that reinterpret the events of the past. These current means of accessing revelation are accepted as valid because they are linked to the essential authoritative testimony stemming from those normative events and persons in the past.201 While historical events are the means through which God initially communicates, it is authoritative re-communication that mediates these original events to people today.

These historical events, however, do not exist in a void, but require the “word.” They were experienced by those with and without faith, but it is in the word that their revelatory significance comes to light. “The divinely authorized word of interpretation lets such events of secular history be seen as acts of God in the history of revelation and salvation.”202 The word remains subordinate to the events. This is most especially true in the case of Christ. “God’s supreme act in Israel’s history was to raise Jesus from the dead.”203 In this case the event and the reality of the event “has priority” over the word of interpretation. He describes the word as divinely authorized interpretations that allow one to see secular history as acts of God in the history of revelation.204 O’Collins also explains the great variety of situations through which God reveals: experiences that are common and uncommon, positive and negative, and those found in nature and history.205 Faith is required to see these events as revelation.

Scripture claims a unique and authoritative place as the interpretive word, but in

O’Collins’s view should not be seen as identical with revelation understood as the original

200 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 71. 201 Ibid. 202 Ibid., 74. 203 Ibid., 75. 204 Ibid., 74. 205 Ibid., 62-67. Negative here refers to moments of suffering, and . 60 experiences of God’s self-communication. The Scriptures are a record of the revelatory experiences, which in some cases remain “remote from the immediacy of that experience.”206

Further, the content of the Scriptures should not “be simply identified as revelation”207; rather, the Scriptures, which were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, allow revelation to reach its fulfillment in the experience of each person. They express in writing the original foundational experiences of God and “generate (dependent) experiences of God in people who later heard and read them.”208

One can compare O’Collins’s view of the relationship between word and event with that of Dulles, who holds that the Second Vatican Council, most specifically in Dei Verbum, sought a balanced approach to the issue of the relationship between deeds and words in revelation by avoiding any dichotomy between the two. Dulles’s understanding of this teaching is that the interpretive word is actually part of the process of revelation. To the objection that words, and the thoughts expressed by these words, presuppose revelation that has been given and received,

Dulles notes that “thought and formulation develop concurrently, so that our ideas are not mature until we have expressed them, at least to ourselves.”209 He concludes that public revelation, even in its first occurrence, includes some verbal expression.210 O’Collins holds that the event and the word are necessary but the event has priority, especially in the case of the , death, and

206 Ibid., 227. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid., 226. 209 Avery Dulles, “Faith and Revelation” in Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. eds. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 83. 210 Ibid. 61 resurrection of Jesus. Dulles refrains from giving priority to one over the other, holding that both are required and in fact are present in the initial unfolding of revelation.211

Turning from the issue of the relationship between word and event in revelation to that of the validity of historical knowledge, in Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus (1995), O’Collins reiterates several observations regarding various stances towards history, its “knowability,” and its role in faith formation.212 In response to Lessing’s comments concerning accidental facts of history, O’Collins notes that historical events, while not subject to mathematical or natural-scientific standards of provability, can be shown to be true beyond

“reasonable” doubt. One can, for instance, study and know that persons such as Alexander the

Great, Augustine, Julius Caesar and Jesus existed and impacted the culture and history of the

Middle East.213 Per Lessing’s claim that accidental truths cannot be the basis for necessary truths accepted by reason, O’Collins notes that historical events are never necessary. By this he means that events in history could have happened differently—the accidental quality of history does not stall a valid investigation. “Only someone like Lessing who was/is bewitched by the pursuit of necessary, universal truths of reason would deplore this (historical) situation.”214 O’Collins points out that necessary truths are “tautologies, mathematical truths, and other a priori deductions” that do not need .215 While not having this type of credibility, historical experience and contingent truths can change lives. This fact is illustrated by the impact the Gospel has had on the lives of millions of Christians. O’Collins therefore modifies Lessing’s

211 The relationship between word and event will be examined in more depth when discussing O’Collins’s view of salvation history (2.4). 212 Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5–11. 213 Ibid., 9. 214 Ibid, 9. His parenthesis. 215 Ibid. 62 formulation to read that one needs the data and truths of history as well as “the help and truths of philosophical reason.”216 The data of history and the philosophical structure work in tandem to balance each other and, in a sense, to keep each other honest.217 Philosophy provides clarification through its ability to test the coherence of a belief. In this vein, philosophy and its “metaphysical structure” clarify and examine what is gained through historical experience.218

O’Collins returns briefly to the issue of history in Focus on Jesus (1996). History is always “interpreted history.” He rejects the positivistic view of history that seeks to attain an objective and neutral view of historic facts. He claims that this false view has been largely abandoned and the subjective component in studying history has been rightly acknowledged:

I certainly want to fight shy of language which could suggest anything like a separation between the bare facts, on the one hand, and someone’s vision or interpretation on the other. A totally uninterpreted grasp of anyone or anything is impossible. From their earliest contacts with Jesus, the first disciples were interpreting him.219

This process of interpretation continued in Church tradition and then with the Gospel writers.

There has never been a merely factual, objective set of facts about Jesus. This clarification in

Focus on Jesus brings O’Collins fairly close to Dulles’s understanding: “External events and spoken or written words, though integral to the process of revelation, are not revelation until their divinely intended meaning is perceived and accepted.”220

The relationship between history and theology can be further clarified by examining

O’Collins’s general view of the importance and role of philosophy in theology. O’Collins believes that theologians should critically reflect on the sources of faith in a manner that is

216 Ibid., 10. 217 Ibid., 9–10. 218 O’Collins, Christology, 11. C.f. Gerald O’Collins, Interpreting Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 28–29, for a similar discussion. 219 Gerald O’Collins and Daniel Kendall, Focus on Jesus (Wiltshire, : Cromwell Press, 1996), 214. 220 A. Dulles, “Faith and Revealtion”, 83. 63

“critically aware of their positions, attentive to evidence and coherent in elaborating their discipline.”221 In this task the field engages philosophy as a tool. The two fields of theology and philosophy differ in some ways. Philosophy builds upon earlier ideas and theories but is limited to what the human mind can naturally know and reflect upon. In contrast, theology reflects on revelation as a “given” that “does not tolerate an increase” in the content of revelation.222

Theology “does not experience in any essential way cumulative and progressive gains in the human interpretation and expression of the truth about God.”223 While the practice of theology requires both religious practice and a personal relationship with the subject, philosophy makes much less of a demand upon the subject since it does not require a personal relationship with the object being examined. In adopting philosophy, theologians must be careful in their use of philosophical theories. When used by theologians, philosophical concepts and methods may require adjustment, although O’Collins holds that at their deepest level the two fields of theology and philosophy share a common interest in examining .224 In addition, O’Collins agrees with Rahner that all academic disciplines are interactive with each other. The challenge

O’Collins poses to theologians is to be aware of and acknowledge this interaction.225

O’Collins’s view concerning the study of history has many of the same possibilities and constraints seen in his understanding of philosophy. The interpretation of the data of history builds upon the insights of earlier thinkers and can in its understanding of past events. The

221 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 8. 222 Ibid., 26. 223 Ibid., 26. If I understand O’Collins correctly here, he is not disagreeing with the concept of . Rather he is expressing as a theologian in the face of the task of speaking and understanding the mystery of God. He notes how looked back upon his work and saw it as straw “and not as labors which had helped theology to intrinsically and essentially.” Fundamental Theology, 27. 224 Ibid., 13. 225 Ibid., 13. See Karl Rahner, ed., Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi (London: ET, 1975), 1687. 64 interpretations of historians allow for new formulations and fresh insights gained from new data.

The practice of history does not require an intense relationship with those being studied. History can be influenced by both helpful and detrimental philosophies that either further or hinder its goals of understanding the past. Historians can be made self-aware of the various influences and assumptions at work in their methodology. Thus O’Collins’s insights invite a critical reflection on the role of the findings of history in relationship to faith.

2.4 Salvation History

O’Collins recognizes that Christianity has a historical grounding. This leads him to accept a nuanced view of salvation history. Heilsgeschichte or “salvation history” is a meta- narrative approach, finding history imbued with God’s salvific activity. It was developed by

Protestant thinkers such as Oscar Cullmann and by Catholics such as Jean Daniélou and Hans

Urs von Balthasar, and the approach was explicitly adopted in the documents of Vatican II.226

Where the apologetics of the nineteenth century and fundamental theology in its initial stages saw historical data as demonstrable proofs of the Church’s authenticity, O’Collins, in adopting the category of salvation history, recognizes God’s ongoing self-communication and salvation through historical encounters.227

According to O’Collins, the salvation historical view impacts a believer’s understanding of history so that history, instead of being comprised of isolated events impacted by purely

226 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 81–82. Examples of “historia salutis” being used include Ad Gentes 9, Dei Verbum 2, Glaudium et Spes 32 and 41 and Lumen Gentium 65. 227 O’Collins’s book Foundations of Theology (1970) is the main source of his reflection on the topic of salvation history. The references he refers to are taken from an undated translation of The Documents of Vatican II with page references to112, 208-209, 450, 452. In the Flannery translation the term salvation history is mentioned numerous times. Examples include: Ad Gentes 3,5,9, and16, Gaudium et Spes 1, 32, 41, 43, 45 and 76, Lumen Gentium 2, 9, 55 and 65, and Dei Verbum 2. 65 immanent (i.e. natural) causes, also involves the work of God. From within the salvation history perspective, believers find that the has a positive value for faith. The New

Testament is in continuity with the Old Testament. And of all the events of the past, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are the most significant and the heart of salvation history.

Salvation history recognizes the eventual finality of time, and thus has a futurist eschatological aspect for man and the world. One positive benefit of the salvation historical perspective is that this view opposes an “individualizing of the gospel” that emphasizes personal salvation outside of a community or tradition.228 Rather it emphasizes the corporate and communal aspect of

God’s salvation. It also safeguards the fact that these redemptive actions of God are prior to our faith: “Salvation history guarantees that redemption is no hidden form of self-redemption.”229

This raises the questions of how someone can come to recognize the events of history as salvific. Does someone require faith as a prerequisite to recognize God’s self-communication in history as divine manifestations? O’Collins holds that faith is required in order to recognize these events as salvific: “At the heart of the biblical history of revelation and salvation lies a set of events which certainly occurred – to be experienced then by believers and non-believers alike and accessible now to common historical investigation, even if the Christian discernment and interpretation of these events embodies a specifically theological understanding shared only by believers.”230

O’Collins finds salvation history a complex notion that offers possibilities, limitations, and problems. He notes a distinction between general salvation history (universal) and special salvation history (particular). General salvation history is all of seen from a

228 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 93. 229 Ibid., 94. 230 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 81. 66 salvific perspective, that is, from the perspective of Christ’s fulfillment of God’s ongoing salvific activity. Special salvation history involves those events recorded in the bible for human salvation.231 The focal point of both general and special salvation history is the coming of Jesus

Christ. This distinction allows O’Collins to recognize God’s salvific revelation as available to those not aligned with the biblical history of revelation and salvation.

So what makes history, broadly understood, salvific? O’Collins reads Rahner as emphasizing the revealing word as important in understanding salvation history. It is through

God’s interpretive word that particular historical events and persons are interpreted as special and salvific. It is only when an event is interpreted by the word of God that the event stands out from profane history: “Rahner puts his full weight on the side of the interpreter rather than on the side of the actions which are interpreted.”232 Interpretation happens through the “word- revelation” which takes even extraordinary miraculous and extraordinary events and shows their significance. Gregor Smith offers an alternative view: divine actions in history make history salvific. He places the emphasis on God’s miraculous actions in history in contrast to the interpreting word. For Smith, action and events are pre-eminent over the word-revelation perspective.233

O’Collins, as noted above (2.4), embraces both: special events that are known as such through revealed word. Both are important, but O’Collins holds that the event has priority over

231 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology 122. 232 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 88. O’Collins is referring to Rahner’s “History of the World and Salvation- History,” Theological Investigations, vol. 5, trans. Cornelius Ernst (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), 97–114. Rahner’s transcendental understanding of salvation history, as expressed in Foundations of Christian Faith, 138– 146, though correctly summarized by O’Collins, bears more nuance than the few used by O’Collins. 233 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 88–89. See Gregor Smith, Secular Christianity (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 112. O’Collins correctly identifies Smith’s difficulty with various approaches to salvation history that place God’s intervention outside reason and man’s history. In this view God intervenes in history through miracles and compels obedience. Smith criticizes Cullmann as promoting this view. 67 revealed word.234 The revealing word remains subordinate to the event. God’s revealing word is special because it is associated with special persons and events. The word is subordinated to the event and serves it. This is true most importantly in the resurrection, which was God’s supreme act in history, where action has priority over the word.235

This interconnection between event and word highlights deficiencies in other approaches.

O’Collins claims that one cannot go so far as Pannenberg, who claims that divine activity in history is so clearly manifested that it can be critically authenticated using reason and historical investigation. According to O’Collins, biblical testimony, especially as expressed by John and

Paul, states otherwise.236 In the seeing does not necessarily lead to belief in

Christ: “Though he had done so many signs before them, yet they did not believe in him.” (Jn

12:37) Paul explains that belief is the work of God in a person: “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.” (1 Thess 2:13) Both John and Paul’s biblical testimony is not open to “proof.”

Only those drawn by the Father can see. In other words “The history of salvation is, in these terms, recognizable only through the perspective of a divinely given faith which enables me to experience events as God communicating himself, revealing his “plan” and saving me.”237 This is why many see Jesus but do not understand Christ as the divine Revealer.238

On the opposite pole of the event-word discussion, in using the category of salvation history there is the danger of a selective spiritualizing of history that is dependent on our

234 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 89. See also Fundamental Theology, 74–76. 235 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 89. 236 Ibid., 90–91. 237 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 91. 238 Ibid., 90. Also see 74-76. 68 subjective whims, resulting in a shirking of personal responsibility. This is a criticism of the salvation history perspective leveled by G. Smith and the Bultmannian school. Cullmann engages this point. He warns that one must not view salvation history in such a way that excludes human freedom and encourages a passive stance with no personal engagement. Rather (as

O’Collins explains Cullmann’s view), salvation history “creates the basis for existential decision by calling men to align themselves with God’s saving activity which comprehends past, present and future.”239 Thus, the salvation history perspective has a moral trajectory. The call to make a decision for or against God is not in tension with salvation history, but is part of it.

This salvation history perspective leads O’Collins to define what is and is not an “act of

God.”240 O’Collins holds that God directly intervenes in history, though the proper understanding of this activity should be nuanced. “Acts of God” vary in that each may involve more or less engagement on God’s part. To neglect such a distinction would see all actions of God univocally and would invite a Deistic view of God’s relationship with creation. Acts of God, which are recognizably independent of the usual causal structure of the , “imply a religious claim and convey moral significance.”241 Acts of God are mysterious and ambiguous. These acts never constrain one’s freedom. Divine actions are neither measurable nor contained in spatial attributes, though the results of such actions are so measurable. Lastly, these actions may be experienced as both human acts and divine acts. So in an attempt to avoid both Pannenberg’s view that collapses the event-word distinction into reasonably knowable divine events, and

239 Ibid., 92. O’Collins here is referring to Oscar Cullmann’s Salvation in History (New York: Harper and Row, 1967),12, 20, 121, etc. This is a translation of Heil als Geschichte: Heilsgeschichtliche Existenz im Neuen Testament (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1965). Cullmann explains that taking a salvation history perspective leads to “accepting the meaning of the present supplied by salvation history and to assume the obligation that follows” (p. 121). 240 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 94–97. See also O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 76. 241 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 96. 69

Smith’s view that emphasizes the interpretive word and free decision, O’Collins provides several criteria of “Acts of God” that allow for human freedom and recognize the role of faith in discerning these events, while also acknowledging divine intervention in history.

Returning to the broader category of salvation history, O’Collins spells out several essential features of Cullmann’s understanding of salvation history in order to clarify his own view. According to Cullmann, Heilsgeschichte is so named because it leaves room for human freedom. It deals with a connected series of events that belong to ordinary history. In contrast to a secular approach to history, Cullmann’s concept of salvation history contains gaps, where secular understanding of history does not.242 In disagreement with Cullmann’s view, O’Collins instead holds that there are no gaps in what God does for mankind. According to O’Collins the difference between historical and salvation historical knowledge lies in our own personal knowledge, not in what actually takes place. Cullmann confuses the orders of reality and knowledge.243 O’Collins also finds Cullmann’s notion of salvation history as an interconnected series of events problematic in that Cullmann places all biblical events on the same level of reality. There is a difficulty in that Cullmann sees an analogy between history and salvation history that does not account for varying degrees of figurative language or genre variation.

O’Collins finds it difficult to place all of the events of salvation history (creation, the flood,

Jesus’ ) on the same level of reality.

242 Ibid., 98. O’Collins is again drawing upon Cullmann’s Salvation in History (154–155). He correctly identifies Cullmann’s point: “Isolated events appear differentiated and sorted out of the total historical process, historically speaking, in an arbitrary way ... nevertheless, a connection exists between them” (154). 243 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 99. 70

O’Collins values the term “salvation history” because it encompasses such events “as the death of Jesus and the fall of .”244 The concept of salvation history requires some basis in fact. The events included in salvation history should be “open to human observation and accessible to historical investigation” even though these events are seen through a theological understanding. So while a historian may examine the historicity of the deportation to , the historical fact can be seen carrying within it a deeper story concerning man’s salvation.

Regarding how the ongoing events of salvation history in postbiblical times are to be understood, O’Collins has two guidelines for selecting which past and current events should be considered. First, one may consider the actions of the Church a part of salvation history if they are clearly an attempt to bring about the obedience of faith. In places and times where the salvation of God is proclaimed through the Scriptures, in the , and most especially the

Eucharist, salvation history continues. O’Collins secondly considers the postbiblical history of the as part of salvation history since they enjoy God’s special divine engagement in their history.245

In Fundamental Theology (1981) O’Collins returns briefly to the topic of salvation history; he considers the place and time of revelation and answers by identifying three periods of revelation: the time of preparation in the Old Testament;246 the climax of revelation in Jesus;247 and Jesus’ continuing presence.248 In the first period the Israelites sometimes experienced God as

“a loving, saving and tenderly devoted God,” while holding an elevated view of God as

244 Ibid., 100. 245 Ibid., 101. 246 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 86–89. 247 Ibid., 87–99. 248 Ibid., 99–102. 71 transcendent.249 O’Collins here does not address issues surrounding images of God as wrathful and a punisher. Rather he focuses on God as progressively unfolding his nature as the only god who is transcendent while also being lovingly close to his people.250 During the second period

God’s self-revelation reached its climax in Christ. History, understood as the history of salvation and revelation, had been moving towards this goal of God’s complete self-communication. What was partial before—in the Old Testament period of preparation—was now complete.251

Reflecting on the second period of God’s self-communication in his Son, O’Collins recognizes that what Christ did for mankind (event) could never be exhaustively stated (word).252

In other words the Scriptures could never exhaustively express the event of Christ. Within the basic unity of the community who had all experienced the events of Jesus’ life, O’Collins notes some variety in the interpretive word. For instance the stressed in general the rule of God while each a particular emphasis. Mark portrayed Jesus as the one who proclaims God’s rule. Luke emphasized that Christ came to bring the good news to the poor and suffering.253 This variety is why the Church has been left with numerous writings on Jesus including Paul’s letters, the Synoptic and Johannine Gospels.254 As a whole the interpretive word

249 Ibid., 86. 250 Ibid., 84-85. 251 Ibid., 87. 252 Ibid., 87, 98, and see O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 79–83, for a recapitulation of this idea. 253 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 87. 254 O’Collins makes several noteworthy points here. First, in support of his earlier wedding of the concepts of revelation and salvation, he points out that Paul intertwines the reality of salvation and revelation together in numerous places (Fundamental Theology, 90–91). Second, he notes that John’s writings include a template for the basic criteria needed for proper discernment of spiritual experience that will in turn bring one to communion with God. These criteria that aid proper discernment are the apostolic witnesses and the testifying community (Fundamental Theology, 95). 72 provided by the writers of the Apostolic age is normative due to the nature of their direct and unrepeatable contact with the events in the life of Jesus.255

O’Collins holds that the presence and power of the original saving revelation continues in the third period. While the original events themselves are unrepeatable, O’Collins emphasizes that the particular moments and events of one’s life can communicate God and his salvation.256

Revelation continues in the lives and experience of people as they encounter the interpretive word in various ways. To make this point O’Collins draws attention to the conversions of

Augustine and Thomas Merton, who were reached by the ongoing presence of God’s self- communication. One can also see the ongoing presence of revelation in those who are already believers but who continually grow deeper in faith. O’Collins mentions other forms of this ongoing presence of saving revelation, including the sacraments, , the reading of

Scripture, actions of loving concern for others, episodes of suffering, and other concrete .257 In such moments, various events in a person’s life can mediate the continuing presence of Christ and his revelation. The present events serve in some sense as the interpretive word that brings to life the events of the past: “wherever and whenever revelation and salvation are experienced, there the divine self-communication continues to take place.”258 For O’Collins, experience, as defined in chapter 2 of Fundamental Theology, is the key.259 Through these interpretive experiences, wherever salvation and revelation are experienced, divine self- communication occurs.

255 Ibid., 99. O’Collins includes Paul as a recipient of this direct experience of revelation and salvation. 256 Ibid., 99–100. 257 Ibid., 100. 258 Ibid. 259 Ibid., 32-52. 73

O’Collins turns to Dei Verbum to strengthen his argument as it concerns the continuation of saving revelation. Dei Verbum 8 states:

God, who spoke in the past continues to converse with the spouse of his beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel rings out in the Church— and through it in the world—leads believers to the full truth.260

O’Collins also notes other documents of the Second Vatican Council in which God’s self- revelation is spoken of using the present tense, such as Dignitatis Humanae 10 and Ad Gentes

13.261 Drawing on his earlier definition of experience, he emphasizes how important it is that each person encounters God in the present. O’Collins does not wish to undermine the significance or unique aspects of the Christ event and revelation, but rather emphasizes the need for each person to undergo a revelatory experience of salvation in the present. This encounter in experience happens in the present through “the sacraments, sermons, the reading of the

Scriptures, loving activity with and for others, episodes of suffering and any other concrete means (of a dramatic and an everyday kind) that convey revelation and grace.”262

In summary, O’Collins accepts a salvation historical view because of its Christocentric perspective, though he holds that clarifications should be made concerning the types of events one can include as part of salvation history and the nature of what he calls “acts of God” in history. Drawing on the distinction and interrelationship between event and word, O’Collins

260 Dei Verbum 8, “sicque , qui olim locutus est, sine intermission cum dilecti Filii sui spons colloquitur, et Spiritus , per quem viva envangelii in ecclesia, et per ipsam in mundo resonat, in omnem veritatem unducit, verbymque Christi in eis abundanter inhabitare facit.” 261 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 100. The texts read: Dignitatis Humanae 10 “Man, redeemed by Christ the Savior and called through Jesus Christ to be an adopted son of God, cannot give his adherence to God when he reveals himself unless, drawn by the Father.” The key verb here is vocatus, a perfect passive participle. Ad Gentes 13 “And this is in the order that non-Christians, whose heart is being opened by the Holy Spirit, might, while believing, freely turn to who, since he is the ’way, the truth and the life’ will satisfy all their inner , or rather infinitely surpass them.” The verb for “turn” here is convertantur, a present passive subjunctive. Flannery translation. 262 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 100. 74 clarifies what he considers the proper understanding of the interpretive word and promotes the view that revelation is ongoing through various manifestations of the interpretive word, which bring each person into an experience of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.263

2.5 The Relationship between Faith and History

The examination of O’Collins’s ideas pertaining to revelation and history so far has addressed primarily O’Collins’s view of the nature of revelation and how it is experienced in the present. This section will turn more specifically to the role of history in this experience and explain O’Collins’s view on the nature of history and its proper place in coming to faith. The following section will briefly explain the other various factors O’Collins notes that complement the historical component in the free decision of faith in an attempt to answer the question of how one holds a balanced relationship between the free response in faith, which is both a gift from

God and a freely chosen decision, and faith’s reliance on past historical testimony.

O’Collins’s proposes that the proper relationship between history and faith should be viewed from a broader perspective. Faith arises not just from history, nor from any single factor as experienced by an individual, but rather faith arises when history and many factors unite. One cannot simplify the coming to faith in a simplistic formula. History is one of these constitutive factors, though not the only or definitive one. In Foundations of Theology (1970), O’Collins notes that Christians believe that current experiences of God, as mediated through the proclamation of the Word and the sacraments, somehow make the past contemporary. It is not just through recalling past events that this link between then and now occurs. The Gospels

263 The various factors that act as the interpretive word alongside Scripture will be examined in more depth in section 2.6. 75 disclose instead that the early Christians maintained a link with a past person.264 The New

Testament testimony makes clear that alongside a present and future oriented dimension, faith retains an essential link to past events which in some way “determine the shape and content of faith.”265

Two dangers become apparent when this point is made. The first danger is the trivialization of the historical existence of Jesus, a line of thought O’Collins finds originating in

Kierkegaard and proceeding down through both Barth and Bultmann.266 A second danger is to emphasize Christ’s message over his person. In addition one can overemphasize either the universal aspects of Christ or his particular and concrete existence, each at the cost of the other.267 In the case of Bultmann one finds no significance in the concrete historical Jesus in the present, a position that emphasizes the universal aspects of him as received in faith. This approach, however, ignores that a substantial part of the preached message about Jesus is bound to its historical origins:268 “the message loses force to the extent that its derivation from those origins is neglected and minimized.”269 In response to Bultmann, O’Collins asserts that faith is in part dependent on history. Aspects of the Apostles commit Christians to certain historical truths. Faith depends in part on “some of past history.”270 This means that historians could possibly disprove certain historical claims as false in the future.271 Being based upon history, faith is critiqued by history:

264 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 66. 265 Ibid. 266 Ibid., 67. 267 Ibid., 68–69. 268 Ibid., 70. 269 Ibid. 270 Ibid., 71. 271 Ibid. 76

If it were demonstrated that Jesus never lived or that he preached a message which was quite opposed to the accounts given in the gospels, Christian faith would be shown to be falsely based. The fact that possible historical discoveries could falsify grounds for Christian faith indicates a certain dependence of faith upon history.272

How then can an absolute assurance of faith depend on past history?

This question leads to Lessing’s point that accidental truths are not able to establish necessary truths. Lessing held that history is not strong enough to ground any faith claims.

History warrants claims of high only. Yet, since history is human intellectual endeavor one can ask “isn’t such an undertaking just a form of rationalism or ‘a search for (false) through the work of the intellect?’”273 With this consideration, Bultmann, Barth,

Herrmann, and (1899–1966) sought to isolate and immunize faith from the field of historical inquiry. Faith to them was considered to be an “extra-historical perception” or “an obedient response to the word of the kerygma.”274 O’Collins does not consider these attempts at severing faith from history as productive. In the case of Herrmann, severing Christ from history left him with a Jesus who looked startlingly like Herrmann himself. Such efforts often allow a scholar’s preoccupations and worldview to influence strongly his reconstruction of Jesus.

Bultmann at least recognized the fact of Jesus’ existence and crucifixion as historical events, and was therefore left vulnerable to potential critique due to historical research.275

272 Ibid. 273 Ibid., 72. 274 Ibid., 73. 275 Many theologians have recognized this vulnerability to history in various ways, including J. Jeremias (1900– 1979), W. Pannenberg, and the New Questers of the Historical Jesus such as Ernst Käsemann (1906–1988), G. Ebeling (1912–2001), H. Conzelmann (1915–1989), and others. Instead of insulating faith from history, they sought historical groundings for faith (O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 73). 77

O’Collins seeks a middle ground between what he terms the universal and the concrete poles of understanding faith.276 By concrete pole he means an overemphasis on historical “facts” and knowledge alone: “From history alone Christian faith derives neither its structure nor the kind of certainty it enjoys.”277 While not being reduced to such historical facts, faith must retain its historical ingredients. Faith is not the prolongation of its historical ingredients, but something that happens in the present. Christian faith may not be reduced to history, but it cannot exist independent of history.278 The faith of normal believers does not hinge on history. Their faith in

Christ is often based instead upon only few facts. It is more often grounded in the results of faith.

No one fact stands out as all-important to normal believers since questions about the basis of their faith elicit a wide variety of responses as to which facts are more important than others.279

O’Collins explains that “there exists no standard pattern of facts which serve as prerequisites for faith.”280 Ultimately faith essentially involves a historical risk on the part of the believer regarding the essential historical truths required for faith.

O’Collins makes a second point, beyond this important role of history in faith, in response to theologians, such as Bultmann, who seek to immunize theology from history. If one neglects the study of how historians operate, one puts him or herself in danger of creating a private world and language that severs ties with actual historians and their understanding of history.281 This can lead to those outside theological circles forming negative views towards the theological endeavor.

276 As discussed above in 2.1. 277 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 74. 278 Ibid. See also Fundamental Theology, 142 and 156. 279 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 75. 280 Ibid. 281 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 76–78. 78

While Pannenberg is right, in O’Collins’s opinion, to engage the historical issues surrounding Jesus, O’Collins disagrees with Pannenberg’s attempt to define revelation “in terms of knowledge which (at least logically) precedes faith.” Historical events, while being open to investigation by historians, are interpreted and recognized by theology as revelation via faith.

In Fundamental Theology (1981), O’Collins delves into the subjective pole of the human reception of revelation and the relationship between history and faith. While Foundations of

Theology dealt more with the “objective pole” of history’s role in faith formation, in

Fundamental Theology he begins to develop a stronger understanding of human subjectivity in response to and as a condition for revelation. Humans are designed to receive revelation since human experience functions in such a way that it can both recognize and receive revelation and grace. Humans experience both common and uncommon events, as well as moments of and . Experience can recognize and receive revelation directly, as in the foundational experiences of the Apostles, as well as indirectly through dependent revelation via proclamation today. Those who experienced foundational revelation transmitted and expressed their encounters in a variety of ways. One privileged form of transmission is the scriptures. These written accounts generated dependent experiences in those who later read them, thus allowing later generation the possibility of sharing in their experiences and participating in the new identity these experiences generated.282 This means that the possibilities opened by the nature of experience allow the past to be effective in the present. O’Collins explains that the

Second Vatican Council taught both the complete and definitive nature of revelation in Christ

282 Ibid., 225-226. 79 and the continuing nature of this communication.283 He is careful to nuance this present encounter with saving revelation as being “under the shadow” of the historical encounter of the experience of the Apostles.284 Yet in both, the historical experiences of the Apostles and the current experience of faith, a person “immediately experiences revelation and salvation.”285

Drawing together his views of the nature of revelation as personal, the aspects of history as either foundational or dependent, and the nature of experience, O’Collins attempts to explain what constitutes faith and the role that history plays in its formation. He begins by noting that faith is socially and communally experienced. A socially constructed common language and cultural traditions help mediate God to the individual.286 Faith then is assisted by the community, which draws its identity from history, since history is the locus where salvific revelation occurs.

Each person’s experience, open to revelation and salvation, facilitates this encounter.287 That experience, as Paul indicates, is constituted by the preached word and the interior illumination that is a divine work in each person. This word and illumination make it possible for each person to acknowledge in faith God’s self-communication in Christ. Thus faith is formed by the action of the Holy Spirit, who assists each person’s acceptance of God’s self- communication.288 Still, reason is important in this faith formation, though not decisive. Several

283 Ibid., 100. Some examples include Dei Verbum, 5, which speaks of God revealing in the present tense: “God as he reveals himself,” which includes a citation of Dei Filius, 3 “Qua homo se totum libere Deo committit ‘plenum revelanti Deo intellectus et voluntatis obsequium’ praestando,” and Dei Verbum, 8, which explains that God continues to converse with the spouse of His beloved Son: “God, who spoke in the past, continues to converse with the spouse of his beloved Son.” For the see footnote 256 above. O’Collins notes that these and other texts speak of God’s self-revelation as ongoing by using the present tense, as in Dignitatis Humanae, 10, and Ad Gentes, 13. Gaudium et Spes, 10, does the same as it explains how Christ strengthens one in the present. 284 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 101. 285 Ibid. 286 Ibid., 134. 287 Ibid., 135. 288 Ibid., 139. O’Collins points to Paul’s letters as a whole, but he specifically notes Rom 10:17, Gal 3:5, and 2 Cor 4:6, 5:17, and 3:17 as examples of God’s saving work through the preached word. 80 problems can arise from the use of reason, the most noteworthy being the fact that one cannot arrive at faith by exclusively rational means:289 “faith is reasonable; it can point to evidence to support itself…but faith is not rational” in that it cannot provide a complete and comprehensive argument to support its position.290 Faith brings reason, will, and imagination together to influence each other while leaving the will free to choose. A person knows, hopes, and decides in one act of faith. History then, which informs our reason in weighing the facts, is an important aspect of faith, but not the sum total.

O’Collins emphasizes the fact that each person encounters not merely an idea, but a person in God’s self-communication. This encounter and the acceptance in faith of a person are not merely cognitive; they evoke a life-changing decision that involves the past, the present, and the future. This is why history plays only a part in the decision. Historical data could potentially disprove the claims of Christianity, but since faith involves a free decision for God, historical data cannot play the decisive role. History does play a role in that it provides some evidence for the credibility of the testimonial claims of the apostles. This evidence is not conclusive, but plausible thus providing an attractive religious option and “key grounds for faith.”291

For O’Collins, faith involves a decision connecting the past, present, and future. This three-fold aspect of faith can also be explained as including faith (confession), love

(commitment), and (confidence) for a future fulfillment and completion: “the human response of faith to the divine self-communication in Christ reveals a deep mutual interaction between knowing, deciding, and hoping.”292 This three-fold terminology is important as

289 Ibid., 144. 290 Ibid., 145 291 Ibid., 141. 292 Ibid., 149. 81

O’Collins considers the challenge given by Lessing’s understanding of history and its importance in faith.293

O’Collins then expands an earlier discussion294 concerning the ideas of Bultmann, who sought to protect faith by reducing the amount of historical knowledge it requires.295 All that

Bultmann found important in the historical realm was the fact that “Jesus existed.” Following

Lessing and the Enlightenment, Bultmann held that the “certainty of faith’s decision” cannot be dependent on the work of historians.296 O’Collins contrasts his ideas with those of Bultmann on the proper relationship between history and faith.297 Christian faith cannot exist without some historical knowledge. The amount of historical verification needed varies from person to person;

O’Collins does not explain what accounts for this variation, but takes it as a given. The minimum content includes the historical statements in the Apostles Creed and those beliefs professed at

Baptism and the .298 One need also accept some historical facts, such as the existence of

Jesus, though reliance on these facts does not necessarily require a dependence on professional historians. However, Christian faith does not depend solely on historical knowledge. External proclamation requires the complement of the grace of interior illumination: “No amount of historical knowledge . . . will bring about faith.”299 Faith involves moving beyond the historical evidence in a loving commitment to a personal relationship.

293 See O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 145–156, for a discussion of the past/present/future dimensions of faith and their implications. 294 See O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 74. 295 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 157. 296 Ibid. 297 Ibid., 157–160. 298 O’Collins does not elaborate on which elements of the Apostles Creed are historical (“was crucified under Pontius Pilate”) or belief-based (“and he sits at the right ”), but he apparently means the basic events in history, such as Christ’s crucifixion and death. 299 Ibid., 157. 82

O’Collins explains that an important influence on faith is “the historical knowledge of believers . . . [which is] affected by the loving commitment and hopeful confidence made possible by the external proclamation and the internal grace.”300 Love facilitates knowledge. The commitment in love to Christ opens a type of knowledge to the believer. O’Collins holds that faith results from a “mutual interaction between knowing, loving and imagining.”301 Love creates the possibility of knowledge while knowing makes it possible to love a person or thing. Further,

“the certitude of faith’s historical knowledge is part of its [faith’s] total certitude.”302 Historical claims about Jesus often assume that elements of his life in time and space can be detached and examined independently of faith. O’Collins explains that the historical question cannot be treated independently of faith. Faith is a lived unity concerning not only the past as confession but also the present as a moral commitment and the future as confidence.

O’Collins reiterates his point, regarding Lessing’s view: faith depends partly on the past and thus is always a risk.303 O’Collins also notes that a weakening of faith impacts a commitment of one’s life and future hope (confidence.) Again he notes the important role of history in rooting one’s faith. The confession of faith, utilizing history, moves from the specific events to the universal. For instance, faith moves from Jesus of to an understanding of Christ, who is

Lord of the universe. Commitment and confidence inversely move from the universal back to the specific. Faith as being grounded in the specific and historical then helps root the person in reality and avoid “flights of fancy” based on vague generalities.

300 Ibid., 158. 301 Ibid. 302 Ibid. 303 Ibid., 159. 83

Finally, in Retrieving Fundamental Theology (1993) O’Collins states, “While not being simply the result of human argumentation, faith in divine revelation is reasonable and should offer some kind of verification.” One should be able to explain to others why one believes.304

This of course means that one should be able to call upon history, at least in some sense, to show others that faith is not unreasonable, nor is it a mere wish fulfillment.

As can be seen O’Collins moves from a critical examination of historical approaches to a broader understanding of the appropriation of faith. He resists an understanding of faith that reduces the decision merely to a particular historical approach, especially if that approach is based in an overstated desire for certitude. He instead places faith formation in a wider context of encounter by the entire person with God’s self-communication. While faith is not divorced from reason and what the study of history can reveal, it is through a consideration of the involvement of the entire person that faith is best understood.

2.6 Factors that Mediate Faith

The personalistic understanding of revelation as God’s self-communication in the subject’s experience has implications for O’Collins’s view of the various mediations through which the salvific event is understood. The “words” that interpret the events of revelation in history, as given in the Scriptures, the Church, the magisterium, tradition and dogmas, all take on specific meaning for O’Collins in light of his deliberate shift from a propositional view to a personalistic view of God’s saving and revealing events in history.305 This section will briefly

304 O’Collins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 42. 305 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 79–83. 84 summarize O’Collins’s view of the various traditional mediators of revelation, seen in light of his personalistic understanding of revelation.

O’Collins holds that revelation as proclaimed in the Scriptures is the privileged expression of saving revelation. Later understandings and teachings by the Church are considered dependent revelation since they originate from persons who did not directly experience the historic events of God’s revelation, especially the life, death, and resurrection of

Jesus. O’Collins insists that one should not consider the bible as coextensive with revelation: “In general the Scriptures record the human experience of the divine self-communication, but many particular passages and even books of the Bible do so in ways that remain somewhat remote from the immediacy of that experience.”306 It is a unique and authoritative word given to the

Church that bears not just chronological priority, but, especially in the case of the Gospels, a priority based on the direct experience of those who experienced personally God’s self- communication in history.307 The Scriptures participate in the truth of Christ, who is Himself truth: “through testifying to the divine self-communication which reaches its climax in him

[Christ] and the various human responses to that divine self-giving, these writings help to communicate truly that saving and revealing event.”308 Since the Scriptures “set up the conditions” for God to speak to us, O’Collins emphasizes the importance of being a listener to the word, by which he means that all Christians should actively receive the texts of the original authors and through the texts listen to what God intends for them to hear.309

306 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 227 307 Ibid., 232. 308 Ibid., 241. O’Collins uses the present tense here, suggesting that the Scriptures continue to participate in the Truth of Christ. 309 Ibid., 241, 262–263. 85

Another significant dependent source of revelation is the ongoing presence of the Church, which in O’Collins’s understanding, is connected with but not coextensive with the Kingdom of

God. Jesus preached an interim continuation between his departure and his return.310 In the the Church clearly served, preached the word, and baptized.311 The Church serves the Kingdom and its institutional components, while being necessary for its survival, must not inhibit or deter the spiritual lives of its members, but foster and nourish them.312 The Church performs this role when it helps actualize revelation through , teaching, and the Scriptures.

The Church, as a living , allows revelation to take place in “the lived reality of human existence.”313 Proclaiming the word brings Christ’s presence and accompanying salvation into the world and communicates this presence to the believer.314 As to the question as to whether or not revelation can take place without the Church, O’Collins makes the case that the Holy Spirit works in a special way through the Church. This does not preclude the fact that revelation can be known in various ways outside the visible Church.315

Tradition for O’Collins serves the larger goal of fostering a relationship between the believer and God. The first narrative recounting of the original experiences of God’s self- communication in history gave birth to later accounts and practices. These later stories and activities in turn wove into their fabric the author’s own experiences of God’s self- communication.316 Some of these experiences, which were triggered by God’s self-

310 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 278–279. 311 Ibid., 279–287. 312 Ibid., 290. 313 O’Collins, Theology and Revelation, 67. 314 Ibid., 53. 315 as shown in chapter 4 below. O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 130. See Foundations of Theology, 57. 316 Ibid., 191. 86 communication, were put to writing, while others, now called the tradition of the Church, include actions (actus tradendi) or a content of what is handed on (traditum).317 These two moments of tradition can be distinguished but not separated. Tradition in both forms is expressed and passed on in a multiplicity of ways through the “traditionary activity” of the Church.318 Authentic tradition exists in many expressions and fosters and enables the encounter with God’s ongoing presence by handing on the foundational experiences to each generation. O’Collins distinguishes traditum by using a capital “T” in the English translation when referring to the foundational tradition (Traditum) and contrasts it with the multiplicity of lower-case traditions (tradita) which are expressions of the one Traditum through many particular, time-bound expressions localized in liturgy, doctrine, and experience.319 While the Holy Spirit is the bearer of the essential

Tradition (Traditum), O’Collins recognizes that the various tradita allow the divine reality to take flesh in human customs, beliefs and practices. Various traditions then can let human weakness enter in, creating “inauthenticity” in these traditions.320 Traditions (tradita) are necessary to preserve and disclose the tradition (traditum), but not all are of equal value to the believer in “genuinely expressing and actualizing the foundational revelation.”321 The Tradition

(Traditum) of the Church includes, but “goes beyond,” the scriptures: “Handing on and interpreting the Scriptures is only one major part of this traditionary activity.”322 Tradition

317 Ibid., Also see O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 202. 318 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 203. See also Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 195. 319 Ibid., 204. 320 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 195. 321 Ibid., 208. 322 Ibid., 203. 87

(Traditum) both as a process or an object handed on “includes Scripture rather than simply standing alongside it [since] in both instances tradition is much more extensive that Scripture.”323

O’Collins’s understanding of tradition of both types (Traditum and tradita) bears scrutiny in comparison to the Church’s teaching found in Dei Verbum. Ratzinger illuminates the understanding of tradition as adopted by the Second Vatican Council.324 He explains that behind the debates on the issue of tradition lie the ’s decision to avoid a two-source theory, known as the partim-partim view; instead, the connective et was used to explain the relationship between scripture and tradition.325 Tübingen theologian J.R. Geiselmann, whose ideas Ratzinger believes “exercised a valuable influence” on the Fathers’ discussion at the

Second Vatican Council, concluded that Trent’s decision signaled a turning away from a view that truth was split between two separate sources. This insight led Geiselmann to hold that scripture contains a material sufficiency independent of tradition.326 This view was held in contrast to the view of some in what came to be known as the minority position at the Second

Vatican Council. This view held that tradition contained a deposit distinct from scripture as reflected in certain Marian dogmas.327 Also behind the discussion at the Second Vatican Council stood the Romantic movement, which encouraged an understanding of tradition “in terms of the categories of growth, progress and the knowledge of faith that had developed.”328

These dynamic ideas concerning tradition and progress, developed by the Jesuit School in Rome,

323 Ibid., 204. 324 Joseph Ratzinger and Karl Rahner, Revelation and Tradition (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 26-66, and Joseph Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 155-181. 325 Council of Trent, session 4 (April 8, 1546), “perspiciensque, haec veritatem et disciplinam contineri in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus.” DS 1501. 326 Ratzinger, Revelation and Tradition, 32-33. 327 John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Press, 2008), 217. 328 Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,” 156. 88 influenced Neuman’s view on development and through his writings impacted a wider audience.

Tradition-as-knowledge came to be understood by some schools of thought more in terms of tradition-as-process.329 These various currents of thought influenced the discussion on what would later be promulgated as Dei Verbum.

Ratzinger explains that the final text of Dei Verbum was the result of many compromises on the issues surrounding tradition.330 While the issue of material sufficiency of scripture was not settled, Dei Verbum marked a turn towards a more comprehensive view of revelation because the document embraced “a more general view of the phenomenon of tradition which results from it.”331 The issue of material sufficiency of the scriptures was left open, while both scripture and tradition were subsumed under the “same divine wellspring” of Christ.332 Tradition, understood as multi-layered reality of the one mystery of Christ, is handed down in three ways: teaching, life, and worship. This handing down process is linked “with the being and the faith of the

Church.”333 While discussion also sought a “criterion of valid tradition,” Ratzinger explains that the small shift in language in response to this concern (the deletion of the clause omne quod habet) was not real progress; in essence, this decision ignored the whole question.334

O’Collins’s understanding of tradition both coincides and differs from that of Dei

Verbum, though all his theological ideas fall within the possibilities left open by the document.

O’Collins clearly disagrees with the two-source theory of revelation which, as noted above was an issue left unresolved at the Council. He places tradition and scripture within the larger

329 Ibid. 330 Ibid., 164. 331 Ibid., 184. 332 Dei Verbum, 9. “Nam ambae, ex eadem divina scaturigine promanantes, in unum quodammodo coalescunt et in eundem finem tendunt.” 333 Ibid., 185. 334 Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,” 185. 89 penumbra of dependent revelation handed down through the Church under the guidance of the

Holy Spirit. In a manner similar to Dei Verbum’s identification of teaching, life, and worship as means of transmission of tradition, he allows for a wide variety of methods through which the believer today can encounter and be transformed by tradition. O’Collins notes that, “It

[Tradition] is the saving presence of Christ engaged in a process of self-transmission through his

Holy Spirit in the continuing life of the Church.”335 O’Collins, by way of an addition to the teaching of Dei Verbum, attempts to identify specific criteria with which to purify Tradition of inappropriate particular traditions (tradita). This purification and discernment of inauthentic traditions is a theological development not specifically addressed by Dei Verbum.336

O’Collins recognizes a fourth aspect of mediation: the magisterium. The magisterium, as noted in Fundamental Theology (1981), serves the Church as a divinely chosen means that passes along the essential confession of faith by reactivating Christian experiences and beliefs.

The magisterium in turn helps lead the Church to a fuller Christian life.337 The magisterium should be recognized as a special but not exclusive bearer of Tradition.338 Like tradition

(tradita), it is authentic only insofar as it serves this goal of mediation. It serves as a guide “in that permanent dialogue between inherited traditions and new experiences.”339 While not addressing the role of the magisterium in the same manner, Dei Verbum explains that the magisterium is the servant to the Word of God, teaching only what it has been given and

335 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 205. 336 O’Collins’s multi-point criteria for discerning true manifestations of tradita in the one traditum can be found in Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology, ed. René Latourelle and Gerald O’Collins, translated Matthew J. O’Connell (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 327-329, Fundamental Theology, 208-224, and Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 208-221. 337 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 187. 338 Ibid., 203. 339 Ibid., 210. 90 guarding it with dedication. Dei Verbum connects Tradition, the Scriptures and the magisterium intimately: “It is clear, therefore, that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred

Tradition, sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others.”340 O’Collins differs from Dei Verbum, not in content, but in emphasis. O’Collins emphasizes the proximate and dependent role of the magisterium, noting that it is not an ultimate authority. The magisterium present the Tradition with which it has been entrusted and may not even choose to speak on certain matters. In this silence of the magisterium believers must make up their own regarding the authenticity of traditions.341

Dogmas, if properly understood, also serve this mediation between revelation and each person. O’Collins previously proposed that the term “dogma” should be dropped owing to its imprecise nature and other problems.342 The term itself was not used in connection with Church teaching until 1870.343 Since this advice found little favorable response, O’Collins continues to use the term while clarifying the various ways the term “dogma” is understood by the magisterium.344 Dogmas may be broken into two general overarching categories: extraordinary and ordinary teachings. By ordinary O’Collins is referring to non-solemn teaching found outside of Council and Papal Infallible statements. Extraordinary/solemn teachings of the magisterium

340 Dei Verbum, 10. 341 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 210. 342 See Gerald O’Collins, The Case against Dogma (New York: Paulist Press, 1975). While holding that the term “dogma” can have several proper uses, O’Collins holds that the term has been misapplied to cover almost all aspects of theology and Church teaching of the past. Because of this overextension of the term, O’Collins holds that it should be replaced by more precise terminology. He does not argue against the existence of binding Church teachings but rather holds that the existing terminology is unhelpful. 343 O’Collins, The Case against Dogma, 89. According to Francis Sullivan, S.J., one of the first theologians to give the term dogma its present meaning was Philipp Neri Chrismann in his work Regula fidei catholicae (1792). Sullivan, Creative Fidelity (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1996), 29. 344 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 188–190. 91 are proclaimed in papal definitions and general councils. Ordinary/non-solemn teachings include a host of various pronouncements such as universal teachings when taught by the Pope and the

College of , and non-universal teachings which include , , and the teachings of individual bishops.345 Broadly speaking, O’Collins understands the term dogma to mean either a revealed truth defined by the pope or a general council, or a definitive teaching by the ordinary magisterium (i.e., as taught by the pope and the entire college of bishops) that should be held by the faithful.346 Concerning the source of dogmas and their relationship to scripture, O’Collins explains: “Only revealed truth which is seen to come from the climactic divine self-communication of Christ can become dogma.”347 Unlike scripture, which is part of the foundational, constitutive phase of the Church, dogmas are part of the interpretive phase of dependent revelation. O’Collins holds that dogmas, understood properly, have a role in assisting a person to faith, and in guiding that faith. Dogmas should be examined by the magisterium and theologians to help explain, paraphrase, and reformulate their wordings so that these teachings can be fruitful to believers.

While O’Collins discusses at length the above-mentioned mediators of revelation, he places greater emphasis on the Scriptures. The magisterium receives less attention in his most recent writing on fundamental theology.348 What is central in O’Collins’s consideration is the encounter in experience God’s self-communication that is both revealing and salvific. This brings the discussion to a consideration of a prominent nontraditional mediatory factor in the coming to and building of faith—life experiences.

345 Ibid., 190. 346 Ibid., 189. O’Collins agrees with and quotes Lumen Gentium, 25, on the bishops’ perogative to proclaim infallibly the doctrine of Christ in certain conditions. 347 Ibid., 188. 348 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 214. 92

Alongside the scriptures, the magisterium, tradition, and dogma, O’Collins holds that various types of experience assist in the formation of belief. Since faith involves a personal and free appropriation on the part of believers, O’Collins recognizes that the witness to the resurrection finds its fulfillment only in this appropriation. The witness accounts are thus actualized in certain ways, such as preaching and the sacramental life.349 Further, it is in worship and in life, as assisted by the Holy Spirit, that Christ is experienced. In contrast to establishing faith from reason, one experiences the presence of Christ through these means. In the case of life experiences, the movement of Christians in love and service validates the ongoing presence of

God. John, in his Gospel, blurred the past and present horizons “so as to reveal how the risen

Jesus and living Jesus . . . shows himself the Interpreter and Transformer of what human beings must typically endure and live through.”350 O’Collins draws attention to several instances in the

Gospel of John where Jesus encounters people with serious challenges: the religious doubt of

Nicodemus (:1–10), the situation of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:7–42), the of the father with a sick son (John 4:46–53), the suffering lame man who has been handicapped for thirty-eight years (John 5:1–18). In each situation Christ transforms the person’s awareness of their circumstances. By reading these archetypical cases, believers come to realize that Christ, who is powerfully present today, encounters human problems and transforms such difficulties into situations of hope.351 According to O’Collins, the Gospel of John connects readers’ present situations to the past and allows them to see Christ still present in his role as savior. Christians today can recognize that Christ is present in their situations.

349 Gerald O’Collins, Faith: Believing in the Risen Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 58. 350 Ibid., 62. Emphasis his. 351 Ibid., 64. 93

Having examined O’Collins’s view on the nature of revelation and the subject who receives revelation (2.1), the stages of revelation (2.2) and the relationship between revelation and history (2.3- 2.5), O’Collins’s views on the interaction between revelation and faith can be better understood.352 O’Collins holds that “Christian faith arises through a convergence and collaboration of objective and subjective factors.”353 The objective factors include an outer public testimony of the community and the internal activity of the Holy Spirit. The public testimony concerning God’s self-communication is recalled and re-enacted in worship. Using dependent revelation, they witness to the events and person of Jesus in the foundational period of revelation. This testimony offers a new vision of the world, a way to live in accord with that vision, and “what they can hope for.”354 Faith is a decision that involves drawing on

“reasonable” information on the existence of God and the person of Jesus and his message. Faith also moves beyond the evidence in that it “involves a loving commitment to the person of

Christ.”355 In this sense “it is reasonable but not merely rational.”356 God inclines a person’s heart, and the person receives “an interior that accompanies the external presentation of the Christian message.” O’Collins explains that the subjective aspects that lead to faith include the personal experiences, dispositions, questions, and needs of a person. By way of example, O’Collins holds the Gospel of John to be the “Gospel of revelation par excellence” in that it captures this interplay between the objective and subjective aspects leading to faith.357 In

John, O’Collins argues, we find a variety of people with their various needs who encounter the

352 This explanation will be further developed in the next chapter as O’Collins’s views on Christ, the fullness of revelation, are discussed. 353 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 176. 354 Ibid. 355 Ibid., 177. 356 Ibid. 357 Ibid., 178. 94 divine revelation in Christ, react to him, and make a decision whether or not to be led by him to faith.358

In summary, O’Collins understands the mediating role of the Church, the magisterium, dogma, tradition, and personal experience through the lens of personal encounter in experience.

These means serve the goal of faith only insofar as they properly mediate the encounter between the person and God. As mediations they are actualized when they accomplish this goal of personal encounter and should be evaluated in light of their ability to mediate faith.

2.7 Summary

O’Collins defines the relationship between revelation and history in coming to faith by moving the discussion beyond the “factual events” into the importance of history in the free decision of faith. As self-disclosures of God, the historical events themselves are given a different emphasis than in earlier apologetic views, in that O’Collins emphasizes a personalistic appropriation of faith with elements of the inner experience and new awareness models of revelation. Against Pannenberg’s view, O’Collins holds that the historical events are insufficient in themselves and require the word, which allows the Holy Spirit to act as our interpreter and to allow each person to see revelation in these events. Against the dialectical school, as represented by Barth, O’Collins holds that the universal significance of Christ requires actual historical events. Against those like Bultmann, who seek to protect the faith by removing it from the realm of historical verification, O’Collins holds that faith requires both history and a present-day

358 Ibid., 178-9. 95 encounter with God through mediated forms, but is not entirely dependent upon history. While faith does depend on history, it does not depend solely on history.

O’Collins holds that certain revelatory events are more significant than others. Such is the case in the coming of Jesus, who in himself revealed God fully and personally. Because Christ was the fullness of revelation, the Apostles, in their own realm of experience, experienced God in a special and unrepeatable way. Their accounts, which are handed on throughout time by the

Church especially, are therefore normative. One can encounter God through the dependent revelation which transmits the original and normative encounters.

How are the past and present bridged in the realm of experience? O’Collins’s understanding of experience as the subjective reception of revelation aids in his correlational view. “Correlation” for O’Collins means that experience is able to receive God’s self- communication. In fact revelation presupposes this ability in experience, thus moving beyond the propositional model of revelation as fact to be held to a view of revelation as interpersonal encounter. O’Collins holds that Jesus, as the fullness of God’s self-communication, is experienced in the proclamation, which can enter into present experience. Further, it is experience that conveys truth, in a wide variety of ways—such as via the Scriptures and various life experiences. This experience depends on the understanding that certain events in the life of

Christ actually happened.

To O’Collins, the confession of faith always involves some historical risk, not unlike “the risk involved in accepting that ‘this man and this woman’ are our parents and relying on many other such lived certitudes in our daily experience.”359 So while a particular view of history and

359 O’Collins and Kendall, Focus on Jesus, 7. 96 an acceptance of specific facts as true aids in “closing the gap” between Christ as he lived in the past and Christ as he is experienced in the present, faith entails a loving trust that includes a commitment of the entire person. This risk in which reason plays an essential but limited role is aided by our free choice and the grace of God.360

What follows will summarize some main points covered thus far in the chapter, referenced with sections in parenthesis. Revelation should be understood through the lens of experience, transcendentally understood (2.1). O’Collins holds that “salvation” and “revelation” are mutually interchangeable terms in that God’s revelation always involves in some manner a salvific element (2.1). Where there is revelation there is also a salvific presence of Christ at work. Concerning the understanding of revelation, O’Collins makes several important distinctions. O’Collins distinguishes between foundational and dependent revelation. This distinction is based upon a person’s relatively direct contact with revelation as fully expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ (2.2). While foundational revelation happened in the experiences of those who knew and encountered Christ, dependent revelation relies upon their accounts as inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by the early Church. O’Collins links the particular events of Jesus and his life to the universal understanding of Christ later formed by the Church (2.2).

Regarding the later communication of revelation, the event of Christ’s life in history is properly understood only when the word of interpretation, aided by the Holy Spirit, is given. The word and later understanding remain subordinate to the actual historical event (2.2). O’Collins notes that history is not a science with the same degree of certitude as (for example)

360 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 141. 97 mathematics. Some truths, while not holding up to the certitude of the empirical sciences, can and do change lives (2.3). While philosophy has an explanatory role in understanding and purifying faith, it does not have a solely determinate one (2.3). Christian views on Jesus are always interpreted views. A set of “bare” facts is never available. (2.3).

O’Collins holds that salvation history is an interpretive view that guards certain important facts, such as the fact that revelational events happened independently of the interpretive word

(2.4). He explains that redemptive actions happen prior to faith but that faith is required in order to recognize these events as divine communication. The events of revelation in history are interpreted. These interpreted events in turn impact the assent of faith. Christians do not hold to a private (e.g., gnostic) form of self-redemption to which only Christians have access (2.4).

Regarding history, O’Collins divides salvation history into two types: general history and special history. General history is available to all; special history is the events in history involving those who have had access to God’s self-communication (2.4). O’Collins believes that one must emphasize the role of both God’s action and the interpretive word (2.4). O’Collins holds that the word about Christ could never adequately explain or exhaust the Christ event. The revelation event is in fact inexhaustible (2.4). Faith is in part dependent upon historical events but is not reducible to these events; faith always involves a trusting risk and cannot be reduced fully to rational evidence and arguments. While events in history impact faith and could invalidate faith should certain events be proven to be untrue, faith is not based solely on these events, but they are one component among many that bring about the decision and acceptance of faith (2.5).

Lastly, O’Collins notes that there are various factors mediating Christ and the word that interpret our experiences. Some are institutionalized, such as the Church and its proclamation, 98 and others are more personal. All paths to faith are unique and a result of a correlation between human experience and God’s self-communication. The various factors that converge and lead one to faith are unique (2.6).

2.8 Preliminary Critique

While I will offer an evaluation and critique of O’Collins’s contributions to fundamental theology in the final section of this dissertation, one can pause briefly here and consider what has been examined in this chapter. O’Collins’s understanding of revelation will be placed within the broad spectrum of views on the nature of revelation using Dulles’s five models of revelation.361

Next, O’Collins’s understanding of the relationship between revelation and history will be examined.

O’Collins does not fall neatly into any one of Dulles’s models of revelation. His understanding of revelation may be seen as primarily reflecting two models, revelation as inner experience and new awareness. O’Collins eschews the doctrinal/propositional model, though his turn to the personal model of revelation in experience does not completely eliminate the need for and expression of propositional truths.362 O’Collins’s use of the (second) historical model is nuanced: he rejects Pannenberg’s approach, yet embraces a meta-view of salvation history found in such thinkers as Cullmann. Set within his overall account of experience, history plays a part, but not an all-encompassing part, in faith.

Dulles’s third model of revelation as inner experience is the first of two predominant approaches found in O’Collins’s theology of revelation. He emphasizes two main themes found

361 Avery Dulles, Models of Revelation (New York: Orbis Books, 1983). 362 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 55. 99 in this model. The first theme is that revelation is God’s self-communication to the person, and the second is that this communication is not only revelational, but salvific. Also, in line with this model, O’Collins holds that experience is the point of insertion of God’s revelatory activity. God is immediately experienced by the believer. Unlike the model, O’Collins recognizes the need for mediation through signs and the sacramental quality of experience.363 Dulles notes that Rahner, while locating revelation in the person’s inner experience of grace, is not a typical representative of this model. Rahner insists that “the transcendental experience of God is nonobjective and is correlative with revelation through word and history.”364 Because of his own appropriation of

Rahner’s transcendental experience, O’Collins fits this description as well and does not fall neatly into the model of inner experience.

The fourth model of dialectical presence clearly does not fit O’Collins’s understanding of revelation. Developed most famously by Barth and Bultmann, this model advanced a theology of revelation in response to theological . Keenly aware of the “” or radical discontinuity between God’s and human sinfulness, this school of thought denied

God’s presence in the created sphere of existence. Practically speaking, this model does not allow for a . God could only be accessed only by way of divine initiative via faith. Revelation, fully given in Christ, requires a yes or a no response in faith. O’Collins especially distances himself from this model’s Christomonism which, while emphasizing the centrality of Christ in revelation, does not allow for any expressions of revelation outside

Christianity.

363 See Dulles, Models of Revelation, 69. 364 Ibid., 70. 100

Certain aspects of Dulles’s fifth model of revelation, known as the new awareness model, exist in O’Collins’s understanding of revelation. The new awareness model sees revelation as a

“transcendent fulfillment of the inner drive of the human spirit towards fuller consciousness.”365

Revelation allows each person to experience a participation of the divine life through a transformed subjectivity.366 Like this model, O’Collins insists on rejecting the fideism found in the dialectical school and recognizes the importance of reason in appropriating revelation.367O’Collins also agrees with this model’s emphasis on the ongoing nature of revelation in the experience of God.368 Unlike this model, O’Collins holds that revealed truths can be expressed as propositions and that a fixed foundational revelation happened in the past.

Unlike a major flaw Dulles finds in many practitioners of this model, O’Collins takes great to remain faithful to Scripture and Tradition.369

Regarding revelation and history, O’Collins tackles several of the contentious issues surrounding their relationship. The Enlightenment search for certainty had impacted the science of history, leading thinkers such as Lessing to dismiss data that were less certain, as rationalism demanded. How could faith be certain if it depends on historical facts that were less than certain?

Alongside this issue lay the difficulty of a savior whose historical actions were in the past but who has a continuing impact on the free decision of faith in the present. Unlike the earlier Neo-

Thomistic and apologetic approaches, which emphasized timeless truths and used historical events as proofs of certitude for dogma, O’Collins recognizes the validity of historical science

365 Ibid., 98. 366 Ibid., 99. 367 Ibid., 103. 368 Ibid., 105. 369 Ibid., 111-112. 101 but not at the expense of other aspects of the faith decision, such as a free decision, grace, and a personal encounter.

O’Collins addresses these issues in several ways. He recognizes that history is indeed significant in the formation of faith. It is not the sole factor, however, in coming to faith. The assent of faith in fact does not require the certainty demanded by rationalistic thinkers. While it takes place in history, revelation is more than a set of facts and propositions; it is primarily an encounter with God’s self-communication. Where true revelation takes place salvation is also taking place. Revelation, while being grounded in the unrepeatable events in the life of Christ, continues to impact people today through the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit, and is mediated in various ways. In response to the rationalistic issues concerning certitude in history,

O’Collins recognizes the importance of history while realistically noting that absolute rationalistic certainty is both unavailable and unnecessary for faith. With regard to the ongoing nature of revelation, O’Collins holds that the foundational events are sui generis and the summit of revelation, but he also recognizes the ongoing encounter with that same Christ via the presence of the Holy Spirit. O’Collins also recognizes that faith is professed freely within a larger set of factors, such as love and hope.

Regarding the development of O’Collins’s thoughts about the nature of revelation and its relationship to history, one can say that his basic ideas regarding these issues were laid out briefly in his Theology and Revelation (1968); in Foundations of Theology (1970) he develops the objective aspect of these themes and then investigated the subjective response to revelation in

Fundamental Theology (1981). In this last work O’Collins explicitly builds his model of experience and weds it to a Rahnerian transcendental orientation. His book Retrieving 102

Fundamental Theology (1993) widens the scope of his considerations and develops the themes of symbolism and biblical . O’Collins’s Rethinking Fundamental Theology (2013) recapitulates a good portion of all four of these works in summary form. O’Collins’s ideas regarding revelation and history developed over the years as a deepening of an original impulse.

From his original emphasis on revelation as personal and salvific (1968), he later engaged the views of German theologians on the nature of revelation and its relationship with history (1970), and he continues to deepen his thought on the anthropological dimensions of the encounter with

God that takes place in revelation (1981). The scholars and perspectives that O’Collins encountered drew him into dialogue with a variety of schools of thought, yet his theology maintains its original format.

The influences on O’Collins’s view of the nature of revelation and history are manifold.

His indebtedness to Rahner is apparent. He admits this clearly throughout his discussion of the transcendental aspects of experience. O’Collins’s developing model of experience contains several important insights related to the nature of experience but also faces certain challenges, several of which will be addressed in our final critique. However, it is worth noting here that it is unclear how O’Collins’s model of experience avoids what calls a “naïve realism.” A naïve realist thinks they know the world immediately, by the “sum of what is seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelt [and] felt” instead of a world mediated by meaning.370 In

Lonergan’s eyes, a naïve realist has an awareness of only a fragment of the totality available to them. Knowing, rather, involves more than seeing. It involves experiencing, understanding, judging, and believing. “The reality known is not just looked at; it is given in experience,

370 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 328. 103 organized and extrapolated by understanding, posited by judgment and belief.”371 Knowledge requires an intellectual conversion that avoids both a strict empiricist perspective which restricts knowledge to sense experience and an idealist perspective which holds that the world is not real, but ideal. While O’Collins clearly does not stray towards an idealist perspective, an empiricist view may be present. In Fundamental Theology O’Collins explains that the very first aspect of experience is immediacy.372 He also recognizes that all experience has meaning, which in his understanding means experience “makes sense.373 What is unclear in his list of the various aspects of experience is how they work together to avoid merely “seeing” the world. In his defense, O’Collins is aware of naïve realism and critiques Luedemann’s view of human knowledge as falling into this perspective.374 But while the various aspects of O’Collins’s understanding of experience are certainly true in some fashion, Lonergan’s key epistemological insight, that knowledge of reality is gained through experience, understanding, judging and believing, is missing in some aspects of O’Collins’s theology.

The Second Vatican Council also plays an important part in O’Collins’s work. O’Collins endorses and draws on Dei Verbum frequently and often connects his particular ideas with passages in Dei Verbum.375 What is unclear is if Dei Verbum and other Second Vatican Council documents are the source of his thought or if he finds support for already existing ideas in them which he then develops. It is clear that he focuses on certain themes and develops them

371 Ibid. 372 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 33. 373 Ibid., 39. 374 O’Collins, Easter Faith: Believing in the Risen Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 2. 375 See for example his discussion of Dei Verbum’s language of revelation being both in the past and actualized in the present in Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 87-89. 104 throughout his work and considers his theology a legitimate expression of key teachings of the

Council.

Regarding other influences on his view of revelation, history and experience, much of

O’Collins’s insight into salvation history leans heavily on the work of Cullmann, although

O’Collins is careful to mark points of both agreement and disagreement. Many of O’Collins’s distinctions regarding the nature of revelation have been forged through discussion and interaction with a wide range of theologians. Both Bultmann and Barth, for example, were given consideration in Foundations of Theology with reference to the nature of revelation.

O’Collins’s theological approach to history and revelation has several strong points. His understanding of these topics engages several leading European theologians. He recognizes both the role of faith as a presupposition in his discussion, as well as the importance of philosophy in the theological project. He embraces a shift from a propositional model of revelation to a personal model, but not at the complete expense of the propositional. He develops his understanding of experience so that the transcendental orientation of the subject can be properly understood in the personal encounter that revelation allows. He clarified and defined the term

“history” and notes the strengths and weaknesses of over- and undervaluing its impact on faith.

His ideas parallel the direction he finds in Dei Verbum, noting the salvific aspects of revelation as well as the personalism of God’s self-revelation. O’Collins’s use of experience allows him to distinguish various moments of revelation as either foundational or dependent. This in turn allows him to clarify the role of Tradition and the magisterium in communicating revelation— that is, of enabling a personal encounter with God’s self-communication in the realm of experience. 105

One evident strength of O’Collins’s approach is that in contrast to earlier scholastic-based forms of fundamental theology, O’Collins offers an understanding that does not use revelation and historic events as proofs that validate the credibility of revelation. In emphasizing the role of the person and experience as well as the inner nature of revelation as an act of encounter,

O’Collins recognizes that history plays a constitutive role in the personal act of coming to faith.

This understanding of the relationship between history, revelation, and faith plays an important part in his consideration of Jesus and his resurrection.

While O’Collins adopts and develops several specific insights into the nature of revelation in his fundamental theology, this development suffers from difficulties (as noted at the end of section 2.1). O’Collins identifies and explains in general the mediatory means through which God commonly communicates Himself in experience by delineating several factors and characteristics of said experience. His insights are helpful, but he does not place these various aspects into the context of an over-reaching or model. He eschews previous models in the hope of creating in general a “neat and tidy” view of experience.376 He does not provide a comprehensive model himself which leads to a difficulty: a unifying element is lacking. In the absence of a scheme and/or model in which to understand the process of experience, O’Collins’s view of revelation, understood as God’s self-communication received in the transcendentally understood realm of experience, remains fragmented. This observation does not undermine the value of what he proposes, but does highlight its limitations. The creation or adoption of a more detailed schema or model in which to understand and organize the various aspects of experience would be helpful.

376 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 33. Chapter 3. Christocentrism and the Resurrection

3.0 Introduction

As noted in the introduction (Chapter 1), Neo-Scholastic theology divided theology into two distinct parts: apologetic or fundamental theology, and dogmatic theology. Jesus was often considered first from an apologetic perspective, which then resulted in a lack of a unified dogmatic Christology. Progress in addressing contemporary issues, such as the consciousness of

Christ and the impact of historical studies on our understanding of Jesus, was therefore slowed or impeded.

John Galvin points out that modern Catholic theologians have moved past this impasse and now engage the issue of Christ’s identity while seeking to give a unified account of Christ.

Foundational issues concerning exegesis of the Biblical accounts and a desire to “address the specific challenges of modernity” have moved to the forefront of discussion in theological circles.377 Galvin notes that beyond the engagement with the meaning of creedal statements, greater attention has been paid to foundational issues that deal with the grounds of belief in

Christ. These foundational concerns tend to focus on Christ from “below” rather than the

“above” perspective favored in Neo-Scholasticism. In the case of Christology from below, Jesus is approached in the context of his human history. High Christology is developed from the perspective of Christ as the and second person of the Trinity.378

Francis Schüssler Fiorenza frames the discussion of Jesus by noting that while Saint Paul affirmed the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus for faith, a claim reaffirmed by the teachings

377 Galvin, “Jesus Christ,” in Systematic Theology, 257. 378 See O’Collins’s discussion in Christology, 16–17. 106

107 of the Church, many critical historians today challenge the historicity of the event and many theologians have tried to reinterpret it. Schüssler Fiorenza notes that theologians must now grapple with the historical accounts and the emergent belief in Jesus’ resurrection and determine to what degree the resurrection should be the foundation for Christianity.379 One theologian, who has written extensively on the topic of Jesus and the resurrection since the shift indicated by

Galvin, is Gerald O’Collins. His concerns have included fundamental theological issues pertaining to Christ as the ground of belief.380

O’Collins’s Christocentric understanding of revelation builds upon his views on the relationship between revelation and history (see chapter 2). Although revelation includes all the events in salvation history, interpreted by the word and received in faith, God’s self- communication reached its climax in the life, teachings, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Of these aspects of Jesus’ life, O’Collins considers Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection as most significant. While avoiding a rationalistic approach, O’Collins attempts to clarify the historical facts and meaning surrounding the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith with a special emphasis on the resurrection. The resurrection and how it is understood, plays a unique role in the decision of faith, since it is in the resurrected Christ that faith resides. O’Collins develops the theme of how the resurrected Christ is present throughout history and is mediated in

379 Schüssler Fiorenza, Foundational Theology, 3. See pp. 5–28 for a discussion of how traditional, transcendental, and historical-critical approaches to theology have dealt with the resurrection. 380 O’Collins traces his interest in the resurrection to a 1967 invitation to speak at Penbroke College, Cambridge, by Henry Hart, who was the dean of Queen’s College. See Gerald O’Collins, “A Theological ,” in Shaping a Theological Mind: Theological Context and Methodology, ed. Darren C. Marks (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishers, 2002), 99. The earlier discussion here (see chapter 2), concerning O’Collins’s view of the nature of revelation and its relationship to history, becomes specific and concrete in the life of Jesus as the fullness of God’s self-communication in history. 108 various ways, most importantly through experience, in what O’Collins terms the “experiential correlate.”

O’Collins’s ideas concerning Christ and the resurrection will be examined under six general thematic topics. Examined first (3.1) will be the Christocentric nature of revelation and

O’Collins’s emphasis on the fact that Jesus is the fullness of God’s personal self-communication.

Second (3.2), the resurrection will be examined specifically as the pivotal point for faith in its role as the central proclamation of the Church. The third section (3.3) will examine O’Collins’s thought concerning the relationship between the resurrection and history, where he seeks to clarify what aspects of the resurrection can and what aspects cannot be examined by historical method. The fourth section (3.4) will examine how the nature of the resurrected Christ as

“glorified” allows Jesus to exist in a new relationship to history. The fifth section (3.5) will examine O’Collins’s ideas concerning the ongoing presence of Christ; the final section (3.6) will consider how this ongoing presence plays a part in what O’Collins terms the “experiential correlate.” O’Collins’s general views about revelation and history are brought into focus dramatically in the life of Christ, and more specifically in the resurrection.381 This presentation will generally move diachronically through his work, noting how his ideas develop over time.

3.1 Christocentric Nature of Faith and Revelation

O’Collins adheres strongly to the idea that Christ is the central and most important revelation of God. Since revelation is a personal encounter with God’s self-communication, it is

381 This section will not give a comprehensive explanation of O’Collins’s Christology and theology of the resurrection in this section, rather I will summarize his main arguments as they pertain to fundamental theology. O’Collins tends to use the name “Jesus” when referring to the historical person as encountered by the Apostles, and the name “Christ” when referring to the person now recognized as God’s self-communication in faith though he is not consistent in this regard. 109 in Jesus that mankind encountered God most fully. Throughout his writings, in regards to faith in the resurrected Christ, O’Collins is preoccupied with maintaining a balance that recognizes the importance of history but not at the expense of the free decision of faith and the gift of grace from God. O’Collins returns frequently to what he deems a balance between history and faith, often in dialogue with what he considers imbalanced positions. This section will examine how

O’Collins understands this Christocentrism, explain more precisely his understanding of foundational and dependent revelation in light of this Christocentric outlook, and specify the distinction and corrections he makes regarding what he calls historical maximizers and minimizers.

O’Collins’s concern with a Christocentric outlook and the proper balance between history and faith can be found in his earliest writings. In Theology and Revelation (1968) O’Collins explains that revelation is most fully understood through the person of Christ, who invites us through faith into a relationship with God.382 Revelation in Christ is definitive, the final revelation to which all earlier revelations lead.383 In Christ the new is established and disclosed. As Dei Verbum, ch. 1, points out, after Christ the Church awaits no new public revelation.384 Thus, Christ is the unrepeatable revealer385 and the savior of all.386 O’Collins explains that Jesus is the universal savior in that through his passion, death and resurrection, he calls all people to relationship with God. O’Collins both contracts the source of salvation to

Christ alone while simultaneously expanding the reach of salvation to all people. This exclusive and universal aspect of Christ’s role is important in O’Collins’s ecumenical insights.

382 O’Collins, Theology and Revelation, 74. 383 Ibid., 40. 384 Ibid., 41. See Dei Verbum, 4. 385 Ibid., 45. 386 Ibid., 68. 110

In Foundations of Theology (1970) O’Collins further explains his Christocentric outlook, noting that all theologians should recognize the Christological nature of revelation. He explains that Jesus was not just “more” revelation. His presence was unique and the full revelation of God that all other previous revelation only hinted at.387 O’Collins clarifies three points that he argues theologians must take into consideration when examining the life of Jesus and the significance of

Christ for faith. First, one does not have the materials necessary to write a modern biography of

Jesus.388 Second, the Gospels are not biographies but instead are of faith: “the gospels may not be dismissed as simply the devotional literature of the early Church or primitive books of common worship. But neither may they be interpreted as ordinary historical sources from ancient times.”389 Third, following the findings of , he notes that the Gospels are sources on the belief of the early Church and only secondarily sources for the historical reconstruction of Jesus. Ignoring these three points could lead to imbalanced views of Christ and his significance for faith.

In Fundamental Theology (1981), where O’Collins develops his ideas on the subjective, human pole of revelation, he notes how in experience Christ continues to be the central expression of God’s self-communication today. O’Collins emphasizes the fact that the “coming of Christ event” can never be exhausted by the word.390 In the Scriptures, for instance, multiple accounts are needed just to give the basics about Jesus in the experience of the Apostles. These by no means exhaust what could be said. In addition, O’Collins revisits the importance of the fact that the event takes precedence over the later interpretive word and directly applies this fact

387 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 60–61. 388 Ibid., 174. 389 Ibid., 175. 390 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 81, 98. 111 to Christ as the central “event” in revelation.391 This distinction means that the actual event in history must always be consulted, and that the “word,” proclamation, or later beliefs must always be “in regards to” the actual event or events. This distinction protects belief and proclamation from being disconnected from the reality of actual revelation, thus in essence avoiding fideism.

In support of this emphasis on event over word, he notes how Paul’s sees all later divine action as completing what was inaugurated in Christ.392

In support of his point that Christ is the climax of revelation, O’Collins draws attention to the Synoptic Gospels that portray Christ as the teacher par excellence especially. In Matthew

28:20 the divine teacher “is identified with the message he proclaims and will remain with his disciples ‘always, to the close of the age.’”393 Christ the teacher can never be repeated. The

Gospel of John presents Jesus as the definitive word self-communicated by the Father.394 Dei

Verbum 5, followed the same lines by emphasizing the absolute nature of Christ in the : “Through Christ God has established a definitive and eternal covenant with humanity so as to mediate revelation and salvation until the end of the world.”395 This variety of sources contribute insights into Jesus as God’s revelation. In O’Collins’s view, all these distinctive contributions validate his insight that God’s self-communication reached a climax in Jesus: “[I]n the and later we find an interplay of motifs which justify identifying Christ’s life, death and resurrection as the absolute climax in the human experience of God’s revealing and saving activity.”396

391 Ibid., 75. 392 Ibid., 98. 393 Ibid., 98. 394 Ibid. 395 Ibid., 99. 396 Ibid. 112

This understanding of the life of Christ as the climax of revelation leads O’Collins to a distinction between foundational and dependent revelation.397 O’Collins explains that the

Apostles experienced revelation and salvation in Christ in a unique and unrepeatable manner that gives their witness a normative quality. It is not normative in the sense often emphasized in the past, where it was argued that the Scriptures were authored by God and hence had guaranteed normativity. Rather, O’Collins looks to the experiential closeness of the Apostles to the Christ event—understood as the fullness of revelation—as the criterion for the normativity of the

Scriptures. The writing of these experiences was, of course, guided by the Holy Spirit, but it is the actual experience of the fullness of revelation in the person of Christ that makes the Gospels normative. This distinction then between foundational and dependent, far from being an arbitrary division, is based on the centrality of Christ as the definitive revelation of God.

O’Collins’s strong emphasis on a Christocentric outlook leads him to critique other views that consider the relationship between the historical knowledge of Jesus’ life and its relationship to faith. O’Collins disagrees with what he calls the approaches of the historical maximizer and historical minimizer approaches, each of which distorts the particularity of Christian revelation.398 He engages Bultmann as the most obvious example of a minimizer, who de- emphasizes the role of history in faith. O’Collins explains that Bultmann’s position cuts the historical person of Jesus off from the later Kerygma, the latter being the object of faith.399

According to Bultmann, it is the proclaimed Kerygma today to which one must respond and from which faith flows; historical knowledge of Christ is irrelevant. This leads to problems, according to O’Collins. Bultmann’s move turns the Gospel into an “objectless word-event” that is salvific

397 See (2.2) above. 398 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 172. 399 Ibid., 176–177. 113 in itself, cut off from any originating person.400 A second problem with Bultmann lies is his approach gives one no justification to retain even the basic fact of Jesus’ existence.401 O’Collins finds it baffling that many scholars accepted Bultmann’s minimizing position. Ernst Käsemann, of course, insisted that the form of Jesus’ life was significant for faith, which turned many scholars back to the issue of Jesus’ historical existence.402

Maximizers overemphasize the role of historical data in faith. Such attempts to find the historical Jesus often returned to the trend criticized by Albert Schweitzer, in which scholars tended to find a Jesus who looked much like themselves. While new evidence, such as the

Qumran findings, has been helpful in understanding the period in which Christ lived, O’Collins notes that a significant tendency in this quest has been a renewed confidence that the truth about

Jesus can be found. Jeremias, who has embraced this confidence, holds that advances in scholarship—such as , form criticism, new information about first-century

Palestine, deeper knowledge of Aramaic, and a deeper understanding of eschatology—all protect scholars from the mistakes noted earlier by Schweitzer.403 However, O’Collins disagrees in that the techniques and growth in knowledge do not immunize the scholar from mistakes and personal bias; “As Käsemann expresses the matter, to rest one’s faith on exegesis in the way

Jeremias proposes would be more dangerous than to walk blindfolded into a minefield.”404

O’Collins this overemphasis on historical fact the “maximizing tendency,” a tendency to overinflate the importance of the historical Jesus for faith, undermining the need for grace or

400 Ibid., 177. 401 Ibid., 178. 402 Ernst Käsemann, “The Problem of the Historical Jesus” in Essays on New Testament Themes, trans. W.J. Montague (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1964), 15-47. 403 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 179. 404 Ibid., 180. 114 freedom in choice. This view is illustrated by Pannenberg’s approach, which places importance on past events alone and places less importance on the proclamation now. The maximizing position contrasts with that of Bultmann, who minimizes the past and places all his emphasis on the proclamation here and now.

O’Collins attempts to steer a middle course between the minimizers, who overemphasize the present proclamation of Christ, and the maximizers, who overemphasize the historical reconstruction of Jesus, by maintaining that the past and present should not be separated. God’s self-disclosure in the life and death of Jesus does not remain “back there.”405 God reveals Christ to those who receive revelation now. The past event and the presence of God in the present are an inseparable unity. Revelation is not a fact unto itself but requires a person to receive it in the present. For O’Collins, “as a living reality revelation does not hang in the air but is present only in and to living, believing men.”406 In short, in dealing with minimizers and maximizers,

O’Collins stakes out a “both-and” solution:

the true tension between the concreteness of a given human life and the universality of Christ’s lordship must not be relaxed by devaluing either past origins or present proclamation. We meet God in the cosmic Christ who encounters each person now, as well as in the peculiarity and strangeness of a first-century Galilean.407

Christ remains the central and most important element of faith, even many centuries after his incarnated existence on earth.

O’Collins returned to the issue of the minimizers and maximizers in Interpreting Jesus

(1983). In contrast to the maximizers, O’Collins notes that the minimizers pay little heed to what

Jesus claimed, knew, or did. They hold that are correct regardless of these factors.

405 Ibid., 182. 406 Ibid. 407 Ibid., 185. 115

Again, O’Collins attempts a middle path. He explains that doctrine should not totally rest upon what Jesus said and did, since other factors play a part in interpretation and faith. These factors include Old Testament revelation, Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit’s influence on the early Apostles, and the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit. Against the minimizer position

O’Collins holds that one cannot discount what Christ did, since to know him now is to know the same Christ who existed then. He adds an interesting point: Church Christology was not a movement from low to high Christology, but rather from implicit, or indirectly implied revelation about Christ, to a more fully developed explicit proclamation. Christ’s original claims were not modest claims that were later maximized by the early Church. Instead O’Collins holds that the early Church’s understanding of Christ developed an already present, implicit understanding of Christ. The Church’s understanding of Christ began with encounters and historical events and then developed into an understanding of the universal significance of Christ for all, not the other way around.408

In sum, O’Collins holds to the centrality of Jesus, a Christocentrism. He nuances this centrality in the balance between the historical accounts and the faith derived from the historical person himself. This centrality should not move to either a minimizing or a maximizing extreme where the historical figure of Jesus is almost completely taken out of the picture or overemphasized to the neglect of other revelatory factors in the now of coming to faith.

3.2 The Centrality of the Resurrection for Belief

408 O’Collins, Interpreting Jesus, 69. 116

O’Collins’s Christology is informed by his understanding of and emphasis on the resurrection. From the more general observation that Christ is the fullness of God’s self- communication in history, O’Collins focuses his attention on Christ’s resurrection as the central moment and apex of this communication. The centrality of the resurrection is reflected in the fact that the resurrection is the central focus and point of belief for Christians, as reflected in liturgy and theology. He does not neglect the Incarnation and Jesus’s life and teachings in his

Christology, but he considers the resurrection as containing the central meaning of Jesus’s life as well as being the height of God’s self-communication. In contrast to those who stress the life and teachings of Jesus as central (often to the neglect of the resurrection), O’Collins notes that

Christians are baptized into Jesus’s passion, death, and resurrection. Saint Paul defined the

Christian God as the “God of the resurrection.”409 Everything concerning Christianity follows from this basic truth that Christ is risen. The resurrection embodies the fullness of revelation410 and plays an important role in mediating Christ’s ongoing presence.411

In his early work Theology and Revelation (1968), O’Collins explains that Christ is the fullness of the revelation of God in history412 and that the supreme event in this revelation takes place in his death and resurrection.413 He looks to John’s Gospel to elucidate this point. Since the signs that Jesus performed during his ministry failed to bring about faith in those around him (Jn

12.37–43), O’Collins notes John’s explanation that “it remains for his death and resurrection to

409 Gerald O’Collins, Jesus Risen (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1987), 148. 410 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 159. 411 The ongoing presence of Christ will be discussed below, in section 4.3. This section will examine O’Collins’s reasons for emphasizing the resurrection and the sources he draws upon to make this claim. Later sections will examine the implications this centrality has for O’Collins’s theology. 412 O’Collins, Theology and Revelation , 26. 413 Ibid., 38. 117 mediate the revelation he brings.”414 Though only briefly discussed, this initial point about the centrality of the resurrection becomes important for O’Collins in his later writings.

In Foundations of Theology (1970), O’Collins notes that the proclamation of Christ’s resurrection comes from the earliest layers of statements concerning Jesus.415 While later considerations concerning Jesus, such as those discussed in the Church councils, dealt with the incarnation, the earliest faith focused on the resurrection. For faith, the resurrection was not only logically foundational, but also chronologically so.

O’Collins notes in Jesus Risen (1987) that the resurrection was often treated in the days before the Second Vatican Council as part of apologetics.416 The resurrection proved Jesus’ claim to be God’s appointed messenger as well as the Son of God. O’Collins finds this approach limited since the resurrection serves merely as a “proof” for Jesus’ claim of divinity when it is so much more. In contrast to this perspective, O’Collins holds that “[w]hen properly understood, it is the truth about God from which everything flows.”417 Paul focused on the resurrection as the specifically Christian manner of understanding God. If one misunderstands the resurrection, then one misrepresents God, since to Paul, God is the God of the resurrection.418 From this basic truth about God “everything else flows.” All other beliefs in Christianity “unfold what is implied in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”419 Without the resurrection, the cross would not reveal God; it

414 Ibid. 415 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 154. 416 O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 148ff. 417 Ibid., 148. Emphasis his. 418 See 1 Cor 15:15. 419 O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 148. 118 would not have been the instrument of our salvation; and the Church would not be brought into existence.420

Why is the resurrection so important in the role of revelation and salvation? First, the resurrection reveals Christ’s relationship with the Father. The resurrection reveals that the life of

Jesus was the human life of the son of God. Further it reveals Christ as Lord, helping impart awareness of Christ’s divine majesty.421 Acknowledging Christ as Lord gives rise to the call to worship Christ. The Easter stories, in a narrative genre, call for the of the risen Jesus, now identified as the divine Lord. O’Collins notes John as an example, where Jesus is addressed as “My Lord and my God” by Thomas (John 20:28).

The resurrection also plays an important role in the doctrine of the Trinity and the

Christian view of the created world. For O’Collins “the doctrine of the Trinity points to and gathers up the self-revelation of God communicated through Christ’s resurrection.”422 In the early proclamation of the Gospel, the Trinity is perceived as active in the life of Christ and the

Church. It is not as developed an understanding of the Trinity as one finds in the later councils, but it is present nonetheless in such biblical accounts as Christ’s (:9–11, parallels) and Peter’s address at (Acts 2:14–36). Creation itself is also better understood in light of the resurrection in that the created awaits its fulfillment and completion. As Christ rose from the dead, so shall one rise along with the cosmos. O’Collins highlights the hope of redemption for our bodies once the world ends. This hope is elucidated by

Paul (Rom 8:18–25). It is also described by the author of Revelation (21:1) as the transformation of the world into a new and earth. By deepening and broadening our understanding of

420 Ibid., 149. 421 Ibid., 151. 422 Ibid. 119

Christ’s resurrection, O’Collins moves beyond earlier apologetic theology in which the resurrection served primarily as a proof.

Returning to the issue of the centrality of the resurrection as the foremost moment of revelation, in Focus on Jesus (1996), O’Collins highlights Saint Paul and the Gospel writers as being primarily focused on the resurrection. Drawing on a commonly held view, O’Collins notes that Saint Paul, who wrote the first New Testament books (chronologically speaking), placed the

Paschal mystery into the center of his thought. Mark’s Gospel, written several years later, has been described as a passion narrative with a long introduction. Later Matthew and Luke wrote their Gospels with Mark’s gospel “in front of them.” John of course began his Gospel by linking

Jesus to his origins in the . O’Collins sees in this understanding of the development of the New Testament writings a progressive concern for the origins of Christ that began from an original focus on the .423

O’Collins develops various insights into the centrality of the resurrection, noting especially the impact the resurrection had on the early Church. In each instance noted above he attempts to bring attention to the resurrection, not as an apologetic proof, but as the central illuminating insight of faith. The following sections will examine the content of this centrality of the resurrection and the implications this centrality has for faith.

3.3 Resurrection and History

If the Church and the faith the Church proclaims find their source in the resurrection, the question arises: How much or little of the event can be known historically? Is the resurrection of

423 O’Collins and Kendall, Focus on Jesus, 21–22. 120

Jesus a fact that can be investigated and proven? What level of certitude regarding the factual status of the resurrection is required for faith? Pre-Vatican II approaches to the resurrection assumed a historical certitude in the accounts and focused on the event as an apologetic “proof.”

O’Collins, in contrast to earlier approaches, distinguishes between those aspects of the resurrection accounts that can be verified and those that are accepted as testimony. When accepted as true and recognized as revelation, the resurrection accounts play an important part in the decision of faith. This section will focus on O’Collins’s discussion of what can and cannot be known historically concerning the resurrection accounts.424 By defining the nature of the resurrection and in what manner the risen Christ was encountered by his followers, O’Collins clarifies what can and cannot be known via historical investigation.

According to O’Collins the nature of the resurrection determines what can historically be known. In Man and His New Hopes (1969), O’Collins notes that Christ’s resurrection returned him to life not as a resuscitated corpse but as a newly risen and glorified self. He came back as

Spirit-filled and as the source of life for all. Because of the unique nature of Christ’s transformation in the resurrection, some aspects of the resurrection story are not open to historical investigation and some are. The resurrection event itself is not properly considered

“historical” because it did not happen “in” space or time in the same manner as other historical events, which are “localizable in space and datable in time.”425 If the event of the resurrection had happened in space and time as historians understood the terms, then “he would not be the risen Christ.”426 Christ’s accessibility to historians does not include the resurrection itself nor

424 The next section (3.4) will examine O’Collins’s more theological speculation concerning what the resurrection means for Christ’s ongoing presence. 425 Gerald O’Collins, Man and His New Hopes (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 69. 426 Ibid. 121

Jesus’s transformed glorified mode of existence.427 His new precludes any further investigation into Jesus as an ordinary human being, since he was transformed and now transcended the world of space and time. This does not mean that the risen Christ was not accessible to the Apostles, to whom he chose to appear, but rather that Jesus’s unique spirit-filled existence following the resurrection cannot be examined by historians.428 Historians have access, however, to the accounts of those who encountered him and their reactions to the transformed

Christ. “We can ascertain through historical methods that there was an Easter faith and can establish what its content was.”429 These accounts can be investigated, alongside the empty tomb, as another historically accessible “fact.”430

Regarding the testimonies that can be examined, O’Collins suggests two independent traditions, based on historical “kernels,” that can be verified and that strongly suggest actual historical events. A first tradition began with the women encountering the empty tomb (cf. Mark

16:1–8). Testimony from women was considered dubious, thereby granting the tradition a certain weight for factuality today.431 A second independent tradition finds its source in Peter and the

Apostles, who encounter Jesus. (cf. 1 Cor 15, a text that predates the Gospels). These accounts of encounters with Christ are extremely important since, as O’Collins holds, early Christian faith did not arise from the discovery of the empty tomb, but from the post-resurrection encounters.432

427 Ibid., 69-70. 428 The nature of the apostle’s encounter will be discussed below. 429 Ibid., 70. 430 Ibid., 68–70. 431 See chapters 2 and 4 of O’Collins’s Interpreting the Resurrection: Examining the Major Problems in the Stories of Jesus’ Resurrection (New York: Paulist Press, 1988) for an in-depth discussion of women as witnesses. He holds that if attempts were made to create a fabrication, male witnesses would have been used since “legend-makers do not normally invent positively unhelpful material.” 432 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 163. See also Gerald O’Collins, Believing in the Resurrection (New York: Paulist Press, 2012), 91–95, for a summary of his earlier discussions concerning the place of the empty tomb and the 122

O’Collins’s understanding of the risen Christ as transformed and transcending space and time raises the question concerning the nature of the encounters with him, the appearances recounted in the New Testament. Were his appearances actual events in history, or were they merely psychological events experienced privately in the minds of the Apostles and other witnesses? In Foundations of Theology (1970), O’Collins argues that something was required to bring about a complete reversal of his followers’ views that Jesus was dead. This something had to be more than just a psychological event on the part of the apostles. The witness accounts claim that their shift from the perception that Jesus was dead to a conviction that Jesus is alive was triggered by their encounter with a formerly dead but now alive person. “The primary purpose of the witnesses was to announce what God had done to Jesus, not to relate religious changes in other men.”433 The kernel from which their faith grew was, O’Collins claims, the factual reality of the resurrection. As Brian McDermott summarizes O’Collins’s point, “They experienced not only but also Jesus personally alive.”434

O’Collins rejects two extreme interpretations of the resurrection appearances. First,

O’Collins rejects the view that attempts to reduce the basis of their testimonies to psychological conditions or hallucinations based upon the interior life of Apostles. He also rejects the view that reads the entire biblical account as referring to an “inner-historical event”—a view that includes the idea that Jesus’ resurrection was merely the resuscitation of a corpse. This view ignores the unique events following the resurrection and discounts Christ’s glorified body. This second view, in O’Collins’s opinion, does not take into account the post-resurrection state of Christ, who was

resurrection appearances. For a short discussion on the symbolic value of the empty tomb, see O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 202. 433 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 164. Emphasis his. 434 Brian O. McDermott, Word Made Flesh: Dimensions of Christology (Minneapolis: Liturgical Press, 1993), 115. 123 not just a resurrected corpse, but a glorified body outside of the normal time and space continuum. In addition, O’Collins argues that the resurrection accounts cannot be reduced to miraculous visions, though it is true that Christ’s risen presence transcended normal human existence.435 Drawing from 1 Corinthians 15 and the Gospels, O’Collins makes the case that various aspects of the resurrection accounts can be historically investigated. The various accounts of the witnesses can be examined, while the risen Christ himself cannot.

These encounters, which happened in time and space and involved a transformed being who was no longer in time and space, raise questions. Thus, O’Collins asks: Could one have recorded the resurrection encounters with a camera? In other words, if someone had been present as an outside observer, what would they have seen? O’Collins says that the answer to this question is unclear and is not important, but the fact that the Apostles did meet him is.436

O’Collins explains that the risen Christ should not be understood as a pure spirit seen by means of purely interior visions, nor as a body that has returned to its previous bodily life: “his existence transcends a bodily existence in the earthly, historical sense.”437 He settles upon the view that the Apostles did see and hear the risen Christ, though in a manner differing from their normal, pre-resurrection encounters. For instance, Paul’s encounter with Christ on the road to

Damascus involved a flashing light and a voice (Acts 9:1–9). O’Collins concludes, “[T]he resurrection transcends history, and yet it is no purely supra-historical or extra-historical event.”438 The resurrection touches history and leaves traces in history. The resurrection then

435 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 166. 436 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 165. He returns to this point in The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, discussed below. 437 Ibid., 166. 438 Ibid., 168. 124 transforms Christ in such a way that he is “effectively present to men in history, even if he himself no longer belongs to history in their spatio-temporal sense.”439

Without falling into the pitfalls of reducing the resurrection to a mere interior vision or the resuscitation of a corpse, O’Collins explains how the apostles experienced the resurrection.

In The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1973), he turns to the language used in the biblical accounts.

In describing encounters with the risen Christ, Paul uses the word ōphthē in 1 Corinthians 15, meaning Christ “was seen.”440 O’Collins holds that Paul uses the term technically in reference to the resurrection appearances. These appearances require man’s involvement and impart a mission to proclaim the resurrection. Ōphthē further indicates that Christ initiated the events that constitute a visual episode of revelation. So, in the encounters of the risen Christ, there is an objective action of Christ disclosing himself, as well as a “subjective perception” of the person encountering Christ that included a visual component.441 The visual component is not merely a

“vision” on the person’s part: “this term, with its heavy connotations of modern psychological explanations, ignores the fact that Paul does not concern himself with psychological aspects of the events he reports.”442 The appearances were a “confrontation” with the risen Christ. 443

Thirty-nine years later, in Believing in the Resurrection (2012), O’Collins revisits the issue and augments an earlier explanation of the nature of the encounters with the risen Christ.

O’Collins notes that the transformed risen Christ, who is beyond the normal limitations of the universe, reveals himself to people while calling them to faith and mission involving “some kind

439 Ibid., 166. 440 O’Collins, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 7. 441 Ibid., 8-9. 442 Ibid., 9. 443 See William P. Loewe, “The Appearances of the Risen Lord: Faith, Fact and ,” Horizons 6, no. 2 (1979): 177–192, for a critique of O’Collins’s views on the resurrection appearances, which—while promoting a nuanced view of their being historical events—remain obscure. 125 of external perception.”444 He also points out that while it is difficult to reduce the accounts to a mere interior vision, it is also difficult to reduce the accounts to normal, everyday perception.

Seeing the risen Christ involved visual perception, but also went beyond it.445 O’Collins adds that the visual components require the extra element of grace in order to “see” him. This grace was not given to the guards at the tomb nor to Paul’s companions on the road to Damascus.

Those who encountered Christ needed “graced powers of perception” that made the person “in some sense” like Christ.446 This grace of perception required some preparation, though not to the extent “that by the time the passion arrived the original disciples were already fully prepared for

Easter faith.”447 The grace then did not leave the disciples as “purely passive observers,” but instead invited them into a freely chosen faith encounter with the risen Christ.448

Returning to The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1973), O’Collins clarifies the limitation and scope that historical investigation has in examining the resurrection and resurrection appearances. He states that historians follow a certain process of observing, discovering the empirical causality of what was observed, determining the intrinsic intelligibility of the events observed, and then offering an analogy to other events in history.449 In the case of the resurrection, however, the Gospel accounts do not suggest that such means would have been capable of verifying the event. O’Collins notes that if witnesses had been present at the times of

Jesus’ appearances there might not have been anything for someone outside of the encounter to observe. What may or may not have been visible to a neutral observer is unclear in the accounts.

444 O’Collins, Believing in the Resurrection, 64. 445 Ibid., 65. 446 Ibid., 76. 447 Ibid., 77. 448 Ibid., 78-79. 449 O’Collins, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 57–58. 126

O’Collins suggests that someone like Pilate, if present in the upper room when Christ appeared to the Apostles, “would most likely have seen at all.”450 He agrees with Reginald H.

Fuller, who he believes represents a scholarly consensus that the resurrection events were not open to neutral observers.451

Beyond observation, historians need to discern the causality of what they observed. The resurrection was, however, the result of divine intervention, and thus beyond the purview of historical science to ascertain. According to O’Collins the New Testament expounds the resurrection as a transit out of history into God’s glory and “attributes it to divine causality alone.”452 So while historical investigation seeks to determine the intelligibility of an event, the resurrection from the dead cannot be examined as a common causal event and remains beyond our comprehension. It completely transcends all other events. It was a uniquely new event, for while are lacking the resurrection itself lies beyond the scope of historical investigation. Christ was transformed into a glorified existence and the agent was God alone.453

Given the limitations of historical investigation, how does one come to know and believe in the resurrection? O’Collins holds that the acceptance of the resurrection is built on two general sources. The first source is the past evidence, and the second is present personal experience

450 Ibid., 58–59. 451 See Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narrative (: Fortress Press, 1980), 48. Fuller writes, “The resurrection of Jesus was conceived as the first and determinative (and therefore Christological) instance of the general resurrection of apocalyptic hope involving translation into an entirely new mode of existence. As such, it was not a ‘historical,’ but an eschatological and meta-historical event, occurring precisely at the point where history ends, but leaving its mark on history negatively in the empty tomb . . . and positively in the appearances.” O’Collins examines this issue in more detail in “The Uniqueness of the Easter Appearances” in Focus on Jesus, 111–127. 452 O’Collins, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 59. 453 Ibid., 59. 127

(discussed in 3.4). Both of these sources, neither of which can overrule or negate the need for the other, are required for faith.454

Regarding the first source, O’Collins raises the question of how evidence is weighted and accepted. O’Collins turns to a causal argument to suggest a reason why certain evidence is accepted today. This argument holds that the Church is unexplained if Christ died and remained dead. He points to C. F. D. Moule (1908–2007), who in his version of this argument notes that the historical phenomenon of the Church cannot be adequately explained by lies and misapprehensions.455 Not only the existence but also the distinctiveness of the early Church over and against requires a sufficient reason. O’Collins credits this view as having some credibility, but in the end he requires a better explanation that must come from the credibility of the testimony itself.

O’Collins defends his position in more recent books. In Easter Faith (2003), O’Collins defends his views against various forms of skepticism (i.e., the writings of Gerd Luedemann

(1946– ), A. J. M. Wedderburn (1942--), and Willi Marxsen (1919–1993)456 and clarifies earlier definitions. Several points warrant discussion here. O’Collins notes that various skeptics—and in fact all who engage in examination of the evidence of the resurrection—bring with them

“background theories” that predetermine in advance if they will accept the testimony of the

Apostles.457 For example, Marxsen holds that any rational appeal distorts faith. Trusting in the

454 O’Collins, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 64. 455 Ibid., 64. Found in C. D. F. Moule, Phenomenon of the New Testament (London, S.C.M. Press, 1967), 11 and 19. 456 See Gerd Luedemann, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: History, Experience, Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994); A. J. M. Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection (London: SCM Press, 1999), 120–126; and Willi Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (London: SCM Press, 1970), 150–154. All three attempt to explain the accounts of the resurrection by using explanations other than Christ’s actual bodily resurrection. 457 O’Collins, Easter Faith, 4–5. 128 testimony of the Apostles would undermine the trusting faith in Christ. To Marxsen faith does not just go beyond the evidence, it rather excludes the evidence.

Others, such as Luedemann, hold to “scientific” views that explain the resurrection experiences of the Apostles under the category of bereavement experiences.458 Earlier accounts are thus explained through analogous experiences today. O’Collins is critical of this analogous understanding of the resurrection account since analogies serve to aid in understanding and not to provide new knowledge; they serve to categorize knowledge achieved through other means.459

Indeed, the Church employs biblical and sacramental analogies to aid its understanding of the resurrection. But bereavement experiences and mystical experiences, while giving some insight, should not be pressed too closely, since O’Collins holds (in agreement with Rahner460) that the

Easter experiences were unique, sui generis.461 This is not to say that one cannot experience the power of the resurrection in one’s life today. Instead O’Collins here is arguing that one needs to be cautious in reducing the Easter experiences of the Apostles to commonly occurring events experienced today.462 Like Rahner, O’Collins holds that the resurrection happened during a definite phase in salvation history and carried with it a unique task, that of sharing the witness of their experiences. Looking at 1 Corinthians 15:8 (“last of all he appeared to me”) and John 20:29

(“You have believed because you have seen me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet

458 Ibid., 11-15. 459 O’Collins, Easter Faith, 7. 460 See Rahner’s Foundations of the Christian Faith, 276–277. Rahner holds the Easter experiences were unique in that the Apostles’ experience of the risen Christ cannot be repeated. The Apostles were aware of the peculiar nature of the Easter experiences in that these experiences were given to them from “without” and were different than the visionary experiences with which they were familiar. The experiences were given in faith and yet were the basis and ground for their faith. As unique, these experiences were reserved to a “definite phase in salvation history.” The experiences carried with them a task of passing on an account (witness) because of their unique nature. 461 O’Collins, Easter Faith, 18. 462 Although the Easter event is a sui generis experience in foundational revelation, O’Collins clearly holds that the ongoing presence of Christ risen is encountered in various ways. See O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 174. This ongoing presence as well as the experiential correlate will be examined in chapter 4. 129 believe.”), O’Collins holds that there is a clear implication, especially in the second passage, that later followers are called to believe without seeing what the Easter witnesses actually saw and believed. O’Collins infers from this that the early Church leaders received a special mission that was “irreplaceable” for the later Church. He links the unique quality of the experiences themselves with the unique mission to bear witness.463

In Believing in the Resurrection (2012), O’Collins provides an interesting story that illustrates his point about dealing with the role of evidence in belief. In Maurice West’s novel

The Clowns of God,464 West tells of a discussion between the pope and a skeptical German friend: “After debating some issue of faith the pope remarks, ‘Carl, old friend, there is never enough evidence.’” This applies as well to the resurrection. There is never enough evidence, but fortunately there is more to faith than historical evidence. “Such faith does not remain within the limits of the evidence alone. Merely knowing the evidence and even finding it very persuasive does not mean knowing him personally in faith.”465 O’Collins holds that historical considerations show that Easter faith is not irrational, but a credible option. Yet faith goes beyond the evidence:

“the external testimony of Christians and the internal working of the Holy Spirit come together.”466

3.4 Christ’s Ongoing Risen Presence

For O’Collins, faith is Christocentric, and belief in the resurrection is central to that faith.

Aspects of the resurrection can be historically investigated, though some aspects happened

463 O’Collins, Easter Faith, 18–19. 464 Maurice West, The Clowns of God (New York: Murrow, 1981). 465 O’Collins, Believing in the Resurrection, 134. 466 Ibid., 137. 130 outside the realm of historical inquiry. This raises the further question of how this event, which happened nearly two thousand years ago, is believed today. In addition, one should note that for someone to “believe,” they not only believe in the fact of the resurrection, but in the resurrected

Christ himself. How does this belief in the resurrected Christ happen today? In answer to this question, O’Collins suggests a theological concept of Christ’s ongoing presence. Christ, now risen, ascended, and glorified, remains in some sense present to all history. This presence is mediated in various ways that are not foundational revelation, but rather create the possibility of encounter with Christ in the realm of human experience.467

O’Collins lays the groundwork for his view on Christ’s ongoing presence in Man and His

New Hopes (1969) by examining the resurrection, Christ’s relation to history, and the relationship between the resurrection and faith. With his death, Christ passed out of time as one experiences it, and with his resurrection he was reinserted back into time and history, but now in a glorified state.468 When Christ rose, he no longer existed in what is considered normal

“historical” existence. This does not mean that the New Testament is not in fact historical. As noted above (3.3), O’Collins holds that the Apostles’ account is open to historical inquiry. Using history one can ascertain the existence of an Easter faith and what its content was.469 But it does mean that Christ—in a certain way—exists in all history. The resurrection gives Jesus’s humanity access to all time. To jump briefly ahead chronologically, O’Collins, in Focus on Jesus

(1996), explains that in regard to the post-resurrection Christ’s relationship to humanity, “the

467 The next two sections will first examine how O’Collins views the transformative power of the resurrection as enabling the ongoing presence of Christ, and will then examine the interaction of the individual and Christ revealed in a concept he calls the “experiential correlate.” The concept of presence will return in the fourth chapter on ecumenism and inter-religious , where the ongoing presence of Christ is examined in light of non-Christian beliefs and practices. 468 O’Collins, Man and His New Hopes, 68. 469 Ibid., 69–70. 131 resurrection lifted Jesus beyond historical limits to become the effective way to God for every man and woman.” Jesus is “the light of the world who enlightens everyone, the one name under heaven through which we can be saved, the unique mediator between human beings and God.”470

In Jesus Our Redeemer (2007) O’Collins clarifies the meaning of Christ’s ongoing presence. Christ undergoes a transformation through his death and resurrection. Where he was limited previously to a specific time and place, the resurrection effected a radical transformation that did not suppress his humanity but rather “glorified and freed his human condition to be actively present everywhere, so as to both lovingly (and mysteriously) the lives of all men and women and to fashion a new, visible community of love, which the New Testament presents through the figure of the groom/bride relationship.” The resurrection enhanced his body so that he can now in an “enhanced” fashion. Now Christ ministers via signs to the whole

Church through the sacramental system of the Church.471 The resurrected Christ, because of his risen nature, can be encountered today by means of a commitment in faith that is mediated and shared in a faith community.

How then does one experience this ongoing presence of Christ? How is this presence mediated? O’Collins notes various ways this mediation takes place. In Jesus Risen (1985),

O’Collins holds that theologians should assist in the communication of Christ through exploring relevant symbols, reflecting imaginatively on human experience, and drawing on the Church’s liturgy.472 It is through these three avenues that the centrality of the Paschal mystery is most fully

470 O’Collins and Kendall, Focus on Jesus, 15. 471 Gerald O’Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 201. 472 O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 201–208. 132 communicated. The liturgy specifically holds his attention, since it is in the liturgy that Christ is

“specially present and revealed in a rich variety of ways.”473

O’Collins enumerates several other ways in which one can find the ongoing presence of

Christ. Taking a cue from John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptor Hominis,474 O’Collins notes the presence of Christ in the millions of people who are united to Christ. Christ is closely united to those who suffer. This is exemplified in Christ’s own death, as indicated by the remark of the

Centurion, “Truly this man was the Son of God” (:39). The Jewish people have also consistently symbolized Christ’s continuing presence in all human suffering: “No other race as such has symbolized as they do the divine intentions for human beings.”475 Beyond the specific revelation to God’s , O’Collins notes the full range of events that make up contemporary history. These events can manifest Christ’s salvific actions. Ecumenical dialogue, for example, has the potential to enrich our knowledge of the ongoing presence of Christ because it “encourages us to acknowledge and the risen Christ as, in some way or another, actively there in other religions even before any contact with the Gospel has taken place.”476

O’Collins holds that various cultures and faiths provide “a matrix” where saving revelation exists and should be reflected upon.477

O’Collins continues the Christological development of the idea of presence in

Christology (1995). He begins with human experience. Humans “go beyond themselves not only in their openness to the mystery of one another but even more in their openness to the infinite.

473 Ibid., 206. 474 Pope John Paul II, Redeemer of Man Redemptor Hominis (15 March 1979) Acta Apostolica Sedis 71 (1979): 257–324. 475 O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 207. 476 Ibid., 208. 477 Ibid. 133

Made in the divine image and likeness . . . they remain restlessly open to God.”478 Engaging the work of Karlfried Graf von Dürckheim (1896–1988), O’Collins sees the human condition as “an incessant search for the absolute fullness of life, meaning and love which is only found in

God.”479 O’Collins’s further develops the concept of presence by reflecting on Christ’s transcendence. This transcendence is possible because the Second Person of the Trinity existed before the Incarnation.480 This means Christ transcends temporal categories. This does not remove Christ from time, since transcends time but is “not apart from it.”481 Therefore,

Christ—insofar as one speaks of his divine nature—is immediately present at all moments in time. At this point in Christology O’Collins does not address the new situation concerning

Christ’s presence after the resurrection.482

In the last chapter of Christology, O’Collins attempts to synthesize and draw out the instances of presence found throughout the earlier chapters. Christ’s presence was first seen in the creation of the world and in the subsequent history of the Chosen People. This presence became concrete in the earthly and incarnate activity of Jesus. With Jesus, God’s kingdom had come and was coming. This arrival of the Kingdom climaxed on the cross, where Jesus revealed

God’s love and solidarity with those who suffer. This identification with is made paramount in Matthew’s discourse on the judgment of the nations (Matt 25:31–46). The salvation offered through Christ was made possible through the resurrection. This power of salvation was present to all people through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who mediates this outpouring of God’s

478 O’Collins, Christology, 230. 479 Ibid. O’Collins gives no citation to Dürckheim’s work. Dürckheim was a Bavarian professor who before the Second World War was assigned by the Nazi government as an ambassador to , where he was exposed to Eastern philosophy. Returning to Germany with his new insights, he wrote about psychoanalysis and . 480 Ibid., 238. 481 Ibid. 482 Christ’s post-resurrection presence will be examined in the upcoming sections. 134 love through the sacraments, Scriptures, preaching, and the Church’s members, among other ways. The experience of Christ’s saving presence in the life of the Church drove the debates behind the ecumenical councils and later medieval developments, which included the Feast of

Corpus Christi with its Eucharistic emphasis.483 This ongoing presence leads people today to recognize Jesus numinously as the Holy One, as holy and full of mystery. Some have expressed this ongoing presence of Christ as revealer/savior in terms of the concept of grace.484 Grace, according to O’Collins, denoted Christ’s gracious presence in the lives of individuals, history and creation. In short, O’Collins holds that the concept “presence” is able to synthesize a “fully deployed Christology.”485

O’Collins notes that there is a dearth of philosophical examination of the concept of presence. Marcel has developed some aspects of this concept, but outside of Marcel’s writings, O’Collins thinks that it has largely been ignored. In applying this concept to Christ, only Christ’s divine has been considered. So, O’Collins suggests several aspects that constitute and help define presence, a style of examination much akin to his examination of experience in Fundamental Theology. First, presence implies “presence to.” Presence “happens” in a relationship with others. Presence is relational. Personal identity, due to the communal nature of humanity, is created in relationships of presence. We are able to fully develop our potential only through our relationship to others. Second, presence implies a level of personal freedom. Interpersonal presence involves and creates true communion of life and love. This communion of life and love is illustrated in marriage, wherein the relationship of presence

483 Ibid., 308. 484 See John P. Galvin, “The Invitation of Grace” in A World of Grace, ed. Leo J. Donovan ( Press, Washington D.C., 1995), 64-75. 485 O’Collins, Christology, 307–309. 135 between persons brings life and love. Third, presence is communicated symbolically. Where God communicates God’s self within the Trinity, humans are not capable of total self-donation, so human presence, and the communion it creates, is symbolically communicated through words and actions. Fourth, O’Collins, drawing on Marcel,486 notes that presence has many modes and qualities. It may be stronger or weaker, more intense or less. “Interpersonal presences can always be closer, more intense, more freely chosen, and productive of an even richer communion of life.”487 In other words, presence exists in varying degrees because of the nature of interpersonal relationships that, while allowing for people to be present to each other in some degree, can never allow them fully to disclose themselves to the other. Fifth, presence also possesses a feminine aspect. This is found in its nurturing and receptive quality, seen in God in whom “we move and live and have our being” (Acts 17:28) in that God creates “space” for humans to live and grow.

Reflecting on these aspects of presence in relation to Jesus, O’Collins notes that Christ is eternally and personally present to the Father and Spirit and they to him. This Trinitarian

“presence to” is reflected in the economic presence of the Son in history. Jesus calls the Father

“Abba,” and he brings this relationship between the divine persons into time. Jesus expresses this in various ways, such as “knowing” the Father, which Jesus alone does (Matt 11:27). O’Collins explains that presence allows one to view Christ’s saving activity as mediating his own presence to the world, so as to communicate God’s love and redemption. Christ’s personal presence, which was bodily displayed in history, “allows the interpersonal relationship with Christ to

486 , Creative Fidelity, trans. R Rosthul (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Co., 1964). 487 O’Collins, Christology, 312. 136 emerge and grow as the revealing/saving presence pro nobis.”488 This is why the sought to defend the historical bodily existence of Christ against the Gnostics and Marcion. In line with this presence model, Christ is seen as present to all creation. As the Logos Christology of Justin and the Fathers suggest, Christ as Logos permeates the universe. He is universally present. His historical incarnation offered a new, more intense and personal presence to the world in addition to this universal presence in creation.

O’Collins notes that the notion of presence, of Christ who identifies with those who suffer, applies to the history of the Jewish people. The Jewish people in a special way “serve as a living reminder of Jesus the Jew, God’s suffering servant who rose from the dead . . . in a special way, their agony has embodied and symbolized his.”489

The resurrection, as noted, brought a “dramatically new, life giving sharing of his presence.”490 The risen Christ became the ongoing, active, present source of eternal life. The resurrection produced two important effects, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the Church.

The Church’s sacraments make Christ effectively present. One last consideration is of Christ’s presence at the end of history. His work and presence will be consummated at the end of time.

To sum up O’Collins’s application of the various aspects of presence to Christology: he explains that Christ is present in creation, the suffering human body, the Jewish people, the ecclesial body, the body of world religions, and the historic “body” of humanity. This presence varies in degrees and manner, but it is everywhere, always.

488 Ibid., 314. Emphasis his. 489 O’Collins, Christology, 315. 490 Ibid., 315. 137

In his article “The Risen Jesus: Analogies and Presence,”491 O’Collins expands on this notion of presence, adding three characteristics. Presence—beyond being relational, personal, free, communion creating, symbolically mediated, communicated in an infinite variety of ways,

Trinitarian, and feminine—is also described as bodily, costly, and future oriented. As bodily, the presence of one person to another always involves a physical dimension. This was true for

Christ—who through his teaching, life, death, and resurrection made the Kingdom present and who, through his bodily suffering, connected for all time with those who suffer. In regards to presence as costly, O’Collins explains that freely given presence has a price and makes one vulnerable to the other with whom one is present. Lastly, presence is future oriented in that no presence in this world can totally fulfill us. Humans long for a love and a presence that is eternally fulfilling.

O’Collins develops some implications of his understanding of presence. First, presence implies the bodily presence of Christ encountered in the common worship of the Church, where each person’s bodily presence to the other manifests Christ. This notion presupposes the cumulative growth of the community over time. The succession of Christian communities

“communicates” the ongoing presence of Christ. Second, the costliness involved in presence helps one see Christ’s ongoing presence in those who suffer: “Human suffering also mediates the continuing presence of the crucified and risen Jesus.”492 The third sense of presence, that of its future orientation, mediates Christ’s presence in and through belief in Christ’s consummation of the world and his definitive “arrival,” or parousia. Christ is the one that is hoped for. Thus

491 Gerald O’Collins, “The Risen Jesus: Analogies and Presence,” in Resurrection, eds. Stanley Porter, Michael Hayes, and David Tombs (New York: T & T Clark, 1999), 195–217. 492 Ibid., 214. 138

O’Collins has developed a model of understanding presence that serves to help one identify the ongoing presence of Christ.

In Rethinking Fundamental Theology (2011), O’Collins nuances and summarizes his earlier discussion of the resurrection in regards to presence. He explains that the resurrection also plays a role in the ongoing presence of Christ in that it vindicated Christ’s certainty of the coming of God’s kingdom. What had appeared as a defeat and a blow against the veracity of

Jesus’ teaching was now reversed. O’Collins does not mean this vindication in terms of a miraculous and rational proof. Instead the resurrection fully revealed “the meaning and truth of

Jesus’ life, person, work, and death. . . . It put the divine seal on Jesus and his ministry.”493 The resurrection is thus a qualitatively different event than previous miracles. As Paul explains, it is the beginning of the end of all things.494 The resurrection also transformed the Apostles’ understanding of God; it opened a Trinitarian understanding of God. O’Collins notes, for example, that the risen Christ gave the Apostles the “ of the Father” and assured them that they would be “clothed with power from on high” (:49). In the resurrection, the

Apostles became aware of God’s transforming work in history and creation. This new level of awareness, generated by Easter, helps bring into existence the Church. The resurrection then is more than a miraculous proof to be used to certify Christ’s credentials; it is a far event, full of meaning that both reveals and vindicates.

O’Collins addresses the role of Christ’s human nature after the resurrection in Rethinking

Fundamental Theology. What role does Christ’s humanity play in this ongoing presence of

Christ? A Gnostic tendency would be to dismiss his humanity after the resurrection as

493 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 160. 494 Ibid., 160. Cf. Rom 8:29 and 1 Cor 15:20. 139 unimportant or perhaps discarded. O’Collins notes that the early councils of the Church, especially the First Council of Constantinople, confessed that the same Christ who died and rose would return at the end of time.495 He finds this view of the continuity of the “pre-” and “post-” risen Jesus in the Gospels, Hebrews, Paul’s letters, Acts, and Revelation. In general, what is said of Christ would be profoundly incoherent if Christ’s humanity had disappeared or ceased to be a factor.496 O’Collins draws attention to John Paul II’s teaching in Dominum et Vivificantem,497 which highlights the universal salvific role of the Spirit as intimately connected to what Christ did for all “by taking on the human condition.”498

3.5 The Experiential Correlate

Revelation, the self-communication of God, is not completed until it is received in faith.

While a propositional model of revelation emphasizes revelation as statements to be accepted,

O’Collins embraces an interpersonal understanding of revelation as an encounter between God and man in experience. This raises the question, in light of the previous section (3.4), of how the ongoing presence of the risen Christ is received by the believer. In answer to this question

O’Collins puts forward the concept of the “experiential correlate.” This idea is O’Collins’s answer to the question of how one comes to faith in the resurrected Christ. O’Collins’s concept

495 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 309. 496 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 310. He notes in Jesus Our Redeemer, 201: “The radical transformation of the resurrection did not suppress his being human, but rather glorified and freed his human condition to be actively present everywhere, so as both to affect lovingly (and mysteriously) the lives of all men and women and to fashion a new, visible community of love which the NT presents through the figure of the groom/bride relationship.” 497 Pope John Paul II, On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World [Dominum et Vivificantem ] (18 May 1986), Acta Apostolica Sedis 78 (1986): 809–900. 498 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 315. 140 of the experiential correlate incorporates various factors involved in the decision for faith, such as the mediatory role of the Church, personal experience, human freedom, and the Holy Spirit.

Though not using the term “experiential correlate,” O’Collins’s Man and His New Hopes

(1969) presents an initial idea and context for the relationship between the person’s experience and God’s self-revelation. Here O’Collins explains that the ongoing presence of Christ is mediated through the Church’s proclamation and in the acceptance of this proclamation.

O’Collins explains that the empty tomb is not the essence of Easter faith.499 Discovering an empty tomb does not prove that Christ rose. Rather, it is the appearances of the risen Christ that form the basis for the apostolic faith.500 In turn, accepting the witnesses’ accounts in faith today requires viewing the historical data, making a decision that involves our whole lives, and then looking to the future that includes life with Christ after death.501 O’Collins notes that having only the facts about the resurrection does not in the end mean that one has entered into a relationship with God. Facts are not enough. Paul himself points out that faith comes through the power of

God.502 O’Collins holds that one can distinguish between the fact of Christ’s death and resurrection and the value of these facts for faith. Seeing can exclude believing: “Settling the fact of the appearances of the living Jesus does not coincide with entering into the relationship to God disclosed in Jesus.”503 Watching an event in the life of Jesus would not necessarily lead to faith in him as the Son of God.504 The act of claiming that Jesus appeared to certain people after his

499 O’Collins, Man and His New Hopes, 73–74. 500 Ibid., 74. 501 Ibid., 75. 502 Ibid., 77. 503 Ibid. 504 Ibid., 78. 141 resurrection is not the same as faith “that he died for our , that he rose for our justification or that we will rise like him.”505

Two extreme views regarding Easter faith should be avoided. The first extreme is a disregard for the testimony of the Easter witnesses. Pannenberg holds the other extreme—that the resurrection is historically provable, and that this proof leads to faith.506 O’Collins’s point is this: that it is through a concurrent acceptance of the witness of the Apostles as history and through a submission to God that one comes to faith.507 While it is true that the Apostles experienced a privileged direct encounter, one can also experience the risen Christ through the

Christian community, which in turn trusts the testimony given by the Easter witnesses.508

In The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1973), O’Collins, faced with the limitations of the historical narrative, asks the question, “How can one come to faith in the resurrection?” It is in response to this question that O’Collins develops his “experiential correlate.” O’Collins’s

“correlational” understanding of revelation finds a meeting between the ongoing self- communication of God in revelation with present experience. Belief in the resurrection requires going beyond the facts and includes a life choice with enormous implications for one’s future existence. This all-encompassing aspect of faith is developed later in Fundamental Theology

(1981).509 O’Collins holds that faith always involves not just a faith in the “what” of belief, but also a loving commitment to the “who” of Christ in a trusting hope that places our future in

Christ’s hands. In addition, O’Collins notes that the accounts or “facts” of the resurrection are understood and appropriated in experience. This “experiential correlate” varies from person to

505 Ibid. 506 Ibid., 80. 507 Ibid., 82. 508 Ibid., 83. 509 See O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 130–160. 142 person, depending on the individual’s subjective openness and based upon a wide range of other factors.

O’Collins identifies four factors that he believes condition a person’s experiential correlate.510 The first is a person’s interaction with death. Resurrection can become an intelligible concept after someone loses a loved one in death. Living through such episodes and the and separation they bring can lead to a sense of being “raised” themselves, which in turn allows them to understand what it means that Jesus was raised from the dead.511 A second factor determining a person’s experiential correlate is the gap between a person’s expectation and their actual experience. This gap arises from our search for wholeness and completion. Faith in the resurrection relates to an expectation of final and freedom. A third conditioning factor in a person’s experiential correlate is the human search for meaning about self and the world. When we discover meaning in the world, we in turn discovers oneself and thereby becomes more engaged in the world. In personal relationships, one more intensely experiences meaning. When one projects this search for meaning into the world with a desire to establish peace, , and love, that search can “facilitate belief in Christ’s resurrection and its promise.”

A fourth factor that can affect the experiential correlate is the hope for one’s own resurrection. It is by hoping for a positive final future in fulfillment in heaven that the resurrection can be believed. Alongside these four conditioning experiences O’Collins notes that freedom—which is not usurped but strengthened by faith in the resurrection—plays an important role in the acceptance of faith. Faith cannot be coerced. There must be a freely chosen willingness to adopt

510 O’Collins, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 70–71. 511 Ibid. 143 a new perspective, as seen in the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The disciples had to change their view of the Scriptures in order to recognize Christ.512

O’Collins echoes an earlier distinction (see section 3.3): that Easter faith is not based simply on our knowledge of reliable testimony. Though it cannot exist independently of such

“facts,” faith cannot be reduced to historical knowledge.513 The experiential aspects play a critical role in coming to faith and in the encounter between the risen Christ and us.

The Church also plays an important role by mediating an encounter between the resurrection and our own experiences: “[N]ot only historical study but also human hope and

Christian worship open up ways for considering Jesus’ resurrection.” The Church, through its proclamation of hope and its liturgical worship, allows one to engage in this process of encounter. Thus and worship are an important foundation required to grasp the resurrection. “Unless and until worship counts for us, neither Jesus’ resurrection nor, for that matter, religion itself can say much to us.”514

In Easter Faith (2003), O’Collins notes how the Gospel writers (especially Luke and

John) are interested in presenting the Apostles’ encounter with the risen Christ as an ongoing revelatory experience. They state or imply that Jesus is personally experienced in the Eucharist, meal fellowship, the forgiveness of sins, the reading, hearing, and reception of Scripture, the dynamic operation of the Holy Spirit, and the experience of faith.515 In these examples,

O’Collins sees the two evangelists explaining how Christ remains present in the Church. This ongoing ecclesial presence assists in the experiential correlation between past and experienced

512 Ibid., 72. 513 Ibid., 73. 514 O’Collins, Jesus Risen, 3. 515 O’Collins, Easter Faith, 88. 144 present. Matthew, Luke, and John also develop their of the resurrection through the themes of: the divine victory over evil and injustice, the reconciliation of sinners, and redeeming love.516 These themes present the belief in the risen Christ, who brings healing and transforming love.

In Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation (2007), O’Collins delves into the role of the Holy Spirit in faith formation. Though O’Collins does not discuss the Holy Spirit in terms of the experiential correlate, he does explain the Holy Spirit’s role in bringing together the various influences on a person’s coming to faith, such as the testimony concerning a new fellowship with the Father (1 :3), the proclamation of the Word, and an historical awareness of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection.517 The Holy Spirit provides the that, in a sense, actualizes the various factors that lead to faith.

O’Collins again asks how past events and present experience can be bridged. In past discussion of this issue he described experience as the locus for an encounter with Christ, who in his resurrected state is present through various mediatory means. Here, he focuses on the role of the Holy Spirit. While the Holy Spirit does not become incarnate like the Son, or become transformed into a new kind of existence as Christ does in the resurrection, the Spirit does become “fully and intensely operative” after the resurrection in the lives of the community of believers and the whole world.518 John’s Gospel especially understands and explains this relationship and the role of the Holy Spirit.519 This relationship, and the redemption the Spirit

516 Ibid., 90–102. 517 O’Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer, 201–209. 518 Ibid., 201. 519 O’Collins draws attention to John 1, 7, and 14–16. 145 brings, is expressed in the Koinonia of the early Church, which is effected by the Holy Spirit,520 and in the themes of and life, understood in a broad sense by O’Collins to be found in

Romans in the word “glory” and in other authors in synonyms like “grandeur” and “life- giving.”521

More specific to present concerns, the ongoing presence of the Spirit mediates the union that takes place between believers and Christ. “The spirit mediates and manifests the presence of the risen Christ, awakes faith in him, and prepares hearts to receive him and appropriately respond to him.” The roles of the Spirit and the Son are inseparable, though distinct.522 While not mentioning the “experiential correlate,” O’Collins makes clear that the Holy Spirit plays an important and in fact essential role in this correlation.

In summary, O’Collins develops an understanding of the personal encounter of each believer with the risen Christ through the idea of the experiential correlate. The correlation that takes place in experience is mediated by various factors, including the Church, its proclamation, the Scriptures, personal experiences, and the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit.

3.6 Summary

O’Collins clearly places a strong emphasis on a Christocentric understanding of revelation. He affirms a historic core in the New Testament accounts of Jesus and affirms that

520 Jesus Our Redeemer, 202–205. 521 Ibid., 206–207. O’Collins notes that Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) in his poem “God’s Grandeur” takes up a theme found in (d. 444) that describes the Holy Spirit in terms of life and beauty (Ibid., 206). 522 O’Collins explains here the Trinitarian aspects of how salvation is effected: “The Father and the Spirit were actively present in the salvific offering, death, resurrection, and of the Son, and so too are they present with the risen Christ in the Eucharist which communicates the Easter mystery to the believers assembled for worship” (Jesus Our Redeemer, 210). 146 within the Kerygma the death and resurrection of Christ play an essential role as the fullness of

God’s self-communication. This historic core in turn impacts a person’s process of coming-to- faith. True Christian faith is faith in the risen Christ. O’Collins defends his position that certain aspects of the resurrection are historically accessible because these aspects did in fact happen as an event in time and space. Some aspects of the resurrection, even to those who personally witnessed the risen Christ, are only accessible via faith. Going beyond an apologetic defense of the accounts of the resurrection, O’Collins focuses on the significance and meaning the resurrection conveys to the believer. This meaning derives from the acceptance by an individual that Christ was a radically transformed person. This transformation brought Christ into a new relationship with history and reality, making him present in a new and universal way—one of ongoing presence in all time and places. This ongoing presence, which will play an important part in O’Collins’s views on Christ and other religions (discussed in chapter 4), allows for a personal encounter in the present between Christ and all people as mediated in various manners and degrees. The idea of experiential correlate is used to explore how this ongoing presence generates faith within the realm of human experience.

In O’Collins’s view of transcendental experience (see section 2.1), heavily reliant on

Rahner’s thought, God is already present to each person as the ground and possibility of all experience. According to Rahner, God is experienced indirectly as already present but hidden in the experience of finite objects523 while each person as a spiritual subject is oriented

523 Rahner, Foundations of the Christian Faith, 21. 147 transcendentally towards the mystery of God.524 O’Collins finds in the risen Christ the possibility of an encounter with God in the present (see section 3.4).

How does O’Collins align his understanding of transcendental experience, which finds

God already present in all human experience, together with the special mode of Christ’s ongoing presence in light of the experiential correlate? The answer for O’Collins lies in the nature of certain special, “religious” experiences. O’Collins recognizes that there are certain special, explicit, and profound experiences, which O’Collins calls “religious” because they “concern our ultimate purposes and relationship with God.”525 These religious experiences “push beyond the minimal, unthematized awareness of God and ourselves involved in every act of knowing and willing—that is, in transcendental experience.”526 These more explicit and meaningful experiences brings one into a closer encounter and presence with God over and above transcendental experience. O’Collins views experience of the risen Christ as the revelatory and salvific encounter par excellence. As he notes in Salvation for All, “Because of his incarnation, the Son of God assumed a ‘bodily place’ in time and eternity,” therefore “the incarnation provided a new way for a divine person to be present somewhere and (through the transformation of the resurrection) everywhere.”527 Through various ongoing means, God continues to reveal and salvifically interact with all people, thus making explicit to all what was previously unthematized transcendental experience. The transcendental aspect of all experience is essential in knowing and recognizing these special revelatory moments: “As all human experience entails an ultimate, religious element, it bears a primordial, transcendental revelation

524 Ibid., 52. 525 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 50–51. 526 Ibid., 51. 527 Gerald O’Collins, Salvation for All (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 212. 148 and can become a consciously religious experience to constitute an historical self- communication of God.”528 The resurrection plays an important and to O’Collins an essential role in a person’s coming to faith, where the hidden transcendental openness to God becomes an explicit and conscious encounter.

What follows will summarize main points covered in this chapter with sections references in parenthesis. O’Collins posits that Jesus is the fullness of God’s self-communication. Jesus is a unique event and the central revelation in history (3.1). As a result Christian faith must always reference this centrality of Christ (3.1). In regarding the resurrection one must avoid two extreme tendencies: minimizing or maximizing the historical Jesus. The first tendency underemphasizes the Jesus of history, while the second tendency threatens to reduce faith to the logical and rational acceptance of a particular fact (3.1). In regard to Jesus, the past event and present presence of Christ must be considered a unity. Present understanding should take into account that one is speaking of the same Jesus from the past (3.1). When considering the word-event relationship, O’Collins holds that the “word” proclaiming Christ can never exhaust the event

(3.1). Within the mystery of Christ, the resurrection is the most important aspect of His life for belief. It is in the passion, death, and resurrection that the fullness of God’s self-communication occurred (3.2). The risen and glorified Christ is not accessible to historians, though historians can access the witness’s accounts (3.3). The “something” that brought about resurrection belief cannot be reduced to a merely psychological experience. What the Apostles experienced was the risen and glorified Christ (3.3).

528 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 62. 149

O’Collins notes that there are two independent traditions informing the biblical accounts of the resurrection: the first is the women’s account of the empty tomb, which he does not classify as a source of resurrection belief; the second account finds its source in Peter and the

Apostles’ encounter with the risen Jesus. It is this second account that is the source for resurrection faith (3.3). Through Christ’s resurrection and his glorified state, Christ remains present in history, though not “in” history in the ordinary sense. The ongoing presence of the risen Christ allows for the possibility of revelation as an encounter with God in experience (3.4).

Encounter with God in present experience is possible because of the ongoing presence of the risen Christ and the transcendental nature of human experience. The two are correlated. Various life experiences and mediatory aspects condition the experience correlate to help bring together an individual’s experience and God’s self-communication. These include the experience of loss through death, the ministry and preaching of the Church, the grace in the sacraments, and the reading and speaking of the Scriptures (3.5). Finally, the Holy Spirit plays an essential role in mediating and bringing about the correlation in experience between man and God as revealed through Christ as risen (3.5).

3.7 Preliminary Critique

Regarding the development of his theology, in Theology and Revelation (1968),

O’Collins emphasizes the importance of a Christocentric outlook in theology. He amplifies this view by adding an emphasis on the centrality of the resurrection in later writings such as

Christology (1995), where he also begins to develop a theology of presence. O’Collins then deepens and develops an initial impulse derived from his early studies and biblical reflection. 150

Throughout his writings O’Collins develops an understanding of Christ and the resurrection that purposefully avoids viewing both topics as sources of proofs while emphasizing the meaning and implications of Christ’s resurrection for faith.

It is difficult to pinpoint particular sources that influenced O’Collins’s perspective on the resurrection. Along with the overarching role that Rahner played, O’Collins’s own scriptural study of Paul’s and the Gospel of John were significant in his theological formation. In addition, personal reflection on the Church Fathers from onward, with special mention of Thomas Aquinas, served to shape his theology.529 In developing themes within his books O’Collins interacts with a wide variety of positions concerning the centrality of Christ and the nature of the resurrection. While it is difficult to assign a single influence to his

Christocentric theology, modern exegetical methods are employed throughout his interpretation.

He also leans on general scholarly consensus, a position he urges for others.530 If his books and articles are any indication, one can simply say that O’Collins arrived at his theological views concerning Christocentrism and the resurrection over a period of time via interaction with a wide variety of scholars, some of whom he agrees with and with many of whom he does not. In regard to the development of a theology of presence, O’Collins credits Fr. William Kelly, who worked on this theme in his Gregorian dissertation, as having an influence on his theology through their sharing of research and discussions on the topic.531

529 Gerald O’Collins, personal communication, August 26, 2013. For O’Collins’s discussion of Aquinas and the resurrection, see “Thomas Aquinas and Christ’s Resurrection,” Theological Studies 31, no. 3 (1970), 512–522. 530 In The Bible for Theology (p. 6), he writes under “the Principle of Exegetical Consensus” that “where available, the consensus of centrist exegetes guides systematic theology.” 531 O’Collins, “A Theological Pilgrimage,” 101. See William T. Kelly’s dissertation, “Towards a Christology of Presence: Uncovering and Relating Themes from Scripture, Philosophy and Theology” (Roma: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1996). 151

O’Collins offers insights into the ongoing presence of Christ, bringing a depth of understanding to the term “presence” as it applies to the risen Christ and the manner in which

Christ’s ongoing presence might be construed theologically. In the last chapter of Christology

(1995), O’Collins recapitulates the contents of the book in light of presence, regarding it as a metacategory under which many aspects of his views on Christology might be organized.532 His perspective has in that it serves to illuminate the fact of Jesus’ ongoing presence, but it is not designed to delineate between the degree or manner of Christ’s ongoing presence as it concerns all aspects of Christology. More development seems needed before a theology of presence may be applied on a larger scale and in a definitive fashion.

Difficulties arise, as noted above, in O’Collins’s consideration of whether or not outside observers would be able to have witnessed the resurrection appearances and how visible such manifestations of the resurrected Christ would have been to a neutral onlooker. It is true that the

Gospels do not recount the event of the resurrection itself, nor do they tell of a witness to the actual resurrection, but rely instead on the empty tomb and personal encounters with the risen

Christ. O’Collins, while holding that the apostles did in fact see and experience the risen Christ, dismisses as indeterminate the possibility that one can explore the issue of a neutral third party observing the objective aspect of the resurrection.533

532 O’Collins, Christology, 306–309. 533 O’Collins, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 34–35. See Loewe, “The Appearances of the Risen Lord,” 182–183. Chapter 4. Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Studies

4.0 Introduction

O’Collins’s theology concerning the ongoing presence of the risen Christ leads him to consider how Christ is present to those outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church. The relationship between Christ and non-Christian peoples is important in view of O’Collins’s understanding of salvation as Christocentric: how does he allow for the salvation of non-

Christians? Influenced by the Second Vatican Council, as well as thinkers such as Jacques

Dupuis, S.J., O’Collins addresses this question in a distinctive way. He links revelation with salvation while simultaneously recognizing a transcendental orientation of the human person towards the divine. Additionally, he draws on the theology he developed about Christ and his ongoing risen presence.

O’Collins’s approach to the possibility of revelation and salvation for non-Christians should be understood in the larger context of the Catholic Church’s more ecumenically minded posture following the Second Vatican Council.534 The Council helped create widespread acceptance of a fresh ecumenical approach in Catholic theology, as well as a desire to open dialogue with non-Christian religions. While it did not create this shift in understanding, it did mark a significant movement from earlier intolerance by officially embracing a wider understanding of faith and salvation outside of the visible Church.535

534 While some have used the term “ecumenism” in the broadest possible sense to include all dialogue between religions, in this chapter “ecumenism” is used for the interaction between Christian denominations, and “inter- religious dialogue” is used for the relations between Christians and non-Christians. O’Collins deals more explicitly with the issue of salvation and the presence of Christ in non-Christian religions. 535 Michael A. Fahey, “Ecumenical ,” in The Gift of the Church, ed. Peter C. Phan (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 119. 152

153

The positive tone came in part as a result of a renewed self-understanding of the Church’s ecclesiology, expressed in a series of key declarations from the Council.536 The Council produced two significant documents dealing with relations between faiths in Unitatis

Redintegratio (1964) and Nostra Aetate (1965). It re-examined the nature of the Church’s activity in Ad Gentes (1965), and broadened the Church’s understanding of her relationship to other faiths by recognizing elements of truth in other religious traditions. Pope

Paul VI, during the Council, issued the encyclical , which called for inter- religious dialogue in a new courteous and open tone. Gaudium et Spes (1965), one of the four constitutions of the Council, dealt explicitly with the relationship of the Church to the modern world and set a new tone of positive interaction. Regarding two key questions about the role of

Christ and the Church in salvation, the Council Fathers explicitly taught that Christ is the source of salvation for the whole world (Lumen Gentium, 17) and that the Church is involved in the salvation of every person (Lumen Gentium, 9).537 As Dulles points out, for the first time the

Church began to speak officially of non-Christian religions as having elements of truth and goodness. As a result, the Council has been recognized as a turning point in Church history with respect to ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.538

536 See Joseph A. Komonchak, “The Significance of Vatican Council II for Ecclesiology” in The Gift of the Church, ed. Peter C. Phan (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2000); and “Vatican II as an ‘Event’,” in Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?, ed. David G. Schultenover (New York: Continuum, 2008). 537 Avery Dulles, “World Religions and the New Millennium: A Catholic Perspective,” in In Many and Diverse Ways, eds. David Kendall and Gerald O’Collins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 2003), 5. 538 As to the scope and nature of the change wrought by the Second Vatican Council concerning ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, there has been a wide diversity of views. Some hold that the Council taught that the Church was no longer unique in its role to save, since salvation was to be found in other faiths as well. Other interpretations saw no change from earlier positions (i.e., “outside of the Church there is no salvation”) but just a softening of terminology. Others rejected the Council entirely. The literature on this subject and its various interpretations is vast. The Council and its documents had a huge impact on O’Collins, and he bases many of his insights on ideas from the Council. See his Retrieving Fundamental Theology (1993) and Living Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 2006). 154

John Paul II continued the Council’s call for dialogue, leading Kevin

McDonald to write, “Pope John Paul II’s contribution to the ecumenical movement was simply colossal.”539 John Paul II renamed the Secretariat for Non-Christians the Pontifical Council for

Inter-religious Dialogue and through deed and word sought to strengthen ecumenical and inter- religious dialogue, most notably with the Orthodox Churches. His encyclical Ut Unim Sint

(1995) continued this ecumenical drive by calling for an ecumenical reconsideration of the papacy as a step towards the unity of all Christians. Benedict XVI continued these initiatives.

The growth in dialogue between Catholicism and other Christian denominations in the fifty years since the Council has been nothing less than remarkable, according to Edward Cardinal

Cassidy. Modest gains have also been seen in inter-religious .540

Theologically, the shift in inter-religious perspective led to a variety of attempts to rethink Catholic theological commitments and language. Dulles notes that at one extreme, both

Paul Knitter and (1922–2012), the latter not Catholic, have rejected claims of absolute truth in that they believe such claims undermine true openness and dialogue.541 Cardinal Francis

Arinze has called for frank and honest discussion that avoids a false and arises out of the very needs of faith itself.542 Some have rejected inter-religious dialogue as a betrayal of the

Church’s claim on truth and its mission to evangelize the world to Christ. Despite this variety in views, the since the Council have carried on dialogue “as a necessary aspect of

539 Kevin J. P. McDonald, “The Legacy of Pope John Paul II: Ecumenical Dialogue,” in The Legacy of John Paul II, eds. Gerald O’Collins and Michael Hayes (New York: Burns and Oates, 2000), 111. 540 See Cassidy’s Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 2005) for an overview of major developments since the Council. 541 See Dulles, Models of Revelation, 171–173 and 189–192 and Craft of Theology, 208–210. Also see John Hick, The of God Incarnate (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1993) and Paul Knitter, “Jesus-Buddha- : Still Present?” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 16 (1979), 651–671. 542 Cassidy, Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue, 238–239. 155 evangelization.” This outlook was continued by John Paul II in Redemptoris Missio (1990)543 and continues today, despite several tension-causing stumbles.

While dialogue and prayer have become necessary aspects of ecumenism and inter- religious dialogue, in the years since the Council Catholic theologians have taken on the task of examining theological commitments and definitions in order to seek areas of congruency with other faiths while not sacrificing true areas of difference. The Catholic magisterium views ecumenical theology as being in the service of its missionary mandate—this view at times creating tension between church officials and theological circles.544 The reaction concerning some statements in Dominus Iesus545 reveals that there are many perspectives involved in ecumenical and inter-religious theology.546

O’Collins has engaged in the development of a theological understanding of non-

Christian religions in order to understand better and clarify areas of commonality between

Christians and non-Christians, and aid in the Church’s task of fostering unity in Christ. He views the central question in this discussion as being how to reconcile the centrality of Christ as savior and revealer of God with the Holy Spirit’s presence and work in various other religions.547 He has done this from a fundamental theological perspective, attempting to create a Christocentric hermeneutics of unity.548 And he has self-consciously attempted to base his insights in the teachings of the Council.

543 Ibid., 9. 544 Ibid. 545 The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church” [Dominus Iesus], (6 August 2000), Acta Apostolica Sedis 92 (2000), 742–765. 546 Cassidy, 119–121. 547 See Gerald O’Collins, “Jacques Dupuis: His Person and Work,” in In Many and Diverse Ways, eds. Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins (New York: Orbis Press, 2003), 23. 548 See O’Collins, Living Vatican II, chap. 6, for an interesting extended personal anecdote about his various experiences and exposure to various faiths and the ecumenical perspective. 156

This chapter will assess several key concepts, developed in O’Collins’s work, that contribute to his ecumenical and inter-religious fundamental theology.549 O’Collins’s thought focuses more on issues surrounding inter-religious themes, but touches at times on issues pertaining to ecumenical concerns, such as the nature and role of tradition.550 The first two concepts are the application of his understanding of Christocentrism (4.1) and transcendental experience (4.2) to the issue of encountering Christ in what O’Collins calls general history.

Christ as sole savior is also the universal savior and is present in any experience of revelation.

The transcendental nature of experience allows for the encounter with Christ and his salvation outside the visible confines of special history. A third key concept specifies the actual modes through which Christ outside the traditional means mediates the Christian faith. O’Collins suggests that Christ’s hidden presence in various religious traditions can be seen in semina Verbi,

“seeds of the Word” (4.3). One unique locus of such a seed is Judaism, which deserves attention because of its special role in salvation history (4.4). O’Collins evaluates the role of tradition both in and outside of the Church and its role in light of this ecumenical and inter-religious perspective (4.5). Tradition, because of the transcendental aspects of human experience, can mediate the already present Christ to all, which in turn opens the possibility of recognizing as fact that one can find truth in all religions. Each of these concepts will be examined in turn, as interrelated in O’Collins’s understanding, and related to his concepts of Christ, history, revelation, and experience.

549 O’Collins attempts to adopt a positive terminology when dealing with various beliefs, avoiding terms like “non- Christian” and “non-evangelized.” He prefers the terms “God’s other people,” “outsiders,” and “others.” See O’Collins, Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples, vii. 550 O’Collins refers to the field as “interreligious studies” and focuses much of his thought on non-Christian religions. I have adopted the terms ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue to clarify when O’Collins is discussing (respectively) non-Catholic Christians or non-Christian religions. See O’Collins, Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples, vii. 157

4.1 Christocentric and Universal Salvation through the Risen Christ

A prominent concept in O’Collins’s inter-religious understanding is that Christ, while being sole revealer and savior, is also the universal savior for all—a frank and unabashed

Christocentrism (see section 3.1). But O’Collins understands this Christocentrism not as an obstacle that hinders those outside the Christian faith from attaining salvation, but rather, when viewed rightly, as an opportunity for all, since Christ as sole savior is present to all. The dual aspect of O’Collins’s Christocentric understanding, as both sole and universal savior, opens the possibility of recognizing salvific opportunities outside traditionally recognized conduits of revelation such as the Church and the Scriptures.

In Christology (1995), O’Collins explains that Christ mediated salvation through particular historical events in his lifetime. Yet Christ “is more than a simple reality of the temporal and spatial order.”551 He is present in all history and creation, though not in a depersonalized manner or as a universal principle. Salvation comes personally through him as incarnate. His presence is mediated by the Holy Spirit, who works in the Church but is not confined to the visible Christian community.552 Christ’s ongoing presence allows for the possibility of sharing Christ’s saving grace everywhere.

The risen Christ plays a central role in O’Collins’s approach to inter-religious dialogue.

O’Collins explains that Christ mediates salvation to all through the risen Christ’s ongoing presence as the Risen Christ. In Focus on Jesus (1996), he states that dialogue has focused on such issues as creation, incarnation, and ministry—and ignored the resurrection. Yet, O’Collins

551 O’Collins, Christology, 303. 552 Ibid., 304. 158 believes, it is the resurrection that holds the key to understanding how the particular event of the life of Jesus has import for all peoples everywhere. It is the bridge between the particular historical event and the ongoing presence of Christ to all: “To pass over the Easter mystery is to omit something utterly essential for the dialogue with other non-Christian religions.”553

The resurrected Christ as savior for all continues to be a theme developed by O’Collins.

In Jesus Our Redeemer (2007), O’Collins holds that the claim that Christ is the savior for all people originated as an expression of the early Christian community’s faith in Christ as risen from the dead. His resurrection introduced the possibility of resurrection for all (Rom 8:29 and 1

Cor 15: 20–8), and the entire human family was seen as impacted by Christ’s resurrection. Thus,

Christ is portrayed as the returning judge and the light of the heavenly Jerusalem (Matt 25:31–46 and Rev 21:23, respectively). “In his glorified humanity he will remain the means by which the blessed know the Trinity and enjoy the fullness of salvation.”554 Christ continues to mediate salvation for all.

According to O’Collins, the New Testament supports the idea that Christ continues to impart his universal redemption to the world. This idea is seen in the active presence of the Holy

Spirit, who allows a share in Christ’s Sonship.555 It is seen in the link Christ made between his person and the presence of the Kingdom, a claim authenticated to the early Christians through the resurrection.556 Christ’s ongoing presence is seen in the nature of the incarnation, in which

God “moved into historical solidarity with all human beings.”557 Further, since Christ is acknowledged as the agent of the original creation, so too in a parallel manner Christ is the

553 O’Collins and Kendall, Focus on Jesus, 109. 554O’Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer, 225. 555 Ibid., 226. 556 Ibid., 227. 557 Ibid. 159 universal agent of the salvific re-creation. Since all things were originally made through Christ as the universal and exclusive agent of creation, and since that same creation serves to mediate

Christ to each person, “those who receive this saving grace are in fact receiving it through

Christ.”558 All of these New Testament insights indicate the universal role of Christ in salvation and are ultimately grounded in his divinity. Without acknowledgment of his divinity, one cannot account for or “justify” Christ’s unique universal redemptive role.559 “At best he could then be only revealer and savior [both lower case] for those who know his message.”560

The role of Jesus as savior for all raises a question concerning the Church’s teaching regarding the relationship between membership in the Church and salvation. O’Collins addresses this question in Jesus Our Redeemer by emphasizing that the view extra Christum nulla salus should be nuanced with a recognition that Christ, while being the sole savior, is also the savior for all, and thus the universal redeemer. O’Collins takes note of how, for instance, Luke upholds

Christ in Acts as universal savior without “denigrating those who were not (or were not yet) aware of the source of salvation.” O’Collins notes Paul’s speech to the Athenians and their “prior quest for and experience of ‘the unknown god.’”561 This diffidence towards a pagan god in the

New Testament reflected a certain Old Testament “large-minded fairness” towards non-Jews based on the universal aspects of the early covenants, such as the covenant with , which impacted the entire human race. So, while Christ “confined himself to preaching to his own people,” he also espoused “a certain .” Jesus taught that God cared for all people; he

558 Ibid., 228. 559 Ibid., 228–229. 560 Ibid., 229. 561 Ibid., 222. 160 cured non-Jews, found faith in those outside Israel, and declared that the final Kingdom would include non-Jews.562

In summary, O’Collins maintains that Scripture indicates that Christ mediated salvation and revelation to all and that all people may be saved, including those outside of Christianity.

Such a position in turn engenders the question of just how non-Christians experience Christ outside of the special revelation found in salvation history—a question examined in the following section.

4.2 Experiencing Christ in General History

How can Christ, who is the sole savior, be experienced outside of the special revelation mediated by the Church? O’Collins develops his initial thoughts on how Christ’s salvation is experienced by those outside of the Christian faith in Fundamental Theology (1981). He addresses this difficult issue by broadening the human aspect, or potentiality, for encounter with

God, outside of the category of special revelation. Since all human experience (as transcendental) is open to God’s saving and revealing, Christ as savior can be encountered outside of the special historic mediation shared in the experience of Christians. Christ, as the goal, the agent, and the object of revelation,563 effects God’s self-communication not only to those who have experienced special revelation but also to everyone because all people experience what O’Collins terms “general history.”

A systematic reflection on revelation, understood as God’s self-communication in human personal experience, leads O’Collins to conceptualize history under two categories: general

562 Ibid., 224. 563 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 115–116. 161 salvation history and specific, or special, salvation history. General history is all of human history of revelation and salvation; O’Collins sees revelation and salvation as coextensive (but not identical) with world history.564 The specific or special salvation history, as his second type, is the history normatively recorded in the Bible. This special history is the one recalled and celebrated by Christians, Jews, and in their own fashion. It is special because it has been authentically interpreted by a source of recognized authority (Jesus, the Apostles, etc.), and thus each faith tradition recognizes particular events as acts of God in history. As mentioned previously (see section 2.4), O’Collins holds that actions in history precede faith and are known afterwards, only through faith, to be God’s saving work.

Can those who live in general salvation history be saved outside of Christ? O’Collins answers that they cannot. There is no salvation outside of Christ. But all is not lost. Certainly those who experience special salvation history have had their implicit a priori openness to God made concrete and, in a sense, actualized, and those who experience general salvation history have not. Yet Christ is available to those who have an a priori openness to God in general salvation history, because even this implicit openness is accomplished through Christ. Christ is always the agent, even when not explicitly acknowledged, of any experience of God.565

O’Collins’s position can also be explained in terms of transcendental openness to God,

“which forms the a priori of all human knowing, willing and acting,”566 which always assumes a historical form (a posteriori). 567 Everyone has the possibility of encountering God. Some have

564 Ibid., 122. 565 Ibid., 123. O’Collins refines his theory of the possibility of experiencing salvation in general revelation in Rethinking Fundamental Theology (2011), 61-65. Here he adds a reflection on Hebrews 11:6, where he finds support for his view that faith can occur within the realm of those who receive general revelation. 566 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 122. 567 Ibid., 123. 162 had explicit encounters with God (in special salvation history) that allow them the opportunity to embrace the next step, which is faith. Others, not exposed to these acts of God or their subsequent dependent expressions, have only been exposed to general salvation history.

What role do religious and customs have in mediating the experience of the risen Christ? The great religious traditions of the world, , , and others,

“historically objectify and socially institutionalize the transcendent experience of God’s self- communication.”568 Of course, these traditions can embrace some elements of error, but insofar as they objectify transcendental revelation, they can also transmit the truth.569 They provide a matrix and allow, on the historical level of their particular experiences, many to know God and receive salvation.570

This understanding of experience helps O’Collins answer the central question of the possibility of experiencing God outside of Christ: it is not possible. The “primordial self- communication of God, which forms the ultimate a priori for all human experience, involves the

Word of God.”571 God is present potentially in every experience, and God is always a triune

God. Christ is always the revealer and agent of revelation, and through Christ humankind also experiences the triune God. Whenever non-Christians encounter God, they are always doing so through the mediation of Christ. This is why O’Collins holds that lack of access to special salvation history does not limit the possibility of an encounter with God to those events mediated explicitly by the visible Church. Saving revelation may reach a person in faith and make them holy: “[W]herever and whenever revelation and salvation are experienced, there the divine self-

568 Ibid. 569 See O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 303-306. 570 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 124. 571 Ibid., 123. 163 communication continues to take place.” This brings O’Collins into agreement with Rahner’s postulate of the “anonymous Christian.”572 In the process of living their lives, non-Christians can be unconsciously engaged in a saving dialogue with Christ, even though only those who arrived at faith, as professed through special salvation history, acknowledge this fact.

In this general history, all people experience Christ’s role as the goal, agent, and object of revelation in creation itself, either explicitly or implicitly. All people experience this since the world contains the vestigia Christi; all things in the world are likenesses of Christ, who is the agent of creation.573 This general history does not remain uninfluenced by salvation history. The presence of Christianity has impacted many sectors of humanity who experience God only through general history. Thus O’Collins argues that a visible element of Christ’s universal saving role as mediator of truth is present throughout the world today.574 This presence opens the possibility to experiencing God anywhere. O’Collins explains that Christ is always the object known in any aspect of knowing God:

In any authentic religious experience we encounter a double reality: ourselves and the Trinity. However obscurely, the experience of divine revelation will always entail Christ as object along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Every genuine acceptance of the divine self-communication is an acceptance of Christ.575 This understanding of Christocentrism, which finds Christ in any and all genuine encounters with revelation, is the key for O’Collins.

572 O’Collins writes: “On the historical level of particular religious experience, , Buddhists, followers of , adherents of traditional religions and millions of others have known God and received salvation through their religious practices and their day-to-day lives, without Christ being explicitly envisaged or considered.” God is present then in their life experiences “despite all those human elements which may be provisional, erroneous or downright perverse” (Ibid., 124). This presence in their lives in a saving dialogue with Christ need not be consciously known in order for this to happen. For Karl Rahner’s discussion of the anonymous Christian see his Foundations of the Christian Faith, 176, 228, 306, 402, 453, and “Christianity and Non-Christian Religions,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 5, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), 115–134. 573 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 116. 574 Ibid., 117. 575 Ibid., 118. 164

O’Collins is not alone in this view. In his article “Vatican II and Fundamental Theology”

(2009),576 O’Collins states that he believes he has found an ally in his views on inter-religious understanding in John Paul II, who developed in Redemptor Hominis (1979) the idea that all humans possess an already existing desire and movement towards God.577 Accordingly for

O’Collins:

From the time of their conception, all human beings begin to share in the ‘mystery of redemption’; that is to say, they start to share in the mysterious and dynamic reality of Christ who became light and life for all people through dying on the cross, rising from the dead, and sending the Holy Spirit from the Father.578

The Holy Spirit is at work in the deepest part of each person’s being and in their ongoing questioning. Thus, O’Collins claims a parallel between his view and John Paul II’s .

They share a common view by humankind’s primordial orientation that shows Christ at work in each person’s experience.

In summary, O’Collins affirms the centrality of Christ as the universal savior, now made present universally to all in the resurrection. The nature of experience, as lived in both special and general history, allows for an encounter with Christ anywhere and at any time. O’Collins thus affirms that all are saved through Christ, who alone reveals, while simultaneously opening this salvific revelation to all peoples. The transcendental nature of experience is applied then not only to Christians and those within the Church but to non-Christians as well.

4.3 Seeds of the Word

576 Gerald O’Collins, “Vatican II and Fundamental Theology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 74 (2009): 379–388. 577 Gerald O’Collins, “John Paul II on Christ, the Holy Spirit, and World Religions,” Irish Theological Quarterly 72 (2007), 327–337. 578 Ibid., 328. 165

As the previous section noted, O’Collins holds that the ongoing presence of the risen

Christ, who offers salvation to all, can be experienced by all. In the last chapter of Christology

(1995), O’Collins explores the “possibilities of presence,” noting that the resurrection opened two “essential elements” in the new presence of Christ to the world: the outpouring of the Holy

Spirit and the Church.579 This presence in turn allows a recognition that Christ is “there whenever and wherever we encounter the body of creation, suffering human bodies, Jewish bodies, the ecclesial body . . . the ‘body’ of world religions, and the historical ‘body’ of humanity.”580 O’Collins calls these various manifestations and encounters of Christ outside of the Church the semina Verbi, or “seeds of the Word.”

This section will examine where O’Collins finds the possibilities of Christ’s presence as experienced by non-Christians. First the presence of Christ as mediated by the Church will be examined in order to compare and contrast it with how O’Collins finds the presence of Christ available to non-Christians. The various ways in which this mediation occurs will be examined, leading to O’Collins’s umbrella designation of the presence of Christ as the seeds of the Word.

First, how do Christians experience the revealing and saving presence of Christ?

Christians experience Christ’s saving presence through the Church’s various mediatory ministries, such as preaching, the liturgy, and service. As the mediator of Christ’s revelation and salvation to the world, Christianity is unique. In Theology and Revelation (1968) he turns to the role of the Church in revelation and salvation and explains that the Church functions as the place of revelation in all its fullness. “Through the witness of the Church men encounter Christ as the

579 O’Collins, Christology, 316. 580 Ibid. 166 revelation of God’s merciful love.”581 The Church transmits and makes present revelation through liturgy, proclamation, scripture, teaching, and other means in the “lived reality” of human existence.582 The unique role of the Church does not negate the mediatory role of those outside the Church’s visible structures. O’Collins holds that Christians outside of the Roman

Catholic Church share in the Church’s function as well. Through the various forms of their witness, all Christians help communicate divine revelation.

This unique role raises the question of how the Church mediates Christ to present human experience. In Focus on Jesus (1996), O’Collins notes that certain types of experience bring the same Christ of Christian origins and tradition into our present experience. Christ’s ongoing presence exists, for instance, in worship. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum

Concilium (1963), notes that “Christ is always present in his Church, especially in her celebrations.” According to O’Collins, Christ is also present in other non-Christian people, in

“all our brothers and sisters.”583 Within this large group Jesus is especially present in those in need: “He [Christ] identifies with all those who in their various needs have a claim on our practical love.”584 Reflecting on his own personal experience of living in Rome in the late 1970s,

O’Collins states that he became aware of Christ’s presence during the funeral services of those killed by terrorist organizations such as the Red Brigade and First Line. He recognized this presence in the funeral and homilies that brought meaning to meaninglessness. O’Collins also finds Christ “in the . . . material world that surrounds us, and in the microcosm of our own

581 O’Collins. Theology and Revelation, 66. 582 Ibid., 67. 583 O’Collins and Kendall, Focus on Jesus, 24. See Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7, AAS 56 (1964). 584 Ibid. 167 personal experience.”585 To explain this presence he turns to Aquinas and his view that through memory, understood as accumulated personal wisdom and understanding, one comes to appreciate and recognize Christ at work in one’s life.586

Turning to non-Christians, O’Collins finds that they too can assist in this function, either explicitly through their own religious activities or implicitly in other ways, such as novels and movies, which, though not intended to convey God’s revelation, can help transmit “, grace and love” to some degree.587 O’Collins notes that the Jews have a special place in this communication of revelation “through their very existence, their worship, and the (Old

Testament) scriptures which they share in common with us.”588 So while the Church “is the divinely established place of revelation and has the authentic means by which the divine disclosure is transmitted in all its fullness,” it is also more than that. The Church is actively involved when divine revelation is actualized in human life.589 Accordingly, when O’Collins refers to the Church, his understanding goes beyond the visible structure or baptized members of the Roman Catholic Church.

O’Collins has progressively expanded and developed his understanding of how non-

Christians mediate the ongoing presence of Christ. In Fundamental Theology (1981), O’Collins notes several sources that have led him to expand his understanding of the scope of revelation and salvation which in turn have implications for non-Christians. First, the Old Testament

585 Ibid., 25. 586 Ibid., 26. See Aquinas’ ST I, 54, 5, ad 2. 587 O’Collins and Kendall, Focus on Jesus, 26. O’Collins does not directly address atheists in this discussion. He considers the opportunities for encountering Christ outside of the Catholic Church but does not address issues surrounding those who have explicitly rejected these opportunities. 588 Ibid., 67–68. The unique role of the Jewish people will be discussed in section 4.4 below. 589 Ibid., 70–71. 168 reveals that salvation from God is for all people.590 God’s choice of Israel was not a rejection of other peoples. Paul, he points out, recognizes the testimony of nature and conscience.591 Finally,

Vatican II is more explicit; for example, Lumen Gentium 16, notes the possibility that those

“who through no fault of their own” are ignorant of the Gospel may yet be saved. Non-Christians may be moved by grace through their conscience and manifest this grace through good actions in their lives. This movement is actually that of Christ and can lead to salvation.592

O’Collins examines other religious forms and perspectives, seeking out various modes of

Christ’s salvific presence in non-Christian religions while affirming God’s salvific will for all peoples. While these modes of presence are not labeled “sacraments,” they do express

O’Collins’s optimistic approach towards non-Christian religions. He identifies particularly, but not exclusively, certain religious experiences shared by all religious people, the common thread of wisdom, historical events, and “seeds of the word.” Wisdom is one such place of convergence between faiths that might indicate the salvific presence of Christ. O’Collins is convinced that

Christ’s ongoing universal presence opens the door to recognizing that Christians do not have “a monopoly on wisdom.” Sapiential forms of thought in non-Christian faiths are thus indicators of

Christ’s universal presence.593

O’Collins revisits sapiential forms of presence in Jesus Our Redeemer (2007), where he considers the ramifications of Christ’s universal redemption for the nonevangelized. How can

590 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 119. Specifically, O’Collins notes God’s concern for foreign nations in Amos 1–2, Isaiah 13–23, 46–51, and 25–32. He notes the non-Israelite prophet (Numbers 22–24) and the comic caricature of bringing the message to Nineveh. O’Collins finds in the prophetic books, rather than the historical books of the Old Testament, “a sense that wishes to speak to and save the whole of mankind.” Fundamental Theology, 119. 591 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 120. See Romans 1:18-32 and 2:13-15. 592 Ibid., 121. 593 O’Collins, Christology, 304–305. 169 one say that Christ is “effectively present in all creation and history” without depersonalizing him and reducing Christ to a mere principle? O’Collins argues that this ongoing presence happens and can be recognized in three ways—Spirit, Word, and Wisdom—and all three of these reach outside the visible confines of the Church. For instance, the image of lady wisdom

“catches his [Christ’s] role beyond the visible community— in mysteriously and anonymously gathering and healing human beings around the world.”594 This image is especially attractive to

O’Collins, since the appreciation of wisdom does not exclusively belong to Christianity. A sapiential model might help in bridging the gap between various cultures and religions. It also helps Christians to recognize that to see Christ as the fullness of revelation does not mean denying that other faiths have some knowledge of God and a means of salvation in Christ through that same God. O’Collins does not consider it tolerable to conceive of God’s love limiting the possibility of salvation to only the few who are fortunate enough to experience

God’s explicit manifestation.595

This consideration prompts him to return to a point he developed in Retrieving

Fundamental Theology (1993),596 that Dei Verbum uses the terms “salvation” and “revelation” interchangeably.597 Since salvation is possible to non-Christians via Christ’s universal presence,

594 O’Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer, 230. 595 Ibid., 231. 596 See O’Collins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology, 54–55. 597 O’Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer, 232. See section 2.1 above. O’Collins draws attention to Dei Verbum, 2–6 to illustrate his point regarding the inseparability of the terms “revelation” and “salvation.” O’Collins notes that “Article 4 announces that it is ‘above all through his death and resurrection from the dead and finally with the sending of the Spirit of Truth,’ that Jesus Christ ‘completes, perfects and confirms revelation with the divine testimony: namely, that God is with us to liberate us from the darkness of sin and death and raise us for eternal life’” (italics O’Collins’s). O’Collins continues, “Here the revealing and saving activity of God belong inseparably together in constituting the one history of divine self-communication.” O’Collins is correct in noting the terms are used frequently in relation to each other, but it should be noted that the terms clearly have distinct meanings; the term “interchangeable” is too strong of a word to describe their relationship. Revelation, while bringing an invitation 170 it follows that this salvation is, on some level, a revelation of God through Christ. To support this view O’Collins draws attention to how the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium makes use of parallel terminology to describe how Christ’s presence is recognizable outside of the visible

Church:598 “Whatever is good and true which is to be found in them [other religions and cultures] is considered by the Church to be a preparation for the gospel and given by Him who enlightens all human beings that they may at length have life” (Lumen Gentium 16).599 Thus,

O’Collins includes all forms of goodness and truth found in various non-Christian religions as moments when one may encounter Christ.

This raises the important question of how non-Christians encounter Christ without explicit knowledge of him. In Fundamental Theology, O’Collins promotes the view that people of all religions can in fact experience God and salvation through Christ without explicit knowledge of Christ.600 This mediation does not need to be recognized explicitly as being from

Christ. Through the various forms of religious practice God is present to them, despite the various errors and perversities in their practices. Christ is already present in other, non-Western cultures before even arrive. Borrowing from the Greek Fathers, O’Collins talks of the semina Verbi.601

Seeds of the Word is a notion originally employed by the Greek Fathers to describe

Christ’s universal role in the human experiences of God.602 This view held that salvation was

to salvation, is only salvific should one freely choose to accept it. He is correct is in placing God’s revealing and saving activities under the umbrella of “the history of divine self-communication.” 598 O’Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer, 233. 599 Lumen Gentium, 16 (emphasis O’Collins’s). 600 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 124. 601 Ibid., 125. O’Collins explains that this view was held by Justin, , and , who saw in the Old Testament prophets and Greek “Christians before Christ” (Ibid., 125). , in his , 17, 6, places in the human a knowledge of God that cannot be lost. Ibid., 271 n5. 602 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 125. 171 offered to those who lived before Christ because Christ’s presence was available in seed form in every human being since the creation of humanity. O’Collins embraces this view and builds upon it by attempting to delineate how one can discern these seeds today in non-Christian religions. O’Collins hopes that by providing criteria for discerning these seeds in non-Christian religions he will help clarify the “criteria for authentic religious experience as such.”603

According to O’Collins, the notion of seeds of the Word applies not to the transcendental order, but only to the historical and conscious level of religious experience. Through identifying these

Seeds of the Word in certain experiences outside of the visible Church, O’Collins hopes he can find those practices in non-Christian religions that are authentically religious.604 The various aspects of Christ’s ongoing saving presence, such as wisdom, are given a clarifying structure under this umbrella category.

How, then, does one recognize these seeds? O’Collins notes several essential presuppositions: Jesus was the definitive and complete climax of God’s self-communication; and thus Christ is the goal of all human experience of revelation in special and general salvation history, both transcendentally and historically; accordingly, Christ is the ultimate criterion for judging the history of revelation and salvation.605 With these presuppositions in mind, O’Collins provides criteria by which one can identify experiences in non-Christian religions in which the revealing and redeeming presence of Christ renders authentically religious. One can first examine non-Christian religious experiences for a sense of profundity. These experiences will go beyond the everyday. O’Collins’s second criterion is that these experiences of the seeds of the

Word will have an impact on a person’s subsequent behavior. This means that these experiences

603 Ibid., 126. 604 Ibid., 128. 605 Ibid., 125. 172 will evoke a person’s sense of hope and love. They will lead a person to care for and have for others. Third, these experiences of non-Christians will in some manner have a link to Christ. This Christological dimension of a person’s experience will contain a revealing and redeeming presence, along with an orientation towards Christ that reflects the Trinitarian character of God.606 This is an important criterion for O’Collins since it affirms the centrality of

Christ as the agent of revelation and salvation. While this criterion focuses on the special history of revelation, hints of Christ’s presence can be found in general history when, as he specifically notes, non-Christian religions disclose Christ’s influence and message.607 O’Collins’s final criterion for finding authentic seeds of revelation and salvation is the Trinitarian face stamped upon all experience. Since there is no other God than the Trinitarian God, all true religious experience should bear in some manner the Trinitarian shape. He calls this the “vestigia

Trinitatis” and notes that these vestiges are only recognizable in the light of faith.608

In searching for semina Verbi, one can include not only religious experiences but various expressions of faith, such as religious texts and writings. Examples of important religious writings that express authentic religious experiences and bear a Trinitarian face include the

Trimurti , which reflects on the three aspects of the Absolute Spirit (, , and

Siva), as well as writings on the Yin, Yang, and of . Less specifically, O’Collins notes that one should look carefully at other religious writings that examine the absolute origin of the world, since these writings provide a principle of meaning and order and often provide reflections on the unity of love.609 Since even Christian formulations are limited in their ability to

606 Ibid., 127–128. O’Collins later works out the meaning of Christ’s “presence” in chapter 14 of Salvation for All. 607 Ibid., 127. 608 Ibid. 609 Ibid., 128. 173 express the limitless and unsurpassable experience of the Christ event, one must be open to allow for similar gaps in non-Christian religions. This gap between experience and expression should allow one to look more charitably upon non-Christian religions and their ability to express the semina Verbi.610

In summary, O’Collins deepens his initial reflection on the universal salvific presence of

Christ to include various ways in which one can find vestiges of Christ as savior and revealer in non-Christian religions. He identifies conscience, good actions, and wisdom as possible avenues of reflection in this regard. The notion of presence especially attracts O’Collins, since the nature of presence is multivalent. This leads him to the notion of semina Verbi, from which O’Collins develops criteria to help discern authentic religious experience of Jesus in non-Christian religions and writings.

4.4 The Unique Role of the Jewish People

In light of the above discussion about authentic religious experience of non-Christians, one can examine O’Collins’s thought on the role of Judaism. While they are considered non-

Christians, the Jewish people share much with the Christian faith. Their unique position raises several questions regarding Christ. If Christ is sole savior and revealer, in what light should one consider both the Jewish people and the revelation given to the Jews previous to Christ’s coming as recorded in the Old Testament? If Jesus, who lived in a particular time and place, is the exclusive revealer and savior, then how is revelation in the Old Testament to be understood? In

Foundations of Theology (1970), O’Collins expresses the view that there is a basic continuity

610 Ibid., 129. 174 between the Old and New Testament. This means, in effect, that the Old Testament remains

“relevant” for Christian faith.611 While the Old Testament retains its own independent value as a witness to special divine dealings with a particular people, it also maintains an intrinsic unity with the New Testament, in that it attests to God’s one salvific plan for mankind. Both testaments are concerned with the same God, the same people, and the person of Jesus. In testifying to Jesus, the New Testament writers drew upon and interpreted the Old Testament. As a result, the two testaments are inter-related for the Christian: “[I]f Christ is the key to the Old

Testament, the Old Testament is the key to Christ.”612

Yet, O’Collins points out that the relationship between the two testaments resists “any kind of satisfying encapsulation in a single formula.”613 In some ways the Old Testament provides a lengthier and more detailed explication of the relationship between heaven and earth, thus the Old Testament “enjoys a superiority in disclosing God and man.”614 What O’Collins apparently means is that, if someone relied only upon the New Testament for an understanding of faith, certain important aspects of faith might be overlooked, such as the need to engage in temporal liberation of those who are oppressed. While this theme can be found in the New

Testament, O’Collins holds that the Old Testament reflects in a more thoroughgoing manner humanity’s interaction with God and the ensuing reaction to “the manifestation of the divine will.”615 Unlike the New Testament, the Old Testament records a complex and extended set of events that comprise God’s revelation and man’s response.

611 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 107. See also Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, [Dei Verbum] (18 November 1965), Acta Apostolica Sedis 57 (1965), 15–16. 612 O’Collins, Foundations of Theology, 109. 613 Ibid., 110. 614 Ibid., 111. 615 Ibid., 111. 175

The strong thematic connections between the two testaments of the bible serve to reinforce O’Collins’s conviction that have much in common—a commonality that creates an important bridge for dialogue and mutual respect. O’Collins discerns a theme running consistently through both testaments: the human need for redemption.

This need is ultimately fulfilled in Christ, who offers salvation to all people. Moreover, recognizing the importance of the Old Testament serves as an important impetus to enter into dialogue with Judaism.616 O’Collins sees the Jewish people and their scriptures as being in continuity with the saving actions of Christ. Although they are not Christian, the Jewish people and the Old Testament hold a unique position as part of special divine revelation, distinct from other non-Christians.

In Fundamental Theology (1981) O’Collins again examines this theme, noting that the biblical writings that prepared for Christ’s coming also “participate in the truth which he [Christ] himself is.”617 Both the Old and the New Testaments convey the mystery of Christ, prophetically in the Old Testament and apostolically in the New. Israel’s history was marked by the divine self-communication that dynamically and progressively unfolded.618

Theological speaking, how can Christians understand this unique relationship between the two faiths? O’Collins identifies various ways in which Christ, who is present in all forms of revelation, effects God’s self-communication. The first is through creation. “As agent, model and goal of God’s creation, Christ also brings about the revelation of God through the external world.”619 The world itself bears the vestiges of Christ since Christ was the agent of its creation.

616 Ibid., 112. 617 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 241. 618 Ibid., 84. 619 Ibid., 116. 176

This is seen only through the eyes of faith, but O’Collins notes that fundamental theology

“maintains the aim of reflecting systematically on what the eyes of faith see.”620 The second way that Christ effects God’s self-communication is through the historical incarnation, while the third is through the resurrection, whereby his ongoing transformed humanity is present through all time. This three-fold distinction raises the question of where to place the Jewish people.

The Jewish people experienced the progressive self-revelation of God prior to Christ, resulting in an elevated view of God whose salvific presence revealed God’s devotion and power.621 This is a shared experience between Jews and Christians.622 As a result, O’Collins gives Jews a of place among non-Christians, and—given that the Old Testament does not fit cleanly into the three-fold schema of creation, incarnation, and resurrection that O’Collins outlines as the ways through which God self-communicates—he accepts the Old Testament as witness to a special (though incomplete) fourth instance of God’s self-communication. In terms of O’Collins’s distinction between general salvation history and particular salvation history, the latter of which “is the story of divine self-communication” recorded once for all in the books of the Bible, he grants the Jewish and even to a small degree the Muslim religion a part in particular salvation history insofar as they record, remember and continue to re-enact the story of divine self-communication.623

In addition to this placement of Judaism as a fourth instance in this schema, O’Collins examines Judaism in light of its unique role in salvation history: both in the Old Testament and the New. In Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples (2008) O’Collins revisits the issue of the

620 Ibid. 621 Ibid., 86. 622 Ibid., 119. 623 Ibid., 122. 177

Jewish people and examines the biblical understanding of the role of the Jewish people in salvation history.624 While it is true that God interacted with the people of Israel in a unique manner, O’Collins posits that God also extends his benevolence to all peoples regardless of nationality and race.625 Within this broad benevolence the Jews in the Old Testament enjoyed the special role of envoy and agent of God to the nations. O’Collins recognizes that the Old

Testament envisages all the nations in some manner being associated with Israel. “Salvation for the nations does not bypass Israel or occur without the involvement of Israel.”626 Thus O’Collins identifies a “Jerusalem-centered outlook” throughout the Old Testament and in Isaiah especially.

In Isaiah 66:18–23, God said he would make outsiders into and Levites to serve in the

Temple.627 More significantly, as a Israel was meant to serve as God’s agent in bringing all others to him. In this role Israel was to mediate God to others and in turn, would receive spiritual from the other nations;628 however, Israel never fulfilled this role. Also, certain destructive actions on the part of Israel in the Old Testament remain troubling, such as the genocide in Joshua 10. O’Collins recognizes that the tension between Israel’s universal call to mediate salvation and its destructive actions scattered throughout the narrative is problematic.

But these moments do not undermine God’s universal plan or the special place given the people of Israel.629

The New Testament provides several insights into the relationship between the Jews and

Christ. O’Collins closely examines Paul’s discussion concerning the Jews in Romans 9–11. He

624 O’Collins, Salvation for All, 64-78. 625 Ibid., 64. 626 Ibid., 72. 627 Ibid., 73. 628 Ibid., 74. 629 Ibid, 76–78. 178 notes that, faced with the difficulty of the Jews’ rejection of the Gospel, Paul offers no easy answer. Paul does affirm that God’s promise to the Jews did not fail (Romans 9:6–13); it is only an apparent failure. Paul sees the silver lining in the Jews’ rejection and notes how their temporary resistance has had the effect of allowing Gentiles the chance to receive the Gospel

(Romans 11:7–12). These Gentiles are grafted onto the tree, whose roots are the ancestors of

Israel (Rom 11:16–17, 28).630 In the end, Paul is confident that in God’s mysterious way all of

Israel will be saved. Thus God’s covenant with the Jews is not superseded, but continues. It seems that O’Collins places the Jewish experience of God, as recorded authoritatively in the Old

Testament, as a part and in continuity with the ongoing and developing divine revelation that culminated in Christ.631

4.5 The Role of Tradition in Ecumenism

O’Collins’s evaluation of non-Christian religions is mirrored by an internal evaluation of the Church’s tradition and its role in ecumenism, a topic at the heart of fundamental theology which is discussed at length in Fundamental Theology (1981).632 O’Collins’s view of Church tradition emphasizes a core “tradition” (traditum) based on the fullness of revelation in Christ over, and at times against, later culturally and historically derivative Church “traditions”

(tradita).633 The distinctions he recognizes between the two types of tradition and his view of the

630 Ibid., 171. 631 See Nostra Aetate, AAS 58 (1966), 740-744: “Even so, the apostle Paul maintains that the Jews remain very dear to God, for the sake of the patriarchs, since God does not take back the gifts he bestowed or the choice he made.”(4) 632 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 192-207, and Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 190-215. See 2.6 above which examines O’Collins’s view on tradition as a mediatory factor in revelation. 633 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 200. When writing of tradition as a whole, O’Collins uses traditum without capitals. Once he notes the distinction between the one Traditum and its various expressions over time (tradita), he switches to a capital “T” for Traditum. The following discussion will follow these distinctions. Also, O’Collins notes that the two source theory, which holds that tradition and scripture contain two distinct materially valid 179 role of tradition in the Church allow O’Collins to find elements of truth in other Christian beliefs.

Modern Catholic traditions (tradita), understood in a hierarchy of importance, need not be so tightly held, and in turn open realms of greater agreement with other Christians.634

O’Collins recognizes the important role tradition plays in human society; providing continuity, identity and unity. Social groups act as a collective subject when passing on, interpreting, and administering tradition.635 Christians find in their tradition a “definitive and absolute point of reference.”636 While other groups and societies cherish and refer to their traditions, Christians place “absolute, unsurpassable value” on the foundational episode of the coming of Jesus Christ, which was “the definitive climax of the divine self-communication.”637

Christians place their trust in the Church founded by Christ and recognize the Holy Spirit as the

“invisible bearer of their essential tradition.”638 Theologically, this raises the question of how later expressions of tradition (tradita) remain loyal to the original, foundational revelation. In other words, how is continuity retained?

Drawing on his distinction between foundational and derivative/dependent revelation,639

O’Collins asks if there is some way to be sure that foundational truths are properly manifested in later tradition (tradita), with its dependent formulations and practices. This question is especially important in light of the Protestant Reformation, which reduced all tradition to the Scriptures; no sources of revelation, was not supported by Trent. The shift to an interpersonal and dialogue model of revelation shifted the emphasis from material content to understanding revelation as happening when a person encounters God through various experiences, such as hearing sermons or reading the scriptures. 634 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 203. O’Collins credits both the 1963 Faith and Order Meeting in Montreal and Dei Verbum as important to his understanding of tradition. According to O’Collins, the Meeting was impacted by the thought of Protestant Hans-Georg Gadamer, who emphasized the importance of tradition as a necessary key to recovering the proper meaning of a text. 635 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 194. 636 Ibid. 637 Ibid. 638 Ibid. 639 Ibid., 99. 180 other authority beyond the bible “really counts.”640 In answer to this question, O’Collins distinguishes between the active process of tradition (actus tradendi) and the object and content of Tradition (Traditum).641 The action of tradition, which happens on the visible level, is an activity of the whole Church through proclaiming the Scriptures, celebrating the Eucharist, composing music, preaching, etc. In this handing on process, tradition and scripture assist each other in bringing revelation to life in changing contexts. Authentic tradition over time (tradita) attempts to remain faithful to the normative record of Christianity’s origins found in the scriptures, while interpreting the record to be effective in the present.642 The magisterium plays an important, but not exclusive, role by clarifying the relationship between the two and helping various traditions (tradita) remain faithful to the foundational revelation. Tradition as an action is tied to the bishops as successors of the Apostles.

O’Collins identifies the content of tradition (traditum) with the “whole aggregate of customs, belief and practices” that create .643 The magisterium transmits this content through statements of faith that it makes in light of the Scriptures and Tradition. The tradition (Traditum), as an object that is passed along, is impacted by changes in language and the ongoing development of doctrine as passed down from one generation to another.644

O’Collins explains:

The dependent revelation which is experienced now remains essentially continuous with the original, foundational revelation which the apostles received in faith. All the same, the whole Church, no less than the members of the magisterium, clearly modifies to some

640 Ibid., 196. 641 Ibid., 202. 642 Ibid., 203. 643 Ibid., 203. 644 Ibid., 204. 181

degree that aggregate of beliefs, customs, and practices (tradition as “object”) which gets transmitted from one generation of believers to another.645

Christianity’s essential tradition (Traditum) is borne by the Holy Spirit and carries God’s saving self-communication. This communication “takes flesh in various customs, beliefs, and practices which provide human beings with their social continuity, identity and unity.”646 The fact that God’s self-communication is passed on through such human realities leads O’Collins to note that “ operates in ways that recall the incarnation itself.”647 It is because of this relationship between human and divine realities that fundamental theology examines inherited traditions (tradita), searching for instances where human weakness has allowed

“unauthenticity” to exist. Both types of tradition, tradita and Traditum, play a part in the ongoing life of the Church, though the differentiation of the two from each other is an important task each generation and culture must undertake.

In Rethinking Fundamental Theology (2011), O’Collins clarifies how one might discern authentic tradition (tradita) by posing several questions.648 Does the given historically manifested tradition (tradita) assist in leading one to the Lord? Does the given tradition (tradita) help create better worship? Is the given tradition (tradita) supported by prayerful reflection on the

Scriptures? Does the given tradition (tradita) lead to a stronger involvement in serving the poor and the needy? These questions highlight the idea that particular expressions of the one perennial tradition (Traditum) serve a broader purpose and are not ends unto themselves. These questions

645 Ibid. 646 Ibid., 195. 647 Ibid. 648 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 210–211. 182 further serve the goals of fundamental theology “to access inherited traditions and establish whether or not they express the foundational revelation that comes to us from the apostles.”649

In addition to these discerning questions, O’Collins engages a Christological criterion for examining particular traditions (tradita). Using a Christological criterion follows in the footsteps of Saint Paul who, in both letters to the Corinthians, makes an “explicitly Christological criterion the key to the discernment and interpretation of traditions.”650 Paul explains that it is in the

Eucharist that the Traditum is found “par excellence,” which is the crucified and risen Lord handed over for us.651 O’Collins applies this Christological criterion to the present, looking back to Christ as the for all later tradition and looking forward to all forthcoming developments.

Even though Christ was historically placed in a particular place and time, one can continue to call into question every generation’s particular traditions (tradita) that might obscure the

Church’s mission to re-express the “essential experience of God’s self-communication to human beings.”652

O’Collins’s view of tradition and its discernment opens avenues of dialogue between various Christian denominations. Turning to the impact such a view of tradition can have on ecumenical dialogue, O’Collins notes how the attendees of the 1963 Montreal Conference on

Faith and Order were able to come to several points of consensus, which paralleled themes that would be found in Dei Verbum in 1965.653 The Montreal Conference recognized the distinction between tradita and Traditum. The common themes pertaining to tradition found in both the

649 Ibid., 210. 650 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 222. 651 Ibid. This Christological criterion was used in Dei Verbum, chap. 4, where Christ is spoken of as the primary sign of God’s completed revelation. 652 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 223. 653 Ibid., 205–207. 183 conference proceedings and Dei Verbum confirmed O’Collins’s view of tradition. First, the conference emphasized revelation as a personal encounter and not the communication of a set of facts, which helped calm potential tensions over the issue of whether saving truths were contained in Sacred Scripture and/or in tradition (Traditum).654 This emphasis on encounter shifted the discussion away from a quantitative debate of which facts/truths were contained in either scripture or tradition (traditum). The conference and Dei Verbum also understood tradition as “a whole living process.” Tradition (traditum) is not an object possessed, but a reality that possesses each person. The conference and Dei Verbum also agreed on the invisible role of the

Holy Spirit. The participants who attended the conference recognized a difference between the

“one” truth and the various expressions of this one truth in diverse historical forms. Unitatis

Redintegratio 17 makes a similar point. These parallel recognitions of the nature of tradition are encouraging developments for O’Collins.

To summarize, O’Collins holds that the value and authenticity of tradition (traditum) is an ecumenically vital concern, since various Christian faiths exist within a tradition, and various aspects of these traditions (tradita) do not correspond to each other. It is also important to clarify the nature of tradition (traditum), since traditions (tradita) necessarily change and evolve over time within any given denomination. O’Collins suggests criteria for discerning proper tradition

(tradita) within the essential tradition (Traditum). His results, which create a certain hierarchy of value within specific traditions (tradita), have an impact on his ecumenical ideas, since they, in essence, allow O’Collins to recognize traditions that retain truth in other denominations. The

Catholic Church is not alone in formulating tradita that properly express the one traditum. While

654 Ibid., 204. 184

O’Collins holds to the Catholic faith, he believes that one cannot discredit other traditions insofar as they hold to the foundational tradition—the one tradition (Traditum).

4.6 Summary

By way of summary, O’Collins builds his inter-religious and, in the case of issues surrounding tradition, ecumenical thought on his earlier fundamental theological concepts, such as the transcendental orientation of experience, the Christocentric role of Christ as sole universal savior, and the categories of history as general and specific. He develops several ideas such as an emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit and a willingness to find elements of the universal presence of Christ in seed-like form throughout the world. It is on the ongoing presence of

Christ, risen and glorified, and the theme of Christ’s universal presence in “seeds of the Word” that he places the greatest emphasis.

O’Collins attempts to understand the central beliefs of the Christian faith in a manner that opens possibilities to finding in other religious traditions elements of Christ’s presence. This presence, then, is not limited to personal transcendental openness, but can be seen in the structures and actions of belief. He does not explicitly go so far as Dupuis, for whom these various non-Christian traditions in turn enrich Christianity, though he may not be opposed to this line of thought.655 O’Collins’s view is optimistic in its openness to other faith perspectives, though realistic regarding the possibility of error and sin both in Catholic traditions (some of which must be re-examined and discarded) and in the traditions of other religious practices. He

655 See O’Collins “Jacques Dupuis: His Person and Work” in In Many and Diverse Ways (New York: Maryknoll, 2003), 24-25. For an account of O’Collins’s friendship and defense of Dupuis see On the Left Bank of the , 213-252. He defends Dupuis and highlights the significance of Dupuis’s work in Jacques Dupuis: The Ongoing Debate Theological Studies 74 (2013), 632-654. 185 does not equate the traditions of the Church with those of other religions, but does not give up on seeking a way of finding elements of holiness and truth outside the visible confines of the

Church through the personal realm of experience and institutionalized religious forms. In other words, O’Collins is strong in affirming his own Catholic religious heritage but seeks a positive and constructive way in which to understand those elements of truth in other faiths through the ongoing presence of the risen Christ in creation, revelation, and salvation, through mankind’s transcendental realm of experience, and through the ongoing mediation of the Holy Spirit. As he acknowledges in Focus on Jesus, O’Collins follows Rahner, Dupuis, and Gavin D’Costa in affirming his own belief in Christ as the universal and unique savior. He disagrees with the theocentric approach taken by Hick, who imposes a sort of absolutism by requiring that all major faiths abandon their own absolute and particular claims.656 O’Collins’s Christocentrism is applied with a non-polemical intent that he hopes opens possibilities for dialogue.

O’Collins emphasizes Christ as the sole savior and revealer of God to humankind and also the universal savior of all. As revealer, Christ brings God into encounter with people, both in special salvation history and outside of special salvation history. An encounter with Christ is possible outside of the special salvation history of revelation because of the transcendental nature of human experience that is always open to God’s saving activity in all experience. This presence outside of the special history is found in “vestiges” such as creation. An encounter with Christ in these vestiges is possible because the resurrection set him free from space and time to be present everywhere (3.4). So those experiencing general history, though lacking the special mediation of the Church, still have access to Christ via their own unique religious experience. Thus, non-

656 O’Collins, Focus on Jesus, 15–16. See John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, 174–188. 186

Christian faith forms can in their own way bring about a “transcendent experience of God’s self- communication” mediated solely through Christ (4.3).

O’Collins seems confident that various forms of Christ’s presence can be located in non-

Christian religions. Notable religious examples of these forms can be found in wisdom literature, creation, conscience, and the human orientation to the divine (4.1 and 4.3). In addition, since salvation and revelation are intrinsically linked, whenever one finds Christ revealing God, one also finds the possibility of salvation (4.1).657 O’Collins promotes the image of “seeds of the

Word” because it indicates and recognizes the already existing presence of Christ in other faiths

(4.3). Finally, O’Collins notes that the various traditions (tradita) found in Christian denominations should be understood as a historically and culturally conditioned expression of the faith. As such, each practice of tradition should be regularly evaluated for its in bringing people into an experience with the risen Christ as the full self-communication of God

(4.5).

4.7 Preliminary Critique

First, O’Collins has applied an ecumenical and inter-religious perspective to fundamental theology in a manner very different from those theologies one finds before the Second Vatican

Council. Preconciliar fundamental theology tended towards an apologetic stance and often failed to consider the relationship between revelation in Christ and the beliefs of other Christians and non-Christians. Encouraged by the Second Vatican Council and his ongoing interaction with scholars from around the world both from a Catholic viewpoint and beyond it, O’Collins has

657 See 2.1 above for O’Collins’s view on this link and my evaluation of it. While I agree that the terms are interconnected, they are not “interchangeable” as he puts it. 187 developed a perspective that offers reason to believe that revelation, which reached its fullest expression in Christ, is salvific and meant for all people, including those who do not profess themselves to be Christian. In O’Collins’s view, the resurrection is not reducible to a proof of

Christ’s divinity. Rather, revelation as the personal self-communication of God offers the prospect that the risen Christ is active in his saving and revealing role outside of the visible confines of the Roman Catholic Church. So while O’Collins understands salvation and revelation as coming through Christ alone, he simultaneously universalizes the possibility of Christ’s presence to all at all times. Thus, instead of being a “tacked on” afterthought to his fundamental theology, this ecumenical and inter-religious perspective has become an organic development of

O’Collins’s initial insights. This openness to see Christ at work in non-Christians follows both from his understanding of revelation as a personal encounter in the realm of transcendental experience and from his understanding of the transformative nature of the resurrection, which initiates Christ’s ongoing presence.658

This line of thought, while seminally present in his earlier theology, begins to develop later in his theological writings. His inter-religious views are developed in Fundamental

Theology (1981), where one can observe the beginnings of his thoughts on the possibility that a transcendental anthropology may lead to ecumenical and inter-religious developments. This view is expressed in his more recent work, Jesus Our Redeemer (2007), which devotes a chapter to

“The Salvation of Non-Christians” (chapter 11), and in Salvation for All (2008). Both of these books develop a detailed biblical case for an openness and awareness of faith among non-

658 Catherine Cornille notes that while O’Collins is unabashedly confessional in his approach, his book Salvation for All is a “generous attempt to include all peoples in God’s plan of salvation as conceived in Christian terms.” Catherine Cornille, “Review Symposium of Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples—Four Perspectives” Horizons 36, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 132. 188

Christians. Additionally, these same ideas have been developed in his fundamental theology, particularly his work pertaining to transcendental openness to the ground of being and the ongoing presence of the risen Christ.

By way of critical appraisal, one notes that the theme of presence and the mediation of

Christ’s ongoing presence through the power of the Holy Spirit is a valuable insight. However, an examination of the criteria O’Collins provides to discern Christ’s ongoing presence suggests that while constructive, it is also vague in some areas and requires further refinement. As Paul

Griffiths points out in his review of Salvation for All, the fact that Jesus is redemptively present in other cultures and religions does not necessarily mean that the founders of other religions are delegates of the risen Christ.659 Griffiths notes that O’Collins’s formulation and those of a similar vein avoid a serious look at some of the leaders of such religions, who were “agents of absence, advocates of lack, [and] entrepreneurs of evil.” Griffiths is quite correct in noting that there is nothing in O’Collins’s approach, at least as explained in Salvation for All, that rules out this possibility. Instead, Griffiths suggests that while one should affirm the option and desire to find such presence, it cannot be said that such is the case in each circumstance. The possibility of salvific presence does not mean that in fact salvation is actually present, especially when negative elements exist in a given belief system.

659 Paul J. Griffiths, “Review Symposium of Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples,” 136, refers to O’Collins’s statement in Salvation For All: “In other cultures and religions the risen Christ is also redemptively present in varying ways and degree. They [the prophets and founders of non-Christian religions] have all been delegates and agents of the risen Christ” (218). Chapter 5. Critical Evaluation

5.0 Introduction

Chapters two through four of this dissertation traced the development of the theological concepts of revelation and history, Christocentrism, and inter-religious dialogue in O’Collins’s thought. This chapter will examine his ideas to provide a critique. Chapter 1 presented the views of Gerardus van Noort as an example of an intra-conciliar theology and René Latourelle, S.J. in the context of the Second Vatican Council and the development of fundamental theology. Their work represents two discrete moments in the development of fundamental theology. Below, each theologian’s work will be examined in regards to their views or lack thereof on fundamental theology, revelation, the nature of faith, Christ and his resurrection, and the Church’s relationship to non-Christian religions in contrast to the thought of O’Collins (5.1). The thought of Joseph Komonchak will be employed to place O’Collins’s work in a contemporary context

(5.2). After this analysis, the systematic coherence of O’Collins’s fundamental theology will be examined (5.3) and several suggestions will be made concerning how his contributions to the field might lend themselves to future development (5.4).

5.1 Comparison of van Noort, Latourelle, and O’Collins

Van Noort’s thought clearly reflects the theological outlook found in the decades preceding the Second Vatican Council. His was a Neo-Scholastic perspective wedded to a preoccupation with proof and , an outlook that J. McDermott has labeled

189

190

“conceptualist.”660 This perspective is immediately apparent when one examines the sources upon which van Noort relies, such as Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877–1964) and Louis Billot

(1846–1941), both of whom are classic examples of this line of thought.661 O’Collins has set out to compensate for the deficiencies in this type of approach in that his work develops the subjective pole of faith-response to revelation, now understood as an interpersonal encounter in the realm of human experience. His understanding of miracles moves beyond understanding them solely as proofs. This is most clearly evident in O’Collins’s understanding of the resurrection as the height of God’s self-communication of love. O’Collins clearly moves faith beyond a conceptualist desire to establish proofs of certainty, while still holding history as a constitutive aspect of faith. For van Noort, reason and history prove the grounding for faith.

While van Noort’s theological approach reflects the concerns and of theologians in the early twentieth century, O’Collins’s contributions embrace the subjective turn and concerns of the late twentieth century. The apologetic nature of van Noort’s work is subsequently at odds with the initiatives of the Council and the direction set by John Paul II for dialogue with other religions.

Latourelle’s fundamental theology is an excellent example of the changes beginning to be felt in theology just before and during the Second Vatican Council. As Dulles notes, Latourelle escapes the rationalism found in so many Neo-Scholastic theologies of revelation by emphasizing revelation as a “gracious self-donation, an appeal for the obedience of faith, and an

660 John M. McDermott, S.J., “The Methodological Shift in Twentieth Century Thomism,” Seminarium 31 (1991): 245–247. 661 Fergus Kerr, in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians (9–10), comments that in the mid-twentieth century theology was taught by studying secondary sources, such as the text books of J. Gredt on Thomistic philosophy and L. Billot on theology, both of whose work typified the Neo-Scholasticism leading up to the Second Vatican Council and both of whose works Kerr considers classic texts of this period. Van Noort’s work is replete with references and quotations from both Billot and Garrigou-Lagrange. 191 assumption of man into a transforming situation of divine friendship.”662 Revelation is found not in the facts of what happened so much as the inspired interpretation; that is, the interpretive word.

Latourelle’s most notable work, Theology of Revelation, is indicative of the theological shift in perspective that broadened to include the receiver of revelation as well as incorporating the insights of the Council. O’Collins, in comparison to Latourelle, develops a different perspective by following the transcendental turn found in Rahner, coupled with an openness to the theologies found in non-Catholic schools of thought. In van Noort one finds a concern with certainty and proof; with Latourelle one finds a concern with understanding revelation in terms of the history of salvation and in light of the Church’s authoritative interpretation; and in

O’Collins one finds an understanding of revelation as an encounter with God mediated by the

Holy Spirit that also includes all of the various aspects in the process of coming to faith, viewed in light of the experiential role of the believer. While one may not find elements of disagreement between O’Collins and Latourelle, one certainly finds a shift in emphasis from dogmatic concerns to experiential concerns. O’Collins reevaluates dogma, tradition, and the magisterium in light of their central purpose, that is, in mediating an encounter with God in human experience. O’Collins, in essence, has broadened the discussion while developing a certain experiential approach.

An area of commonality between Latourelle and O’Collins is the central place of faith in practicing theology. They agree that theology should be done from within a faith perspective, while Van Noort, at least in his approach to fundamental theology, seeks to ground his proofs in

662 Dulles, “The Theology of Revelation,” 43. 192 rational ideas and historical facts. All three are Christocentric, though the role Christ plays varies. All three theologians reflect the respective period in which they write. Their texts reflect the current concerns and issues engaging Christian thought from the time in which they lived.

Each made use of the methods and tools available to them at that time.

5.2 General Critique

In his article “Defending Our Hope: On the Fundamental Tasks of Theology,” Joseph

Komonchak (1939– ) offers several penetrating insights into the past and current role and purpose of theology that aid in evaluating O’Collins’s contribution to the field of fundamental theology.663 While not in agreement with Komonchak in several respects, O’Collins parallels his approach in that O’Collins understands faith and the role of fundamental theology as providing an understanding that engages the entire person.

Komonchak notes that early theologians responded directly to Peter’s call to “make ready a defense” of their faith (1 Pt 3:15–16) and consequently formed theologies that bore four positive fundamental features related to this task. First, their theology was an “articulation of the ground of one’s hope,” in contrast to giving reasons for one’s faith. The use of hope here orients the theologian to a “practical orientation more immediate” than faith’s orientation of meaning and truth.664 Hope is “the existential direction of one’s whole self” towards a promised future that impacts our practical decisions in the present. Thus 1 Peter calls upon Christians to provide a

663 Joseph Komonchak, “Defending Our Hope: On the Fundamental Tasks of Theology,” in Faithful Witness: Foundations of Theology for Today’s Church, eds. Leo J. O’Donovan and T. Howland Sanks (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 14–26. 664 Ibid., 14. 193 reason that does not necessarily neglect faith, but that points a theologian towards a somewhat different trajectory than giving-reasons-for-faith would.665

Second, earlier forms of theology featured practical answers to questions about how

Christians should live their lives. When non-Christians witnessed the Christian life lived in hope, especially in the face of , they asked about the source of this life, and theologians sought to provide an explanation. Third, theologians sought to answer with and respect questions posed to Christians, recognizing that others had a right to ask and understand. This theology created the possibility of finding “some common logos that can serve as an apologia.”666 Finally, in developing their views and ideas, early theologians, again following 1

Peter 3:15–16, implicitly legitimized the need for explanation of their hope not just for non-

Christians but for themselves as well. They found that Christ himself provides this needed justification and explanation for their hope. While it is true that hope exists as a subjective reality in them, it is also true that Christ is the external (“from without”) and objective ground of their hope. Considering all four requirements of theology based on 1 Peter, Komonchak explains that theology is a “mediation of the Christian gospel within a cultural context.”667

Early Patristic theology’s development of these four features was oriented towards two audiences: those within the Church (ecclesial orientation) and those outside the Church (cultural orientation). Komonchak notes that initially theology was able both to defend the beliefs of the

Church against alien cultural dangers and also simultaneously engage the surrounding culture.

The theologian’s ability to reach both ecclesial and cultural audiences culminated in the work of

St. Thomas Aquinas but was lost in subsequent periods of theological development. Confronted

665 Ibid., 14. 666 Ibid. 667 Ibid., 15. 194 with a decline in influence during the , the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, the

Church withdrew from mainstream society and instead created a “distinct Catholic subsociety, inspired by a distinctly antimodern subculture.”668 As a part of this new “subsociety,” Catholic apologetics and fundamental theology’s aim of engaging and transforming the surrounding culture shifted primarily to refuting errors and rationally demonstrating the veracity of the

Church’s authority. In essence Catholic theology had become culturally alienated. With the rise of modernity, Christians were unable to approach with “modesty and respect” those who asked for a reason for their hope.

The Second Vatican Council changed the methods and outlook of theology for the better.

An awareness of theology’s early aim to transform and utilize the surrounding culture to bring people to faith was restored by scholars such as , Marie–Dominique Chenu, and

Henri de Lubac, who helped prepare for the Council. Following the Council, theology emerged from its subculture and re-engaged the world in dialogue. Komonchak notes three important areas within culture that theology re-engaged: , with its turn to the subject, historical consciousness, and politics. In engaging these areas theologians made anthropology the focal point of fundamental theology.669 Komonchak endorses this “anthropocentric turn” in theology because it now includes the one for whom salvation is offered—the human person. This is an essential point if salvation is to be properly understood. Such an anthropological analysis would include considering the person to whom the message of salvation is preached and the needs of the human person who requires salvation and healing: “[T]his [anthropological] analysis cannot be undertaken without some reflection on what it means to be the authentic human being

668 Ibid., 16. 669 Ibid., 19. 195 whom God has created and redeemed.”670 In addition to a focus on Christian anthropology,

Komonchak calls for further exploration in theology surrounding “the fact that Christianity presents itself as a word and grace from without, from God.”671 Essentially, theology should serve as a mediator between the Gospel and “the current cultural context to and for which it is preached.”672

Komonchak is not alone in recognizing the need for a theological anthropology centered around the question of human freedom. Rahner, Lonergan, and all strove to develop a fundamental theology grounded in a model of human consciousness. These theologians recognized that theological anthropology must center on the question of human freedom. Komonchak explains that within an anthropocentric-theological understanding, “the human person’s project of self-constitution through freedom becomes the horizon within which the question about God is considered to arise.”673 Man is involved in a free movement towards understanding and meaning that has no “finite term.” Beyond the specific questions for meaning there is an ultimate horizon and an ultimate meaning that theology seeks to mediate, and that is

God. In this task theology exists not as a timeless understanding, but only in specific theologies in particular and in concrete cultural contexts. Komonchak concludes by noting that in its anthropological turn, fundamental theology cannot be considered merely an introductory discipline. Rather the field engages the most central issue: the question of why we hope. An

670 Ibid., 20. 671 Ibid. 672 Ibid., 21. 673 Ibid., 22. 196 explanation for our hope, in turn, helps to reveal the “most basic clues to the meaning of the

Christian Gospel.”674

Komonchak’s reflection helps illuminate the significance of O’Collins’s theological project—first, in highlighting the great value of theology’s return to answering questions regarding the ground for our hope. Given this, O’Collins’s attention to the role of history within revelation, the centrality and meaning of Christ and his resurrection, and the Church’s affirmation of Christ’s presence outside a visible ecclesial structure are all the more important. In examining these ideas O’Collins breaks through the confines of a Catholic theology focused on the refutation of error and a rational demonstration of Church authority, both of which reflected an insulated subculture, and begins to offer grounds for our hope that engage current culture and the subject who encounters God’s self-communication. O’Collins’s understanding of the cogency of these beliefs as well as their meaning and purpose in the faith journey of an individual further develops the validity of the truth claims of the faith in dialogue with the free human subject who searches for meaning. O’Collins’s understanding of fundamental theology also calls attention to the role of grace in conversion, avoiding an overemphasis on rational proofs in a person’s faith decision. Alongside the role for , grace and the work of the

Holy Spirit are essential to conversion and faith.

O’Collins engages the modern person and acknowledges the complex role of mediation between God and the person in real life. Revelation, understood as God’s self-disclosure to each person, must be encountered in actual experiences. The historical validity of revelation plays an important part in this encounter, but faith is not solely dependent upon such considerations.

674 Ibid., 26. 197

O’Collins is careful not to sideline the centrality of Christ and his resurrection but instead insists that they play a more significant role in faith than simply being a “proof” for faith. He also understands the meaning of the risen Christ and his ongoing presence with each person through his victory over death. Using modern historical methods, O’Collins claims that the basic core of the resurrection accounts—that Christ in fact did rise and that his followers did in fact encounter him as a risen being—is historically valid and defends it against reductionist theories while being at all times careful not to undermine the meaning of the resurrection for one today. In an inter- religious tone O’Collins defends the centrality of Christ in faith and recognizes the seminal presence of Christ within the practices and doctrines of non-Christian faiths. In all three areas he makes a compelling effort both to defend the faith and engage in modest and respectful dialogue with those who, as Komonchak points out, ask valid questions concerning the grounds for our hope.

Second, Komonchak’s encouragement of an anthropocentric turn in theology is clearly seen in O’Collins’s thought. While affirming an objective, propositional component in revelation, O’Collins believes revelation is best understood as the personal self-communication of God. This encounter occurs in the realm of human experience. O’Collins’s understanding of this encounter protects the freedom of the person and also recognizes the importance of grace.

He appropriates the transcendental thought of Rahner to account for the possibility of this experience. The nature of revelation, the Church, and the magisterium are understood in light of their roles in facilitating the encounter between God’s self-communication and each person in the realm of human experience. 198

Third, when quoting 1 Peter 3:15–16 and its use of the term “hope,” Komonchak notes that hope “is the existential direction of one’s whole self towards an expected or promised future.”675 Although O’Collins considers the task of theology to be faith seeking understanding, he develops a train of thought parallel to Komonchak’s in that O’Collins discovers a faith-love- hope engagement that involves the entire person. Faith involves a recognition of the actuality of past events, most specifically the resurrection. Faith also involves an encounter with the risen

Christ in the present. This encounter, imbued with the grace of the Holy Spirit, leads to a fundamental life-changing decision that involves a person’s future commitments. Thus a true faith commitment for O’Collins involves the past, the present, and the future in a corresponding confession, loving commitment, and hopeful confidence in the future.676 So while Komonchak finds in hope a total commitment of the whole person, O’Collins follows a similar path in the way in which he develops an understanding of faith that involves the entire person. Both are concerned with the impact of revelation upon the whole person, reflecting the anthropological emphasis on post-conciliar theology. O’Collins explains that “faith is more than simply confessing a set of truths or affirming some objective facts which happen to look reasonably plausible.”677 Rather, faith also involves a loving commitment and a hope and confidence that look to the future: “In identifying Jesus as the truth and grace of God, they [the believer] consciously submit to him, enter into communion of life in the Trinity, and abandon the future trustingly into the divine hands.”678 This free decision involves the entire person.

675 Ibid., 14. 676 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 150. 677 Ibid., 146. 678 Ibid., 151. Emphasis O’Collins’s. 199

Fourth, Komonchak notes that broadly understood, tradition exists only in particular traditions. Similarly, O’Collins holds that each particular tradition must be examined and weighed since each tradition is a particular temporal and culturally conditioned expression of one foundational Tradition.679 For both Komonchak and O’Collins, theology must continually strive to mediate what Komonchak considers the ultimate horizon and meaning that is God.680

Clearly, while diverging on the specifics, O’Collins resonates with what Komonchak yearns for: a theology that gives a reason for hope and that both defends and explains the inherited faith. Embracing modernity, O’Collins strives to find seeds of the Gospel outside the visible Church while simultaneously defending the faith. (cf. 1 Pt 3:15–16) O’Collins’s insights into the nature of revelation and its relationship to history, his Christocentric perspective, and his ecumenical views offer a theology that engages this two-fold discussion with those within and outside of the Church. His insights provide reasons for the faith while engaging current culture.

O’Collins’s anthropocentric perspective helps direct the turn from metaphysics to epistemology, but without losing the awareness that faith is based upon grace which comes from God. For those within the Church, O’Collins’s fundamental theology helps to explicate and develop insights into faith. For those outside the Church, it underscores areas in which other religious practices and doctrines participate in the truth—areas in which God’s presence may also be found.

5.3 Critical Evaluation

A comprehensive view of O’Collins’s work in fundamental theology indicates that he is a synthesizer who carefully constructs an approach to fundamental theology by bringing together

679 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 210. 680 Komonchak, “Defending our Hope,” 22.See O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 212-215. 200 the insights garnered from various sources such as faith, theology, philosophy, and human experience. His thought interacts with influential thinkers such as Rahner, Bultmann, Barth,

Pannenberg, and others. Though his sources are eclectic, O’Collins thoughtfully weaves the important insights he discerns from these sources into an interconnected whole.

He begins from within a Catholic faith perspective, where he attempts to adapt a critical view that seeks to understand the sources of faith. He holds that sources of faith should be examined in light of their ability to bring the individual into a relationship with God. This personalist perspective informs his critique and serves as the underlying norm for his understanding of revelation, tradition, and the magisterium. In order to advance this personalist perspective he creatively adopts a hybrid transcendental understanding of experience, which serves in turn to inform his ideas concerning history, revelation, the process of coming to faith, and the presence of Christ to non-Christian religions.

As noted in the introduction, O’Collins explains that his fundamental theology is not meant to be comprehensive. This is true, though one can observe that his recent publication,

Rethinking Fundamental Theology (2011) provides an overview of many of the key elements of the field. While one can agree that his work in fundamental theology does not touch on every aspect of the field, his work does touch upon many of the main themes, contributing an original synthesis. Does his eclecticism undermine his overall project? I think not. One can reply that his ideas are coherent and in fact build upon each other. In addition, as his ideas have expanded and developed over the years, he has remained consistent.

Some aspects of O’Collins’s thought are founded on controversial distinctions. One such point is his view that revelation should be seen primarily as personal and experiential. Michael 201

Buckley, in his review of Fundamental Theology, voices reservations concerning O’Collins’s attempt to build a fundamental theology upon his working definition of experience.681 While

Buckley agrees with the need to ground fundamental theology upon experience, he questions the adequacy of O’Collins’s explanation of experience as the basis for building such an “extensive structure.” Buckley notes that one of O’Collins’s important criteria for experience is

“immediacy.” O’Collins uses this term to mean that in order for an experience to be authentic a person must directly encounter some object or person.682 While human experience does contain some element of immediacy, Buckley notes that it is “critically important to note that this is almost always mediated immediacy”683—a term Buckley leaves unexplained.684

Buckley’s observation parallels Lonergan’s distinction between the immediacy of the world of data, that which is given to the senses, and the world mediated by meaning, which leads to understanding.685 Lonergan, in Method in Theology, discusses this point in depth. One can mistakenly hold that one understands and encounters the world directly in an unmediated manner. This view of knowing by “seeing,” Lonergan holds, is a mistake; rather it is through a mediated encounter that one knows: “The reality known is not just looked at; it is given in experience, organized and extrapolated by understanding, posited by judgment and belief.”686 It is the naïve realist who knows the world of meaning but thinks that he knows merely by seeing it

681 Michael Buckley, review of Fundamental Theology by Gerald O’Collins, S.J. [review], Theological Studies 43 (1982): 140–142. 682 See O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 33. 683 Buckley, Fundamental Theology by Gerald O’Collins, 141. 684 Buckley goes on to explain that without this mediated immediacy O’Collins’s explanation of how Christians encounter God’s self-communication through preaching and the sacraments is difficult to sustain. Ibid. 685 See Bernard Lonergan, “Christology Today: Methodological Reflection,” in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., ed. Frederick E. Crowe (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 78–79. 686 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 238. 202 immediately.687 O’Collins indirectly addresses this issue in Fundamental Theology by explaining that there are no “unpremised experiences.” He explains that presuppositions and preconditions play a part in how one receives and understands one’s experiences.688 One must ask if O’Collins, while acknowledging the role of preconditions, goes far enough, or is he engaging in a mild form of Lonergan’s naive realism?

In Focus on Jesus (1996) O’Collins writes, “I certainly want to fight shy of language which could suggest anything like a separation between bare facts, on the one hand, and someone’s vision or interpretation of these facts, on the other. Right from the stage of sense experience a totally uninterpreted grasp of anyone or anything is impossible.”689 This sounds more in line with Lonergan’s point but is at odds with O’Collins’s earlier point regarding the immediacy of experience in Fundamental Theology (1981). In Rethinking Fundamental

Theology (2011) he seems to move even further in the direction indicated by Lonergan: “[T]his immediacy should not be misconstrued as if it meant to deny the presuppositions and prior condition involved in all experience.”690 He goes on to explain that various factors always play a role in mediating the experience.

O’Collins’s clarification, perhaps in response to Lonergan’s thought and critiques such as

Buckley’s, remains vague and suggests that O’Collins fits or at least unintentionally falls into

Lonergan’s category of a naïve realist. O’Collins recognizes that experience is mediated, but how this is mediated needs some development. While he notes the various aspects of experience, he does little to order and prioritize them. He also acknowledges little interest in Lonergan’s

687 Ibid., 238–239. 688 O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 43. 689 O’Collins, Focus on Jesus, 214. Emphasis mine. 690 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 44. 203 work, only introducing some aspects of his method in Rethinking Fundamental Theology

(2011).691 Lonergan’s insights might shed some light on this issue by allowing a dialectical understanding to bring the relationship between mediated and immediate experience into clarity.692 Whereas naïve realists think they know the world of meaning by looking, the world mediated by meaning is known by experiencing, understanding, judging, and believing.

Lonergan’s transcendental insights, especially in regards to the ordering of the human consciousness, provide a possible solution, then, to the difficulties O’Collins’s views on the immediacy of experience pose.

Another controversial aspect of O’Collins’s fundamental theology is his understanding of revelation, which heavily impacts other facets of his theology, such as the way in which he distinguishes between categories of revelation as either foundational or dependent. How does

O’Collins’s theology fare in light of many who do not hold to his distinctions? One first should note that O’Collins is a speculative theologian. One cannot hope to propose ideas that will be accepted by all other theologians. It is difficult to categorize or create distinctions of revelation that will achieve universal agreement. Such a goal is impossible and perhaps not even desirable.

His insights, such as his distinction between foundational and dependent revelation, fall within the possibilities found in Dei Verbum and other Church teachings. O’Collins’s work has been widely reviewed, for the most part positively, and his writings have been recognized by many reviewers as having provided a positive contribution to the field.693

691 O’Collins, A Midlife Journey, 372. See Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 16-17. 692 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 238. 693 See Charles Hefling’s review of Christology in Anglican Theological Review 79 (1997): 73; Luke Timothy Johnson’s review of The Bible for Theology in Worship 73, no. 1 (1997): 73–75; and Michael Buckley’s review of Fundamental Theology in Theological Studies 43, no. 1 (1981): 141–142. 204

O’Collins envisions his approach as one among many legitimate theological approaches.

In Rethinking Fundamental Theology O’Collins categorizes other approaches, such as those founded in of suffering, questioning, historicity, and symbolic mediation. He opts for an anthropology that finds its source in the experiencing person, which he terms homo experiens. Unlike Dulles, who seeks to find a system that underlies all other approaches,

O’Collins recognizes that his approach is not necessarily exclusive of others.694 Noting these various approaches I would agree with Buckley’s overall observation that O’Collins’s insistence that fundamental theology be grounded in experience is a strong point, and that overall “the judgments he forms on a vast number of issues are uniformly balanced and clearly argued.”695

Regarding O’Collins’s overall approach to revelation, as noted in the critique in Chapter

2 (2.8), I have argued that his view predominantly contains elements of Dulles’s inner experience and new awareness models. At the core of his understanding of revelation is the belief that revelation is personal communication. While he develops various important aspects of the experiential facet of this communication, his understanding lacks a unifying element.

O’Collins’s understanding of the nature of the resurrection appearances is cogent but not without some difficulties. William Loewe notes in “The Appearances of the Risen Lord: Faith,

Fact and Objectivity” that O’Collins, writing in The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1973), introduces a subject-object schema into his consideration of the nature of the appearances of the risen Jesus.696 O’Collins finds that the New Testament term ōphthē emphasizes the objective action of the risen Lord as the one who reveals himself to others while also suggesting a

694 See Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 37-42. 695 Buckley, Fundamental Theology by Gerald O’Collins, 142. 696 William P. Loewe, “The Appearances of the Risen Lord: Faith, Fact and Objectivity,” Horizons 6, no. 2 (1979): 177–192. 205 subjective perception that contains a visual component seen on the part of those who experience the risen Jesus. O’Collins does not wish to consider the encounters with the resurrected Jesus as

“visions,” since to him such a term denotes a merely psychological event rather than an actual encounter with the risen Christ. O’Collins wishes to emphasize that the encounters are produced by God and are not merely subjective psychological events of the mind. He dismisses those theories that describe the resurrection encounters as visions, hallucinations, or bereavement experiences, all three of which tend to reduce the encounters to interiorly produced and merely subjective events.

Loewe questions O’Collins’s approach since it was O’Collins who bifurcated the term

ōphthē into two aspects of objective and subjective in the first place. Indeed, the nature of the incidents, which included a visual component, invites a discussion of the visual subjective component as well.697 O’Collins holds that there was a visual component experienced by the

Apostles, and an objective reality, and simultaneously a neutral onlooker would not necessarily have seen Christ.698 Loewe is quite right in asserting that O’Collins’s view invites questions that

O’Collins seemingly prefers not to engage. In O’Collins’s effort to rule out those theories that seek to minimize or ignore the objective aspects of the resurrection appearances and reduce the encounter claims to merely subjective and internally faith-generated experiences, he undermines his own points concerning the subjective visual aspects of the encounters. In short, this aspect of his understanding of the resurrection appearances loses coherence.

697 See O’Collins, Believing in the Resurrection, 62-72. 698 In The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, O’Collins does not come to any conclusions concerning the possibility of neutral observers seeing the risen Christ but holds that the reality of the encounters is not dependent on this type of fact (34). But in Interpreting the Resurrection, after explaining that R. H. Fuller holds that the appearances were “not open to neutral observers,” O’Collins points out that “Fuller’s general account is acceptable” (6, 11). O’Collins notes in Jesus Risen that the ability to see the risen Christ would require transforming grace, a grace that would change a possible observer in such manner that they were more like Christ (120). 206

Finally, O’Collins’s understanding of presence has much to recommend it. He creatively attempts to develop an understanding of presence, especially in Christology (1995), that can helps one understand the various ways that God in Christ has made himself available and interactive with humanity. O’Collins has not been alone in considering the possibilities of

Christ’s ongoing presence both in and outside of the visible Church. O’Collins highlights the pronouncements of John Paul II, who speaks of the ongoing presence of Christ in the world as mediated by the Holy Spirit. More recently, O’Collins has begun to emphasize the prominent role of the Holy Spirit in mediating this presence. O’Collins’s particular contribution to the issue of Christ’s ongoing presence finds its locus in the resurrection of Christ’s human body. It was through the newly glorified state of his human body that the risen Jesus entered into a new relationship with history. The resurrection for O’Collins serves as the key transition point for the omnipresence of Christ’s glorified humanity that is now present to all, not just to those in the visible Church.

However, while O’Collins clearly defines both the source of this ongoing presence and its continuing presence outside the visible Christian Church, he does little to differentiate these various manifestations of presence. His intention seems to be to broaden our thoughts beyond an exclusivist perception of Christ’s presence as existing only in the Catholic Church.699 In order to show Christ’s presence beyond the visible confines of the Church, O’Collins provides a list of various facets of presence so that one can recognize Christ’s presence in various ways.700

O’Collins does not clarify and differentiate possible forms or intensities of presence, something

699 Drawing on J. Peter Schineller’s’ “Christ and the Church: A Spectrum of Views” [Theological Studies 37.4 (1976): 545–566], one can see that O’Collins’s view of the relationship between the Church and Christ perhaps best fits in Schineller’s third category of “Christocentric universe, inclusive Christology.” 700 O’Collins, Salvation for All, 214–224. 207 which must be taken into account when discussing, for example, the Eucharist in contrast to other forms of presence. His point of Christ’s presence outside his visible manifestations is well taken, but again this presence needs to be differentiated in its various manifestations. As noted previously (see section 4.7), Griffiths notes that O’Collins’s approach, while identifying aspects of Christ’s presence that can be found outside the visible Church, fails to look seriously at how leaders of various religions might not be agents of Christ. Griffiths notes that while one can endorse the fact that the risen Christ is redemptively present in other religions and cultures, this fact does not necessarily lead to an endorsement of the religious prophets and founders of non-

Christian religions.701

5.4 Future Areas of Development

From this analysis several avenues of development become apparent. The first area in need of development suggested by O’Collins’s work is the relationship of liturgical theology with fundamental theology. While O’Collins endorses the importance of liturgy in mediating revelation,702 this theme bears further development. Liturgy mediates and forms the worldview of faith. Liturgical studies present a picture of liturgy’s role, scope, and purpose beyond that of a mere symbolic mediation of images. Western and Eastern actualize and provide the context in which revelation takes place and is passed along to the believer. In this sense liturgy is seen as the locus of experience par excellence. In the liturgy the proclamation of Scriptures finds its home. It is in the liturgy that faith is expressed and actualized, and it is in the liturgy that grace is dispensed. The Catholic understanding of baptism is that in the faith and full

701 Paul Griffiths, “Review Symposium of Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples,” 136. 702 See O’Collins, Fundamental Theology, 200. 208 membership in the is given. This is not to say that faith is not already present in those preparing for baptism, but that the sacramental liturgy plays a unique part in giving baptised the fullness of the gift. Liturgy then plays a central role in the mediation of revelation to present believers and therefore needs further consideration. For example, the role of the

Eucharist as the ongoing presence of Christ would also be an interesting area to develop in light of O’Collins’s emphasis on the ongoing presence of the Risen Christ.

A renewal of the apologetic aspect of fundamental theology is needed due to an increase in the credibility and mainstream public discussion of following the infamous terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.703 O’Collins notes that this aspect of fundamental theology is important.704 In Rethinking Fundamental Theology he includes for the first time in a work dealing with fundamental theology a chapter on the nature of God in a work dealing with fundamental theology.705 This apologetic function of fundamental theology should continue in light of the current cultural debate concerning such issues as the existence of and ability to know

God. This does not mean that fundamental theology should revert to apologetics, but rather that the scope of fundamental theology should include some aspects of the apologetic endeavor in dialogue with the currents of modern thought.706

Ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue continue to rank high as a priority for the

Catholic faith. O’Collins’s views are in need of further development, especially in light of the progress and difficulties of recent years. O’Collins work, while touching on ecumenical concerns, focuses more explicitly on issues pertaining to inter-religious dialogue. O’Collins has

703 See David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions (New Haven: Press, 2009), ix–18. 704 See O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 4–5. 705 Ibid., ch. 2. 706 Ibid., 5. 209 provided general criteria for examining non-Christian traditions. Utilizing these criteria in dialogue with other religious perspectives may be a next step. It would be important to see if his perspective has led to deepened understanding and dialogue with other faith perspectives.

Ecumenism has a practical goal of unity. O’Collins’s insights, alongside those of other thinkers, can be tested for efficaciousness.

O’Collins has recently noted that “the very existence of this discipline [fundamental theology] seems to be quietly threatened with non-existence.”707 He notes that the Second

Vatican Council document Decree on the of Priests did not mention fundamental theology as a branch of theology. The name of the field itself suggests to some either or . Fundamentalism promotes a rigid interpretation of the sources of faith, while foundationalism uses a rationalistic approach to the sources of faith that seeks to demonstrate the validity of these sources. Fundamental theology should not be confused with either of these two approaches. Fundamental theology also is portrayed as being only a

Catholic preoccupation, a claim O’Collins shows is no longer the case.708 After examining a survey of classes in fundamental theology offered by various faculties around the world,

O’Collins noticed that the range of issues that he believes should be examined by the field is being partially ignored and replaced by courses like introduction to systematic theology and that the discipline of fundamental theology as a whole is not considered important.709

707 Ibid., vii. 708 Ibid., vi. 709 O’Collins notes that while several key issues in fundamental theology, such as revelation and faith, are discussed, the full range of topics is passed over. He does not offer an opinion about why this development has taken place. Ibid., vii. O’Collins lists the foundational issues he considers important: the revelation of God in history (both in Israel and Jesus Christ), the human condition as open to faith and God’s self-communication, the testimony that puts each person in contact with Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection which makes faith a credible option, the transmission of the experience of God’s self-communication through scripture and tradition, the founding and 210

In light of this decline, O’Collins believes strongly that the field needs to be revived and strengthened. The basic issues the field needs to engage include revelation in history, the conditions in humans that allow for faith, the testimony that puts each person in touch with

Christ, the transmission of revelation, the founding and mission of the Church, the nature of theology as a science and its methods, and an awareness of world religions.710 If the field is to survive, fundamental theology’s relevance must be demonstrated. It must evolve, engaging current issues and concerns in its search. It must continue to engage current issues and concerns in its search for a modest and respectful account of Christian hope. While a comprehensive fundamental theology might be beyond the work of most theologians today, its development should continue, a point strongly encouraged by O’Collins.711

mission of the Church, the questions pertaining to method, and the claims of world religions and the “impact on them of the risen Christ and his Holy Spirit.” Ibid.,15. 710 Ibid., 15. 711 Ibid., vii. Appendix A: Brief Identifications of Significant Thinkers Referred to in the Text

Karl Barth (1886–1968), a Swiss Reformed theologian and often considered the greatest Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, is known for his role in the development of dialectical theology in response to liberal Protestant theology, and for his opposition to the Nazi regime. Louis Billot, S.J., (1846–1941), a French theologian, was a strong proponent of a Thomistic form of Scholasticism. Henri Bouillard, S.J., (1908–1981), a French theologian most known for his role in the nouvelle théologie movement. Emil Brunner (1889–1966), was a Swiss reformed Protestant theologian, along with Barth, was associated with the dialectical school of theology. Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), a German Lutheran theologian who taught at the University of Marburg, is well known for his biblical approach that concentrated primarily on the fact of Jesus rather than the details of his life, death, and resurrection;he held that only the Kerygma proclamation is necessary for faith. Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999), a Lutheran theologian known for his work on salvation history and ecumenism, was an observer at the Second Vatican Council. Jean Daniélou, S.J., (1905–1974), a Catholic theologian and a professor at the Institut Catholique in Paris, was a at the Second Vatican Council and was considered an important contributor to ressourcement theology. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), a German historian and philosopher, wrote on the field of hermeneutics. Johann Sebastian von Drey (1777–1853), a German theologian who taught at the University of Tübingen, with Johann Adam Möhler, was part of the Catholic Tübingen School. Johann Gustav Droyson (1808–1884), a historian, alongside , emphasized that history is an empirical science. Jacques Dupuis, S.J., (1923–2004), a Belgian priest and theologian, was most known for his work on ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue. Johann Nepomuk Ehrlich (1810–1864), an Austrian theologian, taught fundamental theology at the University of Prague. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., (1877–1964), a French Catholic theologian, was considered to be one of the great interpreters of Thomas Aquinas of his time. He taught at the Angelicum. Claude Geffré, O.P., (1926– ), a French theologian, taught dogmatic theology at le Saulchoir and fundamental theology at the Catholic Institute of Paris. Adolf Harnack (1851–1930), a German Lutheran theologian and historian, is known for his re- evaluation of early Christian tradition and the Gospel of John.

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Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922), a Reformed German theologian who taught at Marburg, was a Liberal Protestant who thought that Jesus was just an ideal man; his most famous pupil, Karl Barth, reacted against his views. John Hick (1922–2012), an English-born theologian who taught at Cornell, Cambridge, and Princeton, he is known for his theology of and his controversial views concerning Christ’s divinity. Johann Baptist von Hirscher (1788–1865), a German Catholic theologian, taught moral theology at the University of Tübingen. Joachim Jeremias (1900–1979), a German Lutheran theologian, taught New Testament studies at the Georg-August University of Göttingen. Ernst Käsemann (1906–1988), a Lutheran theologian, taught New Testament in Mainz, Göttingen, and Tübingen; a student of Bultmann, he is especially known for challenging his mentor’s work and beginning the “New Quest for the Historical Jesus.” Joseph Kleutgen, S.J., (1811–1883), an influential Thomistic theologian and philosopher, sought to protect Catholic theology from the effects of harmful influences such as rationalism; he helped shape Vatican I’s Dei Filius and the encyclical by Leo XIII Aeterni Patris (1979). Paul Knitter (1939– ) an American theologian, teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is known for his advocacy of a theology of pluralism. Adolf Kolping (1813–1865), a German Catholic priest and theologian, was known for his work with the Foundation of Journeymen in the Rhine region. René Latourelle, S.J., (1918– ), a Canadian theologian who taught and served as dean of studies at the Gregorian University in Rome, has written on a wide range of theological topics, most notably revelation and Christology. Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781), a German philosopher, writer, and thinker of the Enlightenment, is known for his rationalistic critique of history. Alfred Loisy (1857–1940), a French Catholic priest and biblical scholar, attempted to reconcile then-modern historical methods with the Scriptures, causing tension with Church authorities. Gerd Luedemann (1946– ), a professor of New Testament studies at the University of Göttingen., holds that Easter faith stems not from literal events as related in the Gospels but from the visionary experiences of the Apostles, as well as from their experience of forgiveness. Willi Marxsen (1919–1993), a professor of New Testament studies at the University of Münster, was known for his emphasis on faith as a present commitment rather than a reliance on doubtful accounts of the resurrection. Johann Baptist Metz (1928– ), a Catholic theologian who teaches at Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, Germany, based his theology in , , and concerns.

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Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838), a German Catholic theologian who taught at the University of Tübingen, was known for his innovative approach to ecclesiology and theological anthropology. C. F. D. Moule (1908–2007), a British Anglican priest and scholar, taught New Testament studies at Cambridge. (1928–2014), a German theologian who emphasizes the historical dimensions of revelation, taught at Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal, the University of Mainz, and teaches systematic theology at the University of Munich. Michael Polanyi (1891–1976), a Hungarian chemist and philosopher who made contributions to a number of fields, is well known for his arguments against , calling instead for a richer view of human knowledge. Hermann Reimarus (1694–1768), an Enlightenment thinker who emphasized over supernatural faith, is best known for his work on the life of Christ, published posthumously. Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), a Lutheran professor of theology at the , was an influential thinker during the time he wrote, emphasizing the experiential aspect of religion, in line with Schleiermacher, his theory of value judgments, a derivation of Kantian thought, was one of his major contributions to liberal Christian thought. Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., (1914–2009), a Dutch theologian who taught at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in the , wrote Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (1974). Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), a German theologian who brought Enlightenment thought into dialogue with Christianity, often focusing on , is considered the Father of modern liberal Christian thought. Ronald Gregor Smith (1913–1968), a professor of divinity at the University of Glasgow from 1956 to 1968, translated various continental authors’ work into English, such as ’s I and . Gottlieb Söhngen (1892–1971) was a German theologian, taught patristic theology at the University of Munich. D. F. Strauss (1808–1874), a German theologian whose various publications on the life of Jesus caused a great stir in Europe because of his denial of Jesus’ divinity, is considered one of the influential founders of the quest for the historical Jesus. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., (1927– ), a professor of dogmatic theology at the University of , taught at the Gregorian University in Rome and was a member of the Leonine Commission; he is considered an authority on Thomas Aquinas. Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), a Protestant theologian and historian, endorsed a historical-critical understanding of Jesus.

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George Tyrrell (1861–1909), a Jesuit priest, until expelled, and a theologian, focused his speculative ideas on the development of doctrine and scriptural studies; his writings were condemned during his life by the Church, provoking during the modernist crisis. Leopold von Ranke (1793–1886), a German historian whose ideas concerning the proper practice of history were influential during the later nineteenth century in Europe and America. A. J. M. Wedderburn (1942– ), a professor of New Testament studies at the University of Munich.

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Selected Bibliography

Books by Gerald O’Collins, S.J.

Theology and Revelation. Butler, WI: Clergy Book Service, 1968.

Man and His New Hopes. New York: Herder and Herder, 1969.

Foundations of Theology. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Valley Forge, NJ: Judson Press, 1973.

The Case against Dogma. New York: Paulist Press, 1975.

The Calvary Christ. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977.

What Are They Saying about the Resurrection? New York: Paulist Press, 1978.

Fundamental Theology. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1981.

Interpreting Jesus. New York: Paulist Press, 1983.

Jesus Today: Christology in an Australian Context. New York: Paulist Press, 1986.

Jesus Risen: An Historical, Fundamental and Systematic Examination of Christ’s Resurrection. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

Interpreting the Resurrection: Examining the Major Problems in the Stories of Jesus’ Resurrection. New York: Paulist Press, 1988.

Retrieving Fundamental Theology: The Three Styles of Contemporary Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 1993.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Some Contemporary Issues. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993.

Experiencing Jesus. New York: Paulist Press, 1994.

Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Focus on Jesus. Wiltshire: Cromwell Press, 1996.

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Easter Faith: Believing in the Risen Jesus. New York: Paulist Press, 2003.

Living Vatican II: The 21st Council for the 21st Century. New York: Paulist Press, 2006.

Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Jesus: A Portrait. New York: Orbis Books, 2008.

Rethinking Fundamental Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Believing in the Resurrection. New York: Paulist Press, 2012.

A Midlife Journey. Ballan, Australia: Connor Court Publishing, 2012.

Articles by Gerald O’Collins, S.J.

“Criteria for Interpreting Traditions.” In Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology, edited by René Latourelle and Gerald O’Collins, 327–339. New York: Paulist Press, 1982.

“Jacques Dupuis’s Contributions to Interreligious Dialogue.” Theological Studies 64 (2003): 388–397.

“John Paul II on Christ, the Holy Spirit, and World Religions.” Irish Theological Quarterly 72 (2007): 323–337.

“The Resurrection: The State of the Question.” In The Resurrection, edited by Gerald O’Collins, Daniel Kendall, S.J., and Stephen Davis, 5–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

“The Resurrection and Bereavement Experiences.” Irish Theological Quarterly 76 (2011): 224–237.

“The Risen Christ: Analogies and Presence.” In Resurrection, edited by Stanley E. Porter, Michael A Hayes, and David Tombs, 195–217. London: T and T Clark, 1999.

“A Theological Pilgrimage.” In Shaping a Theological Mind: Theological Context and Methodology, edited by Darren C. Marks, 97–102. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2002.

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“Thomas Aquinas and Christ’s Resurrection.” Theological Studies 31, no. 3 (1970): 512– 522.

“Vatican II and Fundamental Theology.” Irish Theological Quarterly 74 (2009): 379–388.

“Vatican II on the Liturgical Presence of Christ.” Irish Theological Quarterly 77 (2012): 3– 17.

Collaborative Works

O’Collins and Daniel Kendall, S.J.

Focus on Jesus: Essays in Christology and Soteriology. Wiltshire: Cromwell Press, 1996.

The Bible for Theology: Ten Principles for the Theological Use of Scripture. New York: Paulist Press, 1997.

O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia

A Concise Dictionary of Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 1991.

O’Collins and René Latourelle

Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell. New York: Paulist Press, 1982.

Edited with Daniel Kendall, S.J.

In Many and Diverse Ways: In Honor of Jacques Dupuis. New York: Orbis, 2003.

Secondary Sources

Baron, Craig A. “The Theology of Gerald O’Collins and .” American Theological Inquiry 2, no. 1 (2009): 22–37.

Beinert, Wolfgang, and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, eds. Handbook of Catholic Theology. New York: Crossroads, 1995.

Cassidy, Edward Idris Cardinal. Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue: Unitatis Redintegratio, Nostra Aetate. New York: Paulist Press, 2005.

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Dulles, Avery Cardinal, S.J. The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System. New York: Crossroads, 1992.

___. A History of Apologetics. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999.

___. Models of Revelation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983.

___. Revelation Theology. New York: Herder and Herder, 1969.

___. The Survival of Dogma. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971.

___. “The Theology of Revelation.” Theological Studies 25, no. 1 (2001): 43–58.

Dupuis, Jacquis, S.J. Toward a of Pluralism. New York: Orbis Books, 2001.

Fiorenza, Francis Schüssler. Foundational Theology: Jesus and the Church. New York: Crossroads, 1985.

___. “The Resurrection of Jesus and Roman Catholic Fundamental Theology.” In The Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus, edited by Kendall Davis and Gerald O’Collins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 213-248.

Fiorenza, Francis Schüssler, and John P. Galvin, eds. Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.

Ford, David F., with Muers. The Modern Theologians. Singapore: Blackwell, 2005.

Fries, Heinrich. Fundamental Theology. Translated by Robert J. Daly. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1996.

Galvin, John P. “Jesus Christ.” In Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, 2nd ed., 255–314. Edited by Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and John Galvin. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011.

Geffré, Claude. A in Theology. Translated by Robert Schillenn, Francis McDonagh, and Theodore L. Westow. New York: Paulist Press, 1974.

Gros, Jeffrey, FSC, Eamon McManus, and Ann Riggs. Introduction to Ecumenism. New York: Paulist Press, 1998.

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Hall, Gerard. “Jacques Dupuis’ Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.” Pacifica 15 (2002): 37–50.

Hick, John. The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age, 2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster, John Knox Press, 2005.

Kendall, Daniel, S.J., and Stephen David, eds. The Convergence of Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 2001.

Kern, Walter, Hermann Josef Pottmeyer, and Max Seckler, eds. Handbuch der Fundamentaltheologie. Freiburg: Herder, 1985–1988.

Kerr, Fergus. Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians. Malden, ME: Blackwell, 2007.

Komonchak, Joseph A. “Defending Our Hope: On the Fundamental Tasks of Theology.” In Faithful Witness: Foundations of Theology for Today’s Church, 14–26. Edited by Leo J. O’Donovan and T. Howland Sanks. New York: Crossroads, 1989.

Latourelle, René, S.J. Christ and the Church. Translated by Sr. Dominic Parker. New York: Alba House, 1972.

___. The Miracles of Jesus and the Theology of Miracles. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell. New York: Paulist Press, 1988.

___. Theology of Revelation. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009. Originally published as Théologie de la Révélation. Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963.

___. Theology: Science of Salvation. Translated by Mary Dominic. New York: Alba House, 1969.

Latourelle, René, S.J., and Rino Fisichella, eds. Dictionary of Fundamental Theology. New York: Herder and Herder, 1994.

Latourelle, René, S.J., and Gerald O’Collins, eds. Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell. New York: Paulist Press, 1982.

Livingston, James C., and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, et al. Modern Christian Thought: The Twentieth Century. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006.

Loewe, William P. “The Appearances of the Risen Lord: Faith, Fact and Objectivity.” Horizons 6, no. 2 (1979): 177–192.

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Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Method in Theology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971.

___. “Christology Today: Methodological Reflection.” In A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., 74–99. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe. New York: Paulist Press, 1985.

Lucker, Raymond A., and William C. McDonough, eds. Revelation and the Church: Vatican II in the Twentieth Century. New York: Orbis Books, 2003.

Luedemann, Gerd. The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1994.

Maddox, Randy. Towards an Ecumenical Theology. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984.

Marxsen, Willi. The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970.

McCool, Gerald A. Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: A Quest for a Unitary Method. New York: Seabury Press, 1977.

McIntyre, John. The Shape of Christology. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1966.

Metz, Johannes B., ed. Fundamental Theology: The Development of Fundamental Theology. Concilium 47. New York: Paulist Press, 1969.

Morerod, Charles, O.P. Ecumenism and Philosophy: Philosophical Questions for a Renewal of Dialogue. Translated by Therese C. Scarpelli. Ann Arbor, MI: Sapiential Press, 2006.

Nichols, Aidan. The Shape of Catholic Theology. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991.

Niemann, Franz-Josef. Jesus als Glaubensgrund in der Fundamentaltheologie der Neuzeit: Zur Geneologie eines Traktats. Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 1983.

Noort, Gerardus van. Dogmatic Theology: The True Religion. Translated by John J. Castelot and William R. Murphy. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1955.

___. Dogmatic Theology: Christ’s Church. Translated by John J. Castelot and William R. Murphy. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1957.

___. Dogmatic Theology: Divine Faith. Translated by John J. Castlelot and William R. Murphy. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960.

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