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The Self Prior to Mimetic Desire: Rahner and Alison on Original Sin and Conversion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Abstract
This paper engages the theological anthropologies of Karl Rahner and James Alison in order to develop two mutually clarifying perspectives concerning original sin and the nature of conversion. It begins by considering the value and limitations of Alison's use of the Resurrection, as well as his Girardian reading of history, as lenses through which to understand the self, original sin, and conversion. Rahner's transcendental anthropology, because of its similar assumption regarding the priority of the Resurrection for understanding the self, provides an effective instrument for evaluating Alison's project. I conclude that Rahner's transcendental perspective from within the “order of being” represents a necessary compliment to the Alisonian viewpoint, which remains exclusively within the “order of discovery” and thereby limits rather than enhances persons' capacity to experience grace. I ultimately propose, however, that further investigation of Alison's work and its usefulness for illustrating the psychological, ethical, and socio-political aspects of conversion constitutes a worthy theological task within contemporary Christian culture.
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References
1 Alison, James, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 28.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., 9 (Alison's emphasis).
3 Ibid., 19.
4 See ibid., 9–21 for Alison's account of mimetic theory. For another succinct summary of Alison's adoption of Girard's basic scheme, see Charles Hefling's review of Alison, 's theology, “A View from the Stern: James Alison's Theology (So Far),” Anglican Theological Review 81 (1999): 689–710, esp. 691–3.Google Scholar
5 Alison describes the “density” of the disciples' resurrection experience as a revelation that they too had been complicit in Jesus' death and were in need of forgiveness. But this revelation was only possible because in their encounter with the Resurrected Lord the disciples had the experience of having already been offered forgiveness (Joy, 74–6).
6 Ibid., 68.
7 Alison asserts the concept of the “christoformity of grace” as a better means than Rahner's “anonymous Christian” of accounting for the Christian belief that all redemption is by virtue of Christ (ibid., 90–3). Because redemption/salvation is what happens through revelation as a process of human discovery, the “christoformity of grace” could also be articulated as the “christoformity of revelation.” For Alison, all revelation is christoform because all revelation is discovery of the intelligence of the victim which has been made possible by the Resurrection of the forgiving victim.
8 Alison, , Joy, 83.Google Scholar
9 Hefling, 693.
10 Alison, , Joy, 69.Google Scholar
11 Ibid., 84 (Alison's emphasis).
12 Ibid., 237–65.
13 Ibid., 261.
14 Ibid., 265.
15 Ibid., 261.
16 Ibid., 265.
17 Hefling, 699–704.
18 Alison, , Joy, 239.Google Scholar
19 Hefling, 700.
20 Ibid., 702.
21 Alison, , Joy, 279.Google Scholar Cf. Hefling, 701.
22 Alison, , Joy, 253–6.Google Scholar Cf. Hefling, 702.
23 Hefling, 707.
24 Ibid., 709 (Hefling's emphasis).
25 Alison, , Joy, 260–5.Google Scholar Alison refers to Paul's mysterium iniquitatis (2 Thess. 2:7) in his explication of his own use of mysterium caecitatis.
26 Alison, , Joy, 263.Google Scholar Cf. Gen. 19:26.
27 For summary treatments of Trent's definition of original sin see Fagan's, Sean “Original Sin” in The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994), 620Google Scholar; Rahner, Karl “Original Sin,” in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Rahner, Karl et al. vol. 4 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 331Google Scholar; and Daly, Gabriel “Original Sin,” in The New Dictionary of Theology ed. Komonchak, Joseph A., Collins, Mary, and Lane, Dermot A. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988), 727–8.Google Scholar
28 Alison, , Joy, x–xi.Google Scholar
29 Duffy, Stephen, “Genes, Original Sin and the Human Proclivity to Evil,” Horizons 32 (2005): 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n.8. He cites several modern attempts to reformulate the doctrine of original sin given contemporary evolutionary theory and sociobiology: Domning, Daryl P., “Evolution, Evil and Original Sin,” America 186 (2001): 14–21Google Scholar; Korsmeyer, Jerry D., Evolution and Eden: Balancing Original Sin and Contemporary Science (New York: Paulist, 1998)Google Scholar; Williams, Patricia A., Doing Without Adam and Eve: Sociobiology and Original Sin (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001)Google Scholar; Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt, The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology (New York: Continuum, 1994).Google Scholar
30 Alison, , Joy 101–2.Google Scholar
31 See the preliminary considerations preceding Rahner's synthetic account of the doctrine of original sin in “Original Sin,” 330. Also see the methodological presuppositions to his treatment of original sin in “The Sin of Adam,” Theological Investigations, vol. 11, Confrontations 1, trans. Bourke, David (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 249–50.Google Scholar
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35 Rahner, , “Existential, Supernatural, Dictionary of Theology, 164.Google Scholar
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37 Rahner, , Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. Dych, William V. (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 116.Google Scholar
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39 Rahner, , “Brief Theological Reflections on the ‘State of Fallen Nature’,” Theological Investigations, vol. 19, Faith and Ministry, trans. Quinn, Edward (New York: Crossroad, 1983) 45Google Scholar: “This state of man is originally grounded in God's free will in which the latter offers himself with his very own uncreated reality to the freedom of his intellectual creatures as meaning, dynamisms, and goal of man.”
40 Ibid. Following from the footnote above, Rahner continues, “[T]his freedom of love in which God gives himself to man really establishes fundamentally the state of man.”
41 See pp. 18–19 above.
42 Rahner, , “‘The Existential’—Theological”, 306Google Scholar (my emphasis).
43 Ibid. (my emphasis).
44 Rahner, , “Original Sin,” 329.Google Scholar
45 Here, Rahner clarifies the traditional understanding of original sin as a lack of original justice. For Rahner, original justice is never completely lost (whereas, for Alison, a state of original justice never really existed). Rahner explains his development of the traditional teaching saying that, prior to the formulation of a transcendental anthropology, it could not be conceived “how the universality of God's saving will and the fact that Christ died for all men could be translated into a structural feature intrinsically characterizing the personal life of every man even prior to his justification.” See “Original Sin,” 329. Yet, Rahner sees his formulation as essentially consistent with the classical conception of original as a lack of sanctifying grace (“The ‘State of Fallen Nature’,” 52). For Rahner the lack of sanctifying grace, which causes an inability to exercise one's freedom over the totality of one's existence, is never a complete loss of grace.
46 Rahner, , “The ‘State of Fallen Nature’,” 52–3.Google Scholar Against a post-Tridentine theory, Rahner links human perception of original sin with the human experience of concupiscence, which he describes as the person's experience of an “inability here and now to love God with [one's] whole heart.”
47 Ibid., 53.
48 Ibid., 51. In “The Sin of Adam,” Rahner also says “what we call original sin … belongs to the initial constitution of that ultimate beginning which is withdrawn from us and never recurs, and the true nature of which is only gradually revealed in the light of the future which is Christ” (254). Later in the same article, he says this: “Unless we postulate this [personal guilt at the beginning] we cannot conceive of a situation which ought not to be the case, a state which is contrary to the will of the Creator” (257). And, “the existence of a real sin at the beginning is no myth … [t]his is a reality which we experience” (262).
49 In reference to the relationship of these two beginnings, Rahner only says that they “must be brought so close to one another that a history in the usual sense of the term coming between them is inconceivable” (“The ‘State of Fallen Nature’,” 50–1; [Rahner's emphasis]).
50 Rahner, , “The Sin of Adam” 259–60.Google Scholar
51 Rahner, , “Original Sin” 333.Google Scholar “God's offer of self-communication to man remains in force because of Christ … [and] also implies a permanent existential, a factor in every man's situation in regard to salvation.”
52 Rahner, , “The Sin of Adam” 259Google Scholar; Rahner's emphasis. In “Original Sin,” Rahner articulates this same position: “Antecedent to [every moral] decision, therefore … man's situation in relation to salvation is dialectically determined: he is in original sin through Adam and redeemed as oriented toward Christ” (333). Rahner notes that “situation” is concept also used by Schoonenberg, Piet J.A.M. in “Der Mensch in der Sünde,” Mysterium Salutis, vol. 2, Die Heilsgeschichte vor Christus, ed. Feiner, Johannes and Löhrer, Magnus (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1967), 928 ffGoogle Scholar, and in Theologie der Sünde: ein theologische Versuch (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1966). See “The Sin of Adam” 259, footnote 18.
53 Alison, , Joy, 44–5Google Scholar (Alison's emphasis). Although Alison affirms that God's gratuitous self-giving has always already been present, he denies that it has always already been present in history because he understands history as “a production of memory built on distortion” and, therefore, history, at least prior to Jesus' resurrection, is that which must be subverted.
54 Ibid., 101–2 (Alison's emphasis).
55 Ibid., 101–2. He asserts that the doctrine of creation in Christ was a discovery “simultaneous with the discovery not of our ur-Christlichkeit, but of our complicity in violence, our ur-Kainlichkeit.”
56 Ibid., 101.
57 Ibid., 102.
58 Ibid., 42.
59 Ibid., 43.
60 Ibid., 42 (my emphasis).
61 Ibid., 43.
62 Ibid., 42 (my emphasis). See p. 25 above.
63 Rahner, , “Considerations on the Active Role of the Person in the Sacramental Event,” Theological Investigations, vol. 14, Ecclisiology, Questions in the Church, the Church in the World, trans. Bourke, David (New York: Seabury, 1976), 175Google Scholar; see also pp. 169–75. For further reading of Rahner's treatment of Christ, the Church, and the sacraments as signs of salvation see his The Church and the Sacraments, trans. O'Hara, W. J. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1962)Google Scholar; idem., “The Provenance of the Church in the History of Salvation from the Death and Resurrection of Jesus,” in Rahner, and Thüsing, Wilhelm's A New Christology trans. Smith, David and Green, Verdant (New York: Seabury, 1980)Google Scholar; and Rahner, “What is a Sacrament?”, Theological Investigations, vol. 14, 135–48.Google Scholar
64 Rahner's understanding of the role of the sacraments (as well as “extra-sacramental” signs) in the process of conversion and in the history of redemption is dependent upon his distinctive use of the term “experience” with regard to the experience of God (or grace). For a more detailed account of the latter see Nieuwenhove, Rik Van's “Karl Rahner, Theologian of the Experience of God?”: Louvain Studies 29 (2004), 92–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
65 Considering Bernard Lonergan's differentiation between intellectual, moral, and religious conversion could help to clarify more precisely the points of difference between Alison's and Rahner's understandings of conversion and might also provide the grounds for working out a mediating position between the two. See Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 235–44.
66 Alison's use of Oughoulian's “interdividual psychology” is an elaboration of the self's constitution in and through the desire of the other described above (pp. 2–3). For Alison's own account of Oughoulian's position, see Joy, 27–33.
67 Alison, , Joy, 28.Google Scholar To use Hefling's description of Alison, “Our selves are mediated from the first,” (Hefling, 701), Hefling is referring to Joy, 279 where Alison writes, “All human beings are from conception, a completely cultural reality.”
68 See pp. 18–21 above.
69 Rahner, , “The ‘State of Fallen Nature’,” 47Google Scholar: “If our transcendentality reaches out, not only to one object but also in a kind of paroxysm of absolute hope to the original unlimited unity of all that is, then (whether it can reflect on this or not) it is already sustained by God's self-communication, which we usually describe as sanctifying grace and which, at least in the form of an offer, exists always and everywhere.”
70 Alison, , Joy, 46Google Scholar (my emphasis).
71 Ibid., (my emphasis).