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Ancient, Postmodern, and Prophetic: How Haight's Symbol Theory (Almost) Does It All
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Abstract
The achievements of Roger Haight's provocative book Jesus Symbol of God rise and fall according to the strengths—and weaknesses—of Haight's symbol theory as applied to his christological project. While this essay expresses a largely positive view of Haight's overall project, it focuses on two key shortcomings pertaining to Haight's symbol theory as it shapes his Christology: first, that his notion of symbol is too low to serve traditional Christology; second, that Haight strips religious symbols of their prophetic power by conceding too much to his audience. Drawing on the symbol theories of Karl Rahner and Paul Ricoeur, to whom Haight is deeply indebted for his understanding of symbol, a path is indicated by which Haight's model could more adequately wed symbol theory and Christology in yielding a more fruitful understanding of Jesus as symbol of God.
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References
1 Haight, Roger, Jesus Symbol of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999).Google Scholar
2 See Ratzinger, Joseph and Amato, Angelo, “Notification on the Book, Jesus Symbol of God” in L'Osservatore Romano, February 7–8, 2005Google Scholar; also accessible at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_ 20041213_notification-fr-haight_en.html (accessed 18 September 2007). The document is signed December 13, 2004. The statement highlights seven distinct ways in which Haight's book violates “truths of divine and Catholic faith,” namely: theological method, the pre-existence of the Word, the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, the salvific value of the death of Jesus, the unicity and universality of the salvific mediation of Jesus and of the Church, and the Resurrection of Jesus. The “Notification” bans Haight from teaching Catholic theology “until such time as his positions are corrected to be in complete conformity with the doctrine of the Church” (see “Conclusion”).
3 See “Statement of the Board of Directors, The Catholic Theological Society of America: With Respect to the Notification Issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Concerning the Book, Jesus: Symbol of God, by Rev. Roger Haight, S.J. and Prohibiting Fr. Haight from Teaching Catholic Theology” (February 2005), http://www.jcu.edu/ctsa/haight.html (accessed 18 September 2007).
4 For example, note Haight's willingness to engage critical observations on Jesus Symbol of God during an open forum on the book at the 2002 CTSA Annual Convention. On his welcoming and engaging responses to other critics, see Haight, Roger, “Response to Robert Masson,” in Christology: Memory, Inquiry, Practice, ed. Clifford, Anne M. and Godzieba, Anthony J., College Theology Society Annual Volume 48 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003): 87–91Google Scholar; and idem, “Traditional Christology for Our Time: A Response to Edward Jeremy Miller,” Horizons 27 (2000): 164–84.
5 Even Haight's critics concede that this is indeed “a courageous book” which “does not skirt tough topics.” See Miller, Edward Jeremy, “Jesus Symbol of God: Does It Work?” Horizons 27 (2000): 164, 171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Haight, , Jesus, xiGoogle Scholar (hereafter, page references appear in parentheses in the text). The precedent for referencing the Incarnation as the basis for inculturation is rooted in the documents of Vatican II, especially Ad Gentes (see, for example, paragraph 22). On the history of the term “inculturation,” including the role of Jesuits in the shaping and implementation of the concept, see Chupungco, Anscar J., Liturgical Inculturation: Sacramentals, Religiosity, and Catechesis (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 25–27.Google Scholar For the brief but pivotal document in which the Jesuits formally committed themselves to exploring and engaging the concept of inculturation, see “The Work of Inculturation of the Faith and Promotion of Christian Life” from the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (1974–1975) in Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations (St. Louis, Missouri: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), #5, 439–40.
7 He refers to language used at the 1995 General Congregation of the Society of Jesus.
8 Johnson, Elizabeth, “Christology Revisioned,” America 181, no. 14 (November 6, 1999): 25–26.Google Scholar
9 Yaghjian, Lucretia B., “Flannery O'Connor's Use of Symbol, Roger Haight's Christology, and the Religious Writer,” Theological Studies 63 (2002): 268–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar, places the postmodern christology of Haight in masterful conversation with the writings of Flannery O'Connor, noting that both writers are highly sensitive to reaching a largely secular audience who no longer accept many traditional Christian theological categories. Yaghjian cites O'Connor: “The great mistake that the unthinking Catholic reader usually makes is to think the Catholic writer is writing for him. … My audience are the people who think God is dead … at least these are the people I am conscious of writing for” (282).
10 Cf. Schleiermacher, Friedrich, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, trans. Crouter, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, first published anonymously in 1799. Significantly, the opening speech is titled “Apology.”
11 Haight cites Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 1, pt. 1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, trans. Thomson, G. T. and Knight, Harold, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F., 2d ed. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), 3–44.Google Scholar Haight opens his own constructive christology (the final major unit of the book) with an analysis, by way of polar tensions, on the christological thought of Schleiermacher and Barth. See chap. 11 (“Beyond Schleiermacher and Barth”), especially pp. 301–17.
12 It would seem that this methodological orientation accounts for Haight's somewhat unconventional preference for not capitalizing the discipline “christology” throughout his work. To avoid undue confusion, I have opted to extend his preference throughout this essay, except when citing others who capitalize the term.
13 The terms come from Ogden, Schubert, The Point of Christology (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982), 41–63.Google Scholar
14 See Jesus, 44: “One must answer today the long debated question of whether we can know enough about Jesus in order to make him the focus of christology in an explicit, methodological way. In this christology the response is that we can and we do, so that this knowledge that we have of Jesus is both necessary and sufficient for christology.”
15 For his criteria, see Jesus, 47–51. Further emphasizing his commitment to a method of critical correlation, he rounds out his three criteria with “empowerment of the Christian life,” which functions on several levels: it must have resonance with actual, existential Christian experience; it must respond to the ethical challenges of our time; and, it must offer a language of salvation that is intelligible to the actual Christian experience. This third criterion is, therefore, more an exclamation point to the second (“intelligibility in today's world”) than a separate criterion itself. These three criteria are given even further treatment in the constructive segment of the book, where Haight outlines two christologies he sees as viable today (pp. 425–31).
16 While Haight argues that symbols may at times function to reveal things which would not otherwise be known, Ricoeur presses even further when he contends that it is an inherent quality of symbols that they function as the sole means by which a certain surplus of (symbolic) meaning is accessed: “Symbolic signification, therefore, is so constituted that we can only attain the secondary signification by way of the primary signification, where this primary signification is the sole means of access to the surplus of meaning.” In this regard, Ricoeur is more careful than Haight to limit what may and may not properly be called a symbol, an issue I take up later in this essay. See Ricoeur, Paul, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 55.Google Scholar In a slightly narrower sense of the individual being making itself known both to itself and to others, Rahner has expressed a similar claim of symbolic expression when he writes: “The being is known in this symbol, without which it cannot be known at all; thus it is symbol in the original (transcendental) sense of the word” (Rahner, Karl, “The Theology of the Symbol,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4: More Recent Writings, trans. Smyth, Kevin [Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966], 231).Google Scholar
17 See Dulles, Avery, “The Symbolic Structure of Revelation,” Theological Studies 41 (1980): 60–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 In this context, Haight highlights problems he sees in the hypostatization of the terms Logos, Wisdom, and even Spirit. According to him, each of these terms should be understood as poetic figures of speech in reference to various attributes of God. He contends that difficulties arise when any of these personifications is transformed into a real being, into “a literal something,” distinct from the Father, and yet divine. It appears that herein lie the roots of Haight's unwillingness to accept the traditional notion of a pre-existent Logos, a position roundly rejected in the CDF's “Notification.”
19 See Hick, John, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 162–65, 233–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Haight adds that Karl Rahner agrees, in principle, with Hick on this point; see Rahner, 's “History of the World and Salvation History,” Theological Investigations, vol. 5: Later Writings, trans. Kruger, Karl-H. (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), 97–114.Google Scholar In this context, Rahner is exploring the relationship between “salvation-history” and “profane history,” and writes that “Salvation-history, which of its nature is a hidden history, works itself out in the dimension of profane history in which it takes place. God, who grants salvation, addresses man within the profane dimension of history” (99).
20 Later Haight writes: “It needs to be repeated that the phrase ‘merely a symbol’ has no connection at all with the theory of symbol being employed here.” He continues, “For ‘merely a symbol’ has come to mean that something ‘refers to something else’ and ‘does not mean what it says literally,’ and, therefore, ‘is not really true.’ If something is ‘merely’ a symbol, therefore, it is no symbol at all, for a symbol as it is understood here truly reveals and makes present what it symbolizes” (197).
21 Not surprisingly, it is precisely on this point of theological method that the CDF's “Notification” anchors its strong criticism of the book. Headlining the list of “serious doctrinal errors” is the opinion that Haight's effort at “critical correlation” actually results in “a subordination of the content of faith to its plausibility and intelligibility in postmodern culture” (sec. I, par. 2).
22 Recall Haight's definition: “Christology is the interpretation of Jesus Christ as the medium of God's self-communication to human existence” (196). With this definition of christology in hand, it is a small step to take when Haight proposes the following as a criterion for evaluating christologies: “christology is faithfully Christian in the measure in which it adequately explains how Jesus is the concrete symbol mediating God's salvation to humankind” (212).
23 This is one point where Haight critiques Rahner's christological language. See Haight, , Jesus, 432–33Google Scholar, 443, 459. See also Haight's reflections on the “Son of God” christology found in Mark's gospel which Haight categorizes as a “two-stage christology” insofar as it lacks any mention of pre-existence in its understanding of Jesus as Son of God (159–63).
24 While Haight explicitly prefers a Spirit christology model over a Logos christology (a preference evident as early as p. 23), he nonetheless argues that it is possible to develop a Logos christology which does meet his criterion for intelligibility to a postmodern audience. He even presents a model Logos christology alongside a Spirit christology in chapter 15, contending that both are legitimate christological options. While he manages to preserve enough Logos christology language to assign it the title, the substance is so thoroughly similar to the Spirit christology which follows that one is left wondering whether Haight has not, in fact, succeeded only in dressing a single Spirit christology in two rhetorical robes. For an earlier presentation of his defense of a Spirit christology, see Haight, Roger, “The Case for Spirit Christology,” Theological Studies 53 (1992): 257–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25 Haight qualifies his dismissal of Jesus' pre-existence by adding, “unless the understanding is such that we too were pre-existent.”
26 Though Haight rejects the notion of any qualitative difference between Jesus and ourselves, he admits feeling compelled to preserve something of it due to its prevalence throughout the Christian tradition. He therefore notes the ambiguity of the term “qualitative” in relation to “quantitative” differences, suggesting that a quantitative difference does, in fact, empirically alter the qualitative character of a given subject (463–64).
27 In a move reminiscent of Schleiermacher's decision to relegate his entire discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity to the brief conclusion of his monumental dogmatic work The Christian Faith, Haight leaves his own treatment of the Trinity in his 500-page christological work to a brief final chapter. See Schleiermacher, Friedrich, The Christian Faith, ed. Mackintosh, H.R. and Stewart, J. S., 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989)Google Scholar for an English translation of the second German edition published in 1830–31.
28 See Jesus, 479–80 for further analysis of the relationship between trinitarian theology and christology.
29 For an incisive critical commentary on Haight's trinitarian thought in Jesus Symbol of God, see the sections entitled “Theology From Below and Trinitarian Agnosticism” and “Fault Lines” in Loewe's, William P. “Two Revisionist Christologies of Presence: Roger Haight and Piet Schoonenberg,” in A Sacramental Life: A Festschrift Honoring Bernard Cooke, eds. Barnes, Michael Horace and Roberts, William P. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2003), 93–115.Google Scholar
30 See especially chapter 15 (“The Divinity of Jesus Christ”). Here Haight, while sympathetically suggesting some points of critique which have recently been raised against Rahner's christology (432–35), describes his own constructive work in this chapter as “a retrieval of Rahner” (435).
31 Cavadini, John levels a similar charge against Haight in his sharply critical review “A Metaphor Gone Wild,” Commonweal, 8 October 1999, 22–24.Google Scholar
32 Another example of his interchangeable use of the terms comes in a discussion of “the metaphorical and symbolic character of this term ‘Word’ …” (437). This apparent collapse of metaphor and symbol into a single meaning is particularly inconsistent with the interpretation theory upon which Haight relies most heavily, namely Paul Ricoeur's as outlined in Ricoeur's, Interpretation Theory, 45–69.Google Scholar
33 Among Haight's critics, Cavadini (“A Metaphor Gone Wild”) is one who concludes that Haight's project fails to back up his own protestations that Jesus is not merely a symbol after all. Cavadini is certainly not alone in his assessment. For an equally sharp but more sustained critique of Haight's earlier presentation of the nature of Jesus (one consistent with that developed in Jesus Symbol of God), see Wright, John H. S.J., “Note: Roger Haight's Spirit Christology,” Theological Studies 53 (1992): 729–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In the end, Wright believes Haight's christology is too low to fulfill even the guidelines Haight establishes for himself: “These criteria are well chosen. But using them to evaluate his Christology as described above, I find it to be defective, precisely in his denial that the ultimate personal subject in Jesus, the one who is Jesus, is truly and personally divine” (730).
34 Haight notes “five problematic areas” of Rahner's christological thought (432–35).
35 Rahner, , “Symbol,” 225.Google Scholar
36 Ibid., 235.
37 Masson, Robert, “The Clash of Christological Symbols: A Case for Metaphoric Realism,” in Christology: Memory, Inquiry, Practice, 69.Google Scholar
38 Rahner, , “Symbol,” 225Google Scholar, 227.
39 Ibid., 227.
40 Ibid., 231.
41 Ibid., 226.
42 Ibid., 229–30, n. 9.
43 Haight criticizes Rahner's trinitarian theology specifically on this point: “The problem with Rahner's construct is that, from a critical epistemological point of view, the axiom of the identity of the economic and the immanent trinity represents a jump. Epistemologically, it is a pure postulate that rests on no more than dogmatic grounds” (487). Haight takes particular issue here with Rahner's axiom: “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity.” Cf. Rahner, Karl, The Trinity, trans. Donceel, Joseph (New York: Seabury, 1974), 21–24.Google Scholar
44 Rahner writes: “If a theology of symbolic realities is to be written, Christology, the doctrine of the incarnation of the Word, will obviously form the central chapter” (“Symbol,” 237).
45 Ibid., 235.
46 Ibid., 234.
47 Masson, , “Clash,” 66.Google Scholar In this regard, Masson shows how Haight is clearly more sympathetic to Paul Tillich's notion of symbol than he is to Rahner's. The discrepancy also highlights for Masson the illegitimacy of Haight's conflation of the two thinkers’ theologies of symbol in the book (cf. “Clash,” 65–69).
48 Haight, Roger, “Response to Robert Masson: The Clash of Christological Symbols,” in Christology: Memory, Inquiry, Practice, 88.Google Scholar
49 Rahner, , “Symbol,” 230.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., 230. Italics are his.
51 Haight uses “horizon” here in the Gadamerian sense of the word. See Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, trans. Weinsheimer, Joel and Marshall, Donald G., 2d rev. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1998), 302–07.Google Scholar
52 See Ricoeur on the difference between the spoken and written word: “The letters of Paul are no less addressed to me than to the Romans, the Galatians, the Corinthians, and the Ephesians. Only the dialogue has a ‘thou’ whose identification precedes discourse. The meaning of a text is open to anyone who can read” (Interpretation Theory, 93).
53 It should be noted, however, that Ricoeur himself uses the phrase “surplus of meaning” (or “surplus of signification”) to refer to a second level of meaning to be found in symbolic signification, what he calls “the residue of the literal interpretation” (Interpretation Theory, 55).
54 Rahner, Tillich, and Eliade round out the short list.
55 Ricoeur affirms: “I believe that being can still speak to me—no longer, of course, under the form of immediate belief, but as a second immediacy aimed at by hermeneutics. This second naïveté aims to be the postcritical equivalent of precritical hierophany” (Ricoeur, Paul, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Buchanan, Emerson [Boston: Beacon Press, 1967], 352Google Scholar).
56 Ibid., 352. Ricoeur continues by describing such a hermeneutics as “the ‘modern’ mode of belief in symbols, an expression of the distress of modernity and a remedy for that distress.”
57 In this chapter, Haight laments the fact that the Christian message today has too often become an exclusively individual affair seen as having little relevance to pressing social concerns. He thus argues for a more socially and ethically relevant role for religion in our postmodern world.
58 Ricoeur, , Interpretation Theory, 94Google Scholar; also Symbolism of Evil, 356.
59 See, for example, Cone, James M., Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999), 100Google Scholar (on the role of Jesus' crucifixion in the theology of Martin Luther King, Jr). Cone later writes: “Because the church is a community called into being by the ‘Crucified God,’ it must be a crucified church, living under the cross” (124). See also the discussion of martyrdom in the introduction to Gutiérrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, trans. and ed. Inda, Caridad and Eagleson, John (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), xliii–xlivGoogle Scholar (orig. 1971). Also see Berryman, Phillip, Liberation Theology: Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America—and Beyond (Oak Park, IL: Meyer-Stone Books, 1987), 53–57Google Scholar, for an exploration of the ways in which the biblical language of Jesus' struggle, death, and vindication have been appropriated in Latin American liberation theology.
60 I use “neglected” advisedly here. Haight is certainly well aware of Ricoeur's notion of “polyvalence,” a concept closely related to symbolic “opacity” (see Haight, , Jesus, 57Google Scholar, n. 4). He also lists the “multivalent” structure of symbols among his six traits of symbolic mediation (201, citing Mircea Eliade, but clearly described with Ricoeur in the background). Elsewhere, he describes symbols as “dialectical” in a way which seems roughly equivalent to Ricoeur's opacity: “A symbol is dialectical. This means that from different perspectives it allows for contrary predications, or predications that do not on the face of it cohere” (“A Response to Miller,” 182). When Haight applies his theory to Jesus as symbol of God, however, he strips the gospel narratives of precisely such dialectical potential by way of an unyielding insistence that symbol must adhere strictly to the logical norms of his audience.
61 Ricoeur argues that this movement toward rationalizing symbolic, biblical narrative into dogmatic discourse describes the development of the Christian doctrine of sin. Ricoeur places particular blame on St. Augustine, whose rationale necessitated the sacrifice of one of the two visions of evil—and here the ethical dimension eclipsed the tragic dimension. The resulting doctrine of original sin which eventually gained ascendancy in Christian theological discourse thus represents for Ricoeur a great impoverishment of the original symbol narrative: “Anti-Gnostic in origin and intention, because evil remains integrally human, the concept of original sin becomes quasi-Gnostic to the degree that it is rationalized” (Ricoeur, Paul, “Original Sin': A Study in Meaning,” trans. McCormick, Peter, in The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Ihde, Don [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974], 269–86 at 280Google Scholar).
62 For an analysis of this internal contradiction of evil as captured in the Adamic myth, see Ricoeur, , Symbolism of Evil, 243–60.Google Scholar
63 For example, see 1 Corinthians 1.
64 Ricoeur, , Interpretation Theory, 60, 94.Google Scholar
65 Haight, Roger, “Confessional Christian Theology in the Context of the Wider Human and Religious Conversation,” paper delivered at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Baltimore, MD, March 1, 2007.Google Scholar