Thank you, Richard. This is quite helpful. Rahner makes sense, and we already have this kind of thought in Orthodoxy.
Fr Aiden Kimel approaches difficult texts asking the question how they can be preached, on the basis of the Resurrection, in order to focus on God's goodness and ultimate restoration. So one would start, "Christ is risen, therefore...." Your post today completes this for me with the idea, "....therefore it - and He - is the proof that God has provided everything necessary for approach to himself in the cultic sense, connected to the Incarnation with God's own voluntary actions from his love." Or something like that :)
Thank you for this helpful post. I think you’re spot on in identifying a misapplication of a juridical lens over top of that passage.
Thinking out loud here about the application of Rahner’s Rule to this particular aspect of soteriology:
It’s easy to grasp how God’s processio (nature, essence) is what makes approaching him dangerous when one is defiled by sin. He is a consuming fire after all.
What aspect of his nature is bound up in his missio? I mean, how do we respect the limitations of RR so as not to conflate the necessary distinctions between the immanent and economic?
If Jesus’ nature is bound up in his saving work (according to RR), and if he is only Savior because of his work, how is his deity not dependent on his humanity?
Perhaps I’m being too nit picky but I think that saying his nature is both dangerous and safe is something different than saying the immanent and economic are the same.
Not nit-picky at all. I'm a bit confused by it as well. :-)
Here's how I'm thinking about this. By "safe" I mean that God's nature *in se* allows for approachability. God doesn't need to "do anything" to make our approach "possible." God is inherently approachable. In fact, it is God who approaches us in the Incarnation and who dies for us while we were yet sinners. This *in se* approachability becomes visible to us in history in Jesus.
That said, we have to make that approach "under the blood," confessing and recognizing our sin. So there is a duality here. Approachability and safety if we allow our sin to be exposed. Danger and risk if we make the approach in a "high handed" way, spurning the blood.
So, God is both holy and safe and given that duality there is a conditional/confessional aspect to our approach. As an image here, I think of Aslan. He's safe to approach, he is inherently approachable, no need for a "sacrifice" to make him approachable, but our approach depends upon the posture of the one making the approach.
Thank you for the response! I imagine we will both be thinking about this for a very long time to come.
That’s a very helpful distinction: that God doesn’t need to do anything to make himself approachable. That’s the key to understanding how Rahner’s Rule doesn’t devolve into an assault on his aseity.
And things need not get overly complicated here. God is radically intimate with sinners. You could argue this from a cosmic Christology (Col. 1, John 1), that as the ontological ground of all being, God is, to use Augustine's words, "closer to us than we are to ourselves." We can also look at the Incarnation and bear witness to Jesus as the "friend of sinners" and his seeking the lost sheep. As the "very image of God" Jesus shows us how God is relaxed and comfortable in His closeness and proximity to sinners, ontologically and Incarnationally. This is what I mean by "safe."
I am thinking about this (that is, the anthropology side of the coin) all the time. I find some help in an earlier part of Hebrews, 2:14,15. It seems that the humanly dangerous aspect of approaching God is to think the approach is unsafe (due to living in a Girardian miasma cloud of envy, scarcity thinking, fear and distrust). This thinking reinforces non-approach. The danger of non-approach is the living death of protective, autonomous self-enclosure. To risk approach is to come into cleansing contact with the indestructible Life of the perfectly Trusting Son. Discipleship is the progressive dispelling of the miasma cloud, allowing for deeper and deeper connection with Life.
Thank you, Richard. This is quite helpful. Rahner makes sense, and we already have this kind of thought in Orthodoxy.
Fr Aiden Kimel approaches difficult texts asking the question how they can be preached, on the basis of the Resurrection, in order to focus on God's goodness and ultimate restoration. So one would start, "Christ is risen, therefore...." Your post today completes this for me with the idea, "....therefore it - and He - is the proof that God has provided everything necessary for approach to himself in the cultic sense, connected to the Incarnation with God's own voluntary actions from his love." Or something like that :)
Dana
Thank you for this helpful post. I think you’re spot on in identifying a misapplication of a juridical lens over top of that passage.
Thinking out loud here about the application of Rahner’s Rule to this particular aspect of soteriology:
It’s easy to grasp how God’s processio (nature, essence) is what makes approaching him dangerous when one is defiled by sin. He is a consuming fire after all.
What aspect of his nature is bound up in his missio? I mean, how do we respect the limitations of RR so as not to conflate the necessary distinctions between the immanent and economic?
If Jesus’ nature is bound up in his saving work (according to RR), and if he is only Savior because of his work, how is his deity not dependent on his humanity?
Perhaps I’m being too nit picky but I think that saying his nature is both dangerous and safe is something different than saying the immanent and economic are the same.
Not nit-picky at all. I'm a bit confused by it as well. :-)
Here's how I'm thinking about this. By "safe" I mean that God's nature *in se* allows for approachability. God doesn't need to "do anything" to make our approach "possible." God is inherently approachable. In fact, it is God who approaches us in the Incarnation and who dies for us while we were yet sinners. This *in se* approachability becomes visible to us in history in Jesus.
That said, we have to make that approach "under the blood," confessing and recognizing our sin. So there is a duality here. Approachability and safety if we allow our sin to be exposed. Danger and risk if we make the approach in a "high handed" way, spurning the blood.
So, God is both holy and safe and given that duality there is a conditional/confessional aspect to our approach. As an image here, I think of Aslan. He's safe to approach, he is inherently approachable, no need for a "sacrifice" to make him approachable, but our approach depends upon the posture of the one making the approach.
And I'm still thinking about all this...
Thank you for the response! I imagine we will both be thinking about this for a very long time to come.
That’s a very helpful distinction: that God doesn’t need to do anything to make himself approachable. That’s the key to understanding how Rahner’s Rule doesn’t devolve into an assault on his aseity.
And things need not get overly complicated here. God is radically intimate with sinners. You could argue this from a cosmic Christology (Col. 1, John 1), that as the ontological ground of all being, God is, to use Augustine's words, "closer to us than we are to ourselves." We can also look at the Incarnation and bear witness to Jesus as the "friend of sinners" and his seeking the lost sheep. As the "very image of God" Jesus shows us how God is relaxed and comfortable in His closeness and proximity to sinners, ontologically and Incarnationally. This is what I mean by "safe."
Love it. Thank you for the time you gave to these comments.
I am thinking about this (that is, the anthropology side of the coin) all the time. I find some help in an earlier part of Hebrews, 2:14,15. It seems that the humanly dangerous aspect of approaching God is to think the approach is unsafe (due to living in a Girardian miasma cloud of envy, scarcity thinking, fear and distrust). This thinking reinforces non-approach. The danger of non-approach is the living death of protective, autonomous self-enclosure. To risk approach is to come into cleansing contact with the indestructible Life of the perfectly Trusting Son. Discipleship is the progressive dispelling of the miasma cloud, allowing for deeper and deeper connection with Life.
I suspect I got some of this from previous Richard posts, and have now just incorporated it into my daily grammar
Wow!