The Peace of Life

Pondering Dual Membership

The other day, I was talking with a fellow student here at YDS who is studying to earn an MAR in Asian Religions who identifies as both Catholic and Buddhist. He was explaining his choices and I ended up explaining how I was baptized and confirmed Episcopalian, then prayed and worked for years at a TAC Anglican cathedral, and then was confirmed as an adult into the Catholic Church; and so then my classmate asked me: "So are you Catholic, Anglican or both?"

At first I was inclined answer only Catholic, since my entry into the Catholic church was an important development for me and I certainly consider myself to be first and foremost Catholic... but then I paused because I actually don't know - from either a technical or spiritual sense - whether the shift to Catholicism also marked a shift away from the Anglican Communion.

After all, in a technical sense, I never signed an exit paper or did anything to separate myself from the Anglican Communion (unless the Episcopal church considers my Catholic confirmation to be a cancellation of my Episcopalian one, though such an exclusion would be theologically a little suspect since the Anglican church, like the Catholic, considers its sacraments to involve a real transmission of grace and a real transformation of state; sacraments by definition can't get undone, can they? Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about that. I may be interpreting Anglican sacraments through a Catholic sacramental theology, simply on account of not knowing the Anglican theology as well.) Moreover, whether it's theologically true or not, I'm still on the books at St. John the Divine and St. James Episcopal churches as being a baptized and confirmed member of the church. Thus I don't know whether I confirmed myself out of the Anglican Communion or whether I am and always will still be part of it.

Spiritually speaking, I've realized here at YDS just how eclectic my theological informants have been. I certainly identify most with Catholic theology (and have especially enjoyed reading Rahner because his work resonates so well with my experience of God in life), but that doesn't mean I ever set out to reject the various emphases I learned as a child in Baptist Awana, Lutheran Sunday School, Episcopalian confirmation class, or Anglican liturgy. I've simply been adding all of these perspectives, layering them all into my spiritual basket and carrying them all around together, glad to have more rather than less.

In the end, I am and always will be first and foremost deeply Catholic - but I hope there is some theological way of understanding it in addition to the other identities that are floating around inside of me. My friend in Asian Religions joked in our conversation yesterday, "I'm fully Catholic and fully Buddhist. After all, Jesus didn't just do things one hundred percent - he was fully divine AND fully human." I laughed because I don't have a clue what theology would say about dual religious citizenship, but I do know what he means about feeling somehow more than merely one or the other.

Protestant Perspective on the Knowledge of God

Protestant Orthodoxy

1. God is known only by God

1.1. God is the only real subject of the knowledge of God (CD II.1, 179)

1.2. Humans participate in God’s self-knowledge, knowing God by God’s word

1.3. Barth: If you look at our knowledge of God, it looks like regular human knowledge but in fact we are made to participate in the self-knowledge of God, which is not ordinary at all!

2. Trinitarian Conception of God

(Read ‘The Psychology of the Redeemer’ by Nietzsche, who assumes that you must have eyes to see, and that you must have some affinity with what you observe in order to understand it)

2.1. The father addresses us in the Son and the Holy Spirit receives that address in us

2.2. Why? There must be affinity between that which is known and the one who knows

2.3. Human beings have no affinity with God, since God is God and humans are humans

2.4. Therefore we need the Trinitarian structure for an affinity through the Holy Spirit:

2.4.1. 1^st Person of the Trinity is the source of knowledge about God, who makes himself known as God

2.4.2. 2^nd Person of the Trinity is the object, whom we encounter

2.4.3. 3^rd Person of the Trinity is the receptor of the knowledge of God, through whom we know God

3. Karl Barth’s Concerns

3.1. The Nature of Truth

3.1.1. Pre-Barth Protestant theology assumes God reveals truth about himself in the form of propositions, that the content of truth is information about God

3.1.2. Barth: Truth is not a matter of encounter rather than cognition, an event rather than a concept

- You never know persons as you know things

- You cannot have truth about God apart from God’s presence

3.2. The Nature of Human Beings

3.2.1. Protestant Theology: The knowability of God cannot be made intelligible as the predicate of a human being

- Knowing God is not something we can achieve, given that we have no innate capacity to know God

- “Total depravity” means that all aspects of humanity, including our reason, are impaired

- Just as a drop of ink in water spreads and tints the entire substance without making it all ink, so too our depravity makes our thoughts, intellect, ect. stained

3.2.2. Barth: We have absolutely no capacity (not just a severely impaired capacity) and thus any capacity to know God is in fact God’s capacity to know God

- Barth is echoing Kant in this argument for radical categorical difference, along with the impairing impediment of sin

- We have a two-fold impediment of categorical difference and sin

- Thus if we know anything about God, it is only because God knows and is somehow making us participate

4. The Event of Revelation

4.1. God is in fact knowable because God is known

4.1.1. Where actuality exists, there is also corresponding possibility

- Rahner isn’t trying to justify the possibility of knowing God, but is working entirely within a Christian faith that knows God as knowable and can thus assume it is possible

4.1.2. Revelation is the miracle of God making Godself knowable

4.2. Revelation must involve an indwelling encounter of some kind

4.2.1. Whereas classical Protestantism would point to the Bible and say it is the Word of God, Barth would regard the speaking of God as true revelation and the Bible only as its record

4.2.2. Just as the Word dwelt in the body of Jesus, so also God indwells in human language

4.3. God is coming but never staying, like a line tangent to a circle

4.3.1. Barth differs from Catholicism in which sacraments really are infused with God’s presence through a permanent transformation of state

4.3.2. Barth: God comes and goes when he chooses, and the only sacrament is Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ was God

4.3.3. In all other spheres where God comes to be known in non-permanent ways, revelation is an event

– God can speak through the reading of a Bible

– God can speak through the hearing of a Mozart concerto

– God can even speak through the seeing of a dead dog*

* Al Ghazali’s “99 Names of God” - Forgiveness makes manifest that which is beautiful. Jesus is walking with disciples down the street and they see a carcass of a dog; the disciples make a big effort to avoid it, but Jesus says, what beautiful teeth he has!)