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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian,net.religion,net.flame
Subject: Re: Supposed claims to be the ONE TRUE CHURCH
Message-ID: <5155@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 3-Mar-85 13:10:24 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5155
Posted: Sun Mar  3 13:10:24 1985
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Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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re God being wishy-washy

The counter position to this one is that of Karl Rahner. (Actually, a lot
of other people have proposed it, but Rahner is probably the most famous.)
Rahner writes like an existential philosopher, so here goes:

	Christians must realise, however, that, besides the explicit
	faith which they profess as being members of the visible Church,
	there is an implicit faith which is also salvific. Through this
	implicit faith, men who have never accepted or even encountered
	Christian Revelation become, not just anonymous theists, but
	anonymous Christians. In other words, tehy place an act of
	conscious, though implicit, faith in the Triune God of Christian
	Revelation.

	Rahner's theology of the anonymous Christian is an extension of
	his theology of the supernatural existential. [Note: this is
	real fancy Rahner talk. It means a lot of things, but one of
	them is that by man's very existing he is fixed in a place 
	and time. In other words, man is incarnated. -- lac] Through the
	supernatural existential the unobjective Horizon of the
	human spirit [another Rahner buzz-word -- ``Grace'' does
	rather nicely here in most contexts, though sometimes only
	God will do -- lac] has become in the historical order
	the Triune God of Grace and Glory. By his Incarnation the Word
	has become the ground of man's elevation to the supernatural order
	and has also become God's historical revelation of himself to
	men. Therefore, when the human spirit, elevated by the supernatural
	existential, makes its loving surrender to the Horizon of the
	world, man receives the justifying grace of Christ. The surrender
	of the human spirit is a surrender in which both knowledge and love
	unite themselves in a single dymanic process. [...] A salutary 
	surrender of the huamn will to the Triune God is an implicit act
	of charity. [...] It follows, therefore, that, if the human
	subject's free response to his world includes in its intentionality
	an act of loving surrender to the world's Absolute Horizon, the
	human subject has made an implicit act of saluatory Christian
	faith. Ontologically and not just metaphorically, he has become
	an anonymous Christian.

		[From Theological Investigations, vol VI, pp 390-395]

Clear as mud, eh? The idea is that you cannot do any good thing except
through Jesus Christ. So all ``good people'' are good through the
same Christian God -- and all are saved through Him. Christians
are fortunate enough to have a better idea of what is going on.

I have real problmes with this definition of Christian myself. But it
*is* interesting...

Laura Creighton (anonymous Christian?)
utzoo!laura