This final post is a collection of quotations from Disputed Truth. One of Kung's gifts is a way of writing that has style, lucidity, and a restrained but persistent passion for his subject.
One of Kung's most important books is Justification. The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, English edition 1964, which along with Von Balthasar's volume on Karl Barth, represents some of the best appreciative Barthian criticism, both still having to be reckoned with as interpretations of Barth -(though Bruce McCormack's work has since 'reckoned with' Von Balthasar's thesis). Kung spoke with affectionate admiration at Barth's memorial serrvice, and comments in his latest Memoir volume:
Now the theologian who could point to an incomparable theological oeuvre has returned to his God. And I remember the moving moment when he told me that if ever he had to go before his God he would not refer to his many 'works' not even to his 'good faith', but simply say, 'God be merciful to me, a poor sinner'. I do not doubt for a moment that he has been received graciously. (page 98)
The relationship between Kung and Ratzinger, now Benedict xvi, is woven throughout this volume. Is there any love lost between them? Or found? It's harder to read Kung's inner feelings than to read the well written narrative, anecdotes, and comments; a mixture of fair-minded recall, reflection after the fact and not infrequent acid aside, which could be humorous, ironic or sarcastic, depending on the tone of voice - not discernible in print! Here are a couple of his comments:
From the beginning to the present day Joseph Ratzinger has seen himself 'really at home' in traditional Bavarian Catholicism...He saw and sees himself as a theologian of tradition, who persists essentially in the theological framework marked out by Augustuine and Bonaventure. For him the 'early church', or the 'church of the Fathers' is the measure of all things...
This is the early church as he understands it. He doesn't see Jesus of Nazareth as his disciples and the first Christian community saw him but as he was defined dogmatically by the hellenistic councils of the fourth/fifth centuries, which in fact split Christianity more than they united it. The Jesus of history and the undogmatic Jewish Christianity of the beginning hardly interests him, so he also has no deeper understanding of Islam, which is stamped by their environment. Nor does he show much understanding for the diverse charismatic structure of the Pauline communities and the different possibilities of a 'succession of apostles', and also of'prohpets' and 'teachers'. he isn't interested in the church of the New Testament but in the church of the fathers (of course without the mothers). (page 131)
In his critique of Rahner, Ratzinger and other dogmaticians, Kung can sound more Protestant than Catholic. But that would be to misunderstand him. Rather than a church where one branch claims monopoly of catholicity, Kung insists that all Christian traditions submit to the singular authoritative criterion. However to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ as attested in the New Testament that primary criterion, as Kung does, is an obvious challenge to a too narrowly conceived Roman Catholicism:
...this criterion cannot be other than the original Christian message, the gospel of Jesus Christ. That means that the theologian who is catholic in the authentic sense must have an evangelical disposition, just as conversely the theologian who is evangelical in the authentic sense must be open in a catholic direction. In this sense we can be ecumenical theologians, whether catholic or evangelical. In other words, authentic ecumenicity means an 'evangelical catholicism', centred on and ordered by the gospel of Jesus Christ. (page 167)
Jesus isn't a phantom, but a historical person with human features. And if one can learn about him only from the foundation documents of the faith, and in the end it is often impossible to decide what is historical and what isn't, the great contours of the message, the conduct and the fate of Jesus of Nazareth and his relationship with God, come out so clearly and so unmistakably, that it is evident that the christian faith has a support in history and that therefore discipleship of Jesus is possible and meaningful. (page 225)
Another of Kung's enduring contributions is his work on ecclesiology. His book The Church, became a source of considerable anxiety to those with centralist Vatican prejudices, and is still a standard account of the church as primarily a charismatic community expressing the Body of Christ in a life which is incarnational, redemptive and sacramental, all three teleologically present both in the Church's origins and in the defining expressions of its mission. It is a singluar irony of Kung's life that he is one of the best apologists for ecumenical rapprochement and inter-faith conversation, yet has been a focus of divisive controversy within his own communion for half a century. So these words bear the weight of considerable experience and persistent hopefulness.
The church must change even more to remain itself. And it will remain what it should be if it remains with the one who is its origin; if in all its progress and change it remains faithful to this Jesus Christ. It will then be a church which is closer to God and at the same time closer to men and women. Then the catholics with their emphasis on tradition will become more evangelical and at the same time the Protestants with their epnasis on the gospel will become more catholic, and in this way - and this is decisive - both will become more Christian. (page 230)
The reading of Kung's Memoirs has been an emotionally demanding and theologically enjoyable encounter with one of the few theologians whose theological and moral programme seek to span cultures within and beyond Christianity, and on a global scale. His 'Global Ethic' is not without its serious critics, and his theological reconstructions do read at times like an older form of demythologising and disowning of mystery, removing the sharp edges of a Gospel which both wounds and heals. Like many others, there are times when I think Kung is simply wrong, and in seeking to explain, explains away, and in seeking to communicate with the modern world is perhaps too accommodating to the modern, and now post-modern mindset. But in a world that manages to be both polarised and fragmented at the same time, a message of global responsibility and a way of moving towards a more responsible and hopeful way of human existence, Kung believes, arises out of the nature of the Church and its rootedeness in the life, death and present reality of Jesus Christ.
Kung is right about the Gospel of Jesus Christ as first criterion, judging both church and world. You don't need to go to Nicea and Chalcedon to root such a message of global conciliation and human healing in the reality of Jesus Christ - 'through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things...making peace by the blood of the cross'. Kung's latest theological reflection published before this volume was on the Beginning of All Things. I hope he has time and inclination to write one on the End of all things, with Christ as the telos in whom meaning and purpose, in creation and in human life, finally and fully cohere.
Comments