The Emergence of Eternal Life

THE EMERGENCE OF ETERNAL LIFE

The question of whether life exists beyond death remains one of themost pertinent of our existence, and theologians continue to addresswhat relevance the answer has for our life in the present. In thisbook, William J. Hoye employs the phenomenon of emergence the way higher forms of existence arise from a collection of simplerinteractions as a framework for understanding and defending theconcept of Eternal Life, showing how it emerges from our presentlife, our human longing for fulfillment and happiness, and ourstriving for knowledge of reality. Hoye uses the work of Karl Rahnerand Thomas Aquinas to explore questions concerning suffering, theultimate relevance of morality, and how the fundamental idea ofresponsibility changes when viewed eschatologically. Contemporaryreasons for denying an afterlife are examined critically and extensively.This book will be of great interest to those studying systematictheology, theological anthropology, and Catholic theology.

william j. hoye is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Uni-versity of Munster. He is the author of many books, including mostrecently Die Wirklichkeit der Wahrheit (2013); Tugenden. Was sie wertsind, warum wir sie brauchen (2010); Liebgewordene theologische Denk-fehler (2006); andDie mystische Theologie des Nicolaus Cusanus (2004).

THE EMERGENCE OFETERNAL LIFE

WILLIAM J. HOYE

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Contents

1 Introduction to the question page 11.1 Emergence: The causality of Eternal Life 51.2 The happening of reality (Creation) 10

2 Motivations for disbelief in a life after death 132.1 Difficulties 132.2 The Experience Prejudice 202.3 The Praxis Prejudice 422.4 Hedonism 582.5 The ambivalent teaching of Christian Faith 64

3 A justification of the traditional Christian beliefin Eternal Life 773.1 The question 773.2 Transcendental hope in ones own resurrection as the horizon for

experiencing the resurrection of Jesus 803.3 Reality as the liberating horizon 843.4 Wonder 853.5 By his very nature man strives for fulfillment 863.6 The rationality of reality 923.7 The final and comprehensive goal of human nature 973.8 The expectation of the fulfillment of human desire 993.9 The compatibility of the dogma on hell with the foregoing

argumentation 104

4 Eternal Life as the vision of God 1114.1 Emergence as the light of glory 1124.2 The act of attention 1194.3 The Biblical teaching that Eternal Life consists in contemplative

knowledge 1204.4 The widespread acknowledgment of the primacy of knowledge in

the European tradition until the modern age 1224.5 Mans eschatological union with God as the apprehension of truth 1294.6 Truth and the predicative structure of experience 135

vii

viii Contents

4.7 The necessary structure of the vision of God 1444.8 The mode of Gods presence: The forma intelligibilis 1484.9 The vision of God as the whole of Eternal Life enfolded 1534.10 Never-ending wonder in the vision of God 1574.11 Interim conclusion 167

5 The human factor 1695.1 Happiness and human nature 1695.2 A minimal and maximal heuristic principle 1715.3 The desire for truth 176

6 Life history as the predetermination of Eternal Life 1806.1 The eternity of salvation as the fulfillment of time 1816.2 Time and eternity 1836.3 Longing in time as the predetermination of the vision of God 1916.4 The theological notion of memory 2016.5 The eternal significance of temporal suffering 2046.6 The eternal relevance of morality 216

7 Sensuality: the resurrection of the body 2377.1 Sensuality as an end in itself 2437.2 Sensual pleasure as a part of eternal happiness 2477.3 The difference between joy and happiness 2497.4 The corporeal unfolding of the vision 2527.5 The soul and the body 258

8 The emergence of Eternal Life a conclusion 276

Bibliography 278Index 290

chapter one

Introduction to the question

Is it really possible, or likely, as is often asserted, that we can know nothingabout the goal of human life? In the wake of this question, many relatedproblems are entailed. Are we free, or compelled, to define the ultimatemeaning of our own lives? Can we defy our own nature, from which thevery idea of a meaning in life arises? If there were no meaning in life,could we even conceive of the question of the meaning of life? If life hasa purpose, then this purpose should certainly be of relevance during life.If death is the absolute end of ones existence or if the goal of life has tobe reached before death, then one will surely attempt to live differently.How does one make deliberate choices in crucial situations if one has noidea of the meaning of life? Is it meaningless to die for an ideal? Is the lifeof heroes who have sacrificed their own life for others a failure? Is survivalof absolute value? Can the motivation of a suicidal terrorist who killshimself for religious reasons be understandable in some kind of rationalcategories?

Whoever writes seriously today on such questions cannot avoid expe-riencing a feeling of embarrassment. The most frequent reactions that Iencounter are skepticism and rejection. Furthermore, even most believersare unable to articulate in any meaningful way what it is that they believe.How is this teaching to be understood? What does the skeptic actuallyreject?

The assertion that it cannot be understood at all raises a claim thatlogically goes considerably further than maintaining that it can only beinadequately understood. Even a little knowledge of the question can be ofgreat value. If we are lost in the woods, a signpost can be decisive; at leastit points in the right direction. The proof for the absolute denial is highlydemanding and certainly not fulfilled by simply repeating old negations.A theological statement that negates requires as much demonstration asa positive statement. As is often evidenced in the history of orthodoxtheology, knowledge of what God is not requires a deeper knowledge than

1

2 Introduction to the question

of what God is. It is typical for contemporary culture that serious people,including scientists, believe that they knowwith clear certainty andwithoutfurther ado that there exists no life after death. They need not botherstudying theology; they know it quasi-intuitively. On the one hand, thisattitude has the positive aspect in that it shows that a theological positionis something that everyman has, but, on the other hand, it also reveals thelight-mindedness that prevails in theological matters.

Educated believers in Eternal Life are normally well acquainted with thethesis that it is merely a wish projection or simply a pious imaginationfor the purpose of distracting ones attention from the responsibilities orjoys of this world. Who today is not aware of the Marxist criticism ofreligion? Rather, one is surprised that these critical objections continue tobe repeated.

A careful agnosticism is easier to respect. Applying the principle ofOccams Razor, the believer can take the burden of proof on himself. Butit is one thing to argue in favor of ones own belief and another to refutenegations. A negation should be falsifiable if it purports to make a truthclaim.

The skeptical argument that one cannot imagine a life after death or,better, cannot understand it or cannot even think of it responsibly cannotbe answered with the remark, first of all, that the believer need notmaintainthat our imagination can have any validity in this matter. It is no great featto realize that the afterlife transcends imagination.

Thinking about it is another matter. If the afterlife could not be an objectof thought in any way, then we would have to consider it to be nothing,and then it would be impossible to believe in it. But it is possible to knowthat something is not understandable, that it transcends understanding and this can be thought and demonstrated.

A peculiarity of Eternal Life is that it challenges understanding. It attacksthe prevalent mindset. For us, it is especially difficult to conceive of becauseit stands in contradiction to our contemporary understanding of reality. Inthe long run, this is, in fact, even a plausible reason for positively believingin Eternal Life not in the sense that I believe because it is absurd butrather that I believe because it challenges my understanding.

In fact, theChristian idea of Eternal Life seems rather to be a provocation,for it teaches that the purpose and result of all of our work consists finally inknowledge of some kind. And Eternal Life is this: to know you, the onlytrue God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (Jn 17:3). Specifically,it is knowledge of God, which is what we are ultimately striving for inwhatsoever we pursue. All human activity has intellectual speculation for

Introduction to the question 3

its end, as Thomas Aquinas dares to put it.1 This tells the man of praxisthat his happiness consists in theory. The knowledge of God therefore isthe final end of all human study and activity.2 Life has ultimate meaningonly at its end. The opium that Christianity has to offer is hardly whatthe average person today would consider to be a desirable pleasure, not tomention the fact that hell is also a component of Christian eschatologyand can hardly be called opium.

How is a teaching like this to be rendered comprehensible? If EternalLife is what human beings are really interested in, then the relevancy of anintellectual pursuit of the question should be evident in any case.

It is possible that we have replaced our belief in the afterlife with a beliefin something in this world. The popular idea that ones immortality consistsin being remembered by others in the future might be an example of thiskind of secularization. A similar idea is that we can achieve perpetuity inour works. Of course, this is not a real ersatz for eternity. Remembrance,books, and art works may have a practically unlimited duration, but theyare obviously not eternal and offer no really adequate solution to theproblem of death. Death assumes the role of the Final Judgment and givesrise to the problem of perpetuity.3 What in the Christian perspective hadbeen called acedia becomes depression in the secularized world.4

Max Horkheimer expressed the hypothesis that the idea of society mayalso represent a secularized form of life after death. The individual lives hisown life to its natural end and has contributed in some way to the life ofsociety. Society itself takes on the aura of eternity. An indication of this canbe seen in the strength of protests against weapons that could annihilate allmankind. The species seems to contain more reality and importance thanthe sum of the individual members. Horkheimer states: The meaning thatevery action in life won from the thought of eternity is replaced by theabsolutizing of the collective, in which the individuals feel integrated.5

1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, III, c. 25. 2 Ibid.3 Rosa, Beschleunigung, 288, suggests that the relinquishment of the idea of a life after death havingvalidity beyond question and supported as a binding cultural component, from which and withrespect to which life before death receives its meaning and direction, must unavoidably have to putinto question the basis of its subjective and cultural meaning . . . If previously the end of ones ownlife was seen in a perspective with the expected end of the world, which, at the same time, signalizedthe beginning of true time, both time horizons moved visibly apart owing to the fading of thelatter (emphasis in original).

4 It is a question of a psychic condition that is characterized by barrenness and emptiness (accom-panied at the same time by an inner restlessness) and a paralysis of the soul as the result of thesouls inability to direct its energy toward a firm, definitive and convincingly worthwhile goal andenergetically develop it. Ibid., 388.

5 Horkheimer, Bedrohung, 21.


Under this presumption, the possibility that human society could someday be extinguished appears unbearable.

The teleological structure of such ideas at least resembles and is pre-sumably inherited from Christian belief. The final state gives meaning toevery action. The expected future classless society serves as the justificationfor present activity. The whole relationship between the final state and themeaning of life is characteristic. Marxism, for example, justifies presentactivity on the basis of an expected future state. Daily life does not exhaustits significance within the bounds of each day. Understanding life as anetwork of final causes, culminating in an ultimate final cause, is possiblya frame of thinking that is simply natural and unavoidable.

More essential than such comparisons is an analysis based on concreteexperience. What is the most important aspect of life as we know it?Although this question is not so easily answered, I think that it would besafe to say that reality, or the awareness of reality, is what is most importantto human beings. If you imagined a situation in which you could havesomething desirable say, pleasure or a friend but without this being real(in the sense of being more than merely my own subjectivity), what wouldyou prefer: reality with its normal pains and problems or pleasure as nothingmore than a feeling or your friend but only as an imagined thought? Are wereally happiest when we are day-dreaming? As Augustine remarked: Andhow much human nature loves the knowledge of its existence, and how itshrinks from being deceived, will be sufficiently understood from this factthat every man prefers to grieve in a sane mind, rather than to be glad inmadness.6 Since the presence of reality is what I would call truth, thequestion is whether one prefers living in truth or in falsehood regardlessof how delightful the falsehood may be. This makes it understandablehow Thomas Aquinas can claim that what gives us most delight is theknowledge of divine things, regardless of how inadequate it may be:

Everything desires most of all its own last end. But the human mind ismoved to more desire and love and delight over the knowledge of divinethings, little as it can discern about them, than over the perfect knowledgethat it has of the lowest things.7

Otherwise, this assertion that knowledge of God is the goal of human lifewould sound incredible.

6 Augustine, De civitate Dei, XI, 27. 7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, III, c. 25.

1.1 Emergence: The causality of Eternal Life 5

1.1 Emergence: The causality of Eternal Life

Reality occurs in different modes. Something can become more real. Forexample, New York can exist in my imagination. But standing in thephysically real New York makes the city more real than in my imagination.Eternal Life is a more real form of the reality that I now know. Actually,this is precisely what it is; in other words, not heaven as opposed to Earthbut rather the original as opposed to the copy. Eternal Life is not like aprize for a victory although this metaphor is not impossible. Emerginginto Eternal Life means becoming more real that is, rising to a highermode of being but still my being. The change takes place somehow in ourkind of reality. God does not change. This extremely important teachingwas expressed by Thomas Aquinas:

Suppose that two things are not united at first, and then later they are united;this must be done by changing both of them, or at least one. Now, supposethat a created intellect starts for the first time to see Gods substance; then,necessarily, according to the preceding arguments, the divine essence mustbe united with it for the first time as an intelligible species. Of course, it isnot possible for the divine essence to be changed . . . So, this union muststart to exist by means of a change in the created intellect. In fact, this changecan only come about by means of the created intellect acquiring some newdisposition.8

Admittedly, the notion of emergence does not provide a concrete explana-tion of how something occurs, but it does, at least, convey the rudimentaryknowledge that what occurs is real, that is, a participation in reality.

Reality does not simply exist, it changes and develops. Reality happens.Reality is not merely a collection of realities. It is more like an energy field.It is dynamic; it is moving, evolving. Within it, new realities can emerge.New wholes are more than the sum of the elements out of which theyhave arisen. The analogy to light is helpful. Light is not just there, it ishappening, it is energy making, as it were, colors emerge in objects. Ifthe light desists, so do the colors immediately.

The idea of a whole is, of course, an analogous notion. There are wholesthat are nothingmore than a collection of elements; however, it is importantto acknowledge that there exist many wholes that are more than theirelements. A melody is more than a collection of notes. A word is morethan a collection of letters. Dgo is not a word, dog is. And dog, again,is more than a word; it is also a notion, possessing meaning, which is more

8 Ibid., c. 53.


than just the word. Furthermore, a sentence is more than the words ofwhich it is composed; in contrast to words, a sentence can have the qualityof being true or false. Out of letters, meaning emerges; out of words, truth.Out of matter, life emerges, an animal being more than the chemicals ofwhich it is composed. Out of living beings, conscious life emerges; out ofhuman life, Eternal Life which is, so to speak, the meaning of humanlife, like the notion connected with the word.

As the classical principle, found in Aristotle, asserts: in some cases, thewhole is greater than the sum of its parts, that is, more than just a heap.9 Inthis case, Aristotle concludes that there must be a cause of the unification ofwholes that are more than aggregates. He calls the cause reality [;actus], which is more than a reality. The cause of the whole that is ahuman being is then the soul, the primordial act of reality [actus primus]of a natural body having the potentiality to live. It is extremely difficultto translate the Greek word energeia [] or the Latin word actusinto contemporary language. Should one say reality or actuality? Sinceactuality is obviously the translation of actualitas, which was coined inmedieval theology during the lifetime of Thomas Aquinas and used by himas distinct from actus the phrase actualitas omnium actuum (although itoccurs only once in Thomass work) is important I prefer using thetranslation reality. One must remember, however, that reality is to bethought of in the sense of an act, or actualization, or realization, that is,not as a collection of elements. Reality is not simply a universal notion;it is more like a light field, in which colors emerge.

A different approach to the phenomenon of the emergence of organicspecies in time employs the idea of so-called seminal reasons [rationesseminales]. With this notion, Augustine explained how there can be devel-opment within creation. Accordingly, when God originally created theworld, he instilled things with seminal reasons that is, virtual princi-ples of things later to evolve. With time, they develop into actual being.Evolution is, accordingly, the maturation of quasi-seeds, hidden in matterfrom the beginning. Consequently, change is simply the realization of whatalready exists virtually. The concept was possibly influenced by Platos the-ory of recollection, according to which knowledge involves rememberingwhat one already knew. Bonaventure is a later defender of this idea, arguingthat the forms that come into existence are all present in matter. The sub-stance of matter, he writes, is pregnant with everything.10 This would

9 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, VIII, 6; 1045 a 810.10 Bonaventure, In IV. Sententiarum, dist. 43, a. 1, q. 4, concl.


be like taking the immortality of the spiritual soul for the cause of EternalLife, implying that the cause lies within the nature of human beings.

It is more plausible to interpret Eternal Life as a case of what is calledemergence, provided that emergence be viewed ontologically that is,as a development of being. The result is not already present from the start,but a capacity for it is. Obviously, existing reality contains more realitiesthan have been thus far revealed. It evolves and grows. When an individualgrows, reality grows. Reality happens. Light reveals more about reality than,say, a stone. As shownherein, new realities are notmerely collections of theirparts. In this case, the whole is more than its parts. It may well be that newrealities are susceptible to a method of reduction, but evolution cannot beadequately explained by the factors that can be found by reduction. Whatdevelops is not predestined in the original elements from which it arises. Inview of evolutionary phenomena such as loss-of-function mutations, notall evolution can be explained by reductionism.11

The physicist Philip W. Anderson (Princeton University) describes theprinciple of emergence as a philosophical foundation for modern science.12

As he puts it: The watchword is not reductionism but emergence. Emer-gent complex phenomena are by no means a violation of the microscopiclaws, but they do not appear as logically consequent on these laws13 apotentia obedientialis (see page 103), so to speak. The method of reductioncannot be reversed, so that developments would be predestined. Andersonnotes:

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not implythe ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The con-structionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin diffi-culties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely newproperties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology appliedchemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, butvery different from the sum of its parts.14

11 Cf. Brandt, Konnen Tiere denken?, 1516: Materialistic reductionism has been overcome by thenew emergence research on biological systems. It has arrived at the acceptance of characteristics thatcannot be predicted by an individual examination of the physical components (physics, chemistry).

12 This principle of emergence is as pervasive a philosophical foundation of the viewpoint of modernscience as is reductionism. It underlies, for example, all of biology . . . and much of geology. Itrepresents an open frontier for the physicist, a frontier which has no practical barriers in terms ofexpense or feasibility, merely intellectual ones. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 92 (July 1995), in anintroductory paper at a colloquium entitled Physics: The Opening to Complexity, held June 26and 27, 1994, at the National Academy of Sciences, in Irvine, CA, 6653.

13 Ibid., 66536654. 14 Anderson, More Is Different, 393396.


Konrad Lorenz criticized the notion of emergence because he felt that itsuggested that something that had already existed but had been hiddennow comes to light. He preferred instead to use the notion of fulguration(i. e., the act of flashing like lightning), as though the new quality arosesuddenly and without having any preexistence whatsoever.

Emergent wholes are qualitatively different from their individual parts.A sentence is different from a list of individual words. It possesses thecapacity to be true or false, whereas a list of words no matter how many does not possess this quality (although a phrase may be composed of manywords). A word can have a meaning, whereas the collection of letters thathas the external appearance of a word may be void of meaning.

A hurricane is an example for emergence. Another example of emergencethat is often cited is an ant colony. The queen is not the monarch, givingdirect orders and communicating to the different ants what they must do.Instead of there being a hierarchical structure, each ant reacts to stimulithat occur in the form of chemical scent from larvae, other ants, intruders,food, and buildup of waste, leaving behind a chemical trail, that, in turn,provides a stimulus to other ants. Here, each ant represents an autonomouswhole, which reacts depending on only its local environment and thegenetically encoded rules for its variety of ant. Nevertheless, despite thelack of centralized decision making, ant colonies reveal complex socialbehavior.

Emergence is not magic and neither is Eternal Life a miracle. In a sense,both entail getting something out of nothing. The question that causesproblems for physics is naming the cause. Aristotle explains the idea thatthe whole may be more than the sum of its parts by distinguishing betweenform and matter. But if, as we say, one element is matter and another isform, and one is potential and the other actual, the question will no longerbe thought a difficulty.15 With these categories, Thomas Aquinas was ableto explain the unity of a human person by viewing the human spirit asthe form of the material body. However, these explanations are intendedto explain the unity of the whole but do not explain the phenomenon ofemergence itself. What brings about the unity?

The temperature of gases is also cited. While gas has a temperature,the individual molecules of which it is composed do not. In other words,the whole has a quality that the parts lack. Organisms have life, but a cellis not a tiger, just as even a single gold atom is not yellow and gleam-ing. Moreover, within consciousness, we directly experience a kind of

15 Aristotle, Metaphysics, VIII, 6.


emergence, which may serve as an analogy. When a physical object appearsin my consciousness, this is a startling instance of emergence. Out of some-thing singular and material, an entity arises that is universal and can bethought about independently of the original object. For instance, I can seea tree. It is really this tree that is now in my consciousness but without thematter for example, the wood in its materiality, although I am includ-ing it in my thought. Then I can imagine other trees. Without countingone by one, I can calculate: one tree plus two trees equals three trees regardless of whether three trees can now actually be seen. Or I am ableto compare two trees that are separate in reality; that is, I can see themtogether in a single apprehension and conclude that one is bigger than theother.

An early exponent of the idea of emergence is Aristotle: That which iscompounded out of something, so that the whole is one, not like a heapbut like a syllable now the syllable is not its elements, ba is not the sameas b and a.16

Reality should not be thought of as a material cause. It is more like anefficient cause, if one must choose between the two, similar to the waylight causes colors. It makes them appear. Aristotle said: This is a sortof positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colors intoactual colors. Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed,since it is in its essential nature activity.17 Actually, I can wonder at thefact that when I open my eyes I see reality, without doing anything otherthan making myself receptive. Reality is active and affects me.

Wonder is the human reaction to reality, seen in this two-fold way.Wonder arises, according to Aristotle, when we see something as causedwithout knowing the cause itself. Applied to reality, it means that we see areality and realize that it has received its reality. We wonder then about thesource of its reality.

It is possible that the loss of the body can have the result that the spiritualbecomes stronger.18 Immanuel Kant writes that the soul after death willsee the world not as it appears but as it is. He interprets the separationof the soul from the body as the change of sensual perception to spiritualperception. This is what Kant calls the other world. Accordingly, the otherworld is not another place, but only another perception.19 One remainsin this world, he explains, but has a spiritual perception of everything.20

16 Ibid., VII, 17. 17 Aristotle, De anima, III, 6; 430 a.18 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, II, c. 80/81.19 Kant, Zustand der Seele, 255. 20 Ibid., 256.


1.2 The happening of reality (Creation)

Reality happens; it is actuality; it is not simply a collection of realities.A reality is not a thing, an entity, but rather an act. Reality itself is notmerely the collection, or set, of all realities, that is, an abstract notionfor all realities, the name of the set. To think about the afterlife, it isabsolutely essential to keep this in mind. The world is in constant motionand change. Change belongs to the quintessence of reality as we knowit. The definition of change that goes back to Aristotle is the reality, oractualization, of a possibility. (More precisely: change, or motion, is theactuality of a possibility as such.21) This characteristic of reality is the basisfor our experience of time. The universe exists in time by the fact that it isreal and the reality of the world is composed of possibilities and actualities,with actualities always presupposing the corresponding possibilities. Evenif everything in the universe comes to a standstill, time will still somehowcontinue; otherwise, the standstill would not be thinkable.

Although we may not be explicitly conscious of it, we constantly expe-rience existence as something that happens. Existence plays no role in thecritical reflection of the natural sciences, although it is the primordial fact.The natural sciences deal with happening in time, but they ignore the fact ofthe existence of evolution. Time itself is not further questioned. Questionsof this kind belong to the perspective of philosophy and theology.

The reason why the natural sciences neglect existence is that they inves-tigate change, whereas creating, as Thomas Aquinas understands it, doesnot cause a change. He compares the creation of a new creature with theaddition of a geometric point to a line. This does not cause the line toextend any farther. This is analogous to Gods unchangeableness. If Godwere changeable, then he could become an object of physics. As it is,creation happens without time.

The apprehension at the basis of the idea of creation is the same as theapprehension of self-reflection. Self-consciousness is the apprehension ofthe act of existing.

The act of creation does not require matter as a presupposition. Thistruth divine Scripture confirms, saying: In the beginning God createdheaven and earth (Gn 1:1). For to create is nothing else than to bring athing into being without any pre-existent material.22

The causality of being encompasses the entire thing caused, whereasother forms of causality are limited. This aspect makes divine causality

21 Cf. Aristotle, Physics, III, 1. 22 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, II, c. 16.

1.2 The happening of reality (Creation) 11

essentially different from every other kind of causality that we know. As anidea, it is not thinkable for the natural sciences, which always presupposesomething from which something arises. Physics knows of no causalityfrom nothing. Thomas Aquinas argues as follows:

The more universal the effect, the higher the cause: for the higher the cause,the wider its range of efficiency. Now being is more universal than motion.Therefore above any cause that acts only by moving and transmitting mustbe that cause which is the first principle of being; and that we have shownto be God. God therefore does not act merely by moving and transmuting:whereas every cause that can only bring things into being out of pre-existingmaterial acts merely in that way, for a thing is made out of material bymovement or some change.23

It is fundamental and specific to theology that the cause of being as suchtranscends change:

It is not proper to the universal cause of being, as such, to act only bymovement and change: for not by movement and change is being, as such,made out of not-being, as such, but being this is made out of not beingthis. But God is the universal principle of being. Therefore, it is not properto him to act only by movement or change, or to need pre-existent materialto make anything.24

Rather than involving change, creation is a relationship of dependence ofcreated being on the creator. To us, creation appears as a change, although,strictly speaking, this is an illusion. As Aquinas observes: Creation isspoken of as a change according to our mode of conceiving it, inasmuchas our understanding takes one and the same thing to be now non-existentand afterwards existing.25

Creation of anything whatsoever in the theological sense cannot bestudied by the theory of evolution because there is no succession involved.If that is difficult to comprehend, then theology is difficult to comprehend but evading the strenuousness implies evading theology. Since evolutionpresupposes a succession, the question of creation cannot be treated by it.This is simply a corollary to the previous thesis: Succession characterizesmotion. But creation is not a motion, nor the term of a motion, as changeis; hence, there is no succession in it.26

Thomas argues from the fact that there can be no medium betweenbeing and non-being:

23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., c. 18. 26 Ibid., c. 19.


In every successive motion, furthermore, there exists some mean betweenthe extremes of the motion; for a mean is that which a continuously movedthing attains first before reaching the terminal point. But between beingand non-being, which are, as it were, the extremes of creation, no mean canpossibly exist. Therefore, in creation there is no succession.27

Creation happens in an instant: A thing is at once in the act of beingcreated and is created, as light is at once being shed and is shining.28

The idea of creation presents a basis for viewing Eternal Life as anemergence out of temporal life. Being includes endless possibilities.

27 Ibid. 28 Ibid.

chapter two

Motivations for disbelief in a life after death

2.1 Difficulties

This book pursues two intentions: (1) the question of whether there reallyexists life beyond death is to be examined as stringently as possible, and(2) the relevance of such knowledge for our present life is to be studied.With the ingenuousness appropriate to such questions, I intend to presentan affirmative answer to the first question and to show that life after deathreveals the ultimate meaning of the present life; however, a number ofobstacles stand in the way.

2.1.1 The inevitable naiveness of statements on Eternal Life

The expression life after death is, of course, deliberately naive. Speakingof after in a context that has to dowith eternity has to be either ambivalentor meaningless. There can be nothing like a continuation in eternity, asthough one continued on to exist after death, although in a differentmanner. Furthermore, the term life is not less naive. Nevertheless, thisuse of language has advantages over a well-defined technical terminology,which could convey the impression of precise univocity, whereas obviouslyinadequate language serves as a reminder that our theological categoriesare ineluctably ambivalent. This rudimentary fact is all the less likely toescape notice if simple, everyday language is used. Life after death is, intruth, a paradoxical expression and this is appropriate.

The teaching that no true sentence about God can ever be univocalwas taught not only in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas with histhesis that notions justly predicated of God are always analogous butalso by someone like the contemporary physicist and philosopher CarlFriedrich von Weizsacker. He demands from theological statements thatthey be both incomprehensible and, nonetheless, stimulating. Logicalunivocity, he writes, is the manner in which humans speak of their

13

14 Disbelief in a life after death

own, for them understandable matters.1 According to him, all talk aboutdivine things in the human language must have the form of stimulatingincomprehensibility.2

It is quite appropriate when Thomas Aquinas claims that pictures andsymbols of God that are more dissimilar to him are to be preferred to thosethat possess more similarity. At the beginning of his Summa theologiae,Thomas defends this principle. He refers to Pseudo-Dionysius the Are-opagite, who wrote: We cannot be enlightened by the divine rays exceptthey be hidden within the covering of many sacred veils.3 Accordingly,it is advisable to predicate qualities of God that clearly cannot be takenliterally. It is more fitting to communicate divine things in the figures ofvile bodies than in those of noble bodies. Thomas explains that with thismethod,

mens minds are the better preserved from error. For then it is clear that thesethings are not literal descriptions of divine truths, which might have beenopen to doubt had they been expressed under the figure of nobler bodies,especially for those who could think of nothing nobler than bodies.4

Because, from a Christian perspective, life after death consists in a unionwith God, whoever speaks in this life about life after death in an under-standable manner misses the point. What is related to God cannot beunderstandable. Univocality is a guarantee that one is speaking either aboutpresent reality or about nothing. Eschatology, that is, speaking or thinkingabout the beyond, requires language that is neither univocal nor equivo-cal; it requires the dissimilar similarity and the similar dissimilarity ofanalogy. Symbols are employed but they are employed self-critically, thatis, their falsehood is conscious. For our present state, Thomas holds thatnegative knowledge is in itself more appropriate, our present knowledge ofGod referring to what he is not rather than to what he is. Hence, he argues,similitudes drawn from things furthest away from God form within us atruer estimate that God is above whatsoever we may say or think of him.5

2.1.2 The natural aversion to belief in a life after death

Although belief in a life after death may be quite natural and perhaps initself even self-evident, the average person living in our present-day culture

1 Weizsacker, Wahrnehmung, 267. 2 Ibid.3 Dionysius the Areopagite,De caelesti hierarchia, c. 1. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 1,a. 9c.

4 Ibid., ad 3. 5 Ibid.

2.1 Difficulties 15

surely feels a deep and spontaneous reluctance to accept this conviction.Even religious individuals reveal at least a degree of embarrassment fortheir Faith. If they express their belief explicitly, then they usually defendit immediately by asserting, for example, that this does not mean that theirmoral responsibility for their present situation is hindered by their beliefin an afterlife. We are living in an age in which we feel morally obliged tojustify this belief. We are unable to take it for granted or exempt it fromdoubt. Our reluctance occurs spontaneously and is usually accompaniedby an emotion, without need of reasons or deliberation. In itself, this factgives fruit for thought, especially if one is aware that earlier ages reactedin just the opposite manner. It probably caused more difficulty in earlierages to believe that humans would walk around the surface of the moon.In comparison, we today have no problem pressing a few buttons on atelephone and believing that in a few seconds a particular individual onsome other continent will be exchanging thoughts with us. We get into anautomobile or airplane with its unfathomable technology and are full ofbelief that it will function.

The aversion to an eschatological belief is further supported by a reflectedphilosophical position that expresses itself in a markedly aggressive way. Forthis reason, the contemporary believer can hardly avoid a confrontationwith philosophical positions dominant in our mental situation. Otherwise,this belief would have to succumb in good conscience to such positions;belief cannot contradict truth, even if it is merely a matter of a subjec-tive viewpoint. Under this condition, even what may be a self-evidenttruth in itself demands an intellectual defense. Were there no bad philoso-phies, intellectual exertion in regard to philosophical questions would besuperfluous.

Human reason is influenced not only by objective reality but also by onesown will. Whoever has acquired an unwillingness to believe in a life afterdeath will have to apply noticeably more exertion to believe in it honestly.Perhaps this represents an excessive demand that can be met only with thesupport of religion, for belief in life after death casts doubt on a fundamentalconviction of our contemporary Western culture. In our cultural situation,it is no longer the disbelievers who need the courage to assert themselves; thebelievers are the ones who offer resistance to the socially dominating viewsand values. The spontaneous aversion, which entails more than merely arational skepticism or a cautious modesty, appears to be a phenomenonthat is characteristic of contemporaryWestern culture. The astounding factthat young Arabic Moslems possess the willingness not only to put theirown life at risk but also to sacrifice it directly in order to gain salvation


after their death presents our dominantly secular way of thinking withexcessive demands.

2.1.3 A counterargument: Vain curiosity

Among the arguments that are brought up against the question of lifeafter death is the well-known criticism that it represents nothing but vaincuriosity. We will never be able to find out anything reliable about it. Itis a matter of believing: either you believe or you do not believe. Thiskind of comment is part and parcel of our culture. It makes sense onlyon the presumption that Eternal Life has no intrinsic relationship to thepresent life. As a critical argument, it is as old as Christianity. Cicero, whoseems to be the originator of the word curiosity, criticized the intellectualinterest in crossing over the borders of knowledge that are defined byreligion. In an excellent historical study of the notion of curiosity, GuntherBos notes: At a time preceding Christian authors, Cicero was aware ofthe limitation of the human striving for knowledge and a point of greatimportance he speaks repeatedly of the curious crossing of the border thatreligion set down.6 And, in the second century ad, Apuleius promulgatedin his Metamorphoses a negative view of curiosity that is still influentialtoday. In this story Lucius is turned into a donkey as a punishment forhis inopportune curiosity [inprospera curiositas]. For Apuleius the highestdegree of forbidden curiosity consists in breaking a divine prohibition.He speaks of blasphemous curiosity [sacrilegia curiositas]. (The popularclaim that previous to Christianity curiosity had no negative connotationis obviously untrue.)

Why should it be forbidden to be interested in the goal of life? Throughthe objection that such interests are mere curiosity, the project of enquiringinto questions concerning the afterlife seems to lose at once all of itslegitimacy. When I tell someone that I am giving thought to eschatologicalquestions, I often get the impression that he or she is offended and thenmakes comments to the effect that I ought not to continue. We are allowedto think about all sorts of questions but not about the whole. If a naturalscientist makes negative claims about religious questions that supposedlyare soon to be solved by science or at least shown to be merely pseudo-questions, even some theologians not rarely accept this and retreat. Butwhy should it be a priori impossible to pose questions about the meaningof life? Why should we have to go through life blindly, on our way to someend but without any awareness of what this end might be? Why should

6 Bos, Curiositas, 48.

2.1 Difficulties 17

we be able to set our own goals to take our life, as it is said, in our ownhands but incapable of integrating these goals into an organic unity?Why must the purposes that I envision in my life remain in a hopelesslydisintegrated state? Why can short-range goals be possible but a final goalremains out of the question?Why does the question about the ultimate goalof all my goals become mere curiosity? From this question, it is worthwhilenoting, Aristotle developed his entire ethics and political philosophy.

What am I to think when the statement is expressed without anyjustification that we can know only that there exists an afterlife but thatwe know nothing aboutwhat it is and yet, nonetheless, that this knowledge,coming from divine Revelation, is supposed to serve as a guidepost? Thisis at least how I understand the following teaching of Joseph Ratzingers:

We found that, at any rate to some extent, we could extrapolate from thepresent life to the existence if not the character of the life to come. Yet thecontent of eternal life, what it is [Was] as distinct from its existence [Dass],lies completely outside the scope of our experience, being quite simplyunknowable from our perspective. And so, in the concluding chapter of thisbook, as we reflect on the hints which divine revelation offers about thiswhat-it-is [Was], in its fundamental possibilities, we must be alert to thelimitations of what we can say. The tradition of faith is not given to us forthe satisfying of idle curiosity. Where it exceeds the proper limits of humanexperience, its aim is to direct us, not to divert, that is, to entertain us. Thisis why it opens up what lies beyond only to the extent that this will be ahelpful signpost for those in the here and now.7

This would seem to imply that disbelievers are quite abandoned. Theclassical idea of the inborn desire of human nature [desiderium naturale] isreplaced by a supernaturalism. In truth, as we shall see, intellectual curiosityis essential to our question. The unquenchable striving for knowledge ofreality will be shown to be fundamental.

The same view can be found in the standard work Mysterium Salutis:Eschatology in the New Testament does not intend to be a teaching onthe far-off end of the ages but an illumination and proclamation of thepresent.8

The principles that Ratzinger formulates sound unassuming, but onecan question whether they can be conceived meaningfully. If it were truethat that which lies completely beyond the sphere of our experience isfrom our standpoint utterly unknowable, then it would not be plausibleto me how divine Revelation can convey such knowledge. No one less thanSt. Thomas Aquinas discards this possibility a priori. For him, Revelation

7 Ratzinger, Eschatology, 161 (emphasis in original). 8 Mysterium Salutis, 723.


does not alter Gods unknowableness.9 To the contrary, the insight intoGods unknowableness encompasses any such Revelation. Revelation doesnot transcend this insight but rather serves to intensify it. According toThomas, the truth of Faith gives support to the divine unknowableness.10

The reason for this lies not in the nature of Revelation but rather in humannature. Because Revelation has to reach human beings, it presupposes alistener, a hearer of the Word. Grace presupposes nature [gratia supponitnaturam], to quote a Scholastic axiom. Thus, human nature transcenden-tally lays down a condition for the possibility of divine Revelation. Evendivine Revelation is unable to reveal to a hearer what he or she is by natureunable to understand.11 However, this does not apply to concrete aspects ofRevelation; it is the fundamental mode that is pre-determined. Althoughwe are elevated by Revelation to know something that would otherwise beunknown to us, states Thomas, nevertheless, we would not know any-thing in any other manner than through sensibles.12 Corporality remainsfor Aquinas an unconditional dimension.

This implies that theologians cannot avoid disputing with philosophers.Theology should not, however, let itself be superseded by philosophy. InThomass mind, there is no doubt that Christian Revelation brings newknowledge. What he denies is only that the question of Gods unknow-ableness is influenced by it:

Although concerning God we do not know through the Revelation of gracein this life what God is and thus are united with him as with the unknown,nevertheless we do know him more fully insofar as more and higher effectsof his are shown to us and insofar as we attribute to him some things outof divine Revelation that cannot be reached by natural reason, for example,that God is triune and one.13

Even if God is attained in an inner experience, it is only a sign of hisessence (often called a theophany) but never, Thomas insists, his essenceitself.14 It is well to remember that it took until the lifetime of ThomasAquinas for the teaching to be established among Christians that in theafterlife, the beatific vision consists in more than theophanies.15 Because,

9 Cf. Hoye, Gotteserkenntnis, 277, n. 33.10 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, I, c. 5.11 Divina non sunt revelanda hominibus nisi secundum eorum capacitatem. Thomas Aquinas,

Summa theologiae, III, q. 101, a. 2, ad 1.12 Thomas Aquinas, In De trinitate, q. 6, a. 3c, n. 2. Cf. ibid., q. 1, a. 2; q. 6, a. 2, ad 5; Summa theologiae,

I, q. 13, a. 10, ad 5; ibid., III, q. 3, a. 6c; Summa contra gentiles, I, c. 3; Super Romanos, c. 1, lect. 6.13 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 12, a. 13, ad 1. Cf. In IV. Sententiarum, dist. 49, q. 2, a. 7,

ad 3.14 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 18, a. 3c. 15 Cf. Hoye, Gotteserkenntnis, 269284.

2.1 Difficulties 19

therefore, divine Revelation does not affect Gods unknowableness, thereis no reason for concluding from the fact that Thomas acknowledgessupernatural Revelation that his teaching on Gods unknowableness is notto be taken seriously,16 especially since he himself explicitly rejected suchinconsequence. Nicholas Thomas Wright expressed it well:

We must remind ourselves yet once more that all Christian language aboutthe future is a set of signposts pointing into amist. Signposts do not normallyprovide you with advance photographs of what you will find at the end ofthe road, but that does not mean they are not pointing in the right direction.They are telling you the truth, the particular sort of truth that can be toldabout the future.17

2.1.4 Philosophical prejudices against life after death

Other reasons for denying an existence after death taken in a Christiansense are indirect, deductive conclusions. They do not arise from a directanalysis, to say nothing of observation. No one goes and looks and returnswith the piece of information that there is nothing there, like the Russiancosmonauts who returned from space with the message that God wasnowhere to be seen. Most likely, it is a priori impossible to find an aposteriori proof on the nonexistence of the afterlife. The arguments aredeductive: There is no life after death because this is impossible. Let therebe no misunderstanding: This is not only a legitimate way of arguing, it isalso a very potent way.

This kind of judgment is founded on a prejudgment. The logic hereis conclusive, but the truth question is risky. Conclusions arising out ofprejudices convince us with the power of self-evidence until we realize thatour point of departure is, in fact, a prejudice. In the case of prejudicesthat are important to us, this reflection is anything but easy, but oncewe become aware of a prejudice as such, it loses some of its convincingstrength. Although it is certainly not easy to discover a prejudice as longas it is one of our own seeing the prejudices of our opponents is easier it is a promising reaction to focus the light of doubt on it. A consciousprejudice is susceptible to being rejected, revised, or rationally justified. Ofcourse, living without prejudices is impossible. They define the homelandin which we feel secure and are able to live our normal life. But this canalways mean living in falsehood. Hence, it is always better to examine adiscovered prejudice.

16 As Nicolas, Dieu connu, 88, does. 17 Wright, Surprised by Hope, 132.


There are four such prejudgments in particular that seem to me topresent the most influential opposition to a belief in life after death. Ibegin my study by characterizing them before subjecting them to rationalcriticism. I refer to them as experience (natural science), praxis (technologyand morality), hedonism, and Christian Faith.

To be sure, the alternative cannot be a state void of prejudices. Whatis required is a prejudgment that is far-reaching enough to allow for thepossible existence of a life after death. I refer to it as the prejudice forreality reality taken without further qualification. It would be mean-ingless to postulate an existence that lies so far in the beyond that itis no longer real. The afterlife must be relevant, perhaps even enjoy akind of self-evidence. Eschatology is comparable to logic: We make useof it in general without reflection, whereas making a study of it can bestrenuous.

In any case, the agnostic denial of any knowledge whatsoever about theafterlife is considerably more demanding than the claim that we do notknow anything or do not yet have knowledge. This is normal scientificmodesty. However, the assertion that something cannot be known is of aquite different caliber. It represents a truth claim of a high degree. To main-tain that the goal and meaning of life is unknowable is an extraordinarilyweighty thesis.

The intention of the following five subchapters is to overcome the prej-udices that render the afterlife impossible. Once room for belief in anafterlife has been opened a priori, attention in the subsequent chapters canbe turned to a more positive approach. What can be called the anthro-pological parameter will then be treated first, allowing a study of somefundamental factors. Finally, an attempt will be made to come to termswith the essence of Eternal Life. The reader who is not interested in thecritical treatment of the positions rejecting Eternal Life may advance toChapter 3.

2.2 The Experience Prejudice

In its essence, life after death as conceived by Christianity is traditionallycalled a vision of God. Although it is never actually done, this visioncould be called a kind of experience, seeing that the beatific vision isan immaterial apprehension of God. God will be seen as he is face toface as Christian Faith expresses it. Eternal Life is defined as a union

2.2 The Experience Prejudice 21

with God, and this union is a conscious union. It is obvious, then, thatChristianity cannot do without a notion of experience in its worldview. Itis absolutely dependent on a notion of experience that extends far enoughand deep enough to embrace the eternal vision of God himself. It musttherefore be acknowledged that Eternal Life seems in some way to be anexperiential fact, albeit no one has been there and returned with a factualreport. Nevertheless, experience taken in the usual sense seems to speakagainst a belief in the afterlife.

The purpose of the present subchapter is not only to criticize the usualnotion of experience but also, above all, to broaden and deepen the cus-tomary notion of experience so that it can be valid for eschatology. WhatI refer to as the Experience Prejudice is the restriction of experience tothe empirical, the sensual. The crucial breakthrough here must be theawareness that experience embraces more than facts that is, more thanthe given (data) in experience. If the Christian worldview is true, then therealm of conscious experience is more far-reaching than one would nor-mally presume. The notion of Erlebnis (see pages 3941) bears witness tothis.

The Experience Prejudice is the conviction that only that is real whichin some way or another is an object of empirical experience or is somehowrelated to empirical experience; in its simplest form: I will only believeit if I see it. The point of view of this prejudice is a conviction thatis presupposed without further reasoning; conversely, its filter effect iscomprehensive. It requires a priori that anything like Eternal Life mustbe judged to be superfluous since it lies by definition beyond time experience, as we know it, being something temporal. Experience is empir-ical, it is the participation of consciousness in empirical reality. The Expe-rience Prejudice, which is a typical fundamental presumption of our age,presents a major hindrance to a belief in a life after death. Empiricismis a teaching that defines reality itself as empirical. Reality being empir-ical, there is no place left for Eternal Life, which cannot be reduced toa fact or, for that matter, even to something temporal. If it were real,it is arguable, then one would expect something as presumably impor-tant as the afterlife to be in some way empirically noticeable or at leastsignificant.

Relevant for a theological treatment of Eternal Life are, in particular,three forms of the Experience Prejudice: neopositivism; Jesus Christ as thefoundation of Christian theology; and the idea of an experience of God,as frequently understood in theology in the past few decades.


2.2.1 Positivism and neopositivism: Reality definedby empirical science

Hardly anyonewould claim that natural science is the only access we have toreality the claim itself is self-refuting but the opinion is quite widespreadthat it is our most mature and reliable access. Positivism and neopositivismarticulate this common conviction. Positivism is the philosophical beliefthat the object of empirical science is reality and vice versa. Reality isdefined as that which can be in any way treated by empirical science.Expressed negatively: whatever is inaccessible to scientific treatment isregarded as nonexistent. This viewpoint can be called scientism; it is, ofcourse, a philosophical decision and is taught in no way by natural scienceitself. It makes natural science into a metaphysics. For classical positivism,religion ranks as a preliminary stage of knowledge that will be supersededby science.

In his extraordinarily popular book Language, Truth and Logic, Alfred J.Ayer expresses a straightforward application of the Experience Prejudice:

We conclude, therefore, that the argument from religious experience is alto-gether fallacious. The fact that people have religious experiences is interestingfrom the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply thatthere is such a thing as religious knowledge . . . The theist . . . may believethat his experiences are cognitive experiences, but, unless he can formulatehis knowledge in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may besure that he is deceiving himself. It follows that those philosophers who filltheir books with assertions that they intuitively know this or that moralor religious truth are merely providing material for the psychoanalyst. Forno act of intuition can be said to reveal a truth about any matter of factunless it issues in verifiable propositions.18

Ayer states outright what many contemporaries implicitly think. Meta-physics and, consequently, theological statements referring to a transcen-dent God are not so much false as simply meaningless:

We shall maintain that no statement which refers to a reality transcend-ing the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have any literalsignificance; from which it must follow that the labors of those who havestriven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production ofnonsense.19

Theology, therefore, need not be refuted.

18 Ayer, Language, 119120. 19 Ibid., 34.


Neopositivism does not go so far as to require that truth be always agiven in direct experience. The Verification Principle only demands that atruth assertion have some empirical relevance.20

It is logically consistent, then, to conclude that notions like meta-physics and speculation not tomention God, heaven, and the like are empty, thus being susceptible to pejorative meanings. Speculation isaccordingly looked on as empty thought, that is, thinking that is not relatedto reality. Ironically, metaphysics is understood as lying outside of reality although its defenders understand it as the study of being. If reality isdefined as concrete existence, then it follows automatically that there isroom for nothing beyond concrete existence. The concrete appears to bemore real than the abstract. In this view, facts are the most real realities.

This development can hardly be appreciated if one is not aware ofhow previous history perceived these questions. Compared to the Platonictradition, which for centuries dominated Western thought, it is not only adevelopment, it is also an antipodal conversion. ForHegel in the nineteenthcentury, the idea is absolute truth of which all phenomenal existence isthe expression; the idea embodies the Absolute. Christians developed theteaching that the Platonic ideas are, in truth, Gods thoughts. Until theModern Age, the abstract was considered more real than the concrete. Inthis way of thinking, the concrete enjoys merely the dependent reality ofan imperfect copy, of a shadow, of a reflection, of a likeness.

For us viewing with the eyes of the Experience Prejudice realityappears to be just the opposite. For Plato, who originated the term ideaand for whom it was the central notion of his philosophy and theol-ogy, ideas are the fullest realities. What we call realities today are forthe Platonic view merely imperfect copies, deriving their existence fromthe all-embracing fullness of the ideas. For us, ideas are no longer thefundamentals of reality; they have been reduced to mere thoughts. And, inour eyes, thoughts are the copies. My idea table is, for example, an imageof real tables, whereas for Platonism, it is the concrete table that is theimage. Whereas originally idea was a metaphysical notion, today it is anepistemological one. The Oxford English Dictionary provides a typical def-inition of the term idea: A conception to which no reality corresponds;something merely imagined or fancied. It can even mean something thatis in the imagination or mind as opposed to being in reality.21 In German,

20 Cf. ibid., 35.21 A further definition: A notion or thought more or less imperfect, indefinite, or fanciful; a vague

belief, opinion, or estimate; a supposition, impression, fancy. To have no idea: (a) not to anticipateor expect (a situation or occurrence); (b) to be unable to comprehend; usu. in phr. you have noidea.


the word has come to mean a very tiny quantity. In the expression to adda pinch of salt, Germans can say Idee instead of pinch. Contemporaryculture has been carrying on a direct polemic against Platonism, retainingthe original Platonic terms and turning their meaning and importanceverily upside down.

The reduction of reality to the concrete reaches a high point in neoposi-tivism. Neopositivism is not difficult to criticize. Because this axiom is itselfcertainly not empirically verifiable, it proves itself to be inadequate throughthe simple fact that it teaches that only empirically relevant knowledge ispermitted. The Verification Principle or that of Falsification has thequality of a postulate. It is similar to a dogmatic truth. Because, however, itis itself not susceptible to verification, a breakthrough is exposed. Throughtheir own explicit teaching, neopositivists demonstrate that there is truththat cannot be verified in experience.

A particularly influential adaptation of the Experience Prejudice withintheology is exhibited in the overemphasis of the theological significanceof Jesus Christ. Time is accepted as the horizon of reality. In other words,history becomes the all-encompassing dimension, and Jesus Christ is a def-inite historical figure. Treating him as the starting point and foundation ofChristian theology represents the most convincing form of the ExperiencePrejudice within theology. The appeal to Christ in a theological argumen-tation often has the advantage of providing a relationship to experience.Jesus belongs to the givens of history.

In theology, the Experience Prejudice finds further expression when aseparation is made between the historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith.This is like someone claiming that the circle on the blackboard is not reallya circle but rather only little heaps of chalk and that the circle exists onlyin our imagination. This leads some theologians to a denial of knowledgeabout the afterlife with the argument that we have no pictures of it.

The German philosopher Richard Schaeffler pointed out that thebasic mistake of positivism is that experience is treated as self-evident.22

Schaeffler argues that experience has a dimension of transcendentalreflection and that God is the name that names the condition whichmakes experience possible.23 God is the only possible explanation becausenothing that occurs within experience can ground experience. If humantranscendentality makes the relationship to objects of consciousnesspossible, then an object that appears within the transcendental horizoncannot be the condition for the opening of this horizon.24 Being not anobject of experience, God is thus the condition for the development of the

22 Cf. Schaeffler, Fahigkeit, 28. 23 Ibid., 124. 24 Ibid., 119.


horizon of experience. For this reason, Schaeffler maintains that experienceis not self-evident, and positivism treating it as self-evident neglectsto pose the question about the condition for the possibility of experi-ence. As shown in the next subchapter, Karl Rahner exemplified thistranscendental approach in his Christology.

2.2.2 Jesus Christus as the foundation of theology

Is Christianity then not Christian, not Christian through and through?This question is deceptive. In truth, Jesus did not begin his own theologywith Christology; he presupposed a theology, including a conception ofGod and creation. His gospel is not identical to his theology; instead, it isintegrated into it. The specificum of his teaching is not the existence of Godthe Creator but rather salvation. His own concern was eschatological. Ifnot misconstrued, it can be said that Christ is not enough for Christianity.What is specifically Christian is not the innermost essence of Christianity.Therefore, it is not inappropriate when summaries of Christian theologylike the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Summae of ThomasAquinas do not have Christology as their starting point.

Rahner made a point of warning against a Christological bottleneck[Engfuhrung]:

Great caution seems to be called for against taking a too narrowly Christo-logical approach . . . A too narrow concentration of the foundational courseon Jesus Christ as the key and the solution to all existential problems andas the total foundation of Faith would be too simple a conception. It is nottrue that one has only to preach Jesus Christ and then he has solved allproblems. Today Jesus Christ is himself a problem, and to realize this weonly have to look at the demythologizing theology of a post-Bultmann age.The question is this: Why and in what sense may one risk ones life in Faithin this concrete Jesus of Nazareth as the crucified and risen God-Man? Thisis what has to be justified. Hence, we cannot begin with Jesus Christ as theabsolute and final datum, but we must begin further back than that. Wehave several sources of experience and knowledge, all of which have to beexplored and mediated. There is a knowledge of God which is not mediatedcompletely by an encounter with Jesus Christ. It is neither necessary norobjectively justified to begin in this foundational course simply with thedoctrine of Jesus Christ.25

To be sure, Jesus Christ might well represent the specific of Christianity,but constricting Christianity to him leads ultimately to atheism. Christian

25 Rahner, Foundations, 13. (Throughout this volume and unless otherwise noted, Rahner refers toKarl Rahner.)


religion is not simply based on Christs teaching. It is similar with theChurch, if she is given a role that is overly essential. Seeing that theChristian religion is not identical with the Christian Church, Rahner alsoemphasized that the Church is not the central teaching of Christianity.26 Itis easy enough to have an institutional church that is void of religion andto celebrate divine services without God.

Faith in Jesus Christ must be responsible. Rahner explains that Christhimself is a question of conscience. In the opinion of Thomas Aquinas, itwould be immoral to believe inChrist if ones consciencewere (erroneously)convinced that belief in him contradicted truth. Someone in this statewould be rejecting truth if he or she believed in Christ and, thus, wouldbe contradicting the meaning of Faith in Christ.27 (Noteworthy is the factthat Fyodor Dostoyevsky took the opposite position: he maintained that hewould choose Christ if he were confronted with the hypothesis of choosingbetween Christ and Truth.28) What is important here is that there is akind of knowledge of God that is not adequately mediated through theencounter with Jesus Christ.29 Jesus himself presupposes an elaboratetheology. Moreover, Christ himself represents a theological question. It iscertainly not by chance that Aquinas does not take up Christology untilthe third and final part of his Summa theologiae and the fourth and finalpart of his Summa contra gentiles.

It is a crucial mistake to identify what is specifically Christian withthe essence of Christianity. If Christ is to be viewed theologically, thebackground must be composed of a mature theology. There exist differentChristologies because the presupposed perspectives are different. Neitherthe experience of Christ nor belief in him can replace this; Faith and reasonare not alternatives. Here, too, the axiom Grace perfects nature holds.

Some would consider it ironic that it is the Catholic teaching office thatemphasizes the indispensability of philosophy within theology. To be sure,The Catechism of the Catholic Church begins with a question about Faithbut, in order to treat this, it first explains the natural human capacity forGod [capax Dei], which consists in a desire for God [desiderium Dei]. Thisis essential to understand Faith.

26 Cf. ibid., 324. 27 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, III, q. 19, a. 5c.28 Cf. his letter of February 20, 1854, to Natalja D. Fonvizin (Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XII, 297);

English: I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, moremanly and more perfect than the Savior . . . If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside thetruth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not thetruth. Quoted in Dirscherl, Dostoevsky, 52. A few years later, the same dilemma is recounted inThe Demons, Part II, Chapter 1, 7.

29 Rahner, Foundations, 13.


In his tribute to philosophy in the encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998), PopeJohn Paul II underlines the fact that Christian thought allows for nei-ther a fideism nor a Biblicism. Both fideism, which fails to recognizethe importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for theunderstanding of Faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief inGod, andBiblicism, which tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scrip-ture the sole criterion of truth, overlook the role of philosophy and reasonin theology. That there can be no contradiction between Faith and reasonis a traditional Catholic conviction. As Thomas Aquinas argues, this is sobecause the light of reason and the light of Faith both come from God.30

It is not possible to hear or read Revelation without being influenced bya philosophy. Most people read the Bible in translation and are influencedby the philosophical presuppositions of their language. Holy Scripture doesnot come purely; it cannot be understood without interpretation, beingotherwise nothing but language without content. No one has the wholeof Revelation present in his consciousness of what Christianity is. We allmake selections from what is revealed and put these ideas in a hierarchy ofimportance. It is not Revelation that does this.

An ideal situation would be that the theologian is his own philosopher.He should begin his philosophy simultaneously with his theology and notborrow a philosophy or consider it to be merely a system of categories or areferee of logic or a language into which theological ideas can be translated.Instead, it reveres truth as much as theology does. The touchstone for theseriousness of the involvement of philosophy can be found in the notionof reality. Does the theologian simply presuppose this notion or does hehimself reflect on it and take responsibility for his notion of reality?

Rahner considers the philosophical presuppositions to belong to thecontent of Revelation theology.31 He calls philosophy an element withinChristian theology and maintains that there even exists a unity betweenphilosophy and theology insofar as both study the whole.32 Accordingto Pope John Paul II, the deep unity of Faith and philosophy must bereached anew.33 There is a natural-philosophical teaching on God and, asRahner asserts, it is not carried on next to Revelation theology.34 Rahnerdescribes the philosophical element . . . as a transcendental presuppositionwithin the theological sphere.35 At least in his own case, philosophicalreflections are certainly not pre-theological, as has been claimed.36

30 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, I, c. 7; John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, n. 43.31 Cf. Rahner, Foundations, 36. 32 Ibid., 11.33 Cf. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, n. 48. 34 Rahner, Schriften, 5051.35 A letter of July 24, 1968; as quoted in Eicher, Anthropologische Wende, 79, n. 1.36 Cf. Fischer, Mensch, 160, n. 109.


The relevance of philosophy for theology is not exhausted by the factthat the Church has adopted philosophical notions to express dogmas.37

Much more important is that the Church has drawn from philosophy inorder to gain a deeper understanding of Faith.38 Hearing the divine wordand understanding it are two different acts. Pope John Paul II encouragesphilosophers to trust in human reason and not to be overly modest indefining their goals.39 He further recommends that it is necessary not toabandon the passion for ultimate truth, the eagerness to search for it orthe audacity to forge new paths in the search.40 It is natural to ChristianFaith that it presents reason with a challenge. It is Faith, he states, whichstirs reason to move beyond all isolation and willingly to run risks so thatit may attain whatever is beautiful, good, and true. Faith thus becomes theconvinced and convincing advocate of reason.41

For this thoroughly positive viewpoint, which is no more than theaxiom that grace presupposes and perfects nature, Thomas Aquinas is citedas follows:

Thomas recognized that nature, philosophys proper concern, could con-tribute to the understanding of divine Revelation. Faith therefore has no fearof reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on natureand brings it to fulfillment, so Faith builds upon and perfects reason.42

Both philosophy and theology have the final goal of human existence astheir object.43 Both should be seeking Truth, each with its own autonomy.

Rahner describes the relationship between believing and thinking as acircular movement between the question and the answer. The question thatthe human being himself is presents the condition of the possibility forhearing the answer that Christian Revelation is. The question establishesthe condition for real hearing, he says, and the answer first brings thequestion to its reflective self-givenness.44 The circle runs between thehorizons of understanding and what is said, heard, and understood.45 Inthis way, the philosophical presuppositions become a part of the content ofRevelation theology, and philosophy is seen to be a factor within Christiantheology.46

Pope John Paul II expresses a warning about the attempt to separatetheology from philosophy. The result, he notes, would not be an inde-pendent theology but rather an impoverished and enfeebled theology.

37 Cf. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, n. 55. 38 Ibid., n. 5. 39 Cf. ibid., n. 56.40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Cf. ibid., n. 43. 43 Cf. ibid., n. 15.44 Rahner, Schriften, 23. 45 Rahner, Foundations, 24. 46 Cf. ibid., 25.


Without philosophy, theology is reduced to particular feelings and experi-ences. Thus, it would become a study of myths instead of being:

Deprived of reason, Faith has stressed feeling and experience, and so run therisk of no longer being a universal proposition. It is an illusion to think thatFaith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary,Faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition. By thesame token, reason which is unrelated to an adult Faith is not prompted toturn its gaze to the newness and radicality of being.47

Not for pastoral or pedagogical reasons but instead by the very nature of therevealed word do certain tasks that are the responsibility of theology itselfdemand recourse to philosophical enquiry.48 Because of this, the believermust do philosophy before doing Christology. Faith in Christ presupposesreason.

2.2.3 The notion of the experience of God

The form of the Experience Prejudice that is most common and influentialwithin theology is the idea that it is possible to experience God in thepresent life. To the best of my knowledge, the term experience of God isnever used in an eschatological context. In another book, I attempted tocome to terms with the idea extensively.49 It might seem at first sight thatthe acknowledgment of an experience ofGod [cognitio Dei experimentalis50]must be supportive ofChristian Faith.However, in reality, this prejudgmenthas a laming effect on eschatology for it leads to the consequence that itis difficult to think of anything meaningful under the eschatological termvision of God. If God could already be experienced in this life, then lifeafter death would seem to be in principle superfluous because it wouldhave nothing more to offer than an experience of God. Otherwise, onewould have to conceive of an experience of God in this life that would notbe fulfilling. Rahner finds no better solution than the metaphor of spatialcloseness. In the eschatological vision, God, he teaches, is closer than inexperiences of God in this world. It must be admitted, at least, that it isdifficult to distinguish the heavenly experience of God from the allegedmystical experience of God before death.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, who during the course of his life dissociatedhimself from the notion experience of God,51 confirmed the closeness ofEternal Life andmysticism, which he described as a thin veil, a foretaste,

47 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, n. 48. 48 Cf. ibid., n. 64. 49 Cf. Hoye, Gotteserfahrung?50 Cf. Bonaventure, In III. Sententiarum, dist. 35, q. 1, a. 1c. 51 Cf. Engelhard, Gotteserfahrung.


and a shadow of the heavenly glorification.52 Balthasar cites St. John ofthe Cross, who describes the ascent in the dark night to Mount Carmelthrough the hindrances, which are destroyed by the consuming divine fire.Having reached this pinnacle, one desires that the veil be torn apart, sothat a union takes place in burning love like in an infinite ocean. The soulis compared to the irradiated shadow thrown by Gods glorious light. Suchis for him the ultimate unity of a human with God.

Worth thinking about is the fact that the expression experience ofGod occurs in no official Church teaching in a positive sense. Even inthe Catechism of the Catholic Church, in which one would expect to findit, there is not a single occurrence of the expression. In fact, it took theChurch until the thirteenth century before it was decided that a visionof God himself takes place in the afterlife, to say nothing of the presentlife. Previously, it was orthodox to define all of the experiences that involveGod, including Eternal Life, as theophanies. According to this teaching,it is not God himself who is encountered but instead merely appearancesor revelations of God.

For Thomas Aquinas, our present state is not defined as a vision butrather as Faith, whereby Faith implies for him precisely that the objectis not experienced, is not seen at all.53 Accordingly, the idea of a Faithexperience is an oxymoron. Faith does have, of course, a relationship tothe eschatological vision of God, being its precursor, but it does not bringabout this vision. To the contrary, says Thomas, The knowledge of Faith,far from appeasing desire, rather excites it, since everyone desires to see thatwhich he believes.54 Thus, Faith provides not so much a support as a goad.The answers provided by Faith do not lessen further enquiry. As Aquinasnotes, Faith is concerned with things absent, not with things present.55

A further consideration is the consequence for the theodicy problem. Inmy opinion, this problem would be unsoluble if it were a priori possible toenjoy the fulfilling happiness of the vision of God before death even ifonly for an instant. Maintaining a belief in God in the face of the theodicyproblem is coupled with the impossibility of a fully happy existence beforedeath; striving as well as suffering are unavoidable as long as reflectinghuman beings live in time. If it were theoretically possible for humans to

52 Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Drama, 428430.53 The object of Faith is not truths [vera] but rather truth itself [veritas prima ut non apparens].

Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 14, a. 3, ad 6. Ratio formalis credibilis est ut sit non visum.Summa theologiae, IIII, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2. Est autem obiectum fidei aliquid non visum circa divina.Ibid. Creditum est non visum. Ibid.

54 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, III, c. 40.55 Fides de absentibus est, non de praesentibus. Ibid.


be fully happy in this life, then there would be no way of justifying Godsfailure to bring this about; God does not play hide-and-seek games withus. Concrete suffering is neither absolutely unavoidable nor unnatural andmeaningless when it does occur.

I now attempt to get beyond the notion of an experience of God bybroadening the horizon.56 Not in all Rahner with his idea of a tran-scendental experience being the best-known example but in most cases,the notion of an experience of God is closely associated with the idea ofconcreteness. An experience is usually concrete and the idea of the concreteis held in high estimation by our modern mindset. So, most authors usingthe term experience of God emphasize its concreteness. The aspect ofconcreteness presents a good starting point for an analysis of the idea ofthe experience of God.

Facts are concrete. Etymologically, concrete means grown together.If one wants to do theology that is, to reflect on God then one must firstget beyond facts. Of course, they ought not to be denied, but they must betranscended. Facts are not simply statically there; as the etymology reveals,in some way or another, they have been made (Latin factum, thing done,neuter past participle of facere, to do, to make). Facts must be appreciatedfor what they really are. A helpful as well as time-honored analogy can bedrawn to the appreciation of what colors are when one becomes aware thatthey are light waves. Colors are, so to speak, the concretization of light, itsconcrete forms. Furthermore, they are references to light. Without colors,light is invisible; when colors are perceived, then one knows, without seeingit, that light is present.

Although, admittedly, nothing conclusive can be proven from the fact,it is revealing to note that the word concrete originated in Christiantheology. It reveals a point of view that the Christian idea of creationhas made thinkable. Today, the term which first occurred within highlyabstract theology is part of everyday language. It is conceivable that theterm still includes hidden elements of Christian thought but in a secularizedform. It is perhaps no accident that it has been employed for an anti-theological purpose. In its original meaning, concrete signified preciselythat which is not God. God was unhesitatingly considered an abstractbeing. A creature was understood as that which has grown together madeas a fact and which is consequently contingent. A creature is susceptibleto corruption. The concrete is thus, by definition, a participation in Godbut itself anything but God.

56 For a lengthier treatment ofmy arguments, the readermaywant to consultmy book,Gotteserfahrung?


A further term belonging to everyday language and originally a theo-logical concept is abstract. Both concrete and abstract taken in anepistemological sense were coined by the Roman statesman, Christianphilosopher, and theologianAniciusManliusTorquatus Severinus Boethius(480524 ad). This occurred in an unmistakably theological work namely,On the Trinity. There, the term abstract is used to define what theologyis. In contrast to physics and mathematics, theology studies the abstract,the objects of physics and mathematics being restricted to the inabstract.Taken in the original sense of the word abstract, one could say that with-out the abstract, there would be no theology. Today, the word abstracthas ironically taken on a pejorative connotation for theologians as well asothers. At the same time it is often used polemically. The values attached tothe terms abstract and concrete are in this case reversed in comparisonto the original usage. Understood in the contemporary sense, the concretepossesses more reality than the abstract. The Oxford English Dictionarygives as the first definition, naming a real thing. This is taken to bethe equivalent of belonging to immediate experience of actual things orevents. Abstract then has just the opposite meaning. It implies beingat a distance from reality; the more abstract something is, the weaker is itsreality. It also has the meaning of abstruse, or difficult to understand.According to the leading German dictionary, abstract means that some-thing occurs only in thought, being theoretical and without an immediaterelationship to reality.57 As could be expected, concrete then has themeaning of something real, existing in the world beyond mere thought.

According to the scholarlyHistoricalDictionary of P

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The Emergence of Eternal Life