Communication As A Basic Principle Of Theology
By Franz-Josef Eilers, SVD
[Professor Eilers has served as coordinator of the Social/Pastoral Communication Program at the Pontifical University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Manila and director of the Asian Research Center for Religion and Social Communication (ARC) at St. John’s University in Bangkok.]
Communication Theology does not start with the media or technical means but rather with the center of theology, with God himself. Communication does become the eye through which the whole of theology is seen because the Christian God is a communicating God. Communication becomes a theological principle, a perspective, under which the whole of theology is seen.
Avery Dulles (1969) points to this when he says that “theology is at every point concerned with the realities of communication” confirming that Karl Rahner “brings out the communications dimension” of theology. This is true especially with what he calls “symbolic communication.” In fact, Dulles shows the consequences of this in a chapter on “Theology and Symbolic Communication” with special sections on Fundamental and Practical, but also Systematic Theology. According to him this is also reflected in a special way in fields like Christology, Creation, Grace, Sacraments, Ecclesiology, and Eschatology. Juergen Werbick (1997,214 f.) points to this in the section on Communication in the 11th volume, dictionary for Theology and Church (“Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche”) saying that communication is already for some 30 years a leading perspective for fundamental theology where revelation, faith, tradition and ecclesiastical practice are seen as grounded on communicative realities : “God reveals himself in a communicative way i.e. He shares Himself to humans in a relationship which is based on a dialogic exchange of word and response (“Wort und Antwort”), partnership (“Covenant”), which enables a new communicative culture.”
Here, Christian faith and practice is a response to God’s communicating love as revealed by Jesus Christ. Communication thus becomes a theological principle under which the whole of theology is considered and studied. The main elements of such a Communication Theology are Trinity, Revelation, Incarnation and, finally, the Church.
Trinity
At the beginning of Communication Theology stands a Trinitarian God who, within Himself, is Communication. Jesus Christ revealed to us a communicating Trinitarian God. There is an ongoing communication between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit as the Latin-American Bishops said in their statement of the Puebla Assembly (1976): “Christ reveals to us that divine life is Trinitarian communion. Father, Son and Spirit live in the supreme mystery of oneness in perfect, loving intercommunion. It is the source of all love and all communion that gives dignity and grandeur to human existence.” Carlo Martini in his pastoral plan on Communication for the archdiocese of Milan, Ephata, Apriti, refers to the different scriptural sources for this and concludes: “From the Gospel words transpires that sense of profound communion and exchange which live in the mystery of God and which is at the root of all our human communication. In the Trinitarian communion, the dialogue between the persons is ongoing. We can say that in the Trinity the three Divine persons are the more persons as they form a unified communion, and the more communion as they are persons. This way every one of us realizes the same, the more he lives the appropriate identity in dialogue and as gift with and through others.”
Bernhard Háring (1979, 46) is also quoted by Dulles in summarizing this mystery in the following way:
Communication is constitutive in the mystery of God. Each of the three Divine Persons possesses all that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, but in the modality of communion and communication. Creation, redemption, and communication arise from this mystery and have as their final purpose to draw us, by this very communication, into communion with God. Creating us in His image and likeness, God makes us sharers of his creative and liberating communication in communion, through communion, and in view of communion.
As human beings, we can communicate because we are created in the image and likeness of such a communicating Trinitarian God!
This communication perspective is also reflected today in Asia; Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia (1999) writes that “Communion and Dialogue are two essential aspects of the Church’s mission, which have their infinitely transcendent exemplar in the mystery of the Trinity, from whom all mission comes, and to whom it must be re-directed.” (No.31)
This understanding leads to the next dimension of Communication Theology.
Revelation
Gisbert Greshake, in one of his books on Trinity (1999, 21f.), begins with the Trinitarian communication dimension for revelation which is not only notional but the experience of God’s personal self-revelation to his creatures. He writes:
To the Christian understanding of revelation belongs a threefold consideration: 1. It is the infinite God the Father who reveals himself without limits to humans in order to unite himself with them in the closest community of love. 2. This revelation happens in the Word –in the broad sense – in a fully human way so that we are all able to understand. At the high point of this God’s revelation, the Word appears in Jesus Christ – God’s Son becoming man in whom God expresses and gives himself totally and without reservation. 3. The acceptance and understanding of God’s word happens within man in a divine way which means the personal, subjective acceptance of God’s word happens in the power of God acting in the Holy Spirit. Only if all these three elements come together can one realize without contradiction that God does not reveal something about him but rather that he communicates himself literally in infinite love and shelters the human beings into his divine life. Revelation understood as radical self-communication therefore pre-supposes a Trinitarian understanding of God.”
The Vatican II Constitution on Revelation Dei Verbum states: “By Divine Revelation God wished to manifest and communicate both himself and the eternal decrees of his will for the salvation of mankind. He wished, in other words, to share with us divine benefits which entirely surpass the powers of human mind to understand.” (No.6)
Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975, No. 42) speaks of the word as “the bearer of the power of God.” Thus, Christian Communication in its revelational aspect becomes a saving power. God’s revelation is not just a passing on of ‘information’ in its narrow sense, but it is indeed a dialogic process with concrete effects in life, manifested in the sacraments. The dialogic process of Revelation builds on the general means of, and for, human communication. God’s revelation and communication takes place through all the human senses as St. John expresses in his first letter (1 Jo. 1-3): “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life … we proclaim also to you…” In his personal experience of conversion St. Augustine shares how ‘revelation’ affected all his senses: “You called on me, you cried aloud to me, you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me, you put my blindness to flight. You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and I gasp for your sweet odor. I tasted you and I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me and I am inflamed with love of your peace.” (X, 27) Both examples show how God’s revelation builds on human nature and experience.
The Mission document of Vatican II Ad Gentes sees Mission as the essence of the Church. In a similar way, Communication Theology sees communication at the center and as the essence of the Church. The Church exists to communicate. After all, Mission is also communicating. Further, the Church is a community, and no community can exist without communication. A theology of Communion presupposes a Communication Theology. Such communication is at the essence of the relation with God (vertical) but also presupposes communication on the horizontal level. The emergence of modern technology for communication from Gutenberg to Internet is a special gift to intensify, deepen, but also extend, this communication. “The Church would feel guilty before the Lord if she did not utilize these powerful means that human skill is daily rendering more perfect” (Evangelii Nuntiandi 1975, 45). The emergence of a “New Culture” (Redemptoris Missio 1990, 37c) which is determined by modern communications therefore is a special challenge but also an opportunity for the Church today. This goes far beyond any instrumentalization.
A Communication Theology-based Ecclesiology is needed which includes also the new and emerging means of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The Second Vatican Council describes the communication obligation of the Church in the following words: “The one mediator, Christ, established and ever sustains here on earth His holy Church, the community of Faith, Hope and Charity, as a visible organization through which he communicates truth and grace to all people… For this reason, the Church is compared, not without significance, to the mystery of the incarnate Word.” (Lumen Gentium, 8) The Church as the body of Christ has to “proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God” (Lc 4, 43) and she says with St. Paul: “Not that I boast of preaching the Gospel since it is a duty that has been laid on me; I should be punished if I did not preach it.” (1 Cor. 9, 16)
Along these lines, the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975) states that “Evangelizing – Communicating – is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the mass which is the memorial of his death and glorious resurrection” (No.14). Pope Paul VI reminds us, in the same document, that the Church acquires only its “full meaning when she becomes witness, when she evokes admiration and conversion and when it becomes the preaching and proclamation of the Good News” (No.15). Evangelii Nuntiandi sees as instruments of evangelization and communication not only the mass media but also other means, starting with the witness of life, followed by a living, preaching, liturgy, catechesis, personal contact, sacraments, and popular piety. (Nos.40-48). Avery Dulles has analyzed the different documents of Vatican II under the perspective of Communication and the different Church models reflected in them. He comes up with models for a communicating Church.