The Triume God: Source And Fundament Of Human Communication
A Sketch Of Communicative Theology
By Lukács László
Budapest, 31st May 2007
Communication, as such, is as old as humankind. Human persons cannot live but in and out of constant communication with one another. Still there is a new phenomenon arising in the second half of the 20th century: communication has become one of the magic ideas common in the development of technology, sciences, and society.
New techniques of communication enabled us to be in constant audiovisual touch with one another – eliminating time and space as barriers of human communication. The new slogan is ours is the age of communication, we are in an information revolution. The technical development of mass media (or still better: social media), the communications industry, has gone alongside with the elaboration of different theories of communication. A new interdisciplinary branch of science appeared: that of communication. Semiotic and linguistic sciences are as intensively interested in creating theories of communication as social sciences and philosophy. There are numerous approaches to communication so one cannot speak about one single and unified theory of communication.[1]
The research of communication, its impact on individuals and societies, has found a great interest in anthropology and psychology as well. The question is not, simply, how the new media influenced the way of life, for worse or for better; one wanted to get closer to the very essence of human nature and of the person by analyzing communication as the basic phenomenon of human existence. Human beings are not only individuals but they live in a multiple network of relationships: person (persona) is the human being who is unique as individual but who at the same time lives in an immense network of communication. Neither collectivism nor individualism can satisfy our human condition: individuals are to live in communion with one another – this is the only way to achieve genuine self-development, to live fully human.
At the same time – in the post Vatican II Council era of the church – new insights were born in theology as well. Some of these ideas were integrated in the documents of the Council, others were inspired by the Council, yet others were discovered in the past few decades. In the center of this development the doctrine on the Holy Trinity is found. This topic was rather marginalized for centuries as a respectful but faraway entity which is the origin and background of all but has little relevance for our everyday life. Kant’s opinion was characteristic not only in the practical pastoral work of the church, but also for theological studies: “Aus der Dreieinigkeitslehre, nach dem Buchstaben genommen, lässt sich schlechterdings nichts fürs Praktische machen.”[2]
The trinitology of our days has discovered the rich heritage of the Church Fathers,[3] and in their footsteps tried to gain insights into the inner life of the “Immanent Trinity” which has been revealed to us in the “Economic Trinity.” According to Karl Rahner’s famous axiom: "the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity."[4] God’s communication to the world is preceded by his self-communication within the loving communion of the three divine persons.
The main points of this “new theology” are as follows:
The loving communion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is the source and final goal of the whole created universe
revelation is the self-communication of God who is love
incarnation, cross and resurrection are the peak-point of the history of salvation
the Church is the Sacrament of Salvation
the history of salvation is coextensive with human history with the final goal of reaching the loving communion of the Holy Trinity
A new (or ancient old, though forgotten!) horizon of our faith was emerging in and after the Council. One can find the basic outlines of this “new theology” in the very documents of the Council too: revelation as the loving communication of the Triune God with humankind (Dei Verbum); Church as the communion of love based on the God of Love, i.e. the Father and the Son and the Spirit (Lumen Gentium); the dialogue of Church and world to help human development (Gaudium et Spes).
Two non-theological concepts – communication and communion – stand in the middle of recent theological considerations, leading to a fruitful encounter with the revolution of communication in our times. (The “intrusion” of non-theological concepts into the sacred field of theology and the faith of the church is, by far, not a new phenomenon: e.g. the word “homousios” used by the Council of Nicaea, the Aristotelian terms used by Thomas Aquinas etc.) Lots of theological inquiries and church documents deal with communication in our days, but most of them focus on the use of mass-media or means of social communications: how to use them more effectively in church life as new tools of Evangelization and catechesis; in fostering a sense of community among believers; how to educate believers to a proper use of the media as recipients and perhaps also as communicators; what is the impact of modern media on our lives in society and in the church. To my mind, all this is important, but not sufficient. The practical approach to the media should be completed with a theoretical research of communication as the basis of our human condition. There are promising initiatives in this field as well: to elaborate a theology of communication, and what is more, to create a communicative theology. Such studies can enlighten both the essence of human life and the history of salvation which is the result of divine communication with us human beings.
Such an endeavor can help us to comprehend better who the Triune God is, what is his salvific will with creation and incarnation, what is the essence and orientation of the history of salvation. It can also help our contemporaries, formed by communication, to understand their opportunities for a better human life, but also aware of the threats and evil consequences of a misused communication.
In the following argumentation the term “communication” will be used as defined by Karl Rahner in his Theological Dictionary.[5] According to Rahner, “communication is a conveyance based upon the ability of listening and of free openness resulting in a communion between the sender and the receiver.” This community can be called communication as well. In the highest form of communication, the sender communicates his own self with the recipient: this is self-communication. Total self-communication is realized only in the Holy Trinity, but the triune God is capable of communicating with humankind.
Following the principles mentioned above, our argumentation is structured in three steps:
First step: Communication within the immanent Trinity (“ad intra”)
Second step: The “ad extra” work of the economic Trinity:[6]
Revelation as divine-human communication
Divine-human communication as sacramental interchange
The climax of revelation: Jesus Christ the Symbol of God
The church as sacrament of salvation and communion of the people of God.
Third step: the possible impact of a communicative theology for church and society.
Needless to say in the framework of such a modest proposal for further debate a dangerously narrow path can only be followed, neglecting e.g. the majestic debates between the great Western and Eastern theologians about the immanent Trinity, or the more recent debates about the trinitology of Karl Rahner or Karl Barth. One needs to apologize for the oversimplification of the different theological views and opinions or even their neglect to simply give a hint for communication theology or, better, communicative theology.
First Step: Communication Within the Immanent Trinity
The traditional chapter of dogmatic theology De Trinitate has become one of the most popular topics of contemporary theologians. Dozens of books and hundreds of articles have appeared about the Trinity in the past few decades. One idea is, however, common in the different approaches: most of them try to depict the inner life of the Triune God as the most dynamic life of divine loving communion. The notion of “perichoresis” used by the Church Fathers is reinvented and reinterpreted in today’s trinitologies.
The expression used most frequently by Christians is love. The central message of Christ is that God loves us because he himself is love forever. His love had not begun with his love towards the created world and human beings; it belongs to the inner life of the eternal One-God. Love is the very essence of God, who is the communio of three persons who are one God yet live in an eternal self-giving. God is love: a perfect communion of the three divine persons in the perfect communication of love. In theological terms: God-Father, giving himself completely to his Son, to the extent of being one with him; God-Son, receiving completely his Father into himself, so that they are completely one divinity; and God-Spirit, the joyful result, the complete gift, of the loving union between the Father and the Son. St. Augustine describes this mutual exchange with the term relatio, which means that the divine persons are completely one except the manner of their relationship in the perichoresis of love.
As the Council of Florenz defined it: “Everything in them is one where there is no opposition of relationship” (DH 1330). And: “Because of that unity the Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Holy spirit is wholly in the Father and in the Son” (DH 1331). Or as Heribert Mühlen puts in our days: “The differentness of the divine persons, to the extent that they are persons (… is so great, that it cannot be conceived as any greater, whereas their unity (…) is so intensive that it cannot be conceived of as any more intensive.”[7] Another modern author, one of the pioneers in the field of communication theory, Pierre Babin refers to the Holy Trinity as follows: “Communication, c’est un mot céleste, la révélation de ce rapport sans aucune dysharmonie entre émetteurs et récepteurs. le Père, le Fils et la Saint-Esprit.”[8]
The process of self-giving “begins” with the Father, he is the origin without origin, the Son receives everything = his whole divine person is the Son of the Father who gives himself totally as gift to his Son: they are of one essence, so that he returns himself as gift to the Father in thanksgiving. The “outcome” of this infinite dialogue of love is the Person of the Holy Spirit, who combines the two divine Lovers. John D. Zizioulas has built his whole personal ontology on the persons of the Triune God: “his being is identical with an act of communion (…) Love as God’s mode of existence “hypostizes” God, constitutes his being.”[9] Or in the formulation of W. J. Hill: “Divine love is not a sterile symbiosis of lovers but an élan of perfect life wherein the love itself becomes a reality over and against the lovers with all the density of ontological personhood.”[10] Efforts to create a new, personal ontology, based on the loving communion of God has been made by numerous authors: “In the theology of the Trinity a new ontology is developed: for God to be is to be in communion.”[11]
The only one God is the Holy Trinity. And human beings are created in the image and likeness of this Triune God, to be brought into that communion of love. God is total love, total and mutual gift of the divine persons to one another. In other words: he is (they are?) total communication. St. John begins his Gospel as follows: “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.” This statement can be paraphrased as: “In the beginning was Communication.” The whole history of salvation can be described as communication from its primordial source and fundament in the Triune God, through our human history, up to its final eschatological perfection of the “new heaven and new earth.” P. Hoffmann refers to Richard of St. Victor claiming that “immanent Trinity is the source and goal of all human communication society.”[12]
The self-communication of the Triune God does not end up in the intratrinitarian communion of divine love, but is extended to humankind by the creation of the world. As Karl Rahner puts it: „The only really absolute mysteries are the self-communication of God in the depths of existence, called grace, and in history, called Jesus Christ, and this already includes the mystery of the Trinity in the economy of salvation and of the immanent Trinity.”[13]
Second Step: The Work of the Economic Trinity
1. Revelation as divino-human communication
Before examining revelation as communication a few remarks are necessary concerning human communication. As stated above: perfect communication is total giving of the self. Though human beings are essentially beings of communication, perfect and total self-giving cannot be reached by them, for at least two reasons. Human beings are enclosed in time and space, they can present themselves only in pieces or fragments. What is more, if I give something to another person, this appears as loss on my part: my gift presented to somebody is counted as my expenditure. Total self-giving can be achieved only in dying for the other – that is why martyrs are so respected both in the church and in the world. “Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10,39). But even this ultimate and tragic act of selfless giving ourselves to others does not lead to real communion – it cannot be called communication in its full sense.
How can human persons – who are “Geist in Welt”, “spirit united with the material cosmos” – communicate with one another, transcending the limits of time and space? Our body – which does not simply belong to us but is the essential part of our person according to the famous axiom: “anima forma corporis” – is a prison, closing us from others, but at the same time a bridge, a medium connecting us with others. That is why human communication is realized on various levels and by various means of communication.
There are different theories trying to explain and analyze the conditions and rules of human communication. Certain points are, however, common in the different approaches: 1. there must be some external (material) element (=medium) conveying the message. – 2. Signs, among them preeminently words, play an important role in communication. – 3. Communication is an interpersonal act: it can only be achieved by persons: one person (the “sender”) utters, conveys a message in the “envelope” of a visible sign to another person (the “recipient”) who is able to decode the message and is willing to accept it. – 4. The only real aim of all interpersonal communication is the (loving) communion of the communicators.
The conclusion of all these theories of communication was that within our human world nobody – not even God – can communicate without mediation, without using human means of communication. If God wants to get into touch with human beings, if he wants to create interpersonal relationships with humanity – even he has to accept the rules of human communication and use it as means in order to enter into communion with human beings. As Vatican II declared: “Through this revelation the invisible God (see Col. 1;15, 1 Tim. 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.
This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having in inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them. By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.”[14]
Revelation – as seen by the Council Fathers – is God’s loving self-communication “ad extra” (from our point of view: a transcendental process) by the means of words and deeds (a process immanent in human history). That is why it can be called – in contrast with the immanent (ad intra) divine communication of the three persons within the Triune God – a divine-human communication. The fullness of this revelation is the person of Jesus Christ who is the only mediator and who is the fulfillment of communion between God and human beings: he is “true God and true man” and not “a confused mixture of the divine and the human.”[15] The term “unio hypostatica” tries to express this unique reality: Jesus Christ is inseparably true God and true man. This fact has immense consequences to the whole area of communication between God and humankind leading to our loving communion with the Holy Trinity – the key to the whole history of salvation can be found here.
Jesus Christ appears as historical figure on the stage of human history. But God the Father sends to us also his Holy Spirit – using the beautiful phrase of St. Iraeneus, the Father creates with his “two hands”, the Son and the Spirit. “The Holy Spirit communicates to us, intimately and personally, the life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son.”[16] It must be analyzed, later on, how the Son and the Holy Spirit work jointly to communicate with human persons. (Their “collaboration” for our salvation leads us to the problem of external and internal grace.)
2. Divine-human communication as sacramental interchange
Soon after the birth of the new science of communication a great deal of research in sacred and sacral communication was begun, along with a special field of Christian communication. It is impossible to analyze, or even to enumerate here, all these theories. Just two approaches are to be mentioned. Both try to give a Christian approach to communication and make use of it in religious life. Pierre Babin follows the footsteps of McLuhan in interpreting communication.[17] He enumerates six different schemes of communication. The most important insight is that besides the schemes of language, Babin speaks about communication of Affinity (distinguishing the communication of Friendship and of Spirit). The conclusion of his argumentation can perhaps be formulated that human communication necessarily has an external (material) side and an internal (personal) side: as complex beings human communication can only be complex and thus mediated.[18]
Even Babin refers to symbols as perhaps the most important means in communication. Symbol-theory, in fact, has widely been accepted and analyzed not only in Christian context but also in various semiotic research. It has found a great echo among theologians and modern sacramentology is mainly based on the theory of symbolic communication.[19]
Communication is an exchange of signs, a process of exchange of how human persons can come into contact with one another and eventually form communion.[20] The use of symbols as means of mediation in our human condition is the most common starting-point for modern sacramental theologies. To quote just one of the classical authors, L.-M. Chauvet: ”Le réel ne nous est jamais présent que de manière médiate, c’est-à-dire construite a travers le réseau symbolique de la culture qui nous façonne.”[21] Or Karl Rahner: “Das Seiende ist von sich selbst her notwendig symbolisch.”[22] He claims for a “theology of Christian symbolic reality” and adds: “Das eigentliche Symbol (Realsymbol) ist der zur Wesenskonstitution gehörende Selbstvollzug eines Seienden im anderen.”
As is well known, Rahner calls the sacraments of the church “Realsymbole” because they also contain and convey what they signify. Symbols, by definition, are visible signs (Augustin: signa sacra): a piece of the material world contains a non-visible, yet very condense reality. (In scholastic terms “res”, the personal self-giving, the act of becoming united, is realized by the “sacramentum”, the sign containing reality which is received by the recipient.”) This communication was extended outside God to humankind in the history of salvation. But – and this is an important rule of human condition – even God revealing, communicating, himself cannot be without the mediation or representation of symbols. His revelation is communicated also by symbols – let it be the created universe, or the history of the Old Testament or Jesus Christ himself. The communication of the Triune God of love ad extra is subdued to the rules of symbolic mediation, in other words, of sacramental communication. That is why Jesus Christ can be called the sacrament of God and the church also as sacrament of salvation, following the redeeming function of Jesus the primordial sacrament.
Rahner argues that this divine-human communication is possible only because God is eternally communication. “Weil Gott sich innergöttlich ‘ausdrücken’ ‘muss’, kann er sich auch nach aussen aussagen.” That is why “der menschgewordene Logos (…) das absolute Symbol Gottes in der Welt ist, das unüberbietbar mit dem Symbolisierten erfüllt ist.”[23]
There seems to be, however an immense difference between divine and (divine)-human communication. In the Trinity ad intra the perfect communication of love is fulfilled directly in their communion. Whereas in their communication to the world this communication can be achieved only “indirectly”, by symbols: in creation, in Christ, in the Church, and in the sacraments of the Church.
It is an ancient tradition among theologians to see the created world as image and footstep of God, and this speaks about “natural sacraments.” Quite a few contemporary theologians develop this idea: the universe as such has a sacramental character in which the communicative self of God is manifested.[24]
God’s “natural revelation” was continued by his concrete revelation in the Old Testament: this is the beginning of communication to create a loving relationship with the chosen people. A free initiative of God to embrace even human persons with his love, to invite them into his loving community extending his divine perichoresis. Its first form was the Old Covenant, the ongoing communio between God and his chosen ones (which could not be destroyed by any human sins, faults, and mistakes!). Its peak point was the accomplished unity in the person of Jesus Christ, in the New Covenant.
The history of revelation in the Old Testament is the history of divine-human communication: God reveals himself i.e. his love to draw the chosen people in this loving communion. For that reason, he makes a Covenant with them. “Through divine revelation, God chose to show forth and communicate Himself and the eternal decisions of His will regarding the salvation of men. He chose to share with them those divine treasures which totally transcend the understanding of the human mind.”[25]
According to Vatican II, revelation is not simply information about the eternal will of God but a communication of love. “Communication is more than the expression of ideas and the indication of emotion. At its most profound level it is the giving of self in love.”[26] But this process of communication-revelation was subject to the rules of the human condition, to communication through symbols. „ç’est dans la réalité d’une vie symbolique, ou s’échangent paroles et dons, que l’Amour peut ètre aimé.”[27]
The Catechism depicts God’s revelation in creation, in the Covenant and then in Jesus. Unfortunately, however, in this place[28] only the “signs taken up by Christ” are mentioned, without referring to Christ himself as the greatest sign of the loving God. This is, though, explicitly declared at the beginning of the book speaking about “Christ Jesus – ‘Mediator and Fullness of all revelation’”: “Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect and unsurpassable Word.”[29]
Rahner argues with the idea of unio hypostatica, proving that the “menschgewordene Logos (…) das absolute Symbol Gottes in der Welt ist.” Jesus Christ not only teaches about God, but makes him present, in our human history. As it runs by Haight: “The doctrine of the two natures corresponds to the dialectical structure of Jesus as symbol of God.”[30]
3. The climax of revelation: Jesus Christ the Symbol of God
If we accept the traditional definition of the sacraments (“sacramenta efficiunt quod significant et significant quod efficiunt”), it is more than natural to call Jesus the primordial sacrament of God, the Love of God in person. “The whole history moves toward the self-communication of God to human existence. That union is absolutized in God’s presence to human existence in Jesus Christ, and in an absolute human acceptance in Jesus’ death on the cross.”[31]
In the life and person of Jesus all the elements of real symbols, of perfect communication, can be found:
He has, in itself, the whole perfect divine, though hidden, presence of God: he is God’s perfect symbol (i.e. he is real God, being one with the Father in the Spirit): “Philip, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14,9.) This statement is in contrast to the Arians claiming that Jesus is not real God.
He has a perfect human nature, with human conscience and will; this statement is in contrast with docetism and monothelitism.
The Symbol Jesus is not simply a means of communication, mediating between two persons (that of God and of the human person), but he, himself, is a person.
As a result, the whole communicative dynamic process of symbols is present in Jesus:
a/ In that divine-human communication the Father utters himself so completely in Jesus-the-Man as in the eternal Logos: the eternal Son “emptied himself” (Phil 2,7) in the Kenosis of Incarnation, Death and Eucharist.
b/ Jesus as true man has received the love of God totally in complete filial obedience to the Father – that is why the self-giving of God has resulted in perfect communion, in personal union between God and humanity.
c/ Jesus did not simply take up the love of God in his life, but by his death and resurrection returned it so perfectly that the reciprocal (perichoretical) love of the Holy Trinity has been extended to humankind as well: due to his salvation for us human beings are taken into the loving communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.
d/ The final aim of this salvific process is to take all people on earth into one communion with God and with one another. This task is entrusted to the church born from the Spirit of the Risen Christ.
4. The church as sacrament of salvation and communion of the people of God.
Jesus, the Symbol of God, continues his salvific activity in his body, the Church. “The Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument, both a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race.” It is “the universal sacrament of salvation.”[32] Christ and his church cannot be separated. “Jesus is the real symbol of God’s self-communication to the world. The church has the function of making historically present, and tangible with the world, this symbolization of God’s self-communication. (…) Only if the symbolization of God’s self-communication in Jesus continues historically can Christ continue to be a real symbol of God’s presence for humanity.”[33] There is, however, a fundamental difference between the two symbols: Christ as true God and true man is the only and utmost real-symbol of God. The church can be the sacrament of God only in a secondary sense and in relationship with Christ. As the Church Fathers liked to use the metaphor: Jesus is the Sun, the church is the moon, mirroring only the light of the sun.
Christ is the only mediator between God and humankind. The church must continue his redeeming work of mediation throughout the history: foster the divine-human communication (divinum commercium) and thus serve the communion of people with God and with one another. This task is fulfilled first by the service of the Word and of the Sacraments. Due to controverses during the Reformation, the two things were seen to be opposing each other: the churches of Reformation claimed for the service of the Word, the Catholic church defended the sacraments. Theology today combines the two: sacraments are not simply mechanical instruments of grace distributed by the church, but they presuppose a personal commitment on part of the receiver. Alexandre Ganoczy claims for a “communicative understanding of the sacraments” and this insight is more and more widespread in sacramentology.[34] “Weil die tragende Realität aller Sakramente Gott in seiner angebotenen Selbstmitteilung ist, dient seiner wirksamen Gegenwart in angemessener Weise nur jenes Wort, das mitteilungsfähig ist, und nur jene Handlung, die gebend-nehmenden Austauschcharakter besitzt. Gerade auf eine solche Angemessenheit zwischen Gnade in Person und ihre ‘Media’ im Hinblick auf die aktiv-empfangenden Addressaten kommt es an.”
The church is called to become model and instrument for this loving communion, for the divine-human communication throughout human history. God loves us and asks for our love – to love him and one another. As St. John wrote: “My dear friends, let us love each other. Since love is from God... God is love.” (1John 1,1). This is the heritage and message of the Church; Jesus claimed himself to be the son of God: he called Jahve, the majestic only God – his father (the aramaic word “Abba” can be best translated as “Daddy”), and spoke about the Holy Spirit, who is sent to us by both himself and the Father.
Speaking about the final aim of communication, the pastoral instruction Communio and Progressio expresses the same idea. It states about Jesus: „While He was on earth Christ revealed Himself as the Perfect Communicator. Through His ’incarnation’, He utterly identified Himself with those who were to receive His communication and He gave His message not only in words but in the whole manner of His life.”
This task is to be continued by the church: „In the Christian faith, the unity and brotherhood of man are the chief aims of all communication and these find their source and model in the central mystery of the eternal communion between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who live a single divine life.” That is why „the media of social communication can contribute a great deal to human unity.”[35]
The church is called to become communio, as symbol and earthly continuation of the trinitarian communion. It is a communicative society serving humankind. „Angesicht des Menschen, der wesentlich ’animal communicans’ ist, erschliesst sich das in Jesus Christus öffentlich gewordene Geheimnis Gottes als Schöpfer einer umfassenden Kommunikationsgeschichte, innerhalb derer die Kirche Christi als Kommunikationskollektiv ihren Sinn hat.”[36]
It is beyond our limit here to go into details of the role of the Holy Spirit in the history of salvation. Just one remark may be mentioned from the point of view of communication. God’s self-communication through history culminates in Jesus Christ. The Risen Christ outpours his Spirit upon the first Christians and promises to stay with his church by the Spirit. „God pours out his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, Who has been given to us; thus the first and most necessary gift is love, by which we love God above all things and our neighbor because of God.”[37]
God’s love is mediated through Christ by the church and its sacraments – in the power of the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit is not limited to the visible church. Grace may also be given directly, into the midst of human beings, his spirit becoming our spirit. In terms of communication, his indwelling may be direct, invisible, reaching any people unnoticed, anonymously, without any human instruments as means of communication. As Karl Rahner puts it: “in grace, that is, in the self-communication of God’s Holy Spirit, the event of immediacy to God as man’s fulfillment is prepared for in such a way that we must say of man here and now that he participates in God’s being; that he has been given the divine Spirit who fathoms the depths of God; that he is already God’s son here and now, and what he already is, must only become manifest.”[38] Rahner’s basic thesis is that human history is the event of transcendence. This is to say that through the supernatural existential—it “takes place” within, or “is mediated” by, everyday history—human beings experience their transcendentality. Only within this condition of human transcendence are human beings enabled to experience and receive God’s self-communication through historical mediation, which is called “salvation history.”[39]
Third Step: The Possible Impact Of A Communicative Theology For Church And Society
The Communio-God is announced by Jesus and is destined by him to be continued in the church. The communio, which is the church, finds its model in the communio which is the Trinity. Up to the Vatican II Council the church was called societas perfecta, perfect society. Sober self-critical analysis of the reality of the church let the term be omitted from the texts of Vatican II. But it is valid to say that by its heritage, its origin and its mission, the church is a perfect communio. “The vocation of the church is to be a communion, a living source of Trinitarian relationships.” The extraordinary synod of 1985 deliberately viewed the church as communio, and since then this approach has been accepted almost unanimously – though there were several critical voices against the misuse of this phrase.
If the church is built on relationships, then it must be, and there must be, communication. God communicates himself in the Word and in the Sacraments, and makes it possible for us to communicate with one another, to establish brotherhood and sisterhood within the church, and become a sign of communion and communication for the whole human family. (That means, that we are all called to do our best to live according to this communicative, living communion in the spirit of solidarity and service, in constant reconciliation, in a committed effort to improve the life of every person around us.)
What has been said about the Triune God who is love is not an abstract formula: real communio is perfect communication. It is proclaimed, cherished, and carried by the church even if it is not carried out in its full form. Living fully human means to live in communion (i.e. in communication) with others both on the microlevel of private life and on the macrolevel of social life. The church by its origin and essence and goal is/should be a communication-communio. With its very existence, with its mistakes and frailties, with its efforts for a better communion, but first of all with its continuous proclamation and presentation of the loving communion of the Holy Trinity, it can offer a model and a companion to society in its effort to change into a genuine communications society and to the individuals to fulfil their self-development in strengthening their loving relationships, their communications with others.
We have been pleading for a communicative theology, leading to new insights first of all within trinitology, christology, ecclesiology, and sacramentology. But the church needs a communicative pastoral activity as well. Evangelization and catechesis cannot be a one-way proclamation of the Good News, it must be fulfilled in an interactive way, in continuous dialogue with those who receive it. No need to say that those who proclaim the Gospel, must always remain “disciples of Christ”, in continuous dialogue with the self-giving God, in communion with the Triune God.
It could be a special field of research to review all the priestly, prophetic, and pastoral activities of the church; to discover their communicative dimension and draw practical conclusions for a renewed life of the church.
The final goal, however, can be summed up in just one sentence: in the history of salvation, human persons are drawn into the perichoresis of the Triune God. This extension of God’s loving community, however, cannot be fulfilled completely in our earthly life. But the whole history tends towards its fulfillment in the eschaton, where this loving communion will be perfect with the communion of the three divine persons, in the “visio beatifica”, where no symbols are needed any more for the perfect – divine – communication of God with the communion of all the saints. According to the vision of St. John there is no temple in the city of God: “The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are themselves the temple” (Rev 21,22).
[1] Cf. Meufells, H. Otmar: Kommunikative Sakramententheologie, Freiburg, 1995. The author refers to the book of P. Watzlawick, J.H. Beavin and D.D.Jackson: Menschliche Kommunikation, Formen, Störungen, Paradoxien, Bern, Stutgart, Toronto 1990. Looking at the internet there are cca. 29.000 hits about this book: studies and monographies referring to this pioneer work of the three authors.
[2] Kant, Immanuel: Der Streit der Fakultäten, in: Kant – Werke, Frankfurt a.M. 1963. Bd. XI. 303. Quoted and interpreted by Hilberath, Bernd Jochem: Der dreieine Gott als Orientierung menschlicher Kommunikation. In: Hilberath, Bernd Jochem – Kraml, Martina – Scharer, Matthias (Hg.): Wahrheit in Beziehung, Mainz, 2003.
[3] The Eastern Orthodox Churches were more faithfully bound to the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Over sixty years ago, amid the horrors of the Second World War, the Russian theologian, Vladimir Lossky, wrote that the only alternative to the Trinity is hell. See God in Trinity, in: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Cambridge, 1957. 66.
[4] Rahner, Karl: Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise “De Trinitate”, Investigations, IV. 77-102. This article was the basis of Rahner’s article in Feiner – Löhrer: Mysterium Salutis II., Freiburg, 1957. English translation by Joseph Donceel. The English version does not bear the original subtitle: „The Trinity as the Primordeal Ground of Salvation History.” Cf. George Vass: A Pattern of Doctrines 1. God and Christ, London, 1996.
[5] Karl Rahner, Herbert Vorgrimler: Theological Dictionary, Crossroads, New York, 1985.
[6] Some authors rightly prefer using the words „ad intra” rather than „immanent” because this term expresses better the perichoretic love of the divine persons opening in creation and revelation „ad extra.” Cf. Torrance, Alan J.: Persons in Communion. Edinburgh, 1996. 279.
[7] Quoted by Jüngel, Eberhard: Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, Tübingen, 1982. 371.
[8] Babin, Pierre: L’ère de la communication, Paris, 1986. 30.
[9] Zizioulas, John D.: Being as Communion. London, 1985. 44-46.
[10] Hill, William J.: The Three-Personed God, Washington D.C. 1988. 75.
[11] Gunton, Colin: The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, Edinburgh, 1977. 39.
[12] Hoffmann, Peter: Glaubensbegründung. Frankfurter Theologische Studien, Bd. 36. Frankfurt/M. 1988. 268.
[13] Rahner, Karl: Foundations of Christian Faith, London, 1978.
[14] Council Vatican II Dei Verbum Nr. 2.
[15] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Washington, 1992. Nr. 464-469.
[16] Catechism, Nr. 683-689.
[17] Babin, Pierre: L’ère de la communication, Paris, 1986. – Babin, Pierre: The New Era in Religious Communication, Minneapolis, 1991.
[18] This ideas are mainly described in his second book mentioned above.
[19] The Catechism of the Catholic Church itself follows this argumentation: cf. Nr. 1145-1152.
[20] Cf. Meuffels: op.cit. 20.
[21] Chauvet, Louis-Marie: Symbol et sacrement, Paris, 1990.
[22] Rahner, Karl: Schriften zur Theologie IV., Einsiedeln, 1967. 278.
[23] Rahner, Karl: op. cit. 292.
[24] Cf. Greshake, Gisbert: Gott in allen Dingen finden, Freiburg, 1986. 23. – Schneider, Theodor: Zeichen der Nähe Gottes, Leipzig 1981. 26. – Peacocke, Arthur: Theology for a Scientific Age, London, 1993. 61.
[25] Vatican II.: Dei Verbum Nr. 6.
[26] Pastoral Constitution Communio et Progressio Nr. 11.
[27] Delzant, Antoine: La Communication de Dieu, Paris, 1981. 309.
[28] Cf. Note 19.
[29] Catechism of the Catholic Church Nr. 65.
[30] Haight, Roger: Jesus Symbol of God, Maryknoll, 2000. 14ff. 321ff. – Wong, J. H. P.: Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner, Romae, Vatican 1984. passim.
[31] Haight: op. cit. 321.
[32] Council Vatican II. Lumen Gentium. Nr. 1. 48.
[33] Fiorenza, Francis-Schüssler: Foundational Theology, New York, 1995. 95.
[34] Ganoczy, Alexanre: Einführung in die katholische Sakramentenlehre, Darmstadt, 1979. 109. – Cf. also Meuffels: Kommunikative Sakramententheologie, Freiburg, 1995.
[35] Pastoral Instruction Communio et Progressio. Nr. 8.
[36] Ganoczy: op.cit. 116.
[37] Vatican II. Lumen Gentium Nr. 42.
[38] Rahner: Foundations of Christian Faith, op. cit. 120.
[39] Cf. Joas Adiprsetya on Karl Rahner. http://www.people.bu.edu.