Barth Library - Letter to Rahner, 14 Nov 1967

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To Prof. Karl Rahner, Mnster, Westphalia. In Letters 1961-1968. [word count]

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275To Prof. Karl RahnerMnster, WestphaliaBasel, 14 November 1967

Dear Colleague,

It is really time I told you how pleased I was to read your letter of 23 October [note] and your "Notes on the

Reformation." [note]

For a long time I have wanted to have closer contact with you like that I have with Hans Kng. Not by a long way hav

read all you have written but all I have read I have absorbed with great interest, though not without the need for some

counterquestions. Do not hesitate to use your next visit to Basel (to H. U. von Balthasar, the author ofCordula?!) [note]

for a meeting with me.

I can gladly agree with your "Notes" not only on the whole but also in almost all the details. They are a true reformatio

sermon-another proof to me of what you say on p. 234 about "common faith," "not from

-- 279 --

the church but toward it" (p. 230). Let us henceforward stand and move together in this sense even as separated

brethren. I shall never forget how P. Maydieu, OP, of Paris, who unfortunately died some years ago, and who once, lon

before the council, regularly visited me supposedly for the "strengthening of his faith"-I was much more polemically

inclined then than I am now-how he said to me: Let us not talk about the pope, let us talk about Jesus Christ. That

sometimes we have to talk a little about the pope, too, and Mary, etc., has not escaped me in reading your fine essay. B

it is wonderful that today we can discuss such problematical things without biting and devouring one another. In relati

to you particularly we also have to reckon with the appearance of some special doctrines such as that of anonymous

Christianity [note] which one can applaud only with a Placet juxta modum.

Your desire that we on our side should produce authoritative spokesmen [note] in the form of institutionally empower

church leaders will, I fear (no, I must say, I hope), be fulfilled only in the eschaton when every impossibility will be

realized. When someone becomes a president or bishop among us, then one can count on it with the greatest probabilit

that if ever he was a good theologian he will cease to be so, or at least to speak and act as such. Is the opposite really th

rule on your side? Did not all or most of the good things that were said at the council and expressed in the texts come

from the Periti who were prompting certain accessible bishops behind the scenes? And as concerns the unity of doctrin

at least in necessary things, on our side it is only too true today, as it has been for the last two or three centuries, that t

situation is dreadful. Do you know the bookStellvertretung by D. Slle, [note] a lady of whom the only thing one can

really say is that that woman should keep silence in the church? [note] But read too the fine book in which H. Gollwitze

has answered her. [note] Among us, everything depends on the Holy Spirit being there at the right time and seeing to i


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that the church remains at the heart of the village. He has done this faithfully through all our Pietism, Rationalism,

Romanticism, Historicism, Existentialism, etc., so that in fact-without any official congregation of faith or the like-we

have always survived and may definitely still hope to do so today. Indeed, what are we for our part to think of it that

among you it can and does take place that with an episcopal imprimatur, Hasenhttl [note] and the Dutch Robert Ado

[note] (whose book I came to know through the November issue of Herder-Korrespondenz) can extol as theological

leaders, even if they cannot beatify, not only Bultmann but even the English Robinson? Are not those who speak

authoritatively by virtue

-- 280 --

of their office equally poor on both sides and equally well taken care of by the prayer Veni, Creator Spiritus, or the

constant hearing of that prayer?

I was very pleased at what you wrote on p. 233 and p. 235 about our future fellowship in the Lord's Supper, which is s

very different from what we Reformed still hear today from the Lutherans, at least in principle. Think of it: A year ago

was in Rome, where on Sunday I was at a Catholic service, and was seriously tempted to go with my Catholic doctor to

the communion rail, refraining only so as not to embarrass the officiating priest who had previously greeted me, and n

to cause offense later among the Roman Waldensians. Conversely I do not think there are many Evangelical pastors

(apart from some obstinate Lutherans) who would forbid a known Catholic to partake of our Lord's Supper.

What do you think of Schillebeeckx's book on transubstantiation (or, as he says, transignification or transfinalization)?[note] If you have the time and desire, read what Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli's successor in Zurich, wrote in this

connection in Articles XIX and XXI of the Second Helvetic Confession of 1562. [note] Did Sch. know this text? Would h

not be a little scared to find in whose close company he is with his doctrine, which is undoubtedly such a noteworthy o

for us? Should you not be studying our classical theology with as much diligence as I at least have rooted around for

years in Denzinger, Mhler, and especially Scheeben? [note] In my old days I spent more time reading all kinds of

Catholica than I did the more or less tasty fruits growing in our own garden. Now I am giving a seminar on Lumen

Gentium[note] which is attended at the moment by a handful of students from Freiburg i.B. whose teacher (Kolping)

happens to be dealing with the same theme this winter. So I am poring over the (wickedly expensive) volumes of

Barauna, [note] the first volume of your LThKon the council, [note] the volumes of Hampe (where I found an essay by

you), [note] and many other relevant materials.

A last question: for a long time I have been regularly listening on the Sunday radio to a Roman Catholic sermon side by

side with the Evangelical one, and I may sometimes be found in the Bruder Klaus Kirche on our Bruderholz hill. What

am I to make of it that so far I have not heard in any of these sermons even a mention of anything mariological? And

what am I to make of it that in spite ofLumen Gentium chap. 8 [note] brother Kng has managed to avoid any such

mention in his very important bookDie Kirche?[note] This is fine with me. But how does it relate to your statement

(made at least in a past book) that mariology

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is one of the "central truths" of Catholic Christianity? [note] (I raised this with you, if I recall, in our short meeting inRome, but what now?)

Enough for the moment. I fear you must regard me as a talkative old man. The letter has become so full because I want

to indicate to you that we shall certainly not be short of things to discuss if you ever visit me in my little house. I would

then introduce you to my dear doctor whom I am constantly exhorting to practice his lay apostolate.

With friendly greetings, then, and all good wishes,

Yours,

Karl Ba


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Barth Library - Letter to Rahner, 14 Nov 1967