This article seeks to explore the challeges raised by Germain Grisez to Karl Rahner’s theory of fundamental option. Dr. Grisez holds that Fr. Rahner misunderstood the Tridentine teaching on justification, and posited the inaccessability of fundamental option to reflection. After reviewing Dr. Grisez’ position and the Tridentine doctrine of justification, the article will explore Fr. Rahner’s writings on fundamental option, and form conclusions regarding the conversation between Karl Rahner and Germain Grisez.

There follow four documents that I hope will be found useful by students of la nouvelle théologie, the theological movement that flourished in France around 1950 and that in various ways prepared the way for the Second Vatican Council. The first is my translation of the Conclusion of Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946), pp. 483-94. This excerpt was arguably the main place in which he expounded his theology of the relation of nature and grace. The second (...) document is my translation of an article titled “Ein Weg zur Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von Natur und Gnade,” by an anonymous writer known only as “D,” who purported to convey de Lubac’s theology on this matter in systematic style, as distinct from de Lubac’s own more rhetorical approach. This article appeared in Orientierung, vol. 14 (1950), pp. 138-41. Karl Rahner replied to it in the same issue in the immediately succeeding pages, 141-45, and in slightly amended form this reply constitutes his important essay “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” in vol. 1 of his Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961), pp. 297-317, translator Cornelius Ernst. My amendments to the Ernst translation of this essay form the third document of the present group. The final document is my identification of D. Without further ado let us proceed to the documents. (shrink)

This article pursues Rahner’s idea that the Holy Spirit has the role of “Spirit of Christ” even before the Incarnation, namely as “entelechy” directed to the Christ event. In the article, particular use is made of a biblical text hitherto not invoked in this connection, namely 1 Peter 1:11, from which a biblical base for this theology is developed. The article also investigates Teilhard de Chardin’s theory of evolution encompassing the world religions and Christianity, the absolute religion. The idea of (...) the Spirit of Christ as entelechy is clarified and refined by application of the author’s construct of the “return” model of the Trinity, in which the Son does not just come forth from the Father, but returns to him in the power of the Spirit (see his newly published book, Deus Trinitas). Before, and in reparation for, the Son’s historical return to the Father, in Christ, the Spirit, precisely as entelechy, has to seek him in history, that is, through the creation and evolution of the cosmos, the arrival of humans, the consequent and new operation of the Spirit as grace, and the history of Israel culminating in the lives of Mary and, finally, Jesus, in whom this operation finds its final goal. Moreover, the role of the Spirit as entelechy complements and forms a unity with that of the same Spirit (again “Spirit of Christ”) as sent historically by the glorified Christ upon the Church, and continues even after the Incarnation, in leading to Christ (as “anonymous Christians”) men and women of goodwill, including those belonging to the world religions who have not yet had the gospel effectively preached to them. Finally, the paper notes that it covers some of the same ground as the Vatican Declaration Dominus Iesus, but in a different way, namely as instructed by the work of Teilhard and Rahner. (shrink)