The Context of Political Theology－Theological and Historical

In this section we will make a deeper analysis of the intentions and issues behind the political theologies of Moltmann and Metz with an attempt to draw out their similarities and differences. As mentioned already, political theology begins, as with all other theologies, in the self-revelation of God In Jesus Christ. This central core of Christian faith is and can never be contested, not even for political theology. What is at issue is the primacy of the form of expression of this faith and thus of Its mode of transmission. Whether this expression is to be characterised principally by the intellect, the will or the all-engaging human act, leads respectively to the corresponding modes of transmission of faith as orthodoxy, orthopoesis and orthopraxy.(10) Much of the controversy over the primacy question is influenced by the historical conditioning of the believer vis-a-vis his basic understanding of himself as human and the understanding of God as the transcendent. Arising thence are secondary questions, which include: the identity and non-identity of faith and that human historical conditioning, the epistemological structure of theology, and the continual discovery of the true character of the original biblical record of God's self-revelation in Christ, all acting as parameters within which the original question on primacy takes shape.

In the existentialist theology of Barth, Bultmann and Rahner, we find three different understandings of faith and its modes of expression. In Barth, the primacy of faith is identified with none of the three modes of expression－neither intellect, will nor praxis. Faith is primarily an act on God's part even in its its human expression. Theology becomes the explication of this divine action in man. The non-identity of faith with man's historical conditioning means that the original Word of God mediated in scripture is above historical criticism. It is only on the secondary level that faith enters as the human acknowledgment of the divine action, and love for one's fellowmen follows the proclamation of the Word.(11)

We find in Bultmann an opposite position. Faith, while acknowledging its ultimate divine origin, Is identified with the historico-existential conditions of man. Primacy is given to a form of orthopoesis whereby knowledge of a new relation with God and with oneself leads to a life of faith characterised by love and freedom. Theology becomes the tool for a continuous correlation between faith and the existential condition of man.

For Rahner, the question of primacy is further identified with the very constitution of man. The 'anonymity' of faith is synonymous with the transcendental subjectivity in man. Theology is thus 'anthropology'; and anthropology is impossible without its theological groundings. The biblical record is understood as the irreversible exemplar of the thematization of this transcendental subjectivity in the God-man Jesus Christ.

It would be unfair to say that in Bultmann and in Rahner there is a simple identification of faith with the human situation. Both writers are aware of the non-identity element, the not-yet of eschatology, in their theology. Yet their treatment of the tension created by this latter element falls into the intellectual trap of reifying history. As a result, Bultmann reduces the human condition to the historicity of man realized in the time-and-again decision of faith. In Rahner, the reality of the ambiguity of the history of religion exists more as an intellectual possibility rather than a fact under the broad vision of the 'anonymity' of faith. This imbalance of Identity over non-identity in Bultmann and Rahner is not a 'watering-down' of faith, but is rather the product of the 'over-spiritualizing' of man. The major weakness in their attempts to explicate faith, and to a similar extent the almost utter non-identity approach in Barth, is to locate the Christian message in some atemporal conception of truth that is accessible to the private, intellectual realm of an individual.

The revival of a praxical understanding of knowledge and truth led to a fresh challenge to Christianity's search for an adequate expression of the original self-revelation of God in Christ. The dissatisfaction with an idealistic conception of man and his history plus the critique of religion as an ideology was the occasion that gave rise to political theology as the answer to the search for a contemporary expression of faith. In the formulations of Moltmann and Metz, political theology emphasizes the critical function of faith. The identity of faith with the idealistic conception of history and humanity found in Bultmann and Rahner and the near non-identity found in Barth are replaced by a more optimum unity of identity and non-identity.

Faith lived as hope recognises the world and its history as the only reality whereby faith finds an expression. The 'already' element of eschatology finds expression in the practice of Christians. At the same time the 'not-yet' element is the ground of the 'already' as eschatology breaks into history and the future into the present. Yet knowledge of the promise of the Risen Christ no longer serves as an explanation of history. It confronts it. Theology becomes an hermeneutical tool to mediate between the practice of faith and political society. It defines the contexts whereby the Christian message of the resurrection of the crucified one takes up history seriously as the voice of the oppressed. The orthodoxy of dogmatic statements gives way to the orthopraxy of Christian "living as the embodiment and expression of the Truth. The biblical record too receives a fresh understanding as a body of faith-stories that seek to preserve the different memories of God's self-communication to man in history. As THEO-logy, these memories become the ground of all other forms of theology. They also give shape to the epistemic structure of a praxis-oriented political theology. In order to perform its role as a critique of society and also of Christianity in its institutions and subjects, political theology can only mediate the Christian message in the form of stories of subversive memories. The hope of the oppressed is thus grounded in the solidarity with Christ who rose from the dead. The history of freedom is thus remembered not as a series of triumphs but rather as stories of sufferings in history. Memory of the non-identity of human sufferings in history becomes the subversive tool of political theology to fulfil its critical function.(12) The need for narrative in political theology avoids the danger of only offering a critique of society on the transcendental-idealistic plane. This latter mode of critique is applicable only when its overall presupposition that society is guided by a rationalistic-idealistic ethic is operative at the time. If this is not the case, the critique will be no more than an academic exercise in the realm of ideas; and runs the risk of exonerating the burden of sufferings in history in exchange for the aesthetic satisfaction of a neat and reified 'history'.

If the negative moments in political theology remind us of the crisis theology of Barth, it is because of their coincidental interest in the non-identity of faith with any 'secular' expression of emancipation and of redemption. Yet there is a crucial difference between them, not only in the degree of non-identity but also in the capacity of the non-identity in their theology. In Barth's crisis theology, the non-identity has its roots in a denial of any form of natural revelation. Faith comes only through a direct proclamation of the Word, because faith is nothing but the adherence to its object, namely the Word of God. Thus the non-identity in Barth is overarching in his theology. It denies the world so that the latter may turn to faith in the search for freedom. In political theology, the non-identity never functions apart from the context of the identity of faith and the world. Faith is neither prior to nor over-and-above the world perceived as history. Faith is found only in and through the world. The non-identity of faith here has its roots in the eschatological contents of the Christian message. The present is always relativised by the future in which God, the 'object' of faith resides. The 'not-yet' of the eschaton is the core of this non-identity that pulls history. That is, God as future is continually beckoning man, symbolized in a praxis, forwards. Thus, faith is always critical of any attempt to remove this forward thrust, whether it is to suppress the pain of suffering thus creating an illusion of a fully realized 'already' or to remove the pull of the future as advent in projecting an eschatology that pretends to comprehend the totality of history. However, this non-identity element in political theology does recognize a genuine movement of letting men be full subjects as part of that eschatological history of man's emancipation in Christ.

10)See R. Panikkar, Myth, Faith & Hermeneutics, Paulist Press, 1979, Chapter VI, 2, "Faith as a Constitutive Human Dimension". Metz's understanding of "praxis" is different from that of Panikkar. The former is concerned with the practical side of social praxis, the critical function of memories in history, and the pathic structure of praxis, whereas Panikkar is concerned with finding a general (and acceptable) understanding of faith in a cross-cultural study. His interest in "praxis" as a form of a self-realization of the human agent tends to focus on the moral and anthropological determinant of social praxis. As such, he is really discussing the concept "praxis" rather than "praxis" itself; and his method is more akin to establishing an orthopoesis rather than an orthopraxy, i.e. he emphazises finding the right concept to guide action rather than finding the right activity to rest his reflection upon.

11)References to the conception of faith held by Barth, Bultmann and Rahner, come from: K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV. i. p. 742; R. Bultmann, Theology of the N. T., vol. 1, Ch. V(C), and also J. Macquarrie's An Existential Theology; K. Rahner, "A Short Formula of Christian Faith", in A Rahner Reader, ed. by G. A. McCool, and also Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith.

12)"Memory" for Metz is not only a "theme" for his practical fundamental theology, but also a "category"; that is, it not only provides the content of his political theology but also the structure and means whereby this theology effects changes. See Metz (1980), Chapters 5, 6 and 11.