Fr Dr Sooraj George Pittappillil

While penning down these reflections, confined within the four walls of my room in anti-corona quarantine, I am reminded of the warning Dante places over the threshold of hell, in his Divine Comedy: lasciateognisperanza (abandon all hope)! When corona looms up ahead in apocalyptic proportions, billions of people worldwide can seldom entertain the luxury of hope, I think. In a season of social distancing, what sense does Easter make as the nonpareil feast of hope and communion?

“Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.Just a drop would save me. No, half a drop would suffice!” So laments Dr Faustus, towards the tragic end of his licentious life, in Christopher Marlowe’s Tragedy of Doctor Faustus. The emancipative power of Christ’s blood- namely of his passion, death and resurrection is the central theme of Easter. As a feast, Easter commemorates the universal salvific leverage of Christ’s blood, which stands, at times, even at odds with the holy enthusiasm of St Cyprian that ‘not one single drop of grace falls on the pagans.’ Likewise, it also nullifies the Jansenist apprehension that the ‘the grace of God would be degraded if it were used lavishly.’ As a mystery, it functions as the foundation of all other mysteries. Commitment to this mystery must make us committed to all other mysteries of faith. In his 1975 essay, Fern seed and Elephants, Anglican theologian C.S Lewis says: “A theology which denies the historicity of nearly everything in the gospels to which Christian life and affections and thought have been fastened for nearly two millennia- which either denies the miraculous altogether or, more strangely, after swallowing the camel of resurrection strains at such gnats as the feeding of the multitudes- if offered to the uneducated man can produce only one or other of two effects. It will make him a roman catholic or an atheist. What you offer him he will not recognize as Christianity.” I think, the sarcastic comment of Lewis must make the catholic theologians buckle up for a broader understanding of the mystery of resurrection and its sway on the whole Christian life.

In understanding the salvific plan of God, we must bear in mind that the universal salvific Sun, Jesus,permits no grey zones. God’s disproportionate and unilateral love for the mankind resulted in His incarnation, passion and resurrection. By creating man in his image and likeness, God asserted that he is special to Him. That man is created in the image and likeness of God, is the precursor to universal brotherhood and equality. Although we find philosophies like stoicism, before Christianity, which proclaimed that wise man is a universal citizen, we do not find any telling evidences in history of the barriers between the free ones and slaves lowered down even during the reign of stoic emperors! As Henri Bergson observes, in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, ‘humanity had to wait till Christianity for the idea of universal brotherhood, with its implication of equality of rights and the sanctity of the person, to become operative’.

Further, through incarnation and by undergoing passion He solemnly proved that He is madly in love with mankind. Ancient Roman playwright Terence said: “Homo sum, humaninihil a me alienumputo” (I am human and I think nothing human is alien to me). Likewise, we find here a God who builds his mansion upon earth among the humans. Such a love cannot discriminate anyone. Thus, a theology that tries to find out grey zones in the salvific plan is not theology at all. No one can effectively prove himself opaque to God’s self-communication. Karl Rahner’s transcendental theology of revelation emphasizes this concept in an unparalleled way.

Rahner’s theology of revelation revolves around his theological concepts about man and God’s self-communication. Fundamentals of his theological reflection are found in his book, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity. There, we are introduced to the notion of man as a transcendent being. He emphasizes the nature of man as a hearer of divine message. As a subject listening to the divine message, he has a dimension that surpasses his mere finitude.Thus Rahner considers human being as the event of God’s free and forgiving self-communication. Rahner emphasizes that God’s transcendence is in no way an exclusive distant presence. On the other hand, it means a graspable closeness.

“Divine self-communication means, then, that God can communicate himself in his own reality to what is not divine without ceasing to be infinite reality and absolute mystery, and without man ceasing to be a finite existent different from God.”

Thus, Rahner’s theology of revelation asserts that God’s universal salvific will is efficacious in the world and that God freely offers Himself to all of humanity. Through Jesus as the source of grace–God’s self-communication–humanity is related to God either explicitly or implicitly (anonymously). It is here he introduces the famous concept of the ‘anonymous Christians’. There could be ways for human beings, though not necessarily known to us, to be saved due to the unconditional love of God. The shareholders of this mysterious divine plan are known as anonymous Christians.

Incarnation and passion of our lord Jesus Christ serve as the foundation for universal brotherhood and universal salvation. As Shakespeare says in his Cymbeline, ‘love’s reason is without reason’. As we are loved unconditionally, we are also called to reciprocate this love in our society. It would, then, cheapen the otherwise luxury, hope. Let Easter unite us in both brotherhood and hope. Church, as J.B. Bossuet observes, would, then, become ‘Jesus Christ spread abroad and communicated.’