I have entitled this chapter "The Presence". I was tempted to use other expressions, like "God", "Grace", "Loving Consciousness" or "Spiritual Presence", but none seemed appropriate or adequate. "God" is a useful symbol, but is flawed, paradoxically, both by the connotation of impersonality and by a history of misconception. While "Grace", in highlighting activity, is more helpful, it does not focus sufficiently on identity. "Loving Consciousness" is warmer, but a little too amorphous. "Spiritual Presence", Tillich's phrase, emphasises identity at the expense of dynamism. While no signifier was wholly appropriate, I settled on "The Presence", a felt image that implies relationship, movement and meaning.

Recapitulation

In the first chapter, it was argued that our shadow side is an integral part of who we are, that we are embodied, that we are cells of wider human networks, that we are embedded in the ecological environment and that we are connected with an all-encompassing Self, to which all phenomena own their existence and their interconnectedness.

In arguing for this interconnectedness, I concentrated on insights from the New Physics, alluding to intuitions from the world's religions only incidentally. In this chapter it is my intention to supplement the evidence of the New Physics with additional testimony from the mystical tradition of the world's major religions.

The East

The treatise, Discourses on Vegetable Roots, from the Ming Dynasty, questions the assumption that there is a great divide between humanity and heaven. It argues that the omnipotence of Heaven can be experienced within one's interiority.¹ This perception is reinforced by the Taoist notion that the Tao, the uncreated, ineffable source of what we take for reality, is its ground, its immaterial foundation. In an exchange between Chuang Tzu and Tung-kuo Tzu, Chuang Tzu argued that there is no place where the Tao does not exist. It is even in the ant, the panic grass, the tiles and shards, even the piss and dung!²

The same perspective, couched in different terms, is evident in the comment of Shankara, a 9th century Hindu mystic, who argued that Brahman is not something to be obtained. Rather is it that which constitutes a person's self and which is present to everyone.³

Paul Brunton, a modern, Western mystic, who spent many years in the Orient and whose writings have only come to light posthumously, summed up the Eastern mystical heritage with his comment that the notion that God is to be experienced within an individual, as their Ground, is not an attempt [43] to depose God and deify humanity. Just the opposite. The experience involves a humiliation of the self and a recognition of one's helplessness and dependence. Self, in its ordinary sense, is cast away, and, as a concomitant development, one's reverence for God deepens.⁴

The West

In the West, metaphysicians, and alchemists influenced by a variety of esoteric traditions, including Eastern religions, were the first to begin exploring the implications of the intuitive feel they had for the oneness of reality and the divinity that appeared to suffuse it. This development found expression in Plato's world of Ideas, that were seen as emanating from a primeval universal Goodness, and in Platonic and Stoic doctrines of a cosmic Logos.⁵ This tradition was also evident in the Gospel of John,⁶ and, in a somewhat bizarre form, in Gnosticism. It was also reflected in Alchemical texts, such as the Corpus Hermeticum, which advised that this constitutive Presence embraces everything, everywhere and at all times. Expressed in contemporary terms, it was argued that this Presence is ubiquitous, non-temporal and non-spacial.⁷

This perception of reality surfaced again in the West, during the Middle Ages, in the Christian mystical tradition, and later, during the Enlightenment, in Schelling, and in Hegel's notion of a Welt Geist, or World Spirit, which comes to self-expression in the human quest for knowledge and understanding.

The Perennial Philosophy

The periodic resurfacing of this intuition, described as the Perennial Philosophy,⁸ is due, according to Aldous Huxley, to the fact that many people from different cultural traditions have become directly aware of the cosmic consciousness sourcing and sustaining the material universe. Their accounts are descriptions of their experiences rather than the product of sheer metaphysical speculation.⁹ The psychologist, William James supported this verdict by contending that the consciousness of individuals is continuous with the wider Self, through which saving experience comes.¹⁰ This wider Self Emerson has called the Overself.¹¹

Christian Panentheism

While it has been Western traditions, outside Christianity, or heretical traditions deriving from Christianity, that have been the major carriers, through history, of the insights of the perennial philosophy, there is strong biblical support for the perception of a cosmic Logos and for what McFague describes as a "Christian panentheism."¹²

The development of panentheistic insights within the New Testament were conspicuously evident in the context of an emerging Christology. For instance, the Christological hymn, embedded in Colossians, contended that [44] Christ created everything in the universe and that everything that exists is held together in him.¹³ This theme was re-iterated in Hebrews, which argued that Christ, in whom the fullness and character of God is reflected, sustains the universe by his word of power.¹⁴ This emphasis was expanded in the prologue to the Gospel of John, which argued that the Word, the Universal Logos, that dwelt with God, that was what God was and that became incarnate in Christ, was with God when the universe was brought into being. It was through the Logos that everything came into existence. What he brought into existence was alive with his life and that life was the source of human enlightenment.¹⁵

That this theme continued to nourish many in the church in the days of the Church Fathers was evident in a prayer of Augustine, who confessed that while he had sought God in the external world, with his busy mind ablaze with desire for God, the quest had been in vain. The reason for this, he discovered, was that the God he sought was not without, but within. He had been looking in the wrong place.¹⁶

Aquinas, despite his philosophical reliance on Aristotle, whose focus was on the external world, nevertheless preserved the view of a cosmos as inhering in God. His understanding was that every creature witnesses to God's power, omnipotence and wisdom¹⁷ and participates in the likeness of the divine essence.¹⁸ Aquinas argued that the Trinity, in a dynamic openness to the world and history, was involved in two missions, one invisible, in which God was present to everyone in sheer Being, and one visible, in which the Word became incarnate.¹⁹

This Christian tradition of panentheism was further developed, not by orthodox theologians, though Luther's Theologia Germanica was an exception, but by those exploring mystical theology, theology associated with prayer, contemplation and spirituality. Meister Eckhart, a conspicuous example of this genre, was one of the most insightful of Medieval mystical theologians. He contended that the Ground of God and the Ground of the soul are one and the same and that the knower and the known are one. God is not separate from us in a dualistic sense. To know ourselves is to know God. To know God is to know ourselves.²⁰ We will not find God by going out of ourselves, by looking for him in the external world. Nor ought we to seek to serve or glorify an external God, as if such an external God existed. Rather are we to serve and honour the God who is within. We are to live authentically. To know oneself, and to be true to oneself, is to know God.²¹ He went on to contend that the soul has the capacity for recognizing a oneness with God.²²

The concept of a God-drenched cosmos was also evident in the approach of Ignatius Loyola, mystic, activist and founder of the Jesuit order, who was noted for a ability to find joy in all things. His perspective resulted from a non-possessive attitude of detachment from things, which he described as "indifference", and his discovery of God in all things.²³ [45]

The notion of God being present in the cosmos was a prominent theme in the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit and paleontologist. Teilhard's emphasis was evident in his comment that his material body was not an aspect of the universe, that he possessed totally. The truer reality was that he possessed the whole of the universe in the context of his particularity.²⁴ The poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, equally a master of the quintessential, celebrated this intuition by declaring that the world was filled with the grandeur of God.²⁵

Tillich, influenced by Schelling, articulated the vision of a ubiquitous "Spiritual Presence" which found unique expression through humanity, its culture and history.²⁶ Rahner also developed this theme of an immanent divine cosmic Presence.

Rahner

Rahner, in a style that gives the impression of being rationally convoluted, but which is deeply intuitive, argued that God is not the object of human knowledge, but the ground and absolute future of all reality.²⁷ We have access to God in our inner being, in experiences of transcendence that he describes as unthematic and anonymous. In-as-much as we, in our luminous subjectivity, are oriented towards holy mystery, this knowledge is present to us before we begin to reflect upon it or speak about it.²⁸ According to Rahner, God has made himself the innermost constitutive element in us.²⁹ In this way God gifts us with himself.³⁰ This gift is the foundation of our freedom, a freedom to say yes or no to God's free gift of himself. Enfolded within this offering is the additional offer of forgiveness.³¹

Rahner argues that there are two ways in which God communicates to people in the context of their inner lives, in an antecedent offer and call to freedom and in a response to this offer which issues in either acceptance or rejection.³² Our capacity for and desire to respond to God's gift of himself is itself a graced event.³³

Rahner is adamant that this inner activity of God, his gifting us with self-constitutive possibilities, is experienced by all people as a characteristic of their capacity for experiencing themselves transcendentally.³⁴ Furthermore, this gift of God's free self-communication³⁵ is not diminished by its being offered to all.³⁶

Exploring the essence of the gift of God's self-giving even further, Rahner argued that the experiencing of the subjective immediacy of God's self-communication is, at the same time, an experience of the fundamental unity of knowledge and love.³⁷ His point was that, when we have the courage to explore our inner depths, the abyss that we are confronted with is experienced as accepting us and embracing us in a true and accepting security.³⁸ [46]

McFague

Feminist theologians have also been eager to celebrate a cosmic Presence, partly in reaction to a persisting patriarchal theological paradigm, with its rationalism and hierarchies, and partly because of their desire to relate their experience of embodiment to the discussion of theology. This tendency is reflected in Sally McFague's description of the cosmos as The Body of God.³⁹ She argued that everything on the planet is related to everything else and to the well-being of the whole,⁴⁰ and, therefore, that the concept of the cosmos as "body" best captures the essence of this inter-relatedness. She contended that, as our bodies were born in distant stellar explosions, there is a continuity to the material base of all physical and biological reality. She went on to argue that this continuity links us to everything in a most intimate way.⁴¹ Furthermore, she suggested that it is appropriate for us to speak of God as the inspirited body of the entire universe. This contention was based on two factors, first, the fact that we, as humans, are inspirited bodies that live and love and think, and second, that Christian tradition asserts that we, these living, loving and thinking beings, are made in the image of God. If we are like God, then God is like us. In her engagement with the whole creation, God, this living Spirit, produces, guides and saves all that exists.⁴²

McFague was critical of redemption-centred theology, which is so focused on sin that it is unable to celebrate cosmic evolution.⁴³ She also argued that it is for this reason, and also because of the mechanistic model of the universe on which past theology was premised,⁴⁴ that the Deistic perspective of traditional Natural Theology is inadequate.⁴⁵ She opted for a combination of agential and organic models, the agential model preserving transcendence, or God's creative engagement with the universe, and the organic model underscoring the notion of God's immanence, God's presence within the universe.⁴⁶ McFague considered that the models of the universe, a universe billions of years in formation, as God's body, radicalises our view of transcendence. This universe represents the outward being of the one who is the source and breath of all existence.⁴⁷

In McFague's model, God is viewed as Spirit, permeating the cosmic body and vivifying and developing it. Her choice of "spirit", as metaphor, was designed to undercut anthropocentricism, to promote cosmocentrism and to depict God, not as orderer and controller, but as source, empowerment and breath that enlivens and energizes. It is a relational rather than a managerial metaphor.⁴⁸

McFague saw Christ as the ultimate incarnation of the constitutive, fructifying, cosmic Spirit. She argued that the cosmic Christ, in being the shape of God's body, helped us appreciate that God suffers with us. This co-suffering occurs when we confront destructive forces and when we are forced to endure a form of passive suffering that results when our advocacy is spurned and our efforts defeated.⁴⁹ Carol Ochs goes even further than McFague, in arguing that God is as much a casualty of this process as we and the planet are. If the universe is the Body of God, then, as the world [47] changes, so too does God. God is both creator and creation, our ancestor and our descendent.⁵⁰ There is a sense in which we are involved in the creation and metamorphosis of God.⁵¹

Smart and Konstantine

Ninian Smart and Steven Konstantine were attracted by Ramanuja's argument that the doctrine of the relation of God to cosmos was analogous to the relationship of soul to body.⁵² Beginning with this pre-supposition, they conceptualize God, conceived of as the Trinity,⁵³ as the soul of the cosmos.⁵⁴ God is immanent in the world as its inner essence, its constitutive consciousness.⁵⁵ Furthermore, this immanent God is the Mother of all things, the Tao.⁵⁶ In this reconstruction, the dichotomy between transcendence and immanence is overcome.⁵⁷

Smart and Konstantine also argue that God, incarnate in the natural universe, comes to greater consciousness within humanity. They contend that, when we reach the stage of being able to discern the Divine beneath, behind and within our consciousness, we will more readily discern God in the consciousness of others, in their facial expressions and in the le⁵⁸ of everyday life.⁵⁹ There is a hauntingly beautiful passage in the book, in which they seek to gather up the threads of their poetic vision of a continuous creation, a vision that encapsulates their Christian darsana.⁶⁰ They describe the creation as an exuberant pouring forth of energy, in which God, as Spirit, goes out of herself to create an intricate, interconnected material universe suffused with spirit and heavy with potentiality for evolutionary development.⁶¹

This magnificent vision, of a cosmos constituted by a God whose grace suffuses it, whose transcendence is a reflection of her immanence and who has not left a single human without evidence of her presence in the depth of their subjective experience of transcendence, raises an important question. What do we do with Jesus?

Jesus?

We have been arguing that the whole of creation incarnates divinity in the sense that Divinity is within all things. Implicit in this conception is that individuals, and their cultures, incarnate the grace that is present in each of our subjectivities and within our shared life in community. If this is so, then one has to ask, what was unique about the way Christ incarnated this divinity? Christians have traditionally contended that Christ was "the" incarnation of divinity, in the sense that, in encountering him, one encountered the Son of the Living God, the Second Person of the Trinity, the unrepeatable incarnation of the eternal, cosmic Logos. [48]

Hick

John Hick has argued that there has been, in recent years, a "Copernican revolution" in our understanding of the relationship between Christianity and other world religions.⁶² According to Hick, Christianity is no longer perceived, even by Christian scholars, as the sun around which other religions revolve. It has become clear that the sun is God, around whom all religions circle, including Christianity. This view is consonant with the fact that that the non-Christian religions are the principal means of approach to God for the majority of humankind.

Schuon

Frithjof Schuon has developed an interesting paradigm to explain the relationship of the religions to each other. He argues that religion can be lived at either exoteric or esoteric levels. Those who live out their faith at an exoteric level accept as literal the myths, stories and symbols of their tradition. Those engaging their religious culture at an esoteric level recognize the mythic, narrative and symbolic texture of their faith tradition and live it at a transcendent level.

Schuon commented that those at an exoteric level, because of their literalism and fundamentalism, must reject the religious traditions of other groups as without validity. On the other hand, those who have distilled from their traditions a subjective essence, live that essence transcendentally and thus acknowledge a greater affinity with those living at a similar level in other religions than they do with their co-religionists who are more comfortable living at an exoteric level.

While this model could be criticised for being hierarchical, the conclusion should not be drawn that those living out of an esoteric understanding of their traditions are necessarily more conscientious or moral than those whose understanding of symbolic constructs is more literal.

While Hick's celebration of a Copernican revolution and Schuon's paradigm enable us to get at least a foothold on this new matrix of understandings, they still leave the question of Christ's ontological status unanswered.

Two Positions

Within Christian theology at least two positions are being taken on this urgent Christological conundrum, positions represented by Hick and Rahner.

Hick

Hick, drawing attention to the fact that the confession that Christ was the eternal Son of God, second person of the Trinity, was responsible for fuelling Christian anti-Semitism, Western colonialism and the social subordination of women, argued that, while Christ was unique, he was not what Christians have claimed him to be. He contended that at no stage did Jesus claim he [49] was God. Furthermore, his contemporaries regarded him, not as a pre-existent Son of God, but as an eschatological prophet. It was subsequent theological development that led to the twin doctrines of incarnation and pre-existence and to the Chaledonian declaration of the doctrine of the two natures, that is, that Christ was both perfectly human and perfectly divine. Hick argued that what the Church Fathers at Chalcedon produced, was not an explanation, but a definition, the phenomenological implications of which no one has yet been able to adequately explain.

Hick, drawing on a distinction made by Sarah Coakley, spoke of six ways in which the notion of "incarnation" was used by theologians.

1. as an affirmation of God's involvement in human life,
2. as an assertion that, in Jesus, God was involved with humanity in an especially powerful way,
3. as a way of speaking of the sort of incarnation that pre-supposed pre-existence,
4. as a dogmatic statement stipulating that in Christ there was a total interaction of the human and divine,
5. as a shorthand way of declaring that Jesus was and will always be the only divine incarnation in the previous sense
6. and in a manner which equates the incarnation with the orthodoxy of Chalcedon, with its precise terminology, reflecting Greek categories of substances.

Hick is only willing to affirm the first two of these categories. It is his view that Jesus incarnated the love of God to such a degree that his influence has been powerfully transformative. He argues that it is illegitimate to go beyond the evidence and to affirm that Jesus is the second person of a Trinity!⁶³

Rahner

Rahner represents the opposite tendency.

Rahner begins by re-emphasizing his conviction that God is active among all peoples. He contests that it is wrong to limit the activity of God to Judaic-Christian history.⁶⁴ The Spirit is present, and can be discerned as present, wherever people experience a radical re-ordering of their human essence, a gifted transformation that is associated with new knowledge, freedom and a deepening sense of God.⁶⁵ These experiences can be encountered in individuals and communities that have no association with the institutional Church, which should regard them as confirmation that the God of Jesus Christ wants all men and women to be saved, to be liberated into incomprehensible mystery.⁶⁶ According to Rahner, we should not regard those we may consider "pagan" as individuals who are untouched by God's grace and truth.⁶⁷ [50]

While the anthropological foundation Rahner lays for the development of his theology is sinuously intuitive, and individual, the Christology he develops, on the basis of this anthropology, conforms, in a broad sense, to the teachings of the church. He is committed to what he affirms, he is not merely doffing of his hat to the Magisterium!

Having begun with a profound explanation of the manner in which the whole of life, and particularly of human experience, is incarnational, Rahner goes on to deal with the specificity of Christian revelation and its claim to represent a decisive moment in God's dealings with humanity.

For Rahner, any "special Intervention" of God can only be understood against the background of the universality of God's self-communication.⁶⁸ One can talk about special revelation

1. where this self-communication succeeds conspicuously,
2. where self-awareness reaches a stage where the individual knows themselves to be guided and directed by God,
3. where they are freed from the tendency to cling to what is merely provisional
4. and where they discover the true self.⁶⁹

The history of this special revelation reached its apogee in Christ.

That Rahner is operating from a strong, rather than a weak Christology, is evident in his assertion that the crucified and risen Christ is the criterion for distinguishing between human misunderstanding of the transcendental experience of God and the legitimate interpretation of this experience. It is only in him that a true discernment of spirits is possible.⁷⁰ This unabashed Christo-centrism is also evident from his rhapsodic affirmation that Christ is present

1. in the heart and centre of the earth,
2. in the blind hope of all creatures seeking to participate in the glorification of his body,
3. in the history of the earth,
4. in its evolutionary essence and energy,
5. in the tears and the hidden paradoxical joy and the life present in all that appears to die
6. and in an inner, but barely perceptible movement that is continually restructuring chaos into order.⁷¹

Rahner coined the phrase "anonymous Christians" to describe those who, in the context of universal grace, do not owe allegiance to the Church, but have been responsive to an inner Presence in the living of their transcendentality.⁷² To hear themselves described as "anonymous Christians", would be considered imperialist and offensive by adherents of other religious traditions. However, this controversial phrase does represent an honest attempt at reconciling a commitment to universal revelation with [51] the traditional Christian understanding of the incarnational uniqueness of Christ. One must also take account of the nature of the community to which the accommodation is offered. It is a statement to insiders, to one's peers within the Church, who need persuading that Rahner was not compromising the central, Christological foundation of their tradition.

In using the term, "anonymous Christians", Rahner implies that people can be in possession of sanctifying grace, can be justified, sanctified and children of God and oriented towards eternal salvation before they have made a profession of Christian faith or been baptised.⁷³ Furthermore, this work of God in the lives of individuals, the possibility of an unthematic experience of grace, of transcendence, is the presupposition of our evangelistic preaching.⁷⁴ The missionary task is premised on the basis of their being "anonymous Christians."⁷⁵ Rahner further contends that, while the presence of anonymous Christians prepares for the Church's proclamation of Christ, it doesn't do away with it by rendering it superfluous.⁷⁶ For Rahner, Christianity's uniqueness lies partially in the fact that it keeps open the question of an absolute future, which wills to communicate its reality to the present, a reality that has been irreversibly established in Jesus Christ. This reality is God.⁷⁷

Complementary

How does one decide between Hick and Rahner? Commitment to orthodoxy would automatically decide the issue in favour of Rahner. However, for many, what could be seen as capitulation to dogma and authority, would be unsatisfying.

Hick has a point. There is no conclusive evidence that Jesus regarded himself as the incarnation of a pre-existent Son of God. Chalcedon was the church's formulation and its declaration is neither understandable nor provable. Furthermore, our hesitations will not be silenced by an appeal to ineffable mystery, to the limitations of our finitude or to the authority of the church.

On the other hand, there is no necessary illegitimacy in the Church concluding, after considerable theological development, that there was an ontological uniqueness about Jesus. In any event, the dogma of his unique sonship, however it be conceived, is not ultimately falsifiable, except on the basis of an eschatological verification, to which none will be privy before the event.

The dilemma surrounding the ontological status of Jesus of Nazareth raises an additional issue. If someone considers Jesus to have powerfully, transparently, lived with the flow of a pervasive cosmic grace, and if they are committed to taking up their cross and following him, while denying that he was the eternal Son of God, can they still legitimately call themselves Christian? As the definition of what it means to be a Christian is tied to who one considers Christ to be, the answer must be "yes". [52]

It is my suspicion that, if we are to be intellectually honest and open, and, at the same time, committed to traditional Christology, we will be unavoidably forced to live this paradox, represented by the opposed opinions of Hick and Rahner, with both commitment and openness. It could be argued that we do not believe and doubt in sequence, but in parallel. We do not believe and then doubt in alternating episodes. We both believe and doubt at one and the same time. Belief is the precondition for doubt and doubt is the background against which our belief resonates.

Evolution Culminating in Christ

There is a general consensus, among those endorsing the notion of a cosmic Presence, that the cosmos, as a consequence of an inner Spiritual dynamism, has been evolving and is continuing to evolve, from matter, to life, to mind and onwards towards a Christic omega point. Teilhard used the term Christo-genesis to describe this development.⁷⁸ This Christogenesis was an evolutionary directedness, a teleology implicit in the cosmos, which became increasingly focused in a Christ-drenched humanity.⁷⁹

Rahner's Two-Directional Evolutionary Hypothesis

Rahner, impressed by Teilhard's vision, expanded it.

According to Rahner, the evolutionary dynamism, evident in creation, reflects the presence of an immanent creator, who, while different from the creation, is himself the dynamic energy of its evolution and history.⁸⁰ Rahner goes on to contend that redemptive grace is essentially incarnational.⁸¹ This incarnation begins at the lowest level with matter, and makes possible the exercise of freedom and the possibility of communication. It is because of our materiality that both are possible.⁸² The emergence of humankind was a critical breakthrough in the evolutionary process, involving a self-conscious emergence of spirit and the possibility of self-transcendence.⁸³ The history of nature and of spirit is an interconnected, graded unity.⁸⁴ By becoming manifest in the corporeality of humanity, the thrust of an immanent evolutionary grace ensured that further evolution was inevitable--spirit, body and cosmos pressing on to even greater consciousness.⁸⁵

Christ represents, for Rahner, as for Teilhard, the culmination of the coming to self-consciousness of Spirit through humanity. By abandoning himself to absolute mystery, the mystery we call God, Jesus, in powerfully incarnating this divine reality, uniquely actualised the essence of human reality.⁸⁶ His divinity did not detract from his humanity, but enhanced it. The divine Logos created and accepted this corporeality as his own reality, so that he could be present in the world through it.⁸⁷ Jesus of Nazareth, in his basic constitution, represented the original unity of being and consciousness and lived in a unity of wills with the Father. He continually accepted himself from the Father and gave himself over totally to the Father. Because of this he was able to accomplish what we are not able to accomplish.⁸⁸ This God-man [53] culminated the self-transcendent process built into the universe from the beginning.⁸⁹

It is with great subtlety that Rahner delineates his understanding of the fact that Christ can be spoken of as saviour. He argues that, in Christ, God's absolute self-communication, was irrevocable, unambiguous and climactic.⁹⁰ Christ is the epitome of God's promise to us of his ultimate self-communication, and, at the same time, he represents, from the perspective of a receptive humanity, the acceptance of this self-communication. Through what we would call his obedience, his prayer and his willingness to embrace a destiny that involved being put to death, he lived out the acceptance of a grace that God bestowed on him as a man.⁹¹

A Docetic Christ?

So suffused is Rahner's Christology with the notion of transcendence, which Christ is said to possess in an absolute manner, that one could be left with a Docetic Christ, a Christ who only appeared to be human. Rahner, however, is at pains to explain, in line with orthodox belief, that Christ was truly human. He possessed a finite subjectivity. His life was historically conditioned and his way of relating to God was not different from the way we relate to God, that is, through God's inner self-communication.⁹² Rahner argued that there was a sense in which he was more truly human than we are. He exhibited a freedom and independence, a centredness, that existed, not in spite of, but because of his being so completely constituted by the self-utterance of God.⁹³

The Crucifixion

Christ, through his death, reflected his resolute fidelity to his mission⁹⁴ and surrendered his inner-worldly future to the grace operative within him. This same act, a death connected to resurrection, also showed that he was accepted by God. Through his death and resurrection, he became the unique manifestation of God's irreversible offer of himself to the world.⁹⁵

In explaining Christian belief in the resurrection, Rahner contends that we experience this resurrection in the Spirit, in the sense that we experience Christ, and his cause, as living and victorious.⁹⁶ He further argues that the persisting belief in resurrection that has fascinated humankind from the beginning is generated by the gifted experience of self-transcendence.⁹⁷ This did not mean, however, that Christ's resurrection was superfluous, for his resurrection helps us to objectify the hope.⁹⁸

Rahner's grand vision of a graced evolutionary process that births Jesus of Nazareth, from within the creation, as a culmination of that process, is consistent with the view of Sri Aurobindo, who pointed to a certain symmetry between the upward striving of evolutionary forces and the downward creativity and grace of God. This perception of a two-directional evolutionary process is also embraced by Smart and Konstantine, who argue [54] that we see Brahman expanding outwards into her body, into material processes, which, in their turn, in a reverse cycle, and out of their dynamism, strive to create the centres of consciousness that reflect their origin.⁹⁹ Wilber describes these two, complementary movements as involution and evolution.¹⁰⁰

Offer and Response

In spite of the fact that God's presence constantly impinges upon us with insistent sensitivity, we are not irresistibly carried along by this grace. The offer of God's call to freedom, and the offer of a grace that will enable us to make an appropriate response, can either be accepted or rejected.

Rahner outlines a variety of human responses that reflect an efficacious acceptance of the offer of this freedom, an acceptance that occurs, throughout life, without the participant being aware of what is happening. These include

1. the acceptance of our existence ultimately and unconditionally,
2. the allowing of ourselves to fall into the abyss of mystery and incomprehensibility,¹⁰¹
3. the commitment to flow with our supernatural transcendality in inter-personal communication in love and fidelity¹⁰²
4. and the willingness to risk ourselves radically for another.¹⁰³

While we flow with a healthful, evolutionary grace, often without being aware of our tacit co-operation, this very transcendent grace, to which we are surrendering, makes us increasingly aware of its incarnation within us and of its facilitative energy, its continuous offering to us of our freedom. Thus, we become increasingly aware of our response. It is in this way that we become conscious of the dynamics of the process and thus able to co-operate more intentionally with it.

This means that we need to learn to consciously flow with this grace. This will involve discerning the movement of grace, not only within ourselves, but within the wider human and ecological environment. We do this with our body/minds. As Eugene Gendlin commented, our "physically-felt" bodies enable us to feel part of a vast, alive, cosmic system. We experience this system from within.¹⁰⁴ Openness to this grace will also involve a relinquishment of the need to completely control our lives and circumstances and will require, at the least, our commitment to do the will of God. It will also involve us living in the present moment, identifying and exploring our graced potential and following our bliss.¹⁰⁵ In addition, it will mean, as Tillich suggested, developing the courage to be,¹⁰⁶ with courageous hope and hopeful courage.¹⁰⁷

All of this involves, as Thomas Merton argued, co-operating with God in recognizing, beneath the subterfuges of a false self, a nascent identity gifted [55] to us by God and in actualising it. In other words, we are to work with God to create the truth of our identity.¹⁰⁸

The acceptance of Christ, in whom the evolutionary dynamism of immanent transcendent grace reaches a zenith, necessitates a deliberate appropriation that assumes the form of a consciously desired relationship. In the developing of a relationship with Jesus Christ the individual grasps the absolute saviour in Jesus Christ, where Christ mediates the immediacy of God to the individual.¹⁰⁹

Choosing the offer of freedom, choosing to use the freedom on offer appropriately, also means that we choose to move with the graced process of evolution. This involves, according to Campbell and McMahon, participation in the birth of the new Adam, the new corporate personality, called Christ.¹¹⁰

The fact that this evolution is partially dependent on our co-operative participation means that we can resist it, in our own personal development, in the development of particular communities and in the evolution of the human species itself.

Wilber

Wilber argues this point powerfully in two of his writings. The first deals with individual development and the second with the evolution of human consciousness from earliest times. His explanation is set in the context of stage transitions within a spectrum of consciousness.

Wilber contends that we have a certain immortality, in the sense of being indwelt by the divinity that suffuses all creation. However, caught between eros and thanatos, the forces of life and death, we fail to recognize our immortality and try to immortalise ourselves by inadequate and illegitimate means. The usually happens when we are poised for a stage transition.

He argues, that, as we ascend through various stages, the ways in which we have successively symbolized our existence become inadequate. We have continually translated, or modified them, until they cannot be further modified. To proceed, we need to die to the old ego--the old ways of looking at life and addressing it--and undergo transformation, rebirth into the next stage.

Many baulk at this point, and, rather than die to the self that has seen them through to that stage, they offer a substitute sacrifice. They put something, someone, some group, or some philosophy, to death outside themselves. Rather than acknowledge the new reality, they criticise/crucify those whose lives and view of life represent the challenge of the next stage. Socrates was such a victim, and so too was Jesus. This is the demonic face of fundamentalism. The presence of such fundamentalism is one reason for the ambiguity of the Spirit's presence in human life and history. [56]

Christ as Exemplar

Whether we conceptualize development in terms of stage transitions, or the narrative of our developing awareness of and surrender to the cosmic Presence, recognized in internal intuitions or in praxis, the example of Christ affords guidance to the Christian on how to proceed. Therefore, there is a sense in which Christ is not merely a metaphor of God to us. He is an example to us of the manner in which we can best co-operate with grace. The faith of Christ, the way of Christ, is paradigmatic for us. The Johannine Gospel has Jesus indicate to the woman at Jacob's well that in the future people would worship God in Spirit and in truth, that is, by moving with the flow of the Spirit, discerned within themselves and within the community.

It can also be argued that Jesus' relationship with his "Father" was not a repertoire of behavioural responses programmed onto his hard disc at conception, nor was it an automatic perceptiveness. There was need for moment by moment discernment and effort. And there were times when he felt he had lost it, when he experienced confusion, and, ultimately, dereliction. These were occasions when the suffering, resulting from his faithfully following intimations, seemed to deny that there was any reality beyond himself actually sourcing them.

It is interesting to note, that, when the apostle Paul became a Christian, he made the transition from a view of deity as an external figure to an awareness of God as a facilitating internal presence. He began to speak of his connectedness to God in relational terms, such as when he confessed that he was aware of an inner Christ sourcing initiatives.¹¹¹ In phenomenological, if not in absolutely ontological terms, this was hauntingly similar to the remark, attributed to the Johannine Jesus, that he was one with the Father.¹¹²

Christ affords us an example of the way in which it was intended that we flow with in inner transcendental grace. However, he is also, at least potentially, the unsurpassed means of our gaining access to this Presence. It could, therefore, be said, that by our continuing openness to Christ we put ourselves in the position of being caught up in the slipstream of his faith, the history of his openness to reality, and carried along by it. This faculty relates to the consummate manner in which he incarnated this Grace and to the fact that, by ascending into the non-temporal, non-local dimension of this originating Presence, he has become accessible to all. [57]

[FOB 43-57]