Philip Arthur Bence PhD Thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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neighbor. This love, however, is essential. The "love
of neighbor is the precondition and the result of the
love of God."16
God, in grace and love, places himself within every
person. This self-communication is both revelation''
and redemption. A 'Christian' is one who opens himself
to the divine communication, reaching toward his
God-given potential.
We could characterize Christian life precisely
as a life of freedom. For freedom is
ultimately an openness to everything, to
everything without exception: openness to
absolute truth, to absolute love, and to the
absolute infinity of human life in its
immediacy to the very reality we call God...
God's salvation raises men to the level of the
eternal. 'Eternal life.' however, is not merely an
endless extension of time, but a "mode of spirit and
freedom" which begins in this life and continually moves
toward unity with God.15'
Christianity is the reli g ion which keeps open
the question about the absolute future which
wills to give itself in its own reality by
self-communication, and which has established
this will as eschatologically irreversible in
Jesus Christ, and this future is called
God..2°
God reveals himself to all persons, and even those
without knowledge of Christian dogma can be 'Christians'.
In spite of this, Rahner retained a traditional view of
the importance of Christianity's historical basis and
statements of doctrine. "The absolute necessity of Jesus
Christ must not be obscured; but it is permissible to
approach Christology from a universal pneumatology."21