Introductory notes for readers of this thesis - Theses - Flinders ...

He recognised that sacrificial atonement was a recognisable, but not necessarilyexclusive, New Testament interpretation of the death of Jesus which made perfect sensein light of the biblical historical setting in which blood sacrifice was a commonlyunderstood element of the then contemporary religious/spiritual practice of the Jews.However, Rahner discerned the limitations of this view:• the meaning of blood sacrifice has no clear and natural connection to currentreligious/spiritual practice and is an abhorrence to the modern, secular mind;• sacrifice cannot be understood in its fuller biblical sense as producing achange in God—his forgiveness and love are the motivating cause of theIncarnation, not the outcome;• the primary or exclusive view of blood sacrifice as a dominant interpretationof the meaning of the Incarnation diminishes the significance and power ofthe resurrection.Rahner developed an alternative view of the salvific nature of the Incarnation as it is fullyexpressed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In this he was much influenced bythe Greek fathers as the following quote from Theological Investigations shows:as the theology of the Greek Fathers comes into its own, the incarnation itself isbeing regarded as a moment of the redemption, and not merely as the act wherebysomeone is placed in a position where he can be redeemer, if he wills anddedicates himself to the task by a completely new act, so to speak. Thus theadvent of the incarnate Logos of the Father is being inevitably seen as the mostradical case of a salvific, creative word of God in general, which calls for atheology of the word of God as a soteriological entity in general 107 .What follows is a synthesis of the explanations of this alternative view using ideas fromDych, O’Donnell, O’Meara and Rahner (from his essay ‘On the theology of theincarnation’)108 .For Rahner, human history is the common history of the entire human family and in thissense the destiny of one member of this family can hold significance for the whole.It must be remembered that the history of humankind is one and single, so thatthere is an intrinsic unity between everything it contains from Abel to the last107 Theological Investigations, Vol IV, 256.108 W. Dych, Karl Rahner (London: Continuum, 1992), 60-61; J.O’Donnell, Life in the Spirit, 39-58; T.O’Meara, God in the world (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2007), 76; K. Rahner, ‘On thetheology of the Incarnation’, Theological Investigations, Vol IV, 105-120.161