Few theologians have raised as many worthwhile questions in the religious world as the eminent Karl Barth, until recently associated with the theological department of the University of Basel, Switzerland. Now his successor, Heinrich Ott, has raised some questions, and some Christian eyebrows, by propounding the idea that some men may really be Christians without knowing it.
Dr. Ott, the thirty-five-year-old successor to Karl Barth, was lecturing at Vanderbilt Divinity School in April, 1964, on the thought of two men of considerable theological stature in Europe. The first was the well-known Rudolph Bultmann, of Germany, and the second was Karl Rahner, of Austria. If Rahner is less known to us than Bultmann, it is due to the fact that he is a brilliant Jesuit whose works have not been widely translated into English; but he is one of the most influential European Roman Catholic systematic theologians of the day.
Are There Anonymous Christians?
Dr. Rahner has written about "anonymous Christians, or believers whom ye cannot yet recognize and who themselves do not yet know that they are believers," Dr. Ott brought out in his lecture, as reported in the Nashville Tennessean, April 26, 1964, and in many other journals. His thought is that scattered over the world, and quite unconnected with institutional religion, are many people who long unconsciously for the church, and this longing comes from a valid, if unconscious, faith.
Apparently Dr. Rahner's view is that in today's world the ways of men are so intimately interwoven that the Christian believer and the unbeliever are at times indistinguishable from each other. For example: "Nowadays the 'unbeliever' is our neighbor; he is that person whose honesty, reliability, and respectability one counts on just as much as one relies on corresponding attributes from one's fellow believers (and one often gets the shocking impression that this is more likely possible with the former than the latter)." The same report enlarges on this idea and introduces the weighty testimony of Dr. Rudolf Bultmann in support of Rahner's ideas.
The Pre-eminence of Christian Faith
Bultmann stresses the necessity of a living faith "rather than the repetition of Christian doctrines," and he believes that this living faith may be "wholly unconscious." No sane person will question Bultmann's dictum that a living faith is vastly more important that vocalizing creedal doctrines that are not seen in everyday life. It has also to be sadly confessed that Rahner's strictures on the all-too-frequent inconsistency among Christians have point, and that quite often so-called unbelievers unconsciously practice some basic Christian virtues more consistently than do many nominal believers.
Before we conclude, however, that there are large numbers of "unaware" Christians, we should define our terms and understand what the celebrated doctors Ott, Rahner, and Bultmann mean by "being a Christian."
Dr. Ott postulates three situations in which there may be Christians who are unaware of the fact: (a) in the man who unflinchingly faces death and whose confidence betokens a "meaningful beyond"; (b) in the man who spends his life "according to faith rather than according to no belief"; (c) in the man who lives among men so that he gets a new understanding of life.
It is possible, of course, to point to countless cases of men who faced death courageously and meaningfully. The man who said, "Let death be daily before your eyes and you will never entertain any abject thought," was none other than the first-century Stoic philosopher Epictetus. These Stoic followers of Zeno (336-264 n.c.) had courage and a philosophy that took many of them to sad but courageous ends in the last days of the pagan Roman world. Both before and after Jesus these and other men faced death with meaningful dignity. Thousands of "unbelievers" have faced death unflinchingly, even meaningfully, for they have reasoned that a life lived honestly can leave a future in the hands of higher powers, whoever or whatever they may be.
Dr. Ott's second point on living life "according to faith rather than to no belief" may mean that a man has confidence in some undefined principles rather than living deliberately without a philosophy or belief of any kind. But it is modernistic language and is not specific as to what is meant by being a Christian. It certainly is better to have minimal faith rather than no faith at all.
His third point—living to get a new understanding of life—still leaves us asking where such men begin and where they end in "belief." The man who discovers a new meaning in life should surely be able to define his beliefs. Belief that is undefinable is too nebulous to be really Christian. There is nothing nebulous in New Testament beliefs.
What Is Christian Faith?
Dr. Rudolf Bultmann is, of course, a forthright supporter of critical theology. It is in this camp that men like Professor Joachim Jeremias have asked if "the historical Jesus and His message have any significance for the Christian faith."—The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, April, 1959. Many of these men reject the idea that the Christ of Christian faith is verily the Jesus of history. It is one thing to strip conventional religion of myth and false accretions; it is quite another to divest Jesus Christ of His divinely incarnate life. "For Bultmann, the history of Jesus is part of the history of Judaism, not of Christianity. This Jewish prophet has historical interest for New Testament theology, but he has, and can have, no significance for Christian faith, since (and here we have an astonishing thesis) Christianity began with the Resurrection."—Ibid., p. 119.
Perhaps this is enough to show that what Ott and Bultmann mean by being a Christian may not be what many of us mean.
Rahner is a challenging Roman Catholic theologian. He has at times displeased his own church authorities, but since he is a loyal Roman Catholic, we may take him to mean a sincere man, what is usually called "a good living man," when he speaks of unaware Christians, and not a fully converted believer.
A Vague Faith or a New Birth?
From the fivefold New Testament reference to the Jewish ruler Nicodemus, he might appear to be something of an unaware Christian when we first meet him in John 3:1-12. He was an honest Jew who was weighing the works and words of Jesus: "We know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."
At this time Jesus no doubt regarded Nicodemus as an unaware believer, but it is clear that this was not enough for Him. He exposed the insufficiency of secret, or unaware, discipleship by insisting on the miracle of the new birth: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
In Jesus' thinking, being good, whether by the good fortune of heredity or by training and deliberate decency, was not enough. Being a Christian was to Him being a totally new man, an out-and-out disciple, a dedicated believer.
That there are sincere people in the world outside of institutional religion and organized Christian society is unquestionably true. This confused world, both secular and religious, must have multitudes of people waiting for God, else why would God say, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins" (Rev. 18: 4)? But longing for God, being unaware Christians, so to speak, is only a halfway house. It is the work of the Holy Spirit and the privilege of witnessing Christians to lead these unaware people to God, and that means through Christ. "Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him" (Matt. 11:27).
When a not altogether converted disciple was inquisitive as to Christ's teaching concerning His future, he asked, "Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?" (John 14:5). To which Jesus replied in language declaring that the way to God and an assured future life was through an awareness of Jesus as the Messiah: " 'I am the way; I am the truth and I am life; no one comes to the Father except by me.' " Verse 6. (From The New English Bible, New Testament. Copyright, The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press 1961. Reprinted by permission.)
Making Men What They Are Not
There are unquestionably men and women who, though making no formal religious profession, nevertheless have a deep inner yearning for something better. It is the task of the Christian to bring the answer to that desire.
The famous bass singer Jerome Hines tells that he wandered through life for thirty years "with an inner fire burning in my soul, an inner fire that relentlessly drove me here and drove me there." It burned all through his university chemistry and mathematics studies, through his musical training, and through his travels, as he sang in four languages before the great of earth for sixteen years. But this discontent continued; the inner fire burned on!
Then Hines says, "One day I found Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, and I discovered that it was He that I had been seeking all my life. How wonderful to find that burning fire quieted within me, to find my life complete. . . . In the few years that I have been His, He has led me only into truth, and I praise His name, for He is making me into the man He wants me to be—the man I am not."
It is not surprising that Jerome Hines entitled his own operatic composition I Am the Way, and that his Christian wife makes a talented soprano contribution to this and other projects dedicated to the cause of Christ.
Whatever we may call them—anonymous Christians, unaware believers, etc.—let us not be unaware that on every side of us there are men and women waiting for something better. Above all, let us seek for an awareness of these people in whose souls there may be burning the inner fire through which God may make them eventually what now they are not. In this process we all develop living faith, and we all become what we now are not.—Reprinted from These Times, January, 1965.
