Hermeneutics and The Shape of the Future - Edited by Frank K. Flinn
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Hermeneutics and The Shape of the Future - Edited by Frank K. Flinn |
For many Christians, the focus of the theological controversy generated by Divine Principle is christology. Not only are contemporary Christian theologians especially interested in christology per se but many of them also consider Unification christology to be the most troublesome aspect of Divine Principle.
What is Unification christology? Is it derived from the Bible? How is it related to traditional christological doctrines? These are just a few of the relevant questions we might ask. Unfortunately, in this short paper I cannot do justice to any of them. Nevertheless, I do offer some preliminary arguments in support of two views. First, Divine Principle uses scripture in a way that is hermeneutically justifiable. Second, Unification christology is doctrinally orthodox.
The Bible was a product of its times. As Robert M. Grant points out, not only was the New Testament written for the early church, but it also "reflects the life of the Church."1 And as long as scripture is interpreted strictly in its original historical context, biblical scholarship remains on fairly safe ground. In fact, according to Wilckens, "the only scientifically responsible interpretation" of the New Testament is to "describe the meaning these texts have had in the context of the tradition history of early Christianity."2
However, this does not mean that we are obliged to view the Bible as a merely human document. Although Aquinas' claim that "The author of holy Scripture is God"3 is inadequate for most post-Enlightenment Christians, the Bible's own claim that "the teaching is from God" (John 7:17) still deserves to be taken seriously. But this is a theological claim, and for theological purposes a merely historical interpretation is not sufficient.
Barth maintains that "intelligent and fruitful discussion of the Bible begins when the judgment as to its human, its historical, and psychological character has been made and put behind us."4 Then we can focus our attention on the "special content" of scripture, the "inner Dialectic of the matter" in the text itself.5 For Bultmann, historical research is the only "scientific" method of dealing with the New Testament. But the historical text is "never the central matter itself," so "a genuine interpretation can only be given when the concepts are understood in light of the matter they are intended to convey."6 Ironically, despite their different emphases, both Barth and Bultmann have been criticized for doing violence to the text.
Kelsey has analyzed some uses of scripture by seven modern Protestant theologians, ranging from "conservative" (Warfield) to "neoorthodox" (Barth) and "liberal" (Bultmann). Despite the diversity of their interpretations, all seven claim to be basing their theological proposals on the Bible. Kelsey concludes that each theologian begins with an "imaginative characterization of the mode of God's presence among the faithful" which determines his subsequent use of scripture. According to Kelsey, such an "imaginative construal" ought not to be completely arbitrary: it must be "open to reasoned elaboration." It must fall within "culturally conditioned limits to what is seriously imaginable," and it must be "responsible" to "tradition."7 However, within these rather wide limits it seems that Protestant theologians have exercised considerable freedom in construing the text.
Of course, the claim that there is no such thing as a "presuppositionless interpretation" is not new. Schleiermacher and Dilthey considered the "hermeneutical circle" to be an inevitable consequence of the relationship between an interpreter and the text. Although, as Betti insists, any theory of interpretation should affirm the essential autonomy of the text, it seems unlikely that any work is interpreted without the use of some "hermeneutical principle." Schleiermacher thought that the best way to leap into the "hermeneutical circle" was to reexperience intuitively the mental processes of the author. For Dilthey, the focus was not the author bur the disclosure of human experience by the text. Heidegger considered the text to be a disclosure of Being itself, and described hermeneutics as a thinking dialogue with the text which uncovers new meaning in the original event of disclosure.8
Following Heidegger, Gadamer's "philosophical hermeneutics" proposes a dialectical method for understanding the meaning of a text. The first step is an attitude of openness on the part of the interpreter, followed by immersion in the subject matter itself. Once one understands the sort of questions which can be meaningfully asked (the "hermeneutical horizon"), a questioning dialogue with the text can reveal more than is already explicit in it. One must "inevitably ask questions beyond what is said."9
However, Frei maintains that the "subject matter" approach to hermeneutics is inadequate. For Frei, the "hiatus posited between narrative and subject matter is misleading, if not wrong." Instead, "the narrative itself is the meaning of the text." It is "not a profound, buried stratum underneath" which constitutes meaning, but "the narrative structure or sequence itself."10
Divine Principle acknowledges that scripture is historically conditioned. The Bible "is not the truth itself, but a textbook teaching the truth." The Ne w Testament "was given as a textbook for the teaching of truth to the people of two thousand years ago." However, since "the quality of teaching and the method and extent of giving the truth must vary" according to the historical period, "we must not regard the textbook as absolute in every detail."11
Historical critical research is not rejected by Divine Principle; but it is of limited value in theological interpretation, which cannot come from "synthetic research in the scriptures, and in literature, or from any human brain," but must come "from God Himself." Therefore, "we must first establish direct rapport with God in spirit through ardent prayer and next, we must understand the truth through correct reading of the Bible." The "correct reading" in our context may not be identical with earlier interpretations, since Divine Principle takes seriously the biblical claim that "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth." (John 16:12-13). Nevertheless, this does not mean that anew expression of truth will contradict scripture or even take the place of it, but that it will "elucidate the fundamental contents of the Bible."12
This approach might possibly be described in Kelsey's terms as follows: God's "mode of presence among the faithful" is characterized as more immediate now than in the past, since divine providence has reached a stage where our communication with God, lost through the fall, is now being restored. Divine Principle provides a "reasoned elaboration" of this claim: a providential timetable, citing biblical chronology and church history as its basis, points to the present century as the time for the fulfillment of eschatological predictions; those predictions are explained in terms of a coherent picture of how the fall is to be restored; and various modern phenomena are cited as evidence that those predictions are in fact being fulfilled.13 Of course, one might not agree with this "reasoned elaboration," but it meets Kelsey's criterion. Whether the "imaginative construal" of God's accessibility falls within "culturally conditioned limits to what is seriously imaginable" is an open question, which might best be answered by observing the growth of the Unification movement in various cultures. Finally the Divine Principle approach is responsible to a tradition that goes back more than fifteen hundred years. As Augustine wrote in his Confessions: "Provided, therefore, that each of us tries as best he can to understand in the Holy Scriptures what each writer meant by them, what harm is there if a reader believes what you, the Light of all truthful minds, show him to be the true meaning? It may not even be the meaning which the writer had in mind, and yet he too saw in them a true meaning, different though it may have been from this."14
This gives us some insight into Unification hermeneutics, but it is not enough. If there were no more to be said about the Divine Principle approach, then it could be accused of allegorizing scripture in an arbitrary and subjective manner. But Unification hermeneutics is more precise than that. In Gadamer's terms, it might possibly be described as follows: the "subject matter" disclosed by the Bible is the story of God's relationship with humanity. Anyone who wants to understand that relationship must not be "attached to conventional ideas," but must immerse oneself in the subject matter "through humble prayer." Then, one can formulate the sorts of questions that lead to a fruitful dialogue with the text. It seems to me that two such questions, though not explicitly stated in Divine Principle, are nonetheless implied, and that they play an important role in Unification hermeneutics.
One implied questions is: "What should be the proper relationship between God and us?" And the answer is: "parent-child relationship."15 'This answer is consistent with the New Testament teachings of Jesus, who called God "Father" and directed us to do likewise (Matthew 6:6-14). Of course, other answers are also possible: for example, "a subject-object relationship," or "a creator-creature relationship;"16 but the fact that Divine Principle gives pre-eminence to the parent-child relationship has several important consequences. First, it suggests a loving, suffering God who is more genuinely related to us than the abstract God of classical theism. Divine Principle is more concerned with understanding "God's heart" than with speculating about his perfections. Second, it means that in some respects we can grow up to become very much like God. According to Divine Principle, we were created "in His image, after the pattern of His own character, with tremendous potential." This does not justify a naively anthropomorphic view of God, nor does it minimize the gulf between fallen mankind and God. But it does affirm the fundamental intelligibility of his motives.17
Another implied question is: "How can we find the best answers to fundamental questions?" And the answer is: "By viewing them from God's standpoint."18 This is not a blasphemous claim that we can literally take God's place; instead, it relies on the familiar human ability to imagine a situation from several different perspectives. The parables of Jesus made good use of this ability: for example, the Parable of the Vineyard (Matthew 21:33-44) communicates God's viewpoint concerning the crucifixion.
This sort of imaginative "perspective shift" might also be compared to the Copernican Revolution in astronomy. When people began viewing the solar system from the standpoint of the sun, the movements of the stars and planets became more intelligible than when they were viewed from the standpoint of the earth. Astronomers did not literally go to the sun to make observations; instead, they shifted their perspective by an act of imagination. Analogously, Divine Principle claims that viewing creation and history from God's standpoint renders them more intelligible than viewing them from our human standpoint. Of course, we must not confuse theology with natural science; but we may have here a theological analogue of what Kuhn calls a "paradigm shift" in science.19 This is better than arbitrary allegorizing, but we have not yet pinpointed the distinctive hermeneutical perspective of Divine Principle. To do that, we might possibly try describing Unification hermeneutics in Frei's terms. Like Frei, Divine Principle interprets Genesis as a "realistic narrative," and considers "the narrative structure or sequence itself to be fundamentally important. The Bible begins with creation, and so does Unification theology, but the biblical creation story is immediately followed by the fall story. It is clear from the narrative itself that something which should not have happened at the beginning did happen, and that it was contrary to God's will. It is only natural for the reader to wonder what should have happened -- or in other words, to ask what God originally intended. Divine Principle poses the question in the form: "What is the purpose of creation?"
According to Genesis 1:31, God saw that the creation was "very good." Divine Principle reasons that "God's joy is produced in the same manner" as ours. Since we feel the deepest joy when we are stimulated by an object "in which our own character and form are reflected and developed," God presumably felt joy when he saw his goodness reflected in the creation. Divine Principle concludes that the purpose of creation is "to return joy to God."20
Judging from Genesis 1:28, God expected his joy to be most fully realized when Adam and Eve fulfilled his blessing to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion... over every living thing that moves upon the earth." However, if this verse were to be interpreted apart from God's purpose, it could easily be seen as a warrant for over-population and ecological destruction. The key, according to Divine Principle, is individual perfection. Only after achieving the "first blessing" (God-centered individual perfection) does it make sense to proceed to the "second blessing" (God-centered families and societies) and the "third blessing" (God-centered stewardship). Therefore, our first human ancestors should have developed to perfection, fulfilling the purpose of creation by reflecting God's own character and returning joy to him.
This conclusion is fundamental to Unification theology, and especially to Unification christology. Divine Principle introduces all of its major theological topics by referring to it.21 It could be called the "hermeneutical principle" which guides the Unification interpretation of scripture.
How can we evaluate Unification hermeneutics? Kelsey's criteria are nor normative for Christian uses of scripture, but when we apply them, Divine Principle at least seems to be in the right ball park. Likewise, the hermeneutical approaches of Gadamer and Frei are not normative. Describing the Unification approach in their terms does not prove anything; but it does seem to indicate that Divine Principle treats the text in as thoughtful and responsible a manner as do some other modern hermeneutical options. Although I would not necessarily claim that every single use of scripture by Divine Principle is above criticism, it seems to me that the Unification approach is hermeneutically justifiable. Of course, whether the resulting interpretation is theologically adequate is another question, which might best be answered through comparing it with Christian doctrine.
Since there are so many different christologies in the New Testament, trinitarian and christological issues have generated endless debates among Christian theologians. Pelikan points out that the two issues, though related, are distinct: the Trinity concerns the relationship of the divine in Christ to the divine in the Father, while christology concerns the relationship of the divine in Christ to the human in Christ.22
According to Pelikan, the specifically trinitarian question is whether Christ was "equal in his divine essence with the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth."23 Arius, in his concern to protect God's unity and impassibility, argued that the Logos was a creature. This meant that Christ's "divinity" was something less than fully divine. The Ebionites and adoptionist Monarchians argued that Jesus was a man endowed with special powers. This meant that there was basically no difference between Christ and the prophets. However, in order for salvation to be complete, Christ had to be fully divine: "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).
On the other hand, Jesus Christ was also a man. The Docetists and some Monophysites, in their concern to protect Christ's divinity, argued that he could not have had a real human body. This meant that Christ's suffering and death were illusory. Apollinarius argued that Christ had a human body which was inhabited by the divine Logos instead of a human soul. This meant that Jesus lacked the most important aspect of human nature. Yet in order for salvation to be accessible, Christ had to be fully human: "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19).
The Council of Nicaea (325) attempted to safeguard the full divinity of Christ by its "homoousion" formula, though this unscriptural and metaphysically questionable terminology has never been completely satisfactory. The Council of Chalcedon (451) confessed "the one and only Son," who was "actually God and actually man, with a rational soul and a body." In his divinity, Christ was "of the same reality as God" (homoousios). In his humanity, Christ was "like us in all respects, sin only excepted." The "two natures" (divine and human) "concur in one person and in one hypostasis," without confusion or separation.24 Although it did not put an end to christological disputes, the Definition of Chalcedon has served ever since (at least in the West) as the norm of orthodox christology.
Despite the Chalcedonian emphasis on Christ's full humanity as well as his divinity, Christian piety has often tended toward monophysitism and docetism. Taken by itself, the popular statement that "Jesus is God" verges on heresy. Rahner points out that not everyone is heterodox who "has problems with the statement." Like many other modern theologians, Rahner tries to restore the balance by stressing the humanity of Jesus. This often entails reinterpreting ancient doctrinal formulations. According to Rahner, "anyone who thinks that he is able to express what is meant in the classical christology of the Incarnation in another way without doing violence to what is meant...may express it differently."25
In Rahner's reinterpretation, the "permanent validity" of classical christology lies first in its insistence that Jesus was not just another prophet or reformer and, second, in its affirmation that in Christ "God has turned to us in such a unique and unsurpassable way that in him He has given Himself absolutely." Rahner emphasizes the absoluteness of this "eschatological act of salvation" by calling it "final." Nevertheless, the history of salvation "is in itself always open towards the future."26
According to Divine Principle, our first human ancestors were supposed to attain individual perfection, reflecting God's own character. Because of their failure, it became necessary for Christ to come, fulfilling God's purpose by attaining the perfection intended for all of us. Divine Principle thus echoes not only the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:48) and St. Paul (Romans 5:12-19; I Corinthians 15:45), but also Irenaeus, who claimed that Adam should have become "like God," and that Christ came to "recapitulate" the same man "who was at the beginning made after the likeness of God."27
What is the nature of "individual perfection"? According to Divine Principle, human beings are supposed to grow to perfection through "three orderly stages of growth." During these stages, God's dominion is "indirect," leaving individuals to accomplish their own "portion of responsibility" by their obedience. This is necessary in order for them to become like God by "inheriting God's creatorship." However, a person who passes the "perfection" state "enters the direct dominion of God," which is a dominion of love rather than compulsion. Since love is the strongest force in the universe, the bond of love between God and a perfected individual can never be broken.28
Upon entering God's direct dominion, a person lives "in perfect union with God's heart," "feels all that God feels," and "cannot do anything which would cause God grief." Therefore, such a person "could never fall." According to Divine Principle, the relationship between God and a perfected man or woman may be compared to the relationship between a mind and a body. Just as the body is "the substantial object to the invisible mind, which it resembles," so a perfected individual is "the substantial object to the invisible God, taking after His image." Such a person becomes the "temple" of God, "assuming deity." Therefore, someone who attains the purpose of creation "would assume the divine value of God."29
Divine Principle affirms that "Jesus was a man who had attained the purpose of creation." This "does not in the least diminish his value." Rather, Jesus was a man of divine value, and "in light of his deity, he may well be called God." Divine Principle "does not deny the attitude of faith held by many Christians that Jesus is God, since it is true that a perfected man is one body with God." However, Jesus "can by no means be God Himself since "the Bible demonstrates most plainly that Jesus is a man." The relationship between God and Jesus "can be compared to that between mind and body," but "the body can by no means be the mind itself."30
Divine Principle justifies all of these claims by referring to standard christological passages in the New Testament. It also relies on Unification ontology which, like the now-archaic Greek metaphysics of the creeds, does not claim to be derived from the Bible. Unification ontology maintains that a subject-object relationship, such as the one between internal character (mind) and external form (body), is the basis for all "existence, multiplication and action."31 This strong relational emphasis indicates that the unity between God and Jesus, like that between mind and body, is ontological and not merely moral. The result is a christology that is consistent not only with scripture, but also with the Definition of Chalcedon.
Like Chalcedon, Unification christology affirms that Christ in his divinity is one body with the Father. Like Chalcedon, Unification christology maintains that the divine and human natures are united ontologically in one person, unconfused and unseparated, just as a person's mind and body are distinct but united. However, God does not take the place of the human mind in Jesus, so Unification christology is not Apollinarian. Divine Principle echoes Chalcedon in claiming that the man Jesus was "no different from us except for the fact that he was without original sin."32 Therefore, like Chalcedon, Unification christology affirms the true humanity of Christ.
One interesting consequence of this approach is that it allows for genuine growth. Although Jesus was born sinless, he had to pass through stages of growth before reaching perfection. Therefore, unlike christologies which assert that Jesus was perfect from his conception, Unification christology allows for genuine temptation. However, it does not lead to a heretically adoptionistic view of Christ. Unlike mere prophets and reformers, Jesus was born sinless and achieved perfect unity with God. And, unlike them, he came as the savior of the whole world.
How was Christ supposed to save the world? Unification sotetiology, like Unification ontology, is fundamentally relational. Those who believe in Jesus are united to him, and he is united to God: "I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you" (John 14:20). Therefore, people should have united fully with Jesus: "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent" (John 6:29). It was through disbelief, contrary to God's will, that Jesus was crucified. Furthermore, from the standpoint of God, Jesus was supposed to fulfill all three of the original blessings, and not just the first one. Although Divine Principle affirms that the crucifixion had redemptive value, it concludes that God did not originally intend for Jesus to be crucified.33 This conclusion, though controversial, seems to have as much scriptural support as its opposite. In any case, it does not violate basic Christian doctrine, as defined by the seven ecumenical councils.
Divine Principle maintains that all people should be "reborn through Christ," becoming children of goodness, "cleansed of original sin." They should then grow to perfection, fulfilling the purpose of creation. Christ is the "first fruits" (I Corinthians 15:20-33), but there should be many more like him. This does not jeopardize Christ's "unsurpassibility," since no one can assume "a value greater than that of a man who has attained the purpose of creation." However, Divine Principle claims that other perfected individuals would have a value "equal to that of Jesus," differing from him only in "time and order."34
Does that jeopardize Christ's "uniqueness?" Divine Principle explicitly affirms Jesus' uniqueness, in the sense that every perfected individual is unique and unlike any other. This claim is stronger than it sounds at first, because every perfected individual plays a unique and irreplaceable role in returning joy to God. Furthermore, Jesus will always be unique as the "first fruits."35 Nevertheless, there does seem to be a problem here. It concerns the issue of "finality."
Of course, "finality" per se is not a Christian doctrine, and therefore does not define orthodoxy. Although many Christians tend to equate "orthodox" with "conventional" or "traditional" it really means adherence to right doctrine. Since the East-West schism and the Protestant Reformation, the proliferation of denominational confessions has enormously complicated the doctrinal situation, but in the most basic sense of "Christian," Christian doctrine is limited to scripture and the creeds of the seven ecumenical councils. To be orthodox, a Christian must affirm, in essence, what scripture and the creeds affirm, and refrain from asserting what they prohibit. So although we need not affirm "finality" to be orthodox, we must affirm whatever it is in Christian doctrine that "finality" is attempting to describe.
There are at least two senses of "finality" which are affirmed by Divine Principle. The first is that Jesus Christ can be called the "final cause" of the world in the sense that the purpose of creation was fulfilled in him. The second is that Jesus' position is "final" in the sense that no one can ever replace him as the "first fruits."36 But there is clearly something more at stake here, and it runs on the interpretation of "only-begotten Son."
As a trinitarian phrase, "only-begotten Son" refers to the divine nature of Christ, which is "true God from true God, begotten not created" (Nicaea). Christ's divinity is the "only-begotten Logos of God," and "before time began, he [i.e., Christ] was begotten of the Father, in respect of his deity" (Chalcedon).37 The purpose of these phrases is to affirm that Christ's divine nature, as the second person of the Trinity, is God himself. Since God's basic nature is unchangeable, He always had and always will have only one Logos. In this affirmation, Divine Principle concurs.38 Although it could be argued that Divine Principle uses the word "trinity" in unconventional ways, it seems to me that Unification theology and Christian doctrine basically agree on the trinitarian meaning of "only-begotten Son."
However, as a christological phrase, "only-begotten Son" necessarily has different implications, since Christ's human nature was begotten in time. If Christ is called "only-begotten" in "respect of his humanness," the description is a temporal one. In human terms, the claim that a father has only one begotten son describes the present (and possibly the past), but says nothing about the future. It seems that the "finality" claim is attempting to say what the creeds do not: "There is only one begotten (human) son, and there can never be another."
Many Christians might think that the creeds intended to make this claim, even though it is not explicit. For example, someone might argue that the hypostatic union insures that the Logos is so fundamentally united to the man Jesus that the two can never be separated. But this argument misses the point. Of course it is true that Jesus and the Logos can never be separated. But the creeds could not be implying that the Logos is limited to Jesus. Since the Logos is "true God from true God," it is (like God) eternal and omnipresent. The man Jesus, on the other hand, is (like us) Temporally and spatially limited. To say that there is no more to the Logos than Jesus is to say that God has lost some of his attributes. Then Christ would not be fully divine, and that is certainly not what the creeds intend to say.
Therefore, when Divine Principle affirms that we are intended to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48) and concludes that God is not limited to a single incarnation, it is not contradicting basic Christian doctrine. To be sure, Unification christology is unconventional and (at the moment) unpopular. Bur it is neither un-Christian nor heretical. It affirms, in essence, what scripture and the creeds affirm, and it refrains from asserting what they prohibit. Doctrinally, Unification christology is orthodox.
Nevertheless, it could conceivably be declared heretical, if the Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches could settle their differences long enough to convene another ecumenical council. If that were to happen, Unification christology could be anathematized and another creed could be promulgated. All it would have to say is: "God must never have any more sons. Nor, for that matter, any daughters."
1 Robert M. Grant, A Historical Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 60.
2 Ulrich Wilckens,"Uber die Bedeutung historischer Kritik in dermodernen Bibelexegese," in his Washeisst Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift? (Regensburg: Pusret, 1966), p. 133, translated and quoted in Edgar Krenrz, The Historical-Critical Method(Philadelphia: Forrress, 1975), p. 33.
3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. la,1,10, Blackfriar's translation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), p. 60.
4 Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man. trans. Douglas Horton (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 60-61.
5 Warner Georg Kummel, The New Testament, trans. S. MacLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), p. 367.
6 Kummel, pp. 372-73, 378.
7 David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), pp. 170-75.
8 Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1969), pp. 36, 57. 86-89, 113-21, 130, 147-49.
9 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method(New York: Seabury, 1975), pp. 325-41.
l0 Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 269-70, 280.
11 Divine Principle (Washington: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1973), pp. 9, 131; here after cited as Divine Principle.
12 Divine Principle, pp. 15-16,132, 152.
13 Divine Principle, pp. 103-14, 120,125,128, 403.
14 Sainr Augusrine, Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin(Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1961), p. 296.
15 Divine Principle, pp. 12, 39, 77.
16 Divine Principle, pp. 25-28, 35, 55.
17 Divine Principle, pp. 10, 41, 43, 212-13.
18 Divine Principle, P. 13.
19 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nded. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
20 Divine Principle, pp. 41-42.
21 Divine Principle, pp. 19, 68, 100, 140, 168,195, 206, 222.
22 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, Vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 175.
23 Pelikan, pp. 176, 226.
24 John H. Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches, rev. ed. (Atlanta: Knox, 1973), pp. 30-36.
25 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. 288-91.
26 Rahner, pp. 299-301.
27 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, eds. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1975), I, 522, 538.
28 Divine Principle, pp. 52-57, 80-81.
29 Divine Principle, pp. 43, 206.
30 Divine Principle, pp. 209-11.
31 Divine Principle, pp. 20-29.
32 Divine Principle, p. 212.
33 Divine Principle, pp. 142-47.
34 Divine Principle, pp. 206-9, 213.
35 Ibid.
36 Rahner, pp. 300, 318. These ate two of the several ways in which Rahner seems to be using the word, "final."
37 Leith, pp. 30-31, 35-36.
38 Divine Principle, pp. 196, 215.