"The Church of Sinners": Radner and Rahner

"The Scribes and the Pharisees—they are not in the Church alone but everywhere and in all disguises—will always drag "the sinful woman" before the Lord and accuse her (with secret satisfaction that she is, thank God, no better than themselves) —"Lord, this woman has been taken again in adultery. What sayest Thou?" And this woman will not be able to deny it. No, it is scandal enough. And there is nothing to extenuate it. She thinks only of her sins, because she has rarely committed them, and she forgets (how could the humble maid do otherwise?) the hidden and shining nobility of her holiness. And so she does not attempt a denial. She is the poor Church of Sinners. Her humility, without which she would not be holy, knows only her guilt. She stands before Him to Whom she is espoused, Who has loved her and given Himself up for her to sanctify her, who knows her sins better than all her accusers. But He is silent. He writes down her sins in the sand of world history which—with her guilt—will soon be effaced. He is silent a little while, which to us seems thousands of years. And He judges this woman only through the silence of His love which gives grace and absolves. In every century new accusers confronted this "woman", and stole away, one after another, beginning with the eldest, for there was not one who found her who was himself without sin. And in the end the Lord will be alone with the sinner. He will turn and gaze at His fallen Spouse, and ask: Woman, where are they who accuse thee? Has no man condemned thee? And she will reply with unspeakable remorse and humility: No man, Lord. The Lord will go to her and say: Then neither will I condemn thee. He will kiss her brow and say: My Spouse, my holy Church."

 - Karl Rahner, "The Church of Sinners" (1947, collected in Theological Investigations, VI)

Being an intern at Church of the Incarnation has many advantages, one of which has been the opportunity to attend a class on ecclesiology Ephraim Radner has been teaching as part of the Incarnation School of Theology.  Thinking through what we mean by "the church" with the Rev. Dr. Radner has been a timely exercise for me, as I consider where I stand in the mess that is Anglicanism in North America (more on this in future).  The last two days have been particularly apropos to the current situation, as we have considered how to articulate the church's oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity in the face of her sinfulness and brokenness in history.

Radner has convinced me that any understanding of the church must acknowledge her sinfulness as part of her identity in time.  He suggests that a figural reading of the church is the best way to articulate how it is that the church that has so evidently failed time and again is truly said to be "one, holy, catholic and apostolic."  How?  Because a person (e.g. Adam, Israel, David, Mary, Peter) has a history which is marked by sin, judged and forgiven by Christ, and which finds fulfillment in the person of Christ.  Radner used Karl Rahner's famous essay, "The Church of Sinners" (with which I began this post) as an example of such a figural reading.  For Rahner, the church is the woman caught in adultery, whose holiness is found in her repentance and her Lord's forgiveness. (If you object to this figure on the basis of the story's questionable authenticity, then take the case of Peter, or Israel, or David, etc.)  Thus, the church is inescapably (in history) in need of continual conversion.  

If the church must be semper reformanda, always reforming, as part of its very identity, then surely division is not the solution to the church's failures. 

[The images are from Rembrandt's painting The Woman Taken in Adultery (1644) and his drawing Christ and the woman taken in adultery (1659), respectively.]