Tożsamość w rozwoju i różnorodności – integralna wizja tradycji Kościoła w teologii Waltera Kaspera

Abstract

Modern society while adhering to the ideals of scientificity, progressiveness and development finds it difficult to define its approach to Tradition, or it contests Tradition and rejects it. The same problem is experienced at the religious level. The Church should incessantly seek an adequate understanding of its Tradition. Departing from such assumptions. Cardinal Walter Kasper follows this direction in his thinking. In order to place and work out an issue, one should start from a broad understanding of the phenomenon of tradition (the anthropological level). Having analysed the crisis of tradition in contemporary tradition and stressed the importance of tradition as a generally human phenomenon, Kasper decidedly opposes the false alternative: either progress or preservation of tradition. The philosophical conception of “tradition”, which – drawing on the modified version of the system of Hegel – allows to define it as a unity of act and being, contents and process, results in a theological analysis of the understanding of the Tradition of the Church. For Kasper this is the place of manifesting the truth in history (the Christian interpretation of one of the basic questions in the philosophical systems of German idealism – G. W F. Hegel, F. W J. Schelling). The following aspects: Christological-pneumatological, ecclesiologica!, eschatological, and, eventually, typological-sacramental, unveil the wealth and depth of Tradition, but, above all, its universal understanding as the way to transmit the Gospel and the process of “self-giving” (Selbstueberlieferung) of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit towards the everlasting presence in the Church. The distinction between the one and the only one Tradition (the everlasting presence of the Truth of Christ in the Church) and the traditions resulting thereof (the manifestation of the Truth in its ever new historical attire), with respect to Kasper’s criteria of distinction between both realities, reveals the space of Christian freedom, openness to ever more profound (than its articulations in the Church) Truth. This truth of the Gospel of Christ that is present in the Church remains unaltered despite differences, development, and historical conditions of its testimonies.