Mitsunobu Ichiro

１００号記念

１００号記念

１００号記念

Continuing from the last issue, this article examines what a kind of momentum of the creation-perspective is found out in Pesch's doctrine ofgrace-justification and how it is integrated into his entire theology. First, the doctrine of justification, an important branch of the doctrine of grace, is taken up. This subject is understood by Pesch as the summation of God's merciful acts just under the viewpoint of the overcoming of sin. The doctrine of justification has double focuses like an ellipse, namely a negative accentuation in the event of salvation (i. e. God's anger, curse and punishment against man's sin) on the one hand and on the other hand a positive profile of the Christian belief (i. e, man's freedom). These two aspects form the genius of Pesch's theology itself. That is to say, he bases his theology on two somewhat contradictory elements : a harmonious estimate of the unity between creation and salvation from the Catholic tradition, based mainly on Thomas Aquinas, and a sharp appeal to the fact of sin, which is the essential concern of the Lutheran heritage. However Pesch opts for a positive creation-centered way of thinking finally, when he interprets in modern language the significance of the original occurrence of the justification. He sees it now as the unconditional acceptance by God of the sinner "as he is". According to Pesch the message of justification today should not any longer lay emphasis on the accusation or condemnation of the sinner by the law as in former days, but should emphasize God's primary affirmation of the sinner. Pesch takes this fundamental option for a creation-optimism mainly from Thomas, but also from Luther's special image of God and the concept of "belief" which also show a creation-centered perspective. According to Pesch Luther's image of God ("A1leinwirksamkeit", i. e. God alone works out everything) and the idea of "belief" ("Gott Gott sein zu lassen", i. e. to let God be God) bring us a sense of God's living presence. The chief source of his option for a creation-centered perspective comes however from his understanding of grace as "qualitas" in Thomas, which expresses the actuality that "God's love works in us always and is necessarily creative". This article concludes that Pesch's theology of grace and justification does not take sides with any freezingly pessimistic sincentered standpoint at all, in spite of its first statement. It lays stress rather on the side of man's salvation, and there also creation will be affirmatively accepted. Grace then gives creation a proper orientation to its goal. The limitation of Pesch's theology must be pointed out. This is found in its initial intention itself, that is in his motif of contributing to ecumenical dialog between the Catholic and the Lutheran church. The range of Pesch's theological sight is consequently restricted within this Western issue, in the very doctrine of grace and justification. It does not take account of any other Christian tradition, much less of other religions. Its theological dynamic stays within the dimension of the Incarnation, which consists in the relation between the Father and the Son. Because of this feature of his theology Pesch pays scarcely any attention to the role of the Trinity or of the Spirit in his doctrine of grace-justification and consequently to the concrete penetration of God's love into the reality of creation. Learning from Pesch's efforts in his own tradition, but also considering Eastern spirituality, which underlines man's unity with nature (creation) through a negation of ego, one gains a new inspiration to develop a doctrine of grace in our Japanese context.

As one of the most prominent representatives in the field of theologi-cal study for the doctrine of grace and justification, Otto Hermann Pesch pursues his investigation with specific accent on ecumenical responsibility. His theology is deep-rooted in the Western tradition of the church, and intends to mediate it in the life-condition of the present day. The author, therefore, characterizes one of his main works "Freisein aus Gnade" as the traditional "doctrine of grace" from a modern point of view and also as an up-to-date "theological anthropology" linked with tradition. In Theological anthropology, the newest tractatus in Christian dogmatics, Pesch, a Catholic theologian, works towards a certain approval of the general trend of Protestant theology. That is to say, the word of God reveals human existence as sinful. According to his basic theological interest of trying to face the modern crisis of belief, Pesch points out the unfortunate situation, in which one lives as if God does not exist, in fact eliminating God from everyday life and then, as a result, suffering. But this secret rejection of every relation to the transcendence in the name of desire f or personal autonomy is none other than what Luther called "unbelief". Thus Pesch's theology takes its starting point from an anthropological view of the human being as sinner. On the other hand, such a standpoint meets with considerable criticism from a number of theologians who base themselves on a theology of creation and think that the very positive thought can maintain unity and balance among the realities of Christian belief. They suppose that a negative orientation like the theological anthropology of Pesch which starts from sinfulness of humankind, makes theology narrower, because it reduces the role of theology to the function of human self-understanding. Then task of this article is to investigate how the "creation-grace" approach relates to the sin-centered theological position. Pesch understands grace in a form of a triad of "grace", "freedom" and "belief" which acts on us as a driving dynamism-according to Pesch is "the gentle fascinating power of God's love" which is coming to us constantly and working creatively. Although Pesch doesn't take any creationcentered position for his study, he tries however to re-animate the somewhat old-fashioned concepts like "grace" or "belief" through a new understanding of God's love, i. e. through a creation-perspective. This article is the first half of a summary of the dissertation : "Die Schopfunfsperspektive in der Gnaden- and Rechtfertigungslehre bei Otto Hermann Pesch", which was accepted for doctorate by the Faculty of Theology of die Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen, Frankfurt am Main, in 2001. The whole text in German is available.