Prima,
Where do I start? So many things I could say in reply. This could get rather lengthy, but I will try to be as brief as possible.
First of all, you don't need my permission for this, but you may consider this a private message, and therefore neither approve it nor reply to it. I will take no offense if that's how you decide to go.
One of the spiritual works of mercy is to instruct the ignorant. Most people do not welcome unsolicited instruction, but I have actually solicited clarification from you. You have chosen not to help me overcome my ignorance. I am neither an imbecile nor a heavyweight when it comes to theological concepts. In awareness of that, I granted that it was possible I was missing something in what you said. Your refutation of Hahn continues to elude me, apparently due to your failure to consider that I mean what I say, which prevents you from offering a constructive reply. Perhaps you might care enough about a fellow Christian to exhibit some patience with my struggle to understand you.
With that bit of sincere fraternal correction hopefully accomplished, I have maybe a couple more observations. I believe you put yourself at a disadvantage when you stray from the substance of our online conversation and resort to ad hominems. They do not bother me terribly, but they put you in a less than flattering light, as it begins to appear that you do not feel it sufficient to have the truth on your side. Instead of letting a new wave of bitterness arise within yourself, simply consider what I am saying and try to discern if I have a valid point.
As a matter of fact, I had already re-read your post(s) at least two or three times. While you did say some things distinctly different than Hahn, you did not support them effectively. In my reading of Hahn, he says that the third cup is of thanksgiving. You state that the thangsgiving in John 17 gives no reason to assume the fourth cup was not taken. At this point you and Hahn are virtually talking past each other, because you each are relating thanksgiving to distinctly different cup. Can you now see one of the sources of my confusion? At this point one of you is mistaken, no matter how honestly. If you believe it is Hahn, now would be the time to demonstrate how.
If Hahn's theology is merely pop-Catholicism, then we certainly are able to generate a fair amount of debate over something supposedly so shallow. If Hahn's work was so weak, you should have been able to decimate it before now in such a way that there was absolutely nothing I could say in reply without a transparent and embarassing partisan cheerleading on my part. That has not been the case.
There are many points I could raise about the nature of Christian theology, but this is already getting long, so I will limit myself to one quote that any aspiring theologian should find heartening:
"We have no need to wonder, therefore, if God is in the end a Thomist or a Rahnerian or a Barthian, as if one entire system could capture the revelation by rationalizing it through mental categories or empirical canons, as if some theologian finally got it right to the exclusion of others. The system, because hypothetical, remains free, able to be transcended. The best books of Rahner, Lonergan, von Balthasar need not be played off against each other for a final answer, but each system must be checked against all-too-possible wanderings into ideological or exclusivist confusion of the faith with the method or of the data with the observer's mental instrument."
Fr. Joseph Murphy, SJ
"Theology: Method and Content"
page 200, Transfiguration: Elements of Science and Christian Faith (1993)
And, yes, the above warnings hold true for Hahn or anybody's theologian of choice. If somebody is able to convince me that Hahn's theology is deficient to the point of potentially yeilding even a minor heresy, I would have no choice than to read Hahn in an entirely different light. So far that has not occurred.
Finally, I am nobody's groupie. I follow the truth, in season and out, and always strive to hear the voice of Christ, especially as it comes to us via his Church. Nothing less.
Respectfully,
Greg
