Atonement and the Sensus Fidelium:
Comparing the Soteriologies of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar
By Mark F. Fischer, St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo
Although we commonly think of Karl Rahner as the champion of the sensus
fidelium, he also exposed the shortcomings of traditional soteriology, including the
popular theories of satisfaction and vicarious atonement.1 He was particularly critical of
St. Anselm’s elaboration of the vicarious atonement, the idea that the crucifixion offered
satisfaction to God for the insult made by sin. Rahner feared that this theory could be
misunderstood as a ransom paid to the devil, or as a depiction (however inadequate) of
God’s justice, or as a demand for reparation as the condition for forgiveness. These
misinterpretations of the satisfaction theory are so popular, and Rahner’s critique so
radical, that the critique almost seems to contradict the sensus fidelium.
By contrast, Hans Urs von Balthasar strongly emphasized the vicarious
atonement.2 He seems (at first glance) more faithful than Rahner to traditional
soteriology and to the sensus fidelium. Balthasar taught the Father loaded the sins of the
world onto the Son, condemning them (and him) to hell. The crucifixion was a sacrificial
liturgy for which the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16) and the Suffering Servant (Is. 52-53)
paved the way. In the economy of salvation, the Son’s life was exchanged for ours; but
in the immanent Trinity, the cross ultimately expressed God’s compassion and selfemptying love. Balthasar’s soteriology reflects (seemingly better than Rahner’s) the
traditional sense of the faithful, namely, that Christ was sent as a sacrifice to repair the
gap between humanity and God.
Depicting Rahner and Balthasar as antagonists who took opposing sides of the
sensus fidelium, however, grossly misrepresents them. The proposed paper will sketch
the distinctiveness of their soteriologies in order to point the way to a deeper synthesis.
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Responsibility. The paper will show that Rahner, far from rejecting the satisfaction
theory and the notion of expiatory sacrifice, criticized them in order to emphasize
human responsibility in the drama of salvation.
Satisfaction. Balthasar himself criticized Anselm’s satisfaction theory for showing
the divine Father and Son as legal disputants, rather than as hypostases of divine love
who established the Christ-form as a new paradigm for human beings.
Liturgy and Sacrament. Rahner’s advocacy of quasi-sacramental efficacy in the
cause of salvation, and Balthasar’s idea of the relation between humanity and divinity
as a cosmic liturgy, reflect their consensus that salvation is the initiative of God who
created both liturgy and sacrament to foster the divine encounter with humanity.
Partisans of Rahner and Balthasar tend to heighten their differences. The paper proposed
here aims to see convergences. It will show that both theologians, however different,
held that salvation stems from the Trinity, God working with and through human beings.
See Rahner’s articles on “Salvation,” Part I (“Universal Salvific Will”) and Part IV (“Theology”), in
Sacramentum Mundi; as well as Foundations of Christian Faith, chapter VI.6.
2
See Balthasar’s The Glory of the Lord, vols. 6-7, as well as Theo-Drama, vol. 4.
1