Zusammenfassung / Summary
With his 2014 publication, “Maria - Ecclesia”, Gisbert Greshake offers neither a mere Mariology nor a mere Ecclesiology. Rather, he offers a thesis which seeks to resolve the remaining problems raised by his own theology of the Trinity and of Creation. His “Epilogue” is meant to be the solution of the puzzle with which the great spiritual minister and theologian Wilhelm Klein SJ (1889-1996) challenged his students. Klein's question was whether the problem of the mediation of God and World, as well as the mediation of eternity and time (an abiding problem with which Hegel grappled), has been answered by thinking of God as Trinitarian. But is it not necessary to assume a being which is pure relation, pure conception, and in this a perfect image of the perfect creational relationship of the three Trinitarian persons? Is the pre-existent wisdom of the Old Testament an indication of a creation before the Creation? And what do the Church Fathers mean when they speak not only about the Redeemer's pre-existence but also about the pre-existence of the Church? Is the pre-existent Ecclesia a Mary before the historical Mary - a “primordial Mary”? The present article discusses the far-reaching consequences resulting from the supposition of a pre-existent answer to the Logos for the relation between grace and freedom, between Christianity and non-Christian religions and, last but not least, for the self-understanding of the church.