12. Karl Rahner: Pastoral Theologian

Abstract

This chapter looks at Karl Rahner as a pastoral theologian and notes that the “heart” is the major theme of his theological project. It provides the historical context of Germany where Rahner lived: the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment thought of German philosophy, the work of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the Kulturkampf (culture war) on the Catholic Church in 1872, the criminalization of the Society of Jesus in Germany until 1917, the oath against modernism, and the two world wars. All of these events helped to hone the pastoral vision of Rahner's theology. The chapter then touches on some of the overriding themes that come out of Rahner's grappling with such a world, and concludes that Rahner's theology of grace as God's self-communication is the lens by which all of his theology is based.