Experiences of a Catholic Theologian

Abstract

Shortly before his death in March 1984, Karl Rahner offered this brief retrospective on his life's work as a theologian in which he focused on four experiences which, as he approached the end of his life, he considered crucial to any form of theological reflection. With characteristic modesty he uses these experiences as a way of critically reviewing his own theological work. Pride of place goes to what he calls the analogical nature of all theological assertions since Rahner always favored an apophatic way of speaking about God. Yet this God does not remain distant but has communicated God's very self to humankind. This self-communication of God, an experience of grace, is the second experience discussed here and constitutes for Rahner the core of the Christian message. A third retrospective experience is that as a Jesuit his theology has some affinity with the spirituality of his religious order. At least, that was his hope-that he would be able to incorporate some of the existentialism of Ignatius into his own way of theologizing. A fourth and final experience is the incongruence of theology with the other sciences. Nevertheless, if theologians are not to preoccupy themselves with a purely abstract concept of God, they will see the various natural sciences and artistic expressions such as music, visual art, and poetry as revealing the hand of God. The experience of not-knowing, of not being able to provide any clear answers to a multitude of problems and questions, led Rahner to plea for a greater modesty in theological discourse: A theology that wishes to answer all questions clearly and thoroughly is guaranteed to miss its proper 'object'.