Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity by Karl Rahner

Abstract

BOOK REVIEW KARL RAHIDJR: Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduption to .the Idea of Christianity. Translated by WILLIAM V. DYcH. New York: Seabury Press, 1978. $19.50. In a number of ways this book is a summary. In the first place, it is a theological summary-statement of the principal Christian beliefs in their resonance with contemporary human concerns. The distinctive Christian claims about God, human person and history, world, about Christ, Church and sacraments, about hoped-for destiny-each is expounded with a sensitivity to present cultural interests. Moreover, Foundations summarizes, brings to plenary statement, a career of public theologizing in the Roman Catholic tradition that has extended over forty years (beginning with early studies on patristic spirituality); in some way, the home-coming of that odyssey is narrated on the pages of this book. The book might also be taken as a one-volume summary of the fourteen volumes of Rahner's Theological Investigations (hereafter TI), not to mention of the principal motifs that Rahner contributed to the Mysterium Salutis series. The basic themes and fresh insights of TI are granted a more succinct but also more systematic treatment in Foundations. In this respect, if keyed to the corresponding more extended items in Tl, the present book will provide a most serviceable introduction and map of Rahner's theology; indeed, in at least the first two chapters, Rahner has achieved a mode of expression that renders his thought somewhat more accessible than is the case with parallel treatments in Hearers of the Word or in certain items of Tl, for example. Finally and most importantly, this book presents a summary of Rahner's thought: the distinctive style, motivations and deployment of his theological thinking. For encountering that thinking in its utmost conciseness of basic principles and in particular clarity of line and movement, Foundations seems destined to be inscribed on the list of theological classics. For, to a degree that is exceptional in the history of theological thinking, Rahner's enterprise has exhibited a remarkable consistency over the years. Surely the spine of this consistency has been Rahner's possession of his transcendental method of inquiry from the very outset of his theological career (at least from the completion of Spirit in the World); this transcendental perspective has proved to be the Archimedean point of Rahner's project. But the consistency of his thinking has not been simply methodological but also contentual. For with a few axioms in hand (e.g." the 'immanent' Trinity is the 'economic' Trinity") Rabner has generated a theological edifice that has varied little in the course of its 186 BOOK REVIEW 187 accomplishment. With one exception (the emergence of a dominant Christocentrism ), most of the peripeties in Rahner's thought have been the result of external factors: e.g., the perceived shift in magisterial teaching on monogenism; Metz's critique of the " privatization of salvation "; the emergence of future-oriented theologies. Precisely the inner consistency of Rahner 's thought has permitted him to address these developments outside his system and to find a place for them within an already constituted theological universe, a place that does not jar the whole. No other work of Rahner's so strikingly illustrates that inner consistency nor so well reveals his theological universe as does Foundations. In any discussion of this work the issues of the audience of the intended address and of the mode of that address cannot be separated. As the "Preface " remarks (p. xiii) , Foundations grew out of lecture-courses that Rahner offered at Munich and Miinster in response to the requirement of Vatican H's Decree on Priestly Formation (art. 14) that a basic course treating the Christian mystery of salvation in an introductory and overview fashion begin the theological formation of Catholic students for the priesthood. The latter were the original audience of this work. Nevertheless. in its present form, Foundations is addressed to the broader community of believers; on their behalf, it is an attempt to state the grounds upon which the Christian option to believe is both intellectually honest and responsible in the contemporary world. Indeed, as part of his treatment of the "Jesus of history/Christ of faith" problem...