Karl Rahner and the Elusive Search for Christian Unity

Eric Dart

doi:10.3390/rel9110365

Abstract

Despite his prominence within the landscape of theology, Karl Rahner is largely absent in ecumenical discourse. This is surprising considering the concern he shows for both the church’s unity and ecumenism throughout his writings. Rahner’s understanding of unity and diversity and their relationship to one another has the potential to provide important resources for the contemporary ecumenical movement and the goal of visible unity. This article examines Karl Rahner’s theological understanding of ecumenism and the relationship of ecumenism to the realities of unity and diversity. This article explicates Rahner’s theologies of symbol and unity as prerequisites for understanding and developing the relationship between unity and diversity. The unity of the Church is fundamentally a symbolic reality in the process of “becoming”.

Highlights

Unity, from the earliest writings of Paul up through the contemporary ecumenical movement, is a reality that Christians have struggled to establish, maintain, develop, and achieve
Chapman observes in his article Ecumenism and the Visible Unity of the Church, “[f]rom the time of the apostles, Christian history has been marked by the tension between confessing the essential unity of the Church and the historical reality of disunity among Christians.”(Chapman 2015, p. 352)
The criteria for what exactly constitutes the essential visible unity of the Church and what kinds of diversity warrant disunity vary throughout history and between particular churches

Summary

Introduction

From the earliest writings of Paul up through the contemporary ecumenical movement, is a reality that Christians have struggled to establish, maintain, develop, and achieve. The criteria for what exactly constitutes the essential visible unity of the Church and what kinds of diversity warrant disunity vary throughout history and between particular churches. The local church must be structured in such a way that unity does not destroy diversity and diversity does not destroy unity. This appears at first sight to be a totally unrealistic principle. The following looks to the writings of Karl Rahner as a resource for the contemporary ecumenical movement’s work in discerning the relationship between unity and diversity and their relationship to one another. The following takes up Rahner’s theology of unity and symbol as potential sources for discerning the ecumenism’s goal of “visible unity in one faith and one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ.” (World Council of Churches 2018)

Karl Rahner

Theology of Symbol

Theology of Unity

Rahner and the Nature of Ecumenism

Conclusions