Karl Rahner's Theology Research Articles

Freedom Made Manifest: Rahner's Fundamental Option and Theological Aesthetics, Peter JosephFritz, The Catholic University of America Press, 2019 (ISBN 978‐0‐8132‐3119‐8), xx + 278 pp., hb $65

Freedom Made Manifest: Rahner's Fundamental Option and Theological Aesthetics, Peter JosephFritz, The Catholic University of America Press, 2019 (ISBN 978‐0‐8132‐3119‐8), xx + 278 pp., hb $65

Dominican and Jesuit Theologians at an Ecumenical Council: Yves Congar and Karl Rahner

The Second Vatican Council was not only a meeting of bishops from around the world, it was also an assembly of theologians. Prominent among those gathered were the Dominican theologian Yves Congar and the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner. Both offered a positive theology of grace outside of Christianity, an embrace of true inculturation within the church, and both saw the council as a beginning in opening up the church to theological variety appropriate to become a global presence in a new era. During the council, Congar and Rahner worked together, developed a friendship, and found that they had harmonious theological perspectives that allowed them to become valuable allies in shaping the final outcome of the council.

Theological-relational pedagogy: Winnicott, Rahner, and the development of a theological perspective on relational pedagogy

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to move beyond a critique of historically dominant ways of thinking about teaching and learning relationships to offer a conceptualization of relational pedagogy from a theological perspective. It offers commentary on the potential of relational pedagogy for Christian faith-based schools informed by the scholarship of German theologian Karl Rahner and the dialectical child psychotherapy of D. W. (Donald) Winnicott. An argument for a theological-relational pedagogy is outlined, followed by discussion of three features linking Rahner, Winnicott, and relational pedagogy: realizing our human-ness through relationships with others; the role of a dialectical unity between self and other; and the mystery of human subjectivity. The paper concludes by signalling some of the implications for faith-based curriculum and pedagogy arising from our argument, centred on the emergence of a new theology of childhood.

Hopeful Hopkins by Desmond Egan (review)

Hopeful Hopkins, Desmond Egan (Newbridge: Goldsmith Press, 2017), 120 pages. What Desmond Egan brings to bear on Hopkins criticism is a refreshing, distinctively poetic, aesthetic lens, an approach and a reading which make the work alive and which may hope to make it more widely known and better understood. The first chapter opens with an epigraph from the great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner: ‘Darkness can only be perceived by an eye which was created for light’. There is a story about Rahner that, every time he sat down to write, he contemplated three words written in large letters above his desk: ‘Nothing before Kant’. For him, in his theology the subjectivity of the stating subject must be taken seriously and fully accounted for. This is very apt for Hopkins, whose focus is the climate of the seasons of the heart, our ‘being indoors’. It is also apt that Rahner should echo Keats’s concept of ‘negative capability’, the capacity to live with uncomfortable questions and painful feelings without sinking into clinical depression. Is a tendency to sadness ‘incompatible with inner peace’, this first chapter asks. For Egan, supposedly depressive artists such as Kafka, Bergman, Becket or Brian Bourke exemplify the truth that ‘a tragic sense is by no means incompatible with a positive disposition’. Thus, although the poet’s time in Ireland was partly miserable, he nevertheless wrote twenty-eight poems in that period. For the author, the so-called sonnets of desolation are sonnets of hope, not despair. He argues cogently and, for me at least, persuasively that the sickly Hopkins was far from being a nervous wreck. Clearly the poet experienced what might be called Prufrockesque moments of self-doubt, but examples of his sense of humour can be uncovered as well. The author sets out to redress an incomplete perception of Hopkins, whose aliveness to the resources of language and whose metrical complexity in composition imply imaginative energy and inner spiritual space. A unifying thread in what is a collection of eight essays is the idea that poets, and Hopkins in particular, centre on what is concrete and individual, on the specifics of subjectivity, ‘the sensuous and the precise’, what Hopkins speaks of as inscape, without overlooking the objective thematic focus of the work and the inspiration of a topic which so preoccupies this poet, the humanity of Christ. One critic, Noel Barber SJ, has praised Egan’s reading of ‘As kingfishers Autumn 2018: Book Reviews Studies • volume 107 • number 427 395 catch fire’ as ‘the best study of that poem I have seen’. This poem contains the great cri de coeur, ‘what I do is me, for that I came’. That clarity of calling, it might be said, echoes something of Desmond Egan’s own sense of mission to redress the balance between the dark sonnets and the vitality and imaginative energy of Hopkins’s work as a whole. A view of the poet as the depressed, repressed prophet of doom and gloom is one-sided, hence Egan’s title and focus on ‘hopeful Hopkins’. It takes a poet to know a poet, as Robert Smart puts it in his heartwarming introduction, and Egan’s argument is wellsupported from the evidence of the poet’s life and poetic writing. His aliveness to the materiality of poetry is responsive to the exuberance of Hopkins’s images from nature and the metaphoric weight they carry. The metaphors are obvious enough, but Egan is alive to what might be called the metonymic dimension and draws the reader’s attention to the features of punctuation that keep the movement going, aided – in the case of ‘As kingfishers catch fire’ – by the twenty verbs that, as Egan notices with poetic alertness, mean that ‘every image is one of movement’. Egan is concerned not just to teach a subject but to evoke interest in the musicality and metaphoric layers of the poetic craft and art. Matisse said of his paintings that his aim was ‘to evoke and not to inform’. Like C S Lewis’s definition of a good book as one that invites good reading, Hopkins requires time to ‘get’ him; he is, in that sense, an acquired taste. Something similar...

The Jesuit and Patristic Spirituality in Karl Rahnerʼs Spiritual Theology

In the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner’s life and work, philosophy, spirituality and systematic theology are harmonized for the benefit of the increasingly desacralized and secularized man of the late modernity. Familiarization with the great world’s philosophers, from Plato to Aristotle up to Blondel and Heidegger, with Ignatian spirituality and with the Eastern and Western Fathers of the Church decisively helped Rahner in his endeavour to free the Catholic theology from the “captivity” of scholastic rationalism and objectivism and to redirect it “existentially”, by a genuine turn, from an abstract God, isolated in the transcendent and irrelevant for the Christian life, to the concrete man, “hearer of God’s word”. The spiritual experience of the most influential Catholic theologian of the 20th century was conveyed in an original way, by pastoral guidance, through lectures and his monumental work, on many generations of Catholic servants and believers.Setting out the Ignatian and Patristic sources of Karl Rahner’s spiritual theology, this article outlines, against its background, the odyssey of yesterday’s and today’s Christian experience, at the same time emphasizing the profound ecumenical dimension of patristic spirituality. Keywords: Karl Rahner, Jesuit, Spiritual Exercises, Ignatian spirituality, Church Fathers, existential experience

Grace, Symbol, and Liturgy: Constructing the Theological Anthropology of Nichiren Daishonin

Anthony B. Pinn called upon theologians to do theology in "non-traditional ways," by considering overlooked dimensions of African American life and black theology. One way to do this is to consider a non-Abrahamic religious tradition that African Americans practice, such as Nichiren Buddhism. As I am both African American and a Buddhist, failure to consider such overlooked dimensions of African American life and black theology cause people like myself to be excluded. In this article, I examine the writings and liturgical recommendations of Nichiren Daishonin (1222–1282) in order to construct his theological anthropology. Nichiren was a Buddhist monk who publicly broke with the Japanese Tendai tradition in which he had been ordained, by declaring that the best way to express devotion to the teachings contained in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra or The Sūtra on the Lotus Blossom of the Wonderful Law (Lotus Sūtra) was to chant its title in the form of a mantra: Nam-MyōhōRenge-Kyō. I bring Nichiren's writings into dialogue with Karl Rahner's theology of the symbol, as presented by US Hispanic Catholic theologian Miguel Diaz; with feminist theologian Jennifer Beste's work on trauma theory as a challenge to Rahner's theology of grace; and with womanist theologian M. Shawn Copeland's notion of "liturgy of the Spirit." This dialogue shows that for Nichiren, the human being is "Buddha-in-the-world," and has an innate potential to express the life-state of Buddhahood; one primary symbol, the Gohonzon, manifests this potential; and suffering is the result of an innate capacity for "hellish experiences" due to a kind of ignorance known as fundamental darkness. Further, Beste's work on trauma theory and Copeland's notion of "liturgy of the Spirit" show that Nichiren's theological anthropology is concretized in the liturgical practice known as gongyō that he recommended his followers engage in, and demonstrates that Nichiren gives sufficient attention to experiences of brokenness and healing, thereby avoiding the charge of having too positive a theology. [End Page 267]

The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions by Gerald O'Collins

Reviewed by: The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions by Gerald O'Collins Glenn B. Siniscalchi Gerald O'Collins, The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 214. $45.00. O'Collins's concern is to explain and defend Vatican II's teaching on the uniqueness of Christ and the possibility of salvation outside the Church, in order to convince those who endorse religious exclusivism. In this view, none of the formal outsiders can be saved: "Clearly many Roman Catholics and other Christians find it unsettling or even disturbing to acknowledge that God's revelation and salvation are available for 'the others'" (p. 159; cf. p. 202). One of O'Collins's presuppositions is that the meaning of biblical and conciliar texts can take on a meaning of their own after they have been originally written down. Although Vatican II did not explicitly state that the other religions are "ways of salvation" (p. viii), the texts allow for such an interpretation. He says that Vatican II "developed some teaching on other religions" (p. 1, cf. p. 149) and "offered something startlingly new" (p. 143). Instead of labeling the outsiders as "pagans," "heathens," and "infidels," the Council Fathers would rather use positive language about those outside the Catholic communion. Beginning with an exposition of the scriptures, O'Collins contends that the scripture writers give positive evaluations regarding the possible fate of the formal outsiders. By analyzing the documents of Vatican II, he also believes that the reality of divine revelation can be found outside the boundaries of Judaism and Christianity. A favorable response to revelation allows outsiders to be saved. Unless God reveals Godself outside the church, formal outsiders could never be saved. O'Collins's endorsement of Karl Rahner's theology enables him to speak freely of people's being saved through the other world religions. O'Collins's careful treatment of the biblical and conciliar texts is continuously accurate and informative. He rightly says, "Neither the thesis of total [End Page 617] discontinuity (or substitution of something completely new) nor the thesis of total continuity (or no change whatsoever) can possibly be sustained. The crucial question concerns the degree of change or discontinuity" (p. 202). By the end of the book he speaks about "considerable discontinuity" in the "official doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church" (p. 204). Such a claim cannot be denied. In terms of the way that the Church expressed doctrine, there was indeed remarkable change, but in terms of the content of teaching, the doctrine of salvation outside the Church remains unchanged. Like so many other reputable publications in the theology of religions, the reader must pay careful attention to the way in which O'Collins defines and utilizes his terms in order to exegete his text appropriately. His book will be an excellent text for graduate-level courses on interfaith relations. No matter where the reader falls on the spectrum of Catholic belief on this particular issue, this book is a serious work of theology that deserves a wide readership. [End Page 618] Glenn B. Siniscalchi Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology Saint Meinrad, IN Copyright © 2018 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

Review Symposium: Four Perspectives on Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics, by Peter Joseph Fritz, followed by a Response from the Author

Review Symposium: Four Perspectives on Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics, by Peter Joseph Fritz, followed by a Response from the Author

Rival Methodologies in Emergence Theory: A Non-Dual Approach

ABSTRACTJason Roberts proposes that Karl Rahner's theology of nature serves as an appropriate dialogue partner for natural scientists like Terrence Deacon in his naturalistic approach to the emergence of higher-order levels of existence and activity within the natural sciences. Yet Rahner and Deacon employ different understandings of formal causality in their respective approaches to evolutionary theory: for Rahner, causal agency vis-à-vis constituents; for Deacon, objective constraint on the agency of constituents. Yet a compromise position may be available based on a modest revision of the relationship between societies and their constituent actual entities in A.N. Whitehead's cosmology.

What might a non-confessional theory of Catholic education look like?

This article emulates the new stance of Professor Michael Hand on faith schools. He illustrates how theological criteria could be used to inform and guide curriculum aims in a way that avoids indoctrination and the perils of faith-based education. This approach is adopted vis-à-vis Catholic education in order to sketch out what a non-confessional theory of Catholic education might look like. It is argued that a central feature of Catholic theology, as presented by the leading theologian Karl Rahner, is a recognition of the centrality of mystery in human existence. This theological insight is applied to the curriculum and it is used to provide a theological justification for a non-confessional account of Catholic education.

Ludwig Wittgenstein i Karl Rahner o nie-obecności Boga w świecie

Istnieje w myśleniu religijnym punkt szczególnie krytyczny, gdy ktoś z jednej strony uważa, że świat może i powinien być analizowany wyłącznie środkami naturalistycznej nauki, a z drugiej strony dostrzega w nim obecność Boga, którego nie sposób nimi ująć. W jaki sposób można pogodzić determinizm naukowego obrazu świata oraz wiarę, że jest w nim obecny Bóg? W artykule analizuję stanowiska z dwu różnych dziedzin, które starają się stawić czoła temu problemowi. Tezy mistyczne z Traktatu logiczno-filozoficznego Ludwiga Wittgensteina zestawiam z rozważaniami niemieckiego teologa Karla Rahnera. Idea, jaką można odnaleźć u obu myślicieli, jest następująca: działalność Boga, sama w sobie nadprzyrodzona, w świecie dokonuje się zawsze środkami przyrodzonymi. W tekście wskazuję na możliwe konsekwencje powyższego stanowiska oraz perspektywy, jakie ono ze sobą niesie.

Cur Verbum Homo? An Augustinian Rebuttal of Karl Rahner

Prominent twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner rejects conventional accounts of Trinitarian theology as “mere ‘monotheis[m].’” Even in the absence of any doctrine of the Trinity, “God would still, as (the one) person, have become man, which is in fact about all the average Christian explicitly grasps when he confesses the incarnation.” A Trinitarian theology fails if it “never makes it very clearly exactly which divine hypostasis”—the Logos—“has assumed human nature.”Rahner accuses Saint Augustine of being the first to set the Church down the path of such failed Trinitarianism: “[S]tarting from Augustine . . . it has been among theologians a more or less foregone conclusion that each of the divine persons . . . could have become man,” meaning that the fact of the incarnation indicates nothing particular about the Logos.But Augustine does not offer the generic “God-man” as humanity’s incarnate savior. Though he certainly comments on the importance of Jesus Christ’s uniting the divine and human natures, Christ is able to do this on account of being the “Word of God, through which all things were made.” Christ can only be the harmonizing, salvific “interlock . . . of creation” because—as the Logos—“whatever has been made in this world was in him life.”

Informed by Grace: Terrence Deacon, Karl Rahner, and Emergence

Theologian Karl Rahner holds that in trinitarian theology and evolutionary conceptions of Christology and anthropology, personhood emerges as a dynamic function of being-in-relation. Integrating Rahner's insights with neuroscientist Terrence W. Deacon's recent work on emergence provides a fresh framework for interpreting and developing Rahner's understanding of the manner in which created being subsists dynamically vis-à-vis infinite Being as such (the analogia entis), how one might conceive of God's creative activity or grace at work in evolutionary processes, and how Homo sapiens has evolved to bear the imago trinitatis—image of the Trinity—in a unique way.

Zen And The White Whale: A Buddhist Rendering of Moby-Dick by Daniel Herman (review)

ZEN AND THE WHITE WHALE: A Buddhist Rendering of Moby-Dick. By Daniel Herman. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press. 2014.Trying to catch Moby Dick the whale, like catching Melville's novel, can be a frustrating and often self-defeating quest. It is not simply the foundational great American novel (see Lawrence Buell's 2014 work, The Dream of the Great American Novel) but a text that cannot be contained by any geographic, disciplinary, or ideological boundaries. Yet, Daniel Herman has caught (or come as close as to catching it) in simply one of the most imaginative, creative, and fascinating academic works I have read in years.In Zen and the White Whale, Herman draws upon his experience and study of Japanese and Chinese Zen Buddhist traditions and writings as the lenses to explore the often illusive meanings of Melville's novel and its key characters. A reader can potentially drown in the speculative nature of Herman's text (and here I refer to the academic work, though the novel also has its casualties). Words and phrases like perhaps, maybe, or it is possible are linked with every one of Herman's assertions, but this is an academic detective novel immersed in the possible, not the actual. Herman is clear that little to no evidence is available to prove Melville was aware or deeply read Zen Buddhist writings (xiv). Ironically, seems to be the case that Melville's (unconscious) awareness of Buddhist principles was sharper before he was more formally exposed to them, as evidenced in some of his later writings (13). Moreover, in some cases, historical scholars can prove that American knowledge of Zen Buddhism was virtually nonexistent when Melville composed Moby Dick, and only imaginative leaps and educated guesses can point to encounters and interactions on Melville's peripatetic global journeys. But no matter: the confluence and mirror images or echoing ideas between Buddhist thought and Melville's novel are so eerie and interrelated that one could call Melville (or perhaps Ishmael) an anonymous Buddhist, if we employ Catholic theologian Karl Rahner's anonymous Christian terminology from the mid-twentieth century. Let me give a few succinct examples.Herman sees Ishmael as the embodiment of the Middle Way (141), where a self transcends the self, free of detachment or illusion or permanent naming. Call me Ishmael, the novel's famous opening, testifies to this fluid and contextual process. …

Zdroje filozofického myšlení Karla Rahnera

The article deals with the basics of metaphysics of the German theologian Karl Rahner, as it developed in his key works Geist in Welt and Horer des Wortes. In both cases, the article pertains to the second edition of both works, which are revised and supplemented. The starting point for the philosophical thinking of Karl Rahner can be seen in four philosophical streams: the classical scholasticism of St. Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant's transcendental reflection, the intellectual dynamism of Joseph Marechal and the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger. More specifically, the scope of the article is to explore the question that is the fundamental basis of Rahner's metaphysics. The question has two sides: the interrogativeness (which demonstrates the original unity of knowledge and being) and the disputableness (doubtfulness, alienation of being by the matter). Finally, the article raises certain objections to Rahner's metaphysical starting point. The main objection to the subjectivism can be seen as having been overcome in Rahner's theology of the symbol.

Some Theological Reservations Surrounding One Contemporary Christian Approach to Teaching and Learning

This article raises a number of theological reservations about one contemporary Christian approach to teaching and learning. For many years David Smith and Trevor Cooling have played a leading role in demonstrating how Christian beliefs and theological themes might be integrated into classroom practice across the curriculum. But despite the good fruits in their work, there are some theological reservations that need to be raised. There is something deficient about the perceived relationship between theology and education that grounds this contemporary example of a Christian approach to teaching and learning. To illustrate this concern, an embryonic proposal that draws inspiration from the systematic theologian Karl Rahner is presented. This is done in order to describe how theology could provide the guiding framework for educational theory in general and for teaching and learning across the curriculum.*

Praise as Protector of the Natural World

Praise as Protector of the Natural World Kathy Abbott About two miles from my parish, there is a place where on these blazing hot summer days, you can enter a green lawn under an enclosure of towering oak trees and feel ten degrees cooler. The oaks surround an ancient spring‐fed pond, which has been enlarged and adapted over the years into a pond/swimming pool hybrid. In the 1930s children dove off a floating dock in the middle of the pond, but now they use diving boards and tubular plastic slides along a straight cement wall at the deep end. Despite the cement, the tree canopy and the pond's rounded, dark shape provide the impression that you are at a serene, natural body of water. In fact, native frogs have this impression too, since each August they find their way to the grassy, shaded edge of the water, much to the delight of frog‐catching children. This green place is special, and a new historical marker put up in 2010 says as much. It was founded in 1929 by a group of Jewish summer homeowners from Brooklyn. The pool plus 150 acres were known as The Colony until 1969. The original owners enlarged the natural pond, stocked it with fish, and also allowed swimming. The pool transferred to municipal ownership in 1969 and has been managed and maintained by municipal employees ever since. Because it is a municipal pool, the landscaping is not on par with private swim clubs, but those majestic old oaks are inviting. Since 1995, I have raised my children on the partially shaded beach side of the pool. Under the trees, parents park their strollers and let infants and toddlers sleep. Mothers, protected by a blanket, nurse infants. There are two play structures, one for toddlers and one for older kids, in the wooded recesses around the beach area. Both are welcome respites from the sun at the water's edge. Lots of people know the pattern of the sun, and set up their chairs on the side of the beach where the shade grows as the day progresses. Others place their chairs at the edge of the shade closest to the water in the morning, and then follow the shade as it gradually retracts. Shade is what the skin doctors order, especially for children under age 3. There is something else the shade offers. You feel an almost parental comfort from the stately trees. When you reach a relaxed equilibrium of playing, chatting or observing, you may notice the abiding presence of the trees. Amidst the gentle rustle of the leaves, you can become in tune with the hum, the perpetual motion of the earth's energy within and without. The trees are breathing themselves, sending our lungs pure oxygen, and we, in a divinely complementary way, return the favor by breathing out carbon dioxide. In addition, the trees are performing transpiration by releasing fine water droplets through their leaves, thereby cooling all organisms living beneath their canopy. As one of these organisms, you may sense that you are nourished and suspended in a larger whole. This feeling of comfort from nature, this almost womb‐like experience, is called Biophilia, the love of nature. Biophilia, a term coined by biologist E.O. Wilson, leads us to seek recreation in beautiful natural places, with water, scenic landscapes and clear skies. We want to re‐charge, re‐create ourselves in natural spaces where we momentarily feel free from personal obstacles and challenges. Theologian David Toolan, S.J. calls this felt‐sense of belonging to the infinite a “cosmic embrace.” This intuited awareness of participating in something larger than ourselves is also what theologian Karl Rahner, S.J. defined as the human capacity for “pre‐reflective,” “pre‐conceptual” knowledge that the divine is incarnate in our world. St. Augustine referred to this same non‐verbal knowledge of God when he wrote in the 4th century that Christians, of which the vast majority were illiterate, could read the “Book of Nature” equally as well as the sacred scriptures to find illumination about the order, beauty and love of God. Our ancestors set to music this knowledge of...

Toward a Theology of Infertility and the Role ofDonum Vitae

A theology of infertility is needed to help couples and the broader ecclesial community understand the theological implications of infertility. Infertility raises questions about human freedom, finitude, embodiment, childlessness, and parenthood. In this article, dominant cultural assumptions surrounding each of these areas when considering reproductive technologies are sketched. Official Roman Catholic teaching on reproductive technologies (Donum Vitae), while rejecting most forms of such technologies, does provide a viable response to the presupposition that reproductive technologies resolve infertility. Given the dominant cultural assumptions and insights from Roman Catholic teaching, this article advocates for several ecclesial changes when considering infertility. Finally, theological resources for developing a theology of infertility are offered. Specifically, insights from Karl Rahner's theology of concupiscence are examined with an eye toward how they provide a framework for rethinking the cultural assumptions about freedom and finitude when considering reproductive technologies.

Interpreting Rahner's Metaphoric Logic

Recent provocative reinterpretations of Karl Rahner's theology illustrate the hermeneutical challenge of retrieving his achievement for a new era. The spectrum of positions is exemplified by Karen Kilby, Patrick Burke, and Philip Endean. The essay proposes an alternative interpretive scheme attentive to Rahner's metaphoric logic.

A Sense of the Tragic in a Christian Theology of Freedom

For many Christian theologians and non-Christian theorists about Christianity, tragedy has no serious place in a Christian conception of the world; at best, tragedy is an episode overcome by the triumph of resurrection. Drawing on Karl Rahner's theology of freedom, this article argues that including a sense of the tragic in a Christian conception of the world can both undermine a saccharine theology immune to the threats of contingent history and, paradoxically, be a means of reengaging a Christian theology of hope, understood as commitment to the world.