Rahner's Theology Research Articles

Theological Investigations: Volume XVI by Karl Rahner, S. J., and: The Acting Person by Karol Wojtyla

BOOK REVIEWS Theological Investigations: Volume XVI. By KARL RABNER, S. J. New York: The Seabury Press, 1979. Pp. xii + Q75, with index. $14.95. The Acting Person. By KAROL WoJTYLA. Boston: D. Reidel, 1979. Pp. xxiii + 367, with index. By reviewing these two books together we should be able to compare the anthropologies of Karol Wojtyla and Karl Rahner. Clearly, The Acting Person is an essay in philosophical anthropology. While the most recent volume of Rahner's Theological Investigations is more diversified in scope, the human person remains sufficiently in the forefront to found a comparative essay. Given the probably greater familiarity of the reader with the thought of Rahner, I shall use Wojtyla's book as the point of departure and give it a lengthier treatment. Discussing each author in turn will help to provide a brief overview of their works as a basis for a presentation of their views on human transcendence and freedom. In this way we can achieve a sharper focus. The simple devout soul who stumbles into a religious book store and, moved by the impressive cover picture of His Holiness in full regalia, purchases The Acting Person for devotional reading will find his or her perseverance sorely tried. This is a difficult volume. The prose as translated from Polish is turgid and makes for laborious reading. To read this book once is to read it twice; one must continually reread what one has just read. But such writing is not peculiar to philosophers. And the depth of analysis is remarkable. Wojtyla's understanding of man is comprehensive and detailed. At times repetitious, he seldom veers from his chosen theme. Wojtyla begins with methodology. The focus is upon experience, and the approach is in the line of phenomenological realism. The author claims that his work is consistent with traditional philosophy, which he identifies as Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy (p. xiii) . Yet his presentation is a rethinking and recasting of the tradition, not denying it, " but supplementing it in an attempt to rethink it to the end " (p. Q66) . In this rethinking he especially acknowledges the influence of Max Scheler's Wertethik. Wojtyla seeks by his phenomenological approach to explain what experience and intuition provide. Part One is entitled " Consciousness and Efficacy ". The focus is on the person as revealed through conscious action. The various dynamisms are considered along with the proper efficacy of the human person. In Part Two we find " The Transcendence of the Person in the Action ". Here the structure of freedom is considered in relationship to the problem of the will and the cognition of truth and value as it leads to choice and decision. 472 BOOK REVIEWS 473 Throughout, the complexity is underlined. The study turns to freedom as manifested in self-determination, then to the possibility of fulfillment, and the role of conscience and responsibility. Part Three moves to the complement of transcendence, namely " The Integration of the Person in the Action ". Here, the person's subjectivity as manifested through the body is considered, with an extensive treatment of the emotions. Part Four is entitled "Participation", and turns to the problem of Intersubjectivity and social being. But what is the purpose of this book? It is of course to " exfoliate the complexity of man". Yet the aim seems to be more than analytical. Granted that throughout the volume the author concentrates upon the dynamic interaction and unity of the person and action, these are seen as leading to the true and authentic attainment of freedom and fulfillment. The becoming of the person through genuine freedom and the fulfillment gained through action appear as a guiding thread through this discourse on man. To grasp Wojtyla's idea of freedom and how is it related to transcendence and action much groundwork is needed. Wojtyla thoroughly analyzes action. Action discloses the person; better, the person is manifested through action. The author firmly renounces a static human nature as grounding human acts. The dynamic nature of man is thoroughly accepted. Contrasting this contemporary approach with a more traditional philosophy of man, the Polish philosopher notes that for the latter man's nature is rational, he is a person in virtue of reason, and his rationality...

A World of Grace: An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner's Theology. Edited by Leo J. O'Donovan. New York: Seabury, 1980. xii + 198 pages. $14.95 (paper $7.95).

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

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...

Development within Rahner's Theology

Development within Rahner's Theology

Science and Faith in Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, Marxism and Christianity

672 BOOK REVIEWS Science and Faith in Teilhard de Chardin. The Teilhard Study Library, vol. 1. New York: Humanities Press, 1967. Pp. 109. $3.00. Evolution, Marxism and Chri.stianity. The Teilhard Study Library, vol. 2. New York: Humanities Press, 1967. Pp. llO. $3.00. There have been at least three phases in tlle promulgation, study, and influence of the philosophical and religious writings of the Jesuit priestpaleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Before the Second Vatican Council, Tcilhard was known through The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine L"tfilieu, and some of his unpublished essays were in the hands of European and Canadian theologians. During and immediately after the Council, in a second phase, there were two developments. :Most importantly , Teilhard's iJeas influenced several of the Council periti and are apparent in some of the Council documents, particularly in the Pa.storal Constitution on the Church in the "\fodern World. At the same time, Teilhard's name and some of his ideas, distorted and undistorted, became a rallying point for the renewd enthusiasm of many Catholics; Teilhard became a fad. In a third phase, two more things happened. Serious general studies of Teilhard's thought began to appear, among them Henri de Lubac's The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin (i\cw York: Desclee, 1967) and Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning (i\ew York: Hawthorne, 1965), Christopher Mooney's Teilhard de Chm·din and The Jlystery of Christ (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), and Emile Rideau's The Thought of Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Harper & Row, 1957). And the thought of Teilhard began to have a quite visible impact on Christian thought and especially on theology. Almost all contemporary Catholic theology of original sin is derivative of a fe,Y key ideas of Teilhard's, and almost every effort today to rethink the mystery of creation in terms of an evolutionary world view is heavily dependent on Teilhard's vision. To what degree new emphases in Karl Rahner's theology depend on Teilhard, to what extent Teilhard's influence has contributed to the " theology of hope" current and to the new strong stress on eschatology, how much Teilhardian thought is behind new directions in Catholic spiritual theology -all this can only be guessed at; but certainly Teilhard's influence has been great and widespread. A fourth period is beginning in Teilhard studies. Most of Teilhard's philosophical and theological works are now in print, and there have been a number of general studies of Teilhard that have laid the groundwork for further work. What is beginning to take place is this: at the same time that Teilhard's impact on Christian thought, particularly Catholic theology, is becoming even greater, there are at present underway several studies of Teilhard's thought according to special areas. There are, for example, at BOOK REVIEWS 673 least five doctoral dissertations being written on different aspects of his ethical theory. One work that treats a special theme in Teilhard's thought has already appeared, The One and the Many, by Donald Gray (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969). There are sure to be many other studies that treat of special questions in Teilhard's writings-his idea of God, his ecclesiology, his theology of prayer-and that relate his ideas to present. philosophical and theological activity. The two books reviewed here are properly situated between phases two and three; they are, in part, a product of the now passing fad for Teilhardiana, and they serve as an introduction to Teilhard's work and a guide to its implications. They arc made up of lectures given at the first annual conference of The Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Association of Great Britain and Ireland held in London in 1966. The first volume consists of three essays by Claude Cuenot and a short piece by Roger Garaudy. Cuenot's three lectures-expanded-into-essays are eoncemcd with Teilhard's spirituality, his integration of science and religion, and the over-all structure of his thought. The first presents Teilhard's spiritual doctrine as an answer to the needs of young people who, in Cuenot's analysis, seek a Christian rationale for their will to effective...

The Philosophy of the Human Person in Karl Rahner's Theology

The Philosophy of the Human Person in Karl Rahner's Theology