Karl Rahner

Background

Rahner, Karl was born on March 5, 1904 in Freiburg, Germany.

Education

Feldkirch, Austria; Pullach, near Munich. Valkenburg, Netherlands. Universities of Freiburg and Innsbruck.

Career

Lecturer at Innsbruck, 1937-1939. Pastoral work in Vienna, then teaching at Pullach until 1948, when he returned to Innsbruck. Professor, Universities of Munich (1964-1967) and Münster (1967-1971).

Achievements

• His theology influenced the Second Vatican Council and was ground-breaking for the development of what is generally seen as the modern understanding of Catholicism.

Works

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  • Spirit in the World

    (One of Rahner's classic studies, this volume employs the ...)

  • Encounters With Silence

    (Encounters with Silence is a book of meditations about ma...)

  • The Trinity (Milestones in Catholic Theology)

    ( The ground-breaking treatment of the doctrine of the Tr...)

  • The Mystical Way in Everyday Life

    (Karl Rahner, a Jesuit Priest who died in 1984, is widely ...)

  • Karl Rahner: Spiritual Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters Series)

    (A major force at Vatican II, Jesuit priest Karl Rahner's ...)

  • Belief Today

    (This 128-page hardcover was published in 1967 by Herder a...)

Views

Rahner’s thought turns upon the unity of such distinct yet inseparable ideas as the sacred and the secular, nature and grace, transcendence and history. The Incarnation, which reveals humanity’s union with God, is the supreme instance of this unity. God is personally related to all, and this relationship establishes and facilitates, rather than thwarts or frustrates, human autonomy and freedom.

With Aquinas and Kant, Rahner holds that all human knowledge is grounded in the finite world of experience. But our human questions at once reveal our ability to transcend that world; for we reach out from what we know partially to what may be more fully, though not yet perfectly, known; for the God who reveals himself is also, in an important sense, ever concealed.

Consistently with his recognition of difference in unity, Rahner investigates both the epistemological conditions of our reception of revelation and the historical content of revelation. He thus proceeds from a theory of knowledge to Christology, and thence to the ecclesiastical community, called to be a servant in the world. In this last connection Rahner’s contribution to ecumenism, and to the Second Vatican Council, should not be overlooked.

To Hans von Balthasar’s complaint that his theology was too anthropocentric, Rahner replied that it was integral to his thought that in the Incarnation the anthropocentric and the theocentric are indissolubly united. He insisted that °ne cannot speak of God without at the same time speaking of humanity—and vice versa. When his Pupil, the political theologian Johann Baptist Metz, charged him with underemphasizing the societal aspects of human freedom, Rahner retorted that a genuine political theology cannot proceed ‘without reflection on those essential characteristics of man which transcendental theology discloses’. Others, more sceptical, have wondered how far a satisfactory case can be made for the deliverances of the dogmatic tradition, the validity of which Rahner’s theology presupposes. Sources: Obituary notices.

Interests

• Philosophy of religion.

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Joseph Maréchal; the Catholic tradition tempered by Kant, Fichte and Hegel; Heidegger.

References

• Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics
• Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life (The Crossroad Spiritual Legacy Series)