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Australian eJournal of Theology 4 (February 2005)
1
Rahner and his Critics: Revisiting the Dialogue
Declan Marmion SM
Abstract: It is not unusual to hear the comment today that Karl Rahner’s is rather
outdated to postmodern sensibilities. Despite some truth in this, it would be unwise to
dismiss Rahner’s theological style as passé. A spectrum of criticisms of Rahner will be
discussed below, beginning with Hans Urs von Balthasar and Johann Baptist Metz, then
those of the postliberal George Lindbeck. The vexed question of the role of experience in
theology raised by Lindbeck will be explored in the third section. Penultimately,
criticisms by Emmanuel Levinas of the ontological tradition of Western philosophy,
which forms the basis of Rahner’s theology, will be noted. These thinkers help, either
directly or indirectly, to illuminate a number of Rahner’s philosophical and theological
presuppositions and (Levinas excepted) his vision of Christianity and Church. However,
my approach is to ask whether Rahnerism has resources within itself to respond to these
issues raised, despite its idiosyncrasies.
Key Words: Karl Rahner – reception; Hans Urs von Balthasar; Johann Baptist Metz;
George Lindbeck; Emmanuel Levinas; postliberalism; German philosophy
I. EARLY CRITIQUES: VON BALTHASAR AND METZ
n his introduction to Karl Rahner’s life and thought, Herbert Vorgrimler concedes
that Rahner’s theology, like any theology, has its weak points, and is not immune
from criticism. He further notes how Rahner’s understanding of Christianity was variously
attacked for being either too radical, or not radical enough.1 Thus, Catholic traditionalists
complained that Rahner, especially since Vatican II, had relativised the radical demands of
Christianity. A famous example of such adversarial reaction to Rahner’s understanding of
Christianity is that of Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Cordula oder der Ernstfall.2 This
work seems to mark a significant shift in the relationship between Rahner and Balthasar.3
1 Herbert Vorgrimler, Understanding Karl Rahner: An Introduction to his Life and Thought, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1986), 121-30.
2 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cordula oder der Ernstfall, Kriterien 2 (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1966). [ET: The Moment of Christian Witness, trans. Richard Beckley (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1969)]. A second edition (1967) contained an “Afterword” by von Balthasar as a response to the widespread criticism of his treatment of Rahner in the first edition.
3 Despite his reservations about Rahner’s anthropological method, Von Balthasar recognised the theological “courage” of Rahner and spoke of him in 1964 as a “brilliant theologian” (einen genialen Theologen). Manfred Lochbrunner, Analogia Caritatis. Darstellung und Deutung der Theologie Hans Urs von Balthasars, Freiburger Theologische Studien 120 (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), 123. See also von Balthasar’s positive evaluation of the early volumes of Rahner’s Theological Investigations: “Grösse und Last der Theologie Heute: Einige grundsätzliche Gedanken zu zwei Aufsatzbänden Karl Rahners,” Wort und Wahrheit 7 (1955): 531-33. For his part, Rahner composed a “Laudatio” for Von Balthasar’s sixtieth birthday in 1965. Karl Rahner, “Hans Urs von Balthasar – 60. Geburtstag,”Civitas 20 (1965): 601-605.
AEJT 4 (February 2005) Marmion / Rahner and his Critics
2
Balthasar’s book is essentially a reaction to Rahner’s anthropologically-oriented
theology, which, in his view, tended to reduce Christian living “to a bland and shallow
humanism.”4 In particular, Balthasar claimed that Rahner’s concept of the anonymous
Christian had little to do with the message of the Gospel. This concept, moreover,
overlooked what he called the “Ernstfall” or “decisive moment,” which is the cross of
Christ. Thus, Balthasar laid special emphasis on the readiness to suffer and on the value of
martyrdom where the “Ernstfall,” or cross of Christ, becomes the permanent pattern or
form of Christian discipleship.5 Moreover, he felt that most forms of modern theology,
including Rahner’s, were incapable of providing the grounding or motivation for such a
vision of Christian living.
One specific criticism Balthasar makes of Rahner’s understanding of Christianity
concerns Rahner’s identification of love of God with love of neighbour. Rahner is accused
of undermining the absolute priority in Christianity of the love of God for us by
“identifying” love of God with love of neighbour. Balthasar’s comments are a reaction to a
Rahner article that emphasised, however, the unity of the love of neighbour and love of
God.6 At the outset of the article it is clear that Rahner’s intention is to inquire into the
nature of charity by reflecting on its unity with the love of God. In other words, he hoped
to demonstrate that neither love of God nor love of neighbour can exist or be practised
without reference to each other. Rather than subordinating the love of God to love of
neighbour, Rahner’s aim is to elucidate how the whole truth of the Gospel is hidden and in
germ in the love of one’s neighbour. Just as the love of neighbour and the love of God can
be distinguished but not completely separated the same holds true for the relation
between the transcendental and the categorial dimensions of human love. Love of
neighbour is the fulfilment of the transcendental nature of the human person: in the form
of a decision or action it constitutes the way for the individual to actualise her openness to
God. Here we see the incarnational seriousness of Rahner’s theology and anthropology.
Selfless acts of love are not merely proofs of our love of God but are underpinned and
supported by God’s divinising grace.
Yet Balthasar’s fear is that Rahner’s transcendental method ultimately leads to a
bland Christianity that is not worth its salt. The divergences between the two also need to
be seen against their different backgrounds, temperament and training. Balthasar, the
refined aristocrat, was more influenced by the figures of Goethe and Mozart, more at home
with the arts than with politics, more phenomenological in his theological approach. While
he always kept an eye on Rahner’s theological interests, Balthasar was convinced that
Rahner’s theology was too limited by his philosophy with its focus on transcendental ideas
and notions. In a later section we shall return to a similar criticism of the Western
philosophical tradition from Kant to Heidegger via the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas,
namely, its preoccupation with an analysis of subjectivity (and the subject’s mastery of
self) to the neglect of intersubjectivity. Admittedly, Cordula was written at a dark period of
4 Von Balthasar, The Moment of Christian Witness, 126.
5 Cordula, who, according to legend, initially recoiled from the prospect of martyrdom, but subsequently changed her mind and willingly underwent death, exemplifies this readiness for death by martyrdom. Von Balthasar, The Moment of Christian Witness, 133.
6 Karl Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God,” Theological Investigations, vol. 6 (London: DLT, 1981), 231-49 [henceforth all references to the Investigations will be abbreviated to TI], a talk given by Rahner to social workers in Cologne in 1965. It seems that one of the reasons for Balthasar’s difficulty with Rahner’s thesis is that he (Balthasar) confuses the terms unity and identity. Although Rahner sometimes used the term “identity,” his underlying concern was to emphasise aperichoresis or mutual conditioning of the two elements: love of neighbour and love of God.
AEJT 4 (February 2005) Marmion / Rahner and his Critics
3
Balthasar’s life, but it does reveal his concern at what he considered “the growing
anthropocentrism and secularisation of Christian self-understanding.”7 Ultimately, their
disagreement can be traced back to their respective starting points and is at the level of
ontology. If Rahner understands God in terms of the striving of the human spirit, the pre-
apprehension of being, Balthasar’s approach is more “from above” and stresses that God is
first to be praised and served in obedient discipleship. Moreover, he is uncomfortable with
a preoccupation with a subjectivity that neglects the intersubjective and in particular, the
otherness of God.8
In place of polemic, however, it is preferable to tackle these issues with Rahner
rather than against him, in other words, to draw from within Rahner’s own writings
resources to respond to the various criticisms made of him. It is not that Rahner’s theology
represents some kind of closed “system” – he never thought of his work in such a way.9
Indeed, he acknowledged both the limitations of his theology as well as the need for other
thinkers to develop his ideas in new directions.
This is the approach taken by one of Rahner’s former students – Johann Baptist
Metz, who has been critical of Rahner’s transcendental approach to theology.10 With
regard to Rahner’s theology, Metz argued that it did not give sufficient importance to the
societal dimension of the Christian message. The message becomes “privatized” and the
practice of faith is reduced to the timeless decision of the person. “The categories most
prominent in this theology are the categories of the intimate, the private, the apolitical
sphere.”11 Alongside this, Metz notes the transcendental attempt to undermine history. An
out and out transcendental theology, he claimed, runs the risk of not having to enter the
field of history since the human person “is ‘always already’, whether he or she wants to be
or not, ‘with God’.”12 Since Metz’s criticisms are already well documented, it would seem
more constructive to look at how Rahner responded to and incorporated such criticisms
into his own work.
Shortly after Rahner’s death, Vorgrimler edited a series of interviews and articles by
Rahner covering this political dimension.13 Vorgrimler’s contention is that any
investigation of Rahner will reveal that Rahner’s thesis of the unity of the love of God and
7 “Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Interview with Werner Löser,” America, 16 October 1999, 20.
8 See, Gerry O’Hanlon, “The Jesuits and Modern Theology – Rahner, von Balthasar, and Liberation Theology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 58 (1992): 25-45 and Thomas G. Dalzell, The Dramatic Encounter of Divine and Human Freedom in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity 105 (Berne: Peter Lang, 1997), 23-58.
9 A fair evaluation of Rahner’s understanding of spirituality cannot be obtained solely on the basis of a limited and arbitrary selection of his works. This is the perennial danger in any attempt to review Rahner’s theology according to J. B. Metz: “… and every review of his (Rahner’s) theology seems almost inescapably to be in danger of roughly schematizing it or arbitrarily abridging it.” Metz, “Foreword,” Spirit in the World, xvi.
10 J. B. Metz Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. David Smith (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 161-68.
11 J. B. Metz, Theology of the World (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 109.
12 Metz, Faith in History and Society, 160.
13 Karl Rahner, Politische Dimensionen des Christentums: Ausgewählte Texte zu Fragen der Zeit, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (Munich: Kösel, 1986). See also: Karl Neumann, Der Praxisbezug der Theologie bei Karl Rahner, Freiburger Theologische Studien 118 (Freiburg: Herder, 1980); Andrea Tafferner, Gottes- und Nächstenliebe in der deutschsprachigen Theologie des 20. Jahrhunderts, Innsbrucker theologische Studien 37 (Innsbruck/Wien: Tyrolia, 1992); Titus F. Guenther, Rahner and Metz: Transcendental Theology as Political Theology (Boston: Univ. Press of America, 1994).
AEJT 4 (February 2005) Marmion / Rahner and his Critics
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neighbour14 can be interpreted in terms of the indissoluble unity of the “mystical” and
“political” dimensions of Christian spirituality. Although Rahner’s theology of the love of
neighbour sometimes gives the impression of being restricted to a narrowly interpersonal
level (i.e., to one’s immediate neighbour), he was convinced that the category of love held
out great potential for inter-human solidarity, including with those who are suffering.15
While he increasingly came to stress the socio-political character of neighbourly love, he
tried to steer a middle course between the privatisation of Christianity, on the one hand,
and its reduction to a purely humanitarian commitment on the other.16 Rahner supported
Metz’s political theology as thoroughly orthodox, even if he had some questions about it.
He agreed that theology must criticise those structures in society that oppress individuals
and groups. Moreover, theology must give rise, in turn, to a socially transformative praxis.
However, he further believed that theology should also see God as a politically relevant
figure.17 In this regard, it is worth noting that various politically committed theologies
including Metz, Tracy and Gutierrez have returned in recent years to Rahner’s central
question, the question of God.18
With the many complex moral issues facing the Christian today, Rahner’s approach
is to accent the political and ethical relevance of conscience. Thus, when discussing the
Christian attitude towards atomic weapons, for example, he insists that the Christian can
never abdicate his or her ultimate responsibility before God or delegate this responsibility
to others.19 Rahner’s emphasis is on the decision of conscience, which always occurs in
solitude and in an immediate responsibility before the inscrutable God. An authentic
spirituality, in Rahner’s view, then, always involves both a mystical and a societal
component. Both these components form a unity just as the love of God and love of
neighbour constitutes a unity.
The seeds of Rahner’s later awareness of the political dimension of Christianity,
then, can be traced to his early writings on the unity of the love of neighbour and the love
of God, an awareness that subsequently became more explicit.20 If Rahner’s writings on
the Ignatian Exercises focussed on the core experience of a personal encounter with God,
the practical and more political nature of his later writings, reveal a societal component –
even if the latter element was not always brought sharply into focus. Rather than claiming
that Rahner exclusively pursues a transcendental method, which then leads to an
insensitivity to social problems, it would be more accurate to claim he follows a two-fold
theological method, or rather, a method that incorporates both transcendental and
14 Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God,” TI 6:231-49. See also Declan Marmion, A Spirituality of Everyday Faith: A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl Rahner, Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs 23 (Louvain: Peeters Press, W.B. Eerdmans, 1998), 79-88.
15 See Jon Sobrino, “Karl Rahner and Liberation Theology,” Theology Digest 32 (1985): 257-60; and Sobrino, “Current Problems in Christology in Latin American Theology,” Theology and Discovery, 189-230.
16 Karl Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come, trans. Edward Quinn (London: SPCK, 1974), 123-32. In fact, Rahner is more at home in critically reflecting on the Church, its nature, task, future, etc., where the “political” content of his theology comes most sharply into focus.
17 Rahner, Politische Dimensionen des Christentums, 55.
18 David Tracy, “Foreword,” in Gaspar Martinez, Confronting the Mystery of God: Political, Liberation and Public Theologies (London/New York: Continuum, 2001), ix.
19 Rahner, “Nuclear Weapons and the Christian,” TI 23: 16-32.
20 See Leo O’Donovan, “A Journey Into Time: The Legacy of Karl Rahner’s Last Years,” Theological Studies 46 (1985): 621-46.
AEJT 4 (February 2005) Marmion / Rahner and his Critics
5
historical reflection.21 If Rahner considered the transcendental method to be only one part
of theology, albeit a necessary one, he also maintained that Christians today no longer
accept theological propositions of faith which have no apparent connection with their own
understanding of themselves. Thus he could agree with the characterisation of his
theology as a “transcendental anthropology,” as long as this description did not give the
impression that he had bracketed the complicated question of the relation between
transcendence and history.22 Admittedly, transcendental reflection always runs the risk of
failing to take into account the historical dimensions of theological reality.23 In so
emphasising the self-communication of God to the human person in the transcendental
dimension of their being, it can be overlooked that such a self-communication also has a
history. While consistently arguing for the ever-present interaction of experience and
reflection, or for the reciprocal interdependence of transcendental and historical
reflection in theology, Rahner nonetheless concentrates more on the transcendental
moment.
By appropriating some of the criticisms of Metz, Rahner also opened the way for a
more performative understanding of spirituality. The human person is not only a hearer of
the Word but a doer of the Word as well. Christian spirituality is not merely an
“experiencing” but a “doing,” an activity, necessarily involving a “praxis” of solidarity with
one’s neighbour. Commentators who have examined the relationship between Metz and
Rahner agree that, while the historical moment in Rahner’s method should be more
explicitly developed, it would be incorrect to declare his transcendental theology void of
any imperatives impelling Christians towards a spirituality of solidarity.24 Yet Rahner
warns that one should not limit oneself merely to a one-sided social and political
engagement. A truly authentic Christian spirituality, he maintains, will not shy away from
the attempt to bring such political engagement into an “inner synthesis” with one’s
spiritual life.25 His own attempt to incorporate the concerns of political theology into a
broader transcendental framework, however, takes some of the cutting edge off political
theology’s critical questions. On one level we have the emphasis on the unity of love of
neighbour and love of God, while on another level the accent is on Christianity not
becoming stifled in the finite: “God and the world must not be made to coincide simply in a
dead sameness.”26 It is certainly not a question, though, of Rahner bypassing or neglecting
the intra-mundane relevance of the love of God and the consequent requirement of ethical
action. Rather, it is another example of the ongoing dialectical tension between
21 See Leo O’Donovan, “Orthopraxis and Theological Method in Karl Rahner,” CTSA Proceedings 35 (1980): 47-65, and also Mary V. Maher, “Rahner on the Human Experience of God: Idealist Tautology or Christian Theology?,” Philosophy & Theology 7 (1992): 127-64.
22 Karl Rahner, “Gnade als Mitte menschlicher Existenz,” Herausforderung des Christen: Meditiationen-Reflexionen-Interviews (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), 129-30.
23 Metz’s critique of Rahner highlights the need to develop a method for the dialectic between the transcendental analysis of human experience oriented toward and by Mystery and the attending (dialectically) to the pluralism of social, cultural and historical positions. See Maher, “Rahner on the Human Experience of God,” Philosophy & Theology 7 (1992): 148.
24 Guenther, Rahner and Metz: Transcendental Theology as Political Theology, 271.
25 Rahner, Glaube in winterlicher Zeit, 128.
26 Rahner, “The Inexhaustible Transcendence of God and Our Concern for the Future,” TI 20: 180. Rahner’s point is that authentic love of God only exists when concern for self is surpassed and relativised by love for God in Godself. This transcendence of the human person towards God thus relativises all individual finite realities (be they particular ideologies, social systems, propaganda, technical developments, etc.), depriving them of their potentially idolatrous character.
AEJT 4 (February 2005) Marmion / Rahner and his Critics
6
transcendence and history at the heart of Rahner’s twofold theological method. As Rahner
himself put it (in the context of the relationship between his theology and that of Metz):
For it has always been clear in my theology that a ‘transcendental experience’ (of God and of grace) is always mediated through a categorical experience in history, in interpersonal relationships, and in society. If one not only sees and takes seriously these necessary mediations of transcendental experience but also fills it out in a concrete way, then one already practices in an authentic way political theology, or in other words, a practical fundamental theology. On the other hand, such a political theology is, if it truly wishes to concern itself with God, not possible without reflection on those essential characteristics of humankind which a transcendental theology discloses. Therefore, I believe that my theology and that ofMetz are not necessarily contradictory.27
II. POSTLIBERAL CRITICISMS: RAHNER AND LINDBECK
George Lindbeck, formerly of Yale University, proposed a new way of conceiving religion
and religious doctrine in his The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal
Age.28 At one level, this is a book about doctrine, while at another, it presents a vision of
theology and Christianity for a postliberal age. “Liberal” here characterises a specific
position “that espouses a theory of religion as the bearer of common human experience
and a theory of doctrine as expressions of those experiences.”29 If “liberals start with
experience, with an account of the present, and then adjust their vision of the kingdom of
God accordingly… postliberals are committed to doing the reverse.”30 The first perspective
enables Christianity to accommodate to present trends, while the second, postliberal
stance, resists current fashions and the wish to acknowledge a revelatory dimension to
present experience. In relation to doctrine, Lindbeck categorises traditional perspectives
according to three types. One approach “emphasises the cognitive aspects of religion and
stresses the ways in which church doctrines function as informative propositions or truth
claims about objective realities.”31 This position, he terms “cognitive-propositionalist” or
preliberal. A second approach focuses on the “experiential-expressive” dimension of
religion, whereby doctrines are interpreted as expressive and evocative objectifications of
internal experience. A third approach attempts to combine the cognitive-propositionalist
and the experiential-expressivist theories. Lindbeck points to Karl Rahner and Bernard
Lonergan as examples of such an effort: the liberal perspective. He terms his own
approach “cultural-linguistic,” a postliberal position that emphasises the way religions are
like languages or cultures embedded in forms of life, and that doctrines are communal,
grammatical rules.
In Lindbeck’s view, liberal theologians in the experiential-expressivist tradition,
including Tillich, Rahner and Tracy, have their roots in Schleiermacher’s view of doctrines
27 Rahner, “Introduction,” to James J. Bacik, Apologetics and the Eclipse of Mystery: Mystagogy According to Karl Rahner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), x.
28 Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984.
29 James J. Buckley, ed., “Introduction: Radical Traditions: Evangelical, Catholic and Postliberal,” in George Lindbeck, The Church in a Postliberal Age (London: SCM Press, 2002), xii.
30 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 125-126.
31 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 16.
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as mere “shadows of our religious emotions.”32 This assertion that inner experiences are
prior to expression, that all language and culture are merely “expressive” of a
foundational, non-discursive experience, highlights, in turn, the irreducibly subjective
component of experiential-expressivism. Lindbeck rejects such a unilateral relationship
between experience and language. Rather, language is a communal phenomenon shaping
who we are by its distinctive patterns of grammar, syntax and semantics. Religions are
also viewed as “comprehensive interpretative schemes, usually embodied in myths or
narratives… which structure human experience and understanding of self and world.”33
Our culture, language and/or religious idiom are prior to any efforts to acquire them. In
short, language is prior to experience - it is necessary to have the means for expressing an
experience in order to have it. To become Christian or religious is to interiorise a set of
skills by practice and training and consists of “prolonged catechetical instruction” until
catechumens are “deemed able intelligently and responsibly to profess the faith.”34
Whatever the merits of Lindbeck’s rule-theory of doctrine he has oversimplified the
“experiential-expressivist” approach by suggesting that the relationship between
experience and doctrine in Rahner is unilateral rather than dialectical. From the
experiential-expressivist perspective, according to Lindbeck, religions are externalisations
of a pre-reflective, pre-linguistic, pre-thematic foundational experience. This experiential-
expressivist or revisionist model, he maintains, is based on the typically modern liberal
“turn to the subject” paradigm.35 The experiential model is ideally suited to those
“structures of modernity” which “press individuals to meet God first in the depths of their
souls and then, perhaps, if they find something personally congenial, to become part of a
tradition or join a church.”36 In contrast, religion in a cultural-linguistic framework, like a
culture or language, is “a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of
individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities.”37
The postliberal or “cultural-linguistic” model, then, views religions as self-enclosed
language games in which doctrines operate as grammatical rules. A particular faith
community must understand the world in its own language and it accomplishes this
primarily through the biblical narrative or text. Theological faithfulness is “intratextual” in
that it refers to the theologian’s primary commitment to the authority of the biblical text
and subjecting his or her propositions and experiences outside (extra) Scripture to
correction by those within (intra) Scripture. Resisting the impulse to “find their stories in
the Bible,” intratextualists seek instead to “make the Bible their own story.”38 The slogan
of postliberal theology reflects this: It is the text, which absorbs the world, rather than the
world the text.39
32 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans. J. Oman (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), 122. Whether Schleiermacher can be classified in experiential-expressivist terms is a moot point. See B. A. Gerrish, “The Nature of Doctrine,” The Journal of Religion 68 (1988): 87-92.
33 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 32. See also James J. Buckley, “Doctrine in the Diaspora,” The Thomist 49 (1985): 447-448.
34 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 132.
35 For a more nuanced position, see David Tracy, “Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology: A Reflection,” The Thomist 49 (1985): 460-72.
36 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 22.
37 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 33.
38 Jeffrey C. K. Goh, Christian Tradition Today: A Postliberal Vision of Church and World. Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs 28 (Louvain: Peeters Press, 2000), 199.
39 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 118.
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8
An underlying presupposition of the postliberal agenda, not unlike that of Balthasar,
is that theology, especially in its liberal or revisionist forms, has accommodated itself too
uncritically to a secular and pluralist culture. This leads, in turn, to an undermining of the
specific content and identity of particular religious traditions.40 It is with the aim of
combating the “acids of modernity” that postliberal theology wishes to absorb the
universe into the biblical world.41 Rather than “translating” the language of the Bible into
the speech and thought forms of modern culture, which leads to dissolution of the biblical
witness and a loss of Christian identity, the postliberal approach highlights the
assimilative power of the biblical text and its capacity to draw us into a particular
framework of meaning. This is a plea to the Christian community to rebuild its particular,
distinctive, biblical culture. It leads to a Church of communal enclaves of mutual support
living in the midst of a hostile and de-Christianised culture. The future of the Church will
therefore require some kind of “sociological sectarianism,”42 some kind of standing apart
in order to witness to, and negotiate the challenges of, an increasingly liberal society.
This contrast model of Church, with its attendant understandings of doctrine,
biblical narratives and tradition stands over and against an approach that argues for a
mutual correlation between theology and human experience. With its rather pessimistic
reading of postmodern culture, and its inward-looking model of Church, the postliberal
vision runs the risk of ghettoising the Church and rendering theology as a public discourse
practically impossible. Segregation is not the answer. Unless the Church is more than an
aloof contrast-society, it risks failing to contribute positively to the world in which it forms
a part.43
Rahner, for his part, might initially appear to be supporting Lindbeck’s view of the
Church of the future when he talks about the future “diaspora” Church of the “little
flock.”44 By “little flock” Rahner did not mean a petty sectarian mentality as a way of
protecting a cosy traditionalism. His ecclesiology needs to be viewed in connection with
the renewal inaugurated by Vatican II and its openness to the world. Unlike Lindbeck,
Rahner did not want the particularity of Christian identity to be purchased at the price of
the public character of theology. Most of his publications from the sixties onwards were of
an “ad hoc” nature – responding to particular issues of the times. He did not recommend
Christians to isolate themselves from their cultural environment. In fact, he often
presented the dividing line between Christians and non-Christians in a rather fluid
manner. This leads to a further problem with Lindbeck’s vision of Christianity: it seems
too black and white. The choice facing Christians, it appears, is either a strategy of
accommodation to secular thought and culture or a kind of resistant sectarianism. The
former leads to dissipation and loss of the distinctively Christian identity, whereas the
latter represents the only hope for the Church in a world that is becoming less and less
Christian.
The divergences between Rahner and Lindbeck have not only to do with the future
of Christianity and with questions of Christian identity and particularity. The difference is
also one of method. When applied to Rahner’s work as a whole, labels such as
40 J. A. Columbo, “Rahner and his Critics: Lindbeck and Metz,” The Thomist 56 (1992): 87.
41 Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 127, 135.
42 Lindbeck, “Ecumenism and the Future of Belief,” The Church in a Postliberal Age, 91-105.
43 Goh, Christian Tradition Today, 448.
44 Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come, 29-34.
AEJT 4 (February 2005) Marmion / Rahner and his Critics
9
“transcendental”45 or “experiential-expressive” are insufficient descriptions. Due to the
influence ofMetz and others, Rahner became increasingly conscious of the historical,
contextual, and analogous character of theological assertions. Admittedly, the postliberals
are stronger in highlighting the contextual and tentative character of knowledge and truth.
They also criticise the epistemological Pelagianism of a Western philosophy overly keen
on establishing first principles or foundations on which the edifice of knowledge can be
built. But once again, we are presented with an either/or approach: either a
nonfoundationalist theology that espouses Reformation theology’s suspicion of theological
speculation,46 or some form of “mediating” theology that seeks to establish common
ground between theology and secular culture. Following Barth, postliberals reject the
mediating approach “because it subordinates the Word of God to human words, revelation
to experience, and finally the infinite to the finite.”47 Where postliberals are weaker is their
unwillingness to engage positively with the radical pluralism of contemporary society. To
do so, they believe, would be to blur the differences between Christians and the world. But
this is to dichotomise the spiritual and the political, and it is therefore not surprising that
postliberal theology gives “insufficient attention to justice issues, to critiques of ideology,
and to action for ecclesial reform and social transformation.”48
In relation to doctrine, Rahner pursued the search for new and creative ways of
formulating Christian faith, a process, he maintained, of trial and error in the development
of doctrine. He believed the traditional dogmatic language of the Church was no longer
intelligible to many Christians today, particularly in the more secularised cultures of the
West. Rahner never viewed doctrinal pluralism and the plurality of religions as
developments to be lamented but to be welcomed. The challenge to theology, he claimed,
will always be to acknowledge two basic tenets of Christian faith: the universal salvific will
of God and that this salvation comes through God in Christ alone. Moreover, he argued that
provisional theological formulae were more appropriate in terms of furthering our faith
understanding than authoritative universal definitions. The issue is how authentic
doctrinal development can take place in the context of a pluralism of theologies and
competing views that cannot be adequately synthesised.
Rahner looked to Vatican II as the inspiration for this theological rather than
dogmatic approach. The Council made no formal dogmatic definitions and its teaching is to
be understood positively as the expression of “instructions” or “appeals” rather than in the
context of errors to be condemned as tended to be the case with previous councils.49 The
(Catholic) church has often had difficulty coming to terms with the historical, partial, and
fragile character of Christian truth claims. The desire for a secure and certain foundation
of knowledge overlooks the fact that all human knowing is intimately connected with such
45 Systematic theology is “transcendental” when it investigates the “a priori conditions in the believer for the knowledge of important truths of faith.” Karl Rahner, “Transcendental Theology,”Sacramentum Mundi (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 6:287.
46 Thus, Tracy’s conclusion that the postliberal position is “a methodologically sophisticated version of Barthian confessionalism.” Tracy, “Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology,” 465. John Thiel,Nonfoundationalism (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1994), 89, reaches a similar verdict: “(Postliberals’) insistence on the priority of the scriptural narrative, their antipathy to speculation as an aid to theological reasoning, and their commitment to a descriptive or, broadly speaking, exegetical approach to theological interpretation bespeak the extent to which the confessional sensibilities of classical Protestantism shape the conception of foundationlessness they consider to be normative.”
47 Thiel, Nonfoundationalism, 48.
48 Bradford E. Hinze, “Postliberal Theology and Roman Catholic Theology,” Religious Studies Review 21.4 (1995): 302.
49 Karl Rahner, “Basic Theological Interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” TI, 20:89.
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factors as: historical location, political contexts, ideological allegiances, conceptual
frameworks, psychological assumptions, and linguistic practices. Such factors undermine
the claim that there is an unchanging meaning of dogmas that can somehow be discovered
outside of history.50 Traditionally, the church dealt with this question by distinguishing
between the truth, substance, or meaning of a dogma and the way it is expressed or
presented. The value of this distinction is to serve as a reminder that the language of
dogmatic statements should not be absolutised in the sense of identifying the language
with the reality of which they speak. This should lead to a greater degree of modesty in
theological discourse. While granting the abiding validity of the truth of dogmatic
statements, these are by their very nature partial and not full expressions of this truth;
they point beyond themselves to the mystery that is God.51
Rahner’s underlying intention in all of this is to see whether it is possible for
Christians today to be both faithful to their tradition while at the same time genuinely
engaged in the wider human community. For him, tradition is not some fixed, static entity
merely to be received and preserved52 but requires ever-new articulation. In this process,
he drew on the two movements of Vatican II – aggiornamento and ressourcement. If the
former sought to bring the Church into the modern world, the latter wished to recover
“forgotten truths” of the tradition important for the Church’s vitality.53 Rahner would have
appreciated the cultural-linguistic approach to religion for its emphasis on the linguistic,
historical and contextual character of knowledge. But it is also important to acknowledge
the fact that those theologians whom Lindbeck has labelled “experiential-expressive”
(including Rahner, Tillich, Lonergan and Tracy) have also come to terms with the
historical character of Christian truth. Yet, unlike the counter-cultural, postliberal vision,
the liberal or revisionist approach, while engaging the world, does not seek to absorb it. In
sum, the postliberal, evangelical perspective views the pluralism of the contemporary
world as essentially a challenge to be overcome, while for the liberal it is something to be
embraced in a spirit of critical appreciation.54
III. EXCURSUS: RAHNER, THEOLOGY AND EXPEREINCE
The postliberal critique of Rahner’s “experiential-expressive” theory of religion in the
previous section raises the question about the role of experience in Rahner’s theology. The
recognition of the importance of religious experience, both personal and social, has
50 In more recent times, it is feminist theologians who have retrieved neglected possibilities within the tradition and highlighted the historical open-endedness of talk about God. See, for example, Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 3-41.
51 Contemporary interpretation of dogmas attempts on the one hand to acknowledge the abiding validity of their truth: God’s self-communication has a noetic or cognitive dimension, which the Spirit-guided church, is enabled to grasp. In other words, doctrinal and creedal statements have a specific cognitive status. On the other hand, there is the challenge to present this truth not as a dead relic from the past but as something fruitful for the life of the church.
52 This is another limitation of Lindbeck’s postliberalism. See Paul D. Murray, “Theology after the Demise of Foundationalism,” The Way 38 (1998): 163.
53 Recent comments by Cardinal Ratzinger have called into question the optimism of some of the documents of Vatican II (e.g., Gaudium et spes). He would have certain affinities with the postliberal vision in his emphasis on “Christianity’s estrangement from the world – derived from Augustine’s view of the City of God as a stranger here on earth,” and the Christian gospel’s essentially “antithetical relationship to the cultures of fallen humanity.” John Thornhill, “Creative Fidelity in a Time of Transition,” The Australian Catholic Record 79 (2002): 7. See also John L. Allen,Cardinal Ratzinger (New York: Continuum, 2000), 80.
54 Paul Lakeland, Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age (Minneapolis: Augsburg, Fortress Press, 1997), 86, 112-113.
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become increasingly accepted as one appropriate starting-point and referent for both
theology and spirituality.55 Theologians have come to recognise that religious experience
cannot be dismissed as “cognitively empty” as happened during the Enlightenment.
Theological assertions are then regarded as derivative, and as “the expressions of a
spirituality.”56 Rahner himself continuously underlined that an experience of God is at the
core of what it means to be Christian. Theology, then, in a second step, reflects on this
experience, describes and elucidates it. Or, in more traditional terms, theology both grows
out of the spiritual life and remains in debt to it.
In effect, Rahner understands theology as the “science of mystery,” which
transcends the formulation of mere human words and which calls ultimately for an
attitude of worship. All theological reflection begins and ends in the holy mystery of God. It
involves a being led back into mystery.57 A theology that does not acknowledge this
dimension of mystery, the reductio in mysterium or, more precisely, a “reductio in
mysterium Dei,” of theological propositions, has, in his view, failed in its true mission.58 It
has failed to recognise the analogical nature of such theological propositions, and
remained stuck on the conceptual level. It is here that the borders between Rahner’s
spiritual and more strictly theological writings become rather fluid.59 For even in his
spiritual writings, Rahner is theologising on a first level of reflection – reflecting, as he
describes it, on Christian faith considered as a whole.60 Rahner never considered his more
explicitly “theological” writings (e.g., in the Investigations) as “scientific” in the strict sense
of the term – even these writings were to have an “edifying” purpose.61 In evocative,
kerygmatic language, he writes that “theological discourse does not only speak about the
mystery but… only speaks properly if it is also a kind of instruction showing us how to
come into the presence of the mystery itself,” and so lead beyond the concepts to the
reality signified.62
Throughout his writings Rahner frequently uses the term “experience” without
defining it. In addition, he uses the term in a variety of inter-linked ways, the most
55 See, for example, Walter H. Principe, “Toward Defining Spirituality,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 12 (1983): 127-41. See also Sandra Schneiders, “The Study of Christian Spirituality: Contours and Dynamics of a Discipline,” Christian Spirituality Bulletin 6 (1998): 1-12.
56 “It is this that gives them their interest and their grandeur. If we are surprised by the theological divergences found within the unity of dogma, then we must also be surprised at seeing one and the same faith give rise to such varied spiritualities. … One does not get to the heart of a system via the logical coherence of its structure or the plausibility of its conclusions. One gets to that heart by grasping it in its origins via that fundamental intuition that serves to guide a spiritual life and provides the intellectual regimen proper to that life.” Michel-Dominique Chenu, Une Ecole de Theologie: Le Saulchoir (Casale, Monferrato: Marietti, 1982), 59, cited in Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (London: SCM, 1984), 147, n.2.
57 This idea is further developed by Rahner in his third lecture on “Reflections on Methodology in Theology,” TI 11:101-114.
58 On this, see Rahner’s “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” esp. the “Third Lecture,” TI 4: 60-73 and “The Hiddenness of God,” TI 16: 227-43. In his description of some of the fundamental characteristics of Rahner’s theology, Cardinal Karl Lehmann gives the “spiritual element” pride of place, seeing in this the living source or ground for the dynamism of Rahner’s theology. Karl Lehmann, “Theologie aus der Leidenschaft des Glaubens: Gedanken zum Tod von Karl Rahner,” Stimmen der Zeit 202 (1984): 294.
59 For Rahner’s reluctance to have his writings classified as works of theological scholarship, see “Some Clarifying Remarks About My Own Work,” TI 17: 243-48. His preference is to describe his writings as “the work of a dilettante” (246).
60 Rahner, “Intellectual Honesty and Christian Faith,” TI 7:58-60.
61 “Ein Brief von P. Karl Rahner,” in Klaus Fischer, Der Mensch als Geheimnis: Die Anthropologie Karl Rahners. Mit einem Brief von Karl Rahner (Freiburg: Herder, 1974), 402.
62 Rahner, “What is a Dogmatic Statement?” TI 5: 60.
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common of which include the following expressions: “experience of God,” “experience of
transcendence,” “experience of the Holy Spirit,” “experience of grace,” “mystical
experience,” and “experience of enthusiasm.” The closest we come to a definition of the
term is in his Theological Dictionary, where religious experience is described as “the inner
self-attestation of supernatural reality (grace).”63 Such religious experience is only
possible, “in conjunction with objective, conceptual reflection of the mind upon itself.”64 In
other words, we cannot make a clear-cut distinction between the creative working of
God’s grace and our conceptual interpretation of it, since God and God’s activity can never
be grasped in isolation, or clearly distinguished from the reflective activity of the created
mind.
Experience, then, is a rather elusive and enigmatic concept in Rahner’s writings. It
refers to a source or to a particular form of our knowledge arising from “the direct
reception of an impression from a reality (internal or external) which lies outside our free
control.”65 If experience is a way of knowing, then whatever we discover about
experiential knowledge in general will help illuminate the dynamics of our experience of
God. Rahner further maintains that the dynamics of our experience of God are comparable
(but not identical) to what happens in typical human experiences such as joy, faithfulness,
trust, and love. But our experience of God is also atypical – it cannot simply be grouped
together with these other experiences66 – since God is so radically different from the
objects of ordinary experience.
Thus, there is an ambiguity operative from the outset in Rahner’s notion of
experience. Commentators usually deal with this difficulty by focusing on a number of
distinctions which Rahner himself makes.67 One such distinction is that between the
“transcendental” and the “categorial” dimensions of experience. The category
“transcendental” points to a dimension of human experience and to a level of
consciousness that is deeper, more significant, than the dimension of reflected, articulated,
conceptualised experience, which is termed “categorial.” Rahner hopes to delve beyond or
behind the world of doctrines, propositional language, and the like, to their primordial
ground in the mystery of God.
63 Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, “Experience,” Theological Dictionary, ed. Cornelius Ernst, trans. Richard Strachan (New York: Herder, 1965): 162.
64 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Experience,” Theological Dictionary, 162. See also Rahner, “The Experience of God Today,” TI 11: 151-52. “Experience as such and subsequent reflection upon this experience, in which its content is conceptually objectified are never absolutely separate one from the other. Experience always involves at least a certain incipient process of reflection. But at the same time the two are never identical. Reflection never totally includes the original experience.”
65 Rahner and Vorgrimler, “Experience,” Theological Dictionary, 162.
66 Thus, at the beginning of their discussion of Rahner’s understanding of experience, some commentators refer to how he sometimes uses the singular (die Erfahrung), and at other times the plural (die Erfahrungen). Rahner’s intention is to show that the experience of God is not so much given to us in addition to other experiences, but rather lies hidden within every human experience. See William J. Hoye, Gotteserfahrung? Klärung eines Grundbegriffs der heutigen Theologie (Zürich: Benziger, 1993), 112-114.
67 Recent commentators include: Stephen J. Duffy, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought, Theology and Life Series 37 (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 85-114, James A. Wiseman, O.S.B, “‘I have experienced God’: Religious Experience in the Theology of Karl Rahner,” American Benedictine Review 44 (1993): 22-57; Herbert Vorgrimler, “Gotteserfahrung im Alltag: Der Beitrag Karl Rahners zu Spiritualität und Mystik,” Karl Rahner in Erinnerung, ed. Albert Raffelt (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1994), 100-117; 206-34; Donald L. Gelpi, The Turn To Experience In Contemporary Theology (New York/Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1994), 90-107; Ralf Stolina, Die Theologie Karl Rahners: Inkarnatorische Spiritualität: Menschwerdung Gottes und Gebet, Innsbrucker theologische Studien 46 (Innsbruck-Wien: Tyrolia, 1996), 129-159 and 208-50.
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With regard to the experience of ourselves Rahner contends that we always know
more about ourselves than we are able to say. Conceptual knowledge can never totally
capture and fully communicate the deepest levels of our experience of self. We can never
give our experience of ourselves wholly and completely to another person. In fact, even
when we do reflect on our self-experience, our conceptual interpretation can be
inaccurate or distorted. This process of objectifying reflection, this transition from
experience to conceptual knowledge, can be difficult, but it is certainly not superfluous. In
contrast to conceptual knowledge, Rahner considers basic human experiences (of love,
faithfulness, trust, etc.) as inescapable. While conceptual knowledge requires a greater
amount of active participation on our part and is related to the amount of time and energy
invested in analysis and reflection, experiential knowledge is not in our control to the
same degree.
Rahner’s claim is that we cannot avoid experiencing ourselves, regardless of how
inadequate or inaccurate our conceptual interpretations of ourselves might be. Moreover,
his contention is that it is impossible for anyone not to have a basic, if unthematic,
experience of God. The experience of God is utterly inescapable because we experience
God whenever we experience our transcendence.68 While the experience of God is
different from any other human experience, it is not to be thought of as one particular
experience among many other human experiences. On the one hand, Rahner states how
the experience of God is more basic and more inescapable than any subsequent process of
rational and conceptual reflection. On the other hand, this experience does not impose
itself upon us in the fashion of a datum of sense experience or an organic sensation that
we automatically make the transition from the experience itself to a recognition and
interpretation of it at the conceptual level. Rahner’s spiritual writings in particular aimed
to draw attention to this experience, and to enable others to discover it within themselves.
Such an experience of God as the absolute mystery is not therefore confined to the
individual “mystic,” or to those who interpret their lives in explicitly religious categories.
Concrete experiences of life, then, can provide the locus for our experience of God.
The experiences Rahner has in mind include such basic experiences as joy, anxiety,
faithfulness, beauty, love, trust, responsibility, etc. A person has such experiences before
he or she reflects on them, or attempts to analyse them. Rahner is referring to something
extremely concrete, which he describes as “the element of the ineffable in the concrete
experience of our everyday life.”69 He provides examples of both a positive and negative
kind that together represent two aspects of one and the same experience of God.70
Drawing together some of the characteristics of Rahner’s convictions about the
experience of God, we can say, firstly, that everyone has such an experience, however
diffuse and unthematic it may be. Secondly, such experience is both unthematic and prior
to any subsequent attempt, on our part, at conceptualisation and analysis. Thirdly, this
experience of God is, at the same time, anexperience of the self, especially in those limit
situations where the individual is thrown back onto him or herself. Fourthly, the
68 See also Rahner, “The Experience of God Today,” TI 11: 153; “Experience of Self and Experience of God,” TI 13: 123-24; “Reflections on the Experience of Grace,” TI 3: 86-87; “Experience of the Spirit and Existential Commitment,” TI 16: 27-29; and “Experience of the Holy Spirit,” TI 18: 195-99.
69 Rahner, “The Experience of God Today,” TI 11: 157.
70 For some this experience takes place there where “the greatness and glory, goodness, beauty, and transparency of the individual reality of our experience point with promise to eternal light and eternal life.” For others, this experience occurs when the “lights shining over the tiny island of our ordinary life are extinguished and the question becomes inescapable, whether the night that surrounds us is the void of absurdity and death that engulfs us.” Rahner, “Experience of the Holy Spirit,” TI 18: 199.
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experience of God constitutes the radical essence of every personal experience (of love,
faithfulness, etc.). Rahner has shown how the common features of human experience point
in this direction. God may indeed be “met” in our experience, though it is always as holy
mystery that God is encountered. Fifthly, religious experience involves gradations –
ranging from ordinary experiences of grace to more mystical experiences. Sixthly,
religious experience is susceptible of reflection and objectification. Some people have a
greater ability than others to identify and articulate such experience, e.g., the prophet, the
mystic, or the poet. Seventhly, the experience of God takes place in concrete, everyday
experiences of both a positive and negative kind.
The foregoing list of characteristics of Rahner’s notion of religious experience is not
meant to be exhaustive. Our discussion has aimed to show that religious experience
necessarily involves a dynamic interplay of the transcendental and categorial realms. In
the working out of this dialectical relationship, and in order to highlight the - frequently
concealed - depth dimension of human experience, Rahner attached a certain primacy to
the transcendental dimension. This led to his being criticised – by both liberals and
postliberals - for undervaluing the concrete historical or categorial aspects of existence. In
Rahner’s defence, however, he has always contended that we realise or achieve ourselves,
not in an abstract spiritualised inwardness, but in external interaction with other persons
and with our environment.71
There is much to be valued in Rahner’s treatment of religious experience, including
his acknowledgement of a cognitive dimension, i.e., that religious experience can be a
source of theological insight. The postliberal criticisms notwithstanding, Rahner has
shown that the appeal to experience (whether transcendental, ordinary or negative) as a
source of theology need not be rejected.72 He would also accept that doctrinal statements
cannot be regarded as reports of actual experience. Doctrinal claims issue rather from a
process of critical thinking, of abstraction, rather than being merely an appendage to
experience. While they are not completely unrelated to experience, neither are they
simply produced by it.73 There is also the question of whether Rahner has taken sufficient
account of the great diversity of religious experiences, including those of non-Christians,
or whether he is simply assuming a common core to all religious experiences.74 It needs to
be stressed, therefore, that our religious experience is shaped and mediated by our prior
beliefs and concepts, by our interaction with a religious tradition, and by language. Not
that Rahner would deny that any experience has to be identified using some set of
concepts and rules if it is to have cognitive significance, nor is he claiming that religious
experiences elude explanation. Rather, the phrase “experience of God” implies “that there
is something more, something different, and something more fundamental than that
71 Rahner, “Some Thoughts On ‘A Good Intention,’” TI 3:105-106.
72 “In Latin, one who has become experienced is called an ‘expers’. Today, on the contrary, an “expert” is supposedly one who keeps himself from all experience… The expert is someone who has read a lot, but experienced nothing.” Jörg Splett, “‘Enough About Man’: Christians after their Modernity and the Postmodern Objections to their God,” Communio 29 (2002): 373.
73 Paul J. Griffiths, An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 38-39.
74 This forms part of Lindbeck’s criticism of Rahner’s “experiential-expressive” position, i.e., its espousal of a general account of human experience. See The Nature of Doctrine, 30-45, However, we have argued that as far as the relationship between experience and doctrine is concerned, Rahner is more aware of its complex symbiotic and reciprocal nature than Lindbeck’s account suggests.
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knowledge of God which can be acquired through the so-called proofs of God’s
existence.”75
For Rahner, the basic experience of God is prior to and more fundamental than our
subsequent attempts at conceptual interpretation and verbalisation.76 An unfortunate
effect of this kind of distinction, however, is the inclination – particularly among
newcomers to theology – to bracket out their experience, including any religious
experience, from sustained, critical reflection. The former is lauded as real, concrete and
relevant, the latter, including doctrine and dogmas, as abstract, speculative and largely
anachronistic.77 While Rahner’s tendency, at times, to play off unthematic or non-
conceptual knowledge of God against a conceptual, verbal knowledge could appear to
bolster such a view, he himself intended nothing of the kind. For him any disjunction
between experience and doctrine is misguided. We are “spirits in the world,” and “our
worldliness – which includes our dependence on language and society – conditions our
experience and knowledge even of God.”78 Rahner’s concern rather was to highlight the
religious dimension of all experience, particularly ordinary, everyday experiences where
we are “thrown back on ourselves” – when we are no longer able to overlook factors in our
life, which we would rather evade: loneliness, suffering, and especially the reality of death.
Such realities, he believed, can serve as a prelude to a possible experience of God.
IV. RAHNER, LEVINAS AND THE CHALLENGE OF OTHERNESS
A recent work exploring the development in Rahner from a focus on subjectivity towards
inter-subjectivity is that of the Scottish theologian, Michael Purcell.79 Purcell attempts a re-
reading of Rahner in the light of the ethical metaphysics of Emmanuel Levinas. A recurring
theme throughout Levinas’ work is his reaction to the whole spirit of Greek philosophy,
which, in his view, has been characterised by a striving for totality. He specifically
criticises the traditional hegemony of ontology, exemplified in Heidegger, with its stress
on comprehension and assimilation, where the particular being is always already
understood within the horizon of Being.80 In Levinas’ framework, however, the
perichoresis of being and knowing is displaced by the social relation, by the “Other,” by the
other human being, in a way that goes beyond comprehension. Rationality operates within
an inter-relational context, in which the other always has priority. Subjectivity is not in the
final analysis the “I think;” knowledge cannot take precedence over sociality. “To be or not
to be,” insists Levinas, is not the question.81 The “what ought to be” of ethics is not to be
75 Rahner, “The Experience of God Today,” TI 11:149.
76 Rahner aptly described the task of his theological programme in Foundations as the attempt “to relate our theological concepts back to their original experience” (17).
77 For a good discussion of the rhetorical and other appeals to experience in theology, see George P. Schner, “The Appeal to Experience,” Theological Studies 53 (1992): 40-59.
78 Philip Endean, “Theology out of Spirituality: The Approach of Karl Rahner,” Christian Spirituality Bulletin 3.2 (1995): 8, n.6.
79 Michael Purcell, Mystery and Method: The Other in Rahner and Levinas (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998).
80 Emmanuel Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” in Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi, eds., Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 1-10.
81 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity. Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. R. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 10.
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collapsed into the “what is” of ontology. The social is beyond ontology, and subjectivity is
described primarily in ethical terms. By positing the ethical encounter with the other person as the proto-philosophical
experience, Levinas is urging a thinking beyond ontology, which places the Other at the
centre. This awaking to alterity is more than a coming to self-consciousness; it is an
acknowledgement that the Same or the subject is not a totality closed in upon itself.
Philosophy is first of all an ethics – subjectivity is not for itself initially, but for the Other,
understood as responsibility for him or her. As Levinas puts it, “To think is no longer to
contemplate but to commit oneself, to be engulfed by that which one thinks, to be
involved.”82 The meaning of being is located in exteriority. It is not a matter of being with
oneself, but rather of a being-with-the-Other, where this Other is another person. Of
course, Levinas concedes, our relation with the Other includes wanting to comprehend
him or her, yet it is more than this. The Other does not present herself primarily as a truth
to be known but as an interlocutor: to comprehend a person is already to speak with her.
The human Other, or what Levinas terms, “the face,” that infinitely exceeds my
understanding, is the one for whom I am responsible and who summons me to respond.83 A similar, if less developed, dynamic can be seen in Rahner, particularly in his
reflections on the love of neighbour. We have noted how, for him, “every transcendental
experience is mediated by the categorial encounter with concrete reality in our world,
both the world of things and the world of persons.”84 In relation to the love of neighbour,
Rahner explored how “the act of personal love for another is the all-embracing basic act of
a person which gives meaning, direction and measure to everything else.”85 This essential
a priori openness to the other belongs to the most basic constitution of a person and is
experienced in the daily concrete encounters with one’s neighbour. The relationship with
God is realised in the love of neighbour. Love of God can only be achieved by a categorial
action, by a going-out into the world, which, understood as the world of persons, is
primarily the people with whom one lives. Still, Rahner’s philosophical background lies firmly within the ontological tradition
of Heidegger criticised by Levinas for its emphasis on the identity of being and knowing,
and for its understanding of subjectivity as the being-present-to-itself of being.86 Yet,
within Rahner’s later theological writings another strand is evident – one which
recognises that knowledge understood as comprehensive mastery is inadequate. This
desire to move beyond a presumptuous ontotheology, with its emphasis on apprehension
and possession of God, is manifested in a more apophatic manner of speaking that stresses
the incomprehensibility of the holy mystery. Such a deficient form of knowledge, Rahner
maintains, fails when confronted with the utter mystery and incomprehensibility of God.
Mystery is no longer depicted negatively in terms of truths that are provisionally
82 Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” 4. Elsewhere, he aptly summarises philosophy as “the wisdom of love at the service of love.” Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence,trans. A. Lingis (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1981), 161-62.
83 “The heteronomy of our response to the human other, or to God as the absolutely other, precedes the autonomy of our subjective freedom.” “Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas: Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney,” in Face to Face with Levinas, ed., Richard A. Cohen (New York: State University of New York Press, 1986), 27.
84 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. W. Dych (London: DLT, 1978), 52.
85 Karl Rahner, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God,” TI 6: 241.
86 “The subject is one who stands in the presence of being, one for whom to be is to be conscious of being.” Purcell, Mystery and Method, 171.
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incomprehensible. Instead, Rahner attempts to harmonise the notions of knowledge and
mystery:
The supreme act of knowledge is not the abolition or diminution of the mystery but its final assertion and total immediacy… It [the concept of mystery] is no longer the limitation of a knowledge which should by right be perspicuous… We must understand the act of knowing in such a way that it will explain why knowledge can only exist in a being when and in so far as that one being realises itself by an act of love.87
Human beings, created to participate in the mysterious character of God, similarly exceed
the comprehending gaze. Like Levinas, Rahner acknowledges that cognition is essentially
inadequate to the relationship with the other. But Levinas goes further by recasting
subjectivity as essentially “for-the-other,” the human Other, who is and remains excessive
to the capacity of the subject.88 It entails entering into a relationship with the ungraspable:
the Other is not another self, but is constituted by alterity. Western philosophy, Levinas
claims, has consistently practised a suppression of the Other, by a failure to think of the
Other as Other. This absorption of otherness into the politics of identity and the same, this
neutralisation of alterity, is, in effect, a refusal to engage with the Other.89 Despite the urgency of much of Levinas’ language and his valuable retrieval of the
notions of alterity, intersubjectivity and the priority of the ethical relationship with the
Other, there remains a tantalising lack of concreteness about much of his writing. That this
is deliberately the case is acknowledged by Levinas himself, whose primary focus is on
ethical responsibility rather than on political action in society.90 This criticism has as its
theological counterpart political and liberation theologies that have drawn attention to the
totalising discourses of traditional theology “where history pretty much hovers in the
abstract.”91 Levinas offers no systematically developed social ethics but rather a
philosophical reflection on the ethical basis of a humane society. His vision of such a
heteronomous society – constituted by the I’s responsibility for the Other - is an ethical
appeal to overcome the egocentric and totalitarian tendencies in society that overlook
minority and marginal groups.92
V. CONCLUSION
We have examined some of the explicit and implicit criticisms of Rahner’s theological
vision and the foundations on which it is based. Balthasar, Lindbeck, Metz, and Levinas are
valuable dialogue partners for Rahner and help to develop his thinking in new directions.
While accepting some of their criticisms, Rahner’s theological method is nevertheless
subtler than is often portrayed. Rahner aspired to overcome the mutual marginalisation
87 Karl Rahner, “The Theology of Mystery,” TI 4: 41.
88 Purcell, Mystery and Method, 356. See also Colin Davis, Levinas: An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 25-33.
89 Levinas, “Meaning and Sense,” Basic Philosophical Writings, 48.
90 This is somewhat surprising given Levinas’ own background as a prisoner of war. Existence and Existents (1947) was written for the most part within the confines of Stalag 1492. Totality and Infinity (1961) appeared against the political backdrop and experience of totalitarianism.
91 See, for example, Clodovis Boff, Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987), 256, n.46.
92 Roger Burggraeve, Emmanuel Levinas: The Ethical Basis for a Humane Society. Bibliography 1929-1977,1977-1981 (Leuven: Centre for Metaphysics and Philosophy of God, 1981), 5-57.
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18
between religious or spiritual experience and the theological academy.93 In other words,
his assumption was always that theological reflection must be built on a living experience
of faith. For all his emphasis on the ineffable God, Rahner did not stop at pure negation but
used this as a springboard into the search for unity with the transcendent.
But Christianity is not just about experience; it also entails a concrete lived practice.
We discussed a common criticism of Rahner’s transcendental method in this regard,
namely, that his method is insensitive to social problems and ineffectual in the area of
social change. Against this, it was emphasised how he increasingly sought to complement
his transcendental approach with an incorporation of a more historical perspective –
testified, for example, in his choice of theological topics. Although Rahner did not develop
an explicitly social ontology – the starting-point of his philosophical/theological
anthropology is the individual human being in his or her drive toward transcendence - we
have noted a shift towards intersubjectivity in his thought.94 Rather than seeing Rahner’s
subject as totally isolated, it would be fairer to say that he came to increasingly assert the
interpersonal dimension of being, the relational character of the person, and the necessity
of the other.95
Yet, in the light of the current non-foundationalist mood in theology, the question
remains whether Rahner’s transcendental method is radically undermined by the
postmodern critique or whether the unsystematic and apophatic nature of his work might
lend itself to a non-foundationalist reading. The radical postmodern stances, in contrast to
modernity, eschew all attempts to construct some grand narrative or overarching
theoretical system, preferring instead to “celebrate the heteromorphous nature of
discourse and life.”96 There is no fixed meaning to anything – whether world, word, text or
individual human subject. The centre does not hold because there is no centre – the new
cultural motto is “live and let live” and “go with the flow.” A more moderate form of
postmodernism, while resisting the search for the means to ground knowledge in a
context-neutral fashion, which it regards as illusory, recognises truth only relative to the
community in which a person participates. It is this latter approach which has affinities
with Rahner’s Denkstil, one which does not succumb to total epistemological scepticism,
and one which has helped theology come to terms with the situated, partial and fragile
character of all human knowing and doing.97 In a postmodern vein Rahner was aware that
language has a life of its own, is open to ever-new interpretations, and so “he is cautious
about emphasising too strongly the ability of language to express matters so
93 Though beyond the scope of this paper, Rahner accomplished this by taking seriously the dictum lex orandi, lex credendi, by showing that the specific way Christians pray, meditate and experience God constitutes an important element in theological reflection. See his “Reflections on a New Task for Fundamental Theology,” TI 16:156-66.
94 For a comprehensive treatment of the shift to intersubjectivity within Catholic theology. see Joseph A. Bracken, The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2001), 15-47.
95 Karl Rahner, “Experience of Self and Experience of God,” TI 13: 126. See also Kevin Hogan, “Entering into Otherness: The Postmodern Critique of the Subject and Karl Rahner’s Theological Anthropology,” Horizons 25 (1998): 181-202.
96 Thomas Guarino, “Between Foundationalism and Nihilism: Is Phronesis the Via Media for Theology?” Theological Studies 54 (1993): 40. Representative examples include Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.
97 Karl Rahner “Experiences of a Catholic Theologian,” trans. Declan Marmion and Gesa Thiessen, Theological Studies 61 (2000): 3-15.
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definitively.”98 All faith formulations, he maintained, are ultimately relativised in the face
of Holy Mystery that is their source and goal.
By taking seriously the pluralistic, contextual and interdisciplinary99 nature of
theology, Rahner anticipated many of the themes that preoccupy the current postmodern
scene. Religious scholars, influenced by the writings of Derrida, Levinas, Marion and
others, insist that our language about God is inadequate if not idolatrous.100 In thus
reviving the apophatic tradition, they are also, not unlike Rahner before them, advocating
a new, more tentative, way of speaking about God. On the other hand, it is unlikely that
Rahner would have aligned himself with the incipient sectarian tendency of postliberal
theology whose main fear is that Christianity has accommodated itself overmuch to
surrounding culture. Nor would he have identified with a more recent variant, the so-
called “radical orthodoxy” movement, with its rather inward-looking approach, and
confrontational tone.101 Rahner’s concern – and to a certain extent, this has come to pass –
was that theology would petrify into a self-enclosed discourse disconnected from the
challenges and criticisms of other disciplines and from society. While he would have
acknowledged the postliberal desire to preserve the distinctiveness of the Christian voice,
Rahner never favoured an aloof, standing-apart posture as a way of maintaining one’s
Christian identity. If Christians are to be a leaven in society, it is hard to see how
segregation can be a viable option.102 Christian identity is not a given but a constantly
evolving task. Some form of correlation between theology and the contemporary
postmodern context is necessary if theology is not to become a thoroughly introverted
affair.103
Without wishing to turn Rahner into a postmodernist, his theology has at times
anticipated some of the characteristics of this style of thinking.104 In drawing attention to
the intellectual pluralism of modern society, he was aware of the inescapability and the
irreducible nature of such pluralism and the impossibility of integrating the many
different schools of theological thought.105 In the light of the explosion in scientific
knowledge too, the “abstractness” of his theological concepts became increasingly clear to
him. This leads us back, in conclusion, to the central tenet of Rahner’s theology, namely, to
98 Craig A. Baron, “The Poetry of Transcendental Thomism,” in Lieven Boeve & John C. Ries, eds., The Presence of Transcendence: Thinking ‘Sacrament’ in a Postmodern Age (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 57.
99 Rahner was one of the first theologians to enter into dialogue with experts from other secular disciplines, including Marxists, atheists, and natural scientists. See Hans-Dieter Mutschler, ed., Gott neu buchstabieren. Zur Person und Theologie Karl Rahners (Würzburg: Echter, 1994), 97-119.
100 The literature here is voluminous. Two recent examples include: Thomas A. Carlson, Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) and John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds., God, the Gift and Postmodernism (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997).
101 John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, eds., Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1998). For a critical review of the book and the movement, see David F. Ford, “Radical Theology and the Future of British Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 54 (2001): 385-404.
102 Yet, this seems to be option favoured by Lindbeck in The Nature of Doctrine, 112-38. For further critical discussion, see Werner Jeanrond, “The Problem of the Starting-Point of Theological Thinking,” in John Webster, ed., The Possibilities of Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 70-89.
103 These issues raise the question of what exactly constitutes Christian identity. However, in the light of the current intellectual factionalism, and polarisation of attitudes towards renewal within the Churches, including the Catholic Church, it is often difficult to have respectful and constructive dialogue between the various parties concerned.
104 For a discussion of this aspect of Rahner in the context of a non-foundationalist reading of him, see Karen Kilby, “Philosophy, Theology and Foundationalism in the Thought of Karl Rahner,”Scottish Journal of Theology 55 (2002): 127-40.
105 See, for example, Rahner, “Pluralism in Theology and the Unity of the Creed in the Church,” TI 11:3-23.
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20
the God of incomprehensible mystery, who cannot be explained with rationalistic clarity.
In sum, Rahner’s lifelong testimony to the mystery of God as integral to the Christian
tradition is probably the greatest achievement of this “unsystematic” theologian.106
Author: Declan Marmion SM is Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the Milltown Institute of
Philosophy and Theology, Dublin. He received his STD degree at the University of Leuven
Belgium in 1996. Publications include: A Spirituality of Everyday Faith: A Theological
Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl Rahner, Louvain Theological & Pastoral
Monographs (Peeters/Eerdmans, 1998), editor of The Cambridge Companion to Karl
Rahner (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2005), and Christian Identity in a
Postmodern Age: Celebrating the Legacies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan (Dublin:
Veritas Publications, forthcoming 2005).
The article is being reprinted with the permission of the Editor of the Irish Theological
Studies. It originally appeared in the Irish Theological Quarterly 68.4 (2003): 195-212, and
is enhanced for publication in AEJT with permission of the Editor.
Email: dmarmion@iol.ie
106 “The absence of system in Rahner’s theological program finds its final explanation in the nature of this mystery.” DiNoia, “Karl Rahner,” The Modern Theologians, 202. DiNoia refers to the conclusion of an interview given by Rahner on the occasion of his 75th birthday: “The true system of thought really is the knowledge that humanity is finally directed precisely not toward what it can control in knowledge but toward the absolute mystery as such; that mystery is … the blessed goal of knowledge which comes to itself when it is with the incomprehensible one… In other words, then, the system is the system of what cannot be systematized.” See “Living into Mystery: Karl Rahner’s Reflections at Seventy-five. A Conversation with Leo O’Donovan,” America, 10 March 1979, 180.
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