The 20th century saw the blossoming of a circle of extremely important Catholic theologians and philosophers, including Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, Bernard Lonergan, Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar. The work of Karl Rahner (1904-1984) rivals and perhaps even surpasses these intellectual giants in terms of lasting influence. His contribution to religious thinking, as well as to the larger polis of social, political and scientific discussion, has immeasurably impacted the modern world. From his undeniable contribution at the Second Vatican Council, to his efforts to reconcile the growth of secular knowledge with the traditional doctrines of the church, to his extensive corpus of systematic writings on nearly every aspect of man as thinker, believer, and ultimately lover of the divine, Rahner’s legacy is recognized as unquestioned and long-lasting. Whether his theories are defended and built upon, or questioned and critiqued, they cannot be ignored.
After studying under Martin Heidegger and Joseph Maréchal, Rahner’s theological method emerged as an attempt to place traditional Christian teaching in dialogue with modern, post-Kantian philosophy. Such a theological system, appreciating medieval scholasticism while reading it through the lens of rational Enlightenment categories of thought and applying it to contemporary issues, has been called Transcendental Thomism.
Rahner’s focus is largely anthropological, taking into account the philosophical “turn-to-the-subject.” He views humanity as embodied spirits, historically situated in a concrete existence of freedom and temporality. However, this “categorical” situation must always be read against the horizon of Absolute transcendence. Every mundane experience is in some sense ordered toward and grounded in the Infinite, whom Christians identify as the triune God.
The entire existence of the human person reflects this contact with the Absolute, the “asymptotic” goal of life and death. (Rahner often uses this mathematical model of a graph ever-approaching, but never quite reaching a terminal point.) However, humanity is also open to God’s self-communication, stamped with a capax Dei — an openness and ability to receive His offer of divine Self. Rahner famously calls this dimension of the person the “supernatural existential.”
One of Rahner’s most lasting contributions is his interreligious thinking, which centers on his “anonymous Christian theory.” Picking up on the traditional doctrine of baptism of desire, such a theory argues that one can unconsciously accept God’s offer of self-communication by following the dictates of his or her conscience and living for the good, the beautiful, and the true. A person in such a condition is seen to be living in the grace of Jesus Christ, whether he or she knows it or not. To be sure, the theory has its critics and difficult sub-currents. It does not, and was not intended, to lessen the church’s evangelizing mission, dilute the benefits of explicit faith in Christ, or denigrate other religious traditions. It is merely an explanatory concept; one which seems to re-present on a global scale the biblical question addressed to all believers “Are you jealous because I am generous?” (Mt 20:15). Grace abounds in every authentic element of human culture, and God can be found there, for he seeks the salvation of all (cf. 1 Tim 2:4).
Official Catholic doctrine, from Nostra Aetate (Declaration of the Relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions) and Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church) to the Catechism, affirm such a position that “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience — those too may achieve eternal salvation.” Thus, in some sense, Rahner’s theories have been endorsed and implemented through significant magisterial pronouncements.
A quiet mysticism and spirituality also play a large part in Rahner’s theology. Throughout Rahner’s writings, we see an unbreakable thread of commitment to the interior development of the heart toward union with God. Although unquestionably dense and often a bit verbose, there is an indescribable element of thoughtful silence which permeates Rahner’s work and somehow sits behind the torrent of words. Prayer undoubtedly and perceptibly serves as a font for his philosophical and theological reflections. And thus, the devotee of Rahner must contemplate his theology and its bearing on life, not merely dissect it. Nowhere is this combination of theological propositions and the realities which lie behind them more evident than in his reflections on Mary:
When your existence began, sanctifying grace already was yours, and that irrevocable grace was with you always. You walked the way of all the children of this earth, the narrow paths which seem to wander so aimlessly through the life of time, commonplace, sorrowful roads, until death. But they were God’s ways, the path of faith and unconditional assent: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” And in a moment that never passes, but remains valid for all eternity, your voice became the voice of all mankind, and your Yes was the Amen of all creation to God’s irrevocable decree. You conceived in faith and in your womb him who is at once God and man, creator and creature, changeless unalterable blessedness, and an earthly life marked out for bitter death, Jesus Christ our Lord. For our salvation you said Yes, for us you spoke your Fiat; as a woman of our race you accepted and bore in your womb and in your love him in whose Name alone there is salvation in heaven or on earth. Your Yes of consent ever remained, was never revoked, even when the course of the life and death of your Son fully revealed who it was that you had conceived: the Lamb of God, taking on himself the sins of the world, the Son of Man, nailed to the cross by our sinful race’s hatred of God, and thrown, him the Light of the world, into the darkness of death, the lot that was ours.
Rahner wrote copiously on nearly every element of Christian life and thought. In addition to his classic texts Foundations of Christian Faith, Hearers of the Word, and Spirit in the World, he penned a series of essays gathered in the 23-volume work entitled Theological Investigations (which thanks to technology, amazingly sits on my desk in a single disc available through Campion Hall in Oxford). His unquestioned genius, commitment to the church, and courage to employ new modes of thought, always and everywhere within a posture of faith, have inspired a generation of Catholics, including myself. As he once said to Fordham’s graduating class at commencement “Our time calls also us theologians sleeping under the broom tree of orthodoxy like Elijah in the old days: Surge, grandis tibi restat via — Arise, a long journey lies ahead of you.”
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is a Ph.D. candidate in systematic theology at Fordham University.
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