Australian eJournal of Theology 4 (February 2005)

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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outdated to postmodern sensibilities.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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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“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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10

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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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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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.