The SPCK Introduction to Karl Rahner (SPCK Introductions) by Kilby Karen

Author:Kilby, Karen [Kilby, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SPCK
Published: 2005-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

5

Philosophy and Rahner’s theology

A recurring hotspot for theology, at least since Tertullian asked in the third century ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’, has been its relationship to philosophy. This is an issue that keeps returning, a question that does not want to go away, because it is more than a mere matter of jostling between two adjacent academic disciplines: what is at stake, fundamentally, is the relationship of human wisdom, and the products of human reason, to divine revelation.

Rahner’s first two books, Spirit in the World and Hearer of the Word , were works of philosophy. He was at one stage preparing for a career teaching philosophy, or at least the history of philosophy. As a student he sat at the feet (or more precisely, attended the seminars) of the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger. And his theological writing is often saturated with philosophical terminology. The following, for example, comes from his Foundations of Christian Faith :

When understood in this way, the essence and the meaning of God’s self-communication to the spiritual subject consists in the fact that God becomes immediate to the subject as spiritual, that is, in the fundamental unity of knowledge and love. Ontological self-communication must be understood as the condition which makes personal and immediate knowledge and love for God possible. But this very closeness to God ... is the real essence of what constitutes the ontological relationship between God and creatures. (FCF 122)

Terminology of essence and accident, of subject and object, of subjectivity and objectification, of ontic and ontological, of existence and existential, of condition of the possibility, of transcendental condition of the possibility, of transcendence and transcendentality and self-transcendence, litter Rahner’s prose. And they litter Rahner’s prose not just in his early philosophical books, but throughout his writings. What then, in Rahner’s writings, is the relation of philosophy to theology?

One answer to this question, and an answer which has seemed obvious to many, takes its cue from the order of Rahner’s writings. Since Rahner’s earliest major efforts were philosophical, it has seemed natural to assume that his theology is built upon this philosophy. Many have read Rahner’s early books, then, as providing the basis and framework for his subsequent thought: certain truths are first established through philosophical argument, and because they have been so established, Rahner can proceed to his theology. Few suppose, of course, that everything Rahner says is simply derived from philosophy – it is hard to deny that he gives some role to revelation. But there has been quite a widely held assumption that the arguments of Spirit in the World and Hearer of the Word provide the foundation for all that follows. To some this makes Rahner particularly impressive: he has created a single, massive multi-level structure in which the philosophy serves as the starting point and justification for the theology, and it is striking in its sheer systematic coherence. For many, on the other hand, this approach has provided a reason to turn

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