Anonymous Christ or Christ before any of my words?

A conversation within Rahner and his God centred theology.

Bruno R. Zazo
Rahner is completely wrong, unless he is completely right. Rahner is an absolute stranger until he
becomes intensely familiar. During the term I have been reading Rahner I have been highly
critical and quickly dismissive1- with him, as many aspects of his theology seemed erred and
cynical to me.
This is the account of both my initial misunderstanding on Rahner and the faithful search
for an understanding of his theology and his person, with the dialogue it has originated. As
a Christian scholar with a Jesuit background, for a dialogue with Rahner I should have in
mind the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola2, which read on its presupposition:
In order that both he who is giving the Spiritual Exercises, () let it be presupposed that every
good Christian is to be more ready to save his neighbors proposition than to condemn it. If he
cannot save it, let him inquire how he means it; and if he means it badly, let him correct him with
charity. ()

Therefore, Rahner could be Jesuitically read, i.e. initially critically, aporetically3; and, finally,
sympathetically4, or, in Thomistic dialectics, we could confront his main propositions
under a videtur quod sed contra methodology5: this is what I will do to address the main
issues that provoked me major unrest during the study.
In this paper I will focus mainly on one topic, the very first one: God seen just as the
incomprehensible Being produced by my inner longings, and the metaphysical and
epistemological unrest that this provokes. Two other major aspects such as Christ as a mere
symbolic result of my relation with that ineffable God (which provokes anthropological
unrest) and grace, conceived just as the capstone demanded by my nature to culminate its
artificial project (which produces ethical unrest) will be mentioned as a corollary of the first.
As a conclusion of this study I end with the conviction that Rahners theology could be
conceived as a praying theology, what makes it difficult to be understood.

VIDETUR QUOD RAHNERS GOD IS JUST AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRUTCH

As a starting point, I managed to agree with Rahner on only one topic: to make theology is
precisely to speak about God.6 And I took this as the starting point of my investigation
But immediately the first motive of unrest, the first theological aporia, arose: just with
Rahners paradoxical treatment of the question of God, the ineffable, through Worte ins
1

As per KILBY, Karen, Karl Rahner: theology and philosophy, Routledge, New York, 2004, p. 1.
IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, The Spiritual Exercises, P.J. KENEDY & SONS, published as pdf document
by ixtmedia.com.
3
Assuming that he meant badly all the issues that provoked unrest within the Church; therefore ending
in the distrastrous and anguishing anonymous Christ that some have been unable to overcome.
4
Revisiting the same issues but under a hopeful installation: a Rahnerian reading, an address of Rahner
from Rahner; a reading that flows into a subtle and magnificent Christ before any of my words, a Christ
that could, perfectly, be the one pointed to by Rahner throughout his philosophical and theological works.
5
Against the view of McCARTHY, Robert C., A critical examination of the theology of Karl Rahner,
S.J., Carthay Ventures, Texas, 2001, p. 13, who opposes Aquinass open theology to Rahners, I would
argue that Rahners theology is also open, but in the openness of a theologian of the Twentieth Century.
6
RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor (Maria, Mutter des Herrn), Herder, Barcelona, 2012, p. 25.
2

Schweigen (roughly translated into English as Encounters with silence7). The God of my life,
Incomprehensible, be my life8 petition provokes concern in us: how can an absolute other, a
stranger, become familiar, be the God of my life? This is regarding the personal relation
but, regarding knowledge, and as Rahner takes his metaphysics of human knowledge (his
Spirit in the World) as his foundation for metaphysics9: how are we going, as theologians, to
do theo-logia starting from an i-logical God? What from other authors, mainly mystics,
would be admitted as apophatic theology, sounds to us, in relation to Rahner, as
epistemological scepticism.
This was the first oddness on Rahners foundational metaphysical epistemology: that he
() begins from a transcendental experience of openness to mystery that can never be adequately retrieved
and thematized in reflection.10 Being the noumenical God epistemologically inaccessible
theology will use as a spare intellectual tool the way of man, what some label as existential
and which means just phenomenical: God is not anymore just God, but just what I feel,
understand or need that God be: () he accepts that the word God correctly names the whither of
this openness.11 And, in parallel with Heidegger, but using Aquinass noetic motion, Rahner
formulates his Vorgriff12, which serves to compare religious traditions.13
Our experience, not through objectification of the world, but through enriched self-presence or
self-modification14, would be now both the driver of the knowledge process (unifying our
transcendentality (the experience of the self that seeks to transcend) and its goal,
reciprocally enablers and enabled15) and the object of our reflection. Therefore, external
revelation cedes her historical place to individual listening, intuition (Anschauung16) of the
word17, which would be an idle human approach to faith.
But in reality this pre-scientific18 resource to experience might proof equivocal and end into
an epistemological aporia. As happened with the cogito where Descartes ignored the two
inseparable but heterogeneous dimensions of the knowledge of the self that man has as a
spiritual subject- but in reverse direction, the transcendental Rahner would be reducing,
assimilating, the objective existence of the transcendent to the intimate conscience of
transcendence (founded on the immediate apperception of the longing soul of man toward
something beyond the finite). Rahners transcendental experience is (reciprocally as
Descartess cogito) an intuitive and pre-conceptual experience of the transcendentality of the
subject (in the form of an experience of transcending all that is finite.19 This would subsume

RAHNER, Karl, Encounters with silence, St. Augustines Press, Indiana, 1999.
RAHNER, Karl, Encounters with silence, op. cit., p. 10.
9
SHEEHAN, Thomas, Karl Rahner: The Philosophical Foundations, Continental Thought Series,
Volume 9, Athens, Ohio University Press, Ohio, 1987, p. 3.
10
OLEARY, Joseph, Rahner and metaphysics in MARMION, Declan, and HINES, Mary (eds.), The
Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, p. 24.
11
OLEARY, Joseph, Rahner and metaphysics in op. cit., p. 24.
12
Cf. BONSOR, Jack Arthur, Rahner, Heidegger and truth. Karl Rahners notion of Christian truth. The
influence of Heidegger, University Press of America, Lantham, 1987. p. 163
13
Cf. BONSOR, Jack Arthur, op. cit., p. 167.
14
Cf. BACIK, James J., Apologetics and the eclipse of mystery. Mystagogy according to Karl Rahner,
University of Notre Dame Press, 1980, p. 49.
15
Cf. BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 29.
16
RAHNER, Karl, Spirit in the World, Sheed and Ward, London, 1968, p. 9.
17
Cf. BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 49.
18
RAHNER, Karl, Curso fundamental sobre la fe. Introduccin al concepto de Cristianismo, Barcelona,
Herder, 1984, p. 27.
19
KILBY, Karen, Karl Rahner: theology and philosophy, op. cit., p. 34.
8

objective, universal essential knowledge into intimate, existential20 intimate knowledge (yes,
forgetting the senses, as traditional Thomists21 allege, but that is not the question) as in
denken we would look at the universal essence as existing in the individual thing.22
And this facilitates a smooth and illicit transition: from a transcending (operative)
condition in the subject that in fact transcends, to a transcendental condition of the possibility of
experience; that is, we would have surreptitiously moved from the knowing subject to his
operations (the subject in act of knowing); and, from his operations, to the essence of the
operation of knowledge itself, [that] is precisely [that] transcendental experience.23 His would
appear as an unjustified jump from the existential-individual realm into the existentialuniversal dimension, having crossed before through the areas of both individual
knowledge and universal knowledge... Is this legitimate? Or instead, are we inventing a
God because we always look beyond beings toward Being?
SED CONTRA RAHNERS PRISTINE THEOLOGY
IS MADE ONLY OF ONE WORD: GOD
However, being Rahner a Thomist, it would have been very odd of him to have entered
into the shadow lands of intuitionism, no matter if it is just Thomistic intuitionism. On
the contrary, he could be placed against the habitual criticism addressed to him- as a
promoter of thinking realism, as his knowledge theory saves the fundamental reality it has
to save: not only that of the object (he is definitely not an anonymous Anselmian24), but
mostly the who who thinks, as it is actually a concrete who who thinks: something to be
urgently saved after Descartes (and where Kant succumbed).
From the subject to the object: unless we abandon the tyrannical predominance of secular
knowledge25, we will not progress in our theological investigation. This is expressed by one
word: analogy. We are actually founded on Mystery, as this mystery sustains and attract us, and analogy
is a proper way of existence.26 Therefore, All the theological statements, although in a very diverse
manner and grade, are analogical.27 And this means that: For a completely primitive scholastic
comprehension of the notion of analogy, an analogical concept is characterized by the fact that a statement on
a particular reality is legitimately and inevitably formulated by means of that concept but, in a certain sense,
it [the concept] has to be retreated always at the same time, because the mere predication of that concept
about the thing, in itself and without simultaneous retreat, without that strange and disturbing suspension
between the yes and the no, would be unknowing the object really thought and would be erroneous ()
it is the retreat of the predication of a conceptual content at the same time of its predication ().28
In the end, our analogical (dubitative) predication, any theological statement, should be
just Worte ins Schweigen to be rigorously something, and not anything else If we started
agreeing with Rahner on the assertion that to do theology is to speak about God, we
20

MILBANK, John, The suspended middle. Henri de Lubac and the debate concerning the supernatural,
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Cambridge, 2005, p. 211.
21
BACIK, op. cit., p. 56.
22
RAHNER, Karl, Spirit in the World, Sheed and Ward, London, 1968, p. 9.
23
KILBY, Karen, Karl Rahner: theology and philosophy, op. cit., p. 34.
24
LOGAN, Ian, Was Karl Rahner an anonymous Anselmian?, in Durham medieval and renaissance
monographs and essays, Durham, 2012.
25
RAHNER, Karl, Spirit in the Church, Burns & Oates, London, 1979, p. 8.
26
Cf. CORDOVILLA, ngel (ed.), La lgica de la fe. Manual de teologa dogmtica, Universidad
Pontificia de Comillas, Madrid, 2013, p. 105.
27
RAHNER, Karl, Sobre la inefabilidad de Dios, op. cit., p.19.
28
RAHNER, Karl, Sobre la inefabilidad de Dios, op. cit., p.20.

should conclude now that talking about faith, only a word can be said: the word of the supreme God,
of the three-times saint God, ineffably mysterious () and within predication and theology there is no place
for another word. It could also be thought that all the rest should stay under a profound silence, despite
being worth of compliments ().29 This word, this theology, would be just pure prayer:
thinking God, explaining God, saying God Therefore and only analogically understood,
the step from the logical to the ontological, justified in the existential, is legitimate, against
Barth.30
The first theological aporia, that of the impossibility of theology as the discourse on the
ineffable God, would have been solved by Rahners first-stage theology, a theology that
would be a one-word divine discourse (where fides qua and fides quae coincide), a discourse
that would require, from mans (hearer of the word) side, just a listening. It seemed to turn
towards a metaphysical prison31 but actually the object of our knowledge has mystically
rescued us:32 and once this happens the adjustment of the object of knowledge with its
causa finalis (and reason as the apprehension of reality in its connection33) is absolute: truth
is continuously shining, dwelling in us as recipients, an unlimited receptivity34 that together
with the desire for the whole of reality constitute transcendentality or spirit, a power that
reaches out beyond the world and knows the metaphysical35, in unity of all mans cognitive powers.36 In a
profound existential (and analogical, with the experience of both limits37 and overflowing38)
proposal, similar to that of Augustine, we attain a knowledge39 of the knowing of the knower that
it is a tasting of the being of the knower, who is the knowledge of the Being.
Therefore, the act of knowledge would simply be God self-knowledge. Do you remain so
silent precisely because You are waiting until I am really finished, so that You can then speak Your word
to me, the word of Your eternity?40 Hence Rahners theology, the speaking about God, is
actually made from, by and of God. This, to me, would the key to understand Rahner from
Rahner: Rahners theology and its acolytes. And against Endean and Kilby41, I would say
that the philosophical preface to his theology was essential to reach the conclusions he
actually reached. However, Rahners theology does not end here, but goes further than God,
if that can be conceived.
COROLLARY 1:

VIDETUR QUOD RAHNERS CHRIST IS A DERIVED CONSTRUCT

On my second initial investigation I wanted to critically check Rahners views on Christ as
a crucial cross-check. Again, the frustrating result: the Rahnerian Christ would be not a
person with his own existence and persona, but the commoditised result of our
voluntaristic approximations to God, an artificial construct that responds to the intellectual
29

RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit. p. 25.

CORDOVILLA, ngel (ed.), op.cit., p. 1053.
31
OLEARY, Joseph, Rahner and metaphysics in MARMION, Declan, and HINES, Mary (eds.), op.
cit., p. 23.
32
RAHNER, Karl, Curso fundamental sobre la fe op. cit., p. 36.
33
According to Julin Maras. Cf. CORDOVILLA, ngel (ed.), op. cit., p. 149.
34
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 28.
35
RAHNER, Karl, Spirit in the World, op. cit., p. liii.
36
RAHNER, Karl, ibid., p. liii.
37
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 37.
38
Cf. BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 28.
39
A wisdom, a tasting as it is performed with the inner being.
40
RAHNER, Karl, Encounters with silence, op. cit., p. 29.
41
KILBY, Karen, Karl Rahner: theology and philosophy, op. cit., p. 10.
30

formulation O Infinite God, you have actually willed to speak such a word to me! () You have come
to me in a human word. For You, the Infinite, are the God of Our Lord Jesus Christ.42
This, transcendental (abstract), almost hermeneutical43 Christ, would be another condition
of possibility of my thinking, as it makes no difference to the truth of statement and my acceptance of
it, whether the truth is presented to me by an encounter with the thing itself or by a communication from
another.44 Further into this argument, he is incessantly and impersonally referred as the
Word of God45, the reality we believe or the reality we mean when we profess our faith, or, worse
indeed, what resulted after the Word of God became man
Despite the frustration this Christ might produce, again within obscurity beats a shining
light, the key to untie the snare of the second aporia and, indeed, the lock that, once open,
would enable the development of the rest of the theology of Rahner. It is precisely on this
Christ that Rahner builds the whole building of his anthropocentric theology, although the
centre of this theology will not be Christ.
SED CONTRA CHRIST IS THE MAN AND SINCE HIM
THEOLOGY HAS TO BE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
We solved the first aporia with the word of God: with an exercise of theology that is
actually the infinite utterance of the word God, by God himself. It would logically seem
that, if we are to move further into theology, the words to be pronounced now should be
human words: it should be the turn of man now. Paradoxically, again, it is not: mystery can
be attained, it is not anonymous; Mystery can be said, but not by any of my words.
In fact it is the word God what genealogically (and symbolically) contains, in itself, a
motion that, as a big bang, formally causes all the theological realities that sustain the rest of
the theological discourse and originates some additional words, some theological words
that: For theology and faith it does not exist just something like a God and, close to Him, all the
conceivable reality, but it does exist only the only God, incomprehensible, three times saint and worth of
adoration () But, having said that, there exist a theology of man as such, a profession of faith that
expresses something about man itself, not in parallel to the profession of faith into the only eternal God, but
included within this profession of faith; an this is because God Himself, within His Trinitarian life, within
His unfathomable glory, within His eternal life has assumed us within His very personal life.46
Hence the happening of the story is still headquartered in God: God has not given us only a
finite thing, created from nothing, but, further to all creation, he has given himself to us. He himself in his
Word has become man.47 The symbol48 not only points, but shares analogia entis with the being it
symbolizes49.

42

RAHNER, Karl, Encounters with silence, op. cit., p. 16.

RAHNER, Karl, On the theology of the Incarnation, in op. cit., p. 120.
44
RAHNER, Karl, The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology, in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4,
Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1979, p. 44.
45
RAHNER, Karl, On the theology of the Incarnation, in Theological Investigations, Vol. 4, op. cit., p.
105.
46
RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit. p. 27.
47
RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit. p. 28.
48
LENNAN, Richard, The theology of Karl Rahner: an alternative to the Ressourcement?, in
MURRAY, Paul D. and FLYNN, Gabriel, Ressourcement. A Movement for Renewal in TwentiethCentury Catholic Theology, OUP Oxford, 2014, p. 415.
49
LENNAN, Richard, op. cit., p. 415.
43

And although this second Word might seem very relevant to us, and we can be astonished
by this miraculous event, it is indeed especially relevant in another mysterious and
tremendous sense: this is relevant, especially, for God, as from then onwards He is not
only God but, also, man: a man. This is what implies that, as knowledge follows being, from
then onwards we must recognise that we cannot do theology not doing, at the same time,
anthropology.50 Any theology so insolent as to go further than the word God will need to
affirm the Incarnation of God and conclude in Mystery; as a consequence, it will have to be
a divine anthropology51.
Therefore, and avoiding any notion of tailored-made (or anti-Catholic52, indeed) mancentred53 theology, Rahners second-stage theology (the theology that dared to go further
than the word God, into the Word of God) is still fully rooted within God Himself.
Rahners second aporia is solved, dissolved, again, in God: Rahner is continuously doing a
God-centred theology and Christ, the Word of God, is not any word, is not an anonymous
person or, worse indeed, a virtual construct, but the Word before any of the words that
might be uttered by us. 54
COROLLARY 2:

VIDETUR QUOD FOR RAHNER GRACE IS OWED TO OUR NATURE,

IS ALREADY IN US

When God assumes the World in himself55, God opens the man to receive God, and it is
not clear what is stronger: if the grace of God or the will of man. Is God, through man, the
one who makes the acceptation of His grace? 56
I have read57 that Rahner, as the German representative of integralism, naturalises the
supernatural, via the invention of the idea of a supernatural existential, and therefore
avoids, in an intermediate manner, the temptation of extrinsicism.58 Some other authors say
that he is erasing the gratuity from the supernatural, and entering into Pelagianism.
According to Cardinal Siri, Rahner concludes that grace is the fulfilling of our essence. Starting from
this vision that rejects de facto the true gratuity of the supernatural order, he put Christ and God within
things () This doctrine would drive toward the doctrine of the anonymous Christian, the doctrine
of the death of God, the secularization, the demystification, the liberation and many others.59
From this we would end in the notion of the Church as the society of believers: people that
share a common individualistic60 and deserved61 action (a graced search for meaning62) toward
the ineffable God, and not anymore the people of the Mystical Body of Christ. Once the
50

RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit. p. 29.

RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit. p. 30.
52
As in McCARTHY, Robert C., op. cit., p. 5.
53
Supposedly against God-centred theologies such as Aquinass theology, as stated in McCARTHY,
Robert C., op. cit., p. 11.
54
RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit., p. 34.
55
RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit., p. 10.
56
RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit., p. 11.
57
MILBANK, John, The suspended middle op. cit., p. 207.
58
MILBANK, John, op. cit., p. 223.
59
SIRI, Cardinal Jos, Getseman; reflexiones sobre el movimiento teolgico contemporneo, CETE,
Toledo, 1981, pp. 87-92.
60
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 51.
61
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 41.
62
KELLY, GEFFREY B. (ed.), Karl Rahner. Theologian of the graced search for meaning, T&T Clark,
Edinburg, 1993, p. 31.
51

supernatural existential is in everybody63 through an easy experience of loving union with the
universe64, a natural grace would be everywhere (both in any situation and in any doctrine)65
and the anonymous Christian would be the believer in a generic, anonymous Christ, with
no need to profess any special name (against the repeated teachings of the Gospels).
This way, an in an apparently fixation with Salvation (once Christ is not real and God is too
far), the path to heaven would be frank, as grace is not added to nature, because nature
would not be in need of anything else than a self-transcending effort to the Infinite that,
for our own tranquillity, has happened within the event of the continuous selfcommunication of God: the incarnation is not () the trigger for Gods becoming gracious to us, but
the peak of Gods being gracious to us.66 Historical Redemption, with the contradictory
kenosis67 of Christ and His indeed more contradictory Resurrection, is dissolved
throughout domestic68 histories of transcendence.69
SED CONTRA GODS GRACIOUS TRACTION
ACTS FROM THE FUTURE TOWARD US
The third point for me to check was Rahners mystery and grace, as I had nurtured the idea
that mystery in Rahner was something problematic. To discuss Rahners approach to grace
I went into the study of his mystagogy70, a part of his theology he expressly recognized was
lacking development. And after the analysis of the matter I conclude that mystery is, as well
(mentioned supra), something that happens, not just to us, but properly to God. When God
speaks by, and lives in, Christ, the inexpressible Mystery 71is happening; theology, what we
speak about God, must have its word on this.
Grace is not just factually connected to Incarnation72, but becomes Christological73, as Grace is
God himself, () his work is really himself, as the one communicated. 74 This does not mean that
there is an assimilation grace-Christ-supernatural existential, but, again, that we should
sympathetically and analogically read Rahner, realising his Augustinian-type inner75 desires
of God, as does Craigo-Snell76 when he defines the supernatural existential, and Milbank when
pointing to Cajetans both potentia obedientialis and grace supplied natural desire for the
supernatural77 as Rahners reworked tools.
Here again, and circularly, as his theology is circularly complete, we would find also the
manner to understand knowledge: as grace is under the realm of consciousness78, it is a drive
63

BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 27.

BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 30.
65
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 14.
66
KILBY, Karen, Karl Rahner, Harper Collins, London, 1997, p. 21.
67
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 23.
68
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 35.
69
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 32.
70
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 34.
71
RAHNER, Karl, I remember. An autobiographical interview with Meinold Krauss, SCM Press Ltd.,
London, 1985, p. 45.
72
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 22.
73
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 23.
74
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 25.
75
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 29.
76
CRAIGO-SNELL, Shannon, Supernatural Existential, in MCFARLAND, Ian A. (ed.), The
Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, Cambridge, 2011, p. 488.
77
MILBANK, John, op. cit., p. 64.
78
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 4.
64

initiated by a goal that remains beyond our control79, as a wording of what has been existentially lived80, in
a Platonic81 pre-conceptual nostalgia (as in Steiner) for an Infinite that contains, embraces82,
the unified83 finite being (perhaps since eternity?84). The gratuitous experience of
transcendentality and our asymptotic desire for God correspond each other and impede a
dangerous complete identification of ourselves with mystery (pantheism).85
This correspondence is the heart of a perfect Christianism (again paradoxically, it is not
Christ): the free reception of Gods love, through the identification of the profession of
faith with the own life.86 Man is a mystery because he is essentially related to the ever
greater Mystery which is God in his self-communication.87
CONCLUSION
. After this exercise, I conclude that Rahner himself, and Rahners theology, can and
must be approached sympathetically, and that this has to happen through a brand
new approach to theology, in general, and toward Rahner, especially. While this
happens, wrong readings of Rahner will keep contributing to the general nihilism,
amorphous plurality88 and rampant subjectivism89, not only in the Church, but
without the Church.
. Rahner does his theology from God, and in unity90 with God, which is a very
infrequent intellectual and vital installation nowadays. I completely agree with
Endean: Rahners has an apophatic, mystical approach to theology () 91 And I would
add that Rahner is indeed a foundationalist92, but not in an intellectualistic way but
in an old-fashioned magnificent manner: he has God as his only foundation, which
gives intense coherence to his whole theology.
. As per Christ and the Church, his is consequently a Christological theology that
develops from the fact of the Incarnation (the answer93), recognises that man shares
divinity with Christ, and culminates within the communitarian hence, ecclesialsalvation through grace. This is what his faith seeks to understand.
. I would say that only sharing the aforementioned motion one can grasp what
Rahner really meant. This is so because it is impossible to directly approach the
79

BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 36.

RAHNER, Karl, Curso fundamental sobre la fe... op. cit., p. 34.
81
We in fact already knew what we apprehend.
82
RAHNER, Karl, Hominisation. The evolutionary origin of man as a theological problem, Burns &
Oates, London, 1965, p. 52.
83
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 55.
84
Therefore, experience would be what ends, not what starts, the story, in agreement with KILBY,
Karen, Karl Rahner: theology and philosophy, Routledge, New York, 2004, p. 70.
85
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 29.
86
RAHNER, Karl, Mara, Madre del Seor, op. cit., p. 44.
87
VASS, George, The Mystery of Man and the Foundations of a Theological System. Understanding Karl
Rahner, volume I, Christian Classics Westminster and Sheed & Ward, London, 1985, p. 2.
88
Following MARMION, Declan, Some aspects of the theological legacy of Karl Rahner in
MARMION, Declan, and HINES, Mary (eds.), op cit., p. 3.
89
McCARTHY, Robert C., op. cit., p. 54.
90
KELLY, GEFFREY B. (ed.), op. cit., p. 173.
91
Quoted in LENNAN, Richard, op. cit. p. 422.
92
In disagree with KILBY, Karen, Karl Rahner: theology and philosophy, op. cit., p. 9.
93
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 32.
80

central axis of his theology, Mystery, unless one lives within Mystery, as he actually
did. Mystery illuminates around with its tremendous light, but just subject to the
unique condition of maintaining itself a deep and intimate obscurity.
. The turnaround of the inner obscurity of mystery into theological clarity is the
impossible necessary () surely he has taught us one thing: that everywhere and in
everything we can and must seek out that unutterable mystery which disposes over us94- of any
theology that wants to have God as its centre, as Rahners has, and specially for a
pastoral95 theology96, that has to deal with mystery97 within every domestic thing.
Any other option would be reductionist.98
. The way to ecumenism is not an erasing of boundaries, but the primary assertion of
the derived divinity of man: once we affirm that man as inhabited by God, the same
God shines for everyone. Rahner did affirm that God dwells in man, en every man,
and for him there was no secular, there was no place where God couldnt dwell.
. Did Rahner disoriented his public? I would say that his public, as myself, was not
prepared for him yet (as an avant-garde theologian), or anymore (as the last faithful
theologian)? But Rahner did not stay silent99, as a mystic; he preferred to talk.
Those who needed him most, are actually against him, as he seems systematically
aporetic and not healing. There is his work, waiting to be listened to. His is the
ultimate responsibility.
. I would like to finish with the Rahners words addressed to his brothers the Jesuits
in 1978, adopting the persona of Ignatius. I believe they explain well what Rahner
wanted to do with his theology:
As you know, I wanted as I used to say then to help souls: in other words, to say
something to people about God and Gods grace, and about Jesus Christ ()
When I make this sort of claim to have experienced God immediately, this assertion does
not need to be linked to a theological disquisition on the essence of this kind of immediate
experience of God. ()
Im just saying that I experienced God, () He comes to us out of His own self in grace,
just cannot be mistaken for anything else. Such a conviction () is outrageous: outrageous
() for the godlessness of your own time, a godlessness that is actually in the end only
doing away with the idols () After all, the Church throughout its history, in union with
the crucified one, is meant to be what happens when the gods are abolished. 100
Durham, 28th January 2015, St. Thomas Aquinas.

94

SHEEHAN, Thomas, Karl Rahner: The Philosophical Foundations, op. cit., p. xii.
Should not be all pastoral theologies? Does it make any sense to have non-strictly pastoral theologies?
96
RAHNER, Karl, Grace in Freedom, Herder and Herder, New York, 1969, p. 55.
97
RAHNER, Karl, Nature and grace, op. cit., p. 32.
98
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 50.
99
BACIK, James J., op. cit., p. 31.
100
RAHNER, Karl, The Immediate Experience of God, Ignatius of Loyola Speaks to a Modern Jesuit,
in Ignatius of Loyola (London: Collins, 1979 [1978]), pp. 14, 11. Translation taken from RAHNER, Karl,
Spiritual writings, edited by Philip Endean, Orbis Books, New York, 2004, p. 36. Rahner adopts the
persona of Ignatius in order to speak to the Jesuits of his time.
95

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