Australian eJournal of Theology 4 (February 2005)

Rahner and his Critics: Revisiting the Dialogue

Declan Marmion SM

Abstract: It is not unusual to hear the comment today that Karl Rahners is rather outdated to postmodern sensibilities. Despite some truth in this, it would be unwise to dismiss Rahners theological style as pass. 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 Rahners theology, will be noted. These thinkers help, either directly or indirectly, to illuminate a number of Rahners 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 Rahners life and thought, Herbert Vorgrimler concedes that Rahners theology, like any theology, has its weak points, and is not immune from criticism. He further notes how Rahners 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 Rahners 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

Herbert Vorgrimler, Understanding Karl Rahner: An Introduction to his Life and Thought, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1986), 121-30.
1

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.
2

Despite his reservations about Rahners 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 Balthasars positive evaluation of the early volumes of Rahners Theological Investigations: Grsse und Last der Theologie Heute: Einige grundstzliche Gedanken zu zwei Aufsatzbnden Karl Rahners, Wort und Wahrheit 7 (1955): 531-33. For his part, Rahner composed a Laudatio for Von Balthasars sixtieth birthday in 1965. Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar 60. Geburtstag,Civitas 20 (1965): 601-605.
3

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Balthasars book is essentially a reaction to Rahners anthropologically-oriented theology, which, in his view, tended to reduce Christian living to a bland and shallow humanism.4 In particular, Balthasar claimed that Rahners 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 Rahners, were incapable of providing the grounding or motivation for such a vision of Christian living. One specific criticism Balthasar makes of Rahners understanding of Christianity concerns Rahners 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. Balthasars 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 Rahners 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, Rahners aim is to elucidate how the whole truth of the Gospel is hidden and in germ in the love of ones 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 Rahners theology and anthropology. Selfless acts of love are not merely proofs of our love of God but are underpinned and supported by Gods divinising grace. Yet Balthasars fear is that Rahners 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 Rahners theological interests, Balthasar was convinced that Rahners 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 subjects mastery of self) to the neglect of intersubjectivity. Admittedly, Cordula was written at a dark period of

4 5

Von Balthasar, The Moment of Christian Witness, 126.

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 Balthasars difficulty with Rahners 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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Balthasars 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 preapprehension of being, Balthasars 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 Rahners own writings resources to respond to the various criticisms made of him. It is not that Rahners 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 Rahners former students Johann Baptist Metz, who has been critical of Rahners transcendental approach to theology.10 With regard to Rahners 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 Metzs 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 Rahners death, Vorgrimler edited a series of interviews and articles by Rahner covering this political dimension.13 Vorgrimlers contention is that any investigation of Rahner will reveal that Rahners thesis of the unity of the love of God and

7 8

Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Interview with Werner Lser, America, 16 October 1999, 20.

See, Gerry OHanlon, 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. A fair evaluation of Rahners 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 Rahners theology according to J. B. Metz: and every review of his (Rahners) theology seems almost inescapably to be in danger of roughly schematizing it or arbitrarily abridging it. Metz, Foreword, Spirit in the World, xvi.
9

J. B. Metz Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. David Smith (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 161-68.
10 11 12 13

J. B. Metz, Theology of the World (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 109.

Metz, Faith in History and Society, 160. Karl Rahner, Politische Dimensionen des Christentums: Ausgewhlte Texte zu Fragen der Zeit, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (Munich: Ksel, 1986). See also: Karl Neumann, Der Praxisbezug der Theologie bei Karl Rahner, Freiburger Theologische Studien 118 (Freiburg: Herder, 1980); Andrea Tafferner, Gottes- und Nchstenliebe 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 Rahners theology of the love of neighbour sometimes gives the impression of being restricted to a narrowly interpersonal level (i.e., to ones 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 Metzs 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 Rahners central question, the question of God.18 With the many complex moral issues facing the Christian today, Rahners 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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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

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.
14

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.
15

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.
16

David Tracy, Foreword, in Gaspar Martinez, Confronting the Mystery of God: Political, Liberation and Public Theologies (London/New York: Continuum, 2001), ix.
18 19 20

Rahner, Nuclear Weapons and the Christian, TI 23: 16-32.

See Leo ODonovan, A Journey Into Time: The Legacy of Karl Rahners 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 ones neighbour. Commentators who have examined the relationship between Metz and Rahner agree that, while the historical moment in Rahners 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 ones 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 theologys 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

See Leo ODonovan, Orthopraxis and Theological Method in Karl Rahner, CTSA Proceedings 35 (1980): 4765, and also Mary V. Maher, Rahner on the Human Experience of God: Idealist Tautology or Christian Theology?, Philosophy & Theology 7 (1992): 127-64.
21

Karl Rahner, Gnade als Mitte menschlicher Existenz, Herausforderung des Christen: MeditiationenReflexionen-Interviews (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), 129-30.
22

Metzs 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.
23 24 25 26

Guenther, Rahner and Metz: Transcendental Theology as Political Theology, 271. Rahner, Glaube in winterlicher Zeit, 128.

Rahner, The Inexhaustible Transcendence of God and Our Concern for the Future, TI 20: 180. Rahners 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 Rahners 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 Lindbecks view, liberal theologians in the experiential-expressivist tradition, including Tillich, Rahner and Tracy, have their roots in Schleiermachers view of doctrines

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.
27 28 29

Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984.

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 31

Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 125-126. 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 Lindbecks 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 experientialexpressivist 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 theologians 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

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.
32

Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 32. See also James J. Buckley, Doctrine in the Diaspora, The Thomist 49 (1985): 447-448.
33 34 35

Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 132.

For a more nuanced position, see David Tracy, Lindbecks New Program for Theology: A Reflection, The Thomist 49 (1985): 460-72.
36 37 38

Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 22. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 33.

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 Lindbecks 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 Lindbecks 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 Rahners work as a whole, labels such as

40 41 42 43 44

J. A. Columbo, Rahner and his Critics: Lindbeck and Metz, The Thomist 56 (1992): 87. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 127, 135. Lindbeck, Ecumenism and the Future of Belief, The Church in a Postliberal Age, 91-105. Goh, Christian Tradition Today, 448. Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come, 29-34.

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transcendental45 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 theologys 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
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.
45

Thus, Tracys conclusion that the postliberal position is a methodologically sophisticated version of Barthian confessionalism. Tracy, Lindbecks 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.
46 47 48

Thiel, Nonfoundationalism, 48.

Bradford E. Hinze, Postliberal Theology and Roman Catholic Theology, Religious Studies Review 21.4 (1995): 302.
49

Karl Rahner, Basic Theological Interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, TI, 20:89.

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factors as: historical location, political contexts, ideological allegiances, conceptual frameworks, psychological assumptions, and linguistic practices. Such factors undermine the claim that there is an unchanging meaning of dogmas that can somehow be discovered outside of history.50 Traditionally, the church dealt with this question by distinguishing between the truth, substance, or meaning of a dogma and the way it is expressed or presented. The value of this distinction is to serve as a reminder that the language of dogmatic statements should not be absolutised in the sense of identifying the language with the reality of which they speak. This should lead to a greater degree of modesty in theological discourse. While granting the abiding validity of the truth of dogmatic statements, these are by their very nature partial and not full expressions of this truth; they point beyond themselves to the mystery that is God.51 Rahners 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 Churchs 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 Rahners experiential-expressive theory of religion in the previous section raises the question about the role of experience in Rahners theology. The recognition of the importance of religious experience, both personal and social, has
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.
50

Contemporary interpretation of dogmas attempts on the one hand to acknowledge the abiding validity of their truth: Gods 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.
51

This is another limitation of Lindbecks postliberalism. See Paul D. Murray, Theology after the Demise of Foundationalism, The Way 38 (1998): 163.
52

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 Christianitys estrangement from the world derived from Augustines view of the City of God as a stranger here on earth, and the Christian gospels 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.
53

Paul Lakeland, Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age (Minneapolis: Augsburg, Fortress Press, 1997), 86, 112-113.
54

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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 Rahners 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
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.
55

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. OConnell (London: SCM, 1984), 147, n.2.
56

This idea is further developed by Rahner in his third lecture on Reflections on Methodology in Theology, TI 11:101-114.
57

On this, see Rahners 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 Rahners theology, Cardinal Karl Lehmann gives the spiritual element pride of place, seeing in this the living source or ground for the dynamism of Rahners theology. Karl Lehmann, Theologie aus der Leidenschaft des Glaubens: Gedanken zum Tod von Karl Rahner, Stimmen der Zeit 202 (1984): 294.
58

For Rahners 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).
59 60 61

Rahner, Intellectual Honesty and Christian Faith, TI 7:58-60.

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 Gods grace and our conceptual interpretation of it, since God and Gods 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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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.

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.
63 65 66

Rahner and Vorgrimler, Experience, Theological Dictionary, 162.

Thus, at the beginning of their discussion of Rahners understanding of experience, some commentators refer to how he sometimes uses the singular (die Erfahrung), and at other times the plural (die Erfahrungen). Rahners 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? Klrung eines Grundbegriffs der heutigen Theologie (Zrich: Benziger, 1993), 112-114. 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 Spiritualitt und Mystik, Karl Rahner in Erinnerung, ed. Albert Raffelt (Dsseldorf: 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 Spiritualitt: Menschwerdung Gottes und Gebet, Innsbrucker theologische Studien 46 (Innsbruck-Wien: Tyrolia, 1996), 129159 and 208-50.
67

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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. Rahners 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. Rahners 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 Rahners 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
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.
68

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.
70

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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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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 72

Rahner, Some Thoughts On A Good Intention, TI 3:105-106.

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. Jrg 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. This forms part of Lindbecks criticism of Rahners 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 Lindbecks account suggests.
74

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knowledge of God which can be acquired through the so-called proofs of Gods 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 Rahners tendency, at times, to play off unthematic or nonconceptual 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 Rahners 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 rereading 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 76

Rahner, The Experience of God Today, TI 11:149.

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). 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.
77

Philip Endean, Theology out of Spirituality: The Approach of Karl Rahner, Christian Spirituality Bulletin 3.2 (1995): 8, n.6.
78

Michael Purcell, Mystery and Method: The Other in Rahner and Levinas (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998).
79

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.
80

Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity. Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. R. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 10.
81

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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 ones 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, Rahners 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 Rahners 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

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.
82

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.
83

Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. W. Dych (London: DLT, 1978), 52.
84 85 86

Karl Rahner, Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of God, TI 6: 241.

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 Is 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 Rahners 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, Rahners theological method is nevertheless subtler than is often portrayed. Rahner aspired to overcome the mutual marginalisation

87 88

Karl Rahner, The Theology of Mystery, TI 4: 41.

Purcell, Mystery and Method, 356. See also Colin Davis, Levinas: An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 25-33.
89 90

Levinas, Meaning and Sense, Basic Philosophical Writings, 48.

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. See, for example, Clodovis Boff, Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987), 256, n.46.
91

Roger Burggraeve, Emmanuel Levinas: The Ethical Basis for a Humane Society. Bibliography 1929-1977,19771981 (Leuven: Centre for Metaphysics and Philosophy of God, 1981), 5-57.
92

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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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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 Rahners 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

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.
93

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.
94

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 Rahners Theological Anthropology, Horizons 25 (1998): 181-202.
95

Thomas Guarino, Between Foundationalism and Nihilism: Is Phronesis the Via Media for Theology? Theological Studies 54 (1993): 40. Representative examples include Jean-Franois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.
96

Karl Rahner Experiences of a Catholic Theologian, trans. Declan Marmion and Gesa Thiessen, Theological Studies 61 (2000): 3-15.
97

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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 socalled radical orthodoxy movement, with its rather inward-looking approach, and confrontational tone.101 Rahners 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 ones 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 Rahners theology, namely, to
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 (Wrzburg: Echter, 1994), 97-119.
98

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).
100

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.
101

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.
102

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.
103

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.
104 105

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, Rahners 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

The absence of system in Rahners 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 Rahners Reflections at Seventy-five. A Conversation with Leo ODonovan, America, 10 March 1979, 180.
106

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