Declan Marmion

Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of

Introduction

The German termvielseitig – versatile or many-sided – certainly applies to Karl Rahner. The word might be literally translated as ‘many-paged’, and this epithet too applies to Rahner, as many students can attest. His literary output was prodigious – even by 1974 it had reached almost 3,000 publications, including translations. A distinguished Irish theologian once said of him that in all his voluminous works, Rahner has really only one thing to say – but it is maddeningly difficult to name what that one thing is! Were I to venture a guess, I would point to Rahner’s repeated attempts to focus on the core of the Christian faith, a method that does not lead to a reduction of the essentials but, in the words of Herbert Vorgrimler, to ‘a concentration of the plurality into a few very basic thoughts,’ key terms (Schlüsselbegriffe), or better, key experiences (Schlüsselerlebnisse), of which the most fundamental is the experience of the self-communication of God.1 However, in this essay I will not focus on the experience of God in Rahner, though hopefully it will be apparent how Rahner’s ‘mystagogical’ style finds

1 ‘Seine [Rahner’s] Methode … ist die der Konzentration der Vielfalt auf ganz wenige Grundgedanken, wie er sagt, auf Schlüsselbegriffe oder noch besser auf Schlüsselerlebnisse. Der Grundgedanke dieser Theologie oderdas Schlüsselerlebnis ist, nachlesbar bei Rahner selber, die Erfahrung Gottes.’ Herbert Vorgrimler, ‘Gotteserfahrung im Alltag: Der Beitrag Karl Rahners zu Spiritualität und Mystik,’ in Albert Raffelt, ed., Karl Rahner in Erinnerung, Freiburger Akademieschriften, Band 8. (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1994), 102. 4 Declan Marmion its way into all of his theology. Instead, I want to show, in the first part, how there is a congruence between the ‘spirit’ of Vatican II and Rahner’s own way of theologising, and that this ‘spirit’ betokens a theological style, a style of relationship and discourse that is as germane today as it was in Rahner’s time. In the second part, I survey some characteristics of the cur- rent postmodern theological scene and offer a Rahner-inspired response to both its constructive challenges as well as its less salutary side.

Rahner and Vatican II

For a good part of his life, Rahner worked against a backdrop of change in the Church. Vatican II was the benchmark here, and he strove to promote its reception whenever and wherever possible. Rahner saw the Council as a watershed marking the transition from a European and western Church to a world-Church. Moreover, Vatican II wished to speak in a different idiom, moving away from a traditionally defensive neo-scholastic theol- ogy towards a more missionary style aiming to speak to those for whom Christianity had become alien. For the so-called ‘new churches’ in Africa and Asia, adaptation to local cultures was endorsed. This is a style that listens to various viewpoints anxious to find common ground with the other. There was also a positive appraisal of the great world religions2 and a stress on the universal and effective saving will of God. Such optimism about salvation – a theme dear to Rahner – meant that even those who

2 While this is true, Rahner did not always pay the same attention to the particulari- ties and nuances of other religious traditions as he did to his own. See Francis X. Clooney, ‘Rahner beyond Rahner: A Comparative Theologian’s Reflections on Theological Investigations18,’ in Paul G. Crowley, ed., Rahner beyond Rahner: A Great Theologian Encounters the Pacific Rim(Lanham, Maryland: Sheed & Ward/Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 3–21. Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 5 seek the unknown God in shadows and images are not far from the true God, who wills all to be saved.3 Rahner thus anticipated many of the tensions facing Christians in an increasingly pluralistic and fragmented society. While much of his writing focussed on the intra-ecclesial sphere and the need for structural change in the Church,4 he still had to negotiate his way through various polari- ties. Thus we have his plea for a better balance between official teaching authority, on the one hand, and the hierarchy of truths and legitimate academic freedom, on the other. Other tensions included attempting to reconcile the universality of salvation with the particularity of the Christ event, and, in a similar vein, the relationship between anonymous and explicit Christianity. Throughout such reflections, Rahner points to the transcendent nature of the human spirit, to the human person, who, by virtue of his or her dynamism and transcendent orientation, is referred to God in every act of knowledge and love. ‘Whether they are consciously aware of it or not, whether they are open to this truth or suppresses it, a person’s whole spiritual and intellectual existence is orientated towards a holy mystery which is the basis of their being.’5 Not that Rahner’s project is a thoroughgoing anthropocentric one – it is not simply the human quest for meaning and fulfilment that culminates in God. It is God who seeks out humankind with the offer of grace – a grace that is not limited to the confines of an ecclesiastical institution, but is universal. It is simplistic to pigeon-hole Rahner as belonging to a ‘liberal’ or ‘pro- gressive’ camp. His understanding of faith is more subtle. Steeped in the Christian tradition and the teachings of the early Church, he used these as a resource for renewing the present. He practised the method of ressource-

3 Karl Rahner, ‘The Abiding Significance of Vatican II,’ Theological Investigations 20, trans. Edward Quinn (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981), 100. Henceforth all references to the Investigations will be abbreviated to TI. 4 Karl Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come, trans. Edward Quinn (London: SPCK, 1974). 5 Karl Rahner, ‘The Need for a “Short Formula” of Christian Faith,’TI 9, 117–26: 122 (translation amended). 6 Declan Marmion ment and aggiornamento characteristic of the Council.6 Ressourcement ‘advo- cated skipping over what was currently in place to retrieve from the past something more appropriate or more authentic.’7 An example from Rahner is his work on the history and theology of penance in order to retrieve certain ‘forgotten truths,’ for example, the variety of sacramental practice in the early Church, all with a view to inject new life into the sacrament.8 Yet Rahner was not one to merely repeat the tradition. Tradition is not some fixed, static entity merely to be received and preserved but requires ever-new articulation. Every age has its own questions, he would say, so we cannot expect the Fathers to answer our questions for us. 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, 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 underlying issue here is how the Church deals with change. The challenge to theology, in Rahner’s view, will always be to acknowledge two basic tenets of Christian faith: the uni- versal 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

6 For example, the interventions of Melkite Patriarch Maximos IV at the Council were, in the words of Vatican II expert John O’Malley, ‘the most daringly progressive because he was the most radically conservative. His interventions consistently invoked ancient traditions of the church to challenge the status quo.’ John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008), 292. 7 O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II?, 300–1. 8 Karl Rahner, ‘Forgotten Truths Concerning the Sacrament of Penance,’ TI 2, 135–74. Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 7 development can take place in the context of a pluralism of global theolo- gies and competing views that cannot be adequately synthesised.9 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 con- demned, as tended to be the case with previous councils.10 It is a style less autocratic and more collaborative, ‘more inclined to reconciliation with human culture than to alienation from it, more inclined to see goodness than sin, more inclined to speaking words of friendship and encourage- ment than of indictment.’11 The (Catholic) Church has often had diffi- culty 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 con- nected with such factors as: historical location, political contexts, ideo- logical 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.12 Traditionally, the church dealt with this question by distin- guishing between the truth, substance or meaning of a dogma and the

9 Following John Courtney Murray who maintained that ‘development of doctrine was the issue underlying all issues at Vatican II, John O’Malley draws attention to ‘a great cultural shift that took place within the Council: its awareness that the “modern world” thinks historically and its realization that the Council somehow had to think and speak in a historically conscious style.’ John W. O’Malley, ‘Trent and Vatican II: Two Styles of Church,’ in Raymond F. Bulman & Frederick J. Parrella, eds, From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 316. 10 ‘Basic Theological Interpretation of the ,’ TI 20, 77–89: 89. 11 O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II?, 311. 12 In more recent times, it is feminist theologians who have retrieved neglected pos- sibilities 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. 8 Declan Marmion 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 abso- lutised in the sense of identifying the language with the reality of which they speak. This should lead, according to Rahner, 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.13 In the light of Vatican II, Rahner increasingly turned his energies to structural, spiritual and theological renewal in the Church. Indeed, writ- ings related to ecclesiology account for over half of his total output. For him, faith and religion must come from a person’s ‘proper and free con- viction’ and be capable of being experienced. Faith ‘implies an existentiell, practical, and theoretical relationship to the truth of faith itself … [and] may not be reduced to mere obedience to the formal teaching authority of the Church.’14 Here we see the tension between the authority of personal experience as a locus for grace, on the one hand, and Rahner’s conviction that authentic Christianity is bound up with community and society, on the other: ‘Christianity is a historical religion bound up with one Jesus Christ. I heard of him only through the Church and not otherwise. Hence I cannot be content with a purely private Christianity which would repu- diate its origins.’15

13 Contemporary interpretation of dogmas attempts, on the one hand, to acknowledge the abiding validity of their truth: God’s self-communication has a noetic or cogni- tive 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. 14 Karl Rahner, ‘Authority,’ TI 23, 61–85: 84. 15 Karl Rahner, ‘Courage for an Ecclesial Christianity,’ TI 20, 3–12: 9. This question is also at the heart of theological reflection on the so-called New Age spiritual move- ments: the exaltation of personal inner experience and a radical break with Christian tradition. See the Pontifical Council for Culture and Interreligious Dialogue, ‘Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the New Age,’ Origins 32 (2003), 570–92. Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 9

In one sense Rahner is a child of Enlightenment with its rationalistic and anthropocentric focus. But he also stresses the interdepend- ent, other-oriented aspect of the human person: ‘The free subject, even as free subject, is not absolutely self-sufficient.’16 ‘Christianity means Church … [even if ] there will always be the permanent tension, which constantly takes different forms and must always be resolved afresh, between Christian freedom and the Christian need for the Church.’17 Rahner continually tried to find a via media between the institutional and the charismatic dimensions of the Church, between ecclesial authority and the freedom of the individual.18 Towards the end of his life, however, he grew increas- ingly pessimistic with what he perceived as a growing restorationist men- tality within the Church. Consequently, he argued for a more authentic interpretation of the Council – one, he believed, that was suggested by the Council itself. Prior to Vatican II the Church tended to see ‘fidelity in terms of main- taining tradition over against an individual creativity,’ and so when ‘there was a conflict between experience and authority, fidelity consisted in obeying authority.’19 Rahner, on the other hand, did not wish to privilege either pole of the various tensions we have mentioned. For him, a person possesses a spiritual openness to, and is a potential recipient of, divine revelation. For Philip Endean, the implication of this position is that, ‘sometimes, con- frontation with the Gospel word leads us radically to reconstruct our sense of self; at other times, a change within the self leads us to read the Gospel with radically new eyes.’20 Both approaches are valid: theocentricity and anthropocentricity are not to be radically separated.

16 Rahner, ‘Authority,’ TI 23, 63. 17 Karl Rahner, ‘Why Am I a Christian Today?’ The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Christian Spirituality (London: SCM Press, 1985), 12. 18 Karl Rahner, ‘The Church’s Responsibility for the Freedom of the Individual,’ TI 20, 51–64 and ‘Theology and the Roman Magisterium,’TI 22, 176–90. 19 Philip Endean, ‘Has Rahnerian Theology a Future?’ in Declan Marmion & Mary E. Hines, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 285. 20 Ibid., 288. 10 Declan Marmion

These tensions in Rahner’s theology and in his understanding of what it means to be a Christian are also reflected in criticisms of his work. It is not surprising that he was criticized from both the right and from the left, for being either too radical, or not radical enough.21 Catholic traditionalists complained that Rahner, especially since Vatican II, had relativised the radi- cal demands of Christianity. For example, thinks that with Rahner the specificity of Christian revelation and its truth claims are jeopardized in a too eager attempt to accommodate to the increasingly pluralistic societies of the (so-called) first world.22 In place of polemic, however, it is preferable to tackle these issues with Rahner rather than against him, in other words, to draw from within Rahner’s own writings resources to respond to the various criticisms made of him. It is not that Rahner’s theology represents some kind of closed ‘system’ – he never thought of his work in such a way.23 Indeed, he acknowledged both the limitations of his theology as well as the need for other think- ers to develop his ideas in new directions. Speaking in the early seventies, Rahner was already opining:

When I began my theological studies forty years ago, I was far cleverer than I am today, if I take all the possible branches of knowledge and intellectual problems as my criterion of measurement. For today there is such a vast number of questions and

21 Herbert Vorgrimler, Understanding Karl Rahner: An Introduction to his Life and Thought, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1986), 121–30. 22 A famous example of such adversarial reaction is that of Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Cordula oder der Ernstfall. Trans Richard Beckley, The Moment of Christian Witness. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1969). A second edition (1967) contained an ‘Afterword’ by von Balthasar as a response to the widespread criticism of his treat- ment of Rahner in the first edition. For further discussion, see Fergus Kerr,Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity (London: SPCK, 1997), 171–84. 23 A fair evaluation of Rahner’s theology cannot be obtained solely on the basis of a limited and arbitrary selection of his works. This is the perennial danger in any attempt to review Rahner’s theology according to J. B. Metz: ‘… and every review of his [Rahner’s] theology seems almost inescapably to be in danger of roughly schema- tizing it or arbitrarily abridging it.’ Johannes Baptist Metz, Foreword, Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World, trans. William Dych (2nd edn, New York: Continuum, 1994), xvi. Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 11

areas of knowledge of a historical, metaphysical, philosophical, linguistic, sociologi- cal and religious kind that in the face of this mass of theological material I feel much stupider than I did then.24

Not only existentially but intellectually we are pulled in various direc- tions. At the same time, there is a wholeness to Rahner’s theology despite his awareness of the limits of what he could say. Like Aquinas, Rahner ‘always thinks on the basis of the whole and in relation to the whole.’25 Criticisms of Rahner need to be viewed against the backdrop of the reception of Vatican II. There are those who feel Vatican II went too far, was too progressive and surrendered too much of the tradition for the sake of modernity.26 Others feel the full implications of the theology of the Council have still to be worked out.27 We can include Rahner in this latter category. One’s appreciation or otherwise of his theology is, there- fore, directly related to how one interprets the Council and its aftermath. A perceptive commentator on Rahner, Francis Fiorenza, puts it well:

At the time of the Second Vatican Council, Rahner’s method was welcomed precisely because of its anthropological starting-point and its endeavour to bring Thomist philosophy into dialogue with modern philosophy. Rahner’s theology of freedom and his advocacy of free speech within the church were seen as opening the win- dows of the church to let in the fresh air of modernity. Today, however, his method is challenged on these very points. His anthropological starting-point is criticised as

24 Karl Rahner, ‘The Foundation of Belief,’TI 16, 3–23: 6–7. 25 Karl Rahner, Everyday Faith (London: Burns & Oates, 1967), 188. 26 It is beyond our scope to detail the ongoing debate between an interpretation of Vatican II that stresses primarily its continuity with previous Councils (e.g. Agostino Marchetto) and that of the Bologna-school (Giuseppe Alberigo et al.) who under- score the Council as a new beginning, an event, or, in the words of Pope John XXIII, a ‘new Pentecost.’ For further background, see John W. O’Malley, ‘Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?’ Theological Studies67 (2006), 3–33. 27 In other words, the Council was not really about ‘the “adjustment” of certain prac- tices or attitudes,’ but ‘a wholly new orientation’ representing ‘a major turning point in the history of Catholicism.’ John O’Malley, ‘Vatican II: Historical Perspectives on its Uniqueness and Interpretation,’ in Lucien Richard et al. eds, Vatican II: The Unfinished Agenda. A Look to the Future(New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987), 25f. 12 Declan Marmion

a reductive anthropocentrism, his advocacy of freedom is denounced for mirroring the self-centred autonomy of the Enlightenment, and his existential orientation is attacked as a privatising of religion that lacks social and political force.28

Such tensions are evident in various contemporary forms of Christian self-understanding. Some feel a more militant Christianity with a strong proselytizing thrust is called for in a hostile and de-Christianised culture. The danger, however, with such a muscular Christianity is the development of a quasi-sectarianism that eschews dialogue with those of other views (other than trying to convert them). It can occasion elitist attitudes and a retreat into fundamentalism and . Rahner, for his part, might initially appear to be supporting such a view of the Church of the future when he talks about the future ‘diaspora’ Church of the ‘little flock.’29 By ‘little flock’, however, Rahner did not mean a petty sectarian mentality as a way of protecting a cosy traditionalism. If we view his ecclesiology in connection with the renewal inaugurated by Vatican II and its openness to the world, it is clear that he 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 1960s onwards were of an ad hoc nature – responding to particular issues of the times. Indeed, he has been described as an ‘ad hoc apologist.’30 He did not recommend Christians to isolate themselves from their cultural environ- ment. In fact, as noted earlier, he often presented the dividing line between Christians and non-Christians in a rather fluid manner. Though Rahner’s critics may have accused his theology (and also Vatican II) as overly accommodating to the surrounding culture, it would be fairer to say that he was trying to work out the full implications of his

28 Francis S. Fiorenza, ‘Method in Theology,’The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, 65–66. Fiorenza concludes that Rahner should not be seen primarily as a philosophi- cal epistemologist but as a practical theologian. 29 Karl Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come, trans. and intro. by Edward Quinn (London: SPCK, 1974), 29–34. 30 Nicholas Healy, ‘Indirect Methods in Theology: Karl Rahner as an ad hoc Apologist,’ The Thomist 56 (1992): 613–34. For a similar interpretation, see Karen Kilby, Karl Rahner: Theology and Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2004). Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 13 convictions about the universality of grace. In the neo-scholastic world in which Rahner began his theological training, grace was seen as scarce, restricted to the ecclesial sphere, and particularly the sacraments. It was this narrow, two-tiered, and rather dualistic framework that Rahner and others challenged.31 Though many of the dualisms that have bedevilled theology – between sacred and profane, the bodily and the spiritual, the self and the other – are still with us, it is to Rahner’s credit that he sought a more integrated vision of Christianity, a vision that was ultimately more optimistic and hopeful to a post-Vatican II generation.

Rahner in a postmodern context

The term ‘postmodern’ is a contested concept. On the one hand, it is pre- sented as a radical break with modernity – characterised by its faith in human reason, unbridled scientific progress, the autonomous human sub- ject, and the divorce of the secular from the sacred. On the other hand, it has been described as a late form of modernity, an advanced or radicalised stage of the same historical process. For example, the postmodern focus on subjectivity and its concomitant distrust of authority and institutions can be traced back to modernity’s ‘turn to the subject.’ More typically, however, calls into question many of the so-called gains of modernity. Specifically, it is a reaction to the weaknesses and pretensions of modernity, despite its intellectual and societal advances, to what are perceived as totalising ideologies or political systems. If modernity and the Enlightenment project represented , individual autonomy and progress, postmodern theory denies that reason is absolute and universal, that individuals are autonomous and able to transcend their historical

31 For discussion of the nature/grace debates in and their significant theological and political implications, see Kerr, Immortal Longings, 164–71. 14 Declan Marmion context and culture, or that unbridled scientific progress is the answer to humanity’s ills. The modern spirit placed great faith in human reason, in a desire for certitude and clarity, and in the search for a comprehensive explanation of reality – a master story or ‘metanarrative.’ The postmodern spirit, in contrast, is characterised by a scepticism and incredulity towards such metanarratives.32 Epistemological and religious foundations, timeless truths, and other forms of ‘totalising’ discourse are rejected. In place of ‘total’ explanations or epistemological , the relative, perspectival and contextual aspects of human knowledge are highlighted. Truth has a history. ‘Thou shalt not believe in absolutes’ is one way to describe the postmod- ern stress on provisionality, including the provisional nature of language. Language is not something neutral that directly and unproblematically represents an extra-linguistic reality but is socially constructed. Meaning is related to context or, more radically, the meaning of any text is unstable and flexible due to the changing contexts in which it is read. It is impossi- ble to commit to any particular interpretation. In contrast to modernity’s search for absolute truth, the postmodern quest is nomadic and wandering, convinced that nothing is simply ‘true.’ If the postmodern sensibility has done much to uncover or deconstruct the ambiguities of modernity, no single alternative is offered. Broadly speaking, there are at least three kinds of postmodern groupings, each of which has its advocates within the theological academy. A first, more radi- cal, stance exemplified in the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida eschews all attempts to construct some grand narrative or over- arching theoretical system. We are trapped in our own skin, as it were, in the immanence of our own experience; there is nothing more. There is no fixed meaning to anything – whether world, word, text or human subject. This is a reaction to, and a protest against, any kind of system, any

32 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 10, trans. G. Bennington & B. Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 37. Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 15 kind of pretence to totality. In place of classical foundationalist epistemol- ogy with its search for secure first principles (e.g., in Descartes) there is a celebration of the chaotic or heteromorphous dimensions of life and its otherness. Moreover, any system – religious, economic, political – purport- ing to structure our experience is said to be constituted and maintained through acts of exclusion and repression. In relation to , the strong postmodern stance highlights the temporality of knowledge and the contingency of beliefs. To its detractors such a position leads down the slippery slope of and radical scepticism. More positively, it is recognition of the indeterminacy of language and the elusive nature of ultimate meaning and truth. Derrida’s linguistic deconstruction, for example, is essentially a reaction to the unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. It is a rejection of a realist understanding of language that assumes our linguistic utterances have a fixed meaning. Meaning is never static. Texts have to be constantly re-read in new ways, against the grain, to disclose concealed or repressed meanings. A second, more conservative, but equally radical postmodern stance critiques what it sees as theology’s collusion with the project of moder- nity. It renounces the ‘compromises’ of liberal theology in its attempt to mediate religious thought to modern culture. The ‘’ of and his colleagues at is one example, while the ‘Radical ’ movement, whose leading figures include , and , is another. Lindbeck reconceived religion and Christian doctrine, offering in effect a new vision of theology and Christianity.33 Postliberal theology is suspicious of appeals to universal religious experience – which it sees in Rahner’s theology – that reduce religions to a lowest common denominator as different expressions of the same thing. It espouses a strong anti-foundationalist stance: religions are not simply externalisations of a pre-reflective, pre-linguistic founda- tional experience. Rather, religions are like languages or cultures embed- ded in forms of life, and doctrines function as grammatical rules shaping

33 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984). 16 Declan Marmion and regulating a community’s dispositions and discourse. Theological faithfulness is ‘intratextual’ in that it refers to the theologian’s primary commitment to the authority of the scriptural narrative. Underlying the postliberal agenda is that theology, especially in its liberal or revisionist forms, in accommodating itself too uncritically to a secular and pluralist agenda has undermined the specific content and identity of particular religious traditions. The future of the Church will therefore require some kind of ‘sociological sectarianism,’ some kind of standing apart in order to witness to, and negotiate the challenges of, a post-Christian society. Another so-called ‘conservative’ impulse within contemporary theol- ogy is the reform programme of the movement. Also rejecting what it considers the questionable epistemological assumptions of modernity and its sharp separation of faith and reason, the radical ortho- dox perspective views faith not as alien to reason but its intensification and divine illumination. This position, inspired by Augustine and Aquinas, underlines how faith and reason involve a participation in the mind of God, a sharing in the mystery of the life of the . It also finds a resonance in Fides et Ratio, the Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II, where faith and reason are compared to ‘two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.’34 Like the postliberals, the radical orthodox disavow any sphere, any discipline or discourse, independent of God. This is a theology on the offensive: every discipline is framed from a theologi- cal perspective. Society, culture, politics, art, science and philosophy – all are to be boldly critiqued with a view to establishing, or better recovering, a comprehensive Christian vision. It is the end of the master narrative of secular reason.35 Theology makes a return to the public sphere and shapes the way we talk about everything. But the Radical Orthodox vision is also tied in with an explicitly anti- modern agenda. Not unlike Barth’s condemnation of liberal theology, John

34 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio; trans. as Faith and Reason (London: CTS, 1998), Intro. 35 Gavin Hyman, The Predicament of : Radical Orthodoxy or Nihilist Textualism? (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 28. Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 17

Milbank, for example, dismisses what he sees as the compromising strategies of correlation and mediation evident in ‘modern’ theologians including Rahner, Metz and Gutiérrez. In effect, he is re-appropriating Augustine’s City of God to the extent that the heavenly city, a harmonious community of love, is played off against the earthly city of conflict and strife. What results is an exclusivist, oppositional and ultimately dualist approach that refuses to acknowledge any value in secular or non-Christian discourse, which is dismissed as nihilistic. Two different worlds are irreconcilably and antagonistically set against each other. The religious and secular spheres reflect competing hegemonic narratives. Such an agonistic portrayal is at odds with a Christian doctrine of creation where reality is viewed as fundamentally good, while sin and evil are considered not as primary but as secondary realities. If Christians are ‘citizens of both cities’ (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, n. 43), it is not surprising that critics such as Rowan Williams have seen in Milbank’s project ‘the danger of setting the common life of the Church too dramatically apart from the temporal ways in which the good is realized in a genuinely contingent world.’36 A third, more moderate, postmodern stance recognises that just as there are many forms of postmodernity, so too modernity cannot be reduced to a single version. Prior to classical Enlightenment modernity there was the creative, influential culture of Renaissance humanism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.37 Modernity cannot simply be equated with the scien- tific achievements of the seventeenth century. Moreover, modernity was not only entrapping; in its democratic and ethical ideals it was emancipatory. Political and liberation have roots in modernity as do those who refuse to drive a wedge between faith and rationality. This approach, whose advocates include theologian David Tracy, nevertheless acknowledges the limitations of modernity: its autonomous, self-grounding subject, desire for totality, impoverished notion of reason, and individualistic, idealistic

36 Rowan Williams, ‘A Theological Critique of Milbank,’ in Robin Gill, ed., Theology and : A Reader (London: Cassell, 1996), 440. See also Fergus Kerr’s chapter ‘Milbank’s Thesis,’ 429–34, in the same volume. 37 Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity. An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993). 18 Declan Marmion and Eurocentric perspective.38 Postmodernity at its best challenges this ambiguous tradition of modernity, not in a nostalgic, anti-modern han- kering after a bygone era, but in its turn to the other and the different. By recognising and cherishing otherness and difference, particularly in groups marginalised or repressed by Enlightenment modernity – including the mystics, women, dissenters, and those from other religions and cultures – postmodernity inaugurates a new kind of theological self-consciousness. The others, and the different, return to challenge the dominant narrative of Eurocentric modernity. The question of God also returns. As Tracy puts it, theos returns ‘to unsettle the dominance of the modern logos’ despite the fact that ‘in modern theology the logos of modern intelligibility was the dominant partner in the conversation.’39 This is an allusion to the analogies of knowledge and love, championed by Augustine and Aquinas and developed by Rahner and Lonergan, which seek an insight into the triune nature of God analogously in terms of the operation of the human mind – the mind understood as an image of the Trinity. A less prominent counter-current to this psycho- logical trajectory is a strong apophatic strain – from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite through John Scotus Eriugena, in Aquinas himself, and through and – that stressed the incomprehensi- bility of God. It should not surprise that a postmodern sensibility wants to recover this apophatic or mystical tradition against the systematising and speculative tendencies of traditional scholastic theology. Jean-Luc Marion, for example, inspired by Pseudo-Dionysius, wants to reclaim the tradition of God beyond being, to name God anew as excess and gift.40 This anti-idol- atrous sensibility is essentially a claim that theology can never be reduced to, or captured by, a ‘system.’ Marion’s project represents a deconstruction of attempts to name, grasp or control God. It points to God’s alterity.

38 David Tracy, On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church, Concilium Series (New York: Orbis, London: SCM, 1994). 39 Ibid., 37. 40 Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being: Hors-texte, trans. T. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 19

We have seen how theology has been divided in its response to moder- nity. On one side are the ‘mediating’ theologians (e.g., Tracy, Tillich and Rahner) who want to correlate revelatory claims with the demands of reason. Reason is valued but not overvalued. On the other side are the postliberals and radical orthodox (and their predecessors Barth and von Balthasar), who reject all correlational strategies, seeing theology’s sole foundation in revelation. Returning to Rahner, my suggestion is that there is something of this postmodern caution in Rahner, especially in his later writings, a theo- logical awareness and style that I would describe as unsystematic, ques- tioning and apophatic. The more moderate postmodern stance outlined above, and in which we located David Tracy, is one that has affinities with Rahner’s Denkstil. This approach, while resisting the search for the means to ground knowledge in a context-neutral fashion, which it regards as illu- sory, recognises truth only relative to the community in which a person participates. While not succumbing to total epistemological scepticism, it reflects a theology that tries to come to terms with the situated, partial and fragile character of all human knowing and doing.41 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 wary of over-emphasising the ability of language to express matters so definitively.42 All faith formulations, he maintained, are ultimately relativised in the face of Holy Mystery that is their source and goal. 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.43

41 Karl Rahner ‘Experiences of a Catholic Theologian,’ trans. Declan Marmion and Gesa ThiessenTheological Studies61 (2000) 3–15. 42 See 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. 43 This idea is further developed by Rahner in his third lecture on ‘Reflections on Methodology in Theology,’TI 11: 101–14. 20 Declan Marmion

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.44 It has failed to recognise the analogical nature of such theological propositions, and remained stuck on the conceptual level. By taking seriously the pluralistic, contextual and interdisciplinary45 nature of theology, Rahner anticipated many of the themes that preoc- cupy 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.46 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 ten- dency of postliberal theology whose main fear is that Christianity has accommodated itself overmuch to surrounding culture. Nor would he have identified with the polemical and confrontational tone of the ‘radi- cal orthodoxy’ movement.47 Rahner’s concern was that theology would petrify into a self-enclosed discourse disconnected from the challenges

44 On this, see Rahner’s ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,’ esp. the ‘Third Lecture,’ TI 4: 60–73 and also his ‘The Hiddenness of God,’ TI 16: 227–43. In his description of some of the fundamental characteristics of Rahner’s theology, Cardinal Karl Lehmann gives the ‘spiritual element’ pride of place, seeing in this the living source or ground for the dynamism of Rahner’s theology. Karl Lehmann, ‘Theologie aus der Leidenschaft des Glaubens: Gedanken zum Tod von Karl Rahner,’Stimmen der Zeit 202 (1984), 291–98: 294. 45 Rahner was one of the first theologians to enter into dialogue with experts from other secular disciplines, including Marxists, atheists, and natural scientists. See Hans-Dieter Mutschler, ed., Gott neu buchstabieren. Zur Person und Theologie Karl Rahners (Würzburg: Echter, 1994), 97–119. 46 The literature here is voluminous. See, for example, 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). 47 John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, eds, Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology(London: Routledge, 1998). For a critical assessment of the movement, see Steven Shakespeare, ‘The New Romantics: A Critique of Radical Orthodoxy,’ Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 21 and criticisms of other disciplines and from society. While he would have acknowledged the postliberal desire to preserve the distinctiveness of the Christian voice, Rahner never favoured an aloof, standing-apart posture as a way of maintaining one’s Christian identity. If Christians are to be a leaven in society, it is hard to see how segregation can be a viable option.48 Some form of correlation between theology and the contemporary post- modern context is necessary if theology is not to become a thoroughly introverted affair. Without wishing to turn Rahner into a postmodernist, his theology has at times anticipated some of the characteristics of this style of think- ing.49 In drawing attention to the intellectual pluralism of modern soci- ety, 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.50 In the light of the explosion in scientific knowl- edge too, the ‘abstractness’ of his theological concepts became increasingly clear to him:

If as a theologian I inquire not about an abstract concept of God, but wish to approach God directly, then absolutely nothing of what God has revealed as Creator of the world, as Lord of history, should be uninteresting to me. Naturally, it could be piously claimed that everything that is necessary for my salvation is contained in Holy Scripture, and that one needs to know nothing beyond this. But if I wish to love God for God’s own sake and not only for the sake of my personal salvation, then in order to find God I cannot restrict my interest to Scripture alone. Rather, everything through which God permits God’s very self to be perceived in this creaturely world

Theology 103 (2000), 163–77, and David F. Ford, ‘Radical Theology and the Future of British Theology,’Scottish Journal of Theology54 (2001), 385–404. 48 Yet, this seems to be the 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. 49 For a discussion of this aspect of Rahner in the context of a non-foundationalist read- ing, see Karen Kilby, ‘Philosophy, Theology and Foundationalism in the Thought of Karl Rahner,’ Scottish Journal of Theology55 (2002) 127–40. 50 See, for example, Karl Rahner, ‘Pluralism in Theology and the Unity of the Creed in the Church,’ TI 11:3–23. 22 Declan Marmion

will be of interest to me. … Although I would like to know more about the variety of human experiences as explored in the sciences, the arts, and historical events, I am quite ignorant of much of this. For the theologian all these human experiences speak of God even if the individual theologian knows very little about them.51

This leads us back, in conclusion, to a central tenet of Rahner’s the- ology, namely, to the God of incomprehensible mystery, who cannot be explained with rationalistic clarity. In sum, Rahner’s lifelong testimony to the mystery of God as integral to the Christian tradition is probably the greatest achievement of this ‘unsystematic’ theologian.52

51 Rahner, ‘Experiences of a Catholic Theologian,’ 12. 52 ‘The absence of system in Rahner’s theological program finds its final explanation in the nature of this mystery.’ J. A. DiNoia, ‘Karl Rahner,’ The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to in the Twentieth Century, ed. David F. Ford, 2nd edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 202. DiNoia refers to the conclusion of an interview given by Rahner on the occasion of his 75th birthday: ‘The true system of thought really is the knowledge that humanity is finally directed precisely not toward what it can control in knowledge but toward the absolute mystery as such; that mystery is … the blessed goal of knowledge which comes to itself when it is with the incomprehensible one … In other words, then, the system is the system of what cannot be systematized.’ See ‘Living into Mystery: Karl Rahner’s Reflections at Seventy-five. A Conversation with Leo O’Donovan,’America 140 (March 10, 1979) 177–80: 180.