Declan Marmion Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 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 theology 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.