WordPress.com · 2019. 12. 4. · 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ……….………………………..….…………...…………………. 5 A. ‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’

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SALESIAN PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITY Faculty of the Sciences of Social Communication

THE ‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’

OF KARL RAHNER

Thesis for Doctorate

Student: Charles Lwangwa NDHLOVU

Professor: Peter GONSALVES

Rome, 2019

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ……….………………………..….…………...…………………. 5

A. ‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’ AND KARL RAHNER ………..……….. 15

1. CLARIFYING THE TERMS ………………..………………………………………. 16

1.1. Communication …….……………….……………………………………… 16

1.2. Theology …….…………………………….……………………………… 27

1.3. Communication theology …….………………………………………… 30

1.4. A history of ‘Communication theology’ …….……………………………… 36

2. RAHNER AND HIS PASTORALLY ORIENTED THEOLOGY ……………….…. 41

B. PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES AND FOUNDATIONS OF RAHNER’S

‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’ ………….…………….………..……….. 50

3. PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES ………………..……..…………………………. 51

3.1. The Thomistic interpretation of human cognitional bivalence …..……….. 52

3.2. Marecalian-Kantian ‘apprehension of finite being’ ….….………………… 56

3.3. The Heideggerian concept of Dasein and the ‘question’ …..……………… 59

3.4. Rahner’s synthesis and originality ……………….………………………… 60

4. PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS ….…..…………………..…………………… 67

4.1. The ontology of the symbol ….……….…………………… 67

4.2. Human transcendental intercommunication ….……….…………………… 73

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C. RAHNER’S ‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’ ……………………..……….. 80

5. THE HUMAN CONDITION AND GOD’S SELF-COMMUNICATION …………. 81

5.1. Human concupiscence ………………………………………..………….. 81

5.2. Questioning about God ….………………………………………………… 84

5.3. The Hearer of the ‘Word’ ….…………………………………….……… 85

5.4. Revelation and God’s self-communication in Christian history …….……… 88

6. JESUS CHRIST AND TRINITARIAN COMMUNION …………………………… 92

6.1. Jesus as the Absolute Self-communication of God ….………..…………… 92

6.2. Hypostatic Union ……………………………………………………….… 94

6.3. Jesus the Logos and Grammar of God’s self-communication ……..……… 97

6.4. The consciousness of Jesus as God’s self-communication to the world …… 99

6.5. The method and forms of Jesus’ communication ….……………………… 101

6.6. The Father and His Kingdom: the content of Jesus’ communication ….… 104

6.7. The Holy Spirit the consoler and continuity of Christ’s presence …….… 106

6.8. Divine Communication as Trinitarian Communion ….…….…………… 107

7. THE CHURCH – EMBODIMENT OF GOD’S SELF-COMMUNICATION ……… 110

7.1. The Church ……………..……………………………...………………… 110

7.2. The Sacraments ……………………………………………………….… 115

7.3. The Kerygmatic and Sacramental Witness through the Word ….…… 116

7.4. The Liturgy ……………………………………………………………… 120

8. THE MISSION – SHARING THE GOOD NEWS ……………………………….… 123

8.1. Witnessing with one’s life ……………………………...………………… 123

8.2. The witnessing of Mary ……………………………………………….… 124

8.3. The saints and models of Christian witnessing …………………..….…… 126

8.4. Witnessing through human and social development ………….……………128

8.5. Witnessing through language, music, art and media ……..…….………… 129

8.6. Witnessing through dialogue ………………………………………….… 133

8.7. Witnessing through death and martyrdom ………………………..….…… 139

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D. ASSESSMENT OF RAHNER’S ‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’……….. 147

9. RELEVANCE AND CRITIQUE OF RAHNER’S THEOLOGY ………………. 148

9.1. Relevance of Rahner’s communication theology ………………………….. 148

9.2. Some of Rahner’s critics and their views ….…………………………… 152

10. THE COMMUNICATION POTENTIAL OF KARL RAHNER’S THEOLOGY …. 160

10.1. Rahner’s starting point: the urge to question – a communication act ….… 160

10.2. An inclusive philosophical anthropology for a communication theology … 161

10.3. The method of communicating his insights ….……..…………………… 162

10.4. Communication as the ontological pre-condition for being human …..… 163

10.5. Communication as man’s conscious response to God ……………….… 165

10.6. Symbolic self-expression as climax of being and becoming ………..… 166

10.7. The Church’s response to God’s self-communication in history ………. 168

10.8. Communication and Eschatology ….………………………………..… 171

10.9. Rahner’s communication theology under the lens of Lasswell’s theory … 173

CONCLUSION ……………..………………..……………..……………………… 181

BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………….………………..……… 184

APPENDIX 1 ………………………………………….……………………..……… 213

APPENDIX 2 …………………………………………….…………………...……… 219

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INTRODUCTION

Karl Rahner, (1904-1984) is considered to be one of the most influential Catholic

theologians of the twentieth century. Thirty five-years after his death, he is indisputably

“regarded as a key player in the theological preparations and discussions before and during the

Second Vatican Council.”1 One of his unique contributions to theology was his reformulation

of revelation as God’s self-communication, which becomes the point of departure for the

communion of believers. Some of the important expressions of the Council documents bear

traces of his touch, for instance, the church as sacramentum mundi, the importance of the local

church, the issue of collegiality, the church as a communion of sinners, and the priority of the

pastoral life in the Church. One theologian summed up the notion of communication at the

heart of his theology as follows: Rahner’s theology “frees the believer from attitudes of

exclusion of the other and opens him to a spirituality of communion.”2 This doctoral

dissertation is an attempt to pursue this line of thinking by highlighting precisely the

communication dimension of Rahner’s theology.

We are not alone in this search. Church scholars acquainted with the Sciences of

Communication have considered Rahner’s opus a profound example of, what they have

termed, ‘Communication Theology.’ Representative views of these scholars reveal that

“communication dimension is inherent in theology”3 and that “communication is brought into

the centre of theology. It becomes a theological principle.”4

1 Declan MARMION, Karl Rahner, Vatican II, and the Shape of the Church, in “Theological Studies,” 78 (2017)

1, 25-48. 2 The opinion expressed is that of Monsignor Ignazio Sanna, Pro-Rector of the Lateran University in Rome. See

ZENIT STAFF, Re-examining Karl Rahner’s legacy: Congress marks the centenary of theologian’s

birth,https://zenit.org/articles/re-examining-karl-rahner-s-legacy/, (2016). 3 Avery DULLES, The Craft of Theology: From symbol to system, Dublin, Gill and McMillan, 1992, 22. 4Cf. Virgilio F. CIUDADANO, Social communication formation in seminaries and schools of theology: An

investigation, Manila, Logos (Divine Word) publications, Inc., 2015, 107.

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“Communication Theology does not start with the media or technical means but rather

with the centre of theology, with God himself. Communication does become the eye through

which the whole of theology is seen because the Christian God is a communicating God.”5

‘Communication Theology’ considers God as “a communicating God after whose

image and likeness man is made and thus he is able to communicate with and relate to himself

and others.”6

Some of those who promote ‘Communication Theology’ are Franz-Josef Eilers,

Terrence W. Tilley,7 Angela Ann Zukowski,8 Frances Forde Plude,9 Jane Redmont,10 Joseph

Palakeel, Mary Catherine Hilkert,11 Paul Soukup,12 and Jacob Srampickal.13

The name ‘Communication Theology’ was created because of a certain dissatisfaction

with courses in seminaries that generally went by the name ‘Theology of Communication’.

Most of these courses offered practical training in communication skills. Seminarians were

taught homiletics, public speaking skills, language and writing proficiency, use of media

instruments for effective communication, etc. These courses were treated as adjunct or

5 Franz-Josef EILERS, (Ed.), Communication Theology: Some consideration, in Franz-Josef EILERS, (Ed.), Church and social communication in Asia: Documents, analysis, experiences, 2 edition, Manila, Logos

publications, 2008, 174. 6 CIUDADANO, Social communication formation in seminaries and schools of theology, 107. 7 Cf. FORDHAM UNIVERSITY, Terrence Tilley,

http://www.fordham.edu/info/23704/faculty/6700/terrence_tilley, (09.04.2016). 8 Cf. Frances Forde PLUDE, Angela Ann Zukowski,

http://www.talbot.edu/ce20/educators/catholic/angela_zukowski/, (09.04.2016). 9 Frances Forde Plude did her doctoral studies at Harvard and MIT. She has taught or lectured at Syracuse

University, Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Salamanca, among others. She is currently a

designated Research Professor at Notre Dame College, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She has published frequently in

the field of Communication Theology. (Cf. Frances Forde PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, in

“Media Development,” 3 (2011) 14. 10 Cf. Jane REDMONT, Communication theology,

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LqhRxgfzeKIJ:https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ct

sa/article/download/4095/3663+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us, (11.02.2016). 11 Cf. Mary Catherine HILKERT, Communication theology,

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dGokAOOYH1cJ:https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.ph

p/ctsa/article/download/4234/3793+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us, (11.02.2016). 12 Cf. Paul A. SOUKUP, Communication theology as a basis for social communication formation, in Franz-Josef

EILERS, SVD, Social communication formation in priestly ministry, Manila, Logos Divine word publications,

Inc., 2002, 45-64. 13 Cf. Francis ARACKAL, National meet moots ‘Communication Theology’ for seminary formation,

http://www.veritasop.blogspot.it/2003_01_12_archive.html#87484203, (10.02.2016).

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parallel programmes to the standard theological treatises that comprised the main part of the

curriculum.

Proponents of the new name suggested a shift from the old. They argued that the title

‘Theology of Communication’ did not do justice to the uniqueness of the Christian faith since

it ‘reduced’ communication to a genitive14 or adjunct phenomenon alongside theology. The

title seemed to ignore the fundamental, non-negotiable belief that the ‘God’ of Christianity is

the One who had taken the initiative of communicating to man, rather than leave man

guessing if a ‘God’ exists, and who or what He might be like to deserve such an exalted name.

The proponents argued that historically and scripturally Christian theology had to be

recognized as a ‘Communication Theology’, because “communications is a constitutive, and

not simply a functional factor in the process of theologizing”15; because it is only “in this

approach that revelation and salvation are considered communication happenings, events

which are very essential for the proper understanding of the history of the Church;”16 because

only Christianity is a “religion of communication, for God in his inmost essence is a mystery

of self-communication.”17

With the proposal for a change of name, there emerged the challenge of re-designing a

new course, in and through which the idea of a ‘Communication Theology’ would be fully

realized. The proponents suggested the names of theologians whose ideas about

communication and theology were most in line with their vision of what the new title could

encapsulate. The most prominent names mentioned were Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan,

Avery Dulles, Carlo Martini, and Peter Henrici.18

14 Cf. Lucio Adrian RUIZ, Finding theological base for communications, in “Media Development,” 3 (2011) 49. 15 Joseph Palakeel, Communication theology in priestly formation, in Jacob Srampickal – Giuseppe Mazza –

Lloyd Baugh (Eds.), “Cross Connections, Interdisciplinary communications studies at the Gregorian University”,

Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Roma 2006, 178. 16 CIUDADANO, Social communication formation in seminaries and schools of theology, 107. 17 CIUDADANO, Social communication formation in seminaries and schools of theology, 107. 18 Cf. Franz-Josef EILERS, The communication formation of Church leaders as a holistic concern, in Jolyon P.

MITCHELL - Sophia MARRIAGE (Ed.), Mediating religion: Studies in media, religion, and culture, (2003)

159.

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Our interest in elaborating a ‘Communication Theology’ was drawn to a study of Karl

Rahner. However, notwithstanding the emphasis placed by these scholars on his contribution

to ‘Communication Theology’, it seemed that a scientific study of Rahner’s Theology from a

‘Communication Theology’ perspective had not yet been undertaken.19 This lacuna sums up

the motive for our focus on the theme of our doctoral research: The ‘Communication

Theology’ of Karl Rahner.

Rahner was a Jesuit priest, a teacher of theology, an academic figure, and a man of the

Church. Although his life may be described as “monotonous,”20 the truth is that he left us an

impressive, creative, theological legacy.21 His output is colossal: it consists of “1651

publications (4744 counting reprints and translations).”22 Gerald A. McCool, editor of a book

entitled, A Rahner Reader, believed that Rahner was a “prodigiously productive writer. […]

The range of topics covered in these publications is extremely wide.”23

As an independent theologian, Rahner produced original studies on a vast diversity of

themes, some of them being: “the Trinity, Christology, Grace, Ecclesiology, Scripture,

Tradition, and Eschatology.”24 Notwithstanding the highly philosophical and theological

nature of his work, he always submitted his independence to the authority of the Church in

19 In email letters received from a few experts in communication theology we have the assurance that a study of

Karl Rahner’s theology from a purely communication perspective has not yet been undertaken. Kindly see the

Appendix. Franz-Josef EILERS says: “To my knowledge there is not yet a special study on Karl Rahner and his

Theology for Communication. But I forwarded your letter to one of my colleagues and doctoral student Fr. Anh

Vu Ta who is teaching Communication Theology here in our Graduate program at the Pontifical University of

Santo Tomas in Manila. His doctoral thesis will be on ‘Communication Theology’ in Intercultural

Communication Perspective”. On contacting Anh Vu Ta, we have the following reply: “As I know there is no one until now who has researched on Rahner’s communication theology.” Then he proceeds to give two suggestions

which we have taken into consideration in this paper: the fact that Karl Rahner did not talk explicitly about

‘communication theology’, and that he is the first to introduce the term “self-communication” of God. 20 Anne CARR, The Rahner revolution II: Unsystematic systematician, in John P. GALVIN – Anne CARR,

“Commonweal: Contemporary theology issue, The Rahner revolution,” (1985)43. 21 Cf. ZENIT STAFF, Re-examining Karl Rahner’s legacy: Congress marks the centenary of theologian’s birth,

07.03.2004, https://zenit.org/articles/re-examining-karl-rahner-s-legacy/, (2016). 22 KARL RAHNER SOCIETY, Studies of his thought, the publication of his works, and reflections on his spirit,

(2016). 23Gerald A. McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, London, Longman and Todd, 1975, XXIII. 24McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XXII-XXIII.

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articulating what he referred to as “fides divina et catholica.”25 The main motive beyond his

writings was his pastoral concern for the challenges facing Catholics in the modern world. His

originality lay in the capacity to rise above the tendency to provide the same theological

answers that were usually given by the theologians of his time. He decided to venture beyond

and to ask new questions that helped in the realization of a world Church, a church with a

perspective beyond its traditionally limited boundaries. For him, the Church had to respond to

the questions of the world. It had to embrace the world as the locus of the incarnation. As

such, secular history or the history of the world had to be integrated into the concerns of the

Church.26 This was a bold way of perceiving theology at a time when belonging to the Church

meant fleeing the world. One of his critics, Hans Urs von Balthasar, notwithstanding his

reservations about Rahner’s anthropological method, recognized the theological “courage” of

Rahner and spoke of him in 1964 as a “brilliant theologian”27

a. Objectives

There are three major objectives of this study which may be sub-divided as follows.

The first objective is on ‘Communication Theology,’ namely, to understand the difference

between ‘Theology of Communication’ and ‘Communication Theology’; to present the

historical development of ‘Communication Theology’; and to understand Rahner’s concern for

a theology that communicates to the secular culture of the twentieth century and beyond.

The second objective is on Rahner’s philosophical foundations: namely, to study the

epistemological and ontological foundations of Rahner’s ‘Communication Theology’ which

are linked to the Thomistic interpretation of human cognitional bivalence in the ‘conversion to

25Karl RAHNER, Theological reflections on monogenism, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological Investigations,”

Volume 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1961, 236. 26 Karl RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 5: Later writings,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966, 99. 27 Manfred Lochbrunner, Analogia Caritatis. Darstellung und Deutung der Theologie Hans Urs von Balthasars,

“Freiburger Theologische Studien” 120, Freiburg, Herder, 1981, 123, quoted in Rahner and his Critics:

Revisiting the Dialogue, in “Australian eJournal of Theology”, 4, February 2005, p. 1.

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the phantasm’ or “conversio ad phantasmata”28 and on the Kantian-Marecalian ‘apprehension

of finite being’ based on a ‘pre-apprehension of Absolute Being.’ Rahner’s epistemological

and ontological foundations are also based on the Heideggerian concept of Dasein and the

‘question’ with respect to the ‘horizon of being.’ We will also synthesize the transcendental

characteristics of the human orientation to Absolute Mystery.

The third objective is Rahner’s ‘Communication Theology’ and here we will study the

Communication dimension of Rahner’s Theology; man, the questioner: human concupiscence

and hearer of the Word; Revelation as God’s self-communication in history; Jesus as the

Absolute self-communication of God and we will also look at the Church as the embodiment

of God’s self-communication in history. In addition, we will elucidate the concept of

sacraments as symbolic representations of God’s saving-grace; the mission as communication

through witness, homiletics, dialogue, and death. We will also deal with the issues of

Ecumenism, inter-denominational and inter-religious dialogue; aesthetics as communicating

through gesture, image, word, music, and media; spirituality as an engraced everyday life and

finally the issue of mysticism.

In our attempt to achieve the objectives outlined above, we will be responding to the

following questions: What is ‘Communication Theology’? What is Rahnerian anthropology?

How is the human being oriented towards the Absolute Mystery? What is God’s self-

communication? How does God communicate through Revelation and in world history? How

does Absolute self-communication of God take place in Jesus Christ? How does Rahner

understand the expressive nature of the Church, the Sacraments and the Liturgy? What

communicative elements does Rahner emphasize in his reflections on death, the communion

of saints and the afterlife? What is the communication dimension of Rahner’s ‘anonymous

Christianity’? Does Rahner’s theology elaborate the aesthetics of communication? What are

the weaknesses of Rahnerian ‘Communication Theology’ and how do his adherents respond to

his critics?

28 Karl RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 1:

God, Christ, Mary and Grace,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1982, 167.

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b. Hypothesis, Method, Sources and Structure

In this thesis, we will be guided by the following hypotheses: The concept of a

‘Communication Theology’ is deeper than the notion of a ‘Theology of Communication’. The

other hypothesis is that Rahner’s theological investigations demonstrate that it is possible to

elaborate a ‘Communication Theology’ that has for its intrinsic components the objectives

mentioned above.

The methods we have used to arrive at the above conclusion is predominantly by

means of internal evidence, through an understanding of his method and the attentive reading

and analysis of Rahner’s extremely dense content collected primarily from his chief books and

the Theological Investigations. We have also supplemented the content with the application of

a three classical theories from the communication sciences such as Lasswell, Dance and

McLuhan.

The claim that Rahner’s theology has rich communication potential will also be tested

on the basis of brief references to three general theories of communication. We will use the

broad categories of communication provided by F. X. Dance to measure the recurrence of key

communication concepts and their synonyms in the text of the Theological Investigations. We

will also employ one of the earliest definitions of communication formulated by Harold

Lasswell to throw light on Rahner’s understanding of the communication process between

God and human persons. Thirdly, Marshall McLuhan’s aphorismic statements on

understanding media will be applied to Rahner’s Logos-centric communication theology.

While the application of the second and third theories will appear in Section D, Chapter 11,

the application of Dance’s categories through a computer search of the Theological

Investigations has already been carried out as a preliminary test to ensure that our hypothesis

that Rahner’s theology has communication potential was well-worth pursuing. The

compilation of the categories dispersed throughout his works is tabulated in Appendix 2.

Thanks to this initial word-count of communication concepts, we embarked on the delineation

of the chapters and the elaboration of our project.

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For our primary sources, we relied heavily on Rahner’s twenty-three-volume work,

Theological Investigations. When dealing with Rahner’s philosophy we have referred to his

seminal works, Spirit in the world29and Hearers of the Word.30 His final book, Foundations of

Christian faith: An introduction to the idea of Christianity31 has also been our primary source,

which presents the main themes underlying his major writings in a linear and lucid manner.

This structure of this thesis has four parts or sections that constitute eleven chapters.

Part A consists of Chapters 1 to 2. It focuses attention on ‘Communication Theology’ and Karl

Rahner. Part B deals with Rahner’s philosophical influences and his philosophical foundations

for a ‘Communication Theology’. It consists of Chapters 3 and 4. In Part C we explore

Rahner’s ‘Communication Theology’ in sufficient detail. This is the longest section that runs

from Chapter 5 to Chapter 8. It reveals the themes that highlight the communication

perspective of his theology, broadly, God’s self-communication, the human condition, the

incarnation, the Church and her mission. Part D presents in Chapters 9 and 10 the critique and

pertinence of Rahner’s communication theology for today.

c. Motivation and Limitations

Permit me to explain why I am attracted to this theme to the point of making it the

thesis for my Doctorate. For a long time I have been captivated by the close link and

relationship between communication and theology. Having a bachelor’s degree in both,

theology and communication, I wanted to venture into a serious study that would establish the

profound relationship between these two disciplines.

Moreover, as a student of communication, I have frequently come across the

misconception that communication is about the media. This misconception diminishes

communication to technological instruments like microphones, radio, television, computers,

29 Karl RAHNER, Spirit in the world, New York, Continuum Publishing Company, 1968. 30 Karl RAHNER, Hearer of the Word, Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Academic, 1994. 31 Karl RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, An introduction to the idea of Christianity, translated by

William V. DYCH, London, Darton Longman and Todd, 1978.

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the internet and smart phone technology, among others. Through this study, I would like to

examine how communication is an anthropological necessity that is laden with profound

theological significance. To unravel the richness I was drawn to the theological writings of

Karl Rahner, thanks to my early reading of secondary sources and an indicative research

presented in Appendix B.

This study is not without its flaws. The first among them is my decision to rely on

English translations of Rahner’s voluminous writings rather than study his text in German, the

language in which his thoughts were first published. I found my knowledge of German too

inadequate to read and understand Rahner in German. The second ‘limitation’ is the principal

theme itself. Our concentration on the communication dimension inherent in Rahner’s writings

has restricted our study to one point of view on his theology, which, we believe, has not been

sufficiently highlighted in earlier works so far.32 We have chosen not to delve into theological

discussions or debates intrinsic to the Catholic faith. As a result, this approach to studying

Rahner may strike some readers as being rather superficial. The last of the limitations, I need

to mention, in all humility, is perhaps a certain inaptitude before the challenge of

understanding and interpreting Rahner’s intricate and convoluted form of expressing his

theological ideas.

d. Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Bishop Joseph Mukasa Zuza, Bishop Martin Anwel Mtumbuka and

Bishop John Ryan for offering me the privilege and opportunity to undertake my doctoral

studies at the Faculty of the Sciences of Social Communication in the Salesian Pontifical

University, Rome. I thank my parents, Modestar and Matthews, and my brothers and sisters

for the support. Finally, my sincere thanks to my guide Prof. Peter Gonsalves, SDB, for

diligently guiding me through four fruitful years of study and research of one of the greatest

32 See footnote 18 of this thesis.

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theologians of all time. Thank you so much Prof. Bryan Lobo, SJ and Prof. Amabile Musoni,

SDB for dedicating time to offer me valuable comments as co-readers of the doctoral

commission.

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PART A

‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’ AND KARL RAHNER

In the first part that spans Chapters 1, and 2, we will clarify the terminology used in this thesis.

We will present a brief history of the term ‘Communication Theology’ which will be followed

by a study of Karl Rahner’s life and his concern for a pastorally relevant communication

theology for the secular culture of the twentieth century.

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1. CLARIFYING THE TERMS

We begin this chapter by defining the terms, ‘Communication’, ‘Theology’ and

‘Communication Theology’. We will also explain the difference between ‘Communication

Theology’ and ‘Theology of Communication’.

1.1. Communication

Etymologically, the term ‘communication’ comes from the verb communicare, which

means, to communicate. The term ‘communication’ can also be linked to the actio

communicandi, or partecipatio and by extension, the term designates not only the action of the

communicator but also the id quod communicatur, that is, the object that is being

communicated.33

The term ‘communication’ is basically from communio, or communicatio which

denotes the transmission of thoughts and sentiments through written or pronounced words.

The root of the term ‘communication’ is com-munis, or the Greek words koinonia, or koinós,

which mean communion and/or sharing of something that is communal, as opposed to

proprius which means that something belongs to someone as his or her own. With the passage

of time, the verb com-mun-icare, was adopted by the Catholic Church to signify the

distribution of communion or partaking in the Eucharist, and the verb ex-communicare was

formulated and it meant the exclusion of someone from receiving the Eucharist.34

Scholars of the Sciences of communication find it difficult to arrive at one single

definition of communication due to the vast array of different forms and types of human inter-

33Cf. Remo BRACCHI, Comunicazione (etimologia), in Franco LEVER - Pier Cesare RIVOLTELLA - Adriano

ZANACCHI (Edd.), La comunicazione. Dizionario di scienze e tecniche, Roma, ELLEDICI-RAI-ERI-LAS,

2002, 252. 34Cf. BRACCHI , Comunicazione (etimologia), 252-253.

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relationships that can be classified under the Sciences of ‘communication’. For example, there

are two types of communication namely: verbal and non-verbal. Verbal communication is

divided into two other types which are: spoken or written. Non-verbal communication

consists of a list of various non-verbal interactions, such as: kinetics, physical features, touch,

proxemics, artefacts, and environment. Some would add even symbolic communication using

material things or customs and rituals that are signs and symbols through which people

communicate meaning.35

The division of communication can also be based on the forms of communication that

consider the number of people involved in the communication process. Thus, there is intra-

personal communication or self-talk, interpersonal communication,36 group communication,

intercultural communication, mass media, social media and convergence media. Furthermore,

if we consider the media through which communication occurs, the history of media reveals

many changes brought about by technology, depending on the media used from the beginning

till today, namely, bodily gestures, dance,37 music,38 theatre, art, language, orality, literacy,

transportation, postal services and print media.39

As such, the vastness of the communication field clearly makes it difficult to arrive at a

single definition of communication. It is no surprise therefore, that the dictionary of the

Faculty of the Sciences of Social Communication of the Salesian Pontifical University, La

35Cf. Franco LEVER - Pier Cesare RIVOLTELLA - Adriano ZANACCHI, Comunicazione, in Franco LEVER -

Pier Cesare RIVOLTELLA - Adriano ZANACCHI (Edd.), La comunicazione. Dizionario di scienze e tecniche,, Roma, ELLEDICI-RAI-ERI-LAS, 2002, 255. 36Cf. B. M. BERCHMANS, Comunicazione interpersonale, in Franco LEVER - Pier Cesare RIVOLTELLA -

Adriano ZANACCHI (Edd.), La comunicazione. Dizionario di scienze e tecniche,, Roma, ELLEDICI-RAI-ERI-

LAS, 2002, 290. 37Cf. Tadeusz LEWISKI, Danza, in Franco LEVER - Pier Cesare RIVOLTELLA - Adriano ZANACCHI (Edd.),

La comunicazione. Dizionario di scienze e tecniche, Roma, ELLEDICI-RAI-ERI-LAS, 2002, 346-347. 38Cf. G. STEFANI, Musica e comunicazione, in Franco LEVER - Pier Cesare RIVOLTELLA - Adriano

ZANACCHI (Edd.), La comunicazione. Dizionario di scienze e tecniche, Roma, ELLEDICI-RAI-ERI-LAS,

2002, 786-790. 39Cf. F. COLOMBO, Mass media, in Franco LEVER - Pier Cesare RIVOLTELLA - Adriano ZANACCHI

(Edd.), La comunicazione. Dizionario di scienze e tecniche,, Roma, ELLEDICI-RAI-ERI-LAS, 2002, 718-719.

18

comunicazione. Dizionario di scienze e tecniche40doesn’t present one definition. It states that

the word ‘communication’ in its daily usage has become fashionable and we can almost say;

“tutto è comunicazione.”41

For John Fiske, however, there are two main schools in the study of communication.

The first school is called the ‘process’ school and it deals with the fields of social sciences,

psychology and sociology. This school looks at communication as:

The transmission of messages. It is concerned with how senders and receivers encode and decode, with

how transmitters use the channels and media of communication. It is concerned with matters like

efficiency and accuracy. It sees communication as a process by which one person affects the behaviour

or state of mind of another. If the effect is different from or smaller than that which was intended, this

school tends to talk in terms of communication failure, and to look to the stages in the process to find out

where the failure occurred. For the sake of convenience I shall refer to this as the ‘process’ school.42

The second school is called the semiotic school which looks at communication as the

process of producing and exchanging of meanings and the main concern here is how the

people interact with messages and texts to produce meanings. The semiotic school also looks

at the role that texts play in different cultures. As such signification of the term or messages

depends on one’s culture. The method used in the semiotic school is that of semiotics which

refers to the study of signs and their meanings in linguistics and arts subjects. Unlike the

process school which generally deals with the acts of communication; the semiotic school

deals with the works of communication which could be works of art, symbols and images.

Both schools, however, look at communication as the social interaction which takes place

through exchange of messages. The process school looks at the effects of social interaction in

which through relationship, the people can affect the behaviour, emotions and state of mind of

the other. The semiotic school looks at social interaction “as that which constitutes the

individual as a member of a particular culture or society.”43

40Cf. Franco LEVER - Pier Cesare RIVOLTELLA - Adriano ZANACCHI (Edd.), La comunicazione. Dizionario

di scienze e tecniche,, Roma, ELLEDICI-RAI-ERI-LAS, 2002. 41 LEVER - RIVOLTELLA - ZANACCHI, Comunicazione, 255. 42 John FISKE, Introduction to communication studies, New York, Routledge, 1990, 2. 43 FISKE, Introduction to communication studies, 2-3.

19

In this way, communication through social interaction of messages brings about

commonality and identification with a group of people. For example, “teenagers appreciating

one rock-music are expressing their identity as members of a subculture and are, albeit in an

indirect way, interacting with other members of their society.”44

Regarding the processes and theories of communication, one would have to look at the

variety of models of communication that have been identified by communication scholars. In

their 1982 book entitled Communication models, Denis McQuail and Sven Windahl

highlighted three models of ‘mass communication’ beginning from Harold Lasswell’s formula

in 1948 to models of Convergence and Transnational Communication in 1993. Lasswell’s

model was a model that described communication as a linear transmission of a message

through the well-known formula: “Who, says what, in which channel, to whom, with what

effect”45

This model worked well with a linear-based telephonic system, for instance, but it

was/is not adequate to describe the eminently rich oral communication of a tribal village in

which the headman communicates the hereditary culture of his tribe through stories, dance and

rituals that elicit the active participation of his audience – a reality James Carey took seriously

in his definition of communication. That is why, for Carey, it was important to have a ritual

view of communication and not only a technical view of communication. The ritual view of

communication is associated with terms like sharing, participation, association and fellowship.

We can also associate it with terms like commonness, communion, community and communal

faith. All these words fall under the concept of communication. The aim of the ritual view of

communication is not the transmission of messages from one point to the other but “the

maintenance of community ideals, [which] provides a symbolic order of things and is a sign of

an on-going social process.”46

44 FISKE, Introduction to communication studies, 3. 45LEVER - RIVOLTELLA - ZANACCHI, Comunicazione, 265. 46James CAREY, A cultural approach to communication,

http://web.mit.edu/21l.432/www/readings/Carey_CulturalApproachCommunication.pdf , (20.02.2016) 18-19.

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We can also add here the fact that communication constitutes the human being and

represents the specific and ontological dimension of man. Man, is born out of a communion

between man and a woman, he grows up in a context of love. His cognitive abilities open his

mind to curiosity, discovery and doubt, which pave the way for the articulation of language,

thoughts, interpretation and dialogue. Thus, to communicate is to share with others one’s

interpretation of things and be enriched in the process of interaction through presence and

participation. In this sense, we can say that communication is what existentially and

essentially defines man as “homo sapiens è homo communicans.”47

Furthermore, communication is a symbolic exchange in which two subjects engage in

an active and creative mode. There is no asymmetry between the sender and the receiver but

there is reciprocity in which they are both active agents in the process of communication, in

which, communication is not only the production and transmission of the message but also the

construction of meaning and the conserving of memory across the generations. Therefore,

man participates in the revitalization of creation through the cultures he inhabits and

transforms. He also revitalizes creation through the context in which he lives.48

Were we to apply the above definitions of communication to religions, we would be

able to surmise that religious traditions and scriptures which form the basis of most beliefs are

the result of social interactions at their deepest, ontological levels. These profound interactions

naturally find expression in communication processes, symbols, discourses, rituals, myths,

dramaturgy and acts of kindness that converge around a core shared hermeneutic which

provides meaning, and spiritual or psychological stability to generations of adherents, both, on

personal and communitarian levels. Religion and theology – which we shall describe in the

next section – are therefore not averse to communication processes but rather intimately or

intrinsically linked to them. A broader definition or description will help us understand better

this vital connection. In the year 1970, a communication scholar, Frank E. X. Dance published

a groundbreaking article “The ‘concept’ of communication,” in The Journal of

47LEVER - RIVOLTELLA - ZANACCHI, Comunicazione, 269. 48Cf. LEVER - RIVOLTELLA - ZANACCHI, Comunicazione, 267-269.

21

Communication.49 Its uniqueness lay in the fact that it was based on a research of

“multitudinous definitions” of the term ‘communication’. The examination produced 15

defining themes.50 Dance explains:

The main purpose of this essay is to examine the multitudinous definitions of communication in the light

of the meaning of “concept” as reflected in the literature of the philosophy of science. One possible

result of such an examination is the derivation of the essential components of the concept of

communication as reflected in the definitions. A second, though admittedly less plausible, result would

be the synthesis of the components into a single definition of the concept of communication. A concept

is the result of a generalizing mental operation. The initial apprehension and perception of individual

acts, or realities, lead to the grouping of percepts and the labeling of such grouping. The grouping is the

concept and the name, or “term,” serves as the label for a specific concept. A concept is a generic mental

image abstracted from percepts and generally relies on an originally inductive process rooted in objective reality.51

For Dance, some concepts like, dog, food, colour, clouds, thunder, wealth, among

others, are manifestly common and ordinary concepts which come from the obtrusive

experiences of daily life of the people. However, there are some concepts which are

extraordinary or scientific, they need cognitive structuring of the experiences and they “have

to be cut out, as it were. They are discerned only by a more subtle and devious examination of

nature, man, and society than is made in everyday life. […] Terms like mass and momentum,

IQ and primary group, anomie and repression […].”52

What is crucial regarding ordinary or extraordinary concepts is the fact that concepts

must be objective, should correspond to experience and they should also be logical. The same

principle can be applied to the concepts of communication which ought to be logical,

experientially based and should be objective.53

Dance discovered that communication refers to symbols, or to the verbal and

speeches.54 In this view, “communication is the verbal interchange of thought or idea.”55 That

49 Cf. Frank E. X DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, in “The Journal of Communication,” 20 (1970)

201-210. 50DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 201. 51DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 202. 52DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 203. 53 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 202-204. 54 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 204. 55 John B. HOBEN, English communication at Colgate re-examined, in “The Journal of Communication,” 4

(1954) 77.

22

is why communication creates understanding56 and in this perspective, “communication is the

process by which we understand [and] others in turn endeavour to be understood by them. It

is dynamic, constantly changing and shifting in response to the total situation.”57

Other important elements of communication are interaction, relationship and social

process.58 To support this assertion, Dance cited the fact that “interaction even on the

biological level, is a kind of communication; otherwise common acts could not occur.”59

Communication also “arises out of the need to reduce uncertainty, to act effect ively, to

defend the ego.”60 It is in this context that Dance believed that reduction of uncertainty is an

important concept of communication.61

Communication is also a process62 and this is the case because it involves “the

transmission of information, ideas, emotions, skills, etc., using symbols – words, pictures,

figures, graphs, etc. It is the act or process of transmission that is usually communication.”63

Another concept of communication is that of transfer, transmission and interchange.64

In this case, communication refers:

To what is transferred, sometimes to that means by which it is transferred, sometimes to the whole

process. In many cases, what is transferred in this way continues to be shared; if I convey information to

another, it does not leave my own possession through coming into his. Accordingly, the word

“communication” acquires also the sense of participation. It is in this sense, for example, that religious

worshipers are said to communicate.65

56 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 204. 57 Martin P. ANDERSEN, What is communication, in “The Journal of communication,” 9 (1959) 5. 58 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 204. 59 George Herbert MEAD, Mind, self, and society, in Leonard BROOM – Philip SELZNIK (Eds.), “Sociology,”

New York, Harper and Row, 19633, 107. 60 Dean C. BARNLUND, Towards a meaning centred philosophy of communication, in “The Journal of

communication,” 12 (1964) 200. 61 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 205. 62 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 205. 63 Bernard BERELSON – Gary A. STEINER, Human behaviour, New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964,

254. 64 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 205. 65 A. J. AYER, What is communication, in “Studies in communication,” London, Martin Secker and Warburg,

1955, 12.

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Furthermore, Dance discovered that we can talk of communication in terms of linking

and binding66 in which case, “communication is the process that links discontinuous parts of

the living world to one another.”67

We can also add another important concept, namely, the fact that communication

creates commonality.68 “It (communication) is a process that makes common to two or several

what was the monopoly of one or some.”69

Communication is also the channel, carrier, means, route,70 or “the means of sending

military messages, orders, etc., as by telephone, telegraph, radio, couriers.”71

Moreover, communication is “the process of conducting the attention of another person

for the purpose of replicating memories.”72

Dance also believed that another important concept of communication is the idea of

discriminative response, behaviour modifying, in short, response and change.73 In this case,

“communication is the discriminatory response of an organism to a stimulus”74 and

“communication between two animals is said to occur when one animal produces a chemical

or physical change in the environment (signal) that influences the behaviour of another

[…].”75

66 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 206. 67 Jürgen RUESCH, Technology and social communication, in Lee THAYER, “Communication theory and

research,” Springfield III, Charles C. Thomas, 1957, 462. 68 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 206. 69 Alex GODE, What is communication, in “The Journal of communication,” 9 (1959) 5. 70 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 206. 71THE AMERICAN COLLEGE DICTIONARY, New York, Random house, 1964, 244. 72 F. A. CARTIER – K. A. HARWOOD, On definition of communication, in “The Journal of Communication,” 3

(1953) 73. 73 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 208-209. 74 S. S. STEVENS, A definition of communication, in “Journal of the acoustical society of America,” 22 (1950)

689. 75 Hubert FRINGS, Animal communication, in Lee THAYER, “Communication: Concepts and perspectives,”

Washington D.C., Spartan books, 1967, 297.

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Stimuli76 are also cited as one of the concepts of communication because he believed

that “every communication act is viewed as a transmission of information, consisting of a

discriminative stimulus, from a source to a recipient.”77

Communication is also intentional. This means that “in the main, communication has

its central interest those behavioral situations in which a source transmits a message to a

receiver(s) with conscious intent to affect the latter’s behaviours.”78

Time and situation are other two closely related concepts of communication. In this

perspective, “the communication process is one of transition from one structured situation-as-

a-whole to another, in preferred design.”79

Another concept of communication is that of power80 in which “communication is the

mechanism by which power is exerted.”81

Dance believed that when we review all these 15 definitions and concepts of

communication given above, we discover that there are “three points of critical conceptual

differentiation which provide points upon which the definitions split.”82

All these definitions can therefore be summarized or rather condensed into three main

elements of conceptual cleavage, namely, “(1) the level of observation; (2) the presence or

absence of intent on the part of the sender; and (3) the normative judgment (goodness-

badness/successful-unsuccessful) of the act.”83

76 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 207. 77 Theodore M. NEWCOMB, An approach to the study of communicative acts, in Alfred G. SMITH (Ed.),

“Communication and culture,” New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966, 66. 78 Gerald A. MILLER, On defining communication: Another stab, in “The Journal of communication,” 16 (1966)

92. 79 Bess SONDEL, Towards a field theory of communication, in “The Journal of communication,” 6 (1956) 148. 80 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 208. 81 S. SCHACTER, Deviation, rejection, and communication, in “The Journal of abnormal and social

psychology,” 46 (1951) 191. 82 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 207. 83DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 207.

25

In the conceptual component of observation, communication consists of observing

behaviour of human beings especially regarding behaviour that is meaningful, purposeful and

consciously interactive.84

The conceptual component of intentionality, involves the discernment of the presence

or absence of the intent on the part of the one who is sending the message to the recipient. For

Dance, the obvious problem here is:

if one chooses to include only acts which are characterized by sender intent as communication then how

does one classify acts wherein there is manifest deception, or accident, but which result in the

acquisition of information, or the altering of behaviour on the part of one organism as a result of the

behaviour (including verbal messages) of another organism?”85

Then there is the conceptual component of normative judgment; which looks at the

idea of “successful interaction (defined as that kind of interaction in which the intent of the

sender is achieved as a result of the communicative event) as representative of communication

[…].”86

We should also mention here that Dance believed that some definitions like process are

cross-cutting and belong to all the three conceptual components. In a sense, then, even the

three main conceptual elements fail to completely envelope the concept of communication.87

In this way, Dance demonstrated that there is no single agreed-upon definition or

concept of communication. That is why he concluded: “it is difficult to determine whether

communication is over-defined or under-defined but certainly its definitions lead the

experimentalist, the historian, and the theoretician alike in different and sometimes

contradictory directions.”88 We may add that Dance’s definitions of communication can also

throw light on a theologian works, as we hope this thesis will indicate. Dance’s study reveals

that, as a complex concept, communication is difficult to pin down to just one of many human

activities. We should not be rigid and exclusive in selecting one definition. He suggests the

84 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 208. 85DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 209. 86DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 209. 87 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 208-209. 88DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 209.

26

use of a family of communication concepts, approaches and methodologies that have an

experiential basis.89

A family of concepts should also facilitate the treatment of communication in a systems fashion. We

can spread the work through a family of communication concepts. The members of the family may

include “attitudes, “opinions,” and “beliefs” on one level and then on another level members such as

“communication,” and even “effective communication.” The identification of the familial members is a

task still to be completed. Given such a family of communication concepts perhaps those who identify

as communication theoreticians or communication scholars could better systematize their scholarly and teaching pursuits, move towards reducing their professional dissonance, work toward eliminating

conceptual inconsistencies and contradictions and, in the end, come closer toward producing a

satisfactory, systematic theory of communication.90

As a preliminary exercise, to enable us identify the variety of communication concepts

in Rahner’s theology, we will employ Dance’s “family of concepts” to filter his Theological

Investigations through a word processor. We will look for word-clusters that are related to

Dance’s Family of 15 Concepts explained above, including the sixteenth concept, the word

‘communication’ itself. Word-clusters are variations of the root word, for example, the root

word, ‘communication’ can have a cluster constituting the following variations: communicate,

communicator, communicates, communicated, communicating, communicability, communion,

self-communication. The word-counts of the word-clusters are tabulated in Appendix 2. The

filtering process reveals that across a total of 4498 PDF pages91 of the Theological

Investigations, the ten frequently used word-clusters that appear in Rahner’s text are: change

(13974), question (8279), way (6838), time (5319), word (4783), un/certain (4723), sacrament,

(3947), sign (3259), relation (3801), communication (3206). If, from these ten words, we

choose only those that expressly signify communication, such as, question, sacrament, sign,

relation and communication, the total touches 24,069. When divided by the total number of

pages, the vocabulary of Rahner in the Theological investigations, consists of an average of

5.3 communication words per page.

89 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 209-210. 90 DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 210. 91 The total number of pages (4498) refers to the PDF pages of the entire PDF file containing the Theological

Investigations. These also include the introductory part and the indices. The number does not refer to the actual

pages of the Theological Investigations which are embedded in box brackets in red colour within the main body

of the text.

27

This exercise, it must be emphasized, has a merely indicative value for the researcher.

It is meant to give him a first glimpse of Rahner’s communication vocabulary as far as the

English translation of his Investigations is concerned. It has no scientific bearing on the main

object of this study.

1.2. Theology

“The term “theology” (from the Greek theos, “God” and logos, “meaning”) is of

ancient provenance but bears a variety of differing but related meanings.”92

Theology is “the science treating of God, subjectively, the scientific knowledge of God

and Divine things. […] In a higher and more perfect sense we call theology that science of

God and Divine things which, objectively, is based on supernatural revelation, and

subjectively, is viewed in the light of Christian faith.”93

Reason is important in theology and that is why St. Anselm believed that theology is

“fides quaerens intellectum (Lat. “faith seeking understanding”), theology uses the resources

of reason, drawing in particular on the disciplines of history and philosophy.”94 St. Anselm

also introduced “dialectics as a method proper to theology. This replaced the earlier procedure

of relying almost entirely on authority wherein theology was limited by and large to

expositions of and commentary upon recognised authorities.”95

Furthermore, theology is “the study of the nature of God and religious truth; rational

inquiry into religious questions, especially those posed by Christianity.”96

92 William J. HILL, Theology, in Joseph A. KOMONCHAK – Mary COLLINS – Dermot A. LANE (Edd.), The

new dictionary of theology, Delaware, Michael Glazier, Inc., 1988, 1011. 93 J. POHLE, Theology, in Charles G. HERBERMANN, et. al., The Catholic encyclopaedia, New York, Robert

Appleton Company, 1907, 580. 94 Gerald O’COLLINS – Edward G. FARRUGIA, Theology, in Gerald O’COLLINS – Edward G. FARRUGIA,

A concise dictionary of theology, New York, Paulist press, 1991, 240. 95 HILL, Theology, 1011. 96 William MORRIS, Theology, in William MORRIS (Ed.), Grolier international dictionary, Connecticut,

Grolier incorporated Danbury, 1981, 1334.

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However, theology, “in the strict sense (as distinct from philosophy, metaphysics,

mythology, and natural knowledge of God) it is essentially the conscious effort of the

Christian to hearken to the actual verbal revelation which God has promulgated in history, to

acquire a knowledge of it by the methods of scholarship and to reflect upon its implications.”97

Theology is tied to God’s word which is permanently present in the Church which,

through the magisterium, preserves the revelation that the Church has received from God. The

subject matter of theology is God who reveals Himself to human beings. That is why, “it is an

essential part of the business of theology to confront contemporary man’s ‘view of life’ with

the message of the Gospel, because theology is always an effort to hear and understand on the

part of man who has secular historical experience and because this experience must embody

itself in the act of theology if he is to hear God’s word at all.”98

Regarding Catholic theology, the early stages of theology are found in the fathers of

the Church. In the second and third centuries, theology consisted in handing down the

traditional teaching of the Church, and defending the faith against the Jews, pagans and

heretics. This was done by apologists like Aristides and St. Justin, among others. For

example, the fathers of the Church fought against the gnostic heresy which was an attempt to

systematize Christianity into mystical rationalism. They wanted to identify Christianity with

dualistic and mythological elements which were prevalent at that time. There were

theologians like St Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria who fought against these

heresies. Other prominent Church Fathers at that time who contributed towards the

development of an essentially orthodox theology are St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory of

Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, St. Hilary and St. Augustine of Hippo..99

Another important era in the history of Catholic theology was the Scholastic period in

the eleventh Century. During this period, the philosophy of Aristotle was used to analyse the

97 Karl RAHNER – Herbert VORGRIMLER, Theology, in Karl RAHNER – Herbert VORGRIMLER, Concise

theological dictionary, translated by Richard STRACHAN, London, Burns & Oates, 1965, 456. 98RAHNER – VORGRIMLER, Theology, 457. 99Cf. RAHNER – VORGRIMLER, Theology, 458.

29

dogmas of the Church, for example in the Summae Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.100 The

Scholastic period was followed by the Council of Trent in the 16th Century in which there was

the theological influence and prominence of Spanish Dominican theologians like Vitoria,

Melchior Cano and the Spanish Jesuit theologians like Suarez, Vazquez, and Molina. The

Council of Trent was marked by opposition to what the reformers taught.101

Other theologians also arose in the nineteenth century with the emergence of prominent

scholars like Emmanuel Kant, G. Hermes and John Henry Newman. In all these different

stages of the development of theology, “the distance between the actual state of theology and

the religious needs of the age remains greater than it should be, despite all our (especially

historical) learning. Progress in overcoming this situation is slow and has been hindered by

blunders.”102

Thus, theology, “finds itself in a state of crisis, called upon to define itself anew.

Metaphysical thinking, in the Neo-Scholastic period (late nineteenth and twentieth centuries),

has long since given way first to existential thinking (Bultmann and Rahner) and subsequently

to historical thinking (Pannenberg and Mert).”103

Theology today seeks to bridge the gap between faith and theology, between revealed

[Divinely communicated] truths and man’s historical [or cultural] condition. “[O]ne of the

more suggestive issues of this line of development was Karl Rahner’s distinction between the

transcendental revelation which was non-objective and preconceptual and categorical

revelation that was precisely objectification and conceptual thematization of the former.”104

Summing up the question of terminology in our title, we can see that in all the different

stages of theology, there was an attempt to understand the faith. This understanding depends

on how faith is preached and expressed. Communication processes remains the common

denominator in the formulation of theological reflection on Christian scripture, doctrine, law,

100 Cf. Thomas AQUINAS, Summa Theologica, New York, Benziger brothers, Inc., 1946. 101Cf. RAHNER – VORGRIMLER, Theology, 458-459. 102RAHNER – VORGRIMLER, Theology, 459. 103 HILL, Theology, 1012. 104 HILL, Theology, 1012.

30

liturgy and art. Through our articulation of the terminology used in the title of our thesis we

have therefore moved from the importance of communication for all religions (in our previous

section), to the specific role of communication in the elaboration of Catholic Theology in this

part of our study. We will now move on to the next step of understanding the intrinsic

importance of communication in the historical and hermeneutical elaboration of Catholic

theology itself.

1.3. ‘Communication Theology’

Before we define ‘Communication Theology’ for our thesis, it would be useful to know

how its proponents define or describe it. Unfortunately, there does not seem to exist unanimity

of opinion. Franz-Eilers, one of its principal promoters, makes a distinction between

‘Theology of Communication’, ‘Communicative Theology’ and ‘Communication

Theology’.105 For him, the ‘Theology of Communication’ “appears as an attempt to ‘baptize’

the (mass) media: […].In this understanding, media are instruments to be used for the

kingdom of God. Such a notion underlies many Church documents up till our present time.

Even the now defunct Pontifical Council for Social Communication was originally the

“Commission for the Instruments of Social Communication.”106 Eilers further believed that the

‘Theology of Communication’ as an attempt “to ‘theologize’ Communication can hardly be

sufficient for a communication which must be considered as an essential element of the

Church.”107

The Theology of Communication is reflected in the Decree on the Media of Social

Communications, Inter Mirifica, of the Second Vatican Council. Inter Mirifica describes the

media as instruments, which “if properly utilized, can be of great service to mankind, since

105 Cf. EILERS, Communication theology, 172-174. 106 EILERS, Communication theology, 172-173. 107 EILERS, Communication theology, 173.

31

they greatly contribute to men’s entertainment and instruction as well as to the spread and

support of the Kingdom of God.”108

Michael Amaladoss, one of South Asia’s leading theologians known globally for his

writings on culture and inter-religious dialogue in Asia tends to agree with this functionalist

meaning of the term ‘Theology of Communication’.

Communication is an essential function of Theology. Today there is a growing acceptance that language

is not the only medium of theological or any serious expression. Symbols, poetry, painting, and music

can also be authentic expressions. Theology should start using multi-media to express itself.109

With the term ‘Communicative Theology’, Eilers highlights the purpose of making

theology comprehensible and understandable to people so that the uncomprehended truths do

not “rest in the files of the fides implicita where it lies buried.”110 Such truths “are always in

danger of becoming ‘un-existential in the everyday practical life of man. And this happens not

only in the case of those who deny these truths, i.e. ‘heretics’, but also in the case of good,

orthodox Christians.”111

This is an attempt to make theology and theological considerations better understandable using words,

expressions […] to be easily understood by the recipients. Theology expresses itself in an easily

understandable ‘language.’ Already Luther’s Bible translation into commonly understandable German

language goes in this direction though even before him already other German translations of the Bible did exist. In recent development in German speaking countries, this expression is also used for a

theology which grows from spiritual and theological experiences of Christian communities. This is

similar to liberation theology which in theologizing starts with the life of the people.112

Another example of ‘Communicative Theology’ is hermeneutic or contextual theology.

This category of theology is very attentive to how language and words are used in a particular

situation. In this understanding, ‘Communicative Theology’ does not take communication to

be the centre or essence of theology but only an effective means through which theology is

108POPE PAUL VI, Decree on the media of Social Communications Inter Mirifica 2, 04.12.1963,

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19631204_inter-

mirifica_en.html, (09.09.2015). 109 ARACKAL, National meet moots ‘Communication Theology’ for seminary formation, (10.02.2016). 110 Karl RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 2: Man in the Church,” New York, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963, 175. 111 Karl RAHNER, The resurrection of the body, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 2: Man

in the Church,” New York, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963, 203. 112 EILERS, Communication theology, 173-174.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19631204_inter-mirifica_en.html


32

expressed. As Joseph Palakeel would say, it “envisages a theology dressed up in

communication categories.”113

However, a deeper level of looking at communicative theology would be to see

communication as a category of theology. Here, to use Amaladoss phrase, “the term

‘communication’ becomes a theological category when allied with other terms such as

revelation, mission and communion.”114

This leads us to the term ‘Communication Theology’. For Eilers ‘Communication

Theology’ “considers the whole of Salvation and Theology under the perspective of

Communication.”115

Thus Communication Theology does not start with the media or technical means but rather with the

centre of theology, with God himself. Communication does become the eye through which the whole of

theology is seen because the Christian God is a communicating God. Communication becomes a theological principle a perspective under which the whole of theology is seen.116

It is a way of recognizing that Communication is the heart of Christian theology. A

close look at Christian theology will draw attention to the communication core of essential

beliefs such as Sacraments, Liturgy, the communion of saints, the Church, Evangelization,

Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Dialogue, Trinity, Revelation, Incarnation, Ecclesiology - all

theological as well as communicational essentials.117

Communication is so integral to Catholic Theology that the latter would cease to exist

and even become meaningless without the former. This would be the case because God’s

revelation to man takes place in a communicative and dialogic way which involves the

exchange of word, partnership, relationship and response.118

Eilers’ insists that “the whole of biblical theology is concerned about ways and means

of a communicating God ‘speaking’ in many and various ways to his people (cf. Hebr.1:1).

113 Joseph PALAKEEL, Theology and the technologies of communication, An inquiry into the epistemological

implications, in “Media Development,” 3 (2011) 39. 114 Cf. ARACKAL, National meet moots ‘Communication Theology’ for seminary formation, (10.02.2016). 115 EILERS, Communication theology, 185. 116 EILERS, Communication theology, 74. 117 Cf. Sebastian PERIANNAN, Communication theology for formation and mission, in Joseph PALAKEEL,

Towards a Communication Theology, Bangalore, Asian trading corporation, 2003, 183-184. 118 Cf. EILERS, Communication theology, 175.

33

The high point of this development is the incarnation of Jesus Christ where God

communicates to us through his son as the “perfect communicator.”119

Joseph Palakeel takes the meaning of ‘Communication Theology’ further by

envisioning the act of theologizing as a communication act embedded in culture:

A theology conversant with the emerging communication culture may be called a communication

theology. Communication studies today can become a privileged partner of theology like philosophy and

social sciences. Communication theology means not only a change in method of doing theology, but also

a radical rethinking of theology through the language, logic and semantics of the predominant

communication culture. The identity and relevance of theology suggests a close link to the predominant

culture of the place and time. Theology was born from the necessity to communicate effectively in each

time and place. Theologizing is an ongoing process of self-expression of faith in cultures. The identity

and relevance of theology suggests a close link to the predominant culture of the place and time.120

Furthermore, the understanding of ‘Communication Theology’ is affected by the

transmission and cultural definitions of the term ‘communication’. It embraces the

transmission model of sending messages and receiving feedback as when we consider how

God’s communication with us through the prophets was always followed up by his desire to

see man’s resultant cooperation in His plan. Moreover, it embraces a wider concept of

communication that may be defined as a process through which culture is created by the

participation in the construction of meaning and this process leads to communion.121

‘Communication Theology’ is neither purely rational nor notional but it is also

“experiential and tangible through the multimedia and multisensorial communication. Such a

theology is capable of exploring […] the Word of God in the many and varied ways of human

communication, inviting everyone into a life-giving fellowship.”122

Understood in this way, ‘Communication Theology’ would thus affect the whole of

theology and not be relegated to a mere section of it, or simply to one solitary course in the

entire theological curriculum. This is the case because there would be clear “connections

between communication science and theology. One of the most apt areas for this co-operation

119 Franz-Josef EILERS, SVD, Spirituality for Christian communication, in Franz-Josef EILERS, (Ed.), Church

and social communication in Asia: Documents, analysis, experiences, (2nd edition), Manila, Logos publications,

Inc., 2008, 189. 120 PALAKEEL, Theology and the technologies of communication, 39. 121 Cf. PALAKEEL, Theology and the technologies of communication, 38-40. 122 PALAKEEL, Theology and the technologies of communication, 39-40.

34

is fundamental theology or what Rahner referred to as theologia fundamentalis which is the

“(study of the possibility of revelation, the communication of the word in human language, the

role of tradition in the Church, the place of Christianity in society, and so forth.”123

In terms of embracing popular culture, Frances Forde Plude, a communication scholar,

sees ‘Communication Theology’ as an opportunity to perceive theology from the vantage

point of a culture infiltrated by electronic communication. Thus, ‘Communication Theology’

looks at music, image, and symbol as ways in which culture is mediated. Plude believed that

those who wish to do ‘Communication Theology’ can among other things:

(1) attend to the communication dimension of their specific theological discipline; or (2) focus on the

interpretive dynamics involved in communicating the fruit of their theological reflection effectively to

today’s public which resides in an electronic culture; or (3) choose to position themselves in the midst of

a communication-studies culture and elaborate a theology (an understanding of God, God’s presence,

and God’s action) that arises from that communication/culture base.124

Plude, also argued for a more interactive revolution which would involve, “(1) the

flattening and decentralization of organizations; (2) the participatory character of

communication flow with feedback loops, giving rise to “shared minds” within “forums;” and

(3) the importance of access by all to the instruments of communication, enabling “power

with” and reducing “power over.”125 She proposed this ‘communication revolution’ for a

“communion theology of Church” which she elaborated in her article, Interactive

communications in the church.126 She finds the writings of Rahner (among other theologians)

reflecting this concern. In her view, there is need that the theologians and the communicators

should collaborate.127

In the words of Lucio Adrian Ruiz, the plea for a ‘Communication Theology’ asserts

the view that “theology is born by a communicative act, has communication as the objective

123 Paul A. SOUKUP, Communication, cultural form and theology, in “Way Supplement,” 57 (1986) 86. 124 PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 9. 125 Frances Forde PLUDE - Paul A SOUKUP, Communications and theology: Theological reflection and

communication studies, CTSA Proceedings, 49 (1994) 160-161. Also see,

http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ctsa/article/viewFile/3896/3461, (14.02.2016). 126 Cf. Patrick GRANFIELD, (Ed.), The church and communication, Kansas City, Sheed &Ward, 1994. 127 Cf. PLUDE - SOUKUP, Communications and theology, 160-161. Also see,

http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ctsa/article/viewFile/3896/3461, (14.02.2016).

http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ctsa/article/viewFile/3896/3461

35

and its central object of study is communication: [thus] communication is found at the centre

of any theology whatsoever.”128

Taking this discussion a step further, we notice that those who advocate for a

‘communication theology’ point to Rahner’s work as that which lends itself to its

elaboration.129 In addition, Dulles highlighted the fact that Rahner “goes beyond the typical

representatives of revelation-as-history model.”130 Another promoter of ‘communication

theology’, Bernard R. Bonnot, believes that the discovery of the deep relationship between

theology and communication has “not escaped the grasp of theologians” and he points to

Rahner’s use of the phrase “God’s self-communication”, as the “core of Christianity.”131

Ahn Vu Ta, a professor of Communication Theology in the Philippines and specialist

in Rahner says this about ‘communication theology’ and Rahner:

Karl Rahner had not explicitly talked about “communication theology”; however he was the one who

especially introduced the term “self-communication” of God. In many treatises, he reflected on and

unfolded this very important notion which has consequently played a very relevant role in the

theological development that followed. This term was also used especially in the Second Vatican

Council’s document Dei Verbum. It has then become the decisive basis for reflection and thinking on

other documents prepared in the discussion processes of Vatican II.132

It may be added that today this Rahnerian phrase ‘God’s self-communication’ is

normalized in theological discourse, even if credit is not given to Rahner. Palakeel also noted

that “there were many recent efforts to rethink theological method from a communication

perspective. Years back Rahner, through his definition of revelation as God’s self-

communication and the theory of Christ as the Real symbol of God, pointed out that theology

is all about communication.”133

128 RUIZ, Finding theological base for communications, 52. 129 Cf. Jacob SRAMPICKAL, Interdisciplinary approach is inevitable and a major challenge in communication

studies, in Franz Josef EILERS, Communicatio socialis: Challenge of theology and ministry in the Church,

Kassel, Kassel university press, 2007, 160. 130 Avery DULLES, Revelation and the religions, https://universalistfriends.org/dulles.html, (13.02.2016). 131 Bernard R. BONNOT, Media: Superficial or

spiritual,http://newtheologyreview.com/index.php/ntr/article/viewFile/80/139, (14.02.2016) 60. 132See Appendix 1, “Email from Duc Viet Vu” page 229. 133 Joseph PALAKEEL, Theologizing with insights from communication, in Joseph PALAKEEL, (Ed.), Towards

a Communication Theology, Bangalore, Asian Trading Corporation, 2003, 45.

https://universalistfriends.org/dulles.html

http://newtheologyreview.com/index.php/ntr/article/viewFile/80/139

36

The assertions that the above-mentioned scholars have identified elements of

‘Communication Theology’ in Rahner have been further confirmed by a personal

correspondence with Franz Josef Eilers.134 Their assurances that a deeper study of the validity

of their claims has not been undertaken yet, have encouraged me to pursue The

‘Communication Theology’ of Karl Rahner as my doctoral thesis. However, before we

proceed to deal with it head on, a historical perspective of the term ‘Communication

Theology’ is in order.

Conclusively, as we have already mentioned, there is general disagreement on the

definition of the terms that we have given in this section. That is why we have given the

views of different authors to highlight the differences in opinion.

1.4. A history of ‘Communication Theology’

The development and history of ‘Communication Theology,’ was given a firm

foundation from a series of seminars that had taken place in Rome at the Gregorian Pontifical

University two decades ago. These meetings were organized by Robert White.

Every two years, theologians and communication and cultural studies scholars and practitioners came

together for a week of reflection. These seminars focused on fundamental theology, philosophy, moral

theology, ecclesiology, religious film, and popular culture – always reflecting on these topics through a

theological/communication/cultural studies lens.135

In addition, there have been a series of symposia that have taken place on a yearly

basis at the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA). These sessions had been

coordinated by Bob Bonnot and Frances Forde Plude but the funding for the meetings had

been provided by the CTSA and the United States Association of Catholic Communicators.

These series of symposia addressed issues of narratives and ‘Communication Theology,’

theology of preaching and several other issues. And another significant element of an

134 See Appendix for the four emails from different scholars contacted with regard to the possibility of

investigating the ‘Communication Theology’ of Karl Rahner. 135 PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 11.

37

emerging Communication Theology involved study programs that integrate communication

and theology.136

Examples are the Gregorian University and the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome. Pierre Babin’s

program in France trained more than a thousand pastoral agents from 110 different countries and

conducted over 500 sessions in Africa, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe. There have been

programs at the University of Edinburgh and in London and programs established in Asia.137

Other important developments have been concrete courses in ‘Communication

Theology’. Some names in this line are Joseph Palakeel who lectures, provides course

materials and pastoral practice at different training centres in India. Similar initiatives have

been undertaken by Angela Ann Zukuwski in the United States of America who has been

running a Pastoral communication and ministry programme at Dayton University. In addition,

Tom Boomershine, at United Theological Seminary has trained many individuals in the

graduate programme of media and ministry. Frances Plude attests that students in theology at

diverse international institutions of learning collaborate on-line to research different topics on

Communication Theology.138

Regarding methodology of ‘Communication Theology,’ Plude outlined five

methodological issues within ‘Communication Theology’;

Acknowledging experience as a theological source and criterion; reading texts (especially

communication/culture/media texts) in revisioning ways; utilizing the hermeneutic of both suspicion and

retrieval; seeking mutuality in communication forums; critiquing language issues (across continents and

gender).139

We have mentioned earlier that the scholars quoted above generally agree on the

importance of ‘Communication Theology,’ although they may differ in their areas of interest.

Paul A. Soukup, who has done literature reviews in ‘Communication and Theology’,140 thinks

this is to be expected because;

136 Cf. PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 11-12. 137 PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 11. 138 Cf. PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 11-13. 139 PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 10. 140 Cf. Paul A. SOUKUP, Communication and theology: Introduction and review of the literature, Warwickshire,

Avon Litho Ltd., 1991; and Paul A. SOUKUP, Recent work in communication and theology, in Jacob

SRAMPICKAL – Giuseppe MAZZA – Llord BAUGH, Cross connections: Interdisciplinary communications

studies at the Gregorian University, Rome, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2006, 121-146.

38

People tend to conceptualise communication in a certain way and organise their thinking around this

image. Such thinking, of course, often conflicts with communication theorizing from a different

perspective, one that chooses to favour a different image of the communication process.141

Soukup outlined six ways in which ‘Communication Theologians’ tend to interpret

communication and this affects the way they also look at ‘Communication Theology.’ These

six ways are; linguistic, aesthetic, cultural, interpersonal dialogue, and process which basically

includes the sender-message-receiver components. The linguistic element looks at how

language is used in communication. The aesthetic element looks at how someone can

communicate aesthetically. And the cultural aspect looks at how different cultures

communicate. Finally the interpersonal dialogue looks at how different people

communicate.142Frances Forde Plude, however, is interested in interactional theories of

communication.

I am personally comfortable in this last category, because of my interest in dialogic communication and

the reality of interactive technologies like the telephone, computer networks, the Internet, the World

Wide Web and individualized media like blogs, Myspace, and similar talk-back forums. The terms

“media” or “mass media” refer to only a small segment of the field of communication studies. I believe

the interactions among media, religion, and culture can be enriched by a theological renewal that

systematically integrates insights from among the many different genres of communication theory – all

of communication studies and not just media studies. The whole field of communication studies

introduces a broad perspective, whose richness and breadth can match the scope of theology itself.143

For Plude, there is need for theologians, Church leaders, seminaries and congregations

to integrate “many facets of communication studies into theology. It will be most helpful if

theologians themselves systematically conceptualize such integration – a dynamic

Communication Theology “from below.”144

However up to now the integration of communication studies into theology has not

taken place because those who are trained in communication studies return to their locations

where they view “communication (mass media and digital culture, in particular) as something

apart from church policy, religious experience and theology.”145

141 SOUKUP, Communication theology, 27. 142 Cf. SOUKUP, Communication theology, 27-29. 143 PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 10. 144 Cf. PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 10-11. 145 PLUDE, Moving toward communication theology, 10.

39

Palakeel on the other hand has focused on the relationship between language and

theology. The idea is that theology should be expressed in a language that can be understood

by the people. This is a valuable dimension of both communication and theology, otherwise,

“today’s Church and its dominant theology still find themselves bound in a print-media space

and culture, and remain rational and conceptual and far removed from the common language

of the people. Can the Church and theology of another media culture effectively communicate

without the dominant medium of communication of the present day?”146

Communication theology is theologizing in the emerging digital language and literacy. If theology is

considered as a process of constructing meaning, we must ask certain questions to theology: is the

dominant theology “sensitive to the questions and searches of the people? Do priests talk about God in a

language people can understand?” Does it reflect “local religious language which expresses the religious

sentiments of the people?” Does it give pastoral persons the capacity “to see, with the Christian

community, what God is calling the community to do in a given context”, to “see the action of God in a

context” […].147

Palakeel therefore recommended that the shepherds that live in the digital age should

be trained in communication so that they can be critical consumers and so that they can be

creative in using the media for evangelisation. That is why; he believed that “the need of the

time is a communication theology which sees communication as a theological category and

theology as a communication process. [The] seminary has to be envisaged as a school of

communication.”148

Media literacy and media education will enable them to safeguard themselves against the evils of the

media and to train the faithful to be critical and discerning receivers. Exposure and expertise in the

media tools and techniques will empower them to utilize the immense potential of the media for

spreading the Gospel values.149

From the foregoing presentation, it is evident that those who promote communication

theology differ in the way they implement it in their academic circles. The first two concepts

proposed by Eilers (which ‘Communication Theology’ is not) do help us understand the

shades of use from ‘baptizing media and communications’ as understood by the term

‘Theology of Communications’ to doing ‘communicative theology’ and making theology

146 PALAKEEL, Communication theology in priestly formation, 178. 147 PALAKEEL, Communication theology in priestly formation, 178-179. 148 PALAKEEL, Communication theology in priestly formation, 182. 149 PALAKEEL, Communication theology in priestly formation, 181.

40

more effectively communicative. Our study focuses on the last of the three – namely a

‘Communication Theology’ which implies the study of the communication dimensions of

theology or rather then intrinsic communication perception of traditional Catholic theology.

We find in Rahner’s theology the emphasis on just such a dimension or perspective which is

the aim of our thesis.

41

2. RAHNER AND HIS PASTORALLY ORIENTED THEOLOGY

Karl Rahner was born in Freiburg in Breisgau on March 4, 1904 in Germany. He was

the fourth born in his family. Like his brother Hugo Rahner, he was ordained by Cardinal

Faulhaber in St. Michael’s Church in Munich as a Jesuit priest on 26 July 1932, after finishing

his priestly training. After his ordination, he got a degree in philosophy at the University of

Freiburg.

He studied Philosophy at Freiburg University in 1934. One of his professors at the

University was Martin Heidegger whose views influenced him in the production of his

dissertation,150 which his Neo-Scholastic moderator Martin Honecker refused to approve.151

Martin Honecker, the mentor of Rahner’s dissertation, took an equally negative view of Transcendental

Thomism. He refused his approval to Rahner’s dissertation on St. Thomas’s metaphysics of the

judgement, forcing Rahner to leave Freiburg without his degree. Rahner then transferred to Innsbruck

where he received his doctorate in theology in 1936.152

Rahner published the dissertation as a book entitled; Geist in welt (Spirit in the

world.)153 The main idea in this book is that “the human search for meaning was rooted in the

unlimited horizon of God’s own being experienced within the world.”154 In addition, the

fifteen lectures which Rahner “delivered at the Salzburg summer school in 1937 on the

foundations of a philosophy of religion appeared in the book form under the title Hörer des

Wortes in 1941.”155

150 Cf. Francis P. FIORENZA, Karl Rahner and the Kantian problematic, in Karl RAHNER, Spirit in the world,

New York, Continuum publishing company, 1957, XIX. 151 Cf. FIORENZA, Karl Rahner and the Kantian problematic, XXII. 152 McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XIII. 153 Karl RAHNER, Spirit in the world, New York, Continuum publishing company, 1957. 154 CAMPBELL, Karl Rahner, SJ (1904–1984), http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-voices/20th-

century-ignatian-voices/karl-rahner-sj/, (14.11.2014). 155 McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XIX.

http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-voices/20th-century-ignatian-voices/karl-rahner-sj/


42

The refusal of the thesis prompted Rahner to leave the University of Freiburg and

continue his education at Innsbruck University. Whilst there he received a doctorate in

theology in 1936 and became a teacher of theology at the same University from 1937 to 1939.

The year 1939, the Nazis managed to suppress the faculty of Theology at Innsbruck

and they closed the University and they ordered Rahner to go out of the city. He complied and

decided to do pastoral work from 1939 to 1944 and during the same time he was also teaching

in Vienna. Already during this time, the theology of Rahner had started to take shape during

his pastoral and theological lessons.156

During his pastoral work during the years of the Nazi war, Rahner developed “appreciation of

theology’s pastoral implications. His experience of a big city diocese torn by war and persecution and

his pastoral contact with large numbers of priests, religious, and laity during an agonizing and turbulent

period in the history of Central Europe provoked the theological reflections on the diaspora Church, the

parochial principle, the charismatic and hierarchical elements in the Church, the apostolic spirituality of

the laity, the formation of priests, and the religious life which attracted popular attention to Rahner in the

years before Vatican II and contributed greatly to his influence on the bishops who took part in it.157

During his time in Vienna, Rahner was appointed to be a Consultant on theology for

the Archdiocese of Vienna. After this time, Rahner taught theology in Leipzig, Dresden,

Frankfurt, Cologne, Bavaria, Pullach and then returned to Innsbruck after the University had

reopened the faculty of theology in 1948.158

He remained at this university until 1964 when he went to teach at the University of

Munich but he decided to leave this university because as the holder of Munich’s Romano-

Guardini chair, Rahner was not allowed to direct doctoral dissertations. He therefore moved

to Münster in 1967 and later retired from teaching in 1971 to concentrate on pastoral work,

lecturing, and writing. He died on 30th March 1984, at the University Medical Clinic of

Innsbruck in Austria.159

156 Cf. McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XVIII-XIX. 157 McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XIV. 158 Cf. McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XIX. 159 Cf. CAMPBELL, Karl Rahner, SJ (1904–1984), http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-voices/20th-

century-ignatian-voices/karl-rahner-sj/, (14.11.2014).



43

Cardinal Lehmann who was the Bishop of Mainz in Germany160 in an interview

recalled that during the year 1970, Rahner felt increasingly frustrated with the officials of the

Catholic Church and was particularly disappointed with the proceedings of his audience with

Pope John Paul II in 1979.161

However, despite this difficulty with the Church officials, Rahner contributed a lot

towards the Church especially during the Second Vatican Council, when Pope John XXIII

appointed him as Peritus of the council (expert advisor). In addition, Cardinal Koenig who

was the Archbishop Emeritus of Vienna162 appointed Rahner as the private adviser on the

Second Vatican Council documents and together with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger; they

prepared a document on the relationship between scripture and tradition, which was heavily

supported by the German Bishops. Furthermore, during the Second Vatican Council, the

views of Rahner on several topics like divine inspiration of the Bible, the Church in the

modern world, and salvation outside of the Church were widely discussed.163

Second, because the ideas of Rahner strongly influenced the German Bishops, who were very well

prepared and active during the Council. These Bishops maintained powerful associations of financial aid to the Dioceses of the Third World – a quite important political detail. With this, they influenced a

large number of other Prelates to approve their favoured projects in the Conciliar Assembly. Third,

160 Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz, Germany, was born on May 16, 1936, in Sigmaringen, Germany.

He was ordained for the Archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau on October 10, 1963, and holds doctorates in

philosophy and theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. He was an assistant to Fr. Karl Rahner

at the University of Münster. After earning his “habilitation,” he taught dogmatic theology at the Johannes

Gutenberg University, Mainz. He was a member of the Central Committee of German Catholics and the Jaeger-

Stählin Ecumenical Circle. He later taught at the Albert Ludwig University, Freiburg im Breisgau, and was a

member of the International Theological Commission. CRUX: COVERING ALL THINGS, Cardinal Karl

Lehmann, http://www.cruxnow.com/people/cardinal-karl-lehmann/, (28.10.2015). 161 “Considered one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, Rahner spent much of his career

under Vatican scrutiny. John XXIII had him silenced and was extremely critical of his writings. Under Paul VI, he was rehabilitated and his theology greatly influenced the Second Vatican Council, where he served as an

expert for the German bishops. In his later years, he was very critical of the conservative direction the church

had taken under John Paul II. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith took issue with Rahner’s views

about priestly ordination, contraception and his doctrine of the “anonymous Christian.” After his death in 1984, a

gradual reassessment of Rahner’s theology took place, and by the time of his centenary in 2004, the secretary to

the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith declared Rahner to be “an orthodox theologian.”

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, Theological disputes, 25.02.2005,

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005a/022505/022505h.php, 29.10.2015. 162 Cf. CATHOLIC-HIERARCHY.ORG, Franz Cardinal König, http://www.catholic-

hierarchy.org/bishop/bkonig.html, (29.10.2015). 163 Cf. CAMPBELL, Karl Rahner, S.J. (1904–1984), (14.11.2014).

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005a/022505/022505h.php

http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bkonig.html


44

Rahner was one of the authors of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium; among

others, the concepts of “the Church as mystery” and “people of God,” as accepted by Vatican II are

attributed to him.164

In addition to his influence on the Church, Rahner published so many books. Some of

his books have been indicated in the bibliography of this thesis and according to Jim Campbell

(who wrote an online biography of Rahner): there are “over 3, 500 published works written or

edited by Rahner.”165

The aim of Rahner’s academic interest was to serve the mission and life of the Church.

As an expression of this deep conviction, Rahner conducted several retreats and wrote many

spiritual reflections, which are recorded in the book: Prayers and meditations: An anthology of

the spiritual writings by Karl Rahner.166

Rahner also “saw himself as a spiritual theologian and his theology is found in prayers,

interviews, and spiritual writing, as well as more academic papers […].167

Rahner imparted this new understanding of theology to his students for whom he

worked as a spiritual director. He supported them and frequently accompanied them as they

went out in the neighbourhoods to give alms to the poor. At his 80th birthday, Rahner,

appealed for money to buy a “motorcycle for a priest in the African missions. To the end of

his life, Rahner was ever more convinced that the meaning of life was bound up in the

experiences, history, and sacramental life that are God’s world of grace.”168

Rahner believed that his writings would be used as a pastoral aid for the ordinary

people and would be a supplement on the intellectual life of the Church. He wrote his articles

and books in a way that respected the spiritual sensitivity, cultural diversity, and religious

pluralism of the people.

164 Atila Sinke GUIMARÃES, Book reviews: The theology of Karl

Rahner,http://www.traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_009br_Rahner.htm, (02.01.2016). 165 CAMPBELL, Karl Rahner, SJ (1904–1984), (14.11.2014). 166 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Prayers, and meditations: An anthology of the spiritual writings of Karl Rahner, New

York, Crossroad publishing company, 1980. 167 Mary STEINMETZ, Thoughts on the Experience of God in the Theology of Karl Rahner: Gifts and

implications, in, “Lumen et Vita” 2 (2012) 1. 168 CAMPBELL, Karl Rahner, SJ (1904–1984), (14.11.2014).

45

Or, to put this position in its best-known form, a Christian form made famous by Karl Rahner, members

of other religions are “anonymous Christians.” In other words, the central category of our religion also

applies to them. They share “our” world and “our” values, even if “they” don’t know it. Thus, this

position is also a universalizing stance vis-a-vis other religions. However, instead of advocating that

others join “us,” they are claimed as really, in essence, part of “our” group already, despite differences of

theology and values.169

We can therefore see that Rahner’s theology was developed against the background of

a general longing for a renewal in theology. There was a general longing for a new theology

that communicated to the people of the twentieth century. Renewal was therefore inevitable

and had to be done through a new way of conceiving theology. This new way would not have

to depart from the essential and foundational elements of Christian faith and Catholic

dogmatic tradition. But the renewal of theology had to be faithful to tradition and Catholic

doctrine. In other words, the new way of conceiving theology had to draw new meaning from

the traditional Catholic elements. This is what Rahner did. He explained the Christian faith in

a new way so that theology became pastorally communicable and comprehensible.170Theology

had to be anthropological and be based on the lived experiences of the people.171This explains

why the Rahner scholar, McCool declares: “Rahner is a great pastoral theologian precisely

because he is one of the greatest systematic theologians of this century.”172

Another renewal of theology consisted in the fact that “Rahner’s theology does much

to de-mythologize mysticism. He approaches the experience of God as an ordinary

occurrence, and this sense of normality is related to his understanding of the human person as

one who is ultimately oriented toward transcendence.”173

169 Rita M. GROSS, Religious diversity: some implications for monotheism,

http://www.crosscurrents.org/gross.htm, (07.01.2016). 170 Cf. John P. GALVIN, The Rahner revolution I: Grace for a new generation, in John P. GALVIN – Anne

CARR, “Commonweal: Contemporary theology issue, The Rahner revolution,” (25.01.1985) 42. 171 Cf. Karl RAHNER, The Church’s commission to bring salvation and the humanization of the world

‘horizontalism’ in Christianity and in the contemporary Church, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 14: Ecclesiology, questions in the Church, the Church in the world,” New York, Seabury press, 1976,

304. 172 McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XXIV. 173 Mary STEINMETZ, Thoughts on the Experience of God in the Theology of Karl Rahner: Gifts and

implications, in, “Lumen et Vita” 2 (2012) 1.

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Rahner’s main concern was that theology had to communicate and be relevant to the

people of his time, to the man of today or to the “new man.”174 That is why he held that

theology should lead to the salvation of people who live in historical time. That is why he

believed that theologians who belong to different times theologize differently. For example, it

is “expected to find at least as pronounced a difference between a theological compendium of

today and one of, say, 1750, as between the Summa Theologica of St Thomas and the writings

of Augustine.”175

In view of the present state of the world and of history, of the problems which have already come to the

fore and all the new problems which are still appearing-in view of the mentality of positivistic, scientific

and industrial man, a changing mentality and one which is affecting the whole world with enormous

rapidity-it is surely conceivable and desirable that the truth might be expressed in such a way that as a

result of a thinking through anew of the old eternally valid truth of the Christian revelation, the truth

would come to be formulated in the light of the mentality of the man of today, in a manner which from

the very outset would take both modern man’s initial understanding and his difficulties in understanding

into consideration as something obvious, so that the eternal truth of Christ is put before man in such a way as to present no more difficulties and obstacles than is absolutely unavoidable when the lofty truth

of God seeks entry into narrow-minded, prejudiced and sinful man.176

Rahner’s quest for a theology that appeals to modern man did not change the Church’s

teaching because he believed that the depositum fidei is immutable. Nevertheless, the

theologian’s writings can mutate according to times in order to help man who lives in a

historical situation to attain salvation. For example, in his work The prospects for dogmatic

theology, which we will often refer to in what follows, Rahner states:

Hypostasis, the supernatural, opus operatum, transubstantiation, contrition, attrition, habitus, gratia

sanctificans, gratia gratis data and many others are concepts of this kind, which have emerged as the

condensed results of theological work which has often gone on for centuries, and so could and still can

each form a point of departure and a conceptual tool for further theological reflexion. They are as it were

symbols and trophies of theological achievements of past centuries.177

In this way, the continuous parallel process of the theologians has led to the

clarification of different theological issues thereby making them more comprehensible to

174 Karl RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘New man,’ in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 5,

Later writings,” London, Darton, Longmann & Todd, 1966, 141. 175 Karl RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume

1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1982, 2. 176Karl RAHNER, On the theology of the council, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 5,

Later writings,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966, 260. 177 RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 4-5.

47

people who live in historical time. This is possible because theology helps in the development

of appropriate terminus technicus which helps people to talk about God in their historical

existence. It is in this regard that Rahner believed that there are so many theological issues

that have not yet been addressed by theologians.178

For instance, “until as late as the eighteenth century there was at least some speculation

about Heaven and its local character. Today we say that Heaven is a place and that no one

knows where it is. Simple, but a little too convenient. Surely there is more to be said than

that.”179 As such, “anyone who pursues the study of theology, moved by the spirit of his time

and an eager religious life and a desire to make a real proclamation to his own time, will

experience soon enough the impact of new questions, questions which only obtain their

clarification and solution by careful and disciplined theological investigation.”180

This search for new theology that addresses the issues of the time does not mean that we

should completely neglect the past theologians on the pretext that they may not have addressed

our issues. On the contrary, “we should enter into association with a thinker of the past, not

only to become acquainted with his views but in the last resort to learn something about

reality.”181

For Rahner, we have to continue to seek new ways of theologically explaining the truths

of God to the people of our time:

Yet all human statements, even those in which faith expresses God’s saving truths, are finite. By this we

mean that they never declare the whole of a reality. In the last resort every reality, even the most limited,

is connected with and related to every other reality. The most wretched little physical process isolated in a

carefully contrived experiment can only be described adequately if the investigator possesses the one

comprehensive and exhaustive formula for the whole cosmos. But he does not possess such a formula; he could have it if and only if he could place himself in his own physical reality at a point which lay

absolutely outside the cosmos – which is impossible. This is even more true of spiritual and divine

realities. The statements which we make about them, relying on the Word of God which itself became

‘flesh’ in human words, can never express them once and for all in an entirely adequate form. But they

are not for this reason false. They are an ‘adaequatio intellectus et rei’, in so far as they state absolutely

nothing which is false.182

178 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 5. 179 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 12. 180 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 6. 181 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 8. 182 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 43-44.

48

By explaining anew the truth of Christ to the people of our time, we will help them to

have “no more difficulties and obstacles than is absolutely unavoidable when the lofty truth of

God seeks entry into narrow-minded, prejudiced and sinful man.”183

This does not mean that the statements about God that we have now are false. They are

true statements but we should not regard them as being exhaustive and adequate otherwise we

would be “elevating human truth to God’s simple and exhaustive knowledge of himself and of

all that takes its origin from him.”184

Rahner believed that theology has to deal with abstract theology of essence but should

also deal with the fact of saving history. This means that theology should be both essential in

the essence of maintaining the depositum fidei but it should also treat of historical issues. In

other words, we need both, the theology of essence and the theology of existence.185

For example we have to maintain theology as maintained by the Magisterium of the

Church which generally “must adhere to what is commonly taught, to what has been tried and

what has already found universal acceptance.”186

A combination of the two will help us to “have our theology, which bears the undeniable

stamp of our time, while we continue to learn anew from Scripture, the Fathers, and the

Scholastics. If we fail either to preserve or to change, we should betray the truth, either by

falling into error or by failing to make the truth our own in a really existential way.”187 This

will also help us “to express the revealed word in a manner adapted to the times and in a

manner which is existentially ‘acceptable.”188

This is possible because theology is “the human word which seeks to express and

understand the Revealed; so that one can have no certain guarantee from Revelation itself that

the attempt has been successful. But there is question not only of a theology which evolves

and revolves round the fixed point of a revealed utterance which has been pronounced once

183RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 261. 184 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 44. 185 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 15. 186RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 261. 187 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 45. 188RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 261.

49

and for all.”189 As we can see here, Rahner believed that theology must address and answer

the historical yearnings of man who lives in time. In our time, therefore, theology must be

relevant to our historical times. This is the case because “God allots to every age its mode of

consciousness in faith. Any romantic desire of our own to return to the simplicity and

unreflexive density and fullness of the Apostolic consciousness in faith would only result in an

historical atavism. We must possess this fullness in a different way.”190

As such, Rahner pointed out that the Church:

ought to be reflecting on the problems posed for her by our modern pluralistic world and society, such as

the problems arising out of the debate with other religions (or rather, out of the loving attempt to

understand them), problems arising in connection with the formation of a type of Christian who can

survive and endure the unavoidable and permanent secularization of the world of today, or in connection

with the activation of a public influence suited to the society of today and tomorrow.191

For instance, the Church has to present issues of morality not as issues that are foreign to

life of man but as imperatives that are right objectively. In addition, the Church must equally

emphasize the role of the lay people and refrain from too much domination of the clergy on

the Church. This however does not mean that we have to compromise on the Church’s

teaching rather, we need, “good, carefully thought out, thoroughly debated doctrines.”192

189 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 46. 190 Cf. RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 67. 191 RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘New man,’ 152. 192RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 262.

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PART B

PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES AND FOUNDATIONS OF

RAHNER’S ‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’

In this second part consisting of Chapters 3 and 4, we will present the philosophical

influences on Rahner’s thought and the key principles that lay the foundation for his

‘Communication Theology’.

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3. PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES ON RAHNER’S THEOLOGY

Rahner was eager to save theology from closed and defensive apologetics, as it was

perceived and studied in Catholic seminaries before the Second Vatican Council. He sought

“the universality of theology, not by extending its sphere of influence or its status as a

legitimate science, but rather by pushing on through itself to reach finally an adequate grasp of

the human.”193 More pertinently, he wanted theology to be accessible to the challenging

questions posed by modern men and women in a technologically advanced society. He turned

to philosophy in order to find the deepest answers, among others.194 Rahner’s philosophical

foundations can be linked to inspiration from four philosophers: Thomas Aquinas (1225 –

1274), Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), Joseph Maréchal (1878-1944), and Martin Heidegger

(1889 – 1976).

The Neo-Scholastic conception of theology was aimed at restoring the medieval

philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, and the Dominican school of thought. Neo-Scholasticism

was a speculative thought system which synthesized and brought together the two disciplines

of theology and philosophy, in order to build a theological system that was reflective of both

disciplines. Rahner adopted this practice and used philosophy as the foundation for his

theological thought.

In the period between 1890 and 1940, Neo-Scholastic Thomism was promoted by the

Church as the foundation for the composition and teaching of the Catholic Catechism

formulated and taught in the question-and-answer Catechism. The main aim of the Neo-

193 Vincent HOLZER, Philosophy with (in) theology: Rahner’s philosophy of religion, in “The Heythrop Journal”

55 (2014), 584. 194 “Although Rahner may, on an ad hoc basis, draw directly on modern thinkers other than Heidegger and

Maréchal-Kant, Goethe […] or Hegel […,] for instance – his debt to such thinkers is derived less from them as

individuals and more from themes that cut across their thought.” Stephen M. FIELDS, SJ, Being as Symbol: on

the origins and development of Karl Rahner’s metaphysics, Washington D.C., Georgetown University Press,

2000, 5.

52

Scholastic theologians was to defend the Catholic faith from attacks, which explains why it

was largely apologetic and why it eventually became rigid, self-defensive and closed in on

itself.195

It is within this period, that Rahner began to develop his own philosophical and

theological position. He first strove to understand the original meanings of the traditional

theological formulations of the Church. He did not exclusively depend on Neo-Scholasticism

for this but broadened his perspective. He took a bold stand of being faithful to tradition and

to be open to the realities of his time. This was a radical move from the prevailing apologetic

theology that was concerned with defending doctrine. For Rahner, theology was supposed to

be a service to his contemporaries, many of whom were questioning the relevance of the

Christian faith. This is why he dealt with theological issues of his time through explanations

and responses to new questions of theological, spiritual, and devotional issues of the Christian

faith.196

Rahner’s theology, however, was not a question of starting from zero. He was

influenced by mainly four strands of thought. Francis P. Fiorenza, author of the Introduction

to Spirit in the World states that “Rahner’s formative influences […] led him to confront the

philosophy of Thomas Aquinas with the questions and problems of Kant’s philosophy as

interpreted by Maréchal and Heidegger.”197 In what follows, we will present a summary of the

contribution of these key figures to Rahner’s of thinking.

3.1. The Thomistic interpretation of human cognitional bivalence in the ‘conversion to

the phantasm’.

Though Rahner had differences with Neo-Scholastic Thomism, he was not opposed to

the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. His doctoral thesis, Spirit in the world, was basically an

195 Cf. GALVIN, The Rahner revolution I, 40. 196 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 213. 197197 Francis P. FIORENZA, “Introduction” to RAHNER, Spirit in the World, xxii.

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historical and systematic study of Summa Theologiae I, q. 84, a.7, the text in which Thomas

Aquinas inquires “whether the intellect can actually understand through the intelligible species

of which it is possessed, without turning to the phantasms”198 Thomas himself answers: “In

the present state of life in which the soul is united to a passible body, it is impossible for our

intellect to understand anything actually, except by turning to the phantasms.”199

He goes on to explain how the intellect to understand (not merely fresh knowledge but

also applied knowledge) requires the act of imagination to actualize and concretize the

knowledge obtained. He cites the importance of sense-based examples in understanding things

that are abstract and difficult to understand and finally he cites the importance of the senses,

phantasms and the imagination to individuate things without which we would remain at the

realm of abstraction and generalities.200

In the introduction to his book Spirit in the World, Rahner expresses his indebtedness

to Aquinas when he explains the principle of the conversion to the phantasm:

The present work is entitled Spirit in the World. By spirit I mean a power which reaches out beyond the

world and knows the metaphysical. World is the name of the reality which is accessible to the immediate experience of man. How, according to Thomas, human knowing can be spirit in the world is the question

which is the concern of this work. The proposition that human knowing is first of all in the world of

experience and that everything metaphysical is known only in and at the world is expressed by Thomas

in his doctrine of the conversion and of the intellect’s being constantly turned to the phenomenon, the

doctrine of the “conversion of the intellect to the phantasm.” For this reason the work could have been

entitled, Conversion to the Phantasm.201

Through Thomas’ explanation of the process of knowing, Rahner reveals that a

cognitional bivalence is revealed that is based firmly in the human ontological condition. The

human being is a conflict between a striving of the spirit in its embodiment and the realization

of embodiment in its striving for the spirit. Using Rahnerian terminology Sheenan explains

198 Thomas AQUINAS, Summa Theologiae I, q. 84, a.7 in http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1084.htm#article7

(24-04-2017). 199 AQUINAS, Summa Theologiae I, q. 84. 200Cf. AQUINAS, Summa Theologiae I, q. 84. 201 RAHNER, Spirit in the World, liii.

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1084.htm#article7

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this as “a tension of presence-to-the-other in receptive sensibility and presence-by-absence in

spontaneous intellection.”202

Indeed, the Thomistic interpretation of human cognitional bivalence in the ‘conversion

to the phantasm’ attracted Rahner’s interest and became one of the pivotal principles of his

entire opus. He removed the dualism between the process of intellection and sensation by

showing how they both take place in the same knower precisely because the human being is a

unity of spirit in matter.203

For him, the intellect is not divorced from sensibility but rather the intellect produces

sensibility in and through which the human being becomes himself. This is important because

Rahner agreed with Scholastic thought in that we know the essence through the accidentals

and by extension, that we know the spirit through its material acts or performances.204

For Rahner, man is a bivalent unity of intellect and sensibility which moves towards

beingness. Man’s intellect is instrumental in the conversion of sensibility to phantasm. The

essence of the human being is the spirit which is in potency and is in the process of becoming

present to itself. Therefore, he referred to the human being as “possibility or possible

intellect.”205

The possible intellect refers to the kinetic nature of the human person whose intellect

has the potentiality to relate with sensibility. Through this desire, striving and movement from

potentiality to actuality, the human intellect through its relationship with sensibility realises its

goal as well as its end. The human being is a pre-ab-sential because in some sense, the human

being already is.206

But man is also in a process of becoming because through the receptivity to sensibility

he is present to other beings in the world. It is only by encountering other beings in the world,

that he is a being in becoming. Hence, man is a being or unity that already is; but he is always

202 Cf. Thomas SHEEHAN, Karl Rahner the philosophical foundations, Athens, Ohio University press, 1987,

233. 203 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 119. 204 Cf. SHEEHAN, Karl Rahner the philosophical foundations, 234-235. 205 SHEEHAN, Karl Rahner the philosophical foundations, 235. 206 Cf. SHEEHAN, Karl Rahner the philosophical foundations, 235-236.

55

striving to unify himself because of his continuous receptivity to sensibility through the

ontological modality of bodiliness. “The unity of these two moments – the spirituality of

sensibility or the sensibility of the spirit – is the ‘cogitative sense’ as conversion to the

phantasm”207which refers to the fact that the intellect understands reality by converting it into

something that is understandable.

This epistemological principle has important implications for communication. Aquinas

himself takes the impossibility of understanding anything without the conversion to the

phantasm as a natural fact of our embodied state when he says:

Anyone can experience this of himself, that when he tries to understand something, he forms certain

phantasms to serve him by way of examples, in which as it were he examines what he is desirous of

understanding. For this reason it is that when we wish to help someone to understand something, we lay

examples [or symbols or metaphors] before him, from which he forms phantasms for the purpose of

understanding. 208

Thus, Rahner’s philosophical point of departure as the foundation on which to build his

theology emphasizes the use of the symbol/metaphor as a necessary and inescapable factor of

the processes of human knowing, understanding and communicating. The ‘conversion to the

phantasm’, the ‘incarnate-word’, the ‘embodied spirit’ the symbol or the metaphor becomes

the measure of effective communication. This unity leads Rahner to his theology of Real-

Symbol which is generally209 recognized as the core of Rahner’s contribution. It will underpin

our efforts to elaborate a Rahnerian ‘Communication Theology’.

207 SHEEHAN, Karl Rahner the philosophical foundations, 236. 208Cf. AQUINAS, Summa Theologiae I, q. 84, a.7. 209 The following are some of the publications that attest to the pivotal role of the symbol in Rahner’s theology:

John WONG, Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner, Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano 1984; Stephen

M. FIELDS, Being as Symbol, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2007; Hugo RAHNER,

“Eucharisticon Fraternitatis”, Gott in Welt: Festgabe für Karl Rahner, ed. Johannes B. Metz and Herbert

Vorgrimler (Freiburg-im-Breisgau:Herder, 1964), 2:897; Maria Elisabeth MOTZKO, “Karl Rahner's Theology:

A Theology Of The Symbol.” (1976). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI7625741,

https://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7625741; C. Annice CALLAHAN, “Karl Rahner’s Theology of

Symbol: Basis for his theology of the Church and the Sacraments” in Irish Theological Quarterly 49 (1982): 195-

205.

https://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7625741

56

3.2. Marecalian-Kantian ‘apprehension of finite being’ on the basis of a ‘pre-

apprehension of Absolute Being.’

If Thomism provided Rahner with a way to understand how human sensibility and

human intelligibility are intrinsically linked to each other in the process of knowing,

Transcendental Thomism helped Rahner to explain the dynamism beyond sensibility inherent

in the same process.

Transcendental Thomism was developed by the Belgian Jesuit philosopher, Joseph

Maréchal (1878-1944), a professor at the Jesuit Faculty of Philosophy of Louvain for many

years.210 In his introduction to Spirit in the World, Rahner acknowledges his indebtedness to

Maréchal211 who elaborated a Thomistic answer to the question raised by Kant: how can one

have absolutely certain knowledge of reality?

Kant’s answer to this epistemological quest was not to be found in contingent objective

reality, that is, a search that begins a posteriori with the things in the world. The answer lay in

the transcendental method which he described as follows: “I call every knowledge

transcendental, which occupies itself not so much with objects, but rather with our way of

knowing objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori.”212

Our a priori knowledge is not based on the nature of things we know, but on the

conditions by which we are able to know them. For instance, a key will open a lock only if the

keyhole of the lock is predisposed to complement its shape and size. In other words, “the

knowability of the object […] must be examined, but also the distinctive nature of the subject

and his specific openness with regard to just that object.”213

Supplying further examples, Rahner explains:

Rather the structure of the subject itself is an a priori, that is, it forms an antecedent law governing what

and how something can become manifest to the knowing subject. The ears, for example, constitute an a

210 Cf. FIORENZA, Karl Rahner and the Kantian problematic, XIX. 211 Rahner is said to have taken copious notes of Maréchal works. Cf. FIORENZA, Karl Rahner and the Kantian

problematic, XXII. 212 Kant quoted in Emerich Coreth, Metaphysics, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Herder

and Herder, 1968), 35 213RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 186.

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priori law, a screen, as it were, which determines that only sounds can register in the ears. The same is

true of the eyes and all the other organs of sense knowledge. They select according to their own law

from the fullness of the possibilities of the world impinging upon them, and according to their own law

they give these realities the possibility of approaching and presenting themselves, or they exclude

them.214

However, we should also quickly add that “an a priori openness to something is far

from making this ‘something’ a debitum in a conceptually necessary way.”215 The ‘not only’

mentioned in an earlier quote is meant to stress the importance given to the a posteriori

process of knowing emphasized by scholastic Thomism.

The a priori conditions of knowing that Rahner in the footsteps of Aquinas and

Maréchal considered part of the embodied person can be understood by considering the highly

sophisticated means of communication today. What are these means, if not the extensions of

human in-built (a priori) possibilities that aim to maximize results obtained from previously

established (a posteriori) knowledge, thanks to the a priori dynamism for knowing more? The

media are, as Marshall McLuhan argued in his 1964 book Understanding Media, extensions of

ourselves and therefore technical, mechanical and digitalized extensions that heighten our

senses to perceive, and augment our innate capacities to discover newer possibilities hitherto

undreamed of. For example, human hearing took a qualitative leap with the discovery of the

telephone and the radio thanks to the discovery of instruments that had built a priori sensors to

pick up the electromagnetic waves discovered in 1887 by Heinrich Hertz. The same can be

said of the WI-FI ambient invented by Vic Hayes in 1997 – an a priori condition for receiving

and sharing smartphone data without wires. The search engines of Google or the directions on

a GPS application are enormously complicated networks that restructure information in order

to enable us have any data at our finger tips. The a priori and the a posteriori ways of knowing

are now intimately related to making real and virtual realities ontologically and physically

present to our consciousness, thanks to instruments that are capacitated to be dynamic in the

fulfilment of their role as receivers and transmitters. Their a priori capacities are built to be

much larger in their reach and more dynamic in their reception of categorical data that a single

214 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 19. 215RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 187.

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human being would need to use on a daily basis. The a priori potential far exceeds the

individual need, which is also why the individuals have the possibility to increase and yet be

satiated.

Maréchal makes Kant’s transcendental reflection on the a-priority of human knowing,

his principal thesis. He defends his position by applying it consistently. To the a priori forms

of knowledge of Kant, such as space and time, he includes the intellectual dynamism of the

human mind. Thus, these fundamental forms work to strengthen the Thomistic insistence on

metaphysical realism,216 not against it. Maréchal does not agree that these a priori forms lead

to critical idealism cut off from reality, as Kant had mistakenly supposed. “Kant himself was

unable to extricate himself from critical idealism because he failed to observe that the

dynamism of the human mind is one of the a priori conditions of possibility for the

speculative intellect’s objective knowledge.”217

Thus just as we identify things on the basis of our transcendental intuitions of a

determinate space and time, so also we are innately urged to know, discover and question

things because of an intellectual thirst that transcends the particular known-object within our

grasp. Thanks to this a pre-apprehension, the human being never stops searching for newer

answers to old questions, and newer questions from old answers. The more knowledge is

grasped, the greater the urge to discover the yet unknown. The horizons of human knowing are

always receding. The closer the seeker comes to the goal, the further he/she is pushed to

pursue a future horizon. Rahner calls this ‘pre-apprehension’ of being the vorgriff – the way

we know finite beings ‘in anticipation of’ knowing much more than we already do, and so on,

up to infinity. The acceleration in the rapidity of discoveries and inventions in the fields of

science and, for our purpose, in the development of communication technology testify to this

dynamic power and creativity that has helped the human species progress from the age of cave

216“Metaphysical realism is the thesis that the objects, properties and relations the world contains exist

independently of our thoughts about them or our perceptions of them.” Drew KHLENTZOS, “Challenges to

Metaphysical Realism”, in Edward N. ZALTA (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, (Winter 2016

Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/realism-sem-challenge/ (20-03-2018) 217 McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XIII.

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/realism-sem-challenge/

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paintings around 3500 BC to our digital age. Significantly, the dynamism never seem to end as

more questions keep propelling us into new and even dangerous worlds.

As for the meaning of the Infinity we are heading towards, the Mystery remains open:

impossible to know in its fullness yet waiting to be more fully understood. Kant’s lacuna was

precisely his inability to allow this dynamism to extend beyond the grasp of finite beings.

Kant developed the implications of his analysis of the sources of human knowledge to conclude that

human knowledge is limited to the objects of possible experience. The spontaneity and dynamism of

human reason towards an absolute unity which transcends sense experience is merely modal and logical. Since human reason cannot perceive the absolute as an object of experience, its dynamism towards an

absolute cannot go beyond the modal and logical so that it is unable to form even an adequate idea of the

absolute necessary being. Kant denies, therefore, the possibility of rational theology and special

metaphysics.218

Rahner’s use of Maréchal’s interpretation of Kant sets the ground for a theological

anthropology that engages him in the search for the ultimate meanings of things while being

“deeply concerned with getting underneath modern unbelief”219and we will elaborate this in

our next chapter.

3.3. The Heideggerian concept of Dasein and the ‘question’ with respect to the ‘horizon

of being’

Heidegger was preoccupied about the question of being. He breaks down this question

into a number of concrete questions, such as those about language, logic, understanding, time,

and technology, the work of art, human existence, death, history, etc.220 For him, man is by

nature a questioner. The questions he asks are not ‘ontic’ about factual beings but

‘ontological’ about the theory and interpretation of factual beings. Man is a Dasein, that is, a

being-in-the-world. The only being capable of self-awareness in the act of raising “the

question of Being in a world of sensible objects.”221 It is the metaphysical question which is

218 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 387. 219 ROSENBERG, Rahner, Balthasar and high school theology, (01.11.2015). 220 SADLER, Heidegger and Aristotle, 2. 221 McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XVI.

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“the question turned consciously upon itself, the transcendental question which does not

merely place something asked about in question, but the one questioning and his question

itself, and thereby absolutely everything.”222

For Heidegger, Being-in-the-situation is essentially being out, which is ek-sistence into

history.223 Rahner employed this understanding of Being and Heidegger’s “phenomenological

ontology, which is evident in this concern with man’s conscious pre-grasp of his spirit’s

Horizon, [that] also appears in the importance which Rahner places on the role of freedom in

man’s authentic grasp of himself, his world, and the world’s Horizon.”224

Heidegger’s notion of ‘hearing’ is also central to Rahner’s thought albeit with

differences in their application. Heidegger’s notion of man as a ‘hearer’ as ‘attending’ is

developed in his attempt to unravel the meaning of Sein (Being). Rahner instead, argues

metaphysically to the notion of man as a “hearer of the word” through the pre-comprehension

(Vogriff) of being.225

Indeed, Rahner borrowed the word ‘sensibilization’ from Heidegger, especially where

the latter sorted out “the essential elements of pure knowledge: pure intuition and pure

thought. Furthermore, Heidegger showed that the unity of ontological knowledge (the

ontological synthesis of pure thought and pure intuition) happens in the transcendental

imagination through the categories.”226

3.4. Rahner’s synthesis and originality

Rahner’s ability to use the four sources of influence reveals “the audacity to

innovatively construct an entirely new kind of relation between metaphysics and theology.

222 RAHNER, Spirit in the World, London, 58. 223 Cf. McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XIII-XIV. 224 McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XIII-XIV. 225Robert MASSON, Rahner and Heidegger: Being, Hearing, and God, in “Thomist, a Speculative Quarterly

Review,” 37 (1973) 3 456. 226 Cf. SHEEHAN, Karl Rahner the philosophical foundations, 235-236.

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Rahner was able to hear radically new questions, and in answering these he was never

subservient to a single lexicon [of any one philosopher].”227

In what follows, we will attempt to demonstrate how Rahner harmonizes the

philosophical insights he received in order to construct a radically different approach to

theology that combined intellectual rigour with pastoral concerns; in other words, a theology

that strove to make faith intelligible and the intelligent more faithful.

Blending the thoughts of Aquinas, Maréchal and Heidegger, Rahner conceived human

beings as radically spatio-temporal – that is, situated in-the-World and therefore in-Time but

essentially and existentially oriented towards Absolute Being as manifested in the ontological

urge to question. The act of questioning necessitates the grasping of the finite which is based

on the pre-grasp of the Infinite. Thus, the actual human options of being free, relational and

responsible within the limits of finite history, are potentially the ‘fundamental option’ for a

wider and deeper relationship with the Infinite which by the very fact that it is non-finite

cannot be grasped, and therefore remains a Mystery.228 We will look at these two inter-related

aspects of the human being in more detail as we study man’s relational tendency to Infinite

Mystery even while he relates to his own finiteness and that of all beings in the world.

3.4.1 The human transcendental experience

For Rahner, man is a kinetic self-subsistence whose intellect moves towards the

beingness of beings. Man has the power to make things intelligible. He is open to infinity.

To realize and utilize this openness, something must be really conceived or grasped.

Regarding the totality of man’s spiritual knowledge, Rahner believed that man can know,

through subjective self-possession. This a priori structure of subjective self-possession in

man is fundamentally and by nature an openness to absolutely everything that is being as such.

This openness to everything can be proved by the fact that the very denial of the unlimited

227 HOLZER, Philosophy with (in) theology: Rahner’s philosophy of religion, 595. 228 Cf. McCOOL (Ed.), A Rahner reader, XIX-XX.

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openness of the spirit to everything implicitly acknowledges this openness. Such is the case

because the unlimited openness of the spirit includes the fact that man can even doubt or deny

it because of the “individual substantiality of the human subject.”229

The transcendental experience is man’s a priori capacity to pre-apprehend and known

all finite beings in a universal way. In itself, the transcendental experience cannot be known to

man except through the realisation of other beings as finite, distinct from him, that they are not

him, that they are “standing opposite”230

Opening up the realm of being as such, and, on the other hand, since there is no metaphysical intuition,

at the same time it does not present the metaphysical object itself, and therefore must be a formal

principle of the mode of thought which is related to sense intuition, then both characteristics of this

principle can be understood as compatible only in such a way that a pre-apprehension disclosure of

being as such takes place only in a conversion to the objectivity of the sense intuition (whereby being as

such is not intuited objectively, but is had only in a pre-apprehension), and this sensible objectivity can

be had only through the disclosure of being as such in a human way, that is, as universal and standing

opposite.231

While the conversion to the phantasm enables us to individuate the particular qualities

of the known. The dynamic pre-apprehension extends beyond the knowledge of finite beings

in its thrust towards infinity. This enables what is known to be comprehended as finite against

the background of a horizon of several other possible objects. The same applies for self-

knowledge. When a person experiences his own limitation, he does this by the power of the

pre-apprehensive grasp towards infinity (Vorgriff) that makes him recognize his own limited

identity, as well as his distinctness from finite others.232 Thus both the a priori grasp of

infinity and the a posteriori grasp of finite individuality blend in the one act of human

knowing.

For every genuine, metaphysical a priori does not simply have the a posteriori “alongside of” or “after”

itself, but holds it in itself, not of course as though once again the a posteriori, the “world” in its positive

content were able to be resolved adequately into pure, transcendental apriority, but in such a way that the

a priori is of itself referred to the a posteriori, that in order to be really itself, it cannot keep itself in its

229 Karl RAHNER, Natural science and reasonable faith, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 21: Science and Christian faith,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1988, 30. 230 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 396. 231 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 396. 232 Cf. Karl RAHNER, The Theology of the religious meaning of images, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 23: Final writings,” New York, Crossroad publication company, 1992, 158.

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pure transcendentality, but must release itself into the categorical. Hence the openness of the a priori for

the a posteriori, of the transcendental for the categorical, is not something secondary, perhaps merely a

subsequent piecing together of two completely separable contents of reality and of knowledge, but is the

fundamental definition of the contents of the one metaphysics of man.233

The pre-apprehension has no intrinsic limit precisely because transcendence takes

place when a subject is co-present in every act of knowing and when the knowing subject is

unlimitedly open to all reality that is possible, that is open to infinity. The transcendental

experience is the “subjective, unthematic, necessary, and unfailing consciousness of the

knowing subject that is co-present in every spiritual act of knowledge, and the subject’s

openness to the unlimited, unthematic expanse of all possible reality.”234

In the transcendental experience, one experiences the structure of the subject and in so

doing discovers the structure of all conceivable objects of knowledge, which are in identity.

Transcendental experience does not only involve pure knowledge but it also includes the

importance of the will and freedom of the subject. The transcendental experience can easily

be overlooked because it cannot be objectively represented in its own self. This is why

theology is needed to make explicit the natural knowledge of a possible Supernatural Being in

whom the human dynamism open to infinity is satiated. In addition, transcendental experience

is always ontologically there, which means that it is not constituted by the fact that one talks

about it.235 Thus the ontological a priori grasping to know that is open to infinity makes

communication (‘talking about what is known and can be known’) possible.

3.4.2. The human categorical experience:

Influenced by Heideggerian ideas of sensibilization, Rahner believed that “what we are

calling transcendental knowledge or experience of God is a posteriori knowledge insofar as

233 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 405. 234 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 20. 235 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 404-405.

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man’s transcendental experience of his free subjectivity takes place only in his encounter with

the world and especially with other people.”236

The categorical experience is man’s finite and embodied condition in the world, where

his sensibility is the basis and foundation for his metaphysical inquiry and questioning of

being. Sensibility is temporal and spatial and through it, man can possess the world. However,

at this level, man’s imagination is not able to transcend the confines of space and time.

Rahner explains that “sensibility [is] the possession of another because it is the act of matter,

because it is the ontological actuality whose essence is consciousness […] Sensibility is the

givenness of being (which is being-present-to-self) over the other, to matter.”237 This is what

happens in a posteriori knowledge when man’s being-present-to-himself is given over to

matter, to an extent that he as the knower cannot separate himself from what is known. But

man, through the agent-intellect has the capacity to “place the other, which is given in

sensibility, away from itself and in question, to judge it, to objectify it and thereby to make the

knower a subject for the first time, that is, one who is present to himself and not to the other

one who knowingly exists in himself […].”238

Influenced by Aquinas, Rahner states that the process of thought that makes the world

an object (known) distinguished from the subject (the knower) needs to be analysed in two

phases. First, the knower, to distinguish himself from the known, has to ‘stand back’ from the

known to understand its abstract form. This process of abstraction is necessary yet incomplete

since the knowing subject cannot not know an abstract form in itself except by referring back

to the known in its sensible nature. This second phase is the conversion to the phantasm.

These two “phases” are of course not to be thought of as coming one after the other; they mutually

condition each other and in their original unity form the one human knowledge. In the Thomistic metaphysics of knowledge this liberation of the subject from sensibility’s abandonment to the other of

the world is treated under the heading “abstraction”; turning to the world, which has thus become

objective, is called the conversion to the phantasm. 239

236 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 51-52. 237 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 116. 238 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 118. 239 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 119.

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Human knowing is possible because of the transcendental vorgriff that abstracts

universal aspects from the categorical or sensible known. Yet the knowing remains incomplete

and therefore incomprehensible without an immediate reference to the individual sensible

characteristics of the known. For example, I know that the tree before me is an apple tree by

the fact that it participates in the universal character of ‘treeness’ and because of its sensible

particularities that ascertain that it is an apple tree rather than a banana tree.

Basing himself on the views of Aquinas and Heidegger, Rahner explains that during

the phase of abstraction, there is pre-apprehension in which man comes to know the synthesis

of something or the objective in-itself of the object. This objective in-itself of the known, is

pre-apprehended in its formal universality (essence, essential characteristic or the “whatness”

of an object) and in its synthesis which refers to the esse (being). “Hence what-is-in-itself as

such is apprehended in the pre-apprehension.”240

The knowledge of a quiddity of something which is received is always possible only by the knowing

subject setting itself over against the something which manifests itself and is received; and vice versa:

the being-present-to-itself of the receiving subject, whose proper object is the other, is only possible by

knowing a quiddity of a something which is set opposite. Human knowledge is a return to oneself in

knowing a universal quiddity of another. Only in this knowledge with all these moments is an object in

the world given to man.241

In addition, for Rahner, the knowledge that man gets from the process of sensibility,

abstraction and then from the pre-apprehension of being-in-itself is true knowledge. This is

the case because a proposition is true in “so far as it indicates the truth of the intellect, which

consists in the conformity of the intellect with a thing.”242

Through the process of pre-apprehension, “the form of the sensible object which is had in the concretion

of sensibility is known as limited by the concretion, is thereby abstracted, and so opens up for the first

time the possibility of relating the form thus abstracted to the object given in its own self in sensibility in

such a way that it appears as objective and thus the knowing subject as such differentiates itself from the object in its universal knowledge and thereby accomplishes the complete return.243

Furthermore, while man needs the capacity of a-priority, there is also need for him to

have a-posteriori knowledge. This is the case because while the agent intellect has the

240 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 156. 241 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 397. 242 AQUINAS, Summa Theologica I question 16, article 8, 95. 243 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 397.

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capacity to make all possible objects actually knowable a priori, “it does not already have of

itself the totality of possible determinations with itself, for otherwise it would have to be able

to present this to the possible intellect by itself alone, without the help of sensibility and it’s a

posteriori material.”244

Indeed, if man is to know the totality of being “according to their most universal

metaphysical structure, […] still needs the determinations of sensibility in order to present an

object to the possible intellect at all, and in these metaphysical structures of the object.”245 We

can therefore say, “human knowing (in its present state) is only possible from sensibility.”246

This statement justifies the existence the symbol, the key to imagining, knowing and

communicating in the human categorical experience. Man by nature is homo symbolicus.

In conclusion, we can say that Rahner’s philosophical foundation lays the ground for

an anthropology that celebrates the intrinsic unity of the two experiences: the transcendental

experiences are essentially linked to the categorical experience and vice versa. Human beings

are ontologically spirit-in-matter, just as they are matter-open-to-spirit. Platonic dualism and

Cartesian rationalism are all but rejected in favour of a Kantian-Thomistic unity grounded in

Heideggerian existentialism. The synthesis of four streams of thought makes Rahner’s starting

point for a (communication) theology both wide and deep. Horizontally large in as much as it

embraces the whole of humanity in its sweep. Vertically profound in as much as it celebrates

the transcendental nature of all human beings, whether they are aware of it, ignore it, deny it

or refuse it.

244 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 224. 245 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 224-225. 246 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 395.

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4. PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF RAHNER’S ‘COMMUNICATION

THEOLOGY’

In this Chapter, we will unravel some of the implications of Rahner’s fundamental

insight of the harmony between the categorical and transcendental experiences of the human

condition. More specifically, we will consider Rahner’s ontology of the symbol and Human

transcendental intercommunication.

4.1. The ontology of the symbol

Rahner explains the ontology of the symbol in his article entitled “The Theology of the

Symbol” in Volume IV of his Theological Investigations. It can be considered the heart and

foundation of what we are calling his ‘Communication Theology’. In it he proposes that

matter be understood as the symbol of spirit.247 He puts forth five statements to explain its

meaning. Below, we present them in his own words before we proceed to elaborate some of

them.

[1] The basic principle of an ontology of symbolism, is as follows: all beings are by their nature

symbolic, because they necessarily ‘express’ themselves in order to attain their own nature. […]

2. The symbol strictly speaking (symbolic reality) is the self-realization of a being in the other,

which is constitutive of its essence.

3. The principle that the concept of symbol – in the sense defined in nos. 1 and 2 – is an

essential key concept in all theological treatises, without which it is impossible to have a correct

understanding of the subject matter of the various treatises in themselves and in relation to other

treatises. […]

4. The principle that God’s salvific action on man, from its first foundations to its completion, always takes place in such a way that God himself is the reality of salvation. […]

5. The principle that the body is the symbol of the soul, in as much as it is formed as the self-

realization of the soul, though it is not adequately this, and the soul renders itself present and makes its

appearance in the body which is distinct form it.248

247 Patrick BURKE, Reinterpreting Rahner: A Critical Study of His Major Themes, New York, Fordham

University Press, 2002, 91 248 Karl RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume four,

More recent writings,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974, 224-247

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Statements one, two, three and five will be briefly explained below. The third

statement about the application of the concept of the symbol to the treatises will be effected, to

a certain extent, in the chapters to follow. The fourth, however, will be elaborated in Chapter

5.4.

Rahner emphasized that the first basic principle for an ontology of symbolism is that

“all beings are by their nature symbolic, because they necessarily ‘express’ themselves in

order to attain their own nature.”249

At the outset, he clarifies the difference between real symbols and symbolic

representations (signs, signals, and codes). The latter are merely arbitrary symbols which are

agreed upon by convention. They are mere indicators that perform a ‘function of

expressiveness’ in their role as pointing to another reality outside themselves. The ring is one

such symbol. It points to the act of being in love or to a pact of being married to another for

life. Yet, it could be substitute by convention with a bracelet or a necklace. The ‘symbolic

reality’ or ‘real symbol’ instead, has an ‘over plus of meaning’ where the expressiveness of the

being that is a real symbol points to its own identity. An original work of art is the self-

expression of the artist that establishes a clear identity in the eyes of other. Rahner admits,

however, that in real life, the margins of distinction between the two types are not always

clear.

His ontology of the symbol concentrates on the real symbol, not signs or arbitrary

indicators. What follows, then, is a search for “the highest and most primordial manner in

which one reality can represent another considering the matter primarily from the formal

ontological point of view.”250 To understand the primary concept of all beings as symbolic in

the sense of the real symbol, Rahner sets out to explain with this premise: “All beings (each of

them, in fact) are multiple, and are or can be essentially the expression of another in this unity

of the multiple and one in this plurality by reason of its plural unity.”251

249RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 224. 250 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 225. 251 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 225-226.

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That all finite beings are multiple is self-evident. By their nature they are a presence to

self and a presence to another.252 They express themselves in multiple ways and in doing so

become completely themselves. The expression is not a physical but a metaphysical

differentiation that allows one reality to render itself present. Thus the plurality fulfils and

enriches the original unity of being in general. The more a being expresses itself in its

originality the more it becomes what it is. We may take the case of a woman as an example.

She is a complex being who is one and plural at the same time. She is plural by the fact that

she is a daughter, a fiancée, a wife, a mother, a home-maker, a teacher, a nurse, etc. The

plurality of her relationships are not one role alongside the other, but each originate from her

one intrinsic essence and existence. Rahner calls the condition that constitutes all finite beings

a “stigma of the finite”.

Each finite being as such bears the stigma of the finite by the very fact that it is not absolutely ‘simple’.

Within the permanent inclusive unity of its reality (as essence and existence) it is not simply and

homogeneously the same in a deathlike collapse into identity. It has of itself a real multiplicity. […]253

However, Rahner says all beings, not merely finite beings alone are multiple. He posits

this multiplicity even in Absolute Mystery, where it is not a stigma but the fulfilment of

complete Being - a point we will elaborate later.254 For now, we know that

Every being as such possesses a plurality as intrinsic element of its significant unity; this plurality constitutes itself, by virtue of its origin from an original unity, as the way to fulfil the unity (or on

account of the unity already perfect) in such a way that that which is originated and different is in

agreement with its origin and hence has (at least in a ‘specificative’. if not always in a ‘reduplicative’

sense) the character of expression or ‘symbol’ with regard to its origin.255

A being is “‘symbolic’ in itself because the harmonious expression, which it retains

while constituting it as the ‘other’, is the way in which it communicates itself to itself in

knowledge and love. A being comes to itself by means of ‘expression’, in so far as it comes to

itself at all. The expression, that is, the symbol […]. Is the way of knowledge of self,

252 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 226. 253 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 226. 254 See Chapter 6. 255 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 229.

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possession of self, in general.”256 Thus Rahner deduces that, in the light of what has been said

above, the word ‘expression’ is interchangeable with the word ‘symbol’.

The second principle, Rahner states as follows: “The symbol strictly speaking

(symbolic reality) is the self-realization of a being in the other, which is constitutive of its

essence.”257 Here Rahner places the emphasis on the gradual becoming of every being through

an expression or symbolization that is proportionate to its nature. He calls this the “congruous

expression.”258

Furthermore, this analogical expressivity of being is how it appears to the knower.

“The knowability and the actual knowledge of a being (as object of knowledge) depend on the

degree of actuality in the thing to be known itself.”259 A being can be known “in so far as it is

itself ontically (in itself) symbolic because it is ontologically (for itself) symbolic” and in this

sense “symbolic for another”260.

As stated earlier, the third and fourth principles will be explored in the chapters to

follow. Rahner’s fifth statement is: “The principle that the body is the symbol of the soul, in

as much as it is formed as the self-realization of the soul, though it is not adequately this, and

the soul renders itself present and makes its ‘appearance’ in the body which is distinct from

it.”261

Rahner rejects the dual notion of man that considers the human being as composed of

the soul and body. He adheres to the Thomistic metaphysical tenet that man is composed of

the substantial form or soul and the materia prima. The materia prima according to Aquinas

is not a human body. Rather, it is in potency to become a human body. It is not yet in act but

it has a passive possibility to become a body when it is actualised and in-formed by the soul.

Therefore, “what we call body is nothing else than the actuality of the soul itself in the ‘other’

256 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 230. 257 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 234. 258 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 231. 259 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 230. 260 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 231. 261 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 247.

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of materia prima, the ‘otherness’ produced by the soul itself, and hence its expression and

symbol in the sense which we have given to the term symbolic reality.”262

Rahner holds the view “that the body can and may be considered as the symbol, that is,

as the symbolic reality of man, […] and that the soul is the substantial form of the body.”263

The Thomistic concept underlying the above premise is the one way in which we can

elaborate the unity of man and the humanness of man against empirical consideration and

misconception which considers the material reality of the body as having greater independence

from the soul. The idea is that if we consider the body to be an actual being before it is in-

formed by the soul, then it would be impossible to think of the body as an expression of the

soul because the body would already have its own essence. Consequently, the body and the

soul would be seen as two separate entities that have been brought together; hence, the body as

a whole would not be a symbol of the soul.264

For Rahner, there are two merits of understanding the soul as the substantial form of

the body. First, it succeeds in defending the unity of the soul and the body in one human

person and secondly it defends the real humanness of the body in the sense that the body needs

to be in-formed by the soul. These two points are especially important and help us to realise

that the body is dependent on the soul. The forma corporis is polyvalent which means that the

body has many accidental possibilities, which the soul actualises.265

Human beings can express themselves mimetically or phonetically but the

characteristic thing about both, and many other human expressions, is that they all involve the

whole human person. This is the case because, when the body expresses itself, it’s not only

one portion of the body that expresses itself, but the whole person is involved. In this way, the

whole person is present in the human expressions whether the expressions are mimetic or

phonetic in nature.266

262 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 247. 263 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 246. 264 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 246. 265 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 247. 266 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 246-248.

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Rahner gives an example of Medical Science in which a sick person is treated as a

whole. The doctor does not only treat a particular organ or part of the body that is sick but the

whole person, hence the condition of the patient is treated as an organically localised sickness

rather than simply regarding it as sickness of one particular organ. Rahner, therefore, agreed

with the axiom that “the part is only understandable in the whole, and the whole is in each

part, was true above all of the human body.”267

This doctrine is not only true in the area of human expressions and in Medical Science,

but it is also consistent with scriptural and scholastic tradition.268 In addition, according to

Rahner:

The scholastic doctrine, that the soul is fully present in each part of the body, being simple, comes to

have a fuller and deeper meaning. It is not just that the simple principle of quantitatively extended

reality must inevitably be as a whole in every part of this entity. The assertion also means that this substantial ‘presence’ of the soul implies that it determines and informs each part as part of the whole.

[…] In a mysterious concentration of the symbolic function of the body, each part bears once more

within itself the symbolic force and function of the whole, by contributing its part to the whole of the

symbol.269

In this way then, what Rahner states in his second principle mentioned above, is

reiterated in his study of the body as the symbol of man. There is an ontological unity of the

whole man because there is unity between the whole and each of the parts. However, this

ontological unity of man, (that each part contributes to the body as a symbol) must be

attributed to the ontological origin of the body, that is, the soul, which is the originating

principle of the body.270

According to Rahner, the soul, “explicitates itself in what we know as ‘powers’,

faculties and acts of the soul (understood now empirically in the concrete), and which

expresses itself in what we call the body of man (understood as animated by the soul).”271

267 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 247. 268 See Revised Standard Version, 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26. St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that they were one

body in Christ and that there are many parts, which together form one body. 269 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 248. 270 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 248. 271 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 248.

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We can hereby understand how human communication is the result of the intimate

intra-communication of the soul as informing and expressing itself through matter as the basis

for the expressivity of the human person. The body is the symbol of the human person. For

Rahner, it is a moot point to think that the power of expression of the part of the body, its

openness to the soul or indeed its degree of belonging to the soul, depends on physiological or

biological necessity. For him, every part of the body is crucial to the perfect functioning of

the whole. Thus when we talk of a particular body-part like head, heart or hand, we refer to it

as a symbol of the whole person. We do not refer exclusively to the body-part in question.272

Each part of the body is a symbolic reality of the whole.

4.2. Human transcendental intercommunication

From the random statements made about the Scholastic tradition, we can see that the

only knowledge that humans have of God is a posteriori knowledge, which comes from an

interaction with the world. It is from sense experience and sensibility that abstraction and

transcendental knowing is possible273 since, “human thought remains permanently dependent

on sense intuition.”274

While Rahner agrees with the Scholastics, he contends that man is not only experiential

because his original epistemological orientation to know moves beyond finite objects of

knowledge in the thrust towards infinity. This vorgriff accompanies all human knowing. It is a

permanent existentiall of man as a conscious subject in the world of categorical experiences.

The fact that this dynamism surpasses the categorical in the continuous process of moving

towards Infinity – a movement without which humans would not question, or know anything

at all – is undeniable transcendental given of the human condition, that is, a given that does

not depend on the merit of man, but is intrinsic to his nature. The ontological Infinity that

272 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 248. 273 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 231. 274 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 387.

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humans tend towards, both, in being (ontically) and knowing (logically), can only be described

as the Being that surpasses all beings (Absolute), as well as the Unknown Knower (Mystery),

which we may henceforth call Absolute Mystery, or in theological language, God. Thus, man

tends towards God, ontologically. His nature cannot be fully understood and interpreted

through the thousand decisions of daily living without taking serious account of the ontic fact

that he is oriented to the Absolute Mystery. So also his knowing is always a tending towards

the One that his finite capacity to knowing can never grasp. Thus, the human being “made for

mystery, must be such that this mystery constitutes the relationship between God and man, and

‘hence the fulfillment of human nature is the consummation of its orientation towards the

abiding mystery.”275

The vorgriff is a permanent foundation for all human knowing and being. Having

explained the human side of the vorgriff, we now turn to explain the relationship from God’s

side as self-communication in grace. What we notice is that human language about God is

necessarily limited inasmuch as human verbalisation about God as Absolute Mystery is a mere

reflection of man’s own orientation and experience. His attempts are pointers to the original,

unthematic, and unreflexive being of God. The proofs of God’s existence are “meaningful and

necessary, but also secondary interpretations and verbalizations of that experience in which I

come silently before the infinite mystery.”276

We can add that if man’s subjectivity, his transcendental structures and his reflection

on his orientation towards God are original as well as fundamental experiences, then we can

say that the knowledge of God is always present for him but without being indoctrinated from

outside. It is from this transcendental experience and knowledge that he gets the thematic

knowledge of God that is expressed and formulated in religious and philosophical reflections.

Hence, man discovers God through experience, sensibility and through reflection on his

movement and orientation towards Absolute Mystery not necessarily through religious or

275 Karl RAHNER, The concept of mystery in Catholic Theology, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 4: More recent writings,” Translated by Kevin Smith, London, Darton Longman and Todd, 1966, 49. 276 Karl RAHNER, Courage for an ecclesial Christianity, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 20: Concern for the Church,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1981, 5.

75

philosophical reflection which only comes after man has already experienced God through

sensibility and the experience of the Vorgriff.

That is why Rahner asserted that all explicit and thematic knowledge in religion,

metaphysics, and philosophy is intelligible if it points to the orientation and openness of man

towards the Absolute Mystery and this is an unthematic experience because it is not yet

expressed in themes and clear cut concepts. However, to be conscious of himself, to be aware

of his transcendental structures and be oriented towards Absolute Mystery; man, lives in a

concrete world with definite ways of doing things in which he can participate in a passive or

active mode. In the same way, the knowledge of God, on one hand, is not based on itself as

divorced from the experience of man and on the other hand, it is not just based on the

interiority of man as if it were some personal divine self-revelation. In other words, a

posteriori knowledge of God is both experiential277 and transcendental.278 Even if knowledge

of God is experiential, its object is distant.279

However, even if this orientation towards Absolute Mystery is fundamental, basic, and

original for man, he can either accept or deny it in freedom and in so doing, he ends up

suppressing the truth about his being. In fact, one can easily overlook God in life because God

is different and unique from all the things that human beings have known in life, and even the

concept of God that human beings have does not fully grasp God. Hence God is a mystery that

is present and distant at the same time, whether he is aware of it or not. This mystery is always

present to man; God always continues to be the ground of man’s existence and subjectivity.

Man lets this Absolute Mystery grasp him and envelope him by becoming aware of his

nearness to this ground of his existence. He can engage in a reflexive conceptualisation of God

through concepts and words. But more fundamentally he must develop an attitude of being

277 Cf. Karl RAHNER, What is a dogmatic statement, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological Investigations, Volume 5:

Later writings,” Translated by K. H. Kruger, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1970, 49. 278 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Atheism and implicit Christianity, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume

9: Writings of 1965-67,”Translated by G. Harrison, London, Darton Longman & Todd ltd, 1972, 159. 279 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Experience of transcendence from the standpoint of Catholic dogmatics, in Karl

RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 18: God and revelation,” New York, Crossroad publishing

company, 1983, 180.

76

conscious that he is never alone, and that he is called to listen to the transcendental presence

that is the ground of his being. Rahner is therefore encouraging a shift from explicitly

speaking about God in concepts and words sustained by the awareness of the transcendental

orientation to God, to a positive communication of God’s presence that, though fully beyond

man’s comprehension, yet reaches out to embrace him. In other words, Rahner challenges us

to look at the vorgriff (which we have understood as a thrust of man towards God), from the

other side: the vorgriff as God extending himself to man through Divine grace. In Thomistic

terms, the final cause is not only that which we naturally tend towards, but also that which

draws us towards itself through its magnetism. Man’s nature is fundamentally (though not

always consciously and volitionally) a reaching out to God, but could it not, by the same

(onto) logic, be God extending and sustaining man, or what has been traditionally called

‘grace’? Thus, while man can be metaphysically said to be a fundamental option that reaches

out for God. By that same fact, man is also metaphysically fundamentally opted for by an

outreaching God. Rahner calls this reverse dynamic of the vorgriff, grace, or God’s self-

communication to man. In light of this thesis, the human is engraced; a recipient of God’s

offer of self. Thus humans are ontologically bound to God by grace. In Thomistic language,

man has potency for the hypostatic union which means that in their essence, all human beings

are drawn towards union with God and this means that the nature of humanity is to be self-

transcendent. To become truly and fully human is to surrender oneself to the self-

communication of Absolute Mystery. Thus for Rahner, a free person is not one who has a

multiplicity of options to choose from, but one who consciously surrenders himself to the

fundamental option through which he attains self-realization. How is this consciousness

possible? How can one be aware of something about which he cannot have a clear concept?

Furthermore how can one speak of something he has not experienced, that is beyond sensible

experience? Rahner says, that very attempt to conceptualise the Absolute, is assisted by the

Absolute who is beyond conceptualisation. “For this reason, neither can we form a concept of

God in the proper sense and then ask afterwards if it exists in the real order. The concept in its

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original ground and the reality itself to which this concept refers move beyond us and enter the

unknown together.”280

Traditionally, we believe that man comes to know God through three ways. The first

way is through the light of natural reason which happens through the transcendental structures

of the human mind. The second way of knowing God is through “divine revelation in

word.”281This type of revelation is built on the idea that the revelation of God has already

happened through different events reported in the scriptures. The third way in which we know

God is through the salvific activity of God in history as it unfolds before us, which is self-

revelatory because God witnesses to himself through his actions. But generally, the second

way of knowing God namely the Christian revelation in word and then the self-revelation of

God in history - the third way, are usually associated and brought together in what is referred

to as divine self-communication in spatio-temporality. The meeting point of these three modes

of knowing is that in the order of salvation, there cannot be self-realization of man in his

orientation towards the Absolute Mystery without the assistance of God’s grace. Grace refers

to revelation in the proper and transcendental sense of the word. Hence, knowledge of God

can never be completely natural even if it is acquired in freedom. That is why even when man

comes to know God through the assistance of grace; he can still choose to be open and

receptive to God’s orientation towards the immediacy of Absolute Mystery. Alternatively,

man can choose to close himself up to this orientation.282 Reason, revelation and the ‘now’ of

history-in-the-making all coalesce to make human living and communicating an en-graced

experience.

In this way, then, the knowledge of God from a theological point of view, whether it is

in the form of acceptance or rejection, is always more than just natural knowledge of God.

This is true whether human beings come to know God un-thematically as in the process of

280 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 54-55. 281 Karl RAHNER, The specific character of the Christian concept of God, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 21: Science and Christian faith,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1988, 185. 282 Karl RAHNER, Concerning the relationship between nature and grace, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1982, 361.

78

self-interpretation on their existence, and that of the world: which is an original and basic

characteristic of man or when human beings come to know about God in an explicit and

thematic way, as is the case in religious activity. The knowledge of God is a result of natural

knowledge283 and grace.284 The knowledge of God on one hand is based on man’s subjectivity

and free transcendence. On the other hand, it is based on his categorical experiences, which

enable man to realise that he is not completely at his own disposal. He is always affected by

the empirical and secular experiences around him. In the end, the categorical experiences of

man and his transcendence form a unity and it is within this unity that man experiences

himself in the world and transcends himself through his orientation towards the Absolute

Mystery. In conclusion, man’s reflection on his orientation towards God helps him to realize

that God is the ineffable mystery. As such, man cannot claim to have actively mastered the

knowledge of God or to have known God completely. Man cannot transcend himself by his

own means. It is the Absolute Mystery itself that gives man’s transcendence, the means to

survive and exist, as a movement and as an orientation towards it. Absolute Mystery allows

itself to be experienced by man’s finite transcendence. Through this process, man becomes

aware that his own transcendence is formal, empty, and that it has transcendence that is

bestowed on it, that he is a being grounded in another Infinite Mystery and that as finite-

radical infinity, he is not fully at his own disposal. But as finite transcendence, man has the

capacity to question and understand his finite transcendence and realize its finitude. The

difference between man’s finite transcendence and God’s absolute transcendence is that God’s

transcendence is the ground on which man’s transcendence is grounded. In this sense, there is

a unity between finite and Absolute transcendence and the nature of transcendence is that it

opens itself beyond itself to know God. This is the only condition through which man comes

to know and understand his freedom, history and gain concrete knowledge. Through

transcendence, man comes to experience that he is known by God because God offers himself

283 Karl RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 1: God,

Christ, Mary and Grace,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1982, 82. 284 RAHNER, Concerning the relationship between nature and grace, 307.

79

to him through His self-communication which is an invitation for man to know God more.

This thirst, leads man to search for signs of God’s concrete self-communication in human

history.285

Could not this self-communicating Absolute Mystery have possibly expressed and

disclosed itself in human history? This is the decisive question that unites the philosophy of

Man the Questioner with the theology of man the Hearer of the Word, which we shall take up

in succeeding chapters.

285 Cf. RAHNER, Considerations on the development of dogma, 61.

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PART C

RAHNER'S ‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’

This third part deals with the core of our thesis. The main themes we will focus on are the

Human condition and God’s self-communication, God’s absolute self-communication in Jesus

Christ, the Embodiment of God’s self-communication in the Church and finally, the Mission

entrusted to the Church of sharing the Good News of God’s self-communication to humanity.

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5. THE HUMAN CONDITION AND GOD’S SELF-COMMUNICATION

The study of the philosophical influences and foundations of Rahner’s theology, which

we have just undertaken, can be compared to the laborious climbing of a mountain that, once

conquered, allows access to the grand panorama of Rahner’s theological insights that flow

from them. From this Chapter onwards we will demonstrate some of these theological insights

that are characterised by a strong communication dimension. We will begin by focussing on

the response to man’s question about Absolute Mystery – a question he encounters implicitly

in the very act of knowing finite realities.

5.1. The Human condition: Concupiscence

We have seen that “Man questions necessarily”286 because “Being is

questionability.”287 Man raises questions in order to know being and to interact with the world

around him. The question is the result of the communicative a priori urge to enquire about

being and the world in which he finds himself and discovers a posteriori. That is why when

man encounters reality, “the first step is always the uneasy feeling of a need to ask whether it

might not be possible to give this or that matter closer attention and find a better solution”288

and so he questions in order to deepen his knowledge of reality around him. Through this

process of questioning, man “is already with being in its totality […]; otherwise, how could he

ask about it? […] He is already […] in a certain way everything and […] he is still nothing

[…].”289

286 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 57. 287 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 68. 288RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 151. 289 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 60.

82

However the act of questioning is not merely a cognitive or epistemological act. It is,

in many respects, an act of the will as well. Just as man is finite-knowledge-tending-to-Infinite

omniscience, so too he is finite-good tending towards Infinite good. Just as he hesitates,

doubts or refuses to know the Infinite so does he hesitate, doubt or refuses to will the Infinite.

This condition of man is called concupiscence because it is a yearning or a tendency for

Infinitude but always falling short or attaining it. Man is already good but always falling short

of Perfect Goodness.

Apart from the many things about which man questions, he also asks about his own

concupiscent nature. Human concupiscence exposes man’s limitedness and leads him to

search for fulfilment through his constant questioning. Rahner argues that this never-ending

questioning is a constitutive feature of human nature that draws us toward infinity. The

“human being is rather a reality absolutely open upwards […].”290

This entails an orientation and movement of man towards Infinity or Absolute Mystery

named God. As man makes this movement upwards, reality and being in general communicate

its limitedness and un-limitedness. When faced with this reality and being in general, man

questions several things including his own fragility and his limitedness which is manifested in

his “spatio-temporality.”291

This fragility is not merely about the necessary things of life but also about the

tendency to freely will and decide against the vorgriff towards Infinite Goodness. And the

other phenomena that man requires for his livelihood, which he questions and which

communicate to him his limited nature include man’s dependence on food, shelter, clothing,

work, etc., he also encounters his own finiteness and “the most irrevocable and clearest limit”

is the fact that “he dies, he has a beginning and an end, and this means that absolutely

everything which lies within these ‘brackets’ is under the relentless sign of the finite.”292

290RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 183. 291 RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘New man,’ 141. 292 RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘New man,’ 142.

83

Even when faced with death, man questions about the reality of death and as such there

is need of a “communication made to him by the people round him, this communication must

not be withheld. If the moment when this communication is made, and the way in which it is

made, are chosen properly, it does not have to come as a frightening shock to the dying

person.”293

When we question and find answers, we often experience “an acquisition and a

victory, which allows us to enjoy clarity and security as well as ease in instruction, if this

victory is to be a true one the end must also be a beginning. […] Any individual truth, above

all one of God’s truths, is beginning and emergence, not conclusion and end.”294

While man is capable of knowing some things through natural reasoning, there are

certain things which can only be known through the “open-ended movement to God arising

from God’s own self-communication and the grace and revelation it contains.”295 As such,

through grace and self-communication, “God has become the inner principle of the creature’s

striving for God’s immediacy”296 in the beatific vision297 where man will see God.298

Despite being limited by his concupiscent nature, “man is sustained by God’s self-

communication, to love God with his whole heart, [and] to love him divinely […].”299 As

such, man’s concupiscence and his “spiritual nature has been elevated by God’s self-

communication through grace.”300

The questioning and concupiscent condition of the human being, in communication

terms, is precisely the context to which and in which God-self communicates. Every

293 RAHNER, The liberty of the sick theologically considered, 105. 294RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 149. 295 Karl RAHNER, The Old Testament and Christian dogmatic theology, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 16: Experience of the spirit: Source of theology,” Translated by David Morland, New

York, Crossroad publishing company, 1979, 185. 296 Karl RAHNER, Faith and sacrament, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 23: Final

writings,” New York, Crossroad publication company, 1992, 186. 297RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 63-64. 298Cf. RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 149-150. 299 RAHNER, Brief theological observations on the ‘state of fallen nature,’ 53. 300 Karl RAHNER, Religious feeling inside and outside the Church, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 17: Jesus, man and the church,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1981, 234.

84

communication act is contextual, devoid of which a communication lacks clarity. We will now

pursue the understanding of the Divine self-communication through Rahner’s understanding

of the traditional distinction between the terms ‘nature’, ‘grace’ and engraced nature.

5.2. Questioning about God

Man is “homo religious.”301 He questions about God, about the reality of things in the

world where he lives,302 and he also questions about events like his “absolute assent to God’s

saving self-communication, for instance the Christ event […]”303 Questioning is universal

because it is the nature of man to question and through it, man comes up with different words

and concepts that refer to God. For example, man comes up with the word God. This word is

different from other words like trees or birds which only exist in the human sphere but the

word God exists in the spiritual and human sphere. Even if God is given a name he remains

nameless and the several names that are given to Him are an expression of the

incomprehensibility and namelessness of God. He is “the ‘ineffable one’, the ‘nameless one’

who does not enter into the world we can name as a part of it. It means the ‘silent one’ who is

always there, and yet can always be overlooked, unheard, and, because it expresses the whole

in its unity and totality, can be passed over as meaningless.”304

As such, the word, God, is a proper name which questioning man gives after

experiencing the incomprehensibility of God. This word is so important that if it did not exist

or if it was forgotten in this world then man would regress to a lower level of a clever animal

capable of making fire and tools. This would be the case because man would no longer be

able to reflect and he would not be free to question. Thus, man needs “unreserved surrender in

faith to the Absolute Mystery, the surrender to the self-communication of this Mystery, which,

301 Karl RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,”

London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966, 128. 302 Cf. RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, 79. 303 Karl RAHNER, What the Church officially teaches and what the people actually believe, in Karl RAHNER,

“Theological investigations, Volume 23: Final writings,” New York, Crossroad publication company, 1992, 175. 304 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 46-47.

85

though holy, yet gives itself and forgives in direct intimacy, the surrender to its inscrutable

ordering of history.”305 Man has also to surrender to the fact that God is an “unencompassable

sovereignty which he retains even in his self-communication […].”306

Man in the full sense of personhood, subjectivity, responsibility and freedom, truly

exists when he questions about God, whether that leads him to accept or refuse God’s self-

communication. This is the case because the question about God, concerns the whole totality

of things and the totality of the ground of existence. This question about God is received and

passed on in the history of language. It is a question that is so demanding and exhausting but

we need to have the resolve and love for it because it is the destiny of every man. As such,

man needs to have the courage to question about God, “unconcerned about whether he is also

immediately capable of answering them (questions about God) adequately.”307

Even if man may be unable to answer all the questions he asks, he can be consoled by

the fact that he is assisted by the gracious vorgriff, the self-communication of God that

sustains him and enables him to find the answer to his question about God.308

5.3. The hearer of the ‘Word’

Called into being and to the knowledge of Being through the vorgriff, man asks if the

Being has not already revealed Itself. A study of the history of religions demonstrates that only

in the Judeo-Christian tradition there is a positive answer to this existential and

epistemological question. Foundational claims have been made about an Infinite Mystery that

communicated to man in the finiteness of his spatio-temporal realm. Man is consequently

305 Karl RAHNER, Observations on the doctrine of God in Catholic dogmatics, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations: The Church and the sacraments: Volume 9 of Quaestiones disputatae,” Freiburg im Breisgau,

Herder & Herder, 1963, 138. 306 Karl RAHNER, Oneness and threefoldness of God in discussion with Islam, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 18: God and revelation,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1983, 115. 307 RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 179. 308 Karl RAHNER, The human question of meaning in face of the absolute mystery of God, in Karl RAHNER,

“Theological investigations, Volume 18: God and revelation,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1983,

102.

86

challenged to respond onto-logically by becoming the ‘Hearer of the Word’. In order to

understand man as the hearer of the message, we have to take into consideration the whole

anthropology and study the individual determinations which constitute personhood, namely,

“man’s transcendence, his responsibility and freedom, his orientation towards the

incomprehensible mystery, his being in history and in the world, and his social nature.”309

Man is affected by anthropological factors in the way he hears and interprets the

message precisely because his origins and roots are found in the empirical realities which

touch and affect him daily and significantly. Man hears the Christian message from the

prophets of Judaism who are the bearers and hearers of God’s original self-communication.

The generations that come later interpret the messages of the prophets and discover how the

original communication applies and speaks to them personally and contextually. In order to

hear and interpret God’s message, mediated through the prophets and through the generations,

man is continuously anticipatorily assisted by God’s self-communication (vorgriff). God is

both the giver of the original communication and revelation through the prophets, and He is

also the interpreter of His self-communication which He does through the human bearers

whom He sends. He gives them the message and leads them to the proper interpretation of the

message.310

This does not mean that prophetic interpretation and God’s interpretation of his self-

communication are both part of an essentially historical instance within God’s transcendental

self-communication. On one hand, God’s self-communication and God’s self-interpretation of

His self-communication and the prophetic interpretation of God’s self-communication on the

other hand, have their own histories and are both governed by God’s providence and His

universal salvific will. It is the light of faith which helped the prophets to grasp the original

God’s self-communication and the same light of faith which helps the man of today as the

hearer of the message to understand God’s communication. It is this same light of faith that

enables the Church and Christians to understand divine self-communication so that “this self-

309 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 26. 310 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 158.

87

communication is perceived and accepted, not as theory, but more profoundly in the very

living of human life […].311

Even if everyone is given faith, but not everyone is a prophet. Others are only hearers

of God’s self-communication. The prophets through their interpretation of the self-

communication of God provide a productive model, an animation and inspiration to follow.

The prophets do not simply share their relative view of God’s self-communication but they

also share their experience of God’s transcendental self-communication of God which is given

in things that have actually taken place in history. The difference between the prophets and

the hearers of the message as such, is that the hearers constantly dialogue and check their self-

interpretation of God’s self-communication with the interpretations of others. One’s self-

interpretation of God’s self-communication is not solipsistic but happens in the context of a

historical religious community which has figures like priests, prophets and pastors whose self-

interpretations of God’s self-communication are taken as points of reference. The prophets’

interpretation of God’s self-communication refers to the official history of revelation. The

prophets’ interpretation of God’s self-communication is not only official but it is also

legitimate because it is addressed to many people who believe it.312

For man to hear the message, he must transcend himself by the assistance of God’s

self-communication so that he can recognise the Word of God for what it is; as God’s word

and not as some mere human word. This is the case because “a posteriori proposition of

verbal revelation which comes in history can be heard only within the horizon of a divinizing

and divinized a priori subjectivity. Only then can it be heard in the way it must be heard if

what is heard is seriously to be called the “word of God.”313

311 Karl RAHNER, The relation between theology and popular religion, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigation, Volume 22: Humane society and the Church of tomorrow,” London, Darton Longman & Todd Ltd,

1991, 147. 312 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 160-161. 313 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 147.

88

5.4. Revelation and God’s self-communication in Christian history

Man is the hearer of the Christian message as well. But we may have to ask: “what

kind of a hearer does Christianity anticipate so that its real and ultimate message can even be

heard?”314 The Christian message summons the hearer to face the truth of his being from

which he cannot escape and it is in front of the truth of his being that man encounters the

incomprehensible mystery through God’s self-communication.315 But is Rahner’s term any

different from the traditional term ‘God’s revelation’?

There is a close significance between the two. God’s self-communication through

grace, seen from a chronological perspective is called “revelation”. The divine communication

is not merely a sustaining-in-being of all things visible but is also a chronology of Divine

interventions that is written and recorded over centuries. The question is; does such a record of

events of Divine self-communication exist in all religions?

One would need to research all the religious traditions that exist to find one that is

based on a history of God’s revelation to man. Most religious traditions have recorded

histories that detail man’s search for the Absolute. They are largely scriptural (inspired) and

traditional (rituals) elaborations of whether God exists, and in what forms understandable to

the human mind he can be known, obeyed and worshipped. It is only in the Judaic tradition

that we find a scripture and a tradition that is based on a fundamental human attitude of

listening to the word through which the Absolute reveals himself. “Revelation (by which we

mean not just God’s speech but also and above all his active dealings with men) does have a

real history.”316

314 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 24. 315 Cf. RAHNER, Faith and sacrament, 187-188. 316 RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, 86.

89

By active God’s active dealings we do not mean a “mere communication of

propositions […] but as history (of which of course propositions are also a part) […].”317

Rahner elaborates:

Revelation is not the communication of a definite number of propositions, a numerical sum, to which

additions may conceivably be made at will or which can suddenly and arbitrarily be limited, but an

historical dialogue between God and man in which something happens, and in which the communication

is related to the continuous ‘happening’ and enterprise of God. This dialogue moves to a quite definite

term, in which first the happening and consequently the communication comes to it’s never to be

surpassed climax and so to its conclusion.318

The Judeo-Christian tradition proclaims God’s ‘self-communication’ and ‘revelation’

to human beings who are hearers of his message. “[...]. The one and entire self-

communication of God to the one and entire world in its one history itself has a history. God’s

self-communication has a history […].”319That is why; we cannot separate history and the self-

communication of God because “the original transcendental experience of God in grace,

however, is necessarily mediated by personal communication within the ‘this-worldly’

sphere.”320 The Judeo-Christian tradition therefore also proclaims how God’s self-

communication has been interpreted in history.321

Thus, Christianity is a historical religion of the self-communication of God following

the Judaic tradition. This revelation of God becomes manifest in the Old and New

Testaments322 and “in the last resort, God is the Same in the Old Testament and in the New,

[…] because the whole of saving history is a progressive revelation of the way in which the

free God who is active in history has wished to enter into relationship with his world.”323

317 Karl RAHNER, The death of Jesus and the closure of revelation, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 18: God and revelation,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1983, 134-135. 318 RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 48. 319 RAHNER, Faith and sacrament, 188. 320 Karl RAHNER, Why and how can we venerate the saints, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 8: Further theology of the spiritual life 2,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1974, 20. 321 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Observations on the problem of the ‘anonymous Christian, in Karl RAHNER,

“Theological investigations, Volume 14: Ecclesiology, questions in the Church, the Church in the world,” New

York, Seabury press, 1976, 29-294. 322 Karl RAHNER, Law and righteousness in the Catholic understanding, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 18: God and revelation,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1983, 282-284. 323 RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, 89.

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This relationship, revelation and self-communication is historical but the problem is

that God is beyond history. Human history is therefore the context for the transcendentality of

man through the assistance of the self-communication of God. “Salvation-history takes place

within the history of this world”324 and “everything in the history of the world is pregnant with

eternity and eternal life or with eternal ruin.”325

This type of self-communication of God is different from verbal or propositional

revelation which can be identified with the Revelation of the Old and New Testament.

Transcendental revelation and self-communication is a transcendental moment in man’s

consciousness which happens because of God’s grace.326

It is obvious that much ought to be said about the relation of this ‘transcendental’ revelation (or rather,

the transcendental element of revelation) to the categorial, historical, verbal revelation (or the categorial

element of the single revelation). Certainly this relationship must not be thought of as if the transcendental element of revelation (constituted by grace) rendered the categorial element superfluous

or threatened its meaningfulness.327

God’s transcendental and supernatural self-communication and these interpretations of

transcendental revelation constitute categorical history of Revelation which is only a segment

of universal history that includes both the transcendental and categorical self-communication

of God.328

Rahner stated that the Christian revelation of the Old and New Testaments is THE

revelation which happens through the light of faith, and through God’s self-communication.

This transcendental self-communication does not only take place in religious or sacral places

but also takes place outside the religious sphere because God is a free subject who can

communicate himself even outside the religious sphere. Nevertheless, God’s supernatural and

transcendental self-communication and revelation is unconceptual and unthematic unlike the

ordinary human self-communication and revelation which is thematic, propositional and

324 RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, 97. 325 RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, 99. 326 Cf. RAHNER, Atheism and implicit Christianity, 161-163. 327 RAHNER, Atheism and implicit Christianity, 162. 328 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 155.

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conceptual. The different instances of transcendental self-communication constitute and

comprise the history of transcendental revelation and self-communication.

Furthermore, the history of God’s self-communication is both individual and

collective. It is God himself who chooses whether to reveal himself individually or

collectively. That is why, “the basic relationship between creator and creature, the beginning

of this history, even though it is dependent on man’s freedom, it is nevertheless an event of

God’s freedom which can give itself or refuse to give itself.”329

Man’s refusal of God’s self-communication takes place in freedom within the history

of the world. God does not impose his self-communication on man but gives it as an offer to

be accepted or rejected. As such, the communication of salvation, “takes place in the form of

that free acceptance of this communication which we call faith [...]”330

Furthermore, when God gives His self-communication; man, is borne with God’s

grace. This means that human beings can “stand before God and decide their salvation. If this

were not so, then their activity would not be free in the real metaphysical and theological

sense.”331

In order to accept God’s self-communication man is given supernatural grace so that he

should avoid the false, depraved, and inadequate interpretation of God’s self-communication.

Man, may sometimes misinterpret God’s self-communication, reject it, or accept it.332 At the

end of life, God himself “will come to meet this activity of man as its confirmation or as its

condemnation and judgement.”333

The history of salvation and the self-communication of God to man has been

progressive and each generation has contributed and participated in this communication until

the God-man event in Jesus Christ reaches its goal.334

329 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 142. 330 RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, 98. 331 RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, 100. 332 Cf. RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, 89. 333 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 146. 334 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 169.

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6. JESUS CHRIST AND TRINITARIAN COMMUNION

Thanks to the ontological vorgriff which keeps the human condition in a constant

search for meaning, and by that same fact, in a constant state of being naturally engraced into

becoming a hearer of the word, man searches and listens to see if the Absolute Mystery has

already revealed Itself in human and finite history.

The unique Judeo-Christian stance is the only consistent and permanent attitude

through which man is always the hearer of the Word of an Infinite that has spoken and

continues to speak from time immemorial. The Old Testament is a record of the self-

communication of God through the prophets. It is an explicit communication that is

qualitatively more pronounced, linguistically more personal and inter-relationally more

communitarian. Man’s fundamental human attitude is one of listening to the Word of the

prophets through which the Absolute reveals himself through the promise of the Messiah. The

seeker of the Word, probes further to recognize traces of the Messiah’s coming. The Christian

tradition acknowledges the absoluteness of Jesus as the unique and ultimate self-

communication of God, the true and only Messiah that had claimed to redeem the world

though his life, teaching, passion, death and – for proof – his resurrection from the dead.

6.1. Jesus as the Absolute Self-communication of God

Through Jesus Christ, God gave his irrevocable self-communication without creaturely

representation through nature or through human intermediaries, that is, “without man himself

being dissolved into nothingness in this communication.”335 God’s self-communication

335 RAHNER, Courage for an ecclesial Christianity, 8.

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through Jesus Christ is definitive. Jesus is the full communication to the “world of the most

intimate depths of the divine Reality itself and of its Trinitarian life: […] Now there is nothing

more to come: no new age, no other aion, no fresh plan of salvation, but only the unveiling of

what is already ‘here’ as God’s presence […].”336 Through Jesus Christ, “the absolute self-

communication of […] God to us has been manifested in history in a manner which is

irreversible […]”337 and “the victorious self-communication of God, established by God

himself, has been manifested as victorious, as eschatological, as definitively final.”338

After Jesus, and especially after the death of the last apostle, there are no more “divine

communications”339 to be made because Jesus is the final and absolute self-communication of

God. This is why Jesus is the saviour in the absolute sense because he “embraces and

exhausts all past, present and future reality [...].”340God’s free self-communication “in the

kairos of Christ is the unsurpassable communication of everything that God is and can be by

essence and freedom, it is also a communication of the divine nature.”341 The absolute self-

communication of God in Jesus happened through the “dual unity of a communication of

supernatural being and of the word.”342 Jesus in turn is the Word, the Verbum of the Father.343

In Jesus Christ, God’s self-communication reached its real essence and its real

breakthrough. This does not mean that the history of the self-communication of God has

336 RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 49. 337 Karl RAHNER, The faith of the Christian and the doctrine of the Church, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 14: Ecclesiology, questions in the Church, the Church in the world,” New York, Seabury press, 1976, 44. 338 Karl RAHNER, The Church’s redemptive historical provenance from the death and resurrection of Jesus, in

Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 19: Faith and ministry,” New York, Crossroad publishing

company, 1983, 30. 339RAHNER, Dogmatic notes on ‘Ecclesiological piety,’ 348. 340 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 5, Later writings,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966, 174 341 RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, 125. 342 Karl RAHNER, The Ignatian mysticism of joy in the world, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 3: Theology of the spiritual life,” New York, Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982, 285. 343 RAHNER, The Ignatian mysticism of joy in the world, in Karl RAHNER, 285.

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reached its end or its conclusion but it means that in Jesus, the self-communication of God in

history has become “irrevocable and irreversible”344.

Not only is he the full self-communication of God to man, but he also totally accepted

to fulfil the self-communication of God to man by totally accepting to die on the cross. The

death of Jesus on the cross exemplified the total obedience of man to God’s self-

communication. As such, Jesus as Saviour

who represents the climax of this self-communication, must therefore be at the same time God’s absolute

pledge by self-communication to the spiritual creature as a whole and the acceptance of his self-

communication by this Saviour; only then is there an utterly irrevocable self-communication on both

sides, and only thus is it present in the world in a historically communicative manner.345

6.2. Hypostatic Union – Man’s perfect acceptance of God’s self-

communication

In Jesus alone is the gift of God’s self-revelation fully and freely given and fully and

freely accepted. This mutual relationship is the incarnation of the God-man in which the

matter/body and spirit of Jesus were united through the hypostatic union.

The hypostatic union refers to the “belonging of the two natures to one and the same

Person as its very own in virtue of its being the selfsame.”346Thus in Jesus’s hypostatic union,

the relationship between man and God has become absolute. This is the case because through

the perfect acceptance of God’s self-communication (in Jesus) the whole man has been saved.

Generally, where God’s absolute self-communication in Jesus is legitimately accepted and

ultimately interpreted by people; they are united in a Christian profession of faith. But “where

this relationship is not actualized in history and interpreted as absolute, real explicit

Christianity ceases to exist.”347

Rahner equally pointed out that

344RAHNER, Christology, 175-176. 345 Cf. RAHNER, Christology within an evolutionary view, 176. 346RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 175. 347 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 205.

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Jesus is truly man with everything this implies, i.e. with man’s finiteness, his being-in-the-world, his

materiality and his participation in the history of this cosmos which leads him through the narrow gates

of death. This, then, is what is supposed to be expressed by the Christian dogma of the Incarnation:

Jesus is truly man with everything which implies, with finiteness, his materiality, his being in this world

and his participation in the history of the cosmos in the dimension of spirit and of freedom, in the history

which leads through the narrow passageway of death.348

Jesus is a person and “the concept of person as the ontological principle of a free active

centre, self-conscious, present to itself and through itself in being, is a concept which, in the

sense just indicated, has always played round the edge of the most static and objective concept

of person.”349

That is the reason why, like us, Jesus had a subjectivity which was a recipient of God’s

self-communication in grace. If Jesus is like us in this way, it is not surprising that the

fundamental axiom of Christology is: God became man/flesh. Rahner claims that this event is

the most decisive in history: the fact that God became man or that God became matter “is the

most basic statement of Christology.”350

Thanks to the fact that Jesus is the perfect acceptance of God’s self-communication in

human form, we humans now enjoy the unity of transcendentality and historicity in our

existence to the extent that the self-communication of God and hope appear and are mediated

in history. Hope is given to human beings by God as a promise of the continuation of God’s

self-communication. There is hope because man has been forgiven and given grace to be in

communion with Absolute Mystery through Jesus Christ the perfect man.351

The incarnation is of great importance because, “by the fact that God the Son became

man […] the Word of God became himself a member of this one Adamite humanity and,

conversely, the one human race became thereby fundamentally and radically called to share

the life of God supernaturally.”352 Through the Incarnation, human beings are no longer ‘mere

men’ but they have become the united “people of God.”353

348 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 197. 349RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 158. 350RAHNER, Christology within an evolutionary view, 176-177. 351 Cf. RAHNER, Christology within an evolutionary view, 186. 352RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 81. 353RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 83.

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In addition, if we are to comprehend the hypostatic union in Jesus Christ, and the grace

in us, then we must understand them together, that is, as a unit because they are a signification

of God’s free decision of self-communication for salvation to all people. This is what we see

in Jesus, through whom God communicates His salvation to all men in grace and glory. This

self-communication of God to man through Jesus does not bring a hypostatic union in human

beings. But, “it takes place insofar as God wishes to communicate himself to all men in grace

and glory. God’s unsurpassable self-communication to all men has reached its fullness and is

historically tangible in an irrevocable way.”354

However, what differentiates ourselves from Jesus Christ is not grace since we have all

received grace from God but Jesus is the one who is offered by God to us as God’s Absolute

self-communication.355 We are not offered for such a function like Jesus; but we are the

recipients of Jesus, as God’s offer of self-communication to us. As such, the relationship and

unity between God as the one offering Himself, and Jesus as the offer, is not only moral but is

hypostatic.356

It is just this that the hypostatic union means, this and really nothing else: in this human potentiality of

Jesus the absolute salvific will of God, the absolute event of God’s self-communication to us along with

its acceptance as something effected by God himself, is a reality of God himself, unmixed, but also

inseparable and therefore irrevocable. But to assert this is to assert precisely the offer of the grace of

God’s self-communication to us.357

Finally, the unio hypostatica “eliminates the possibility of separation between the

proclamation and the proclaimer, and hence a union which makes the really human

proclamation and the offer to us a reality of God himself.”358 The message and the medium

through which the message is sent are one and the same. The hypostatic union “implies the

self-communication of the absolute Being of God-such as it subsists in the Logos - to the

human nature of Christ which thereby becomes a nature hypostatically supported by the

Logos. The hypostatic union is the highest conceivable-the ontologically highest-actualization

354 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 202. 355 Cf. RAHNER, Christology within an evolutionary view, 183-184. 356 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 201-202. 357 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 202. 358 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 202.

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of the reality of a creature, in the sense that a higher actualization would be absolutely

impossible.”359 This is why we need to look at the message, the Word, or Logos to understand

better God’s self-communication in the hypostatic-union of Jesus Christ.

6.3. Jesus the Logos and Grammar of God’s self-communication

The reason why God became man was to communicate with man in the most absolute

sense. God himself through Jesus Christ His Son would communicate directly to man.360

That is why Jesus is no ordinary man. He is the “grammar of God’s possible self-

expression.”361 He is the self-revelation of God not only through what He said but through

what He does and is. He is the absolute self-communication of God to man.362 Jesus is the

Logos, the ‘Word of God’ and Rahner, elaborates richly on John the evangelist’s interpretation

of Jesus as the Word of God.

If God wills to make himself known to the world in that which he is in his most proper, most free Self,

beyond the realm of his creative power, he can do this in only two ways: either he seizes us and the

world immediately into the dazzling brilliance of his divine light, by bestowing upon his creatures the

direct vision of God, or he comes in word. He cannot come to us in any way other than in the word,

without already taking us away from the world to himself. For he wants to give himself to us precisely as

that which simply as the Creator of realities outside himself he cannot reveal. That is possible only

because there is present something in the world, one thing alone, which belongs to God’s own reality: the word, which sets the creature free from its muteness by pointing beyond the whole created order. It

alone is capable of making God present as the God of mysteries to the man who does not yet see him, in

such a way that this presence not only is in us by grace, but is there for us to perceive. Thus the word as

the primordial sacrament of transcendence is capable of becoming the primordial sacrament of the

conscious presence in the world of the God who is superior to the world.363

Jesus is the Word, the Logos that became flesh. This is not to be understood as a mere

disguise of God so that He could perform some salvific activity then suddenly reveal Himself.

“Thus by maintaining the genuineness of Christ’s humanity, room is left within his life for

359RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 205. 360 Cf. RAHNER, The concept of mystery in Catholic theology, 72-73. 361 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 221. 362 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 224. 363 Karl RAHNER, Priest and Poet, in “Theological investigations”, Volume 3, Chapter 20, 303-304.

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achievement and the possibility of a real Mediatorship and thus – if you will – of a real

Messiah-ship is preserved.”364

In this context, considering that Jesus is both human and divine365 it is not surprising

that Rahner referred to Jesus, the Christ, as the “unique Mysterium.”366

The Word is the reality of immanent divine life that is born of the Father as his own

image and self-expression. This process of generation of the Word is a divine act of

consciousness and self-possession. The Logos symbolises the Father. It is “the ‘word’ of the

Father, his perfect ‘image’, his ‘imprint’, his radiance, his self-expression.”367

Jesus is the absolute symbol of the Father because he is the fullness of what he

symbolises, namely, the Father. He expresses the presence of God’s wish for the world. This

expression through Jesus cannot be surpassed because it is irreversible and final. As such,

Jesus as Logos is the “image, likeness, reflexion, representation, and presence – filled with all

the fullness of the Godhead.”368

All words and communication acts by religious leaders are passable, in that the

speakers use words to tell something about religious realities that are beyond them. The

speaker and his means of communication (his words or content of communication) may be

close, but only arbitrary. The signifier and what is signified are really two entities. Similarly,

self-communication and self-expression of God often happens through a word or event that is

finite in the realm of creation (except for the beatific vision).369 But if mediation of God is

finite, it is not unsurpassable but only provisional. God can surpass any mediation or

“communication” of Himself, by establishing a special mediation that surpasses the former.

And that special mediation is the Christ.

[T]ruly and radically the humanity of Christ is really the ‘appearance’ of the Logos itself, its symbolic

reality in the pre-eminent sense, not something in itself alien to the Logos and its reality, which is only

364 Cf. RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 158. 365 Cf. RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 73. 366 RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 174. 367 RAHNER, The Theology of the Symbol, 236. 368 RAHNER, The Theology of the Symbol, 237. 369 Cf. RAHNER, The Theology of the Symbol, 237-238.

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taken up from outside like an instrument to make its own music but not strictly speaking to reveal

anything of him who uses it.370

Moreover, when we claim that God’s offer of Absolute self-communication and its

acceptance in the reality of Jesus is unsurpassable, it means that the reality of Jesus was

established by God but also that “it is God himself. But if this offer is itself a human reality as

graced in an absolute way, and if this is and absolutely to be the offer of God himself, then

here a human reality belongs absolutely to God, and this is precisely what we call hypostatic

union when it is understood correctly.”371 Thus, the humanity of Christ is not merely a putting

on of a garment through which God makes his appearance. The Logos is the self-disclosure of

God who expresses himself as making humanity His very own.

6.4. The consciousness of Jesus as God’s self-communication to the world

Rahner claims that the being of Jesus, in whom the hypostatic union is realized, can

only be surpassed by God, and no other being. This is the case because it does not come into

effect through efficient causality (as in the case of the created universe) but through quasi-

formal causality (since Jesus is not a reality that is created but uncreated). The question

therefore arises about Jesus’ consciousness of his identity as the Logos of God.

The hypostatic Union involves an ontological ‘assumptio’ of the human nature by the person of the

Logos, it implies [...] a determination of the human reality by the person of the Logos and is therefore at

least also the actualizing of the potential obedientialis, i.e. of the radical capacity of being ‘assumed’,

and hence is also something on the part of the creature, particularly since-as stressed by scholastic

theology-the Logos is not changed through the Hypostatic Union, and anything happening [...] takes

place on the side of the creature. [...] The visio immediate is an intrinsic element of the Hypostatic

Union itself.372

This connection of the Hypostatic Union and the visio immediate is important for

establishing a ‘Christology of consciousness’ which refers to the “unique union of the human

consciousness of Jesus with the Logos-which is of the most radical nearness, uniqueness and

370 RAHNER, The Theology of the Symbol, 238. 371 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 202. 372RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 206.

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finality [...]”373 All this is possible because of the ontological self-communication of God in

the person of Jesus Christ374 in which there was a “substantial union with the person of the

Logos himself.”375 This union then would have helped Jesus to be conscious of his divine

Sonship and direct presence to God the Father (visio immediate.) However, one wonders if

the historical Jesus had such a consciousness especially because of the doubts, and questions

that he himself had in his ministry as evidenced by his feeling that God had forsaken him on

the cross. That is why, we have to understand this presence and consciousness not in the sense

of an object standing side by side with Christ Jesus but as a spiritual presence that forms the

basis and foundation of everything that Jesus does. It is the attunement (Gestimmtheit) of the

spirit of Christ to the Logos as the foundation of his decisions. This is possible because “the

Logos is consciously communicated to the spiritual human nature of our Lord.”376

Nevertheless, this consciousness and awareness of direct presence of God grew and developed

gradually in the spiritual history of Jesus. “For it is in accordance with the nature of the

spiritual, personal history itself, and its whole content, that a basic state should tend to

communicate itself to itself [...].”377In addition, for Rahner, God’s absolute Word is his self-

communication addressed to all people. This primordial communication makes possible and

elevates human communication. The free acceptance or rejection by human beings of God’s

self-communication depends on what they have decided on how they want to relate with God

even if essentially all human beings are an event of the self-communication of God. “This

self-communication of God necessarily exists either in the mode of its acceptance, which is

usually called justification, or in the mode of its rejection, which is called disbelief and sin.”378

Through Jesus’ hypostatic union of matter and spirit, man’s natural dynamism for

transcendence reaches a qualitatively new level. Jesus’ humanity as the Logos of the Father in

obedience to the will of the Father unites in his humanity the Father Himself.

373RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 207. 374 Cf. RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 205-207. 375RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 208. 376RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 210. 377RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 211. 378 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 186.

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The humanity of Christ is not to be considered as something in which God dresses up and masquerades –

a mere signal of which he makes use, so that something audible can be uttered about the Logos by means

of this signal. The humanity is the self-disclosure of the Logos itself, so that when God, expressing

himself, exteriorizes himself, that very thing appears which we call the humanity of the Logos.379

Rahner concludes that anthropology is symbolically and ontologically linked to

theology. Because “anthropology itself is finally based on something more than the doctrine of

the possibilities open to an infinite Creator […]. Its ultimate source is the doctrine about God

himself.”380 In Jesus, humanity is transformed into God’s absolute self-expression. He lives in

the full consciousness of his identity as the self-communication of His Father to the world.

The Gospels remind us of this through his constant reference to an intimate relationship with

God, who he called His Father. It is the very reason why he is condemned to death by those

who considered his claim blasphemous.

6.5. The method and forms of Jesus’ communication

From the Rahner’s explanation of the hypostatic union of Jesus, his existence as the

Logos and his consciousness of his identity we come to understand the implications of the

incarnation. The world that God created is now appropriated in the Logos as God’s very own

habitat.

[W]e should have to consider that the natural depth of the symbolic reality of all things – which is of

itself restricted to the world or has a merely natural transcendence towards God – has now in ontological

reality received an infinite extension by the fact that this reality has become also a determination of the

Logos himself or of his milieu.381

Thanks to the hypostatic union or incarnation therefore, every God-given reality

(barring that which is degraded by human concupiscence) reveals or “states more than itself:

each in its own way is an echo and indication of all reality. […] All things are held together

379Cf. RAHNER, Christology within an evolutionary view, 163-164. 380 RAHNER, The Theology of the Symbol, 239. 381 RAHNER, The Theology of the Symbol, 239.

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by the incarnate Word in whom they exist (Col 1.17), and hence all things possess, even in

their quality of symbol, an unfathomable depth, which faith alone can sound.”382

Moreover, the communication of Jesus, thanks to the unio hypostatica, “eliminates the

possibility of separation between the proclamation and the proclaimer, and hence a union

which makes the really human proclamation and the offer to us a reality of God himself.”383

This means that, ontologically and theologically, in Christ the medium is the messenger and

the messenger is the message. Here, Rahner breaks away from abstraction to give us a

glimpse of the application of his thesis on the symbol.

It would be well to explain all these abstract statements in detail, by applying them to individual realities

– water, bread, hand, eye, sleep, hunger and countless other affairs of man and of the world which

surrounds him, bears him up and is referred to him – if one wished to know exactly what theology of

symbolic reality is based on the truth that the Logos, as Word of the Father, expresses the Father in the

‘abbreviation’ of his human nature and constitutes the symbol which communicates him to the world.384

The application, however, is more than evident in the preaching and teaching of the

Logos through his incarnational method by which he brings to categorical realities

transcendental significance. His communication was the extension of his own identity as the

man-God and the metaphor expressed in parables was his dominant medium of verbal

communication. For Rahner, this has been the case because ontologically speaking,

“everything is a parable – figura – of God, who is constantly being unveiled yet at the same

time constantly concealed in the parable.”385

Thus, Jesus, the Word, brought to light the poetry of his Father’s real presence hidden

in the persons, events and things of ordinary life. For example, the parable of the prodigal son

is sheer poetry. Rahner states, “Anyone who does not feel the Parable of the Prodigal Son to

be wonderful poetry understands nothing about poetry. At the most he can plead in excuse –

with justification – that the tears he shed in hearing this read caused him to forget that the

words which so touched his heart were also poetry.”386

382 RAHNER, The Theology of the Symbol, 239. 383 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 202. 384 RAHNER, The Theology of the Symbol, 239-240. 385RAHNER, Thomas Aquinas on truth, 32. 386RAHNER, Priest and poet, 316.

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The metaphorical nature of Jesus’s communication can be seen again in the parable of

the children in the market place as in Mt 11:16 onwards. Here Rahner explains:

The children can serve him as examples of lack of false ambition, of not seeking for dignities or

honours, of modesty and lack of artificiality in contrast to their elders, who are unwilling to learn

anything from them (Mt 12:2 ff.; 19:13 ff.) When Jesus holds up the child to us as the prototype of those

for whom the kingdom of heaven is there it cannot be said, even in a relative sense (much less in an

absolute one), that what he is thinking of is its innocence.387

This metaphorical thrust in Jesus’s communication dominates the Gospels in many

forms. Using F. X. Dance’s research on the concept of communication, we can briefly

highlight the different forms of his communication. The most obvious form of his

communication was his verbal communication through vocal preaching. He used parables,

metaphors, word-pictures and paralanguage.388

For example, he demonstrated the importance of putting the word of God into practice

by using the parable of the sower.389 He also used nonverbal communication through his

presence,390 gestures, 391proxemics, touch,392 and his use of clothing.393 He often used

consciously constructed symbolic actions to convey a message, for example he was eating

with sinners to show the universality of his mission.394 His attitudes and ways-of-being were

also rich in communication content, and can be seen in the way he was able to have

compassion on the multitude,395 and he healed the sick.396 He even performed symbolic

actions that defied the laws of nature, which we call miracles,397 even to the point of

communicating life to people who were already dead.398

387RAHNER, Ideas for a theology of childhood, 42. 388 Cf. RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 209-210. 389The Revised Standard Version, Mark 4:1-20. 390The Revised Standard Version, John 11:1-44. 391The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 8:3. 392The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 5:12-16. 393The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 27:35. 394The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 9:10-17. 395The Revised Standard Version, Matthew, 15:32. 396The Revised Standard Version, Luke 13:10-17. 397The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 8:23-27. 398The Revised Standard Version, Mark 5:21-43.

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Jesus’ communication was also visible through his extremely sociable nature

demonstrated through his interaction with people, his personal and social relationships and the

social processes he set in motion.399 He also displayed a remarkable capacity for dialogue400

and an astute mind for debate.401 Finally, he showed a longing for interior silence402 even in

the face of taunts and jeers.403Above all, he was even able to read minds.404 He replied to

people even while they were thinking and before they had time to express it.405

6.6. The Father and His Kingdom: the content of Jesus’ communication

Jesus’s consciousness of his identity as the incarnation of Absolute Mystery was not a

given datum. It was, as Rahner states, a progressive and evolving consciousness that led him

to see himself as ‘a son begotten of the Father’. From the Gospels we observe that Jesus was

“conscious of being the Son of God as incomprehensible mystery, and who, in his own

incomprehensible understanding of himself dared to call that mystery his Father, even in the

moment of his death when he felt himself abandoned by God.”406

Rahner states: Jesus “knows himself to be the Son of God and to be in the direct

presence of God.”407 It is in this sense that we can say that he was conscious of being the Son

of God. However, this consciousness of divine Sonship grew progressively and evolved with

time. There were obviously dark moments through which Jesus passed but he was always

aware of the presence of God as his ‘Abba’ in his life.408

Unlike the Hebrew concept of God as distant in his transcendence, Jesus’ concept of

God is as a loving Father, a Person in relationship with his creatures. Just as he is omniscient,

399The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 14:13-21. 400The Revised Standard Version, John 4:1-42. 401The Revised Standard Version, Mark 11:28. 402The Revised Standard Version, Luke 9:18. 403The Revised Standard Version, John 8:8. 404The Revised Standard Version, Luke 5:22. 405The Revised Standard Version, Luke 11:28. 406 RAHNER, Experiencing Easter, 165. 407RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 216. 408RAHNER, Experiencing Easter, 165.

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he is also the fullness of Love. He is a communicating Subject who builds communion with

human subjects. He “has called us in his Son to the most intimate community with him.”409

God is the father of Jesus but he is also the Father of all those who follow Christ. “This

fatherhood has its basis in the free election of the Father, who calls and leads men to his Son

(John 6:37-40.44.45). Men are therefore not children of God by nature, but they can become

his children, if they dispose themselves morally in certain definite ways (Mt 5:9.45: Luke

6:36; cf. John 1:12).”410

The motive for this communion, Rahner continues, is to collaborate in the Father’s

plan for conducting his creation towards greater heights of goodness and perfection.411 The

point of arrival of this progression is what Jesus calls his Father’s ‘Kingdom’. It is conceived

“as the realm of the enlightened mind, or of the fully civilized man, or of the classless society

or in any other way whatsoever.”412 The Kingdom of God includes different people who are

brought together under the banner of values cherished by the Father. The kingdom of God is

the absolute future of the salvation of man. This means that the ultimate destiny of man as

fully saved will be found in God. That is why, “the salvation of an individual soul does not

consist in escaping from the history of humanity but in entering into the latter’s absolute

future, which we call the ‘kingdom of God’.”413 As Jesus said, “the Kingdom of God is within

you”414 and not in a place that is distant in space and time. His words are a challenge to all

who follow him to become sons and daughters of God by working to make the world that

“God loves so much”415 conform to the values his Son lived and died for.

409 RAHNER, The prospects for dogmatic theology, 118. 410 RAHNER, Theos in the Old Testament, 144. 411 RAHNER, The theology of power, 409. 412 RAHNER, Questions on the theology of history: History of the world and salvation history, 112. 413RAHNER, Theological Anthropology: Christian humanism, 190. 414 Luke 17:21. 415 John 3:16

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6.7. The Holy Spirit, the consoler and continuity of Christ’s presence in the

world

If the mission is to build the Kingdom of the Father, Rahner continues, the “Holy Spirit

[…] is the true gift”416 that is “at work everywhere”417 to form a community that is inspired by

the values of the Kingdom. “[F]or this very reason, everyone in a genuine community of the

Holy Spirit is dependent on the others and finds himself only by seeing himself in others.”418

The community of people that are entrusted to be an integral part of the mission to

make the Kingdom of God a reality is the Church which is the “unity of human beings in the

Holy Spirit.”419 That is why, for Rahner, “persons who share a profound love of God should

also share other concerns, and the love that the Holy Spirit inspires for God and neighbour

should practically and concretely become manifest in a true community of mutual love and

service.”420

If indeed the Holy Spirit inspires Christian unity and community of persons, then the

fundamental act that guides the members is prayer.

If the one Holy Spirit is to move us all, and there is one body because we have been baptized by this

Spirit into one body (1 Co 12:13) and if we must therefore – because we are members of the one body of Christ – [219] with one mind bear each other’s anxieties, then everyone ought to pray for everyone else.

Apostolic prayer is a Christian duty. That is why the Apostle says: ‘Be watchful in prayer for all the

Saints’ (Ephesians 6:18). ‘Only, brethren, I entreat you by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the

Holy Spirit, to give me the help of your prayers to God on my behalf’ (Romans 15:30).421

Furthermore, the gift of the Holy Spirit is communicated to everyone. The Holy Spirit

is a gift that is given to everyone because everyone is an event God has willed. That is why

Rahner indicated that God “has freely given us his Holy Spirit to help with everything, so that

each one of us should become the very one whom God conceived and loved.”422 Life in the

416RAHNER, Some implications of the scholastic concept of uncreated grace, 338. 417RAHNER, The perennial actuality of the papacy, 195. 418RAHNER, The Church of the saints, 103. 419RAHNER, Theology and spirituality of pastoral work in the parish, 89. 420RAHNER, The future of Christian communities, 127. 421RAHNER, The daily life of the Christian: The apostolate of prayer, 219-220. 422RAHNER, The renewal of priestly ordination, 175.

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Spirit makes a person more loving, joyful and peaceful. Nevertheless, the road to establishing

the Kingdom is narrow and uphill. This is why the Holy Spirit is especially gifted to “those

who have slowly learned in little ways to taste the fullness in emptiness, the ascent in the fall,

life in death, the finding in renunciation.”423

6.8. Divine Communication as Trinitarian Communion

Over time, the Church founded by Christ and entrusted to Peter has come to recognize

that God is a Trinity, comprising the profound communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

[…] Each of the three divine persons communicates himself as such to man, each in his own special and

different way of personal being, in the free gift of grace. This Trinitarian communication (the

‘indwelling’ of God, the ‘uncreated grace’, to be understood not merely as the communication of the

divine ‘nature’ but also and indeed primarily as communication of the ‘persons’, since it takes place in a

free spiritual personal act and so from person to person) is the real ontological foundation of the life of

grace in man and (under the requisite conditions) of the immediate vision of the divine persons at the

moment of fulfillment.424

The communion and communication in the Trinity is the basis and foundation of

human communication because man was created in the image and likeness of God.425

However, Rahner thinks that the challenge lies in how one should conceptualise and

communicate the reality of the Trinity. The problem arises because of some difficult

catechetical formulations of the Trinity that evolved across the centuries.426 Therefore, the

language used in describing aspects of the Trinity belongs to a certain epoch which is different

from our times. For instance, terms essential to describing the Trinity are ‘hypostasis’,

‘persons’, ‘essence’ and ‘nature’ – all complex concepts to understand. The term ‘persons’

presupposes separateness, distinctness, and uniqueness of one’s own conscious and free

activity as being different from another person. But when used to describe the Trinity, we talk

423RAHNER, Reflections on the experience of grace, 90. 424 RAHNER, Remarks on the dogmatic treatise

‘de trinitate,’ in Theological investigations Volume 4: More recent writings, Translated by Kevin Smith, London,

Darton Longman and Todd, 1966.96, 425RAHNER, What does it mean today to believe in Jesus Christ? 150. 426 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, 134-135.

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of three persons that live in communion and communication as one God. “The divine Trinity

remains determined by that mysterious threeness which we profess about God when we speak

haltingly of the Trinity of persons in God.”427

The other problem with regard to conceptualizing and communicating about the Trinity

is the problematic nature of the psychological analogy of the Trinity which gives an

explanation of the inner divine life of the Trinity by postulating that the “Father expresses

himself in Word, and with the Logos breathes a Spirit which is different from him.”428

According to Rahner, the problem subsists in the fact that the psychological analogy of

the Trinity does not explain why the Father expresses himself in the Word. It is so much

concerned about the inner divine life of the Holy Trinity almost to the point of forgetting that

the self-communication of God already expresses the very being of God. If the self-

communication of God, already explains and reveals the very self of God, there is no need

therefore for the psychological theory of God to be preoccupied with explaining the inner life

of God, which is ambiguous and not helpful to the people of today.429 It neglects the

experience of the Trinity in the economy of salvation but instead it concentrates on giving

gnostic speculations and in the process it forgets that self-communication of God already

reveals so much about the Trinitarian nature of God and the being of God. In short, Rahner

emphasizes the communication theory rather than the psychological theory to explain the

Trinity to our contemporaries.430

Rahner thus indicated that the history and economy of salvation is a good starting point

for understanding of the Trinity. This is the case because the Trinity in the history and

economy of salvation is the immanent Trinity as it is in itself. This means that in the history

and economy of salvation, God has revealed himself as the Trinitarian God who has come

427 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, 133-134. 428 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, 135-136. 429 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, 134-135. 430 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, 134-136.

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down to encounter human beings. Through this encounter between man and God, we are able

to conceive the inner life of the Trinity.431

431Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian Faith, 137.

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7. THE CHURCH – EMBODIMENT OF GOD’S SELF-COMMUNICATION

Based on the philosophical foundations presented earlier, we shall proceed to show

how Rahner draws forth a series of implications for the Christian’s way of being and

communicating in the modern world. In this chapter we will deal exclusively with way of

being Church.

7.1. The Church

In the Gospels we read that Christ personally wished that his Church be established in

this world. And for this purpose, he entrusted the responsibility to Peter, to be the head of the

apostles.432 All that the Church would do would be to fulfil the command and wish of Jesus.

Even if he is not visible to the eye but the Church would exist to fulfil Christ’s command to

the apostles. The Church would not do what she wants to do but what Christ commanded.

As such, the Church is the symbol of Jesus in the world and his teaching which proclaim the

self-communication of God. Thus, the Church is both the hearer of the word of God and the

bearer of His word. The Church is both the believer and proclaimer of the word. The church

hears and then believes and therefore proclaims. It believes that the word is eschatologically

irrevocable, unsurpassable, and victorious; because God has revealed this word through His

Son, Jesus Christ who is the Absolute self-communication of God. The word, which the

Church believes and proclaims, is definitive and ultimate because no single prophet can

surpass it and that is why we have stated that the word as given through the Son is

432 The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 16:18.

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unsurpassable.433 This word is sustained by the self-communication of God to the world and it

does not depend on the effort of man but it is effective by the power of God.434

The Church for Rahner is not only the embodiment and symbol of God’s self-

communication and presence of Christ in the world for a particular time in history, but it is

also the sign and symbol of the continuation of God’s self-communication in the world for all

time. Jesus founded the Church so that God’s self-communication could continually be made

available to the people of God for all the ages to come.435

Jesus is the final moment of God’s self-communication and through him the self-

communication of God in the world will be historically available. The intrinsic nature and

constitutive element of the acceptance of this offer of God’s self-communication to man is

faith and this is exemplified by the disciples’ faith in Jesus. The Church is a community of

faith, and this faith does not arise out of its own initiative but rather as a response to God’s

self-communication. Therefore, the Church symbolizes a mutual inter-communication, a

double movement of communication between man and God in which God communicates His

self to man and man in turn communicates his faith in God. This is a two-way communication

process in which God is the initiator and active partner.436

Communication is not only between man and God but there is also communication,

communion and intercommunication between the Church and the wider society.437 This is the

case because, the God who expresses Himself to man, in self-communication is interested in

the salvation of the whole person and for all peoples across the world and throughout history.

The presence of the Church in the world is a confirmation that man, in the fullness of his

existence as a social, interpersonal and communicative being, brings all that he is in his

433 RAHNER, The Concept of mystery in Catholic Theology, 71. 434 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 327-328. 435 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 328. 436 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 329-330. 437 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Aspects of European theology, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigation, Volume 21:

Science and Christian faith,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1988, 94.

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relationship with God, because God has made him this way, and God relates with him

precisely in the fullness of his being that is historically contextualized.438

As such, belonging to the Church is an important condition for salvation because one

benefits from God’s self-communication which is given through many graces in the Church

(although it is also true that God distributes His graces as He wishes) because of the

communion of the believers and the direction/guidance of the Church to the faithful.439

Rahner maintained that God’s graces inside and outside the Church have an “incarnational,

sacramental and ecclesiological structure.”440

We should always realise and be aware of our limitations in understanding the infinite

and boundless mercy of God who extends his own Church and His self-communication to

even include those who are in invincible error.441 Obviously, “who could presume in himself

an ability to set the boundaries of such ignorance, taking into consideration the natural

differences of peoples, lands, native talents, and so many other factors?”442

In what follows we will present other facets of Rahner’s understanding of the Church

that reveal his deeply communicational perspective on ecclesiology.

For Rahner, “the Church is the great and unique gesture of God and the accepting

gesture of humankind, in which divine love, reconciliation, and the self-communication of

God are forever manifested and imparted.”443 It is the symbol and embodiment of God’s self-

communication. It is a symbol and sign, through which God offers his self-communication to

all mankind.444

The Church as a symbol is human and has its social and juridically determined nature

because of its social and existential dimension. As a social and existential reality, the Church

is juridically constituted. However, even if it is a social and juridically constituted reality, the

438 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 343. 439RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 59. 440RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 68. 441RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 63-64. 442RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 64. 443 Karl RAHNER, Questions on the theology of sacraments, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 23: Final writings,” New York, Crossroad publication company, 1992, 191. 444 RAHNER, The word and the Eucharist, 272-273.

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Church is not an arbitrary sign. It is a symbolic reality because it makes present that which is

symbolized: the universal offer of God’s self-communication to every human being. The

Church realizes itself by rendering God and His self-communication present to the world.

God in turn makes himself present in the Church as a human and juridically constituted

symbol. For example, in the communication and exchange of responses between two spouses;

be it civil or ecclesiastical, the response that is exchanged between the spouses is symbolic and

effective because it brings about a permanent marriage bond between the two spouses.

Without this ‘yes’, the marriage bond cannot be realised. The audible expression and that

which it symbolizes are related in the same way that the body and soul are related. In the

same way, there is a close relationship between the Church as a symbol and what it

symbolizes, namely God’s self-communication offered to all and “it is the symbolic reality of

the presence of Christ, of his definitive work of salvation in the world and so of the

redemption.”445

For Rahner, the Church “contains what it signifies; that it is the primary sacrament14 of

the grace of God, which does not merely designate but really possesses what was brought

definitively into the world by Christ: the irrevocable, eschatological grace of God which

conquers triumphantly the guilt of man.”446 It is the full symbol of the triumphant mercy and

presence of Christ which makes it indestructibly holy as a whole.447 If the Church is symbolic

of the presence of Christ in the world, then it is a basic sacrament of salvation for the world. It

is a “real sign and embodiment of the salvific will of God and of the grace of Christ”448 The

Church is a “sign in history which brings to manifestation at the historical level, and thereby

also “effects,” the will of God towards the world which creates salvation and unity.”449

The Church is an institution in which there is continuation of the self-communication

of God in the Church and outside the Church through the sacraments, apostolic succession,

445 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 241. 446 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 240. 447 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 240. 448RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 73. 449 RAHNER, What is a sacrament, 142.

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and adherence to the tradition and truth that Jesus preached as revealed in the “Holy Scriptures

[...] as the Word of God.”450 It is a “world Church”451 because it is the self-communication of

God addressed to all people without discriminating against anyone. God’s self-communication

is given to all people without empirical and conscious faith. This self-communication of God

will never disappear from the world. It is in this sense that the Church is the sign of the

eschatological victory of God in the world. God’s self-communication impels the world

towards the consummation of the Kingdom of God, regardless of the problems and pitfalls that

the Church encounters.452

As such, the Church is an effective sacramental sign of God’s self-communication in

the history of the world.453 It is based on the work of the Spirit. Its members should be

cautious enough to realize that apart from the Church’s teaching office that is inspired by the

Spirit and besides God’s Spirit blowing in different other ways in the Church,454 the Spirit of

God can also work outside the confines of the Church.455 As such, even other faith

expressions have “a reference to the interior self-communication of God in every man […].”456

In this case, as the Church utilizes the “missionary character” of the means of communication,

it is important for the Church to take into consideration the fact that there is an element of the

self-communication of God that we do not know about.457

450RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 24. 451 Karl RAHNER, The position of woman in the new situation in which the Church finds herself, in Karl

RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 8: Further theology of the spiritual life,” London, Darton

Longman & Todd, 1974, 79. 452 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 321-211. 453 Cf. Karl RAHNER, On the theology of worship, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 19:

Faith and ministry,” Edward Quinn, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1983, 142-143. 454Cf. Karl RAHNER, On the theology of the council, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 5,

Later writings,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966, 252. 455 Cf. RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, 110-111. 456 Karl RAHNER, Possible courses for the theology of the future, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 13: Theology, anthropology, Christology,” Michigan, Seabury printing, 1975, 41. 457 Karl RAHNER, On the current relationship between philosophy and theology, in Karl RAHNER,

“Theological investigations, Volume 13: Theology, anthropology, Christology,” Michigan, Seabury printing,

1975, 71.

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7.2. The sacraments

It is important to understand Rahner’s philosophical notion of the symbol, in order to

understand his presentation of the sacraments. The teaching of the Church states that a

sacrament is a sign which confers grace.458 They are seven: baptism, confirmation,

reconciliation, Eucharist, holy orders, matrimony and anointing of the sick. Sacraments are

described expressly in theology as sacred signs or symbols459 of the grace of God, through

which a “sacramental communication”460 takes place between God and man. Through the

sacraments, “God freely communicates his own being and three-personal life into the

innermost being of man which opens itself out in a believing and loving yes, and this in such a

way that this communication should and can be fruitful.”461

The sacraments concretise, actualise, and constitute the symbolic reality of the Church

as the primary sacrament in which graces are communicated and received by man.

Moreover, the sacramental sign is not a pointer that signifies something outside itself.

It is, as Rahner says, a symbolic reality, that is, it is the reality it represents. It is constituted

by God, who wishes to render Himself present through the action of the minister. The

sacrament is the “cause of grace in so far as it is its ‘sign’ and that the grace – seen as coming

from God – is the cause of the sign, bringing it about and making itself present.”462 In more

technical terms, sacraments are symbols through which God’s self-communication is

explicitly represented as giving grace that is effective ex opere operato. “[A] sacrament gives

grace of its own power, and that one does not receive this grace without a sacramental

reception of the sacrament.”463 The efficacy of sacraments demands a proper disposition in

the reception of the sacraments. The right disposition is necessary for the res sacramenti - the

458 Cf. RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 71. 459 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 239. 460RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 252. 461 Karl RAHNER, The renewal of priestly ordination, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 3:

Theology of the spiritual life,” New York, Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982, 172. 462 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 240. 463Karl RAHNER, Personal and sacramental piety, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 2,

London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1963, 109.

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effects of the sacrament464 which are “peculiar grace of each individual sacrament, which

pertains to the particular sacrament in accordance with the particular characteristics and

purpose of the sacrament concerned.”465

The minister, who performs the sacrament, acts not by his own mandate but by divine

mandate. The role and action of the ministers are important because they embody the action of

God for and in the midst of His people. The minister makes the action of God present, visible

and alive. The minister is, therefore, the symbol of the action of God466 who acts ex opere

operato, that is, irrespective of the spiritual state of the minister.

Hence, the grace of God is symbolised by the sacraments, even if sacraments take

place within a juridically constituted structure of the Church that does not still affect the

symbolic reality of the sacraments.467

7.3. The Kerygmatic and Sacramental Witness through the Word

The Church’s role is to foster a deep communication between man and God and

between humans. As such there is need for continuous preaching, communicating,

interpreting, and maintaining the truth of scripture so that the Church’s communication of the

Gospel should not differ but correspond to the Kerygmatic witness of the apostles. This duty

of preaching and communicating the good news is primarily the work of priests in the

Church.468

May we not then describe the priest as the man to whom the word has been entrusted? Is he not quite

simply the minister of the word? But of course we must state more clearly what word is here in question.

The word which is entrusted to the priest as gift and mission is the efficacious word of God himself.469

464 Cf. RAHNER, Personal and sacramental piety, 113. 465RAHNER, Personal and sacramental piety, 110. 466 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 242. 467 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 242. 468 Cf. Karl RAHNER, The situation of the Society of Jesus since its difficulties with the Vatican, in Karl

RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 23: Final writings,” New York, Crossroads publishing company,

1992, 103-104. 469RAHNER, Priest and poet, 304.

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The communication ministry of the priest is about the proclamation of the Word of

God. The Word is the eternal Logos. It is the Word that God speaks to his people. The

Word enlightens the life of man.470

The word of God must ‘run on’, but it must be borne by those who are sent. We call the messenger and

the herald of the word of God the priest. Therefore what he says is a proclamation, a kerygma, not

primarily nor ultimately a doctrine. He is handing on a message. His word, in so far as it is his word, is a

signpost pointing to the word spoken by another. He must be submerged and unseen behind the message

he delivers. As priest he is not primarily a theologian, but a preacher.471

The Word is efficacious not only because it produces an effect of salvation on the

hearers but also because “it is really present. It is present in virtue of being proclaimed. The

word first translates the love of God into man’s sphere of existence as love, to which man can

respond. The word is consequently the efficacy of love. It is an efficacious word.”472

There are many efficacious words spoken at the command of Christ. These words are of varying efficacy in themselves and in the men who hear them. When is the most concentrated, the most effective word

spoken? When is everything said at once, so that nothing more has to be said, because with this word

everything is really there? Which is the word of the priest, of which all others are mere explanations and

variations? It is the word which the priest speaks when, quietly, completely absorbed into the person of

the incarnate Word of the Father, he says: ‘This is my Body . . . this is the chalice of my Blood . . .’ Here

only the word of God is spoken. Here is pronounced the efficacious word.473

Moreover, sacraments are linked and related to the word. When we talk about the

word, we are referring to the word of God in the preaching ministry of the Church, which

basically is the word of man in as far as it is human beings who are charged with the

responsibility of preaching the word of God. It is through the lips of human beings that the

word of God is preached and proclaimed through God’s divine command and it is the word of

God on the lips of the Church.474

The Church is the believer, proclaimer, communicator and also hearer of the word.

Together, the Word and the sacraments constitute the Church, which means “the power to

preach the word of God by the authority of God and of his Christ, and the power to administer

470RAHNER, Priest and poet, 304-306. 471RAHNER, Priest and poet, 305-306. 472RAHNER, Priest and poet, 306. 473 RAHNER, Priest and poet, 307. 474 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 253.

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the sacraments to men are the two basic powers of the Church which are constitutive of its

essence.”475 We then have the word as such which is proclaimed by the Church.

They constitute the essence of the Church because the word renders present what it

proclaims and the Word is very important because it is a constitutive element for the

sacramental action. The word is communicated to us by God himself, and it is Christ who

speaks (communicates) in us. The Word that Jesus communicates to us is active and effects

what it signifies, and that is why, the word is a symbol in which a higher reality becomes

present or is expressed.476

Thus, within the Church, there is need to not only take up the theology of preaching but

also the theology of the annunciation of the Word of God. In this theology, revelation and the

self-communication of God are presented as the revelatory action and event. It is through this

action and event that God bestows his graces on men “uttering his word in it and for it, as an

inner moment of this action on man – or, to put it biblically, the action is the word, because

God’s word must produce what it says.”477 The word of God is the symbol of the self-

communication of God because through it, God discloses and communicates himself to his

people.478

The utterer of the word is the Church and through the Church, Jesus communicates His

message to the people. The word is uttered by the Church for the salvation of man. Salvation,

however, is the work of God, because it is a result of his self-communication to man which

comes through the medium of the human word.479

The word is the “spiritual self-communication of God to the creature, especially as this

grace is not this or that created reality, but the real self-communication of God in ‘uncreated’

grace […].”480 The spiritual self-communication of God to man, however is transcendental

475 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 254. 476 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 255-257. 477 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 256. 478 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 255-258. 479 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 257. 480 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 258.

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and cannot easily be brought to the level of man’s reflective consciousness where he can

become aware of himself as a recipient and believer of God’s self-communication.481

Rahner states that the Word is exhibitive of two things. First, the word is exhibitive as

an event of grace, which means that the Word is an occasion for the reception of grace for the

world and the “the communication of the Spirit (the divine pneuma).”482

Secondly the Word in the Church is the eschatological and continuing presence of the

salvation of God for the whole world. The fact that the Word is in principle exhibitive means

that it effects and renders present that which it signifies.483

This exhibitive character of the Word transcends different faith confessions and is

based on two principles. First, the Church is the proclaimer of the word and secondly, the

Word is proclaimed at the command and behest of Christ.484

There are different situations in which the word is pronounced but the basic

characteristic is that there are various levels of significance of the Word for the speaker and

the listener in the Church. For example, the Word pronounced for catechesis will not have the

same character and significance as the Word that is used to inform the penitent that his/her

sins are forgiven in the sacrament of penance which obviously is of higher significance. The

same can be said of the words of the sacrament of penance which do not have the same

significance as the Word that pronounces the death of Jesus which obviously is of higher

significance.485

The Word exists through an event of grace and it is this event of grace that gives the

word it’s exhibitive and saving character in varying degrees depending on the way in which it

is hearkened to in the concrete human situation. For example, the sacrament is a specific

word-event and the basic essence of a sacrament is the word, which is the common nature of

481 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 259. 482 Karl RAHNER, Nature and grace, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations Volume 4: More recent

writings,” Translated by Kevin Smith, London, Darton Longman and Todd, 1966, 179. 483 Cf. Karl RAHNER, The point of departure in theology for determining the nature of the priestly office, in Karl

RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 12: Confrontations II,” London, Longman & Todd, 1974, 34-35. 484 Cf. RAHNER, What is a sacrament, 139. 485 Cf. RAHNER, What is a sacrament, 140.

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all the seven sacraments. The sacraments of matrimony and penance, however, consist merely

in the word because they are sacraments that are enacted in words alone. If we say that the

word is the essence of the sacraments that does not diminish the importance of the use of

matter and element, in the performance of the sacraments.486

Furthermore, the “word should be understood simply as that which is sustained in

grace as the self-communication of God. […]. The word of the gospel is always sustained by

a grace which is de facto effective by the power of God and not merely by good will on man’s

part […].”487 The sustaining power of the word of God does not depend on man as such but

depends on God’s self-communication which acts as the power that can sustain it.488

It is God who sustains the word because the “word has been spoken by God. He has

come in grace and in the word. Both belong together: without grace, without the

communication of God himself to the creature, the word would be empty: without the word,

grace would not be present to us as spiritual and free persons in a conscious way. The word is

the bodiliness of his grace.”489 We return to Rahner’s underlying thesis of the inter-

dependence of spirit and matter, grace and nature, the a posteriori and the a priori elements in

knowing and being Christian in the World.

7.4. Liturgy

For Rahner, the liturgy is the official prayer in which “it is the Father to whom we pray

through the Son, and this Father is simply called Deus.”490 The liturgy is a communitarian

prayer in which many people participate. The celebration of sacraments is in fact the

celebration of the Church’s liturgy.491

486 Cf. RAHNER, What is a sacrament, 138. 487 RAHNER, What is a sacrament, 143. 488 Cf. RAHNER, What is a sacrament, 143-144. 489 RAHNER, Priest and poet, 304. 490RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, 149. 491Cf. RAHNER, Forgotten truths concerning the sacrament of penance, 161.

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There are different liturgies in the Catholic Church. For example, there is the liturgy of

the Word, a liturgy of the Eucharist and the liturgy of penance. Rahner considers it important

that the words of the liturgy be read in modern languages that are easily understood by

people.492

Once one is clear in one’s mind about the fact that at a closer view the liturgy of the Church has never

been, nor can ever be, carried out purely in Latin, then the only serious problem can be that concerning

the proper proportion of Latin and modern languages in the liturgy. This presupposes, of course, that

there are no good reasons for wanting to exclude the use of Latin from the Liturgy of the Latin

Church.493

Using Latin as the only language may sound difficult because not everyone can

understand Latin. This is contrary to the Church’s efforts “not only of the liturgical movement

but also of the official Church authorities themselves are pressing for a participatio actuosa of

all the faithful in the Church’s worship.”494 In so doing, “it will lead to a liturgy which can

really be a liturgy of the People of God here and now.”495

There is also need of the “adaptation of the liturgy to the spirit and culture” of a

continent or country, or to the cultures of the people of different regions.496It is meant to

reflect the social, economic and cultural life of the people or community. That is why Rahner

stated that “when and if the liturgy as such is still taken seriously it is in principle and

obviously an affair of the community.”497 It is in this sense that we can speak of “the liturgy

as the real expression of a community’s life and not merely an officially conducted ritual

which the individual pious Christian attends […].498 The purpose of the liturgy among other

reasons is that the one who participates in its celebration can be helped in Christian living.

The aim of the liturgy is that one may love God more, may become more believing, more

hoping, more loving to God and man, may worship God better ‘in spirit and in truth’.499 The

492RAHNER, Latin in the Church, 387. 493 RAHNER, Latin in the Church, 388. 494 RAHNER, Latin in the liturgy, 391-392. 495RAHNER, Practical Theology within the totality of theological disciplines, 114. 496 RAHNER, Fundamental Questions: Christian living formerly and today, 5 497RAHNER, The relationship between personal and communal spirituality and the work in the orders, 229. 498RAHNER, Modern piety and the experience of retreats, 148. 499 RAHNER, Fundamental Questions: Christian living formerly and today, 6.

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liturgy must be expressive of the joys and hopes of the community that has gathered and the

Church authorities ought to encourage a “participatio actuosa of all the faithful in the

Church’s worship.”500

500 RAHNER, Latin in the Church, 392.

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8. THE MISSION – SHARING THE GOOD NEWS

God’s self-communication in its various forms was not meant to remain a preserved

privilege of the people who were initially chosen to hear the message. It was meant to reach

the ends of the earth, to touch the hearts and minds of every man and woman across the

centuries so that the Good News becomes an opportunity for all humans to experience. The

missionary dimension is an intrinsic aspect of being Christian – similar to the joy of

announcing the birth of a child as intrinsic to birthing it. The first and most important method

of communicating the Good News is by living it through a profound Christian spirituality. In

this, Mary and the Saints are outstanding examples. The second method is by communicating

the Good News via language, culture and various forms of media. The third method of being

missionary is through dialogue within the church and with all those who do not share the

Catholic Faith. The fourth witness is through death and martyrdom. We shall study Rahner’s

views on each of these forms of communicating God’s self-communication beyond

boundaries.

8.1. Witnessing with one’s life

The Church has been given the task of witnessing to the self-communication of God to

every man and woman as an event, recipient and addressee of the self-communication of

God.501 It is important, however, that as the Church bears witness to the self-communication

of God, she ought to be aware that “a further peculiarity of the experience of God today

501 Cf. Karl RAHNER, The ‘commandment’ of love, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 5,

Later writings,” London, Darton, Longmann & Todd, 1966, 376.

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consists surely in the distinctive character of the medium in which it is communicated in the

present. Every experience of God has its medium of communication […].”502

The medium can simply be a silent testimony of Christians living their calling to the

best of their ability. The Church communicates and gives its witness not only through the

“existence of the saint with his wisdom and contemplation, but rather [through] that of the

man whose life does not appeal to our feelings, who bears responsibility for himself in silence

and solitude, yet who exists selflessly for the sake of others.”503

Furthermore, the primary witness to the self-communication of God is given through

the love for one’s neighbour.504 The love of one’s neighbor is extremely important, especially

for intercommunication between individuals which is a witness to the self-communication of

God that is given to each and every one. But this love of neighbor presupposes a way of

looking at the world and everyday life as already engraced, already touched by the intimate

communication of God.505

8.2. Witnessing of Mary

The teenager, Mary of Nazareth is a model par excellence for every Christian as

regards her simple and sincere witnessing. We have the basis to make this statement because

of her unique role in God’s Absolute Self-communication in history, or as Rahner put it:

“Mary is only intelligible in terms of Christ.”506 This is the stated in the Church dogma of the

Immaculate Conception, and in the Gospel of Luke that reveals her historic cooperation in

becoming the Mother of the Son of God.

Regarding the first, Rahner explains how God predestined her from her birth.

502 Karl RAHNER, The experience of God today, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 11:

Confrontations,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1974, 161-162. (Italics mine) 503 RAHNER, The experience of God today, 162. 504RAHNER, The experiment with man, 220. 505 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Christian humanism, in Karl RAHNER, The Church and the sacraments: Volume 9 of

Quaestiones disputatae, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder & Herder, 1963, 200. 506 Karl RAHNER, The Immaculate Conception, “Theological Investigations”, Volume 1, Chapter 6, 202.

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God can of himself i.e. prior to a man’s actual decision, absolutely and effectively will a definite good

act of a man’s freedom, and yet this act does not thereby cease to be free, nor does it follow that on

account of the creature’s freedom God merely has foreknowledge of this free action just because it

happens and not also because he wills it. In this way God attains his will, and man does freely what God

of himself has unconditionally willed. For God is He who as God can bestow freedom itself upon the

creature, freedom even before Himself. Why he can do this, how he does it – this is a mystery of

blinding darkness. Let us for convenience call this fact predestination, carefully excluding everything

fatalistic, unfree, deterministic from this theological concept. Thus we may say: Mary, as the Holy one

and she who has been most perfectly Redeemed – her personal free consent [at the Annunciation]

includes both these – is already predestined in God’s will with respect to Christ, the Incarnate Redeemer

of the generation of Adam.507

In order to fulfil her role as the mother of Jesus, she was specially prepared from the

moment of her conception. The Church holds that: “the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first

instant of her conception, has been, by a special grace and privilege of Almighty God, […]

preserved and exempted from every stain of original sin, is revealed by God […].508 Rahner

agrees that all of us are predestined for a certain role in God’s plan for the world, but we, like

Mary, never know it. Only she was privileged to have it revealed to her at the time of the

Annunciation.

The Self-communication of God in the life of Mary is manifested in the words of the

angel Gabriel: “Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you.” (Luke 1:28) Mary experiences the

proactive nature of God’s self-communication that leaves Mary “troubled”. The news that she

would give birth to a son who will be called “Jesus” without “knowing man” is even more

perplexing. Humbled in her inability to comprehend the mystery, she bows to God’s plan that

will change the course of her life, and the history generations yet to come. At the moment of

her ‘yes’, her “Be it done unto me according to your Word” the most intimate communication

of God in the history of humanity is effected.

Her objective service, by means of which her bodily reality is delivered to the Word, is also her

subjective action, one in the other. Her faith is called blessed because it admitted the Word into the

region of the flesh, and her bodily motherhood is not only a biological occurrence but the supreme

action of faith, through which she becomes blessed.509

507 RAHNER, The Immaculate Conception, 209. 508 RAHNER, The Immaculate Conception, 200. 509 Karl RAHNER, The interpretation of the dogma of the Assumption in “Theological Investigations”, Vol. 1,

Chapter 7, 217.

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Thus, Mary becomes the real symbol of her Son, the Absolute Self-communication of God

who is now incarnate in her virgin womb. In Mary, we have the combination of the free grace

of God and His will and the freedom of Mary to accept or refuse the role that God is offering

her.510

God’s absolute and unconditional will is that the Redeemer should come from Mary and her free Fiat,

his will is that she should be the most perfectly Redeemed in this free Motherhood itself. For here

‘office’511 and personal holiness must coincide. If, then, God wills Christ and his Mother in the plan of

predestination, he wills her as the Holy one in this single predestination: not just in any similar

predestination, but in Christ’s, and thus in his first, original plan.512

Mary is therefore an example of the continuous self-communication and grace that

exists between God and man. She was assisted continuously by God’s communication in

grace from the time of her conception.513 Thanks to her unique role in the history of our

salvation, Mary has never stopped been venerated across the generations through diverse

forms of devotion, piety, poetry, art, music, dance and liturgy.514

8.3. The saints and models of Christian witnessing

When we talk about the communion of the saints, Rahner explains, we are not dealing

with a media strategy where holy people are presented to the world. We are talking about an

‘objective reality’, a real communion of people who struggled to mirror God’s self-

communication to the world. They are acknowledged as saints because of “their existence in

blessedness, their exemplary status, the fact that they are worthy of veneration, their ability to

intercede for us with God.”515

510 RAHNER, The immaculate conception, 209. 511 By ‘office’ Rahner means “essential function in the public saving history of God’s People” Cf. RAHNER, The

immaculate conception, 205.

“512 RAHNER, The immaculate conception, 210. 513 RAHNER, The immaculate conception, 200. 514 RAHNER, The immaculate conception, 201-202. 515RAHNER, The veneration of the saints as an existential and theological problem, 5.

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The communion of saints does not only refer to those who have died but also to the

“nature of the Church, which is the sanctified communion of the members of God’s

household.”516 It is in this sense that we can talk of a communion of saints which includes the

fact that the members of the Church ought to suffer for each other and even be ready to die for

each other. “Thus it becomes possible to have a Communion of Saints in suffering for one

another, so that one can say to the other: thus death is at work in us, but life in you (2 Co

4:12).”517

Furthermore, the communion of saints also refers to the “one ‘concrete’ existence in

which we consummate our own spiritual, final liberty, is itself involved in a dynamic history

which sometime ends in transfiguration, in a reality not only of the spiritual person, but also of

his common sphere of being.”518

In addition, the saints are the models of Christian witnessing and that is why we pray

to them to intercede for us in our day to day life. This is qualitatively different from a mere

honour given by secular society to great human beings who are deceased.519 The saints are the

truly “completed end-result to the ‘triumphant’ Church”520 insofar as they are victorious in

their struggle to be the true Church – the symbolic reality of God’s presence in the world.

Saints are living (resurrected and interrelating) members with those of us who are still

alive on earth. Through prayer and intercession, we enter into communion with them and they

with us. The current process for the postulation of saints, with its scientific rigour that includes

the performance of miracles as a condition for their beatification and sainthood, is a powerful

testimony to the fact that this communication to build communion is indeed alive. On the basis

of this active and living communion with a host of saints, “the mission to praise the grace of

God as something which has come and conquered contains the obligation of the Church to call

516RAHNER, Forgotten truths concerning the sacrament of penance, 139. 517RAHNER, The Eucharist and suffering, 170. 518RAHNER, The body in the order of salvation, 89. 519RAHNER, The eternal significance of the humanity of Jesus for our relationship with God, 39. 520 RAHNER, The Church of the saints, 98.

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herself the one who is holy throughout the ages, and to make this statement about herself in a

concrete way as seen in the prize of the Saints given by name.”521

8.4. Witnessing through human and social development

The consequences of Rahner’s philosophical point of departure that is the basis for an

anthropology that opens up to Infinity can be witnessed in the attention to society as well. One

important area of witnessing to the self-communication of God in the world is the obligation

of Christian involvement in social development to promote love, truth, justice, peace and

equality. In response to a criticism from his student J. B. Metz that his theology was not socio-

political enough, Rahner replies:

[I]t 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. […] Therefore, I believe that my theology and that

of Metz are not necessarily contradictory.522

Thanks to his openness to Metz, he opened the way for a more action oriented

spirituality by stating that man is not only a hearer of the Word but a doer of the Word as well.

Christian spirituality also involves a ‘praxis’ of solidarity with one’s neighbour.523

Furthermore, he states that this involvement is the special vocation of the laity. While

priests are dedicated to pastoral ministry and consecrated religious seek to realize the kingdom

values personal piety, education and evangelization, it is only the Christian laity who are fully

encouraged to participate in party politics for socio-political change. The official church,

therefore, has the task of engaging in speaking the truth as “prophetic instruction in social

criticism” that must encourage individual Christians to commit themselves to greater social

521RAHNER, The Church of the saints, 97-98. 522 Karl 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. 523 Cf. Titus F. GUENTHER, Rahner and Metz: Transcendental Theology as Political Theology, Boston,

University Press of America, 1994, 271.

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and political responsibility.524 Rahner suggests that the Church’s work is to inspire, motivate,

and move groups of Christians within it to organize themselves in the service of the world, and

in their following of Christ who came “to give the good news to the poor and to set the

captives free”.525 Thus all members of the pilgrim Church, those in authority and those who

obey, both clergy and laity, religious and lay strive for their own sanctification not apart from,

but fully immersed in their efforts to sanctify the world wherever they are situated. They are

called to become the ‘Good News’ of the Self-communication of God to people in their

vicinities especially the most disadvantaged.526

8.5. Witnessing through language, music, art and media

Another way in which the Church can witness to the self-communication of God is

through preaching, a task and duty of ordained ministers. The homilies are the medium

through which the word of God and his revelation to man are communicated to believers. In

this regard, Rahner suggested that the “mechanics of communication”527 and homiletics can be

improved in the Church by having a new discipline and theology that will specifically focus

on the area of preaching the word of God.528

“Language as such is associated exclusively with the nature of man. Indeed, it is

precisely by speaking that he fulfils his human nature [...].”529 Through language man

understands God’s self-communication to him which is given through verbal

communication530 and by the use of language, man is also able to communicate, is able to

enter into an I-Thou relationship with God and other human beings. As such, “language is not

524 Cf. RAHNER, The function of the Church as Critic of Society, 243-44 525 The Revised Standard Version, Luke, 4:18. 526 Cf. Jon SOBRINO, Karl Rahner and Liberation Theology, “Theology Digest” 32 (1985): 257-60. 527 Karl RAHNER, Religious enthusiasm and the experience of grace, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 16: Experience of the spirit: Source of theology,” Translated by David Morland, New

York, Crossroad publishing company, 1979, 49. 528 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 255. 529RAHNER, Latin as a Church language, 367-368. 530 Cf. RAHNER, Jesus Christ in the non-Christian religions, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 17: Jesus, man and the church,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1981, 48.

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so much a supplementary means of human inter-communication, [...] it is a constitutive

element of human nature to such an extent that we cannot really conceive man without it.”531

As such, when we speak about man, we are basically speaking about his existence and

each one therefore has a right to speak one’s own language and that is why apart from the

plurality of peoples in the world, we also have the plurality of cultures and languages and all

this is a positive occurrence in the world. That is why:

The actively proclaiming Church is the Church which speaks the many languages of many peoples and

which, without losing her unity in the object and exercise of that word, is also sent out by a divine

charism into the pluralism of languages without being permitted or forced to fear that she will thereby

lose the oneness of her message either in its object or exercise.”532

God himself through the Holy Spirit helps in preventing the dividing potential of the

languages, so that, God’s self-communication and message can be given and interpreted by all

people in their own historical languages.533 That is why; St. Paul did not justify the use of a

language that people did not understand during the liturgy. That is why he forbade speaking

in tongues when there was no interpreter (1 Corinthians 14:1-25). Having said that, we know

that every language has its advantages and disadvantages and to deny such an assertion would

be “naive nationalism.”534

Having highlighted the importance of language, it is imperative as well to state the fact

that transcendence, being and God are essentially indefinable and this raises the difficulty but

not impossibility of communicating about the divine realities.535 As such, the term

transcendence is a mystery because it is a term that refers to God, who is transcendental and

essentially indefinable. God is a being who is always questionable and human beings are

always incapable of fully communicating about him. He is a question that never fully receives

an exhaustive answer.536 God is a Being that is close to us but at the same time, belongs to the

realm that is outside of us because He is Absolute transcendence and He is Holy Mystery. He

531RAHNER, Latin as a Church language, 368. 532RAHNER, Latin as a Church language, 368. 533RAHNER, Latin as a Church language, 368-369. 534RAHNER, Latin as a Church language, 371. 535 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 71. 536 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 71.

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is mystery because he is a Being that cannot be encompassed by a pre-apprehension, hence He

cannot be defined.”537

Revelation in which God objectifies and manifests his will through a finite word or a historical

occurrence remains open-ended, capable of revision, provisional. Something that as such is merely finite

in itself alone is of its very nature incapable of signifying and mediating to us a divine communication

which cannot be superseded. The communication always remains provisional in view of the infinity of

God’s possibilities and the sovereignty of his freedom. If, however, God communicates to us his self-

promise as one that is irrevocable and definitive, then the created reality through which this takes place

cannot simply stand at the same distance from God as other created realities.538

Nevertheless, even though transcendence and God is incommunicable, preaching about

God is still effective because God’s grace gives it the efficacy. Although man may be unable

to fully grasp and communicate about God, it is God Himself who, through His self-

communication in grace, predestines the whole world towards salvation and not towards

perdition.539

Besides spoken and written language, another way in which transcendence can be

communicated is through the use of images in the Church. There are two ways of looking at

images. The first way is “more Aristotelian, and treats the image as an outward sign of a

reality distinct from the image, a merely pedagogical indication provided for man as a being

who knows through the senses.”540 We can here cite the example of the self-communication

of God which is offered to man. Man perceives it through the sense of hearing and seeing.541

The use of the image here is pedagogical and is used to teach. There is here a distinction

between the image and the reality that it wants to portray or communicate. The image in this

case helps us to communicate an idea. For example, “we cannot perceive white unless there is

something white in our field of vision.”542

537 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 65. 538 Karl RAHNER, Jesus Christ – The meaning of life, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigation, Volume 21:

Science and Christian faith,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1988, 218. 539 Cf. RAHNER, What is a sacrament, 143. 540 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 243. 541 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 154. 542Krisanna M. SCHEITER, Images, appearances, and phantasia in Aristotle, in George BOYS-STONES -

Christof RAPP, “Phronesis,” 57 (2012) 260.

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Secondly, the “image participates in the reality of the exemplar - brings about the real

presence of the exemplar which dwells in the image.”543 For example, the sacred images bring

about the real presence of the exemplar in varying degrees. Sacred images like statues,

pictures, sacraments and the Logos bring about the reality that they symbolize in varying

degrees. The Logos and a picture, for instance, do not bring about the presence of the

exemplar in the same way. The Logos is more powerful as an image and sign than a mere

picture because Logos represents an invisible reality in a more powerful way because it is

God’s utterance and His eternal image.544

Nevertheless, “Christian tradition holds, namely, that revelation and God’s gracious

self-communication happen fundamentally through the word and through the hearing of the

message conveyed by words.”545

Rahner also regarded the role of poets as important because they “speak primordial

words in powerful concentration. If they utter these words, then they are beautiful. For real

beauty is the pure appearance of reality as brought about principally in the word.”546

Music as well is important because it expresses the glory of God in heaven and that

shows why it should be sung not only here on earth but also in heaven. Music “is full of

mystery. Nevertheless, perhaps lovers of music who are at the same time theologians might

give a thought to the fact that God revealed himself in word and not in purely tonal music. But

in heaven, they will reply, there reigns the sound of songs of praise and not merely the

recounting of the glory of God […].547

For Rahner, music, dance and art in general help man to rest after long hours of

work.548 Art and music lead the listener and the composer “to be lost in the infinite.”549 Art

543 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 243. 544 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 243. 545 Cf. RAHNER, The Theology of the religious meaning of images, 154. 546 RAHNER, Priest and poet, 271. 547 RAHNER, Priest and poet, 272. 548 Karl RAHNER, Theological remarks on the problem of leisure, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 4, More recent writings,” in Karl RAHNER, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974,

387. 549 RAHNER, Priest and poet, 298.

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should not just be pursued for good feeling or enjoyment or for fame; otherwise it loses its true

sense of purpose. It ought to help man make progress in realizing of his role as a re-creator of

the world under the guidance of the Holy Spirit who makes all things new (Rev 21:5). It is the

Holy Spirit that helps the artist to transcend himself to the point of being able to engage in art.

As such, when one communicates through art, he or she transcends oneself and one’s spirit.550

Rahner also considered the media as important for the different dioceses of the world.

For him, this is important for linking up and connecting of the different organs of the diocese.

That is why there is need for “the influencing of public opinion, the management of mass

media […].551 The Church as such cannot remain detached from the world as it is. We live in

a world in which there is so much of “technical achievement, of atomic power, of automation,

of the ‘ABC weapons’, of the media of mass communication […].552

As such, the Church too benefits from the media and uses it for education and

evangelization. This is despite the dangers that are associated with the media that are often

used for propaganda and the promotion of half-truths and lies in the different means of mass

communication.553

8.6. Dialogue

A third way of witnessing to God’s self-communication is through dialogue. This

means dialogue within the church, with other Christians and with unbelievers or people of

other faiths.

Dialogue within the Catholic Church herself is of prime importance. There should be

“a free, charismatic element in the Church. [...].”554

The Church is not a kind of totalitarian State on the religious plane. The Church must not imagine that

everything functions best in her when everything is as far as possible directed in an institutionalized

550Cf. RAHNER, Priest and poet, 320. 551RAHNER, The bishop in the Church: The episcopal office, 340. 552RAHNER, The Christian in his world, 89. 553RAHNER, Christian Virtues: On truthfulness, 243. 554RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 252.

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manner and this from the very summit of the Church, when obedience has become the virtue which

completely replaces everything else, including all individual initiative and any questioning about the

urgings of the Spirit and individual responsibility-in brief, the virtue which replaces completely any idea

of an independent charism coming directly from God.555

As such, the Church ought to be pluralistic, public, open, dialogic and ecumenical.

The dialogue must not necessarily annul “the universal demands of a world-view [...]”556 but it

must be such that promotes an atmosphere where people can “speak clearly and simply – in

short, reasonably [...] because only in this way can one speak with each other.”557

The Church’s efforts for dialogue do not mean that the Church should be exclusively

democratic or charismatic.558 The Church is both charismatic and hierarchical and these two

elements should be properly integrated because they both exist because of God’s self-

communication.559 At the same time, there is need to avoid “a cowardly relativistic dialogue

in which the partners no longer take their own convictions seriously [...]. It means dialogue in

genuine freedom and ‘toleration’ and co-existence [...].”560

This kind of dialogue will lead to the development and rising of a “collective and

cosmic atheism, but also of a world Church really coming into being to afford universal access

to God to all history and to all men.”561 This ‘universal access to God’ through dialogue will

lead the Catholic Church to a genuine openness about what is common and what is different in

the different ecumenical faith professions.

The world-Church as such has appeared on the scene and it now tells the world –inexplicably marvelous

and yet taken for granted – that, with all the depths of its history and all the grim possibilities of its

future, it is embraced by God and his will, through whose unfathomable love God himself in his self-

communication offers himself to the world as ground, power and goal, and of himself makes this offer

effective in the freedom of history.562

555RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 253. 556 Karl RAHNER, Dialogue within a pluralistic society, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations: Volume

6, Concerning Vatican Council II,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1969, 36. 557 RAHNER, Dialogue within a pluralistic society, 42. 558 Cf. RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 246. 559 Cf. RAHNER, On the theology of the council, 254. 560 RAHNER, Dialogue within a pluralistic society, 36. 561 RAHNER, The position of woman in the new situation in which the Church finds herself, 79. 562 Karl RAHNER, The abiding significance of the second Vatican Council, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological

investigations, Volume 20: Concern for the Church,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1981, 102.

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Ecumenical dialogue is also necessary, wherein the Catholic Church seeks a common

ground with other Christian Churches. For example, the Catholic Church can focus on the

sacraments of baptism and Eucharist which are also accepted by some Protestant theologians,

rather than deal with the five disputed sacraments of penance, marriage, confirmation, holy

orders and anointing of the sick. (Protestant theologians dispute that these five sacraments are

not scripturally based and that they are not explicitly instituted by Jesus.)

As we have already stated, the self-communication of God is given to all people

without discrimination. As such, the Church must also witness to the self-communication of

God, with respectful dialogue with people of other faiths. To identify people who belong to

these groups, and to help Christians enter into a dialogue with them, Rahner uses the term,

“anonymous Christians.”563 This term is based on Rahner’s philosophical foundations and

Christian anthropology dealt with in preceding chapters: God’s self-communication in grace is

given to every human being, even to non-Christians who implicitly accept Christ’s grace in

their lives and those who are conscientious of their moral activities and judgements. Grace

therefore is not the monopoly for Roman Catholics but it is given to each and every man as an

event of God’s self-communication.

Anonymous Christianity refers to the fact that there is a possibility that some people

can have transcendental experiences, which are not necessarily explicit or mediated in a

religious manner.564 This concept portrays the fact that transcendental experience does not

always limit itself to the confines of false or true religion but can take place in individual

persons and sometimes in profane history of humankind “which does not of itself offer us any

certain interpretation regarding salvation and damnation.”565

The dialogue between Catholics and anonymous Christians ought to be brotherly so

that both groups can arrive at “concrete, clear and practicable imperatives [...].”566 Such inter-

563 Karl RAHNER, The present situation of Catholic theology, in Karl RAHNER, Science and Christian faith, 21

(1998) 135. 564 Cf. RAHNER, The present situation of Catholic theology, 135. 565 RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, 102. 566RAHNER, Dogmatic notes on ‘Ecclesiological piety,’ 339.

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faith dialogue can be “achieved by a renewal of the Catholic Church herself.”567 Once the

Church has renewed itself especially in its openness towards other faith groups, she will be

able to “reach a mutual understanding with unbelievers even qua unbelievers about the natural

part of the actual constitution of the nature of man, about his dignity as a person and the

‘natural moral law’ resulting from it.”568

It is true that there are forces in the world today that are even hostile to the Catholic

Church. Nevertheless, the Church ought to be open towards such forces in order to be able to

“understand their existence (since this cannot be simply acknowledged), in order to bear with

and overcome the annoyance of their opposition [...]”569 These religious forces constitute the

religious pluralism that exists in the world today and it is unlikely “that the religious pluralism

which exists in the concrete situation of Christians will disappear in the foreseeable future.”570

Religious pluralism includes those who deny religion and mystery in general, and advocate for

a secularised society.571 This denial against religion and mystery is a result of man’s lack of

receptivity, submissiveness and openness of the spirit.572

It is the openness of man as spirit to being in the absolute (that which provides the basis for the being of

all that is). It is that feeling, that initial perception, in which we accept with our minds the mystery of

which we are conscious as the foundation and support of all reality, and which we call God, the unique

truth of truths which bears its own meaning within itself.573

Pluralism, lack of openness and denial of religion in general goes against the principle of

Christian religion that “it is the religion, the one and only valid revelation of the one living

God.”574 The opposition to the Church and divisions in the one Church of Christ may not end

and in fact, “we must even be prepared for a heightening of this antagonism to Christian

567RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 244. 568 RAHNER, The dignity and freedom of man, 242. 569 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 115. 570 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 133. 571 Cf. RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 116-117. 572 Cf. Karl RAHNER, On truthfulness, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 7: Further

Theology of the spiritual life 1,” London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1971, 233-234. 573 RAHNER, On truthfulness, 233. 574 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 116.

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existence. [...] And this is part of what the Christian must expect and must learn to

endure.”575

And so everybody today is determined by the intercommunication of all those situations of life which

affect the whole world. Every religion which exists in the world is – just like all cultural possibilities and

actualities of other people – a question posed, and a possibility offered, to every person. And just as one

experiences someone else’s culture in practice as something relative to one’s own and as something

existentially demanding, so it is also involuntarily with alien religions. They have become part of one’s

own existential situation – no longer merely theoretically but in the concrete – and we experience them therefore as something which puts the absolute claim of our own Christian faith into question .576

It is generally accepted Christianity that the apostolic age was the end of the binding

force of mosaic religion and other religions like Judaism. Hence forth, Christianity became

the absolute religion and the only religion. But this absoluteness is only with regard to

destination, namely that Christianity is necessary for salvation.577 This assertion is based on

the fact that:

There is no salvation apart from Christ [...]. Every human being is really and truly exposed to the

influence of divine, supernatural grace which offers an interior union with God and by means of which

God communicates himself whether the individual takes up an attitude of acceptance or of refusal

towards this grace.578

Notwithstanding the necessity of the Church for salvation, Rahner stated that there are

some non-Christian religions which are lawful while other religions are unlawful. “A lawful

religion means here an institutional religion whose ‘use’ by man at a certain period can be

regarded on the whole as a positive means of gaining the right relationship to God and thus for

the attaining of salvation, a means which is therefore positively included in God’s plan of

salvation.”579 A lawful religion ceases when “a certain religion is not only accompanied in its

concrete appearance by something false and humanly corrupted but also makes this an

explicitly and consciously adopted element – an explicitly declared condition of its nature

[...].”580

575 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 133. 576 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 117. 577 Cf. RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 120. 578 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 123. 579 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 125. 580 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 127.

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Non-Christian religions then, even though incomplete, rudimentary, and partially debased, can be

realities within a positive history of salvation and revelation. They are able admittedly to overcome their

ambivalence (between objectification of God’s first and last self-communication to the world as grace

and revelation on the one hand and the incompleteness and debasement of this objectification to the

point of an absolute existential rejection of God’s self-communication on the other hand) and to reach a

final discernment of spirits only in the light of Jesus Christ as eschatological Word of God.581

However in the absence of the consciously adopted corruption of religion, the non-

Christian religions are only limited because of the presence of man’s original sin and the

depravity of the human person notwithstanding the assistance that man gets from God’s self-

communication in grace. The positivity in the non-Christian religions refers to the

“supernatural, grace-filled elements”582 which are found in these religions.

In the same vein, it is not right to say that all those who are outside official and public

Christianity are evil or sinful. It would be equally wrong to think that God’s communication

of his grace and his wish for universal salvation would not extend to those living outside

official Christianity. This is the case because “grace has not only been offered even outside the

Christian Church (to deny this would be the error of Jansenism) but also that, in a great many

cases at least, grace gains the victory in man’s free acceptance of it, this being again the result

of grace.”583

If we can recognize elements of positivity and truth in the non-Christian religions, we

can conclude that even to such religions, God has given his self-communication. Hence the

non-Christian person is strictly speaking not a pagan, because God’s truth has already been

revealed to him. Such a person is an anonymous Christian usually with “fides implicita.”584

Non-Christianity is not paganism. It is “Christianity of an anonymous kind [...] a

world which is to be brought to the explicit consciousness of what already belongs to it as a

divine offer or already pertains to it also over and above this as a divine gift of grace accepted

581 Karl RAHNER, On the importance of the non-Christian religions for salvation, in Karl RAHNER,

“Theological investigations, Volume 18: God and revelation,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1983,

294-295. 582 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 121-122. 583 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 122. 584 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 131.

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unreflectedly and implicitly.”585Christians and the Church in general ought to treat those who

do not explicitly believe to be anonymous Christians and should approach them with the

attitude of St. Paul. “What therefore you do not know and yet worship (and yet worship!)

That I proclaim to you” (Ac 17.23). “If we think of non-Christianity in this way, we will be

tolerant, humble and yet firm towards all non-Christian religions.”586

Nevertheless, the Church encourages conversions to it especially for those who are

capable of freely joining it. However, this should not be the main objective of the Church.

“Official leadership of the Church [...] could give somewhat less attention to the demand made

on the individual non-Catholic Christian to become a Catholic [...] than it does to more general

ecumenical endeavours”587 and should also concentrate on communicating the Good News to

all people of good will.

For example, “we are no longer inclined today to deny good faith to all ‘educated’ non-

Catholics who, although they do in some ways come into actual contact with Catholics and the

Catholic Church, nevertheless do not become Catholics.”588 To deny our proclamation of the

faith would mean denying the universal salvific will of God’s self-communication.589 God

asks us to be authentic communicators of his love in respectful and creative ways, yet the

process of conversion in the minds and hearts of the receivers is entirely in his care.

8.7. Witnessing through death and martyrdom

Rahner highlights two aspects concerning death, the active and passive aspects. Death

is passive in the sense that one becomes powerless to stop it especially at the time when one

clinically dies. When one is dying, it seems as if one’s freedom is annihilated and destroyed. It

585 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 133. 586 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 134. 587Karl RAHNER, Remarks on the question of conversions, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations,

Volume 5, Later writings,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966, 316. 588RAHNER, Remarks on the question of conversions, 318. 589 Karl RAHNER, On the situation of faith, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 20: Concern

for the Church,” New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1981, 29.

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is as if death has both aspects of being a reality that man cannot understand and it is also a

question that man fails to answer.590

No one knows concretely what sort of death he will face. He must see it as the event of active

finalization of the one act of freedom of his life; he experiences the same death as the height of his

powerlessness; he knows that his freedom must accept this powerlessness while hoping to the very end;

he cannot tell explicitly and with certainty where and how, in living or dying, the opportunity of such an

acceptance by an act of freedom has been given to him in his powerlessness and whether he has actually

accepted it. Insofar as this death involves the approach of God’s incomprehensible mystery, embracing both the incomprehensibility of his nature and also that of his freedom in regard to man, the

incomprehensibility of death becomes definitive in its hiddenness.591

At the same time, death also has an active aspect. During a person’s life, one comes to

accept the fact that his disposability is both final and irrevocable. In a sense, the undeniable

fact of the certainty of death enables one to prepare for it, and in doing so one’s death becomes

an act, the final climax to a whole life, however short or long it be.

There is a unity between the active and passive aspects of death, precisely, because

“the absolutely proper ‘object’ of freedom is the very acceptance or rejection of this

disposability, that is, of finite creatureliness, which enters into our experience precisely

through the infinite horizon of freedom.”592

The same could be said about the death of Jesus Christ. His death was a passive death

in the sense that he died as a consequence of the plotting of the religious and political leaders

of his time. This was something that he could control. As such, he passively underwent

through his death. At the same time, Jesus’ death was active in the sense that it includes an

element of self-surrender especially at the point at which Jesus was being interrogated. Jesus

could have rejected God but he did not do so. It is in this sense that Jesus’ death was active.

He actively defended what he believed in, even at the point of death. The problem however

still exists that at times it is not very clear in which context the death is passive or active.

Nevertheless in the case of martyrdom, “through their active witness and life, they too brought

about the situation in which they could have escaped death only by denying their faith.”593

590 RAHNER, Christian dying, 247. 591 RAHNER, Christian dying, 247-248. 592RAHNER, Christian dying, 246. 593 RAHNER, Piety: Dimensions of martyrdom, 112.

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The indubitable fact of death brings into focus the ‘theology of the last things’.

Christianity has a well-developed eschatology that has the power to nourish and improve the

meaning to temporal life. Catholic saints have, through their preaching, writing and example,

advocated for a frequent reflection on death in order to improve the quality of daily living.

Rahner puts this in perspective when he states, “Christianity is a religion with an eschatology;

it looks into the future; it makes binding pronouncements about what is to come both by

explaining what will come and by looking on these future events as the decisive guiding

principle of action in the present.”594 Eschatological pronouncements and statements are

usually communicated through concepts, images and other means of representation. This is

because eschatological realities belong to the spiritual world. Embodied as we are we can

understand eschatology only through “a conversio ad phantasmata, [...]. All knowledge about

any reality, no matter how supra-mundane the object and strict and abstract the notion, is

knowledge in ‘likenesses and parables.”595 This is why, even when the Scriptures

communicate eschatological realities, their authors describe them in images, symbols and

representations. For example, we have the description of the last judgement that present the

Lord ‘dividing’ the ‘sheep’ from the ‘goats’, to symbolise the ‘separation’ of those ‘worthy

and not-worthy’ of ‘entering paradise’. All these are metaphors that communicate to us in

imaginative ways the unseen reality of death and resurrection.”596

The figurative nature and the easy freedom and practical variability of the cosmic images (conflagration

of the world, the falling of the stars onto the earth, etc.) is too clear to allow us any possibility of

thinking that they were not recognized as being imaginative by the original speakers. Who cannot

seriously doubt that even the writer of Holy Scripture knew that in the case of many the phrase ‘the

tombs open up’ cannot correspond exactly to the actual manner of their resurrection?597

What the different images and representations seek to represent is the concept that

“resurrection’ means, therefore the termination and perfection of the whole man before God,

which gives him ‘eternal life. “598 “The end of the world is, therefore, the perfection and total

594 RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘New man,’ 135. 595 RAHNER, Resurrection of the body, 209. 596 Cf. RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 209-210. 597 RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 210. 598 RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 211.

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achievement of saving history which had already come into full operation and gained its

decisive victory in Jesus Christ and in his resurrection.”599

In order to understand these images, concepts and figures of speech, there is need to

use hermeneutical principles that address and treat themes like “death, about a new heaven and

a new earth, about the last days, and about the signs by which the coming and the return of

Christ can be recognised.”600

If we properly understand the eschatological images and concepts, then we will come

to understand that the future of man is “already overtaken by the future of Christ [which has]

come upon us and by the divine self-communication, and that therefore this future too, if it is

to bring man his salvation, must happen in the kairos of Christ.”601

The images and concepts of eschatology also bring together anthropology of man’s

body and soul into futurology. Through the different images we come to understand what will

happen to man’s body and soul in the future. This is given and communicated in different

stories, images and concepts in which we come to understand that salvation is not only

individual but it is also collective.602

However, to understand correctly the eschatological accounts of the New and Old

Testaments, it is important to realise that the biblical accounts of death and of the end of times

are historical episodes because they were conclusions that were arrived at by different persons

in their concrete historical situations through the assistance of God’s self-communication.

They were man’s eschatological reflections in their different historical situations and were

projected into the future. Rahner therefore concluded that man “develops a futurology and

eschatology, but he knows about these last things by means of an aetiological anticipation of

what he knows here and now about himself and about his salvific present.”603

599 RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 213. 600 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 431-432. 601 Karl RAHNER, The Church and the Parousia of Christ, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological Investigations,

Volume 6: Concerning Vatican Council II,” Translated by K. H. Kruger and B. Kruger, London, Darton

Longman & Todd Ltd, 1969, 312. 602 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 434. 603 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 432.

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“The climax of eschatological revelation is necessarily what it actually is: that God has

revealed to man his Trinitarian self-disclosure and self-communication in the grace of the

crucified and risen Lord, a revelation already actual, though still only in faith.”604

It is also important that we should make a distinction between genuine eschatology and

the apocalyptic statements that may contain theological utopia which needs interpretation

rather than taking them literary. In the same vein, we should be aware of the similarity

between eschatological statements and apocalyptic statements, which are both representational

and images of the future of man. For example, there are apocalyptic images which indicate

that man in heaven will sit at the table with the Lord.605 This apocalyptic image concretizes

the happiness that man will have in the beatific vision. It also shows how man takes his

present situation seriously and that the future of man arises out of his present but the present is

inspired and projected into the future through the self-communication of God. Man makes

this reflection in his historical, social and political situation through different images and

representations which should be interpreted rather than taken literary.606 For example, we can

find so many images and perceptual materials in the passage that talks about the second

coming of Jesus when the angels will blow the trumpets. We read that all people will gather

and God will separate people as the shepherd separates sheep from goats.607 When we read

such images, we should interpret them so that we can be able to comprehend the deeper

meaning of the image and symbolism.608

Metaphorical language enriches our understanding of eschatology and without it,

eschatology would be mere concepts without images – a way of thinking, as we have seen

earlier, is not human but angelic. Thus Christian eschatology by its very nature is a blend of

the transcendental and categorical experiences of man. However, Christian anthropology or

eschatology still remains a mystery that cannot be fully comprehended. It consists of some

604 RAHNER, The hermeneutics of eschatological assertions, 334. 605 The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 25:32. 606 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 431-433. 607 The Revised Standard Version, Matthew 25:32. 608 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 433.

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measure of comprehensibility – what is already understood – with some measure of

incomprehensibility – what is still not understood. Human beings are bound to a life between

the ‘already and the not yet’. Hence, man must worship God in silence and recognise the fact

that we cannot fully grasp the eschatological realities because God, on whom these realities

depend, is Absolute Mystery, far above human imagination and images.609 Rahner expressed

this when he wrote:

All eschatological assertions must be seen in the light of this basic hermeneutic principle. If they are not

really ‘actualized’ and existentialized as an imminent expectation properly understood, they will be

regarded, unwittingly or not, as curious inside information about something really indifferent, something

with which one has nothing to do since it only comes much later without affecting the present. If on the

other hand they are so thoroughly existentialized and actualized that the whole future already takes place

as and in the present, if the necessary process of actualization makes one lose sight of the genuinely temporal future which as such remains a dimension of man, then in fact man is mythologized, because

the down-to-earth factor of time is denied him, a sober fact which is also part of his salvation.610

For instance, it is difficult to imagine that empirical temporality of man ends at death,

while we believe that his soul continues to live on. This difficulty creeps into some images

that we use about death. Hence, when we speak of Christian eschatology of those who have

died and yet they are now alive, we do not mean that “things continue on after death [… and

that] we only change horses and then ride on.”611

In addition, if we explain death by saying that man enters infinity that too becomes

problematic. This is the case because it is difficult for man to understand the concept of

infinity because he lives in empirical temporality. We can however explain death by using the

image that in this temporal order, all things change, but death is the final achieved validity of

human existence and through it man moves from the temporal order into eternity. Man, is

liberated from the world of change to the world that does not change. Death is not so much

about man entering eternal life but it is about man being liberated from temporality. Death is

inevitable “for whatever freedom is allotted to man, at its heart and centre death lies as a factor

which is wholly beyond his control.”612 If man remained in this world of temporal time, he

609 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 434. 610RAHNER, The hermeneutics of eschatological assertions, 343. 611 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 436-437. 612 RAHNER, The Scandal of death, 142.

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would continue changing indefinitely. But through death, man enters into eternity and eternity

is a time to enter into the presence and immediacy of God because of the love that human

beings have for God and for his self-communication. This experience of being in God’s

presence is a source of joy and fulfilment to man and scriptures express this joy through

different images as a place of “rest and peace, as a banquet and as glory, as being at home in

the Father’s house, as a day which will never end, and as satisfaction without boredom.”613

Regarding the doctrine of purgatory, there are different images and representations that

are used for Catholics. The Catholic Church articulates its doctrine on purgatory as follows:

All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their

eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to

enter the joy of heaven. The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect,

which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. The Church formulated her doctrine of

faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by

reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire.614

Rahner explains this doctrine of ‘purification’ after death as follows:

Through death the basic disposition of a person, which has come about through the exercise of his

freedom, acquires a final and definitive validity; but on the other hand, because of the many levels in

man, and consequently because of the unequal phases in the process of becoming in which he reaches

fulfilment in all of his dimensions, it seems to teach that there is a process of maturation “after” death for

the whole person.615

The problem of the image of man maturing in phases in purgatory is that it may lead

one to think of maturation in the same way as we mature in the realm of temporal experience

categories. This shows the difficulty of understanding the purgatory-maturation image.616

Rahner thought that if we cannot deny the notion that personal maturation can take

place gradually during this earthly life, then we would have no reason to deny the possibility

that there could be a gap between the death of man and the process towards his fulfilment.

613 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 441. 614 CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, art. 1030, 1031 in

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2N.HTM (17-03-2019) 615 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 441-442. 616 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 438-439.

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This personal maturation could be similar to a purifying fire, or it could be referred to as a

state of purification.617

He also emphasized the fact that the plurality of images on eschatological themes such

as, resurrection, immortality of the soul, and the purifying interval, are necessary. Imaging is

an anthropological necessity. If there is plurality of images at the level of anthropology of

man, then it is understandable why there is the same plurality of images at the level of

eschatology. We should therefore not be disappointed if we are unable to build them together

into a single conceptual model; after all, this same plurality is reflected in the New and Old

Testament. That is why Rahner concluded that there is certain hiddenness about

eschatological statements.618 But all the images collectively speak powerfully of

eschatological communication. One can see the abundant imagery in the doctrine of hell

which is a reminder that God respects the free will of man in their choice for or against

salvation. If this were not the case, then the freedom of man and his history would have to be

abolished. This does not mean that man is faced with two ways or that he is standing on the

crossroads but that the “possibility that freedom will end in eternal loss stands alongside the

doctrine that the world and the history of the world as a whole will in fact enter into eternal

life with God.”619

617 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 442. 618 Cf. RAHNER, The hermeneutics of eschatological assertions, 330. 619 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 444.

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PART D

ASSESSMENT OF RAHNER’S ‘COMMUNICATION THEOLOGY’

This section consisting of Chapters 9 and 10 concludes our thesis. We will present a study of

Karl Rahner’s theology in general, first, from the point of view of his critics. The second

chapter will focus on the positive contribution that Rahner’s communication theology has

made to the fields of philosophy, theology and communication.

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9. RELEVANCE AND CRITIQUE OF RAHNER’S ‘COMMUNICATION

THEOLOGY’

The communication perspective on Karl Rahner’s theology is but one viewpoint. It

needs to be studied further and against the backdrop of the critical appraisal he has received

for over half a century. Since this is a voluminous task which would require much more time

and effort than a doctoral thesis can afford, we will limit our study to the opinion of a few

critics who hold significant views on disagreements with his theology, while keeping in mind

the communication perspective.

9.1. Relevance of Rahner’s ‘Communication Theology’

Rahner renewed the Christian message by re-articulating it in a new way by

emphasizing the importance of open Catholicism.620 This emphasis was because his

philosophical starting point (as we have seen in section B) was the metaphysical question that

generates the harmonious blending of the transcendental and categorical experiences – which

by implication capacitates the openness of man to all finite reality as well as the infinite

Absolute Mystery. In this sense his communication theology proposes a Catholicism that is

truly ‘catholic’ and ‘universal’. It was a view that elucidated his conviction that the human

search for meaning was rooted in the unlimited horizon of God’s own being experienced

within the finiteness of the world. This approach was markedly different from the Neo-

Scholastics who rejected the ontological transcendental openness of man for the Infinite. They

held the view of extrinsicism, namely, an understanding that God’s grace builds on nature as if

grace was imposed from outside on nature. His ‘Communication Theology’ was inclusive.621

In so doing, he developed a theology that was pastorally applicable and communicable while

remaining systematic and coherent in his thought.

620 Cf. RAHNER, On truthfulness, 233-234. 621 RAHNER, The present situation of Catholic theology, 135.

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Anne Carr, associate professor of Theology at the Divinity School in Chicago noted

that Rahner’s “approach to the central mysteries of Christian faith embodies a coherence and

consistency, even a kind of simplicity, within the complexity of the questions he addresses,

and the equally complex responses he offers.”622 The qualities that Carr mentions are reflected

in the way Rahner explained through lectures the truths of the faith which were “silenced to

death by the fact that no one took any notice of them in the practice of their religious life.

Theology was not trying very hard to make them understandable.”623 Instead, Rahner’s

theology helped to explain the uncomprehended truths and put them into explicit (ín thesi’)

formulations624 so that the truths of faith can be “easily assimilated’ and ‘realized.”625 A

cursory look at the index of his 23 volume Theological Investigations will surprise the reader

by the utter down-to-earthness of the themes he has chosen to explain. Some of these include,

devotion to the sacred heart, the Immaculate Conception, the duration of the Real Presence of

Jesus in Eucharistic communion, death, purgatory, heaven and hell. He sought to clarify these

and many more theological dogmas in order to seek better clarification and communication of

Catholic doctrine.626

Another contribution of Rahner to theology is that he merged the dichotomous

positions of grace and nature. It made his theological formulations relevant to the people of

his time and easy to communicate and understand because his theological explanations were

based on the categories of experience.627 This partly was due to the influence of the

existentialism of Heidegger and the transcendentalism of Kant. On the one hand, Kant

emphasized the importance of the transcendental question, or the possibility of existence

which is also referred to as fundamental ontology. On the other hand, Heidegger did not

emphasize the transcendental question but he put the emphasis on the existential and

experiential categories of man. Rahner did not depend exclusively on either of them. He

622 CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 43. 623 RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 175. 624 Cf. RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 175-1176. 625 RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 176. 626 Cf. RAHNER, Remarks on the theology of indulgences, 176-177. 627 Cf. GALVIN, The Rahner revolution I, 40.

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reconciled the two positions in what he termed as the “supernatural existential.”628 In coining

this term, he emphasized the importance of the transcendental and the existential in one and

the same concept. These two realities are brought together by God’s self-communication in

grace.629

Rahner’s anthropology also highlighted the fact that man is an event of God’s self-

communication.630 As such, we cannot understand man from a purely theoretical or

metaphysical point of view but our understanding of man should be based on a theological

anthropology. This means that we do not have to understand man merely theologically, but

also anthropologically, as a symbolic being in social interaction and as a being capable of

transcending his incarnation in his communication631 with God.632 This does not mean that

theological anthropology and metaphysics cannot help in understanding man. But these two

disciplines must take into consideration the historicity of man. It is within history that man

grows and develops. That is why Rahner pointed out that “the man of today, and even more

so the man of tomorrow is the man of a history unified the world over, the man of a global

space for life and hence the man of a world in which everyone is dependent on absolutely

everyone else.”633 It is within this history that God communicates himself to man. As such

we can see here the relevance of Rahner’s theology that highlighted the fact that God’s self-

communication takes place within the context of an “anthropology oriented theology.”634

We can thus see that for Rahner, the history of revelation is not just about how God

intervenes or communicates himself miraculously in the events of man but it is more about the

way man over the millennia has struggled to interpret the transcendental experiences and the

self-communication of God. Hence, the history of revelation is basically the history of the self-

628 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 141. 629 RAHNER, Anonymous Christians, 393-394. 630 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 347-348. 631 LEVER - RIVOLTELLA - ZANACCHI, Comunicazione, 269. 632 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 348. 633 RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘new man,’ 136. 634 METZ, Foreword: An essay on Karl Rahner, XVII.

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communication of God in history.635 The self-interpretation of the original self-

communication of God is basically how man interprets God’s self-communication. The self-

interpretations are different from one person to the other and from one situation to the other.

That is why the bible can be interpreted differently by different people.

Rahner also believed in the importance of the “aggiornamento of theology,”636 because

he sought “the ever new never for the sake of modernity, but out of faithfulness to the

incumbent historical beginning.”637 Renewal in theology is important because “the man of

today and tomorrow is the man of technology, of automation and cybernetics. [...] Man is no

longer [...] the man who simply lives out his existence according to the given pattern of nature

in an equally pre-existent environment, but someone who fashions his own environment.”638

Theology, therefore, has to take into consideration the developments that have taken place in

the life of man in order to improve the intercommunication between God and man but also

between human beings.639

According to Johann Baptist Metz, Rahner respected historical traditions of his

predecessors like Socrates and Thomas Aquinas, to mention just two. For example, he

respected and developed the Socratic method of questioning in his own unique way. It is from

here that he saw the importance of the capacity to question about reality because Being is

questionable.640 This questioning about Being leads man to search for answers about the

reality of things.641

Rahner also contributed to the discussions on the theme of ecumenical

communication642 through his discourses on the importance of inclusiveness of the

“anonymous Christians.”643 He did this by promoting dialogue, respect and

635 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 154. 636 FIORENZA, Karl Rahner and the Kantian problematic, XIX. 637 METZ, Foreword, XV. 638 RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘new man,’ 136-137. 639 RAHNER, The body in the order of salvation, 88. 640 Cf. METZ, Foreword, XV. 641 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 68. 642 Cf. GALVIN, The Rahner revolution I, 42. 643 Cf. RAHNER, The present situation of Catholic theology, 135.

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intercommunication between different Churches. In particular he encouraged the idea of open

Catholicism which promoted the fact that the Catholics should enter into open dialogue with

other religions including those who still do not know Christ or do not believe in God, but are

nevertheless deeply committed to promoting the same values which Christ taught, and for

which he lived and died.

These persons Rahner called “anonymous Christians.”644 He pointed out that “the

supernatural saving purpose of God extends to all men in all ages and places in history.

Everyone is offered divine grace-and is offered it again and again (even when he is guilty)”645

and that “the living God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ is at work with his light and

grace even outside the zone of saving history in the narrower, theological sense.”646 This

means that Rahner believed that God’s gift of grace can also be given outside the sphere of the

Catholic Church. The grace of God is not limited to those who profess and express the faith

but even to the non-believers. In a way, this was Rahner’s “indirect ecumenical effect.”647

9.2.Some of Rahner’s critics and their views

In the second part of this chapter we shall consider the views of Rahner’s critics. Some

disagreed with his starting point, a criticism that calls into question the whole edifice of his

theology. Others did not accept certain conclusions he had elaborated. We present here the

range of critics keeping in mind the two extremes.

Rahner was criticized by the Gilsonian Thomists who rejected his transcendental

metaphysics. Gilsonian Thomists argued that “one must approach the texts of Thomas

through the lenses of his theological working principles.”648 As such, they did not “accept

644 Cf. RAHNER, The present situation of Catholic theology, 135. 645 RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, 103. 646 RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, 81-82. 647 METZ, Foreword, XV. 648 Douglas B. RASMUSSEN - Aeon J. SKOBLE - Douglas J. DEN UYL, Reality, reason and rights: Essays in

honor of Tibor R. Machan, Lanham, Lexington books, 2011, 92.

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Rahner’s Marèchalian contention that the dynamism of the mind can ground his metaphysics.

They also reject Rahner’s metaphysical account of abstraction through the mind’s conscious

pre-grasp of God. […] Such an abstraction is both unThomistic and philosophically

unwarranted.”649 The Gilsonian Thomists further claimed that even phenomenological

philosophers would reject Rahner’s metaphysical conception of being and his proposition that

the intentionality of man is oriented towards an Absolute Mystery (God). This rejection that

man is oriented towards the Absolute Mystery is at the heart of Rahner’s explanation of man

as the event of God’s self-communication. They rejected Rahner’s orientation towards the

absolute saying that it was an idea that was too abstract.

That is why probably McCool defended Rahner by saying that “as a philosophical

theologian, however, Rahner would simply refer these critics to the texts in which he has tried

to justify his basic metaphysics of knowledge and being. There is little more than a

philosophical theologian can do.”650 In addition, Rahner emphasized the importance of linking

the transcendental realm and the categorical experiences of man. That is why he developed a

theological anthropology that would emphasize on understanding the abstract realities by

using images and concepts that are experiential, historical and existential.

We argue that even though Rahner borrows from different philosophical schools, his

approach is not eclectic. Through his seminal works he had taken great pains to prove that a

well harmonization of philosophies when coherently and systematically applied to traditional

Christian thought is possible, and perhaps necessary for an age that had come to reject a

‘monocular vision’ of reality in the face of a plural, and rapidly changing multi-cultural

world? Rahner’s challenge is precisely to create the philosophical foundations for a bridge that

will make traditional faith intelligible to the man and woman of the twentieth century. Did not

Aquinas’ content and style attempt to make faith intelligible for his time? Was not his

649 McCOOL, A Rahner reader, XXVII. 650 McCOOL, A Rahner reader, XXVI.

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philosophy a harmonization of Christian tenets with the philosophies of Aristotle,

Neoplatonism and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite?651

James M. Gustafson thinks that Rahner placed too much emphasis on human freedom

because in so doing he neglected other equally important elements of the human person, such

as, justice.652 In other words, freedom without justice is not responsible freedom. The concept

of freedom is key to Rahner’s explanation of the Self-communication of God which is given

freely and freely accepted or rejected by man. This does not mean that Rahner rejected the

importance of justice but wanted to show that a human being is a free subject that can accept

or deny God’s self-communication.653 In fact, he emphasized that “responsibility and freedom

are coordinate realities of transcendental experience along with subjectivity. Our freedom

concerns our subjectivity considered ‘as such and as a whole,’ not in discreet moments

[…].”654

Anne Carr stated that the term “anonymous Christians”655 was rather difficult for

members of other religious denominations to accept. Rahner used the term to refer to non-

Christians and Jews, and Carr believed that this was offensive. For her, it was not right to use

such terms for non-Christians because some of them lived moral, religious, and authentic

lives. Even if Rahner may have been well-meaning in his designation of the term “anonymous

Christians” but members of the other religious denominations would likely reject such a term

because it sounded unpleasant.656

651 Cf. Jan AERTSEN, Aquinas’ philosophy in its historical setting, in Norman KRETZMANN and Eleonore

STUMP (Eds), “The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas”, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. See

also Wayne J. HANKEY, Aquinas, Plato, and Neo-Platonism, in Brian DAVIES and Eleonore STUMP (Eds),

“The Oxford Handbook to Aquinas”, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012. 652 Cf. CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 43. 653 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Freedom in the Church, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 2,

London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1963, 90. 654 Mark S. M. SCOTT, God as person: Karl Barth and Karl Rahner on divine and human personhood, in

Catherine CAUFIELD, “Religious Studies and theology,” 25 (2006) 2, 178. 655 RAHNER, The present situation of Catholic theology, 135. 656 Cf. CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 43.

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Furthermore, some theologians criticized Rahner for overemphasizing the importance

of the human person as a subject.657 For example, Lois Daly, professor of theology at Siena

College in New York, indicated that Rahner’s overemphasis on anthropology can endanger the

environment because as free and independent subjects, human beings may think that they have

a right to use the environment in any way that they want. For Daly, too much emphasis on

human freedom and on anthropocentrism can lead to arbitrary use of the environment and

nature. This arbitrariness can lead to a conception that nature is only a raw material that man

can use in any way without regard for its conservation. As such, Daly concluded that Rahner

did not do enough to protect ecology and the environment.658 However, we may respond to

Daly by saying that the self-communication of God in creation is a strong foundation for

ecological and environmental protection.

Rahner’s former student Johann Baptist Metz argued that Rahner’s emphasis on

theological anthropology and freedom was detrimental to political theology.659 For Metz, it

was not proper for Rahner to overemphasize theological anthropology and freedom because

these two concepts together seem to point to individualism and privatisation. As such, they are

detrimental to the proper functioning of society.660 Metz meant that emphasizing man’s

personal freedom would lead man to stop cooperating with other underprivileged members of

society in the name of freedom. He feared that emphasis on personal freedom would lead

human beings to live for themselves and to forget the community dimension of life. Quoting,

Metz, we can see that he accused Rahner of not giving “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.”661 Rahner, however, responded to

Metz criticisms by saying that his concepts of freedom and theological anthropology were not

657 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 18. 658 Cf. CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 46. 659 Cf. J.B. METZ, Faith in history and society: Toward a practical fundamental theology, translated by David

Smith, New York, Crossroad, 1980, 161-168. 660 Cf. CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 46. 661 Declan MARMION, Rahner and his critics: Revisiting the dialogue, in Stephen BEVANS - Louis J.

LUZBATEK, “Australian eJournal of Theology,” 4 (2005) 3.

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opposed to political theology because he (Rahner) respected groups of people who lived

together in a political community. He also believed that the transcendental experience of God

and grace, could only be communicated, and mediated to the world through relationships in a

(political) society. By so doing, Rahner showed that he respected the importance of political

theology that can help people to live well together in a community.662

Nevertheless, in line with Metz’s criticism, Carr also thought that the emergence of

social problems like hunger, sexism, racism, and global inequality showed that there was a

need for a wider theological reflection to promote community living, and in her view,

Rahner’s theology had failed in this regard.663

Hans Urs von Balthasar664 criticised Rahner’s anthropology and the theory of

anonymous Christianity on the basis that they reduced the transcendent sovereignty of the

word of God to “a bland and shallow humanism,”665 and that the theory of anonymous

Christianity devalued the importance and centrality of the cross because human beings could

not receive God’s self-communication without the cross of Jesus, the mediator between man

and God.666 Denying the importance of the cross of Jesus would lead to the error of

“autoredenzione dell’uomo.”667

For Balthasar, Rahner’s concept of anonymous Christianity rendered the missionary

task and Gospel communication of the Church superfluous because people could be saved

662 Cf. CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 46. 663 Cf. CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 46. 664 The Swiss Von Balthasar, who was a Jesuit from 1929 to 1950 and, like Rahner, was heavily influenced by the

Spiritual Exercises, left the order (but not the priesthood) to pursue the establishment of a religious community

for lay men and women with a person who was one of the most important influences on his life, the medical doctor and mystic Adrienne von Speyr […]. He worked primarily as a writer, chaplain, retreat master and

publisher. Though he had been under suspicion by Rome for some time, Balthasar was appointed to the Papal

Theological Commission in 1967, certainly a sign of his ecclesiastical approval after the Second Vatican Council.

He died shortly before he was due to be created a cardinal. ROSENBERG, Rahner, Balthasar and high school

theology, In “America: The national Catholic review,” http://americamagazine.org/issue/402/article/rahner-

balthasar-and-high-school-theology, (01.11.2015). 665 Von BALTHASAR, The moment of Christian witness, San Francisco, Ignatius press, 1994, 126. 666 Cf. Mark F. FISCHER, The Soteriologies of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar: Presentation at the

breakfast meeting of the Karl Rahner Society, 13.06.2015, http://karlrahnersociety.com/wp-

content/uploads/2015/06/Soteriologies-of-Rahner-and-Balthasar1.pdf, (02.11.2015). 667BERGER, Karl Rahner, commiato da un mito pericoloso, 10.

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without having to know or believe in Jesus but only through God’s unnoticed self-

communication. He defended himself against the criticisms of his concept of anonymous

Christianity by Balthasar as follows:668

Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of

explicitly constituted Christianity […]. Let us say, a Buddhist monk… who, because he follows his

conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous

Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains

that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so, if I hold if

everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the

world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else

but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.669

Finally, we take up the objection of Stefano Fontana who declares “the theology of

Karl Rahner and the Social Doctrine of the Church are absolutely incompatible”. His article is

replete with consequences that he believes to be the result of Rahner’s non-traditional

philosophical foundations. Here is a sample paragraph:

[He] sets faith in an historical perspective; faith [is] not considered as knowing, but as having an

existential experience of a transcendent horizon. There are no longer atheists or believers because one

and all are within this horizon and accompany one another in the interpretation of life. When someone

passes from an anonymous Christianity to just the opposite, that being a clearly cogent and conscientious

Christianity, that person does not cease sharing this same horizon. Good and evil are not clear-cut. Since

existence as a whole unfolds within the transcendental horizon of God, there are various levels of good to be uplifted, but never to be condemned. Man can never really know when he is in a situation of sin.

The Church is not face to face with the world even though it is also in the world, but becomes world

because it shares the common existential horizon with the world.670

Fontana’s highly motivated objection reflects a grossly exaggerated misunderstanding.

He confounds Rahner’s metaphysical and epistemological foundations that are intrinsic to

being human with the psycho-sociological choices that every human, and particularly the

Christian and the Church are explicitly called to make in the world. The first is an ontological

and unconscious given, the second is what is known and willed in consciousness. Let us

668 Cf. CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 43. 669 RAHNER, The present situation of Catholic theology, 135. 670 Stefano FONTANA, The theology of Karl Rahner and the euthanasia of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

Let’s begin a discussion about Rahner’s theology, in http://www.vanthuanobservatory.org/eng/the-theology-of-

karl-rahner-and-the-euthanasia-of-the-social-doctrine-of-the-church-lets-begin-a-discussion-about-rahners-

theology/ (28-03-2019)

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demonstrate how Fontana confuses the two realms by picking up his claims in his first three

sentences.

Faith is the content of (religious) beliefs that adds meaning and commitment to the

purpose of living in the world. Believing and knowing, are therefore conscious acts that

belong to the a posteriority of being. The “existential experience of a transcendent horizon” is,

contrarily, an apriority that is ontologically given and therefore cannot be denied without its

existence being affirmed in the very act of denial.

His second and third sentence similarly confuse those who declare themselves atheists

and believers with the ontologically engraced human condition open to the Infinite,

irrespective of our explicit knowledge and recognition of whether It is or who It is,

irrespective of whether we are Christian or not. This horizon is the unconscious basis on which

the explicit choice to be a Christian or not is made, as St. Paul emphasizes ‘in [H]im we live

and move and have our being’671, that I, the condicio sine qua non of our existence and

essence. The Christian still has a long way to recognizing, believing and responding in

conscience to the Absolute Self-communication of God ‘revealed’ in Jesus. Social engagement

in the world is an essential part of that response. The social doctrine of the church is about the

explicit missionary witness of the Church and her members to become more authentically

Christ’s symbol of God’s self-communication to the world – thanks to the implicit, naturally

given blending of the transcendental and categorical experiences in all human beings. With the

incarnation, social involvement of the Church becomes a sine qua non of every Christian,

because theology is anthropocentric and anthropology is engraced.

In conclusion, we would like to note that for many, the criticisms levelled at Rahner

have been in good faith. For example, Balthasar and Rahner had a relationship that was

mutually respectful of each other’s intellectual capacity. In fact, they both quoted each other’s

works while acknowledging the differences that existed between them.672 Likewise, Johann

671 The Revised Standard Version, Acts 17:28. 672 Cf. Rodney HOWSARE, What you need to know about Hans Urs von Balthasar, 19.08.2013,

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2013/08/what-you-need-to-know-about-hans-urs-von-balthasar/,

(01.11.2015).

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Metz, one of the great proponents of political theology in Germany, was able to dialogue with

Rahner who, as we have seen before, co-authored a book with him. Metz feted his master by

saying: “Karl Rahner has renewed the face of our theology. Nothing absolutely is the same as

it was before him.”673 Despite her criticisms, Ann Carr admits that Rahner made an

“extraordinary achievement, produced in the routine of a monotonous life, broke open the

ideology of a lifeless Catholic theology in the fifties, with a fresh and contemporary

expression of Christian faith.”674

Even David Berger, author of an article against Rahner slips in an unquoted and

therefore presumabily personal acknowlegement when he says in the Italian translation of his

text, “anche quelli che lo criticano e lo rifiutano, vivono ancora delle sue vedute e delle sue

altrettanto perspicaci e delicate percezioni nel mondo della vita e della fede.”675

673 BERGER, Karl Rahner, commiato da un mito pericoloso, 4. 674 Cf. CARR, The Rahner revolution II, 43. 675BERGER, Karl Rahner, commiato da un mito pericoloso, 4.

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10. THE COMMUNICATION POTENTIAL OF RAHNER’S THEOLOGY

In this section, we wish to briefly indicate some of the important elements that have

spurred us on to read Rahner with a communication lens. We will also recapitulate the

important communication themes of, what we have called, his ‘Communication Theology’.

We will use the standard models of Communication as our structural base to put Rahner’s

Communication theological or methodological insights in perspective.

10.1. Rahner’s starting point: the urge to question – a communication act

Rahner’s concern at the heart of his investigations was to make Theology

understandable to the Christian inserted fully in the world. He recognized that perceptions of

the world had changed after World War II largely due to the human need to question almost

everything. This need began at the dawn of humanity, and is the reason for man’s accelerated

development throughout the millennia. Beginning from shared experiential knowledge on

matters concerning daily domestic life, the need to question took on social, cultural,

philosophical and technological concerns that sought to conquer geographical boundaries

(space), accelerate the pace of progress (time) and the quality of self-expression in human

relationships (communication). Thanks to the philosophical influences on his thinking,

Rahner’s genius lay in making the primordial ‘act of questioning’ the very heart of his

theological investigations. It is the seed from which develops self-expression and self-

expansion in the process of human interaction and development. The question is the window

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through which man understands himself, the reality around him676 and his “unpredictable

future.”677

Man does indeed over and over again express surprise at how he has underestimated his own

possibilities, at how the world is greater than he had thought, at how new avenues open out to

possibilities which he had up until now regarded as utopian. Certainly it is dangerous in many respects

to declare something to be impossible; for many times in the past such declarations have been the

beginnings of successful efforts to make the impossible come true.678

This starting point reveals Rahner’s outlook on theology. His concern is to make

theology respond to the doubts of modern men and women rather than relegate theological

discourse and debate to theologians within ecclesiastical circles alone. The starting point

reveals Rahner’s theology fundamentally as a pastoral response to men and women who are

actively engaged in the search for ways to communicate and find meaning. It influences the

scope, method and orientation of his theology.

10.2. An inclusive theological anthropology for a communication theology

Rahner’s pastoral approach to theology can be seen in his choice to begin with

philosophy as it concerns the whole of questioning humanity and not the privileged few who

believe in the tenets of the Catholic faith alone. Existentialists had begun to question the

essence of things, the essentials that had once given life meaning and society its security. In

the realm of religion, some of these essentials were beliefs in the inerrancy of scripture and the

indubitable values of tradition that ranged from sacred rites and rituals to laws regulating

behaviour with rewards and punishments. By placing his foundations for theology within

philosophical anthropology rather than within scripture or tradition, Rahner had the freedom to

begin his investigations from a broader base that would open Catholic theological discourse to

include all humanity. The freedom to question made possible by his starting point, would give

his theologizing a unique advantage that would invite the participation of even those of his

676 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 57. 677RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘New man,’ 139. 678RAHNER, Christianity and the ‘New man,’ 140.

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contemporaries who did not share the Catholic faith. This dialogue with men and women of

his time would have been impossible if he were to simply theologize from within the Catholic

faith, that is, from within the precincts of its firmly established tenets. This choice eschewed

the apologetic or catechetical approach that sought to respectively defend or explain the faith.

His choice for philosophy was a choice to dialogue, an elevated mode of communication

especially in situations where differences in points of view predominate.

10.3. The method of communicating his insights

The medium Rahner chose in order to spread the results of his investigation were

unique for his time, if viewed from a communication perspective. Aware that modern man is

indifferent to long theological discourses elaborated in books, he chose the essay or article as

his preferred method of responding to the many questions of the inquisitive Christian. The

themes were relevant and the articles brief. A cursory glance at the index of the Theological

Investigations will suffice to reveal his desire to engage the reader through the length and

breadth, the variety and range of themes chosen.

In general, his approach to an issue taken up in his articles followed a linear

methodology. He first sought to lay the foundations of a teleological inquiry, before entering

into the intricacies of a theological discussion. The first part sought to put all the cards on the

table, to state clearly the terminology and its implications, the purpose of conducting the

inquiry, and the conditions that make it worth pursuing. The questions that the issue at hand

prompted or pre-empted were first dealt with. In doing so, he cleared the way for a thorough

concentration on the core theological question at stake.

When dealing with the diversity of themes he considers for theological investigation,

we shall attempt to categorize them within the perspective of a communication process

elaborated by two communication theorist, namely, Harold Lasswell (the linear model) and F.

X. Dance (the helical model).

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10.4. Communication as the ontological pre-condition for being human

In Rahnerian terms, communication is the pre-condition of the human being and being

human is inherently the result of a communication process. That is why, commenting on

Rahner, Mary Steinmertz writes: “the human person is understood as one who is created for

the self-communication of God. This orientation toward Ultimate Mystery is the foundational

characteristic of being human.”679 Man is nothing without God’s self-communication. For it is

the grace of God that is given through God’s self-communication that helps man to live. That

is why for Rahner, “the experience of God is not something unusual; rather, to be human is to

be open to the possibility of God’s self-communication. This radical orientation to mystery at

the root of being human is what Rahner calls the “supernatural existential.”680 God and man

are ontologically linked in a relationship. This openness to Mystery as the horizon that is

always ever greater is the possibility for the reception of grace, which is defined as the

communication of God’s own self. Thus, the potential to respond to God’s offer of Him-self,

or obediently potential (or potency), is a result of what the human being is created to be.681

The self-offering of God as Holy Mystery, in revelation and in his love to man, is what

constitutes the identity of man. In other words, a human being is the addressee of the self-

communication of God.682

For Rahner, man experiences God, without knowing, in the ordinariness of life through

man’s consciousness of his limits, strengths and finitude. “In Rahner’s view, everyone is

conscious of God, not as the ‘predicamental’ object of one’s consciousness, but as the

‘transcendental horizon’ of consciousness itself. This ‘implicit,’ ‘unthematic’ form of God –

679 Mary STEINMETZ, Thoughts on the Experience of God in the Theology of Karl Rahner: Gifts and

implications, in, “Lumen et Vita” 2 (2012) 2. 680 STEINMETZ, Thoughts on the Experience of God in the Theology of Karl Rahner, 2. 681 STEINMETZ, Thoughts on the Experience of God in the Theology of Karl Rahner, 2. 682 Harvey D. EGAN, Introduction, in Karl RAHNER, “The need and blessing of prayer,” trans. Bruce W.

Gillette, Collegeville, The Liturgical Press, 1997, XI.

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consciousness - an actual mystical consciousness - forms the ambience, the undertow, or the

basal spiritual metabolism, of daily life.”683

In fact, man’s experience of the self-communicating God is something unavoidable and

“utterly inescapable”684 and it is the basis of man’s dissatisfaction with the things of this

world, precisely because there is nothing that can equal it. That is why even atheists and

agnostics have a deep awareness of the existence of injustice, and evil in the world even if

they do not admit Rahner’s position that the experience of God’s self-communication

provides “the grounding for a radical experience of ‘what ought not to be’ for those who deny

ultimate meaning a priori […].”685 This experience of God is universal and cannot be avoided

because it belongs to the identity of the human person as transcendental and metaphysical.686

This means that God communicates Himself to man as a “transcendental subject.”687

It is an experience that is based on the cognitive capacities of man, which include his

capacity for freedom, responsibility,688 subjectivity,689 and man’s ability to transcend and

become present to himself. Through his transcendental capacity, man is able to know himself:

that he is finite linked to other finite beings around him. Despite this categorical experience

that surrounds him, man is also capable of the “pre-apprehension of absolute esse, and hence

the implicit affirmation of Absolute Being [as] the condition of the possibility of any

knowledge”690 even before it is communicated in nonverbal or verbal ways.

683 Harvey D. EGAN, Soundings in the Christian mystical tradition, Collegeville, Liturgical press, 2010, 339. 684 Declan MARMION, A Spirituality of Everyday Faith: A Theological Investigation of the notion of

Spirituality in Karl Rahner, Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs # 23, Louvain, Peters Press, 1998,

116. 685 Harvey D. EGAN, Karl Rahner: Mystic of everyday life, New York, Crossroad publishing, 1998, 67. 686 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 405. 687 Karl RAHNER, On Angels, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 19: Faith and ministry,”

Translated by Edward Quinn, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1983, 261. 688 Cf. SCOTT, God as person, 178. 689 RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 221. 690 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 391.

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Through the cognitive faculties of abstraction, pre-apprehension and the return of the

intellect to the phantasms,691 man is oriented towards the Absolute Mystery, which is given to

him in “absolute immediacy,”692 that is, it conceals itself in its own questionableness.”693

This means that man through his faculties is already predisposed to the self-

communication of God. As such, man can know God from the concreteness of his categorical

existence. This is the case because “something knowable exists in God.”694 In this sense, it

would be a mistake to think that man’s concept of God does not correspond to something that

is real. Rather, it is real knowledge about God who offers himself to man through God’s self-

communication.

10.5. Communication as man’s conscious response to God’s self-communication

Even if man is in a relationship with God in a primary way through God’s self-

communication, man’s speech and verbalisation of his experiences of God can only be

possible in a secondary way, through an awareness or openness to Mystery.695

[I]f we are resolved to let God be God, if we adore him as an ineffable mystery, not to be inserted as a definable factor into the sum of our life, we may suddenly experience him as communicating himself, as

merciful and forgiving, indeed, as grace, and thus call him Father; though mother, love or home would

express this just as well, because they also describe a primeval experience, preserving the bliss of the

secret hour.696

Moreover, human beings have a pre-grasp of infinity through the vorgriff or pre-

apprehension697 through which man can become aware of his real future hopes and his

liberating transcendental characteristics of responsibility and freedom. This means that man

can transcend himself and become aware of the infinite possibilities that lie before him. Due

to their freedom and subjectivity, human beings are capable of making their own authentic

691 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 1III-1IV. 692 Anne CARR, The God who is involved, in Gordon MIKOSKI, “Theology Today,” 38 (1981) 319. 693 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 58. 694 Cf. RAHNER, Theos in the New Testament, 89. 695 Cf. RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 204. 696 RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 197. 697 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 396.

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choices. They are not “avers, automatons or marionettes. On the contrary, they are persons

who are able to enter into a “two-sided personal relationship” by exercising our free will by

responding to God in an authentic personal encounter.”698

Human beings respond to God’s self-communication with liberty, and freedom.699

This is the case because Rahner believed that man is a being “who must realize himself in

perfect responsibility and thus in freedom.”700Nevertheless, although man is aware of his

freedom and responsibility towards God’s self-communication, he is also aware of his fragility

and emptiness. In fact, man becomes aware that his being is “received”701 from God but he is

supposed to give a response that is either affirmative or negative. Only the affirmation can

fulfil the receiver’s deepest desires.

An openness to this type of encounter with God involves active work for a person. To open oneself to

the grace or free offer of God’s self-communication, a person must choose to open her/himself to

Ultimate Mystery. This happens in prayer, contemplation, and in often - difficult conscious choices.702

Briefly, Rahner states that man is both finite and transcendental. He is finite because

his being is ‘received’ and he is transcendental because he needs to be ‘open to a mystery’,

who is, “God as the ground of the world, as the guarantor of its continued existence, as the

ultimate background of everything.”703

10.6. Symbolic self-expression as climax of being and becoming

For Rahner, “self-communication means precisely that objectivity of gift and

communication which is the climax of subjectivity on the side of the one communicating and

of the one receiving.”704 This means that in the process of self-communication, God

698 SCOTT, God as person, 175. 699 Cf. SCOTT, God as person, 178. 700 RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 204. 701 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 394. 702 Mary STEINMETZ, Thoughts on the Experience of God in the Theology of Karl Rahner: Gifts and

implications, in, “Lumen et Vita” 2 (2012) 7. 703 Karl RAHNER, The passion and asceticism, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 3:

Theology of the spiritual life,” New York, Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982, 76. 704 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 118.

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objectifies expresses and manifests Himself to man and this is the climax of the subjectivity of

God and of being in general. In fact, the more any being expresses itself, the more it realises

itself and perfects itself. In this case, the expression of being leads to plurality and leads to the

self-fulfilment or self-possession of the being in question. Hence plurality is not opposed to

the self-possession of being in love and knowledge. By possessing itself, being comes to

itself; “and it comes to itself in the measure in which it realises itself by constituting a

plurality.”705

Every being is primarily symbolic because it realises itself by communicating,

constituting and expressing itself into another being – into a symbol, and by so doing; being

realises itself, perfects itself, and possesses itself.706 Being also gives itself “away from itself

into the ‘other,’ and there finds itself in knowledge and love, because it is by constituting the

inward ‘other’ that it comes to (or from) its self-fulfilment, which is the presupposition or the

act of being present to itself in knowledge and love.”707 This “presence-to-itself is the inner

being-illuminated of actual being for itself; more precisely, for the subject which possesses

this being in its own self.”708 In addition,

Something which exists is present to itself, to the extent in which it has or is being. This means that the

intrinsically analogous and inflective nature of being and of the power of being, is in absolutely clear

and equal proportion to the possibility of being present to oneself, to the possibility of self-possession in

knowledge, and the possibility of consciousness.709

Rahner argues that the self-communication of God helps man to reach the climax of his

subjectivity. This is the case because man’s end and fulfilment is the supernatural and

immediate vision of God which is theologically referred to as the beatific vision. By knowing

God (through God’s self-communication) man already anticipates and lives already (but in a

limited way) the beatific vision, which is the final goal of man.

705 Karl RAHNER, Theology of the symbol, in “Theological investigations, Volume 4: More recent writings,”

Translated by Kevin Smith, London, Darton Longman and Todd, 1966, 229. 706 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume four, More

recent writings,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974, 221-223. 707 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 230. 708RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 169. 709RAHNER, Knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ, 205.

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The source of all this communication that takes place between God and man; man, and

the world around him is the nature of the God revealed by Christ, which is a God who

communicates within Himself. God is a self-communicating God and His self-communication

to man is only subsequent to the communication that already takes place within the Trinity.

“It is because God ‘must’ ‘express’ himself inwardly that he can also utter himself outwardly;

the finite, created utterance ad extra is a continuation of the immanent constitution of ‘image

and likeness’-free continuation […].”710

10.7. The Church’s response to God’s self-communication in history

Rahner saw a close connection between the history of the world and the history of

salvation. This is because the history of salvation takes place within the context of the general

history of man; and because God communicates Himself to save the historical human being

who is finite and transcendental, free and responsible. Therefore, history is the actualisation

and realization of man’s acceptance or rejection of the self-communication of God in

freedom.711 The self-communication helps man to find the answers to the questions that he

raises in history. However, the fulfilment and complete realisation of the self-communication

of God will be effected at the end of the world - in the eschatological times712 when man will

have full knowledge of the Absolute Mystery.713

The freedom that he now has is finite714 because it is “always choice arising out of a

given situation. It is a choice which is imposed on us without our being able to choose it

ourselves. It is a choice, imposed without choice, which can itself be the least free of all if the

scope given to it, and within which it is exercised, is itself already a prison of bondage in the

710 RAHNER, Theological foundations 5, 236. 711 Cf. RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 225. 712 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 164. 713 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 71. 714RAHNER, Membership of the Church, 81.

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wrong place [...].”715 As such the freedom of man has to be freed and Rahner referred to this

as the “freedom of freedom.”716

The idea here is that, when left alone, man’s freedom can be enslaved by the

continuous choice of finite things but when assisted by God’s communication of the pneuma

(the ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’), man’s freedom is saved from being “an exhausted freedom or starved

freedom.”717 In addition, the pneuma frees man from sin, law and death. This is the case

because through the sin of the first man, we lost the sanctifying grace through which we had

the freedom of freedom but now through the pneuma, our freedom is freed. “The fact that

there is a pneuma, which is the freedom of freedom, has its source, is made accessible and is

applied to us in Jesus, the Word of the Father in flesh of Adam, the Crucified and the risen

Christ.”718

“The pneuma is the principle of freedom [...] and the animating entelechy of the

Church. [...]. Where the Lord’s spirit is, there is freedom. She is the ‘where’ of spiritual

freedom. In so far as she is different from the Pneuma living and ruling within her, the

Church is the historical quasi-sacramental sign of this pneuma, and hence also of freedom, by

which the ‘pneumatic’ freedom is signified and made present.”719 The pneuma “can be had

only in the Church, since it is her inner reality and she its external sign.”720

We can add here that even if man has finite freedom, he can accept or reject Jesus who

is the “climax of God’s self-communication to the world, [and he] must be at the same time

both the absolute promise of God to spiritual creatures as a whole and the acceptance of this

self-communication by the saviour […].”721

Through Jesus Christ, as the Absolute Symbol of God, the history of the self-

communication of God to people began moving towards its final-end and towards its full

715RAHNER, Freedom in the Church, 92. 716RAHNER, Freedom in the Church, 93. 717RAHNER, Freedom in the Church, 94. 718RAHNER, Freedom in the Church, 96. 719RAHNER, Freedom in the Church, 97. 720RAHNER, Freedom in the Church, 98. 721 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 195.

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realisation. Jesus is the climax of the self-communication of God to man in his categorical

experience. He is also the climax and the end of the history of God’s self-communication. On

one hand, Jesus is the absolute promise of God to human beings but on the other hand, he is

the full realisation of the acceptance of God’s self-communication. It is in this sense and

perspective that in Jesus, the course of history has reached an irreversible phase because Jesus’

acceptance of God’s self-communication is an “irrevocable decision.”722

In other words, through Jesus, God has irrevocably made an offer to communicate

himself to the world in a way that is historical and communicable. All this is possible through

Jesus who is the Absolute self-communication of God because he is the Logos through whom

God the Father communicates, expresses, manifests and possesses Himself. “The Logos is the

symbol of the Father, in the very sense which we have given the word: the inward symbol

which remains distinct from what is symbolised, which is constituted by what is symbolised,

where what is symbolised expresses itself and possesses itself.”723

Jesus as the Absolute self-communication of God founded the Church to become the

continuation of God’s self-communication to the world. The Church is supposed to be a

community that communicates the offer of God’s self-communication to all people without

distinction. That is why, Rahner advocated for a World-Church where there are many

international languages and therefore justified the use of Latin as the common language of

communication in the Church but without barring the local Churches to communicate in their

own language that appeal to them.724

For Rahner, the Christians in the Church should be free to listen to the Church’s

message and “to agree with it or to reject it explicitly and responsibly.”725 However, the

722 RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 212. 723 RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 236. 724 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Latin as a Church language, in Karl RAHNER, “Theological investigations, Volume 5,

Later writings,” London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966, 338. 725 RAHNER, Theological foundations 5, 236.

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Church should preach about the self-communication of God in an ecumenical and dialogical

way that appeals even to the “anonymous Christians.”726

Thus the Church and her members can carry on a dialogue also with all those who are outside. This

dialogue should be concerned not only with social, political, cultural and economic questions in order to

build and develop a world that is worthy of men, but also with philosophical and religious problems.

The Christian knows that a dialogue is valuable even if he must hold on to his Christian convictions with

absolute commitment and cannot hope for unity in the foreseeable future.727

For Rahner therefore, the Church should teach and communicate about the

fundamental truths of the Church like legitimacy of the Church,728 sacred images,729

eschatology,730 and the relationship between scripture and revelation731in a comprehensible

and pastorally communicable manner. In this way, the Church will be the sacrament of

salvation for all people.732

10.8. Communication and Eschatology

In addition, Rahner stressed the close relationship between the self-communication of

God and eschatology. He held that “in the end, of course, many signs and symbols will cease

to be; the institutional Church, the sacraments in the usual sense, the whole historical

succession of manifestations through which God continually imparts himself to man, while he

still travels far from the immediacy of God’s face, among images and likenesses.”733

As such, God’s self-communication to man through symbols will cease but one symbol

that will not cease is Jesus Christ. This will be the case because his significance is eternal for

the immediacy of the beatific vision. The humanity of Christ, which is the humanity of the

Logos, will have an eternal significance because through the Incarnation, the Logos received

726 RAHNER, The present situation of Catholic theology, 135. 727 RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 212. 728 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 346. 729 Cf. RAHNER, Theological foundations 5, 243. 730 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 431. 731 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 368. 732 Cf. RAHNER, What is a sacrament, 141-142. 733 RAHNER, Theological foundations 5, 244.

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supernatural grace and glory and through the gracious freedom of God, the supernatural grace

and glory of Jesus will remain even after the end of the world by the gracious freedom of God.

Rahner also perceived that the dependence of the created spirit on the self-communication of

God through the Incarnate Logos is not merely a moral relationship but it is real and

permanent. That is why, the self-communication of God to the created spirit through the

Incarnate Logos will not cease because the Incarnate Logos merited this glory for the created

spirit which lives in time.734

If we accept this proposition […] it implies that what has been affirmed of the symbolic function of the

Incarnate Logos as Logos and man also holds good for the perfected existence of man, for his eschata.

Eschatology also teaches us about the symbolic reality which conveys to us the immediacy of God at the

end; the Word which became flesh.735

Thus Christian eschatology can be referred to as the doctrine of the last things, which

is the doctrine of man as being open to the absolute future with God. In this sense,

eschatology is concerned with freedom of man who has been given the gift of self-

communication in grace.

Man can say what he is only by saying what he wants and what he can become. And as a creature,

basically he can say what he wants in his freedom only by saying what he freely hopes will be given to

him and will be accepted by his freedom. Because of man’s very nature, therefore, Christian

anthropology is Christian futurology and Christian eschatology.736

Lastly, regarding eschatological hermeneutics and the full realisation of the self-

communication of God; Rahner believed that at the end of time, the sacraments, symbols,

signs and the whole lot of historical succession of manifestations, through which God has

imparted Himself to man will cease. Now, man will possess full knowledge of God and will

have the beatific vision and there will be no need for God to communicate Himself through

symbols because man will already be in full communion with God. But while we still live in

this world, “our historical transcendence depends on God’s offer to communicate himself; for

734 Cf. RAHNER, Theological foundations 5, 243-244. 735 RAHNER, Theological foundations 5, 244. 736 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 431.

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our spiritual transcendence is never merely natural but always surrounded and carried by a

dynamic of grace that points towards God’s nearness; […].”737

10.9. Rahner’s communication theology under the lens of Lasswell’s theory

From the foregoing chapters, we can see that the themes that Rahner had chosen and

treated in his theological investigations are essential elements of the communication process

described by different communication scientists. Using the theoretical framework of Harold

Lasswell, we can identify the communication process based on “who says what to whom in

which medium and to what effect”.

10.9.1 Who communicates?

The communicator in the process of God’s self-communication is God himself and He

communicates to man who is an event of God’s self-communication in grace. God

communicates himself to man so that man may know, love and serve Him and so be able to

accept God’s offer of salvation forever.738 Once God has made his offer of salvation through

His self-communication, man is at liberty to accept or to reject God’s communication. This

means that God’s self-communication does not force man to give a particular response, be it

positive or negative, but it is a communication that leaves man free to respond in any way he

chooses.739 We have seen that this communication is a gift freely given that is not merely

handed over to the recipient, but one that holds the recipient in being. God’s communication is

first and fundamental. This apriority underlies all beings called into existence. To conceal this

apriority is to describe human communication as if it was without foundation. Thus the Father

is the Sender, the beginning, the originator of all life, and therefore the source that makes all

communication possible. (John 1: 1-2).

737 RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 209. 738 Cf. RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 204. 739 Cf. RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 204.

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In the third chapter, we have explored Rahner’s ‘Communication Theology.’ We have

looked at the human condition and God’s self-communication; Jesus Christ – God’s absolute

self-communication; the Church – embodiment of God’s self-communication and the mission

of communicating the Good news.

10.9.2 What is the message? Jesus the Word – the revelation of Absolute Mystery and the

climax of salvation history

God communicates the fullness of life and love that is Himself. All creatures, known

and unknown, big and small are his creation. God makes all things and he constantly makes all

things new. Creativity and novelty constitute God’s activity and this activity emerges from the

wellspring of unconditional love. However, His communication reaches its climax in Jesus740,

the Absolute symbol through whom God’s self-communication is given its fullness and is also

accepted in its fullness. Jesus is the Logos, the Word spoken by the Father. “This is my

beloved Son, listen to him.”741 Jesus is the Word of God and through him, God has spoken

everything that can help man to be saved.742 However, to understand the depth of meaning of

the message in Jesus as Logos, it is essential to consider the full meaning of ‘Logos’ as

Medium.

10.9.3. How God communicates: Through media, metaphors, symbols

God communicates Himself through various means. God is Absolute Mystery and

cannot be fully comprehended by man in His absoluteness that is why He communicates

through symbols which are part of the human categorical experiences of man.743 But the

740 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 195. 741 Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35. 742 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 379. 743 Cf. RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 391.

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perfect medium through which God communicates himself is his own “Word made flesh who

dwelt amongst us”744, His son Jesus. Jesus is therefore the message and the medium in one.

The form God’s message took was the “incarnation”. The doctrine of the incarnation

represents God’s self-giving, self-communicating action towards all creation. The message

sent has a purpose: to proclaim the Kingdom (Luke 4:18). In Jesus all of creation is the

symbol of God’s purpose and salvation. Man is the only creature to understand, interpret, use

and be inspired by the symbols because only he is capable of recognizing and worshiping the

God who communicates himself through creation, through the Word, through the sacraments

and most of all through His Son, Jesus, the absolute symbol.745

For McLuhan, one of the notable pioneers of media studies, the medium is not just a

limited technical prop, but the totality of the infrastructures and conditions necessary for a

message to be communicated. Jesus Christ is such a medium. He is not merely a physical body

in which the Word of God was implanted. He, in his totality, is the fullness and richness

through which God's Word is symbolized and communicated to the receivers. The totality of

experience that is associated with him includes the years of longing for the Messiah, his

insignificant arrival, the virgin birth, his lifestyle, his controversial life, his radical choices, his

courageous determination in the face of excruciating suffering, his scandalous death, his

mysterious resurrection, his glorious resurrection, his unprecedented post-resurrection

presence. All this is the medium and all this is Christ.

Christ's teaching is unique and carries with it the power of authority that the people

who witnessed him speak, heal and work miracles, marvelled at him. (Mk1:22) In Aetatis

Novae, the Pastoral Instruction on Communication, we can see traces of Rahner’s

terminology:

[T]he communication of truth can have a redemptive power, which comes from the person of Christ. He

is God's Word made flesh and the image of the invisible God. In and through him God's own life is

communicated to humanity by the Spirit's action. […] Here, in the Word made flesh, God's self-

communication is definitive. In Jesus' words and deeds the Word is liberating, redemptive, for all

744 The Revised Standard Version, John 1:14. 745 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 236-237.

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humankind. This loving self-revelation of God, combined with humanity's response of faith, constitutes

a profound dialogue.746

The document points to Christ as the saving “content and the dynamic source of the

Church's communications in proclaiming the Gospel.”747 He, who is the Word of the Father in

whom all things are made is the Father’s Supreme Gift and message to man. In him the Father

communicates love. If we speak of Christ, communicator and communication, we cannot

forget that he is the Word that is in the Father from the beginning, and through Him all of

creation is a communication addressed to those who are created “in His image and

likeness”748. McLuhan, a devout Catholic, was once asked whether the formula “the Medium

is the Message” could be applied to Christ, he replied at once: “In Jesus Christ, there is no

distance or separation between the medium and the message: it is the one case where we can

say that the medium and the message are fully one and the same.”749

10.9.4. To Whom – Man the hearer of the Word

God’s self-communication is addressed to a recipient. God is the sender of the

message of His offer of salvation which is addressed and channelled through Jesus, the

Absolute symbol of God. Man is the event of God’s self-communication and he is the hearer

of God’s message.750 In order to hear the message, man is helped with God’s grace which is

given to him. If man hears the message and accepts it, then he will be saved in paradise but

failure to comply and listen to the message leads to perdition and damnation.751

746Aetatis Novae, Pastoral instruction on social communications on the twentieth anniversary of

Communio et progression, art. 6, February 22, 1992. 747Aetatis Novae, Pastoral instruction on social communications on the twentieth anniversary of

Communio et progression, 1992. 748 The Revised Standard Version, Genesis 1:27 749 Marshall MCLUHAN, The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion. Eds. Eric McLuhan and Jacek

Szklarek. Toronto: Stoddart, 1999, 103. 750 Cf. RAHNER, The theology of the symbol, 254. 751 Cf. RAHNER, History of the world and salvation-history, 100.

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10.9.5. With what effect – Man the doer and questioner of the Word.

The message of God’s offer of salvation which is given through God’s self-

communication produces an effect in man. Assisted by God’s grace, man is helped to respond

positively. Without God’s assistance and grace, man is incapable of understanding and

responding positively to God’s message of salvation and God’s offer of salvation.752 Through

grace, man does what the word of God tells him to do and also questions the Word in order to

properly understand it and put it into action. The Word of God has a transforming effect and

has an efficacy because it is supposed to change the life of man so that he can be saved.753 The

response of man demonstrates the cyclic nature of the entire process of communication. It

stresses the ontological fact that Absolute Mystery is constantly in dialogue with human

history, calling forth humanity to be always more than it can be.

However, the communication process described above is not a replica of human

communication as researched and analysed by Lasswell. It goes beyond. In human

communication the sender of a message has no power to shape and control the influence

his/her message will have on the receiver. In other words, the sender can control, to a certain

extent, the effect of the message on the receiver through strategic marketing. But the ultimate

effect cannot be completely guaranteed, unless the sender in question has set in motion a

program of control that leaves the sender no room for free choice. In the case of God’s self-

communication which is given freely in order to elicit a free response from the receiver, it is

God who is the formal, efficient and final cause of the message generated and response

received, thanks to his Spirit. The role of the third person of the Blessed Trinity is, as we have

seen, the pneuma that breathes life, inspires, promotes, consoles and converts. The

communication process is therefore fully in the control of the Triune Godhead and the receiver

who freely accepts the invitation experiences what it is to be free.

752 RAHNER, Grace in freedom, 209. 753 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 146.

178

Meanwhile, a visible and concrete presence to facilitate a positive feedback to God’s

self-communication in Jesus Christ is the establishing of the Catholic Church by the apostles

that over space and time seeks to communicate its mission so that the Good News received

becomes the Good News shared to men and women of every place and every age.

Consequently the Dialogue continues as the communication process initiated by Absolute

Mystery in a decisive moment in time with the birth of the long awaited Messiah. The mission

continues as an ever widening spiral that evolves both horizontally and vertically through the

variety of cultures and ages until the present day.

10.9.6. The entire communication process is vertically and horizontally dynamic

Rahner was not oblivious of the dynamism underlying the communication process of

the Christ event. He puts the incarnation in an evolutionary perspective that advances forward

biologically, chronologically and spatially.

Jesus is a true man; he is truly a part of the earth, truly a moment in the biological evolution of this

world, a moment of human natural history, for he is born of woman; he is a man who in his spiritual,

human and finite subjectivity is just like us, a receiver of that self-communication of God by grace

which we affirm of all men […]..754

Jesus like any of us, Jesus was born and developed biologically and spiritually. He

was in an evolutionary process as a human being growing up from being young to becoming

an adult.

Aetatis Novae continues to reflect Rahnerian thinking and elaborates on the

implications for the evolving Church when it states:

Human history and all human relationships exist within the framework established by this self-

communication of God in Christ. History itself is ordered toward becoming a kind of word of God, and

it is part of the human vocation to contribute to bringing this about by living out the ongoing, unlimited

communication of God's reconciling love in creative new ways. We are to do this through words of hope

and deeds of love, that is, through our very way of life. Thus communication must lie at the heart of the

Church community.755

754RAHNER, Christology within an evolutionary view, 176. 755 AETATIS NOVAE, Pastoral instruction on social communications on the twentieth anniversary of

Communio et progressio, 1992.

179

A student of the communication sciences cannot fail to recognize in the entire process

of personal and social response to God’s initiation of dialogue and communication, the helical

model of communication promoted by F. X. Dance in which communication is viewed as an

ascending spiral that reaches beyond any given communication event.756 Applying Rahner,

one can see that the communication process initiated by God includes the entire life of

individuals or in the case of societies many generations throughout human history. The helical

model helps us see how the communication process of individual persons effects time and

history, since it passes into culture and through generations yet to come. Through all this ever

ascending and widening spiral, God’s self-communication is always given. But on the part of

man it is either accepted or ignored and refused. Notwithstanding man’s response, God self-

communication as experienced through the history of revelation757 continues to lead us towards

infinity758 which culminates in Christian Eschatology.759

We also notice that the process involves the widening of space – the spiral gets larger

as time moves on, to embrace many more people across the world.760 This is exemplified by

the missionary commitment to communicate the Christian experience and share God’s offer of

salvation to reach out to as many more people who have not yet heard the Good News.761

This horizontally dynamic process includes the annunciation to all without reserve

without any compulsion. It also consists in the capacity to recognize those who Rahner calls

Anonymous Christians who consist of those who are ignorant, indifferent or opposed to

Christianity but nevertheless practice Christian values in the way they live their private and

social lives.762 The term used by Rahner is a way to explain to members of Catholic

Christianity the place or role of genuine truth seekers who are not Christians (the popes call

756 Cf. DANCE, The “Concept” of Communication, 201. 757Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 155. 758 Cf. RAHNER, Current problems in Christology, 198-199. 759 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, 431-432. 760 RAHNER, The position of woman in the new situation in which the Church finds herself, 79. 761 Cf. RAHNER, Dogmatic notes on ‘Ecclesiological piety,’ 339-340. 762 RAHNER, Christianity and the non-Christian religions, 133.

180

them “people of good will”763) but nevertheless included in humanity’s response to God’s self-

communication in Jesus that is, according to Rahner’s theology, fundamentally and

ontologically reaching out to embrace every human being. The term was never intended to be

used as a label people who were “of good will” (from the Christian viewpoint), whether

atheists or believers in other faiths.

763 Cf. John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, art. 1, APRIL 11, 1963; Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, art. 1, August 6, 1964.

181

CONCLUSION

Rahner’s theological writings were motivated by his deep love for the Church and the

need to make its teachings relevant and understandable by the faithful. He was aware that this

pastoral challenge would not be easy to surpass. He therefore decided to address his writings

to people who are not afraid to raise questions about reality in general.764 He confessed that his

writings “will appear too “high,” too complicated and too abstract, while to others it will

appear too primitive.”765

Rahner wrestled with all these questions and wrote much because he wanted the

Church to flourish amidst the mass-media culture of the late twentieth century. But to achieve

this, he had to be forthright in making suggestions to the institutional Church, as someone who

was loyal to the Teaching Office of the Church.766

Obviously theology needs an area of freedom. No doubt theology’s free space was often unduly

restricted in the years before the Second Vatican Council. Naturally, there are limits to its range of

freedom wherever theology denies head-on and decisively a defined truth of Church faith. Unlike Hans

Küng and such people, I never really wanted to do a theology that called into question the teaching

authority of the Church where it bound me unconditionally.767

At times, Rahner differed with the Neo-Scholastic theologians because they were too

dogmatic and not adapting to the times. He did not intend to “simply repeat what Christianity

proclaims after the manner of a catechism and in the traditional formulations, but rather, […]

to reach a renewed understanding of this message and to arrive at an “idea” of Christianity.”768

Such an idea of Christianity would guide the Church in its renewal. Rahner was convinced

that the idea of Christianity had to be communicated and presented in a new way that was

fitting to the men and women of the twentieth century that is why “anche nel mondo non

764 RAHNER, Spirit in the world, 58. 765 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, XI. 766 Cf. Karl RAHNER, Faith in a wintry season: Conversations & interviews with Karl Rahner in the last years

of his life, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder & Herder, 1989, 52. 767 RAHNER, Faith in a wintry season, 52. 768 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, XI.

182

cattolico l’ammirazione per Rahner non passò inosservata.”769 He therefore avoided presenting

the faith as if all questions are completely settled and he equally avoided repeating what the

traditional catechism teaches.770

He had to be ready for “some rather strenuous thinking and some hard-intellectual

work.”771 This then partly explains why some have found the writings of Rahner to be

difficult; because he was trying to present the faith in a way that would go beyond the

traditional question and answer catechism but while “replicating memories”772 of the

traditional catechism which he promoted for the salvation of souls.773

Reading through the works of Rahner, different communication scholars in the 1990s

like Franz-Josef Eilers, Angela Ann Zukowski, Frances Forde Plude, Joseph Palakeel, Bernard

R. Bonnot, Paul Soukup and Jacob Srampickal had indicated that it would be possible to

consider Rahner’s theology from a communication perspective.

This is exactly what we have attempted in this thesis by focusing on those aspects of

Rahner’s method and content that reflect a predominantly communication dimension.

Firstly, the main objectives of this thesis were to understand the difference between a

Theology of Communication and a ‘Communication Theology’; to investigate the historical

development of ‘Communication Theology’; to understand Rahner’s concern for theology that

communicates to twentieth century secular culture and to evaluate the ‘Communication

Theology’ potential in Rahner’s writings on theological themes.

The second objective was to penetrate Rahner’s philosophical foundations in order to

come to terms with the epistemological and ontological foundations of Rahner’s thought; to

understand the Thomistic interpretation of human cognitional bivalence in the ‘conversion to

the phantasm’; to show the Kantian-Marecalian ‘apprehension of finite being’ on the basis of a

‘pre-apprehension of Absolute Being’; to delineate the Heideggerian concept of Dasein and

769BERGER, Karl Rahner, commiato da un mito pericoloso, 4. 770 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, X-XI. 771 RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, XI. 772 CARTIER – HARWOOD, On definition of communication, 73. 773 Cf. RAHNER, Foundations of Christian faith, XII.

183

the ‘question’ with respect to the ‘horizon of being’ and then we wanted to synthesize the

transcendental characteristics of the human orientation to Absolute Mystery.

Our third objective was to focus on the communication dimensions of Rahner’s

theology that consisted of such themes as: the human condition of man the questioner, with

concupiscent tendencies and a hearer of the message of God’s revelation in history. Under

this objective, we also discussed the concept of Jesus as the Absolute self-communication of

God, the Church as the embodiment of God’s self-communication in history; the symbolic

representations of God’s saving grace; the sacraments, the mission to witness, through

homiletics, dialogue and death; the mission to build communion through ecumenism through

inter-denominational and inter-religious dialogue; the aesthetical aspects communicated

through gesture, image, word, poetry, music, media and finally, to look at spirituality as the

ability to recognize grace as the communication of God in every reality of daily life.

It is our hope that the theme chosen and the effort to elaborate and substantiate a

concrete example of a Communication Theology based on Rahner’s works is deemed valid

and relevant for our communication age. Rahner’s theology is indeed a ‘Communication

Theology’.

184

BIBLIOGRAPHY

a) A Selection of books and articles by Karl Rahner in English in chronological

order of publishing

RAHNER Karl, Free speech in the Church, Freiburg im Breisgau, Johannes-Verlag, 1959.

RAHNER Karl, On the theology of death, volume 2 of quaestiones disputatae, Freiburg im

Breisgau, Herder & Herder, 1961.

RAHNER Karl, Mission and grace, London, Sheed & Ward, 1963.

RAHNER Karl, Nature and grace: Dilemmas in the modern Church, New York, Sheed and

ward, 1963.

RAHNER Karl, Renewal of preaching, New York, Paulist press, 1963.

RAHNER Karl, The Christian commitment: essays in pastoral theology, London, Sheed and

ward, 1963.

RAHNER Karl, The Church and the sacraments: Volume 9 of Quaestiones disputatae,

Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder & Herder, 1963.

RAHNER Karl, Nature and grace: Dilemmas in the modern Church, New York, Sheed and

Ward, 1964.

RAHNER Karl, The Word: Readings in theology, New York, P.J. Kennedy, 1964.

185

RAHNER Karl - Herbert VORGRIMLER, Theological dictionary, Freiburg im Breisgau,

Herder & Herder, 1965.

RAHNER Karl (Ed.), Christian in the market place, New York, Sheed & Ward, 1966.

RAHNER Karl, Inspiration in the bible: Quaestiones disputatae, Freiburg im Breisgau,

Herder & Herder, 1966.

RAHNER Karl, Everyday faith, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder & Herder, 1968.

RAHNER Karl, On prayer, New York, Paulist press, 1968.

RAHNER Karl, Spirit in the world, New York, Continuum publishing company, 1968.

RAHNER Karl, Do you believe in God?, Gracewing, Newman Press, 1969.

RAHNER Karl, Grace in freedom, translated by Hilda C. Graef, London, Burns & Oates,

1969.

RAHNER Karl, The priesthood, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder & Herder, 1973.

RAHNER Karl, The shape of the Church to come, New York, Seabury Press, 1974.

RAHNER Karl (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of theology: A concise sacramentum mundi, London,

A&C Black, 1975.

RAHNER Karl, Meditations on the sacraments, New York, Seabury press, 1977.

RAHNER Karl, Foundations of Christian faith, An introduction to the idea of Christianity,

translated by William V. DYCH, London, Darton Longman and Todd, 1978.

RAHNER Karl, Happiness through prayer, London, Burns & Oates, 1978.

RAHNER Karl, The spirit in the Church, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1979.

186

RAHNER Karl, A new Christology, New York, Seabury Press, 1980.

RAHNER Karl, Prayers and meditations: An anthology of the spiritual writings of Karl

Rahner, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1980.

RAHNER Karl, A handbook of contemporary spirituality, New York, Crossroads, 1983.

RAHNER Karl, The love of Jesus and the love of neighbour, New York, publishing company,

1983.

RAHNER Karl, The Love of Jesus and the love of neighbour, New York, Crossroad

publishing company, 1983.

RAHNER Karl, The practice of faith: a handbook of contemporary spirituality, London, SCM

Press, 1985.

RAHNER Karl - Paul IMHOF - Hubert BIALLOWONS, Karl Rahner in dialogue:

Conversations and interviews, 1965-1982, Freiburg im Breisgau, Crossroad, 1986.

RAHNER Karl - Pinchas LAPIDE, Encountering Jesus - encountering Judaism: A dialogue,

New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1987.

RAHNER Karl, Faith in a wintry season: Conversations & interviews with Karl Rahner in the

last years of his life, Freiburg im Breisgau, Herder & Herder, 1989.

RAHNER Karl, Hearer of the Word, Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Academic, 1994.

RAHNER Karl, The Great Church year: The best of Karl Rahner’s homilies, sermons, and

meditations, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1994.

RAHNER Karl, Prayers for a lifetime, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1995.

187

RAHNER Karl, The need and the blessing of prayer, Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 1997.

RAHNER Karl, Encounters with silence, translated by James M. DEMSKE, South Bend, St.

Augustine’s Press, 1999.

RAHNER Karl, Watch and pray with me, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 2000.

RAHNER Karl, The Trinity, translated by J. DONCEEL, Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury

Publishing, 2001.

RAHNER Karl, Spiritual writings, Ossining, Orbis Books, 2004.

RAHNER Karl, The Content of faith, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 2013.

RAHNER Karl, Ignatius of Loyola speaks, South Bend, St. Augustine’s press, 2013.

RAHNER Karl, Spiritual exercises, translated by Kenneth Baker, South Bend, St. Augustine’s

Press, 2014.

188

b) The Theological Investigations in order of volumes

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 1: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, New

York, Crossroad publishing company, 1982.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 2: Man in the Church, New York,

Crossroad publishing company, 1963.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 3: Theology of the spiritual life, New

York, Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations Volume 4: More recent writings, Translated by

Kevin Smith, London, Darton Longman and Todd, 1966.

RAHNER Karl, Theological Investigations, Volume 5: Later writings, Translated by K. H.

Kruger, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1970.

RAHNER Karl, Theological Investigations, Volume 6: Concerning Vatican Council II,

Translated by K. H. Kruger and B. Kruger, London, Darton Longman & Todd ltd,

1969.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 7: Further Theology of the spiritual life 1,

London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1971.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 8: Further theology of the spiritual life 2,

London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1974.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 9: Writings of 1965-67, translated by G.

Harrison, London, Darton Longman & Todd ltd, 1972.

189

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 10: Writings of 1965-67 II, Translated by

D. Bourke, London, Darton Longman & Todd ltd, 1973.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 11: Confrontations, London, Darton

Longman & Todd, 1974.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 12: Confrontations II, London, Longman

& Todd, 1974.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 13: Theology, anthropology, Christology,

Michigan, Seabury printing, 1975.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 14: Ecclesiology, questions in the Church,

the Church in the world, New York, Seabury press, 1976.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 15: Penance in the early Church,

Translated by Lionel Swain, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1982.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 16: Experience of the spirit: Source of

theology, Translated by David Morland, New York, Crossroad publishing company,

1979.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 17: Jesus, man and the church, London,

Darton Longman & Todd, 1981.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 18: God and revelation, Crossroad

publishing company, 1983.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 19: Faith and ministry, Translated by

Edward Quinn, New York, Crossroad publishing company, 1983.

190

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigations, Volume 20: Concern for the Church, New York,

Crossroad publishing company, 1981.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigation, Volume 21: Science and Christian faith, London,

Darton Longman & Todd, 1988.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigation, Volume 22: Humane society and the Church of

tomorrow, London, Darton Longman & Todd ltd, 1991.

RAHNER Karl, Theological investigation, Volume 23: Final writings, New York, Crossroad

publication company, 1992.

191

c) Books and articles on Karl Rahner in alphabetical order of authors

ALLEN John L., Debating Karl Rahner and Hans urs Von Balthasar; Interview with David

Schindler; appointments in the Roman Curia; Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo of

Kisangani, 28.11.2003, in John L. ALLEN, “National Catholic reporter: The

Independent newsweekly,”

http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word112803.htm, (01.11.2015).

BERGER, Karl Rahner, commiato da un mito pericoloso, in “Fides Catholica,” 01 (2004).

BUCKLEY James J., On being a symbol: An appraisal of Karl Rahner,

http://cdn.theologicalstudies.net/40/40.3/40.3.2.pdf, (07.11.2015) 453-473.

BURK Patrick, Reinterpreting Rahner: A critical study of his major themes, New York,

Fordham University press, 2002, 93-94.

CAMPBELL Jim, Karl Rahner, SJ (1904–1984),http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-

voices/20th-century-ignatian-voices/karl-rahner-sj/, (14.11.2014).

CHAN Wai Shu, Karl Rahner’s thought on Sacrament,

http://www.cgst.edu/Publication/TheologyStudent/Journal20/Article_A03.pdf,

22.09.2014.

CLARK A. William, The Authority of Local Church Communities, in “Philosophy and

Theology,” 13 (2001) 2, 399-424.

CROWLEY Eileen, Endless crossings, Karl Rahner’s theology, communication, and the arts,

https://www.academia.edu/1753514/Crowley_Endless_Crossings_Karl_Rahners_Theo

logy_Art_and_Communication_, (21.09.2014).

http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word112803.htm

http://cdn.theologicalstudies.net/40/40.3/40.3.2.pdf



http://www.cgst.edu/Publication/TheologyStudent/Journal20/Article_A03.pdf

https://www.academia.edu/1753514/Crowley_Endless_Crossings_Karl_Rahners_Theology_Art_and_Communication_

https://www.academia.edu/1753514/Crowley_Endless_Crossings_Karl_Rahners_Theology_Art_and_Communication_

192

CROWLEY G. Paul, Rahner, doctrine and ecclesial pluralism, in “Philosophy and

Theology” 12 (2000) 1, 131-154.

DEDEREN Raoul, Karl Rahner’s the shape of the church to come: A review article,

http://www.auss.info/auss_publication_file.php?pub_id=548&journal=1&type=pdf,

(10.01.2016).

DYCH V. William, Karl Rahner’s theology of Eucharist, in “Philosophy and Theology,” 11

(1998) 1, 125-146.

DYCH V. William, Transposing orthodoxy into orthopraxis, in “Philosophy and

Theology,” 11 (1999) 2, 223-255.

ENDEAN Philip, Von Balthasar, Rahner, and the commissar,

http://www.theway.org.uk/endeanweb/vonbrc.pdf, (08.01.2016).

FISCHER Mark F., The Soteriologies of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar:

Presentation at the breakfast meeting of the Karl Rahner Society, 13.06.2015,

http://karlrahnersociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Soteriologies-of-Rahner-

and-Balthasar1.pdf, (02.11.2015).

GALVIN John P., The Rahner revolution I: Grace for a new generation, in John P. GALVIN

– Anne CARR, “Commonweal: Contemporary theology issue, The Rahner

revolution,” (25.01.1985) 40 – 42.

GROMADA T. Conrad, How would Karl Rahner respond to “Dominus Iesus”?, “Philosophy

and Theology,” 13 (2001) 2, 425-436.

GUIMARÃES Atila Sinke, Book reviews: The theology of Karl Rahner,

http://www.traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_009br_Rahner.htm, (02.01.2016).

H. U. V. BALTHASAR, L’amour seul est digne de foi, Aubier, Paris, 1966, 35-69.

http://www.auss.info/auss_publication_file.php?pub_id=548&journal=1&type=pdf

http://karlrahnersociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Soteriologies-of-Rahner-and-Balthasar1.pdf

http://karlrahnersociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Soteriologies-of-Rahner-and-Balthasar1.pdf

http://philpapers.org/rec/GROHWK

http://www.traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_009br_Rahner.htm

193

HARDON John, Fr. Karl Rahner, S. J. verses the real presence, 6.07.2012,

http://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.it/2012/07/fr-karl-rahner-sj-verses-real-

presence.html, 23.09.2014.

HINES E. Mary, Rahner on development of doctrine, in “Philosophy and Theology,”12 (2000)

1, 111-130.

JOWERS Dennis W., An exposition and critique of Karl Rahner’s axiom: “The economic

Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa,

http://www.midamerica.edu/uploads/files/pdf/journal/15-jowers.pdf, (06.11.2015) 168.

KELLY B. Geoffrey, “Unconscious Christianity and the anonymous Christian in the theology

of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Rahner, in “Philosophy and Theology,” 9 (1995)

117-149.

LEIJSSEN J. Lambert, Rahner’s contribution to the renewal of Sacramentology, in

“Philosophy and Theology,” 9 (1995) 201-222.

LENNAN Richard, Faith in context: Rahner on the possibility of belief, in “Philosophy and

Theology,” 17 (2005) 233-258.

LENNAN Richard, Rahner’s theology of the priesthood and the development of doctrine, in

“Philosophy and Theology,” 12 (2000) 1, 155-185.

LENNAN Richard, The Ecclesiology of Karl Rahner, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997.

MARMION Declan - Mary E. HINES, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner,

Cambridge, Cambridge university press, 2005.

MARMION Declan S.M., Rahner and his critics: Revisiting the dialogue, in Stephen

BEVANS - Louis J. LUZBATEK, “Australian eJournal of Theology,” 4 (2005) 1-20.

McCOOL A. Gerald (Ed.), A Rahner reader, London, Longman and Todd, 1975.

http://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.it/2012/07/fr-karl-rahner-sj-verses-real-presence.html

http://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.it/2012/07/fr-karl-rahner-sj-verses-real-presence.html

http://www.midamerica.edu/uploads/files/pdf/journal/15-jowers.pdf

194

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, Theological disputes, 25.02.2005,

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005a/022505/022505h.php, (29.10.2015).

O’DONOVAN J. Leo, (Ed.), A world of grace, Washington, Georgetown University Press,

1995.

O’DONOVAN J. Leo, A journey into time: The legacy of Karl Rahner’s last years, in

“Theological Studies,” 46 (1985), 621-644.

O’MEARA Thomas F., God in the world: A guide to Karl Rahner’s theology, Minnesota,

Liturgical press, 2007.

ORJI Cyril, Using ‘foundation’ as inculturation hermeneutic in a world Church: Did Rahner

Validate Lonergan?, in “Heythrop Journal,” 54 (2013) 2, 287-300.

PEKARSKE T. Daniel, Abstracts of Karl Rahner’s Theological investigations 1-23,

Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2002.

PENASKOVIC Richard, A prophetic voice, in “Philosophy and Theology,” 23 (2011) 2, 283-

300.

RAHNER Karl, Foundations of Christian faith: An introduction to the idea of Christianity,

3.07.2004, http://liberalcatholicrahnereucharist.blogspot.it/ (10.11.2014).

RANKER, Karl Rahner books list,http://www.ranker.com/list/karl-rahner-books-and-stories-

and-written-works/reference, (09.04.2015).

ROSENBERG Randall S., Rahner, Balthasar and high school theology, in “America: The

national Catholic review,” 23.09.2002,

http://americamagazine.org/issue/402/article/rahner-balthasar-and-high-school-

theology, (01.11.2015).

http://liberalcatholicrahnereucharist.blogspot.it/

http://www.ranker.com/list/karl-rahner-books-and-stories-and-written-works/reference

http://www.ranker.com/list/karl-rahner-books-and-stories-and-written-works/reference

195

RYAN Robin, Ekklesia part VI: Karl Rahner's view of the Church, 21.11.2012,

http://www.catholicsoncall.org/ekklesia-part-vi-karl-rahners-view-church,

(01.12.2015).

STEINMETZ Mary, Thoughts on the experience of God in the theology of Karl Rahner: Gifts

and implications, in “Lumen et vita,”

https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/lumenetvita/article/viewFile/1900/1907,

(11.03.2015).

THEIßEN Henning, Witness and service to the world. Discovering protestant Church renewal

in Europe, in “Neue Zeitschrift für Systematicsche Theologie Und

Religionsphilosophie,” 53 (2011) 2, 225-239.

VORGRIMLER Herbert, Understanding of Karl Rahner, New York, Crossroad, 1986.

WONG K. Y., A Study of Karl Rahner’s sacramental theology on liturgy as symbol,

http://www.chinesetheology.com/WongKY/LiturgyAsSymbol.htm, (08.04.2015).

YOUTUBE, Karl Rahner’s theology of the symbol - Sacraments and worship lecture 4,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yayZn-mUzSc&hd=1, 21.09.2014.

ZENIT STAFF, Re-examining Karl Rahner’s legacy: Congress marks the centenary of

theologian’s birth, 07.03.2004, https://zenit.org/articles/re-examining-karl-rahner-s-

legacy/, (21.02.2016).

http://www.catholicsoncall.org/ekklesia-part-vi-karl-rahners-view-church

http://www.chinesetheology.com/WongKY/LiturgyAsSymbol.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yayZn-mUzSc&hd=1

https://zenit.org/articles/re-examining-karl-rahner-s-legacy/

https://zenit.org/articles/re-examining-karl-rahner-s-legacy/

196

d) Books and articles on ‘Communication’, ‘Theology’, ‘Communication Theology’

and other topics cited in the thesis in alphabetical order

ANDERSEN P. Martin, What is communication, in “The Journal of communication,” 9 (1959)

5-5.

ANGELICANOHEMIQUINONEZ, The best explanation for transubstantiation yet,

24.02.2011, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/takeandread/2011/02/the-best-explanation-

for-transubstantiation-yet/, (19.02.2015).

ANTHONY KRIEG Robert (Ed.), A precursor’s life and work, in Robert ANTHONY KRIEG

(Ed.), Romano Guardini: Proclaiming the sacred in a modern world, Chicago, Arch

Diocese of Chicago liturgy training publications, 1995, 16.

AQUINAS Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 84, a.7, Chicago, Benziger brothers Inc., 1947.

ARACKAL Francis, National meet moots ‘Communication Theology’ for seminary formation,

http://www.veritasop.blogspot.it/2003_01_12_archive.html#87484203, (10.02.2016).

AYER A.J., What is communication, in “Studies in communication,” London, Martin Secker

and Warburg, 1955, 11-28.

BALTHASAR Von, The moment of Christian witness, San Francisco, Ignatius press, 1994.

BARNLUND C. Dean, Toward a meaning centred philosophy of communication, in “The

Journal of communication,” 12 (1964) 197-211.

BERELSON Bernard – Gary A. STEINER, Human behaviour, New York, Harcourt, Brace

and World, 1964, 254.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/takeandread/author/angelicanohemiquinonez/

http://www.veritasop.blogspot.it/2003_01_12_archive.html#87484203

197

BONNOT R. Bernard, Media: Superficial or spiritual,

http://newtheologyreview.com/index.php/ntr/article/viewFile/80/139, (14.02.2016) 60.

BUNNIN Nicholas - Jiyuan YU, The Blackwell dictionary of western philosophy,

http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g978

140510679516_ss1-33, (18.05.2017).

CAPUTO John, Heidegger and Aquinas: An essay on overcoming metaphysics, Bronx,

Fordham University press, 1982.

CAREY James, A cultural approach to communication,

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APPENDIX 1

a) Email from Susan Parlow

From: Susan Parlow <[email protected]>

To: CharlesNdhlovu<[email protected]>

Date: Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 6:53 PM

Dear Fr. Ndhlovu

I do not know where the Salesian Pontifical University is - is it in Rome? But I am honoured

to hear from you and delighted to hear that you are interested in Rahner.

My PhD is in clinical psychology. I have returned to school at Fordham University and am

studying theology with the Jesuits there. I don’t know anyone currently working on his idea

of communication. Having said that, all the faculty at Fordham do treasure Rahner! Elizabeth

Johnson adverts to him in her new book as a major source of inspiration. When I think of

Rahner and communication I think of his central idea that God is a self-communicating God,

and I would take off from there - when and how does human communication allow for the

presence of God, and when might it foreclose that?

Perhaps you can say more of what you are thinking of and I could have more to say than that!

But I encourage you to pursue this notion, and wish you all grace and luck.

Warm regards, SP

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Susan Elizabeth Parlow PhD, 80 Eighth Ave, 1605, New York NY 10011,

[email protected]

b) Email from Franz-Josef Eilers

From: Franz-Josef Eilers <[email protected]>

To: [email protected]

cc: Vu <[email protected]>,

Date: Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 11:12 AM

Subject: Re: Communication Theology

Dears Fr. Charles,

To my knowledge there is not yet special study on Karl Rahner and his Theology for

Communication yet. But I forwarded your letter to one of my colleagues and doctoral student

Fr. Anh Vu Ta who is teaching Communication Theology here in our Graduate program at the

Pontifical University of Santo Tomas in Manila. His doctoral thesis will be on

“Communication Theology in Intercultural Communication Perspective”. We just published

his book on Communication Theology which should be there at UPS. He is a priest from a

German diocese which means all resources are available to him in their original (German)

language.

Best wishes and blessings, Franz-Josef Eilers

mailto:[email protected]

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c) Email from Declan Marmion

From: Declan Marmion <[email protected]>

To: [email protected]

Date: Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 12:40 PM

Subject: your query

Charles,

Thank you for your mail. In relation to Rahner's theory of God's self-communication, you can

read the chapter on Faith and Revelation and on Theological Aesthetics in the Cambridge

Companion to Karl Rahner.

Each of these chapters will give good references to primary sources in Rahner's Investigations

and elsewhere. John O'Donnell's little book on Rahner Life in the Spirit is also excellent and

relevant for your theme.

Also, see the web reference below though I have only scanned the piece. I cannot tell you

precisely if anyone else is working on this theme as I am not clear what your specific focus is.

With every good wish -- Declan Marmion

Prof. Declan Marmion, SM

Dean of Theology

216

St. Patrick's College,

Maynooth

Co. Kildare

Ireland

Tel. 01-7083627

http://maynoothcollege.ie/pontifical-university/rev-declan-marmion/

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d) Email from Duc Viet Vu

From: Duc Viet Vu <[email protected]>

To: Charles Ndhlovu <[email protected]>

Date: Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 10:49 AM

Subject: Communication Theology

I am very sorry for this late answer. After I have received your email, I have consulted Father

Eilers about your request. He himself said to me, I shouldn’t do anything because he already

made you aware of my small book newly published together with Fr. Eilers.

But now, still keeping you email in my account, I realized that you have asked me somehow in

details about the topic. So, I urges myself to write to you, even it is very late.

I am again sorry for this. As I know there is no one until now who has researched on Rainer’s

communication theology. If you are trying to do that, may I make some suggestions to you:

1. Karl Rahner had not explicitly talk about ‘communication theology’, but however he

was the one especially introduced the term “self-communication” of God.

2. In many treatises, he reflected on and unfolded this very important notion which has

consequently played a very relevant role in the theological development later.

3. This term was also used especially in the Second Vatican II’s document “Dei

Verbum”. It has then become the decisive fundament for the reflection and thinking of

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other documents prepared in the discussion processes of the Vatican II. (To be

mentioned also, that some protestant theologians in Germany had also used in their

theological essays, but not to a broad extent and in deep way).

4. You may find in several treatises of Rahner many considerations which implicitly

show the communication dimension of God in the history of salvation as the

foundation for the concept of communication theology: e.g. the Trinity, Theology of

the Symbol (Theological Investigation), the teaching on the Eucharist, and the other.

5. I know some books of Rahner, but I am not sure if they are already translated into

other languages.

6. If you are interested in communication theology, you may read also Bernard Lonergan,

Avery Dulles, Carlo Maria Martini who had thought also in this direction that God is a

communicating God. They further reflected on the way how God has communicated.

7. In my small book, as basic study for our students, I have given a systematic

introduction to this new way of thinking of theology in the perspective of

communication. You may find some ideas and further references that it could help you

further.

With regards

Anh Vu Ta