Jon Sobrino and Karl Rahner

The Tablet has an article about Joh Sobrino SJ this week - Sobrino judgement ignites widespread anger - that discusses the large number of people around the world who disagree with the Vatican's judgement of Jon Sobrino's work.

As I'm still interested in the subject, I thought I'd look through some old issues of The Way to find any articles by Fr. Sobrino, and I came upon one ... Karl Rahner and Liberation Theology.

Here below is a bit of Fr. Jon Sobrino's article .....

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During the 1970s a new Church and a new theology arose in Latin America. This article is a personal reflection on what Karl Rahner has meant for me in that context, though I hope that what I say will apply to liberation theology more broadly. I write out of the life-experience in El Salvador that has lead me to read with new eyes the theology I had previously studied, in which Rahner's work was a very important element. I am also writing out of my close personal and intellectual relationship with Ignacio Ellacuria, Rahner's student in Innsbrook between 1958 and 1962. On account of his defense of faith and justice, Ellacuria, as many will know, was murdered on 16 November 1989, along with five other Jesuits and two female workers from the university in which he taught. But we should remember that Ellacuria was not just Rahner's pupil. He took forward important ideas in Rahner's theology, as he sought to express them in his own situation and in a way appropriate for the world of the poor .....

In an interview he gave to a Spanish magazine shortly before his death, Rahner was asked what he thought about the current state of the Church. Rahner replied in terms that have proved themselves only too true: 'in gerneral, we are living through a "wintery season"'. People still quote these words as a kind of lament or protest. But Rahner added something that has, unfortunately, been forgotten: 'however, there are some parts of the Church where there is a very animated, charismatic life, one that yields hope'. He was referring to the creative new developements in churches like those of Latin America .....

And it is well known that two weeks before his death, on 16 March 1984, he wrote a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima defending Gustavo Gutierrez' theology against the charge of being unorthodox. This theology, Rahner said, was in many ways very original, because it was 'at the service of evangelization in a specific situation'. There was something in the churches of Latin America that attracted Rahner .... their rootedness in lived reality .....

An important part of the new reality emaerging from Latin America was its theology: liberation theology. I do not think that Rahner had any detailed knowledge of it, but he was certainly aware intuitively of the fundamental issues at stake and he supported it. This was by no means something to be taken for granted, other great figures of his generation, such as Jacques Maritain, Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar had no idea of how to respond to this emergent reality. Liberation theology was stammering out its insights without much profundity. It was coming from distant, unknown places, and its future was incertain .....

What struck me in Rahner's theology was was how reality itself was its foundation. The point may seem obvious, but there are theologies that start from preconceived notions in which this priciple is not often observed. Be that as it may, Rahner was outstanding in his fidelity to the real ..... liberation theology's fundimental assertion and conviction is that the poor - and God in the poor - have broken into history. The believer, the human person, has to respond to this reality, indeed correspond to it. We are charged to liberate the poor and, in Ellacuria's phrase, to take them down from their cross. Theology can no longer be the ideology that fosters oppression. None of these convictions is just the result of a theoretical argument; they come from an honest and hopeful option to let lived reality be central, to let it speak, to hear its word, to let it guide us and call forth our response .....

This reality has a mystery at its heart. God is the mystery par excellence, and the human person is the being confronted with mystery. Rahner insists that God is the Holy Mystery ..... Rahner has a deeper sense of God's mystery than other standard progressive theologians, one that is matched in liberation theology. Gutierrez places mystery, God's mystery, at the center ... The inbreaking of the poor person, and of God within them, recalls much of Rahner's account of mystery .....

I have been noting the fundamental influence of Rahner on liberation theology .... Obviously there were some significant differences. Rahner engaged the Enlightenment as represented by Kant; liberation theology engaged the Enlightenment as represented by Marx .... Moreover, liberation theology would now see important gaps in Rahner's theology .... I do not think Rahner ever came to understand Ellacuria's utopian conception of a 'civilization of poverty' in contrast to the 'civilization of wealth' that has never given life or dignity to its minoritie ... Nevertheless, we should not forget his support for the Church and the way of Christian life that was emerging in Latin America in his last years .....

Is there a liberation theology here? The answer to that is not so important. But I like what Pedro Casaldaliga, Christian, bishop and poet of liberation, wrote after Rahner's death:

'What are you doing now?'
the Pope used to ask him (inquisitorially? kindly?).
The theologian used to reply (evasively? magisterially?),
'I am preparing to live the great Encounter'.
And with eighty Aprils, well-pondered,
a hearer of the Mystery in the Word,
he plunged into the absolute future.

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