Karl Rahner's dream
By accident I came across an old 1982 New York Review of Books review of a couple of books by Catholic theologian and Jesuit Karl Rahner .... The Dream of Karl Rahner. I didn't mean to read it - I find Rahner so hard to understand, I despair that there's no Rahner For Dummies book - but the review was read-able despite my denseness. The review is long, but here are just a few bits of it that I found interesting -
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This part about the afterlife ....
What, then, happens in the afterlife? For Rahner, precisely nothing—for there is no afterlife, no duration beyond experienced time. We may choose to speak of man's salvation by talking of eternity, Rahner says, but that "does not mean that things continue on after death as though, as Feuerbach put it, we only change horses and then ride on." Death is the end of man, but as a fulfillment, the "self-realization which embodies the result of what a man has made of himself during life" and which "comes to be through death, and not after it." Moreover, if it is man's nature never to be without a relatedness to matter, and if one maintains that man is immortal as a whole and not just as a spirit, then it follows for Rahner that in death one does not leave the material world but enters more deeply into it and becomes what he calls "all-cosmic," somehow present to and in communication with all material reality, an "open system towards the world" and "a real ontological influence on the whole of the universe." (On this hypothesis, he says, "certain parapsychological phenomena, now puzzling, might be more readily and more naturally explained.")
However one takes this strange notion of achieving an "all-cosmic body" in death, it is clear that Rahner's attack on Platonic Christianity and its bloodless desire for the angelic is thorough and uncompromising, and that his position is in fact more consonant with the Judeo-Christian promise of resurrection of the body than is the Greek doctrine of immortality of the soul. If you want immortality, he says in effect, don't think you'll get it by escaping from matter and history. In that sense Rahner's philosophy of man is arguably closer to Marx than to Plato and has more in common with Nietzsche than with Plotinus. He sees man as bound to this world, with no possible escape to some spiritual heaven, and whatever man knows about God he knows by knowing the world. That may not be much, but for Rahner it's all we have. As Eliot says, "The rest is not our business."
And this about contraception and women's ordination .....
When it comes to birth control and the ordination of women, he is quite emphatic: "I do not see either in the arguments used or in the formal teaching authority of the Church...a convincing or conclusive reason for assenting to the controversial teaching in Paul VI's Humanae Vitae [encyclical against birth control] or to the Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith which seems to exclude the ordination of women in principle and for all time."
And the review ends with mention of an ecumenical dream Rahner once had ......
In one of the essays he recounts a dream he had about an ecumenical gathering at the Vatican in 1985, at which the Pope discusses the question of his own infallibility with the leading representatives of the other Christian churches. A very congenial Pontiff calls the others "Gentlemen, dear brothers" and promises, for the sake of unification of the churches, to be extremely circumspect in any future exercise of infallibility, and one even gets the impression that he might not invoke it any more. The response on the part of the non-Catholic clergymen is positive, and they are on the brink of uniting with Rome when Rahner wakes up.
The dream, if it is true, does say a lot about Rahner, not least of all that he lives theology so deeply that he even dreams it. It speaks of his lifelong vision of a united and universal Church without the rigid dogmatisms that stifle the mystery of God and man. But when he recounted the dream to a friend, he got a response that applies not only to the reunification of the churches but, given the current climate of the Vatican, also to any concrete hopes for the theological reforms that Rahner has advocated for decades. It is a nice idea, his friend said, but unfortunately it does not seem likely at present. And Rahner's response summed up, simply and clearly, the spirit that has kept him working for over forty years. Yes, he agreed, "but we may dream and hope."
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Interesting stuff, but I still need that Dummies book :)
***********************
This part about the afterlife ....
What, then, happens in the afterlife? For Rahner, precisely nothing—for there is no afterlife, no duration beyond experienced time. We may choose to speak of man's salvation by talking of eternity, Rahner says, but that "does not mean that things continue on after death as though, as Feuerbach put it, we only change horses and then ride on." Death is the end of man, but as a fulfillment, the "self-realization which embodies the result of what a man has made of himself during life" and which "comes to be through death, and not after it." Moreover, if it is man's nature never to be without a relatedness to matter, and if one maintains that man is immortal as a whole and not just as a spirit, then it follows for Rahner that in death one does not leave the material world but enters more deeply into it and becomes what he calls "all-cosmic," somehow present to and in communication with all material reality, an "open system towards the world" and "a real ontological influence on the whole of the universe." (On this hypothesis, he says, "certain parapsychological phenomena, now puzzling, might be more readily and more naturally explained.")
However one takes this strange notion of achieving an "all-cosmic body" in death, it is clear that Rahner's attack on Platonic Christianity and its bloodless desire for the angelic is thorough and uncompromising, and that his position is in fact more consonant with the Judeo-Christian promise of resurrection of the body than is the Greek doctrine of immortality of the soul. If you want immortality, he says in effect, don't think you'll get it by escaping from matter and history. In that sense Rahner's philosophy of man is arguably closer to Marx than to Plato and has more in common with Nietzsche than with Plotinus. He sees man as bound to this world, with no possible escape to some spiritual heaven, and whatever man knows about God he knows by knowing the world. That may not be much, but for Rahner it's all we have. As Eliot says, "The rest is not our business."
And this about contraception and women's ordination .....
When it comes to birth control and the ordination of women, he is quite emphatic: "I do not see either in the arguments used or in the formal teaching authority of the Church...a convincing or conclusive reason for assenting to the controversial teaching in Paul VI's Humanae Vitae [encyclical against birth control] or to the Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith which seems to exclude the ordination of women in principle and for all time."
And the review ends with mention of an ecumenical dream Rahner once had ......
In one of the essays he recounts a dream he had about an ecumenical gathering at the Vatican in 1985, at which the Pope discusses the question of his own infallibility with the leading representatives of the other Christian churches. A very congenial Pontiff calls the others "Gentlemen, dear brothers" and promises, for the sake of unification of the churches, to be extremely circumspect in any future exercise of infallibility, and one even gets the impression that he might not invoke it any more. The response on the part of the non-Catholic clergymen is positive, and they are on the brink of uniting with Rome when Rahner wakes up.
The dream, if it is true, does say a lot about Rahner, not least of all that he lives theology so deeply that he even dreams it. It speaks of his lifelong vision of a united and universal Church without the rigid dogmatisms that stifle the mystery of God and man. But when he recounted the dream to a friend, he got a response that applies not only to the reunification of the churches but, given the current climate of the Vatican, also to any concrete hopes for the theological reforms that Rahner has advocated for decades. It is a nice idea, his friend said, but unfortunately it does not seem likely at present. And Rahner's response summed up, simply and clearly, the spirit that has kept him working for over forty years. Yes, he agreed, "but we may dream and hope."
**********************
Interesting stuff, but I still need that Dummies book :)
posted by crystal | 7:24 PM
4 Comments:
That's interesting.
There is a collection of sermons called (I think) "The Great Church Year" that is a bit less dense than the theological stuff.
You have that, don't you? I have a small book with a few of his sermons - The Need and the Blessing of Prayer - but I think his view of the afterlife is really interesting. Wish I could understand it.
I know it has been quite some time since your posting regarding Newman. It is true that the Faithful as a whole are infallible. We move as a body protected by the Paraclete guaranteed to us in Scripture. It is important to remember that in this regard this is not the same as Democracy, which is rather elevated form of Oligarchy. Papal infallibility is another form. And, infallibility of the episcopal college is yet another. All three forms work together and none can operate without the other. It is a very basic concept. Attached is an excellent article on the subject. As with most things involving the Faith a thorough reading and re-reading might be neccessary. May God bless you and your family and do not let the World discourage you.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out :)
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