Karl Rahner has been rightly praised as the twentieth century “Father” of Roman Catholic theology and as “the quiet mover of the Catholic Church.” His four thousand written works show his profundity as a philosopher and as a multi-faceted theological genius. They also indicate his talent as a preacher, a retreat director, and a teacher of prayer. A great ecumenist, he entered into dialogue with atheist, Buddhist, Jewish, Marxist, Muslim, Protestant, and scientific thinkers the world over.

Although this Catholic titan defies easy classification, many of Rahner's earliest commentators wrote almost exclusively about his philosophical theological- speculative prowess. More recent studies have corrected this imbalance by accenting the spiritual dimension of even his most difficult writings, particularly as this relates to his own Jesuit and priestly life. However, this chapter will attempt to make evident the indissoluble marriage of theology and spirituality which runs throughout almost all the Rahnerian enterprise.

A SAPIENTIAL THEOLOGIAN

When praised by an interviewer for his numerous publications, Rahner replied: “I always stressed that in point of fact by profession I never claimed to be a scientific researcher either in philosophy or in theology. I never practised theology as a sort of art for art’s sake. I think I can say that my publications usually grew out of pastoral concern. But in comparison to professional scholars I have remained a theological dilettante.” Thus, he spoke of himself only as a man, a Christian, and a priest – not as an academic scholar. When asked a few years before his death about his theology, he reiterated that his theological norm centered on pastoral problems relating to the proclamation of the gospel in ways the contemporary person can understand.

INTRODUCTION

The implications of Karl Rahner's theological project for ethics become clear when one considers that the concept of choice is at the heart of both his transcendental anthropology and the Ignatian spiritual tradition that so richly informs all of his theology. It would be a serious mistake, however, to view the Rahnerian concept of choice and the theology of freedom that supports it as the mere capacity to select among various objects. Choice in this account is correctly understood as “the possibility of saying yes or no to oneself, the possibility of deciding for or against oneself,” which is also always a decision for or against God.

For Rahner, then, the human person is that self-transcending spirit who in the act of knowing or willing implicitly experiences both itself as subject (that is, free) and something of the ultimate structure of reality. The person’s unthematic experience of the self as free before the gracious mystery that is God is, for Rahner, necessarily related to self-disposition. This self-disposition, known as fundamental option, involves the subject’s definitive acceptance or rejection of God by means of free, moral action. This capacity for definitive choice finds its most perspicuous Christian expression, Rahner argues, in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.

It is hard to name a theologian who has singularly influenced the contemporary discourse on religious pluralism more than Karl Rahner. In the 1960s and 1970s his writings on the topic gained wide appeal and his thoughts enjoyed popular exposure through public sermons and radio addresses. Throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the new millennium, his theological project has so influenced the discussion that many of today's major voices on religious diversity present their theologies in direct conversation with his. Rahner's ideas have even elicited responses from notable spokespersons of the religions of the world. Thus, in examining Rahner's theology of religious pluralism, we can gain insight not only into his own influential thinking, but into the contours of the conversation today.

At the forefront of Rahner’s work was a concern that theology speak to people. And so, he explained Christian doctrine in a way that connected with lived experience. As people embedded in a complex and diverse world, Rahner recognized that the encounter with the religious “other” would be among the challenges Christians would face. Religious diversity was not merely an abstract theological concern, but one that grew out of an increasing awareness of and engagement with people of other faiths.

There is a wide consensus among theologians that Rahner was a turning point in Catholic theology, paving the way for a fruitful dialogue between modernity and Catholic theology and opening countless doors to further theological enterprises. A very fruitful Rahnerian heritage can be found in the work of two theologians who have developed their own theological projects in two different cultural and social contexts: Johann Baptist Metz in Germany, and Gustavo Gutiérrez in Peru. Political theology has developed in Germany through the works of Dorothee Sölle, Jürgen Moltmann, and Johann Baptist Metz. Of the three, Metz is the key figure to capture some of the potentialities and problems in the theology of Rahner, of whom Metz was a student, a collaborator, and a friend. Liberation theology is a way of doing theology that originated in Latin America in the late sixties and is currently widespread throughout the world. Gustavo Gutiérrez is widely regarded as the father of that theology, since he has been one of its most consistent proponents, and the first who formulated it formally.

Gutiérrez and Metz, as well as the theological currents they represent, relate to Rahner in a different way. Whereas Metz studied under Rahner, Gutiérrez’s main exposure was to la nouvelle théologie during his studies at Lyon. However, Rahner’s theology plays the role of starting or referential point in both political and liberation theologies, which, therefore, present continuities and discontinuities in relation to Rahner. Among the continuities, these post-Rahnerian theologies seek the meaning of faith and the role of theology in relation to the situation from which they stem and to which they relate, thus following the Rahnerian drive toward a pastorally focused theology that is meaningful to those Christians who want to live out their faith in the midst of their culture. In that sense, they are pastoral correlational theologies.

Karl Rahner's writings on “the Church” are significant in volume, in content, and in their connection to the central concerns of Rahner's life and work. For Rahner, the Church was always more than a social structure, a political force, or a site for religious activities; the Church was a genuinely theological reality. Rahner affirmed an intimate connection between the Church and the foundational elements of Christian faith: God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ; the presence of the Holy Spirit in human history; and God's promise that love, rather than sin or death, would speak the final word in that history.

Just as Rahner’s emphasis on the capacity of human beings to encounter God in their everyday world resulted in a theology of eating, of laughing, and of childhood and old age, so too it ensured that the Church’s relationship to history and culture was a prominent feature of his ecclesiology. For Rahner, living as an ecclesial Christian was an invitation to be part of the world in a particular way, a way that witnessed not simply to humanity’s orientation to God, but to the social implications of God’s self-revelationin Jesus Christ. To that end, Rahner was at pains to aid the appropriation of ecclesial faith by articulating the authentic claims and necessary boundaries of “the Church,” by promoting reconciliation between Christians, and by sketching the possibilities for the Church’s creative engagement with the wider world.

Karl Rahner developed his theology and method within the shift taking place in theology between Vatican I and Vatican II. In that period, neo-Thomist theology permeated much of academic theology. The growing influence of scriptural, patristic, liturgical, and philosophical studies began to dismantle the neo-Thomist approach and to prepare the way for Vatican II. Karl Rahner was both influenced by these advances and was a leading figure in their development in the period before and after the Council. Today, however, another significant shift is taking place. The aftermath of the Second Vatican Council saw not only the implementations of the Council, but also many multi-sided criticisms. The Right maintained that the Council went too far, whereas the Left claimed that the Council did not go far enough. From the perspective of post-liberalism, Vatican II went too far, was too progressive, and surrendered too much of the tradition for the sake of modernity. From the perspective of the various liberation, feminist, post-colonial, and pluralist theologies, the Council was too embedded within a European mentality whose patriarchalism and colonialism constitute the undersides of Western modernity. Consequently, the current scene is one of theological conflict, disagreement, and controversy.

These shifts are important for interpreting Karl Rahner’s method. As the cultural climate has changed from an openness to modern philosophical values to a critical caution toward modernity and to an embrace of postmodern values, so too the assessment of Karl Rahner’s method has changed.

The year 2004 marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Karl Rahner, S. J., who, it is widely acknowledged, was the dominant theological voice of the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century. For many, his theology has come to symbolize the Catholic Church's entry into modernity, an event publicly and ritually celebrated at the Second Vatican Council. Not surprisingly in the forty years since the Council and the twenty years since the death of Rahner both the Council and the theology of Karl Rahner have undergone some critical reappraisal, often in connection with their relationship to modernity. With the widespread intuition that society had moved beyond modernity into a somewhat amorphous consciousness called “post-modern” came the need to look critically at all things labelled “modern.” On the other hand, there is also a growing concern with a tendency in some quarters to retreat into a kind of naïve pre-modern mindset that would also call into question the vision of the Council and the theological insights of Karl Rahner. The legacy of Karl Rahner stands between this Scylla and Charybdis. It seems, then, an appropriate time to re-examine his theology and to introduce Karl Rahner to students of theology for whom he has not been a formative influence.

RAHNER AS A MODERN THEOLOGIAN

Rahner has “modern” credentials. Following Maréchal, he seeks to overcome the constraints which the Enlightenment project placed upon knowledge. The former ontological critique was displaced by the transcendental critique of the Enlightenment, and it was no longer possible to give an account of exteriority other than in terms of the subject. As Maréchal notes, “the ancient critique posits the ontological object, which includes the transcendental subject; whereas the modern critique relates to the transcendental subject, who posits the ontological object.” If, in modernity, the concern was the constituting role of the epistemic subject in knowing and the concomitant problem of the ontological status of the object, the problem in post-modernity is the displacement of the stable subject, now viewed not simply as constituting and constructing but also as constituted and constructed, and the concomitant return of the object whose exteriority disturbs and disrupts subjective frameworks and horizons. Said otherwise, the post-modern concern is for fragmented subjectivity or interiority and the return of objectivity or exteriority, and the challenge which these present to enlightened transcendentalism.

Now, Rahner himself admits “the principle that every philosophy, i.e. every genuine metaphysics worthy of the name must proceed along the lines of transcendental philosophy, or else it is not philosophy in this authentic sense at all.” For “transcendental,” the “phenomenological” – which can be viewed as a continuation of the project of modernity – can also be imputed.

Eschatology, or the doctrine of the Last Things, has had a chequered history in Christian theology. Rooted in the belief concerning Christ's return (parousia) in glory to judge the living and the dead and his eternal kingdom and in the expectation of the universal resurrection, the Christian teaching on life everlasting occupied the central position in the theology of the early Church. Theologians of both East and West kept in the forefront of Christian consciousness the New Testament conviction about the final consummation of human history through Christ in God's reign (see 1 Corinthians 15:28). Such is the case with, for instance, Irenaeus (c. 130- c. 200) with his concept of recapitulation (anakephalaiosis), Origen (c. 185- c. 254) with that of universal restoration (apocatastasis), and Augustine (354-430) with that of the City of God (civitas Dei). Furthermore, during the first few centuries of the Christian era, this eschatological consciousness was also heightened by millenarianist groups such as the Gnostics and the Montanists.

Except for brief outbursts of millenarian enthusiasm with Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135–1202), and, much later, with the Anabaptists and the Bohemian and the Moravian Brethren during the Reformation, the Church’s official consciousness of Christ’s glorious return and one-thousand-year rule was gradually eclipsed, and with it the collective eschatology that discusses the meaning and destiny of human history. In late scholasticism, and subsequently in neo-scholastic manualist theology, the main focus was the post-mortem fate of the individual.

Revelation and its correlative, faith, were at the heart of Karl Rahner's life and work. As a priest and theologian, his major concern was ultimately a pastoral one, that of helping people to come to faith, to deepen their faith, to make it a life-enhancing, life-directing force in their lives. His focus was on both the content of faith and the existential appropriation of that content in the lived response of believers to it, on fides quae and fides qua.

When Rahner began his theological career issues of revelation and faith tended to be addressed primarily within the context of fundamental theology and its preoccupation with apologetics. Although new and creative developments were beginning to be made in this area, the neo-scholastic approach remained dominant. Described as a form of extrinsicism, its concern was to establish the possibility and credibility of a historical revelation by God in the history of Israel and especially in the person of Jesus. Particular emphasis was given to miracles and the fulfillment of prophecy as divine endorsement of the claims of Jesus. A further task of this kind of apologetics was to show that Jesus instituted the Church and entrusted to its teaching authority the content of revelation. The method of argumentation remained on what might be called the formal level in that it was intent on establishing the fact of revelation and the formal structures by which that revelation is handed on in the Church. No consideration was given to the content of revelation or to the actual situation of those to whom the gospel was to be preached.

If the title of this essay is taken at face value, by all rights it should be very short. While Rahner's life spanned the twentieth century, with the rapid and irreversible change that century has brought to our understanding of “female, ” Rahner's observations about the changing status of women do not refer to the movement of feminist theology, a movement that was well underway by the time of his death in 1984. At the outset, then, we must state clearly that Karl Rahner was not a feminist (indeed, not even an “anonymous” one). Nevertheless, Rahner's twin expositions of the hearer of the word and the mystery of God, his searching method, and, perhaps most importantly, his insistence that these ground a dynamic re-framing of the Christian, and particularly the Roman Catholic, tradition, have proven to be a rich resource for Catholic feminists.

Following the vision of Vatican II, and responding to the needs of a church faced with rising numbers and declining vocations, an unprecedented wave of lay women and men began graduate-level study in theology in the 1970s, readying themselves for a variety of positions in parish ministry and education. Many of those studying were women, women who were experiencing simultaneous social and ecclesial revolutions. For many of these, Rahner’s voice shaped their theological study, providing a theological framework for questions about doctrinal change, masculine symbolism, and the status of the human person before God, as well as a pastoral voice that took seriously their experience of profound change, with its shock of freedom and decision.

One thing to keep in mind when reading and thinking about Willa Cather is that she was, in both literal and figurative terms, an American pioneer. Her family migrated to Nebraska in the 1880s, a time when people lived in dug-outs and sod-houses (although when young Willa arrived, she had family contacts there to make her settlement relatively easier) and old-timers shared memories of Indian encounters. As an adult, with memories of one uprooting embedded in her consciousness, Cather moved to the Northeast with enthusiasm, finding opportunities for ambitious and intelligent women not in the small towns of Nebraska and the Midwest but in urban centers, amid “the steel and concrete and electric waves” of large cities such as Pittsburgh and New York. There, the figurative pioneer, Cather rose to the top of her field in journalism (in the first decade of the new century she was the editor of McClure's Magazine, one of the most famous and widely read magazines in American history) and then abandoned that career to become a novelist. In her fiction she did what is understood to be impossible: she wrote novels embraced as art by critics and read with passion and devotion by the popular reading public.

Willa Cather and the criticism of politics

In 1996, Elizabeth Ammons confidently asserted that “the new canon in American literature -the one . . . that it is imperative to think about Willa Cather within - is multiculturalism.”Undoubtedly, multiculturalism - including feminist, queer, and ethnic studies - has brought an enormous vitality to Cather criticism. Yet the composite of Cather constructed by such approaches - queer opera diva, rugged cowgirl, and Greenwich Village cosmopolitan - has barely dented the image of Cather that persists in the public imagination. When Laura Bush recently proclaimed, after hosting a literary salon celebrating the writing of Cather, Edna Ferber, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, that “there is nothing political about American literature,” it was clear that the Cather she had invited to the White House was safely apolitical, the author of slightly more grown-up, highbrow versions of Little House on the Prairie. The First Lady's appropriation of a bland, antiseptic Cather follows close on the heels of Joan Acocella's reactionary crusade to cleanse Cather criticism of ideology - recuperating Cather from an academic trend towards what Acocella terms “spun-from-nothing hypotheses” about race, sex, and politics.

In the “Hired Girls” section of My Ántonia, just after her move to town, Ántonia tells the following story of country life. It is threshing time, and a tramp emerges from the intense heat, thirsty and looking for beer. Trading places with one of the men, he gets on the threshing machine, and begins to work: “He cut bands all right for a few minutes, and then, Mrs. Harling, he waved his hand to me and jumped head-first right into the threshing machine after the wheat. I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the horses, but the belt had sucked him down, and by the time they got her stopped, he was all beat and cut to pieces. He was wedged in so tight it was a hard job to get him out, and the machine ain't never worked right since.” In the dead tramp's pocket they find an old penknife, “the wish-bone of a chicken wrapped up in a piece of paper, and some poetry” - “The Old Oaken Bucket,”cut out of a newspaper. One glimpses in this arresting moment some of the distinctive interests and attitudes of Cather's fiction: its emphasis on the making of meaning, on the gestures, like the tramp's wave, that produce significance in a world cut loose from overmastering explanatory narratives; its careful attention to ordinary life and work as the field in which such meanings emerge; its tolerance for the inconclusive, suggested by the resonant inconsequence of the contents of the tramp's pockets.