Karl Rahner

Karl Rahner (5 March 1904 – 30 March 1984) was a German Jesuit priest and theologian who, alongside Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Yves Congar, is considered to be one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century.

He was the brother of Hugo Rahner, also a Jesuit scholar.

Rahner was born in Freiburg, at the time a part of the Grand Duchy of Baden, a state of the German Empire; he died in Innsbruck, Austria.

Before the Second Vatican Council, Rahner worked alongside Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, and Marie-Dominique Chenu, theologians associated with the emerging school of theological thought known as Nouvelle Théologie.

Some elements of Nouvelle Théologie were condemned in the encyclical Humani generis by Pope Pius XII.

The Second Vatican Council was influenced by Rahner's theology and his understanding of Catholic faith.

Karl Rahner's parents, Karl and Luise (née Trescher) Rahner, had seven children, of whom Karl was the fourth.

His father was a professor in a local college and his mother had a profound religious personality, which influenced the home atmosphere.

Karl attended primary and secondary school in Freiburg, entering the Society of Jesus upon graduation; he began his Jesuit formation in the North German Province of the Jesuits in 1922, four years after his older brother Hugo entered the same order.

Deeply affected by the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola during the initial phase of his formation (1922–24), he concentrated the next phase of his formation (1924–7) on Catholic scholastic philosophy and the modern German philosophers: he seems to have been particularly interested in Immanuel Kant and two contemporary Thomists, the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal and the French Jesuit Pierre Rousselot, who were to influence Rahner's understanding of Thomas Aquinas in his later writings.

As a part of his Jesuit training, Rahner taught Latin to novices at Feldkirch (1927–29), then began his theological studies at the Jesuit theologate in Valkenburg aan de Geul in 1929.

This allowed him to develop a thorough understanding of patristic theology, also developing interests in spiritual theology, mysticism, and the history of piety.

Rahner was ordained a priest on 26 July 1932, and then made his final year of tertianship, the study and taking of Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises, at St. Andrä in Austria's Lavanttal Valley.

Because Rahner's superiors wished him to teach philosophy at Pullach, he returned home to Freiburg in 1934 to study for a doctorate in philosophy, delving more deeply into the philosophy of Kant and Maréchal, and attended seminars by Martin Heidegger.

His philosophy dissertation Geist in Welt, an interpretation of Aquinas's epistemology influenced by the transcendental Thomism of Maréchal and the existentialism of Heidegger, was ultimately rejected by his mentor Martin Honecker, allegedly for its bias toward Heidegger's philosophy and not sufficiently expressing the Catholic neo-scholastic tradition.

In 1936 Rahner was sent to Innsbruck to continue his theological studies and there he completed his habilitation.

Soon after he was appointed a Privatdozent (lecturer) in the faculty of theology of the University of Innsbruck, in July 1937.

In 1939 the Nazis took over the university and Rahner, while staying in Austria, was invited to Vienna to work in the Pastoral Institute, where he both taught and became active in pastoral work until 1949.

He then returned to the theology faculty at Innsbruck and taught on a variety of topics which later became the essays published in Schriften zur Theologie : the collection is not a systematic presentation of Rahner's views, but, rather a diverse series of essays on theological matters characterised by his probing, questioning search for truth.

In early 1962, with no prior warning, Rahner's superiors in the Society of Jesus told him that he was under Rome's pre-censorship, which meant that he could not publish or lecture without advance permission.

The objections of the Roman authorities focused mainly on Rahner's views on the Eucharist and Mariology; however, the practical import of the pre-censorship decision was voided in November 1962 when, without any objection, John XXIII appointed Rahner a peritus (expert advisor) to the Second Vatican Council: Rahner had complete access to the council and numerous opportunities to share his thoughts with the participants.

Rahner's influence at Vatican II was thus widespread, and he was subsequently chosen as one of seven theologians who would develop Lumen gentium, the dogmatic explication of the doctrine of the Church.

The council's receptiveness towards other religious traditions may be linked to Rahner's notions of the renovation of the church, God's universal salvific revelation, and his desire to support and encourage the ecumenical movement.

During the council, Rahner accepted the chair for Christianity and the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Munich and taught there from 1964 to 1967.

Subsequently, he was appointed to a chair in dogmatic theology at the Catholic theological faculty of the University of Münster, where he stayed until his retirement in 1971.

He published several volumes (23 total in English) of collected essays for the Schriften zur Theologie (Theological Investigations), expanded the Kleines theologisches Wörterbuch (Theological Dictionary), co-authored other texts such as Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility with Heinrich Fries, and in 1976 he completed the long-promised systematic work, Foundations of Christian Faith.

Rahner then moved to Munich and in 1981 to Innsbruck, where he remained for the next 3 years as an active writer and lecturer, also continuing his active pastoral ministry.

Rahner fell ill from exhaustion and died on 30 March 1984 at the age of 80, after a birthday celebration that also honoured his scholarship.

He was buried at the Jesuit Church of the Holy Trinity in Innsbruck.

During his years of philosophical and theological study and teaching, Rahner produced some 4,000 written works.

Rahner's output is extraordinarily voluminous.

In addition to the above-mentioned writings, his other major works include: the ten-volume encyclopaedia, Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche; a six-volume theological encyclopaedia, Sacramentum Mundi, and many other books, essays, and articles.

In addition to his own work, the reference texts that Rahner edited also added significantly to the general impact of his own theological views.

The basis for Rahner's theology is that all human beings have a latent ("unthematic") experience of God in any perception of meaning or "transcendental experience".

It is only because of this proto-revelation that recognising a distinctively special revelation (such as the Christian Gospel) is possible.

His theology influenced the Second Vatican Council and was ground-breaking for the development of what is generally seen as the modern understanding of Catholicism.

Until the early 2000s his thought also shaped Catholic theology in the United States.

A popular anecdote, that resonates with those who find some of Karl Rahner's works difficult reading, comes from his brother Hugo who quipped that in his retirement he'd try to "translate his brother's works ... into German!"

Written near the end of his life, Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith (Grundkurs des Glaubens) is the most developed and systematic of his works, most of which were published in the form of essays.

Among the most important of his essays was The Trinity, in which he argues that "the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity" (sometimes called 'Rahner's rule').