The Reality of Love

Karl Rahner's Theology of Love Applied to Spirituality

Rosok

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781532632389
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Love is one, and love is "all we need." This book argues against the traditional theological view that God's love differs from human love. If God is love and love is one, we will find God embodied in all kinds of genuine love experiences. By analyzing Karl Rahner's theology of love, the author explores how God penetrates and embraces the whole of reality, suggesting implications for Christian spirituality and spiritual direction.

1

Terminology and Analytical Perspectives

Rahner has developed his own way of understanding some key terms that are frequently used. Some of these will be defined or explained subsequently throughout the book. There are, however, a few terms that are crucial to the analysis and that are easily blurred and misunderstood when reading Rahner. The most foundational of these is the term “transcendental,” which needs an introductory remark before entering the analysis. Some notes will also be given on the Rahnerian understanding of experience.

1.1. The Term Transcendental26

When Rahner claims a profound unity between the love of God and the love of neighbor, his arguments are based on a transcendental philosophy applied to theology. The foundation of this philosophy is found in the epistemology as developed in Geist in Welt and (the anthropology) further developed in Hörer des Wortes. Although I later will argue that Rahner’s theology must be understood as a whole, with a particular view on spirituality, there is no doubt his early philosophical writings set a methodological course which to a large degree demarcate his later writings. Hence, Rahner’s understanding of how human beings relate to God is developed according to this transcendental approach. Before entering the presentation and analysis of Karl Rahner’s thoughts relevant for his theology of love, I will clarify how he uses the term “transcendental,” and provide a brief historical background of his early philosophical works.

The term transcendental is of great relevance and frequently used by Karl Rahner. He talks for instance about transcendental conditions, transcendental experiences, human transcendentality, and transcendental revelation. In philosophy and theology, the term transcendental naturally connotes with the exceedingly influential philosophy of Immanuel Kant. However, Rahner’s different combinations and use of the term do often go beyond the Kantian meaning, and thus he can easily be misunderstood.27 In the following I will sort out some of the different ways of understanding the term—both the traditional Kantian way, and the more specific Rahnerian ways.

The word “transcend” means to surpass, to go beyond or above. Thus, one might expect transcendental to relate directly to that which goes beyond something. However, in the tradition coming from Immanuel Kant, the term has little or nothing to do with that. Here, the word relates to a distinct way of understanding knowledge. Thus, Kant says that a transcendental knowledge “is not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of these objects, so far as this mode of cognition is possible a priori.”28 In that way the term refers to an investigation of the subject’s constitution, of what comes before the knowing. The things discovered in that investigation are known as the transcendental conditions of the possibility of experience, which can be called the horizon behind the experiences. For Kant, there is no way of getting any knowledge beyond space and time; transcendental, as a term for the horizon behind our experiences, functions as the barrier to that kind of knowledge. For Rahner, the term is used in many ways, often the reverse of this Kantian meaning. Following the etymological meaning of transcend, he uses the term more as an invitation than a barrier—an invitation to transcend the categorical and to discover that particular objects are gifts pointing towards the infinite horizon of all things, whose source is already given in the conditions of the human being.

Considering the immense influence of Kant on this term, the critics and discussions on Rahner’s combination of “transcendental experience,” for example, is understandable.29 In Kantian understanding, those words cannot belong together without sounding like a contradiction. So how are we to understand Rahner and his way of using the term in so many combinations?

It is possible to broadly distinguish two ways Rahner uses the term. First, he does in fact often employ the term in a Kantian way, that is, as an investigation and the results of such investigation.30 Second, he also employs the term in the way one would naturally expect—in the meaning of that which goes beyond something. In that sense, he can talk about the transcendental experience, meaning those experiences that transcend and reach beyond particular, finite objects. What characterizes Rahner, then, is to combine those understandings.

“According to Rahner if one undertakes a transcendental investigation in the broadly Kantian sense, then, pace Kant, what one will discover is precisely that our experience has a transcendental dimension . . . in the non-Kantian sense.”31 Another way to put this is to say that Rahner employs the term transcendental both in a formal sense and in a material sense. The former is when he refers to the conditions of the possibility of experience (or action, knowledge), as with Kant, only broader. The latter is referring to our inner movement or openness that reaches out beyond all finite, as in transcendental experience.

Despite all efforts to categorize the ways Rahner employs this term, there will always be a need of precaution while reading and interpreting his texts. In his discussions of transcendental theology, he often shifts without warning from one meaning to another.32 It will be of importance to keep in mind these distinctions throughout the book. Another term that is frequently used, but without a clear-cut definition, is the term “experience.” That is of great importance in the present analysis, which is why I offer some preliminary remarks on this from the outset.

1.2. Remarks on Rahnerian “Experience”

Rahner was among the theologians contributing to a shift in Catholic theology in the view of the role of experience to theology. Traditionally, there was a great reluctance and skepticism to consider the personal, human experience as a factor to theology. For Rahner, however, any mention of God has its starting point in the human experience. However, he uses the term experience in many different contexts and combinations without elaborating on the meaning of the term. He speaks of experience of transcendence, experience of grace, experience of the Holy Spirit, mystical experience, experience of enthusiasm, to name a few.33 The only straightforward definition is found in Theological Dictionary, where he defined religious experience to be “the inner self-attestation [innere selbst-Bezeugung] of supernatural reality (grace).”34 This is in line with the phenomenological approach of Bernard Lonergan, who regarded grace as an experience that enables the person to become aware of self-presence and love.35 The axis along which Rahner often distinguishes or categorizes experience, however, is not the religious or sacred ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Abbreviations List
• Remarks on References and Material
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Terminology and Analytical Perspectives
• Part 1: The Theological Fundament for Love
• Part 2: One Love—Three Perspectives
• Part 3: Rahner and Beyond
• Bibliography