Daniel Pekarske, Abstracts of Karl Rahner's Essays

Karl Rahner was one of modern theology's most prolific and accomplished essayists. He was a consummate master of the genre, using essays to develop unsystematic sketches, suggestive hints, paths for future exploration. His great essay collection, Theological Investigations, spans 23 volumes and covers innumerable theological topics.

Unfortunately, the arrangement of these essays is often more or less arbitrary, making it difficult to track down Rahner's writing on a particular theme. So I've often made use of Daniel Pekarske's marvellous 659-page reference work, Abstracts of Karl Rahner's Theological Investigations 1-23 (Marquette University Press 2002) – a true labour of love, in which Pekarske provides a concise, informative overview of each essay, together with a detailed index.

So I was delighted to see that Pekarske has now released the sequel: Abstracts of Karl Rahner's Unserialized Essays (Marquette University Press 2009), 565 pp. In this volume, Pekarske provides abstracts of numerous essays that didn't make it into the Theological Investigations. As you'd expect, the essays here represent the extraordinary breadth of Rahner's interests – there are essays on Marxism and the economy, Concilium and renewal, prayer and silence, freedom and hominisation. As in the previous volume, Pekarske provides a very brief abstract of each essay, followed by a list of main keywords, then a list of subsidiary topics (these are often the most interesting bits), and finally a more detailed precis of the essay's argument.

Students of modern theology are indebted to Pekarske for his selfless and painstaking labours. With these unique reference works, the vast library of Rahner's essays becomes less daunting and much more accessible.

The highest form of thought

“It is simply the case that the highest and most comprehensive form of thought is adoration. Prayer is the most decisive word that a person can say. There are some highly articulate scholars who are yet in an ultimate sense deaf-mutes: they do not listen to the word of God, and have nothing to say to God.”

—Karl Rahner, Mission and Grace: Essays in Pastoral Theology, Vol. 2 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1964), p. 108.

Getting over Rahner?

Over at Pontifications, Al Kimel suggests that the Catholic Church needs to “get over” Karl Rahner. The Church’s future, he suggests, lies with Balthasar rather than Rahner.

Personally, I think it would be better to get back to Rahner. After all, hasn’t he already become a theological “classic,” i.e., someone whose books are always mentioned but never read? And is it a good thing if we “get over” a thinker like Rahner without first coming to terms with him for ourselves?

So although I feel perfectly happy about the current Balthasar renaissance, my own suggestion is that we should get “back to Rahner” as well—just as some Protestants (yes, even Barthian Protestants!) are now starting to get “back to Schleiermacher” in new and fruitful ways.

Humanity as the mystery of God

“We could now define humanity ... as that which ensues when God’s self-utterance, his Word, is given out lovingly into the void of god-less nothing.... And if God himself is human and remains so forever; if all theology is therefore eternally an anthropology; if the human is forbidden to belittle himself, because to do so would be to belittle God; and if this God remains the insoluble mystery—then humanity is forever the articulate mystery of God.”

—Karl Rahner, “On the Theology of the Incarnation,” in Theological Investigations IV (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974), p. 116.

Karl Rahner and extra-terrestrial intelligence

The new issue of The Heythrop Journal includes an article on one of the most peculiar features of Karl Rahner’s thought: his theological reflection on the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence. It’s a quirky topic, but a fascinating article. Here are the details:

Christopher L. Fisher and David Fergusson, “Karl Rahner and the Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Question,” The Heythrop Journal 47:2 (2006), 275-90.

A Rahner joke

In a recent comment on Jim West’s blog, Rick Mansfield related the following joke which he once heard from a Catholic priest:

Hugo Rahner had an audience with the Pope. After a great deal of discussion, the Pope asked Hugo Rahner his opinion of the world’s greatest theologian.

Rahner squirmed a little bit, breaking eye contact with the Pope while he sought the proper and most humble way to answer the question. Finally, he looked up, shrugged, and said, “I suppose, Your Grace, I would have to say the world’s greatest theologian is my brother, Karl.”

The Pope’s eyes widened. He sat straight up in his chair in astonishment and exclaimed: “Your brother is KARL BARTH?!”

Where do we learn what "creation" means?

“It is from this experience of God’s free personal activity within history that the confession of God as Creator of the world ... also acquires its specific vitality and clarity.... The New Testament (like the Old) accepts its knowledge of the world’s createdness in the strict sense from the God who speaks and reveals himself. Further, man only really learns what creating is from God’s free and powerful activity in history, unconstrained by any prior obligation.”

—Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations I (London: Darton, 1961), p. 107.

Karl Rahner: theological anthropology

“[Man] is a Christ-centred being, i.e. his being possesses an ontic and spiritual-personal capacity for communicating with Jesus Christ in whom God has forever made the countenance of a man his own and has opened the reality of man, with an unsurpassable finality, in the direction of God; only thus was the real possibility of a direct communication of all men with God established with finality. Hence we can only speak ultimately of God by engaging ... in anthropology; and ultimately any information about anthropology ... can be given only when we engage in theology about God and from God.”

—Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations II (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963), pp. 240-41.