Karl Rahner

Life

Rahner was born in 1904 in Freiburg, Germany, one of seven children of a Gymnasium (academic secondary school) teacher. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1922 and was ordained a priest in 1932. The church historian Hugo Rahner was his older brother. While studying philosophy at Freiburg, he is known to have attended the lectures of Martin Heidegger. His doctoral dissertation on the epistemology of Thomas Aquinas was rejected by his supervisor but was later published as Spirit in the World (1939). He went on to teach for many years at the University of Innsbruck and also held professorships at the University of Munich and the University of Münster. He died in Innsbruck in 1984.

Ministry and Contributions

• Second Vatican Council: He participated in the Council (1962–1965) as a theological expert (peritus) and exerted a major influence on the direction of twentieth-century Catholic theology.
• Writings: His principal works include the multivolume Theological Investigations (Schriften zur Theologie), a collection of his essays, and Foundations of Christian Faith (1976), a synthesis of the whole of theology.
• Transcendental theology: Rahner held that human beings are by nature open toward God and that God's grace is already given within the conditions of every human being's existence. He called this the "supernatural existential."
• Doctrine of the Trinity: He advanced the thesis that "the Trinity revealed in the history of salvation (the economic Trinity) is God's own Trinity (the immanent Trinity)." This thesis, commonly known as "Rahner's Rule," is widely cited across denominational lines in discussions of the Trinity.
• Anonymous Christian: He maintained that those who live according to conscience and accept God's grace, even without explicitly knowing or confessing Christ, can share in salvation through Christ, and he called such people "anonymous Christians."

Influence on the Korean Church

In Korea, Rahner has been studied and his works translated chiefly within Catholic theological circles. Among Protestants, he is frequently discussed in systematic theology courses at seminaries and in debates over religious pluralism. In the classification that divides Christian attitudes toward other religions into exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, Rahner is presented as a leading representative of inclusivism.

Assessment

Rahner is regarded as one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. His concept of the "anonymous Christian," however, has drawn criticism from several directions.

• Within Catholicism, Hans Urs von Balthasar criticized the concept for weakening the significance of explicitly confessing Christ and of martyrdom. Hans Küng is known to have objected that calling adherents of other religions "Christians" regardless of their own wishes is disrespectful toward them.
• Among Protestant evangelicals, critics argue that the concept obscures the necessity of explicit faith in Christ and of preaching the gospel.
• Rahner's defenders regard the concept as an attempt to explain God's universal saving will while upholding the confession that Christ alone is the way of salvation.