|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
A Capacity for Transcendence
| Article
# : |
12304 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1987 |
3,080 Words |
| Author
: |
George Weigel
George Weigel, a Roman Catholic theologian, is president of
the Washington-based James Madison Foundation and the editor
of American Purpose. His most recent book is Tranquillitas
Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American
Catholic Thought on War and Peace. |
UNDERSTANDING KARLRAHNER
An Introduction to His Life and Thought
Herbert Vorgrimler
Crossroad, 1986
198 pp., $ 15.95
KAL RAHNER IN DIALOGUE
Conversations and Interviews, 1965-1982
Paul Imhof, Hubert Biallowons, and Harvey D.Egan, eds.
Crossroad, 1986
376 pp., $ 22.50
WILL IT LIBERATE?
Questions about Liberation Theology
Michael Novak
Paulist Press, 1986
307 pp., $ 14.95
Although his bibliography ran to some 4,000 items at the time of his death in 1984, Karl Rahner's essential message was a simple one: "Human persons, in every age, always and everywhere, whether they realize it and reflect on it or not, are in relationship with the unutterable mystery of human life that we call God." In explicating that one, basic truth in books and essays translated into dozens of languages, Rahner became the most influential Catholic theologian of the twentieth century. The contest for Rahner's legacy - more so than far more visible, controversial theologians like Hans Kung, Edward Schillebeeckx, and Leonardo Boff - will determine the course of Catholic intellectual life into the twenty-first century.
The bare facts of Rahner's largely uneventful life seem to belie the significance of his accomplishment and the importance of the argument over his lifework. Born in Swabia in 1904, into what he later described as a "normal, middle-class, Christian family," Rahner entered the Jesuits after graduating from high school, and remained with them for the next sixty-two years of his life. He followed the normal course of Jesuit studies but ran into his first academic thornbush after his priestly ordination in 1932, when his superiors sent him to study philosophy at the University of Freiburg.
In those days, Freiburg meant the great German existentialist Martin Heidegger, and Rahner was soon enrolled in Heidegger's exclusive seminar. He wrote his doctoral dissertation, however, for a Catholic
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
