Relaxing With Karl Rahner
Hebblethwaite, Peter
hand, is really just a bumbler despite his unflappable way of taking charge. The subway system acts like a King Midas in reverse. Everyone who comes in touch with it from the mayor to the...
...The other theory verified in this way is that the path of theology is through complexity towards simplicity, towards "the unutterably simple mystery" which enCommonweal: 111 compasses us all the time...
...It worked...
...was the very natural question...
...I don't have any more trees to cut down," says Rahner, using a characteristic image: indeed, some of us have long thought of Rahner as a skillful Bavarian woodcutter, chopping patiently away at the encrusted tree of a dogma (hacking away the merely mitgedacht, what is "co-thought') until it is laid bare in its essential and luminous splendor...
...1 November 1974:112...
...Another of Rahner's deflating strategies, off the rostrum, is humor, but sometimes it rebounds upon him because of the difficulty of recognizing exactly when one is the presence of humor...
...He has been described as "the last of the scholastics," dismissed as too speculative and metaphysical, and is alleged to neglect the dimension of history...
...But he was switched to theology, no doubt in order to plug a gap...
...German professors are exposed to no such discipline...
...Rahner does not get upset about these charges and admits that there is some truth in them...
...Everyone who comes in touch with it from the mayor to the hijackers turns into a nitwit...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 HAROLD WITT THROUGH A GLASS, BRIGHTLY It was only a glimpse beyond trees of a blond young man coming down through shimmering oats and barley-a shoulderflash, a shine almost subliminal-gone before he was seen-but taking me down the path of youth through such a h e a t - - timothy brushing my calves, midges in light like that when I was blond eighteen-butterflies licking about like bits of loosened flame-lost in distance and time, stepping with dancer's feet, hair thick as a mane--quick without being in haste as bright air streamed through my hands-and unconcerned as he with any slowings of pace...
...Rahner gives every satisfaction in this respect...
...Rahner's images are rare, apposite and welcome...
...And what did you say...
...Rahner is genuinely modest, in so far as he is allowed to be...
...Like his claim to be a dilettante, this is a little disingenuous in view of his exhaustive treatment of, say, penance in the patristic period...
...The other cat appeared, and Rahner began with the vocative case, " 0 cat...
...A portrait----of himself signed," said Rahher...
...condition which qualifies this last remark: he feels more stupid "in view of the vast amount of material which has to be mastered before one can begin to speak of a problem etc...
...And to get the feel of a strange city, he always prefers to visit department stores with their glitter rather than churches...
...They bring one back to ordinary things...
...Doesn't know whether it's for good or ill, others will have to judge, and it is they, not I, who speak of "Rahnerian theology...
...I suggested that he try English...
...Rahner prefers what he calls a "wintry piety" that has been exposed to the icy blasts of the contemporary world...
...he would like to stand alongside the atheist and go with him through the purgatory and hell of rationalism...
...Rahner also admits, with some cheerfulness, that be has made no discoveries in historical theology, but has merely "reflected on the data provided by others...
...They are constantly expected to utter Great Thoughts...
...Ordinariness shall have the last word...
...Theology can't deliver practical applications, he remarks, like "freshly baked breakfast rolls...
...I'm afraid he doesn't really make it as a Western hero either, any more than Fallon does...
...All those volumes...
...The first is concerned with the wonder of everyday things...
...But he had not read Heidegger...
...Rahner has his critics in the German theological world...
...In the end of his film, Garber doesn't catch the hijackers so much as just stand around and watch while they trip themselves up...
...He started adult life, anyway, as a philosopher--or more precisely his Jesuit superiors intended that he should teach the history of philosophy at Pullach...
...The German university tradition places the Herr Professor on a very lofty pinnacle...
...I recall Rahner waiting for the elevator in the London house of the Jesuits...
...But like most of the things Rahner has done, it provided no simple answers and was massive...
...There can be no doubt about the deep pastoral concern that has always made itself felt in his theology, along with a keen sense of what it means to be truly human...
...Despite his disclaimers, a simple test of Rahner's success is to list the phrases that he has injected into common theological discourse: we now find indispensable "anonymous Christianity," "the dynamic element in the Church," "the Church of the diaspora," "God as the absolute future" and the "Christology from below" in which Rahner once more studies ordinary life for latent pointers to Christ...
...His colleagues in Munich solve this problem by laughing heartily whenever they think that a joke has been made...
...Yet reading between the lines one could catch a rare glimpse of Rahner the man...
...Anglo-Saxon professors--at least the ones I know--have to survive the irony of their colleagues, and consequently find it much more difficult to take themselves too seriously...
...The cat curled round his ankle, arched its back, purred, joined us in the lift, but lost a heartbeat as the lift began to climb...
...In this way Rahner also lives out two of his cherished theories...
...The problem for both of them is that, as cowboy philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, things are in the saddle and ride mankind...
...Anyone wishing to devise an examination in Rahnerian theology could do worse than propose comparable themes and invite the candidate to suggest how Rahner would have treated them: thus we might arrive at the theology of birdwatching or coffee-drinking...
...The professor's reward is adulation, and here Rahner differs from the others in that he suffers from the respect and reverence which are heaped upon him...
...It was after midnight, and cats were roaming...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...In the slim volume he published under that title, he discusses a number of ordinary activities--like walking about, sitting down, or going to bed--in which he detects hidden traces of omnipresent grace...
...K ARL RAHNER recently notched up three score years and ten and gave a celebration interview to Herder Korrespondenz in which he was invited to review his life's work...
...Consequently he does not need to be interesting, still less entertaining, and indeed he is expected to be obscure, since the pursuit of Geist is arduous...
...Naturally there is a PETER HEBBLETHWAITE i$ former editor of the Jesuit publication, The Month...
...He can derive great pleasure from studying the instructions on the label of a sauce bottle or examining the workings of a cigarette lighter...
...What was it...
...In his birthday interview, Rahner shows himself to be very mistrustful of those who--with Cardinal Suenens - - p i n their hopes for the future of the Church on the Pentecostal movement...
...That is where Rahner stands...
...Rahner said: "In the cat-consciousness this must be rather like an astronaut's journey...
...The idea that man is defined by his openness to being (anima est quodammodo omnia) is absolutely central in Rahner, and is the basis of his view of man's existential orientation towards God...
...One of them approached, but it fled as Professor Rahher addressed it in German which the cat found menacing...
...In the centenary of Chesterton's birth, it is only fair to note both themes--child-like wonder at the ordinary and the universality of grace--were found in him too...
...When he was leaving Munich for Mtinster in the spring of 1967, he returned from a farewell visit to Cardinal Doepfner who had been so kind, said Rahner, as to give him a going away present...
...Not only is he the accredited representative of Geist, that unique combination of spirit, mind, intellect, soul and imagination, but he embodies it and is its spokesman...
...He has said what he has to say...
...they inquired anxiously...
...Quite frequently Rahner has in fact made a joke in the self-deprecating manner that is his, halfway between speech and a slurred murmur...
...One had to give courses in this and that, one wrote them up, it turned out that they interested other people...
...Since one might be tempted to believe that only a wellprogrammed computer could equal Rahner's prodigious output, it is comforting to know that he has a human side...
...There is a quality of impishness and mischievousness which comes out in the interview when he claims to be a "dilettante" in theology, and declares that after studying it for forty years, he feels more stupid than when he started...
...Subsequent worldwide reputation...
...Collapse of several stout parties...
...Even though that is rather like being invited to write one's own obituary, he set about the interview with good grace...
...He has a number of ploys for dealing with the situation...
...Ha ha, laughed I, falling into the trap...
...Impact on Vatican 11...
...and to highlight it might be to provide a key to his thinking...
...Even then, Rahner won't admit to any special distinction...
...He concedes that he discovered in scholastic philosophy at its most banal a dynamism that enabled him to go beyond it...
...But first a preliminary remark about German professors...
...Rahner has another ploy for dealing with these solemn expectations: he pretends to be a very ordinary chap, constantly surprised by the ordinariness of very ordinary things...
...Eminenz, I said, thank you very much: but that is just what you gave me for my sixtieth birthday...
...but it is true that his main concern lay elsewhere...
...In the interview he explains that in his view, the remaining manuscripts in his files do not merit publication...
...This last charge comes from the Tiibingen school of which Hans Kfing is the star...
...Rahner is modest again in that he genuinely believes that he stumbled into theological distinction and never sought for influence...
...Can't claim anything, it all happened so swiftly, no one really knows who was responsible for particular expressions in the final texts...
...Ha, ha, ha," they chortle...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 5
