Karl Rahner on Original Sin: An Uncomfortable Truth

Karl Rahner's ‘mature’ reflections on original sin appear in his Grundkurs des christlichen Glaubens (ET Foundations of Christian Faith, 1976) which was planned as an introduction to the ‘idea’ of Christianity. Written in dense prose, it probably did not receive the kind of reception as his Theological Investigations and their ad hoc article style, which, I believe, better suited Rahner's Denkstil. The topic itself is presented towards the end of a chapter on sin and guilt—key Christian themes, according to Rahner, and not something the human person can absolve ‘by his or her own power and strength’. In other words, he is pointing to our ‘need for redemption’.1 Our ‘situation’, Rahner will conclude, is dialectically and intrinsically determined. On the one hand, the situation of every person is co-determined by the guilt of others, and this is ‘something universal, permanent and, therefore also original’.2 On the other hand, we have been saved and delivered from evil because of God's universal salvific will and the offer of God's self-communication in Christ. Original sin is not something that belongs to the past. Rahner eschews an interpretation of the world that says, ‘formerly there was a very evil world burdened with guilt, and that by the redemption of Jesus Christ it then became essentially different in an empirical and tangible way’. Methodologically, he claims, the two notions, our need for redemption and deliverance from evil, ‘may not be connected in a temporal sequence’.3 Nevertheless, the somewhat infelicitous term ‘original sin’ intends to highlight an unredeemed situation or an absence of grace. But why? This is the classic stumbling block of theodicy: ‘Why and how can a God of holiness and love have willed or allowed such a world of general sinfulness and death, obscurity and anxious doubt?’4 Rahner does not provide an answer, only to concede that, ‘we may serenely reckon with the fact that original sin really happened but at a moment which cannot be more accurately determined’.5 Rahner admits that his contemporaries do not experience themselves as standing before God burdened by guilt. If anything, they feel it is God, not us, who needs to justify the unhappy condition of the world. Still, there is an awareness that we are accountable, and that we feel the discrepancy between what we should be and what we in fact are. He warns against a ‘false innocence’ about our sinful situation, which is not facing up to a key message of Christianity, namely, the human person as sinner. Furthermore, a true understanding of guilt, for Rahner, is only possible alongside an experience of forgiveness, which is also an experience of grace: ‘The ultimate and radical nature of guilt itself lies in the fact that it takes place in the face of a loving and self-communicating God, and only when a person knows this and makes this truth his own can he understand the depths of guilt.’6 Rahner's reflections on sin and guilt are linked to his understanding of grace and freedom. Freedom is not merely freedom of choice, not merely freedom regarding a finite object or possibility in the world. Rather, it is ‘the capacity of the subject to decide about him or herself in his or her single totality’.7 It is a freedom ‘for’ more than a freedom ‘from’. It is the capacity of a person to assume responsibility for the totality of their existence. All the discrete acts of choice of a person are really dimensions of the one freedom by which that person actualises him or herself. As he puts it, ‘freedom in the theological sense is freedom from and directed towards God’.8 Freedom, therefore, has to do with the self-actualisation of the person, to dispose of oneself, and ‘is antecedent to the individual acts and events of human life as the condition of their possibility’.9 Freedom, therefore, for Rahner, ‘is a capacity of subjectivity … the capacity to do something final and definitive… It is the capacity for the eternal’.10 Freedom is always freedom before God, to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God, and to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to oneself. It has to do with the fundamental decision or option by which a person decides definitively about the totality of their life. Freedom begins as a potentiality and ‘is something that has to be realised’.11 It comes from God and is directed towards God: ‘the act of freedom is always essentially the act of a person's self-surrender to the uncontrollable providence of God and in this sense is always a trusting venture’.12 Freedom, though wounded by sin, is the capacity for the eternal, for love, and plays a determinative role in the journey to salvation. This ‘transcendental’ freedom, as Rahner calls it, this ‘freedom to dispose of oneself … is actualised in a free and absolute “yes” or “no” to that term and source of transcendence’, namely, God. Freedom is about the subject him or herself, and not about this or that thing.13 The notion of transcendence connotes that the human person is dynamic, a process, on the way towards a goal that is nothing less than the infinite itself. We are beings with an infinite horizon, borne by our transcendental immediacy to God. At the same time our orientation to the infinite never occurs totally on its own. Rather, a person's experience of God is given with and through human experiences in the world. Our freedom is ‘mediated by the concrete world … and especially by the world of other persons’.14 Moreover, the ‘decision of freedom’ takes place in a situation or context that exists prior to the human person—one that exists not only externally but internally, a situation that intrinsically co-determines the history of each person who ‘appropriates’ both its good and bad elements. In short, we find ourselves in a world ‘which is co-determined by guilt’ and which threatens our ability to make good, fundamental, and free decisions.15 Yet there is always the possibility of a free ‘no’ towards God. Rahner speaks of ‘the possibility of sin as a permanent existential’ or threat which cannot be eradicated.16 The paradox of our freedom is that, while not destroyed, it is ‘enslaved’, ‘subject to the impulses of concupiscence’, and needs to be liberated by grace.17 The paradox is that we sin unavoidably but also freely. Rahner does not dwell overmuch on the possibility of a radical self-refusal towards God. Rather, he wants to emphasise that a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to God are not simply parallel options. A ‘no’ might appear as an absolute act, yet in reality it is merely affirming a categorical goal absolutely.18 Rahner always stresses what he calls the a priori ‘gracedness’ of humanity and God's universal salvific will. Creation is always in view of grace.19 As he puts it, ‘sin was only permitted by God within the domain of his unconditional and stronger salvific will, which from the very beginning was directed towards God's self-communication in Christ’.20 Regarding original sin, Rahner identifies some common misunderstandings. The first is a tendency for the human person to view themselves as primarily ‘good, sound and whole’, and any defects (e.g., alienation from self or social disharmony) as merely secondary phenomena eliminable by one's own power.21 Another misunderstanding is to equate original sin with an insuperable pessimistic existentialism whereby original sin simply refers to the absurdity of human existence and the tragic and flawed nature of the human person, which cannot be traced back to a primordial historical event at the beginning of humanity. A third misunderstanding equates original with personal sin, ‘if not in its cause at least in its nature’. This creates a kind of ‘collective guilt’ because of someone else, which is either accepted as a mystery or rejected as a contradiction.22 Original sin was not taken as designating a feature in the constitution of human reality which is always and from the start comprised within God's salvific will for all and the powerful grace of Christ, but as the situation of all, out of which a subsequent grace saves only some; the universality of original sin was clearer than the universality of man's redeemed condition.23 In other words, what was missing was how God's universal salvific will and the fact that Christ died for all ‘could be translated into a structural feature intrinsically characterising the personal life of every person even prior to their justification’.24 For Rahner, by virtue of God's universal salvific will, the human person is pre-determined a priori towards his or her supernatural end in God. This claim is linked to what he called the ‘supernatural existential’. Grace (understood as God's self-communication) is present to all in the mode of an offer—to be freely accepted or rejected. Rahner's transcendental-anthropological method showed how the human person is an ‘obediential potency’ for a possible revelation of God, and he developed the notion of God as the horizon of our knowing and the term of our transcendence. But Rahner also wanted to show how God is more than the metaphysical condition of the possibility of human knowing and loving. He presents the offer of God's self-communication in such a way that the human person can recognise this as the valid expression of, and the key to, their own self-understanding. And if one is to accept this offer of grace, there must be an openness on our part to receive it. In short, the human person must be created in such a way that he or she can receive this love which is Godself. God's grace can only be received if its very reception is made possible by God: the self-communication as such effects its own acceptance.25 We are enabled to share in the very nature of God. Because God gives humanity a supernatural end (and this end is primary in the divine intention), the human person ‘is by that very fact always inwardly other in structure than they would be if they did not have this end’.26 What Rahner wants to stress is that the self-communication of God is antecedent to the free decision of the creature, who is ambivalent and therefore not holy. In rejecting the sanctifying offer of Godself, there is a ‘loss’ or ‘lack’ ‘which ought not to be’, which forms part of the human situation of freedom.27 In his entry on ‘Original Sin’ in Sacramentum Mundi, the Encyclopaedia of Theology he edited, Rahner turns to Paul as providing the ‘decisive biblical statement’ in Romans 5 that both our situation of estrangement from God (owing to Adam's disobedience) and our redemption by Christ are antecedent to our personal decision, our ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God.28 Just as we ratify our ‘no’ by personal sins (Rom. 5:12), so too do we appropriate the objective redemption wrought by Christ by a life of faith. Rahner's fundamental conviction, therefore, is that humanity is offered ‘divinizing and forgiving grace … given to all only through Christ and not simply because they are human beings … and given to all as forgiving sins’.29 In other words, humanity precisely as humanity lacks the divine Pneuma, a situation which does not correspond with the divine intention. If this is the case, then it is because of a freely incurred guilt, which, in an analogous sense, has the character of a sin. As Rahner puts it: ‘It is a state which ought not to be (and ought not to have been) … a state in which ontological holiness is lacking’.30 It is a deprivation in that the human person does not have the divine Pneuma, ‘an inner condition proper to men and women—precisely because they belong to the fellowship of the human race by physical descent … an interior original sin proper to each’.31 What Rahner takes from Paul is that all are sinners and share in a situation that is universal from the beginning. Paul does not explain how this is so, how it is that we are affected by the sin of Adam prior to any personal decision. He insists only that it is so and argues from the universality of death. ‘Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spreads to all, because all sinned’ (Rom. 5:12). Because we all die, we are all implicated in sin, since death is the effect of sin. Decisive is the fact that the ‘one person’, Adam, contributes to the ungodly condition of humanity just as do all other humans, and that sins and the consequences of sin continue to burden their existence. Alongside original sin and death, Rahner adds the traditional term ‘concupiscence’—another existential of human nature, and a realisation that we are ‘weakened’ and ‘wounded’ in our natural powers—as descriptive of our human ‘situation’. Rahner broadened the theological concept of ‘concupiscentia’ traditionally understood as a power (or existential of human nature) weighing us down and inclining towards sin. While traditionally linked to the sensitive appetite (Begehrungsvermögen), Rahner believed concupiscence affects our spiritual faculty as well (e.g., persistent temptation against faith or to despair). Metaphysically the sensitive and spiritual faculties function together in the human person, or, more positively, we can be drawn to God through materiality as well as through spirit. Concupiscence is not simply to be equated with disordered desire but reflects the tension or resistance we experience when making a decision or following a decision with action. Yet Rahner concedes that there is always a tension within us between ‘nature’ and ‘person’, between our createdness (finitude) and our freedom to dispose ourselves fully towards God. Concupiscence is a way of this of Rahner adds that this of person and nature affects not only bad but good as and concupiscence are of the yet of grace. Because of Adam's sin, grace is not at our and any decision for or against God is only possible through the grace that comes from Christ. for Rahner, is the of original sin. And even concupiscence and death permanent of Christian life. Rahner speaks of our situation as one is in original sin through Adam and redeemed as towards as by we ratify this situation of freedom in a personal decision in one of two we ratify either our state of original sin by personal sin or our condition of redeemed by a life of faith and Rahner stresses that original sin is not something that belongs to the past. sin, death, and the of good and evil within and us cannot be or in Original sin is ‘the Christian for this fundamental than we should be to the all the while that ‘the power of grace to and death is As one Rahner it, is not the first Adam but the is at the not at the to his more on original sin in Rahner been with the before in the context of in the natural in to the of and the of The was which in a of against and in and While the was to a of regarding the of as the of the by God was it the of which that either Adam there on this true men who did not their through natural from him as from the first of all or that Adam a of first The according to the has a on the traditional understanding of original sin, ‘which from a sin by an individual Adam and which, through is on to all and is in as his Rahner's was that is not a of the of original sin, is it itself a by the he the in since who that was not with the traditional of original sin to face He that a of can be accepted by and that and the natural do not need to be at Rahner the of all humanity in as is the concrete expression for that one which … the has as a with the consequences which traditional to this He presents original sin as that or ‘sin of the original of human In other words, this can be in as a as a Nevertheless, Rahner's on the did not of the notion of In his of the he in his article that the of is While he did not be by he that the to from and he his as a of with a interpretation of the (e.g., He a and interpretation of the of a common all belong to a single history of and … and this … has a beginning and an Rahner was between two as it On the one hand, he linked our single history of and with a single a single individual in the beginning and in his in the same he is more The individual must be understood in of the If the of a this did not At Rahner an of because this has been an of the of redemption and original sin as are in and in its interpretation by and the the of the of original sin through to Rahner this more as a theological than need not be to physical other contemporaries of Adam subject to original sin … not but with to in did not this to a individual but developed the that original sin is in that all by original and this is a a and state of guilt, which we all In on the Rahner would from any of as a for the of original he the within a of what he a it is not the and the message of Christ that a of original sin an understanding of which we from the Original sin is not simply an of our it is a As a historical the human person is that has from the and is towards the and together in our it is in the of the that the is This this or is from us and never It is not simply the first in a of following one the of its very nature on which the of history … by God … is itself The true nature of the sin or original sin ‘is only in the of the which is of the sin which place in the at the beginning as such is of as the of grace, and it is precisely in this way that a universal sinfulness comes to which is in The personal sin at the beginning creates a situation for all which should not and it is as and with this situation that the reality is given which we original Rahner the analogous character of original sin in to personal sin and guilt. This is because our of or state of sinfulness is prior to any personal decision on our Adam's personal state of guilt cannot be on to At we can of an analogous state of We have traced a in Rahner from his to a view of the with an to an of and a on our situation of freedom, while out as a is subject to the impulses of concupiscence and and Freedom has its source and goal in God, and ‘is always either a in the of God or a radical self-refusal towards As the capacity of love it and the At the same time the of original sin is a that our situation of death, and guilt cannot be in original sin is not something that simply belongs to the but has a it the of the ‘sin of the The is an of the present situation of humanity. grace and not from the beginning of from Adam, but from Christ, as the goal of its beginning. The power of grace to and death is present and but the of original sin is a that this cannot be this of contemporaries of Rahner and who taken up and developed his his broadened the or it with the ‘sin of the Original sin is not only a first sin but has a and to and through The the sins of one person with of a sinful it comes to a person from yet a prior to sin, a to evil, in human nature itself. This is not to freedom to our freedom is is person is both free and while our of freedom always such as Rahner, to the within an while that a of our tendency to evil is is not we are more than the of our against such how the human person is also a of as well as a the of our and our is by a freedom that our and our our and our and our different from the other In we are in the between our infinite horizon and of our all of which up the and character of freedom. with such ontological this does not a have for their sin grace all the (Rom. as Rahner might it, God's universal salvific will cannot an has been too and too by the that grace would be grace if it too by the love of It is not out of place to of of sin’ which … are in personal sin, and always linked to the concrete acts of who and make to And they and the source of other and so are into a sinful in and as part of the is proper to social sin is that it is sin. subject is a and its is less of than of sin itself … in of that a Original sin is a to this human be into the world is to in sinful and For his Rahner, while not to make for they did not freely speaks of a person who in the situation of guilt to his own while the of what is of human choice and what is the of one's Regarding the he that each sinful choice and our and that of the ‘Sin the human in a he has not only but he is a Yet Rahner does not the structural of sin, to stress its while that personal sin cannot fully explain the experience of sin in the on sinful social has the between and between and between what is about human sinfulness and what is Rahner the primarily a interpretation of our own situation, from which is that our freedom or, more our situation of freedom, is co-determined by the guilt of guilt at a of God's sanctifying self-communication grace of and this the character of something which should not This situation is both original in that it can be traced back to the of the human and universal in that it every person's He the way to what is a accepted in namely, that the term ‘original sin’ refers not to a individual sin but is better understood as a condition than an act, a of than