The Imaginative Sources of Rahner's Theology of Original Sin

This paper will investigate the philosophical resources employed by Karl Rahner in his theology of original sin. While it would be a mistake to bypass completely the conceptual genealogy of Rahner's thinking, we argue that Rahner's thinking is original and to a certain degree independent of its sources. Moreover, this paper will attempt to verify the hypothesis that it is more effective to use images than concepts when one tries to understand Rahner's theology. For this reason, this paper will be focusing on Rahner's theological imagination, and his ability to free himself from the conceptual heritage of certain notions and redefine them creatively and imaginatively. Rahner's intellectual activity started in philosophy. Two ‘masters’ were particularly important for him: Joseph Maréchal and Martin Heidegger. The former proposed a synthesis between Immanuel Kant's philosophy of knowledge and the metaphysics of St Thomas Aquinas, and both Aquinas and Kant would eventually become major philosophical and theological sources for Rahner. It is on Aquinas, Kant, and Heidegger as philosophical sources for Rahner that this article will focus. From Kant, he inherited the importance of the subject, from Heidegger, the importance of the question of Being, and from Aquinas the ideal of the luminosity of the world.1 We will first start by considering Kant's influence on Rahner. Kant's ‘Copernican revolution’ modified the coordinates according to which the process of the act of knowledge is understood. After the Kantian revolution, what was at stake was no longer the relationship between the mind and the materiality of the object, but the elaboration of knowledge within and by the human mind. The change in perspective was considerable: from truth understood as the adequation between the mind and the object, we move to truth understood as a process within an authorised perimeter. The image of abstraction, or extraction, of knowledge from an external object gives way to the image of jurisdiction centred on the knowing subject. the structure of the subject itself is an a priori, that is, it forms an antecedent law governing what and how something can become manifest to the knowing subject. The ears, for example, constitute an a priori law, a screen, as it were, which determines that only sounds can register in the ears. The same is true of the eyes and all the other organs of sense knowledge […] This in no way implies that the realities which present themselves cannot manifest themselves as they actually are. A keyhole forms an a priori law governing what key fits in, but it thereby discloses something about the key itself.2 Despite partly following Kant, Rahner remained a realist. The realist approach is expressed in the fact that the lock—the image applied to the intellect, understood as the subject of knowledge—is nevertheless able to accept, within its own limits, an external object. The key is the image of a real object which, while being configured by sensibility and intellect, retains a degree of authenticity and independence (noumenal, to use Kantian terminology). Such a view of epistemology is more than an elaboration of Kant's philosophy of knowledge. Rather, it is a rupture from Kant's epistemology. This domain is an island, enclosed by nature itself within unalterable limits. It is the land of truth—enchanting name!—surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the native home of illusion, where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with empty hopes, and engaging him in enterprises which he can never abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion. Before we venture on this sea, to explore it in all directions and to obtain assurance whether there be any ground for such hopes, it will be well to begin by casting a glance upon the map of the land which we are about to leave, and to enquire, first, whether we cannot in any case be satisfied with what it contains—are not, indeed, under compulsion to be satisfied, inasmuch as there may be no other territory upon which we can settle; and, secondly, by what title we possess even this domain, and can consider ourselves as secured against all opposing claims.3 In Kant, reason reigns supreme and excludes the results of dubious rational expeditions. Reason's ‘cadastral’ activity is the only socially acceptable activity. Anything that goes beyond the realm of pure reason, anything that ventures beyond the firm ground of the island, exceeds both its political (in the broadest sense of the word) and philosophical frameworks.4 Nevertheless, despite all these restrictions, the open sea retains its charm. What is made intelligible is grounded ultimately in the one thing that is self-evident, in mystery. Mystery is something with which we are always familiar, something which we love, even when we are terrified by it or perhaps even annoyed and angered, and want to be done with it. For the person who has touched his own spiritual depths, what is more familiar, thematically or unthematically, and what is more self-evident than the silent question which goes beyond everything which has already been mastered and controlled, than the unanswered question accepted in humble love, which alone brings wisdom? In the ultimate depths of his being man knows nothing more surely than that his knowledge, that is, what is called knowledge in everyday parlance, is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been travelled. It is a floating island, and it might be more familiar to us than the sea, but ultimately it is borne by the sea and only because it is, can we be borne by it. Hence the existential question for the knower is this: Which does he love more, the small island of his so-called knowledge or the sea of infinite mystery? Is the little light with which he illuminates this island—we call it science and scholarship—to be an eternal light which will shine forever for him? That would surely be hell.5 The difference between Rahner and Kant is obvious. Whereas the Königsberg philosopher wanted to circumscribe the domain of reason and thus restrict its exercise, the Innsbruck theologian encouraged people to step outside their cautious limits, look towards the horizon, and seek to reach the unattainable. This change in approach leads to a change in the meaning of the transcendental. It is limiting and juridical in Kant, but tempting and dynamic in Rahner. The word that best describes the Rahnerian transcendental is Vorgriff, in other words, anticipation or pre-apprehension. What is anticipated is a ‘beyondness’, or transcendence, that goes beyond the totality of the island. More could be said about this transcendental. Rahner understands the unlimitedness of the transcendental as an existential, that is, as a pre-conceptual reality going beyond the purely noetic dimension.6 What interests Rahner is not, as in Descartes, the limitlessness of the concept of infinity, or, as in Anselm, the greater than the thinkable, but the foundation in Being of these possibilities of the mind. Thus, the conceptual unlimitedness of the mind, illustrated in the concept of infinity, is not just a concept. It is, rather, an innate power, an original and structuring disposition, which determines the whole human being: not simply his thinking but also his existence. The connection between thinking and Being owes much to Heidegger. But as ever, Rahner's similarity towards other philosophers also comes with a certain dissimilarity. In 1940, he showed both his indebtedness towards Heidegger and also his distance from him in an article which he published in French. The article, written after Rahner had already published Spirit in the World and Hearer of the Word, focuses on existential philosophy (not to be confused with Rahner's own understanding of the Existential). The article explores Heidegger's philosophical act, particularly his focus on Dasein (or being in situation), rather than on logos (or logic). It also considers Heidegger's attempt to address the fundamental problem of Being and his renewal of philosophy's approach to this problem. I prefer to speak of ‘approach’ to this problem, and not of ‘solution’, for Heidegger's philosophy is above all a project of displacement, of exodus, which leaves behind a certain understanding of Being and tries to discover Dasein's place within the question of being. There is no solution in sight, only a path to be explored. The first point that Rahner raises concerns Heidegger's metaphysical ambition. In Rahner's view, the question about Being in its most general sense acquires an undeniable theological meaning as soon as the investigation is directed towards the foundation of this Being. The second point highlighted by Rahner concerns the fact that Heidegger's enquiry adopts a transcendental form. Rahner provisionally defines the transcendental, starting from Kant, as the search for the a priori conditions of knowledge. However, he also emphasises the metaphysical nature of the transcendental question. This signals a significant shift. The transcendental is no longer the quality of a method of knowledge but becomes a metaphysical question: ‘what being is man himself as he who asks about Being as such and without restriction?’7 The reason for this shift lies in an important correspondence that is noticed by Rahner: that between the transcendental approach and the question of Being. Being is not an object, but a pre-existing notion found within the human spirit which marks all his knowing. The subject, through the omnipresence (both logical and gnoseological) of the question of Being, lives out the metaphysical question. The metaphysical object, that is, Being, corresponds to a question, the question of Being, which has a constitutive role in the life of the spirit. In other words, the metaphysical and the transcendental align with one another. This is the important novelty introduced by Rahner with respect to Heidegger. The essence of the transcendental approach is the return to the subject, and this subject is structured by the metaphysical question.8 There is no subject which is not conditioned by the metaphysical question. This means situating the question ‘What is man?’, while still relating it to the question of being in general, on an entirely new and original plane. Heidegger names this, as defined, fundamental ontology. His concept which will consequently exclude the specifically logical—can be characterised thus: fundamental ontology is the analytic of man as bearer of relations with being, the existential analytic of ‘this-concrete man,’ of this existent, of this ‘present one’: Dasein, following Heidegger's terminology. […] Existential philosophy in Heidegger's sense is the transcendental investigation of what man is, insofar as he raises the question of being, an investigation that rejects the initial traditional stance in this matter—exclusively intellectual—and undertaken with the intention of providing an answer to the question of being in general: fundamental ontology, as the basis of all metaphysics.10 In this long quotation, the shift in relation to the concept of the transcendental is clear. Rahner moves from an understanding of the transcendental as the a priori conditions of knowledge to an understanding of the transcendental as the examination of what man is (insofar as he poses the question of being). In other words, he leaves behind the subject considered in one of his activities, knowing, and considers the subject as a totality. The subject is the total human being whose essence it is to question the totality of Being. In other words, a metaphysical anthropology replaces a philosophy of knowledge. Not only have we returned to the subject, but in him the metaphysical question appears as his own being. If now one tries to know what general formal structures are found in all existential consciousness, the question is an existential question. The rubric ‘existential analytic of Dasein’ now becomes clear: it deals with the problem of the formal and general structures which go with Dasein as Dasein's properly human mode of being, that is, as openness (transcendence) to being in general, and thus as self-disposability, as self-comprehension.12 It should be noted that in his later work, Foundations of Christian Faith, Rahner will not only speak of openness for transcendence, but of an experience of transcendence. This experience of transcendence contemplates a descending aspect—a theology of grace—and an aspect of reception. It the self-giving of the transcendent and the reception of this grace. All we can say is that in Heidegger's work as it has been presented up to now, the interpretation of Dasein moves entirely within the horizon of temporality, of death, and of nothingness; it seems, consequently, that this ‘existential analytic of Dasein’ ought to have as a logical, even necessary, sequel not an ontology but an ontochrony (the expression comes from Heidegger himself), that is, a science showing that the meaning of all being as such, and, absolutely, the meaning of Being, is nothingness.13 This means Heidegger stops in his tracks and replaces the ultimate goal—Being as such—with an intermediate one—Being according to finite Dasein. Against Heidegger's connection, in this context, between Being and nothingness as manifested in Dasein, Rahner argues that nothingness cannot be an existential. The anticipation of the whole (Vorgriff) as a question addressed by the human being is a question that neither remains unanswered nor does it find its end in nothingness. The ultimate existential, the transcendent—God himself—and the transcendence of the human spirit towards the divine could be seen as an existential of grace and reception. What we have just argued needs a further clarification. How does Rahner know that the question about the infinite has not remained unanswered? The answer is Christian revelation. For Rahner, nothing obliges one to identify the analytic of Dasein with ontology tout court. More importantly, he starts from a premise that Heidegger does not share: the transcendent mystery has addressed itself to humanity. Building on this communication of grace, the human being could be phenomenologically described as borderless. It is open towards God's infinite mystery.14 This is the theological line of separation between Rahner and Heidegger. if this transcendence is rather the plainest, most obvious and most necessary condition of possibility for all spiritual understanding and comprehension, then the holy mystery really is the one thing that is self-evident, the one thing which is grounded in itself even from our point of view. For all other understanding, however clear it might appear, is grounded in this transcendence. All clear understanding is grounded in the darkness of God.15 Rahner retains the primacy of the reception in the act of knowing. However, this receptivity is accompanied by the awareness of limitation, of not being able to know everything. While in Spirit in the World, Rahner was still understanding receptivity in terms of luminosity, in Foundations, he understands it as paradoxical, or even tenebrous. A connection could be made between this tenebrous state of human knowing and the question of original sin. The latter could be understood as the state of a world that should have been more luminous than it in fact is. The world is not without light, it promises, through the Vorgriff of divine transcendence, some kind of light. However, this is only a promise, which has more the form of a quest, rather than a realised objective. Existence promises us such evidence, but the luminosity of the world is more of a promise than an answer. It ultimately requires an act of faith. This is precisely what Rahner means when, building on Aquinas, he considers the world in terms of a ‘luminous ideal’. This luminous ideal should not be taken to mean a self-evident ideal, but is, rather, a promise.16 In this sense, we can read the account of Genesis 3 as a promise that a light making the world transparent to the presence of God was due, but because of humanity's sin this promise remained a promise, and it is still waiting for an answer. In this, Rahner's understanding of sin is much different from that of Aquinas and, even more, that of Augustine.17 This is why, at the beginning, we pointed out that Rahner is an original and independent thinker: he has to be read on his own terms. This is what we will do in our concluding remarks, where we will try to elaborate a theology of original sin on the basis of Rahner's own theological imagination. In light of our exploration of Rahner's epistemology and metaphysics, we could say that for him, the question of original sin is to be situated within the epistemological question. This point is problematic for two reasons. First is the question of whether Rahner's distance from Augustine's Platonism18 is not compromised by the continued association of original sin with knowledge. Second, it raises an important question about Rahner's Christology. Rahner, among other theologians, rejects the scholastic theses about Christ's perfect knowledge (scientia). Part of the flawed reasoning found in these theses (of Monophysite flavour) consists in the identification of sin with ignorance. The imperfect knowledge that the human being possesses is the result of his sin, and since Christ is sinless, he should be without ignorance. However, when it comes to original sin—and here lies our critique of Rahner—he proposes an interpretation that closely links the issue of sin with ignorance of God's presence. The obscuring of the world's transparency to God, its historical and existential opacity, is not a thing, but a form of ignorance. Is Rahner, therefore, inconsistent when he rejects the link between sin and ignorance in the case of Christ but upholds it in the case of humanity's original sin? Does the development in Christology, advanced by Rahner and other theologians, not have a bearing on original sin? It seems to me that this point should be interrogated further. Original sin condemns us to a world that should be more luminous—that is, transparent to the divine presence—than it actually is. The varying degrees of opacity are the result of the autonomy of creation in relation to God and the transcendence of God, but also original sin. The latter is not primarily a historical reality, but a theological evaluation of the world's history. The world, as understood here, is not a collection of things, but a whole determined by human existence. This world is determined by humanity's ‘no’ or ‘yes’ to God: hence why original sin plays an important role in the level of opacity. Sin and holiness, both personally and collectively—because humanity is inherently taken in relation to God's grace is to which the opacity of the world to God, or its Moreover, humanity's the for God or against God also has a and it is and made in for or against The this and of all the is there now, and not and In he the of the world, divine in the and of the world where this, even to its in and its God's It was from this one of all in which and nothingness could no longer be and from which their whole that he This by Rahner should be primarily considered as a It is Christ's that is the new existential. This view is the result of Rahner's through his theological imagination, to the connection that between sin and holiness, and Christ's and In us an to what we have out in this original sin without certain such is the of the of in light of Rahner's this could be taken to mean that the of certain and to something that is other than the world without This is the and in it is for the of all