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Rahner and Ogden: Man's Knowledge of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

John C. Robertson Jr.
John C. Robertson Jr.
Affiliation:
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
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Extract

There is a large and growing number of people, both Catholic and Protestant, who are coming to recognize Karl Rahner, S.J., as the most important Roman Catholic theologian of the present period. While a number of books and articles on Rahner are beginning to appear, most of them are limited simply to expositing his position. What has yet to be done in a satisfactory way is to think through critically his relationship to and significance for the wider theological enterprise, that is, in terms of the interconfessional discussion (as well as in terms of current secular reflection upon general human experience). Rahner's work deserves such consideration, although, because of the fact that since the Reformation and Vatican I Protestant and Catholic thought have tended to develop independently of each other, it is difficult for one schooled sufficiently in Rahner's tradition to understand his work to understand Protestant thought sufficiently well to make a discussion meaningful, and the opposite situation is also the case. Without claiming exemption from this handicap, I should like to make a beginning at the sort of clarification and critical analysis that seems to me to be needed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 1970 , pp. 377 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1970

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References

1 The other name most frequently mentioned is that of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., but at the time of this writing his generally available work is mostly in philosophy. Philosophically speaking, Rahner and Lonergan have much in common inasmuch as both employ the so-called “Transcendental Method.” For a discussion of this method and their relationship to it see Muck, Otto, S.J., The Transcendental Method, translated by William D. Seidensticker (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968)Google Scholar.

2 E.g., Gelpi, Donald L., S.J., Life and Light: A Guide to the Theology of Karl Rahner (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966)Google Scholar, and Roberts, Louis, The Achievement of Karl Rahner (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 Witness, for example, the artificial character of Roberts's attempt to bring the two into a dialogue.

4 George Lindbeck, The Thought of Karl Rahner, S.J., Christianity and Culture (October 18, 1965), 211–14. Ogden, Schubert M., Karl Rahner: Theologian of “Open Catholicism,” Christian Advocate XI, 17 (September 7, 1967), 11–13Google Scholar.

5 Cf. CORNELIUS ERNST'S Introduction to Rahner, Karl, S.J., Theological Investigations, I (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1963), xiiffGoogle Scholar. Cf. Ogden, Schubert M., Christ without Myth (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961)Google Scholar, passim.

6 For a discussion of this tendency in Roman Catholic thought see Lonergan, Bernard, S.J., The Subject (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1968)Google Scholar. For a statement of Barth's influential polemic see, for example, Protestant Thought: Front Rousseau to Ritschl (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959)Google Scholar, especially the essays on Schleiermacher and Feuerbach, chs. 8 and 9.

7 Rahner, Karl and Vorgrimler, Herbert, Theological Dictionary, edited by Cornelius Ernst, translated by Richard Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 107fGoogle Scholar. For Ogden's treatment of the doctrine see his The Reality of God and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 211fGoogle Scholar.

8 Theological Investigations, IV: The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Assertions, 333. Cf. also Eschatology in Theological Dictionary, 149, and Rahner, , On The Theology of Death (New York: Herder and Herder, 1962)Google Scholar, passim.

9 Ogden, The Reality of God, 209f.

10 Marechal's major work is Le Point du Départ de la Métaphysique (Louvain, 1927)Google Scholar. For documentation of RAHNER'S indebtedness to Marechal see Muck, Otto, S.J., The Transcendental Method, trans. William D. Seidensticker (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 181ffGoogle Scholar.

11 Francis P. Fiorenz, Introduction to Rahner's Spirit in the World, trans, by William Dych, S.J. (Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1968), XX–XXIIGoogle Scholar.

12 Rahner, , Geist in Welt, Zweite Auflage (München: Kosel-Verlag, 1957)Google Scholar. For English translation, cf. ibid.

13 See, e.g., Copleston, F. C., S.J., Aquinas (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1955), 26Google Scholar.

14 For the most important statements of this point see Rahner, Geist in Welt, 69ff.

15 Ibid., 181f. and 3878., especially 389.

16 Ogden expresses his affinity with Hartshorne in many places. For a very explicit statement see his Bultmann'S Demythologizing and Hartshorne'S Dipolar Theism, The Hartshorne Festschrift: Process and Divinity, edited by William L. Reece and Eugene Freeman (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1964), 493–514Google Scholar.

17 Hartshorne, , Reality as Social Process: Studies in Metaphysics and Religion (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1953), 71Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., 29ff. and 69ff.

19 Ogden, The Reality of God, 57.

20 Furthermore, it is instructive to note that it is the “early” rather than the “later” Heidegger that has impressed RAHNER and OGDEN the most. See Ernest, Cornelius, O.P., Introduction to Rahner's Theological Investigations, Vol. I, translated by C. Ernst (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961)Google Scholar, xiii; and Ogden's essay in The Hartshorne Festschrift, op. cit., 495ff., especially 513, note.

21 Rahner, , Theological Investigations, Vol. V, translated by Karl H. Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), 210fGoogle Scholar. See also, Geist in Welt, passim.

22 Rahner, Theological Dictionary, 367.

23 Ibid., 161.

24 Rahner, Hörer des Wortes, 87.

25 Ibid., 187f., note.

26 Ibid. See also Roper, Anita, The Anonymous Christian, translated by Joseph Donceel, S.J., Afterword by Klaus Riesenhuber, S.J. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966), 138ffGoogle Scholar.

27 Rahner, Hörer des Wortes, 205ff.

28 Rahner, , On the Theology of Death (New York: Herder and Herder, 1962), passimGoogle Scholar. For a more technical expression of the point see Rahner, Theological Investigations, Vol. V, 210f.

29 Rahner, Anthropocentrism, Lexicon für Kirche und Theologie, 626f. Quoted by Neel, Henri, S.J., The Old and The New in Theology: Rahner and Lonergan, Cross Currents (Fall, 1966), 466Google Scholar.

30 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961.)

31 ibid., 43.

32 Ibid., 25, parentheses mine.

33 As Ogden notes, mythological thinking commits what Gilbert Ryle calls a “category mistake,” according to which there is “the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another.” Cf. Ogden, The Reality of God, 105. Cf. Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson and Company, Ltd., 1949), 8Google Scholar.

34 Ogden, Christ without Myth, 154.

35 Ibid., 146.

36 Ibid., 153.

37 Ibid., 153.

38 Ibid., 162.

39 Ogden, The Reality of God, 104. Ogden distinguishes clearly between “our inner nonsensuous perception of ourselves and the world as parts of an encompassing whole and the outer perceptions through our senses whereby we discriminate the behavior of all the different beings of which we are originally aware.” Ibid., 105.

40 Ibid., 164ff.

41 For example, see Rahner, Hörer des Wortes, 15ff. and 205ff., and Ogden, Christ without Myth, 146ft., and Theology and Philosophy: A New Phase of the Discussion, The Journal of Religion 44 (1964), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology, Vol. I (Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), 8ffGoogle Scholar.

43 See Rahner, Theological Dictionary, 121–23, and Ogden, Christ without Myth, passim.

44 Bultmann, Rudolf, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner'S Sons, 1958), 66Google Scholar.

45 Rahner, Theological Dictionary, 121–23. Ogden, The Reality of God, 71ff.

46 Buren, Paul M. Van, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1963)Google Scholar.

47 Bultmann, Faith and Understanding; edited and introduced by Robert W. Funk, translated by Louise P. Smith (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 53ff. and 313ft.

48 See Muck, The Transcendental Method, translated by William D. Seidensticker (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 72ff. Ogden's indebtedness to Hartshorne has been noted above. See Hartshorne's, Ideal Knowledge Defines Reality: What was True in “Idealism,” The Journal of Philosophy, xiii, 21 (April, 1946), 573–82Google Scholar.

49 In addition to the general argument of Geist in Welt, see Rahner's Hörer des Wortes, 80.

50 Theological Dictionary, 105f.

51 Ibid., 381f.

52 Ibid.

53 Ogden, The Reality of God, 43.

54 Ogden, God and Philosophy: A Discussion with Antony Flew, Journal of Religion (April, 1968), 161ff., 160f.

55 The Reality of God, 36.

56 Ibid., 41.

57 Ibid., 37ff.

58 Rahner, Theological Dictionary, 42.

59 Rahner, , DO YOU Believe in God? (New York: Newman Press, 1969), 7Google Scholar. Rahner frequently cites this point in developing his notion of the “anonymous Christian.” Cf. Röper's book, op. cit., for elaboration.

60 Rahner, Theological Dictionary, 381ff.

61 Ibid., 381–83.

62 Ogden, The Reality of God, 138f.

63 Ibid., 21–43.

64 Hartshorne, , Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941), 59Google Scholar.

65 See Haetshokne, , Anthropomorphic Tendencies in Positivism, Philosophy of Science, Vol. VII, 2 (April, 1941), 188Google Scholar.

66 Kant, Immanuei, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1963), 349–454, 525–72Google Scholar.

67 Royce, Josiah, The Possibility of Error, The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce, edited by Stuart Gerry Brown (New York: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1952), 8–38Google Scholar. Hartshorne acknowledges his indebtedness to Royce in his (and William L. Reece's) Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953), 206Google Scholar. Also see his Ideal Knowledge Defines Reality: What was True in “Idealism,” op. cit., 573ff.

68 Hearers of The Word, 39.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., 42.

71 Ibid., 43.

72 Ibid., 45ff.

73 Ibid., 49.

74 Ogden, , The Challenge to Protestant Thought, Continuum, Vol. VI, 2 (Summer, 1968), 239fGoogle Scholar.

75 Hartshorne, , The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1947)Google Scholar. See also his Philosophers Speak of God, 131ff.

76 Hartshorne, , Philosophical Interrogations, edited by Sydney and Beatrice Row (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), 346Google Scholar.

77 The two ways of understanding knowledge can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. For Plato, knowing involves a confrontation between a subject and an object. PLATO, furthermore, openly admits that this commits him to holding that, even for God, “motion” is involved in knowing. For Aristotle, however, knowing is identity, i.e., being's act of self-possession. But then one might ask how God can know anything other than his necessary essence. See Plato's, Sophist, in Plato: Collected Dialogues, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York: Bollingen, 1966), 93ffGoogle Scholar. Also: Aristotle's De Anima, in Introduction to Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon (New York: The Modern Library, Random House, 1947), 145–237, 231. The historical precedent is not surprising, considering Aquinas'S alignment with Aristotle and Hartshorne's with Plato.

78 The conceiving of God's love solely in terms of giving is not unique to Catholic theologians, of course. For a Protestant example, see Ebeling, Gerhard, The Nature of Faith, translated by R. G. Smith (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961), 145Google Scholar. See Ogden's critique of Ebeling on this point: The Reality of God, 222, note.

79 Ogden, ibid., 23 and 195.

80 Ibid., 188–205.

81 It is true that Rahner makes the traditional distinction between nature and grace. But in his later writings especially he makes it clear that, while a purely natural (ungraced) man must be postulated as a metaphysical possibility (since God does not owe grace to man), in fact there is no such man nor was there ever. Actual man is always graced man: “Thus always and everywhere history is the history of salvation and of revelation.” Theological Dictionary, 411. See also his Nature and Grace: Dilemmas in the Modern Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964)Google Scholar.

82 Lovejoy, A. O., The Great Chain of Being (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 6Google Scholar. See also Ogden, The Reality of God, 51.

83 It is clear that Rahner does not intend that God'S eternity entail sheer timelessness or a static state: Theological Dictionary, 340. It is not clear, however, that he can avoid this conception.

84 I find myself to agree with Leslie Dewart's criticism of Thomism on this point, if not on others. DEWART speaks of this deficiency of the classical tradition as inadvertently promoting a sort of spiritual “hedonism.” Dewart, , The Future of Belief (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 28–35Google Scholar.

85 Ogden, The Reality of God, 229.

86 Ibid., 17.

87 In fairness to Catholic theologians it should be noted that the most influential Protestant theologian of this century, Karl Barth, would side with Rahner rather than with Ogden and Hartshorne on this issue. See, e.g., Barth's, Church Dogmatics, II/I (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), 257–321Google Scholar. Although Barth rejects Thomas' concept of God as “static,” etc., he would agree with both Thomas and Rahner on this way of conceiving God's freedom, etc.

88 Cf. Ogden, The Reality of God, 63f. and 213f Cf. also Hartshorne's Man'S Vision of God, 230–98. The doctrine of creation is possible on this account in the sense of conceiving God as the ground of the world order, but not in the sense of conceiving of a first state of affairs.

89 For a syllogistic statement of this, see Hartshorne's question to John Wild in Philosophical Interrogations, op. cit., 158f.

90 See Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God, 194f., 255, 275, 306, and especially 246.

91 Rahner, Hörer des Wortes, 105–17.

92 Rahner, Nature and Grace, 139.

93 Ocden, The Reality of God, 1645. See also Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God, 67, and The Logic of Perfection, 280–97.