Karl Rahner writes as follows (Foundations of Christian Faith, page 431): “In view of the mode in which eschatological statements are made in the Old and New Testaments, a Christian is always tempted to read and to interpret the eschatological statements of Christianity as anticipatory eyewitness accounts of a future which is still outstanding”. The meaning of this sentence, according to Hugo Meynell (New Blackfriars, July/August 1980, page 348), is that Rahner is warning us against the temptation of thinking that eschatological statements tell us anything, or have any bearing upon, what is to happen to us when we die: “Perhaps it is stupid of me not to be able to see what is being denied here, unless it is that Christians have some kind of expectation for the future after the end of the present life”. Dr Meynell thus reads the sentence as if it were stressed as follows: “In view of the mode in which eschatological statements are made in the Old and New Testaments, a Christian is always tempted to read and to interpret the eschatological statements of Christianity as anticipatory eye-witness accounts of a future which is still outstanding”. What we are being warned against, then, is the notion that eschatological statements refer to the future. This is the only sentence which Dr Meynell quotes to support his suspicions that Karl Rahner does not hold orthodox Catholic beliefs about the afterlife.