The Rationality of Faith

Like most contemporary debates, those in Catholic theology in the years prior to the

Council and continuing into the present day are part of a larger context. The current issues of

today are in many ways still a result of the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. Various

questions about the nature of knowledge and the reliability of sense perception gained increasing

prominence both due to advances in astronomy and other sciences but also because of debates

relating to the nature of authority and the reliability of tradition in religious matters. One could

say that Immanuel Kant best articulated the significance of many of these questions and while

most agree that Kants answers are inadequate, for a variety of reasons he continues to set the

terms of todays debate, still to offering various avenues by which to proceed. This is true not

only in isolated philosophical departments but in contemporary theology also. As we will see,

both Karl Rahner, S.J., and Hans Urs von Balthasar approach the problems of fundamental

theology from this standpoint.

It will be helpful to outline Kants basic approach to these questions.1 It was in the

confrontation between Newtonian science a system that was very successful and therefore

seemingly true and David Humes very plausible and convincing skeptical philosophy that

Kant set out to institute a Copernican revolution. Kant points to way that knowledge derived

from the senses is always seemingly corrigible by more experience. This is a problem when it

comes to the foundations of science, particularly the Newtonian science of Kants day. How can

1 We should then proceed precisely on the lines of Copernicus primary hypothesis. Failing a satisfactory progress
in explaining movements of the heavenly bodies in the supposition that they all revolved round the spectator, he
tried whether he might not have better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the stars to remain at rest. A
similar experiment can be tried in metaphysics, as regards the intuition of objects. If intuition must conform to the
constitution of the objects, I do not see how we could know anything of the latter a priori; but if the object (as object
of the senses) must conform to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, I have no difficulty conceiving such a
possibility. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Boston:
Macmillan, 2003), 22.
we know that a particular scientific law is true if its foundation is empirical experience? Isnt it

possible that our conception of this law will be corrected by more experience? Can these laws

be deduced a priori from reason? If not in what sense can they be called laws? Should we not

rather follow Hume and see such purported laws as giving us no real guarantee that things will

happen accordingly? Kants Copernican Revolution will attempt to found the laws of nature and

knowledge on the a priori structures of the human mind. Kant claimed that there were a variety

of a priori structures of the human mind both of the reason and of the intuition and that these

served to structure our a posteriori experience. One can also see why this was necessarily

unsuccessful. With the development, first, of non-Euclidean geometry and then of post-

Newtonian physics, it was recognized that the theories that Kant presupposed were not quite

accurate to reality and were certainly not necessary to all experience.2 As Alasdair Macintyre

notes, the rejection of Newtonian physics at the very end of the nineteenth century was

sufficient to show that what the Newtonian scheme had provided may have been, indeed was a

priori, but was not knowledge.3

This dissolution of Kants synthesis was inherited by virtually all later philosophers. We

should see Hegel, the later Heidegger and Thomas Kuhn as attempting a solution to this problem

in one way and Rudolf Carnap, AJ Ayer and the early Wittgenstein in another. Now what does

this have to do with Catholic Theology? For at least three reasons the implications of this

2
According to Kant, our synthetic a priori knowledge includes something very close to
knowledge of the necessity of Newtons laws of motionin a somewhat revised form. The
forms of Newtonian science are the forms through which the mind constitutes and apprehends
nature. But in fact Newtons Mechanics turned out to be false, displaces in one area by
relativistic mechanics and in another by quantum mechanics. Alasdair Macintyre, Edith Stein
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 2006), 34.

3
Macintyre, 35.
history cannot be ignored by Catholic theologians. First, because theology is a science (ST

1.1.2) and as Thomas says, The articles of faith stand in the same relation to the doctrine of

faith, as self-evident principles to a teaching based on natural reason (ST 2-2.1.7).4 As gratia

naturam non destruit sed supponit et perficit, it follows that problems in epistemology are

relevant to any attempt to understand the Faith as true or as knowledge. The next reason has to

do with the way the problems identified by Kant have been perpetuated in various disciplines,

particularly Biblical studies. Kant pointed to the great difficulty of relating the ideal to the real,

or the conceptual to the empirical (particularly from a post-Cartesian approach to philosophy).

This general problematic can be seen in the debates about the historical Jesus as opposed to the

Christ of Faith as well in various other areas, i.e., the relation between faith and reason. In fact,

Rahner is driven to adopt the methodology that he does, because these controversies in Biblical

interpretation.

In the introduction to the Foundations of Christian Faith, after explaining that he will

offer a grounding of faith that is antecedent to all of the various disciplines of theology, Rahner

cautions against taking a too narrowly Christological approach5. He says further,

It is not true that one has only to preach Jesus Christ and then he has solved all problems. Today

Jesus Christ is himself a problem, and to realize this we only have to look at the demythologizing

theology of a post-Bultmann age. The question is this: Why and in what sense may one risk his

life in faith in this concrete Jesus of Nazareth as the crucified and risen God-Man? This is what

4
Kevin Knight, Summa Theologica, New Advent, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/ [accessed 11/22/2009].

5
Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity,
trans. Wiiliam V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1999), 13.
 has to be justified. Hence we cannot begin with Jesus Christ as the absolute and final datum, but

must begin further back than that. We have several sources of experience and knowledge, all of

which have to be explored and mediated. There is a knowledge of God which is not mediated

completely by an encounter with Jesus Christ.6

A case can be made for an analogy between Kant's problem namely, Hume's skepticism and

that of Rahner. We ought to read the dissection of the figure of Christ by modern biblical

scholars as a recurrence of Humean skepticism. Without denying the validity and usefulness of

the historical-critical method, taken out of context (and here this mean, operating with

presuppositions that are neither evaluated nor rationally justifiable) this method can tend to

discredit any particular text. Without some justification for revelation or the figure of Christ

exegetes may do just what Hume did to any purported necessity in Newtons laws. To this end

Rahner provides a new a priori in the form of a philosophical and theological anthropology that

is, in some sense antecedent to Jesus Christ that is not mediated completely by an encounter

with Jesus Christ.

As a preface to this anthropology Rahner argues for an originary unity of philosophy and

theology, in that philosophy raises the question of man and theology is an understanding of the

Christian answer. This question, which man is and not only has, must be regarded as the

condition which makes hearing the Christian answer possible.7 Rahner elaborates the nature of

man as a question through an account of the transcendental nature of subjectivity, that is, the a

priori conditions for the possibility of knowledge and freedom. In this Rahner transposes

Ibid.
7

Rahner, 33.
Heideggers fundamental ontology through Joseph Marchal into a Thomistic framework.

Rahner says, In the fact that he affirms the possibility of a merely finite horizon of questioning,

this possibility is already surpassed, and man shows himself to be a being with an infinite

horizon. In the fact that he experiences his finiteness radically, he reaches beyond this finiteness

and experiences himself as a transcendent being.8 His point is that we, as human beings,

always live within a limited picture of the world and any picture of the world, whatsoever, is

always transcended a priori by man who can and does put any such picture of the world in

question merely by raising questions about it. Rahner also acknowledges that this question can

be evaded. A person can, of course, shrug his shoulders and ignore this experience of

transcendence.9 Heidegger makes the same point to the scientific community with regard to

question about nothing. Both thinkers argue that categorical knowledge and historical freedom

presuppose mans transcendence (of the world) as their condition of possibility. This is not a

causal argument such as found in Aristotles argument for a prime mover but is rather an

argument about the nature of experience, that man as a thinking and acting thing, in order to be

thinking and acting must always be able to put his finite frame of reference in question. It is a

Kantian argument about the conditions of the possibility of experience.

But what is the significance of this? Man is a transcendent being insofar as all of his

knowledge and all of his conscious activity is grounded in a pre-apprehension of being (Vorgriff)

of being as such, in an unthematic but ever-present knowledge of the infinity of reality (as we

can put it provisionally and somewhat boldly). We are presupposing that this infinite pre-

Ibid., 32.
9

Ibid.
apprehension is not grounded by the fact that it can apprehend nothingness as such.10 Here

Rahner rejects Heideggers interpretation of the Vorgriff, of mans transcendence. We should see

this as a Thomistic modification of Heidegger because his seemingly transcendental and a priori

anthropology somewhat tacitly presupposes an a posteriori argument for Gods existence.

Continuing the quotation from above he says, We must make this presupposition because

nothingness grounds nothing. Nothingness cannot be the term of this pre-apprehension, cannot

be what draws and moves and sets in motion that reality which man experiences as his real life

and not as nothingness.11 By opting for being instead of nothingness as the content of mans

transcendence Rahner, so to speak, tips the scales in favor of theism, something Heidegger

avoided.12 This raises important questions regarding Rahner's entire project, particularly

regarding the fact that the philosophical presuppositions for a cosmological argument for God's

existence like the one implicitly offered by Rahner entail a rejection of the of the sort of

Humean presuppositions held by Biblical scholars whose work suggests skeptical conclusions

regarding the person of Christ and, therefore, suggest that Rahner's solution is somewhat ad hoc.

In his difference with Heidegger, Rahner suggests a level of disagreement that is more

fundamental.
10

Ibid., 33.
11

Ibid.
12

On the other hand, in the ontological analysis of Being-towards-the end there is not an anticipation of our taking
any existentiell stand toward death. If death is defined as the end of Dasien that is to say of Being-in-the-world
this does not imply any ontical decision whether after death still another Being is possible, either higher or
lower, or whether Dasein lives on or even outlasts itself and is immortal The this-worldy interpretation of
death takes precedence over any ontical other-wordly speculation Methodologically, the existential analysis is
superordinant to the questions of a biology, psychology, theodicy, or theology of death. Heidegger sees
fundamental ontology philosophical anthropology as more fundamental and more formal than any of the ontic
sciences, sciences which are not a priori. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 292.
 In 1929 Martin Heidegger delivered his inaugural lecture at the University of

Frieburg, entitled What is Metaphysics. In this lecture Heidegger asks scientists and

scholars of all fields to consider the question about 'nothing'. He argues that science is a

relationship to a particular set of beings. He says, "This distinctive relation to the world

in which we turn toward beings themselves is supported and guided by a freely chosen

attitude of human existence13." And further,

That to which the relation to the world [of science] refers are beings themselvesand nothing

besides.

That from which every attitude [of science] takes its guidance are beings themselvesand

nothing further.

That with which the scientific confrontation in the irruption occurs are beings themselvesand

beyond that nothing.14

Heidegger is arguing that through a particular attitude, a certain orientation to the world,

scientists have defined their subject matter to be 'being' and that which is not a concern of

science to be 'nothing'. Therefore, science does not take account of the 'nothing'. He argues

further that science presupposes 'nothing' in its self-understanding, it presupposes a horizon that

is greater than science against which it defines itself, as that comportment to the world that is

13

Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964), ed. David Krell
(San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 94.

14

Ibid., 95.
concerned with beings over against that which is not, that which is not an object of science.

Heidegger does not identify the larger context presupposed by science with God, but merely

points out that this context is outside of the scope of science. As he also points out in the same

lecture, different epochs have had various understandings of Being, different from that of the

scientific epoch but limited nonetheless. For Heidegger, "Dasein means: being held out into the

nothing. Holding itself out into the nothing, Dasein is in each case already beyond beings as a

whole. This being beyond beings we call 'transcendence'."15 It is because we can recognize the

lack of necessity in our everyday existence (in our particular understanding of the world), that

we can think and act all. Here Heidegger's argument is very similar to Rahner's quoted above.

We exist as free subjects because of the nothingness that permeates and surrounds our existence,

'nothingness' in the sense of horizon, further context, outside that which we define and

understanding to be 'being'. But Heidegger understands the horizon here more or less in the

sense of mystery, that which cannot be spoken about, without giving it a positive content (God)

as Rahner does.16 He says further, "If in the ground of its essence Dasein were not transcending,

which now means, if it were not in advance holding itself out into the nothing, then it could

never be related to beings nor even to itself."17 In all this we should keep in mind the differences

between Rahner and Heidegger and the way that Rahners introduction of a cosmological

argument fundamentally altered this approach to anthropology and more particularly the

15

Ibid., 103.
16

One should not read an atheistic perspective into Heidegger but with a more apophatic
viewpoint the question of God should be left open.
17

Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964),
103.
paradoxical place that Rahner is in. On the one hand, it is necessary to rely on something like a

cosmological argument to understand the horizon of human subjectivity to be God but on the

other, by relying on this sort of argument, he has already pointed to the necessity of not

beginning with anthropology because he has already accepted the metaphysical presuppositions,

the rejection of which (by various Biblical scholars) necessitated, so he claimed, his adoption of

what seemed to be an a priori approach to anthropology. As we move on to a discussion of

Rahner's fundamental theology proper, this ought not entail a rejection of Rahner; as Karen

Kilby amongst others have pointed out, Rahner need not be read as a foundationalist. As she

says, Rather than attempting to place himself on neutral ground from which he might persuade

unbelievers, Rahner is best understood as articulating in a philosophical idiom something that

was part of his general theological vision, namely a sense of the utter inescapability of God.18

And while this is the best way to understand Rahner, the acknowledgement of this should lead

one to ask why he did not engage in a deeper critique of contemporary philosophy and Biblical

studies, something that a anti-foundationalist approach makes very possible.

The supernatural existential was Rahners attempt to provide a solution to the problem

of the relation between nature and grace, particularly with regard to the debates prior to Council

in which Henri DeLubac, S.J., played a major role. It is a further elaboration of his

anthropology and demonstrates the properly theological motivation behind his work. For

Rahner the experience of Grace is a modification of mans transcendental experience. Here

man experiences himself as a finite, categorical existent, as established in his difference from

God by absolute being, as an existent coming from absolute being and grounded in absolute

18

Karen Kilby, Karl Rahner: A Brief Introduction, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2007) 1-14.
mystery.19 This is Rahners philosophical understanding of anthropology. When we say now

that man is the event of Gods absolute self-communication, this says at the same time that on

the one hand God is present for man in his absolute transcendentality not only as the absolute,

always distant, radically remote term and source of his transcendence which man always grasps

only asymptotically, but also that he offers himself in his own reality.20 Rahner views Gods

presence in grace as a new mode of closeness of God. Where at the level of nature God is

present as the mysterious horizon of subjectivity, the experience of grace is an experience on

the level of transcendence of God offering himself. He sees Gods presence in knowledge and

love as founded on the ontological communication of God but also as being the real essence of

what constitutes the ontological relationship between God and creatures.21 It is a presence that

is gratuitous and which overcomes the sinful rejection of God by creatures.22 Since this

experience of grace happens primarily at the transcendental level and is only mediated by the

categorical actions and events, it is not only with regard to religious activities but rather any and

every categorical happening can mediate the experience of grace, the experience of a personal

encounter with God, just as all experience is a mediation of God as the infinite horizon.

The supernatural existential is Rahners account of the universality of this experience of grace,

the experience of God giving himself, at least as an offer. It is essential to stress the importance
19

Rahner, 119.
20

Ibid.
21

Rahner, 122.
22

Rahner presents his views on grace in the context of his transcendental anthropology as interpretation of the
traditional udnerstanding of grace as justifying and the pledge of glory not as a rejection or reductionistic account.
See, Foundations, Chapter IV Section 2, What Does the Self Communication of God Mean?
of understanding the Heideggerian terminology that operates in Rahners presentation23. He

says, The statement, man is the event of Gods absolute self-communication, does not refer to

some reified objectivity in man. Such a statement is not a categorical and ontic statement, but

an ontological statement.24 Commentators have misunderstood Rahners use of ontological so

that it means precisely what he does not intend it to.25 For Heidegger, Ontological inquiry is

indeed more primordial, as over against the ontical inquiry of the positive sciences.26

Heidegger sees ontology as concerned with the way we understand being in general, our idea

or paradigm of being. An ontic science is one that is concerned with particular beings. Further

in the same paragraph Rahner says, [the statement man is the event of Gods absolute self-

communication] expresses to man his own self-understanding, one which he already has,

although unreflexively.27 His point is that the supernatural existential is not some thing in

man but rather mans understanding of himself as called by God, as existing in the state of being

addressed by God. This is a claim about mans understanding of himself and his world (his

understanding of Being in Heideggers sense) not a claim about a structure that belongs to mans

23

For a Thomist, ontological refers to those statements that speak of being qua being. For a Heideggerian,
ontological must understood in distinction from ontic. The former term refers to statements about Dasiens
understanding of Being, while the latter refers to statements about particular beings.
24

Rahner, 126.
25

Coffey fails to grasp the importance of Heidegger for understanding Rahner on this issue. See, David Coffey, The
Whole Rahner on the Supernatural Existential. Theological Studies, no. 65 (2004): 95-118.

26

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 31.

27

Rahner, 127.
essence (not an ontic claim).28 Rahner also notes that this understanding may be unreflexive, it

not be completely transparent to consciousness. For Heidegger we necessarily have some

particular understanding of the world, of Being, that is operative in all of our thinking, acting,

and speaking and this understanding of Being guides our dealings with any particular being

even for those who are unaware of what idea of being is operative.29 For Rahner what is

operative in the background of all of our thoughts, word or actions is Gods offer of self-

communication. As he says, the existential of mans absolute immediacy to God in and through

this divine self-communication as permanently offered to freedom can exist merely in the mode

of an antecedent offer, in the mode of acceptance and in the mode of rejection.30 This is the

true horizon in which we act.

Rahner wants to maintain two theses that are in tension with each other. The first is that

Transcendental experience, including its modality as grace, and reflection upon transcendental

experience31 are not the same thing. Here Rahner stresses the fact that Gods offer of self-

communication happens on the level of our transcendentality, so that it is possible for many

(even for most) to fail to grasp, in reflection, the offer given by God. But on the other hand he

28

Although for Heidegger, the world belongs to mans essence. Dasien is essentially being-in-the-world.
29

So whenever an ontology takes for its theme entities whose character of Being is other than that of Dasein, it has
its own foundation and motivation in Daseins own ontical structure, in which a pre-ontological understanding of
Being comprised as a definite characteristic.Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 33.
30

Rahner,128.
31

Ibid., 130.
also maintains that What we are really dealing with is a transcendental experience which gives

evidence of itself in human existence and is operative in that existence.32

We can only have appeal here to those individual experiences which a person has and can have of Gods

self-communication. They cannot indeed be recognized with unambiguous and reflexive certainty within

an individuals experience, prescinding from possible exceptions, but they are nevertheless not simply and

absolutely nonexistent for reflection.33

Rahner maintains that this view of Gods self-communication is not merely theoretical, it is not

merely a deduction from certain views about Gods salvific will, but also shows itself in

moments of categorical experience. He claims that we are able to come to a reflective grasp of

the experience of Gods grace on the level of our transcendentality as it is mediated by various

categorical objects, such as anxiety, joy, etc., along with typical religious objects and events but

theoretically any and every experience can mediate Gods offer of self-communication in grace.

The profundity of this view must be grasped. Here Rahner gives an epistemological

foundation to the Ignatian dictum that it is necessary to find God in all things34 Rahners claim

is that any and everything that is experienced is a sign or symbol of a supernatural experience of

God, and a moment of decision for the person in question since mans transcendentality has been

32

Ibid.
33

Ibid., 130-1.
34

Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Jerome Nadal: Fifth Centenary of his Birth. Review of Ignatian
Spirituality, no. 116 (2007): 9-15.,
elevated through the new horizon of the supernatural existential.35 Considered broadly this

raises all sorts of issues, such as the status of non-Christian religions, Rahners famous

anonymous Christianity both of which are outside the scope of this paper and more relevant

for our purposes, the question of Christs role in Rahners theology. Rahner has given us an

anthropological context in which to raise the question that Christ asked his apostles, But who

do you say that I am (Mark 8:29)?36 It should be noted that this is not merely a philosophical

prolegomena to a theological enterprise. Rahner is clearly relying on revelation for his notion of

the supernatural existential. One thinks of 1 Timothy 2:4, which Rahner often paraphrases,

This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to

knowledge of the truth.

What role does faith in Jesus Christ play in Rahners theology? First of all, Rahner

notes that this insight [Gods offer of self-communication in grace] comes only as a result of the

history of salvation and revelation which has its irreversible climax in the God-Man, Jesus

Christ.37 This priority if Christ is both epistemological and ontological. Rahner says, in this

human potentiality of Jesus the absolute salvific will of God, the absolute event of Gods self

communication to us along with its acceptance as something effected by God himself, is a reality

35

For if mans transcendentality is really mediated to itself by all categorical material of his a
posteriori experience, then, presupposing that a free subject in his transcendentality is acting, the
only correct understanding is that supernaturally elevated transcendentality is also mediated to
itself by any and every categorical reality in which and through which the subject become
present to itself. Rahner, 135.
36

All Biblical citations in this paper will be from the New American Bible.

37

Ibid., 117.
of God himself, unmixed, but also inseparable and therefore irrevocable.38 Christ is the

objective assurance that God has truly given himself irrevocably and that humanity can and has

accepted this offer through Gods grace because in Jesus Christ God has united himself to

mankind in way far surpassing the moral union that the prophets attained; in Jesus God has

become one with man (which must be understood according to the Council of Chalcedon). Prior

to the event of Jesus Christ, man was always threatened by idolatry, the risk of latching on to

some object an object which, understood properly, perhaps could mediate God in his offer of

self-communication in way that absolutized this particular thing and therefore failed to mediate

God to mans transcendence.39 Jesus Christ cannot be surpassed because he is God himself and

so only he can assure a proper mediation of Gods self-communication. He is also ontologically

prior because the union of God and man in a through Christ is the final cause of Gods offer of

self-communication to man throughout all of salvation history, even during the time before

Christ.

It is in the context of this anthropological vision that one can ask the question about the

rationality of faith in Christ. In fact the answer to this question has in its essentials, already been

given, when one understands the nature of the supernatural existential and its necessary

mediation by a categorical object. In his transcendental Christology, Rahner makes this

connection more explicit in its application to Christ. Transcendental Christology amounts to an

38

Ibid., 202-3.
39

As Rahner notes, every self-expression of God which is not simply the beatific vision takes
place through a finite reality, through a word or through an event which belongs to the finite,
created realm. But as long as this finite mediation of the divine self-expression does not
represent a reality of God himself in the strict and real sense, it is still basically provisional and
surpassable because it is finite. Ibid., 202.
outline of those relevant experiences of humanity, which, so to speak, call for an absolute savior.

It gives us a perspective from which to view to and by which to understand who Jesus of

Nazareth is. He presents five aspects of this transcendental Christology. In addition to a general

account of theological anthropology, such as has been addressed extensively and almost

exclusively in this paper, and which is the first and foundation aspect, the second is hope.

Rahners claim is that man is radically given over to hope, for which Man finds the courage to

dare this most radical hope within himself.40 This is a hope that God will give himself fully to

man and is borne by the transcendental experience of Gods offer of self-communication given

in the supernatural existential. Here Rahner relies on his view that the experience of Gods offer

of self-communication can be grasped reflectively if not fully. But this hope which man has is

hope that searches in history for that which can mediate the object of mans hope, and follows

from the fact that all transcendental experience is mediated categorically and historically.

Fourthly, man searches for that offer of God which is final and irreversible, unlike the many

other objects and events in the world that can mediate Gods self transcendence and which are

finally discarded because fundamentally limited. Finally Rahner argues that Gods offer to man

and the world as a whole can be made only by an offer to a free and exemplary subject41 a

person who in accepting Gods self-communication makes it possible for others to accept Gods

offer of self-communication. Rahners claim is that the only object that could possibly attempt

to mediate Gods offer of self-communication adequately is a human person who accepts Gods

offer to exclusion of all other worldly goods, who accepts God to the point of death and is

40

Ibid., 209.
41

Rahner., 211.
accepted by God in this death. Rahner is here claiming that we have something of an inchoate

longing for a savior, who can mediate God to us adequately, is encountered in history, and does

this definitively.

Rahner extends this transcendental Christology with what he calls a Searching

Christology. These three appeals [of searching Christology] have in common the supposition

that if a person accepts his existence resolutely, he is already living out in his existence

something like a searching Christology.42 Again, presupposing his account of the supernatural

existential, Rahner says that God appeals to man in three particular aspects of life, that in these

three privileged areas of human life man can discover an unreflective desire for a savior, like

Jesus Christ. The first of these is interpersonal relationships. He says that true love of neighbor

wants a unity between the love for the human other and God because this human other could

never justify the absoluteness of love. But this means that it is searching for the God-Man, that

is, for someone who as man can be loved with absoluteness of love for God.43 In addition,

Rahner sees in the absolute helplessness of death another locus of the search for God by man.

Death is the one aspect of life in which man by resolutely embracing the inevitability of and

his absolute weakness in death can dispose of himself in his entirety.44 He says further,

But if this free and ready acceptance of radical powerlessness by a free being who has and wants to have

disposal of himself is not to be the acceptance of the absurd, which could by equal right be rejected in

42

Ibid., 295.
43

Ibid., 296.
44

Ibid., 297.
 protest, then in a person who deeply affirms in his history not abstract ideas and norms but present or

future reality as the ground of his existence, this acceptance applies the intimation or the expectation or the

affirmation of an already present or future and hoped-for death which is of such a nature that it reconciles

the permanent dialectic in us between doing and enduring in powerlessness. 45

It is Christs death and our share in this that reconciles this dialectic. It is the surrender to the

Cross, enduring in powerlessness the height of Gods power in which we have a share

through Christ that calls to us in the experience of the inevitability of death. And finally Rahner

sees in mans hope for the future another aspect of his searching Christology. Mans journey

into the future is the constant effort to lessen the self-alienation which is within him and outside

him, and to lessen the distance between what he is and what he should be and wants to be.46 In

the experience of hope the Christian can see in Christ the beginnings of this reconciliation. Man

can see that God has begun this reconciliation in Christ. This searching Christology is more

less a further elaboration of Rahners transcendental Christology. It must be noted that Rahner is

not claiming to be able to deduce Christ from an understanding of anthropology but

presupposes a real relationship with Christ and offers this transcendental approach to

Christology as a way of explicating who it is that we believe in.

Where does this leave us? Rahner, a prolific writer, has much more to say on this question but

we can draw some conclusions in order to contrast his approach with that of Hans Urs von

Balthasar. First it is wrong to think of Rahner as a foundationalist, particularly if this means that

his philosophy is foundational for his theology. It is more accurate to say that a particular

45

Ibid.
46

Rahner, 297.
theological orientation shaped his views on everything, philosophy, religious experience,

Christology, and particularly anthropology. Rahner gives us a vision of the human person as

radically open to God, as encountering God in all things and all activities. But equally crucial

for Rahners theology is his understanding of Gods salvific will and the supernatural existential.

It is this optimism about the way people of all times and places can respond to Gods activity

irrespective of the cultural-linguistic or religious context in which they operate that most

characterizes Rahners theology.

Following this we can say that there is a certain sense in which Rahner is a

foundationalist but not in the way that is typically taken to be problematic. Since the collapse of

positivism figures as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, amid a

variety of others have pointed to the way that our beliefs shape our perception of the world.

Wittgenstein presents his famous duck-rabbit in the Philosophical Investigations as an

illustration of this and Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, systematically

displays how this operates in scientific practice. As we will see Balthasar has his own approach

to Christian perception. This is the best way to read Rahner. His understanding of Gods salvific

will and the supernatural existential lead to an approach to anthropology and religious

experience that is in this sense foundational for his fundamental theology. Rahner says this very

simply, this claim of Jesus is credible for us when, from the perspective of our transcendental

experience in grace of the absolute self-communication of the holy God, we look in faith to that

event which mediates the savior in his total reality: the resurrection.47 But as we noted above it

only from the perspective of Faith in Christ that we can have a proper understanding of Gods

salvific will and the supernatural existential, and therefore, of our own religious experience.

47

Ibid., 246.
And it is only from a knowledge of Christ, who is the culmination of Gods revelation of his

salvific will that we can understand Gods plan for humanity accurately. The experience of God

in his offer of self-communication gives us the evidence so to speak that confirms our faith

and this in a way that is analogous to scientific practice.

One drawback of Rahners approach is that some of the religious and philosophical

presuppositions operative in his theology are not made explicit. Had this been done it would

have given other avenues of approach for engaging in theology. One example is the way that

Rahners philosophical anthropology tacitly drew on cosmological arguments for Gods

existence. Had the implications of this been applied to Rahners approach to biblical studies it

could have lead to an entirely different starting point.

Hans Urs von Balthasar is commonly thought of as the conservative opponent of Karl

Rahner. These categories are like a thick fog that obscures any possibility of rational discussion.

Balthasar once quipped, Rahner went with Kant and I went with Goethe. His project was to

provide a theological aesthetics. Aesthetics must be understood precisely in the context of the

Kantian problematic outlined above. Beauty is about the appearance of the True and the Good.

As he says, The form as it appears to us is beautiful only because the delight that it arouses in

us is founded upon the fact that, in it, the truth and goodness of the depths of reality itself are

manifested and bestowed48 Balthasar follows Barth in seeing the entire Kantian problematic

the seemingly insuperable dichotomy between the ideal and the real as a result of original

48

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: Volume 1: Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, ed. by
Joseph Fessio S.J. and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 118/
sin49 and it is through his phenomenology of the forma Christi that this reconciliation, which

God accomplishes, is pointed to.

Balthasar does not rely on a philosophical or theological anthropology in the same was as

Rahner. If Rahner gave us a new theological a priori, along the lines of Kant and Heidegger,

Balthasar should be likened to the early Husserl. Husserl reacted to the Neo-Kantianism of his

day be returning to the things themselves, as his students liked to say. He was concerned with

our grasp of the form, the gesalt that is given in consciousness. And while Balthasar avoids

anything like intentionality analysis he offers a phenomenology of the forma Christi, which

points to the objective data of the faith. This objective data or evidence always presupposes a

conversion of the subject perceiving the form. For Balthasar there is no perception of the forma

Christi outside of the sequela Christi, and the lumen fidei which is foundational for the Christian

life. We would be involving ourselves in a further contradiction if we were to regard this light

[the lumen fidei] as a purely objective fact and treat it as such: there can be no aesthetics

without adramatics.50 It is through the lumen fidei that this new perception is possible.

Balthasars theological aesthetics operates in the light of the analogia entis and builds on

a certain philosophical analysis of beauty. We may, however, without prejudice distinguish and

relate to each other, albeit in a very preliminary way, two elements in the beautiful which have

traditionally controlled every aesthetic and which, with Thomas Aquinas, we could term species

(or forma) and lumen (or splendor)form (Gesalt) and splendour (Glanz).51 The species is the

49

Ibid., 380.
50

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-logic: Volume III: Spirit of Truth, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 363-4.
51

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: Volume 1: Seeing the Form, 118.
appearance that is tangible and can be measured, while the splendor is the hidden depth that

appears in the form. Admittedly, form would not be beautiful unless it were fundamentally a

sign and appearing of a depth and a fullness that, in themselves and in an abstract sense, remain

beyond both our reach and our vision.52 The phenomenon of the beautiful exacts obedience

from its observer, for it is the making visible of objective reality hidden in the depths of the

form. Balthasar says, let us not forget the strict obedience exacted even by worldly beauty both

from the creating artist and from the re-creating admirer who contemplates and enjoys it.53 It

exacts obedience in that its observer can only perceive the form if he lets it be. A great work of

art or a beautiful landscape must be allowed to show itself to the one who desires to perceive.

One cannot have ulterior motives if the object in question is going to be perceived. By this

point the application that Balthasar will make of this concept to theology should be apparent.

But in order to see the forma Christi man must not merely be disinterested but must be given a

share in Gods own perception through the lumen fidei.

Balthasar says, the formal object of theology (and, therefore, also of the act of faith) lies at the

very heart of the formal object of philosophy54 Here he rejects an overly dialectical

approach to theology that would not give regard to the analogia entis. He goes on to says,

Out of the those mysterious depths the formal object of theology breaks forth as the self-revelation of the

mystery of Being itself; such a revelation cannot be deduced from what the creaturely understanding of

52

Ibid., 118.
53

Ibid., 220.
54

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: Volume 1: Seeing the Form, 145.
 itself can read of the mystery of Being, such revelation [cannot] be grasped by this intellect without the

divine illumination of grace.55

One reading of Rahner would view the supernatural existential as downplaying the importance

of the lumen fidei, ultimately by failing to distinguish between those who have accepted it, and

those who have rejected it. He seems to take for granted that all people possess something like

the lumen fidei, in his account of the theological a priori but Balthasar does not reject this aspect

of Rahner project. He says, As a matter of fact, as Christians we may not only freely admit but

ought to expect that that interior religious light which falls from God-seeking souls on the

historical forms of non-Biblical religions may be the same light that shines in the hearts of

believers.56 This said he shows much more hesitancy than Rahner in allowing for non-Christian

symbols and concepts to mediate God in his self-revelation.

If the ontological light of the active intellect can become objectified only by turning to the phantasm, Gods

supreme light can become objectified only when it falls, not on any random worldy phenomenon (not even

the depository where the soul gathers up its interior experience), but on the phenomenon which Gods light

has fashioned for itself in order truly to make its appearance there not elsewhere.57

This caution stands behind Balthasars project. He offers an extended phenomenology of the

forma Christi, which includes the Church and all of salvation history. This is the proper object

55

Ibid.
56

Ibid., 168.
57

Ibid., 170.
of the lumen fidei whereby it rediscovers its own light in the form of Christian revelation.58

Rahner is fundamentally in agreement with Balthasar here; one would be hard pressed on where

to draw the line on whether certain practices mediate God in his self-communication, just as one

could easily point to certain other practices that without question obscure the lumen fidei, so it is

clear what is the significance of their differing emphases without a concrete historical,

sociological, ethical and theological examination of any particular practice in question.

Pointing to the form of revelation, the forma Christi (which includes all of salvation history and

the Church, in addition to Christ himself) Balthasar says, discipleship in turn, means that we do

not begin by reflecting on ourselves but by responding to the fact that we have been addressed

and called by this divine miracle, namely, that the utterance and the horizon of the utterance can

be one and the same.59 This is a tacit reference to Rahner and his method. Balthasar does not

reject Rahners anthropology but he thinks that the most interesting thing about Christianity is

not that our hearts are restless until they rest God but rather that God has spoken to us in human

words, that he has become man. Balthasar is concerned with the fact that we can see and hear

and touch the horizon, in Jesus Christ. He says further, Thus God himself becomes the most

self-evident reality because he underlies all self-understanding; and at the same time he becomes

the most un-self-evident reality because his beginning, his presence, is a gift, not at all the result

of other premises.60 It is important to note that Rahner would agree with this last statement. As

we saw above the revelation of Gods salvific will in Jesus Christ, is the only way to understand

58

Ibid., 160.
59

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-logic: Volume III: Spirit of Truth, 265.
60

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-logic: Volume III: Spirit of Truth, 364.
anthropology properly. Balthasars point is that we cannot attempt to ground faith in Christ in

something else, in an anthropology, or a cosmology, as Rahner and Thomas, respectively, are

commonly (but wrongly) taken to do. Jesus Christ cannot be derived from further premises.

But does this not mean that knowledge loses its sure foundation, that is, the ability to draw

conclusions from evidence? Does this not mean that theology loses its entire philosophical

foundation?61 The key to this objection is a tacit assumption of epistemological

foundationalism. This is the rationalist or empiricist view that knowledge has some sort of

neutral self-evident foundations which provide the ground for all other conclusion one may

draw. Like Wittgenstein, Quine, Kuhn, and Heidegger (upon whom Balthasar is particularly

reliant in his own philosophical epistemology, see Theo-Logic Volume 1, The Truth of the

World) but also like Lonergan, Rahner and Macintyre, Balthasar rejects this philosophical thesis.

Ultimately the answer will be the one we have already given: Among human beings all

knowledge is itself based on a trust (in the others freedom) and all sciences become preliminary

stages towards the trust of faith. Not vice versa.62 This is intriguing. Balthasars

epistemological stance resembles that of a variety of contemporary philosophers, who from a

critique of positivism have sought to unseat modern science as the paradigm of knowledge. His

epistemological personalism places trust at the heart of any and all epistemic processes. If all

knowledge is grounded in trust in the Other, (and Wittgensteins argument against private

language guarantees that there must always be an Other in any epistemic process, that reason is

61

Ibid.
62

Ibid.
inter-subjective) then faith rather than being a lesser form of knowledge is rather the most

reliable because it rests on the most trustworthy of all persons, Jesus Christ.

This leads Balthasar into a position similar to that of Rahner. His theory of Christian perception

is analogous to Rahners account of religious experience. To explain this he discusses the

Ignatian method of the application of the senses from the Spiritual Exercises. This is a way of

disposing oneself to

see the persons with the sight of the imagination, to hear with the hearing what they are, or might be,

talking about, to smell and to taste with the smell and the taste the infinite fragrance and sweetness of the

Divinity, of the soul, and of its virtues, and of all, according to the person who is being contemplated

[and] to touch with the touch63

Balthasar says, The practice trains us to use our senses in the image of the senses of the new

Adam and the new Eve quoting his teacher Erich Przywara.64 This Christian perception will

ultimately only be possible in the New Jerusalem but he argues that we it begins here and now.

On Balthasars view the Ignatian spiritual senses are not a rare form of mystical experience such

as can be seen in Bovenatures interpretation. Referring to the Mediationes Vitae Christi by

Ludolph of Saxony, an important source for Ignatius, he says, Even though here the spiritual

senses are not explicitly mentioned, nevertheless something spiritual is attained with the

corporeal senses and the imagination, something which clearly aims at making the mystery

63
Elder Mullen, Society of Jesus, Oregon Province, Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius 101-135,
http://www.nwjesuits.org/JesuitSpirituality/Exercises/SpEx101_135.html [accessed 11/22/2009].

64

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: Volume 1: Seeing the Form, 374.
present, even if at a more modest level than that of actual mystical experience.65 This is both

how Balthasar views Ignatius spiritual senses and also Christian perception in general. Again,

this will be accomplished fully only eschatologically but Balthasars point is that this begins here

and now. One can see this as an answer to the Kantian problematic. We perceive God, in faith,

says Balthasar, in all things. This again is a theological foundation to the familiar Ignatian

dictum of finding God in all things.

Like Rahner, Balthasar sees this Christian experience as in some sense giving evidence;

for the faith. This is why the theology of the saints will develop above all in the direction in

which the lumen fidei unfolds and takes concrete form.66 It takes concrete form in the human

person through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This experience is usually referred to as Christian

mysticism, in the most general sense of the term.67 This mysticism is more basic than that

which the word commonly brings to mind, as one sees in the works of St John of the Cross or St

Teresa of Avila. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, bestowed seminally by grace, lead the believer

to an ever deeper awareness and experience both of the presence within him of Gods being and

of the depth of the divine truth, goodness and beauty in the mystery of God.68 That Balthasar

sees this unfolding of the lumen fidei as having to do with sense experience rather than the more

typically mystical phenomenon is clear from his preference for Pascal over Augustine and

65

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: Volume 1: Seeing the Form, 378.
66

Ibid., 165.
67

Ibid., 166.
68

Ibid.
Bernard. Where Pascal developed his raisons du Coeur, Bernard and Augustine described the

unfolding of the lumen fidei in affective and voluntative terms. This may be more correctly

understood using the more central categories of the existential and the personal, which allow one

to see the act of faith at its roots as the attitude and behavior of the total person.69 This leads to

a critique of certain Thomist views of the wills roll in the act of faith(though Thomas is closer to

Balthasar here, see ST II-II Q4, Art.1). Balthasar says, If we retain the disjunction between will

and intellect, then in the psychology of faith, will appears as that element which compensates for

the lack of sufficient intellectual evidence70 This fails to give an adequate foundation to the

act of faith. It could appear as an irrational act of obedience to a powerful authority. Only

when by will and affect we understand the engagement of the person in all his depthonly

then does intellectual faith become a genuine answer to Gods disclosure of his depth as a

person; for God too does not primarily communicate truths about himself, but rather bestows

himself as absolute truth and love.71 Here we complete the circle. Balthasars epistemological

personalism and theological aesthetics unite in the act of faith. Faith is the absolute trust that

one places in the God whose appearance in Jesus Christ is the appearance of absolute truth

and goodness (love). In this final intensification [of the Passion] not only are we shown that

God is love; at the same time it becomes manifest that, in the revelation of his live in flesh and

blood, and in the sacrifice of these for the life of the world, God has committed himself

69

Ibid.
70

Ibid.
71

Ibid.
unsurpassably and beyond all return.72 And this revelation of Divine love in the flesh and blood

of Jesus Christ, is the appearance of the supremely beautiful one, who in revealing the depth of

the Divine love has revealed the Truth of all reality for Deus caritas est (1 John 4:8) but it also

the appearance of he who is supremely trustworthy for God has committed himself

unsurpassably to the point of humiliation and death.

Where does this leave us? Balthasar has given us a philosophical foundation of sorts

but, like Rahner, it is one completely dominated by his theological vision. His aesthetics provide

a way of understanding the objectivity of divine revelation against those trends of thought that

seek to found revelation upon something else be it anthropology or cosmology. And his

epistemology provides a philosophical backdrop to the way the forma Christi can be

foundational epistemologically. In this respect he has much in common with best of

contemporary philosophy. The rejection of positivism and rationalism in both the analytic and

continental traditions along with the widespread acknowledgment of the necessary affective

background for all knowledge claims clears the way for Balthasars assertion that all sciences

are preliminary stages towards the trust of faith. His aesthetic and personalist view of the

foundations of knowledge would likely be fruitfully applied to debates in the philosophy of

science just as Rahner transcendental Thomist methodology has much in common with the

Critical Realism of Roy Bhaskar. It is worth reiterating that Rahner is in full agreement with

Balthasar in his rejection of foundationalism. With reference to faith in Jesus Christ he says,

He can and may begin this way because faith precedes theology, and he certainly does not have

to think that theological reflection must first construct his faith from out of nothing because

nowhere in human existence does theoretical reflection completely recapture an original and

72

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: Volume 1: Seeing the Form,440.
living act.73 This is the law of a subjective apriority without which nothing at all can be

known74 And here we come to the third reason why it is necessary to understand the

philosophical background of contemporary theology. The insights of Thomas Kuhn, Quine and

other in contemporary philosophy of science would confirm the anti-foundationalism of both

thinkers. Philosophers of science have shed much light on the Kantian problematic and a mutual

enrichment would be the only result of such an engagement. This anti-foundationalism is

presupposed by both Rahner and Balthasar, each place faith in Christ as the only foundation to

any attempt to answer the perennial questions of human life.

73

Rahner, 204.
74

Rahner, 243.