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Rahner and Hartshorne on Death and Eternal Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Abstract
While the writings of Rahner and Hartshorne are based upon very different metaphysical foundations, the purpose of this article is to bring to light some of the important similarities (and to clarify some of the significant differences) with respect to their understandings of death and eternal life. We seek to contribute some new insights to the important ongoing dialogue between process theists and theologians rooted in the Thomistic tradition.
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References
1 For an analysis of the similarities and differences between Rahner and Hartshorne on the question of divine immutability, see King, J. Norman and Whitney, Barry L., “Rahner and Hartshorne on Divine Immutability,” International Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1982), 195–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Please note that since writing that article, we have become sensitive to the issue of inclusive language. In the present article, references to God avoid exclusively male language. Since, however, most of the writings of Rahner and Hartshorne were published prior to the general awareness of this issue, we simply have retained their exact wording in quoted material. For his part, Hartshorne's current writings have responded to this issue; Rahner's death in 1984 precluded any similar response.
2 See Whitney, Barry L., “Divine Immutability in Process Philosophy and Contemporary Thomism,” Horizons 7/1 (Spring 1980), 49–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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36 Ibid.
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38 Hartshorne, , “Religion in Process Philosophy,” p. 264.Google Scholar In a recent book, Hartshorne refers to the reward-punishment scheme as “the moral argument against heaven and hell” (see his Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes [Albany: State University of New York, 1985], pp. 97–98Google Scholar).
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40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., p. 257.
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45 Hartshorne, , “Philosophy After Fifty Years,” pp. 150–51.Google Scholar Hartshorne's point here is that while we do not live on consciously in an afterlife, God will make use of our lives in ever new ways, endlessly. Whatever good we accomplished in our earthly lives will be used by God in an endless variety of new perspectives. As such, our lives, while consciously completed, contribute everlastingly to God. The endless variations God makes of our lives will not be experiences by us, of course, “save in principle and in advance through our devoted imagination, our love of God” (Hartshorne, , Logic of Perfection, p. 262Google Scholar).
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47 Ibid.
48 Death, for example, is not merely a phenomenon of the body as opposed to the soul, but affects the total person; eschatological statements are not a report from the future, but an expression of present hope rooted in the present experience of grace; eternity is not an infinitely long mode of time, but the achieved final validity of human existence grown to maturity in freedom.
49 Rahner, , Foundations of Christian Thought (New York: Seabury, 1978), p. 436.Google Scholar
50 Foundations, pp. 85-86. For more detail, see “Theology and Anthropology,” Theological Investigations 9 (New York: Crossroad, 1973): 28–45;Google Scholar“Reflections on Methodology in Theology,” Theological Investigations 11 (New York: Crossroad, 1974): 68–114;Google Scholar and Foundations, pp. 24-71, 116-37. To date twenty volumes of Rahner's Theological Investigations have appeared in English. They are currently being issued by Crossroad, New York. Henceforth we shall refer to any of these volumes as Investigations, followed by the volume number.
51 Rahner, , Foundations, p. 116.Google Scholar
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57 Rahner, , “The Foundation of Belief,” Investigations, 16:13–14.Google Scholar For a fuller discussion of the experience of God, see “The Experience of God Today,” Investigations, 11:149–65;Google Scholar“Experience of Self and Experience of God,” Investigations, 13:112–32;Google Scholar“The Human Question of Meaning in Face of the Absolute Mystery of God,” Investigations, 18:89–104;Google ScholarFoundations, pp. 51-71. See also Bacik, James J., Apologetics and Eclipse of Mystery (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980)Google Scholar, and King, J. Norman, Experiencing God All Ways and Every Day (Minneapolis: Winston, 1982).Google Scholar
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60 Rahner, Karl, “Ideas for a Theology of Childhood,” Investigations, 8:33.Google Scholar
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62 Rahner, Karl, “The Life of the Dead,” Investigations, 4:347–48;Google Scholar“Christianity and the ‘New Man,’” Investigations, 5:140–43;Google Scholar“On Christian Dying,” Investigations, 7:286–89.Google Scholar
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65 “Wherever a free and lonely act of decision has taken place in absolute obedience to a higher law or in radical affirmation of love for another person, something eternal has taken place and man is experienced immediately as transcending the indifference of time in its mere temporal duration” (Rahner, , Foundations, p. 439Google Scholar).
66 Rahner, , “The Life of the Dead,” Investigations, 4:348–51;Google Scholar“Experiencing Easter,” Investigations, 7:162–64;Google Scholar“Eternity From Time,” Investigations, 19:172–75;Google ScholarFoundations, p. 438.
67 Rahner, , “Ideas for a Theology of Death,” Investigations, 13:182.Google Scholar
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69 Rahner, Karl, “The Comfort of Time,” Investigations, 3:145.Google Scholar In “Experiencing Easter,” Investigations, 7:163Google Scholar, Rahner writes: “The process of becoming ceases when the state of being begins.”
70 Rahner, , “The Life of the Dead,” Investigations, 4:347–48;Google Scholar“Ideas for a Theology of Death,” Investigations, 13:173–76;Google Scholar“Eternity From Time,” Investigations, 19:170–72;Google ScholarFoundations, pp. 436-41.
71 Rahner, , Foundations, p. 437.Google Scholar See also “Theological Observations on the Concept of Time,” Investigations, 11:288–308.Google Scholar
72 Rahner, , “Ideas for a Theology of Death,” Investigations, 13:175.Google Scholar
73 Rahner, , “Ideas for a Theology of Death,” Investigations, 13:175.Google Scholar
74 Rahner, , “Eternity From Time,” Investigations, 19:176.Google Scholar See also “Beatific Vision,” in Rahner, Karl, ed., Encyclopedia of Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975), pp. 78–80.Google Scholar
75 Rahner, Karl, “Beatific Vision” in Rahner, Karl and Vorgrimler, Herbert, eds., Dictionary of Theology, new rev. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 42.Google Scholar
76 Ibid.
77 “How all this can be experienced in the concreteness of a state beyond time, what is the meaning of transfigured corporality, eternal fellowship with the redeemed, and so on: this is something we cannot concretely imagine or picture to ourselves here and now” (Rahner, , “Eternity From Time,” Investigations, 19:176Google Scholar).
78 Rahner, , “Christianity and the ‘New Man,’” Investigations, 5:135–53;Google Scholar“Immanent and Transcendent Consummation of the World,” Investigations, 10:273–89;Google ScholarFoundations, pp. 444-48.
79 Rahner, Karl, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbor and the Love of God,” Investigations, 6:231–49;Google Scholar“Christian Humanism,” Investigations, 9:187–204.Google Scholar
80 Rahner, Karl, “The Experiment with Man,” Investigations, 9:205–24;Google Scholar“The Peace of God and the Peace of the World,” Investigations, 10:371–88;Google Scholar“The Question of the Future,” Investigations, 12:201;Google Scholar“On the Theology of Revolution,” Investigations, 14:314–30.Google Scholar
81 Rahner, , “Christianity and the ‘New Man,’” Investigations, 5:144–45;Google Scholar“Marxist Utopia and the Christian Future of Man,” Investigations, 6:59–68.Google Scholar
82 Rahner, , “Christianity and the ‘New Man,’” Investigations, 5:140–43.Google Scholar See also “The Theological Problems Entailed in the Idea of the ‘New Earth,’” Investigations, 10:260–72;Google Scholar“The Inexhaustible Transcendence of God and Our Concern for the Future,” Investigations, 20:173–86.Google Scholar
83 Rahner, , “Christianity and the ‘New Man,’” Investigations, 5:149.Google Scholar See also “Immanent and Transcendent Consummation of the World,” Investigations, 10:273–89.Google Scholar
84 “The resurrection … means the final and definitive salvation of a concrete human existence by God and in the presence of God, the abiding and real validity of human history” (Foundations, p. 266). See also “The Resurrection of the Body,” Investigations, 2:203–16;Google Scholar“Jesus' Resurrection,” Investigations, 17:16–23;Google Scholar“The Body in the Order of Salvation,” Investigations, 17:71–89;Google ScholarFoundations, pp. 266-69, 435-36; and Rahner, Karl and Weger, Karl-Heinz, Our Christian Faith (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 105–23.Google Scholar
85 Rahner, , “The Body in the Order of Salvation,” Investigations, 17:89.Google Scholar
86 Ibid., 88.
87 Ibid.
88 Rahner, , “The Life of the Dead,” Investigations, 4:351.Google Scholar
89 Rahner, , Foundations, p. 441.Google Scholar
90 Rahner, Karl, “Hell,” Encyclopedia, pp. 602–04;Google Scholar“Christian Dying,” Investigations, 18:238–41.Google Scholar
91 Rahner, and Weger, , Our Christian Faith, pp. 120–21.Google Scholar
92 Rahner maintains, for example, that the apostolic witness to the resurrection of Jesus articulates and confirms our own transcendental hope. Foundations, pp. 264-69; Christian at the Crossroads (New York: Seabury, 1975), pp. 87–93.Google Scholar See also “The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation,” Investigations, 16:199–224.Google Scholar
93 See Whitehead, Alfred North, Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan, 1926), p. 107.Google Scholar Whitehead writes: “It is generally held that a purely spiritual being is necessarily immortal. The doctrine here developed gives no warrant for such a belief. It is entirely neutral on the question of immortality or on the existence of purely spiritual beings other than God. There is no reason why such a question should not be decided on more special evidence.” Whitehead, however, made an even stronger allusion to the possibility of subjective immortality in Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1938)Google Scholar: “The everlasting nature of God, which in a sense is nontemporal and in another sense is temporal, may establish with the soul a peculiarly intense relationship of mutual immanence. Thus in some important sense the existence of the soul may be freed from its complete dependence upon the bodily organization” (p. 208).
An article by David Griffin makes this case most convincingly and in the most detail. See his “The Possibility of Subjective Immortality in Whitehead's Philosophy,” Modern Schoolman 51 (1975), 39–57.Google Scholar Other relevant writings on this issue include Ford, Lewis S. and Suchocki, Marjorie, “A Whiteheadian Reflection on Subjective Immortality,” Process Studies 7 (1977), 1–13;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSuchocki, Marjorie, “The Question of Immortality,” Journal of Religion 57/3 (1977), 288–306;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Suchocki's later book, God, Christ, Church (New York: Crossroad, 1982).Google Scholar Robert Mellert also has an interesting discussion of the issue in his What Is Process Theology? (New York: Paulist Press, 1975), 125–29.Google Scholar See also Kinast's, RobertWhen a Person Dies (New York: Crossroad, 1984);Google Scholar and Bracken's, JosephThe Triune Symbol (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1985).Google Scholar
94 Hartshorne, , Reality as Social Process, p. 211.Google Scholar
95 Ibid., p. 253.
96 “It is precisely the essence of the personal being that he is ordained to personal communion with God in love (by nature) and must receive just this love as free gift.” Rahner, Karl, “Concerning the Relationship Between Nature and Grace,” Investigations, 1:305.Google Scholar See also “Ideas for a Theology of Grace,” Investigations, 13:176–78;Google ScholarFoundations, pp. 122-24 and “Beatific Vision,” Encyclopedia, p. 79.
97 Rahner, Karl, “Theos in the New Testament,” Investigations, 1:82–86.Google Scholar The fundamental notion of human openness to a possible divine self-communication forms the central theme of Rahner's early work, Hearers of the Word (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969).Google Scholar
98 Rahner, Karl, “Beatific Vision,” Dictionary, p. 458.Google Scholar
99 See, for example, Cobb's, God and the World (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), pp. 100–02.Google Scholar See also Cobb's, “Whitehead's Philosophy and a Christian Doctrine of Man,” Journal of Bible and Religion 32 (1964), 209–20.Google Scholar
100 Rahner, , Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 435–37;Google Scholar “Beatific Vision,” Dictionary, pp. 42-43.
101 Such metaphors as “being absorbed into deity,” according to Hartshorne, “merely evade alternatives that can be stated more directly. Such crude physical images are surely not the best our spiritual insight can suggest” (Logic of Perfection, p. 254).
102 Hartshorne, , Whitehead's Phiiosophy, p. 107.Google Scholar
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107 Rahner, , “Beatific Vision,” Encyclopedia, pp. 78–80.Google Scholar
108 The differing emphases of Rahner and Hartshorne on being and becoming also affect their understanding of God, as the divine immutability issue illustrates (see note 1).
109 On the question of personal identity, see, for example, Hartshorne, Charles, “Personal Identity From A to Z,” Process Studies 2 (1972), 209–15;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hartshorne, , “Strict and Genetic Identity: An Illustration of the Relation of Logic to Metaphysics,” Kallen, Horace M., et al., Structure, Method, and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Henry M. Sheffer (New York: Liberal Arts, 1951), pp. 242–54.Google Scholar
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111 Rahner, , “Eternity From Time,” Investigations, 19:172.Google Scholar On the mutual necessity and complementarity of the historical and transcendent dimensions of existence and experience, see Foundations, pp. 138-52, and “Formal and Fundamental Theology,” Encyclopedia, pp. 524-25.
112 Rahner, Karl, On Prayer (New York: Paulist, 1968), pp. 71–75;Google ScholarHominisation (Freiburg: Herder; Montreal: Palm, 1965), p. 109;Google Scholar“The Comfort of Time,” Investigations, 3:145.Google Scholar
113 Hartshorne insists that the idea of heaven as a place of conscious existence in a perfected state is “largely the result of the concept of personal ‘substance’” (“Religion in Process Philosophy,” p. 264).
114 Hartshorne, , “Beyond Enlightened Self-Interest,” p. 209.Google Scholar
115 Ibid., p. 201.
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121 Hartshorne, , Logic of Perfection, p. 256.Google Scholar
122 Ibid., p. 251.
123 Ibid., p. 255.
124 Hartshorne, , “A Philosopher's Assessment of Christianity,” p. 177.Google Scholar
125 Hartshorne, , Logic of Perfection, p. 255.Google Scholar
126 Hartshorne, , “Philosophy After Fifty Years,” p. 151.Google Scholar
127 Ibid., p. 148.
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129 Rahner, , “Hell,” Encyclopedia, pp. 602–04.Google Scholar
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131 Rahner, Karl, “Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbor and the Love of God,” Investigations, 6:247.Google Scholar
132 See, for example, Rahner, Karl, “Christianity and the ‘New Man,’” Investigations, 5:135–53;Google Scholar“Christian Humanism,” Investigations, 9:187–204;Google Scholar and “On the Theology of Revolution,” Investigations, 14:314–30.Google Scholar
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