Rahner's Grundkurs revisited

Extract

Can it really be the case, as Hugo Meynell makes out in his meditation on Karl Rahner’s Grundkurs des Glaubens (New Blackfriars February 1980), that “the best living Catholic theologian” (p. 77) neither believes the doctrine of the resurrection in a recognisably traditional sense (p. 87) nor distinguishes the doctrine of purgatory from the belief in reincarnation which characterizes some Eastern religions (p. 88) — to cite but two charges in Dr Meynell’s arraignment? Can it really be the case that, in his ripe old age (for he is 76 this year), as he delivers what is plainly conceived as his theological testament, and prepares to die in the serenity of that faith which has never wavered since his proudly old-fashioned Swabian Catholic upbringing, and throughout his life-long grounding in the Spiritual Exercises (“I think that the spirituality of Ignatius himself, which one learned through the practice of prayer and religious formation, was more significant for me than all learned philosophy and theology inside and outside the order”), Karl Rahner’s Christology is not significantly different from that of a Nestorian or a Liberal Protestant (p. 87), and his idea of eternal life little different from that of (horrendous to relate) Professor D. Z. Phillips?

Well, in the epidemic of reactionary intransigence that is affecting so many of the best educated and the most formidably intelligent Catholics at the present time, no doubt such suspicions of Rahner’s orthodoxy may occasion little surprise and may even pass without notice. But Dr Meynell’s published work, for fifteen years and more, bears witness to his great knowledge of, and imaginative sympathy with, modem theological movements, as well as to his unremitting fidelity to Catholic doctrine in its most classical formulations.