Word: rahner
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Such ideas and attitudes give Rahner's works a powerful ecumenical appeal. "Rahner thinks in a way that transcends confessional differences," says Yale's Lutheran Theologian George Lindbeck, an observer at the council. "Most of the time when I read Rahner I'm not conscious that I'm reading a Roman Catholic." As his enemies see Rahner, there are times when he does not even read like a Christian, for he asks paradoxical questions about even the basic assumptions of the faith. "Is God dead?" he sometimes asks his students, in a jolting-challenge to their...
...Path Found. As a child in Freiburg im Breisgau, in southern Germany, Rahner often jolted his devoutly Catholic parents. He was a mischievous boy, seemingly devoid of promise, got such disgraceful marks that his father, a scholarly Latin teacher, once threatened to take him out of school. But he suddenly reformed, climbed to the top of his class. In 1922, he joined his elder brother Hugo as a member of the Society of Jesus. "Hugo's entering I can understand," said his father. "But Karl...
Once he found his path, Rahner displayed a staggering diligence. Day after day, he gets up at 3:30 a.m. and goes to bed around n p.m., and most of the time in between he works. He can get away with expressing unconventional views because he knows orthodox thought in all its historical ramifications as well as the most formidable of his conservative opponents. He was editor of the Enchiridion Symbolorum, the standard compendium of documents expressing the true teachings of Catholicism. He is currently co-editing a massive encyclopedia of theology that will be completed in 1965 or thereabouts...
Despite his eminence among theologians, Rahner remains virtually unknown among laymen. He has never written a book summing up his theology-his insights are scattered among 700 books, articles and essays, and they are hard reading. As a young man he studied under German Existentialist Martin Heidegger, and the influence of that baffling philosopher is apparent in both Rahner's thinking and his labyrinthine style. "When I am an old man and have the time," jokes his brother Hugo (himself a noted theologian), "I want to translate Karl's writings -into German...
...Faraway Faith. Rahner is sometimes called an existentialist, and he has indeed found inspiration and challenge in existentialist thinkers. He burns with a passionate conviction that the church has failed to grapple effectively with the existential problems of the 20th century. "For modern man the faith is too far away," he says. "The theological problem today is to find the art of drawing religion out of a man, not pumping it into him. The Redemption has happened. The Holy Ghost is in men. The art is to help men become what they really...