Word: theologian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...approach -he keeps relentlessly asking questions, dangerous, thought-prodding questions. Rahner believes that each generation must rethink the problems of theology for itself. He never rejects outright the dogmatic definitions of past councils or Popes, but he is constantly asking what the words of those definitions really mean. "The theologian of today," he says, "must be in search of a new language. We've got a lot of things to rethink. A holy boldness is needed...
...Jolting Challenge. For many Catholics, morality is essentially a matter of sticking to the rules laid down by the church. But Rahner, notes an admiring fellow theologian, "sees the moral life not merely in terms of acts but rather of basic commitments." The world, in Rahner's vision, is full of "anonymous Christians"-men who may formally disbelieve in Christ or the church, but who nonetheless have made a personal and total surrender to the truth of an "unknown God." For Rahner, these truth-wedded men are, in a sense, Christians also-perhaps better Christians than those reared...
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...
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...
...still included in the Audio Record Program. Among Word's releases: Ethel Waters singing religious songs for children, the choir of New York's St. John the Divine Cathedral singing Episcopal Church music. Next month Word will offer a seven-LP, six-hour set of Theologian Karl Earth lecturing on evangelical theology. McCracken's current bestseller: the world-traveling Orphans' Choir from Korea. He recently started another record club, which will feature long-play sermons by Christian leaders such as Baptist Billy Graham, Los Angeles Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy, and Dr. Ralph Sockman, pastor emeritus...