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Rahner’s Searching Christology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Pamela Dickey Young
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Extract

One of the topics to which Karl Rahner devoted a good deal of thought is what he called ‘searching Christology’. He did not think that Jesus Christ comes to human beings as a ‘bolt out of the blue’, so to speak, as an event for which they are totally unprepared; rather, Jesus the Christ comes to a human being who is open, even disposed, to recognize his significance, who is already—indeed always—a being who is searching for the Christ. In this article I am outlining Rahner’s searching christology, for I do not think it has received the attention it deserves, and then I am offering some of my own comments and critical reflections on the topic.

For Rahner, one of the things which precedes the human acceptance of Jesus Christ as God’s revelation is a human search in which, as we shall see, human beings are enough aware of what they are looking for to be able to recognize it when they find it. It is the detailing of what human beings are searching for that interests him.

He attempts to verbalize (albeit in the Christian terms with which he is most familiar) what he takes to be universal human experience. As humans, according to Rahner, we are beings of transcendence who reach out beyond ourselves toward others and ultimately toward the one beyond all limits, the one whom Christians call God (even if we do not always articulate that explicitly).

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 68 , Issue 809 , October 1987 , pp. 437 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Foundations of Christian Faith trans. Dych, William V. (New York: Crossroad, 1978) 39Google Scholar.

2 Ibid. 295.

3 See ‘Grundlinien einer systematischen Christologie’, in Rahner, Karl and Thüsing, Wilhelm, Christologie–systematisch und exegetisch. Questiones disputatae, no. 55. (Freiburg: Herder, 1972), 60ffGoogle Scholar; Foundations, 295ff.; and ‘The One Jesus Christ and the Universality of Salvation’, in Theological Investigations 16, trans. Morland, David (New York: Seabury, 1979) 222ffGoogle Scholar.

4 Foundations 295.

5 Ibid. 296.

6 ‘The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation’, in Theological Investigations 16, 222–223Google Scholar; see also Foundations 296 and ‘Grundlinien einer systematischen Christologie’ 61.

7 Foundations 269.

8 ‘Ideas for a Theology of Death’, in Theological Investigations 13, trans. David Bourke (New York: Crossroad, 1975) 180.

9 Foundations 297; see also ‘Grundlinien einer systematischen Christologie’ 62 and ‘The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation’, in Theological Investigations 16, 223–224.Google Scholar

10 Foundations 297–98.

11 ‘The Quest for Approaches Leading to an Understanding of the Mystery of the God‐Man Jesus’, in Theological Investigations 13, trans. Bourke, David (New York: Crossroad, 1975) 199–200Google Scholar.

12 ‘What Does it Mean Today to Believe in Jesus Christ?’, in Theological Investigations 18, trans Quinn, Edward (New York: Crossroad, 1983) 146Google Scholar.

13 ‘Theology of Freedom’, in Theological Investigations 6, trans. Karl‐H, . and Kruger, Boniface (New York: Seabury, 1974) 190Google Scholar.

14 ‘Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbour and the Love of Go?, in Theological Investigations 6, trans. Karl‐H., and Kruger, Boniface (New York: Seabury, 1974) 247Google Scholar.