Karl Rahner 1904 – 1984
Karl Rahner was a German Jesuit theologian and philosopher and one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century. Trained in scholastic theology and in Heideggerian philosophy at Freiburg, he developed in his early philosophical works Spirit in the World and Hearer of the Word a transcendental Thomist philosophy in which the human being is the horizon-questioning openness to absolute being. His Foundations of Christian Faith offered a synthetic statement of Christian doctrine on transcendental-anthropological foundations, and his many essays in the Theological Investigations shaped the work of the Second Vatican Council and much of postconciliar Catholic thought.
Key facts
- Nationality
- German
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Christian, Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Karl Rahner:
“The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or will not exist at all.”
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Attributed to Karl Rahner:
“Every human being is at every moment confronted with the absolute mystery we call God.”
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Attributed to Karl Rahner:
“Grace is not added from above; it is the deepest inwardness of human nature.”
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Attributed to Karl Rahner:
“Theology is the patient articulation of the inarticulable.”
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Attributed to Karl Rahner:
“The anonymous Christian is the human being who responds to grace without naming it.”