Karl Rahner Quotes
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. The quotes below are attributed to Karl Rahner, organized by topic.
Browse Karl Rahner by topic
Karl Rahner on God
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“The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or will not exist at all.”
Christian Living Formerly and Today", Theological Investigations , Vol. 7, trans. David Bourke (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), p. 15. -
Attributed to Karl Rahner:
“Every human being is at every moment confronted with the absolute mystery we call God.”
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“Grace is not added from above; it is the deepest inwardness of human nature.”
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“Theology is the patient articulation of the inarticulable.”
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“The anonymous Christian is the human being who responds to grace without naming it.”
Karl Rahner on Knowledge
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“The real argument against Christianity is the experience of life, this experience of darkness. And I have always observed that the elemental force and the arbitrary prejudgment which lie behind the technical arguments of the learned — or rather of individual learned men — against Christianity always spring from these ultimate experiences of existence which plunge mind and heart into darkness, fati”
Thoughts on the Possibility of Belief Today" (1962), Theological Investigations , Vol. 5 (1966). -
“Meditations on the Sacraments (1977), Introduction, p. xi.”
Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God , though God does not owe it to any creature to give it this special orientation. Grace does not happen in isolated instances here and there in an otherwise profane and graceless world. It is legitimate, of course, to speak of grace-events which occur at discrete points in space and time. But then what we are really tal
Karl Rahner on Life
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“The real argument against Christianity is the experience of life, this experience of darkness. And I have always observed that the elemental force and the arbitrary prejudgment which lie behind the technical arguments of the learned — or rather of individual learned men — against Christianity always spring from these ultimate experiences of existence which plunge mind and heart into darkness, fatigue and despair.”
Thoughts on the Possibility of Belief Today" (1962), Theological Investigations , Vol. 5 (1966). -
“The devout Christian of the future will either be a ' mystic ', one who has 'experienced' something, or he will cease to be anything at all.”
Christian Living Formerly and Today", Theological Investigations , Vol. 7, trans. David Bourke (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), p. 15.