Religion, Traditionalism and Rahner

Traditionalists – especially more average representatives of this current – devote much of their work to analyzing forms and phenomena of universal religiousness, looking at the outside of individual religions.

They deal with religion as part of the world, but besides religion as an image of the planet and yet religion as a way of life for man. The work of traditionalists is of considerable value due to the fact that it shows that spiritual life is first a average condition for man, and secondly a condition which man should choose and practice of his own free will, due to the fact that thanks to it he full develops his existence and achieves the best relation with the planet (natural and supernatural, earthly and divine). In this way traditionalism strikes arguments of all directions representing religion, either as a “limitation of freedom” or as a pathology of human psyche, culture or history. Traditionalism cannot be accused of only practicing partial, interesting propaganda of a peculiar religion (in our realities known as Catholic apologetics).

However, specified an approach with all its advantages entails 2 difficulties. In discussions with unbelievers, not belonging to any religion, we can explain spiritual life as an interaction of human consciousness with the deep functions of his psyche-spirit, lower and higher, which in turn stay in interaction with the world-cosm. By doing so, we can show that spiritual needs are a appropriate human being, not being brought to the needs of others, and that their satisfaction can only be found in practicing religion. This is how any authors usage the concept of homo religiosus. But then the question will arise: does the divine reality, or the sphere of sacrum, be objectively, outside of our being, or only in the psyche of the soul-man?

And even if we give this first answer to the above question, does not the defence of religion in man's life by referring to the universal spirit of religion, by demonstrating the natural nature and commonness of needs and spiritual attitudes in all conventional religions propose that man can carry them out in any of them: Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism or alleged primary religions? specified a conclusion seems to end, for example, with the valuable book “Religions of the World” by Huston Smith (1919-2016). The choice of Catholicism would then not be more justified than any of the others.

Both problems are solved by the work “Hearer of the Word. Strengthening the doctrine of religion”, which was first published by the Jesuit in 1941 Karl Rahner (1904-1984). This small-sized treaty depicts man as a being directed internally to search answers to these 2 questions: to search out whether somewhere in the planet there is simply a voice of God coming radically from outside the planet and from the man himself, and at the same time indicating to him a circumstantial religion – a being that not only needs religion in general, but besides awaits Revelation.

The author became celebrated as 1 of the most celebrated Catholic theologians of the 20th century, but the “Hearer of the Word” is not a theology work (as Rahner himself emphasizes), but a doctrine of religion. Its author began to gain publicity with the publication of the book “The Spirit in the World” (1939), in which he presented a fresh look at doctrine St. Thomas of Aquinas, adapting to her needs the categories of Heidegger existentialism. In the “Hearer of the Word”, he presented his own philosophical system, as if it were a enclosure of tomism from the outside, so that his claims could be agreed with both Tomistic and non-Tomistic.

The second have inactive not forgiven Rahner's environment convinced that there is no salvation beyond Tomism. Yet the “Hearer of the Word” is part of the German tradition of philosophical treatises addressing the most fundamental issues of reality, which extend from the “Theodycea” and “Monadology” of Leibniz by 19th-century classics of idealism after “Being and Time” of Heidegger or “Truth and Method” of Gadamer.

How, then, precisely does Father Rahner prove that man is simply a listener of the Word? It is best for the gracious reader to see for himself [1].

Adam Danek

[1] Karl Rahner, “The Hearer of the Word. Strengthening the doctrine of Religion", by Robert Samek, Kęty 2008.

Pictured: Karl Rahner (first left)

Think Poland, No. 23-24 (2-9.06.2024)