Chapter Two: Man in the Presence of Absolute Mystery

The title of this chapter does not include the word “God.” Strictly speaking, the title indicates that the chapter is about the human being. That human being, however, is in the presence of absolute mystery. The chapter focuses on this mystery. It asks what it is, why it is absolute, and how it is present. Chapter II has five parts. The first part is a meditation on the word “God.” The meditation distinguishes between the word and what it represents. Even if the word were to be stricken from the dictionary, says Rahner, the question implicit in the word – the question about the origin and destiny of life – would remain.

Cover photo scanned from Robert Kress, A Rahner Handbook (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982).

After Part 1 has raised the question, the second part discusses whether we can know God. It advances Rahner’s central thesis, namely, that we encounter God in a transcendental experience of God’s Holy Mystery. Whenever we experience our limits, imagining what lies beyond them, we begin to transcend them. In that experience, we recognize the mystery of our existence, whose origin and destiny are not yet clear. To know that mystery, says Rahner, is to know the source of transcendence. The source of transcendence is not, however, a blind and impersonal force. The third part states that the source is a personal God. We speak of God as a person by way of analogy. God is not a person in the same sense that we human beings are. But God is indeed a person in that God cannot be reduced to a thing. God is the absolute ground of all things, “absolute” because irreducible to anything else. The human being is related to God as a creature to the source of creation. The fourth part explains how human beings “know” God. We know God by knowing ourselves in relation to the mystery of our lives. This mystery is nothing other than what gives us our place in time and invites us to fulfill the possibilities allotted to us. In Part Five, Rahner states that the Holy Mystery is present “in” the world as its fundamental ground. It is “holy” because it enables us to be complete. It helps us to be what we are meant to be. Doubtless we find God in historical religion and its holy places, people, and things. But God may not be confined to phenomena. Rather, the phenomena of this world, including the holy symbols, sanctuaries, and deeds of religion, mediate the presence of God and teach us how to discern it. But we already know this God immediately as our transcendent ground.

Part 1: Meditation on the Word "God."

(II.1, p. 44). In the six sections of Part 1, Rahner meditates on the reality of the word “God” (A), on its meaning (B), and on its very future as a word and concept (C). Then he reflects on what the human being would be like without the word “God” (D), on the function of the word (E), and on how human beings are presented with the word (F). Although the word is common to every language, it functions in an uncommon way by putting the meaning and destiny of life in question.

A. The Existence of the Word (II.1.A, p. 44). Rahner begins by noting that, in many ways, the word “God” is a noun like any other. But unlike other nouns, “God” names something that does not appear in any place or time. Rahner’s train of thought indirectly recalls us of the First Letter of John: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us” (4:12). Yet this word is known and used by, and has an existence for, even those who claim to disbelieve in God.

B. What Does the Word "God" Mean? (II.1.B, p. 46). Although the word “God” functions like a proper name, it is not one. It differs from the proper names “Yahweh” and “Father.” Unlike them, “God” has a “blank face,” since God is ineffable and does not enter the world. Because the word “God” is “silent,” because it is not spoken by God, it can be overlooked and unheard. But the “blank face” of the word “God” is not only known in every culture, but takes on a variety of cultural contours.

C. Does this Word Have a Future? (II.1.C, p. 47). Karl Marx thought the very word, “God,” as well as theism itself, would disappear. What does Rahner think? Either the word will disappear or it will survive as a question, he says, a question about the goal and meaning of human life.

D. Reality Without this Word (II.1.D, p. 47). If the word “God” disappeared, then human beings would not be brought face to face with the whole of reality as the creation of this “God.” People would not be brought face to face with their own reality, with the individual’s own existence as a whole. For Rahner, the ability to put reality into question is what constitutes the human being. Without a “God” who is the creator and sustainer of reality, there would be no one to question the meaning of reality, and the defining characteristic of the human would be absent. Humanity would henceforth no longer exist.

E. The Survival of the Word "God" (II.1.D, p. 49). “God” is a word by which we refer to the one who brought into existence the whole of reality. With the word “God,” all of language is placed in question. By asking about “God,” we question whether it is possible in language to represent reality and find meaning in it.

F. The Original Word Spoken to Us (II.1.D., p. 50). Language presents us with the word “God.” We do not create the word or what it represents. But the dictionary meaning of the word is not the whole of its reality. It only “represents the real word which becomes present for us from out of the wordless texture of all words” (p. 50). Rahner concludes this section with three references:

1. Tertullian. This second-century Latin Father of the Church taught that there is a soul (human and not divine) in every person a soul, Christian from its origins, which enables the person to hear the real Word of God.

2. Wittgenstein. This twentieth-century philosopher wrote that we should not speak about those things which we cannot understand, and this would seem to rule out all talk of God. But even Wittgenstein disobeys his own dictum.

3. Amor fati. This Latin phrase, "love of fate," illumines the word "God": we human beings ought to love, to cherish, to revere, what is necessary in this life--whether we call it "fate" or "God."

Part 2: The Knowledge of God.

(II.2, p. 51). In this most challenging part of Chapter II, Rahner begins with the fundamental idea that we know God in our reflection on experience, but not as some entity that we can “prove” independently of experience (A). Before any natural or revealed knowledge of God, we have an encounter with God (B). This encounter is given in the human experience of transcendence. This experience is mysterious, for it is both given to us (subjectively) and is something upon which we can (objectively) reflect (C). The mystery was recognized as early as Greek ontology. Ontology, the “science of being,” showed that one both can express something as a concept and yet not capture everything in the concept (D). So instead of a concept, Rahner uses the phrase “Holy Mystery.” He calls it the “term” of transcendence (E). Term is related to terminus, end, or goal. This term is both present in transcendence and as the way to transcendence. It enables us to know the reality of God, and is our experience of it (F). Finally, Rahner makes a comment on the proofs for the existence of God (G). They are signs that point to the reality, he says, and can enable the listener to reflect on the transcendental knowledge of God that he or she already has.

A. Transcendental and A Posteriori Knowledge of God (II.2.A, p. 51). When Rahner speaks of “transcendental” knowledge of God, he means it is something “a posteriori.” We know it, in other words, “after the fact,” e.g., while reflecting on human experience. Our experience with others, Rahner says, enables us to know ourselves, whom we “see” as we reflect on our experience. So too we know the divine in reflecting on our experience of the world. The experience raises in our minds the question of who we are and what we ought to be.

But this knowledge is no mere reflection after the fact. It is what Rahner calls a “permanent existential,” i.e., a part of who we are. We encounter ourselves whenever we try to speak of our experience of God. It is we who are capable of an encounter with God. In this encounter, we find that we can transcend what we once thought to be our outermost horizon. The discovery of this experience itself is a mystery. The mystery is not reducible to what we can say about our transcendental knowledge.

To be sure, our knowledge of God remains “a posteriori.” We know God “after the fact,” after reflecting on our experience of meeting our limits, of imagining what lies beyond them, and of realizing the possibilities given us to respond to God’s call. Our transcendental experience does not cancel the fact that we know it only afterwards, in the reflection on it. This cautions us to beware that God is not a thing we can “know” beforehand. We cannot indoctrinate another person about God, but only lead him or her to recognize the God whom they in an implicit way already know.

What can we know about God? Our knowledge of God is indirect, like the knowledge of “our subjective freedom, our transcendence, and the infinite openness of the spirit” (p. 53). We know the experience of God, even when we do not consciously reflect on the experience. Moreover, we know God, even when our conceptualization of God is unpersuasive to other people.

So we can finally say: the concept of God is not a concept we can grasp. It is, rather, what grasps us. We do not formulate a concept and ask if it is God. No, it is better to say that both the concept itself, as well as the reality, move us into the unknown.

B. The Different Ways of Knowing God and Their Intrinsic Unity (II.2.B, p. 55). Traditionally, one speaks of “natural” knowledge of God, and of knowledge through “revelation” (in word and in deed). Rahner says, however, that there is a more “original experience,” an experience upon which both natural and revealed knowledge rely. The more original experience is a transcendental experience. It is not reducible to metaphysics, and it is fully compatible with the theological concept of grace. Transcendental experience is not purely “natural” because it takes place in freedom. We can choose to reflect on it or ignore it. This God-given freedom, the freedom to act responsibly and to make choices, is itself “supernatural.”

C. Transcendental Knowledge of God as Experience of Mystery (II.2.C, p. 57). Transcendental experience, says Rahner, is “the basic and original way of knowing God” (p. 58). More basic than “natural” and “revealed” knowledge? Yes, says Rahner. Natural and revealed knowledge is mediated. It comes to us through the media of categorical experiences. Transcendental experience, by contrast, is not a neutral power by which to know God. It does not enable us to “master” our experience. Instead, transcendental experience allows us to know ourselves as finite beings – finite beings who can transcend their finitude.

Are human beings united with their transcendence? This is an important and dangerous question. Since God is our transcendence, a "yes" might suggest that we are our own gods. But the unity we experience, says Rahner, is not that. It is rather the unity between the ground and the person who is grounded, between the Word and our response to it. There are two ways, says Rahner, to understand our knowledge of God in transcendence.

1. Subjective knowledge. This transcendental knowledge comes to light in conversation or even in something like Victor Frankl's "logotherapy." Subjective knowledge enables us to see that our experiences (experiences of love, of freedom, of joy, etc.) are experiences of transcendence. We bring our experience to light in discourse with another person.

2. Objective knowledge. This transcendental knowledge comes from a direct contemplation of the source of transcendence. We contemplate it and call it "God." But there is a danger in such objective knowledge. The danger is that, by speaking of God we might lose sight of what we mean. What we mean is the source of the experience of transcendence, the holy mystery. It might be obscured by the concept we use to express it. If we try to describe the source as "absolute being," we might settle for an abstraction, not the source itself.

So Rahner proposes that we call the source of our original experience of transcendence the "holy mystery" (p. 60). This phrase, this image of God, may not be easily confused with a stereotype, a myth, or a conventional image.

D. The Term Transcendence as the Infinite, the Indefinable, and the Ineffable (II.2.D, p. 61). Rahner states that his goal is to express the source of our experience of transcendence without reducing it to a mere object, one topic among others, or a system. What gives him hope is that, whenever he tries to reflect on the meaning of transcendence, “an experience of transcendence takes place” (p. 62). The human being reaches out to or anticipates the “term” of transcendence. This technical word (German: “Woraufhin”; English: “where-to-there”) means goal, end, or terminus. Every person implicitly anticipates an ultimate goal, and in the anticipation of it, grows toward it. The lure of God’s future is the “term” of transcendence.

The transcendental experience (of God) and the categorical objects that mediate it (in the world) are united but different. If they were only united, their relationship would be pantheistic. God would then “be” our experience of the world. If the experience and the categorical objects were only different, their relation would be dualistic. God would be the unknowable “other.” Rahner sees the relation between the two as unity in difference. “God establishes and is the difference” between the world and God (p. 63). Anyone searching for a God “contained in” reality seeks a false God. Those searching for a God wholly other and distant will never know God or themselves.

The earliest Greek philosophies touched upon the mysteries of first principles. Greek ontology saw that human beings cannot measure the first principles, but are themselves to be measured. True, we can have legitimately categorical knowledge of God – knowledge that we can categorize and classify. But we recognize that such categorical knowledge is not the whole. There is more to God than what we can say: that is why we acknowledge that God is infinite, indefinable, and ineffable.

E. The Term of Transcendence as the "Holy Mystery" (II.2.E, p. 65). “Holy Mystery” is Rahner’s “term” of transcendence. Since “term” means “way of access to” as well as terminus or goal, “Holy Mystery” indicates the way to transcendence and remains the goal of transcendence. Rahner says that this Holy Mystery possesses absolute freedom. The Holy Mystery, the Term of Transcendence, is our freedom. In it we are free to be present, in whatever way we choose, to other “subjects of transcendence,” other free persons.

Moreover, transcendence moves us toward Holy Mystery, its proper end. The experience of transcendence opens up to us the Holy Mystery. It is a “mystery” because we cannot fully fathom it. It is “holy” because it enables us to be complete. It allows us to be present to other persons in a communion of freedom and love. When we put ourselves “at the disposal of” transcendence, we move beyond ourselves and form relationships with others, above all, with God. Holy Mystery includes the capacity to freely love.

Transcendence, Rahner concludes, does not depend on its “ground” or “term,” that is, on Holy Mystery. Transcendence is not derived from or reducible to it. Rather, Holy Mystery is what we encounter in the experience of transcendence. Transcendence moves us in freedom and love toward its goal.

F. Transcendental Experience and Reality (II.2.F, p. 66). Transcendence does not create God. Rather, transcendence is “borne by” God, who makes transcendence possible. Rahner calls the term or goal of transcendental experience a “Holy Mystery,” namely, the unity of essence and existence. If it were existence alone, then we could experience it in the same way we experience anything else, like a sunset. If it were only an essence, without any concrete existence, then we could not experience it at all. But as the unity of essence and existence, Holy Mystery has a reality that is grounded for us in the experience of transcendence. That experience is a necessary part of the human being, the one who is created so as to hear God’s Word.

G. Remarks on the Proofs for God's Existence (II.2.G, p. 68). The proofs of God’s existence are, in Rahner’s view, “signs.” They point to God but do not make God graspable or a mere concept. Just as we can only point to our experience of transcendence in words, but cannot reduce the experience to a concept, so we can point to God in “proofs.” These proofs are not “ways” by which a previously unknown object can be known. By means of the proofs, however, one can show another person that they are already involved in the experience of transcendence and of Holy Mystery. The listener, presented with “proofs,” is really being confronted with the light of his or her own spirit. He or she is faced with questions, anxiety, joy, moral obligation, and the anticipation of death – all of which recall the very experience of transcendence.

In the "proofs" of God, there is an element of causality. Causality in this case does not mean, for example, that one sees creation and is moved to belief in a first cause. Rather, causality is a way of indicating that being itself moves our judgment. Absolute being points to the relation between finite creation and its incomprehensible source.

To read the remainder of this text, please order the printed version of The Foundations of Karl Rahner by Mark F. Fischer, published in 2005 by Crossroad Publishing (ISBN 0824523423).