Karl Rahner: Divinization in Roman Catholicism

by Francis J. Caponi, OSA

by Mykhailo Ozorovych

• An Augustinian monk• Got his Doctorate from Harvard• Assistant professor of theology

at Villanova University (PA,USA)

• Fr. Caponi's professional interests include systematic theology, especially eschatology, the theology of the Trinity, soteriology, and the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.

• He has published essays on Dante Alighieri, C.S. Lewis, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Aquinas.

Francis J. Caponi

Karl Rahner

• Karl Rahner, SJ (March 5, 1904 – March 30, 1984), a German Jesuit priest and theologian who is considered one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century.

• The Second Vatican Council was much influenced by his theology and his understanding of the Catholic faith.

Introduction

• Theopoiesis – is a core symbol of Rahner’s theology.• This process of human divinization is the central

notion that moves his understanding of creation, anthropology, Christology, ecclesiology, liturgy…

• In his theology Rahner employs the concept of participation (metaphysical, divinizing, sharing) in both philosophical and theological sense to distinguish between

• a) God’s efficient presence in all created things and • b) His “quasi-formal” presence as grace in humanity.

3 questions about Divinization

1. What is the structure of divinization?

2. What is the essence of divinization?

3. What are the means of divinization?

Structure of Divinization: Metaphysical participation is God

• Rahner’s theology is born of the theology and philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

• “gratia non tollit naturam sed perfecit”• “Grace is a certain participation in the divine nature and a

special love, by which God draws the rational creation above its natural condition to have part in the divine goodness”

• “Every intellect naturally desires the vision of the divine substance (beatific vision), but natural desire cannot be incapable of fulfillment”

• But how could that be? - this the question rose a debate in Roman Catholicism.

• Reacting to the question Rahner proposed a model: Grace is the “innermost heart” of the world so that, far from being an extrinsic imposition, it is the proper fulfillment of human nature. It means that we are by nature intended to be sharers of the divine nature.

• The first movement in the process of divinization. Rahner says, “Nature is, because grace has to be”.

• It comes from St. Irenaeus who thought that God created humanity not because of need, but that He might have someone upon whom to freely confer His benefits.

• God wanted to give his grace and Himself away – that is the reason for creating a nondivine ‘nature’.

• The application that Rahner draws of this assertion is that “the divine will for Self-bestowal conditions the structure of the other…because creation takes place for the sake of grace, the creation is open to the divine self-bestowal, the personal self-communication of God.

• And creation has its being from participation in God, who is “the esse’.

• Every act of human knowing is the intellectual grasp of the participatory structure of created world.

• Agent intellect/Vorgriff auf esse is fundamentally the capacity to know a world that metaphysically participates in the divine.

• This agent intellect must be “ pure openness for absolutely everything, for being as such”.

• Two important types of knowledge are mentioned:- A priori – transcendental affirmation of Absolute being- A posteriori – categorical realm of the concrete, the historical, the

communal. The relation between these two elements is mutual, necessary, and

intrinsic.Rahner says, “we are creatures open for a possible revelation of

God within the categorical, historical realm”God is the one who offers grace and the structure of human nature

(obediential potency) does reception.

The essence of Divinization: Saving participation in God through Christ

• God, Absolute Being, offers himself to us as our truly proper, supernatural end. And this divinizing participation is offered through Jesus Christ.

• To explain this we will look at three interlocking concepts:1. Divine self-communication2. Supernatural existential3. “quasi-formal” causalityDefinition of theosis in Rahner: “God communicates himself…

and makes man share in the very nature of God. He constitutes man as co-heir with the Son himself, called to the eternal life of God face to face, called to receive the direct vision of God, called therefore to receive God’s own life.” – this he calls the heart of Christian conception of reality.

GraceGrace – God’s self-communication in love, which

accomplishes in humanity a divinizing participation in God’s being.

Grace is the innermost and enduring deification of the world, the ground of an ultimate unity of mankind in itself and with God, God’s personal presence.

• The author says that two important points must be made in connection with this understanding of grace:

1. There is an absolute ontological distinction between Creator and creation, because of God’s efficient causal immanence in creation, that results in a participation the divine Esse by humanity in intellect and freedom.

2. Created grace is still a valid and necessary category for understanding God’s relationship to humanity. Justifying grace inheres in the justified, constituting them temples of the Holy Spirit, and giving rise to personal virtues and communal charism.

• In describing the human person as subject of God’s divinizing grace, Rahner develops the concept of the “supernatural existential.”

• The universal offer of God’s self-communication is both gratuitous and intrinsic.

• It is intrinsic because grace forms an abiding dimension or “existential” of the person and becoming a constitutive part of human nature not as a matter but as a mode.

• This idea of “supernatural existential” entails the idea of “pure nature” (not touched by grace). The idea of human nature outside of grace is crucial one precisely because it permits theology to think about human divinization in a way that does not collapse the distinct gratuities of creation and grace.

• “Supernaturalizing” – is when the Holy Spirit becomes an internal, constitutive principle of the human person through a “quasi-formal” causality.

• God has the capacity to act both efficiently (creation) and quasi-formally (grace).

• In grace, the natural divine indwelling of metaphysical participation is supernaturally elevated, so that we are sharers in the divine being in the mode of partners as well as creatures. This elevation of human nature by God to God through the quasi-formal divine self-communication of grace is a participation in the reality that in itself is God.

• Grace as self-communication is tied to Jesus Christ. They are two inseparable acts of God. They are two correlative factors of God’s one free self-communication to the creature.

• For Rahner, grace and Jesus are each causally related to the other: Christ is the cause, the “prospective entelechy”, of history, and Christ is the absolute fulfillment, the result, as it were – of God’s self-communication in grace to spiritual, historical reality.

Summary on Rahner’s perspective on the essence of deification

1. God’s will for self-communication is the final cause of creation.

2. The material creation this brings about is one that evolves into grades of causal participation of the divine Esse.

3. In this causal participation intellect and freedom form the obediential potency for grace.

4. The humanity that so evolves reaches its own high point in the Incarnation of Jesus (unique event of God’s complete self-communication to human transcendence).

5. His understanding of the hypostatic union as the highest realization of graced human reality leads Rahner to assert that grace and Incarnation are analogous instances of God’s self-communication.

a) On the one hand he explains the Incarnation is the utterly unique cosmic and historical event of the absolute self-transcendence of the human spirit into God.

b) On the other hand, the hypostatic union is what occurs when the assumptive dynamism of grace reaches its completion in a divine self-communication, which effects an elevation onto identity of God and human nature.

6. Grace as divine self-communication to that which is other than God must take place is history, both as offer and fulfillment.

The Means of Divinization

• The Church (the historical tangibility of the presence of God in his self-communication) is an essential element in divinization because in the Church occurs both the authoritative proclamation of the Gospel and the acceptance of the Gospel through faith, sacrament (the self-communication of the Holy Spirit in grace), and love of neighbor.

• From Christ the Church has an intrinsically sacramental nature.

• Sacraments are outbursts into history of God’s constant, gracious self-endowment to the world.

• The virtues are the living dynamism of justification and the concrete shape of sanctifying grace. p. 271

• Three observations in connection with this perspective:1. The theological virtues bestowed by grace are not new, ex

nihilo, rather they are the elevation of humanity’s natural virtues. The fruits of this elevations is the capacity if human nature (intellect and will) to give rise to acts of supernatural knowing and willing, namely, acts of faith, hope, and love (directly salvific acts). Rahner emphasizes that this is meant by being in right relationship with God.

2. These theological virtues are supernatural capacities bestowed in justification.

3. The theological virtues give rise to meritorious works on the part of the justified. Such works are done in the Spirit and are based on our participation in the divine nature, intrinsically proportionate to eternal life itself in its glory.

Please read the Conclusion on p.272. It has a great, simple summary of this complicated work.