Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) February 24, 2022: The now-retired American philosopher and Karl Rahner specialist Andrew Tallon of Marquette University wrote the "Editor's Introduction" to the late American Jesuit philosopher Joseph Donceel's English translation of the late German Jesuit philosopher and theologian Karl Rahner's 1941 book Hearer of the Word: Laying the Foundation for a Philosophy of Religion (Continuum Publishing, 1994, pp. ix-xxii).
The prolific Karl Rahner (1904-1984) subsequently became one of the most famous Roman Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. Donceel (1906-1994) prepared his English translation for an anticipated earlier publication of Rahner's 1941 book that failed to materialize. However, when the opportunity to publish Donceel's translation later materialized, Tallon was recruited to serve as the editor of Donceel's translation.
In Tallon's "Editor's Introduction," he says, "In Hearer of the Word we have the single most accessible and necessary book of philosophy and pre-theology Rahner ever wrote. It discusses not only being and knowledge, but freedom, faith, and love; it has a heart in a way missing from the necessarily technical tome that is [Rahner's 1939 book] Spirit in the World" (page xix; I added the bracketed material here). Note Tallon's use of a heart here.
A word is in order here about the Catholic trinitarian theology expressed in those two titles. In Catholic trinitarian theology, the monotheistic deity, the divine transcendent ground of being (also known as God) is imagined as somehow three separate and distinct divine persons (also known as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). Thus, in terms of trinitarian theology, Rahner's title Spirit in the World refers to the Holy Spirit in the divine trinity.
But the Second Person of the divine trinity, Jesus Christ, is also known as not only the Son, but also the capitalized Word (meaning the Word of God). Thus, in trinitarian theology, Rahner's title Hearer of the Word refers to the Word of God, Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father.
In Rahner's title, the word "Hearer" hearkens back to the Hebrew Bible's injunction, "Hear, O, Israel" (Deuteronomy 6:4; also see Mark 12:29).
Earlier in Tallon's "Editor's Introduction," he also refers to Rahner's 1941 book as advancing "a total commitment of the whole person in full triune consciousness, including one's [1] affection, [2] cognition, and [3] volition, both head and heart" (p. xiii). Note Tallon's use of both head and heart here (also see his reference to "a union of head and heart" on p. xviii).
In addition, Tallon draws on the thought of the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) to help him explain Rahner's thought in his 1941 book. Lonergan's philosophical masterpiece is Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957), the 5th edition of which, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, was published as volume 3 of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (University of Toronto Press, 1992).
In it, Lonergan delineates what he refers to as the generalized empirical method (or way of proceeding) of human thought. The generalized empirical way of proceeding of human thought involves what Lonergan refers to as levels (or moments) of consciousness: (1) the empirical level (or moment) of consciousness involves sensory data, memory, and imagination; (2) the intelligent level (or moment) of consciousness involves concept formation; (3) the rational level (or moment) of consciousness involves critical judgment of the adequacy of concept formations; and (4) the existential level (or moment) of consciousness involves responsible decision making and action.
Now, Tallon says, "Rahner and Lonergan concur in finding the human spirit defined not by the limits of temporality and sense intuition, but by the dynamism of intentional consciousness ([Rahner's German word] Vorgriff) as we move through these levels [of consciousness articulated by Lonergan], from experience, through understanding, into critical judgment, and on finally to responsible decision and action, all against the background of affective consciousness experienced as feelings and the immediate attitudes and dispositions we call moods. They [Rahner and Lonergan] would also concur in allowing for a fifth level [or moment] of consciousness, where the action of the spirit (analogous to human love), bestowing the gifts (which are virtues, i.e., habits like faith, love, and hope) that can transform consciousness 'from the top down,' as it were, can be interpreted as bringing about a new recognition that the limits of consciousness may not even be set by human intentionality at all but by the free initiative of a God who chooses to speak a word in history and, in the process, empower (the obediential potency) us to hear it" (pp. xii-xiii). Tallon here has moved from philosophy to Christian theology.
Now, regarding Rahner's thought, Tallon also says that we have enough knowledge of relevant Continental European philosophers "to make a beginning in the direction of retrieving the core of Rahner's philosophy of religion: something/someone in the world speaks for something/someone beyond the world, where world, as the space-time continuum of sense intuition, is known as a world only when it is implicitly (at first) and explicitly (in philosophy) objectified in the movement (kinesis, Bewegung, Zielbewegung) of consciousness transcending the world toward we know not where (worauf: whither), toward being as horizon of triune consciousness [cognition, affection, volition]" (page xv).
In addition, Tallon says, "my body (i.e., embodiment as consciousness's first otherness) is a Vorgriff, a corporeal, connatural anticipation of another person. As emanation of spirit, sensibility makes consciousness present in space-time as [1] affection (Einfuhlung, Urempfindung), then as [2] cognition and [3] volition. Thus, Rahner uses Woraufbin (whither, whereunto) both for spirit's (intellect's) anticipation of its horizon (being, truth) and for sensibility's anticipation of its horizon (beings in space-time). To demystify Vorgriff is to show its root meaning in intentionality emphatically as embodied and thus we get beyond a purely cognitive reading of Vorgriff and recognize in HW [= Hearer of the Word] that Vorgriff opens the horizon of all being (whether or not we say [with Rousselot] that the human 'I am able to' toward being stems from a deeper capax Dei, so that the 'mystical' makes possible the 'ethical' (the other person) and the historical (philosophy of religion, the anticipated advent of God in space-time. Levinas wrote in 1930 of affective intentionality as the necessary anticipation and completion of Husserl's representational intentionality. We need to recognize as a necessary continuation of HW [= Hearer of the Word] an ethical apriori in the Vorgriff: the ethical human other; in my judgment, Rahner's anthropological turn means [with Levinas] that this ethical anticipation precedes and makes possible the revelation by the divine person in history" (p. xvi; I have added the three bracketed numerals and the two bracketed explanations of Tallon's abbreviation HW; all other bracketed material and all italics are Tallon's).
Nevertheless, even armed with Tallon's fine explication of Rahner's German term Vorgiff, I do not find it easy to read the German term in the text of the English translation of Rahner's book.
In his last note in his "Editor's Introduction" (p. xxi, n. 4), Tallon writes sentences about Karl Rahner (1904-1984) and the late Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984): "What sets the limit for consciousness is not our concepts, especially if the range of sense intuition is taken to be the measure of cognition, but our intentionality (another name for Vorgriff), our transcendence toward the horizon. Rahner and Lonergan fully agree: our questions (and our desires, hopes, loves), not our answers, define the reach of consciousness" (p. xxi, n. 4).
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