Karl Rahner: Divinization in Roman Catholicism
by Francis J. Caponi, OSA
by Mykhailo Ozorovych
Francis J. Caponi
• 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.
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 selfcommunication 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-communication
2. Supernatural existential
3. “quasi-formal” causality
Definition 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.
Grace
Grace – 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 selfcommunication 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 selfcommunication, 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.
•
•
1.
2.
3.
The virtues are the living dynamism of justification and the
concrete shape of sanctifying grace. p. 271
Three observations in connection with this perspective:
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.
These theological virtues are supernatural capacities
bestowed in justification.
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.