Abstract
Like experienced guides in a vast terrain, Joseph Wong and Harvey Egan chart pathways for exploring Karl Rahner’s Christology and mystical theology. One could not ask for better pathfinders in English. W.’s excellent book, Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner, continues to be a landmark study. E. has long been one of the most recognized interpreters and expositors of Rahner, who directed E.’s dissertation on the mystical horizon of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. The present book divides neatly into two halves. W. treats Christology first, and E. explores mystical theology next.
Given Rahner’s prolific work on Christology, W. helps readers get their bearings by selectively identifying landmarks, patterns, and case studies of Rahner’s “Christology at work.” He begins by highlighting the “ascending,” “descending,” and “searching” Christological models in order to define and situate them with respect to Rahner’s transcendental anthropology (chapter 1). He then unpacks how Rahner understands divinity, humanity, and salvation to explain the statement: “the Word became flesh to save us” (chapter 2). W.’s following three chapters describe Rahner’s influential treatments of Jesus’ self-consciousness, the salvific efficacy of the cross, and the resurrection. To close, W. examines how Christology underpins Rahner’s theory of the “anonymous Christian,” comparing this with other ecumenical approaches (chapter 6). Though the conversation partners are dated (especially in chapter 6), W. provides a useful lay of the land for Rahner’s Christological approaches.
E.’s contribution is different—more akin to tracing and situating a constellation—because he must give a coherent shape to Rahner’s occasional and scattered remarks on mysticism. E. begins by tracking the different registers in which Rahner treats mysticism; he emphasizes especially the connection between an ordinary Christian’s experience of grace and the heights of mystical contemplation (chapter 7). E. then explains how and why the shape of the mystic’s “experience of God” is best seen and situated in ordinary life through joy and especially “contrast experiences” (chapter 8, especially 148–150). He highlights the influence of Ignatius on central themes in the German Jesuit’s theology (chapter 10) before concluding with a reflection on how Rahner understands Christ’s centrality for the experience of grace (chapter 11). Overall, E. provides one of the more extensive treatments of Rahner and mysticism in English, and anyone interested would benefit from beginning here.
The book succeeds as an orienting introduction, but two areas suggest room for improvement. First, the book’s two halves are more nearly juxtaposed than mutually interrelated. This may be because E.’s contributions, excepting his introduction, are composed of earlier published pieces. Chapter 7 is lightly revised from a 2013 article in The Way, while chapters 8, 10, and 11 substantially overlap with chapters 3, 2, and 6, respectively, of E.’s excellent 1998 book, Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life. This also means that W. and E. do not explore new connections together between Rahner’s Christology and mysticism. (This would surely involve a missing third topic: The Church as the Mystical Body of Christ.) The lack of a synthetic conclusion further reinforces the impression that these are two independent texts joined under one cover.
Second, more attention to Rahner’s neo-Scholastic context would be desirable, particularly regarding his mystical theology. E. capably explains the important debate between Poulain and Saudreau on the place of mystical experience in ordinary Christians’ faith life (126–27). However, Rahner assumes that his reader is extensively familiar with the broader nexus of controversies regarding mysticism’s relation to psychology, its status vis-à-vis beatitude and angelic knowledge, its place in an itinerary of growth in prayer, and more. (Here, Joseph Maréchal’s work on mystical rapture forms an important though frequently overlooked antithesis to Rahner’s insights.) Without this context, it is very difficult to understand the full significance of Rahner’s previously untranslated 1973 letter to Klaus Fischer (commendably included with Daniel Donovan’s translation: 5–11, 163–68). These earlier debates also raise questions—particularly concerning mysticism’s ecclesial significance for Rahner—that are sometimes overshadowed by scholarly focus on the anonymous character of “everyday mysticism.”
Overall, W. and E. provide a helpful topography for those unfamiliar with Rahner’s writings on Christology and mysticism. Their book would be especially useful for graduate courses in systematic theology with a substantial focus on Rahner or for those puzzling out Rahner’s understanding of mysticism. In the end, the book’s title not only identifies the content but suggests an open question: what does Christology have to do with mystical theology for Rahner? Though W. and E. may not provide new answers from their dialogue, their trustworthy map provides an overview of the terrain and invites readers to engage the question for themselves.