This book is undoubtedly a major contribution to Rahnerian scholarship. Its nine chapters run round Rahner's writings on various fundamental aspects of theology: philosophical theology, the relationship of nature and grace, symbolism, history and revelation, Trinity and Christology, ecclesiology and doctrinal development. Indeed, Fr. Burke's book would make an excellent general introduction to Rahner, but what is of more interest is his thesis. For Fr. Burke believes that the key to Rahner's thought is his account of human knowing. For Rahner, there is a basic ‘structure’, a Schwebe, a dynamic oscillation embedded in human cognitional operations by which the mind is conceptually capable of grasping the sensible singular because it is simultaneously relating it to the horizon of Being. Man for Rahner is a being in the world who is always beyond it, and this is why human knowing ever oscillates between the particular and the universal.
The book, therefore, sets out to study how Rahner portrays this oscillation, which appears in his writings as a ‘dialectical analogy’. This, Fr. Burke explains, is Rahner's tendency at one moment to distinguish but then at another to unify. Interestingly, so the argument goes, Rahner's earlier writings laid more emphasis on distinguishing than his later writings, which emphasized unifying, although this switch of emphasis occasionally oscillates itself, working the other way round. The clearest example of the oscillation can be found in the difference between the early philosophical works Hearer of the Word(1941) and Spirit in the World(1957) and the later Foundations of Christian Faith(1976), although many of Rahner's theological books and essays evince it too. Where the early Rahner conceptually distinguished grace and nature, spirit and matter, the temporal and the eternal, the divine and the human, the dynamic unifying side of Rahner's later thought sought to synthesize these antinomies into nuanced unities. Thus, if his earlier writings on salvation-history distinguished the inner word of God's grace from the outer categorial word of revelation in Jesus Christ, his later writings emphasized the unity of all history as revelatory: the one ‘Word’ spoken by God to his spiritual-physical creation.
Another example Fr. Burke proposes is the shift of emphasis in Rahner's theology of grace. In his earlier writings, in line with the conceptualizing side of his thought, he distinguished grace and nature, seeing divine revelation as coming to man's elevated subjectivity ‘from without’. However, from the early 1960s onwards, in line with the dynamic, unifying side of his thought, Rahner stressed much more the existential unity of grace and nature: how the inwardly given grace – and this is a ‘real novelty in Catholic theology’(p. 47)– was itself revelation, so much so that categorial revelation becomes little more than ‘a posterior explicitation of what man always and originally is, the clearest expression of grace and the final cause to which all grace tends’. Yet the dialectical analogy can also work the other way round, in relation to Rahner's earlier writings. For instance, his early Christology emphasized the real unity of humanity and divinity in Christ, taking a ‘from above down’ approach in line with the dynamic unifying side of his thought, whereas his later thought, grappling with the historical criticism of 1960s and 1970s, emphasized the real humanity of Jesus in relation to God, a ‘from below up’ approach more in line with his conceptualizing, distinguishing side.
This dialectic, Fr. Burke argues, is basic to Rahner's understanding of reality. It was how he united into a complex and nuanced synthesis the traditional antinomies and distinctions of Christian thought and how his theology achieved balance and flexibility, an approach that was dynamic yet sound. On the other hand, in the view of the author, this oscillation masks a real tension, nay, a fragility that suggests the synthesis might easily be shattered. To demonstrate this, at the end of each Chapter – Burke does this brilliantly yet sympathetically – probing questions are ventilated as to whether or not Rahner has managed to maintain his balance. Thus in the Chapter on nature and grace: if humans already and always have an experience of grace, and if, in accord with Rahner's later identification of ‘prior’ grace with revelation, that grace is salvific, then why do they also need the Gospel proclaimed by the Church – save merely to label that which they are already experiencing?
This book is an impressive work of scholarship. It evinces a clear mastery of Rahner's writings. Some of the chapters, as one would expect from the topics under consideration, are harder to follow than others, and the last Chapter, over 70 pages long, summarizing and repeating many of the previous points in the light of Rahner's later thought, might have been condensed. Whilst Fr. Burke evidently tackles the implications of Rahner's highly problematic epistemology for his theology, it could be argued that some of his previous publications presented the cognitional problems more sharply and succinctly. If only Rahner and Lonergan had engaged in discussion! Yet on the other hand, whilst it is true that not all Rahnerian scholars will assent to the book's principal thesis — indeed, a growing number contest the interrelationship of Rahner's philosophy and theology — Fr. Burke does write with a genuine appreciation for Rahner's magnificent achievement, even if he leaves the reader in little doubt of the difficulties.
