Karl Rahner and the Theology of Human Origins

The Thomist 66 (2002): 499-517 KARL RAHNER AND THE THEOLOGY OF HUMAN ORIGINS KEvIN A. MCMAHON St. Anselm College Manchester, New Hampshire 0 NE OF THE MOST STRIKING developments in Karl Rahner's thought concerns the issue of original sin, a topic he came back to repeatedly over his long career. After having for many years defended the traditional view that all humanity is descended from a single couple, into the grip of whose sin we are born (monogenism), Rahner, it seemed, quite suddenly adopted the opposing idea that both our biological history and the history of sin must be traced back to a primordial community (polygenism ). When he addressed the matter in 1954, writing in the wake of Humani Generis, the question for Rahner was not whether monogenism was true but how certain one may be of its truth. He concluded that although it had never been the subject, either expressly or implicitly, of an infallible pronouncement by the magisterium, still, given its close connection with the doctrine of original sin, it "must be affirmed with inner (but not in itself irreformable) assent."1 Thirteen years later, Rahner denied that the doctrine of original sin even favored monogenism. There is "no reason," he wrote, "for the magisterium to intervene" against polygenism, for if anything, it is polygenism that marks the 1 Karl Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," Theological Investigations, vol. 1 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961; New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), 234. Rahner observed that the argument in Humani generis considers monogenism to be "logically presupposed by the dogma of original sin" (236), but without appealing to either scriptural texts or statements of the magisterium to declare its certainty. Rahner saw this reserve as an indication that the letter did not intend absolutely to exclude the viability of polygenism. 499 500 KEVIN A. MCMAHON superior approach, resting as it does on the insight of both theology and science that the individual must be understood in terms of the larger group.2 The course of Rahner's change in thought reflected that of many theologians, and educated laity too, during this period, with the conviction coming to be widely held that the Church's position, stubbornly monogenist, is simply untenable.3 Yet this article will suggest that there are elements even in Rahner's later work, consistent and systematic as he was in its construction, that support the monogenist position. I "The remarkable aspect," George Vandervelde writes, "of this change of position on the question of origins is that, theologically, very little changes"4-meaningthat very little changedin Rahner's understanding of original sin. Certainly at first glance this seems to have been so. As seriously as Rahner took the teaching that there was a personal sin committed at the beginning of human history, by which, in the words of Trent, we were "changed for the worse in body and soul,"5 there were many points on which Rahner differed from the tradition. He seems from early on, for example, to have regarded human suffering and moral concupiscence as "natural" to our condition.6 It is not the fact of 2 Karl Rabner, "Evolution and Original Sin," Consilium, vol. 26, ed. Johannes Metz (New York: Paulist Press, 1967), 73. See also Rahner's "Exkurs: Erbsiinde und Monogenismus," in Karl-Heinz Weger, Theologie der Erbsiinde (Freiburg: Herder, 1970), 196-99. 3 Jerry D. Korsmeyer writes on behalf of those anxious for a revision of this and other aspects of the teaching on original sin in Evolution and Eden: Balancing Original Sin and Contemporary Science (New York: Paulist Press, 1998). 4 George Vandervelde, OriginalSin: Two MajorTrends in Contemporary Roman Catholic Reinterpretation (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1975; Washington, D.C.: University Press ofAmerica, 1981), 235. 5 "[f]otumque Adam per illam praevaricationis offensam secundum corpus et animam in deterius commutatum fuisse," Deer. de peccato orig. 1(DS1511), quoting from the Second Council of Orange, can. 1 (DS 371). 6 Trent (Deer. de peccato orig. 5) had spoken of concupiscence as an inclination to sin, arising with the first transgression, which remains even after baptism ("Manere autem in baptizatis concupiscentiam vel fomitem" [DS 1515]). Rahner, in "The Theological Concept RAHNER AND THE THEOLOGY OF HUMAN...