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BOOK REVIEWS Wagnis Theologie: Erfahrungen mit der Theologie Karl Rahner. By HERBERT VoRGRIMLER, editor. Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder, 1979. Pp. 624. 69 D.M. The criterion for contributions to this Festschrift for Karl Rahner's seventy-fifth birthday is unusual. Only those who were doctoral students (43), habilitation candidates (2) or academic assistants (insofar as their addresses were known) of Karl Rahner were invited to submit contributions . The principle of this selectivity was to provide readers in general with accounts of " the experiences which others have had with your [Rahner 's] theology" (p. 12), as the editor, Herbert Vorgrimler, explains in the introduction which is in the form of a letter to Rahner. Among the contributors are two Americans (Leo O'Donovan and Harvey Egan), three women, and other theologians from Spain, Italy, Africa, Poland, South America and India. Clearly, the Rahner connection is not limited to central Europe. A difference in" feel" for Rahner's teaching is discernible between those whose experiences of theology began with Rahner and those whose did not. The contributors are divided into five groups: 1. Theology from the experience of God for Christian praxis; 2. Thinking the Mystery; 3. Concerning the theological dignity of man; 4. In the service of the Church's tradition and praxis; 5. For an open and liberating Church. It is customary in reviews of Festschriften to note the unevenness of the contributions. Such is certainly the case here. Some are anecdotal, some are scholarly and some are phthisic on all counts. This third category will be mercifully uncommented . Generally the first group (nine chapters) is the least satisfactory, probably because these authors are concerned with what Rahner himself has done most originally and best-theologize out of personal and ecclesial (tradition-al) religious experience. Theology is the conceptual, propositional unveiling (a-letheia) of the ontological relationship/experience of God by human subjects. In this section Fraling and Scannone, on the existential dimensions of the Spiritual Exercises, are the most interesting. Egan's article is also good, but the ideas are basically available elsewhere (for example, the Marquette University Rahner Festschrift edited by William Kelly, Theology and Discovery, 1980, pp. 139-158). From the second section Cabada-Castro on the philosophical idea of God is good. Also good is Puntel, although much too brief, on the transcendentalcategorical distinction in Rahner, well defended as necessarily present in all 146 BOOK REVIIilWS 147 philosophy and theology, whether known by this or any other name. Di.implemann explains energetically that the precise philosophical background of Rahner's thought is neither Kant's (" transcendental ") approach nor Husserl 's, but Heidegger's "phenomenological " approach, which is itself, however , transformed and given a new identity by Rabner. Of all the contributions Mayr's "Vermutungen zu Karl Rahner's Sprachstil" is the most delightful, in spite of the gratuitous, as snotty as it is superficial, remark about " Keep smiling" Americans. Mayr's article is both defense and celebration of Rahner's style and language. It is a welcome counter claim to those constant complaints about Rahner's style-all the more strange in an age which still rejoices in Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message." Mayr's defense is not only of the linguistic style in a narrower sense, but also of the thinking style-indeed, of the whole style of presentation typical of Rahner's spoken as well as written word. Thus, he well notes the humor present throughout Rahner's presentations, even the most abstract and speculative. For such reasons is Mayr's article not only valuable , but fun. Its greatest importance, however, is its contention that Rahner's language and thought have been the vanguard in de-Latinizing and enabling truly domestic (read " local Church ") theology within the Roman Catholic tradition (for English speaking countries he notes that Bernard Lonergan has attempted something similar). He also notes an incipient recognition that Rahner may also be included among the process theologians because of his " doing process theology " (p. 158, referring to S. A. Matczak, ed. God in Contemporary Thought, 1977). I am reluctant about this, not because it is simply untrue, but because, given the defacto history and status of process thought in...

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