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| Veress Loránd |
| The Beautiful Aspect of Death - Karl Rahner's Theology of Death |
| Keywords: death, Rahner Karl, theology of death, original sin. |
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In my study I tried to present systematically Rahner's writings discussing death. Meanwhile, however, the investigation of the context in which Rahner formulated his ideas seemed necessary. Without being familiar with this, his theology of death would seem natural here and there, while in other places we would leave unnoticed exactly those subtle differentiations which should require the greatest attention. The widest circle of this context consists of the philosophical concepts. The "offer" is quite rich, as almost each theory has its supporters. As it would have led me to far from my original object, I did not deal with the cause of this plurality; I rather focused on the positive and negative aspects of the philosophical interpretations of death, resorting to a simplifying categorization. On the following pages I discussed the death theology of the Old Testament, where the presentation of the relationship between the belief in God and the other-world existence is noteworthy. The man of the Old Testament did not loose his faith when confronted with death, namely in a situation when death was regarded the absolute end. This fact is an effective argument against the theories which explain religion as a projection. Since the greatest part of Rahner's ideas regarding the theology of death originate from his statements made from the official position of a teacher, I also surveyed these manifestations. Several statements comment on death, but all of them discuss only its passive aspect. In contrast with this the Scripture is familiar with the active side of death (death as self-surrender) as well. We must not divide the two aspects (active and passive) of death, therefore in addition to the official teaching statements we must also discuss death as the act of human freedom. Having outlined the context - without the intention of being exhaustive -, I presented Rahner's own observations, thoughts. I tried to open up his hypotheses for the Hungarian readers (as far as I know no detailed study has been elaborated on this subject so far); for example his view on the post-mortem relationship of body and soul. After the theoretical clean-up - following Rahner's order of ideas - I passed on to the Christian man's death. I was particularly anxious to make clear: the fulfilling, Christian death differs from the possibility of the final fall in the fact that man becomes aware of his finitude and in this way he also realizes that he can really own himself only if he surrenders himself completely to God. This self-surrender - realized perfectly by Christ - is the only possibility for taking possession of himself entirely. | |
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