
Freedom Made Manifest
Rahner's Fundamental Option and Theological Aesthetics
Peter Joseph Fritz(Author)
The Catholic University of America Press
Will be published approx. on 31. January 2019
Book
Hardback
277 pages
978-0-8132-3119-8 (ISBN)
Description
Karl Rahner's seemingly inscrutable theology of freedom can be summarized simply: human freedom makes manifest (or fails to make manifest) God's eternal decision to create, to save creation, and thereby to share Godself. Freedom is something real, a substantive freedom for: for saying ""yes"" to God's merciful self-giving. This freedom most often comes to light not in extraordinary triumphs of spirit, but amid small acts whereby common sinners and downtrodden people travel a pilgrim journey, gradually finding ways to form and to express a life that reflects -however dimly? God's refulgent light.
Freedom Made Manifest explicates Rahner's theology of freedom by elucidating its configuration and sources. Much of its inquiry centers on the fundamental option: each human person's eternal decision made, paradoxically, in time, as a definitive answer to God's personally-tailored call to salvation. This idea stems from three principal sources: Catholic conversations with transcendental-idealist philosophy, penitential theology and practice, and Ignatian spirituality. Rahner's unique redeployment of these sources inflects the fundamental option with theologies of concupiscence, mercy and forgiveness (especially as ecclesially mediated), and devotion to Jesus Christ. Awareness of these inflections can show how Rahner's theology of freedom may assist in theological reflection on freedom's susceptibility to injury and trauma.
To these clarifications the author adds a major emendation, arguing that Rahner's theology of freedom is most adequately interpreted as a theological aesthetic of freedom, attentive to freedom's depth dimension in the heart of each person, through which and out of which God's free decision to self-reveal is expressed or concealed. Following upon Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics (CUA Press, 2014), which introduced Rahner's ""Catholic sublime,"" and anticipating a volume on ""world,"" this volume contributes to theological-aesthetic thinking not at the stratospheric level of being's transcendentals, but within the sensed (aesthetic) friction of everyday existence.
Freedom Made Manifest explicates Rahner's theology of freedom by elucidating its configuration and sources. Much of its inquiry centers on the fundamental option: each human person's eternal decision made, paradoxically, in time, as a definitive answer to God's personally-tailored call to salvation. This idea stems from three principal sources: Catholic conversations with transcendental-idealist philosophy, penitential theology and practice, and Ignatian spirituality. Rahner's unique redeployment of these sources inflects the fundamental option with theologies of concupiscence, mercy and forgiveness (especially as ecclesially mediated), and devotion to Jesus Christ. Awareness of these inflections can show how Rahner's theology of freedom may assist in theological reflection on freedom's susceptibility to injury and trauma.
To these clarifications the author adds a major emendation, arguing that Rahner's theology of freedom is most adequately interpreted as a theological aesthetic of freedom, attentive to freedom's depth dimension in the heart of each person, through which and out of which God's free decision to self-reveal is expressed or concealed. Following upon Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics (CUA Press, 2014), which introduced Rahner's ""Catholic sublime,"" and anticipating a volume on ""world,"" this volume contributes to theological-aesthetic thinking not at the stratospheric level of being's transcendentals, but within the sensed (aesthetic) friction of everyday existence.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Washington
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
635 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8132-3119-8 (9780813231198)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Peter Joseph Fritz is associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross and author of Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics (CUA Press).