KARL RAHNER AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY Jon Sobrino
D
URING THE 1970s, A NEW CHURCH AND A NEW THEOLOGY arose in
Latin America. This article is a personal reflection on what Karl Rahner has meant for me in that context, though I hope that what I say will apply to liberation theology more broadly. I write out of the life-experience in El Salvador that has led me to read with new eyes the theology I had previously studied, in which Rahner’s work was a very important element. I am also writing out of my close personal and intellectual relationship with Ignacio Ellacuría, Rahner’s student in Innsbruck between 1958 and 1962. On account of his defence of faith and justice, Ellacuría, as many will know, was murdered on 16 November 1989, along with five other Jesuits and two female workers from the university in which he taught. But we should remember that Ellacuría was not just Rahner’s pupil. He took forward important ideas in Rahner’s theology, as he sought to express them in his own historical situation and in a way appropriate for the world of the poor. This article begins with an account of Rahner’s attitude towards the new things that were happening ecclesially and theologically in Latin America during the last years of his life. Then I shall try to explore Rahner’s influence on liberation theology. The Demands of a New Situation In an interview he gave to a Spanish magazine shortly before his death, Rahner was asked what he thought about the current state of the Church. Rahner replied in terms that have proved themselves only too true: ‘in general, we are living through a “wintry season”’.1 People still
1 Faith in a Wintry Season: Conversations and Interviews with Karl Rahner in the Last Years of his Life, edited by Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons, translation edited by Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 39. As the interview was originally published in Spanish, we follow the Spanish version here.
The Way, 43/4 (October 2004), 53-66