Introductory notes for readers of this thesis - Theses - Flinders ...

ationalism and is in fact at the centre of human being. In a section from Happinessthrough prayer, Rahner actually picks up a concept from the human sciences to explainwhat theology can facilitate when humans are willing to engage on the journey into thiscentre. Having waxed eloquent about the potentiality for the unifying and liberatingpossibility of the ‘upward/downward’ glance of the soul in prayer (discussed in the earliercommentary on the ‘supernatural existential’), Rahner addresses an anticipated audienceof ‘enlightened’ critics.To many, all this may seem the poetic weavings of mere wishful thinking, sincewe are not really aware (consciously) that we have such a treasure within us. Thisobjection, however, is based on an outmoded idea; for the surface mind, thinkingonly in terms of materialistic being—that is to say, admitting the existence ofconsciousness alone—is an anachronism surviving from the ‘enlightenment’ ofthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today, we know that the mind of…(aperson) is not consciousness alone, and that below the level of consciousness areinfinite possibilities, unfathomed depths, unmeasured horizons 141 .Rahner observes that modern psychiatry has penetrated the depths of this unconsciousworld of the human psyche but in so doing has conveyed the impression that the deepwells of human existence are full of darkness, bitterness and horrors. What is needed—and Christianity can provide—are the ‘eyes of faith’ that will help individuals to enterinto their own depths and find there are nopools of stagnant bitterness, but the waters of infinity springing up into eternallife. It is easy to stir up the slime; but it needs faith to see, behind and through allthese dark forces, a much more powerful force—the power and presence of theHoly Ghost…we cannot truly know ourselves except through this realisation thatour whole nature is in the image of God’s immensity 142 .Rahner argues that the human science of psychiatric medicine and therapy simply‘discovers’ what has existed long before: an unthematic, unconscious experience ofinfinity that profoundly influences the whole of human existence. To such an existentialview, Christianity testifies and uniquely provides the means to find the unifyingconnection to an inner psyche that results in the sweetness of life—rather than anencounter with terror from which most people would rather run away or hide. Therefore,in the true meaning of the word, happiness is experienced through prayer: the medium141 Rahner, Happiness through prayer, 26-27.142 Ibid, 27-28.121