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

In light of the implications of Rahner’s view, all would-be proclaimers of the word maywell cry out, with St Paul, ‘who is equal to such a task?’ 63 . Rahner’s own feelings ofvulnerability in relation to the ministry of preaching, in juxtaposition with his highconviction of its sacramental efficacy, are palpable in these words:Receive us [priests/preachers] as the ambassadors of Christ. Exert your heart andmind by God’s grace to hear God’s word in these human words of ours, ourstruggling, lamentable words that often seem to have paled—the holy, blessed,mighty word that brings us God himself and his everlasting life. If you accept uson these terms with brotherly understanding and forbearance, always gazingthrough us at the Lord who sent us, then dear brothers and sisters, our word willbring into your lives the consolation, the strength, the eternal life that is offered toyou in God’s word. And this word entrusted to the priest by holy mission can bespoken into the concrete situation of an individual human life with an ultimateauthority, an ultimate power, an ultimate relevance, such that, in accordance withGod’s promise, what he has done for…[people] now becomes present in that lifein ultimate truth, deed, and power. Then this word is called the sacramental64word .The primacy of scripture in the theological processFor Rahner, the proclamation of scripture has primacy in the theological process because‘theology is a derivative of the primary reality of the kerygma itself’—a ‘scientificreflection’ on the experience of the word 65 . Rahner’s theology of the word should be readas his careful, deliberate reflection on his lived experience of the scripture and hisobservation and interpretation of the lived experience of the church, and not as theoriginal source of his views about scripture. Rahner also celebrates the movement back toa creative and charismatic exploration of biblical/exegetical sources—as opposed to amere cerebral propagation of a fixed, received tradition 66 —in modern theology, andregards dogmatic theology’s attentive listening posture in its relationship to the scripturesas ‘the most direct and ultimate source of Christian revelation 67 .63 2 Corinthians 2: 16b.64 Prayers and meditations, Griffiths, J. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 29.65 Egan, Karl Rahner – the mystic of everyday life, 105; Ackley, The church of the word, 49-50.66 Karl Rahner in Dialogue, 354.67 K. Rahner, Prayers and Meditations, 89.144