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

approach; he is not arguing against empirical and material anthropologies or dismissingmodern views of the nature of human existence using an anti-intellectual appeal to asuperior ‘special revelation’. While Rahner acknowledges the right of various scientificanthropologies to define and describe humanity in terms of the empirical realities of thisworld (history, culture, genetics), he also proposes that an observable feature of humanexistence is ‘the fact that…[humanity] raises analytical questions about…[itself] andopens…[itself] to the unlimited horizons of such questioning’. This observation leadsRahner to conclude that humanity has already transcended ‘every conceivable element ofsuch an analysis or of…empirical reconstruction’ 21 . In simple terms, the nature of humanbeings as analytical questioners of their existence points towards a spiritual nature andorientation that exists at a level outside of the scope and methodology of the empiricalprocess.According to Rahner, a person who engages in this natural, observable process of selfanalyticalquestioning is acting as a spiritual being in accepting and embracing the‘inescapable situation of self responsibility’ 22 ; they are choosing to face rather than denyor repress the mystery of their existence. This spirituality is the Vorgriff, ‘an a priori 23“power” given within human nature[,]…the dynamism of the spirit as it strives towardsthe absolute range of all possible objects’ 24 . People may or may not be conscious of thefact that they are expressing or repressing their natural spirituality. When discernedthrough philosophical reflection, this process may be sensitively addressed in Christianproclamation. Therefore, everyday human existence can legitimately be recognised as aneveryday spirituality, the inescapable human condition, which isunceasingly for the absolute, in openness towards God. And this opennesstowards God is not something which may happen or not happen…once in21 Ibid, 29.22 K Rahner, The content of the faith, 228.23 A philosophical term that for Rahner distinguishes aspects of the human make-up that are a general,universal property of all human persons rather than the result of the social/spiritual/intellectualdevelopment of a particular individual through life.24 K Rahner, ‘Man as spirit’ (from Hearers of the word, chapter 5) in A Rahner reader, McCool, G. ed.(New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 16.84