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C. God’s Self-communication to Humanity in Grace (FULL TEXT)
Each religious tradition is grounded not only in the general human experience of transcendence
and mystery but in a specific experience or revelation of this mystery, which gives rise to a
particular community with its own stories, traditions, and symbols. For Christianity, the
distinctive revelatory experience which grounds our faith as Christian believers is God’s
self-communication in grace through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
God’s self-communication in Jesus Christ reveals the character of the Holy Mystery as a mystery
of gracious and forgiving love.
What does Rahner mean by God’s self-communication? Because God is not an object in our
experience, but a Personal Subject, God’s self-communication is personal in character. God’s
self-communication is an encounter between a personal God and ourselves as persons (subjects,
not objects). God’s self-communication is a free act of God’s unconditional love towards us in
which God offers us the gift of his very Self. God is both the Giver and the Gift. God’s offer of
grace is an invitation to find our true fulfilment in freely responding to this offer of love.
What does Rahner mean by grace? The theological tradition has identified three aspects of the
mystery of grace:
1) God’s unconditional love and acceptance of us warts and all (justification)
Justification by grace through faith is central in St. Paul, St. Augustine, and in the sixteenth
century Reformers
2) God’s healing and transforming work within us (sanctification)
The grace of sanctification is central in the Catholic tradition with its emphasis on growth in
holiness
3) God’s gift of a share in the divine life (divinization)
Grace as participation in the divine life is central in the Eastern Orthodox tradition
Rahner’s theology incorporates all three aspects of grace in his theology, but his primary
emphasis is on grace as a share in God’s own life:
“God himself as the abiding and holy mystery, as the incomprehensible ground of humanity’s
transcendent existence is not only the God of infinite distance, but also wants to be the God of
absolute closeness in a true self-communication, and is present in this way in the spiritual depths
of our existence as well as in the concreteness of our history” (Foundations, 137)
For Rahner, grace and salvation are God’s own presence in unsurpassable nearness, the
fulfilment of the openness that is most characteristic of our human existence, an openness which
no created reality can satisfy.
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When a person truly opens him or herself to this transcendental experience of the holy mystery
they will begin to discover that this mystery is not some “infinitely distant horizon,” some
“remote judgment” on their lives, or something frightening, but “rather that this holy mystery is a
hidden closeness, a forgiving intimacy, our real home, that it is a love which shares itself,
something familiar which we can approach and turn to in the midst of our estrangement.”
(Foundations, 131)
If we surrender ourselves to this mystery, and “no longer want to understand ourselves in a
self-centered and self-sufficient way, we experience ourselves as forgiven, and we experience
this forgiveness as the hidden, forgiving and liberating love of God, who forgives in that he gives
himself, because only in this way can there really be forgiveness once and for all.” (Foundations,
131).
This mystery of “grace and its fulfillment, therefore, bids us keep ourselves radically open in
faith, hope and love for the ineffable, unimaginable and nameless absolute future of God which
is coming, and bids us never close ourselves before there is nothing more to close, because
nothing will be left outside of God, since we shall be wholly in God and he shall be wholly in
us.” (Foundations, 126)
“Whoever loses themselves completely finds themselves in the presence of infinite love.”
(Foundations, 125) (cf. Mark 8:35)
Rahner affirms that God’s will is the salvation of all. God “wills everyone to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Because God is love and wills to save all,
God has graciously embraced the whole of human history. God’s offer of grace is universal. It is
offered to the whole of humanity. Grace and salvation are present universally in history. The
history of the world is a history of grace. Christians cannot, therefore, limit the history of
salvation and revelation to the explicit history of salvation in the Hebrew scriptures and the New
Testament. The Hebrew scriptures are themselves aware of a covenant between God and the
whole human race. The history of grace, therefore, includes the history of the world’s religions.
For Christian faith this history of salvation and revelation takes place through the events of
Israel’s history, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy
Spirit. God’s self-communication in the person of Jesus Christ is a particular moment within the
universal history of salvation. From the perspective of Christian faith God’s self-communication
in grace reaches its climax and unsurpassable high point in the incarnation, when “the Word
became flesh” in Jesus “and dwelt among us full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
In his death, Jesus surrendered his life into the hands of the Holy Mystery, his Abba, in absolute
trust. In the resurrection Jesus’ humanity was taken up into the life of God and he now lives in
our hearts through the Holy Spirit in anticipation of our destiny to share in God’s eternal life.
When we respond in faith to God’s offer of grace and salvation through Jesus Christ we already
share in that life now in prayer, in worship, and in the sacramental life of the community of faith.
In baptism and eucharist we share in Christ’s death and resurrection and our lives are caught up
into the very life of the Trinity. The Trinity, for Rahner, is not a theological puzzle. It is a
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mystery of salvation, because through the incarnation, death, and resurrection God gives us even
now a share in the divine life through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit.
There is a magnificent passage in which Rahner interprets what it means to have a living faith in
the incarnation:
“The grace of God and the grace of Christ are everywhere as the secret essence of all that is open
to choice, so that it is difficult to grasp at anything without having to do with God and Jesus
Christ in one way or another. Anyone who accepts their own existence - that is, their humanity in mute patience (or rather in faith, hope, and love, whatever they may call these) as the mystery
that conceals within itself the mystery of eternal love and bears life in the bosom of death, says
Yes to something which corresponds to their limitless surrender to it, because God in fact has
filled it with the limitless, that is with his divine self, when the Word became flesh.
‘Though they may not know it, such a one says Yes to Jesus Christ. After all anyone who lets go
and jumps, falls into the abyss that is there, not only as far as they have plumbed it. To accept
and assume one’s human condition without reserve (and just who does so remains obscure) is to
accept the Son of Man, because in him God has accepted and assumed our humanity.
‘If Scripture declares that the one who loves their neighbour has fulfilled the law, this is the
ultimate truth for the reason that God himself has become this neighbour, so that whenever we
accept and love our neighbour we are at the same time accepting and loving that one Neighbour
who is nearest of all to us and farthest of all from us.” (Karl Rahner & Herbert Vorgrimler,
Concise Theological Dictionary, see “Jesus Christ”)
Because in the incarnation God has become our neighbour in Jesus Christ, the love of God and
the love of neighbour are inextricably united. “Whenever people open themselves up to their
neighbour in true personal freedom, they have already done more than merely loved this one
neighbour, since the act is borne by God’s grace. By loving one’s neighbour, one has already
loved God.” (The Mystical Way in Everyday Life, 80) “Whatever you have done to one of the
least of these, you have done to me.” (Matthew 25:40; cf. 1John 4:20) The heart of Christian
faith, therefore, and the heart of Christian spirituality, the fruit of the work of grace in us, is the
love of God and our neighbour.
“If we want to be messengers of God and of God’s love, then we might simply do this: love our
neighbour in life, in caring, in patience, in forgiveness, in helping. Then we will not only have
begun with authentic Christianity but we will have lived it from its essence and core; and then it
can unfold from there in us and become a witness to God’s love in Jesus Christ for us, so that
people will believe that God exists, since they have experienced his love in our neighbourly love
of God’s people.” (The Mystical Way, 85)
Father Rahner lived this out in his own life. While he was a prolific writer, the author of 4,000
written works, a profound theologian and spiritual writer, at the heart of his life and work was his
own love of God and neighbour. A student and friend of Rahner’s writes:
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“Father Rahner had an uncanny ability when it came to finding money, food, clothing, and
shelter for the needy and downtrodden who sought him out. He possessed the knack, too, of
shanghaiing others into assisting him with his practical works of charity. One of the things I
remember most vividly is how we two went grocery shopping in a large supermarket and drove
two hours to take the food to a widow and to find her a place to live. One of Rahner’s last public
acts after the celebration of his eightieth birthday was to appeal for funds to purchase a
motorcycle for a missionary in Africa.” (Karl Rahner: I Remember - An Autobiographical
Interview, 7)
BULLET POINTS

C. God’s Self-communication to Humanity in Grace
Each religious tradition is grounded not only in the general human experience of transcendence
and mystery but in a specific experience or revelation of this mystery
For Christianity, the distinctive revelatory experience which grounds our faith as Christian
believers is God’s self-communication in grace through the incarnation, death, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ
God’s self-communication in Jesus Christ reveals the character of the Holy Mystery as a
mystery of gracious and forgiving love.

What does Rahner mean by God’s self-communication?
Because God is not an object in our experience, but a Personal Subject, God’s
self-communication is personal in character
God’s self-communication is an encounter between a personal God and ourselves as persons
(subjects, not objects)
God’s self-communication is a free act of God’s unconditional love towards us in which God
offers us the gift of his very Self
God’s offer of grace is an invitation to find our true fulfilment in freely responding to this offer
of love.

What does Rahner mean by grace?
The theological tradition has identified three aspects of the mystery of grace:
1) God’s unconditional love and acceptance of us warts and all (justification)
Justification by grace through faith is central in St. Paul, St. Augustine, and in the sixteenth
century Reformers
4
2) God’s healing and transforming work within us (sanctification)
The grace of sanctification is central in the Catholic tradition with its emphasis on growth in
holiness
3) God’s gift of a share in the divine life (divinization)
Grace as participation in the divine life is central in the Eastern Orthodox tradition

Rahner’s theology incorporates all three aspects of grace in his theology, but his primary
emphasis is on grace as a share in God’s own life:
“God himself as the abiding and holy mystery, as the incomprehensible ground of humanity’s
transcendent existence is not only the God of infinite distance, but also wants to be the God of
absolute closeness in a true self-communication, and is present in this way in the spiritual depths
of our existence as well as in the concreteness of our history” (Foundations, 137)

Opening ourselves to the Holy Mystery: Losing ourselves in order to find ourselves
When a person truly opens him or herself to this transcendental experience of the holy mystery
they will begin to discover that this mystery is not some “infinitely distant horizon,” some
“remote judgment” on their lives, or something frightening, but “rather that this holy mystery is a
hidden closeness, a forgiving intimacy, our real home, that it is a love which shares itself,
something familiar which we can approach and turn to in the midst of our estrangement.”
(Foundations, 131)
If we surrender ourselves to this mystery, and “no longer want to understand ourselves in a
self-centered and self-sufficient way, we experience ourselves as forgiven, and we experience
this forgiveness as the hidden, forgiving and liberating love of God, who forgives in that he gives
himself, because only in this way can there really be forgiveness once and for all.” (Foundations,
131).
This mystery of “grace and its fulfillment, therefore, bids us keep ourselves radically open in
faith, hope and love for the ineffable, unimaginable and nameless absolute future of God which
is coming, and bids us never close ourselves before there is nothing more to close, because
nothing will be left outside of God, since we shall be wholly in God and he shall be wholly in
us.” (Foundations, 126)
“Whoever loses themselves completely finds themselves in the presence of infinite love.”
(Foundations, 125) (cf. Mark 8:35)

God’s offer of grace is universal
Rahner affirms that God’s will is the salvation of all. God “wills everyone to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4)
5
The history of the world is a history of grace
The history of grace, therefore, includes the history of the world’s religions.
For Christian faith this history of salvation and revelation takes place through the events of
Israel’s history, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit
God’s self-communication in the person of Jesus Christ is a particular moment within the
universal history of salvation
God’s self-communication in grace reaches its climax and unsurpassable high point in the
incarnation, when “the Word became flesh” in Jesus “and dwelt among us full of grace and
truth.” (John 1:14)

The meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection
In his death, Jesus surrendered his life into the hands of the Holy Mystery, his Abba, in absolute
trust
In the resurrection Jesus’ humanity was taken up into the life of God and he now lives in our
hearts through the Holy Spirit in anticipation of our destiny to share in God’s eternal life.

Our participation in God’s life
When we respond in faith to God’s offer of grace and salvation through Jesus Christ we share in
Christ’s death and resurrection and our lives are caught up into the very life of the Trinity
The Trinity is a mystery of salvation, because through the incarnation, death, and resurrection
God gives us even now a share in the divine life through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, in
the Holy Spirit.

The Meaning of the Incarnation: God has become our neighbour in Jesus Christ
In a magnificent passage, Rahner interprets what it means to have a living faith in the
incarnation:
“The grace of God and the grace of Christ are everywhere as the secret essence of all that is open
to choice, so that it is difficult to grasp at anything without having to do with God and Jesus
Christ in one way or another. Anyone who accepts their own existence - that is, their humanity in mute patience (or rather in faith, hope, and love, whatever they may call these) as the mystery
that conceals within itself the mystery of eternal love and bears life in the bosom of death, says
Yes to something which corresponds to their limitless surrender to it, because God in fact has
filled it with the limitless, that is with his divine self, when the Word became flesh.
6
‘Though they may not know it, such a one says Yes to Jesus Christ. After all anyone who lets go
and jumps, falls into the abyss that is there, not only as far as they have plumbed it. To accept
and assume one’s human condition without reserve (and just who does so remains obscure) is to
accept the Son of Man, because in him God has accepted and assumed our humanity.
‘If Scripture declares that the one who loves their neighbour has fulfilled the law, this is the
ultimate truth for the reason that God himself has become this neighbour, so that whenever we
accept and love our neighbour we are at the same time accepting and loving that one Neighbour
who is nearest of all to us and farthest of all from us.” (Karl Rahner & Herbert Vorgrimler,
Concise Theological Dictionary, see “Jesus Christ”)

The Unity of the love of God and the love of neighbour
Because in the incarnation God has become our neighbour in Jesus Christ, the love of God and
the love of neighbour are inextricably united:
“Whenever people open themselves up to their neighbour in true personal freedom, they have
already done more than merely loved this one neighbour, since the act is borne by God’s grace.
By loving one’s neighbour, one has already loved God.” (The Mystical Way in Everyday Life,
80) “Whatever you have done to one of the least of these, you have done to me.” (Matthew
25:40; cf. 1 John 4:20)

The fruit of the work of grace in us, is the love of God and our neighbour:
“If we want to be messengers of God and of God’s love, then we might simply do this: love our
neighbour in life, in caring, in patience, in forgiveness, in helping. Then we will not only have
begun with authentic Christianity but we will have lived it from its essence and core; and then it
can unfold from there in us and become a witness to God’s love in Jesus Christ for us, so that
people will believe that God exists, since they have experienced his love in our neighbourly love
of God’s people.” (The Mystical Way, 85)

Father Rahner lived this out in his own life
A student and friend of Rahner’s writes:
“Father Rahner had an uncanny ability when it came to finding money, food, clothing, and
shelter for the needy and downtrodden who sought him out. He possessed the knack, too, of
shanghaiing others into assisting him with his practical works of charity. One of the things I
remember most vividly is how we two went grocery shopping in a large supermarket and drove
two hours to take the food to a widow and to find her a place to live. One of Rahner’s last public
acts after the celebration of his eightieth birthday was to appeal for funds to purchase a
motorcycle for a missionary in Africa.” (Karl Rahner: I Remember - An Autobiographical
Interview, 7)
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Suggested Reading
Annemarie S. Kidder, ed. The Mystical Way in Everyday Life. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
2010.
This is a collection of readings from Karl Rahner’s spiritual writings. Recommended as the best
followup book for this course. Food for spiritual growth.
Karl Rahner. Foundations of Christian Faith. NY: Crossroad, 1978.
A one volume introduction to Rahner’s theology by Rahner himself. Recommended only for
those with a philosophical bent. Not an easy read.
Leo J. O’Donovan, ed. A world of Grace. Washington, D.C., Georgetown University Press,
1995.
The most useful and accessible introduction to Rahner’s theology. This book is a summary and
commentary on Foundations with a good bibliography and a glossary of technical theological
terms.
The Rahner enthusiast can find many more resources on the Rahner Society website:
www.krs.stjohnsem.edu
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