Karl Rahner and Philosophical Pragmatism. The Christian Faith Between Historical Genesis and Universal Validity

Abstract

The roots of many heated debates within the church lie in differing views on what opportunities of development the Christian faith has. In this article, I combine Karl Rahner’s reflections on the development of faith with considerations of philosophical pragmatism in order to show how such a theory of development can be formulated. Criticizing both relativism (according to which the present form of faith is entirely contingent) and rationalism (according to which a certain form of faith already contains the truth of God himself), I defend the view that human expressions of divine truth can claim universal validity, but must always be open for change and reform due to their concrete linguistic formulation. The linguistic environment of any human utterance about God makes it clear that it is always a dynamic and performative speech that can and must change.