| The dissertation underscores the critical importance of a continued appeal to the fundamental theology of Karl Rahner in a postmodern context. Specifically, it offers a defense of Rahner's fundamental theology in light of the critique leveled by Francis Schussler Fiorenza. Fiorenza, who roots his own fundamental theology in a self-consciously nonfoundationalist stance, argues that Rahner's method fails to be appropriately hermeneutical. The dissertation demonstrates that precisely because Rahner always begins with historical experience, his fundamental theology is hermeneutical: it is a "transcendental hermeneutics" Rahner's epistemologically nonfoundationalist "transcendental hermeneutics" both grounds the normative claims of Christian faith and meets the exigencies of postmodernity as exemplified by Fiorenza. |
