| Karl Rahner's two early philosophical works, Spirit in the World and Hearers of the Word, are interpreted as conjointly proposing a science of loving freedom. Within a science of loving freedom, the very nature of reality is to be holy mystery. The science of loving freedom employs claims about (1) the precise relation between being, knowing, and willing as well as (2) the origination of the finite from the infinite. The argument on behalf of a science of loving freedom is analyzed as proceeding in two interconnected steps. The first step, a dialectical metaphysics of knowledge elaborated in Spirit in the World, employs a 'logic of indifference' within which being and knowing are identified. This step is viewed as containing a crucial limitation, viz., the metaphysics of knowledge is incapable of definitively establishing itself from within its own resources. This very limitation provides the preliminary legitimation for the second step taken in Hearers of the Word. There Rahner invokes the category of the will. In the human being's own self-affirmation and the free divine act by which humanity itself is posited, Rahner spies the clue needed to establish the possibility of revelation and definitively secure the metaphysics of knowledge itself. In order to eliminate the possibility that the act of will in question might ultimately be irrational, Rahner constructs a dialectical theory of freedom. Within that theory, freedom is seen to be intrinsically loving and loving essentially free. If so, thinks Rahner, the rational intelligibility of free acts is safeguarded and therewith the possibility of a science of loving freedom. Nevertheless, this position requires Rahner to assert that the act of creation itself is somehow neither necessary nor contingent. On these terms, it is argued, the science of loving freedom may itself be no more than a necessary accident. |
