B. The Rahnerian Horizon

1. The human being as person and subject

From ancient times, human beings have wondered about the fundamental question, "What am I?" or "Who am I?" One of the classical answers tells us that the human being is a rational animal. As sciences progress, modern science, anthropologies, whether physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychology, offer various approaches and standpoints from which to define their distinctive characteristics so that common features and patterns of behavior among human beings can be explained more accurately. Their basic attention and methodology focus on certain modes of cause and effect. However, the factors they consider are outside the human self, no matter how great their influence is on the person, for example, parents, social environment, cultural background. These, however, cannot tackle the fact that it is the human being as person and subject who is collecting all the data and considering various factors about the self, aiming towards understanding the self's totality and unity.

Therefore, being human means exactly to transcend all compartmentalized standpoints which seek to understand the self from external factors and elements. We may state this in a Kantian question, namely, what is the condition of possibility that renders human beings capable of making inquiry of any kind? Undoubtedly, what influences human beings can be understood quite well by experimental approaches in analyzing our world and history. These approaches, however, cannot illuminate the unity and totality of the self. Human beings can transcend all particulars and raise the question of questioning itself. Therefore the human being as person and subject is not some objective data awaiting analysis, but the center of existence which takes "self-possession as such in a conscious and free relationship to the totality of itself."5

2. The human being as transcendent being

The human being as person and subject aims to grasp the self in its totality, yet at the same time everyone experiences his or her own finitude and fragility in daily life. These two aspects make up the paradox that human beings intend transcendence, an infinite horizon which surpasses any complacency of finite achievement, whether in knowledge or action. Every answer is just the beginning of a new question, so the human being is always on the way to self-transcendence. In the dimension of acting, we experience the intentionality of higher values. Weak as we all are, surprisingly we have also heard the inner invitation towards higher values, though remaining with the lower ones is much more enticing to our spontaneous appetite. If we respond to this inner voice, it may imply struggle, sacrifice, misunderstanding, marginalization, suffering, persecution or even death. This kind of endurance for the higher reveals the human capacity for self-transcendence towards something or someone, named or unnamed, other than the self. Of course, one can choose to ignore or evade this intentionality, interpreting it as absurd or unanswerable, sticking to one's workaday life and let its current carry one along. This possibility relates to human freedom and will be elaborated later. However, our interest here is to raise the question, namely, what is the condition of possibility for this ongoing transcendence in human beings?

Rahner tells us that "the movement of transcendence is not the subject creating its own unlimiting space as though it had an absolute power over being, but is the infinite horizon of being making itself manifest."6 In other words, in our incessant questioning we experience ourselves as one who receives being, which is grace in our Christian sense, and which renders the person capable of transcending every complacency in order continually to discover the objective world and categorical truths. Serving as mystery, this infinite horizon of being remains hidden within the human being. One can only open up to its revelation in silence and reverence, where one becomes conscious of oneself as person and subject.　

3. The human being as responsible and free

A person who is open to the undetermined possibilities of self-transcendence immediately experiences, thematically or unthematically, the freedom within and at the same time responsible for the self. That is, one takes one's destiny in one's own hands, not only in acquiring knowledge, but also in decision and action. We cannot deny that modern discoveries and research in human sciences render human freedom very controversial, since human behavior seems to be explained away by cause and effect in the world. All choices can be traced back to some original and relative factors. Therefore, what comes from the human free will seems almost a mere illusion. According to Rahner, our "responsibility and freedom are not a particular, empirical datum in human reality alongside other data."7 Therefore, there is no need to find their proof in empirical science. Rather, they emerge when the "I" experiences the self as the subject who is given over to oneself. But what does this mean?

First, freedom does not remain hidden in an interior disposition, but is always mediated by the concrete reality of time and space, by the subject's history in the world. Second, freedom is a fundamental characteristic of a personal existent, in contrast to being a neutral power that one has and possesses as something different from oneself, especially when the subject experiences that one has to give an account and is responsible for what one does. Here, the subject takes a stance towards oneself and the world, or even makes some movement towards the ultimate transcendence and mystery, whether in acceptance or in rejection. This stance is the expression of one's transcendental freedom, though Rahner reminds us that it is not without ambiguity in our reflection and objectification. So, even if one uses all the evidence of cause and effect to try to deny oneself as a free subject, one is actually affirming one's freedom as a subject who is given over to oneself in this stance. Therefore, freedom is understood not so much as power to do this or that but as the power to decide about oneself and to actualize oneself.　

4. The human being is dependent as a creature

This is the other side of being free and responsible. In our transcendental experience and Christian faith, we human beings discover that we are free to open up towards an absolute being and mystery, which is the ground of every knowing and action. This infinite horizon and abyss, being silent and spiritual, is thus infinitely different from the knowing subject and finite known object. In this sense, God is absolutely different from the world and from us. In other words, we are a genuine reality different from God. This difference implies two points of understanding. First, human beings and this world are both God's creation. Our creatureliness is not just expressed in some remote origin and causality in time, but in the experience of both transcendence and historical conditionedness, which are experienced every moment. Second, human transcendentality is not established by one's own power, but is experienced as something established by and at the disposal of another as the abyss of mystery. We always find our subjectivity as a historical conditioned and we never completely realize our possibilities in the world and in history. What overcomes this finitude is not leaving it behind or being free from its constraint, since that is never possible. On the way towards the definite moment of death, however, every person draws from God the power as source and infinite horizon to pursue knowledge and action in freedom. In this sense, the human being is totally dependent on God.8　

5. The human being as a being threatened radically by guilt

As we have already noted, the human being is free and responsible, not in the sense of being a neutral subject as if one could choose and act among some categorical possibilities while remaining uninfluenced oneself. Rather, being free and responsible is experienced as something final and definitive for the subject. In freedom, one does not do something, but does oneself. However, as a person, everyone is subject to openness to the infinite horizon and mystery that constitute oneself so that one's freedom should correspond to this movement. This holy mystery mediates itself in finite and created reality, in the spectrum of categorical and hierarchical values in the world. In this sense, the human being is supposed to open up to these categorical values, from lower to higher, in responding to a vocation as genuine person and subject. Yet, because of freedom, the human being in reality may say "yes" or "no" to this call. A person who says "no" experiences something which contradicts the human constitution as oriented towards the ultimate mystery, and this is guilt in the Christian perspective.

Of course, according to Rahner, in reflection no one can be fully transparent whether in one's categorical choices one is saying a definite "no" to this infinite horizon or mystery, which is God. Yet it always remains a possibility. So, "we never know with ultimate certainty whether we really are sinners, we do know with ultimate certainty that we really can be sinners."9 "Sinner" here does not mean just committing some moral wrong but is taken in a definite and final sense. As we progress towards death, our categorical options in values will finally make an eternal stance as "yes" or "no" to God.　

6. The human being as the event of God's free and forgiving self-communication

What was discussed above gradually converges to this assertion. Rahner tells us that "God's self communication means that what is communicated in grace is really God in his own being, and in this way it is a communication for the sake of knowing and possessing God in immediate vision and love.".10 In this sense, there is no understanding of the human being in so-called "pure nature". Existentially, the human being cannot but enjoy the supernatural dimension of the human constitution, not simply as one characteristic alongside but permeating the whole human being. Therefore, the human being is a supernatural existential. That is, the human being fundamentally participates in the divine, in God-self.　

Rahner clarifies the word of "God". This word

"says nothing about what it means, nor can it simply function like an index finger which points to something encountered immediately outside ... In any case, the present form of the word reflects what the word refers to: the 'ineffable one', the 'nameless one' who does not enter the world we can name as a part of it. It means the 'silent one' who is always there, and yet can always be overlooked, unheard, and, because it expresses the whole in its unity and totality, can be passed over as meaningless."11

The key words here are unity and totality. Rahner leads us to ponder what would happen if this word "God" or its equivalent ceased to be in our language. Then one would never again face the totality of the world and the unity of oneself. At most, one could indulge in wonder at all things around, but would be incapable of wondering at this wondering. One would then regress to the level of a clever animal. In short, we cannot imagine ourselves being human without this intentionality of God, where "God" does not mean some kind of transcendental being apart from us, but is the source and horizon in which we can aim towards the totality of the world and the unity of ourselves.

To follow this understanding, we can infer that if, as supernatural existential, the human being is fundamentally called to be divine, though in freedom one can say "no" to it and make an absolute contradiction of one's existence, then the acceptance of God's self-communication is still based upon God's offer itself. That is exactly what we understand theologically by the notion of grace. "The giver in his own being is the gift... the giver gives himself to creatures as their own fulfillment."12 When one responds with "yes" to this offer in a concrete situation, one becomes a justified person, a being justified by God. In congruence with traditional teaching, this grace is absolutely gratuitous as "unmerited", initiated by God's highest personal freedom, different from what we experience in tangible causes, which produce a necessary effect. This grace is originally implicit and unthematized in our daily life. Through our reflection in concrete experiences we discover certain incarnated effects of this grace, but not the grace as such. For Rahner, grace is the unthematized horizon of transcendence in which we try to thematize certain appropriations to understand and ponder this grace as such, but never in its totality. In our perspective, grace is as wide as God's presence.

The word "grace", on the other hand, makes our relationship with God thematic, namely, the total gratuity of God to us that we have no merit to deserve or earn. This giver as gift produces the emptiness in the human being that only the fullness of God can fill. It is also prior to human freedom. When human freedom mediates through actualizing categorical values, this self-communication appears at least as an offer in an unthematic way, inviting the person towards the absolute mystery in knowledge and love. Therefore, in transcendental experience and freedom, a potential sinner who has rejected the genuine freedom mediated in categorical values, though not in reflective clearness, can return to the invitation of this mystery immediately, an experience of conversion and forgiveness in love. This ability to come back is already due to the grace itself which grants the subject the "re"-cognition of his own infinite horizon towards the truth and love itself.　

7. The development of dogma

Dogma is the formulation of faith in the Church and in her history. It represents Christians' understanding of the original revelation of Jesus Christ in their historicity, under the stamp and authority of the Church. Its existence already betrays the necessity of development in understanding God's revelation in Christ. This fact is not due to God as speaker acting freely in history, but is due to the fact that the human being as listener is a historical being. As long as human beings further their own history, there must be a history of dogma, even though revelation is complete. Accepting this fact, we face rather the challenge of finding new formulations of dogma congruent with the original doctrine in Scriptures and Church's authoritative teaching. This process can be compared to a young man who has fallen in love and tries to articulate the experience and understanding of his love in clearer and clearer terms and propositions, yet remaining faithful to the richness of the original and global experience. Theologians are doing a similar thing in articulating faith in and love of Christ in contemporary terms. The basic requirement is that the new formulation should not undo the past, but should explicate more what is still implicit in the old. Second, there is no surpassing of the revelation in Christ, which is closed in its plenitude. Finally, the development of dogma involves necessarily a unity of all elements constituting its development as revelation, such as spirit and grace, the Church, tradition.13

The Joint Declaration on the Dogma of Justification represents the development of the understanding of justification from St. Paul to the time of Luther and the Council of Trent, and down to the present moment. The seven points in the formulation, which represent the common effort and good will between the two Churches, have provided a greater space of dialogue in clarifying certain stances and terminology, and recognizing some different emphases between them. Yet, from a Rahnerian point of view, there are some areas which need to be clarified and re-interpreted in contemporary terms so that the doctrine itself can shed more light and meaning on our Christian faith.　

5. RAHNER, K. (1976). Foundations of Christian Faith. NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company. p. 30.

6. Ibid. p. 34.

7. Ibid. p. 36.

8. Cf. ibid. p. 42-43.

9. Ibid. p. 104.

10. Ibid. p. 118.

11. Ibid. p. 46.

12. Ibid. p. 120.

13. Cf. ROBERTS, L. (1967). The Achievement of Karl Rahner. NY. Herder & Herder. p. 67.