Chapter Three: Man as a Being Threatened Radically by Guilt

Christians can mistakenly believe that the world was evil before Christ and that, after his death, it essentially changed in a tangible way. Rahner avoids that misunderstanding. He defines guilt as the refusal, from the beginning of human history until now, to accept God's offer of self. Guilt is not merely a feeling of remorse about this or that sinful act. At its foundation, it is a rejection of God. It threatens the human being in a radical way, says Rahner, because the one who refuses God's self-communication refuses true freedom. In Part One of this chapter, Rahner shows just how difficult it is for people to extricate themselves from guilt. No one can escape the guilty situation -- the situation of having refused God's gift of self -- on one's own. Indeed, without God we cannot even recognize guilt for what it is. Once we admit that we have closed ourselves off from God, however, we can freely and responsibly choose the good that lies before us. With this choice we recognize God's offer of transcendence, the offer that we identify with divine mercy and forgiveness.

Scanned photo by Adolf Waschel of Vienna, published as the Frontispiece of Karl Rahner, I Remember: An Autobiographical Interview with Meinold Krauss, translated by Harvey D. Egan, S.J. (New York: Crossroad, 1985).

The freedom to act responsibly, Rahner says in Part Two, is essential to God's communication with human beings. By their free actions, people achieve their life's work and define themselves. But human freedom is never complete. We always act within a context imposed by history. We remain hearers of God's word, never the masters of it. Hence we can never know how free we are or fully assess the moral quality of our actions. This is the argument of Part Three. The self-righteous person is always capable of rejecting God. Such people delude themselves into thinking that they are acting freely and responsibly, but may in fact be doing the opposite. Conversely, a person may profess atheism in the name of human freedom, and thereby affirm God, albeit indirectly and inexplicitly. The mysterious God, who offers people freedom and invites them to act responsibly, remains the sole judge of the moral quality of their lives. Human beings cannot escape the fact that their lives are determined by a history in which people refuse God's offer to them. That is the meaning, according to the fourth part, of original sin. It is not personal guilt, but the universal guilt of people in a history marked by repeated failures to respond to God's call. This guilt is radical because it threatens the root of human freedom.

Part 1: The Topic and Its Difficulties

(III.1, p. 90). Rahner raises two questions: the nature of redemption and the manner in which it is achieved. First, he notes that our sinful acts are never wholly private. We can never reconcile ourselves by ourselves. So that is the first difficulty: how can we be reconciled to God, and to others, after we have done wrong. The second question is about how we are redeemed. Part of this is a temporal question. Rahner asks whether it is a “moment” or a “process.” The answer is to come later.

In Part 1, Rahner starts by showing that most people today regard the question of guilt as confusing or obscure. Next, he shows that we have to have a relationship with God in order to know guilt, and that the experience of guilt leads to an insight into God's love and forgiveness.

A. The Obscurity of the Question for People Today (III.1.A, p. 91). The “normal” person does not fear God as the one before whom he or she shall be judged. Fear of God means respect, normally speaking, and not terror. Even Christians (whom we expect to fear God) do not have a particularly powerful impression of their own moral dispositions. Many people see death not as judgment, but as the resolution of the confusion of daily life or even as something absurd and meaningless.

But all people compare what they should be with what they are. Even though contemporary people not usually think of death as judgment, they do believe that the human being (rather than God) is the one who needs to be justified. They ought to be open at least to the Christian message, namely, that human beings are sinners in need of redemption.

B. The Circle Between the Experience of Guilt and Forgiveness (III.1.B, p. 93). More fundamental than the obscurity of guilt is the problem of the guilty person’s relation to God. It seems paradoxical, but only when one has a “partnership” with God can one know guilt. Only with immediacy to God can we grasp it. Guilt means closing oneself off to God’s self-communication.

Guilt and forgiveness, Rahner says, have a circular relationship. We experience guilt as closing oneself off to God. When one sees oneself doing this, one is moved to an insight. The insight is that the God to whom one is closed is in fact not judgmental abut loving and forgiving.

Part 2: Man's Freedom and Responsibility.

(III.2, p. 93). The freedom of the human being: that is the topic of Part Two. Rahner asserts that this freedom is not something we have to rehabilitate by means of spiritual discipline, but is present in our every action and choice. Freedom is the essence of God’s offer to humanity. But one act of freedom influences the next, Rahner says, and all contribute to the final achievement that is the human life. Every free act expresses our relation to God, the ground of human freedom. And so in every free act, we make a decision for or against God. But because every free act is conditioned by factors beyond the individual’s control, the human being can never be certain of the moral quality of his or her decisions. There is no point at which one can say, “Now I finally understand God’s communication, and I no longer have to listen.”

A. Freedom Is Related to the Single Whole of Human Existence (III.2.A, p. 94). The concept of freedom can be understood falsely in terms of the Gnosticism we associate with Origen. He believed (according to Rahner) that life in the concrete is evil. Given this viewpoint, the Gnostic views freedom as something that existed before concrete life, even before history. As a counter concept, Rahner proposes that true freedom is “the capacity of the one subject to decide about himself in his single totality” (94). It is not something which one has to “recover” by means of a rigorous spiritual discipline, but rather something one exercises constantly. Freedom did not exist before history (in some Gnostic aeon of perfection), but actualizes itself in a passage through time.

Freedom is not a "datum," a given, or a neutral faculty. It is not the mere ability to make choices. It is not a faculty whose morality one can only assess after it has been exercised. It is fundamentally the achievement of one's own person. By acting freely, one actualizes oneself.

B. Freedom as the Faculty of Final and Definitive Validity (III.1.B, p. 95). It is a misunderstanding to assert that freedom is merely the capacity to do this or that, as if one decision has no bearing on the second decision. Rather, every decision conditions the next decision. Freedom is the capacity to do something definitive. Every act of freedom makes the achievement of one’s life ever more final. Freedom is the capacity to achieve one’s own self. It is the capacity to establish “the eternity which we ourselves are and are becoming” (96). Every act contributes to the sum of who we are.

C. Transcendental Freedom and Its Categorical Objectifications (III.1.C, p. 96). Freedom is an element of every human being, but it cannot be fully known or objectified. We can reflect upon it, and so make it a theme for thought. But even then it never becomes wholly an object. The very reflection on freedom is an exercise of it. We cannot define it without using the term as an implicit element of the definition.

Whenever the human being acts, he or she experiences freedom. But that freedom is never absolute. Freedom is subject to necessity. Whenever we act, we experience our freedom as limited. One consequence is that we can never be sure of the moral quality of our actions. Why not? Because our actions are "a synthesis of original freedom and imposed necessity" (97). Our intentions alone do not determine the moral quality of our actions, and our intention to do good may nevertheless result in evil. That is why the attitude of "obedience," of listening to and of discerning God's self-communication, is so important.

Part 3: The Possibility of a Decision Against God.

(III.3, p. 97). The human being can say “yes” to God, but that “yes” is directed to the invitation we suppose God is making. We never know God’s will directly (A). This lack of knowledge complicates our understanding of sin and guilt. Even the person who rejects God usually does so in the name of freedom – irresponsible freedom (B). The “no” to God is possible in freedom because it is not usually an intellectual decision (C). Rather, it is a decision made manifest in one’s actions (D). It is a “no” to the possibilities God offers, possibilities that we can refuse. And whether we refuse or accept God’s offer, the decision is usually hidden, at least from others (E). Even an explicit “no” to God may be an implicit “yes,” an acknowledgement of the fundamental reality and goodness of God (F). Jesus’ condemnations of his “evil generation” should not be interpreted as a prediction of that generation’s fate, but rather an indication of the seriousness of our moral decisions (G). One can never know (in an ultimate sense) whether one’s actions are sinful in God’s eyes, but we know for certain that we cannot escape the possibility of evil (H). God grants the freedom to make a decision for or against God, but the freedom God gives does not limit God’s sovereignty and omnipotence (I).

A. Unthematic Affirmation or Denial of God in Every Free Act (III.3.A, p. 98). Even when we say “yes” to God, we address God indirectly. Our “yes” to God “is not affirmed immediately to the God of original and transcendental experience, but only to the God of thematic, categorical reflection” (98). In other words, we say “yes” to what we believe God asks. We can never be absolutely certain that we are saying “yes” to the absolute will of God.

Are we then to despair of ever really knowing and affirming God's will? No. For when we say "yes" to what we believe God is asking, we experience transcendence. It is the experience of ourselves reaching for what is forever beyond ourselves, namely the will of God. And in our decision to affirm God's will, we are making an "unthematic" yes to God. About the will of God which we affirm, we may well be mistaken. Our knowledge of that will is mediated. But our intention may well be utterly unreflected.

B. The Horizon of Freedom as Its "Object" (III.3.B, p. 99). In every decision, we choose what we think will make us more free. Even when we say “no” to God, we aim to affirm our freedom. And in that affirmation, we implicitly affirm the divine self. For it is God who created us in freedom. It is God who invites us to exercise that freedom responsibly.

C. The Possibility of Absolute Contradiction (III.3.C, p. 99). Some deny the possibility of saying both “yes” and “no” to God. They argue that we can only say “yes.” When we say “no,” these people contend, we are only refusing some finite reality, some imagined God. They argue that no one can really refuse the divine self. But Rahner disagrees. If we could not refuse God, he says, there would be no real freedom.

D. The Freedom to Say "Yes" or "No" to God (III.3.D, p. 100). Our freedom involves not just people, things, and actions, but God as well. Our freedom is freedom for our own final and definitive validity. We can choose to live our life in uprightness and truth, or in irresponsibility and falsehood. Every choice we make moves us toward the final and definitive achievement that arrives at the moment of death

The concreteness of our transcendence consists not only in our choices, but in God's offer to us. We can transcend who we are by realizing the potential given to us. Our freedom to do this is also the capacity to say "yes" or "no" to God. When we say "no" to God, this "no" is not primarily an intellectual act. The real "no" is actualized in our existence. We cannot equate it with the moral sum of our deeds. Nor can we define it in terms of the last act in our lives. It is rather who we are.

E. The Hiddenness of Decision (III.3.E, p. 101). Not just a one-time act of faith, but our entire lives, are an answer to God’s question. God’s question is about the human ability to transcend ourselves. Do we accept this transcendence and its divine source? The choice to hear God’s invitation to transcendence, and to become what God invites us to be, may well be a “hidden” choice. It may not manifest itself in the usual mode of an upright life. Even a heinous crime may not manifest the totality of who a person is. It may only manifest what the person was before conversion. And what may seem upright – the bourgeois life of respectability – may conceal bitterness and despair.

F. "Yes" and "No" to God Are Not Parallel (III.3.F, p. 102). One can say “no” to God, true, but that “no” is by no means parallel or equal to a “yes” to God. Why? Because when one says “no” to God, one is at least acknowledging that there is something true. The truth one acknowledges is the existence of God. And even when one says “no,” it comes in the midst of the more profound “yes,” the profound yes to God’s existence. Hence the “no” is never absolute in itself. Rather, it takes place within the context of an implicit “yes.”

By contrast, an explicit "yes" to God may be a falsehood. It may be only a "yes" to a categorical and bourgeois ideal of God. And as such, it may conceal a "no" to the transcendental horizon of freedom--a "no" to the reality of God.

G. On the Interpretation of Eschatological Statements (III.3.G, p. 102). What does it mean to say “no” to God? One can only say this “no” when one is evil, when one understands the evil, and when one wants it. Is this what Jesus meant when the Scriptures attribute to him statements about this “evil generation”? Do the “woes” and punishments that Jesus apparently called down on evildoers present us with an eyewitness account of how the world’s wickedness will turn out? Rahner says no. Jesus’ statements are possibilities. They are instructions about the seriousness of our moral decision-making. Far from being relevant only to the end-times, they are statements about the human being of all times. As we human beings face the alternatives of death and eternal life, Jesus’ eschatological statements demand that we take God, and the possibilities that face us, with the utmost seriousness.

H. The Possibility of Sin as a Permanent Existential (III.3.H, p. 104). Every decision made by the human being is a synthesis of “original freedom” and “the necessities of freedom” (as discussed in section C). Every decision is “co-determined” by previous decisions. To these previous decisions we may be blind, and about them we may be incapable of reflection. Our actual situation is not completely accessible to reflection (as Rahner noted in section A). Even a thorough examination of conscience may not be a statement of absolute certainty.

One never knows perfectly whether objectively guilty actions manifest a "no" to God. They may well represent a manipulation of us which has the character of necessity. As Rahner says, "We never know with ultimate certainty whether we really are sinners" (104). But we know with certainty that we really can be sinners. And we know that this possibility cannot be overcome.

I. The Abiding Sovereignty of God (III.3.I, p. 105). Saying “yes” to God is not an alternative to freedom. Making a difficult moral choice may give us greater freedom than the easier, immoral choice. Yet it is true to say that “an evil will does indeed contradict God.” The evil will that “freely” chooses wrongdoing makes a choice against God, and the good will that chooses righteousness under painful moral duress makes a choice for God that feels anything but free. But when the righteous person chooses to do good, even if “constrained by God,” nevertheless that person still acts in freedom. God does not take over the human will.

God creates human beings as different from God. Even human freedom is God's creation. It does not limit God's sovereignty. So although we act freely, we never know the mind of God directly. Thus we can never know ("except in obedience," says Rahner) that our free choices will reach a good decision. Still we must make that decision. It is not a decision which may or may not arise. It arises at every moment, and it has absolute consequences.

Part 4: Original Sin.

(III.4, p. 106). In this section, Rahner proposes a re-interpretation of the doctrine of original sin. It is reinterpreted in light of the experience of freedom and transcendence. He begins by showing how the free choices of those who have gone before us in history limit our freedom (A). He then goes on to say that, although we cannot judge the objective moral nature of another person’s act, it is a fair guess that the evildoing of another can lead me to do evil (B). The guilt of another person shapes me and taints all my choices, even my good choices (C). This leads to the basic definition of original sin as the universal and ineradicable guilt of human beings whose evil has shaped all human generations (D). This original sin must be distinguished from personal guilt, defined as the person’s refusal to heed God’s call to freedom and transcendence (E). Original sin is more than the refusal to obey this or that commandment, but the refusal to accept God’s offer of the divine self (F). In relation to that offer of transcendence, the Biblical story of Adam’s sin is an “inference,” a story that explains the more basic idea of heeding or ignoring God (G). Original sin hinders our freedom to respond to God’s call, and it is in that sense that the traditional “consequences” of original sin (i.e., toil, ignorance, and sickness) should be understood.

A. The World of Persons as the Realm of Freedom's Actualization (III.4.A, p. 106). Our freedom is limited by the freedom of others. Indeed, all our choices are shaped by the choices of those who have gone before us. To be sure, we exercise freedom. But that freedom takes place within a world and within a history shaped by the decisions of others. So the “history of freedom” puts its stamp on us. Our freedom is not absolute, but rather a participation in freedom. Our decisions are thus never a pure manifestation of good or evil, but choices within a situation given to us. We do not know if they really objectify the good itself, or only look as if they do, given the situation we find ourselves in. Indeed, the goodness or evil of a decision can change its character as it becomes a part of another’s free decision.

B. The Objectification of Another's Guilt (III.4.B, p. 108). When we suffer wrong from another, is that an actual manifestation of an evil intention? It can be, says Rahner, but there is no certainty. One can only be certain of one’s own subjective evildoing. Although the personal guilt of another remains obscure, and equally obscure my own participation in an evil situation (which, as original sin, can shape me), nevertheless it seems true that “the situation” in which I find myself can lead me to evildoing. That is Rahner’s sense of original sin.

C. Original and Permanent Co-Determination by Others' Guilt (III.4.C, p. 109). Everyone is touched by the guilt of others. And when touched by another’s guilt, I am “co-determined” by that guilt. It shapes my choices. Even my good acts are tainted by the guilt of others, and so can appear to be anything else but good. Example: I benefit from the wealth of my parents, and so am able to give charitably, but my parents’ wealth was ill gotten, and so taints my charity. This is a form of Christian pessimism, says Rahner, but it has a truth to it. It dispels the myth of utopia.

D. The Christian Teaching About Original Sin (III.4.D, p. 110). Our guilt is “original” in the sense that human beings have established this guilt throughout history. There is no point in history at which human beings have not been guilty of wrongdoing. The history of wrongdoing co-determines us, as we saw in the previous section. That is the meaning of original sin. To say that some original act of Adam and Eve has been transmitted in its moral quality, or transmitted biologically, is a form of mythology. Rather, original sin is the “situation” in which we find ourselves, a situation in which we exercise our freedom co-determined by the guilt of those who precede us. Example: every time we purchase a banana, out act is co-determined by the situation of those who picked the bananas and by those who profit from them. Original sin is “original” in the sense that it is universal and ineradicable.

E. "Original Sin" and Personal Guilt (III.4.E, p. 111). Original sin is not personal guilt. Personal guilt lies in our refusal to accept the transcendence that God offers, i.e., when we refuse to do the good to which we are called and which would realize our potential. Indeed, the word “sin” is used analogically; we know “sin” by looking at acts of wrongdoing, but we are unable to judge the moral intention of the sinner. The challenge to preachers is to find a way to express this idea, the idea of original sin and of personal guilt, to those who have only a rudimentary concept of God.

F. "Original Sin" in the Light of God's Self-Communication (III.4.F, p. 112). In summary, original sin teaches that our human situation, in which choices are shaped by history, is “determined by guilt.” History and guilt impair our freedom. How much is it impaired? That depends on the sin that lies at the foundation of original sin. If that foundational sin is a rejection of God’s offer of the divine self, then it is weightier than a rejection of one or another divine commandment. A rejection of God’s self-communication is the rejection of the condition for true freedom. This kind of original sin is as radical an existential as God’s offer to humanity of the divine self. It has shaken the very foundations of human nature.

G. On the Hermeneutics of Scriptural Statements (III.4.G, p. 114). One can gain an insight into original sin from the Christian experience of the history of salvation. That history culminates in the God-Man, Jesus Christ, who (unlike human guilt) is not just a product of human history. The encounter with Christ teaches us that we are called to transcendence, and that sin is a rejection of God’s offer of transcendence. By contrast, the story of Adam’s “original” sin is an “inference.” We “infer” the existence of a primeval sin from our experience of the offer of transcendence and of our acceptance or rejection of it.

H. The "Consequences of Original Sin" (III.4.H, p. 115). The Church proclaims that toil, ignorance, sickness, pain and death are the “consequences” of original sin. Experience teaches, however, that these would exist without original sin. So how are we to interpret the Church’s proclamation? Rahner’s approach is to say that we interpret these “consequences” differently in our concrete situation of guilt, the situation that co-determines and limits our freedom. We cannot imagine life as it is – life with toil, ignorance, sickness, pain and death – as if we were not touched by the guilt of those who preceded us. In that sense, the loss of these gifts is the “consequence” of original sin.

Original sin must be understood as a limitation upon human freedom, Rahner says, not in the mythological terms inferred from a more basic, transcendental experience. The teaching about the preternatural gifts (Edenic life without pain, ignorance, etc.) expresses our longing for existence without guilt. We trace the loss of these gifts to the myth of Adam and Eve’s loss of Eden. The myth, however, symbolizes something deeper. It symbolizes the “no” to God that human beings have uttered from the beginning.