Rahner Quotes & Sayings

In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all. — Karl Rahner

The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable. — Karl Rahner

Grace can and does have a history. — Karl Rahner

In the post-Christian world, all Christians will be mystics. — Karl Rahner

The Mandrake is the "Tree of Knowledge" and the burning love ignited by its pleasure is the origin of the human race — Hugo Rahner

But there is yet another form of this hidden heresy, and, paradoxically, it can affect those who are proudest of their long-standing and unimpeachable orthodoxy; heresy in the form of indifference. — Karl Rahner

Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise. — Karl Rahner

The dead are silent because they live, just as we chatter so loudly to try to make ourselves forget that we are dying. Their silence is really their call to me, the assurance of their immortal love for me. — Karl Rahner

The struggle against atheism is foremost and of necessity a struggle against the inadequacy of our own theism. — Karl Rahner

There's been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for environmentalists to concern themselves with. — Michael Pollan

The paradigm shift happens when we come to terms with the fact that the world doesn't revolve around us. — Mark Batterson

The Garden of Wonders project encompasses the knowledge that Be Open has accumulated over the years of work on different continents and different spheres. — Yelena Baturina

Emptiness is only a disguise for an intimacy of God's, that God's silence, the eerie stillness, is filled by the Word without words, by Him who is above all names, by Him who is all in all. And his silence is telling us that He is here. — Karl Rahner

For it is the bitter grief of theology and its blessed task, too, always to have to seek (because it does not clearly have present to it at the time) ... always providing that one has the courage to ask questions, to be dissatisfied, to think with the mind and heart one ACTUALLY has, and not with the mind and heart one is SUPPOSED TO have. — Karl Rahner

If we have been given the vocation and grace to die with Christ then the everyday and banal occurrence which we call human death has been elevated to a place among God's mysteries. — Karl Rahner

Real evils can be either cured or endured; it is only imaginary evils that make people anxiety-ridden for a lifetime. — Earl Nightingale

The task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable. — Karl Rahner

Knowing God is more important than knowing about God. — Karl Rahner

Only in love can I find you, my God. In love the gates of my soul spring open, allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom and forget my own petty self. In love my whole being streams forth out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion, which make me a prisoner of my own poverty emptiness. In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you, wanting never more to return, but to lose themselves completely in you, since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart, closer to me than I am to myself. — Karl Rahner

To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic. — Hugo Rahner

The darkness is still with us, O Lord. You are still hidden and the world which you have made does not want to know you or receive you ... You are still the hidden child in a world grown old ... You are still obscured by the veils of this world's history, you are still destined not to be acknowledged in the scandal of your death on the cross ... But I, O hidden Lord of all things, boldly affirm my faith in you. In confessing you, I take my stand with you ... If I make this avowal of faith, it must pierce the depths of my heart like a sword, I must bend my knee before you, saying, I must alter my life. I have still to become a Christian. - Karl Rahner, PRAYERS FOR MEDITATION — Kathleen Norris

For a Catholic understanding of the faith there is no reason why the basic concern of Evangelical Christianity as it comes to expression in the three "only's" should have no place in the Catholic Church. Accepted as basic and ultimate formulas of Christianity, they do not have to lead a person out of the Catholic Church ... They can call the attention of the Catholic church again and again to the fact that grace alone and faith alone really are what saves, and that with all our maneuvering through the history of dogma and the teaching office, we Catholic Christians must find our way back to the sources again and again, back to the primary origins of Holy Scripture and all the more so of the Holy Spirit. — Karl Rahner

Not everybody, however, has a genuine sense of humor. That calls for an altruistic detachment from oneself and a mysterious sympathy with others which is felt even before they open their mouths. Only the person who has also a gift for affection can have a true sense of humor. A good laugh is a sign of love; it may be said to give us a glimpse of, or a first lesson in, the love that God bears for every one of us. — Karl Rahner

I think that persistence and stubbornness and hard work are probably, at the end of the day, more important than the willingness to take a risk. — Malcolm Gladwell

Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God. — Karl Rahner

Only God, my dear," wrote Yeats blithely, "Could love you for yourself alone/And not your yellow hair." This quote is meant as a bit of lighthearted verse. But it is an epic tragedy in three lines. — Naomi Wolf

Love alone allows man to forget himself ... it alone can still redeem even the darkest hours of the past since it alone finds the courage to believe in the mercy of the holy God. — Karl Rahner

Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray! — Karl Rahner

just like we did back then. But the upgrades weren't done yet, the builders still needed to expand the trench. So, now they are working on that. A couple of notable villagers moved into town. One was named Peter. He claimed to be a great builder and wants to build amazingly tall buildings. Peter proposed to the mayor that we start building higher structures because it would help save space since our town was growing — Steve The Noob

Good and bad aren't absolutes. They are beliefs, judgements, ideas based on limited knowledge as well as on the inclinations of our minds. — Steve Hagen

I love the area I grew up in, which is right outside D.C., in Alexandria, Virginia. — Casey Wilson

Sometimes, sport is just plain pleasing to the eye, like watching La Belle France flit by on television during the Tour de France. I can do that for hours. — George Vecsey

When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying. — Karl Rahner

In the midst of our lives, of our freedom and our struggles, we have to make a radical, absolute decision. And we never know when lightening will strike us out of the blue. It may be when we least expect to be asked whether we have the absolute faith and trust to say yes — Karl Rahner

I'm a little devil. — Roger Moore

What good is a song that doesn't break your heart? — Marty Rubin

Learning always involves self-transcendence. Learning calls forth what is in us, helping us to move toward authenticity and wholeness. — Karl Rahner

Childhood is not a state which only applies to the first phase of our lives in the biological sense. Rather it is a basic condition which is always appropriate to a life that is lived aright. — Karl Rahner

The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all. — Karl Rahner

I love the idea of a movie hero in a thriller who is able to get ahead by just his brilliance, and not with a gun or by being an action hero. — Danny Strong

What Christ gives us is quite explicit if his own words are interpreted according to their Aramaic meaning. The expression 'This is my Body' means this is myself. — Karl Rahner

How often I have found that we grow to maturity not by doing what we like, but by doing what we should. How true it is that not every 'should' is a compulsion, and not every 'like' is a high morality and true freedom. — Karl Rahner