Kerr on Rahner

In the opening pages of his Theology After Wittgenstein , Fergus Kerr, O.P., mounts a Wittgensteinian critique of Rahner’s epistemology, which, he concludes, is thoroughly indebted to Cartestian philosophy. Due to the influence of Cartesian categories, Kerr sees Rahner’s theology determined by “an extremely mentalist-individualist epistemology” that contributes to a central theme of his theology, namely, “the possibility for the individual to occupy a standpoint beyond his immersion in the bodily, the historical and the institutional.” This has significant implications for Rahner’s treatment of nature and the supernatural, which Kerr sees reflected in Rahner’s Christology: “The doctrine of the Incarnation almost ceases to be a scandal” because nature’s reception of the supernatural seems so easy, nature is so “transparently, even diaphanously, open to the absolute.”