Rahner (still working in his little book, Nature and Grace ) distinguishes between “being ordered to grace” and “being directed to grace in such a way that without the actual gift of this grace it would all be meaningless.” He affirms the first, not the second. A created spirit “is essentially impossible without this transcendence, whose absolute fulfillment is grace, yet this fulfillment does not thereby become due.”
But the italics (which are Rahner’s) indicate that there is a more relative fulfillment, a fulfillment of created spirit that does not involve grace. So, human beings who are created with an orientation to supernatural fulfillment still have meaningful existence even if this supernatural fulfillment is never reached. There is another rest than rest in God, it appears. This seems to smuggle natural beatitude back into the picture, and supports Milbank’s view that Rahner reverts to the extrinicism he wants to avoid.
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