A glorious failure

One of the great theologians of modern times was Father Karl Rahner, S.J. He was born in 1904, so this year is the centenary of his birth.

This great theologian was once a failure. He began his academic career by flunking. It was however a glorious failure which showed his greatness and the blindness of his professor.

His original intention (in obedience to his superiors was to become a professor of philosophy, and for that he studied for the doctorate in one of Germany’s great universities. At the end of his course he submitted a doctoral dissertation which was rejected. He had flunked.

For a graduate student, nothing worse could have happened.

Undaunted, Karl Rahner (again in obedience to his superiors) turned his attention to theology, got a doctorate in it and became one of the really great theologians of the 20th century. He was among the most influential theologians at the Second Vatican Council. His theological treatises are still studied and quoted by today’s theologians.

So, his failure in philosophy was providential. God wanted him to become not a philosopher but a theologian.

And the doctoral thesis that had been rejected by his professor? It has since been published and translated into many languages. Its English translation is entitled Spirit in the World published in a large 400-page volume.

It was a dissertation on one particular question in the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. The question was: Can the human intellect know anything without sense perception (the phantasm)? According to his usual method, St. Thomas first gives the opposite opinions (Videtur quod non). Then he gives the opposite opinions (Sed contra). Finally he gives his own solution (Respondeo dicendum).

The usual procedure for thesis writers is to explain what St. Thomas means, to examine all his other works to find parallel passages to see if St. Thomas’s thinking had undergone development, and to inquire which authors had influenced St. Thomas. In other words, a historical approach.

Rahner did not follow that procedure. Instead he used a philosophical approach. He repeated the experience of St. Thomas. He took the question that St. Thomas proposes, examined it from every angle, and then proposed his own theory of human cognition. He was, in short, breaking new ground in human psychology, doing what St. Thomas was doing.

His professor, a plodding teacher and not a real philosopher, was alarmed. "This is not Thomistic! We must not go beyond Thomas. We can only study St. Thomas." He flunked Rahner.

It was one more example of how great minds must suffer from the incomprehension of little minds. But in this case, the great mind finally triumphed. Rahner is now acclaimed a great thinker. Who remembers the name of that poor professor who had flunked him?