Karl Rahner

Karl Rahner, S.J.
Karl Rahner (portrait by L. M. Cremer)
Born	(1904-03-05)5 March 1904 Freiburg im Breisgau, Grand Duchy of Baden, German Empire
Died	30 March 1984(1984-03-30) (aged 80) Innsbruck, Tyrol (state), Austria
Alma mater	University of Freiburg
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Christian philosophy, theology
Main interests	Christology, Trinity, Faith
Influences Saint Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Augustine, Ludwig Feuerbach, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Joseph Maréchal, Neo-Thomism.
Influenced Francis A. Sullivan

Karl Rahner, S.J. (5 March 1904 – 30 March 1984), was a German Jesuit priest and theologian who, alongside Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Yves Congar, is considered one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century. He was the brother of Hugo Rahner, also a Jesuit scholar.

Rahner was born in Freiburg, at the time a part of the Grand Duchy of Baden, a state of the German Empire; he died in Innsbruck, Austria.

Before the Second Vatican Council, Rahner had worked alongside Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac and Marie-Dominique Chenu, theologians associated with an emerging school of thought called the Nouvelle Théologie, elements of which had been condemned in the encyclical Humani generis of Pope Pius XII. Subsequently, however, the Second Vatican Council was much influenced by his theology and his understanding of Catholic faith.

Karl Rahner's parents, Karl and Luise (Trescher) Rahner, had seven children, of which Karl was the fourth. His father was a professor in a local college and his mother had a profound religious personality, which influenced the home atmosphere. Karl attended primary and secondary school in Freiburg, entering the Society of Jesus upon graduation; he began his novitiate in the North German Province of the Jesuits in 1922, four years after his older brother Hugo entered the same Order. Deeply affected by the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola during the initial phase of his novitiate (1920–24), he concentrated the novitiate's next phase (1924–7) on Catholic scholastic philosophy and the modern German philosophers: he seems to have been particularly interested in Immanuel Kant and two contemporary Thomists, the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal and the French Jesuit Pierre Rousselot, who were to influence Rahner's understanding of Thomas Aquinas in his later writings.