Rationality and Revelation in Rahner

The ancient problem of working out the relationship between reason and revelation has assumed a new form in the contemporary context as philosophers debate the very concept of rationality. The present study argues that the conception of rationality operative in the thought of the twentieth-century Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, provides a viable language and framework for dealing with the problem in its contemporary form. In Rahner's thought - which is neither discontinuous with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition nor oblivious to the contributions and questions of post-Enlightenment thought - the complementarity of reason and revelation is grounded in a more primitive unity which is encountered and experienced in contemplative living and thinking.