Karl Rahner's Writings on Literature, Music and the Visual Arts - Paperback

by Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen (Editor)

This book is made up of a collection of texts unavailable in one volume until now, including six previously untranslated essays, from a major theologian of the twentieth century.

Rahner's numerous writings focused on the revelation of God as mystery in the world and on the human being who has an essential openness towards the transcendent. His articles reveal an empathy and a depth of insight into the relationship between theology, faith and the arts which are remarkable and may take the reader by surprise.

More recently, Rahner's contribution to the growing field of theology and the arts has been recognised by leading theologians on this subject. He asserts that theology must integrate the verbal and non-verbal arts as they are authentic means of human self-expression, of religious experience, and of God's self-communication; and therefore they are essential sources of theology. Rahner argues that theology, understood as a person's 'reflexive self-expression' about him- or herself 'in the light of divine revelation', cannot be regarded as complete until 'the arts become an intrinsic moment of theology itself'.

Author Biography

Gesa E. Thiessen lectured for many years at Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin. An Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of Religion at Trinity College Dublin, Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, Salisbury, and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, she has published widely on theology and the arts and on ecumenical ecclesiology. She is a non-stipendiary minister in the Lutheran Church in Ireland.