Philosophy and Theology

Volume 16, Issue 1, 2004

Theological Method According to John Henry Newman and Karl Rahner

In what was originally a lecture, the well-known German fundamental theologian Heinrich Fries looks at similarities between the general theological characteristics of Karl Rahner (a friend of Fries) and John Henry Newman (the object of Fries’s early books and lasting research). He offers first some contrasts but then notes similarities: theology as an investigation rather than a system, being a theologian concerned with the most basic aspects of faith, faith as a dynamic of subectivity rather than as a collection of beliefs, a primacy of praxis over theory, theological efforts done at the time of an Ecumenical Council. To conclude there are questions addressed to Fries and Rahner (who was present at the original lecture).