A Speechless Grace: Karl Rahner on Religious Language FRANCIS J. CAPONI* Abstract: The theological and pastoral goals of Karl Rahner’s work require an accounting of the capacity of human language to speak meaningfully about God. This article argues that in his reflections on dogma, poetry, mysticism and ‘anonymous faith’, Rahner presents two conflicting perspectives on religious language: an ‘incarnational’ approach in which language is a necessary and constitutive dimension of revelation; and an ‘optional’ approach in which language is the subsequent and ultimately unnecessary embodiment of the ‘transcendental revelation’ of God. A way forward for Rahner’s theology is proposed through a rejection of his identification of grace and revelation. ‘No sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance . . . all utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical’. 1 A.J. Ayer’s unqualified declaration of the cognitive vacuity of religious language has not weathered the downturn in the fortunes of empiricism and logical positivism, 2 nor held up in the light of more realistic assessments of language in general, 3 and more sensitive comprehensions of religious language in particular. 4 Yet, Ayer touches upon a perennial challenge to religious language within the Christian tradition. Below the ‘crisis’ 5 of the ongoing search for an adequately faithful and contemporary * Villanova University, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, 800 Lancaster Avenue Villanova, PA 19085, USA. 1 A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover, 1952), p. 115. 2 Carl Hempel, ‘Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4 (1950), pp. 41–63; W.V.O. Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, The Philosophical Review 60 (1951), pp. 20–43. 3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958); J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd edn, ed. J.O. Urmson and M. Sbisà (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975). 4 Ian Ramsey, ed., Words about God: The Philosophy of Religion (New York: Harper, 1971); Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 5 See the essays in J.B. Metz and J.P. Josua, eds., The Crisis of Religious Language (New York: Herder & Herder, 1973). International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 9 Number 2 April 2007 doi:10.1111/j.1468-2400.2007.00253.x © The author 2007. Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA.