That’s obviously correct. It’s also obvious that Rahner almost certainly never made such an argument.
I am just a Theologian in Training and am still working on my MA in Theology. In fact, I just finished reading Rahner in my very first Systematics course on the Theological Method. I may have misrepresented Rahner in the way I phrased my earlier statement. So, if you will allow me, I would like to clarify my statement using Rahner’s words:
In Rahner’s book, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, Rahner says in Chapter 2, Man in the Presence of Absolute Mystery, that we can only know words and language to describe things which we have experienced. Therefore, “we can say that what is most simple and most inescapable for man with regard to the question of God is the fact that the word “God” exists in his intellectual and spiritual existence” (p. 45).
He goes on to say that the Atheist who says that there is no God, prolongs the existence of the word God. If he truly wanted the word ‘God’ to be dead, he would have to keep “dead silent” and not declare himself to be an atheist.
Then he comments, on page 47, what a world would be like if the word God did not exist, “Man would no longer be brought face to face with the single whole of reality, nor with the single whole of his own existence.” Without the word ‘God,’ man would no longer be able to question the existence of God, he would no longer be able to question himself or his own questions. “He would have ceased being a man. He would have regressed to the level of a clever animal” (p. 48).
“Man really exists as a man only when he uses the word ‘God,’” now Rahner does acknowledge that in using this word, we use it as a question to which we either accept or reject. However, if the word ‘God’ ceased to exist, it would indicate that “man himself has died” (p. 49).
But an important distinction Rahner makes is that the word ‘God’ is not based on the phonetic sound of the word or the language in which you speak it. The way that we pronouce and speak the word is a human creation, however the concept of ‘God’ is not. “Rather it creates us because it makes us men” (p. 50).
Finally, Rahner tells us that we cannot fully comprehend the transcendental meaning of this word. If we did, we would be hearing it as a word “obvious and comprehensible” as the other words we use and, therefore, “we would have heard something that has nothing in common with the true word ‘God’ except for its phonetic sound” (p. 51).
Rahner developed his theological method based on Thomas Aquinas’ theology and Immanual kant’s philosophy. His method is called Transcendental Thomism.
They do change their minds to match the superstition of the day (paganism, pantheism, atheism, realism, nominalism, conceptualism.etc. . .). I’m trying to find time to read about these “-isms” defined in the book The Last Superstition by Edward Feser.
