An Appraisal of Karl Rahner's Theology of Death | Fr. John Corbett, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2022

⏱️ 65 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given on February 27, 2022 at Cedarbrake Renewal Center as part of the Second Annual Texas Student Retreat: "The Meaning of Death and Eternal Life." For more information on upcoming events, please visit our website at www.thomisticinstitute.org. About the speaker: Fr. Corbett grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and came to know the Dominicans through family members in the Order, through St. Patrick’s Parish, and through attending Providence College, from which he graduated in 1973 with a B.A. in Political Science. Fr. Corbett joined the Dominicans in the summer of 1974 and was ordained a priest on May 12th, 1980. He completed his Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 1981 and began to teach moral theology as well as the Development of Western Civilization at Providence College. Three years later he began his doctoral studies under Servais Pinckaers, O.P., at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and was awarded his Ph.D. after completing his dissertation on the theology of virtue in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Fr. Corbett was appointed to the Faculty of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, in 1991, and spent the next seven years teaching various courses in moral theology, as well as offering retreats, spiritual direction, and personal formation for seminarians.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute. For more talks like this, visit us at
0:06.1	tamistic institute.org. Why am I talking about Ronner? Well, he is one of the pioneers of the
0:16.5	theology of death. Up until his time, there was a more or less standardized account of death, which
0:22.8	basically treated it as a passage from this world to the next, but of little intrinsic
0:30.0	interest in itself. But I think it was one of Ronner's many theological achievements,
0:35.8	is that he explored the meaning of death per se and not just
0:40.7	in relationship to further outcomes. I want to talk about this in terms of distinguishing between an
0:51.0	experiential account of death and a formal definition of death.
0:58.0	These are not the same thing.
1:00.0	I think we're long on the formal definitions and short on the experiential account.
1:07.0	An experiential account of death, which we would all like to have an advance notice and warning,
1:14.6	an experiential account of death would basically tell us what death is like.
1:23.6	What's it like to die?
1:26.6	And a formal account, on the other hand, what's it like to die?
1:35.6	And a formal account, on the other hand, would get at the essence of death.
1:41.4	It would tell us it would define death in terms of its formal defining characteristics,
1:44.9	such as the cessation of the life of the body or the separation of soul from body or whatever formal definition you may come up with with death, but it would
1:52.7	not by itself be enough to tell us what death is like. Thomas Nagel wrote an influential essay years ago with an intriguing title. The title was,
2:06.9	what is it like to be a bat? And his answer was, we have no idea. The answer, why is it the case that we could have no idea of what it is like to be about?
2:21.2	Because they have a different, entirely different sensory apparatus than we do.
2:26.2	Their experience of the world is radically different, and we could not really have that
2:31.7	sensory apparatus to process the world in the way they do without ceasing to be human.
	...

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