Díaz, Miguel H. On Being Human: U. S. Hispanic and Rahnerian Perspectives. Foreword by Robert Schreiter. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001. Pages xvii + 156. Paper, $25.00 ISBN: 1570754020

Reviewed by: Robert Lassalle-Klein

On Being Human presents a dialogue between Karl Rahner and U.S. Hispanic/Latino/a Catholic theology. It is the first book-length treatment of the role of grace in “what it means to be human” from a U. S. Hispanic/Latino/a perspective. Serving both these goals, author Miguel Díaz asserts, “U.S. Hispanic theological anthropology can be systematically, philosophically, and theologically enriched by engaging in an explicit conversation with Karl Rahner, and Karl Rahner’s theological anthropology can be deepened, developed, and critiqued from the perspective of U. S. Hispanic vision” (xiv).

The first three chapters offer an apt introduction to U. S. Hispanic/Latino/a theology (USHLT), and the most complete summary to date of its underlying theological anthropology. Chapter one reviews the basic history and concepts of USHLT, encompassing topics such as contextual theology, the early work of Virgilio Elizondo, mestizaje, popular religion, self-description as Hispanic and/or Latino/a, and teologia de conjunto. Chapter two then examines seven themes that have defined “the effort of U.S. Hispanic theologians to elucidate the relationship between God and what is ‘Hispanically’ or Latinamente human” (24). This is an important chapter, with subsections treating each theme and highlighting the contributions of selected Hispanic/Latino/a theologians: 1) the Galilean identity of Jesus (Virgil Elizondo); 2) praxis as accompaniment (Roberto Goizueta); 3) the role of culture in humanization and
The birth of the self (Orlando Espín); 4) an anthropology of the struggle for life (Ada María Isasi-Díaz); 5) egalitarian and embodied gender relationships (Maria Pilar Aquino); 6) creaturehood (Alejandro Garcia-Rivera); and 7) Trinitarian themes in Hispanic Catholic anthropology (Sixto García). Chapter three deals with U.S. Hispanic/Latino/a popular Catholicism as an important expression of Catholic sacramental imagination and practice. Díaz shows how USHLT understands its central symbols, meanings, and Marian devotions as sacramental mediators of grace.

The final two chapters deal explicitly with the contributions of Karl Rahner. Chapter four offers a fairly standard summary of Rahner’s theological anthropology, which can serve as a readable general introduction to Rahner for undergraduates. It includes reliable summaries of Rahner’s theology of grace (including a clear explanation of the “supernatural existential”), the human person as “spirit in the world” and person-in-community, and socio-practical developments in Rahner’s thought after Vatican II. The fifth and final chapter moves explicitly into dialogue with Rahner’s theological anthropology. Together with chapter two, it comprises the most original, demanding and important section of the book.

The volume’s claims are framed in the introduction of the remarkable assertion that, “What Rahner argues relative to the theology of this student and friend Johann Baptist Metz, could be argued, mutatis mutandis, relative to emerging U. S. Hispanic theological anthropology” (xiv). Díaz quotes Rahner’s famous assertion:

Metz’s critique of my theology (which he calls transcendental theology) is the only criticism which I take very seriously. I agree in general…[that] every concrete mystagogy must…consider the societal situation and the Christian praxis to which it addresses itself. [And i]f it is not sufficiently done in my theory of mystagogy…then this theory must be filled out…[by] a practical fundamental theology. On the other hand, such political theology is, if it wishes to concern itself with God, not possible without reflection on those essential characteristics of man [sic] which a transcendental theology discloses (xiv).

Here and elsewhere, Díaz appears ready to accept this framework, locating his book as a dialogue between Rahner’s “transcendental theology” and a newly emerging “practical fundamental theology.”

This is curious, given the care thus far of USHLT to distinguish itself from European and Latin American approaches. One can imagine that several theologians cited here would question even a reconstructed appropriation of Rahner’s typically German “transcendental” vs. “practical” template to situate their contributions, developed in an “American” context where these terms are hotly disputed. Thus, it is somewhat surprising when the distinction appears to frame the “central question” of the book’s final chapter: “What can Rahner’s transcendental anthropology contribute both critically and constructively to the ongoing emergence of U. S. Hispanic theological anthropology? And what can the latter contribute, both critically and constructively, to Rahner’s transcendental vision” (112)?

However, I believe the entire issue warrants a closer look. It must be stated that at no point does Díaz explicitly characterize USHLT as a “practical fundamental theology,” or suggest it should accept the terms of Rahner’s transcendental philosophical theology. Rather, his agenda is to show how “Rahner’s transcendental anthropology can help pave the way” for new developments in USHLT, and how Rahner’s effort to correlate human experience and doctrine provides a heuristic example and challenge for U. S. Hispanic theologians” (81). Thus, it may be true that Díaz can be criticized for being too sanguine about the negative implications of allowing USHLT (and other emerging “contextual theologies”) to continue to be characterized in some circles as forms of “practical fundamental theology.” However, I would argue that the book finally demonstrates the very inadequacy of Rahner’s “transcendental” vs. “practical” distinction for locating USHLT. Díaz does this by highlighting and systematizing explicit claims by USHLT that reach beyond the ambit of what Rahner means by a “fundamental practical theology,” and would require far reaching revisions in his theological anthropology.

Díaz asserts in chapter five that Rahner’s theological anthropology “stresses the individual, whereas U.S. Hispanic theology gives priority to community” (129). This raises important questions. He asserts, on the one hand, “Rahner’s theological anthropology must be read in light of the turn to the individual subject,” which Díaz describes as “unsituated and neutral [regarding]…social, racial, gender, economic, and political coordinates” (120). On the other hand, USHLT anthropology explicitly advocates “a turn to the contextual subject” (129), which Díaz says “challenges and particularizes Rahner’s notion of the self transcending person as spirit in the world” (131).

This claim may appear to be at odds with the repeated insistence that “the central elements that comprise U.S. Hispanic theological anthropology…is not inconsistent with Rahner’s anthropological vision” (xiv). However, it is here that Díaz is most original. For the argument implies that, from the early work of Virgilio Elizondo to the present, USHLT has articulated a way of being “Hispanically” human that would require a serious revision in Rahner’s understanding of the “supernatural existential.” The point is that USHLT is developing a complementary, yet distinct, approach to theological anthropology, which Díaz asserts is better able to account for the role of grace in both the particular and collective socio-economic dimensions of U.S. Latino life.

This brings Díaz to the crucial assertion that, “whereas Rahner embraces a movement from individual to community, the opposite is the case with U.S. Hispanic theological anthropology, [which]…accents the organic constitution of reality and underscores the individual as a unique expression of the whole.” (132, 133). Quoting Orlando Espín, Díaz asserts, “each person is not a mirror reflection, but a unique refraction of the whole’ (133). Thus,

Although Rahner’s theology is open to development in socio-political terms…the U.S. Hispanic communal starting point is more capable than Rahner’s is of making a strong case for the socio-political [and cultural] constitution of the self. The emphasis on community predisposes U. S. Hispanic anthropology to consider more so than Rahner can with his individual starting point, those commonly shared experiences out of which the self is born. The U. S. Hispanic theological focus on pueblo, the family, mestizaje, and the socio-political implications of these experiences exemplify my point. In all of these experiences the self is understood as a socially constituted self who exists and exercised his or her freedom not prior to, or separate from, but within a given set of pre-existent relationships to others (133).

I have suggested this raises fundamental questions about Rahner’s supernatural existential. If the individual emerges from community, rather than vice-versa, what is the nature of the “existential” that is transformed by grace? What are its communal dimensions? Does God’s self-off to an entire people somehow co-constitute, or even precede God’s self-offer to the individual? Surely this is closer to a Jewish understanding of the Exodus experience than what twentieth-century existential philosophy can offer? How is history transformed by grace? And how is the human response to God’s self-offer to grace simultaneously a collective and an individual affair?

These and other important questions are raised by this book. But they are not answered. Díaz has opened the conversation, and gives only the broadest indications of how both Rahner’s work and the fundamental claims of USHLT must be revised or developed. He has certainly established the broad continuity of the central claims of U.S. Hispanic/Latino/a theological anthropology with Rahner’s work. In the opinion of this reviewer, however, the book constitutes an important advance precisely by demonstrating that the central claims of a still-developing U.S. Hispanic/Latino/a theological anthropology constitute a true novum in the development in the Catholic theology of grace.