Definition

a person who has de facto accepted the gracious self-offering of God (i.e. salvation), while not yet being a Christian at the social level (through baptism and church membership). Term coined by Catholic theologian Karl Rahner (1904-1984).

Significance

Rahner's views of the supernatural existential and of revelation become the basis of his famous theory of "anonymous Christians." On the one hand, God's salvific will is universal. This leads Rahner to say that there should be a possibility for all persons to be saved. Yet, on the other hand, the Catholic tradition holds a belief that salvation is possible only through faith in Jesus Christ and the membership into the Church. For Rahner, this conflict is solvable through the notions of the supernatural existential, as the condition for all persons in their transcendentality to receive God’s grace and "universal-transcendental revelation," which becomes God's self-communication to all people as transcendent beings. Consequently, Rahner urges, those who do not confess Jesus Christ explicitly and do not become members of the Catholic Church must have the possibility of a genuine saving relation with God and therefore they are called "anonymous Christians."

The difficulty of this term is that it can call into question the autonomy of other non-Christian religions and their adherents. It also downplays the importance of baptism (and other sacraments) as a sign of Christian life and therefore calls into question the role/importance of the life of Christ as a necessary saving act of grace.

Recent Articles and Books

1. Lamadrid, Lucas . “Anonymous or Analogous Christians? Rahner and von Balthasar on Naming the Non-Christian,” Modern Theology 11 (Jul 1995): 363-384. This article discusses/contrasts two ways in which Christians can relate to non-Christians in the encounter between the cultures. Rahner, according to this article, emphasizes the dialogue between the cultures to create a Christian witness and Balthasar emphases that witness makes dialogue possible. The benefit of reviewing these two opinions together is that one gets a more complete picture of these opposing approaches, their implications and their possible implementations.

Related Terms

christology, grace, salvation