A visão beatífica e a noção de mistério em K. Rahner

This study provides a brief presentation of the contribution of K. Rahner to a renewed understanding of the theological notion of mystery, a category fundamental in Christianity and in theology, which is, to an extent, the science of the mystery. The fundamental essence of his contribution – inspired, on the one hand, by St. Thomas Aquinas and, on the other, by a certain tendency in contemporary philosophy, with G. Marcel as one of its most significant representatives – consists in bringing about a methodological inversion, in other words instead of considering the mystery via the limits of reason, to do so via the beatific vision and the theme of the lumen gloriae. The mystery thus comes to refer directly to God, and less to propositions that outpass the limits of reason. The plurality of the mysteries may be summarised in just three: the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation and the hypostatic union, and the elevation of creatures to communion with God in grace. All of the rest amounts to a subdivision of these three fundamental mysteries. K. Rahner’s conclusion is one of an anthropological nature, showing that mankind is essentially the being of the mystery, of the infinite spiritual transcendency, open and susceptible to the excess of sense that the mystery, like the greatness of the Son, encloses within itself.