ABSTRACT
“Resurrection in Death in the Theology of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar”
by Fr. Bryan Louis Kromholtz, O.P.
(Graduate Theological Union, 2000)

Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar offer similar proposals regarding the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.  Specifically, both propose that the resurrection could occur immediately in death, without any kind of intermediate state between the death of the individual and the final judgment.  Both versions of this hypothesis aim to oppose an overly mythological understanding of the afterlife and to promote an idea of the human as a body/soul unity.  However, their proposals yield a spiritualized, less bodily view of the human person.  Further, resurrection in death implies a close association of death with resurrection; this necessarily attenuates the negativity of death as something to be opposed as unjust and renders mourning for the dead more difficult to defend theologically.

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