The Case for God

by Karen Armstrong

Rahner stressed the importance of mystery, which was simply an aspect of humanity. The transcendent is not an add-on, something separate from normal existence, because it simply means “to go beyond.” When we know, choose, and love other beings in this world, we have to go outside ourselves; when we try to get beyond all particular beings, we move toward what lies beyond words, concepts, and categories. That mystery, which defies description, is God. Religious doctrines were not meant to explain or define the mystery; they were simply symbolic. A doctrine articulates our sense of the ineffable and makes us aware of it. A dogmatic statement, therefore, is “merely the means of expressing a being referred beyond itself and anything imaginable.”