The problem of "the one and the many" is as old as philosophy and theology. In its modern religious context it is the problem of relating the universal teachings of the Church to the individual in a concrete situation. Too often these universal essential principles have been applied indiscriminately, as if a particular choice were little more than a fragment or distillation of a general rule. But the universal principle is not, as Karl Rahner points out in the first part of this book, a sufficient recipe for a here and now decision; rather it is a kind of vague perspective which can only be brought into proper focus by individual knowledge and the promptings of grace in a particular setting. Since one's individual duty cannot be known by a consideration of general principles alone, and cannot be deduced from universal premisses, there must be some practical
mode of recognizing these promptings of grace in a particular instance. In the second part of The Dynamic Element in the Church this mode is defined in terms of the Ignatian doctrine of the discernment of spirits. Through this penetrating exegesis of The Spiritual Exercises, Father Rahner unfolds his theory of a fully developed ethics of the individual Person.