Abstract

Theology and literature, as the twentieth century progressed, increasingly treated religion not in terms of the objectifications of dogmas and devotions but as the unseen presence of the divine in an individual life. Readers and critics saw degrees of belief and modalities of sin in the novels of Graham Greene. The writer acknowledged the influence of European novelists and theologians on his narratives. Karl Rahner’s theology of human existence within an atmosphere of grace along with a presentation of the transcendental and the categorical in expressions of faith and grace recall some modern novels like Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case. Both theologian and novelist point to God’s presence as silent, varied, mysterious, and real.