Jeff Mirus's critique of Henri de Lubac

Dr. Jeff Mirus, "Henri de Lubac's fascinating notes on Vatican II" (CatholicCulture.org, August 18, 2015):

Here I explore the notes made by the French theologian Henri de Lubac as he prepared for and participated in the Second Vatican Council. I will gradually add revealing excerpts and comments from successive stages of de Lubac’s involvement. Each stage will be linked below. They will be announced in City Gates as they are added.

• Introduction
• Theological Background
• Preparing for the Council: Highlights through the end of 1961 (presented 5/1/2015)
• Final Preparations: Highlights from 1962 until the Council opened on October 11th (presented 5/8/2015)
• Early Weeks of the Council (presented 5/26/2015)
• Discussing Revelation: Mid-November 1962 (presented 6/15/2015)
• De Lubac’s Closing Chapter: The End of 1962 (presented 8/18/2015)

Introduction [top]

I’ve been wondering how to handle the decision of Ignatius Press to publish the notebooks kept by Henri de Lubac, SJ on his participation in the Second Vatican Council. Volume I has been released, which covers de Lubac’s observations between July 25, 1960 and September 2, 1963.

In printed form, these observations run to nearly 500 pages, and they include everything from physical descriptions of people he met to brief points of analysis concerning key issues facing the Council. To comb the text searching for particular information would be difficult, and to read the whole thing slowly enough to take my own notes would be unlikely to repay the effort.

And yet de Lubac (1896 - 1991) is a pivotal figure in Catholic theology in the mid-20th century, a man unwillingly locked in a battle on two fronts. On the one side were the largely misguided systematic Thomists who dominated the Roman Curia, expending great energy to secure condemnations of every insight that did not fit conveniently into their own excessively abstract system—almost a philosophy rather than a theology, and increasingly divorced from the sources of theology in Scripture and the Fathers. On the other roamed the Modernists, rapidly rising to leadership in the Jesuit Order and elsewhere, who for many good reasons distrusted the narrow establishment in Rome, but who spiraled into an unbridled secularism which has seriously undermined the Faith.

So some notice must be taken of this new and important resource for understanding the questions, problems, personalities, and even hostile forces surrounding the work of the Council. What I have decided to do, therefore, is read through the notebooks at my leisure, mostly for enjoyment, marking brief passages which shed light on issues of continuing importance. Then, in a series of “interventions” of my own (not to the body of bishops but to my readers in this space), I will present and sometimes comment on what I have found to be of special interest.

To make things easier for readers, who will have to digest this material in fits and starts according to my own schedule, I will use internal links which lead to the beginning of each new and dated addition of highlights. In addition, italics will be used to indicate my own comments. Paragraphs in regular type are de Lubac’s own words. But before I begin to notice the most interesting aspects of the notebooks, I will offer just a little bit of background.

'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité': a Frenchman's accounts of revolutions personal and theological ....

Hard on the heels of the just posted article, "Disappointment with Louis Bouyer's Memoirs" (Musings, March 4, 2016), come these potent ruminations from our underground correspondent from an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir- Private Eye:

As you know, I have a sentimental attachment to The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, and hence to its author Louis Bouyer. He was pivotal in my conversion.

I have made an effort to read most of what he has written. Even his commentary on the Gospel of John, authored pre-conversion, which finds him at that point more mainline liberal than backwoods Baptist, so to speak. His work is easy to read but hard to categorize (in his forgotten Dictionary of Theology, he even affirmed the poena sensus [pain of sense] -- in Hell -- as if anyone can say that now, much less explain or defend it!)

For years, rumors of his memoirs circled. He'd supposedly mandated they not surface for a period after his death, so watchers assumed there were broadsides or bombshells worthy of anticipation. Given this was a man who knew Ratzinger, Tolkien, Küng (he was his doctoral advisor!), Bugnini, von Balthasar, etc, and yet who also wrote The Decomposition of Catholicism, for crying out loud.

But slow down a minute ... did you not just read of the associations with JR and HvB? He also supported the start up of and was praised by Ignatius Press... Maybe someone can see some very faint but strange pattern... Great guys all, no doubt, but would you expect Fr. Joseph Fessio or any one of them to strike a note that would offend any reigning pontiff or Vatican City commission. Remember: got...to...love...The Church....

And so we move the anticipated  and  published memoirs, issued now in, yes, two rival translations! This while The Last Writings of Reginald Garrigou Lagrange languishes out of print. Well ... 

But Bouyer's of course memoirs have been hyped. A whole lot. And yet -- surprise or no -- there is essentially just not much there. Pretty much Nada. He is the French Catholic version of Karl Ove Knausgård, prolix but revealing little other than he knows himself to be himself. Though I am now uncertain, I can't even recalling him much mentioning the name 'Jesus.' Or much else. Other than French provincial scenes and an early doomed romance that pushed him to the ministry. Some of this might be a generational or Catholic culture thing. Or French thing. But regardless, in verbosity and density it too much seems akin to the documents of Vatican II.

I look over at the memoirs of Congar and DeLubac and Ratzinger, and am struck by the fact that to my more 21st century sensibilities, none of these guys' writings or memoirs have that much defined shape -- not a one. That may explain the new generation of saints bequeathed us in soft focus.  If you are looking for clearly defined doctrine, Rome may no longer be the place to be. But read on. Amy Welborn had a similar reaction to mine in more muted tones: "These are the memoirs of a defining theologian? Odd." 

[Meanwhile, get and read The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism. Who cares if it was a grace-induced inconsistency: grace-filled it will undeniably seem to be, to any Protestant considering Rome and any Catholic considering his heretical kin.]

Holes or cracks in the Dutch dike: Schillebeeckx and other Nouvelles

Another couple of comments from Guy Noir on why he sometimes think that certain nouvelles may by offering not marzipan but (in a nod to CS Lewis) turkish delight...

I visited the Europe over 20 plus ago as a high school student. On a train we sat in a car with three Dutch youths. To this day I remember their incredulous remarks about the religiosity of America. So that cheery youthful ‘contempt’ they exhibited came back to my mind as I read this disturbing description of the spiritual aridity of Holland. Even 20 years ago the churches we visited were empty museum pieces — I wonder what impression it would all make on me now. But I do not wonder at all at the enabling role of theologians like Edward Schillebeeckx and even more well-meaning Nouvelles in the fallout form a perfect storm of modernism. Once again I remember someone telling me that people and tides do not ‘sit still’ in the spiritual life. We are constantly moving in one direction or another.

And with such a window box as a backdrop, this next linked item rings true. The problems in Church governance seem more like cracks than like holes in the dyke. Things won’t collapse as much as get so porous Catholics and non-Catholics alike will just be palling amidst a slough. Or are we already?

And then, there's this (also from him):

So I then decided to google Edward S[chillebeeckx -- although some also like to call him Sillybeecks].

This is telling. He sounds like he would be quite the Man of the Hour with a couple of very minor tailorings. I also saw that in addition to Ratzinger and von Balthasar, founding members of COMMUNIO included none other than Kasper and Lehman. I believe that tells us something significant:

The Rev. Edward Schillebeeckx, a prominent member of a wave of Roman Catholic theologians who helped reshape Catholicism during the Second Vatican Council and whose writings were later investigated for heresy, died on Dec. 23 in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He was 95.

He died after a short illness, according to the Edward Schillebeeckx Foundation in Nijmegen, which preserves his work.

Although born and raised in Belgium, where he entered the Dominican religious order, Father Schillebeeckx (pronounced SKIL-uh-bakes) joined the theological faculty at the Catholic University of Nijmegen (now Radboud University) in 1958. He soon became a leading adviser to the Dutch bishops, especially during the four sessions of the Second Vatican Council, a marathon reassessment of Catholic life held in Rome from 1962 to 1965.

There he entered into discussions of the council’s documents, which eventually allowed celebration of the Mass in today’s languages rather than only in Latin, endorsed religious freedom, removed many barriers between Catholics, Protestants and other faiths and promoted a positive engagement with contemporary culture.

After the council, Father Schillebeeckx continued pressing for the kind of changes it had initiated. He published and lectured widely on basic theological matters like the nature of revelation and salvation, and on issues of church discipline he argued for democratic procedures in church governance and the ordination of married people, both men and women, to the priesthood.

He helped prepare the “New Dutch Catechism,” which the Dutch bishops published in 1966 and which sold widely.

From 1968 to 1981, the Vatican began three investigations of his writings for heresy. They all ended inconclusively with admonitions, complaints and requests for clarification but with no formal censures or penalties.

Like many Catholic theologians who influenced the council, Father Schillebeeckx had reacted against the neo-scholastic theology that the church adopted in the 19th century as a bulwark against hostile modern ideas. Distilled from the thought of Thomas Aquinas but frequently handed on without any examination of Aquinas’s writings or their medieval context, this neo-scholasticism articulated the faith in series of abstract concepts and propositions presented as absolute, ahistorical and immutable. Father Schillebeeckx found alternative intellectual resources in modern phenomenology, with its meticulous attention to the actual experience of consciousness. And by studying Aquinas in his medieval context, he recovered a Thomism that expounded the presence and mystery of God in far less rationalistic and conceptual ways than did its neo-scholastic versions.

Strong emphases on human experience and on the importance of examining church teaching in historical context became hallmarks of Father Schillebeeckx’s work.

His early writing on the sacraments, for example, portrayed them as personal encounters with God rather than mechanisms for the distribution of grace. In two books — “Jesus: An Experiment in Christology” (1974) and “Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World” (1977) — he recast classical Catholic teachings about Christ around the experiences that gave rise to his followers’ faith in Jesus as messiah and the son of God.

These were groundbreaking attempts at rethinking church doctrine in light of the scholarly research about the historical Jesus that had accumulated in previous decades. But the fact that Father Schillebeeckx did not begin with Christianity’s great creedal statements about Jesus and the Trinity but instead focused on the subjective experience of the first generations of believers, as expressed in the New Testament accounts, stirred considerable controversy and a Vatican investigation.

Critics asked, for example, whether Father Schillebeeckx, by treating the resurrection largely in terms of the “conversion” experiences that Jesus’ disciples underwent after his death, was either denying that Jesus actually rose from the dead or suggesting that it did not matter.

Father Schillebeeckx said he was doing neither. His intention, he said, was to help contemporary people on a journey to belief by portraying the parallel journeys of Jesus’ first followers.

Not all of Father Schillebeeckx’s critics were theological conservatives. Some simply thought that he fell short in his ambitious efforts to master huge amounts of biblical scholarship or philosophical theory and that he consequently opted for arresting but unwarranted positions.

An emphasis on experience led Father Schillebeeckx to much reflection on large-scale human suffering and on salvation as liberation from it. For him, faith in Jesus required not just a mental assent but also a this-worldly response to suffering. Edward Cornelius Florentius Schillebeeckx was born on Nov. 12, 1914, in Antwerp, Belgium. He was the sixth of 14 children in a middle-class Flemish family.

He attended a Jesuit-run secondary school, and joined the Dominicans in 1934. After a brief military service, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1941. In 1946, postgraduate studies took him to the Sorbonne in Paris and to Le Saulchoir, a nearby Dominican house of studies, where he encountered Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar, pioneers of the “new theology” that would be a major influence at the Second Vatican Council.

Father Schillebeeckx was variously described as “reserved” and “charming.” Mary Catherine Hilkert, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame who edited a volume of essays on Father Schillebeeckx, described him as “utterly gracious.”

Principles of Catholic Theology and Careful Readers

Just a brief aerogram today from Guy Noir in Rome, where he was apparently luncheoning with some friends among the papal paparazzi last Saturday. Always the Socratic gadfly, seizing upon every possible means of prodding me and provoking me to THINK, he scrawls out (in a remarkably florid John Handcock-esque hand) the URL to the mighty War Against Being blog of James Larson, and, with the words: "I believe this is depressingly right," refers to the following title and excerpted quote: "The Synod on the Family, Joseph Ratzinger, And the Destruction of the Catholic Mind" (WAB, January 22, 2015):

If that bishop possesses a mind which has fallen prey to the denial of substantiality inherent in Modern Physics, and if he is also an evolutionist: then, despite the fact that the good instincts he has inherited from the past may indeed have led him to vote correctly, he is not at all established in those foundational principles which are necessary for truly “thinking with the Church”. His orthodoxy, his conservativism, in other words, is built on sand, and is eventually bound to crumble – if not in himself personally before his death, then in his spiritual children. He may believe in the indissolubility of marriage, but he has no substantial basis for so believing. He may believe in the concepts of mortal sin and sanctifying grace, but these beliefs fly directly in the face of his being in bed with Science and Evolutionary Theory. He has feet of sand.

To which Noir adds a bit of text in Saxon Runes in mockery of my ignorance of them ...

... which he then "generously" condescends to translate for me as follows:

"... Which explains the ongoing tragedy that we witness unfolding in the well-meaning but impossibly-conflicted papacies of the last six popes. Meanwhile we witness the incredible spectacle of Ignatius Press adding more bricks to its literary memorial to Vatican II.(And I do mean bricks: peruse Fr. De Lubac's Paradoxes or More Paradoxes for confirmation; also note his biggest fan of late is John Milbank)."

Well enough. I never found Milbank rewarding enough to read anyway. I liked de Lubac's The Drama of Atheist Humanism,which shed some interesting new light on Auguste Comte and Ludwig Feuerbach, but I remain in two minds about some of his other work. My head hurts.

[Disclaimer: Rules 7-9]

Beauty, Balthasar, & Boilers

Maureen Mullarkey, "Beauty, Balthasar, & Boilers" (First Things, January 26, 2015).

I received a link to the article above from Guy Noir - Private Eye, along with these observations:

Well... I do not know if Mullarkey thinks all these things as sharply as she says them, or is just having fun.

Who cares?, since she is tremendous fun and certainly well within reason, even if the the Catholic faithful are still suffering aftershocks from her calling the Holy Father "imprudent."

Now here she is at it again, taking aim at the lodestars of the two previous pontificates and tweaking the ears of De Lubac and von Balthasar. And plugging the Japanese and dime store art, to boot!

[Hat tip to GN]

Must Read: "Attacks on Thomism" by John Lamont

A terrific essay by the dependably-thorough and substantial John Lamont, with rarely found explanations of Ives Congar, the difference between Modernism and Protestantism, etc., covering "manualism," Thomism and neo-modernism, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, the state of the Church, and much more -- from "A Christmastide Gift for our Readers: - Attacks on Thomism: a special historical and theological essay"(Rorate Caeli, January 1, 2015).

Attacks on Thomism: a special historical and theological essay

Attacks on Thomism

a special essay for Rorate Caeli by John Lamont

Thomism and neomodernism 

I: Progressives, 'manualism', and Thomism

Anyone who has any familiarity with the clerical and intellectual scene in the Catholic Church will have encountered the received 'progressive' wisdom concerning Thomism and its role in the Church before the Second Vatican Council, and concerning the preconciliar state of theology in general. Its claims and slogans are continually reiterated in theological and clerical circles, with little change since the era – the first half of the twentieth century – in which they were first elaborated. Unlike 'progressive' positions on moral questions, this received wisdom has virtually attained the status of a pseudo-orthodoxy within the Church, with some of its components being central to 'conservative' Catholicism. Its acceptance by neoconservatives is indicated by a favourable presentation of it by Fr. Brian van Hove in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review,¹ a journal that is one of the oldest pillars of conservative Catholicism. Fr. Van Hove's exposition of this received wisdom takes the form of an attack on Pius XII's encyclical Humani Generis, an embarrassing document for neoconservative Catholics. His exposition is a naïve one, lacking the nuances that would be introduced by a clever apologist for his outlook, but it is valuable for that very reason. It is the naïve version of an idea, the simplified and readily accessible one, that gets widely adopted and that determines events; this fact is known by the clever apologists, who are aware that the nuances they introduce to disarm criticism and conceal their intentions will fall by the wayside once their position has triumphed. Together, these points make up the ideology that justified the destruction of preconciliar Catholic theology, and that is an essential underpinning of the progressive hegemony that now controls the Church. Seeing through this ideology is crucial to overcoming this hegemony; this article and its two sequels are devoted to the task of exposing it.

'Manualism'.

An important component of this ideology is an attack on 'manualism'. This attack claims that preconciliar Catholic theology largely consisted in 'manualist theology'. Allegedly, this theology was conveyed in theological manuals, and suffered from legalism, dogmatism, anti-modernism (presumed to be a fault), abstraction, and ahistoricism.  Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

E. Milco on Ressourcement and the New Theology

E. Milco, "Letter to a Friend on Ressourcement and the New Theology" (Ursus Elisei, December 2, 2014).

Since having the "misfortune" (his word) of being linked by First Things, Milco added the following "Notes to My Previous Post" (Ursus Elisei, December 3, 2014).

From the original piece:

The New Theology can be divided into two schools: Ressourcement and Aggiornamento. The former is based on the notion that scholastic metaphysics and the disputative/tractative style of theological exposition are contrary to the richness and depth which belonged to theology prior to the emergence of the Schools in the high middle ages.... There are several problems with this story....

First, when one reads the Fathers, one has a definite sense that they are not only not averse to the use of philosophical tools in theological reflection, but that they often struggle to develop them as a means of clarifying and exposing the faith, and combating heresy....

Second, the standard portrait of changes in medieval theology is completely wrong....

Third, if the task of theological reflection is more "stifling" now than it was a millennium ago, this is in large part because of the clarity that has resulted from the development of the doctrine of the faith....

Fourth, the tradition of scholastic theology between Gregory VII and Pius XII abandoned neither the composition of exegetical tracts and homilies on scripture, nor the practical application of theological insights to spiritual counsel....

Finally, there is an overall difficulty in the implications of the Ressourcement position for the proper approach to the Tradition as a whole.... Could it be that Ressourcement is just an excuse to abandon the Catholic tradition altogether, and reconstruct a new one according to one's tastes and creative inclinations?

The Ressourcement position is the worthier of criticism because it is the less obviously heretical of the two schools within the "New Theology" that have blossomed since the Council. The other is much more disturbing because it reveals a basic lack of commitment to any sort of apostolic tradition or faith. This is the so-called Aggiornamento school, emblematized by the journal Concilium. (Concilium recently devoted an entire issue to the need for the destruction of "orthodoxy" in Catholic theology.) These people are straightforward Modernists....

One needn't wring one's hands about these guys, because it's clear that they are inventing a new religion which simply happens to share some key names and terminology with the one established by Christ. The chief difficulty with them, though, is that (again, as described by Pius X) they hide their many heresies behind vague, unconventional and metaphorical descriptions of their ideas. Rahner is an excellent example of this. In Foundations of Christian Faith, we read a "mystical" treatise on the essence and underlying realities upon which the Christian Faith is based. The language of this text is largely borrowed from Heidegger, and its style is full of circuitous neologisms. Because of the sprinkling of pious phrases and variations on standard doctrinal affirmations spread throughout the text, one might be tempted to think that Rahner's analysis is simply an updating of old Thomistic theology to fit the new philosophical methods of the German phenomenologists. Indeed, this is what Rahner is commonly described as doing! He even has his own "school" of Thomism.

But if you move beyond the stage of simply letting the verbiage wash over you and massage your consciousness, and try instead to get at the precise meaning of what he says, it is often extremely disturbing. He denies the reality of the life to come, except as immanent in the present life. He reduces God to the ground of our experience of mystery. He identifies grace, which is supposedly co-natural with human nature, with beatitude and claims that they are one single moment in our lives. He proposes the abolition of the traditional creeds and their replacement by certain more pluralistic and anthropocentric affirmations of commitment. The whole business is horrifying to anyone interested in preserving the truths of the Catholic Faith, because it very clearly does away with the Faith altogether. And to imagine that this man was held up as the chief theological hero of the Second Vatican Council!

[Hat tip to JM]

Charles James' critique of Karl Rahner

[In our continuing series critically reviewing the representatives of Nouvelle Théologie (see our earlier post on Bernard Lonergan, Musings, September 6, 2014), we now turn our attention to Karl Rahner. Suggestions for other candidates are welcome.]

Charles W. James, "Karl Rahner's Baneful Impact on Theology" (New Oxford Review, September 1995). Charles James, a convert from Anglicanism, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, Academic Dean, and Provost at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California.

Karl Rahner is, without debate, the most influential Catholic theologian of the 20th century. During the course of his spectacular career he wrote or spoke on almost every subject of the Christian faith. When I studied theology at the Jesuit-run University of Santa Clara, Rahner was quoted with more authority than St. Thomas Aquinas. As an Anglican, that gave me pause, so I decided to dig deeper into Rahner's thought. What struck me immediately was Rahner's insistence on interacting with modern European philosophy, especially that of Immanuel Kant. Rahner was unwilling to carry out his theological task in the vacuum of a biblical positivism. He engaged modern philosophy in theological debate, forcing philosophy and theology to speak to each other. Some found this conversation threatening while others found it refreshing. This ambiguous response toward Rahner was reflected in the way he was treated during the Second Vatican Council. At the start of the Council, Rahner was not allowed to act as a peritus -- a theological expert who consults with the Council Fathers. But this semi-ban was lifted from Rahner when Pope John XXIII intervened and gave him the status of theological consultant.

But Rahner's influence has grown even further in the postconciliar period. First, most of his substantive theological works have been translated from the German so that the sheer weight of his theological system is felt by many. The second reason Rahner is so influential today is that he fits our postmortem mentality. Rahner would rather describe God as "holy mystery" than as absolute being. In the developed theology of Rahner, God is not so much the esse absolutum as the mysterium absolutum. This shift from metaphysics to mystery is Rahner's central contribution to the theology of God, but also his greatest liability. To be sure, we sense a subtle attraction to this theology of mystery because the Church has always acknowledged the incomprehensibility of God. We realize that our finite minds can only speak of God analogously. We know that we can have no direct, clear, or full idea of our Creator. "We see through a glass, darkly," as St. Paul said. But Rahner's use of the notion of mystery goes further than merely a description of God. He wishes to use mystery as a criterion of theological truth. This mystery, which is God, becomes Rahner's theological touchstone. He sees mystery not only as a description of God, but as the nature of human consciousness as well. Following Martin Heidegger, Rahner says that the human being is the questioning being because the person himself is a question. And this questioning nature of the human person guarantees that mystery will remain an intrinsic part of human knowing. Rahner is thus able to argue that the mystery of God and the mystery of the human spirit are in continuity. Rahner says that the very way we come to verify and clarify our everyday knowledge is by illuminating our sensations with the mystery beyond us. We somehow already recognize this mystery, our minds move toward it by the universal grace of God, and we use it to give meaning to what confronts us in the world. Hence, for Rahner, mystery serves as a criterion of truth, a backdrop to all our finite thought. The mystery, which is God, answers the human quest for truth. Absolute mystery serves as a measure for the all-too-human striving of our intellect. In short, Rahner replaces the Thomistic analogy of being with an analogy of mystery (analogia mysterii).

This is all very postmodern because it agrees with the postmodern turn away from the metaphysical foundations of thought. The postmodern attitude eschews Plato's forms as well as Aristotle's teleology. It is even ill-at-ease with Darwin and Marx because both held to the 19th-century metaphysical idea of inevitable progress. Rahner fits well within this postmodern attitude because he does not attempt to ground his theology in a metaphysical constant, but rather in mystery. Mystery is his ground as well as his criterion of the validity of theological truth. One may wonder why any Christian would disagree with Rahner's description of God as "holy mystery," or with validating our thought by this mystery. At first look, it appears to provide the spiritual orientation that much of our contemporary theology needs.

But does Rahner's criterion of mystery serve to validate our beliefs or merely relativize them? Can mystery validate thought? Can it serve as a measure of clarity against which we may compare our very unclear ideas? By its very nature Rahner's notion of mystery cannot possibly serve this function. Permanent mystery can neither validate nor clarify our thought, it can only reveal its finitude. Granted, Rahner's stance has given us a needed pastoral warning against conceptual arrogance, but he has not given us a usable criterion of theological truth. What we need in order to validate our thought and our theological statements is not mystery, but a criterion that is substantial and specific enough to serve as a practical guide for our groping intellects. We need a portrait of truth and reality that shares in both the contingencies of history and the absoluteness of divinity. This criterion, marked by both radical contingency and radical divinity, is what the Church calls revelation. Should the Church attempt to go "behind" revelation -- try to validate her message by an appeal to mystery? The very opaqueness of mystery makes it difficult to see how we could ever connect revelation, much less our paltry thoughts, with the infinite otherness of this "holy mystery."

In fact, Rahner tells us that we cannot even conceive of this mystery; it must be experienced in its infinite silence. But if this is so, how can a nonconceptual (experiential) criterion serve to clarify, much less validate, our conceptual thought? It may be possible to find a home for our feelings in this "holy mystery," but what about our ideas? For all of Rahner's lip service to history and contingency, it seems that he has imprisoned truth in a heaven of mystery which can only be penetrated by the experiential and affective sides of human nature. But if we desire the clarification of our concepts or the validation of our theo-logy, we are left standing before the obscurity of this heaven, outside the gates.

We might ask Rahner just how he would go about clarifying or validating a theological statement with his criterion of mystery. In his essay "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," he argues that the propositions of theology must constantly be referred back to religious experience. The job of the theologian is reductio in mysterium -- i.e., a referring of the theological statement back to the theologian's (or the Church's) experience of absolute mystery. In his essay "What is a Dogmatic Statement?" Rahner says that a true theological statement "leads into the mysterium ." Rahner makes our experience of mystery the criterion of theological truth. Only those theological statements which reflect this experienced mystery are valid statements. Hence, the experience of mystery is the measure of theology.

But notice what Rahner is really saying. It is not even the "holy mystery" itself that functions as a criterion of theological truth for Rahner, but rather our experience of this mystery. Rahner has ironically allowed his criterion of mystery to become no more than an experience emanating from the subjectivity of religious feeling. We can only "know" mystery by experiencing it and this experience becomes the criterion of theological truth. Rahner has not successfully surpassed Kant's subjectivity which led straight to the Romantic piety of Schleiermacher. Rather than helping us integrate our thought and our religious experience, Rahner hopelessly dichotomizes them, leaving thought to fend for itself without any theological rationale.

Robert Coles has recently stated that we live in an age of "applauded subjectivity." The postmodern age emphasizes subjectivity out of its fear of objectivity. The postmodernist, whether theological or not, lazily prefers the wide open spaces of obscurity to the hard, narrow road of clarity. Rahner's criterion fits well with this attitude since his principle of mystery precludes conceptual clarity. The central problem is: Given that people have wildly differing religious experiences, how will we adjudicate between one theology and another? Also: How will we ever be able to develop a criterion of theological truth that is more than the mirror-image of ourselves? Human beings need a criterion that will give them a worldview that acknowledges both the real contingencies of their existence and the objective grace that pervades that existence.

The Church finds her criterion of truth in revelation, which means that there is a source of knowledge outside human consciousness. For anyone with commitments to postmodern humanism, this is anathema. To claim that knowledge could come from any source apart from human creativity is to contradict flatly the postmodern mentality. But the Church's acknowledgment of divine revelation makes just that claim. The belief in divine revelation serves as a warning against our self-congratulatory intellectual subjectivity. The idea that the "Word of God" is disturbingly and freely present within the world of contingent history makes our privatization of religion in modern Western culture a rather absurd attempt at domesticating the giant. What disturbs many postmodernists about revelation is not its divine nature, but its historical presence. If revelation were confined to the heaven of pure spirit, all would be well. But the Church insists that revelation is, by its nature, historical. It participates in the radical contingency which is part of human experience. It is not a purely formal and limitless category, nor is it conveniently obscured by the mysteriousness of its absoluteness. Revelation is incarnational, sharing in both the contingency of our history and absoluteness of divinity. In order to verify her thought, the Church does hot look up to absolute mystery; rather, she looks out to history, to "deeds and words." As the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation states, "This economy of revelation is realized by deeds and words, which are intrinsically bound up with each other." This Vatican II document goes on to state that the deeds of God in history reveal the doctrine in the words. But also, the words "bring to light the mystery they [the deeds] contain." Note the restricted use of mystery here. The locus of mystery is history, not, as in Rahner, the limitless mysterium absolutum.

If the Church wants to validate or clarify her theology, she cannot do so by piercing through the appearance of revelation toward some formless mystery. She must patiently pay attention to the events of history and the words of Scripture and Tradition in order to relate her experience to her inherited concepts. In the ongoing work of the mutual interpretation of deeds and words, the Church faces the mystery of God. This mystery, however, is not her criterion of truth, but the inspiration to continue her journey. To use a nautical metaphor, mystery fills the sails of the Church, but something else must serve as her compass. If we follow Rahner's use of mystery as a criterion of theological truth, we will be forcing the experiential and affective nature of our lives to play a conceptual role -- forcing our feelings to function as concepts. But even more confusing, if we appeal to absolute mystery as our theological criterion, we will be deliberately looking away from the place we are most likely to discover our proper criterion, revelatory history. Our compass cannot be found in the ahistorical realm of mystery, but in the contingency of existence into which God has chosen to enter. The incarnation of Christ proclaims that God has entered history and infused it with meaning. The Church is, then, well advised not to look away from this history, but to find the light of her guidance embedded within it. The Church finds this light in the reality of divine revelation. In revelation the Church sees the integration of historical contingency and conceptuality.

In revelation, we find the integration of experiential and conceptual knowledge, the two modes of human knowledge which Western philosophy has been trying to integrate since Plato. Modeled by this reality of revelation, the Church defines truth as both contingent and conceptual. Our understanding of truth is modeled after our understanding of revelation. The incarnation of Christ historicized God and impregnated our history with revelation. We must, therefore, look to this revelatory history if we are to find the recognizable face of holy mystery. We will find our criterion there, as Jesus did. But what kind of criterion may we hope to find?

First, it will not be a single criterion, but a multifaceted one. Second, our criterion will most likely not be apprehended in an instantaneous intuition. Rather, it will emerge as we patiently interpret event with word and word with event. It will be a criterion for pilgrims. But what we lack in singularity we will gain in well-roundedness. And what we lack in immediacy, we will gain in detailed familiarity.

Let us call our criterion the criterion of contingency, and let's replace Rahner's analogy of mystery with an analogy of history. Knowledge of God is made possible not by a continuity of mystery, but by the continuity of history that the incarnating God initiated between Himself and, His creation. Man can know God because both participate in history. But what are the specifics of our criterion? How can we use it, say, to validate a theological statement? Here are some guidelines.

(1) Does our theological statement adequately integrate the experience and the knowledge of the Church? If it is true that revelation is both historical (experiential) and conceptual (thought-like), then our theology ought to reflect this partnership and integrate the experience of grace and the conceptualization of grace. In brief, does our theology help to wed our experience with our doctrine, or divorce them? (It is not accidental that Rahner's experientialism has been deployed by certain Catholic leaders at the parish level to downplay or jettison Catholic doctrine.)

(2) Does our theological statement illuminate the revelatory truth found in the particularities of history? If history without revelation is dark, surely revelation without history is too bright for us to see.

(3) Does our theological statement encourage the growth of the Church's knowledge? By its nature, revelation allows history and word to interpret each other, thus providing for the possibility of understanding. Our theological statements, by reflecting this interaction, should themselves promote the growth of our understanding of that revelation. Theology is not merely the repetition of historical dogma, but the growing understanding of dogma through history.

Rahner's criterion of mystery lacks the specificity of history, and that is why it is not a usable criterion. Rahner consistently points us beyond history toward absolute mystery. In so doing, he doesn't even give us a meaningful criterion of mystery -- he just gives us obscurity.

------------------------------------------

The foregoing review article by Charles James, Karl Rahner's Baneful Impact on Theology," was originally published in the New Oxford Review (September 1995), and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.

[Hat tip to JM]

Related:

• Robert C. McCarthy, A Critical Examination of the Theology of Karl Rahner(Carthay Ventures, 2001), an insightful primer among critiques of Rahner's theology.
• Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Destructio Dei (Destruction of God)(TIA, 2012), a detailed analysis of the novel theological systems of Rahner and von Balthasar on the Trinity.

Charles James' critique of Bernard Lonergan

[This is hopefully the first in a series of critical readings of Nouvelle theologians that we hope to offer. Suggestions are welcome.]

Charles James, "Falling Into Subjectivism" (New Oxford Review, September 2003). Charles James, a convert from Anglicanism, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, Academic Dean, and Provost at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California.

In a breathless article published in Crisis magazine (Feb. 2003), Michael Novak canonizes Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) as the St. Thomas Aquinas of our time. But Novak’s applause is so loud that the reader may overlook a vital point: Lonergan’s Kantianism gets the best of his Thomism, forcing him into the dead end of subjectivism. Lonergan’s philosophy rests ultimately on human experience rather than on a sturdy philosophy of being.

Novak is not alone in his praise of Lonergan. Workshops on Lonergan’s thought are held all over the world. He is studied in major seminaries in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. Boston College has long been a teaching center for his theology and philosophy. The Lonergan Research Institute in Toronto is busy publishing an edition of Lonergan’s writings on theology, philosophy, economics, education, and religion. The Institute’s scholarly journal, Method, is devoted to international Lonerganian research. There are even plans to create an icon of Lonergan!

Why do Novak and others offer such obeisance to Lonergan? First, for many theologians, the most attractive aspect of Lonergan’s thought is the new foundation he offers them. For theologians who long ago jettisoned the Thomistic philosophy of being, Lonergan offers a new grounding for theology. He seems to give us a new apologetic. Faced with the myriad of theological methods, he appears to provide a systematic and comprehensive approach to theology. Yet this new foundation is flawed in its fundamental structure. Second, he expresses his theology in the jargon of existentialism and phenomenology, the current lingua franca of the intellectual elite. Intent on communicating with contemporary intellectuals, many Catholic theologians replace the traditional language of Catholic philosophy with this new jargon. However, their flawed method keeps them from reaching their laudable goal. What they gain in communication they lose in substance. The language of experience never substitutes for the language of being. Third, although Lonergan uses the language of contemporary philosophy, he maintains many Thomistic terms. However, these terms are re-defined in order to support his experiential theory of knowledge. Let me focus on two of Lonergan’s central terms.

The monumental creativity of Lonergan’s thought revolves around his notion of “insight” and “conversion.” Insight was the central idea of Lonergan’s magnum opus, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957). This is the work mentioned in Novak’s article which impacted him so significantly as a theology student in Rome. He tells us that he and his fellow seminarians were “abuzz with the impending publication of Insight….”

The other central term is “conversion.” In his 1972 work Method in Theology, Lonergan displays a more obvious subjectivism as he tries to validate Christian doctrines by an appeal to the experience of conversion. Is it because Method so clearly betrays Lonergan’s false starting point that Novak fails to mention this work? Certainly Method has had a greater impact on theology than Insight. In Method Lonergan uses his experiential notion of conversion as a criterion of truth in theology, clearly basing doctrine on the weak foundation of a religious experience. Does the reluctance to compare Insight and Method, to read them together, bespeak an unease that Lonerganian theologians have with the intensified subjectivism of their master’s later work?

Lonergan’s work is of a piece. Certainly there is development and corrections are made, and certainly his entire corpus represents innumerable subject areas. Yet when read together one sees that Insight and Method share a common root. Method only develops and centralizes the experiential starting point of Insight. Method applies the notion of insight to the religious life by giving it a criterial importance in theology. The Lonerganian notion of conversion is religious insight writ large. It is easy to overlook the subjectivist consequences of Insight, as well as the weak philosophical roots of Method, if these books are not read together.

One-stop resource for the "pure nature" debate

"Henri De Lubac, Thomas Aquinas, and the Debate over 'Pure Nature'" -- imagine, a whole blog devoted to this ongoing debate! You can keep track of the ongoing discussions here, blog-posts, collected articles, citations, books, etc. They have everything but popcorn and ringside seats. They may have that soon, if the technology keeps pace!

Bernard McGinn's "Biography" of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas

A new book on St. Thomas's Summa. It will be interesting to see where this comes out when the dust settles. His self-identification as something other than "a card carrying member of any Thomist party," as well as his disenchantment with the pre-Vatican II "dry-as-dust version of neo-Thomist philosophy" and affection for the Nouevelles suggests some caution. We shall see.

Christopher Blosser plans a more substantial review of the book in the near future, but for now offers this post as a courtesy to the publisher who sent him a complimentary copy for review: "Thomas Aquinas' 'Summa theolgiae': A Biography -- Bernard McGinn" (Against the Grain, May 14, 2014): In full disclosure, I promised that I would give it mention on my blog while the review was forthcoming. McGinn is distinguished for his extensive scholarship of Christian mysticism and does not identify himself as "a card carrying member of any Thomist party." Nevertheless:

"... I'd been reading Thomas for almost sixty years and teaching him for over forty. When I was studying a dry-as-dust version of neo-Thomist philosophy from 1957 to 1959, I was rescued from despair by reading the works of Etienne Gilson, especially his Being and some Philosophers. . . . between 1959 and 1963, I was privileged to work with two great modern investigators of Thomas, Joseph de Finance and Bernard Lonergan. It was then I realized that no matter what kind of theology one elects to pursue in life, there is no getting away from Thomas. So the opportunity to come back to Thomas and the Summa was both a challenge and a delight." [From the Preface]

Suffice to say I am intrigued, and will have more to report once I get into it.

From the Publisher

This concise book tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the vast Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, the Summa was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of the Catholic Church. It synthesizes an astonishing range of scholarship, covering hundreds of topics and containing more than a million and a half words--and was still unfinished at the time of Aquinas's death.

Here, Bernard McGinn, one of today's most acclaimed scholars of medieval Christianity, vividly describes the world that shaped Aquinas, then turns to the Dominican friar's life and career, examining Aquinas's reasons for writing his masterpiece, its subject matter, and the novel way he organized it. McGinn gives readers a brief tour of the Summa itself, and then discusses its reception over the past seven hundred years. He looks at the influence of the Summa on such giants of medieval Christendom as Meister Eckhart, its ridicule during the Enlightenment, the rise and fall of Neothomism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of the Summa in the post-Vatican II church, and the book's enduring relevance today.

Tracing the remarkable life of this iconic work, McGinn's wide-ranging account provides insight into Aquinas's own understanding of the Summa as a communication of the theological wisdom that has been given to humanity in revelation.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Cessario on Cajetan and the Communio School

"Cessario on Cajetan and the Communio School" (Against the Grain, April 1, 2014), quoting from Romanus Cessario, OP., Nova et Vetera Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004):

The Communio school of theology, taken globally, and not as it plays out under the influence of the American edition, is more difficult to define than Thomism. Thomists are those who read Aquinas, and so may be distinguished from those who read and adhere to other major Christian thinkers such as Scotus or St. Bonaventure or Ockham. Partisans of the Communio school, on the other hand, study many authors; their return to the sources embraces a wide range of both ancient and recent theologians and philosophers, and even includes consulting social scientists.

[Tracey] Rowland identifies many of these figures in her chapters. Suffice it to remark that a common feature of Communio school theology is that its adherents subscribe without hesitation to a viewpoint that lately has been set forth by Nicholas M. Healy in his Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life: “In his commentary on the Summa theologiae, Cajetan so separates nature from grace that humanity now has two ends, natural and supernatural. . . .” Healy of course repeats an assertion that was set forth with remarkable success in the twentieth century by Jesuit Father Henri de Lubac, later Cardinal of the Roman Church.

It has always struck me as odd that so many good-willed theologians accept the view that a twentieth-century French Jesuit whose intellectual interests were wide-ranging occupied a better position to understand what St.Thomas Aquinas taught about the finalities of the human person than did a sixteenth-century Italian humanist, who had represented Catholic doctrine in person to no less imposing a figure than Martin Luther and whose commentary on the entire Summa theologiae appears by order of Pope Leo XIII in the critical edition of Aquinas’s opera omnia that bears that Pope’s name, the still incomplete Leonine edition. But they do. Many sincere people, including Tracey Rowland, accept the proposition that de Lubac laid bare a huge historical mistake about how to construe the relationship between nature and grace, and they seemingly consider his critique of Cardinal Cajetan and the Thomists who follow him a non-gainsayable principle of all future Catholic theology. What Cajetan obscured, de Lubac grasped with clarté. Nicholas Healy illustrates this conviction:“[T]he influence of the two-tier conception of reality became widespread and was understood by many theologians as a reasonable development of Thomas’s thought.” One could infer from remarks such as these that Tommaso De Vio, Cardinal Cajetan (1469–1534) should be known as the great betrayer of Aquinas instead of his papal approved interpreter. Prima facie, the proposition seems primitive.

Those who want to understand more about this golden apple of twentieth-century theological discord should consult the work of Professor Steven A. Long....

Read more >>

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Aquinas's Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henri de Lubac

Christopher Blosser, in "Aquinas's Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henri de Lubac" (Against the Grain, March 29, 2014), writes:

As noted by Edward Feser, "there is a growing wave of reaction against the Nouvelle Theologie’s reaction against the tradition of the commentators" -- specifically the proposal that "the centuries-old tradition of Aquinas commentators, and the Neo-Scholastics in particular, somehow all got Aquinas wrong on questions of nature and grace, natural and supernatural."

Among such recently published texts are:

• The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters, by Lawrence Feingold. Catholic University of America Press, 2nd. Edition, (October 2004)
• Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace, by Steven A. Long. Fordham University Press, (April 2010).
• Praeambula Fidei: Thomism And the God of the Philosophers, by Ralph McInerney. Catholic University of America Press. (2006)
• Aquinas's Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henry de Lubac, by Bernard Mulcahy, O.P. (Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. (April 2011).
• Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought, edited by Serge-Thomas Bonino. The Catholic University of America Press (July 1, 2007).

I have read and praised McInerney's book elsewhere on this blog -- one of the first of its kind and narrow in scope (focusing specifically on Etienne Gilson and De Lubac's error-ridden interpretation and criticism of Cajetan and Aquinas. My father gifted Feingold's Natural Desire to See God to me on my birthday. Comprehensive in scope and exhaustive in detail, it will likely take several years for me to digest but it is clearly an invaluable resource in this whole debate. Steven A. Long's shorter treatment is on my "to read" list (particularly interesting as it reportedly examines the work of Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI on the topic). Surnatural, likewise on my "to read" list is a collection of various papers pro and con, following a symposium held in 2000 on the controversy of de Lubac's surnaturel.

Having just completed my reading, I wish to commend Mulcahy's Aquinas's Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henry de Lubac, the publication of his doctoral thesis under the title "Not Everything is Grace" for the Australian Catholic University (full text of which can be found here). Here is the abstract:

Henri de Lubac argues that, in early modern times, a pernicious concept began to become commonplace in Roman Catholic theology: this concept is “pure nature.” Pure nature is human nature, considered without reference to grace or to the supernatural destiny of personal union with God. Further, de Lubac argues that Catholic theology, in assimilating this idea, has departed from the sound tradition represented by St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. He holds that the notion of pure nature leads inevitably to the self-exclusion of Christianity from the affairs of the world -- when, in fact, the light of the Gospel ought to be shed on all aspects of human existence.

This dissertation tests de Lubac’s thesis concerning the history of the idea of pure nature, showing that this notion is not, in fact, a modern novelty. This study examines the role of the idea of pure nature in the Bible and early Church, in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, in the early modern Jansenist controversy, in the theology of Henri de Lubac, and in the theology of the contemporary Radical Orthodoxy movement, paying particular attention to the historical circumstances which made the repudiation of “pure nature” attractive.

Today, some theologians follow de Lubac in contending that Catholic doctrine must eschew the idea of pure nature in order to resist secularism and maintain Christianity’s relevance to all aspects of human life. This dissertation contends that the idea of pure nature is not only traditional, but necessary for Christian theology. It argues that a Christian “integralism” which refuses to prescind from grace when considering nature can do justice neither to nature nor to grace.

Further review by Reinhard Hutter, Duke Divinity School:

Characterized by acuity of analysis, fairness of judgment, and lucidity of thought and style, Matthew Bernard Mulcahy’s ‘Not Everything Is Grace’ is an indispensable reading for any serious student of theology with an interest in the recent renewal of the debate over ‘nature and grace’ and especially the idea of a ‘pure nature’.

Mulcahy convincingly demonstrates first that theologians of the patristic era were well familiar with a human nature and a common final human discernible apart from revelation and grace and, secondly and more extensively, that the idea, though not the term, of pure nature plays a significant role in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Furthermore, by showing that Henri de Lubac’s characterizations of Baianism and Jansenism occluded the political and historical contexts and impacts of these theological movements, Mulcahy successfully questions Henri de Lubac’s familiar, but historically unsubstantiated claim, that the modern scholastic use of ‘pure nature’ facilitated the rise of modern secularism and atheism.

Last but not least, Mulcahy offers an accurate and illuminating reading of the most recent radicalization of de Lubac’s vision into a comprehensive theological integralism - Radical Orthodoxy. Mulcahy’s perspicuous analysis of its central tenets constitutes a critique that is as charitable as it is devastating. Mulcahy makes a powerful case for the indispensability of the idea of pure nature for a Catholic theology that wants to account for the full scope of the complexity of creaturely existence. This is a ‘must’ on the reading list for every class that tackles the ‘nature-grace-debate’ in the 20th century. Its clarity and even-handedness make it a welcome contribution to a complicated and often heated debate. Tolle, lege!

Related:


[Hat tip to Anon.]

Prodigalization: unpopular minority report on entrenched theological assumptions

Another provocative missive from our undercover correspondent we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep it's secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye:

Two items, related in that they both suggest counterpoints to common theological assumptions.

1. First one you likely already saw, in which a charismatic papal preacher, no less, attempts to implode firmly entrenched "Everybody knows" and Vatican II mantras that reign unchecked ...

   Christopher Blosser, Cessario on Cajetan and the Communio School (Against the Grain, April 1, 2014).
   
   [People] should make up their own minds about de Lubac [...] and not assume that one eminent French Jesuit and 100,000 Communio followers can’t be wrong.
   
   Great line!

2. Then there is this, in which a blogger comes across a century old Princetonian theologian pointing out that one parable a summa does not make, or we wouldn't have four gospels not to mention an entire New Testament. The thought Warfield proposes in this digression has got to be a contender for Ideas Running Most Rudely Counter to the Reigning Homiletical Zeitgeist, don't you think? It would be perceived as about as outrageous as not being on board with National Health Care, or someone suggesting that episode with Ananias and Sapphira might ever by anyone be taken seriously. LOL.

   Doing a little study this afternoon, I came across this illuminating section from B. B. Warfield on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the danger of make it a definitive statement of the gospel. Given the parable's present popularity as a sort of quintessential gospel declaration and its presentation as a governing paradigm for our understanding, it is worth pondering. It is also noteworthy for containing, in the second paragraph, the sort of truly tortuous sentence of perfectly correct English that caused Churchill to scribble this note on a civil service paper: "This is the sort of writing up with which I will not put!"

   Indeed, we may even say that the universal admiration the parable commands has finished by becoming in some quarters a little excessive. The message which the parable brings us is certainly a great one. To lost sinners like you and me, assuredly few messages could appeal with more overwhelming force. Our hearts are wrung within us as we are made to realize that our Father in heaven will receive our wandering souls back with the joy with which this father in the parable received back his errant son. But it is an exaggeration to represent this message as all the Gospel, or even as the core of the Gospel; and to speak of this parable therefore, as it has become widely common to speak of it, as "the Gospel in the Gospel," or even as the summation of the Gospel. It is not that. There are many truths which it has no power to teach us that are essential to the integrity of the Gospel: nay, the very heart of the Gospel is not in it. And, therefore, precious as this parable is to us, and priceless as is its message, there are many other passages of Scripture more precious still, because their message enters more deeply into the substance of the Gospel. Take this passage for example: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have ever lasting life." Or this passage: "God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with Him and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus." Or even this short passage: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." All these are more precious passages than the parable of the lost son, not merely because they tell us more fully what is contained in the Gospel, but because they uncover to us, as it does not, what lies at the heart of the Gospel.
   
   It is important that we should recognize this. For the exaggerated estimate which has been put upon this parable has borne bitter fruit in the world. Beginning with an effort to read into it all the Gospel, or at least the essence of the Gospel, it has ended by reading out of the Gospel all that is not in the parable. And thus this parable, the vehicle of a priceless message, has been transformed into the instrument of a great wrong. The worst things are often the corruption of the best: and the attempt to make the parable of the lost son the norm of the Gospel has resulted, I will not say merely in the curtailment of the Gospel, - I will say rather in the evisceration of the Gospel. On this platform there take their stand today a growing multitude the entire tendency and effect of all of whose efforts it is to eliminate from Christianity all that gives it value in the world, all that makes it that religion which has saved the world, and to reduce it to the level of a merely natural religion. "The Christianity of the prodigal son is enough for us," they declare: and they declare this with gusto because, to put it briefly, they do not like the Christianity of the Bible or the Christianity of Christ, and are happy not to find them in the parable of the lost son. [emphasis added]

[Hat tip to JM]

Milbank's de Lubacian reading of Aquinas as interpretive dance

Christopher Blosser, in "Mulcahy on Milbank" (Against the Grain, April 1, 2014), writes: "I particularly appreciate Mulcahy's Aquinas's Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henry de Lubac for its demonstration of how De Lubac's criticism of pure nature has, carried to its logical conclusions, culminated in the "integralist revolution" of John Milbank, leading proponent of Radical Orthodoxy."

After an extensive treatment of Radical Orthodoxy, its relation to de Lubac, and the aestheticism of Milbank ("Once the attractiveness of the divine beauty is experienced, no other arguments or evidence need be considered"), Christopher turns to Radical Orthodoxy's use of de Lubac's account of Thomism, writing: "The impression is clearly given that for Mulcahy -- and I would imagine for most anybody who adheres to prevailing norms of academic scholarship, rational discourse and validation -- the very act of reading Milbank is itself a recipe for exasperation." Consider, he says, the following:

The word "interpretation" must be emphasised and explained when it comes to Milbank’s treatment of Aquinas. As one who rejects "accepted secular standards of scientific truth or normative rationality" and denies that truth is a correspondence between the intellect and extra-mental reality, Milbank insists that "the point [of theology] is not to represent ... externality, but just to join in its occurrence; not to know, but to intervene, originate." Accordingly, his recourse to Aquinas is not a work of exegesis, but a project of creative expression: “exegesis is easy; it is interpretation that is difficult, and Aquinas, more than most thinkers, requires interpretation." This explains why Milbank holds that, even if the actual text of St Thomas "appear[s] incontrovertibly to refute my reading," that reading itself should not be subjected to conventional scholarly critique. ...

This ostensibly post-modern approach to sources has predictably occasioned intense criticism. Informed scholars have described Radical Orthodoxy’s interpretations as "gnostic idealism," "blithely imprecise, ideologically driven historical revisionism," "free-floating, self-perpetuating insularity", "opaque [sentences] drifting [in] conceptual murkiness", "sophistical legerdemain," "blatant misreading ... that ignores the ordinary canons of scholarly enquiry," and "[not] just wrong, [but] laughable, though not amusing." Milbank’s vague and sometimes even inaccurate footnotes do not help his cause.

In Milbank’s defence, one can say only that RO had disclaimed the canons of scholarly objectivity and verifiable accuracy right from the beginning. Radical Orthodoxy sets itself to challenge all settled theological opinion, and pretends no dialogical relationship with other views or types of rationality. When considering Milbank’s interpretation of St Thomas, the best approach, one might suggest, is to recognise it as something akin to an interpretive dance. It displays an inherently subjective approach, and, in effect, purports to be nothing else. Scholarship of an objective kind must be sought elsewhere.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Fr. Gregory Baum & the "manualists"

An excellent article by Joseph Clifford Fenton, "The Teaching of the Theological Manuals" (CatholicCulture.org, March 13, 2014), showing how Fr. Gregory Baum completely misconstrued the significance of the teaching of the manuals with his assertion in Commonweal 77 (Jan. 18, 1963), p. 436:

The conflict at the Council is not at all between men who try to introduce new insights and modern ways and those who seek to remain faithful to the great tradition of the past. It is rather between those who seek to renew the life of the Church by returning to the most authentic Catholic tradition of all ages and those who seek to consecrate as eternal Catholic wisdom the theology of the manuals of the turn of the century and the anti-modernist emphasis which penetrated them.

"I heart Karls"

A First Things reader recently sent me this remark by Editor in Chief, R. R. Reno:

"Closely related was my overconfident view, expressed in “Rahner the Restorationist,” that Karl Rahner is passé. He was the great muse of the decade or two after Vatican II. By my reckoning, the social conditions that made him so alluring—most importantly the nostalgia for an integral Christian culture—are no longer in place. But Pope Francis shows me mistaken. He talks very much like a Rahnerian, not the least when he treats unbelievers as “anonymous Christians,” a key concept in Rahner that allows one to baptize secular culture.

[Hat tip to G.N.]

The "way of beauty"

Robert Royal is always worth reading; and, as Guy Noir says, THIS is "a very good, and delicate, way of saying what needs to be said." He adds, however:

I will agree that an 'Apologetic of Beauty' is one approach, and one to which people who like good music, careful writing, and mind-boggling dense fantasy will warm. One point for Cardinals (and almost so) DeLubac, Ratzinger, and HvB.

But it is NOT by any convincing stretch a broad enough apologetic platform from which we can evangelize energetically. Nor one that can be easily circumscribed in a culture that is quickly coming to conflate Tarantino with Woody Allen, Kanye West with Leonard Cohen, Harry Potter with J.R.R. Tolkien, and Reality TV with Reality. Two points for Cardinals Siri, Ottiviani, and del Val.

And that is just a delicate way of saying if a Theology of Beauty is not the Emperors New Clothes, it certainly is the stuff of (a maybe very, very good) PhD dissertation. Which means most people won't read it, most people who read it won't understand it, and those who do understand it probably appreciated and agreed with the thesis from the start. And when it is turned into a book, no one but reviewers will read it!

[Hat tip to JM]

Related: "Balthasar's hope is hopeless" (Rorate, January 18, 2014).

De Lubac on Ratzinger and the "destruction" of the Holy Office

Cardinal Henri de Lubac, in Entretien autour du Vatican II (Paris: Cerf, 1985), p. 123, writes:

Allow me to recall something that happened. Joseph Ratzinger, an expert at the Council, was also the private secretary of Card. Frings, Archbishop of Cologne. Blind, the old Cardinal largely utilized his secretary to write his interventions. Now then, one of these interventions became memorable: it was a radical criticism of the methods of the Holy Office. Despite a reply by Card. Ottaviani, Frings sustained his critique.

It is not an exaggeration to say that on that day the old Holy Office, as it presented itself then, was destroyed by Ratzinger in union with his Archbishop.

Card. Seper, a man full of goodness, initiated the renovation. Ratzinger, who did not change, continues it.

It would be good to keep this episode in mind.

Translaton by: A. S. Guimaraes

[Hat tip to Sir Anthony S.]

Addendum on Balthasar, Universalism, and Ralph Martin's critique

As an addendum to our earlier post, "Blogger takes on Barron, Shea, Balthasar" (Musings, November 3, 2013), I am posting here some excerpts from an interesting piece by Christopher Blosser, in which a reading of Ralph Martin's critique of Hans von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, and others, awakens some doubts about their credibility across the board. As always, he's detailed and thorough, and I don't think it's nepotism to suggest that he can be worth reading.

Christopher Blosser, "Balthasar, Universal Salvation, and Ralph Martin's 'Will Many Be Saved?'" (Against the Grain, November 5, 2013). Excerpts:

... Martin's devastating critique of Balthasar, however, comes as more of a surprise. For even with figures as highly esteemed as Avery Dulles, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Emeritus Benedict giving a stamp of theological toleration (and/or approval) to Balthasar's hope for universal salvation -- Martin's detailed exposition of Balthasar's tendency to ignore, misquote or mischaracterize his sources (whether from the Scriptures, the Fathers or the mystics) as well as his questionable theological reasoning should give pause for all....

Martin devotes a substantial amount of his book to exposing what appears to be, from a standpoint of academic integrity, a rather questionable treatment by Balthasar of myriad sources -- the Scriptures, the Fathers, the mystics, in support of a position that is squarely at odds with the weight of Catholic tradition. Indeed, my experience o Martin was not unlike that of reading the late Ralph McInerney's "Praeambula Fidei": Thomism And the God of the Philosophers, in which he laid bare Henri De Lubac and Etienne Gilson's (mis)interpretation of Cajetan and Aquinas....

... If Martin's critique of Balthasar is correct (as McInerney is in his criticism of De Lubac) -- if their scholarship on this particular subject is simply not to be trusted, and found wanting -- it casts some doubt upon the integrity of their work as a whole. Where else could they have gone wrong?

At the very least, I do find myself reading the work of both De Lubac and Balthasar with a more cautious eye, and a more attentive ear to those sounding the alarm.

One final piece of theological trivia worth noting -- Balthasar ends Dare we Hope with a lengthy citation from the unpublished theological speculations of Edith Stein, "“which expresses most exactly the position that I have tried to develop.” Stein asserts that while the possibility of the soul's refusal of grace and consequent damnation in principle cannot be rejected, "In reality, it can become infinitely improbable — precisely through what preparatory grace is capable of effecting in the soul." According to Stein,

The more improbable it becomes that the soul will remain closed to it. . . . If all the impulses opposed to the spirit of light have been expelled from the soul, then any free decision against this has become infinitely improbable. Then faith in the unboundedness of divine love and grace also justifies hope for the universality of redemption, although through the possibility of resistance to grace that remains open in principle, the possibility of eternal damnation also persists.

But here's the catch: While Balthasar identifies himself completely with this passage from the saint, Stein herself moved beyond it and revised her position in later years:

Schenk, “Factical Damnation,” p. 150, n. 35, points out that while Balthasar makes this his final position, it was not the final position of Edith Stein herself. Schenk points out that these were passing comments in a work that she herself never published, and that in 1939 in her spiritual testament, she significantly modifies. “The possibility of some final loss appears more real and pressing than one which would seem infinitely improbable.” Hauke, “Sperare per tutti?” pp. 207-8, makes the same point as well as the additional point that not everything a saint or Doctor wrote is honored when they are recognized as saints or Doctors.