THE RISE & FALL OF THE THOMISTIC RENEWAL

The New Oxford Review just published an excellent two-part article by D.Q. McInerny, professor of philosophy at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska.  For anyone interested, both parts are published with the permission of the publisher on my other blog, Philosophia Perennis:

1. THE RISE & FALL OF THE THOMISTIC RENEWAL — PART I: "The Revivification of Sound Christian Philosophy" (July 7, 2015)
2. THE RISE & FALL OF THE THOMISTIC RENEWAL — PART II: "A Revival Cut Short" (July 7, 2015)

Cornelio Fabro (1911 – 1995)

Cornelio Fabro: Philosopher of Esse and of Freedom

Cornelio Fabro (1911 – 1995) is among the most important philosophers of the 20th century because of his studies of the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas and for his vast knowledge of modern philosophy and classical Christian realism from the perspective of Kierkegaard's metaphysical existentialism.

The goal of the Cornelio Fabro Cultural Project is to place the entire intellectual production of this Italian philosopher at the disposition of all, in both printed and digital form, including audio, video, and texts. The Complete Works will be translated into English and Spanish, and the most important volumes into other languages as well.


"The birth of freedom has been the only and essential task, the intensive point of my
journey which is still in motion, because the life of the spirit does not allow breaks... Truth,
therefore, in freedom, and freedom for the truth." C.F.[Hat tip to Prof. Mark Latkovic]

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.]

William L. Portier on the nouvelles and neo-scholasticism

A remarkable review from from a 2008 issue of Communio we missed seeing until a reader called it to our attention. It's a PDF file: William L. Portier, "Thomist Resurgence" ("Notes and Comments," Communio, 35, 2008): A Review Essay of Twentieth-Century Catholic Theolgians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism by Fergus Kerr. Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. 230pp.

[Hat tip to Sir Anthony S.]

A must read

Tracey Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II (London: Routledge, 2003).

Thomism's influence upon the development of Catholicism is difficult to overestimate - but how secure is its grip on the challenges that face contemporary society? Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II rexamines the crisis of Thomism today as thrown into relief by Vatican II, the 21st ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. Following the Church's declarations on culture in the document Gaudium et spes - the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World - it was widely presumed that a mandate had been given for transposing ecclesiastical culture into the idioms of modernity. But, says Tracey Rowland, such an understanding is not only based on a facile reading of the Conciliar documents, but is flawed by Thomism's own failure to demonstrate a workable theology of culture that might guide the Church through such transpositions.

A Thomism that fails to specify the precise role of culture in moral formation is problematic in a multicultural age, where Christians are exposed to a complex matrix of institutions and traditions both theistic and secular. The ambivalence of the Thomist tradition to modernity, and modern conceptions of rationality, also impedes its ability to successfully engage with the arguments of rival traditions. Must a genuinely progressive Thomism learn to accommodate modernity? In opposition to such a stance, and in support of those who have resisted the trend in post-Conciliar liturgy to mimic the modernistic forms of mass culture, Culture and the Thomist Tradition musters a synthesis of the theological critiques of modernity to be found in the works of Alasdair MacIntyre, scholars of the international ‘Communio’ project and the Radical Orthodoxy circle. This synthesis, intended as a postmodern Augustinian Thomism, provides an account of the role of culture, memory and narrative tradition in the formation of intellectual and moral character. Re-evaluating the outcome of Vatican II, and forming the basis of a much-needed Thomist theology of culture, the book argues that the anti-beauty orientation of mass culture acts as a barrier to the theological virtue of hope, and ultimately fosters despair and atheism.

What people are saying about the book:

• “The Second Vatican Council was a turning point, a moment of grace; the Catholic Church, ever suspicious of Western society, at last joined the modern world. As observers feared at the time, however, the Council was much too optimistic about the nature of modern Western culture. In this careful and well-documented study, Tracey Rowland analyses its failure to make a radical critique of the problems that have afflicted Catholicism in the post-Conciliar years.” -- Fergus Kerr OP
  
  
• “Tracey Rowland provides a critical but lucid analysis of the contemporary illusion that it is possible to convert to Christianity a modern culture wrongly thought of as ‘naturally’ Christian. In response, Rowland advocates the development of a Christian culture conscious of its own strong specificity. This book offers valuable insights into how the Christian faith can tackle the cultural challenges it faces today.” -- Serge-Thomas Bonino OP
  
  
• “This ... is an extremely important book, and no serious student of theology or pastor of souls can afford to ignore it.” -- Laudetur
  
  
• “This study...deserves a wide readership...[Rowland's] powers of elucidation and clarification of tangled issues are in full stride in this sustained and persuasive argument.” -- David Forest, Nova et Vetera
  
  
• “For anyone interested in contemporary Thomism or the future of Vatican II's theology, there is much of interest here. ... There is no doubt that anyone interested in current thinking on Vatican II would gain from reading this book. The argument is impressive, challenging, and expressed with clarity and force.” -- Theology
  
  
• “Tracey Rowland's compelling new book ... [is] impressive in many respects.” -- FCS Quarterly

[Tracey Rowland is Dean of the John Paul II institute for Marriage and the Family, Melbourne, Australia, and part of the international ‘Communio’ school of post-Conciliar Catholic theologians.]