Rebels with a Cause: Twentieth-Century Roman Catholic Theologians
Fergus Kerr, OP FRSE“As Edward Oakes notes in his essay in this special issue, the twentieth century, in retrospect, looks like an era of theological creativity as remarkable as any since the fifth fourth and fifth centuries, when the Cappadocians, Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, and John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria were at work, or the thirteenth century, with Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure.
On the Reformed side, Karl Barth stands alone, yet his work regenerated Protestant theology for the rest of the twentieth century. Interest in Barth’s work seemed to wane, no doubt predictably, in the ten or twenty years after his death; but, as the current wave of books about it indicates, as we enter the twenty-first century, Barth is clearly the theological giant of modern times.
On the Roman Catholic side, we have the generation represented in this collection: Jacques Maritain (the one lay man, no doubt unwilling to regard himself as a theologian, nevertheless a key figure in the constellation), Henri de Lubac, Bernard Lonergan, John Courtney Murray, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, Edward Schillebeeckx, and John Courtney Murray, Joseph Ratzinger, and Jacques Maritain (the one lay man, no doubt unwilling to regard himself as a theologian, nevertheless a key figure in the constellation) ..”
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973): Beggar for Heaven on the Byways of the World
Bernard Doering
“On the day of Jacques Maritain’s death (28 April 1973), as a tribute to his friend, François Mauriac, in Le Figaro, tried to answer the question: “Qui est Jacques Maritain?” Almost a decade earlier at Princeton, in the preface to his Carnet de Notes (1965), Maritain, with a touch of humor, had tried to answer this question himself while convalescing from a heart attack:
After all, who am I actually, I asked myself at that time. A professor? I don’t think so; I taught out of necessity. A writer? Perhaps. A philosopher? I would hope so. But also a kind of romantic defender of justice, too ready to imagine, with each battle he waged, that justice and truth would have their day among men. And perhaps too a kind of water diviner putting his ear to the ground to catch the sound of hidden springs, and of invisible germinations. And also perhaps, like any Christian, in spite of and in the midst of the miseries and shortcomings, and of all the graces betrayed that I am beginning to realize more and more now in the evening of my life, a beggar for heaven disguised as a man of the world, a kind of secret agent of the King of Kings in the domains of the Prince of this world, taking his risks like Kipling’s cat, who made his own way all alone.
In this rich and fanciful definition of himself, he does not mention “theologian.” Maritain resolutely maintained that he was not a theologian but a philosopher who considered certain theological questions from a philosopher’s point of view.”
Henri de Lubac, SJ (1896–1991): Theologian of the Church
Susan K. Wood, SCL“Henri de Lubac was a principal figure in the movement known as the “New Theology.” Although he denied the existence of such a “school” of theology, the term refers to the work of certain theologians associated with the Jesuit faculty at Fourvière in the late 1940s. The term “New Theology” actually was used first by Msgr Pietro Parente in L’Osservatore Romano (Feb. 1942) to refer to two Dominican theologians, M.-D. Chenu and L. Charlier, but was applied to the Fourvière theologians in 1946 by the neoscholastic theologian Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Jean Daniélou describes the general orientation of this New Theology in his article, “Les orientation présentes de la pensée religieuse,” which cites a progressive rupture between exegesis and systematic theology as the cause of an increasing aridity within systematic theology and a growing distance between theology and the pressing concerns of the day. The “new” orientation hoped to reunify theology through a return to Scripture, interpreted in terms of prophecy and figure, which relate the Old Testament to the New Testament, a revival of patristic studies, which incorporated such a reading of Scripture, and a liturgical renewal, which used liturgy as a theological source and reaffirmed the symbolic elements of liturgical worship.”
Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904–84): A Theologian of Change and Judgment
Jim Kanaris“The contours of Bernard Lonergan’s contributions to theology and religious philosophy are captured cryptically in the pithy reply he once made to his provincial superior’s question: Are you orthodox? Recounting the incident in a letter to a friend, the young Lonergan responds that he is, adding: “but I think a lot.” Terse and almost burlesque in tone, the statement nevertheless provides insight into Lonergan’s work and his deep dissatisfaction with the assumption that orthodoxy and thinking really are, finally, incompatible."
John Courtney Murray, SJ (1904–67): Working with God
Leon Hooper, SJ“John Courtney Murray was born on 12 September 1904, forty years after Pope Pius IX’s condemnation of all things modern in the Syllabus of Errors, and a scant five years after Pope Leo XIII’s condemnation of the New World heresy labeled Americanism (Testem benevolentiae). He died on 16 August 1967, four years after John XXIII’s outreach to the modern world in Pacem in terris and two years after the Second Vatican Council endorsed its Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis humanae. Murray was raised within an enclosed Roman Catholic culture, attending a Jesuit high school and entering the Society of Jesus in 1920. He studied and worked mostly in Jesuit institutions, having received his graduate degree ( STD) at the Roman Gregorian University in 1937, after which he settled into Woodstock College, teaching Jesuits in training for ordination to the Roman Catholic priesthood, a position he held until his death. All this easily could have induced a classic case of Catholic tribalism—speaking out of, and in a way intelligible only within, a Roman Catholic enclave. Yet Murray is known, irreverently but accurately, as a key agent in making Roman Catholics safe for America, while also making America safe for Catholics. These two tasks of mutual pacification are often respectively symbolized by Murray’s two most influential works.”
Karl Rahner, SJ (1904–84): A Theologian for the Twenty-First Century
Leo J. O’Donovan, SJ“Karl Rahner would be more than pleased, I am sure, to be included with the other major figures remembered in this special issue of Theology Today. Their foundational work for Roman Catholic thought in its twentieth-century rebirth is generally acknowledged as pivotal for the aggiornamento at which Catholicism still labors. Many of their writings are now recognized as classics, works so rich that they bear repeated reading for the depth and power of their insights into the human condition. We are never finished with classics, because we are never done with reclaiming our past for the sake of our future. And so the remembrance of a great figure is not only an honor due the person but a service to our selves. In this essay, I will analyze five pivotal interpretive issues in Karl Rahner’s thought: his understanding of human knowledge; the priority he gives to love and freedom; his understanding of the fundamental interrelatedness of God, self, and community; his importance for a new understanding of Christian praxis; and, finally, the dialectical method he commends to us individually and as a community. Taken together, these questions are decisive in reading Rahner as a theologian for the twenty-first century.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88): The Wave and the Sea
Edward T. Oakes, SJ“Nothing in the charters of the Scriptures (or in the vicissitudes of history, for that matter) has ever guaranteed that the church would be blessed with great theologians in each century of its history. Some centuries, in fact, have witnessed an almost total dearth of theological talent, such as (to speak here only of the west) the seventh to the tenth centuries; and, at least in contrast to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seem pretty arid and dull too (with perhaps Blaise Pascal and Jonathan Edwards excepted), just as the fifteenth looks decadent and epicene in contrast to the sixteenth. But even against the later fourth and early fifth century, when the Cappadocians, Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, and John Chrysostom were at work, or against the thirteenth, when Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure were flowering, the twentieth century must surely stand in retrospect as one of the most remarkable eras of theological creativity in the entire history of the church. On the Protestant side, Karl Barth stands tallest; but he was surrounded by many others, not least Rudolf Bultmann. And on the Catholic side we have the great figures represented in this issue of Theology Today.”
Edward Schillebeeckx, OP (1914– ): Encountering God in a Secular and Suffering World
M. Catherine Hilkert, OP“The Flemish Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, op (Order of Preachers), once remarked that “a theologian can wish no more than to bring people, even believers in crisis, to the point of saying ‘yes’ to the heart of the gospel.” At the center of the sacramental vision of this ninety-year-old scholar, who retired from the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 1983, is the conviction that the God who is “new each moment” can be encountered even in the most desperate of circumstances as the absolute creative and saving presence sustaining and empowering all of life. The only theologian ever to be awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contributions to European culture (1982), Schillebeeckx has attempted throughout his six decades of theological scholarship to speak credibly of faith in the context of modern—and now postmodern—culture. His earliest writings in 1945 dealt with the challenge of humanism to Christian belief in postwar France. Sixty years later, he continues to grapple with how to speak of human life in relation to the mystery of God. In his most recent project, he has returned to the topic for which he first became internationally known—sacramental theology—now approaching the sacraments as ritual metaphors for human life. Both the continuity and the major shifts in Schillebeeckx’s thinking over the course of his career are apparent when one compares the title of his first groundbreaking book, Christ, the Sacrament of Encounter with God (1961),with the Dutch title for the final volume of his Christological trilogy, Human Beings as the Story of God (Mensen als Verhaal van God [1989], translated in the United States as Church: The Human Story of God [1990]).”
Joseph Ratzinger (1927– ): How Conservative Is Benedict XVI?
Mark Ellingsen“The election of Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope was greeted with references to both the theologically conservative character of his thought and mixed evaluations of his ecumenical openness. There is some truth to these characterizations. But, without interpretation, they distort the realities. Benedict XVI is theologically conservative, but no more so than a number of cutting-edge theological alternatives in the academy, particularly several that are committed to doing theology in and for the church. This essay will first consider the points of rapprochement between Benedict and these alternatives with regard to issues of theological method, initially concerning theological hermeneutics and then the relationship between theology and other sources of knowledge. Such convergence on these methodological issues is significant for furthering Catholic-Protestant ecumenical conversation. With these points of convergence established, I shall next consider the issue of the new pope’s cautious ecumenical openness with regard to Protestantism. Two doctrinal loci have frequently drawn his attention, and both will be considered— first, whether the Protestant emphasis on biblical authority does not effectively undermine the authority of tradition and, secondly, whether certain aspects of the Reformation’s treatment of the doctrine of justification are problematic from a Roman Catholic point of view. The closing section will examine some of the pope’s previous writings on ecumenism to see whether his criticisms of the first Reformers and of Protestantism in general have been, or at least can be, readily addressed.”
THE MEDIUM & THE MESSAGE
What and Where Is “Religion and Literature” Now?
Wesley A. Kort“What happened to Religion and Literature? Where did it go? Half a century ago it was an attention-getting graduate program in religious and theological studies. Its advocates tried without, as it apparently turns out, success to establish an academic location for the field and to create markets for young scholars in it. The University of Chicago was the main producer, but other graduate programs were also in the game: Syracuse, Emory, Yale, Virginia, and Boston among American universities, and European counterparts, especially the University of Glasgow. While there still are graduate programs in Religion and Literature and students working in them, their prospects are dim. One rarely if ever sees a job opening for Religion and Literature. What happened? Of the many answers that could be given, three seem paramount.”
CROSSING BOUNDARIES
St John Chrysostom on Ministry, Discernment, and Call
David A. Davis
“I don’t often invite St John Chrysostom (c.347–407) into my study amid the weekly routines of parish ministry. The desk can sometimes get crowded with other theologians and preachers, both living and dead. Occasionally over the years I have turned to John Chrysostom for a eucharistic prayer or have come upon an Easter sermon of his. But it has been a long time since I have sat with one of the post-Nicene fathers. This invitation to reflect upon Chrysostom’s Treatise Concerning the Christian Priesthood definitely pushes me beyond my boundaries. What is most surprising is the freshness of the conversation that comes from such an ancient voice. Discussions of discernment and call arise all the time in studies that explore the notion of surviving the first parish or in material from foundations that fund recruitment programs for the church. Having spent some time recently with St John Chrysostom, I suggest that he still has a contribution to make to ongoing conversation about ordained ministry.”