Le péché originel XVIe-XXe siècles: L'impossible dogme au défi de la modernité ed. by Bernard Hours, Frédéric Meyer, and Sylvain Milbach (review)
2024; The Catholic University of America Press; Volume: 110; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cat.2024.a928023
ISSN1534-0708
Autores Tópico(s)Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
ResumoReviewed by: Le péché originel XVIe-XXe siècles: L'impossible dogme au défi de la modernité ed. by Bernard Hours, Frédéric Meyer, and Sylvain Milbach Quentin Lamy Le péché originel XVIe-XXe siècles: L'impossible dogme au défi de la modernité. Edited by Bernard Hours, Frédéric Meyer, and Sylvain Milbach. [ Chrétiens et sociétés: Documents et Mémoires, No 43.] (Lyon: Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes. 2022. Pp. 410. €22,00 paperback. ISBN 979-10-91592-29-1.) Original sin introduces a certain framework for understanding society, evil, suffering, and freedom. As such, it is of interest not only to theologians, but also to historians. This conviction inspired a colloquium on the scrutiny the doctrine has undergone in modern times. The first session took place in Chambéry in 2019; the second, scheduled for 2020 in Lyon, was canceled due to the pandemic. This book brings together nineteen papers submitted for the symposium. They cover a period from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During this period, original sin, no longer only a matter of the post-Tridentine theological debate, aroused widespread repugnance and incomprehension. Several articles consider how individual writers criticized original sin. Sylvain Milbach's insightful study of Hugues-Felicité Robert de Lammenais († 1854) sheds light on the connections between original sin and political theory. According to this pioneer of liberal Catholicism, the classical doctrine of original sin induces guilt, which ultimately proves to be an obstacle to social harmony and democracy. Five other articles focus on Marie Huber († 1753), a Swiss Pietist; Jean-Baptiste Spiess, a defrocked priest who wrote Lettres philosophiques contre le péché originel (1794); Abbé Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier († 1790), whose Dictionnaire de théologie takes into account the Enlightenment's criticism of original sin; Pierre-Simon Ballanche († 1847), a Romantic philosopher and poet; and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who grapples with evolution. A second group of articles examines theological currents. With great erudition, Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi describes how an intransigent Augustinian movement, at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sought to uphold the idea that Adam's sin, propagated by natural generation, doomed most of the human race, including children who died without baptism, to damnation. Several Jesuits held a more optimistic view, to the point that they were suspected of being influenced by Enlightenment arguments. Other studies focus on nineteenth-century Protestant anthropology, the aftermath of Vatican II, and contemporary feminist trends. Alongside these articles, which focus mostly on detractors of original sin who condemn the doctrine as cruel and absurd, one would expect other papers presenting attempts to renew apologetics concerning this dogma. Our book provides just two. Didier Masseau analyzes French anti-philosophical writings from the second half of the eighteenth century. Sylvain Milbach, in "Défendre le péché originel au [End Page 428] XIXe siècle," presents the strategies of several apologists. These, he notes, "walk on a tightrope, unable to resolve the contradictions they themselves have produced" (270). This article should be read in the light of Philippe Boutry's "La crise du péché originel au XIXe siècle." Of the remaining articles, three consider the challenges of catechesis in relation to original sin. Claude Prudhomme's article takes us out of the French and European context: it presents the catechisms, including their imagery, that were used in the missions. We discover, for example, how the Marist Fathers explained the story of Adam and Eve to the Maoris of New Zealand and the teaching method of the White Fathers in Kenya. Most of the articles in this volume are of high quality, and provide the reader with a wealth of valuable information on modern debates about original sin and their anthropological and social consequences. Quentin Lamy Facultés Loyola Paris Copyright © 2024 The Catholic University of America Press
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