Tradition, Truth, and History in Theology: Four Recent Proposals
2025; Wiley; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/moth.12977
ISSN1468-0025
Autores Tópico(s)Biblical Studies and Interpretation
ResumoAs a historical communion irrevocably bound to a concrete past and yet open to God's ever-greater future, the Christian church is subject to certain cross-pressures: those of purity and totality; historical particularly and catholicity; permanence and assimilability; fidelity to "the faith once for all delivered" (Jude 1:3) and this faith's continued unfolding (John 16:12–13). While a recognition of these tensions in some form is as old as theology itself, many traditional means of negotiating or moderating them were destabilized, first by the Protestant Reformation, and then by the emergence of scientific, historical-critical research methodologies in the seventeenth century. Received narratives of doctrinal unanimity and continuity were newly contested; the contingency of the presumptively necessary and self-evident was unearthed; and anachronistic projections of present viewpoints onto past epochs were exposed. For many, Vincent of Lérins's oft-touted claim that the faith of the church is the faith which has been held "ubique, semper, et ab omnibus [everywhere, always, and by all]," along with the epistemic security and ecclesial authority resting thereupon, were imperiled. Thus, in his 1898 essay on "Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology," Ernst Troeltsch could argue that—contrary to contemporary assumptions—history poses far weightier problems for Christian theology than does natural science. The past century and a half of Catholic theological and ecclesiastical history amply vindicates Troeltsch's contention. The fraught and fractious debates over history and theology first peaked in the Modernist controversy, and, although partially stymied by a series of magisterial interventions, resurfaced in the mid-twentieth century's vigorous debates over the "nouvelle théologie." An armistice of sorts was reached in Vatican II's restrained, underdeterminative, but nonetheless real appropriation of a more historically conscious ecclesial self-understanding. Granted, contemporary theological fragmentation and methodological pluralism indicate that disputes were not so much resolved through consensus as parties were freed to pursue diverse—and increasingly divergent—approaches. Those seeking principles by which to navigate these issues might benefit from consulting four recently published volumes on the nature of theology, truth, and tradition, with each offering its own approach to and assessment of the role of history in Christian theology.1 The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie consists of heretofore untranslated mid-twentieth century essays from four Dominican theologians. These constitute the most prominent "Thomistic" interventions in the spirited intra-Catholic dialogue spurred by Jean Daniélou's watershed 1946 article, "Les orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse" (often interpreted as the nouvelle théologie's manifesto). Prima facie, the debates revolve around theological method and the perennial validity of Thomism, but a closer examination reveals that they derive from deeper epistemological and metaphysical differences regarding human and ecclesial access to fixed, supra-temporal truth within the vicissitudes of history. Writing eight decades later from a consonant theological vantage point, the authors in The Faith Once for All Delivered—keen as they are to unveil and delegitimize what they perceive to be a false and facile concordism with the Zeitgeist—frequently enact a similar reductio ad malum philosophae, most often to some form of historicism or subjectivism. In comparison, David Bentley Hart's Tradition and Apocalypse radically reorients theological discourse on tradition by fundamentally contesting the premises of these two works. He counsels Christians to avert their gaze away from the past—if understood as the pristine source of tradition's once-for-all content and its inviolate transmission and disclosure—and toward the eschatological horizon, in whose light and unexpected future alone tradition is rendered coherent. Lastly, Anne M. Carpenter's Nothing Gained is Eternal approaches history as neither a hermeneutical hurdle nor an unblemished repository of Christian truth. Instead, history is the locus of the Christian tradition's self-constituting action as a living, incarnate mediator of both truth and sin. Individually, each volume offers distinct characterizations, assessments, and proposals for grappling with questions pertaining to theology and history; collectively, insofar as their diagnoses and prescriptions vary, they illuminate certain contours of and cogent approaches to these enduring theological issues. Jon Kirwan and Matthew K. Minerd admit in their introduction to The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie that the publication of Patricia Kelly's Ressourcement Theology: A Sourcebook (T&T Clark, 2021) upended their original designs. Instead of assembling a collection of noteworthy exchanges between the nouveaux théologiens and their critical interlocutors, they opted to focus on the Thomist "response to"—rather than "attack on," as Kelly frames it—the nouvelle théologie (4-5). By translating thirteen articles from one Roman and three Toulousian Dominicans (Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, Marie-Joseph Nicolas, and Michel-Marie Labourdette), Kirwan and Minerd assume the unenviable task of defending, or at least nuancing, the positions of a group "regularly branded as anti-modern and anti-historical symbols of Roman authoritarianism and Scholastic excess" (3). History is written by the victors, and the nouveaux théologiens' vindication at and beyond Vatican II afforded their supporters a monopoly on a historical narrative in need of qualification (2-5, 17, 34, 46-47, 81-83). The sophistication, philosophical and theological acumen, and even cultural irenicism displayed in these essays—especially those of Labourdette—swiftly erase caricatures of "Neo-Thomism's" insular decadence, historical illiteracy, and truculent hostility to any perceived innovation. For these authors, Thomism is a living mode of thinking capable of maturation rather than the static systemization of certain medieval thoughts (141-43, 178n30). Those who have accepted the conventional tale of Neo-Thomism's long-overdue downfall might be surprised to see these Dominicans repeatedly affirm the necessity of hermeneutically situating theology within history (109-16, 124, 148, 152, 155); the theological enrichment that comes from cultural engagement and assimilation (103-7, 130-31, 258); the ways in which historicity and subjectivity condition the subject's pursuit of objectivity (228 ff.); and the epistemic limits of doctrinal language (98-102, 204-7). Given that they are commonly indicted for obdurately denying precisely these characteristically "modern" notions, to what, in reality, did these Thomists object? What problems did they have with the Fourvière Jesuits and their nouvelle théologie's patristic retrieval, mystagogical turn, scripturally charged cosmic-historical vision, and rapprochement with those contemporary philosophies attuned to history and subjectivity? The answer pertains to theological methodology: namely, what it means for theology to be a science. Introducing a 1947 collection of essays from the first throes of the debate, Bruckberger refers to his fellow Thomists as, above all, "concerned with the rigorously scientific character of theology" (129). The data of theology is identical to the data of faith—namely, the "concepts and propositions" proposed by the Church for belief (Labourdette, 105). But, when endeavoring the science of theology, these concepts and propositions are approached not simply as truths to which we salvifically and lovingly cleave in faith, but also as data demanding definition, explanation, and rational synthesis in a process culminating in the speculative knowledge (scientia) of universally valid, supra-temporal truths. As a science, theology's end is understanding and contemplation, not evangelization and apologetically oriented "translation." For the nouveaux théologiens to shift their focus from Aquinas to the allegedly more vibrant, dynamic, and existentially engaging conceptual apparatuses of the patristic era was not in itself problematic. In fact, Labourdette lauds Sources Chrétiennes' retrieval-via-translation of patristic texts as "a magnificent enterprise" that "cannot be praised highly enough" (134)—albeit, wishing that the project had not been accompanied by a simultaneous "depreciation" of scholastic theology (166). These Thomists' apprehension regards the nature of progress in theology. Theology, as a science, aims at unification and universality, not diversification and plurality. The synthesis attained in Aquinas's elaboration of a realist metaphysic—a metaphysic "presupposed" by Scripture and the conciliar tradition (Garrigou-Lagrange, 271, 306, 317, 330, 336)—and his concomitant systemization of heretofore disconnected and "vague" theological concepts constitutes a permanently valid achievement (Labourdette, 142-46, 180-83, 234). Forfeiting the conceptual and theoretical precision of Thomism for a biblical and patristic theological grammar is, scientifically speaking, a lamentable reversion from a theoretical framework to a symbolic one—from uniform conceptual explanation to disorganized imagistic and metaphorical description. This is not to say that these modes of discourse are illegitimate or dispensable—their very evangelical genius is their suppleness and evocative power; it is simply to say that they are not scientific. In a kerygmatic or apologetic enterprise, the theologian can of course utilize symbolic discourse (Labourdette and Nicolas, 236, 257–258), but to do so while also jettisoning the scholastic framework and precision undergirding such an enterprise would be a tremendous regress. In the end, these thinkers argue that Catholic theology can only progress beyond Aquinas and scholasticism by going through and building on them, not by getting behind or around them. Insofar as the nouveaux théologiens' theological appropriation of contemporary philosophy is concerned, these Thomists believe that modernity's metaphysically thin and epistemologically subjectivist framework jeopardizes theology's—and faith's—commitment to objective, extra-mental truth (an apprehension Garrigou-Lagrange voices repeatedly, often taking aim at Blondel). They continually pose the same simple question to the nouveaux théologiens: can your philosophical alternative to Thomistic metaphysics substantiate "fixed and permanent dogmas" (236)? If the alternatives are "Kantianism," "existentialism," "Hegelianism," and "Marxism," then the answer is patently "no." To deny the existence of the very type of truth theological science presupposes and pursues a priori renders a philosophy anti-theological. Alas, "if [Thomistic philosophy] is true, how many things are false!" (Labourdette and Nicolas, 233). Furthermore, these authors take issue with certain nouveaux théologiens'—namely, Henri Bouillard's and Jean-Marie Le Blond's—recourse to "analogy" to legitimate theological transpositions from Thomism into new philosophical systems. Bouillard and Le Blond argue that, given human limitations and divine transcendence, Christians absolutely affirm the reality signified by relative representations; by the grace of faith, they avow the unchangeable essence conveyed through a changeable expression. In which case, successive theological systems relate to one another analogically rather than univocally: the essence of the referent of any theological affirmation is permanent, yes, but it is also permanently ineffable, and therefore its linguistic and conceptual expression is mutable and relative. Because the principle of analogy applies to predications of divinity, it also applies between theological systems. The Dominicans balk at this "abuse of analogy" (Garrigou-Lagrange, "Concerning Notions Consecrated by Councils," 319-30; Labourdette and Nicolas, "The Analogy of Truth," 193-240). Though their reasoning is too detailed and technical to recount here, their underlying concern might be stated interrogatively: If biblical and conciliar concepts are essentially transposable into new philosophical frameworks, is dogma anything more than a malleable, mystagogical signifier of the absolutely transcendent—something preserved for its (ultimately transient) spiritual and evangelical efficacy rather than for its fixity and ontological truth-value? How is dogmatic history not then reduced to a succession of provisional and culturally contingent asymptotic approximations of the de jure incomprehensible—a history in which there is no progress or development, but only difference; no growth, but only groping? Must each culture and era ceaselessly begin anew? If such a vision of analogy holds, the positivity and stability of revelation's intelligible content is jeopardized, and dogmas become "unstable notions fixed by words and ever-provisional schemata" (Garrigou-Lagrange, 350).2 Thus, the Thomists propose that successive theological systems relate to each other univocally—as better or worse—rather than analogically. Granted, for the Thomists, Aquinas is simultaneously the inventor and definer of the science of theology as well as the paradigm and template for theology's "ever-true expression" (Labourdette and Nicolas, 234). Therefore, it can be difficult to disentangle Thomist criticisms of insufficiently scientific and metaphysically substantiated theologies from criticisms for departures from Thomas or (a certain iteration of) Thomist metaphysics. Frequently in these essays, philosophical battles are being waged on theological terrain. Whether it be Garrigou-Lagrange's recurrent and unsparing criticisms of Maurice Blondel and his redefinition of truth (e.g., 305-11); his affirmation that "an error regarding the first notion of truth gives rise to an error regarding all the rest" (290n12); Nicolas's all-or-nothing approach to Thomistic metaphysics both in se and for theology (182-92); Labourdette's admission that the debate will be resolved only by turning to "the [philosophical] critique of knowledge" (122); or Labourdette and Nicolas's post hoc characterization of the dispute as "a modern installment of the conflict between realism and nominalism" (263), these theologians perceived the metaphysical and epistemological stakes and subtext of the debate. The authors of The Faith Once for All Delivered follow suit, seeking first to identify "false philosophies" and "philosophical errors which generate confusion and error regarding truth" in Part 1, only thereafter constructively specifying the requisite "theological tools" for understanding and facilitating Catholicism's ecclesial traditio of Christ's unfailing, unchanging truth in Part 2 (Raymond Cardinal Burke, vi-vii). Cardinal Burke's introduction notes Garrigou-Lagrange's "prescience" in identifying the relativistic and historicist terminus ad quem of the "new theology's" philosophical syncretism, as well as its unwitting commencement of theology's metaphysical weakening unto its own dissolution (1). C. C. Pecknold similarly notes the perspicuity of Garrigou-Lagrange's reductio ad malum philosophiam: any philosophical-theological alloy without a robust metaphysical realism is destined to corrode. This is followed by Christopher J. Malloy's criticism of Karl Rahner's purportedly eclectic blending of Kantian transcendentalism, Hegelian symbolism, and Heideggerian existentialism with Christianity. Thomas Heinrich Stark's essay on Cardinal Walter Kasper—"The Historicity of Truth" —charts a similar course: it is a "pre-theological" analysis of the "axiomatic" philosophical basis of Kasper's theology (69-70). In words that might as easily been uttered by Garrigou-Lagrange a few decades prior, Stark cites Kasper's Introduction to the Faith (1972): "At present, we are experiencing a radical historicization of all areas of reality. Everything is in a state of upheaval and change; there's hardly anything fixed and constant anymore. This historical change has also seized the church and her understanding of the faith" (70). Yet, rather than planting his flag with Garrigou-Lagrange in the terra firma of Thomistic metaphysical realism—in that alone which can withstand the buffets of transient philosophical tempests—Kasper casts his out onto the shifting tides of history: "Reality does not have a history; it is itself profoundly history," for "history is the last horizon of all reality" (Kasper, 71). That which the Thomists feared is that which Kasper embraces: the historicization of reality—and therefore of the truth—whose being is its becoming. Theologically, the consequence is a vision of orthodoxy as "a dynamic event and as an open process" (Kasper, 83)—something to which Stark demurs. In his eyes, Kasper proposes a Heraclitean flux without a subtending Logos, an ontology of event rather than of substance or nature. For Edmund Waldstein as for Stark and their Thomist forbears, Scripture's historical dynamism and kaleidoscopic metaphorical semantics presupposes rather than disposes with a stable metaphysic of nature—namely, the "providential and intrinsically necessary" complementarity of Greek (Aristotelian) metaphysics with Scriptural truth (Waldstein, 106). Christianity's Hebraic and Hellenistic origins provide the Church with normative, objective, and universally valid conceptual content rather than simply a model of inculturation to be subsequently iterated. Waldstein's laconic observation that, for the theologian, "philosophy is not a neutral 'tool'" aptly summarizes the thrust of Once for All's first part (105). The second half of the book treats the Magisterium, the development of doctrine (à la Vincent of Lérins and John Henry Newman), the sensus fidelium, Scriptural interpretation, and the episcopacy. It returns to concerns downstream from those in the aforementioned volume: the hazards of "updating" doctrine under the auspices of "pastoralization" and thereby denying the immutability of its cognitive content (Echeverria, 184-87); historicism's threats to Scripture's historical reliability (Finnis, 251-82); and a furtive relativism's subjectivization of revelation and the deposit of faith—which is "a deposit of doctrine, not of experience"—as well as their eclipse of Christian realism, of that without which there is neither universality nor unity in faith (Mansini, 297-99). An afterword penned by Robert Cardinal Sarah elaborates on the "Unity of the Church through Unity in Faith," calling Christians and theologians to submit in humble obedience to the revealed deposit, preserving it without spot or blemish rather than remaking it in their own image and likeness. Peter is the rock of the Church because of his creedal, Christological confession—a confession given, not from "flesh and blood," but from the "Father in heaven" (Matthew 16:17). The Church lives and dies by its graced confession of faith—that which tradition preserves and transmits, and that without which there is neither synchronic nor diachronic unity and catholicity. In fact, unity throughout space today is impossible without a prior unity with ages past (308, 315). Drawing inspiration from de Lubac's Nouveaux paradoxes (1955), Cardinal Sarah asks us to reflect: are we more tolerant of heterodoxy because the fires of charity now burn brighter than ever before? Or is it because of the lukewarmness of our faith (318-19)? A lot has been said, not always with sufficient reflection, about a "new theology" which, in a constantly developing world, would itself also be in constant development, always en route and never arriving anywhere. If such a view were thought legitimate, what would happen to the immutable Catholic dogmas and to the unity and stability of faith? We can fittingly turn to David Bentley Hart's Tradition and Apocalypse, since it is "primarily" directed against the "traditionalism" and "dogmatism" typified in the works just detailed (155). For those anxious over "the seeming irreconcilability between tradition and history" (19); for those disconcerted by the "ruptures," "inversions," and sheer unruliness comprising doctrinal history (34); and for those unsettled by overwhelming evidence against claims to "orthodoxy's" pristine origins, uninterrupted transmission, and logical unfolding (32-35, 40-41), Hart's guidance is as radical as it is simple: avert your gaze away from the past in se and toward the future's eschatological horizon, toward that in whose light alone history finds its meaning and the history of dogma finds its ratio. Similar to Troeltsch, Hart affirms that history—particularly, Christianity's convoluted dogmatic and ecclesiastical-political history—poses the most serious challenge for "reflective believers" hoping to discern a singular, abiding, and intelligible reality called "Christianity," on whose behalf rational and historical arguments can be advanced. In a rhetorical tour-de-force, Hart problematizes—and illustrates the Herculean task of formulating—a properly theological notion of tradition (4-10, 29-31, 96-100): it must account for coherence and stability as well as dynamism and development, and do so by articulating "a rational and indivisible unity somehow subsisting within a history that encompasses an incalculable number of large, conspicuous, and substantial transformations" (9-10). His conclusion: "such a concept [of tradition] would have to do more than is logically possible" and possess such pliability that it explains everything and therefore nothing (5, 18-19, 88-89). Hart presumes to dismantle logically what he considers the two most influential accounts of tradition to date: John Henry Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1878) and Maurice Blondel's History and Dogma (1904). The merits of Hart's criticisms are debatable (especially those of Newman, which neglect to reference his work's vital first half and therefore dubiously characterizes the Essay as "treating 'tradition' as an object of theological inquiry," 2), and his arguments regarding the eschatological relativity and provisionality of doctrine, doctrine's mystagogical function, the fact that "orthodoxy" and "heresy" are post hoc ideological narrative reconstructions, and the existence of ruptures and contradictions in tradition resemble those found in many twentieth-century reflections on the topic. From my vantage point, the preeminent contribution of the work is found in his broader theological and metaphysical framing of the matter: that the Christological irruption of the eschaton and its deferred-yet-pledged consummation constitutes tradition's "intrinsic entelechy" on the model of Aristotelian final causality (29-32, 92, 154, 167). In this model, potentialities are only manifested in their realization: a tree is emphatically not evident in a seed, though a grown tree discloses what was potentially in the seed—what that seed's fullness and perfection is (29). The divine seed of God's Kingdom was planted in the heart of history through the Incarnation and resurrection, and this is the Christian tradition's ineffable yet ever-operative animating force—its principle of integration, development, and successive sublations, as well as its "ultimate intentional horizon" and telos (167). This "final cause" is so "pervasive of the tradition as to constitute its most essential ground of unity and yet so transcendent of the tradition's actual historical configurations as to allow for the revision of what many believers would regard as the most foundational narratives and concepts of the faith" (167). His preferred illustration is the Council of Nicaea (112-27). To the eyes of an historian, Nicaea overthrows the hitherto regnant, more ancient, and (arguably more) scripturally plausible Trinitarian "subordinationism" and its attendant metaphysic, and it does so at the behest of a pragmatic imperial design for consolidation through unification. In short, historians see a radical theological innovation ("homoousios") endorsed by self-interested political powers. The eyes of faith alone can, after the fact, discern the theo-logic in the Council's determinations: that "the Nicene party discovered a deeper logic written throughout the tradition they had received, but in a language that had yet to be deciphered" (126), one opening new theological vistas as it closes off others. To euphemistically describe this revolutionary paradigm-shift as an "organic" or "logical development" whose rationale and conclusion were de jure predictable prior to their realization is naïve at best and mendacious at worst. In relation to the Thomistic or "traditionalist" positions outlined above, Hart's work undertakes a series of temporal reversals and subversions. He affirms: "the gnoseological priority within tradition of the future," not the past (167); the consequent need for creative fidelity, not to the past and our inheritance thereof, but to the future's apocalyptic unsettling of our certitudes and anathemas (104); that tradition is a source of epistemic and dogmatic humility rather than (overweening) confidence, surety, and security (145, 168); that the true traditio is of the disruptive future to the present "of a gift that remains sealed" (140), and not of a deposit of information from the past into the present (84); and that the failure to achieve either a synthesis between dogma and history or a perennially stable dogmatic equilibrium and consensus is a sign of tradition's vitality, fecundity, and truth rather than its gravest threat. Granted, insofar as Hart offers a theology of tradition without an ecclesiology—something unthinkable for these "traditionalist" interlocutors—his project is categorically different.3 In essence, Hart objects to the reductive reification and objectification of tradition into an inert, transparent, and once-for-all deposit; to making ends out of ecclesial means to an as-yet undisclosed finality; and to the functionally idolatrous absolutization of the provisional. He does so all under the auspices of the stubbornly confounding but simultaneously empowering eschatological proviso—God's great "not yet." Christians ought not be scandalized, then, if ressourcement becomes a means for aggiornamento, or if ostensive "infidelity" to received doctrinal and spiritual expressions might be demanded by a deeper fidelity to those ineffable realties which such forms intend to express. Practically speaking, Hart advocates for a two-tiered fidelity: a prudential fidelity to that which one receives in the present through one's particular tradition (as opposed to a brash iconoclasm or ahistoricism), but which is subordinate to and at times superseded by a deeper fidelity to the eschatological future—to that transcendently immanent and mysterious gift animating tradition, yet never fully captured in any of its concrete instantiations or configurations. He believes that such a vision of fidelity and tradition is liberating: liberating unto a "counterhistory" whose finality is life beyond death (145); liberating from presumptuousness, pride, and dogmatism's self-righteous heresy-hunting (168-69); liberating from anxiety over history's recalcitrance to narratives of doctrine's purity, logical unfolding, and pristine preservation (169-71); liberating "from too great a reliance on organs of authority," whether papal infallibility, Scriptural literalism, or a "fundamentalist" attachment to the mythic "consensus patrum" (173-80); and liberating for "reflective believers" to "revisit," "reconsider," and "reclaim" forgotten, relegated, and even censured aspects of tradition's past (180-81). Anne M. Carpenter commences Nothing Gained is Eternal in a manner similar to Hart, problematizing both the notion and the reality of tradition. Hart begins his work by declaring that "the concept of 'tradition' in the theological sense … is incorrigibly obscure and incoherent" (Hart, 1). Carpenter's opening salvo is similar: "Christian tradition is a problem. A problem of history, of truth, and of both together" (Carpenter, xi; cf. 184). Crucially, she reorients this seemingly epistemological and doctrinal framing with the following: "It is a problem made all the more problematic by Christian sin and infidelity" (xi). The decision to view tradition, not as a history of Christian ideas and ideals, but rather as a history of Christian action—both graced and sinful, saintly and fiendish—animates her project. Rather than miring herself in debates over tradition's precise theological content, she steps into "the realm of theory" (xiii) to propose, first, a metaphysic of tradition—that is, an account of tradition's formal or heuristic structure, its existence in/as act (chap. 1, drawing from Bernard Lonergan); then, a metaphysic of Christian tradition (chap. 2, drawing from Maurice Blondel); and, lastly, a theological metaphysic of Christian tradition (chaps. 3–5, drawing from Charles Péguy and Hans Urs von Balthasar). Carpenter condenses and communicates each figure's relevant insights to argue cumulatively that we, in and through our incarnate and self-transcendent agency, are subjects in history, subject to history, and co-constitutors of history (Lonergan); that Christian tradition, as Christian action, aims at incarnating a synthesis of dogmatic truth and historical reality (Blondel); that Christian truth and history coincide through a praxis of self-realizing—because self-giving—kenotic love that wills the other as other (Balthasar); and that a revolutionary ressourcement must purify, deepen, and renew tradition's past in and for the present (Péguy). Integral to and subtending her construction of a theological metaphysic of tradition are the problems of colonialism and racism. For the theoretician, this problem is magnified by the fact that race—when u
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