Ressourcement and Recovering the History of Theology

Part II on the Hermeneutics of Vatican II

Mar 24, 2023

A couple of weeks ago, I argued in this newsletter that the reason why debates over the proper interpretation of the Second Vatican Council seem so intractable is because, while we have focused on “what happened at Vatican II?”, to quote John W. O’Malley, S.J., we have mostly ignored the question of “what happened before the council?” It is all well and good to consider whether Vatican II represented a rupture with the past, was a reform, or was in continuity with what came before, but the question cannot be adequately answered without a historically accurate account of “what came before,” namely the theological development in the centuries prior to Vatican II. Instead, except for a small handful of specialists, most of us operate with an understanding of “what came before” based more in mythology and ideology than historical reality.

In that earlier post, I explained that a key source of this historical ignorance was the attempt in the late nineteenth century to portray the Catholic Church as the unchanging and unbending bastion of absolute and eternal Truth against the encroachments of the modern world. In particular, following the lead of Pope Leo XIII, the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas came to be understood as the pinnacle of Catholic thought, the culmination of what came before and the standard by which everything afterwards should be judged. This “narrative of restoration” attempted to identify the Tradition with Thomism and therefore emphasized continuity, neglecting the diverse theological voices that had fed the Church’s Tradition since the late medieval era. (It should be noted that there were excellent historical studies of non-Thomist figures during the early twentieth century, but this research did not have much influence on contemporaneous theology.)

In the first half of the twentieth century, a competing narrative emerged that challenged the narrative of restoration’s claim to represent a unanimous, unchanging account of the Catholic theological tradition. The ressourcement movement (or the nouvelle théologie) vowed to go “back to the sources,” the Church Fathers, to recover aspects of the Christian tradition that had been neglected, or even distorted, by later neo-Thomism, or neo-scholastic thinking more generally. The ressourcement theologians were also more sensitive to historical context and growth, less interested in a perennial system of theology than in the organic process of theological development. There have been several excellent studies of the ressourcement movement in recent years, and here I am only offering a brief sketch.

As I already noted, perhaps the preeminent intellectual task of the ressourcement movement was the recovery of the thought of the Church Fathers, both East and West. This included the editing, translation, and dissemination of the texts of the Fathers, but also thorough explorations of major themes in the theology of the Fathers. These historical studies in themselves would not have led the ressourcement theologians into conflict with the regnant neo-Thomist theology; the ressourcement theologians, however, went further and argued that neo-Thomism did not represent a synthesis of earlier thought, but rather represented the thinking of one school of thought that, in important ways, departed from the thinking of the Church Fathers. The Jesuit Henri de Lubac’s work on the natural desire for God is the most notable example. Because of its emphasis on the Church Fathers, there was an ecumenical spirit to the ressourcement movement, undoubtedly with the Orthodox, but also with the churches that emerged from the Protestant Reformation.

There was also a question of style and method; the neo-Thomists argued that the scholastic method of systematic exposition was an improvement over the more pastoral and discursive style of the Fathers, but the ressourcement theologians countered that the method of the Fathers was better suited to addressing the existential and cultural questions of modern people. The latter likewise argued that Patristic theology could lead to more fruitful dialogue with modern philosophy than neo-scholasticism.

The ressourcement movement had an ambiguous relationship toward Thomas Aquinas. On the one hand, the neo-Thomists were the primary antagonists of the ressourcement theologians. On the other, because of the ecclesial preeminence of Thomism, ressourcement theologians often had to frame their works as offering the authentic teachings of Aquinas, over against his later commentators. De Lubac’s treatment of the natural desire for God, particularly in Surnaturel, is again the clearest example. Another defining characteristic of the ressourcement movement, then, is this quest for the “historical Thomas,” a more historical approach to understanding Aquinas’s philosophy and theology that recognizes the various historical influences on his thought, the ways in which Aquinas was responding to the intellectual challenges of his own day, and the distinctions between Aquinas’s thought and later developments of the Thomistic school. The early work of Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P. is a classic example.

Although more sensitive to historical context and the organic development of theology, the narrative of ressourcement shares in common with the narrative of restoration a sense that there is a decline after Aquinas. For de Lubac, the primary source of this decline was the influence of Thomists like Thomas de Vio Cajetan and Francisco Suárez (Suárez himself was more eclectic than a strict Thomist). For the philosopher Étienne Gilson (although not associated with the ressourcement movement, he was a major figure in the recovery of the “historical Thomas,” and therefore a significant influence on the movement), the primary culprit was the medieval theologian and philosopher John Duns Scotus. This so-called “Scotus story” of decline has had a profound influence on recent Catholic, and even Protestant, theology. It is what I was taught in graduate school and is reflected in my early work.

There is also an ecumenical element to this narrative of decline. The theology of this later period comes after the definitive break with the East, and particularly in the aftermath of the Council of Trent, and so it represents a very confessional form of Catholicism. The theology of this period is therefore seen as less valuable in an ecumenical context. Like the narrative of restoration, the narrative of ressourcement creates a powerful incentive to leave the theological tradition after Aquinas neglected and misunderstood.

The work of de Lubac is an interesting exception that proves the rule. Unlike many of his peers, de Lubac pays a great deal of attention to late medieval and early modern theology, particularly in his The Mystery of the Supernatural and Augustinianism and Modern Theology. He takes pains to emphasize the diverse, non-Thomist schools of this period. De Lubac’s purpose, however, is to show that there were early modern theologians who maintained the Patristic teaching on the natural desire for God, and therefore to demonstrate a continuity from which the neo-Thomists had diverged. This is of course valuable work, and a convincing polemic against the narrative of restoration, but the focus is not on understanding the historical development of these different schools of theology or their unique contributions to the tradition.

As I said in the earlier post on the hermeneutics of Vatican II, this is just a sketch of an argument and needs to be more fully developed. It is a manifesto for giving more attention to the theologians and theological debates from the Renaissance era through the nineteenth century, a period that has been neglected for the reasons I have outlined. It also serves as a rationale for some of things I want to highlight with this newsletter.

Rather than focus on major theologians from the tradition, like Augustine and Aquinas, or major modern figures like Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, or Joseph Ratzinger, I want to highlight neglected theologians that may be less familiar to readers, even readers who are professional theologians. The focus will primarily be on theologians from the fourteenth century onward.
Likewise, I want to spotlight theological discussions and debates from that period that may be less familiar to readers, but that may have unexpected relevance for contemporary theological discussion and reflection.

In focusing on these topics, I have two goals that may be in tension with each other but which I don’t think are ultimately in conflict with each other:

To explore theologians from the past on their own terms and to understand the issues that were important to them.
To build a more complete narrative of the historical development of theology from the late medieval period onward, with the hope of leading to a better understanding of the present state of the Church and of theology.

I say these goals are in tension with each other because, when the goal is understanding the present better, there is always a temptation to interpret the past through the lens of the present or to support a pre-determined agenda. That is why I think it is important to appreciate theologians of the past in part precisely because of their difference from us; through that experience of difference, we may come to a better understanding of both the past and ourselves.

If you have any ideas on particular theologians or historical topics for the newsletter, let me know in the comments.

Ressourcement and Recovering the History of Theology

Part II on the Hermeneutics of Vatican II

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