This is an introduction to the most influential movement in Catholic theology in the 20th century which prepared the ground for the Second Vatican Council. It sheds new light on the theological movement that led up to and inspired the Second Vatican Council and is a most needed contribution to the ongoing heated discussions about the 'hermeneutics of the Council'.
An Avant-garde Theological Generation examines the Fourvière Jesuits and Le Saulchoir Dominicans, theologians and philosophers who comprised the influential reform movement the nouvelle théologie. Led by Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Yves Congar, and Marie-Dominique Chenu, the movement flourished from the 1930s until its suppression in 1950. It aims to remedy certain historical deficiencies by constructing a history both sensitive to the wider intellectual, political, economic, and cultural milieu of the French interwar crisis, and that establishes continuity with the Modernist crisis and the First World War. Chapter One examines the modern French avant-garde generations that have shaped intellectual and political thought in France, providing context for a historical narrative of the nouvelle théologie. Chapters Two and Three examine the influential older generations that flourished from 1893 to 1914, such as the Dreyfus generation, the generation of Catholic Modernists, and two generations of older Jesuits and Dominicans, which were instrumental in the Fourvière Jesuits' development. Chapter Four explores the influence of the First World War and the years of the 1920s, during which the Jesuits and Dominicans were in religious and intellectual formation, relying heavily on unpublished letters and documents from the Jesuits archives in Paris (Vanves). Chapter Five analyses the crises of the interwar period and the emergence of the wider generation of 1930-to which the nouveaux théologiens belonged-and its intellectual thirst for revolution. Chapter Six examines the emergence of the ressourcement thinkers during the tumultuous years of the 1930s. The decade of the 1940s, explored in Chapter Seven, saw the rise to prominence of the members of the generation of 1930, who, thanks to their participation in the resistance, emerged from the Second World War, with significant influence on the postwar French intellectual milieu. Finally, the monograph concludes in Chapter Eight with an examination of the triumph of French Left Catholicism and the nouvelle théologie during the 1960s at the Second Vatican Council. .
In the decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council, the movement of nouvelle théologie caused great controversy in the Catholic Church and remains a subject of vigorous scholarly debate today. In Nouvelle théologie and Sacramental Ontology Hans Boersma argues that a return to mystery was the movement's deepest motivation. Countering the modern intellectualism of the neo-Thomist establishment, the nouvelle theologians were convinced that a ressourcement of the Church Fathers and of medieval theology would point the way to a sacramental reintegration of nature and the supernatural. In the context of the loss suffered by both Catholics and Protestants in the de-sacramentalizing of modernity, Boersma shows how the sacramental ontology of nouvelle théologie offers a solid entry-point into ecumenical dialogue. The volume begins by setting the historical context for nouvelle théologie with discussions of the influence of significant theologians and philosophers like Möhler, Blondel, Maréchal, and Rousselot. The exposition then moves to the writings of key thinkers of the ressourcement movement including de Lubac, Bouillard, Balthasar, Chenu, Daniélou, Charlier, and Congar. Boersma analyses the most characteristic elements of the movement: its reintegration of nature and the supernatural, its reintroduction of the spiritual interpretation of Scripture, its approach to Tradition as organically developing in history, and its communion ecclesiology that regarded the Church as sacrament of Christ. In each of these areas, Boersma demonstrates how the nouvelle theologians advocated a return to mystery by means of a sacramental ontology.
A revelatory account of the nouvelle thologie, a clerical movement that revitalized the Catholic ChurchÕs role in twentieth-century French political life. Secularism has been a cornerstone of French political culture since 1905, when the republic formalized the separation of church and state. At times the barrier of secularism has seemed impenetrable, stifling religious actors wishing to take part in political life. Yet in other instances, secularism has actually nurtured movements of the faithful. Soldiers of God in a Secular World explores one such case, that of the nouvelle thologie, or new theology. Developed in the interwar years by Jesuits and Dominicans, the nouvelle thologie reimagined the ChurchÕs relationship to public life, encouraging political activism, engaging with secular philosophy, and inspiring doctrinal changes adopted by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Nouveaux thologiens charted a path between the old alliance of throne and altar and secularismÕs demand for the privatization of religion. Envisioning a Church in but not of the public sphere, Catholic thinkers drew on theological principles to intervene in political questions while claiming to remain at armÕs length from politics proper. Sarah Shortall argues that this Òcounter-politicsÓ was central to the mission of the nouveaux thologiens: by recoding political statements in the ostensibly apolitical language of doctrine, priests were able to enter into debates over fascism and communism, democracy and human rights, colonialism and nuclear war. This approach found its highest expression during the Second World War, when the nouveaux thologiens led the spiritual resistance against Nazism. Claiming a powerful public voice, they collectively forged a new role for the Church amid the momentous political shifts of the twentieth century.
This short book offers a survey of recent philosophy and how its different patterns of thought have influenced Catholic theologians. Rooted in the questions raised by Vatican I and the directions pointed by Vatican II, Philosophy and Catholic Theology shows how theology has developed over the past two centuries and how it builds on the foundations philosophy has laid since the Middle Ages and the crises of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Begin to see how reason informs faith and how the two work together to yield knowledge of lifes most profound realities. This book will be of immediate appeal to students of both philosophy and theology as well as to the general reader.
Nevertheless, if you read this short book and understand what it lays out, you will be in the top 0.001% of people in the world who have a working knowledge of the philosophy and theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas. You will have the knowledge to pass a class called “Thomas Aquinas 101,” and you will be ready to study Thomas Aquinas at the collegiate level. You will have the building blocks to move forward. At the end of this book, I make practical recommendations to take it to the next level and recommend the next books to read.
One of the major figures of twentieth-century Catholic theology, Henri Cardinal de Lubac was known for his attention to the doctrine of the church and its life within the contemporary world. In Corpus Mysticum de Lubacinvestigates a particular understanding of the relation of the church to the eucharist. He sets out the nature of the church as communion, a doctrine that influenced the thinking of the Second Vatican Council. With the publication of Corpus Mysticum, this important text of contemporary Catholic ecclesiology and sacramental theology is available for the first time in an English translation. Its publication fills a significant gap in the range of de Lubac's works available to English-speaking scholars. It will be an important resource in the widespread and ongoing ecumenical discussions among Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox theologians.
Surveying the barriers that contemporary thinking has erected between the natural and the supernatural, between earth and heaven, Hans Boersma issues a wake-up call for Western Christianity. Both Catholics and evangelicals, he says, have moved too far away from a sacramental mindset, focusing more on the "here-and-now" than on the "then-and-there." Yet, as Boersma points out, the teaching of Jesus, Paul, and St. Augustine -- indeed, of most of Scripture and the church fathers -- is profoundly otherworldly, much more concerned with heavenly participation than with earthly enjoyment. In Heavenly Participation Boersma draws on the wisdom of great Christian minds ancient and modern -- Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, C. S. Lewis, Henri de Lubac, John Milbank, and many others. He urges Catholics and evangelicals alike to retrieve a sacramental worldview, to cultivate a greater awareness of eternal mysteries, to partake eagerly of the divine life that transcends and transforms all earthly realities.
