Per Caritatem

By Michael Deem

In this, my final installment on the Ressourcement movement in Catholic theology, I wish to briefly sketch the impact and historical endurance of the movement. While Henri de Lubac may rightly be described as the centerpiece of Ressourcement, he most certainly was not alone in infusing its spirit into Catholic life and thought. Rather, he was flanked by a number of confreres in theology and philosophy which ensured that this spirit remained embodied in theology and philosophy alike.[1]

As has been mentioned, the spirit of Ressourcement may be succinctly described as a return to the first interpreters of Christian revelation, the Church Fathers, so as to rediscover and revitalize the essence of Christianity in the midst of Europe’s modern crises of faith. Therefore, contrary to the perception of many of its detractors from both within and without Catholic theological circles, Ressourcement was neither a simple exercise in some sort of theological archeology nor a nostalgic admiration of bygone eras. Ressourcement was responding to two chief trends in 20th century Europe: 1. the ossification of Catholic theology due to the manual tradition of Neo-Scholasticism, which had a. deemed itself the only proper philosophical response to modern philosophy’s preoccupation with subjectivity and ideas, and b. claimed that, through Thomas Aquinas and the commentary tradition, it had extracted and unified the best teachings of the Fathers and Scholasticism, establishing itself as science; 2. the increasing disappearance of the sense of the sacred in European consciousness due to a. secularizing post-Enlightenment trajectories, b. the increasing irrelevance of the Christian worldview on account of liberal Protestant theology and Catholic Neo-Scholasticism.

The earliest efforts of that loose band of theologians whom we call Ressourcement thinkers have proven to be among the most enduring in Catholic theological studies. As early as 1942, the French Jesuits Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou had inaugurated the Sources Chrétiennes project, which sought to make available to the Francophile world fresh translations and critical editions of the writings of the Western and Eastern Fathers of the Church. The project continues today, having published its 500th translation and critical edition in May 2006.

It was the early recovery and reappropriation of the genuine Thomistic and Augustinian theologies of nature and grace through the efforts of de Lubac[2] and Henri Bouillard[3] that set the terms of the debate with Neo-Scholasticism on the one hand, and with ‘transcendental Thomism’ on the other. This latter debate continues today, though it appears that the theology of grace and nature as developed by Rahner and his disciples is beginning to fade due to its marked Suarezian base and its haphazard—or should I say schizophrenic—oscillation between Neo-Scholasticism and a poor interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s ‘existential’ phenomenology. On account of the efforts of de Lubac and Bouillard, the theology of grace has not gone out of style in Catholic theology and continues to be of interest to contemporary theologians.[4]

In 1946, Ressourcement had become a well recognized and, depending on who was asked, a rather notorious force in Catholic theology. If de Lubac’s Catholicisme (1938) may be called Ressourcement’s programmatic essay, Jean Daniélou’s 1946 essay “Le orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse” was its manifesto.[5] In this remarkable essay, Daniélou discussed three areas in current theology: 1. The spirit of Ressourcement as a return to early Christianity so as to revive biblical, historical and liturgical studies; 2. The need for Catholic theologians to dialogue with modern philosophy on the latter’s terms, employing the tools and ideas recovered through Ressourcement; 3. The gross need to move beyond the prevailing Neo-Scholasticism and its ahistorical and hermeneutically irresponsible attempts at systematization. Needless to say, the thinkers associated with the early Ressourcement movement, especially de Lubac, Bouillard and Daniélou, drew the ire of many Neo-Scholastics of the day, most notably that of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and Marie-Michel Labourdette. It would be Garrigou-Lagrange who, expressing both disapproval and dismay, would coin what would become the lasting caricature of Ressourcement: “la nouvelle théologie”.[6]

The talk of a “new theology” fermenting among the French Jesuits no doubt left many in the Roman Curia uneasy. The prominence of Garrigou-Lagrange in Rome ensured that Pope Pius XII would catch word of the development. In 1950, the encyclical Humani Generis was promulgated in response to a number of troubling scientific, political, philosophical and theological trends in Europe. The encyclical made a cryptic reference to a “new theology” and the effort of some to destroy the gratuity of grace. While Humani Generis made no explicit reference to de Lubac and his confreres, many ecclesiastics and academics interpreted (wrongly) the encyclical as a condemnation of their efforts. After the promulgation of Humani Generis, the Superior General of the Jesuits ordered the removal of all of de Lubac’s books from Jesuit libraries and asked him to step down from his teaching position. Many others mistakenly took the encyclical as a censure of de Lubac’s positions and kept their distance from him. Daniélou and, to a lesser extent, Bouillard were also looked upon with suspicion. However, de Lubac would be vindicated when he was called by Pope John XXIII in the late 1950’s to help prepare the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).[7]

During the Second Vatican Council, the bishops voted overwhelmingly to scrap the various schemata prepared by the preparatory councils due to their archaic tone and stark dependency on Neo-Scholasticism’s outdated language and thought-forms. New constitutions were drafted under the aegis of a number of theological experts who had felt the heavy-hand of the Curia during the 1950’s: Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Küng. What marked these drafts was a historical awareness of the development and pluralism of Catholic thought and liturgical practice across 1900 years. The Council began heading in a new direction, re-grounding the theology and liturgical life of the Church in the earliest Christian traditions stemming from the Fathers. The intention was to fortify the Church’s understanding of its foundations in order to respond to the modern world in terms that were both relevant and coherent. Thus, the work of the Second Vatican Council was largely shaped by the very spirit of Ressourcement. Ressourcement became virtually synonymous with the theme of the Council, aggiornamento—retrieval, restoration and renewal in the Church.[8]

After the Council, Neo-Scholasticism all but disappeared from the theological scene. At the risk of over-generalization, it may be said that Catholic theology largely followed two post-conciliar trajectories. On the one hand were a number of thinkers who interpreted the Council as sanctioning a thoroughgoing grounding of theology in the methods and manners of modern philosophy and/or historiography.[9] On the other hand was a number of thinkers who aligned themselves with the Ressourcement movement, and by extension, the truest spirit of the Council. These included, of course, the original members of the movement such as de Lubac, Daniélou and Congar, as well as a younger generation of thinkers who had been greatly influenced by their works. Most famous among them include Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Louis Bouyer and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II).[10]

If there is any doubt that the Catholic Church did not favor the Ressourcement movement in its theological and liturgical life after the Second Vatican Council, one need only point to the ecclesial honors bestowed on its greatest proponents. Three of the Ressourcement thinkers who were pivotal in forming the theology of the Second Vatican Council were made Cardinals: Jean Daniélou in 1969, Henri de Lubac in 1983 and Yves Congar in 1994. Rarely are theologians elevated to the College of Cardinals. Ressourcement movement has proven itself to be far more enduring than other twentieth-century movements in Catholic theology. While many of the post-conciliar theological trends continue to lose their abilities to provide answers to the questions of contemporary philosophy and society, Ressourcement thought continues to exert a strong influence in contemporary theology and Christian life. A few examples of this will suffice.

Since the early 1970’s, the pioneering Catholic theological journal Communio, which was founded by de Lubac, Ratzinger and Balthasar in order to aid in the interpretation, implementation and expression of conciliar theology, has been a major force in contemporary scholarship. Not only does the journal publish articles by contemporary theologians influenced and marked by the Ressourcement style, but it also reprints a number of short and scarce pieces by the major thinkers associated with the movement.

Henri de Lubac continues to be read and studied by specialists and non-specialists alike. In recent years, many of his ideas have been appropriated by the Radical Orthodoxy movement due to their recovery of the Neo-Platonist, Origenist, Augustinian and Scotist themes in the history of Christian thought that were typically forgotten or ignored by Neo-Scholasticism’s triumphalism and over-confidence.

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s recovery and development of the primacy of beauty among the Scholastic transcendentals has provided Catholic thought with a certain resiliency in the face of post-modernity’s sweeping critiques of modernity and its (dis)contents. Balthasar has become a pivotal figure in contemporary theological and philosophical discussions within and without Catholic circles.

Finally, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, has ensured the incorporation of Ressourcement theology in the Catholic doctrinal tradition. Less speculative than Balthasar and more philosophically and politically conscious than de Lubac, Ratzinger’s theology has been a constant address to, and discourse with, modern and contemporary philosophy and politico-social theory.

To conclude, it is worth repeating that Ressourcement never meant to remain an exercise within academic theology. On the contrary, Ressourcement was a spirit that found haven in a number of independent, diverse men of deep Christian conviction who possessed the understanding that Catholicism needed to rediscover its very core in order to survive in the shifting boundaries of Europe’s intellectual and political landscape. This necessitated a theology that was informed by its past so as to address the present, and a theology that was nourished simultaneously by its intellectual merits and its spiritual heritage. Ressourcement theology is a theology can be lived in prayer, in society and in academia. For this reason alone, it exposed the inadequacies of arid Neo-Scholasticism, it outlives its post-conciliar peers, and it will continue to inspire the whole of Christianity in a post-modern, post-religious world.

Notes:

[1] Abutting Ressourcement theology was the work of Maurice Blondel, Marie-Dominique Chenu and Étienne Gilson, all of whom possessed an acute sense for historicity and hermeneutics in philosophical investigation.

[2]Among Henri de Lubac’s major works on the nature/grace debate were Surnaturel (1946) [no English translation], Augustinisme et théologie moderne (1965) [ET: Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (1969; reprint New York: Crossroad, 2000)], Le Mystère du surnaturel (1965) [ET: The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (1967; reprint New York: Crossroad, 1998)], and Petite catéchèse sur nature et grâce [ET : A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, trans. Richard Arnandez (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984)]. It may be worth noting that, in his recent book on de Lubac and the ‘debate on the supernatural’, John Milbank does not once reference de Lubac’s last word on the issue, Petite catéchèse sur nature et grace. See John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).

[3] Among Henri Bouillard’s major contributions on the question of grace were Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin (1944) [no English translation] and Blondel et le Christianisme (1961) [ET: Blondel and Christianity (Cleveland: Corpus, 1969)].

[4] Three recent books on this very topic are worth mentioning here: Stephen J. Duffy, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992); Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Dissertationes, 3; Rome: Edizioni Università della Santa Croce, 2001); John Milbank, The Suspended Middle.

[5] Published in Étudies 249 (1946): 5-21.

[6] The term was first used by Garrigou-Lagrange in his inflammatory and polemical essay, “La nouvelle théologie, où va-t-elle?”, Angelicum (1949): 126-45.

[7] De Lubac was joined by another theologian whose work was likewise suspect during the pontificate of Pius XII, Yves Congar. After the Second Vatican Council, both de Lubac and Congar would speak of the contempt and alienation they experienced prior to the Council’s proceedings due to the Neo-Scholastic dominated preparatory commission.

[8] The impact of Ressourcement is most acutely evidenced in the conciliar documents Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), Dei Verbum (Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation), Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) and Nostra Aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions).

[9] This is not to suggest that these thinkers comprised a monolithic trend in Catholic theology. Under the single banner of “pluralism” these thinkers followed a number of different paths in theology.

By Michael Deem

Henri de Lubac—French priest, scholar and cardinal—stands at the center of the Ressourcement movement in Catholic theology. While he certainly was not the progenitor of Ressourcement, there seems to be little doubt that de Lubac is its most important and influential exponent. When one attempts to lay hold of the very heart of Ressourcement, one can do no better than to begin with de Lubac’s theological enterprise. Remarking on the manner in which de Lubac’s first book, Catholicisme (1938), affected his own theological orientation, Pope Benedict XVI—then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—wrote in 1988: “(De Lubac) makes visible to us in a new way the fundamental intuition of Christian Faith so that from this inner core all the particular elements appear in a new light…Whoever reads de Lubac’s book will see how much more relevant theology is the more it returns to its center and draws from its deepest resources.”[1] Indeed, one can extend this sentiment to the whole Lubacian corpus.

What characterizes Ressourcement is that which characterizes the entirety of de Lubac’s thought: the conviction that the treasury of Patristic theology does not wear thin along the historical terrain traversed by Christianity and that Christianity cannot meet the exigencies of modern times without rediscovering its essence through a return to its sources in the Church Fathers.

Henri de Lubac entered the Jesuit order in 1914 and immediately gravitated toward a study of the Church Fathers, particularly of Origin and Augustine, during his formation. He was also quite drawn to the works of Rousselot and Blondel, and to a lesser extant Maréchal, all of whom he read alongside the staple Neo-Scholasticism of the religious reformation. What these authors addressed and assailed in the largely theoretical sphere became for de Lubac a concern in the practical and social sphere: the gradual disappearance of the sacred in every element of human existence. In a rarely quoted essay from 1942, de Lubac writes: “Now, basically, this world is not by itself either sacred or secular, for it receives its significance only through man. It can become one or the other according to the way in which man behaves in its regard.”[3]

At the heart of de Lubac’s theology is a concern to re-establish in the consciousness of humanity the Christian principle that the sacred—the presence of God’s saving activity—is not some foreign, invading force in an otherwise mundane, secular world. Rather, nature is always incomplete and unfulfilled without the gratuitous sanctification wrought by grace, and it is peculiar to human nature to release the full splendor of the grace given to it. For de Lubac, as for the Fathers, anthropology and ecclesiology are fully intelligible only in light of one another.

Marking de Lubac’s first two works (which can rightly be described as a sort of the programmatic for the Ressourcement movement) is his utter dismay for the utter secularization of modern European society. His first book, Catholicisme (1938), was published in Yves Congar’s Unam sanctam series. Illumining the historical, social and personalist understandings of the Church with constant reference to the Fathers, it contains the seeds for all of de Lubac’s subsequent thought, and was extensively read and translated throughout Europe. While primarily an historical study on the social character of the ecclesiology postulated and developed by the Fathers, it is undeniably clear that in it de Lubac is seeking to underscore the pervasive presence of grace in the world and the corresponding destiny of all humanity in Christ through the Church.

With the 1946 publication of his Surnaturel and its criticism of the neo-Scholastic theory of “pure nature”, de Lubac became the eye of the theological storm turning throughout Catholic Europe. De Lubac took issue with the hypothetical model of pure nature, which postulated a hypothetical natural end or telos for humanity in the absence of grace, in part due to its absence from the patristic and medieval traditions of the Church. He also noted what he saw as an increasing separation between the secular and sacred, the root of which was not modern philosophy or political circumstance, but the dry, logic based polemic of neo-Scholasticism against Baianism on the one hand, and ‘Cartesian’ rationalism on the other. Neo-Scholasticism, claimed de Lubac, was implicitly sanctioning the efforts of post-War Europe to banish religion and faith from the public sphere! In portraying nature as an autonomous system capable of attaining its end by means of its resources, Catholic theology was conceding nature—and humanity itself—to secularism.[4]

The Ressourcement movement, therefore, was not simply an effort to recover the riches of the Church Fathers so as to counter an impending ossification of Catholic theology. The Ressourcement movement was a valiant attempt by a number of theologians, de Lubac taking the lead, to breathe new life into the soul of Catholic theology so that it might simultaneously rediscover the very essence of Christianity through a return to its sources and respond to the needs and trends of modern, secular European society. Ressourcement restores relevance to theology by means of connecting with, and developing from its roots in the living reception and exposition of the revelation of Jesus Christ by the Fathers.

Notes:
[1] Joseph Ratzinger, “Foreword” to Henri de Lubac, Catholicism, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 11.
[2] In typically dramatic fashion, Hans Urs von Balthasar writes: “With Surnaturel, a young David comes onto the field against the Goliath of the modern rationalization and reduction to logic of the Christian mystery. The sling deals a death blow, but the acolytes of the giant seize upon the champion and reduce him to silence for a long time.” The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview, trans. Joseph Fessio and Michael M. Waldstein (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 63.
[3] “Internal Causes of the Weakening and Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred,” in Theology in History, trans. Ann Elgund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 232.
[4] I have a paper on the Surnaturel debate online at: http://henridelubac.blogspot.com/2006/03/supernatural-and-supernature-nature.html

Suggested Reading:

Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances that Occasioned his Writings, trans. Anne Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993).

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview, trans. Joseph Fessio and Michael M. Waldstein (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991).

Susan K. Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).

John Milbank: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).

This is the first of a multipart series by a guest blogger (and new friend), Michael Deem. Michael earned his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and his Master of Arts in Historical Theology at Saint Louis University. He is currently a Latin/Religion/Ancient History teacher and an instructor in Humanities at Cy-Fair College in Cypress, TX and maintains two blogs: TheoPhenomenon (academic) and Evangelical Catholicism (personal). Michael plans to earn a Ph.D. in theology.

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The Ressourcement Movement
Part 1: Historical Context
By Michael Deem*

If one were pressed to isolate a single trend with the contemporary Catholic theological milieu whose powerful impact and enduring presence has most affected Catholicism from the top of the episcopal hierarchy down to the anonymous layperson in the pew, one would most certainly conclude that the ressourcement movement of twentieth century Catholic theology would be the only viable and worthy candidate for isolation. What began as a loose trend among a few Catholic scholars in the early twentieth century to rediscover the authentic thought of Thomas Aquinas burgeoned into a sweeping ecclesial tour de force emanating renewal and reform throughout academia and the Catholic Church itself. Indeed, the current shape of Catholic theology, spirituality and ecclesial perspective is by and large a direct product of the ressourcementmovement.

‘Ressourcement’ is a difficult word to define. There is no English equivalent to this French neologism. The spirit of the movement, coupled with the etymology of the French, has led most Anglophone scholars to simply transliterate the term as ‘return to the sources’ or, more awkwardly, ‘renewal through return to sources’. True, it’s always nice to return to our roots, but to which roots shall we return? Which sources shall be privileged? In short, the loosely-connected thinkers whose work ushered in the ressourcement movement sought to return to the writings of the early church, that is, to the works and ideas of the early Fathers of Christianity—everyone from Clement of Alexandria to Bede in the West, and everyone from Ignatius to John Damascene in the East. The progenitors of ressourcement believed that a return to the writings of these Christians would not only reestablish in the Catholic consciousness a sense of continuity and development of the treasury of faith across two millennia, but also renew the very face of Catholic theology, which had virtually ossified due to the Scholastic manual tradition that had been entrenched in Catholic universities and seminaries since the eighteenth century. Thus, their theology was not merely an exercise in Patristic study, but a reading of the Fathers as both historical figures (contextualized study) and as contemporaries (constructive implication).

It would be helpful to sketch the historical context in which the ressourcement originated before moving to a discussion of some of its specific emissaries. Catholic theology in the early twentieth century was indelibly marked, or so it seemed, by a fierce allegiance to the commentary tradition on the theology and philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. This tradition, dubbed Neo-Scholasticism, sprouted by means of the concerted studies and commentaries on Aquinas by Thomas Cajetan in the sixteenth century. It took definitive shape through the writings of Francisco Suarez, Domingo Bañez and John of St. Thomas, and was all but ubiquitous in Catholic thought by the start of the twentieth century. The preceding nineteenth century saw a few anomalies amidst the dominant Neo-Scholastic party, in particular the historically and quasi-ecumenically conscious Tübingen school (especially Johann Sebastian Drey and Johann Adam Möhler), John Henry Newman and Matthias Scheeben, a Thomist who exhibited little allergy to the writings of the early Church, especially those of the Eastern Fathers. But exceptions, of course, did not alter the rule.

What most characterized Neo-Scholasticism was the assumption that theology proceeds in deductive fashion, beginning with absolute first principles followed by theological conclusions of varying degrees of certainty therein deduced. Aristotelian logic, especially as outlined in the Prior and Posterior Analytics and the ‘timeless’ quality of Aristotelian science were paradigmatic to the Neo-Scholastic method. Thus, when practitioners of Neo-Scholasticism were not producing dogmatic handbooks chock full of theological deductions arranged by topic (e.g. De Deo Uno, De Deo Trino, De natura humana), they were penning commentaries on either Aquinas’ works or other commentaries on Aquinas’ works. Questions of historicity and hermeneutics were not important to the Neo-Scholastic methodology which, by assuming it was simply perpetuating the spirit of Aquinas, placed its confidence in what it ultimately believed to be a watertight scientific system. Hence, the stamina of such a monolithic theological method across a number of centuries.

This is not to suggest that the Neo-Scholastics were incognizant of the challenge of modern philosophy, which all but exiled Aristotle’s epistemological starting point with the knowledge of being. Indeed, the Neo-Scholastics were quite aware of post-Cartesian trends in philosophy, as well as their Protestant theological interlocutors. However, the Neo-Scholastics took for granted a spontaneous certainty of sense experience while trusting in the accuracy of cognitive appropriation of sense data. Add to this the self-evident presumption that the first thing known through cognition is being, the result is a philosophical system that does not take the cogit seriously, let alone as a valid departure point in philosophy. Neo-Scholasticism conceived of post-Cartesian philosophy as inherently incapable of handling the theological problems it inherited and bequeathed. Without establishing the distinct ordo naturae, it was thought that modern philosophy could not handle the important question of grace and nature. Without a proper metaphysics, it was thought that post-Cartesian philosophy was doomed to nihilism or immanentism due to its distrust of sense experience and rejection of a mediate grasp of being through cognition and judgment.

Up until the late nineteenth century, the regal presence of Neo-Scholasticism was relatively circumstantial. However, with Pope Leo XIII’s promulgation of Aeterni Patris in 1879, the philosophy of Aquinas—as interpreted by Neo-Scholasticism—became the standard philosophy and theology of Catholic seminarian formation. Theological works that took a historical, developmental or ‘Cartesian’ approach to reason and faith were gradually removed and replaced by the dogmatic manuals of the Neo-Scholastics. Solidifying the papal decree within the greater breadth of academia were Matteo Liberatore and Joseph Kleutgen, whose theological and philosophical manuals embodied the desire of Leo XIII for Catholic theology.

Despite the papal prerogative, the shortsightedness of Aeternis Pater became evident to the Catholic realm of theology less than two decades after its promulgation. In a theological climate virtually dominated Neo-Scholasticism, Catholic thinkers such as Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), Pierre Rousselot (1878-1915) and Joseph Maréchal (1878-1944) began to question the philosophical aptitude of their manualist counterparts.

Blondel, trained in philosophy in the secular French university system, did not find Neo-Scholasticism amenable to Catholicism’s engagement with the modern world. He detected in the manual tradition a more Aristotelian than Thomistic spirit that resulted in a radical dichotomy between the world and God—between the natural and the supernatural—which actually aided the efforts of European secularists and their quest to banish religion from the public sphere. In his monumental L’Action (1893), Blondel attempted to illumine the philosophical and anthropological foundations of the volitional desire in humanity for the potential, but not necessary, action of the supernatural, that is, beyond the natural.

Rousselot and Maréchal were both priests, academically trained in the Neo-Scholastic way. However, breaking with their predecessors, Rousselot and Maréchal took modern philosophy seriously. Rousselot, influenced by the anti-‘intellectualism’ of Blondel and Henri Bergson, bypassed the Neo-Scholastic commentaries on Aquinas and turned to the actually writings of Aquinas himself. In his short career, Rousselot produced two treatises that would change the entire course of Thomistic studies in the 20th century: L’Intellectualism de Saint Thomas (1924) and Pour L’Histoire du probléme de l’amour au moyen-âge (1908). Rousselot sought to recover the historical Aquinas’ epistemology, situating his ideas within their historical context and medieval debate, rather than portraying Aquinas’ ideas through the medium of the 700 year commentary tradition of Neo-Scholasticism.

Maréchal, though desirous of recovering the Aquinas of history, also took the trajectories of modern philosophy seriously. In particular, he perceived Kant’s critique of pure reason as a formidable and unassailable challenge to theology. In light of the Kantian problematic, Maréchal detected a fundamental need to map out the necessary conditions for the human knowledge of divine revelation in Thomistic terms. His voluminous notes, collated as Le Point de départ de la métaphysique (1944-1949) paved the way for a careful consideration of Aquinas in historical context while adapting Thomistic epistemology to meet the demands of modern philosophical projects. Maréchal’s work became the basis for the later movement known as ‘transcendental Thomism’ whose main proponents were Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan.

Despite the efforts of Blondel, Rousselot and Maréchal on the academic and public levels, the magisterial rule as laid out in Aeterni Patris still held sway in Catholic theology and philosophy. Neo-Scholasticism remained strong in the early 20th century, due largely to the political and polemical moves of prominent theologians such as Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and M.-Michael Labourdette, both of whom had the constant ear of the pope and Roman Curia. However, a young Jesuit theologian in France was slyly slipping into his otherwise Neo-Scholastic curriculum the writings of Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Blondel, Rousselot and Maréchal. What began as tangential, idiosyncratic leisure reading soon became the defining quality of Henri de Lubac’s theological formation and shortly thereafter, by extension, the pivotal impulse for reform—ressourcement — from within the very heart of the Catholic Church.

SUGGESTED READING

Gerald A. McCool, The Search for a Unitary Method: Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989).

idem, From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992).

Stephen J. Duffy, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), 50-65.

Pierre Rousselot, The Intellectualism of Saint Thomas, trans. James E. O’Mahony (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1935).

Maurice Blondel, Action (1893): Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice, trans. Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).

Joseph Maréchal, A Maréchal Reader, trans. and ed. Joseph Donceel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970).

In the final section of Healy’s article, “Biblical Inspiration and the Christological Analogy,” she discusses the “Christological analogy” and its hermeneutical implications with the goal of moving us beyond the “false dichotomy between critical exegesis and Christian faith, so that the biblical text will once again be illumined as a means of access into the mystery of the God who revealed himself in time and space” (p. 193). Healy begins by presenting a basic definition of the doctrine of inspiration, viz., “the conviction that God himself is the primary author of the sacred books” (p. 190). In other words, God himself speaks through the biblical authors. Granting this, we must then take into account both the human and the divine authorship of Scripture. As Healy explains, the Christological analogy—comparing Scripture with the hypostatic union of two natures in Christ—was employed by the Second Vatican Council and has roots in patristic sources (e.g., Chrysostom). The SVC version reads, “For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as of old the Word of the eternal Father, when he took to himself the weak flesh of humanity became like other men.” Here we see the sacramental character of Scripture corresponding to the sacramentality of Christ’s humanity. Moreover, just as Christ was fully human and fully divine, so too we must affirm Scripture as fully human and fully divine—neither elevating one over the other or seeing the two in tension. The human and divine aspects of Scripture form a unity and, (contra modern critical practices) given this unity, we cannot presume to discern which passages are “divine” and which are merely “human” (p. 191).

Continuing with the Christological analogy, just as there are heretical Christologies, so too are there imbalanced doctrines of Scripture and inspiration. One might, e.g., fall into a kind of “Monophysite” exegesis in which the human dimension of the text is severely downplayed. An extreme version of this would be a “dictation” theory. A second imbalanced approach would move in a Nestorian direction. Here the human aspects are unduly exalted and the divine (if attended to at all) serves as a kind of afterthought.

Given our desire to avoid both of these extremes, Healy suggests that we consider a “’Chalcedonian’ form of exegesis, which does full justice to the human and the divine aspects of Scripture in the integral unity, […] one which takes seriously the human authorial processes and rigorously investigates the relevant manuscripts, languages, literary genres, historical contexts, cultural settings and so on—but [is] open from the beginning to the interior and vertical dimension. The logical priority of the human dimension is at the service of the teleological priority of the divine: interpretation is for the sake of the knowledge of God in Christ” (p. 192). Employing the Christological analogy as our hermeneutical key does not mean that we write off historical-critical methods. Yet, we do recognize that such “tools” are informed by our own convictions. For example, whether or not we believe that God acts in history will no doubt influence our interpretation. Though we all bring presuppositions to the table and begin with a certain perspective, “[t]he only perspective that is adequate to the realities mediated by Scripture is that which is open to the living God: that is, the perspective of faith. Faith is here understood not merely as assent to confessional doctrines but as a prophetic, that is, divinely bestowed, interpretation of all reality. Its absence—whether real or by artificial abstraction—will close off the most significant dimensions of reality from the perception of the interpreter” (p. 193). To illustrate her point, Healy gives the following excellent analogy taken from Farkasfalvy, “[e]xcluding the experience of faith from the exegetical process … is like subjecting a musical piece to the judgment of a jury whose members must be deaf, so that their aesthetic experience would not interfere with the unbiased objectivity of their judgment” (Farkasfalvy, “In Search of a ‘Post-Critical’ Method of Biblical Interpretation,” p. 303; as cited in Healy, p. 193).

*This article is found in Behind the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Craig Bartholomew, C. Stephen Evans, Mary Healy, and Murray Rae (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 181-195.

In section three, “The Vertical Dimension of Biblical Narrative and its Implications for Exegesis,” Healy opens by pointing out that in addition to what we have said in the previous two sections regarding narrative in general, we must add that the biblical view of history is “radically open to God,” hence, the vertical dimension. “For the biblical writers every event is a mystery whose inner depths reveals something of God and his gracious dealings with humanity. God’s absolute transcendence ensures that his intervention in the affairs of history and does not violate or compete with creaturely causality, but actually allows free will its fullest expression” (pp. 187-188). Healy then cites a passage from de Lubac, which deserves to be repeated in toto. “God acts in history and reveals himself through history. Or rather, God inserts himself in history and so bestows on it a ‘religious consecration’ which compels us to treat it with due respect. As a consequence historical realities possess a depth and are to be understood in a spiritual manner: historika pneumatikōs; conversely, spiritual realities appear in a constant state of flux and are to be understood historically: pneumatikōs historika. The Bible, which contains the revelation of salvation, contains too, in its own way, the history of the world” (Catholicism, p. 167).

Recalling the idea of the interiority of an event and the narrative’s ability to open this interior dimension to us, an “adequate interpretation” then is one which both correctly perceives the interiority and provides access to that interiority. Hence, if the Triune God is indeed a major player in the redemptive drama and one a priori excludes God’s activity and in-breaking into the drama, then genuine understanding of the biblical story is destroyed and nothing more than a surface or superficial reading is possible. An adequate interpretation necessitates that “we at least to some degree penetrate the interior depth of the mysteries disclosed in the text” (p. 188).

Turning to the New Testament in particular, Healy points to Jesus’ resurrection as a hermeneutical key for understanding the Gospels [and I would add it is the hermeneutical key to a proper Christian understanding of the entire Bible]. The evangelists write from the deep conviction that Jesus’ resurrection transforms all that he did and taught into a “new mode of existence,” which then becomes a source of power and strength for believers. In other words, each event in the earthly life of Jesus is narrated in such a way as to “proclaim that this historically contingent event is still present because its central character is alive, and that the reader can come into contact with him by accessing the unique grace and power revealed in this event” (p. 188). As Francis Martin puts it, “[t]o read the Gospels in the Spirit in which they were written … we must understand that the Gospels were [written] to put us in touch with the living Lord. As such, they are a sacrament; they contain what they signify” (“Spiritual Understanding,” p. 162).

Healy then asks how all this relates to the challenges of historical criticism. “On the one hand, historical critics seek to reconstruct the actual events supposedly distorted by the ancient authors in the interests of their own theological or social agenda. On the other hand, their postmodern challengers cut the link with the past entirely and locate meaning solely in the narrative world created by the text. Both approaches dissolve the unity of word and deed, and thereby lose sight of that truth which the complete act of communication aims to disclose. Neither approach addresses the presupposition that anything shaping the reports of events in accord with faith compromises historical integrity. If we recognize the mediating function of historical narrative in giving access to an event’s interior dimension, then the falsity of this presupposition is exposed. We might then describe the author’s procedure more accurately, in the case of the Gospels, as narrating in such a way that the open quality of the events of Jesus’ life is revealed. That is, they relate the events in a manner that is ‘transparent’ to the post-resurrection church and the present activity of the living Jesus, yet without thereby disregarding historical accuracy” (p. 189).

*This article is found in Behind the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Craig Bartholomew, C. Stephen Evans, Mary Healy, and Murray Rae (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 181-195.

In section two, “The Mediating Function of Narrative,” Healy states that the most fitting literary genre to mediate history is narrate. “It [narrative] is the means by which event becomes word. Through narrative, a historical event is brought into a new, verbal mode of existence that renders it communicable to those who were not physically present. Because of the concrete particularity of a historical event, it cannot be mediated through a series of abstract propositions, but only through a ‘story’ which gives it shape through plot and character. In that very process, the event is interpreted” (p. 184). Healy goes on to explain that in addition to presenting a meaningful whole, narrative gives access to the “interior significance” of the narrative. For example, consider a scene where a frantic man appears to be smothering a child with a pillow. The scene at first seems horrible; however, when the narrative is given, we find out that the man is attempting to silence his child because he is hiding from a mob which is out to kill him. When the narrative is provided, the true meaning or interiority of the event is given. With this we might say that all narrative is interpretation. In fact, as Healy points out, the ancients were quite cognizant of this—much more so that modern interpreters. Thus, instead of converting events into discourse, they engaged in a re-telling of events. We see this, e.g., in the Old Testament where 1-2 Chronicles is a retelling of 2 Samuel through 2 Kings. Here the Chronicler has specific theological reasons for recounting his version. The four Gospels of the New Testament are another example—here you have authors narrating the same events but bringing out different facets for specific purposes (p. 185).

Healy then briefly discusses the work of Paul Ricoeur in the area of the communicative role of narrative. Ricoeur speaks of an author transposing “an event into word by ‘configuring’ it—that is, by giving it a certain narrative structure. This structure has its own validity and value; it creates a world ‘in front of’ the text, which interacts with the world of the reader and opens up new possibilities for self-realization” (p. 185). Thus, with Ricoeur we have a move away from a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ approach where the surface meaning of the text is questioned. Ricoeur “opposes any attempt at interpretation that involves getting ‘behind’ the text to determine the historical conditions that gave rise to it. Instead he advocates paying attention to the symbolic world opened up by the text on its own terms” (p. 185). However, according to Healy, Ricoeur does not escape the influence of Kant in that “he tends to undervalue the connection between a text and the subject matter to which it ostensibly refers (whether historical or ontological), and he thereby detracts from the role of a text as inter-subjective communication.” In other words, there is an ambiguity in Ricoeur as to the relationship between the actual events described in a narrative and the meaning found “within or in front of a historical narrative” (p. 186).

Healy, however, wants to take seriously the actual events and realities mediated by the narratives (especially since in this context we are speaking of Scripture). Yet, she sees Ricoeur’s work helping us to recognize that “the narrative is precisely that by which we have access to the realities; we cannot bypass the written word to attain a raw, ‘objective’ factuality. In regard to Scripture, these two interrelated factors have traditionally been expressed as the intrinsic unity of word and deed in divine revelation” (p. 186). In light of these concerns, Healy suggests the prepositional metaphor (in place of “behind” or “in front of” the text) of “coming into contact with the referent through the text. This conveys the inseparable importance of both the reality itself and the text by which we have access to it through the author’s configuration” (p. 186).

*This article is found in Behind the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Craig Bartholomew, C. Stephen Evans, Mary Healy, and Murray Rae (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 181-195.

This is part I of a series of posts on an article by Mary E. Healy entitled, “Behind, in Front of … or Through the Text? The Christological Analogy and the Lost World of Biblical Truth.” Healy begins by noting the numerous criticisms of the historical-critical approach by contemporary (which includes postmodern) scholars. For example, contemporary scholars have pointed out that judgments made by historical critics regarding historical questions are laden with unexamined presuppositions and are by no means dispassionate and impartial. In addition, “proponents of new, literary methods of analysis have even questioned whether the primary access to meaning—or any valid meaning at all—is found in a diachronic study of the background and sources of the text” (p. 181). Though Healy lauds this challenge to a hermeneutics of suspicion, i.e., “the idea that biblical narrative must be dismantled and reconstructed in order to arrive at actual history,” she believes that contemporary scholars have failed to unearth an additional set of assumptions centered on the interrelation between event and word (p. 181). Thus, Healy’s goal in this article is to “raise questions and indicate avenues for further reflection in the direction of a more epistemologically adequate heremeneutic.

Healy begins by discussing the influence of Kant on the historical critical school, particularly as exemplified by Bultmann. Generally speaking, with Enlightenment rationalism we have a rejection of God’s transcendence, the acceptance of a new mathematico-scientific worldview, and an a priori denial of God’s revelation and activity in history. Such a worldview with its embedded presuppositions of course affects how one approaches the Bible. “They lead one to envisage the exegetical task as that of dissecting texts, in order that what never could have happened (in the exegete’s view) may be separated out from what might have happened, and explained away by other means (i.e., demythologized)” (p. 182). Healy, however, believes that the beginnings of this skeptical path were paved in the “’turn to the subject’ initiated by Descartes and brought to a culmination by Kant” (p. 182). According to Kant, the human mind actively contributes to the act of knowing. That is, the chaos of the manifold (the flux out there) is organized and processed through the a priori forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of the mind (substance, causation, etc.) and this then makes possible our objects of experience. As a result, we can never get to the thing-in-itself (what Healy refers to as “being-in-itself”); we can only know things as they appear to us. The impact of Kant on modern biblical studies has been immense. As Healy explains,

“[i]n biblical studies, the alienation of being-in-itself manifested itself as the gap between the ‘Jesus of history,’ the irretrievable real Jesus ever-receding into the shadows of the past, and the ‘Christ of faith’ fashioned by hopelessly entangled layers of myth and tradition. The task of historical criticism came to be envisioned as that of sifting through the strands of tradition present in the biblical text to recover whatever vestiges of historical facticity might be discerned. From these, the exegete proceeds to reconstruct events ‘as they actually happened.’ This ambitious goal is realized as the exegete discovers the laws supposedly governing the development of faith traditions, then traces them backward from the text to determine the original historical kernel. The biblical text and the oral traditions behind it thus function in a way analogous to Kant’s productive reason: they are a product of the mind, a filter or veil which only serves to obscure our view of reality in itself. Once the exegete has eradicated this filter, his reconstructed history becomes the norm by which the canonical version of history is judged.[1] The real value of the biblical text itself is then reduced to the moral ‘message’ that can be extracted from its narrative context” (p. 183).

The exegetes who engage is this demythologizing tradition, however, seem to be unaware of their own mythologizing tendencies, viz., the modern myth of absolute objectivity as fashioned Kantian style. That is, the goal of the historical critical approach seems to be a quest to “attain the kind of absolute empirical certitude regarding history that is claimed by the natural sciences regarding physical phenomena” (p. 184). Here Healy cites a witty remark by (at that time) Cardinal Ratzinger, viz., “if the natural sciences are the model, then the Heisenberg principle ought to be included in their application.[2] This principle states that the result of a given experiment is unavoidably influenced by the position of the observer. For more than half a century, it has been recognized in the empirical sciences that pure objectivity is an impossible abstraction; how much more so should it be recognized in the human sciences, where the objects of study include the mysterious thoughts and motivations of the human heart. The idea of an absolutely neutral observer standing on some plane outside the repercussions of history, able to judge interpretations of the past with impartial certitude, is as mythical as the Gnostic ‘Primal Man.’ Rather, all interpretations presuppose the standpoint of the interpreter, since everyone approaches reality from a particular point of view” (p. 184).

*This article is found in Behind the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Craig Bartholomew, C. Stephen Evans, Mary Healy, and Murray Rae (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 181-195.

Notes
[1] Healy adds a footnote stating that “historical criticism is perhaps more sanguine than Kantian epistemology in holding that we can have at least some access, however, tentative, to historical reality-in-itself” (n. 6, p. 183).
[2] Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation,” p. 7.

“Over the last generation in Western culture, truth has been like the rope in a tug-of-war contest. On the one hand, some want to reduce all truth to ‘facts,’ things which can be proved in the way you can prove that oil is lighter than water, or even that two and two make four. On the other hand, some believe that all truth is relative, and that all claims to truth are merely coded claims to power. Ordinary mortals, dimly aware of this tug-of-war, and its social, cultural, and political spin-offs, may well feel some uncertainty about what truth is, while still knowing that it matters.

The sort of thing we could and should mean by ‘truth’ will vary according to what we’re talking about. If I want to go into town, it matters whether the person who has told me to take the number 53 bus is speaking the truth or not. But by no means all truth is of that kind, or testable in the same way. If there’s any truth lying behind the quest for justice, it is that the world isn’t meant to be morally chaotic; but what do we mean by ‘meant,’ and how would we know? If there’s any truth in the thirst for spirituality, it could be simply that humans find satisfaction in exploring a ‘spiritual’ dimension to their lives, or it could be that we are made for relationship with another Being who can only be known that way. And, talking of relationships, the ‘truth’ of a relationship is in the relationship itself, in being ‘true to’ one another, which is considerably more than (though presumably it includes) telling each other the truth about the number 53 bus. As for beauty, we cannot collapse ‘truth’ into ‘beauty’ without running the risk of deconstructing truth by pointing out, as we did earlier, the fragility and ambiguity of the beauty we know here and now.

What we mean by ‘know’ is likewise in need of further investigation. To ‘know’ the deeper kinds of truth we have been hinting at is much more like ‘knowing’ a person—something which takes a long time, a lot of trust, and a good deal of trial and error—and less like ‘knowing’ about the right bus to take into town. It’s a kind of knowing in which the subject and the object are intertwined, so that you could never say that is was either purely subjective or purely objective.

One good word for this deeper and richer kind of knowing, the kind that goes with the deeper and richer kind of truth, is ‘love’” (Simply Christian, pp. 50-51).

In chapter 4 of N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Christian, he presents a nice illustration of the incomplete beauty that we encounter in our world in its present state. He describes a collector who was rummaging through an attic in a small Austrian town and happened to come across what seemed to be an unknown score of Mozart. Elated, the collector informed his friends and soon someone was sitting at a piano and attempting to play the piece. As it turns out, the work was indeed Mozart, however, there were numerous places that were left blank and some that were impossible to make out. What they had found was simply one part (the piano part) to a larger work. “What they are looking at is indeed by Mozart. It is indeed beautiful. But it’s the piano part of a piece that involves another instrument, or perhaps other instruments. By itself it is frustratingly incomplete. A further search of the attic reveals nothing else that would provide a clue. The piano music is all there is, a signpost to something that was there once and might still turn up one day. […] This is the position we are in when confronted by beauty. The world is full of beauty, but the beauty is incomplete. Our puzzlement about what beauty is, what it means, and what (if anything) it is there for is the inevitable result of looking at one part of a larger whole. Beauty, in other words, is another echo of a voice—a voice which (from the evidence before us) might be saying one of several different things, but which, were we to hear it in all its fullness, would make sense of what we presently see and hear and know and love and call ‘beautiful.’” (p. 40).

As was mentioned in a previous post, Socrates was vehemently opposed to musical innovation of any sort and claimed that there was some kind of direct connection with changes in music and changes in the law. Though it is not entirely clear what he means by this, presumably the danger in changing laws would upset or destroy the stability of the city. We also noted that according to Socrates only the dorian and phrygian modes are acceptable, as the ionian and lydian are too “effeminate.” Though it is the case that the exact structure and sound of these harmoniai are unknown, we do know that each harmonia was understood as expressing a specific type of character.[1] It was once thought that Aristoxenus’ Greater Perfect System was reflective of the Greek harmoniai. However, scholars now believe that Aristoxenus’ system was likely a successor to the older harmoniai, and it does not retain the individuating distinctives of the older modes.[2]

“This being the case, musical harmoniai cannot be conceived of as tonal patterns whose identity and character remained stable throughout ancient Greek history. In pre-Platonic times, when the Pythagorean doctrines that eventually influenced Plato were most predominant, harmoniai may indeed have been sharply individuated, contrasted with each other in easily discernible ways. As they were absorbed into a body of common practice, though, they became increasingly standardized, losing much of their former disctincitiveness. Thus, it is possible that the expressive character Plato imputes to the harmoniai had already eroded to a significant extent, and that the qualities and influences he attributes to them, though once apparent, were becoming less discernible. This gradual process of dissolution would make for ambiguity that would help explain Plato’s seemingly prudish attitude toward musical innovation.”[3]

In light of the fact that it is not simply the intervallic relations of the Greek modes that give them their distinctive qualities, but rather it seems that their distinguishing aspects included particular rhythmic features, ornamentation, melodic cliché, timbre and so forth.[4] If this is the case, then one has to question whether Socrates’ insistence on the dorian and phrygian modes is anything more than mere preference given his time and place in history.

Though (in my previous post) I questioned Socrates’ rigid distinction between the phenomenological experience of music and the mathematical reality “behind the music,” I am not claiming that there is no relation whatsoever between the two, nor that do I want to simply write off the socio-political concerns that Socrates has in regard to the possible negative effects of certain kinds of music on the polis. Socrates time and again warns that music’s affective power on the soul is both useful and dangerous. For example, the pleasure produced by music, if taken as an end in itself, will deceive people into believing that music’s goodness or beauty derives from itself and its ability to produce pleasure. For Socrates, such a view would be tantamount to the status of the chained prisoners in the cave analogy who took shadows to be reality. Moreover, the wrong kind of music may even depict that which is bad or corrupt as that which is good and worthwhile. Given the power that Socrates attributed to music (i.e., its ability to make strong impressions on the soul), one could become habituated by such music to believe that things like disobedience to authority and disrespect for the laws of city are not only acceptable but desirable. (Contemporary studies on the effects of certain kinds of heavy metal music in connection with violence and drug abuse among teens suggest that Socrates’ concerns are not unwarranted). A related concern in light of music’s affective power and its resultant pleasure is that people may come to value hedonistic pleasure over rational and moral values.[5]

“The emotional excitement it [music] affords may act in tandem with its imitative function to develop the wrong kind of character, rendering people susceptible to beliefs and actions that are morally bad. Immoderation and hedonism are at odds with rationality, and indulging in musical pleasure for its own sake disposes people to value personal pleasure over the broader social good, sensual gratification over reason. People ruled by pleasure are disinclined to defer gratification for seemingly austere values like truth and justice, a state of affairs that poses a serious threat to social stability. […] The possibility of sense taking the upper hand from reason, feeding and watering the passions instead of cultivating the higher values of mind and reason is obviously of great concern. Like mimesis, music’s esthetic power can serve forces of both good and evil. It can strengthen the soul, individual character, and society at large, or it can weaken them.”[6]

Again in order to strengthen Socrates’ account, one might appeal to the powerful role that Wagner’s music played in Hilter’s strategies[7] or the ways in which music is used in religious cults to arouse certain emotions and actions. All these possibilities granted, we are still left wondering how such restrictions might be implemented and who exactly is qualified to separate the “good” music from the “bad” music. Socrates himself seems to suggest that only the most rational and most highly educated people should are capable of discerning the best music for society as a whole. Here one might be tempted to think that the philosopher-king alone is qualified for such a role. However, Socrates (himself a philosopher) says that he does not know the modes and must rely on Damon’s expertise.[8] Presumably, an expert like Damon not only understands the theoretical aspect of music, but also has a developed taste for the aesthetics of music and is perhaps a musician himself. Someone possessing such a developed understanding of music would likely have music as his or her sole focus and thus could not possibly serve as a ruler. Whoever the rulers are, it is clear that they will have to trust and believe (themselves not having the necessary knowledge required) the musical experts as to what kind of music is best suited for the polis. Perhaps this is why Socrates’ (hyperbolic) account stresses the simplicity and sameness of music. Such simplicity does not require one to be an expert in music and would allow the rulers to regulate the musical and lyrical content without possessing the requisite knowledge of a Damon.

Notes
[1] Republic, III, 398e1-399c4, pp. 77-78.
[2] Wayne D. Bowman. Philosophical Perspectives on Music, p. 33.
[3] Ibid., p. 33.
[4] Ibid., p. 33.
[5] Ibid., p. 42.
[6] Ibid., p. 42.
[7] See for example, Michael H. Kater. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).
[8] Republic, III, 399a4, p. 77.

Plato, using Socrates as his mouthpiece, manifests what appears to be an ambivalent relationship to music. On the one hand, Socrates tells us that music is superior to the other arts because “rhythm and harmony most of all insinuate themselves into the inmost part of the soul.”[1] On the other hand, because he believes that music has a mysterious power to stir the emotions and to move one in either a positive or negative moral direction, Socrates suggests that music must be strictly regulated by the rulers of the city.[2] In particular, Socrates strongly denounces any musical innovation, exhorting the overseers of the city not to allow

“innovation in gymnastic and music contrary to the established order. […] For they must beware of change to a strange form of music, taking it to be a danger to the whole. For never are the ways of music moved without the greatest political laws being moved.”[3]

It is interesting to note that this passage comes directly after the shocking announcement that all things—including women and children—must be shared in common.[4] Continuing in this same vein, in book V Socrates informs us that male and female guardians will train together. Consequently, “they’ll be led by an inner natural necessity to sexual mixing with one another.”[5] Glaucon responds by distinguishing between geometrical and erotic necessity. Given that erotic necessity is uncontrollable, Socrates suggests the idea of a lottery arranged by rulers, which is an image of geometric necessity supposedly controlling erotic necessity.[6] As the just soul and city are thought to be controlled by reason, here too (mathematical) reason is presumed capable of controlling human desire. Given the radical nature of this idea, perhaps Socrates speaking hyperbolically, i.e., he is pointing to the impossibility and utter illusion of any attempt to mathematically control human desires.

If this is the case, then perhaps Socrates’ overly rigid strictures on music are also hyperbolic. Plato’s philosophy of music, if taken at face value, seems riddled with conflicting accounts. From one perspective, actual music making itself and the sounds one experiences become completely irrelevant, as the most important reality lies “behind” the sounds. In other words, music as that which is sensual and irrational is given rational status because of its relation to mathematics. “Since the highest reality lies beyond the particularity of empirical experience, harmony is better grasped through mathematical relation and proportion than through musical sounds and practices.”[7] Yet, Socrates also seems to suggest that actual music making, though less in status (intellectually speaking) than harmonics or philosophy, is able to shape the soul and hence one’s character in a way that reason alone cannot.[8] So reason alone is insufficient for the overall true education of the soul, and in some mystical way music making is thought to affect the soul (whether for good or evil) in a way that reason cannot. Here is it interesting to consider certain trends in contemporary classical music. If it is the case that the most important or most true or most accurate aspect of music reduces to purely mathematical considerations, then we are faced with a number of interesting paradoxes in conjunction with mathematics and music. For example, Pierre Boulez and John Cage, both well-known twentieth century composers, have two fundamentally different conceptions of music. Boulez is a strict adherent and promoter of total serialism, which is a compositional method that organizes music according to mathematical patterns. In contrast, Cage is the champion of what is called “chance music,” where true to its name, just about anything turns out to be music. Jeremy Begbie, who has done extensive work in the area of musicology, has analyzed the music of both composers and makes the following astute observation. Begbie first points out a deficiency in Boulez’s music noted by Boulez himself, viz., that in his music the excess of order tends to produce the perception of disorder when heard. Then he writes, “[a]lthough a piece of music does not have to yield all its meaning in perception, a modicum of perceptual intelligibility would appear to be necessary to apprehend it as music. Total serialism seemed to engender a kind of ‘entropic’ anarchy. Boulez came to describe his Livre pour Quantuor as an ‘accumulation that springs from a very simple principle, to end in a chaotic situation because it is engendered by material that turns in on itself and becomes so complex that it loses its individual shape and becomes part of a vast chaos.’ The prescriptive determinacies of notation coincide with sonorous effects which are largely indeterminate.”[9] The point being that though these composers are more or less on the opposite ends of the spectrum, Boulez representing overly rigid mathematical calculation and Cage representing chance music in the extreme, when one listens to the music of Boulez, its unnatural, machine-like mathematical precision ends up sounding as indeterminate as Cage’s random chance music. Here a number of questions arise when Begbie’s findings are brought to bear on Socrates’ account of music. First, how is it that something so mathematically precise seems to produce that which sounds like mere chaos? Perhaps Socrates would claim that this is in fact proves his point, viz., the senses can led one astray and thus we must listen only to reason. But Socrates has also conceded that music making is able to shape the soul in a way that simply understanding the mathematico-theoretical intervallic relationships of music cannot. He has also claimed (on at least one reading) that the best music is that which most closely imitates the Forms. If this is the case, then we again have to ask how such mathematical precision (the reality “behind” the imitations) can produce that which is indiscernible from something as random (and aesthetically unpleasing) as chance music? In other words, shouldn’t that which participates in the Forms reflect those Forms in a clear and evident way? At any rate, Begbie’s findings seem to highlight Socrates’ conflicting account. In short, the rigid distinction between the phenomenological experience of music (somehow being irrational and mystical) and the mathematical reality “behind the music” (the true and rational aspect of music) appears to be wrought with problems and is in need of further explication.

Notes
[1] Alan Bloom (trans). The Republic of Plato. (New York: Basic Books, 1968); IV, 401d6-7, p. 80.
[2] Ibid., IV, 398d12-400a3, pp. 77-78.
[3] Ibid., IV, 424b3-424c6, pp. 101-102.
[4] Ibid., IV, 423e4-8, p. 101.
[5] Ibid., 458d1-4, p. 137.
[6] Ibid., 459c1-460a8, pp. 138-139.
[7] Wayne D. Bowman. Philosophical Perspectives on Music, p. 35.
[8] Ibid., p. 36.
[9] Jeremy Begbie. Theology, Music and Time. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), p. 188.

Socrates’ seemingly excessive strictures on music (particularly in the Republic) have engendered a number of interpretative rejoinders. One such response is the idea that music’s persuasive and cognitive powers cannot be sharply delimitated. This argument has been developed by Julias Elias and claims that music is essential for even the most rational among us (not just for emotively moving or controlling the masses)

“because of the fundamental limitations of propositional, logical, conceptual knowledge. As Elias has argued, music (or, more broadly, expression that is poetic rather than prosaic) has the capacity to convince precisely where reason alone would fail.”[1]

Interestingly, Plato himself seems to imply something along these lines when he employs myth, poetry, and invokes the muses as if to say that rational argumentation has its limits.

“All systems, Elias explains, rest upon foundational ‘givens’ that cannot be logically proven or scrutinized in terms of the system’s own framework. All thought and reason rest on indemonstrable presuppositions, assumptions which cannot be established propositionally because they themselves constitute the ground on which one stands in accepting or rejecting assertions within the system of rationality. Plato’s myths are not shortcuts to ends he might have achieved by logical, expository means. ‘[E]very system proposed,’ argues Elias, ‘must contain some terms which are primitive, indemonstrable, asserted on faith; and because no rules can be given for their invention a touch of the poet is necessarily found in every such system.’[2] Although Plato sought a purely rational knowledge, universal, self-sufficient, independent of a knower, and untainted by belief, his reliance upon poetry shows he did not find it. And this, urges Elias, is the strongest possible Platonic defense of things like poetry. Since all knowledge is supported at critical points by belief and commitment secured by this ‘poet’s touch,’ music plays an indispensable role in creating and sustaining cultural cohesion and stability.”[3]

Notes
[1] Wayne D. Bowman. Philosophical Perspectives on Music, p. 46.
[2] Julias A. Elias. Plato’s Defense of Poetry. (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1984), p. 233. [3] Wayne D. Bowman. Philosophical Perspectives on Music, pp. 46-47.

By Dru Johnson

If we consider the implications of Part I and II, then we must come to terms with knowing as a fundamentally personal act that is skillful, embodied (even cognitive acts of knowing), and situated in space and time. Knowing is personal as a fiduciary relationship with the known. In other words, you have to commit yourself to knowing in order to know. That means that epistemology is a risky endeavor on all fronts, even knowing the truths of and from God. And this is what we find in the scriptures.

I find that Luke is a clear case of intentional epistemology in biblical literature. In the introduction to the Gospel, we are told that Luke intends for us to have “…certainty concerning the things you have been taught (1:4)”[1] By the time we arrive at the end of Luke’s Gospel (never mind the retelling in Acts 1), what do we find? Do we find a scene that instills in us utter certainty in what we have been taught? Not really.

What we find is a mystified and bumbling group of disciples hanging onto the only thing they know at that point: the resurrected Jesus. The disciples barely understood from whence they had come and were apparently blind as to what will happen next, despite numerous foretellings. This depicts most of the epistemological life of characters lauded as faithful in the sacred texts: confused, trying to make it work their own way, yet still hanging on to what God has promised through them.

Any explanation that is faithful to the epistemological life of the biblical narrative will have to dispense with strictly propositional views of knowing. While Polanyi was probably not a convicted believer of Christianity, his epistemology dovetails nicely onto the biblical model of knowing.[2] This is why theologians of many stripes have picked up on Polanyi’s epistemology.[3]
Why is this epistemology becoming more attractive in the prolegomena to theology? I personally think that the intellectual haut and desire for domestication in theology has worn off. There is a deep dissatisfaction with the mining of scriptural propositions for some absolute sense of certain propositional knowledge. And I do not believe this is what God gives as his pattern for assuredness in the text.

Consider Abram’s interaction with YHWH in Genesis 15. In verse 8, Abram directly and brazenly asked, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it [the land]?” To understand biblical epistemology, we must pay careful attention to God’s answer here. God does not say anything! He does something. He performs a self-maledictory oath ceremony and doesn’t even let Abram participate.

Again, knowing cannot be captured in propositions here and this is an instance where we would really want propositions to soothe our Enlightened nerves if we were Abram. But what could God possibly say at that point to “prove” anything to Abram? He had already begun by previously saying, “Hey, I’m the God who brought you out of Ur.” The point is, for theology and for philosophy of religion, a Judeo-Christian approach to epistemology must be able to account for the kinds of examples above. Our epistemology must be able to speak of confidence when you feel like nothing is as you thought it would be (re the disciples in Luke 24). It must also be able to engage the idea that some of the most preeminent knowing is not propositional and could never be propositional (re the self-maledictory oath of Genesis 15).

So we must sincerely consider whether it is prudent to attempt the adaptation of rigorously propositional theories of knowing onto a narrative that clearly doesn’t depict knowing in a propositional framework. If we take the time to trace the trajectory of “Peter coming to know that Jesus is The Messiah” through the historical texts, we would see that propositional accounts are going to fail us. We might end up asking questions like, “Does Peter know that Jesus is The Messiah at the transfigurative account?” While this appears to be a reasonable course of inquiry, it truly fails to capture the complexity of the situation.

At the Transfiguration, Peter is still trying to put all the pieces together; to connect the dots. Even if we answer, “Yes” to our question, there is evidence to suggest that Peter still has not connected the dots up into Acts 15 and beyond. As I stated in Part II, all courses of inquiry initially ask the wrong questions. So theology must also realize the bad questions it has asked.

Just think of when people have come and demanded an answer from you to one of their questions. They ask you to “prove” the Trinity or, “Just tell me yes or no: Are the body and soul one thing on not?” Nietzsche berates this type of thinking and I tend to agree that the reason these kinds of inquiry miss the point is that they do not seek to enter the narrative; or trajectory of knowing, if you will. There is no submission to authority. It is artificially looking at knowledge strictly from only the knower/known perspective. By answering “yes” or “no”, have you really ever helped someone to come to know something (as I ask a rhetorical “yes or no” question)? Theology must also enter the narrative and the task of theology has the same structure of knowing: knower, known, authority, subsidiary particulars, proximal/distal focus, points of illumination, and more. I will have to leave it at that for the role of Polanyi’s epistemology in the task of theology. I hope it is enough to tease those who are interested into pursuit.

Finally I want to speak to the structure of doubt itself. Doubt, in popular Christianity, is usually thought of negatively. Consider the negative connotation of Doubting Thomas.[4] Polanyi’s epistemology doesn’t allow for purely abstract claims, so a proposition P, should actually be stated, “Dru Johnson asserts P”. In the same light, there is no such thing as pure doubt or skepticism. Trevor Hart, from the University of St. Andrews, summarizes Polanyi this way: “Thus every doubt has a fiduciary structure and is rooted in a set of faith commitments which for so long as they support the doubt, cannot themselves be doubted.”[5]

The critical/skeptical view assumes that we can critique, or be skeptical of an idea, without any commitments. I can just use this trump card called “reason” to doubt your view and my doubt is merely a skeptical view towards your beliefs. Polanyi thinks this is fundamentally mistaken. There is no such thing as an ESPN World Championship of Faith Commitments Poker Game. We don’t get to see all the hands from the removed view of a spectator. The reality is that we are all playing the game. We are all holding a hand both dealt to us and reshuffled by us. In order to be critical or skeptical of another hand, another worldview, we must simultaneously AND unflinchingly believe in our current hand.

If this is true, then we must also reorient our common notion of doubt away from biblical phraseology such as “hardening the heart” or “turning from God” and toward the usage in John 20. The actual counsel that Jesus gave to Thomas in John 20 was, “Do not disbelieve (apistos), but rather believe (pistos).” Jesus does not admonish doubt as a purely skeptical disposition towards some proposition. Thomas, at the very least, demanded something more substantial than a mere proposition (re pierced hands and side). And as Jesus accommodates Thomas’ request, he gives Thomas a nonpropositional experience that could never be articulated with effect.
Doubt, under Polanyi’s and the scripture’s epistemology is a seedbed of belief. It is not the slippery slope to wrath and condemnation. This has immense implications for apologetics and Missiology, but we will have to leave it lay.

Notes
[1] In a post-Enlightenment world, it is still befuddling as to why an English translator would render the Greek asphaleian as “certainty”. The term actually means something closer to “firmness” or “confidence” and the narrative bears out the true intention of such a statement.
[2] Some will see this as a paganizing of The Faith, but I would side with Francis Schaeffer who would most likely commend to us that this legitimizes The Faith. The truth is faithful inside scientific frameworks or anywhere else.
[3] E.g. John Frame, Trevor Hart, Kevin Vanhoozer, Alasdair MacIntyre, and also there is much similitude in the Roman Catholic thought of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan amongst others. I am not sure if Stanley Hauerwas is intimately familiar with Polanyi, but his idea of narrative theology is certainly commensurate with Polanyi.
[4] I believe that Thomas was being the faithful disciple in his challenge in John 20. There is, at least, the ability to misread and misapply this passage.
[5] Trevar Hart, Faith Thinking, 58.