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The Starting‐Point of Marian Doctrine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Cornelius Ernst O. P.
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It cannot be said that English Catholicism has entered with mind and heart into the stream of doctrinal development which is so noticeable a feature of the Marian movement in the Church today. Any attempt to dismiss this movement and the doctrinal development within it as a Continental exaggeration runs the risk of so emphasizing the Englishness of our Catholicism as to compromise its Catholicism. The needs of apologetics in England are sometimes urged in favour of a minimalistic approach to Marian doctrine. There is one decisive answer to this suggestion : the only truth which we as Catholics must proclaim is the whole truth. Our duty as Catholics is not to minimize Marian doctrine but to present it as an integral part of the totality of saving truth which it is the Church’s office to preach to the world.

It is in view of this unsatisfactory situation in England that, so it seems clear to me, the central problem to be examined is the point of departure of the development of Marian doctrine. What I feel is most needed is not a more or less academic study of explicit Mariological structures, the technical elaborations of doctrine, but a disclosure of the motive force and impetus of the development, so that by renewing our living contact in faith and love with our Lady we may be able actively to contribute to the development, this active engagement being the essential precondition of any more objective theological assessment of the sense of that development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 40 , Issue 476 , November 1959 , pp. 450 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The substance of a paper read to the conference of Ecclesiastical Studies, Easter 1959.

2 Cf. J. M. Le Blond, Logique et Méthode chez Aristofe (Paris 1939).

3 Revue Biblique 65 (1958), pp. 481-522.

4 Cf. L. Malevez, The Christian Message and Myth (London, 1958).

5 Cullmann’s objection to this view, in regard to the particular problem of Christ’s self-consciousness, is very much to the point: ‘Die Urkirche glaubte an Jesu Messianität nur deshalb, weil sie daran glaubte, dass Jesus selbst sich für den Messias gehalten hatte’ (Die Christologie des neuen Testaments, Tubingen, 1957, p. 8).

6 For a review of this see E. Kredel, ‘Der Apostelbegriff in der neuren Exegese’, ZKT 78 (1956), pp 169-73; 257, 305.

7 ‘L’Investiture de la fonction apostolique par “Apocalypse”. Étude théatique de Gal. I, 16’, RE 64 (1957), pp. 335-62; 492-515.

8 ‘Die Tradition’, Frugen der Thedogie Heute (Einsiedeln-Zürich-Köln, I957), pp. 84-5.

9 ZKT 78 (1956), pp. 137-68, and now published separately in an expanded form.

10 The use of ‘anamnesis’ as a concept to cover the commemoration of Tradition as well as of Sacrament is due to an important though rather loose study by Nils Dahl, ‘Anamnesis. Mémoire et commémoration dans le christianisme primitif‘, Studia Theologica I (1947), pp. 69-95.

11 Compare the distinction in scholastic philosophy between the nunc fluens and the nunc stans.

12 For all this see the classic work by H. Schillebeeckx, De Sacramerrtele Heilseconomie (Antwerp, 1952); by the same author, De Christusontmoeting als Sacrament van de God-sontmoeting (Antwerp, 1958). Dom J. Gaillard provides an excellent account of recent work in ‘La Théologie des Mystéres’, RT 57 (1957), pp. 510-551.

13 I owe this useful expression to Fr Joseph, Bourke, O.P.

14 Cf. Mgr H. F. Davis, ‘Is Newman’s Theory of Development Catholic?,’ BLACKFRIARS, 39 (1958), PP. 310-21.

15 R. Laurentin, Structure et Théologie de Luc I-II (Paris, 1957).

16 DES, V, col. 1266.

17 Ehses V, p. 31.

18 Cf. R. Geiselmann, ‘Das Konzil von Trient über das Verhältnis der Heiligen Schrift und der nicht geschriebenen Traditionen’, in Die mündliche Uberlieferung, ed. M. Schniaus (Munich, I957), p. 135. Oddly enough, Geiselmann makes no use of this point in his study of Tradition cited earlier, and develops a rather complicated theory of reciprocal norm, FTH p. 98.

19 Maria, Moeder van de Verlossing, ed. 3 (Antwerp, I957), p. 99.

20 Cf. Laurentin, op. cit., pp. 79-81.

21 In Joan. tr. 119; PL 35, col. 1950. Cited by F. M. Braun, La Mère des Fidèles, ed. 2. (Tournai-Paris. 1954), p. 57.

22 R. Laurentin, ‘La Vierge Marie’, Initiation Théologique IV, p. 296. Also published separately as Court Traité de la Théologie Mariale.

23 We should distinguish here between the actual process of development, which has often taken place spontaneously and uncritically in response not to a written word but to an object or a ritual of cult, and the subsequent critical activity of theologians and the magisterium, where the written word is explicitly appealed to. We should then also have to discuss the way in which a given response in faith becomes a datum in need of re-actualization by later generations.

24 Clément Dillenschneider, Le Senr de la Foi et le progrès dogmatique du mystère mariale (Rome, 1954),pp . 103-4.