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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2015
Neo-Thomism, the reading of Thomas Aquinas that became the dominant Catholic theological school in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was eclipsed during the Second Vatican Council but has recently seen a resurgence on the American scene, in terms of both publications and influence among the church hierarchy. This article explores that resurgence in terms of the history of neo-Thomism, the important texts that have come out of this new movement, and signs of its influence on the bishops. In so doing, it critiques the movement for failing to learn the lessons of its fall from favor—in particular, that it has relied on claims to orthodoxy based on authority rather than the power of its own arguments. This article thus argues that theologians should pay careful attention to this movement both to reassert the validity and importance of more contemporary theological methods and to encourage neo-Thomists themselves to develop a greater appreciation of methodological pluralism and reliance on the strength of arguments.
1 Gerald McCool, SJ, The Neo-Thomists (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994), 8.
2 Fergus Kerr gives such an interpretation in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), particularly in his conclusion: “The new emphasis on the doctrine of nuptiality as the key to authentic Catholic self-understanding includes a reaffirmation of the traditional belief in the unbreakable link between the unitive and the procreative in marital love-making” (221). White, Thomas Joseph OP, gives a similar interpretation to a different end in “The Tridentine Genius of Vatican II,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 11, no. 1 (2013): 9Google Scholar.
3 The term is also sometimes used to refer to thinkers such as Rahner who rely on Thomas, as opposed to “Neo-Augustinians” such as Joseph Ratzinger. Massimo Faggioli describes the outlines of such a usage in Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012), 75–83.
4 Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Rival Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) gives a good overview of these issues.
5 Portier, William deals with some of these issues in “Thomist Resurgence,” Communio: International Catholic Review 35, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 494–504Google Scholar, his extensive review of Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians.
6 McCool, The Neo-Thomists, 23.
7 Ibid., 26.
8 Romanus Cessario, OP, A Short History of Thomism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 59.
9 Ibid., 60.
10 Ibid., 61.
11 For a thoroughgoing introduction to Capréolus and his legacy, see Romanus Cessario, OP, and Kevin White, “Translators’ Introduction,” in John Capréolus, On the Virtues (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), xxvii–xxxv.
12 Bernard McGinn, Thomas Aquinas's “Summa theologiae”: A Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 138.
13 Robertson, Charles D. examines these ideas while coming down on the former side in “John Capréolus: Prince of Thomists or Corruptor of Thomism?” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 12, no. 3 (2014): 837–61Google Scholar.
14 Mark D. Jordan, “The Summa's Reform of Moral Teaching,” in Contemplating Aquinas, ed. Fergus Kerr, OP (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 49.
15 Cessario, A Short History of Thomism, 67–8.
16 Henri de Lubac describes this process in Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 114.
17 Ralph McInerny, Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 26–32.
18 Cessario, A Short History of Thomism, 74.
19 Ibid., 76.
20 McGinn, Thomas Aquinas's “Summa theologiae,” 158.
21 Ralph McInerny, preface to John of St. Thomas, Introduction to the “Summa Theologiae” of Thomas Aquinas (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2004), ix.
22 Ibid., vi.
23 Ulrich G. Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology, trans. Michael G. Miller (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 291.
24 See John Deely, Descartes and Poinsot: The Crossroad of Signs and Ideas (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2008); Nuessel, Frank, “Poinsot and Semiotics,” Semiotica 185 (2011): 263–77Google Scholar.
25 Jean-Pierre Torrell, Aquinas's Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception, trans. Benedict M. Guevin, OSB (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 103: “John of St. Thomas's genius and his place in history guarantee him a preeminent position in spreading Thomas's work.”
26 Cessario, A Short History of Thomism, 76.
27 Ibid., 78.
28 Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology, 323.
29 Cessario details the efforts to instantiate Thomism in the Roman College during the 1820s in A Short History of Thomism, 85.
30 Gerald McCool, SJ, Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989), 86. McCool later notes that by 1870 “almost every major force in Catholic theology had been condemned except Scholasticism” (132).
31 McCool, Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism, 138.
32 Ibid., 141.
33 Ibid., 35.
34 Ibid., 226.
35 Ibid., 228.
36 Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Aeterni Patris, 4 August 4, 1879, §18, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html.
37 Ibid., §28.
38 Ibid., §31.
39 McCool, Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism, 238.
40 Ibid., 239.
41 Marvin O'Connell argues in his essential history of the modernist controversy, Critics on Trial (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 39, that “an intellectual movement rooted in the central importance of texts six centuries old appeared distressingly static to those contemporaries of Leo XIII for whom history had become a vital and relentless process of development.”
42 As Aidan Nichols, OP, explains in Reason with Piety: Garrigou-Lagrange in the Service of Catholic Thought (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2008), 8, “Roman Neo-Thomism from the pontificate of Pius X onwards, being framed as it was in terms of a response to Modernism, inevitably became associated with the mechanisms of doctrinal control put in place by the encyclical [condemning modernism].”
43 John O'Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 62: “Thus began the powerful Neo-Thomist movement in Catholicism. Although it started as a conservative movement, it sparked Catholic research into the philosophies and theologies of medieval Scholasticism and led to results unexpected by its originators.”
44 These projects are carried out respectively in Intellectualism, trans. Andrew Tallon (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1999) and The Eyes of Faith, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990).
45 Rousselot, The Eyes of Faith, 34: “In the final analysis the essence of natural being consists in its essential aptitude to serve as a means for created spirits to ascend to God, their final end.”
46 Gerald McCool describes this approach in From Unity to Pluralism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989), 91.
47 This approach is laid out most clearly in his Gifford Lectures, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, trans. A. H. C. Downes (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).
48 Jürgen Mettepenningen explains in Nouvelle Théologie—New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 50, that this work was not intended for publication but rather as an explanation of the school's approach to teaching philosophy and theology.
49 Mettepenningen, Nouvelle Théologie—New Theology, 51: “This perspective is ultimately an undisguised criticism of Scholasticism. Chenu dismisses the latter as a closed system, the principles of which give rise to nothing more than concepts.”
50 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Éditions Aubier-Montaigne, 1946). The work has never been fully translated into English, although Coffey, David has translated sections in “Some Resources for Students of La nouvelle theologie,” Philosophy and Theology 11, no. 2 (1999): 367–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and a new French edition has recently appeared (Paris: Lethielleux, 2010). The book had otherwise been very difficult to obtain owing to an initial limited press run amid controversy and the use of fragile, poor-quality wartime paper. De Lubac updated this work in the 1960s with two volumes, translated into English as Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (New York: Crossroad, 2000) and The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Crossroad, 1968).
51 Garrigou-Lagrange's famous essay, “Where Is the New Theology Leading Us?” and its clear affirmation that the direction is revisiting modernism highlights the continued reliance of the Neo-Thomists on the condemnation of modernism as a rallying cry. This attitude, particularly a reading of the modernist controversy as a more clear-cut affair than it actually was, continues at a lower pitch among some neo-Thomists today. See http://www.traditionalcatholicmass.com/home-m109.html#Where%20is%20the%20New%20Theology%20Leading%20Us. For more on Garrigou-Lagrange, see Richard Peddicord, The Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2004) and Aidan Nichols, OP, Reason with Piety: Garrigou-Lagrange in Service of Catholic Thought (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009).
52 O'Malley, What Happened at Vatican II, 141: “Complaints were circulating, [Ottaviani] said, that the schema took no account of the new theology, but councils spoke for the ages, not for a particular theological school that tomorrow is forgotten.”
53 Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, trans. Henry Traub, SJ, et al. (New York: Paulist Press, 1966), 42.
54 Yves Congar, My Journal of the Council, trans. Mary John Ronayne, OP, and Mary Cecily Boulding, OP (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 63.
55 Ibid., 167.
56 Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 51.
57 Thomas P. Rausch, Educating for Faith and Justice (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), 27–28.
58 White, Thomas Joseph OP, examines this situation from a neo-Thomistic perspective in “Thomism after Vatican II,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 12, no. 4 (2014): 1045–61Google Scholar.
59 Ralph McInerny, one of these philosophical leading lights (and the steward, in different ways, of the legacies of two other leading lights, Jacques Maritain and Charles de Koninck), reflects in his memoir, I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 102, that in his opinion, “as the hegemony of Thomism melted away, however, one was not confronted by devastating critiques that explained the departure. It was largely a matter of mood.”
60 Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2010), xxiii.
61 Ibid., xxxv.
62 Feingold claims on xxxiv of de Lubac, “I see the catholicity of the Church as lying more deeply at the heart of his work.”
63 There is no reason to think this praise disingenuous, despite its sharp contrast with the attitude of previous generations of neo-Thomists. It is reasonable to surmise, however, that this reticence may be linked to the neo-Thomists’ sometime alliance with postliberals influenced by the Ressourcement movement, which will be discussed at greater length later in this article, as well as the desire to avoid the association with schismatic movements or unorthodoxy that might come with harsh critique of theologians who have ecclesiastical approbation. For a contrastive case, see Alyssa Pitstick, Light in Darkness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), a critique of Hans Urs von Balthasar for his thought on universal salvation.
64 Feingold, Natural Desire, 1.
65 Ibid., 6–9.
66 Ibid., 44.
67 Ibid., 45.
68 Ibid., 47.
69 Ibid., 63.
70 Ibid., 99.
71 Ibid., 309.
72 Italics in the original, ibid., 322.
73 Ibid., 339.
74 Ibid., 352–53.
75 McInerny, Praembula Fidei, ix (my emphasis).
76 Ibid., 32.
77 Ibid., 40–41, 52–53.
78 Ibid., 85.
79 Ibid., 87.
80 Ibid., 123.
81 Ibid., 120.
82 Ibid., 155.
83 Ibid., 160.
84 Ibid., 162. McInerny does not further establish the centrality of Aristotle for the period.
85 McInerny, Praembula Fidei, 305.
86 John W. O'Malley, Trent and All That (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 140–43.
87 Ralph McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). McInerny notably points out that “it was, pace Gilson, entirely fitting that [Cajetan's] commentary on the Summa theologiae should be printed along with that work in the Leonine Edition” (3).
88 McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy, 12.
89 Ibid., 163.
90 Steven A. Long, Natura Pura (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 36.
91 Ibid., 98.
92 Ibid., 99.
93 This position is made most clear by the end of Long's first chapter, where he agrees that the theological situation at the time of de Lubac was less than ideal, but for completely different reasons than those enunciated by de Lubac himself. Long goes on to argue that his goal is to see that “the shards of right reason are reunited within a rich and realistic metaphysic translucent to the further ordering of grace and revelation, and at the service of sacra doctrina” (Long, Natura Pura, 51).
94 De Lubac deals with these issues in a series of essays written during World War II: “Internal Causes of the Weakening and Disappearance of the Sense of the Sacred,” in Theology in History, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 223–40; “Christian Explanation of Our Times,” ibid., 440–56; and “Spiritual Warfare,” ibid., 488–501.
95 It is worth noting here that Kathryn Tanner in Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 124, critiques the whole Catholic tradition on nature and grace, including de Lubac, for using terms such as “natural,” precisely because this tends to support a natural-law framework. Effectively, Tanner critiques de Lubac for supporting exactly what Long thinks his work cannot support.
96 Reinhard Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 2–3.
97 John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture (1983; Norfolk, VA: IHS Press, 2008), quoted in Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven, 6.
98 Hütter, Dust Bound for Heaven, 137.
99 Ibid., 138.
100 Ibid., 140.
101 Ibid., 316.
102 Ibid., 405.
103 It is worth mentioning also some recent entries into the field by younger scholars such as Andrew Dean Swafford, Nature and Grace (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014) and Adam G. Cooper, Naturally Human, Supernaturally God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014).
104 De Lubac's work following the Communio/Concilium split took a more “conservative” turn, critical of what he took to be the excesses of other thinkers such as Schillebeeckx. De Lubac expresses these ideas most fully in his essay “The Council and the Para-Council,” in A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, trans. Brother Richard Arnandez, FSC (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 235–60.
105 Cajetan Cuddy, OP, and Romanus Cessario do precisely this in a Nova et Vetera article on Paul, John II and neo-Thomism, , “Witness to Faith: George Weigel, Blessed John Paul II, and the Theological Life,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 10, no. 1 (2012): 1–13Google Scholar.
106 Reno, R. R., “Theology after the Revolution,” First Things 173 (May 2007): 14–21Google Scholar.
107 USCCB Committee on Doctrine, “Statement on Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, by Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson,” in When the Magisterium Intervenes, ed. Richard R. Gaillardetz (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 183–200, at 183.
108 Ibid., 184.
109 Ibid., 187.
110 Ibid., 199.
111 Donald Cardinal Wuerl, “Bishops as Teachers,” in Gaillardetz, When the Magisterium Intervenes, 205.
112 Ibid., 206–7.
113 For neo-Thomist and other sympathetic perspectives on divine suffering, see James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, OP, Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), a volume of conference papers, including one by Thomas Weinandy.
114 Johnson's classic work She Who Is (New York: Crossroad, 1992) is structured precisely as a kind of Thomistic argument.
115 McDermott, John J. SJ, “Elizabeth Johnson on Revelation: Faith, Theology, Analogy, and God's Fatherhood,” Nova et Vetera 10, no. 4 (2012): 923–83Google Scholar.
116 Ibid., 924.
117 Ibid., 976.
118 Ibid., 982.
119 Oakes, Edward T. SJ, “The Surnaturel Controversy: A Survey and a Response,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 9, no. 3 (2011): 629Google Scholar.
120 Ibid., 635.
121 Ibid., 643.
122 Ibid., 649.
123 Ibid., 652.
124 Malloy, Christopher, “De Lubac on Nature Desire: Difficulties and Antitheses,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 9, no. 3 (2011): 567Google Scholar.
125 Ibid., 591.
126 Mansini, Guy OSB, “Experiential Expressivism and Two Theologians,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 8, no. 1 (2010): 125–41Google Scholar.
127 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1984).
128 Mansini, “Experiential Expressivism,” 140–41.
129 Ibid., 141.
130 White, “Thomism after Vatican II,” 1055.
131 Ibid., 1056.
132 White, “The Tridentine Genius of Vatican II,” 10.
133 Ibid., 11.
134 Ibid., 12.
135 Gerald O'Collins, hardly a liberal in the mold that White critiques, writes in an excerpt from his biography (National Catholic Reporter, February 22, 2014, http://ncronline.org/news/people/look-back-dupuis-skirmish-vatican) about the treatment of Jacques Dupuis by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, particularly changes that were made to the text of the Notification after its signature by Dupuis. Eric Genilo's description of John Ford, SJ, and the run-up to Humanae Vitae in John Cuthbert Ford, SJ: Moral Theologian at the End of the Manualist Era (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007) also reveals some of the power dynamics at work. Without reducing the workings of theology and ecclesiastical decision-making to power, it is fair to observe that power dynamics are at work on all sides of such issues.
136 Denys Turner, Thomas Aquinas (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 49.
137 See Karl Rahner, “On Recognizing the Importance of Thomas Aquinas,” in Theological Investigations XIII, trans. David Bourke (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 3–12.
138 Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Fides et Ratio, September 14, 1998, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html.
139 Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology, 359.
140 Gerald O'Collins, “Ressourcement and Vatican II,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 372–91, at 375.
141 John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000).
142 Christopher Ruddy, “Ressourcement and the Enduring Legacy of Post-Tridentine Theology,” in Flynn and Murray, Ressourcement, 185–204, at 187.
143 Ibid., 191.
144 Ibid., 199.
145 Ibid., 200.