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George Tyrrell and the Development of Doctrine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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Early last summer, when he was in Peru, Cardinal Ratzinger disclosed that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was preparing a document on the ‘central issues of the Modernist crisis’. He enumerated these as the nature of doctrine, principles in the interpreting of the Bible, and the role of philosophy in theology.
If we want to get those thorny ‘central issues’ into historical perspective, how should we go about it? If one belongs to the Englishspeaking world, there is, arguably, no better way than to explore the thought of the Modernist George Tyrrell, who was born 125 years ago this year. However severe may be our final assessment of him, it is a fact that the questions Tyrrell raised were those of a theological genius, and we cannot ignore them or brush them away. To understand his thought we must trace its history—his ideas of what theology should be developed dramatically in the course of his life. And if we want to get to grips with what was really distinctive about his thought—where he was addressing himself to the ‘central issues’ which Cardinal Ratzinger has recently listed—then we must consider especially what he had to say about the notion of doctrinal development. His ideas of what theology should be formed, so to speak, a series of photographic lenses through which he peered at his favourite subject: the continuity and discontinuity of Christian tradition.
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- Copyright © 1986 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 For Tyrrell's life, see Petre, M.D., Autobiography and Life of George Tyrrell (London 1912Google Scholar; two volumes). Cited hereafter as ALGT.
2 The Faith of Millions. A Selection of Past Essays (London 1901Google Scholar: ‘First Series’, ‘Second Series’). Here cited as FMI and FMII.
3 J. Crehan, ‘Tyrrell in his Workshop’, The Month 2, 3 (N.S., 1970, p. 111.
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5 Letter of 6.12.1907 to von Hügel, cited in ALGT II. p. 45. A less manipulative view of St Thomas is found in Tyrrell‘s early essay 'Aquinas Resuscitatus’, American Catholic Quarterly Review 16 (1891). pp. 673–690Google Scholar.
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14 Lex Orandi (London 1903), pp. 57ff. There is an echo here of Wiseman's appeal to the orbis terrarum in his 1839 Dublin Review article on Donatists and Puseyites. But whereas Wiseman appealed to the doctrinal judgement of the universal episcopate, Tyrrell appealed to the mystical sense of the plebs sancta Dei.
15 Ibid. p. 153. That popular devotion plays a major part in the historical ascertaining of orthodoxy need not be doubted. See e.g. Chadwick, H., ‘Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian controversy’, Journal of Theological Studies (N.S. 2, 2; 1951), pp. 145–164CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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