I wanted to draw attention to a comment made last week. Because it pertains to a post made several months ago, I fear many of us might miss it - I would probably miss most comments if I didn’t have them emailed to me - and I would hate to see it forgotten. Go here and here for the original posts. I hope Tony, the author of it, won’t mind me posting a snippet of it here. Oh, and, Welcome and Thanks for the contribution, Tony! Send me your email address if you see this.
I think [Reno] is off the mark for blaming the HG for the present state of academic theology. Neoscholasticism collapsed under its own weight. Reno forgets that neoscholasticism had lost the vitality of the original synthesis of Thomas Aquinas. It is strange that he is blase about how neoscholastics had basically brought down on themselves the judgment of irrelevance.More pressing is what to do to correct the present cacophonic situation of academic theology. I am not sure that what is needed is another scholasticizing of the HG’s achievements. I think Vatican II has laid down the “method” to be followed for seminary and school theology (i.e., define the problem, then look to SS, the Fathers, the Scholastics, the Moderns, the Councils, the present-day magisterium, and contemporary theology). the “method” is largely historical. the systematization of theology is not necessarily a good thing (Balthasar likes to think of himself as unsystematic though doctoral dissertations are trying to systematize him). Perhaps the problem is one of catechesis or religious education. But theology is more than catechesis or religious education.
I am also glad that Pitstick was mentioned by one of the respondents to this blog. I was just appalled at the lack of understanding of Balthasar’s deepest intentions. Pitstick is one great example of what I would not want theology to go back to. That her book was recommended by First Things and by such figures as Saward, Nichols is making me think that there are people who are afraid that Balthasar is being addressed by a wider group of interlocutors who would like to see Balthasarian insights pushed to where Balthasar himself did not wish to go. I think this is a shortsighted reaction.
Thanks, Tony, for vocalizing my concerns better than I could have myself.
Ahem. HG?
Also, could someone situate Marion and Balthasar a little bit for me, vis-a-vis this now collapsed neoscholasticism?
Janet, right, sorry for the oversight on two counts. I have updated the post to include links to the original two posts on the HG - Heroic Generation, a moniker invoked by Fergus Kerr to describe the generation of theologians in and around Vatican II, such as Rahner, de Lubac, Balthasar, Congar, and maybe even Ratzinger (B16) with one degree of separation. In Kerr’s reading via Reno’s review, these theologians broke with the neo-scholastic model of theological education, but failed to articulate a coherent enough replacement. Reno is worried that without a strong enough foundation, the work of the HG leads us only into a mire of creative meandering or, worse, fruitless finger-pointing. Yet, I can’t help but feel that his review does much the same that he accuses those like Balthasar of doing. Furthermore, having read a little HUVB myself, I find his stereotype of Balthasar’s work to really deficient and misleading.
So that couches Balthasar in that typology. Marion would be a little more difficult for me, as I’ve only read his philosophical work, which won’t help us with this typology as it relates almost exclusively to dogmatic theology and theological education, and catechesis, as Tony rightly points out).