Today, Matthew Milliner, an Art History student at Princeton Univ., posted a reflection on Reno’s article, which I wrote about yesterday. Milliner begins by recounting the recent art conference, Retracing the Expanded Field, at Princeton’s School of Architecture. The conference included art critic legends like Hal Foster, who seem now to be arguing the same thing about the practice of Art Criticism as Reno does about Theology, namely that revolutionary movements in art, Post-modernisms namely, have been great for shaking up the paradigms, but they’ve done so to the extent that Criticism has yet to find a unified machinery from which to continue to assess art. Like the Heroic Generation, figures like Piet Mondrian and Andre Malraux (to use Milliner’s examples), gained enough momentum to attract a following, but failed to provide a stable “baseline” from which others could grow or rebel. Now, many are without enough of a tradition or background to converse gainfully with others in the field, resulting in a kind of Babel experience. Milliner goes on to conclude that as with the supposed break of the Heroic Generation with the 2 centuries of theological neo-scholasticism before them, so the “post-moderns” broke with those before them, like the New Criticism group (Clement Greenberg, et. al.). Continue reading ‘The Heroic Generation and Art Criticism’s Tower of Babel’
Archive for the 'Theologians' Category
Rusty Reno has a great review article over at the First Things website of Fergus Kerr’s new book, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Chenu to Ratzinger, on the last generation of Catholic theologians, covering greats like Yves Congar, de Lubac, Balthasar, and Rahner. The book actually goes all the way through JP II and Ratzinger/Benedict. Meant not as much as a survey of all RC 20th and 21st C theology, but rather as an examination of what Kerr considers the archetypes of RC theology in the last century, Reno lauds Kerr’s decision to consider how these theologians “fundamentally changed the way in which the Church thinks.” These are the theologians of the “Heroic Generation”.
Since I’m pretty sure you have to be a subscriber to FT, and will therefore not be able to follow the above link, I’ll do my best to highlight the salient points of the article, although you really should try to get your hands on it or, better yet, buy the book.
Kerr chose this particular group because he believes each in his own way articulates a form of post-neoscholastic RC theology. To be sure, the variance between each occurs in greater and lesser degrees. Whereas the distance between de Lubac and Ratzinger is bridged nicely by Balthasar, it could be argued that there is a fundamental split between Rahner and Balthasar. Thus, Kerr’s survey functions less like Frei’s “typology” and more like a historical text, exploring the nuances of these theologians’ projects within the larger scheme of church theology of the time.
In this respect, one of the most interesting arguments, as Reno points out, regarding the attrition in RC theological culture after Vatican II. I know little about Bernard Lonergan, so I was surprised to learn that Kerr considers him to be one of the most acute philosophical minds in this group. Lonergan, according to Kerr, successfully overcame the dualistic, scholastic reading of Thomas, and proposed in his 1972 Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas a new way of understanding Thomas that was more sensitive to recent Continental developments. However, with Vatican II and the concurrent distaste for neo-scholasticism came a diminished vocabulary and skill set among theology students – they couldn’t grasp either the original debate about neo-scholasticism or Lonergan’s creative solution. In this way, Lonergan’s impact was small, although his contribution was potentially large.
Reno states that Kerr makes a similar argument about Henri de Lubac and the loss of his unique contribution with the loss of fluency with Thomism, but I would disagree slightly here. Students, both of philosophy and theology, are rediscovering de Lubac on two fronts. First, von Balthasar’s mediation of Lubac is worth noting, and as Balthasar’s coverage grows, so does Lubac’s. Second, Lubac’s work on Surnaturel and similar works are gaining popularity among philosophy students who have followed the Derrida/Marion and Zizek/Badiou trains as far as they can go. Creative, orthodox theology seems to have something to offer them that exotic philosophies couldn’t.
Reno ends the article by extolling the virtue of a stable, culture forming theology, geared toward educating the church in “the common framework and vocabulary, to prepare them to become full participants in the theological project.” A “exploratory theologian” himself, he recalls popular dismissals of “dusty” Thomism and encourages, with Pope Leo XIII’s 1879 Aeterni Patris, the reader to recognize that “without a standard theology, the Church will lack precisely the sort of internally coherent and widespread theological culture that is necessary for understanding and employing bold new experiments and fruitful recoveries of past traditions.” Yet, while these archetypes of the Heroic Generation were largely innovators and criticized the status quo Thomism, they weren’t seeking to destroy the base, necessarily, but Reno faults many of them, including an acrimonious bit toward von Balthasar for offering “only criticism, much of it bitter and dismissive, and he launched out in new directions with little regard for the official, mainstream theologies of the day.” Had Balthasar attempted to engage theological education, Reno argues, there might have been some constructive value in offering his theology in an introduction to Catholic Theology. However, as it stands, Reno advocates in stead a critical examination of the time that these thinkers worked in. Although they offered many biting criticisms and little constructive engagements with Traditional theological education, we should strive to understand the problems they were trying to correct within their context. “[T]he old theological culture of the Church has largely been destroyed, while the Heroic Generation did not, perhaps could not, formulate a workable, teachable alternative to take its place.” To this extent Reno practically blames Balthasar and others for creating the vacuum that Rahner ended up filling.
Today, lacking the educational and theological base that made thinkers like Balthasar and Rahner possible, Reno calls for a renewal of theology that cares about the concerns and suggestions made by the “Heroic Generation”, but that also seriously evaluates and compensates for their errors.
Reno demonstrates his chastened appropriation in the last paragraph by calling for a ressourcement, this time one that doesn’t only creatively summon the brilliance of the Patristics and Medievals, but one that also recovers the riches of the neo-scholastic period in light of the Heroic Generation.
“To overcome the poverty of the present, our generation must base its theological vision on a fuller, deeper form of ressourcement, one that discerns the essential continuity of the last two hundred years of Catholic theology. After an era of creativity, exploration, and discontinuity, much of it fruitful and perhaps necessary, we need a period of consolidation that allows us to integrate the lasting achievements of the Heroic Generation into a renewed standard theology.”
Reno is right to recall our attention to the lost theologians of the 18th and 19th centuries. As recent work in Schliermacher has demonstrated, sometimes the theologians influenced by the events and philosophies of the European continent in the 20th century were too hasty in the dismissals of such figures. Maybe we can see what they couldn’t thanks to their insights. Maybe our sensibilities, having been admonished by the “Heroic Generation”, enjoy a special perspective that allows us to hang in the balance between those neo-scholastic minds and the post-war, Vatican II intellectuals.
A wonderful essay, delivered by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Faculties of Trinity and Wycliff College at U of Toronto, can be found here. Thanks to Scott and the Faith and Theology blog (where, incidentally, there is also a lively debate about biblical inerrancy occuring just today!) for pointing me toward it originally. The essay is called “The Bible: Reading and Hearing” and is his attemt at a “renewed theological grasp of scripture. It is fitting, then, that in so seeking, he consults my former advisor, Kevin Vanhoozer, and his recent opus, The Drama of Doctrine. Williams raises a couple interesting and helpful points, that I thought I’d raise here, briefly.
First, Williams stresses that the test of any good theology of scripture is the primacy it gives scripture over everything else. This is a basic building block of being Christian. Moreover, this attests to the public nature of scripture; the reading of scripture is a public event. Listening and responsiveness to a unique and identifiable communicative act are the basic characteristics of the Christian, rather than self-generation or self-expression. Hence our understanding of the church as ekklesia. “From one (crucially important) point of view, the celebration of the Eucharist is that representation, the moment when all are equally and unequivocally designated as guests, responding to invitation.”
Second, the bible addresses us in two ways: (i) as “one with” a specific audience of address in the text, as in exhortatory passages; and (ii) texts that, while not addressing a specific audience, suggest a “movement” or change, as in parables. In either case, we need “the capacity to read/hear enough to sense the directedness of a text. Fragmentary reading is highly risky to the extent that it abstracts from what various hermeneutical theorists (Ricoeur above all) have thought of as the world ‘in front of the text’ – the specific needs that shape the movement and emphasis of the text itself.” Williams is concerned both by readers who too quickly draw polemical conclusions from passages, and readers who fail to draw any sort of conclusion about what the text is saying to us, the present audience that should be identifying with the original audience.
“I want to stress that what I am trying to define as a strictly theological reading of Scripture, a reading in which the present community is made contemporary with the world in front of the text, is bound to give priority to the question that the text specifically puts and to ask how the movement, the transition, worked for within the text is to be realised in the contemporary reading community.”
Williams is not here advocating some arbitrary identification of our world with the text’s. Rather, “the effects of the text” actually work to establish a connection with the reader by analogy with the “world in front of the text”: “…the connections between elements of scriptural text, the connections that constitute what I have here been calling its ‘movement’, will be uncovered in the reader’s world as still effecting the same movement and making the same overall demands.”
To fully realize this connection, the theologically sensitive reader understands the dual character of the text, as being an already completed work, but also a work that requires constant rereading and interpretation. “To identify a written text as sacred is to claim that the continuous possibility of re-reading, the impossibility of reading for the last time, is a continuous openness to the intention of God to communicate.” There is an invitation, a Eucharistic invitation even, to reread, reinterpret, and respond to the claims the text makes on us, furthering the basic aspect (attitude) of the Christian mentioned above.
The last thing I wanted to note is Williams’ reflection on the Resurrection in this context. Following the Eucharistic (responsive) aspect of reading scripture, Williams states that to properly hold our theologies of Eucharist and Scripture together, we need a proper Pneumatology, as the spirit is the “binder-togetherer” (to borrow a phrase from Orson Scott Card) of God and the Church. This requires, however, a robust notion of Christ’s Resurrection. The scripture is an invitation by God through the Son to all to join him in fellowship. But, “If it is not the present vehicle of God speaking in the risen Christ, it is a record only of God speaking to others. For it to be an address that works directly upon self and community now, it must be given to us as the continuation of the same act, the re-presenting and re-enacting of the same scriptural reality of invitation and the creation of a people defined by justice, mutual service and the liberty to relate to God as Father and faithful partner.” Resurrection as an ontological reality is the key to a theologically sound Eucharist and reading of scripture. Without it, the message of the scripture and the preforming of the Eucharist are simply remembrances of things past.
Williams’ essay here represents to me a solid step toward clarifying a distinctly Anglican and (surprise) orthodox contribution to Theological Hermeneutics. I only wish he’d expand this into book form. It will be interesting to see how and if other Anglicans respond to this theology of scripture and the ontological affirmation he gives to the ressurrection and its association to the message.
Dan and I are reading Volume 5 right now of A Theological Aesthetics, and we’re going to be posting often on our reading and subsequent discussions. We just looked at his section on Nicholas of Cusa, who he definitely respects as being kind of a super-Catholic–I say this because Cusa, like Pico, was obsessed with explaining all phenomena and all religion in terms of the catholic faith. Kudos to Cusa says Hans. Apparently Cusa was down with the analogia entis as well, which Hans likes, but what we gleaned this past week was that the analogy may be a little too tight with Cusa, as Hans accuses him of preparing the ground (eventually) for Idealism, which equals loss of feeling for eros, and an inability to see eros and God in the same picture. Every metaphor must limp it seems. I agree here, we must be careful about tightening these comparisons too much. The analogy must grow in both directions. Advice I take seriously as I critique Carl Jung’s notion of quaternity for my thesis, definitely an example of too clean a symbol. Wrapping up an analogy should always falter at the last step (between the 3 and the 4) like Bjork says in Dancer in the Dark, where she hoped the penultimate song would never end.
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