As a philosophical historian of ethics, Alasdair seems almost obsessively concerned with recounting the development of practical rationality through the emergence of late modern liberalism. In Whose Justice? Which Rationality? MacIntyre argues that the loss of a teleological orientation in the account of social formation necessarily results in competing practical rationalities. Pursuant to which, modern social science lacks the ability to recognize much less help redress the fracture in practice and rationality caused by the loss of ends-based reasoning.¹ “And hence arises the fundamental incompatibility of theories of justice framed in terms of one of those schemes with theories framed in terms of the others.”² MacIntyre is here trying to articulate not only the relationship between theories of justice (or any philosophical pursuit for that matter) within a particular philosophical tradition – e.g. Socrates to Plato to Aristotle, etc. – or even the relationship between competing traditions – Humean rationalism versus Aristotelian virtue ethics – but also, and in many ways more importantly, the relationship between that philosophical tradition and the communities in which it finds itself at different times. “The history of philosophy as a form of rational inquiry is in such cultural and social orders embedded in the larger history of culture and society and will be, if too much detached from that history, in certain respects distorted or even unintelligible.”³ MacIntyre is clearly wary of attempts to define philosophy in a neutral or absolute sense, divorcing it from the concrete lived experience of its practitioners as members of a organic organization. But because philosophies relate to their social context in different ways, it becomes necessary for MacIntyre to describe how rationality and concepts of justice arise in each particular social tradition as what he calls “socially embodied traditions of rational inquiry.”⁴ Thus begins MacIntyre’s account of the highly contextual matrix of virtues, practices, and traditions, all as interconnected and mutually supporting elements of human society. MacIntyre’s writing does not lend itself to quick summation, or short citation. What follows is my attempt to briefly spell out three elements of his project – his account of the formation of individuals in a distinct practice, the ends (or goods) they seek in those practices, and the pay off of the first two, a theory of practical rationality that is dependent upon but also elucidates elements of the community in which it arises – which together, I think, will be helpful for stabilizing an image of community and practice in mind in discussions of such Church activities like interpretation of Scritpure.

An Aristotelian teleology. MacIntyre establishes the majority of his account of practical rationality on the Aristotelian/Athenian framework of the polis as the organizing locus of practice. He argues that an Aristotelian history of philosophy is superior to both alternative (Enlightenment & Neitzschean) accounts in that an Aristotelian phronetic teleology can both explain itself as well as the idiosyncrasies of an Enlightenment/rationalistic hyper-individualism and Neitzsche’s brilliant but flawed alternative to said individualism. The Aristotelian framework is able to do this not because it captures some objective, neutral assessment in a more rational way than the latter, but rather because it is able to describe the way in which it and the other ideologies fit into concrete social matrices.⁵ In such a framework, success in a particular practice – say farming – clearly depends on more than the mere aggregate of mastery over discrete functions – sowing, harvesting, etc… Rather, success depends on the ability to decide on immediate action whereby one evaluates the success of previous attempts,⁶ and eventually the ability to think abstractly about and evaluate something like farming at its best, and thus a distinction is drawn between thinking about efficiency as the good of the moment and excellence as the best overall.⁷ Such evaluative ability only comes from long periods of familiarity with a particular practice in which one can imagine the end toward which one is proceeding. To do so requires the second kind of evaluation, in which the best is not idealized, but rather is seen as a real condition toward which one is striving and can attain.
What directs [participants in a practice] toward that goal is both the history of successive attempts to transcend the limitations of the best achievement in that particular area so far and the acknowledgment of certain achievements as permanently defining aspects of the perfection toward which that particular form of activity is directed. Those achievements are assigned canonical status within the practice of each type of activity. Learning what they have to teach is central to apprenticeship in each particular form of activity.⁸

MacIntyre is quick to point out that excellence in that activity is not reducible to merely following the rules to the point of perfection. Rather, attaining to excellence demands “a freedom to violate present established maxims , so that achievement proceeds both by rule-keeping and by rule-breaking.”⁸ Only the practitioner able to imagine the best within the established framework, even when the best leads her to divert from that framework, will be able to make that kind of advanced discernment. In other words, success in practice depends on being formed in a dynamic practical rationality inherent to that very practice.

Goods of Efficiency vs. Goods of Excellence. Too often, however, external goods (“good of efficiency”) challenge that imaginative ability by tempting practitioners to act for the sake of obtaining those external goods rather than for the sake of obtaining the internal goods of excellence.⁹ After all, the qualities prized by the “goods of excellence” and the “goods of efficiency,” while sometime matching up superficially are often accounted for differently in important ways. Justice or fairness in a system ruled by “good of efficiency” will be the outcome of holding to contractual agreements – i.e. justice is observing a prior mutual social bond.¹⁰ In this case, there is nothing inherent about justice. On the other hand, justice in a system of excellence will be understood as that which is “due excellence” and therefore injustice entails both wronging the one upon whom the injustice is perpetrated as well as upon the perpetrator because she is denying herself a particular good in that she will now face some kind of punishment.

Political Orderings. However, MacIntyre wagers that the only framework in which a concept of justice can be sustained without fracturing into competing account of goods or deserts (i.e. Competing mutual social agreements about justice – or orthodoxy?) is a community that orders goods in such a way that its members orient themselves and their actions toward achieving a common goal. In such a community, “a polis,” the multiplicity of practices, internal goods, and external goods are all ordered with a view toward the greatest possible enjoyment of all goods by its members.¹¹ Note, however, that even enjoyment has a strongly teleological flavor here. “The constitution of each particular polis could therefore be understood as the expression of a set of principles about how goods are to be ordered into a way of life.”¹¹ MacIntyre here unveils his definition of practical rationality as one which “aspires to show what it is for the citizen of the polis qua citizen – the citizen who acts in accordance with the ordering of goods established in his particular polis – to act rationality.”¹¹

While this is truly one of MacIntyre’s outstanding achievements, it is also one of MacIntyre’s most contested arguments;¹² by clarifying Aristotelian practical rationality as acting in such a way that one stands in relationship to a set of ordered practices with a particular end in view, MacIntyre locates rationality within practice in such a way that seeks to avoid a naïve absolute (or universal) rationality (i.e. classic liberalism).¹³ In eschewing a neutral foundation for knowledge, however, his critics assert that the thereby makes his proposal vulnerable to relativism or perspectivism. However, he  inasmuch as both presuppose not local modes of thinking as they purport but rather a rationally neutral individual, a blank slate which is recognizable only by virtue of its social role and therefore reducible to social role. The individual, for MacIntyre, is primordially directed and motivated. On a microcosmic level, the individual is potentially motivated by the ordering of goods particular to her polis, the ordering without which the person has no recourse to practical rationality. On a macrocosmic level, all individuals are oriented toward a true good, but only insofar as she committing herself to a particular practice. For, it is in initiation into that practice that she begins to move toward finding that good that transcends her local practice.

By advancing in a distinct practice, by learning how to make discrete decisions, and then later to judge the outcome about the decisions, the individual learns how to distinguish the good from bad in terms of her practice. Eventually, the individual also learns how to judge the best in her practice, and may even become an expert in that practice, setting a new standard of the best. However, this person may eventually move on to other practice, and indeed is already involved in a community that is larger than her particular practice. She is involved in a polis that attempts integrate the variety of practices (and their respective goods) in which its citizens are involved.

This integrative activity of the political community thus has as its aims and end the achievement of a form of life which is the highest good, and that form of life provides a telos above and beyond those internal to the practices integrated into that form of life. This telos is the telos of the practice of making and sustaining this type of political community by participating in it as a citizen; let us call this practice politics and let us call such a form of political community a polis.¹⁴

The measure of the success of the polis in integrating those goods will affect how much or how little she is able to move toward a broader conception of the good, and ultimately her understanding of the ultimate telos toward which her life and all lives are moving. So, the polis is not only responsible for ordering the rationality of discrete practices, but also for ordering those practices and the ensuing rationality toward a higher good – “the polis is the form of community concerned with all human goods.”¹⁵

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1. I am here employing MacIntyre’s definition of practice: “By a practice I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established co-operative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended” (After Virtue: A Study in Moral Philosophy, revised edition [South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984], 187); by “goods internal” to a practice, MacIntyre means the kinds of goods (results) that can be had only by successfully pursuing certain activities, whereas external goods are those that are not specific to an activity, but can be obtained through a variety of activities (e.g. prestige, riches, status, social influence, etc…).
2. Alasdair MacIntyre, “Précis of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?,” in The MacIntyre Reader, ed. Kelvin Knight (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 106.
3. MacIntyre, “Précis of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?,” 106.
4. MacIntyre, “Précis of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?,” 107.
5. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 144-45; similarly, Hadot: “for [Aristotle], philosophy was incapable of being reduced to philosophical discourse, or to a body of knowledge. Rather, philosophy for Aristotle was a quality of of the mind, the result of inner transformation, The form of life preached by Aristotle was the life according to the mind.”
6. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 31: “It is a distinction which will inform later judgments upon one’s earlier mistakes in a rational, well-grounded way only in one is able to explain what it was about one in an earlier state that led one into error”; see also, “Practical Rationalities as Forms of Social Structure,” 4: “Such apprentices learn to make two kinds of distinction: between what merely seems good to them and what really is good (a good way to plough a field, for example, or to write an elegy); and between what is good or best for them in their present circumstances and what is good unqualifiedly. They learn to make these distinctions in the course of acquiring habits of action and of judgement which discipline and redirect the initial untrained desires and responses which they brought with them to their apprenticeship.”
7. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 31: “[I]t is important to note that the kind of judgments invoking this second type of distinction are themselves subject to later judgments invoking the first kind of distinction. What seemed to us at one stage a perfect performance may later be recognized either as imperfect or as less perfect than some later achievement. That is to say, in all these areas there is not only progress in achievement but also progress in our conception and recognition of what the highest perfection is.”
8. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 31.
9. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 32.
10. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 37: “it will always be as if justice was the outcome of a contract , an episode of explicit negotiation… But the rules will have to be at least minimally acceptable to almost all for them to function as rules of justice for any extended period of time, and this will characteristically involve that some of the same constraints are imposed on those who are relatively rich and powerful as well as on those whoa re relatively weak and powerless.”
11. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 34.
12. Jennifer A. Herdt, following L. Gregory Jones’s and Jeffrey Stout’s respective arguments, takes it that MacIntyre is here being inconsistent in that he claims that particular human life and traditions are narratively unified, even if traditions are not unified across the board by a normative narrative; Herdt claims that MacIntyre needs a third option between the emotivist and his own to resolve this inconsistency, namely her tradition-trascendent alternative (“Alasdair MacIntyre’s ‘Rationality of Traditions’ and Tradition-Transcendental Standards of Justification,” The Journal of Religion, 78 (Oct., 1998), pp. 524-546, esp. 525. 
13. MacIntyre points out that classic liberalism is actually idiosyncratic in that it purports to a neutral rationality, while in fact being informed a social tradition of prizing the individual’s preferences in way which are highly incompatible with an Aristotelian ordering; see especially, “Practical Rationalities as Forms of Social Structure,” Irish Philosophical Journal 4, (1987): 13-15.
14. “Practical Rationalities as Forms of Social Structure,” 6-7.
15. “Practical Rationalities as Forms of Social Structure,” 7.

“We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”- T.S. Eliot

I have admired the greatness of Eliot as a poet, but never expected to use a bit of his work for a meditation of education such as this. However, it seems to me that this quote from Eliot is filled with profundity and enormous implications for our practice as educators and continuing students. I must say from the outset that my reflection on this quote is not an exegesis of Eliot’s poetry (though certainly such an venture is a worthy endeavor and has been embarked upon by interpreters much more able than I), but rather a contemplation of these words as they stand on their own, detached from the context of his work in which it is originally embedded.

I will begin with a memory. A couple years ago I made the routine visit to my hometown of Jamestown, TN where I was born and raised in the same house until I went away to college at the age of eighteen. While home on this visit I distinctly remember riding in the car with a family member, perhaps my dad. The road that we were travelling upon was a route that I had taken hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times in my life. It was the road from my family’s home to the center of town. About a mile into this route is a field, off to the left, which has cattle and much green grass in its midst. It is perhaps ten acres or so. What was so distinct about the memory is that, to my amazement, I noticed something about the field that I had never noticed before. What I saw was a patch, or perhaps angle on a patch, of trees that I had never noticed before. What struck me with such awe was the fact that I had been travelling this stretch of road almost everyday for the first eighteen years of my life and many times in the ensuing years and had never noticed this patch of woods! It taught me, or perhaps reminded me in a deeper way, that no matter how much we have partaken of God’s creation there is always more to see, touch, taste, and feel.

This “always more-ness” of creation is rooted in the fact that creation derives its being through participation in the Being and Life of the infinite Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So there is always more to any creature than just themselves. If we have eyes to see,ears to hear, and skin to touch we will find that creation and its creatures are iconic gateways into the infinite depth of God from which they draw life. Because this infinite depth just that, infinite, there will always more to contemplate, to learn about a person, a tree, a sunset, etc. For us as educators this means that we must never approach a class or subject we are teaching our students in such a way that we work under the assumption that we comprehensively “understand it” and intend to lead students to this same comprehensive understanding. Rather, if we are teaching the Interior Castle by Theresa of Avila, for instance, we must lead our students into the depths of Theresa’s text as fellow sojourners who are all students of Theresa. For Theresa’s text provides an iconic gateway into the life of the Triune God. We may lead students into the depths of Theresa a hundred or more times in our lives as educators but there will always be “another patch of trees to see.” There will always be the light of new dimensions, angles from which we have not ventured a look at Theresa’s castle, a fresh harmony we have yet to hear in her music.

I think this is perhaps some of what Eliot’s turn of phrase means for our craft as educators. We are to lead our students into continual exploration of the depths of our discipline, for there will always be new vistas, or at least clearer vision of what we are beholding. When we behold this new depth of our subject matter we must pray for the grace to always and ever “arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” No doubt that we and our students will find ourselves at times at the point of satiation, believing like the (cynical) laughing Sarah and Abraham, that we “know the deal.” Geriatric age couples do not have children and one does not encounter fresh dimensions of truth in texts that have been read for hundreds of years and which we have read over and over. And yet this small imagination of Sarah, Abraham, us, and our students shows not a lack in the depths of our subject matter, but a failure in our ability to imagine and encounter a world in which we will ever journey into fresh knowledge. This is so for this world, and the disciplines of study which lead us into exploration of this world, find their being and life in the Being and Life that is beyond all category of being and description…the infinite ocean of love and joy that is the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As teachers and learners may we be given grace by this God to “not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”

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It seems that this is an important issue with which the church should be eager to grapple. I am reminded of Richard Kearney’s small text, On Stories, in which he demonstrates how stories of immigrants, often no more than political propaganda and satirical etchings, throughout history have influenced catastrophic and dispicable behaviour by otherwise decent people. The effects of such actions are still felt within and without the Jewish community still today. Indeed, Kearney and Salmon devote whole chapters to theory after the Holocaust.

So, I propose that we read this book over the next couple months, and discuss no more than one chapter every 2-3 weeks. It’s a small volume, and written in an easy style. Although an accomplished exegete and theologian, she intends the book for parish clergy and laity, so the bulk of our energy and time can be reserved for the discussion. If you like this idea, comment below or email me (link on the about page). In order to give sufficient time to order the book and read chapter 1, we’ll begin on 24 September.

Cheers.

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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.

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Paul Claudel compared tradition with a man walking. In order to move forward he must push off from the ground, with one foot raised and the other on the ground; if he kept both feet on the ground or lifted both in the air, he would be unable to advance. If tradition is a continuity that goes beyond conservatism, it is also a movement and a progress that goes beyond mere continuity, but only on condition that, going beyond conservation for its own sake, it includes and preserves the positive values gained, to allow a progress that is not simply a repetition of the past. Tradition is memory, and memory enriches experience. If we remembered nothing it would be impossible to advance; the same would be true if we were bound to a slavish imitation of the past. True tradition is not servility but fidelity.

This is clear enough in the field of art. Tradition conceived as the handing down of set formulas and the enforced and servile imitation of models learned in the classroom would lead to sterility; even if there were an abundant output of works of art, they would be stillborn. Tradition always implies learning from others, but the academic type of docility and imitation is not the only one possible: there is also the will to learn from the experience of those who have studied and created before us; the aim of this lesson is to receive the vitality of their inspiration and to continue their creative work in its original spirit, which thus, in a new generation, is born again with the freedom, the youthfulness and the promise that it originally possessed.

At last year’s AAR, Hans Boersma gave a paper in response to Vanhoozer’s Drama of Doctrine in which he suggested that Vanhoozer could benefit from appropriating Congar into his overall picture of how doctrine is developed and implemented. I confess that I don’t remember much of his paper and can’t find it in article form online. But I think the salient point is that inherent even to a proposal as generous as Vanhoozer’s is the tension between the Protestant and Catholic relationship to scripture, the (sometimes) radical individualism of sola scriptura and the perceived crustiness and equally rigid rules of tradition. In Congar’s words:

[S]ince the Reformation there is controversy between Christians on “Scripture versus tradition”, a controversy on the rule of faith.

And the dualism goes on…

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After posting on Reno’s article yesterday, I began thinking more about the argument he made, that in criticizing the ethos of neo-scholasticism the Heroic Generation (HG) were in fact fatally disrupting the stability of RC theology. The so-called “baseline” deteriorated until at last the students of the HG had failed to develop the requisite tools to dialogue with the very generation of theology that the HG sought to “rebel against”. What I want to reevaluate here is this notion that the HG is necessarily or entirely to blame for the atrophy of theological acumen Reno so detests in theological education today. Let me state that I, too, am unhappy with the lack of agility and breadth in the theological academy today. However, I am unconvinced that everyone he lists is culpable, or at least as culpable as he makes them out to be.

Balthasar, for instance, spends a good deal of time relating his own project to the last two centuries preceeding him. His analyses of figures like Bruno and Goethe, for instance, are some of the best in vol 5 of his Glory of the Lord. However, they are not disavowals of traditional catholic theology, but rather affirmations of traditional concepts in RC theology. Ironically, many of the arguments Reno makes against the HG are also arguments Balthasar makes about the orthodox theological generations preceeding him. They hadn’t so much lead their students astray, rather they had relinquished the power of theology, whether in losing so much of the brilliance of the Fathers (Denys, Maximus), or in the lack of catholic scope in evaluating the movements of the Rennaissance or Romantic period. Reno calls for a Ressourcement of the Neo-scholastics as a base for theology, but why not go even further with Balthasar, Congar, and de Lubac – the orginal Ressourcement and unconvering the Fathers as a our stable base?

Going back to Milliner’s argument, I am worried about his criticism of the post-moderns’ rebellion against earlier movements like the New Criticism, which along with Clive Bell, Jerome Stolnitz, and most of the modern art world, elevated the work of art to an untenable status of “purposeless”, “useless”, and “an end in itself”. Milliner’s quote of Mondrian and Malruax’s deification of art – “it is hallowed by its association with a vague deity known as Art” – only echoes stronger claims once made by Bell and reified (albeit in a more “responsible” academic form) by Stolnitz. Likewise, the French Ressourcement calls our attention to some of the more troubling foundations of modern theology laid by early modern theologians and philosophers. Seen in this light, they serve more as a agents of internal critique and less like Reno portrays them as external innovators and excursionists. In fact, Reno’s argument might have fared better considering Rahner alone, as his theology served the purposes of the more liberal and unorthodox forms of theology today than Balthasar’s.

Just as Milliner seems to be lamenting the confused state of Art Criticism today and seeks a stable and universal language with which to move the dialogue forward, so too Reno seems to wish for the good ol’ days when theologians sat on the stoop and built the great edifice of scholastic theology, brick by brick, all talking the same language. I guess I’m just not very convinced we can or should return to such a tower.

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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.

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