Conference Description

 

During the upheaval of the twentieth century, Catholic theology, too, felt the unrest of a world grappling with modernity and meaning. While Scholasticism had wrestled with rationalism for several hundred years, as the nineteenth century passed on to the twentieth, it seemed as if Christianity’s complex relation to, and tension with, modern and incipient post-modern philosophy had come to a head. How could faith in divine revelation and an accompanying science of sacred doctrine continue in a setting so alien to that of the Church’s first fifteen centuries? The world of the Church Fathers had been replaced by Kant’s “Copernican revolution” in epistemology, Bacon’s primacy of the practical power in the natural sciences, Locke’s and Rousseau’s liberal political order, and finally, the radical skepticism and despair of post-modernity. The world had changed, and the Church struggled to speak to it. Theology, as if in doubt, fumbled with that primordial command of wisdom: “Know thyself.”
 

In this context, the emergent “Ressourcement” movement attempted to moor theology firmly on its sources: Scripture and the Fathers. Some feared that this was an attempt to leap over and erase Scholasticism’s pride of place in content and method. On one side: the fear of Modernism, “the synthesis of all heresies.” On the other: the fear that the Church would keep proclaiming a message unintelligible to modern people, whom she would ultimately lose. Before, during, and after the Second Vatican Council, condemnations, retorts and charges of heresy were volleyed back and forth among the Church’s theologians, and primarily between the so-called “Neo-Thomists” and “Nouvelle” theologians, the former wanting to carry on the legacy of Scholasticism, the latter wishing to continue with the ongoing process of Ressourcement. These two groups sparred over metaphysics, the nature of divine revelation and its organic development, nature and grace, spirituality, politics, and the very nature and method of theology itself. Both sides claimed that the other departed from the tradition, introducing novelty to the doctrine and spirit of theology. At the conclusion of the Council, many claimed that the Ressourcement movement had won the day, with some Ressourcement thinkers gathering around the seminal journal Communio. But the Scholastic tradition, though attenuated, did not entirely fade away and, indeed, today sees a resurgence.
 

Many questions therefore emerge today about these two movements and their relationship to one another. Are these movements new? What are their relations to the antecedent tradition? What are their relations to each other? Can they be reconciled? Are there insuperable differences? Is scholasticism an organic growth in theological method, or even an improvement? Is St. Thomas Aquinas the “Common Doctor” in terms of his openness to non-Christian philosophical sources, or in the universality of his teaching? As the Church continues further into the 21st century, it seems necessary that these questions be answered. The lines of division amid faithful theologians disfigure the unity of sacred doctrine, but the speculative causes of tension and divergence cannot be papered over either, which would be tantamount to a failure to listen to these movements and thus a failure of contemplation and respect.

Today, the theological landscape is far enough removed from the personal animosities and antagonisms that muddied the theological waters; it is time to return to this Gordian knot. Perhaps we can cut it together.           
 

This year’s conference is an attempt, humble of heart and yet bold in love of the truth, toward a new moment, that is, the settling and setting to rights of the knots created in the 20th century. Such a project, if done in charity and truth, we believe, will bear an abundance of needed theological fruit. Papers pursuant to this task are numerous, including those that treat of the questions particular to the debates of the 20th century, e.g., the method of theology, the relationship between nature and grace, the role of philosophy in theology, etc. Papers that pertain to topics in adjacent fields that deal with similar 20th-century trends are also welcome. Such would include, for example, the relationship between casuistry and virtue ethics in moral theology or the achievements and limitations of the historical critical method in biblical studies. Proposals for panel discussions related to the overall theme are also welcome.