Sunteți pe pagina 1din 15

From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?

Candidate number: V42326

CTC401: Catholic identity and its main themes

Assessment Task 3: Coursework essay

From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a


reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?

In an obituary that appeared in The Times on July 21st 1903, Leo XIII (1810-
1903) was hailed as ‘… the greatest Pope to have governed the Roman
Catholic Church since the French Revolution.’1 It is true that Leo was deeply
immersed in the cultural life of his own century and that one of the aims of his
pontificate was to make it possible for the Church to engage philosophically
with contemporary thought and to make its own contributions to the
integration of European culture. The way in which this was to be achieved
was set out in his 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris: scholars were to be
encouraged to investigate and assimilate the scholastic tradition and to use
the ‘perennial’ philosophy and theology of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) –
linked to the tradition of the Church Fathers and maintaining an openness to
the best insights of scholars of different philosophical persuasions – to
rejuvenate the continent’s intellectual and religious life, so deeply undermined
by the ‘ravages’ of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In section 1
I describe the circumstances that led to the rehabilitation of Thomism as a
serious option for nineteenth century Catholic philosophers and its
endorsement in Aeterni Patris; in sections 2 and 3 I explain and comment on
two strains of twentieth century Thomistic interpretation, Aristotelian and
Transcendental Thomism; finally, in section 4, I discuss the apparent
recommendation of a third strain, Existential Thomism, by Pope John Paul II
in his encyclical Fides et Ratio.

1
Quoted in the entry on Leo XIII in the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, 1993-2001 Microsoft
Corporation.

1
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

1: Developments up to Aeterni Patris (1879)

The ‘story’ that culminated in Aeterni Patris contains some interesting ironies
and coincidences. By the 1750’s, ‘second scholasticism’ (the great revival of
scholastic thought after the Council of Trent (1545-63)) was in serious decline.
The educated elite, influenced by the perceived freshness of modern
Enlightenment philosophy, regarded scholasticism with a thinly-veiled
contempt. The suppression of the Jesuit order in 1722 effectively terminated
the influence of (Suárezian) Thomism on Catholic students in European
colleges. Following the persecution and suppression of the Catholic Church
during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, scholasticism
gradually ceased to be a viable option for Catholic theologians who wanted to
engage with a secular culture that considered all versions of Thomism as
philosophically discredited. Indeed it was to Post-Kantian idealism, rather than
to traditional scholasticism, that the Church (in Germany, at least) turned to
resource itself philosophically in the first half of the nineteenth century. In
Rome, at the Gregorian University (returned to the restored Society of Jesus
by Pope Leo XII in 1824), there was no great enthusiasm for the scholastic
tradition. Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, who did favour the philosophy of St
Thomas, was resisted quite vehemently by the resident Jesuit professors
when he tried to introduce a curriculum based on Thomistic philosophy.

By contrast with the Jesuits, the Dominicans did try to maintain the viability of
the tradition of St Thomas during the political and cultural upheavals of this
period. In Italy, the most influential Thomist thinkers were the Dominicans
Tommaso Zigliara (who won the confidence of the Bishop of Perugia,
Giaocchino Pecci, the future Leo XIII) and Alberto Lepidi. Lepidi’s (he was
Regent at the Dominican College of Flavigny from 1868-1873) argumentative
rigour and exacting intellectual standards helped to re-establish Thomism for
many outside his order and certainly had a decisive influence on what would
be Bishop Pecci’s future agenda for the Church. St Thomas’ most influential
disciple in Northern Europe was the Jesuit Joseph Kleutgen. Interestingly, in

2
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

his book, Out of a Kantian Chrysalis? A Maritainian Critique of Fr Marechal,2


Ronald McCamy observes that Gerald McCool3 discerns in Kleutgen’s general
(‘orthodox’) Thomistic position elements of incompatible versions of Thomism
that, in subsequent decades, would indirectly contribute to its demise.4

So much for one of the ironies, but what of the coincidences? These consist
in a remarkable chain of events that leads from two young Italian seminarians
to Leo XIII’s encyclical. The two young seminarians were Serafino and
Domenico Sordi, both students at the Collegio Alberoni at Piacenza. They
were both enthusiasts for the philosophy of St Thomas. Later, after joining the
Society of Jesus, they made a significant Thomist convert of Luigi Taparelli.5
The latter shared his enthusiasm with fellow student and future pope,
Giaocchino Pecci. The Sordis made further converts of Carlo Maria Curci,
Matteo Liberatore and Guiseppe Pecci (Giovanni’s brother and future
cardinal). In 1846 Pope Pius IX felt constrained by the ‘misunderstanding’ of
nature and grace in some non-scholastic theologies to defend the power of
reason to recognise the credibility of revelation and make a reasonable act of
faith. Twinned to this apologetic aim, Pope Pius, through the establishment of
the review, Civilità cattolica (staffed by Jesuits), sought to reach out to and
influence the thinking of the educated classes of Italy. Matteo Liberatore
joined the staff of the review and Joseph Kleutgen was appointed as the
‘German expert’ for the Congregation of the Index. Both were well placed to
promote traditional scholasticism and to undermine efforts to introduce newer,
non-Thomist philosophies. Liberatore was a brilliant writer and polemicist. In
the review he presented Thomism as a compelling, fully integrated and
coherent modern system of philosophy. For his part, Kleutgen presented wave
after wave of persuasive argument in favour of his view that perennial
scholastic theology was far better equipped to expound and defend
2
Ronald McCamy, Out of a Kantian Chrysalis? A Maritainian Critique of Fr. Marechal, Peter
Lang 1998.

3
His reference is to Gerald McCool’s Catholic Thought in the Nineteenth Century, New York:
Seabury, 1977.
4
The point is developed below on page 9.
5
See p. 2

3
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

Catholicism than the nineteenth century Catholic theologies based on faddish


and ephemeral contemporary philosophy. Both theologians (independently of
each other) rejected the Cartesian return to the subject and the different forms
of idealism that follow in its wake. According to their scholastic Aristotelianism
and epistemological and metaphysical realism, reality impinges on man
through the intensional image, itself abstracted from the phantasm. There is
no a priori intuition of God’s necessary being; God’s existence can be known
only through a posteriori argument from the world of sense experience. This
scholastic synthesis was presented as a modern system, in tune with
common sense, empiricist, informed by centuries’ of reflection on the nature of
rationality, accepting of new insights and capable of coping intelligibly with
serious theological issues such as faith and reason, nature and grace and the
individual and social ethics. All this, in the eyes of Leo XIII, added up to an
irresistible argument for the revival and propagation of scholasticism in the
modern world.

Aeterni Patris laid the foundations for a modern development of scholasticism,


a development that occurred in the twentieth century and that saw
scholasticism assume a number of diverse and distinctive forms. So far the
terms ‘scholasticism’ and ‘Thomism’ have been used without great precision
and almost interchangeably. What is evident from research undertaken by
Étienne Gilson (1884-1978), however, is that a common scholastic synthesis
had never actually existed, despite Pope Leo’s belief in a philosophy ‘common
to all the Scholastic Doctors’. The philosophies of knowledge, being and man
found in the theologies of St Thomas, St Bonaventure and Duns Scotus were,
according to Gerald McCool, ‘irreducibly distinct in their systematic content.’6
Added to this is the fact that the meaning of Thomism is not univocal. The
‘Second Scholasticism’ of the sixteenth century saw the production of different
interpretations of St Thomas, including those of the Dominican Cajetan
(Giacomo de Vio, 1469-1534) and the Jesuit Francisco Suàrez (1548-1617).
Suàrez’s Thomism actually drew on the thought of other scholastic doctors
besides Aquinas. In his interpretation of Thomas’s metaphysics, Suàrez
reduced Thomas’s distinction between essence and existence to a conceptual
6
See Gerald McCool, The Neo-Thomists, Marquette University Press 2003.

4
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

one. Cajetan, however, affirmed that there was an act of existence really
distinct from the essence that limited it. Given these variations it becomes
germane to ask: which version(s) of Thomism/neo-scholasticism were taken
up by theologians at the turn of the century and was the awareness of the
Thomism’s historical character a fillip behind the development of one
interpretation that showed greater openness to the ‘secular’ thought of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

2: Aristotelian Thomism

Three distinct strains of Thomistic interpretation characterised the twentieth


century Thomistic revival: the Aristotelian, associated with the Dominicans
Ambroise Gardeil (1859-1931), Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964) and
Jacques Maritain (1882-1973); the Existential, associated with Étienne Gilson
(1884-1978); the Transcendental (Transcendental Thomism), developed
principally by Pièrre Rousselot (1878-1915) and Joseph Maréchal (1878-
1944). When epistemology has priority over ontology, what is (reality) will be
characterised in terms of what can be known. Hence philosophies associated
with a turn to the subject (Descartes, Kant) regard the real as something
constructed by the human subject. In all three of the strains of the Thomism
mentioned, ontology has priority over epistemology. All three are concerned
with how the real (which is independently of the human subject) impinges
upon human awareness. Robert Harvanek SJ has suggested that what
distinguishes Aristotelian from Transcendental Thomism is that the former
affirms what is real through the concept, whereas the latter achieves this
through the judgement. The ‘philosophy of the concept’ has become the
mainstay of what he calls the ‘conservative view’. The ‘philosophy of the
judgement’ is the province of the ‘pluralists’.7

In what way is the real appropriated through the concept? To answer this, it
will be necessary to provide a brief account of the Aristotelian-Thomist

7
See Robert Harvanek, Philosophical Pluralism in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol 11,
New York: McGraw-Hill 1967, pp 448-451.

5
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

explanation of the nature of knowing.8 Given the independent reality of a


particular object (such as a tree), what is the manner of the subject’s
involvement with (knowledge of) this object? The rather paradoxical answer is
that the subject becomes the object; the knower becomes the thing known.9
All knowing is a kind of grasping, a getting hold of reality and taking it in. This
process begins with the senses; sensible forms are received immaterially
(assuming the truth of Aristotle’s doctrine of hylomorphism) but they are
received under the conditions of matter, hence their particularity and
individuality. In the next, cognitional, stage10 the attentive mind lays hold of
and draws out or abstracts the essential features of the object; it ‘liberates’ it
from the limitations imposed on it by the conditions of matter. The object of
this abstraction (or liberation) – referred to variously as the cognitional image,
the intensional image, the form, or the concept – is capable of existing in
more than one way. By nature, it exists as a physical object (such as a
particular tree); cognitionally it exists as the intensional image. This image is
not a copy of the thing that exists physically. What is known is the real thing
existing in the mode of an intensional image. The locus of reality, then, is the
what of the object. There is no (need for) intuition of existential reality either in
the external world or in the interior of the knowing subject. The what can be in
various ways but it is the concept11 that expresses its nature fully and
exhaustively.

3: Transcendental Thomism

8
The précis I provide is modelled on the kind of summary offered to many seminarians
following philosophy courses in the first half of the 20th century, up to Vatican II. I have drawn
on a couple of seminary manuals: An Introduction to Philosophy by Msgr Paul Glenn, Herder,
1944 and An Introduction to Philosophy by Daniel Sullivan, Bruce, 1957.
9
See Sullivan, op. cit. p. 65.
10
The authors do not suggest that the act of knowing involves any kind of temporal sequence;
the different stages can be identified as a result of logical analysis.
11
The concept has to be distinguished from the term which is the outward expression of the
concept (by means of a conventional sign such as a word). Aristotelian-Thomism suggests
that the term expresses a concept completely (once its meaning has been fully and
competently unpacked). It is also important to emphasise that the proper object of knowledge
is the reality, not the concept. The concept is the medium through which the reality of the
object is encountered.

6
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

Given this ontological-epistemological position, it is clear that there can be no


plurality of conceptual frameworks. The ‘conservative’ opposition to pluralism
would rest of the following grounds: human minds (regardless of culture or
conditioning) will form the same concepts of reality; concepts are founded in
the formalities of mind-independent reality and move beyond subjectivism to
objective reference; concepts capture the timeless and unchanging natures
that make up extramental reality; given that only one conceptual
representation is adequate to a reality which is what it is, only one
philosophical system is possible. Such a position, clearly, would support the
belief that the concepts used by the Church to express Christian doctrine are
the gateway to what is ultimately real; they are not, by their very nature, tied to
any particular culture or epoch nor is their essential meaning in any way
negotiable or in need of revision or reinterpretation.

I referred above (page 4) to theologians who showed a greater openness to


secular thought. One such theologian (someone who, in Harvanek’s analysis,
would favour emphasis not on the concept but on the judgement12) was
Joseph Maréchal, a Belgian Jesuit, who in 1926 published Cahier cinq of his
monumental Le Point de départ de la métaphysique. In this work, Maréchal
presented an understanding of human cognition that is strikingly at odds with
the Aristotelian-Thomistic account summarised above. Like the Aristotelian-
Thomist, Maréchal fully subscribed to philosophical realism. What is in the
world exists extramentally and independently of human subjectivity. However
human knowing involves, not a reception from real things (by means of
abstraction and formation of an intensional image), but a projection of the
knower upon the ultimately real. His starting point for his own development of
Thomism was his analysis of what he considered Kant’s defective
transcendental reflection on human knowledge as set out in Kant’s Critique of
Pure Reason. In Kant’s thought the object is constituted by means of a static
union of empirical data, the forms of space and time, and the categories of the
understanding. By including the dynamism of the human mind as one of the a

12
See McCamy, op. cit. p 14

7
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

priori conditions of possibility for the speculative intellect’s knowledge of the


object, Kant’s unbridgeable gulf between the subject and the world, between
the phenomenon and the noumenon, and between the human knower and
God, can finally be crossed. When the human knower judges that something
is the case, his innate, a priori dynamism (that Maréchal describes as a
‘torrent’ that swamps the data of sensation) provides the non-finite backdrop
against which the object can be profiled in consciousness as finite and limited.
John Knasas likens this backdrop to an ‘‘intellectual sky’ against which things
can profile themselves as beings of finite perfection.’13 The concept is an
important form of knowledge in its own right, but it occupies on an
intermediate position in the scale of human cognition. Considered in this way,
the concept loses its Aristotelian-Thomistic rigidity and becomes susceptible
to reformulation.

John Knasas has observed that several currents of Thomism (including the
Aristotelian) streamed into Vatican II but, as a matter of fact, only Maréchal’s
Transcendental Thomism emerged with any vibrancy.14 It might be germane to
point out some of the attractions that Maréchal’s reworking of Thomism would
have had for some Catholic theologians working in the pre-Conciliar period.
Maréchal’s implied pluralism avoids any commitment to a single and definitive
metaphysics as the crown of man’s natural powers. The Aristotelian-Thomist
position suggests a view of human nature as being so integrated that grace
appears as irrelevant and superfluous. Maréchal’s human nature, by contrast,
is a dynamism to infinite being, a profound longing that can be quieted only by
God. As already observed (page 4) Étienne Gilson’s historical studies showed
that the thinking of scholastic philosophers is as individual as fingerprints. The
Aristotelian-Thomist position is clearly too ahistorical and the Maréchalian
perspective (concepts forming in the wake of intellectual dynamism)
reasonably accommodates the undeniable pluralism in human thinking.
Finally, as against Aristotelian-Thomism’s unappealingly relentless,

13
See John FX Knasas, The Twentieth Century Thomistic Revival, on
www.secondspring.co.uk/archive/knasas.htm. page 2/9
14
See op. cit. p 3/9

8
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

impersonal, a posteriori approach, Maréchal’s Thomism provides ‘an


engaging portrayal of our inner life as conscious beings.’15 Maréchal rings true
to our sense of ourselves as radically orientated to what is ultimately
worthwhile and caught between a longing for God and a restlessness brought
on by our over-involvement with what is contingent and temporary.

Two of the most original theologians of the twentieth century, Karl Rahner and
Bernard Lonergan, emerged from the tradition of Maréchal and further
developed his thought to show that a philosophical and theological method
based on the finality of the human mind can continue to present a concept of
invariant truth in a theology marked by history and pluralism. As ‘new
theologians’, working in the context of post-Conciliar theology, however, many
have questioned whether their work belongs to the history of the Neo-Thomist
movement. John Knasas goes so far as to suggest that being a theologian in
the post-Conciliar period means, by definition, working outside the Thomist
framework: ‘The history of the modern Neo-Thomist movement, whose
magna carta was Aeterni Patris, reached its end at the Second Vatican
Council.’16 In a telling observation, Gerald McCool noted that the seeds of
Neo-Thomism’s own demise could be discerned, quite ironically, in the
philosophy of one of Aristotelian Thomism’s most vocal advocates, namely
Joseph Kleutgen. McCool is able to detect elements of both traditional and
transcendental versions of Thomism abiding in latent opposition in Kleutgen’s
work, two tendencies that will catalyze later into the ferment of the nouvelle
théologie. As he writes, ‘With Kleutgen … the end is in the beginning.’17
‘Demise’, of course, does not mean disappearance; Thomism in its various
forms continued and continues to have its advocates. The demise of Thomism
in this context means the end of its influence as a monolithic philosophical-
theological party line after the Second Vatican Council. This has to be seen as
a corollary of Maréchal’s relativisation of the concept and consequent

15
See Knasas op. cit p. 7/9
16
Knasas, op.cit. p. 7/9.
17
See Catholic Thought in the Nineteenth Century, op. cit p. 3

9
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

legitimisation of different conceptual frameworks that serve as the


philosophical bases of different theologies, theologies that, in the forty years
since Vatican II, have enlarged and enriched themselves with concepts drawn
from existentialism, eschatology, personalism, Marxism and other political
ideologies, praxiology and ecology.18

4: Fides et Ratio and Existential Thomism

The widespread acceptance of theological pluralism in the Catholic Church


conjoined with an ongoing debate about the precise meaning of ‘absolute
truth’ has prompted the present pope, John Paul II, to issue an appeal to
contemporary philosophers and theologians not to despair. His encyclical,
Fides et Ratio, published in September 1998, was addressed to ‘The Bishops
… along with philosophers, scientists and theologians.’ One of John Paul’s
aims (perhaps ironically) is to offer encouragement to (all) philosophers who,
since the Enlightenment, have tended to do their thinking independently of the
Church and who have begun to question the possibility of the attainment of
(universal) truth. He wants to reassure them about the purpose and the
capacity of the human mind with regard to truth: ‘Every truth … presents itself
as universal, even if it is not the whole truth. If something is true, it must be
true for all people at all times … Throughout the centuries, philosophers have
sought to discover and articulate such truth … what inspires them is the
desire to reach the certitude of truth and the certitude of its absolute value.’
(27) It is unusual for encyclicals to endorse particular philosophies or
methodologies and his audience might have expected John Paul to couch his
encouragement and recommendations in a general way. What is striking
about Fides et Ratio is the metaphysical character of his plea. The Pope
provides both an outline of the kind of metaphysics he is recommending and a
more specific characterisation of its essential features. In section 19 he
suggests that the overall philosophical approach will be a posteriori, beginning
with knowledge of ‘the structure of the world and the activity of the elements’
and reaching towards God in causal terms. In 83, he refers to ‘the need for a
18
For a fuller discussion of this see Legitimacy and limits of theological pluralism by Battista
Mondin on www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/PLURALSM.HTM.

10
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

philosophy of genuinely metaphysical range, capable, that is, of transcending


empirical data in order to attain something absolute, ultimate and foundational
in the search for truth.’ In 96 he endorses the use of ‘certain basic concepts
[that] retain their universal epistemological value.’ In terms of the two versions
of Thomism outlined above, John Paul seems to be steering his audience
towards a metaphysical via media that picks up aspects of the Aristotelianism
and Transcendentalism (such as the generally a posteriori context and the
metaphysical rather than natural approach to God) and combines them with
new elements drawn from I have referred to as Existential Thomism.

This is an appropriate point at which to introduce some commentary on the


third strain of Thomistic interpretation which, as I have indicated, is associated
with the French Catholic mediævalist and philosopher, Étienne Gilson.19
Unlike most of the thinkers associated with the twentieth century Thomistic
revival, Gilson was in no sense a ‘cradle Thomist’. He discovered Thomism on
his own and owed no allegiance to any of the traditional schools of Thomistic
interpretation. His interest in Thomism was awakened by his doctoral
research 20 into the scholastic origins of Descartes’ thought. In this study he
became convinced that many of the received ideas about scholasticism were
erroneous. In particular he believed that attempts to disengage mediaeval
philosophy from its Christian theological context were fundamentally
misconceived. When Aquinas did philosophy he did it from within theology.
Christian philosophy was not (secular) philosophy that made reference to
certain Christian beliefs. It was a special way of doing philosophy.
Consequently Gilson took issue with the kind of Thomism found in the
manuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These were works that
did too much of their philosophising in reaction to Descartes. In their zeal to
make their Thomism contemporary, theologians and commentators distilled
the ‘philosophical’ content from the works of Thomas and presented it in the
form of ‘theses’ that were intended to from a coherent Thomistic philosophy.
Gilson believed that this adaptation resulted, not only in inauthentic Thomism,
but in ineffective and seriously flawed (Christian) philosophy. One area of his
19
See p. 5
20
Published as La Liberté chez Descartes et la Théologie in 1913.

11
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

research that has particular bearing on this discussion is Gilson’s work on


Aristotelian metaphysics and its relation to Thomism. Being for Aristotle meant
a subsisting essence, whether it was a pure substantial form or linked to
primary matter. (We have already seen, above, in Aristotelian Thomism that
being is associated with an essence that can exist in various ways, physically
and intensionally.) However, for St Thomas, being meant existence, an act
that could not be a form since its function was to confer existence on an
essence that was already formed. Being cannot be known in the manner of an
Aristotelian form, through a process of abstraction. It can be known only
through a judgement that affirmed the actual existence of something known to
the subject through sense experience. God, the final reality, cannot be
construed in terms of a substantial form, however this may be qualified.
Rather, God should be understood in terms of the complete act of existence,
communicating himself to the world by means of a Pure Existential Act. For
Thomas, according to Gilson, reality inheres not in concepts, but in existence
or, as Thomas himself puts it, agere sequitur esse.

In section 115 of Fides et Ratio, the Pope emphasises the value of a


metaphysics of being based on the very act of existence: ‘Set within the
Christian metaphysical tradition, the philosophy of being is a dynamic
philosophy that views reality in its ontological, causal and communicative
structures. It is strong and enduring because it is based upon the very act of
being itself, which allows a full and comprehensive openness to reality as a
whole, surpassing every limit in order to reach the One who brings all things
to fulfilment.’ John Paul is convinced that a metaphysics of being in the form
of (Gilsonian) Existential Thomism is able to ‘go beyond all that presents itself
directly in knowledge as an existing thing … in order to reach “that which
exists as sheer Existing” and also creative Love; for it is this which provides
the ultimate … explanation of the fact that “it is preferable to be than not to be”
and, in particular, of the fact that we exist.’ 21

21
See John Paul II’s Angelicum Address on the centenary of Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni
Patris, delivered in 1979.

12
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

Concluding remarks

Fides et Ratio, by recommending that the actus essendi as developed in


Gilson’s Existential Thomism be studied by philosophers and considered as
serious option for Catholic thinkers working in the 21st century, clearly breaks
the mould of past papal encyclicals in that specific points of philosophical
doctrine have received official endorsement. John Paul himself, as if to pre-
empt possible criticism states that ‘ … no historical form of philosophy can
legitimately claim to embrace the totality of truth, nor to be the complete
explanation of the human being, of the world, and of the human being’s
relationship with God.’ (FeR, 55) Also, later in 78, he again concedes that St
Thomas is a model and not a requirement: ‘[St Thomas had been acclaimed
by the Magisterium] … not in order to take a position on properly philosophical
questions or to demand adherence to particular theses.’ It would be a mistake
to regard Fides et Ratio as a reaction (knee-jerk or otherwise) to the
philosophical challenges of theological pluralism but the question still remains
about whether, post Maréchal, nouvelle théologie, Rahner, Lonergan and
others working in the very different, post-Aeterni Patris climate of post Vatican
II, there is still a place for a philosophia perennis in the Catholic Church of the
21st century.

4088 words

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books:

Gerald McCool, The Neo-Thomists, Marquette 2003

13
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

Ronald McCamy, Out of a Kantian Chrysalis? A Maritainian Critique of Fr. Maréchal,


Lang 1998

Mary Michael Spangler, Logic: An Aristotelian Approach, University Press of America,


1986

John MacQuarrie, Existentialism: An introduction, guide and assessment, Penguin,


1973

Papers from various websites:

John Knasas, Thomist Metaphysics Past, Present and Future, Center for Thomistic
Studies, University of St Thomas, Houston, Texas, USA.
Knasas, Whither the Neo-Thomsit Revival? Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and
Culture 3.4 (2000) 121-149

Battista Mondin, Legitimacy and limits of theological pluralism,


www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/PLURALISM.HTM

John Ziegler, Transcendental Thomism: Relflections upon a legacy of Decartes, from


Topica Number 1, Sept 2001

Don Boland, Le point de Départ de Maréchal, Topica Sept 2001,


www.cts.org.au/2001/topica/lepoint.htm

Fides et Ratio, John Paul II, on www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/JP2fides.htm

John R White, The Neo-Scholastic Revival on


www.catholicsocialscientists.org/Article--White--Ockham--mss.htm

14
From Aeterni Patris to Fides et Ratio: towards theological pluralism or a reaffirmation of philosophia perennis?
Candidate number: V42326

15

S-ar putea să vă placă și