Theology, Evolution, and the Figural Imagination: Teilhard de Chardin and His Theological Critics

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Ian Curran
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
Early Essay ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
Pure Immanence ◽  
Etienne Gilson

Teilhard de Chardin has been criticized by both Roman Catholic (Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Dietrich von Hildebrand) and Protestant (David Lane and Jurgen Moltmann) theologians for allegedly promulgating a heterodox, modernist version of Gnosticism that substitutes a naturalistic account of evolution for the supernatural Christian story of redemption in Christ, departs from scriptural and classical theological norms, gives primacy to scientific over theological reasoning, and articulates a vision of pure immanence. Teilhard’s theological integration of salvation and evolution in The Human Phenomenon and other works is, however, grounded in an implicitly figural interpretation of history that is both scriptural and classical in inspiration. Reading Teilhard’s early essay, ‘Cosmic Life,’ through the studies of Erich Auerbach, Leonard Goppelt, and Tibor Fabiny on figural interpretation demonstrates that Teilhard describes evolutionary history as a typological anticipation for the coming Christ, thus refuting misconstruals of his theology as gnostic, heterodox, naturalistic, and immanentalist.

Are there Natural Rights? The Sceptical Critique and the Modern Roman Catholic Tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 74-92
Author(s):  
Nigel Biggar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
Positive Rights ◽  
Rerum Novarum ◽  
The Common ◽  
John Finnis ◽  
Catholic Tradition

This chapter examines the modern Roman Catholic appropriation of rights-talk, in order to see whether or not Catholic tradition has proven better than other ‘modern’ traditions at meeting the sceptics’ objections to natural rights. It focuses particularly on Rerum Novarum, Jacques Maritain, ‘Pacem in Terris’, and John Finnis and, in passing, it criticises Samuel Moyn’s construal of twentieth-century Catholic thought on rights. It concludes that, through its affirmation of a larger moral order (‘natural law’), Catholic thinking about rights has shown itself more ready to talk in terms of moral categories other than ‘rights’. It is also unusual in the prominence it gives to the concept of the common good, although typically without offering any exact explanation of how this relates to individual rights—except in the case of John Finnis. Finnis also identifies a common problem with much other ‘modern’ rights-talk: that, since the very concept of a right has an absolute, ‘conclusory’ force, rights-talk has the logical tendency to shut down wider deliberation about justice. Instead, he argues, rights should emerge at the end of deliberation about a range of factors—moral, social, and political—rather than be invoked at the beginning. This appears to affirm socially contingent positive rights rather than absolute natural ones. But that is not the whole story, because the Catholic rights tradition consistently asserts some absolute natural rights. These, however, are either tautologous or practically unilluminating.

The Immediate Realism of Léon Noël

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-189
Author(s):  
Gaven Kerr ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
Important Contributor ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Epistemological Position ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Epistemological Realism ◽  
Etienne Gilson

After the emergence of the neo-Thomist movement in the early twentieth century, the question of how best to present Aquinas’s latent epistemological realism came to the fore. Léon Noël was an important contributor to this area of neo-Thomism, but his work has unfortunately been eclipsed by that of other more recognizable authors such as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain. Noël argued that Aquinas’s realism is a form of immediate realism that recognizes the challenge of modern representationalist epistemologies but does not succumb to non-realist ways of thinking. Hence Noël presented immediate realism as an epistemological position that is inspired by Aquinas but also capable of addressing philosophical concerns that emerged after his death. In this article I present Noël’s view as interesting in its own right and capable of engaging with contemporary non-Thomist trends in epistemology.

Roman Catholicism

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-125
Author(s):  
Anne McGowan
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Dead

Worshippers at Catholic Christmas services may come seeking festivities focused on the infant Jesus but will find in the Scriptures proclaimed and the proper texts of the Christmas liturgies all-encompassing theological claims about salvation through an adult Christ who suffered, died, and rose from the dead. The official Christmas liturgies of the Roman rite were shaped by doctrinal concerns and historical circumstances. They emphasize a ‘holy exchange’ between divinity and humanity in Christ incarnate that opens a way for redemption accomplished historically, celebrated liturgically, and fully realized eschatologically. The celebration of Christmas in Roman Catholic worshipping communities involves situating Christ’s birth in the broader context of his death and Resurrection, negotiating the placement of paraliturgical and cultural customs that nourish the piety of the people and contextualize the feast, and preaching the Gospel in ways that inspire worshippers to become witnesses for Christ in the world.

scholarly journals La correspondencia entre J. Maritain y É. Gilson en 1923. Precisiones en torno a la segunda edición de El tomismo

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-75
Author(s):  
Ceferino P. D. Muñoz ◽  
Juan Heiremans Correa
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
Siglo Xx ◽  
Etienne Gilson

El siguiente escrito muestra el breve pero enjundioso intercambio epistolar entre quizás los dos filósofos cristianos más importantes del siglo XX: Étienne Gilson y Jacques Maritain. Las cartas están centradas en torno a algunas de las tantas temáticas que inquietaron a los tomistas del siglo pasado –la intuición de Dios, el primer objeto de la inteligencia, la función propia del intelecto humano, entre otras– y que aun muestran su plena actualidad en el debate contemporáneo. Ofrecemos la primera traducción al español de las cartas enviadas en el año 1923 –inicio de una fructífera correspondencia entre ambos filósofos–, con ocasión de la publicación de la segunda edición de El tomismo, uno de los libros más emblemáticos de Gilson.

Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Rahner

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Theological Method ◽  
Karl Rahner ◽  
Hans Urs Von Balthasar ◽  
In Christ

This chapter provides an account of the theology of salvation for both Hans Urs Balthasar and Karl Rahner, eminent Roman Catholic, Jesuit theologians of the twentieth century. Dickens explores both the similarities between these two theologians, such as their disdain for the neoscholastic theological method, and their differences, which primarily exist in their conception of the person, distinctive views of sin, and the scope of the reconciliation of God in Christ.

Reframing Aquinas on Art and Morality

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-311
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Simpson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Distinct Species ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Crucial Assumption ◽  
Etienne Gilson

Can a work of art be defective aesthetically as art because it is defective morally? Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain both develop Thomistic accounts of the arts based on Aquinas’s distinction between the virtues of art and prudence, but they answer this question differently. Although their answers diverge, I will argue that both accounts make a crucial assumption about the metaphysics of goodness that Aquinas denies: that moral and aesthetic goodness are distinct species, not inseparable modes, of metaphysical goodness. I propose a new way to develop a Thomistic account of the arts that begins with Aquinas’s treatment of the three inseparable modes of metaphysical goodness: the virtuous, the useful, and the pleasant. This foundation seems metaphysically, methodologically, and explanatorily prior to the accounts of Gilson and Maritain, because art is a virtue, and virtue is related to goodness, and goodness is “divided” into three inseparable modes.

“Iustitia Christi” and “Iustitia Dei”: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrines of Justification

1966 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heiko A. Oberman
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Catholic Tradition ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Positive Evaluation

The ever-increasing respect for Luther among Roman Catholic theologians and historians of Christian thought is not only a sign of but also a significant contributing factor to contemporary ecumenical openness — especially so in Germany. Yet at the same time we should realize that this more positive evaluation of Luther is based on the conviction that the reformer was born under the star of heresy. While it is granted that he articulated the biblical message of sin, grace and forgiveness in Christ within the context of the late medieval nominalism in which he was reared, it is exactly this context which is regarded as essentially a-catholic or even as anti-catholic to the extent that it obstructed Luther's grasp of the full and true catholic tradition in the Middle Ages. Therefore, from the very beginning, access to the specifically Catholic tradition had been denied to Luther.

Reprobation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Feenstra
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
In Christ

Reprobation is an eternal decision by God that results in everlasting death and punishment for some persons. The doctrine of reprobation typically takes one of three forms: (1) that God from eternity decreed to elect some without regard to faith or works and to reprobate others without regard to sin or unbelief, both to display his glory and for reasons we do not know (sometimes called double predestination); (2) that God from eternity decreed to elect some, despite their sin, and to abandon the rest, with the cause of their reprobation being sin and unbelief; or (3) that God from eternity elected those he foreknew would believe in Christ and reprobated those he foreknew would persist in sin and unbelief. Reprobation doctrine was developed by Augustine and appears in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Calvin, who were deeply indebted to Augustine’s thought. Although some Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians have defended reprobation doctrine since the sixteenth century, Reformed theologians have stressed it and made it the occasion of controversy.

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